There was a feeling of poverty about the towns that Leg-Wot had not noticed in her brief visits to the cities of the Summerkingdom. Nature made life hard for these people. Most of the buildings around the transit lakes were small in comparison to what she had seen in the South. She was certain that if Bjault had not been sick he would have been pestering Pelio with questions: How did the Snowfolk support themselves? Where did they get food? How did they heat their stone houses?
They jumped from town to town, each jump spanning perhaps a hundred kilometers. They were heading northeast now, so that every teleportation sent the yacht lurching up and eastward from the water of the next transit lake. The sun ran quickly toward the horizon. And it was cold. The wind keening through the window slats carried a subzero draft onto the passengers. The wood-burning deck stoves didn’t help much. Poor Samadhom huddled miserably by one for a while; then Pelio unstrapped him, and moved the animal into the boat’s hold.
In the lengthening, north-pointing shadows, the villages seemed grotesquely squalid. The snow piled up high around the water like some mineral deposit; many warehouses were built of dirty gray ice rather than stone. Still further north, thick ice shelves stuck out into the water. Snowmen work crews hacked industriously at the ice, trying to keep the road open. The water in the lakes was a peculiar green now; even when it splashed up on the window slats and froze, it had a greenish cast. Pelio told Leg-Wot that the Snowpeople had potions they added to the water to keep it liquid even at these temperatures. Antifreeze, huh? It was hard to believe that only a few hours before they had been traveling through semitropical forests.
Except for a thirty-degree wide band straddling the equator, Giri was a frigid world, its ice caps reaching down in places to the forty-fifth latitude. The colonists from Homeworld had been wise to settle on Novamerika, fifty million kilometers closer to the sun. The Novamerikan tropics were insufferable, but swimmable beaches extended to the poles. In the three years since the colony’s establishment, she had come to love walking alone on those long, empty beaches. But will we ever get back?
She slumped in her chair and for a while sat as silent and withdrawn as Bjault. When she looked up again, the sun had set in the south. The twilight faded to night inside of four jumps—yet it was scarcely past midafternoon! The shifting landscapes were now lit by the stars and the fainter of the two moons. The buildings seemed more graceful, more delicately formed than they had in the failing sunlight. Yellow lamps glowed cheerily in their windows. The air was like crystal, yet the wind coming through the window slats blew steadily, strongly.
Pelio became more talkative, as if he sensed the downturn in Yoninne’s spirits. He had been this way two or three times before, both on state visits to the Snowkingdom and on tours of vassal states beyond the pole. He described the functions of the various buildings clustered about each transit lake, and proudly identified the freighter traffic bound to and from the far fiefs of Summer; the sun-over-fields seal of die Summerkingdom shone on hull after hull, clearly visible even by moonlight. As they progressed into the northern night, traffic became heavier. Soon the splashing water had frozen over the windows and obscured their view. Every third or fourth jump, their pilot-navigator sent crewmen out to chip away the ice. The stoves were restoked and the tiny red sparkles leaking through their sides lit the deck.
Pelio was so animated, so cheerful that Yoninne almost smiled. No doubt he thought they would most likely die at the end of their journey, yet he was doing his best to cheer her up. She wondered again if he would have gone along with this scheme, if the alternative had not been execution. Nine days ago—it seemed so much longer now—when Bjault and Thengets del Prou had first put Ajão’s plan to her, she had insisted that they go directly to Pelio with it.
Prou had been skeptical. “Pelio would be taking a terrible risk in cooperating with you. The Keep is rotten with guards now; if he tried to use his authority to take what remains of your equipment, the chances are Shozheru would discover he’s been consorting with witlings. That would mean almost certain death for the prince—I just don’t think he’s willing to take that chance. We’ve got to create a situation where Pelio—and his father—will be forced to cooperate.”
Yoninne had looked angrily across the tiny room at the Guildsman. Someone had murdered to get their maser; someone had come within centimeters of snatching Bjault. They were at the center of a deadly intrigue that neither she nor Ajão understood. And now this fast-talking Guildsman wanted them to betray the only dependable friend they had here. In the guttering torchlight, she couldn’t read Bjault’s face: did he really buy Prou’s argument? How could they be sure that Thengets del Prou and his Guild were not the people behind all their problems?
The archaeologist seemed to be reading her mind. “I think we can trust him, Yoninne,” he said in Homespeech. “If he wished us ill, we’d be dead or kidnapped by now. And the help he’s giving us will only serve to put us beyond his power.”
“Then your pet Guildsman is doing this out of the goodness of his heart? Or did you promise him the keys to the magic kingdom?” Leg-Wot replied in the same language, her voice heavy with sarcasm. “If he’s not the guy who stole our weapons and the maser, then there’s nothing we could do or tell him that would be of any value.”
Ajão answered quietly. “That’s not so. I told Prou about Novamerika. He’s almost as eager as we are to establish contact; he seems to be equal parts political realism and pathological curiosity. Do you know that for all his power, he’s not allowed to travel more than a few jumps from Dhendgaru? If we get rescued, he wants passage to Novamerika.”
Leg-Wot grimaced. Bjault made Prou sound like some bright college student “thirsting for knowledge.”
But Ajão’s plan was their only hope for survival now that the maser was gone. And that plan depended upon Guild cooperation. They had no choice but to trust Prou. She tapped her stubby fingers irritably against her chair’s armrest, then turned to the Guildsman and spoke in Azhiri: “Just how do you plan to force Pelio and the king to go along with our scheme?” The word “our” came easily to her lips. From the moment Ajão had described his plan she had been sure she could make it work.
Prou leaned forward, seemed to listen for a moment to the night sounds outside the bungalow. “That’s simple, though a bit risky. You’ll publicly reveal yourself to be witlings, witlings intimately associated with Pelio. Shozheru will have to accept your plan, as a means of removing Pelio from the line of succession. His only alternative would be to have Pelio executed, and the king is really too good-hearted to do that. In giving Pelio this last chance, Shozheru will have to provide you with the equipment you need.”
And so Leg-Wot had grudgingly accepted the Azhiri’s suggestions. On the day of the festival, Prou had arranged to have Yoninne and Ajão appear right into the middle of the royal court (even though it was not apparent that he was responsible for their arrival). The guards at the transit pool had immediately recognized them as witling intruders and the confrontation they had counted on took place—with just the results Prou had predicted.
The thought brought Yoninne back to the present—to the chill night beyond the ice-splattered windows, to Pelio’s young face lit by the reddish gleamings of the deck stoves. It just wasn’t right: She was sure he would have accepted the plan, risks and all, if they had laid it out honestly before him. Instead they had betrayed Pelio, and put all their faith in a man who—despite Ajão’s logic—might still turn out to be the rat in this affair.