In the front room, she inventoried the contents of the cabinet. There were several aerosols, but none seemed suitable for her needs. Solids whose smoke might be inhaled. A variety of liquids in bottle or syringe. The bottles were steel, ceramic, plastic—but two were glass, and these she removed from the cabinet. She poured herself a tumbler of each. The green-tinged liquid proved a wine of some sort, quite good. The clear one was a silverplate head-banger. Even a sip set up an ache between her eyes. She made a face and poured the rest of the bottle down the drain, leaving the empty bottle on the sideboard.
Afterward, she turned her attention to the play deck, where she played shaHmat against herself.
Before departure, Donovan had sent a missive by way of Magpie Three Padaborn. It was a list of numbers arranged to resemble an account in Dangchao groats: Gr 844.60 + Gr 288.60 + Gr 311.18 + Gr 109.11 and she immediately recognized it as a Clanthompson code derived from Rosie’s Thesaurus. The numbers represented a taxonomy of concepts. Donovan had seen the code exactly once, years before on Harpaloon, but the Pedant remembered details.
Méarana was not so lucky. She pretended to refer to a list of accounts, muttered something about overcharging for services, and translated the message. Anticipate/expect. Cross-grained/rough/unsmooth. Sporting/hunting-dog. Cheerfulness.
That was clear enough. He knew that one or more Hounds were on their way to her. There would be a rough time between his departure and the Hounds’ arrival, but she should maintain hope.
Any fool can hope, her mother had told Méarana once, when success lies in view. It takes genuine courage to hope when matters seem most hopeless.
Khembold Shadow Darling—no, Confederals placed office-titles last—Khembold Darling Shadow came to fetch her two days after her father had abandoned her among sullen strangers. He came about midmorn on market day, and the Great Square was bustling with activity. Farmers and craftsmen called out greetings from their booths and pavilions and offered wonderful bargains. One man in a brown robe cried out, “Ho, everyone that desires wisdom, let him draw near and take it at our hands, for it is wisdom that we have for sale! Come to the lecture hall tonight!”
On Dangchao such markets were housed under one roof, carefully proctored by the Wardens for cleanliness, and prices were posted, not chaffered over. Buying and selling here seemed more of a sport, much more like the Starport Sarai on Jehovah than the city markets at Port Kitchener. Of course, this was only a citadel, deliberately remote, sutlered by its own outlying villages, and she supposed that what cities the Earth might possess were better furnished than this.
A little ways to the south and east, on the Great Green, an itinerant theatrical troupe had set up in the amphitheater; and as she and Khembold passed by, a Queen (by her masque and tiara) was excoriating a large warrior as “… you great lump, you kraken off the moor…” At which the warrior cringed and tripped over himself, to the delight of the audience.
Inside the Administration center, Khembold led her to the communications directorate, where magpies and clerks sat by. “Gidula left instructions that we are to simulate his continued presence here,” Khembold explained. “By now, the Names may know his standing in the Revolution, and if they know he has departed for Dao Chetty, they may anticipate the play he is unfolding and take measures against him. For that reason, take care in what you say. We don’t know that They listen, but neither do we know otherwise.”
“In what I say?”
“Here is the communicator. Sit here and wear this helmet. Be aware that Messages Sendable will monitor the call for quality purposes.”
“Meaning, I don’t spill the beans.”
“Spill the beans?”
“A Terran expression my father taught me.”
Khembold shook his head in irritation. “Mention no names at all. Not the Old One, not your own, especially not Padaborn.”
When she donned the helmet she found herself in a virtual room with Donovan buigh. His image perched on an ordinary hard chair in a room plain and undecorated. A chronometer floated in midair behind him, set to zero; and a signboard read: INBOUND MESSAGE STREAM.
“Fudir!” she cried, using one of his less-public names.
But of course he did not hear her. He was far upsystem on the crawl, near one of the gas giants—known for some unknown but ancient reason as Wood-star. He had started talking some time ago and his words and image were just now reaching the Forks. The image, which had been frozen until she logged in, began to move and speak.
The first thing, Méarana told herself, is to establish that it is a live image and not a sim. She waited for him to say something no one else could possibly know.
“I am just calling to tell you everything is fine and the trip is so far without incident. Everyone is excited, of course. But I’m curious to learn how much has changed in the twenty-five years since I’ve seen the place. I may not be able to find my way around, and I thought, ‘That can’t be good.’ But I hope I do because so many folks are depending on me. By the way, you can begin answering whenever you like. You can’t interrupt me, and that way I’ll receive your responses that much sooner. So feel free to comment on anything I’ve been saying. If you talk over me, you can always back up and replay.”
That can’t be good had been a tagline used by Teddy Nagarajan, a Wildman who had died defending their escape from Oorah Mesa on Enjrun. No one else who had been there had survived. She nodded. It was Donovan.
Méarana chatted as if they were in fact sitting together in a cheerless room. It was a curiously one-sided discourse. Given the time lag, it seemed as if they were talking past each other. Donovan would speak, she would answer, but Donovan did not respond to her answers. It would be hours before he could.
“By the way,” Donovan said, “give your escort my special thanks for conducting you safely.”
The scarred man was multilayered and few of his sentences had but one nut within its shell. His “special thanks” would be some sort of rebuke to Ravn for dragging his daughter into this peril. The harper had not seen Ravn since she and Gidula had gone to the Nose, but the very fact of the request had to mean that the Shadow was not aboard the slider, either.
And that was Méarana’s second reason for good cheer. She had spent the evening trying to reassemble everything that had happened to her; and as was often the case when you took something apart and put it back together there was a piece left over.
Domino Tight.
Donovan talked for an hour straight while saying little, a skill he had learned in the Bar of Jehovah. In the course of the monologue, he conveyed several warnings and bits of advice, couched in Aesopic allusions to various shared experiences. Neither code nor cipher, it was impossible for outsiders to break. Méarana responded in like manner but was not nearly as optimistic in her glosses as Donovan seemed to be.
Yes, if Ravn was not on the slider, then she was somewhere nearby, her twin goals of rescuing Donovan and assassinating Gidula now thwarted by circumstance. And Khembold Darling had spoken of his admiration for Geshler Padaborn and had shown by various gestures and words that he was watching over her. But if Mother was truly close behind, taking care of Méarana might take second place to capturing Bridget ban. The garrison was expecting her. She would walk into a trap. The harper’s one consolation was that her mother had walked into traps before and knew how to do so with grace and style.