Orion Shall Rise (15 page)

Her husband came to her. He had exchanged his riding outfit for loincloth, sandals, and parachute; every gram he could save would work for him. Sweat sheened on muscular torso and broad visage, his eyes sparkled sapphire, the draft ruffled brown locks, teeth flashed arrogantly white. When he kissed her, the odors of male flesh were nearly overwhelming. ‘Wish me luck, macushla,’ he said. (That was a word he had brought back from Eria. On how many lasses there had he used it? But of course he wasn’t married then.)

‘Be careful,’ she pleaded.

‘I promise. Not so careful that it would be stupid, but within reason, I promise.’ He grabbed her close and growled into her ear: ‘After all, I’ve got plans for this evening, oh, yes. Tomorrow it’s going to be you that’s careful, about walking and sitting down.’ He whooped forth laughter and bounded off.

Farther away, Jovain stood alone … how very alone. He had chosen to wear white shirt and trousers under his parachute harness. That kept for him a dignity which Iern had shed. Likewise did the soft salute he gave her, before he turned and strode to his machine.

You be careful, Jovain!
her heart cried. She clutched to her the
fact that he had insisted on taking the craft lent him to a vacant workshop, that he might spend some hours by himself inspecting and servicing it.

The pilots scrambled into their cockpits, strapped their bodies into skeletal chairs, sent fingers across rudimentary controls. On the upper wing surfaces, solar cells drank energy from heaven. Electric motors awakened. Propellers whirred. Slowly, on parallel tracks into the breeze, the sunwings rolled off. They gathered speed.

If only one of them would hit a rock,
Faylis prayed.
That wouldn’t harm anything except the plane. It would stop this affair.
But obviously it could not happen. The men had checked every centimeter of their takeoff routes.

The sunwings lifted.

Why am I afraid?
she asked the chill within her.
It’s just a sport, with strict sporting rules. The winner forces the loser back to earth. Iern claims it’s less dangerous than polo.

His in bravura spirals, Jovain’s in a steady climb, the damselflies sought altitude. Light shimmered on propeller circles and off the lower wing surfaces. Already she could not see through the skin to the reed-slender ribs, but she knew, she knew.

Jovain got well above his opponent. Abruptly his craft slanted about and dived. His aim was to shade his opponent’s solar cells, but it appeared almost that he meant to ram. Faylis crammed a knuckle between her teeth.

Jovain executed a bank, a turn – she didn’t know the language, she could scarcely follow the action, but all at once Iern’s wings were in shadow. Jovain had the sun gauge of him. If he could hold it for a minute, denying his rival sufficient power, Iern must either glide down or crash.

Or break free! The lower airboat went into a wild roll. Its wingtips came near brushing the other. If they did, both machines would be wrecked. Jovain fell away from that risk, and from stirred-up currents which tossed his gossamer vehicle about. Iern leveled off and swooped around. He must be taking help from an updraft – a thermal, was that the word? He must have planned this.

Now it was he overhead and eastward. He kept well back, so that he blocked light from only about half Jovain’s cells – Faylis guessed. But the Southerner, thus underpowered, disadvantaged by geometry, could not yaw clear of him.

Yet Jovain could ride the wind too, and maybe with greater skill.
Between that and his remaining engine capability, he could keep aloft. For how long? Faylis had heard of engagements that went on for hours, until sheer exhaustion brought a contestant to such slowness and clumsiness that it became easy to hold him under complete eclipse and make him descend.

It
isn’t fair! Iern’s thirteen years younger!

As if in a mating dance, the sunwings swung around the sky. She could not hear them, she could hear nothing but the hiss of air through grass, the drumbeat of blood in her ears.

And, yes, a retainer who addressed the man beside him. ‘Plumb loony, them, heh?’

‘It’s their way, Hannas,’ replied the second. They spoke what must be their mother tongue, Alleman in the Elsass version, believing that nobody else understood it. Faylis had studied the entire linguistic family, as a case history of divergence after the Judgment.

‘Yah,’ the fellow went on, ‘Clansfolk can afford expensive fun, Gott knows. They’ve hooked onto the best land, everywhere in the Domain, and got the biggest factories and what all else. And on top of that, they tax us.’

‘Ah, now, Friedri, they don’t. You know that. Our lords in the states tax us, then pay Himmelburg its due.’

‘What difference? Out of our pockets, however you reckon it.’

‘It’s not much, really. No, not much, next to what I hear the pysans get squeezed for in places like Espayn. And we get a lot for it, too. Safety, first and foremost. My uncle once thought he’d make him a bit of money as a mercenary beyond the Rhin. What he’s told me about war – No, you be glad, Friedri, glad for that big old moon up there.’

‘’Twas you called those two flyers loony, Hannas.’

‘Yah, that I did. I see a lot of funny doings and high
living
–wasteful, shameless – amongst the Clansfolk, ‘specially the youngsters. Not like it used to be.’

‘And on the backs of us groundlings. Mind you, I don’t want to rebel or anything, but it’s damn well past time we got more say in the Domain.’

Such grumbling was on the increase. As yet, few people seemed to feel grossly oppressed, but many were restless. Change blew in on the winds from the sea, the winds in the sails of foreign ships.

Faylis dismissed the thought and the guttural mutters. She sent
her whole mind back aloft. Jovain tried a stallout in hopes his rival would overshoot, but the sunwings were not built to drop straight down and Iern quickly recovered position. The dance wheeled on.

Which of them do I want to win? And why? What difference will it make?

Iern is my man, my brash, heedless, faithless man. Jovain is – is what? Strong but tender, thoughtful, and underneath his armor, oh, how woundable. He loves me. Does Iern, any longer? Jovain is closer in spirit to Iern’s father, Donal, than to Iern. Much closer, no matter how antagonistic their world-views are. To them, power spells duty. (Yes, Iern is conscientious enough, after a fashion, but he just carries out his Clan obligations, he never looks for extra burdens he might assume. The nearest Jovain ever came to losing restraint and saying ill of him to me was that day as we left the Garden, when he called Iern ‘the golden boy’ and bitterness corroded his tone.) Jovain has been guiding me into the understanding, the reality, I have always sought, always since I was a girl and first began to doubt Zhesu. Later I, like those two poor workmen, began wondering if the Clans are perfect rulers by absolute right. Jovain has told me we can regain our legitimacy if we, like the ancestors, bestow something new on the people. They gave peace and prosperity. We can give Insight.
…

The Aurillac aircraft came around and made north toward the high, forested ridge. Relentless, the Ferlay aircraft dogged it. Faylis must needs admire Iern’s mastery, the way in which he steadily denied his opponent light.

What if they go out of view? What if something terrible happens, and nobody is there to see?

The contenders dwindled in sight. She struggled for breath. The servitors mumbled.

On the edge of visibility over the treetops, tiny at its remove, Iern’s flitter suddenly reeled. Jovain’s slipped free of it, banked, circled, and rose like a shark toward it.

Both disappeared from Faylis.

She stood locked for a moment that went on. Shouts roused her. She raised a yell of her own, ‘Come, come! Bring the medical kit!’ and stumbled toward her saddle horse.

Wreckage lay intertwined and scattered on the far slope. The sun stood at noonday and all breezes had died. From here you glimpsed houses, barns, sheds, windmills, in clusters along the northern
horizon. Closer were rail-fenced wheatfields. Ghostly overhead passed the daily dirigible from Tournev to Marsei, and vanished.

Parachuting from too low a height, Jovain had broken his right leg. He rested stoic on the grass and let a man trained in first aid tend it. The remainder of those who had accompanied Faylis stood aside in a nearly mute group.

Iern had sustained no worse than bruises. He stalked like a panther to take stance before them and say bleakly: ‘We collided. That happens once in a while, you know. Collect the pieces and bring them back to my hangar at the airport for salvage. Make Clansman Jovain as comfortable as you can and transport him to the hospital. My lady and I will go home by ourselves.’ He offered no explanation of the long object, wrapped in a piece of cloth, that he held. Turning to Faylis: ‘If you please, madame, we have something to discuss.’

She followed him for a hundred meters. He stopped, confronted her, and rapped forth: ‘Jovain tried to kill me. It was his idea from the beginning.’

No –
She stood more dumb than the servitors.

Taking care to hide it from them, Iern unrolled the cloth for her. She saw a high-powered rifle. He reswathed it.

‘He must have had this ready in his cockpit, to use when he’d drawn me well away from everybody else,’ Iern related. ‘A crack, a whine, two holes in my fuselage and me a few centimeters off the line of them – I looked, and there he was, aiming his weapon. He was shooting through the skin of his plane. What could I do? These bugs are too slow for me to escape every shot he could fire. Instead, I crashed us and jumped.’

She could not answer, she could not, nor could she tell if she could believe.

Iern rattled a laugh. ‘We had a short session together on the ground before you arrived. I’ll yield him this, he swallowed his pain and listened. I said that for the honor of our Clan I wouldn’t denounce him. Officially, we had an accident. But I’ll keep the firearm, with whatever fingerprints of his are on it. I’ll also keep sherds of plastic with bullet holes in them. Who’d have thought to search for bullet holes in me? And he could’ve climbed, gone into a dive, and bailed out. He’d hide the rifle, and nobody would notice the punch-outs in what was left of either vessel. He’d tell the woeful story of how we got too close and collided.

‘What do you think of your Gaean mentor now, Faylis?’

Darkness crossed her in waves. ‘What more will you do?’ came out of her.

‘Nothing, if he keeps his nose clean. Which means pulling back into his castle, minding his proper business there, having no more contact – ever – with us, you and me.’

Iern swept her to him. Battle had turned the smell of him acrid. His breath bore the muskiness of rut. She had never liked that. At this moment she must fight not to gag. ‘By Charles!’ he exulted. Stubble scraped her cheek (Jovain’s beard felt silky.) ‘It’s been well worth the loss, disposing once for all of that son of a camel, hasn’t it, darling? Let the servants take care of things here. Let’s us start back right away, on the gallop. Are you going to get laid!’

I suppose I can pretend.

2

Rain fell softly, like tears, through a gathering twilight. Beneath street lamps and lighted windows, pavement glistened wet. In this newer part of Tournev, houses built in the affluence that first blessed the Domain five centuries ago were mostly brick, tile-roofed, rearing three and four stories high; but steep façades, massive doors and shutters harked back to the unrest which had prevailed earlier. Faylis, who had grown used to her sunny modern town dwelling, felt as if their weight were on her breast. The going was lonesome at this hour, none but a few pedestrians like herself, a bicyclist, a carriage whose horse’s hooves struck with a measured dullness that reminded her of funeral drums. When she reached her goal and wielded the knocker, unseen fingers took her by the throat.

The door opened. Observing the Talence crest on her cowl, the butler laid palms together and bowed low. ‘Madame honors this house by her presence,’ he said ritually but as if he meant it. ‘In what way shall we serve you?’

She was barely able to reply. ‘I … must see … Major Jovain.’

‘I believe he is resting, madame. Does he await you?’

‘No … but … I must. He will want it.’

‘Please enter, madame. May I take your cloak?. … If you will please follow me, we will inquire the master’s wishes.’

The house was family property, but Aurillacs seldom visited these
parts. Nobody was present tonight but Jovain, the entourage he had brought from Eskual-Herria Nord, and the permanent staff. Carpets whispered beneath Faylis’s feet as she passed between age-blackened wainscots from which portraits of the dead regarded her, up a staircase, and down another hallway to one of the suites. The butler took a speaking tube in his hand and glanced at her. ‘Whom shall I announce, madame?’

‘Not my name. Tell him – tell him I’m from Skyholm.’

The butler looked surprised, but obeyed. Jovain understood. Gladness shook through his voice: ‘Yes, let her in!’

She crossed to a room full of heavy antique furniture and deepred drapery. The door closed behind her. Jovain had climbed out of his armchair and leaned on a crutch. He wore a robe whose black velvet made him appear sallow beneath the gaslight, and she saw that the lines had deepened in his eagle face. Then he moved to meet her, and swung along nimbly.
He can’t be too much hurt,
she thought, and some of the load dropped off her.

They stopped and stood before each other, gaze upon gaze, ‘I dared not hope for this,’ he whispered.

‘I would have come before, but: couldn’t get away,’ she told him as quietly. ‘I was terrified that you’d have gone home.’

‘I was planning to leave tomorrow. But –’ He wet his lips. She was profoundly moved, that such a man should be afraid of what she might say. ‘I could remain awhile if – Why aren’t you back in Skyholm?’

‘I told Iern I wanted a rest in more comfortable surroundings, after the shock of… of everything. He agreed to a week, and went aloft on the shuttle this afternoon.’
Why not? Anjelan will keep his bed warm, and somebody else after she’s gone.
The idea angered her enough to burn timorousness off. She spoke louder, with no more hesitation. ‘I couldn’t come here before, and he mustn’t find out, because he’s forbidden me to have anything further to do with you.’