Kyrus leaned his back against the
newly closed door.
“EnDarkened! What do they want? Asking questions…? I didn’t
DO anything. What do they want?”
Hara smacked her hand into the
middle of his chest. “Don’t panic. They’re being polite. They didn’t drag you
off. And they can’t. They can’t just drag you off. Your da just married mine
and that makes you family. You’re a Milar by marriage. They can’t just haul you
away.”
He managed to seize control of
his breathing. The kids were looking at him in a way he didn’t understand. “You
did it like Papa does, Ky.” That was Maks. “When he doesn’t want to talk to
people he ‘polites’ them out the door.
“Thank you. Um… They are going to
be back. They’re probably talking to everybody who knows me. I don’t know for
sure but I’m guessing.”
“It’s not something that is
important enough to interrupt da and papa right at the start of their honey
month.”
“Yeah. Hmmm. I know. I’ll go to
the Mandery school. If they come there to ask about me, I’ll slip out and head
to the war-school.”
“I’ll track you down with lunch
then,” Hara grinned. “You’re fine, Ky. They’ll ask their questions and then
they’ll tell us what’s up. Once they do, we’ll deal with it.”
“You’re right. Thanks, Hara,
you’re right.” He managed to get his breathing under control and listened to
the hammering of his heart. It was
pounding in his chest like the first night he gave himself to a client. Everything hurt. Everything was tight and hot and he clenched
his hands and then shook out his fingers, hoping to fling the ache out of them.
“Of course I’m right. I’ll find
Werfas and the other kids. If it turns out that they want to do awful things to
you, and you need to drop out of sight for a little while until these Lainz go
away, we’ll do it.”
Kyrus managed a deep breath. “Thanks…
I’ll see you at lunch.”
**
Kyrus stepped out of the house
and checked to see if the Hive-Birds were around. No one. Most people were
still recovering from the wedding. He got a wave from the sweepers, cleaning
the stones of the square.There was a new inn, for foreigners, since he’d come.
Someone had figured out that there was money to be made. But there was a bird
tethered and scratching outside the Unity. The Captain’s it looked like from
the fittings he could see.
No sign of the other. He headed
back over to the Mandery school where he’d been attending from the time that
Ilax had insisted, backed by the Zon at the War-school. They’d said they would
teach him no more physical training if he did not train his mind.
His mind, in the school, usually felt
sluggish and as awkward. His Da told him that training his mind was like
training his body and he needed to get through the beginning to reach mastery.
Dee Mander Mayu made him stinking nervous but she was a tiny, bird-like woman.
He knocked on the door of her office and found she was not there.
He headed deeper into the school.
He’d never thought he’d feel safe, but it made him angry to find himself
enfolded by the building. In the main hall he found Mayu sitting cross-legged,
suspended on a thin, thin whippy strand of wood in the centre of the hall,
meditating.
He almost backed out but she
unfolded from her cross-legged pose and slid down the thread thin support.
“Kyrus. I’m glad to see you on a rest-day.” She padded over to her tea-kettle.
“I would have thought you would also be resting today?”
“A couple of Hive-birds came
asking questions about me, Dee Mayu.”
“Yes.” Why was he absolutely not
surprised that she didn’t seem surprised? “Kyrus. You recall your lessons from
me?”
“Of course, Dee Mayu.” I wasn’t
stupid. I didn’t necessarily believe her but I hadn’t forgotten.
“So. Repeat the founding myths to
me then.”
He sat down and pulled in a deep
breath. “We are all refugees. We are all rebels from the original plan. We need
to work together, for the time that the owner of the planet decides to call in
his contracts.”
“Very good. So how old are all
our countries?”
“Some only a few hundred years.
Some as many as a thousand.” She sipped her tea and raised an eyebrow at him. He
closed his eyes. The odd little sense in him, that she had pointed out, came up
into his inner eye. “Planetary years. Terran years are 1.3 of our plantary
years.”
“Good. And Lainz?”
“Lainz did not exist till nine
hundred seventy-four years ago. Milar is only a generation older.”
“Very good.”
“Dee…” He sipped the tea she
offered him butterless, chutneyless, bare. “You call what I call mandery,
science. But what does your mandery tell you about why these Lainz are asking
questions about me?”
She sighed. “I’m not a ‘magic
mouth’, Kyrus. They talked to me about you. I can speculate.”
“Please do.” His hands were
shaking.
“They are asking questions
focused on your character. You may be more important than you think, lad.”
“More important?” He set his
naked tea down with a click. “I have found out my father is alive and he’s been
teaching me. Lainz and my grandfather and ‘His Radiance’ threw his life away as
though he was a used kerchief. What might they want with me?”
“As I said. I may only speculate.
The Emir-al has the authority but from my experience, lad, you should be more
careful of the Amir, in my estimation.”
“I thought so, Dee.” The Amir is the more dangerous person, for all that he has lesser rank. There’s something odd about the man.
“You like my tea?”
“It’s naked.”
“Yes.” She sipped. Endarkened.
Why do all teachers have to be so horribly inscrutable? I’m mature enough for everything she could
throw at me, surely.
“Wonderful. You served me naked
tea to make a point?”
“Kyrus. What we are is defined
culturally. How someone takes his tea is important because we make it
important. It is stupid things like that that make history as we remember it.”
The hairs on the back of my neck tried to stand up. One of her mandery’s was
memory. Not many people had it. But theoretically she held the memories of her
people before their founding. Not all of them but far more than most.
“You’re being obscure again, Dee
Mander.”
“Of course, Kyrus. But it is wise
to remember that we are more than we think. As we find more and more
information as we get older we change ourselves to fit our new information… for
you personally… did things not change for you when you discovered that your
father was still alive?”
He picked up his tea again. “Yes.
Yes it did.” He understood, suddenly. He suddenly realized. Words were like the
perfect punch, the perfect sword-strike, the perfect dee-mand or dee-cline. If
you understood, you could do it. It was as though the whole world folded open
again and he found another layer underneath that he’d never suspected.
“So… Dee… what should I do?”
She smiled at him, her teeth
white and straight and bright.
“You should stop running away, young Kyrus.”
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