Morning rises like thunder out of the Bardwalls and over that icy tower that is Seneschal and spills onto the Sand Hills. The River Scyllay winds through the hills, half sand and half twisted shapes of sandstone and black glass sculpted by the winds. The black glass dated to the Frost Giants, according to my father, but it can cut sharper than a laser, even while the most solid appearing bluffs and cliffs can collapse underfoot.
It took me three half-slides until I found the boy, building a pile of sand that must have been meant as a castle, sitting on a beach beside the now-placid River Scyllay. He couldn’t have been more than three paces from the river.
I dropped out a hundred paces downriver and began to walk toward him, looking for trouble, like big sand snakes that could have swallowed the child whole—Ferrin said they were mutations from the Frost Giant times—or sand cats similar to the mountain cats. Personally, I worried about the snakes more, but as I walked, I didn’t see any of the curved depressions they created, nor any holes in the undersides of the bluffs overlooking the river. There weren’t any clouds over the Bardwalls, and that was a good sign that we wouldn’t face a flash flood.
So I kept walking, ready to dive, as I neared the boy. He had silver-blond hair, even fairer than Baldur’s, and he was piling sand around a
small black glass stone worn smooth by the river and the sand. He was wearing blue night shorts that were wet on the cuffs and smeared with damp sand.
“Hello,” I said, squatting down, not too close, to view his work.
He looked up wide-eyed, shrinking back a little.
I smiled and waited.
He waited.
“I used to build castles.”
He slowly lifted another handful of wet sand and plopped it on top of his pile. “Mommy didn’t want to come to the beach.”
“I see.”
“She said after breakfast.”
I nodded. One of those morning children for whom breakfast time was midmorning or midday.
“Are you almost finished?” I asked.
“No.”
I could see his point. So I stood up and looked around, trying to listen to see if anything else might be stirring, besides the red flies I was brushing away.
The boy had several welts on his back already, but they didn’t seem to bother him.
“We need to go home,” I suggested.
“Don’t want to.” He pushed another pile of sand onto the heap.
“Your mommy will be worried. She doesn’t know where you went.”
“I told her I was going to the beach.”
“Did you tell her which beach?”
He smoothed the sand around the black stone. “No.”
I checked the home coordinates on my gauntlets and reached for his hand.
“Don’t want to.”
“I know.” I waited some more. I kept looking for sand snakes and cats. Maybe it was too early for them.
“All right. Hungry.”
I think I was spoiling his fun by standing there, but I didn’t argue, just took his hand and followed the coordinates.
The house was in a village cluster in a valley not that far away. We broke out right in front of the porch. It was quiet.
I tried not to sigh as we walked up the steps to the door. “Is this your house?”
The boy nodded. I could see a set of elaborate wooden blocks at one end of the porch. I hoped they were his.
I knocked on the door. Nothing. I knocked louder.
“Who the frig is it, Nerryn?”
“How would I know? It’s not even past dawn.”
That was an exaggeration. The sun had barely cleared the Bardwalls. I knocked again.
“Coming …”
The man’s mouth dropped open when he saw the uniform. “Verlyt …” He shut his mouth as he saw the child. “Rykker … are you all right?”
“I went to the beach, Daddy.”
The man looked at me.
“It happened to be a beach on the River Scyllay, right in the middle of the Sand Hills.”
By now the mother was there, hugging the child and murmuring, “Are you all right, dear?”
“I’m hungry now.”
I tried not to grin. “You might think about an inhibitor,” I suggested. “At least for when you’re asleep.”
The two exchanged glances. “I thought you turned …”
“You didn’t …”
I backed away silently, hoping they remembered to keep the inhibitor on while they were asleep. There really wasn’t anything else I could do.
Rykker gave me a solemn wave, and I dropped back to Locator to enter another report. Then I went to my room in the West Barracks and collapsed.
Sometimes nothing happened, and sometimes …
One day, my watch tour was just about over—it was a morning tour—when Frey marched in and presented himself before my console. Frey was Freyda’s son by her fourth or fifth contract.
He wasn’t swinging the black light saber, and he was decked out in formal blacks, with his Senior Guard’s four-pointed silver star positively glittering. My insignia was the gold and green of a senior trainee. At the end of the year, when we finished with Locator and Domestic Affairs probation, we’d all receive official full Guard status and could wear the solid-gold star.
The ranks were really quite few. After you became a Guard, years, centuries, could pass before the next promotion. The Senior Guards wore the four-pointed silver star. Counselors wore black stars edged with gold, and the three Tribunes had black stars edged with silver.
When I looked at the Guards I came in contact with, I wondered who was selected, by whom, and why. Freyda was a Counselor, and trying to be a Tribune when Martel stepped down, or so the gossip ran. Baldur was a Counselor, but Gilmesh, who had more service than either,
and who was in charge of Personnel, was only a Senior Guard. So was Heimdall.
Frey had been promoted to Senior Guard a few years back and had been assigned to run Locator/Domestic Affairs when Wolflen had never come back from a scout run to Atlantea.
Frey was in a hurry.
“You’re off at 1100?”
“Yes.”
“Report to Domestic Affairs as soon as you’re relieved. We need a second standby Guard with hand-to-hand skills.”
He was gone. No explanation. No questions about my availability. Just report to Domestic Affairs.
I wondered if I were getting a reputation as a standby muscler as a result of Baldur’s report on the Sinopol dive. I’d only had lectures on Domestic Affairs and wasn’t scheduled to do my probationary work there until later in the year. For me, it was the last probation tour, but Ferrin had started there. Why had Frey ordered me as a backup Guard? For what?
By the time Ferrin had arrived to relieve me at 1050, I was itching to go.
“Know what’s going on in Domestic Affairs?” I asked with a straight face.
Ferrin smiled, and his too-big teeth lighted his face like a glowbulb. He had picked it up. He catches everything. He might not have been much of a diver, but if anything were in the wind, his long thin nose and keen ears were the first to find out.
“Frey needs muscle, and he doesn’t want to turn to Heimdall for it. You were selected, shining star.”
I grinned back at him. Even though he was snoopy, and his lank black hair hanging over his forehead and his long nose gave him a vulture-like look, I had to like Ferrin. Always willing to help out, he did what he was supposed to do without griping and probably acquired more sheer knowledge from training than any two others put together.
“So why does Frey need me?” I had another question, stupid, but Ferrin could answer it, and I didn’t need one of Gilmesh’s sarcastic answers. “And why does he run both Locator and Domestic Affairs?”
“Do honey and soda bread go together?”
I thought for a moment, then shook my head.
Ferrin, ready to explain anything, plunged in. “Look, Loki, at what Locator does. Locator tracks people. Now, what does Domestic Affairs do? Handles the police functions. And how could it handle the police functions without being able to track people?”
It made sense. I hadn’t had to track someone wanted by Domestic Affairs, but Loragerd had told me the story of her second watch at Locator, when the Guard’s special Domestic Force had gone out with stunners after a man who had tried to storm Martel’s house with an ax.
Using an ax against anyone or his home is bad enough, and it doesn’t happen very often, but to lift an ax against the High Tribune … the wretch deserved a term in Hell for something like that.
The only problem was that he didn’t get it.
The Domestic Force cornered him on a cliff edge under the Bardwalls, right below the Garthorn, but before they could stun him, he’d jumped off, and there was no way to match fall velocities, especially on Query. Besides, who’d want to take that kind of risk for a nut like that?
I’d asked Loragerd if she knew more about the incident, but she couldn’t add much, only that the man had yelled something about the “tyranny of time” and screamed that he was tired of being a “poor, dumb sheep.” His family claimed that the Guard had stunned him and just let him fall. But really, what difference did it make?
No trial. The matter was closed.
So why did Frey need me—a senior trainee? Ferrin still hadn’t answered that question.
“What’s so hot that Frey needs me?”
Ferrin stopped smiling. “I have not the glimmer of an idea, nor even the inkling of a conceptual hypothesis of a rational nature. Unfounded rumor would indicate that he requires someone with outstanding technical diving skills and of a physical nature, someone who is not beholden to Assignments.”
Whenever Ferrin used the double-talk, he meant he couldn’t verify what he said, that he was guessing. His guesses were better than most Guards’ knowledge. His guess translated into Frey needing a junior goon who might be expendable, and he wanted to round up the goon without asking Heimdall’s help.
I added my own guesses. Frey didn’t need or didn’t want a fully trained Guard, which I took to mean that the physical situation wasn’t all that dangerous, but that there were some internal politics involved.
I nodded to Ferrin and signed over the console.
When I reported to Domestic Affairs at 1103, I was promptly greeted by Frey, Gilmesh, and a Guard I’d never met.
“Loki, this is Hightel.” Frey made the introductions.
Hightel was stocky, broader than me, with rock-sandy hair and brown eyes, and seemed ready to burst out of his black jumpsuit. He smiled pleasantly. I decided he was the kind of Guard to be polite to.
“Greetings,” I acknowledged, bowing slightly. I still couldn’t resist
pushing Frey a bit. “Could you please explain what I’m here for?”
“You didn’t tell him?” asked Gilmesh.
“Press of time,” admitted Frey.
Gilmesh’s eyes flicked over Frey with a strange cast, I thought, but the look vanished in an instant. Hightel’s face remained pleasantly impassive.
“It’s fairly simple,” began Gilmesh as Frey stood there without uttering a sound. “We have to move a miscreant from detention to the Hall for trial. Hightel would normally handle the situation, but there is a faint possibility that those sympathetic to the miscreant may attempt to interfere. You are present to ensure that no one interferes with Hightel.”
At that, he handed me a stunner, deliberately setting it on full.
I didn’t understand, but buttoned my lip. None of it made sense. If the miscreant were so dangerous, why drag a trainee, even a senior trainee, in as a second Guard? Frey was all too nervous, and Gilmesh too plausible. I still took the stunner.
“Miscreant” was the official term for those non-Guard Queryans who violated the Code. This particular miscreant must be something. I was interested to see what he or she looked like, to see why Frey and Gilmesh had pulled me in.
While some detention cells were in the Domestic Affairs building across the Square from the Tower, most cells were in the lower Tower levels. Made sense, because the construction of the Tower itself inhibited sliding and diving. Then the Guard added restrainer fields, a beefed-up version of the inhibitors used for children.
What the restrainers did was to scramble thought enough to prevent time-diving or sliding. Without something like that, it would have been impossible to confine most Queryans.
The four of us marched across the Square to the Tower, out of step, but who cared?
In the fall, and the seasons’ temperatures vary only marginally in Quest except for midwinter when there is frost and an occasional snow, the fireflowers’ scarlet was brighter, and they glowed into the twilight, often until midevening. They looked like they would pour perfume into the air, but they had no scent at all.
Hightel hadn’t said a word. We marched down the ramps to the detention levels and still he said nothing. Frey pointed out the cell. Except for the restrainer fields, the thick walls, and the barred door, the windowless room might have passed for a comfortable, if austere, apartment.