The first car in the procession slowed as it approached the path where Ashiban and the Sovereign sat. Began to turn, and stopped when its lights brushed their stolen groundcar. Nothing more happened for the next few minutes, except that the people in the backs of the cargo cars leaned and craned to see what was going on.
“Expletive,” said the Sovereign. “I’m getting out to talk to them. You should stay here.”
“What could you possibly say to them, child?” But there wasn’t much good doing anything else, either.
“I don’t know,” replied the girl. “But you should stay here.”
Slowly the Sovereign opened the groundcar door, slid out again. Closed the door, pulled her cloth up over her face, and walked out into the pool of light at the edge of the road.
Getting out of the passenger seat would be slow and painful, and Ashiban really didn’t want to. But the Sovereign looked so small standing by the side of the road, facing the other groundcar. She opened her own door and clambered awkwardly down. Just as she came up behind the Sovereign, the passenger door of the groundcar facing them opened, and a woman stepped out onto the road.
“I am the Sovereign of Iss,” announced the Sovereign. Murmured the translator clipped to Ashiban’s shirt. “Just what do you think you’re doing here?” Attempting more or less credibly to sound imperious even despite the one hand holding the cloth over her face, but the girl’s voice shook a little.
“Glad to see you safe, Sovereign,” said the woman, “but I am constable of this precinct and you are blocking my path. Town’s that way.” She pointed back along the way the procession of groundcars had come.
“And where are you going, Constable,” asked the Sovereign, “with six groundcars and dozens of people behind you, some of them with guns? There’s nothing behind us but trees.”
“There are three weevil farmsteads in those woods,” cried someone from the back of a groundcar. “And we’ve had it with the weevils thinking they own our planet. Get out of the way, girl!”
“We know the Raksamat tried to kill you,” put in the constable. “We know they shot down your flier. It wasn’t on the news, but people talk. Do they want a war? An excuse to try to kill us all? We won’t be pushed any farther. The weevils are here illegally, and they will get off this planet and back to their ships. Today if I have anything to say about it.”
“This is Ciwril Xidyla’s daughter next to me,” said the Sovereign. “She came here to work things out, not to try to kill anyone.”
“That would be the Ciwril Xidyla who translated the treaty so the weevils could read it to suit them, would it?” asked the constable. There was a murmur of agreement from behind her. “And wave it in our faces like we agreed to something we didn’t?”
Somewhere overhead, the sound of a flier engine. Ashiban’s first impulse was to run into the trees. Instead, she said, “Constable, the Sovereign is right. I came here to try to help work out these difficulties. Whoever tried to kill us, they failed, and the sooner we get back to work, the better.”
“We don’t mean you any harm, old woman,” said the constable. “But you’d best get out of our way, because we are coming through here, whether you move or not.”
“To do what?” asked Ashiban. “To kill the people on those farmsteads behind us?”
“We’re not going to kill anybody,” said the constable, plainly angry at the suggestion. “We just want them to know we mean business. If you won’t move, we’ll move you.” And when neither Ashiban nor the Sovereign replied, the constable turned to the people on the back of the vehicle behind her and gestured them forward.
A moment of hesitation, and then one of them jumped off the groundcar, and another few followed.
Beside Ashiban the Sovereign took a shaking breath and cried, “I am the Sovereign of Iss! You will go back to the town.” The advancing people froze, staring at her.
“You’re a little girl in a minor priesthood, who ought to be home minding her studies,” said the constable. “It’s not your fault your grandmother made the mistake of negotiating with the weevils, and it’s not your fault your aunt quit and left you in the middle of this, but don’t be thinking you’ve got any authority here.” The people who had leaped off the groundcar still hesitated.
The Sovereign, visibly shaking now, pointed at the constable with her free hand. “I am the voice of the planet! You can’t tell the planet to get out of your way.”
“Constable!” said one of the people who had come off the groundcar. “A moment.” And went over to say something quiet in the constable’s ear.
The Sovereign said, low enough so only Ashiban could hear it, “Tell the planet to get out of the way? How could I say something so stupid?”
And then lights came sweeping around the lefthand bend of the road, and seven or eight groundcars came into view, and stopped short of where the constable stood in the road.
A voice called out, “This is Delegate Garas of the Terraforming Council Enforcement Commission.” Ashiban knew that name. Everyone in the system knew that name. Delegate Garas was the highest-ranking agent of the Gidantan Enforcement Commission, and answered directly to the Terraforming Council. “Constable, you have overstepped your authority.” A man stepped out from behind the glare of the lights. “This area is being monitored.” The sound of a flier above, louder. “Anyone who doesn’t turn around and go home this moment will be officially censured.”
The person who had been talking to the constable said, “We were just about to leave, Delegate.”
“Good,” said the delegate. “Don’t delay on my account, please. And, Constable, I’ll meet with you when I get into town this afternoon.”
The Commission agents settled Ashiban and the Sovereign into the back of a groundcar, and poured them hot barley tea from a flask. The tea hardly had time to cool before Delegate Garas slid into the passenger seat in front and turned to speak to them. “Sovereign. Elder.” With little bows of his head. “I apologize for not arriving sooner.”
“We had everything under control,” said the Sovereign, loftily, cloth still held over her face. Though, sitting close next to her as Ashiban was, she could feel the Sovereign was still shaking.
“Did you now. Well. We only were able to start tracking you when we found the crash site. Which took much longer than it should have. The surveillance in the High Mires and the surrounding areas wasn’t functioning properly.”
“That’s a coincidence,” Ashiban remarked, drily.
“Not a coincidence at all,” the delegate replied. “It was sabotage. An inside job.”
The Sovereign made a small, surprised noise. “It wasn’t the weev…the Raksamat?”
“Oh, they were involved, too.” Delegate Garas found a cup somewhere in the seat beside him, poured himself some barley tea. “There’s a faction of Raksamat—I’m sure this won’t surprise you, Elder—who resent the illegal settlers for grabbing land unauthorized, but who also feel that the Assembly will prefer certain families once Raksamat can legally come down to the planet, and between the two all the best land and opportunities will be gone. There is also—Sovereign, I don’t know if you follow this sort of thing—a faction of Gidanta who believe that the Terraforming Council is, in their turn, arranging things to profit themselves and their friends, and leaving everyone else out. Their accusations may in fact be entirely accurate and just, but that is of course no reason to conspire with aggrieved Raksamat to somehow be rid of both Council and Assembly and divide the spoils between themselves.”
“That’s a big somehow,” Ashiban observed.
“It is,” Delegate Garas acknowledged. “And they appear not to have had much talent for that sort of undertaking. We have most of them under arrest.” The quiet, calm voice of a handheld murmured, too low for Ashiban’s translator clip to pick up. “Ah,” said Delegate Garas. “That’s all of them now. The trials should be interesting. Fortunately, they’re not my department. It’s Judicial’s problem now. So, as I said, we were only able to even begin tracking you sometime yesterday. And we were already in the area looking for you when we got a call from a concerned citizen who had overheard plans for the constable’s little outing, so it was simple enough to show up. We were pleasantly surprised to find you both here, and relatively well.” He took a drink of his tea. “We’ve let the team tracking you know they can go home now. As the both of you can, once we’ve interviewed you so we know what happened to you.”