her instruments 02 - rose point (22 page)

“Your brother is home.”

The man turned from the bookcase to face his subordinate, who unlike him was dressed in the plain blue and white robes of Ontine Cathedral’s clergy. “Since that would be a very poor jest, I must assume you aren’t making one.”

“I wouldn’t,” the priest said. “Not about that, anyway. No, we have reports he was seen in the Queen’s wing. The following morning he met with Urise.”

“Urise!” The man closed the book he’d been considering. “Is that so.”

“For over an hour,” the priest said. “God knows why he wanted to talk to that old relic. He hasn’t done anything more useful than teach children their catechisms in decades.”

“Indeed,” the man murmured.

Watching him, the priest said, “I assume you want him followed? Should we suborn Urise’s novice? We know someone in the dormitory, a boy the same age.”

“What? No.” The man put the book away. “Urise’s chosen pupils never defect. The boy would report the attempt and they’d know we were prying. No... just keep a watch on him. I want to know how often they’re meeting.”

“And your brother? We could bribe the servants for information.”

The man snorted. “Liolesa’s servants? Not likely. Nor will you get much gossip out of them if you ask. They’ll only chatter to each other. A stranger, even a trusted one, will probably not inspire their confidences. Put Surela’s coterie to work. They already have a reason to be interested in him, and he knows it. He won’t find their behavior out of character.”

“Consider it done, sir.”

“Good,” the man said, and sat, arranging his dark red robes. “Now, tell me the latest weapon shipment has reached the cache.”

The recitation took some time: there were weapons moving across several borders, and thanks to the Queen’s meddling there were now random patrols riding the length of settled territory. Their activities had not yet been discovered, but the detours they’d been forced to take to avoid detection had stretched their timeline, particularly since he insisted on their assuming aerial reconnaissance. His co-conspirators had argued that the likelihood of one of the Queen’s foxes being overhead at just the right time to see their movements was astronomical, but he knew Alliance technology better than they did. There might be stealthed satellites in place. It was better not to assume.

The man dismissed his servant at the conclusion of his report and considered, fingers steepled. Many things he had anticipated, but not that his brother would remain free for so long. Had events not conspired so magnificently against it, Hirianthial would have been some Chatcaavan’s slave long ago, a possibility that had pleased him enough to go through the lengths required to arrange it. But not only was his brother free, he’d come home.

It was somewhat of a pain, but an opportunity nonetheless.

Sometime later, he left his office and made the long walk to the catacombs where his order used to serve its mission. The cold stone rooms were empty now, their rotted leather restraints swept away. He’d made cleaning the maze a penance for brothers in need of it, which kept the place free of dust that might betray the passage of any people who might be using it. It took him some time to reach the chamber he sought and no one saw him enter it...which was well, for he wanted no one touching the equipment he’d been at such pains to procure.

Sitting at his desk, the man tapped the emitter awake and waited for his signal to traverse the labyrinth of obscuring protocols that hid it in the Queen’s own outbound signal. The royal House aggregated the outgoing traffic from all the people on-world who used a Well feed, a group that included not only Galare but Jisiensire and several of their allied minor Houses as well. It was a surprisingly dense flow; while it hadn’t been easy to disguise his own requests, it hadn’t been as hard as he’d feared either.

His call connected. “I have news,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Your target’s here.”

A pause. “Here. Where you are.”

“Yes. Can you get here? Soon.”

“Yes. But I don’t see how him being there helps me. Unless he’s out in the country somewhere we can pluck him up.”

“Just get here, and mind the system guards,” Baniel said. “Leave the rest of it to me.”

“Fine. Two days.”

The call closed. The man leaned back in his chair, folded his arms on his torso and half-closed his eyes. This thing between them had been a long time coming. The ending of it would be rather more dramatic than he preferred, but there could be a satisfaction in that. He stood, brushed off his robes and settled his stole, and left for his office. Not long now.

Left to their own devices, her crew scattered to investigate the Jisiensire townhouse while they had the opportunity, leaving Reese some welcome time in front of the fire with Allacazam. She’d been feeling the need to assimilate her day and something about the Eldritch lack of technology made it easy to slow down, stop fretting so much about where she was supposed to go next, or how she was going to make ends meet. The
Earthrise
was safe in orbit, there was no perishable cargo to worry about, and for now their room and board was being paid by someone else. Absurdly, even with her nebulous grasp of the political situation she was about to be embroiled in, she found the Eldritch world relaxing in the way she’d been hoping Harat-Sharii would be, and hadn’t been. Had anyone asked her if she’d thought herself capable of spending hours curled up in a fur watching a fire slowly wear through a few logs, she would have laughed. And yet, she did just that, and found it deeply soothing... enough so that Sascha’s arrival didn’t bother her. It was novel not to feel that little flinch of irritation when someone wanted her attention.

The Harat-Shar sat at her foot, one leg stretched in front of him, the other propped up. His tail was curled over his shin, the tip flicking. The sun had set, and the fire was now the room’s sole source of illumination; they considered it together a while before he spoke.

“Tell me the truth, Boss,” Sascha said. “How’s he doing?”

She looked up from petting Allacazam, then glanced out the door. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Except that he’s tense.”

Sascha nodded. “Irine and I were talking about it. He’s been pretty tightly wired since we got him out of Kerayle, and coming here has made it a thousand times worse. We were hoping maybe they’d be able to help him and that would relieve it. Did he talk about it at all?”

“All he said was that they’d found someone to help, and that he’d have to stay awhile.” Reese made a face. “Oh, and that it went ‘well enough.’”

“That sounds like him.” Sascha sighed. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it goes.”

“How what goes?” Kis’eh’t asked, peeking inside. When Sascha waved her over she joined them and settled sphinx-like with her paws pointing toward the fire.

“Hirianthial,” Reese said.

“Whether he’ll be less tense when he gets the help here,” Sascha added.

“Ah.” Kis’eh’t mantled her wings, then tucked them more securely against her second back. “The real question is ‘what if he doesn’t.’”

“We leave?” Sascha said.

Kis’eh’t glanced at him. “That presupposes—interestingly—that we’re not going to.”

They both looked at her. Reese held up her hands. “You know as much as I do. We’re here at the Queen’s invitation until it looks like it’s time to leave.” She rested her fingers on Allacazam again, who murmured a drowsy sound in her head, like rain falling. She wondered if he could eat firelight as well as sunlight, or if he was just sensitive to warmth. “We are going to have to leave at some point to get the horses the Queen wants to buy.”

“We’re going back to Kerayle?” Sascha asked, aghast. “Are you kidding?”

“At the price tag that woman’s willing to pay per horse?” Reese said. “Hell, yes.”

Sascha’s ears were flat to his head. “Even with pirates.”

“We’ll be careful. And besides, we never saw any pirates.”

“Probably because they hadn’t arrived yet,” Kis’eh’t said dryly.

“What she said, Boss.”

Reese chuckled despite herself. “We’ll take some of the Queen’s foxes. Will that make you feel better?”

Sascha grimaced. “Only if they’re better armed than we are.”

“Since someone buttering a slice of bread is better armed than we are,” Kis’eh’t said, “I think we are in good shape. Speaking of which... have you had the bread here, Reese?”

“A little, at the Queen’s table,” Reese said. “Why?” And let the Glaseah fill her ears with enthusiastic praises about the food quality. She and Sascha were debating the flavor of the sparkling juice they’d been given with breakfast when Hirianthial arrived.

“Finally! Someone who can end this debate,” Sascha said. “What did they serve us at breakfast, Hirianthial? Kis’eh’t says it was some kind of mild citrus. I think it was a grape varietal.”

“It was most probably elderflower cordial,” he said.

Kis’eh’t threw up her hands. “Of course it was something neither of us have heard of.”

Ignoring them, Hirianthial said to her, “Lady? It is time.”

As they all stood, Reese said, “Are you coming?”

“To escort you? Of course—”

“I mean are you staying at the palace,” Reese said. “Or are you going to stay here?”

Did he wince? It was startling to see him do anything so obvious. “I probably should stay there, but doing so would be... problematic. I will have to consult with my teacher.”

“I’m assuming there’s enough space,” Reese said.

“The space is not the issue,” Hirianthial said. “But rather the placement. Come, Lady. We have an escort.”

Outside was none other than the page who’d been so forthcoming with Reese, shrouded in a dark blue cloak that smeared him into the dark—and it was very, very dark. The sky overhead, untroubled by the brash lighting of a modern city, looked like a jeweled scarf: she could even see the haze of the galaxy. The shudder that took her then was joy, and joy had a taste and a smell and definitely a countenance, and it was the shimmering wink of those uncountable eyes as seen through a sea-softened atmosphere.

She alone had fallen still amid the bustle until Hirianthial joined her and followed her gaze.

“It’s nothing like Kerayle,” she said, hushed. “Or Mars. Or Harat-Sharii.”

“Those places have towns with artificial lighting.” He kept his voice low, matching hers.

Her neck ached from the angle she was holding it at, but she couldn’t look away. Her eyes were damp. She had never seen anything like it, couldn’t understand why it affected her so powerfully, except that she had named her ship for a distant star because stars meant something—

“We call it io gevaerea.”

The last thing she’d expected was a comment from him, much less one that revealed... well, anything. She glanced at him, holding her cloak closed and hoping he didn’t notice her shaking.

“Gevaerea,” he said, stepping up alongside her. “It means ‘caul’. We shade our words with modes named after colors, and when we speak of the caul of the sky, we use the white mode, for holy things.”

Because they’d all been born from stars? She shivered, but it was happiness, not cold, not discomfort. Yes... she could see that. More, she could understand a people who did, could envy them a world that let them nourish that perspective.

Was this the sort of thing that had made the man standing next to her? She was suddenly as aware of him as she was of the sky, a good awareness, a vibrating, open-hearted awe. On a whim, she held out her hand to him. She didn’t expect him to respond, but if he was willing... then she was too, to share what she was feeling. How long had it been since the sight of his own stars had been new to him, after all? He’d been through so much lately. It seemed the least she could do was to trust him.

She hadn’t expected, really believed, that he would take her up on it. But a moment later, his cool fingers cupped her smaller hand.

Kis’eh’t called, “We’re ready over here, Reese.”

“Coming,” Reese said, and drew her hand back. She glanced at the Eldritch, caught only the hissing fall of his hair over his shoulder as he started toward the others. Just when she thought it was for the best to leave him the privacy of his thoughts, he glanced over his shoulder at her, and she saw a reflection of her own cautious vulnerability in his eyes.

“Theresa,” he said. “Will you come?”

“Sure.” And she ambled after, keeping her head down and wondering at how her chest could hurt without leaving her feeling bad.

The page’s name was Thevenel and he apologized for having to lead them through the back gate as if they were unwanted guests, something overwhelmingly disproven by the second-floor suite he led them to.

“This is for us?” Irine asked, wide-eyed, tail so limp it had fallen on the floor.

“We apologize for putting you in a single suite, but we had only the one in this location, where you are likely to be undisturbed—”

“This is fine,” Reese said before he could fluster any worse. “Please tell the Queen she has our thanks.”

Once the youth left, Sascha said dryly to Hirianthial, “So this is the worst you’ve got to offer here?”

“I would say rather that Ontine is the best you will find on this world,” Hirianthial said. “The guest quarters are designed for long periods of occupancy. It should be comfortable.”