The Quantum Rose
by Catherine Asaro
I. Ironbridge. First Scattering Channel
Kamoj Quanta Argali, the governor of Argali Province, shot through the water and broke the surface of the river. She tilted her face up to the sky, a violet expanse punctured by Jul, the sun, a tiny disk of light so brilliant she didn’t dare look near it. Curtains of green and gold light shimmered across the heavens in an aurora borealis visible even in the afternoon.
Her bodyguard Lyode was standing on the bank, surveying the area. Lyode’s true name was a jumble of words from the ancient language Iotaca, what scholars pronounced as light emitting diode. No one knew what it meant, though, so they all called her Lyode.
Unease prickled Kamoj. She treaded water, her hair floating in swirls around her body, wrapping her slender waist and then letting go. Her reflection showed a young woman with black curls framing a heart-shaped face. She had dark eyes, as did most people in Argali, though hers were larger than usual, with long lashes that at the moment sparkled with drops of water.
Nothing seemed out of place. Reeds as red as pod-plums nodded on the bank, and six-legged lizards scuttled through them, glinting blue and green among the stalks. A few hundred paces behind Lyode, the prismatic forest began. Up the river, in the distant north, the peaks of the Rosequartz Mountains floated like clouds in a haze. She drifted around to face the other bank, but saw nothing amiss there either. Tubemoss covered the sloping hills in a turquoise carpet broken by stone outcroppings that gnarled out of the land like the knuckles of a buried giant.
Kamoj exhaled. What she felt wasn’t unease exactly, more a sense of troubled anticipation. The afternoon hummed with life, golden and cool. Surely on this beautiful day she could relax.
Still, as much as she enjoyed swimming here, invigorated by the chill water and air, perhaps it was unwise. She had her position as governor to consider. Kamoj glided to the bank and clambered out, reeds slapping her body.
Her bodyguard glanced at her, then went back to scanning the area. Lyode suddenly stiffened, staring past Kamoj. Then she reached over her shoulder for the ballbow strapped to her back.
Surprised, Kamoj glanced back, across the river. A cluster of greenglass stags had appeared from behind a hill, each with a rider astride its long back. Sunrays splintered against the green scales that covered the stags. Each animal stood firm on its six legs, neither stamping nor pawing the air. With their iridescent antlers spread to either side of their heads, they shimmered in the blue-tinged sunshine.
Their riders were all watching her.
Mortified, Kamoj ran up the slope to where she had left her clothes. Lyode took a palm-sized marble ball out of a bag on her belt and set it in the sling on the targeting tube of her crossbow, which slid inside a accordion cylinder attached to the bow string. Drawing back the string and tube, she sighted on the watchers across the river.
Of course, here in the Argali, Lyode’s presence was more an indication of Kamoj’s rank, and her desire for privacy while she swam, rather than an expectation of danger. And indeed, none of the riders across the river drew his own bow. They looked more intrigued than anything else. One of the younger fellows grinned at Kamoj, his teeth flashing white in the streaming sunshine.
“This is embarrassing,” Kamoj muttered. She stopped behind Lyode and picked up her clothes. Drawing her tunic over her head, she added, “Thashaverlyster.”
“What?” Lyode said.
Kamoj pulled down the tunic, covering herself with soft gray cloth. Lyode was still standing in front of her, with her bow poised. Kamoj counted five riders across the river, all of them dressed in copper breeches and blue shirts, with belts edged by feathers from the blue-tailed quetzal.
One man sat a head taller than the rest. He wore a midnight-blue cloak with a hood that hid his face. His stag lifted its front two legs and pawed the air, its bi-hooves glinting like glass, though they were a hardier material, hornlike and durable. The man riding it gave no indication he noticed its restless motions. His cowled head remained turned in Kamoj’s direction.
“That’s Havyrl Lionstar,” Kamoj repeated as she pulled on her leggings. “The tall man on the big greenglass.”
“How do you know?” Lyode asked. “His face is covered.”
“Who else is that big? Besides, those riders are wearing Lionstar colors.” Kamoj watched the group set off again, cantering into the folds of the blue-green hills. “Hah! You scared them away.”
“With five against one? I doubt it.” Dryly, Lyode said, “More likely they left because the show is over.”
Kamoj winced. She hoped her uncle didn’t hear of this. As the only incorporated man in Argali, Maxard Argali had governed the province for Kamoj when she was young and was shifting his role to that of advisor now that she had reached her adulthood.
Lionstar’s people were the only ones who might reveal her indiscretion, though, and they rarely came to the village. Lionstar had “rented” the Quartz Palace in the mountains for more than a hundred days now, and in that time no one she knew had seen his face. Why he wanted a ruined palace remained a mystery, given that he refused all visitors. When his emissaries had inquired about it, she and Maxard had been dismayed by the suggestion that they let a stranger take residence in the honored, albeit disintegrating, home of their ancestors.
However, no escape had existed from the “rent” Lionstar’s people put forth. The law was clear: she and Maxard had to best his challenge or bow to his authority. Impoverished Argali could never match such an offer: shovels and awls forged from fine metals, stacks of dried firewood, golden bridle bells, dewhoney and molasses, dried rose-leeks, cobberwheat, tri-grains, and reedflour that poured through your fingers like powdered rubies.
So they yielded—and an incensed Maxard had demanded Lionstar pay a rent of that same worth every fifty days. It was a lien so outrageous, all Argali feared Lionstar would send his soldiers to “renegotiate.”
Instead, he paid.
With Lyode at her side, Kamoj entered the forest. Walking among the trees, with tubemoss soft under her bare feet, made her more aware of her precarious position. Why had Lionstar come riding here today? Did their lands now also risk forfeiture to his wealth? She had invested his rent in machinery and tools for farms in Argali. As humiliating as it was to depend on a stranger, it was better than seeing her people starve. But she didn’t think she could bear to lose any more to him, especially not this forest she so loved.
Drapes of moss hung on the trees and shadow-ferns attended their trunks. Far above, the branches formed a canopy that let only stray sunbeams reach the ground. Argali vines hung everywhere, heavy with the blush-pink roses that gave her home its name. Argali. It meant vine rose in Iotaca.
At least, most scholars translated it as rose. One insisted it meant resonance. He also claimed they mispronounced her middle name, Quanta, an Iotaca word with no known translation. The name Kamoj came from the Iotaca word for bound, so if this strange scholar was correct, her name meant Bound Quantum Resonance. She smiled at the absurdity. Rose made more sense, of course.
Not all the “roses” in the forest were flowers, though. Camouflaged among the blossoms, puff lizards swelled out their red sacs. A shaft of sunlight slanted through the forest, admitted by a ruffling breeze, and sparkles glittered where the light hit the scaled lizards, the scale-bark on the trees, and the delicate scale-leaves. Then the ray vanished and the forest returned to its dusky violet shadows.
Suddenly a thornbat whizzed past her, its wings beating furiously. It homed in on a vine and stabbed its needled beak into the red sac of a puff lizard. As the puff deflated with a whoosh of air, the lizard scrambled away to safety, leaving the disgruntled thornbat to whiz on without its prey.