Dragon in Exile - eARC (29 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Corner of Dudley Avenue and Farley Lane

In the late afternoon, there came a knock at the door.

Kamele raised her head from the folder of letters she had been studying, listening to Dilly’s footsteps as she approached the door, and opened it.

There came the sound of voices: a woman’s, bold and carrying the distinctive rhythm of an accent not elsewhere found on Surebleak, even though her words were muffled.

Kamele smiled, and rose from her chair, pausing only to mark her place in the file before hurrying out of her office and down the stairs.

It had become a habit, after their first, formal meeting at Joan’s Bakery—many weeks ago, now—that Silain,
luthia
, or
grandmother
, of the Bedel who lived in and yet apart from the rest of the port city, would call on them now and then. They would sit around the table and talk for an hour over tea, and all arise refreshed and re-invigorated.

Kamele looked forward to these visits, for Silain was a woman of great learning and insight. She thought that Kareen also put a value upon the grandmother’s visits.

Kareen, so Kamele had observed, was lonely. She had abandoned a wide circle of acquaintance, scholarship, and volunteer work on the old world, and while their mutual project was…encompassing; it did not replace old friends or accustomed duty.

Kamele rounded the wide bottom stair, and walked down the hall toward the dining room at the back of the house.

The table was covered with a deep green cloth, on which three groupings of creamy china cups and plates had been set out, with various spoons and tongs and knives. In the center of the table, a vase painted in abstract swirls of cream and green held a cluster of cream and yellow flowers.

Kareen was already welcoming their guest.

“It is good of you to come, Silain. Indeed, I wish it were in my power to convey how much I look forward to our teas.”

“It is good for sisters to talk,” Silain said, as Kamele slipped into the room. “And here—here is my other sister! We are complete.”

“Let us sit,” Kareen said. “The tea will come soon, and I believe that there are the filled cakes you favor, Silain.”

“That is well. I brought a few fruits of limon, and some mint—a gift to your kitchen, sister. Dilly took them in hand.”

“My house is made richer by a sister’s gift,” Kareen said. “But, Silain, you must sit, and be comfortable.”

So urged, Silain took her usual seat, with the hall doorway at her left hand. Kareen’s chair was at what she called the ‘head’ of the table, which coincidentally faced the doorway. Kamele sat across from Silain, with Kareen on her left.

“Does your work progress well, sisters?”

“As well as may be,” Kareen said, with a cool smile at Kamele. “There was a find earlier in the week, which may be significant, as it supports anecdotal evidence of which we had previously taken note.”

Silain in her turn looked to Kamele.

“What did you find, if it can be shared, among sisters?”

“In fact, it seems peculiarly apt to share it among sisters,” Kamele said, leaning forward and clasping her hands together on the table top.

“We found a…compilation of letters written by grandmothers in various turfs, detailing the history, and the responsibilities, of each. It appears to have been written and collected before the old system broke down utterly, and the Bosses decided to stop cooperating with each other. It doesn’t describe a fully functioning system, but it does seem to show us that the society was closely modeled on the Gilmour Agency’s corporate structure. Each department, or section, had a number of colonists attached to it.

“Later, the system—” she moved her hands, as if she was trying to find the words in the air before her. “The system
imploded
, each section collapsing into itself. The toolbooths became the boundary by which each turf defined itself, and the Boss became the absolute power over the colonists—the streeters.”

“This is exciting information, I see,” Silain said. “But does the past teach you anything useful about the future?”

“All systems build on the past,” Kamele said; “even those which are built on a deliberate denial of the past.”

There was a small sound in the hallway, and she paused while Esil Lang and Amiz brought in the tea tray.

“Thank you,” said Kareen, when the first cups had been poured and the plates of cakes and bread set on the table. “Leave the pot, please. We will serve ourselves.”

“Yes, Lady,” said Esil, and performed one of the small, respectful bows that the house staff had adopted. She shooed Amiz out ahead and closed the door firmly after her.

“You were speaking of the past,” Silain said to Kamele.

She laughed and moved her shoulders, as Jen Sar had used to do when he had judged he’d shown too much enthusiasm for a topic.

“No, I am interested,” Silain pressed, taking up one of the filled cakes. “It is the role of the
luthia
, you know, to bring the past to the present. It is said that the past has much to teach us, which I do not dispute. But sometimes I wonder, sisters, have I learned
rightly
from the past?”

“Exactly!” Kamele leaned forward, elbows on the table, tea cup cradled in her hands. “We
build
from the past, but do we
learn
from it? And, if we
have
learned, have we taken the correct lessons? We bring assumptions to the task of learning, while the history we seek to learn proceeds from the assumptions of another time, to which we may not be privy.

“That’s what makes this portfolio—this history—so important to Kareen’s work—”

“Your work, also,” Kareen murmured.

“—for not only do we have a list of proper behaviors, but the
reasons
those behaviors were considered proper,
and
how those behaviors—those social mores—had changed during the lifetime of our historians. The assumptions of the authors are very clearly laid out, and we can see where we and they intersect, where our—our necessities have diverged, or march together…Really, it’s priceless.”

“I see that it is,” Silain said. She raised her cup and looked to Kareen.

“Our sister puts me in mind of a thing—you would say, an
archive
—for which I am responsible, and which may have some bearing on your work here.”

“You interest me,” Kareen said. “Do you mean to say that you have records of Surebleak before its…collapse?”

Silain sipped tea, her eyes frowning at—and through—the plate of sweet things; the very picture of a scholar in a brown study.

“It may be so,” she said eventually. “You will understand that I have not dreamed every dream in my keeping. The
kompani
…has been on this world for…an amount of time, I will say. At first, we wandered. It may be that the earliest dreams of this place may bring knowledge to my sisters.”

“This dreaming,” Kareen said. “I understand it to be time-consuming, and—forgive me—opaque to those not trained in the method.”

“Anyone can dream. The difficult part is in bringing the dream to the waking world in such a way that it can be understood.” Silain smiled at Kamele. “This is what my sister Kamele has said. The points of reference; the assumptions of the dreaming mind…They are not always clear.”

“Yes. And as none of us here are trained dreamers…”

Silain moved a hand.

“No, I think I have the answer to that, too: A skilled researcher with a strong memory. She was my apprentice, and would be
luthia
if our
kompani
had birthed daughters. Droi is her name. She is pregnant and forbidden some of the work she is used to doing. Time hangs heavy on her hands. I will send her. You, my sisters, will explain to her what you look for, what hints she ought to seek. She will dream from the first dream of Surebleak until—”

She looked ’round the table, spreading her hands wide in a question.

Kareen tapped her finger thoughtfully on the tabletop.

“We have identified a few cusp points,” she said slowly, looked to Kamele, brows lifted.

“By all means, send Droi to us,” Kamele said warmly. “We have the date that the Gilmour Agency shut down operations here, and the date that the last company ship lifted. We have dates for some of the Bosses…”

She glanced at Kareen, who bowed her head, and said, “We have the date that Boss Conrad…
retired
…former Boss Moran and broke the culture a second time…Yes, send us Droi. We will try and see what she can find for us, and if we can be useful to each other.”

Silain nodded, and plucked another sweet from the plate.

“I will speak with Droi,” she said and smiled. “Truly it is said that when sisters talk together, mountains move.”

* * *

“How did you know,” Val Con said, as they walked across the lawns, “that any of our former colleagues had chosen well—and survived the choice?”

“I did not,” Rys said. His steps were soft on the dry grass, but not quite silent. “My grandmother, however, tells me that she has seen five shadows against a conflagration. As she had previously predicted a long and perilous journey on my behalf, my understanding is that four survived the choice.”

“Your understanding is…good. But there is no need for you to endanger yourself.”

“No? Who, then, will lead them? Yourself?”

“My…let us say,
my hope
was that, among us
six
we might come up with a course of action to be carried out by four. My best part is to stay in the Department’s eye, and demonstrate that Korval defends itself nearly—and nothing more.”

“I agree,” Rys said promptly. “Misdirection is vital. Draw their eyes, and give us time to close.”

“Close upon what, I wonder? The Commander?”

“That I will know better when we five have lain our plans.”

“Not six?”

“No…” A flash of black eyes. “Consider that
you
are the final hope. If we all five should fall, then must Korval act, and completely. The reasoning that drove the strike upon Liad was firmly based upon necessity. The Department must be stopped—not for us who have already been captured, and tortured, and escaped as something other than ever we were meant to be.

“But it is not too late for your daughter, or for mine. Our care must be for them.”

“I concur,” Val Con said, after a moment, and, “Have you a daughter, Rys?”

“She will be born soon. The
kompani
wants her and will care for her, but—should there be need, Brother, I solicit your kindness for her and for her mother. My daughter’s name is Maysl. Her mother is Droi.”

“I will care for them as if they were my own.”

He felt a pressure on his arm and looked down to find Rys gripping him lightly with the metal hand.

“I could hope for nothing better.”

They had come to the crack in the world, and Rys knelt to place his natural hand along the rift.

“This needs fill,” he said.

“So we have done. The soil continues to settle, as does the House.”

“Both will come even, eventually,” Rys said, and rose, dusting his hand off against his thigh, his gaze moving over the tidy garden patch along.

“That’s well-placed. However, I do not see vines.”

“Patience. Perhaps they are around the other side of the house. Or behind the barn. Mr. Shaper is not…always tolerant of visitors, and I do not have free run of his land.”

“How do we proceed, then?”

“We will follow the path—you see it?—and we will keep our hands at all times in sight. We do not molest the cats, though doubtless we shall achieve an escort. If we come so far as the house without a hail, I will mount the door-stone and state our business. If that fails to elicit a response, we will return exactly in the style in which we arrived.”

“I understand,” said Rys, and followed him as he stepped over the line onto Yulie Shaper’s land.

They followed the path ’round the garden patch, and Val Con had just bent his head to go under the laden tree limb when the first shot rang out.

* * *

“Captain, we have a personnel issue.”

Miri looked up at Nelirikk, thought about Lizzie up in the nursery. The quiet,
peaceful
nursery where she could rest her head and not think about anything more complicated than did Lizzie need her belly rubbed.

“Continue,” she said.

“Yes, Captain. Jeeves reports that Hazenthull Explorer killed a civilian in the port today, in protection of her partner, who then ran away from the scene, after giving Hazenthull his service gun with explicit instructions to return it to Commander Lizardi, with his resignation. Instead of following these instructions, she chose instead to cover her now-ex-partner’s back as he made good his escape, killing one more civilian, and in the process sustaining wounds which, unless treated immediately, are thought to be life-threatening.”

Miri blinked, took a breath and ran the Scout’s Rainbow, which helped, a little, with her headache.

“Where is Hazenthull now, and in what condition?”

“She is aboard
Tarigan
, in the autodoc. Jeeves confirms that her former partner is the same Tollance Berik-Jones he vouched for as a suitable pilot and back-up for his daughter, Tocohl. The pilots intend to lift on time, as they consider their mission urgent. Pilot Tocohl offers to put Hazenthull Explorer off at a safe port, once she is fully healed of her injuries, and a Korval ship may then pick her up.”

Miri sighed.

Despite her mass, and her attitude, Hazenthull was the most fragile of Korval’s three former Yxtrang corps. Diglon Rifle had taken to Surebleak with a wide delight in everything. He was a sponge for learning things—any and
every
thing—and it was beginning to look like he’d never met a stranger.

Nelirikk was secure in his position as captain’s aide, and he’d managed to stretch out into other areas, including road construction, as needed. Of course Nelirikk was an Explorer—close enough to being a Scout, except a little less prone, in Miri’s observation, to getting into trouble.

Hazenthull, though—she’d been an Explorer, but junior. And she’d screwed up bad, ultimately costing her team leader his life. She had a session or two with Anthora, which had helped, some, but she hadn’t made any connections outside of Korval, and specifically, Korval’s little troop of former-Yxtrang…