As she played and prepared, she saw Maorgan bring forth his harp. It was a strange one, grown not made. Alive. Eyes closed, face taut with concentration, he stroked it and it changed shape. It was a slight change, but her eyes widened as she saw it.
When the shift was finished, he joined her, the harp new-tuned to match her own; the tone was more mellow and didn’t have the volume of her own, but there was something about the sound… I’ll have to have one, she thought, I HAVE to have a harp like that. She closed her eyes and sought focus.
In her mind her sisters came. Naya, Zayalla, Annethi, Itsaya, Talitt, and Sullan. In her mind her sisters danced and she made the music for them.
She sang the ancient croon mated with that dance, a mourning dance for everything that dies. Her human throat could not produce the full sounds, but Maorgan’s living harp seemed to read her need and he played the other tones.
And sometime later the Eolt began to sing.
The sound thrummed in her blood and bone and filled the court and spilled out of it; at the fringes of her being she felt the wonder in the Bйluchar beyond the Meeting House.
The Eolt, the Denchok, the Meloach, the Fior-they gave her the fullness of her grief for the first time in the millennia she’d lived past the death of her world.
The blai was a low, rambling complex of rooms and arcades, a guesthouse for travelers, merchants and peddlers, Ard and Eolt, youths on their wanderyears. The area they were to occupy was at the back, little used, dust on every surface, a musty smell clinging to the walls.
Aslan came into the room where Shadith, Duncan Shears, and Marrin Ola, the laconic student Aide, were taking apart crates, turning them into work stations and stacking equipment on them. “Leave that for a moment. We need to talk.”
Shadith straightened. “What the Eolt said?”
“Yes. And the implications. I want you in on this, too, Marrin. We have to decide what we’re going to do.”
Duncan’s nose twitched. “Moment,” he said and moved to a small crate at the top of a pile pushed into a corner of the room. He unsnapped the clips, lifted the lid, and took out a box. “Where?”
“My room,” Shadith said. “It’s the one with the least stuff in it.”
Duncan opened the box, took out a privacy cone, and set it in the center of the braided grass floormat. He clicked it on. “Our business,” he said and arranged himself on the floor beside it.
“Thanks.” Aslan dropped to the mat, waited a moment as the others seated themselves, then said, “One of the Eolt made a speech at the meeting. It’s a sentient being, connected somehow to the non-Cousin species here. Chave techs are hunting them for sport, touching them off to see the flare. Apparently they’ve already killed hundreds of the Eolt and are still doing it.”
Marrin Ola blinked, leaned forward, then remembered he was only an Aide and subsided.
“Say it, Marrin.”
“Do they know?”
“Good question. The Chave are not noted for their sensitive souls, but they aren’t stupid. If this gets off-world with any kind of reasonable proof, they’ve got problems.”
Duncan grunted. “Styernna.”
“A lot like that. Yes.”
“Um…” Marrin frowned. “Why? No courts, no laws. Shit happens all the time.”
Aslan nodded. “Right. Prespace indigene comes close to meaning extinct. But there are a few twists in that. The Eolt are beautiful, especially wonderful when they sing; flakes passed around of what we heard yesterday and today would be very bad for Chandava business if news of the killing got out. And there’s Helvetia. The Yaraka aren’t important, Helvetia wouldn’t listen to them. It doesn’t get involved in trade wars. University is another thing altogether. Marrin, ever heard of a contract labor company called Bolodo Neyuregg?”
“Huh?”
“Right. They aren’t around any more. They slipped over the edge into slave-dealing. I know because I was one of the slaves they dealt in. Helvetia doesn’t approve of slaving. Blacklisted them. Cut off fund transfers, loans. Their client list evaporated. So did they. Helvetia doesn’t approve of the gratuitous slaughter of sentients. If University got proof of what the Eolt said, Chandava Minerals would go the same road as Bolodo Neyuregg.”
Shadith leaned forward. “You’re going to tell the Goлs.”
“I thought about not, Shadow. Telling Goлs Koraka hoeh Dexios would be the same thing as shouting it in the Chave Ykkuval’s face. Both of them are bound to have spies busy as black biters on a summer day. But when you think about it, that doesn’t really matter.” She moved her shoulders, shifted her legs. “If the Ykkuval doesn’t know by now about the Eolt’s status, he will soon enough. And as soon as he does, he’ll realize that he can’t let news of this get offworld. It’s make or break time, folks. Do we stay, or do we get out of here so fast we leave holes in the air?”
Shadith dropped her hands on her knees. “I’m staying,” she said. “I’m separate, Lan. It’s in the contract that way. What I do lays no burden on anyone.”
Duncan Shears scratched at his chin. “Was wrong. Kinda wrong. Not Styernna. Got the gov on our side this time. Tell Goлs we targets, want shields and stunners. I c’n do alarms, some other stuff. Good pay. No reports, keep the heat down.” He twisted his mouth to one side, shook his head. “Not getting me on shuttle or anything else till Goлs gets his house cleaned.”
“Unh! Hadn’t thought of that. Quick and dirty way of keeping news inhouse. So you say stay, ride it out.”
He nodded.
“Marrin?”
The Aide grinned at her. “I come from a Baronial House on Picabral, Scholar. Fifth line-heir, male and healthy. I’ve made it past thirty still alive and I’ve scrambled a long way from home.” He made an avert gesture. “May that way never get shorter. I’ve already earned one share of Voting Stock and this business gets me another. No caggin’ bunch of heavy-world lizzers is going to chase me off from that.”
“Right. Anything about the Eolt goes into deep code in the Ridaars. Keep it pristine for the Regents and Helvetia. Duncan, you’ll be getting volunteers for the language transfer tomorrow. Copy out everything about the Eolt, set that down in a separate report. Privacy locked, hm? I don’t want the Goлs’ fingerprints anywhere around it. He gets antsy about that, invoke Scholar’s Necessity. Um.” She chewed on her lip a moment. “I want a special flake of that session in the Meeting Room. Shadow, I want a translation of everything said, especially that last Lament. I’ll go see the Goлs tomorrow, arrange to transmit the flake to Tamarralda. Eyes only and classified to the max. Let her know what’s coming so she can get ready. Any questions? No? Good. All of you, eyes open and shields up and don’t let the bastards get behind you.”
5. Grief
1
Ragnal tilted his squeeze pouch, swallowed a mouthful of yang, shuddered, and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.
He was lounging between two roots on a huge tree that was part of the woods between the fields and the Kushayt where the Ykkuval sat like a fat greedy spider. Sifaed called these trees kerrehs. She was one of the local femmes who worked the backroom of Drudge Farkli’s lubbot, a big solid woman, not one of the wisps that broke in your hand if you touched them wrong. Reminded of her, he felt a stiffing and thought about spending a few baks on chich and emm but took another drink instead and glowered out across his fields.
The scowl smoothed out as he rested his eyes on the sogan mounds with their circle-crowns of dark green leaves, giant spearpoints on broad stems. Now that he’d sterilized and remixed the dirt, it was good soil, rich and black and full of nutrients; the first harvest of sogan had brought tubers larger than a man’s foot.
The Drudges were out on their floatboards, working the t’prags, snipping at weeds and stirring the earth around the tuber mounds. T’prags and boards alike were patched together castoffs, hiccupping along like yarks with a hangover because that ni Jilet kreash Hunnar who was running this operation was too cheap to get the parts they needed. Ragnal was a Koroumak cognate like the ni-Jilets, which is why he worked for Company Koroumak-Jilet, but he kept Family tighter than that; far as he was concerned the ni Jilet sept were employers only.