Nardin lowered his arm. Turning his back on Daulo, he stalked a few meters away from the loading area.
Jurisdictional dispute? Jin wondered. Apparently. Or else Nardin just liked going out of his way to irritate people. "You all right?" Jin asked Daulo quietly.
The other took a deep breath, seemed to relax a bit. "Yes," he said, exhaling in a hiss. "Some people just can't handle power this young."
Jin glanced at him, wondering if he noticed the irony of those words coming from a nineteen-year-old heir. "Radig Nardin is high in the Mangus hierarchy?" he asked.
"His father, Obolo Nardin, runs the place."
"Ah. Then Mangus is a family-run operation like yours?"
"Of course." Daulo seemed puzzled that she'd even have to ask such a question.
Across the way, the last few crates were being loaded onto the trunk. "How often does Mangus need these shipments?" she asked Daulo.
He considered. "About every three weeks. Why?"
She nodded at the truck. "Riding inside a crate might be the simplest way for me to get inside Mangus."
Daulo hissed thoughtfully between his teeth. "Only if you had time to get out before they locked all the crates away somewhere."
"Do they do that?"
"I don't know-I've never been there. Mangus always sends someone to pick up their shipments."
"Is that normal?"
"It is for Mangus. Though if you're right about what they're doing in there, it makes sense for them not to let villagers in."
The qualifier caught Jin's attention. "Only villagers? Can city people get in?"
"Regularly," Daulo nodded. "Mangus brings in work parties from Azras every two to three weeks for one-week periods. Simple assembly work, I gather."
"I don't understand," Jin frowned. "You mean they import their entire labor force?"
"Not the entire force, no. They have some permanent workers, most of them probably Nardin family members. I assume their assembly work comes in spurts and they'd rather not keep people there when they're not needed."
"Seems inefficient. What if some of those workers take other jobs in the meantime and aren't available when they need them?"
"I don't know. But as I said, it's simple assembly work. Training newcomers wouldn't be hard."
Jin nodded. "Do you know anyone personally who's been in one of the work parties?"
Daulo shook his head. "For city people only, remember? We only know about it through my father's relationship with Mayor Capparis of Azras."
"Right-you've mentioned him before. He keeps you informed on what Azras and the other cities are doing?"
"Somewhat. For a price, of course."
That price being preferential access to the Sammon family mine, no doubt. "Do the rest of Azras's political leaders share in this tradeoff?"
"Some." Daulo shrugged, a bit uncomfortably. "Like everyone else, Mayor Capparis has enemies."
"Um." Jin focused on Nardin's arrogant expression again; and, unbidden, an image popped into her mind. Peter Todor, early in their Cobra training, visibly and eagerly awaiting the moment when Jin would finally give up and quit. The moment when he'd be able to gloat over her defeat. "Is there any reason," she asked carefully, "why Mangus or Mayor Capparis's enemies should resent Milika in particular?"
Daulo frowned at her, "Why would they?"
She braced herself. "Could you be charging more for your goods than they consider fair?"
Daulo's eyes hardened. "We don't overcharge for what we sell," he said coldly.
"Our mine produces rare and valuable metals, which we purify to a high degree.
They'd be costly no matter who sold them."
"What about the Yithtra family, then?" Jin asked.
"What about them?"
"They sell lumber products, right? Do they overcharge the cities?"
Daulo's lip twisted. "No, not really," he admitted. "Actually, most of the lumber business out there bypasses Milika entirely. The Somilarai River, which cuts through the main logging area to the north, passes directly by Azras, so much of the lumber is simply floated downriver to processing areas there. What the Yithtra family has done has been to specialize in exotic types of wood products like rhella paper-things the more wholesale lumbering places can't do properly. You probably saw a few rhella trees on your way in from your ship: short, black-trunked things with diamond-shaped leaves?"
Jin shook her head. "Afraid I was looking more at what might be crouching up there than I was at the trees themselves. These rhellas are rare?"
"Not all that much, but the paper made from the inner pulp is the preferred medium for legal contracts, and that creates a high demand. Writing or printing on fresh rhella paper indents the surface, you see," he added, "and that indentation is permanent. So if the writing is altered in any way, it can be detected instantly."
"Handy," Jin agreed. "Expensive, too, I take it?"
"It's worth the cost. Why are you asking all this?"
Jin nodded toward Nardin. "He has the air about him of someone who's getting all ready to gloat," she said. "I was wondering if he's looking forward to gloating over the villages in general or Milika in particular."
"Well..." Daulo hesitated. "I'd have to say that even among Qasama's villages, we're considered somewhat... not renegades, exactly, but not quite part of the whole community, either."
"Because you're not tied into the central underground communications network?"
He looked at her in surprise. "How-? Oh, that's right; you learned all about that when you took over that Eastern Arm village your last time through. Yes, that's a large part of it. And even though other villages are now starting to sprout up outside the Great Arc, we were one of the first." He eyed her. "This is all part of your research on us?"
Jin felt her face warming. "Some," she admitted. "It's also related to the problem of Mangus, though."
He was silent for a long moment. Shifting her eyes from the loading dock, Jin looked around her. It was a beautiful day, with gentle breezes coming from the southwest adding contrast to the warmth of the sunlight. The sounds of village activity all around her melded into a pleasant hum; the occasional clinking of chains and cables from the mine entrance nearby added to the voices of the workers.
It was almost a shock to shift her eyes westward and see the wall. The wall, and the metal mesh addition the village had had to erect against the high-jumping spine leopards... the spine leopards her people had sent to them.
On the recommendation of her own grandfather.
A sudden shiver of guilt ran up her back. What would Daulo and Kruin think, she wondered bleakly, if they knew her family's role in bringing this burden onto them? Maybe that's why I was marooned here in the first place, the thought occurred to her. Maybe it's part of a divine retribution on my family.
"You all right?" Daulo asked.
She shook off the train of thought. "Sure. Just... thinking about home."
He nodded. "My father and I were wondering last night about what plans your people might be making to get you back."
She shrugged uncomfortably. "They're not likely to be planning anything except my memorial service. The way the crash destroyed the shuttle's transmitters, there wasn't any way I could signal our mother ship; and between that and what they would have seen from orbit they'd have assumed that everyone was dead. So they'll go on back, and everyone will mourn us for awhile, and then the
Directorate will start debating what to do next. Maybe in a few months they'll try this again. Maybe it won't be for a couple of years."
"You sound bitter."
Jin blinked away tears. "No, not bitter. Just... afraid of how my father's gong to take this. He wanted so much for me to be a Cobra-"
"A what?"
"A Cobra. It's the proper name for what you call a demon warrior. He wanted so much for me to follow in the family tradition... and now he'll wonder if he pushed me where I didn't want to go."
"Did he?" Daulo asked quietly.
Oddly enough, Jin felt no resentment at the question. "No. I love him a lot,