Law of Survival (28 page)

Jani yawned in response, wide enough for her jaw to crack. “I don't know.”

“Don't give me that, all right—I've had a bad night.” Roni scowled and touched her sore cheek. “I've been roughed up in an alley, I've made the Registry Inspector General's
‘watch this one' list, and I've probably done myself out of a job.” She pressed her hand to her face, bleary eyes locked in the middle distance. “When Lucien still worked at Exterior, I used to study him. Much as I hated him, I had to admire the way he just cut through the place. Peter looks like him—the hair, the eyes, but he really can't hold a candle. Lucien maneuvered people like pieces on a gameboard. Even Anais, although she didn't realize it until it was too late.” She looked at Jani. “He threw her over for you. Did you ever wonder why?”

“Access to the idomeni, like I told you in your office.” Jani thought back to Lucien's rapt studying of Dathim. “He finds them fascinating.”

“Well, folks say you're part idomeni. Perhaps he thinks you're fascinating, too.” Roni yawned again. “So, speaking of close but not quite, who was this person I remind you of?”

Jani turned her attention to the darkened buildings. “Yolan Cray. She was a corporal with the Twelfth Rover Corps. She died during the first bombing raid at Knevçet Shèràa.”

“She was your friend?”

“Inasmuch as we could be, considering she was enlisted and I was an officer in the same outfit. We reported to an asshole—that promoted the sense of solidarity.”

“Yeah, that'll do it.” Roni nodded in the loose-necked way of the terminally punchy, then looked at Jani with bloodshot eyes. “You blame yourself for her death.”

Jani started. “No, I don't—”

“Yes, you do. You think you're responsible for everybody. Nema, Tsecha, whatever you call him. Everybody, and everything.” She fell silent. Her chin sagged to her chest. Jani had to nudge her awake when they arrived at their stop.

Roni hailed a 'taxi to take her to Exterior; Jani didn't hire one to take her to her building, out of habit. By the time she arrived, she had slipped into the auto-drive of the truly exhausted, barely lifting her feet above the ground, taking care not to stop for fear of never getting started again.

She entered her flat to find it darkened and quiet. As she passed her desk, she spotted a note attached to the back of her workstation so that she could see it on the way in.
Angevin's handwriting.
You have some explaining to do.

Jani crumpled the note and tossed it in the trashzap. Trudged into her bedroom, tossed her duffel bedside, and fell onto her stomach into bed, fully clothed.

She had just drifted off when the sound of footfalls jarred her awake. The heavy breathing unique to a body in discomfort. The sag of the mattress as Lucien got into bed beside her.

Silence. Then the voice that touched her where none ever had. “I've been waiting for you. Steve and Angevin gave up hours ago, but I waited. I was on the couch—I heard you come in. You walked right past me.” Silence again, as though he waited for her to speak. “Thinking about Dathim Naré helped keep me awake. I've never seen an Haárin like him before.”

Jani recalled his rapt look as he drank in Dathim's every move. “I noticed.”

“Jealous?” A short expulsion of breath, as though he laughed. “Why do you think he cut his hair? Do you think the braids got in his way, or what?”

“I don't know. Why don't you ask him?”

“Maybe I will.”
Silence again, flavored with peevishness. Then Lucien cleared his throat. “Angevin said you went to Sheridan this morning. Make that yesterday morning.”

Morning. It seemed like a year ago. “Yes. I needed to talk to Frances.” Jani edged her hand in her pocket and felt for the antistat containing the broken marker.

“If I'd known, I'd have asked you to stop by my room and pick up a few things.” The mattress flexed as Lucien shifted position. “I keyed it to you. Months ago. You were still on-base at the time. I waited for you to visit, but you never did.”

Jani closed her fingers around the hard, sharp plastic of the broken marker half, and massaged the rough edge.

“Your parents are here. I found that out tonight, when I called I-Com to try and track you down.” Another sigh. “Everything I know about you, I have to find out from other people.”

Jani turned her head. “There wasn't time to tell you.”

The dark form beside her reached out and touched her
hair. “If you gave a damn about me, you'd make time.” The hand moved lower, caressing her cheek. “But you don't, do you?” Lower, moving down her neck. “Where did you take the docs?”

Jani shifted her arm to block Lucien's hand so he couldn't work it lower. She wanted him to, in spite of everything, which was why she made sure to stop him. “I'm tired. We'll talk later.”

Lucien pulled his hand away. “There's later, and then there's too late. Did you ever think of that?”

Jani didn't answer. She forced herself to remain awake until she heard Lucien's breathing slow and deepen in sleep. Then she struggled out of bed, her back aching, her knee popping with every step.

Her footsteps barely sounded as she walked across the sitting room, muffled as they were by Angevin's rented rugs. She opened the door to the entryway closet and hunted through the bags and boxes that had been delivered from the stores. She barely glanced at her beautiful sari, digging until she uncovered her Ganesha with its pedestal.

She set up the shrine in the corner of the room nearest her desk. After she set the figurine on its base and placed the brass bowl before it, she knelt, leaning forward and touching her forehead to the floor three times in rapid succession.
Help me, Lord,
she prayed to the embodiment of wisdom before her, to the remover of obstacles.
Help me find the answers I seek, even if they pain me.
She leaned forward again, this time keeping her forehead pressed to the floor.

I told Niall that there's no such thing as coincidence, that it's hardest to see that which is closest to you. Have I failed to heed my own warnings, Lord?
Her knee throbbed from the press of her weight.
I have never obeyed my body instead of my brain—is this what I'm doing now?

She remained on her knees on the hardwood floor and offered her pain as sacrifice, imagining it as gold coins that she tossed into the bowl. Only when her eyes teared and she bit her lip to suppress a cry did she struggle to her feet, store the empty boxes in the closet, and return to bed.

Tsecha sat on the veranda of Dathim Naré's house and watched the lights of a Vynshàrau patrol skimmer flicker off the water. The activity had lessened considerably compared to earlier in the night. Then, the lake skimmers had traversed in pairs and triples, while demis swooped and glided above as seabirds chivying watercraft.

What do you look for, Shai?
Tsecha watched the skimmer until it turned along the invisible border dividing idomeni waters from those of the Interior Ministry, then flitted toward the dim horizon.
What is out on the lake that you find so interesting? Do you search for documents, too?
He bared his teeth at the thought, but his humor quickly dissipated. He wished he had brought the timeform from his work table—the mental exercise of converting idomeni time to humanish would have occupied him, prevented his thoughts from wandering as the skimmers did over the water.

Where are you, ní Dathim?
He focused his hearing in the still dark, straining for the distant wail of ComPol sirens. He had heard them now and again since the start of his vigil, their cry like the keen of the Rauta Shèràa alarms that had declaimed the arrival of the Laumrau bombs.

Ní Dathim?

Tsecha shifted in his strangely comfortable Haárin chair. Nowhere did the framing stab him. Not once did the angle of the seat threaten to tumble him onto the stones. He looked at the other dwellings—the enclave seemed as deserted in the darkness. No lights showed through windows. No Haárin sat outside and contemplated the water, or walked
the stone-paved lane. So different than the born-sect who lived in the embassy, who discussed points of philosophy upon the veranda throughout the night, or sat in the archives and studied…

…
or waited in the Haárin sequestration for their suborn to return.
Tsecha fussed with the cuffs of his overrobe, tugging them low over the sleeves of the coldsuit that he wore beneath. Blessedly warm though he felt, he shivered as a breeze wafted off the lake, bringing with it the promise of the hellish winter to come, and the chill of more immediate concerns.

Ní Dathim…where are you?

He heard the distant crunch of footsteps upon the lane, and felt the clench in his soul.
I will not call out.
What if it was a guard, who had followed him from the embassy? Or Sànalàn, who seemed to beg his forgiveness each time she saw him, even as she challenged his every thought and action. Or Shai, come in person to demand an explanation for his visits to the sequestration.

This is my place, Shai—am I not Haárin, as declared by Temple and Council? Is not my name of Sìah Haárin? Tsecha. “Fool.” Have I not been as outcast since the war? Even more so since you removed me from my station and ordered me to remain on the grounds of this waterbound place?

The footfalls grew nearer. Stopped before the door of the house. Then, slowly, turned and circled toward the veranda.

Tsecha rose to his feet as the footsteps rounded the corner, heart tripping as the figure darkened the veranda entry, then slowing as he recognized the strange, sheared head. “Ní Dathim. You could announce yourself.”

“That would sound foolish, nìRau. Why would I announce myself to an empty house?” Dathim picked up a weighty metalframe seat and placed it beside Tsecha's. He sat heavily, in the humanish sprawl that he preferred, and rubbed a hand over his face. His chair matched Tsecha's in the height of its seat, so that he sat at the same level instead of a higher, more respectful one.

But such are Haárin—all the same within themselves.
Such chairs as these had not been designed with the idea that
Chief Propitiators would sit in them. “So, ní Dathim?” Tsecha sat down as well, then leaned forward so he could see the Haárin's eyes. For such purposes, sitting at the same level proved an advantage. “Where were you so long? Did you have trouble in the city?”

“No, nìRau, I had no trouble. I have been back for some time. I sat in the skimmer and thought…about many things.” Dathim stared at the ground at his feet. “Humanish are strange.”

“I know you think that, ní Dathim. You have said it before.” Tsecha waited for Dathim to say more, but the Haárin's face held the grim cast of one not inclined to speak. He thought to wave his hand in front of him, as he had once seen Lucien do to Jani when he had asked her a question and she did not answer. But before he could make his attempt, Dathim raised his head and looked at him.

“So. I saw her. Your Kilian.”

“My Jani! She is unhurt?”

“She limps. She said that she fell during the shooting, and hurt her knee. It is not serious.” Dathim looked out over the water. “The lieutenant is with her. Pascal.”

“And he is well?”

“He was shot here. A grave wound, he told me, and truly.” Dathim placed a hand beneath his soul, near his right hip. “He walks. Slowly, but he walks. He is pale, and tired. But still he watches, as he did here. Nothing escapes him.” Dathim shifted in his seat. “He watched me, every move I made.”

“My Lucien watches, Dathim, as you said. Such is his way.”

“Kilian said it was because he had never before seen an Haárin with short hair.” Dathim sat forward and let his hands dangle between his knees. “You would say Pascal is her suborn?”

Tsecha gestured in strong affirmation. “Yes, ní Dathim, I would, and truly. In the way that humanish can be true dominant and suborn, they are. My Lucien provides my Jani protection. She provides him status. It is a most reasonable arrangement, as far as I can see.”

“Then she must know him well, and I must defer to that knowledge.” Dathim turned his attention to his hands, and
picked at his nails. “I gave the documents to her.”

“Did she seem as angry?”

“I could not tell, nìRau. She is most as a wall. Even now.”

“Now,
ní Dathim?”

“Now that she is as Haárin.” Dathim turned his head—the incident light reflected off his broad, bare brow. “She is as Haárin, nìRau, and truly. She does not move as humanish. Her gestures are too smooth. Her hands and wrists—too long and thin. She walks as idomeni, as well. Even though she limps, her stride is long and smooth.” He looked back at his hands. “I saw one of her true eyes.”

Tsecha felt the shocks of the past days redoubled. “How did you do such?”

Dathim gestured in the humanish manner, as though such startling details held little import. “It is not yet as mine. The center is still too small, the sclera too pale.” He gestured in disappointment. “And they are
green
, like Oà. Why did her doctors make them green, instead of gold as Vynshàrau?”

“That was their color before, Dathim.” Tsecha tried to imagine Jani's eyes, tried to extrapolate the hints and shadings he had seen revealed in the bright sunlight days earlier. “John Shroud had tried to leave her a little of what she was before. He thought it important.”

“Hmph.” Dathim did not sound impressed by that which John Shroud thought important. He turned back to the water, his great head stilling like an animal's on alert as the patrol skimmer made another traverse. “She denies she is your heir.”

Tsecha gestured reluctant acceptance. “Humanish deny, ní Dathim, until that which they deny buries them. Such is their way, and truly.”

“She does not want to be as Haárin. She is ashamed.” Dathim's tense posture eased as the patrol skimmer darted away from them. “Her eyefilm broke. When it broke, she sought to hide her eye with her hand. When I forced her to show it to me, she grew so angry. She would have struck me, nìRau, but she restrained herself. Even though she is smaller than me, she would have injured me, and truly.”

Tsecha slipped into Low Vynshàrau to convey the bluntness of his feeling. “My nìa does not like to be coerced, ní
Dathim.”

Dathim sat back with such force that his chair legs scraped along the stone. “And as we shelter your
nìa
who does not like to be coerced, who speaks to the Elyan Haárin and their broken contracts?” He spoke in English, blunter and more forceful still, a barrage of hard and sharp sounds that hammered the ears as bombs. “Who promotes the final order you so desire, nìRau? The harmony of Shiou that follows the upheaval of Caith? Is it nìaRauta Shai, who speaks for the Oligarch without thought as to what the words mean? Who wishes us back to the worldskein, to serve only our dominants as we did before the war? Is it the humanish ministers, who think only of the money they lose if they allow Haárin to live among them? Who speaks? You cannot—you have been silenced. I cannot—I am as nothing. But your nìaRauta Haárin knows Haárin and humanish, life as it is and as it must become. But where is she now, as the Haárin converge upon this cold city and Shai prepares to hammer them with Cèel's words? In her rooms, asleep, with her strange lieutenant who watches and the humanish tricks that cover that which she is!” Dathim fell silent, his breathing labored as though he ran a great distance.

As Dathim's words echoed in his mind, Tsecha again felt the wind brush in from off the water. This breeze, however, he did not find as chilling, but as a warm gust that riffled the flowing sleeves of his overrobe, pushing them up his arms.

He brushed down the soft material, then fingered the red banding that edged the sleeves. So long had he served as ambassador, as teacher, as irritant to his enemies, that he at times forgot his place as priest. But he still understood signs, the hints of order and disorder by which the gods informed him of their will. Thus did he know that he felt Caith in the strange warm wind, as he had felt her many times over the past days. Her ever-present whispers, in the hallways of the embassy, in the wind itself, unveiled his old disorder and reminded him of that which he once had been. Warrior. Killer. Walker in the Night. “My Jani. You would have her here to meet the Haárin, ní Dathim?”

Dathim gave a humanish nod. “If she came here, the born-sects would not dare to keep her out. Shai would admit to your power if she did so, a power she claims you no longer
possess.”

“The humanish Ministers would fight her presence. Anais Ulanova would lead them.”

“The humanish Ministers, I have learned, have to answer to their
reporters,
who batter them as ax-hammers and carry news of their actions to all. These reporters would ask them why they do not permit your Jani to see the Elyan Haárin, and how would Anais answer? Would she speak the truth, that the Haárin are better at humanish business than humanish, and she must therefore work to keep them away from her poor merchants because they cannot compete? Away from the many other humanish who would buy from Haárin if they could?”

“No, ní Dathim—my Anais is more intelligent than that.” Tsecha stood just as another gust of rebellious wind whipped at his sleeves. He walked to the veranda entry, clasping his hands behind his back as he did so to keep his cuffs fixed in place, and hidden from Caith's laughter. “She would say my nìa is unfit because of the crimes she has committed. She will talk of Knevçet Shèràa, and the death of Rikart Neumann. She will make my nìa appear most unseemly, and truly.”

Dathim rose and stepped to Tsecha's side. He made no attempt to edge even a small step to the front of his propitiator, as would have been seemly. “Then let your Jani answer. She has met challenge before, nìRau—she wears the scars. She knows how to fight, and will continue to fight even as she bleeds.” He held out his own arms and rolled back the sleeves, first one, then the other. Even in the darkness his scars showed, the ragged fissuring dark as ebon ink. “If I brought her here, she would see how it is for us, and she would fight for us. You say she fights for her own, nìRau. Who are more her own than we?”

Tsecha stepped off of the veranda and onto the lane. Past the dark, silent houses, then over the short stretch of dune toward the beach. He struggled to maintain his footing as his boot soles slid on the loose sand.

“You forced her yourself, nìRau.” Dathim's voice sounded from behind, like the call of a tracking beast. “In the summer, you forced her to accept her first challenge, to
fight nìaRauta Hantìa in her first
à lérine
. You did not think it such a bad thing then, when you used her
against
Cèel. But now I say we should use her
for
Haárin, and you hesitate. Why, nìRau? Is the chance to anger Cèel not great enough? Is the shock to the humanish when they see your Jani as she really is not great enough? Or are the Haárin not important enough?”

Tsecha wheeled, the sand dragging at his feet like undercurrent. “I warn you, Dathim! You vex—!” His words stopped as he watched Dathim mount the dune and stand astride it as a humanish statue—

—and as another Haárin mounted the dune and took her place beside him—

—and as the other Haárin scaled the short summit and took their places on either side, until the entire ridge filled. Shoulder to shoulder they stood, thirty or more, in their trousers and shirts and boots. Their overrobes, they had left behind. Their looping braids and nape knots, the males had sheared as Dathim had, while the females had undone theirs, or bound them in long tails in the manner of humanish females.

“Are we not important enough, nìRau!” Dathim stood with his arms hanging low, his hands curled in front of him, palms facing up. Not a gesture of idomeni, but of humanish question. “We who go out into this damned cold city so you can be as you are!”

Tsecha took a step back. Another. The Haárin made no move toward him, yet still he felt them push him back. “The battles will be fought in the embassy, ní Dathim! Against those who refuse to accept the truth as I know it will be!” Behind him, he heard the rumble of the lake, the dash of the low waves. The Haárin beach was not smooth sand as was the embassy's, but rock-strewn and rutted. He felt the water-slick rocks beneath his boots, and battled for balance on the uneven ground.