Star's Reach (51 page)

Twenty-Seven: When the Spire Fell

The first night after our messages went out
we were all in the radio room early, waiting for whatever it is
after sunset that makes the high thin air start bouncing radio
waves back to the ground. Tashel Ban had the receiver on by the
time I got there. Berry and Thu were in the room already, and Eleen
arrived not long after I did, while the loudspeaker was still
hissing to itself. After another few moments Tashel Ban, who was
sitting at the table, nodded to himself, glanced back over his
shoulder and said, “Any time now.”

He must have heard something in the hiss that
the rest of us didn’t. Before he could turn back to the receiver, a
voice came through: “Curtis dig. Curtis dig. Message traffic. Am I
clear?”

Tashel Ban had the microphone in his hand
before the voice was finished talking. “This is the Curtis dig, and
you’re clear. Go ahead.”

“Message from the Cansiddi ruinmen’s lodge
for the misters at the Curtis dig.”

“Copied,” Tashel Ban said. “Go on.”

“Contract terms are acceptable. Misters
Cooper and Damey are on their way with prentices and gear. Prices
for most metals are up, so there should be no trouble getting more
help if you need it. That’s all.”

“Copied and out,” said Tashel Ban. “Thank
you.”

“Cansiddi out,” said the loudspeaker.

As soon as Tashel Ban had the transmitter
off, I let out a whistle. “That’s better than I was expecting.”

All the others but Berry gave me the sort of
look you get when you’re talking nonsense. “Two misters?” Thu
asked. “That seems—inadequate.”

“One hundred forty-three misters and senior
prentices,” Berry corrected him. “They should be here in two weeks
or a little less.”

It was Tashel Ban who caught on first.
“Good,” he said. “Do ruinmen often use code?”

I grinned and said, “When there’s need.”

“That’s a better response than I expected,
too,” Berry said then. “There must have been a crowd of them
waiting at Cansiddi.”

I thought about the places I’d seen where
every last scrap of metal had been broken out of concrete and
hauled away before I was born; I thought about the places where the
guild’s closed and new misters have to leave town and find
somewhere else to work, because there aren’t enough ruins left to
support more than the misters who are already there; and I figured
I could guess why a hundred forty-three misters and senior
prentices had been waiting around the Cansiddi guildhall on the off
chance they might have a shot at helping dig up Star’s Reach. I
could see from the look on Berry’s face that he was thinking about
the same thing. It’s something that most ruinmen think about these
days.

By then, though, Tashel Ban was turning knobs
on the receiver again, because it was almost time for the news
broadcast from Sanloo. I shut up and listened with everyone
else.

The broadcast came through the hissing a
little while after that. Most of it was the same thing as usual.
Sheren’s funeral had finally been scheduled, and the presden of
Nuwinga and the meer of Genda were both going to be there. The
emperor of Meyco wasn’t, but he was sending one of his younger
brothers, which is more than Meyco usually does. Some Jinya pirates
got caught raiding merchant ships in the waters south of Memfis,
there was a sharp little sea battle the pirates lost, and the lot
of them got hauled ashore to a navy base in Banroo Bay whose name I
almost remember, where they’re going to be tried and hanged over
the next few days. There were bits of news out of the government in
Sisnaddi and the army along the border with the coastal
allegiancies, nothing important.

Then, at the end: “Last night’s radio message
from Sharl sunna Sheren, who claims to be the late presden’s heir,
seems to have taken everyone by surprise.” A scratchy recording of
Berry’s voice followed: “I’m calling a meeting of the council of
electors in Sanloo on the twentieth of Febry, a month and a half
from now. I’ll present proofs of my identity and ancestry there, so
the electors can decide on my candidacy.” After a few clicks and
pops, the announcer went on. “There’s been no word yet from the
electors about whether they’ll consider the claim.”

That was all, and then the broadcast ended.
We all looked at each other. “At least,” Tashel Ban said, “it’s
being discussed.” With that not very comforting reflection, we
wished blessings on each other’s dreams and headed off to bed.

We spent the next day figuring out where to
put a hundred forty-three ruinmen, and starting to get the rooms
ready for them: a mother of a lot of work, and I was tired enough
that I crawled into bed with Eleen without taking the time to write
anything. That night, there wasn’t anything at all in the news
bulletin, not even a mention of Berry. The next night, though,
after another day of hard work, we listened to one of the important
jennels say that Meriga had enough good candidates for presden, and
didn’t have to go looking for them among tweens and ruinmen. Eleen
spat a piece of hot language at the radio when that came through,
which startled me, but Tashel Ban shook his head.

“Not at all,” he said. “Jennels aren’t fool
enough to say whatever comes into their heads. If he’s that worried
about Berry’s case, the wind’s blowing the right way.”

The evening after that, there was news. Half
a dozen of the less important jennels, I think it was, sent an open
letter to Congrus saying that Berry’s claim should be considered.
None of them were electors, and the electors could ignore them if
they wanted, but they were still jennels, and that counted for
something. What they said was simple enough: by law, one of a
presden’s children became the next presden unless there was some
good reason to do something else; being a tween would probably be
good reason, but there weren’t any other candidates in the direct
line, and being a tween hadn’t stopped Sheren herself from being
one of the best presdens we’d had since the old world ended, so if
this Sharl sunna Sheren was who he claimed to be, his claim ought
to be taken seriously.

That was promising, but the next two evenings
went by without any news about Berry’s candidacy at all—not
surprising, because those were the days set aside for Sheren’s
funeral, and the news didn’t talk about anything else. Not that
long ago, Berry would have spent those days jittering like a drop
of water on a hot griddle, but not any more. I could just about
hear him telling himself, no, a presden doesn’t do that. Still, it
was probably just as well that the two of us spent those days
finding a couple of disused kitchens down in the deep levels of
Star’s Reach; hauling the pots and pans back up all those stairs
didn’t leave him enough strength left to jitter.

It was the following evening that things
changed, hard. Tashel Ban got the receiver working and then sat
there, staring at it, as though he expected something to happen,
and he wasn’t disappointed. After some final news from the funeral,
the announcer said, “Meanwhile, the succession is on a lot of
minds. Odry darra Beth of Sisnaddi Circle had this to say.” Pops
and crackles, and then an old woman’s voice: “It was always a
disappointment that Sheren was never able to become one of us,
though of course now we know why. Circle had an excellent working
relationship with her, and if her child is cut from the same cloth,
I can’t imagine anyone in Circle objecting if the electors favor
his claim.”

Tashel Ban let out a long low whistle. I
didn’t know who Odry darra Beth was, but he did, and I could guess.
The old women in red hats who run Circle don’t just do things on
their own; you won’t hear one of them make an announcement unless
the rest of them are pretty much in agreement with it. With the
power that Circle has in Meriga, if the Circle elders were willing
to accept Berry’s candidacy, he was past one big hurdle.

The announcer wasn’t done yet, though. “And
this from Jor sunna Kelli, of the Sisnaddi ruinmen.” Berry and I
gave each other startled looks as the radio crackled and popped;
that was a name we both knew. “Mister Sharl is one of ours,” he
said, in the kind of voice that sounds like gravel getting crushed,
and warns you not to mess with the person who’s attached to it.
“Whether he ends up presden or not is up to the electors. That’s
the law in Meriga, and we’ll abide by it, but if anybody tries to
make that decision for them, they’re going to answer to us.”

More crackles, then the announcer: “Still no
word from the electors, but word is expected in the next day or so.
This is Sanloo station, with this evening’s news.”

The music started to play, and we all looked
at Berry, who mostly looked dazed. “I take it,” said Tashel Ban,
“that Mister Jor is important.”

“Senior mister at Sisnaddi,” I told him.
“Ruinmen don’t have a chief over them all, but if they did, it
would be him.”

“So the threat is credible,” said Thu. “That
may be helpful.”

“The Circle elder’s the one that interests me
more,” Tashel Ban said. “They rarely involve themselves in the
succession this early on. Well, we’ll see what happens.”

Berry shook his head, then, as though he was
shaking himself awake, and said, “Well.” It seemed like a
reasonable thing to say, and none of us had anything to add to
it.

So we went to our rooms, and I kissed Eleen
and watched her fall asleep, and then pulled out this notebook and
sat here for a while deciding what I still have time to write. I’m
not going to say much about the time I spent in the archives in
Sisnaddi. Not much happened there, other than day after day with
the archivists, trying to find something that would turn WRTF from
a jumble of letters to a place I could find, and night after night
in a little room in the ruinmen’s guild hall outside Sisnaddi,
wondering how soon I would have to give the whole thing up.

I don’t even remember what day it was when I
finally ran out of places to look in the archives. It was just
before lunch, I remember that, and I sat there at the little desk
where I worked, staring at the bare metal, trying to think, and
failing, until the soft bell sounded to let everyone in the
archives know that lunch was ready. I went and sat with the
archivists, ate bread and soup, and tried not to think about the
years I’d spent and the chances I’d thrown away chasing what looked
just then like an empty dream. I really was up against the bare
walls just then, and that’s probably why I thought about the place
Lu the harlot told me about, the place at the Lannic shore by
Deesee where every question has an answer.

If I’d been able to think of anything else to
do, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Still, as I walked
back to the guildhall and slumped in the hard metal chair in my
room, the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. I pushed it away a dozen
times, and tried to be reasonable and figure out what I was going
to do now that Star’s Reach was just a story again, and a dozen
times it came whispering back to me that I had one more chance to
find the thing.

So I had my dinner and went to bed. I wasn’t
expecting to sleep at all, but I dropped off after an hour or two
of lying awake and staring into the darkness, and damn if I didn’t
slip right away into one of my Deesee dreams.

It wasn’t much different from the others I
had down through the years, except this time there were lots of
people in drowned Deesee with me, walking the wide streets and
going into and out of the big white buildings where all the windows
looked the same. Gray Garman went past me, nodding a greeting the
way he did, and then all of a sudden Tam ran up to me, gave me a
kiss, and hurried away. Slane the riverboat trader was there, and
Cash the elwus and his motor Morey, and a lot of ruinmen I knew
from Memfis and Shanuga, and scholars from Melumi and traveling
folk from the roads I’d walked and, well, just about everyone I’d
ever met on my search for Star’s Reach. They were all going
different places, but somehow they were all walking with me, too,
down the street to the place where the hill rose up, green and
smooth and grassy, to the foot of the Spire.

I stopped there, and they stopped, too. They
were waiting for me, I knew, and there was someone else waiting for
me, up there at the foot of the Spire. I was scared, more scared
than I’ve ever been in a dream or waking life, of taking that first
step onto the grass. I looked around, trying to find some other way
I could go, but the people who were with me pressed right up close
behind me, and the only way I could go was straight ahead, up the
grassy slope, to where a dead man was waiting.

That’s when I woke up. I was shaking like a
leaf in a windstorm, and my heart was pounding, but I knew what I
had to do. The sky was just starting to lighten up; I packed my
gear, got breakfast, let the prentice who had charge of the rooms
that day know that I wouldn’t be needing my room that night, and
walked out the door before I had time to have second thoughts.

There’s a lot more of Meriga west of Sisnaddi
than east of it, but you wouldn’t know that from the countryside
close by. Hiyo’s green and prosperous, and it has more towns than
empty ruins, which is something you can’t say of most other parts
of the country. I didn’t have a lot of money left, so inns were out
of the question, but there were plenty of farms where a traveler
can get a night’s sleep in the barn and a breakfast on the kitchen
steps for a couple of bits.

There weren’t any guildhalls where I could
stay, though. Even where there were big towns, and there were some
good-sized ones, there were no ruinmen. All that country had every
scrap of metal and everything else worth taking stripped from the
ground a long time before I was born.

It took me a good while to cross Hiyo, and
then cut through the little neck of Wesfa Jinya that you go through
before you get to Wes Pen, and Pisba. Pisba’s in a valley where two
rivers come together to make the Hiyo River, and it’s shaped like a
wedge. It’s also full of soldiers, because Pisba is about as far
east as you can go and still be in Meriga.