When they’d probed the whole of the compound and made sure there were no others tucked away into the odd corner, they drifted back through the occupied rooms, naming the sleepers so they could tell Brann just who was there, knowing each because they knew what Brann knew.
Callim. Brann’s father. He’d been beaten, probably because he declined to work. He was recovering, the beating must have been several days before, stretched out on the room’s single bed, snoring, twitching as flies walked his back, the weals there sticky with salve. Cathar, Brann’s oldest brother; slept curled up on a pallet in one corner, Duran her younger brother sat dozing in a chair beside the bed, waking now and then to fan the flies away.
In the next room over a man sat, dull-eyed, slack-faced, fingers plucking steadily at nothing, Uncle Idadro the etcher and inlayer, a finicky precise little man, never too adept at handling outsiders; his wife Glynis had gone to the Fair most years befere but she died suddenly of a weakness in the heart and left him drifting, his eldest son Trithin, his only anchor against the world, he was wholly unable to cope with. This year he’d taken that son to the Grannsha Fair, the boy blessed with his mother’s bubbling good humor and ease with people. Little friend of all the world they called him when he was a baskling then a trotling. No sign of Trithin anywhere within the compound; perhaps he was alive elsewhere, but neither of the changechildren believed it, more likely that the Wounded Moon, rose whole than that they’d find Trithin walking earthface again.
This is the roll of the living they call out to Brann later: Callim, Cathar, Duran, Trayan, Garrag, Reanna, Theras, Camm, Finn, Farra, Farm and Idadro. Eight men, four women.
This is the roll of the dead: Trithin, Sintra, Warra, Wayim, Lotta, Doronynn, Imath, Lethra, lannos and Rossha.
At the end of this final sweep the two light smears hovered in the middle of an empty room and sang to each other the questions that had occurred to them. What was that thing in the palace, that thing with the groping fingers? How powerful was it that it not only caused the Emperor to commit genocide, but made Slya herself act deviously, wrenching them from their home space and sending them to Brann to change her so she could be a vessel for Slya, bringing Slya here disguised to fight her attackers? They circled each other and sang their uncertainty. Should they tell Brann what they thought about it? She knew some of it already, knew Slya slept within her and simultaneously slept within Tincreal, knew Slya drove her as she drove the stone of Tincreal, with utter disregard for her and those she cared for. The changechildren contemplated that disregard with a chill in their firebodies that paled the light and almost sent them into their hibernating crystals, the form their people took when all energy was drained from them and no more would be available for some considerable time, the dormant form that was not death but a state for which their folk had little fondness and exercised their ingenuity to avoid unless the alternative was the dispersal of real death, like burnt-out stars choked to ash and nothing. The children hovered and shivered and were more afraid than they’d been since they woke on the slopes of Tincreal and found themselves starving in sunlight. “She might send us back when she’s finished with us,” Yaril sang.
“No…” It was a long long sigh of a sound, filled with a not-quite despair; after all there was much to be said for this world and for the companionship they shared with Brann.
“We could talk to her,” Yaril sang, “when this is over. Brann too. If Slya returns us, she’ll have to change Brann back.”
“Brann,” Jaril sang, “is a brown leaf falling, not ignored but not restored. Why should Slya bother, after she gets the Arth Slyans free again and the vengeance she wanted for the slaughter? I think the great are the same in all realities, they use and discard, use and discard, this one and that, for what they consider the greater good. Their good. Poor Brann.”
“Poor us.”
“That too.”
Two small light smears, very young for their kind with much of the long slow learning of that kind yet ahead of them, swooped anger-driven through the roof tiles, melted into twin owls and went powering back to Brann, uncertain what they should or would say to her, hoping with every atom of their impossible bodies that she slept and dreamed of the bite of pleasure she’d worried from the chaos of her life. They didn’t know what to do, how the Slyans could be rescued without harming folk who were their friends, what to say to Brann if she asked their advice.
They glided through the open window, blurred into their childforms and tiptoed to the bed. Brann was deep asleep, her eyes moving under the lids, a small smile twitching her lips. Yaril looked at Jaril; he nodded and the two of them retreated into a corner and sank into the catalepsy that took the place of sleep.
JASSI STUCK HER head in the door, knocked against the wall.
Taguiloa looked up from the glitter sphere he was polishing.
“Someone to see you.” She winked at him. “Tightass highnose creep with Maratullik’s brand on him. Imperial Hand, eh man. You musta connect some good coming up.
Taguiloa set the sphere carefully into its velvet niche, got to his feet and began pacing about the room. This was an astonishingly early response to his permit; he’d expected several days of rest before the Temuengs took note of his presence, if they ever did. He stopped at the window, stared at the court without seeing any of it. I’m not ready… He snapped thumb against finger, swung round. “That I did. Uh-huh.” He smiled at Jassi. “Tell your creep friend I’m busy but if he wants to wait, I’ll be down in a little while. If he decides he wants to hang around, offer him a bowl of your best wine so he won’t be too-too annoyed.”
“You could land up to your neck, Taga.” She eyed him uncertainly, but with more respect than before. “You that sure of yourself?”
“Jassi, lady of my heart and elsewhere, I’m not, no I’m not, but if you scratch every time a Temueng itches, you’ll wear your fingers down to nubs. Now go and do what I said.” He wrinkled his nose. “If he walks, come tell me.” She shrugged and left.
Taguiloa closed his hands over the window sill, squeezed his eyes shut, breathed deeply. This was make or break. He knew as well as Jassi that he was taking a big chance. If the slave walked out chances were he or another like him would not be back. Chance. He touched his left shoulder. Tungjii, up to you, keep your eye on us.
He pushed away from the window, hunted out the travel papers and the metal credeens he was holding for all but Brann. He stood looking at them a moment, then tossed them on the bed, kicked off his sandals, stripped. Moving quickly about the room, he washed, brushed his long black hair, smoothed it down, tied it at the nape of his neck with a thin black silk ribbon, making a small neat bow over the knot. He dressed quickly in the dark cotton tunic and trousers, the low topped black boots that he thought of as his humble suit. When he was finished, he inspected himself carefully, brushed a hair off his sleeve, smoothed the front of the tunic. Neat but not gaudy. Smiling, he collected the papers and creedens, left his room and went down the hall to Harra’s.