82 - What Do They Want???

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.”