Revolution's Shore (28 page)

“No.” The overhead lights flicked off abruptly, leaving his head haloed by the soft glow of the lights illuminating the shuttle's controls. His shadowed figure was bent in the age-old pose of true suffering. Instinct told her that it was not feigned.

“No.” His voice came stronger on the second negative, although he did not lift his head. “Even if they could prove it, which they can't, I will never let anyone put me in a cell again. Never.”

She found she had squeezed the cushioning of the seat back under her hand until it gave no further. The fabric seemed rougher than she recalled. She had gambled, and she had gambled wrong. Certainly, Finch was safe. But someone else had paid the price for her indulgence, and for Kyosti's—what else could she call it?—Kyosti's obsession. “Void bless,” she murmured. “I don't know what to do.”

“Leave me alone,” he repeated, but this time it was less threat and more plea.

She turned and left him. Went to the bridge. Arranged for a message to be relayed to the Ransome House comm. Arranged for shuttle and crew and scheduled departure: herself, Pinto to pilot, Jenny and Yehoshua for escort. Went to her cabin and cleaned up. Showered twice. Cleaned her clothes again. On her return from the washing cubicle, she found Bach floating just about the bed she usually shared with Kyosti. He merely blinked lights at her, but strangely enough did not sing.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “You ought to come with me as well. But rekey the lock before we go. Manual. To admit you and me only.”

His affirmative was subdued and monochromatic. After a moment, he began to sing a pensive aria.

Ach, mein Sinn,

Wo willst du endlich hin,

Wo soll ich mich erquicken?

Bleib' ich hier,

Oder wünsch ich mir

Berg und Hügel auf dem Rücken?

Bei der Welt ist gar kein Rat,

Und im Herzen

Stehen die Schmerzen

Meiner Missetat,

Weil der Knecht den Herr verleugnet hat.

Ah, my troubled mind,

where shall I find comfort?

Shall I stay here,

or hide beyond the hills and mountains?

In the world there is no counsel

and in my heart

stands the pain

of my shameful deed,

because the servant has broken faith with his Lord.

She knew that she would have to go eventually, but she waited passively, expecting that sooner or later Jenny would come and prod her into action. For once, she could not find the impetus within herself. It had never occurred to her before now that not only was she truly out of her depth—not with Kyosti perhaps, but with Hawk—but that she had now locked herself into an impossible situation.

Her thoughts wound pointlessly on in this manner until the door chimed an “enter” request. She accepted it automatically and was surprised to see Paisley.

“Min Heredes.” Paisley examined her thoughtfully, astute in the way only a child grown to adolescence on harsh streets can be. “You be heart tired, min. I reckoned I ought to tell you that min Hawk be right sore ill. It were only 'cause I and Pinto helped him that he even got to ya Medical.” She paused and waited for Lily's reaction.

Lily sighed and stood up. “Is Pinto ready to leave?”

Paisley said nothing for a moment, frowning, and then shrugged. “Sure, min Heredes.” She turned and left the cabin.

Lily followed her, Bach coasting along behind in her wake. Someone had refueled and cleaned the shuttle. Lily boarded in silence, sat without speaking as the others came on board. Once they detached from the
Forlorn Hope
, she slept, waking only as the tearing winds of Unruli shook the shuttle as Pinto brought them in for landing on the Apron Port strip.

She had forgotten what it was like, and when she stepped outside, she realized that she had never truly appreciated it.

Unruli had a terrible beauty: the wind raged and tore at her clothing, almost knocking her over until she remembered to balance for it. One of the ways Master Heredes had taught her stance was to send her outside into the worst gales until she could stay upright and relaxed against them. A riot of colors filled the air, shading up and down the spectrum in a wild kaleidoscope, a pattern as busy as that covering the skins of Ridanis.

Jenny and Yehoshua came out after her, struggling. Both lost their footing more than once, although only Yehoshua actually fell to his knees, knocked sideways by a furious gust of wind.

Jenny tugged at her breathing plug and pulled on Lily's arm. “Isn't there an inside?” she shouted.

Pinto had parked the shuttle on the far edge of Apron Port's berthing field, and now Lily stood staring at the sheer cliffs that sheltered the port, at the glittering whir of the wind generators, powering the town, and at the faint, far flash of beacons marking in the wilderness of Unruli's turbulent surface that safety could be found here.

“Look,” she breathed, unaware of the growing apprehension of her two companions. “Look!” She froze, slightly crouched for wind balance, and stared at an apparition scudding down the near cliff face, thrown in scattering sheets in front of the wind. “I've never seen one so close to built-up areas before. See. There. It's blowing this way.”

“What—that—it looks like white filaments woven together?” asked Jenny.

“It's a ghost.” Lily gazed, mesmerized, as the white being drifted closer, and closer yet. “There's an old legend that the souls of people lost in storm become absorbed by them.” She gasped as a sudden sharp gust brought the ghost past her. Jenny and Yehoshua both took quick steps back.

A thin, sticky filament brushed across the back of Lily's hand, like a gesture, or a fleeting wisp of affection, and then wind caught it and it streamed upward, pulled into the maelstrom of cloud above.

“Hiro,” Lily said, to no one.

“Cursed to the Seven Hells.” Jenny stared up at the turbulence above. “What did you say?”

Lily shook herself. “Nothing. I just thought of my cousin Hiro. I don't know why. We never got along—always fought. I didn't really like him. In fact, it was some story he told that made me go that night, the night I left Ransome House for good—” She broke off. “Let's go. Where is Bach?”

On the ramp, behind, Bach was still valiantly trying to adjust his equilibrium to compensate for the force of the gale. She waited. They set off together.

Harbormaster's office was expecting them, but had cautiously not sent an escort. Lily did not know the young woman at the desk. She did not ask after Finch's father. After registering and paying the berth tax, one quick call ascertained that the Sar had already sent an ore train in on the tunnel to pick her up and transport her to Ransome House.

“I seem to be coming home in rather better style than I left,” she murmured, more to herself than to her companions.

As in all ore trains, the passenger compartment was cramped and crude. They sat out the rough, noisy ride from Apron Port to Ransome House without more comment than the occasional question from Yehoshua concerning House protocol and the low singing of Bach:
Wie soll ich dich empfangen?
(
How shall I receive thee?
), which was mostly drowned out by the rattle and hum of the train.

At last they slowed and bumped to a halt in the loading breaches of the House mines. Lily eased open the compartment door and found herself face-to-face with her father. Her first, and most damning, impression was that he looked old. Old, worn, and yet, when he saw her, took in her actual physical presence, lit suddenly from within by a rejuvenating energy. He waited alone on the broad platform.

“Lilyaka.” His voice had the same neutral cast she remembered, but his hand, lined and veined with age, trembled slightly as he reached out to greet her. “I was sure you must be dead. I am—” He hesitated, whether out of deference for her reserve or simply out of emotion. “I am very happy to know you are not.”

“I'm sorry, for the way I left.” She reached out and took his hand, feeling as if she were meeting a stranger in a familiar guise. His skin was cool and damp, but his clasp on her hand was firm. “I didn't think—” Suddenly she chuckled, and as if that released something in him, he let go of her hand and ventured his characteristic, calm smile—indicative not so much of humor as of approval.

“No, Lily,” he agreed. “But then, you rarely did.” He looked past her, and she quickly introduced Jenny and Yehoshua. The Sar, not much to her surprise, recognized Yehoshua's House affiliation, and greeted him rather more warmly than he did the imposing mercenary. But his real surprise came when Bach emerged from the compartment.

“Why I remember that piece of—equipment!” he began. “Not even Shiro could get it to work.” He turned a suspicious eye on his youngest child. “Perhaps we all did underestimate you, Lilyaka,” he finished, with a comprehensive glance at her composure and her uniform. Then, reading her discomfort, he turned to Yehoshua and discussed mining and ore with him as they walked the half a kilometer to Ransome House itself.

Various representatives from Unruli's House concerns had already arrived, but the Sar took his three guests to a small suite to let them clean up before he led them to the formal dining hall. This was not the room in which the Ransome House clan had their family meals; Lily had in fact seen this hall rarely, never being of sufficient age or importance to merit inclusion in any formal functions.

But now her own mother greeted her formally as she came into the room. Held her hand a moment long, looking at her with that prim disapproval that was the expression Lily best remembered of her, and said in a low voice, “You are looking well, Lily. I see that your stubborn wildness has found a suitable channel at last.”

Lily was too astonished to do more than reply limply, “You're looking well yourself, Mother.”

It was true enough. The intervening time had left no apparent mark on the Saress. She wore the same tightly coiled hairstyle, precise to each strand, and the smooth ebony of her skin concealed her age far better than the paler brownness of her husband's complexion.

At her father's urging, Lily passed on to meet the other guests: wealthy men and women, elected counselors and university instructors, other House functionaries. She was grateful when they sat down to dinner, and she could escape from enforced conversations that had no meaning into the safety of eating.

In such company, Jenny too remained quiet. When the talk turned to Jehane, and the rebellion, Lily found herself at a loss to convince these passive observers in the kind of reasoned, uncontroversial dinner talk that was their social forte. To her immense relief, Yehoshua's years in Filistia House, before he had joined Jehane, had accustomed him to such niceties and evasions. He quickly became the spokesman while Lily, sitting next to the Sar, could relax and watch him field questions and gently rebuke the prejudiced and ignorant.

“He's a good man, this Yehoshua,” said her father softly under the cover of the conversation. “I know of Filistia House—mostly asteroid mining, of course, but still a large and well-run operation out in the Salah-eh-Din belt. Any kind of alliance, or a bond, with that House would certainly be valuable to us.”

It took her a minute to catch his insinuation. Her first reaction was horror. “That's out of the question,” she began hotly, thinking of Hawk, and then diverted her agitation into a quick change of subject. “During times like these, I mean. But I'd never heard of Filistia House until I met Yehoshua.” Once voiced, the thought made her regard the Sar with sudden, and keen, interest. “You must collect a great deal of information on the mining and House operations across the Reft.”

“To be successful, one must stay informed.” He returned her regard evenly, giving no clue as to what he thought of her brief and impassioned outburst on the subject of bond alliances. “Yes, it's true that I collect a lot of information. Though you've never shown any interest in such things before, Lilyaka.”

She did not answer immediately: she was thinking of Bach, whom she had left back in the suite, idle but for whatever activities such a robot might choose on his own initiative. Already she was planning how to get that information out of Ransome House's computer net and into Bach, to transport back on the
Forlorn Hope
to Jehane's people. Perhaps Jehane already had access to such files, but whatever twists put on the collation by the Sar's active and penetrating mind might reveal some valuable grain of a detail otherwise lost. Lily smiled, taking in her father's bemused expression. “No, I hadn't shown much interest before, had I?”

“Is this the influence of Jehane that I see?”

“No.” She felt the old pain—muted now, true, but still hard beneath the surface. “Perhaps a little, but it was mostly Master Heredes's influence. But he's dead,” she added quickly, wanting to forestall further questions.

“I'm sorry,” he answered gravely. “Then he was indeed in danger that day.”

“Yes. But it was Central that killed him.”

He pondered the bitterness of her voice for a few moments in silence, while farther down the table Yehoshua kept the guests busy with his passionate, but not unreasonable, defense of Jehane. “Some months after you left, the Caennas were arrested—all but the father—by the government on charges of harboring seditious material and tampering with port logs and trade regulations and tax collection. I could discover that they were sent to Harsh, but nothing more.”

“I know. Old Grandmam Caenna died there. And Swann, the daughter, was killed in a raid. Finch is with me now. His mother, not surprisingly, is on Jehane's staff on his flagship.”

“Everyone has suffered, Lilyaka. Your cousin Hiro died the day you disappeared.”

“Hiro?” The name caught in her throat, and she felt with vivid clarity the trailing strand of the ghost's tendril across her hand, back on the flat grounds of Apron Port.