“What was all that?” His voice came from behind her, from the corridor leading to the offices. Rigo.
“That was Obermun bon Haunser explaining that the horses have not yet been revived,” she said, turning to confront her husband. He, lean and no less aristocratic than the man who had just left, was clad all in black except for the high red-and-purple-striped collar which identified him as an ambassador, sacrosanct, a person whose body and belongings were immune to seizure or prosecution, on penalty of retaliation from Sanctity — an organization both too far away and too distracted by recent internal events and current horror to do any retaliating at all. His face was set in what she called — though only to herself — his ugly mode, sullen at the mouth, the wide lips unenlivened by amusement, the black eyes overshadowed by heavy brows and wearied by too little sleep. When he was like this, darkness seemed to follow him, half hiding him from her. He, too, had confessed to feeling testy, and he looked irritated now. She sought something to interest him, something to blow the shadows away. “Do you know, Rigo, I’d be interested in finding out whether the children and I have diplomatic immunity on this planet.”
“Why would you not?” His eyes blazed with anger at the idea. Roderigo had a great capacity for anger.
“Women do not take their husband’s names here, and from something the Obermun said, I question whether they take status, either.” Not that Roderigo’s status was higher than her own. If it came to bloodlines, perhaps-her own pedigree was a little better, not that she would ever mention it. “I’m not sure a diplomat’s wife is anybody.” Not that she had ever planned or wanted to be a diplomat’s wife. Not that Rigo had ever been a diplomat before! So many things were not, she reflected-Not the way she would have had them, if she’d had the choice, though there was still the chance this whole business might turn out to be significant and worthwhile.
He smiled humorlessly. “Mark down one more thing we weren’t informed of.”
“I’m not sure I’m right.”
“Your impressions are often the equal of others’ certainties, Marjorie,” he said in his gallant voice, the one he most often used with women, her no less than any other. “I’ll put Asmir Tanlig to checking it.”
“Asmir?”
“One of my Grassian men. I hired two this morning after I managed to shake off the Haunser.” He scraped an extended finger down his palm, flicking it, ridding himself of something sticky, in mime.
“Is the Tanlig man you hired a bon?”
“Lord no. I shouldn’t think so. A bastard son of a bon two generations back, perhaps.”
“Lateral,” she exclaimed, pleased with herself for knowing. “The Tanlig must be what they call a lateral.”
“I hired a Mechanic, also.”
This puzzled her. “You hired a mechanic?”
“His name is Mechanic-Philological successor to the ancient Smiths or Wrights. His name is Sebastian Mechanic, and he holds no blood with the aristos, as he was at some pains to tell me.” He sank into a chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Coldsleep makes me feel as though I’d been ill for weeks.”
“It makes me feel dreamy and remote.”
“My dear—” he began in the gallant voice, with only an undertone of hostility.
“I know. You think I’m always remote.” She tried to laugh, tried not to show how that hurt. If Roderigo hadn’t thought his wife remote, he wouldn’t have needed Eugenie Le Fevre. If he hadn’t had Eugenie, Marjorie might not be remote. Circle, and around once more, like a horse quadrille, change reins, pirouette, and on to the next figure.
Rigo, point made, changed the subject. “Make note, my dear. Asmir Tanlig. Sebastian Mechanic.”
“What are they to be to you?” She inquired. “Representatives of the middle classes?”
“Little enough of that, except perhaps at Commoner Town. No, representatives of the peasantry, I’d say, who will circulate among the villagers and find out if anything is known. I may need others to find out about Commoner Town, though Tanlig would fit in well enough there, if he cared to. Mechanic, now, he’s peasant through and through, and resentfully prideful about it.”
“Hardly the type of servant to improve our reputation among the bon.”
“The bons aren’t to know anything about it. If we are to complete our mission here, we’ll need access to all levels of society. Sebastian is my link to the people of the soil. He knows enough not to call himself to the aristocrats’ attention. And if you want to know how I got on to the men without bon Haunser knowing, the Sanctity charge from Semling told me about them. I’ve already asked them the question.”
“Ah.” She waited, holding her breath.
“They say no.”
“Ah,” she said again, breathing. So there was hope. “No plague here.”
“There is no unexplained illness that they know of. As we agreed. I told them we’re making a survey.”
“They might not have heard…”
“Both of them have kin in Commoner Town. I think they would have heard of any strange sickness. But, it’s early days. The aristocrats have putative control of ninety-nine percent of the planet’s surface-There could be things going on here the commoners simply don’t know of.”
“It pounds as though you have things well in hand.” She sighed, her weariness and hunger suddenly heavier than she could gracefully bear. “Would you have any idea where Anthony might be?”
“If he’s where I told him to be, he’s with Stella up in the summer quarters, making a rough floor plan of the place for me. We’ll have to furnish it rather quickly, I’m afraid. Asmir tells me there’s a craftsmen’s area in Commoner Town. A place called, unimaginatively enough, Newroad. Lord knows where the old road was.”
“Terra, maybe.”
“Or any of half a hundred other places. Well, it doesn’t matter where it was, so long as we know where this one is. According to Asmir, we can get very acceptable stuff built there within two or three weeks — long Grassian weeks — and he’s already sent word on what he calls the tell-me for some kind of craftsmen’s delegation to come call on us.”
“By acceptable, does he mean to the bons, Rigo? I have a feeling everything we do will be measured and weighed by the bons. I think our poor horses were not revived because the bons did not know whether they would accept them or not, here on Grass. They have creatures of their own.”
“Hippae.”
“Exactly. Who are never kept in stalls, so the Obermun told me.”
“Where in the devil are they kept, then?”
“I have serious question as to whether they are ‘kept’ at all. Rigo, though they live in something not called stables. Why don’t we collect Anthony and Stella and go explore them together?”
The places not called stables were cavernous halls dug into the side of a hill, lined and pillared with stone. A rock-lined, spring-filled tank at the back cast a wavery luminescence across the low-arched ceiling. Half a dozen tall slits in the hillside were the only entrances.
“We could put the stallions and the mares in here and all their foals for the next hundred years,” Stella observed with brooding annoyance, taking a large bite from the apple she had brought with her. “And it would still be blasted inconvenient.” Stella, with her black hair and eyes and passionate disposition, resembled her father. Like him, she moved as a whip cracks, always seeming to arrive wherever she was going with considerable noise but without having bothered to travel the intervening distance. She shouted now, listening to the echo of her own voice as it rattled back into blackness among stout pillars. “Hallooooo,” a hunting halloo, as one sighting a fox might cry “Grass stinks!” she cried, with the echo coming back, “ing, ing, ing, ing”