“My head doesn’t hurt,” Ashiban observed. Despite that, everything still seemed slippery and unreal.
“I took the emergency medical kit on our way off the flier,” the handheld said, translating the Sovereign’s reply. “I put a corrective on your forehead. It’s not the right kind, though. The instructions say to take you to a doctor right away. The speaker is…”
“Translation preferences,” interrupted Ashiban. “Turn off emotional evaluation.” The handheld fell silent. “Have you called for help, Sovereign? Is help coming?”
“You are very stupid,” said Ashiban’s handheld. Said the Sovereign of Iss. “Or the concussion is dangerously severe. Our flier was shot down. Twenty minutes after that a flier goes back and forth over us as though it is looking for something, but we are in the High Mires, no one lives here. If we call for help, who is nearest? The people who shot us down.”
“Who would shoot us down?”
“Someone who wants war between Gidanta and Raksamat. Someone with a grudge against your mother, the sainted Ciwril Xidyla. Someone with a grudge against my grandmother, the previous Sovereign.”
“Not likely anyone Raksamat then,” said Ashiban, and immediately regretted it. She was here to foster goodwill between her people and the Sovereign’s, because the Gidanta had trusted her mother, Ciwril Xidyla, and so they might listen to her daughter. “There are far more of you down here than Raksamat settlers. If it came to a war, the Raksamat here would be slaughtered. I don’t think any of us wants that.”
“We will argue in the future,” said the Sovereign. “So long as whoever it is does not manage to kill us. I have been thinking. They did not see us, under the plants, but maybe they will come back and look for us with infrared. They may come back soon. We have to reach the trees north of here.”
“I can use my handheld to just contact my own people,” said Ashiban. “Just them. I trust them.”
“Do you?” asked the Sovereign. “But maybe the deaths of some Raksamat settlers will be the excuse they need to bring a war that kills all the Gidanta so they can have the world for themselves. Maybe your death would be convenient for them.”
“That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed Ashiban. She pushed herself to sitting, not too quickly, wary of the pain in her head returning, of her lingering dizziness. “I’m talking about my friends.”
“Your friends are far away,” said the Sovereign. “They would call on others to come find us. Do you trust those others?” The girl seemed deadly serious. She sat up. “I don’t.” She tucked Ashiban’s handheld into her waistband, picked up her bundle of skirts and veils.
“That’s my handheld! I need it!”
“You’ll only call our deaths down with it,” said the Sovereign. “Die if you want to.” She rose, and trudged away through the stiff, spiky vegetation.
Ashiban considered tackling the girl and taking back her handheld. But the Sovereign was young, and while Ashiban was in fairly good shape considering her age, she had never been an athlete, even in her youth. And that was without considering the head injury.
She stood. Carefully, still dizzy, joints stiff. Where the flier had been was only black water, strips and chunks of moss floating on its surface, all of it surrounded by a flat carpet of yet more moss. She remembered the Sovereign saying We’re standing on water! Remembered the swell and roll of the ground that had made her drop to her hands and knees.
She closed her eyes. She thought she vaguely remembered sitting in her seat on the flier, the Sovereign crying out, her interpreter getting out of his seat to rush forward to where the pilot slumped over the controls.
Shot down. If that was true, the Sovereign was right. Calling for help—if she could find some way to do that without her handheld—might well be fatal. Whoever it was had considered both Ashiban and the Sovereign of Iss acceptable losses. Had, perhaps, specifically wanted both of them dead. Had, perhaps, specifically wanted the war that had threatened for the past two years to become deadly real.
But nobody wanted that. Not even the Gidanta who had never been happy with Ashiban’s people’s presence in the system wanted that, Ashiban was sure.
She opened her eyes. Saw the girl’s back as she picked her way through the mire. Saw far off on the northern horizon the trees the girl had mentioned. “Ancestors!” cried Ashiban. “I’m too old for this.” And she shouldered her bag and followed the Sovereign of Iss.
Eventually Ashiban caught up, though the Sovereign didn’t acknowledge her in any way. They trudged through the hip-high scrub in silence for some time, only making the occasional hiss of annoyance at particularly troublesome branches. The clear blue sky clouded over, and a damp-smelling wind rose. A relief—the bright sun had hurt Ashiban’s eyes. As the trees on the horizon became more definitely a band of trees—still dismayingly far off—Ashiban’s thoughts, which had this whole time been slippery and tenuous, began to settle into something like a comprehensible pattern.
Shot down. Ashiban was sure none of her people wanted war. Though off-planet the Raksamat weren’t quite so vulnerable—were, in fact, much better armed. The ultimate outcome of an actual war would probably not favor the Gidanta. Or Ashiban didn’t think so. It was possible some Raksamat faction actually wanted such a war. And Ashiban wasn’t really anyone of any significance to her own people.
Her mother had been. Her mother, Ciwril Xidyla, had negotiated the Treaty of Eatu with the then-Sovereign of Iss, ensuring the right of the Raksamat to live peacefully in the system, and on the planet. Ciwril had been widely admired among both Raksamat and Gidanta. As her daughter, Ashiban was only a sign, an admonition to remember her mother. If her side could think it acceptable to sacrifice the lives of their own people on the planet, they would certainly not blink at sacrificing Ashiban herself. She didn’t want to believe that, though, that her own people would do such a thing.
Would the Gidanta be willing to kill their own Sovereign for the sake of a war? An hour ago—or however long they had been trudging across the mire, Ashiban wasn’t sure—she’d have said certainly not. The Sovereign of Iss was a sacred figure. She was the conduit between the Gidanta and the spirit of the world of Iss, which spoke to them with the Sovereign’s voice. Surely they wouldn’t kill her just to forward a war that would be disastrous for both sides?
“Sovereign.”
A meter ahead of Ashiban, the girl kept trudging. Looked briefly over her shoulder. “What?”
“Where are you going?”
The Sovereign didn’t even turn her head this time. “There’s a monitoring station on the North Udran Plain.”
That had to be hundreds of kilometers away, and that wasn’t counting the fact that if this was indeed the High Mires, they were on the high side of the Scarp and would certainly have to detour to get down to the plains.
“On foot? That could take weeks, if we even ever get there. We have no food, no water.” Well, Ashiban had about a third of a liter in a bottle in her bag, but that hardly counted. “No camping equipment.”
The Sovereign just scoffed and kept walking.
“Young lady,” began Ashiban, but then remembered herself at that age. Her own children and grandchildren. Adolescence was trying enough without the fate of your people resting on your shoulders, and being shot down and stranded in a bog. “I thought the current Sovereign was fifty or sixty. The daughter of the woman who was Sovereign when my mother was here last.”