“It’s not even news. Why do you think I came looking on Jehovah? Mother had told me everything about my father but his name. He was strong, she told me, and wise, and deep down, a good man. Can you imagine the shock it was to find you?”
“Did she mention that we were handsome?”
She leaned half out of her chair. “Don’t make a mockery of this, Donovan! I won’t have it!”
“What did you expect after twenty years? We never knew you existed. She cut us off.”
“And what did you expect? You ran out on her and took the Dancer for yourself. How do you think she felt?”
“You know why I did what I did.”
“But she did not. She never knew. She went on her last mission thinking that the man she once loved had betrayed her without a backward glance. You never called at Dangchao.”
“You saw what Those did to us. Would you have welcomed that wreck?”
“I saw what you made of yourself. If Those broke you, they had your willing help.”
Donovan struck the arm of the chair with his fist. His empty glass wobbled from the impact and fell to the floor. “Then why did you come to Jehovah? Why did you drag us onto this mad venture?”
All the anger drained out of her, and Méarana sank back into her chair. “Because I wanted a father and a mother. I wanted both, but I would have settled for either one. Not to raise me. God, it’s far too late for that. But to find the man that my mother once loved…? That might have been worth the effort.”
Donovan reached down and picked up his empty glass from the floor. He set it this time on the side table. “Did you find him?”
“I caught a glimpse of him once in the Corner of Jehovah, on the rim of a rusted-out fountain. I bought him a cheap meal.”
The scarred man all but smiled at the memory. “You’ll never find what never was.”
“I’m not such a fool as that. I’ve always looked for what might yet still be.” Then she cocked her head. “Your eyes,” she said. “They’re stilled.”
“Yes.”
She said nothing for a while, but folded her hands under her chin and studied him. For a long time, she had hesitated to call him “father,” at first from uncertainty, later from a more profound uncertainty. Now she was content to wait. It was a title that must be earned.
The rapping on the door interrupted the silence before it could fall, and when Méarana told the door to open Teodorq Nagarajan stuck his head in. “They’re waiting for us, boss.”
Donovan pointed to Méarana with a tilt of his head. “She’s the boss.”
Teodorq shifted his expectant gaze from Donovan to the harper with no change in his expression. Méarana rose.
“Let’s not keep them waiting.”
Teodorq nodded and left. Donovan rose and offered his arm to his daughter. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go find your mother.”
XII. IN THE REMNANTS OF EMPIRE
Blankets and Beads entered stationary orbit above Enjrun and Méarana gathered her team in the conference room so Captain Barnes could brief them on conditions below. D.Z. unrolled a holomap on the table and they gathered around the topography that emerged. Miniature mountains loomed over green floodplains. Matchstick cities sat on earthen mounds. Captain Barnes handed out earwigs.
“The noor jessen,” she explained, “once ruled this whole region.” Her arms swept across the alluvial plain, the neighboring forestlands, and the northern foothills. “So most everybody south of the Kobberjobble Mountains will savvy the loora noor jesser. We’ve loaded the lingo into these earwigs, so yuh shouldn’t have trouble being understood’ til yuh get to ‘bout here.” She pointed to the foothills. “Once yer in the high-up hills yuh’ll need to hire local translators. Enjrunii don’t take ducats or Gladiola Bills, but if yuh deposit some hard currency with the Resident, he’ll fix yuh up with enough silver or gold for expenses.”
“We’ll put you down here,” said D.Z., pointing with his light-pen, “at Nuxrjes’r, our regular trade stop. The name means something like ‘the place where the river can be crossed.’ You can call it ‘Riverbridge’—or ‘Noor Jesser’ if you’re disinclined to cough up the necessary phlegm. It’s the southernmost point where native technology can bridge the river. The east-west pack caravans connect with the north-south river traffic.
“Nuxrjes’r got rich from the tolls, and eventually got an Empire from the riches. Then, depending on who tells the tale, she grew either too greedy or too tempting, or both, and the barbarians moved south from Kobberjobbles and east from the Blistering Badya. By the time the Bonregarde found its way into the Burnt-Over District, the old Nuxrjes’r Empire had fragmented into a dozen successor states and a rump imperium, ruled variously by barbarian warlords or soi disant counts, depending on which day of the week it was.
“Bonregarde’s, lander put all their postimperial squabbles into perspective. The warlords and counts patched up a truce and agreed that River-bridge would be a neutral city governed by a Board of Dūqs and everyone would smile for the off-worlders.”
“That was about three generations ago,” Captain Barnes said. “So far, the truce seems to be holding, though the makeup of the Board can change sudden-like. Y’might say they moved the fightin’ from outdoors to indoors. But the trade consortium made it real clear that if trouble gets out of hand we stop a-comin’. So the Resident is like an impartial referee. He enforces commercial regs, negotiates deals, and judges disputes among the Dūqs.”
Teodorq spoke up. “If this was World, there’d be a lot of resentment boiling underneath. I don’t know if these noor jessers got honor or not, but judging what I saw back in Varucciyam, they’ll wanna either kiss your ass or cut your throat—or maybe both. Not much in between.”
The First Officer wagged his light-pen at Teddy. “Hear him,” he told the others. “His folk are more advanced than the Enjrunii, but he’s closer to their way of thinking. Everyone down there will be kissy-kissy on the surface, but everything depends on what they think they can get away with. And the farther north and west you go, the less kissy-kissy they’ll be.”
Captain Barnes said, “Yuh’ll meet with the Resident first. His name is Oodalo Bentsen. He’ll see yuh git outfitted proper.” Her pen swiped through the northern mountains. “The noor jessers tell us the parking stone jewelry comes from ‘upriver,’ which means these here mountains. The Kobberjobbles.”
The holographic projection displayed a broad corduroy of high-peaked crags and deep valleys through which the upper reaches of the Aríidnux’r wound like a hungry boa constrictor. “The noor jessers call that stretch of river the Multawee, which they tell me means ‘twisted.’”
Méarana spoke up. “Why not put us down where the jewelry comes from?”
D.Z. pointed into the map. “Because we don’t know were that is. We deal only with the Dūqs in Riverbridge. Where they get the jewelry from, they don’t say.”
The pilot, Wild Bill, snorted. “As if we had time to flit around the planet.”
D.Z. said, “Men accustomed to treachery will see it everywhere.”
Inevitably, eyes turned toward Billy Chins, who flushed and protested. “When Billy ever do such? One time, name him! Ask Donovan. I come to you be safe from shadow.”
“Scared of his own shadow,” murmured Teddy.
Billy turned to him and wagged a finger. “You be scare, too, if you know’ em, the shadows. Maybe now she no catch up; but who can say? Billy good fella, good man in fight. Stick by you. You see him!”