Silas had written over thirty commentaries on various aspects of ancient and modern literature, ethics, and history. Only one, “Brave New Hyperbole,” had ever been committed to permanent form and placed in the library. (Now, years later, the title embarrassed him.) “Hyperbole” argued that Huxley’s book was in fact a speculative fantasy rather than an accurate depiction of Roadmaker technologies and ethics. He wasn’t sure he was right, but he trembled at the possibility that civilization could descend to such horror.
Now he was recording his impressions of Connecticut Yankee. There was simply nothing like Mark Twain in the entire panoply of League literature. The closest approach was probably the wry comedies of the Argonite playwright Caper Tallow. But even Tallow seemed a bit droll at the side of this Roadmaker humorist.
Silas took extreme care with his commentary, because he knew many others would follow. And because he was first, his remarks would draw attention, either as an example of insight or ineptitude. He sensed that this single document would make his reputation, one way or the other, for posterity.
He’d been working, off and on, almost a month on the project and felt so good about the result that he was violating an old rule by showing his progress to some of the other masters. They were impressed, but in the way of such things, they gave all the credit to Mark Twain.
On the day that Silas finished his final draft, Chaka Milana rode up to his front door. He had just put his writing materials away and was getting ready to walk across the street for dinner. She smiled triumphantly at him as she climbed down from Piper. “I can’t guarantee Haven,” she said, “but I think it’s possible to go where Endine went.”
She led him to the Lost Hope, a nearby pub, where a tall, dark-skinned man with thick black hair and a clipped beard sat at a corner table. “Silas,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Jon Shannon.”
Silas extended his hand. Shannon put down his beer. “Pleased to meet you, Silas,” he said.
Chaka pushed in against the wall and Silas sat down beside her. “Chaka tells me you’ve been doing some work for her.”
Shannon nodded. “She wanted me to see if I could find the track of the Endine expedition.”
A chill blew through Silas’s soul. “I assume you succeeded or we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
He glanced at Chaka. “I found some markings up on Wilderness Road. You know where that is?”
Silas had never been on it, but he knew that it was about 140 miles north, that it led northeast from Argon, running roughly parallel to the Ohio. “Yes,” he said.
“We know that’s where they started. I followed it for a couple of days. To Ephraim’s Bluff, which is pretty much on the edge of League territory. Just beyond Ephraim’s Bluff there are several sets of marks.”
“What kind of marks?”
“Tree cuts. Always three strokes. Piles of rocks. Three rocks with a fourth on top. They probably used some chalk too. There’s some granite up there and I’d have chalked it if I were making a trail.”
“But there’s no chalk now?”
“How could there be after all these years?”
“How old are the marks are on the trees?”
“Can’t tell. At least five or six years. Maybe ten. Damn, maybe twenty.”
Silas looked at Chaka, and then swung his gaze back to Shannon. “That’s it?”
Shannon frowned. “What more did you want?”
A waiter arrived and they ordered beer for Chaka and Silas, and dinner for everybody.
“Wilderness Road isn’t really much of a road,” said Shannon. “Nobody uses it except hunters and traders. And the military. Those people all know their territory pretty well, so it would have to be a special set of circumstances that anybody would need to leave guide marks.” Silas could see the big man liked his beer. He finished it off and set the stein down gently. “I’d be willing to bet I was looking at Endine’s jump-off point.”
The pub was busy. It was dinner hour and the dining room was filled with laughter and the sizzle of steak and the aroma of cold brew. Candles flickered on the walls.
“I don’t know you well, Jon,” said Silas, “so I hope you won’t take this personally.” He looked at Chaka. “You hired him to take a look, right?”
“Yes,” she said, puzzled.
“Was it a flat rate? Or did he get more money if he brought back a positive answer?”
Her features darkened. “He wouldn’t lie. But yes, it was a flat rate.”
Silas nodded. “Good. So what do you propose to do now?”
She looked surprised. “I’m going after it,” she said.
“On the strength of a few marked trees.”
“It’s a chance. But it’s a good chance.” Her eyes blazed. “Listen, Silas, the truth about what happened to my brother is out there somewhere.”
“I hate to put it this way, Chaka. But what does it matter? He’s dead. And Karik’s dead. What’s the point?”
Across the room, someone cheered. They were celebrating a birthday.
“I think the truth is worth something, don’t you?” She fixed him with her blue gaze. “Anyway, Haven might be at the end of the road.”
Silas looked from her to the dark-skinned giant. “I’m sixty years old. I’m not really in condition for taking off on a wild chase. Especially not one that’s already killed a substantial number of people.”
Disappointment clouded her features. “Okay. I thought you’d be the first to want to go. There’ll be others.”
“I doubt it.”
Shannon was studying the ceiling.
“How about you?” Silas asked him. “Are you going?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because Haven doesn’t mean anything to me. Because I don’t believe it exists. Because you—” he was gazing at Chaka now, “—and anyone who goes with you, will most certainly fail, and possibly lose your lives.”
Silas turned back to Chaka. “I think he makes sense.”
Their meals arrived. The menu at the Lost Hope was fairly limited. It consisted of either beef or chicken, depending on the chef’s mood, and the vegetable du jour, and bread. On this occasion, the chef’s mood called for chicken, and the vegetable was cabbage.
“I think we all need to be reasonable,” Silas said.
Chaka sat back with her arms folded, stared at Silas for a few moments, picked up a knife, and sliced a strip of meat from the breast. “Haven doesn’t mean anything to Jon,” she said. “What does it mean to you? Ten years from now you’ll be seventy. You want to look back on this and know there was a chance you might have found the entire body of Mark Twain’s work, and who knows what else, but you didn’t bother? Because it was dangerous?”
Illyrian women caught in compromising situations lost their reputations, prospects, and often their incomes. (Men, as usual, operated on a somewhat different standard.) No decent person would associate openly with a woman who’d become entangled in scandal. She was no longer welcome at her place of employment; her customers disappeared; and she could expect to be turned out by her family.
The risks for unmarried women were intensified by a lack of reliable contraceptive devices. Various ointments and oils, if applied prior to sexual activity, were supposed to prevent conception. But it was hard to determine their efficacy. No one kept statistics, and everybody lied about sex. Chaka concluded, as did most women, that the potential consequences outweighed the game. And so virtue reigned in Illyria.
This state of affairs had, to a degree, evolved from a line of emperors and kings who believed that the stability of the city required a solid family tradition, which they had enforced with the power of the priesthood and a series of laws prohibiting divorce and confining sexual activity within the marriage bond. Violators were subject to a range of criminal penalties which, for a time under Aspik III and Mogan the Wise, included burning at the stake.