Star Trek: The Empty Chair (43 page)

“—woman who’s tired of skulking in here like I expect something terrible to happen, Mahan!” Arrhae settled the cloak around her shoulders. “Get me my shopping basket.”

“But mistress!”

She gave him a look.

He sagged a little. “You can’t go out like that, mistress!”

She allowed herself just a small smile. “Better. How would you have me go out, then?”

“Not in that cloak! You used to wear that when you were a, I mean, when you—”

“Mahan! I’m going to the market, not the Praetorate. Now go get that basket.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but Arrhae simply looked at him. After a moment, Mahan went off, and Arrhae sighed. Mahan was feeling the stress as much as she was, if not more. She knew he suspected what her fears were, though he never said as much.

He came back with the shopping basket, a still-handsome thing woven of old weathered
tafa
withies and lined with felted fiber. The fiber was new. “You’ve been taking care of this for me, I see.”

“Hifae spilled ale in it last week,” Mahan muttered.

“Oh, well,” Arrhae said. “That’s what the lining’s for, to catch things like that. Now, Mahan, the list.”

The list of things they had to have on hand to fulfill the requirements of the “readiness exercise” had been their chief subject of conversation for the past day or so, and had also become a sort of code for all the things they were both worrying about but couldn’t discuss in front of the household staff. “How much of it do we have now?” Arrhae said.

Mahan produced a much-folded scrap of writing plastic and handed it to her. Arrhae ran down it. “Root, quatchmilk,
hiuthe
juice…Are you sure about the brickbread? I hate that stuff, but are you sure there’s enough?”

“More than enough, mistress.”

“All right.” She looked down the list. There were only six or seven things left to be purchased. “I can handle this.”

“And you’ll have them send anything not fit for you to be seen carrying?”

“Mahan…!”

He stopped then, and gave her a look. “Mistress, the House has its reputation to think of.”

She smiled at him. “All right, I’ll try not to carry home anything that would reflect badly on you. Digging equipment…livestock…”

“Mistress!”

Arrhae grinned. “I’m sorry, old friend. You make me tease you so. I’ll be back shortly.”

She glanced at the front door, and then in a spirit of complete rebellion, went out the back way, via the little door that was meant for the staff and delivery people. It gave onto a small landing pad, the part of the garden that was given over to kitchen herbs and soft fruit, and the wall that separated the hinder part of the House’s grounds from the little private alleyway leading to the public road into town.

It was a pleasant walk, one she hadn’t done in—As she shut the door in the back wall behind her, Arrhae shook her head and tried to work out when she had last had leisure for this stroll. Early in the morning, before the day’s heat settled in, when there was still dew on the leaves of the trees that overhung the walls on either side of the alleyway, it had always been enjoyable to set out for the town market with the basket over her arm, and for just a little while to dawdle along listening to the birds and insects and thinking of other birds and insects far away.

There was more than dew in the air this morning; the rain was beginning. It wasn’t heavy, and Arrhae pulled the
cloak’s cowl up and walked quietly down the alley to the road, and then down the road to market.

The stalls were put up each morning by smallholders who flew their produce and other wares down from the mountains very early, stayed until about midday, and then flew home again. They did a circuit of provincial markets that way, each one on a couple of different days each week. Some townsfolk did prefer to shop with the bigger retailers in town, but when Arrhae had been working in household management, she had quickly discovered that it was better to deal directly with a small producer than with a big company. The markups were smaller and the prices and quality of the goods were better, without forcing bulk-buying on you unless you really wanted it. She came around the last curve of the road into the town’s main plaza and saw the stalls and stands laid out there, all in the same positions they occupied every week: and a sudden, completely irrational feeling of peace and happiness descended on her.
Order,
she thought,
is a lovely thing. For as long as it lasts.

She went over to the soft fruit stall to get the quatchmilk, which was very sour and worked well as a preservative or a flavoring. As she was turning away from that stall and looking at her list again, a man went by in front of her, also cloaked, like any other householder come in early to do his own shopping. His cowl was up; no surprise, in this weather. But under it, as he passed, she caught sight of a face she thought she knew. She hunted the memory, caught it.

“Why, Ffairrl!” she said, “fair morning to you!”

He looked at her with complete surprise, and for a moment, from the look on his face, she thought maybe he hadn’t recognized her either.

“Deihu,”
he said very quietly, with an expression both of shock and relief. “Whatever brings you here so early in the morning?”

“Believe it or not, the wretched root, mostly,” she said.
“There was none in the market yesterday when my people came down.”

“There’s a great pile of it over there,” Ffairrl said, “but it’s been going fast.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Come this way,” Ffairl said. As they threaded their way among the market stalls, he said, more softly still, “I had been racking my brains to think of a way to reach you, noble
deihu.
I had hoped House Khellian’s
hru’hfe
might turn up here today, or perhaps your worthy door-opener.”

“I think you’ve found House Khellian’s
hru’hfe,
whether either of us likes to admit it or not,” she said under her breath, a little wry. “And, for pity’s sake,
deihu
I may be, but you may leave the nobility out of it and be thanked! Arrhae, let it be.”

Slowly he nodded as they made their way toward the vegetable stand. “But your cleverness astounds me,” Ffairrl said. “The last thing the ones watching you would have expected would be that you would come
here.”

“Their expectations,” Arrhae said, “are not entirely what they should be, Ffairrl. On that I think we can agree.” She nodded to the stallholder, a woman she didn’t recall having seen before, and started picking through the heap of groundroot piled up on the stall’s table.

Ffairrl smiled. “They have seen you going about in your silks and riding in your patron’s car, and now all believe that you have decided the fine life suits you too well for you ever to look into a cookpot or touch a cleaning-rag again.”

She would have been annoyed, except that what he said obscurely pleased her. “That’s well enough, then,” she said, starting to turn the groundroot over. “
Au,
look at these, will you? The genetic manipulation’s taken all the life out of them. They may crop like crazy, but they taste of nothing, and to look at them, you’d swear they’re made of plastic. Have these things ever been in dirt?”

He chuckled, and said nothing while Arrhae turned over another few roots, looking for several of a decent size. Finally satisfied, she handed over the House’s debit token and let the stallholder register it, then put the root into the basket with the milk and juice and walked on.

“I want to thank you,” she said as they got out of anyone’s earshot and made for the far side of the market plaza, “for the word you spoke to me the other day. It seems to have left me safe enough.”

“After what you did,” Ffairrl said, “yes. And not just you.”

She darted him a sidewise look from under her cowl.

“There has of course been no news of a certain engagement,” Ffairrl said. “But ten ships that might have been there were called away at the last moment by your patron. And their nonappearance would seem to have been the event that decided that engagement’s outcome.”

Arrhae busied herself with rearranging her basket’s contents as they walked. “So,” she said softly. “So all this ‘readiness’
is
in aid of those who will be here shortly.”

Ffairrl nodded. “If you do not have a plan for late tomorrow night and early the morning after, you should make one. It will not be safe in the city. Not at all. And when things become…unsettled…there will be too many opportunities for those who wish your patron ill to swoop down on you and carry you off to somewhere private.”

That was a thought that had occurred to Arrhae more than once. “Well, I had considered the mountains,” she said. “Someone needs to go up there and look after that good old man.”

“I honor that thought,” Ffairrl said, “but you might bring him into danger if you went there. One of your other staff might be better suited, one who would not attract so much attention.”

“Mahan?”

“Yes. Indeed, no one would be surprised if all your household
staff relocated there, as various other Houses have very, very quietly begun to do. Oh, your people might be watched at first, but probably not for long, especially when matters begin to become more interesting in Ra’tleihfi and its environs. And even less so should you somehow become separated from them when you were all in transit.”

Alarm shot through Arrhae. “Separated exactly
how,
Ffairrl?”

“Well,” he said, “truly, how can one predict such things? You might always be kidnapped by someone from one of the intelligence services. And once that had happened, none of the
other
Intelligence services would bother to look for you. Especially in the middle of an invasion.”

She looked at him. Ffairrl merely smiled.

“‘Kidnapped,’” she said.

“But not a moment before you had had ample time to communicate some useful information to those who would be most concerned about your disappearance,” said Ffairrl.

“And once I had made such communications, and become separated from my people?”

“There are quite a few of us who are preparing to make ourselves useful,” Ffairrl said. “There is about to be a large gathering of us up near the Pass above Ra’tleihfi, to assist what is about to happen.”

And once again Arrhae found herself faced with the choice. Trust this man? Or not? But so far he could have killed her any number of times, by action or inaction, and he had not.

“What information would you be speaking of?” Arrhae said.

Ffairrl peered into her shopping basket. “Is that a
hurvat
on that root?” he said, and reached out from under his cloak to pick the vegetable up.

Arrhae peered at it too. Of much of ch’Rihan’s insect life, the
hurvat
was one of her least favorites. It could bore
through a root in a matter of minutes, spoiling the whole thing with a corrosive acid. “No,” she said after a moment, “I think it’s just a spot.”

“I think you are right.” But she saw the place where his thumb pressed down on the root, and near the large spot they had both “mistaken” for an insect, there was now also a much smaller one. She put the root back into the basket, spot down, and shrugged.

“At any rate,” Ffairrl said, “I’m glad to have crossed your path, Arrhae. If you think well enough of that root to make soup of it after you’ve peeled it, doubtless you’ll find a way to let me know. Say, before midnight.”

“Doubtless,” Arrhae said. “I’ll give it careful thought.”

“Then fair morning to you, Arrhae.”

“Fair morning to you, Ffairrl.”

As he was turning, she said, “Ffairrl—”

He looked at her from under the cowl.

“Why?”
she said again.

“Because,” Ffairrl said, “there are many, many things worth saving on this planet—especially its only other Yankees fan.”

Arrhae’s mouth dropped right open—but he had already turned and was ambling away.

Quietly she turned and went to finish her shopping, and to otherwise get ready for what was to come.

In that small shielded room on ch’Rihan, three men met for what each of them suspected might be the last time.

“Ten hours,” Urellh was saying. He was past his rages, now. Even he was too worn out to indulge himself. “They will be here in ten hours.”

“And our weapon,” said Armh’n softly, “will be passing through Earth’s orbit in thirteen. Should they acquire any kind of victory, they had best enjoy it, for it will be short-lived in the extreme.”

“I am still not entirely convinced,” tr’Anierh said, “of the effectiveness of this maneuver. I have had a chance to look at some alternate Intelligence—”

“Dubious at best,” Urellh said.

“It was accurate enough,” tr’Anierh said, “regarding the documentation that your agents aboard those ten ships were carrying.” He looked from Armh’n to Urellh.

Both of them looked at each other with the kind of expression one might have otherwise expected to see on a small child caught stealing sweets: as if the matter were hardly worth the mentioning. “If some members of my staff got carried away…” Urellh said, waving one hand.

“Exceeded their authority somewhat,” Armh’n said.

“Surely we have more important things to think about right now. The fate of the Empire…”

Tr’Anierh glanced down at the data display he had
brought with him. He had suspected that this was the excuse he was going to be offered. He was willing enough to let the other Two of the Three think he was accepting it, for the moment. “What is the most recent data on the number of their ships?” he asked.

“Thirty-four of capital size or equivalent,” said Urellh, “plus or minus five. Many smaller vessels that are of much less threat. And two huge ships that appear to have been built with looted colonial resources. These are the chief threat in terms of sheer force. But far worse, in their way—”

“Enterprise.”

“And
Bloodwing.”

Tr’Anierh sat back in his chair and frowned. “It would have saved so much trouble if our agent aboard
Bloodwing
had succeeded. The results would have been disproportionately useful. But as usual, an emplaced agent who has a vengeance-agenda may misfire at a critical moment. Never mind. The risk was worthwhile, and the woman provided us with a great deal of useful information over time.” He shrugged. “We will put up a memorial to her heroism when we have leisure. Right now, there are these thirty-four ships to deal with, and the two large ones, which are far more of a threat—apparently most extravagantly armed.”