The scarred man shook their head. “No. Tomas Krishna Murphy died in the siege of the old Education Ministry. What was left of him died in a bed on Gatmander. He had been betrayed by the man he loved and trusted most. He wanted to die and nearly took the rest of us with him. What do I want? Most of all?” He thought about the question. “I want to sit under my own vine and fig tree and not be afraid. I would like to visit Clanthompson Hall, if you would permit.”
Inner Child noticed how Méarana’s hand, laid casually on her mother’s shoulder, tightened its grip.
“Oh, you would? Donovan, ye keep breaking things. The Dancer, the old Commonwealth Ark, now ye’ve broken the entire Confederation!”
“Well,” said the Fudir, “the Confederation stood between you and me. It seemed the fastest way to reach you.”
“Love, is it? Why, we hae barely spoken in twenty years!”
“Aye, there is something cruel about love. Otherwise, it wouldn’t hurt so.”
Bridget ban did not smile, but her countenance grew more serious. “Maybe it is time for you to come home.”
The scarred man looked up. The young girl in the chiton sang, but her song did not reach his lips. “Why? Does your estate need a vine-dresser?”
“No. Because you stepped between my daughter and the gun of Gidula.”
“‘Our’ daughter. Mine was a desperate gesture. If Gidula had not wasted a charge on Padaborn … If not for Ravn, once I’d dropped, he would have had a clear shot.”
“Not right away.”
The Fudir looked at Bridget ban and nodded. “Yes. Who said we have nothing in common.”
“And Méarana had two more knives. Given such a pause, she might have…” Bridget ban visibly tore herself from the world that might have been. “Ye won’t gang scootin’ off agin, wi’ nary a word?”
Donovan nodded. “Fig tree. Vine. And I’ll leave word.”
Bridget ban could hardly complain, as she herself was often absent on Hound’s Business and the word she left was ofttimes cryptic. “We’ll see. Don’t think it will be like twenty years ago.”
Twenty years ago, Bridget ban had used her charms to seduce Greystroke and Little Hugh, as well as the Fudir, as a way of binding their loyalties to herself. Even two years ago, the Fudir might have thrown that in her face before the Silky Voice could stop him. But Bridget ban was not now who she had been, and neither was he. “I know,” was all he said; and Méarana, of all of them, showed relief on her face.
Donovan rose and pulled open his coverall pants. “That reminds me. I have a present for you.” Before Bridget ban could raise a brow or Méarana blush, he plucked a thread from his undergarment and pulled it free.
“I hope that’s not what’s holding it all together,” said Bridget ban. But she recognized it for a data thread.
“I wove it into my undergarment,” the Fudir explained. “It seemed the safest place, and I haven’t changed the garment since.”
Bridget ban hesitated before taking the proferred thread, and then held it between her fingertips. “What is it ye have for me, Donovan buigh?”
“Old files I copied in the Miwellion in Prizga. They are titled Vyutha 1 through Vyutha 7. ‘Vyutha’ is a term related to the old Murkanglais viuda, which meant variously ‘widow,’ ‘relict,’ or ‘vestige.’”
Bridget ban’s head jerked up. “Vestiges? Oh, well played, Donovan buigh! Well played. Imagine caching the artifacts, then leaving the documentation out where anyone could find it. Where is Prizga?”
“On Old Earth, on the western shore of the Northern Mark, just south of the glaciers.”
“You knew about the Vestiges even then?”
“No, I copied the files because they were the only sealed files in the Miwellion. Briddy, they’re old. They were sealed by the Audorithadesh Ympriales—and they were still sealed when I found them. It will take tender work to break them open.”
“The Ympriales?” Bridget ban and her daughter alike showed bewilderment. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It was an empire on Old Earth shortly after star sliding had begun, after the fall of the Gran Publicamericana but before the formation of the Commonwealth of Suns. It included most of the Northern Mark and parts of Yurp and a place called Strine.”
The Red Hound shook her head. “But then…”
“Aye. The files were time-locked all during the Commonwealth.”
“Then the Vestiges cannae be Commonwealth work?”
“No. And that means they are not prehuman, either. Otherwise, there would not have been so much fuss when Mahadevan found the ruins on New Mumbai. It would have been old news.”
Bridget ban shook her heads. “Then … If not the Commonwealth and not the prehumans … Who made the Vestiges? Where were they found?”
Donovan flicked the dangling thread with his finger. “That depends on how good your decrypters and seal-breakers are. But it does make you wonder why those early expeditions were so keen on finding alien intelligences.”
Bridget ban nodded slowly. “They believed they were out there to be found. Do you think the Confederals know?”
“I doubt it. It was all superstition with them. One problem with hiding things away—it becomes too easy to forget what they were.” Donovan sat back on the bench. “They might be something worth looking for, though.”
“Why, so you can break them, too? I thought you were retiring under your fig tree?”
“Ah, what can it hurt?”
“You, above all men, ask that? You finally deign to show up at Clanthompson Hall, old man, and right away you want to run off again?”
“Old man? I’ve barely a century in my scrip as yet. I’m just hitting my stride. Beside, you should talk about haring off.”
Méarana had left her mother and father, and joined Ravn Olafsdottr, who stood a little distance away. She was eating one of Donovan’s noisome dishes, something called Chicken Joe Freezing. To all appearances, she had just woken up and set to breakfast, but Méarana had no doubt the Shadow had listened to every word her parents had exchanged.
The Shadow wore coveralls now, and she reached into one of their commodious pockets. She pulled out a metal wire and handed it to Méarana. The harper studied it. “A harp string.”
Ravn nodded. “Used to strangle Khembold, later to strangle Gidula. Achieve artistic closure. You use that, my sweet one, to string your new harp.” Then she waved her spoon in the direction of the other table. “They quarrel,” she said around a mouthful of chicken.
“Yes.”
“But you smile.”
“It marks an improvement over twenty years of silence.”
Ravn put down her spoon. “Are you satisfied, then? I told you in your Hall that I had promised to give Donovan a gift.” She hugged herself. “Ooh! I am soo clayver!”
Méarana crossed her arms and studied the Shadow. She still had not made her mind up about the woman. She suspected that Ravn had transported her into danger precisely so that she could rescue her from it. “And what gift was that?”
The teeth were impossibly white against her coal-black face. “Ooh, I am sooch a sentimental oold fool. I gave him Bridget ban.”
Notes for the Curious
It’s a big Spiral Arm and the technology of thousands of years from now is about as imaginable as airliners would be to Assyrians. It helps that there were intervening Dark Ages, lost technologies, and deliberate suppression of innovation. That lets us get away with over-the-horizon science and technology of here and now. Take some stuff that we maybe almost know how to do, and then suppose that we can do it really well. Techne that makes an appearance in On the Razor’s Edge includes: