her instruments 02 - rose point (21 page)

He left them fluttering behind him, heading the way Reese had gone... but he stopped just around the corner and waited, extending his senses until he could perceive their agitation at his abrupt departure. They were talking amongst themselves, from the shifting colors in their auras and the emotions they were passing one another with their words; one of those emotions he liked not at all, a salacious coral-colored speculation they shared until they’d tinged each other with streaks of it. Gossip, God and Lady help him, and Surela no doubt in the middle of it. She’d not forgiven him for choosing Laiselin over her, but he suspected she’d marry him anyway if she could force him to the altar... her and every other eligible woman at court. He had forgotten that he was something worth chasing.

At last Surela’s party moved on toward the lakeside apartments, and he judged it safe to follow Reese. He found her loitering near the door to the Queen’s wing beneath the watchful eyes of the Swords. When he approached, she said, “I could tell you hated them, so I thought it would be a good idea not to let them get a better look at me.”

“You could see that?” he asked, startled.

“Oh yes,” Reese said. “There was just something about the way you held yourself. Like you were revolted.” She looked up at him. “I’m guessing I was right?”

“Yes, and it was well done. There are other ways out of the palace.” He said to the page, “You may go, and thank you.”

“Lord,” the page said. And added a dip of his head to Reese. “Ma’am.”

Reese smiled. “See you later.”

Did he imagine the return smile? He saw it in the adolescent’s aura, if not on his face. He tilted his head. “Befriending the natives, then?”

“He was nice to me first,” Reese said, pulling the cloak more tightly around herself. “How’d your appointment go?”

“Well enough,” Hirianthial said, feeling anew the fatigue. “Though I may be forced to remain at Ontine for some time.”

“The Queen said that might be the case,” Reese said. “So they found someone to help you?”

“I believe so.” The Swords opened the doors for them and he led her back into the Queen’s wing. He would take her out through the servants’ corridors; it would land them closer to the postern gate near Jisiensire’s townhouse anyway.

“Good,” Reese said. “Just remember, if you need any help, you tell us.”

“I shall,” he said, moved by her matter-of-fact offer. Such a different conversation than the one he’d just had, from the frank phrasing of the language to the ease of speaking with people who wouldn’t push him or, God forfend, suggest that it was high time to replace his dead wife. He felt a flush of some emotion: gratitude, perhaps. Looking down at Reese as she paced him, he said, “And how was your first conversation with royalty?”

Reese snorted. “Other than it not being my first conversation, technically?” A touch of amusement then, bright sparks dancing. “It was good. I liked her.”

“Except?” he said, sensing something else.

“Except there’s so much going on here that I don’t know,” Reese said, the words slow to leave her as if she considered each before release. “I like her and I want to trust her, but when you’re in charge of things you don’t always get to make the choices you want to make. I get the feeling that happens to her a lot.”

The perspicacity of that statement caught him by surprise. “I suspect you’re correct.”

“Yeah.” Reese sighed and glanced at one of the paintings as they passed. “Anyway. I’m supposed to collect the crew and come back here to stay. I’m guessing I’ll have to bring them at night? So no one will spot them. I could probably disguise the twins, but Bryer’s feathers are going to stick out of everything but a boat and Kis’eh’t is never going to look bipedal. Though I guess we could make her look like a small horse. Are there small horses? Ponies maybe? Ponies are real, aren’t they?”

“The Queen has asked you to stay here?” Hirianthial said, cutting through the words to the one thing that mattered.

“Yes,” Reese said. “And she wants to introduce us at some court session in a couple of days.”

He stopped. So did she.

“The Queen wants to introduce you formally,” Hirianthial repeated.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Reese said, her unease palpable. “I told her so myself. Even I know that you don’t shove a bunch of out-worlders in front of a culture of xenophobes like that, but she says that things can’t change unless you have some confrontation.”

God and Lady. He said, “And you said you would?”

“Yes,” Reese said, far more seriously than he expected.

“You understand what you’ve agreed to?”

“Not completely, no,” Reese said. “But you’d have to be stupid not to know she’s trying to start a fight.” She looked up at him. “Isn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said, the word profound as the toll of a bell. It colored her aura, his, a somber gray hinting at the black of tombs and shadows.

And yet, she did not shiver, and something in her solidified. The shadows became steel and she let out a breath and nodded. “Then I have only one question,” Reese said. “Is she going to take care of us when the fight starts? Because I’m okay with taking risks for someone who’s going to treat us like her people, but not if we’re just the wood she’s going to use up to torch the planet.”

Turning to face him had put her in the light of the lamps, and the glint he saw at her breast... “Is that a medallion?” he asked.

Reese glanced down, then brought it out for him to see. “She gave it to me as proof of her intent.”

“Can you turn it over?” he asked.

Her puzzlement streaked her aura bronze and purple. He ignored it, waiting for the inevitability... and when Reese showed him the back of the pendant he sighed out. He should have known she would work quickly; Liolesa was nothing if not a master of thinking on her feet. Hirianthial had presented her with an opportunity to catalyze the war she knew she could no longer avoid and so did not want to put off. If she could start it on her terms, she would do that rather than allow her enemies to choose the time and the ground. And they both knew time was running thin.

“Yes,” he said. “She will protect you. That is her personal emblem, and she would not give it to anyone she planned to discard.”

“All right,” Reese said. “That’s what I thought from meeting with her, but you can’t be sure with politicians.” She grinned at him, then faltered. “What?”

“Just like that,” he said. “You have thrown in your lot with us.”

Reese sighed. “Blood and freedom, Hirianthial. Haven’t you figured it out yet?” She met his eyes, fierce. “We threw our lot in with you the moment we went after you in a slaver’s prison. That it took me most of a year to stop denying it doesn’t make it less true. You’re here. This is your fight. That makes it our fight.”

“You’re so sure you speak for the others?” he asked. “They may have signed up for adventure, but not for... this.”

She snorted. “Oh, hell, Hirianthial. They knew it before I did. They spent months trying to beat it through my head. And you know what? They were right. Maybe I’m too stubborn for my own good, or maybe I’m just stubborn enough to get us through things and they’re the ones who remind me to act like a normal human being, but however that works, it did, and I got it.” She shook her head. “You come back to the townhouse with me, Hirianthial, and tell them the story. I’ll bet you a horse they’re going to agree with me.”

“A horse,” he said, amused despite his dismay.

“I’ve just found out how important the things are to you people,” Reese said. “So, yes. A horse.”

“Does that mean if you win I must buy you one?” Hirianthial asked.

She huffed. “Of course it does. You’re the one with the money anyway. I’ll have to take out a loan to pay for yours if I lose.”

Was he really so surprised by her reaction to the Queen’s plan? Maybe he’d forgotten she’d grown up with stories of revolution. The descendants of Mars still reared their children on the bloody history of their emancipation from Earth, and as one of the more traditionalist families the Eddings had been particularly proud of their world’s struggle for independence. Reese didn’t need the whole picture to sense the tensions that were poised to rip this world apart. All she needed to know was that Liolesa had no gem grid and went through the trouble of maintaining out-world connections anyhow. That meant the people here wanted no part of the technology the Alliance offered, and that suggested technology might make it harder for them to keep whatever power they were used to wielding.

And that story she was familiar with, from bones to skin, cell-deep where stories are born. It might be dressed in silk and jewels, but she recognized it all the same.

As Hirianthial led her through the palace, she surreptitiously examined the back of her medallion and found a tiny design: a white flower twining around a sword. Obviously that meant something, but he hadn’t told her what and it was unlikely he would if she asked. As usual. She sighed and smiled a little. As irritating as he was, he was part of the
Earthrise
family. That meant she had to find his foibles at least a little endearing, even when they frustrated her.

“Here,” Hirianthial said, pushing on a wall which was, in fact, a door—that seemed normal for Eldritch design, these doors painted to look like the rest of the corridor. “We will exit through the servants’ halls, but we should be swift. It’s impolite to importune them.”

“Right,” Reese said, and followed him. The decor here was somewhat plainer, but the walls still had moldings and paint, and the floors were nicer, she thought: wood rather than stone. They detoured past what looked like storerooms without seeing a soul and ended up outside the palace near a gate sized for a person, rather than an army. There were guards there too, though they recognized Hirianthial on sight and let them pass.

The walk back to the townhouse took them near the cliffs. Reese looked out over the horizon, over endless waves that glittered pale gray and pewter under the morning sun. She waited for the agoraphobia and felt instead a mute wonder at the sight. What did she know about oceans? Mars had none, and she’d gone straight from there to a ship. She’d seen mountains since, and Harat-Sharii’s plains, but the sea... the sea was new.

“You find it compelling?” Hirianthial asked, quiet. When had he come so close? And why did she find it steadying?

“What? Oh.” Reese pulled the hood closer over her head and answered, “I’ve never seen the ocean. It’s... big.”

“Jisiensire’s lands include the coast in the south,” Hirianthial said. “I had missed it.”

“It’s a little like space,” Reese said, glancing toward it again. When she could pull her gaze away she found him looking at her with interest. “It has a presence. And it’s bigger than you can wrap your arms around. There are things in it you’ll never know or reach or understand.”

“That bothers you not at all?” His voice remained quiet.

“I think it bothers me less than feeling it’s finite and might fall on top of me,” Reese said, though that wasn’t quite it either and she didn’t know what the difference was. But she took a few deep breaths of the brine-scented breeze before going up into the townhouse, and the taste on her tongue felt as old as blood, but cleaner.

They found the crew at breakfast in a room Reese hadn’t seen yet, a long hall sized for its gleaming wooden table, with high windows casting slanted light across what remained of a very large meal. Even Allacazam was somnolent from the slow yellow flow of colors across his neural fur; they’d set him in a sunbeam. The twins and Kis’eh’t stood when they arrived, and Bryer looked up, the light flowing down his face.

“So?” Irine asked, bouncing a little. “Are we staying?”

Reese was deeply gratified to hear the confusion in Hirianthial’s voice when he said, “I beg your pardon?”

“We’re staying,” Reese said. “There are rooms in the palace waiting for us. And it looks like the Eldritch Queen wants to use us to upset her enemies into making a stupid move.”

Sascha pursed his lips. “Wow, sounds dangerous. I’m in.”

“What?” Hirianthial asked, now sounding ever so slightly bewildered.

Reese said, grinning, “I think he means ‘are you sure’.”

Kis’eh’t snorted. “How’s this world going to be worse than being chased by slavers? If their bathrooms are any indication, they certainly can’t manufacture a working firearm.”

“Can we go see the ocean?” Irine asked.

Bryer said, “The sea is good.”

Reese pulled out a chair. “You should move Allacazam, he’s going to get fat if you keep stuffing him.”

Irine scooped up the Flitzbe as Sascha brought her a cup of cider. “Here you go, Boss. No coffee, I’m afraid. It’s tea or alcohol. We’re going to have to import coffee along with the horses.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Reese murmured, hiding her amusement.

“You want to stay?” Hirianthial asked Sascha. “You understand the Queen is trying to start a war.”

“Are you staying?” Sascha asked, and the others grew quiet to listen to the answer.

Hirianthial looked at them, very still, very contained. “I must.”

“Then we’re staying,” Sascha said.

Reese said to Hirianthial, “You owe me a horse.”