Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (6 page)

“That was quick thinking, Your Highness,” he said. “I won't say you saved your friend here from the noose, but you certainly saved a lot of unpleasantness all round. You'll both have to stay in the city until we've taken your statements, but assuming the prints match it'll all be over in a couple of days as far as you're concerned. Josh Burgen has been in trouble before, so we've got his on file. I suspect he's part of a hijacking ring, for that matter, which would account for his cultivating Dayton. Dayton blabs when he's drunk, and, pardon my French, he gets led around by the dick even more than most men his age.”

“And it would account for the churl's being able to use a knife like that,” Heuradys said thoughtfully.

Terwen nodded. “We may be able to make him rat out his accomplices—maybe he thought your friend was here to investigate him.”

“Thank you, Chief Terwen,” Órlaith said, trying for her mother's friendly dignity.

He smiled. “Either of you ever think of taking up my line of work? I haven't seen many cases settled so quick and neat. I'm sure your parents would consider a year or two of it valuable experience . . .”

Startled, Órlaith shook her head violently, and Heuradys made a small choked sound of revulsion. “By all the
Powers
, no! Not that I don't . . .”

“. . . you don't appreciate the job we do, yeah,” Terwen said. “Policemen do hear that occasionally.”

“My father says he'd rather be a farmer, too, and I believe him,” Órlaith said impulsively.

The man looked even more tired than being in his sixties warranted. And of course that was
old
. Her grandmother Juniper was spry enough in her seventies, but such was rare.

“Yeah, I could see that.”

He looked out at the rain streaking the diamond-shaped panes of a window.

“I bought a farm down on the southern border about six years ago, one of my grandsons and his family run it for me. It's got a nice little vineyard and some cherry trees; I call it Uncle Vanya's Place. Next August I'm off there for good, going to sit in the shade and quietly decompose . . .”

“I'm glad you hadn't retired yet, Chief Terwen,” Órlaith said sincerely.

Because I might not have been able to do this with someone more hasty or more dense, so.

Then she found herself yawning. “C'mon, Herry. My couch is your couch.”

by
A. M. Dellamonica

I am a recent transplant to Toronto, Canada, having moved there in the spring of 2013 after twenty-two years in Vancouver. In addition to writing, I study yoga and take thousands of digital photographs. I am a proud graduate of Clarion West, and teach writing through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program.

My latest novel,
Child of a Hidden Sea
, was released in June of 2014 and is the first in a new trilogy set on a seafaring world called Stormwrack. My first,
Indigo Springs
, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. I have several novelettes available online, particularly at Tor.com, where there are two prequels to
Child of a Hidden Sea
and my infamous “baby werewolf has two mommies” urban fantasy, “The Cage.” You can find the full details at my Web site, alyxdellamonica.com.

Alternate history is one of my favorite SF subgenres, and I have always been intrigued by Huon Liu, but the real inspiration for “Rate of Exchange” came when I read S. M. Stirling's
The Given Sacrifice.
The story of the Last Eagle Scout and his people intrigued and excited me, and having a chance to peer into their future was nothing short of candy. In terms of the geography of the Emberverse, I had called dibs on setting a story in Northern Alberta, where I grew up. All I had to do was find a way to bring a young Scout and Huon Liu into the familiar, if often implacable, terrain of my childhood.

T
he totem marking the
pass to the Fortress of Solitude was an enormous man with skin the color of cream, clad in blue and red and with a big “S” emblazoned on his chest.

If not for his size, Finch might have believed him real. The blue of his eyes blazed with lively intensity as they bored down into hers, and his cape rippled in the wind in a way that made him seem as a-thrum with life as any cub or grown adult. His jet-black hair was real—horse, perhaps?—braided in long strands, bound with beads and feathers. The illusion was so perfect she thought she saw him tilt a brow . . . but then her pinto danced sideways and she saw the old man on the platform, putting a finishing lick of red paint on one red boot.

“Like him?” he asked, scampering down an old metal ladder and rubbing his paint-smeared hands.

If her liege lord Huon Liu was surprised at the casual, friendly sounding address, he hid it well. The previous year, they had come to this appointed meeting laden with gifts. The bordermen accepted the offerings, then refused to admit them into the Cree Alliance territory north of Drumheller. The year before that, the Baron told Finch, the mission had simply been told: “What, no gifts?” before being sent on their way.

“The workmanship on this totem is extremely fine,” he replied now. “Better than I've ever seen. But I wonder . . .”

A canny glance from the craftsman.

He was the oldest spry man Finch had ever seen. She had drawn a portrait of the Last Eagle Scout when he was days from his end, tucked into bed and gasping for every breath. Despite the deep lines on his face and the close-cropped gray bristles on his skull, this elder seemed light-limbed, bursting with the energy of a just-grown boy.

“Yes?”

“I believed the Man of Steel tale was more central to the people south of here,” the Baron said.

Delighted guffaw. “Supes was from Kansas, all right. But he keeps his fortress up where the snow flies. So, you bring us anything worth having?”

The Baron gestured, and Finch nudged her pinto forward. She had a wrapped tiger skin bound around the offerings, making an attractive but somewhat awkward bundle. They had paused at the last bend in the trail to arrange it in her arms, so the cat's head rested atop, painted eyes slit, teeth bared.

“The Queen Mother sends greetings and gifts to the Cree Alliance,” the Baron said. Inside was a gold necklace, twelve extremely fine arrowheads, a fine wool scarf and a Sawridge Nation beadwork collection, ancient leather goods, intricately decorated, that had been salvaged by Sandra Arminger from a museum in Seattle, decades before. The Drumheller folk had sent word that their return would be appreciated.

Finch raised the striped pelt so the whole party could see it before passing it down to the man. She was conscious that the tiger's eyes were nothing, in terms of craftsmanship, to the lifelike gaze of this Supes looming above her.

Cold air rushed to chill her legs, where the fur had rested.

“Kitty, kitty,” the man crooned, bending his ear to its mouth, as if listening. Then he bowed, so deeply he was almost bent double, and intoned the words, “My name is Lester Pica, and I am an alcoholic.”

Huon didn't hesitate to reply: “Huon Liu, Third Baron Gervais of the Portland Protective Association, holding from Mathilda, the Lady Protector.”

“Charmed.” The old man's gaze slid to Finch. “And you?”

“I am Rita, called Finch, a Scout of forty badges, bearer of the Falcon, of the Explorer Patrol of Birdsong troop, Eyes of the Council of Troops of the Morrowland Pack.”

Lester straightened, stroking the tiger pelt between its ears: “A gift of cat, then, from a bird?”

“Carried by a bird to a bird,” Finch replied, for pica meant magpie, and bird lore was one of her forty.

“May we always outmaneuver our hunters.” The old man grinned into the tiger's face. “C'mon, then. You want to go to the Winter Hoedown, Baron, I'll be your sponsor.”

*   *   *

Finch's people were those who had fallen from the sky during the Change, into a forest the Baron's folk called Yellowstone. They fought to prove worthy of their territory, learning to survive under the guidance of the Last Eagle Scout. The Morrowland Pack allied with King Artos late in the war with the CUT, and afterward Finch had traveled to Montival to cement the alliance. Her mission: to explore, seek out unknown knowledge, and to learn new skills the Scouts might pass to their cubs in turn.

Sending their Eyes so far from home, even to serve a kind man such as Huon, had been a difficult choice for the Pack. Bright thought she shouldn't go.

“Morrowlanders keep to themselves,” he had argued. “A Scout is trustworthy! Is there any need for such a people as we to engage in diplomacy? To learn the art of espionage?”

Finch had, as yet, no answer.

Now she rode north with Baron Gervais and his party, three men-at-arms, and a groomsman.

“We don't run things top down like all you do,” Lester was telling him. “Cree Alliance holds Councils for its member tribes: The Night's Watch, Wood Buffalo Insulin Collective, Sawridge Band, Wood Cree, the Twelvesteppers—that's my folk. There's Tar Sandies and Hockey Knights, the Kip Kelly Rodeo, Doubledoubles, Wranglers, Riggers, Zambonis, these Alberta Wheat Pool bastards out of New Kiev—”

He seemed, somehow, to realize Finch was searching for that town—New Kiev—within her remembrance of the northern maps she had studied. “Lloydminster, that is.”

He misses nothing.
“Thank you.”

“You can get acquainted at the Hoedown with some of the Council. Make friends, do some minor horse swapping. You got serious business to discuss—and being as you've come up here and rung our bell all polite three years running, I figure you got serious business—”

“Yes,” the Baron said, and his diplomat's mask slipped a little, revealing a glimpse of the concern beneath. “Very serious.”

“It's the whole Council decides.”

“Is it a majority vote?”

“Hell no. Mother Winter, she demands unflinching unanimity of purpose.”

“Consensus, you mean?”

“Yep.”

Finch mulled that over. Huon had come, in part, to see if the Cree knew anything about the Haida raids on the western coasts of the expanding Montival territory, and to investigate a trade in the high quality insulin their hosts refined from pig pancreases. Both items that might qualify as minor horse swapping.

The other matter, though, their primary reason for coming . . .

Could any people reach consensus on treason?

As the afternoon wore on, weather smothered even Lester's inclination to talk. Wind played them, driving ice flakes aslant into the faces of horses and riders alike, poking cold fingers into the gaps in their furs. The riders leaned into their mounts, curling inward to hoard body heat. The horses huddled close, plodding along remnants of old highway from the days of the ancients.

The people of the North were said to be aimless nomads, ill-directed, squabbling tribes, but Finch saw signs of forest management here. Along the road, the trail was fifty feet wide, kept free of trees; the clearing provided browsing for deer and caribou. She saw signs of their passage, here and there, among the humps of snow: spoor, cropped grass, even a splash of blood surrounded by wolf tracks. Farther on, a pair of ribs breached the snow, gnawed clean and reaching skyward like fingers.

The road was the quick and easy way up toward the fortress, but there would be others. Whenever the wind broke enough to allow her a look around, Finch scanned the likely ambush sites, finding high points aplenty and, once, a concealed platform, well constructed and maintained, within an especially tall tree. Invaders would do themselves no favors by taking the easy route.

Not so disorganized, then, not this close to the border with Drumheller. For no good reason, this pleased her.

A gust drove her back into her wraps. Tucking her head, Finch imagined how she might draw Lester. How to capture both age and vitality, not to mention that canny expression? Would she render him with the red Supes paint on his hands, or would that simply make him look blood-drenched?

They passed through a checkpoint—the sentries seemed surprised that Lester had sponsored them—and camped, dining on buffalo stew and preserved sugar beets the party had brought up from Drumheller. At dawn they abandoned the highway for the forest, riding for five hours along an ever-narrower forest trail to Gregoire Lake, the Hoedown site.

Lester said: “These oil towns were real shitholes 'fore the Change, but the people who live here now put up a good gathering. You'll stay in the Twelvestepper wigwam.”

“We're grateful for your hospitality,” said the Baron.

“Lake's got whitefish and walleye and northern pike. Perch, too, though there's a fish I never saw the point of. Use up more life getting 'em than comes back to you in the eating.”

“We must take what comes our way,” Finch said, perhaps out of turn.

The comment had thrown her back to a memory of an especially harsh winter, elder Scouts dividing a small kill among the cubs, deciding who was most in need of the meat. A mouthful for her, for Bright. Two for a littermate who had not, in the end, survived.

“Sometimes,” Lester agreed. “Trick in life's knowing when to throw something back so it can fulfill another purpose.”

That,
Finch thought,
was aimed at the Baron.

Gazing ahead, she saw an expanse of wind-burnished ice: Gregoire Lake, presumably. Its far shore was lined with blue spruce, trees dusted silver by recent snowfall. Totems circled its banks: carvings of bears, hawks, fish, and deer. A red-clad soldier on horseback, both of them upside down, stared across the ice with comical, if strangely lifelike, despair. Nearby a stack of white hats, each the height of a girl and all bereft of heads, stood out luminous, bright even against the snow.

Small camps had sprouted along the shore and on the ice itself, clusters of dwellings made of buffalo hide and sapling, the occasional strip of ancient material: fiberglass, aluminum, copper pipe. One wigwam featured, as its roof, a weather-scarred blue canoe.

The Fortress of Solitude loomed up from the center of the water.

It was a spiky bloom of icicles, a circular stockade of enormous proportions, set on a small island a mile from shore. A silvery glint within its radiating spines led Scout to guess that, within, they might find old steel skyscraper beams. It glittered and sparkled, dripped and bristled. In fair weather, you would have to paddle out to it, within plain sight of the grizzly totems who towered above its walls, not to mention the sentries and archers' towers.

In winter's chill, one could walk right to its open gate, over the sturdy ice.

“Council meets here, on the longest night,” Lester said. “You've time to chat up people 'fore that. Come on, Huon, I'll take you to meet Chief Jane.”

They dismounted, and he showed them where to unsaddle. The groomsmen and the youngest of the warriors stayed behind to brush and stable the horses. Huon spoke to them, quietly, getting them settled.

“All right, Finch?” He was giving her a chance to break from the party, to rest if she wished.

She shook her head, accompanying him and his men-at-arms out onto the lake. The ice muttered as they passed, taking their measure.

They found Chief Jane and a handful of warriors behind a wall of snow blocks, five feet high and curved into the wind. Two of her people were working an old steel screw into the ice, grinding away to make a hole. A third was scooping up the wet, ground ice created by the screw and smearing it on their windbreak, making it thicker and stronger.

Three fur-swathed figures sat around another hole, fishing.

Chief Jane was wide-shouldered, blond, and motherly. Her hair was parted in the middle and divided into snow-dusted braids that hung to her chest.

“Janey,” Lester said. “Got some folk to meet you.”

“Trifling with
yo ne gi
, Old One?” she asked, neither friendly nor unfriendly, just curious.

“Don't feed me that 'ware the white man crap, honey pie. Your grandma was South African, old Boer through and through.”

“Chatter-chatter, Magpie.” She put out a hand and said, to Huon. “
Yo ne gi
these days means outsider. No offense.”

“We're certainly that,” the Baron said, bowing before introducing his followers.

Formality didn't impress her. “You fish?”

“Finch?”

She brightened. “I can net, cast, and angle; I can tie a lure made of feathers and bark. I can spear—”

A bark of laughter, from Lester. “Catch us a perch, little bird?”

Finch borrowed a pole and bait from a stranger whose only visible feature, within his drapes of fur, was a row of stylized coyote tattoos, drawn in arches above a striking pair of smoky gray eyes. She set up with him and two others around the new hole in the ice, happy to listen and learn as Jane made a place for the Baron by their fire, a scavenged metal box set on a tripod above the ice.

For a long time, the conversation circled aimlessly, like hawks on an updraft, casual wanderings as the two became acquainted. Jane asked about Montival and the High King, then told a long story about the annual buffalo hunt, which had gone well, a few weeks earlier.

Conversational warm-up was not the way of the Morrowlanders. A Scout is direct. Finch had been pondering the necessity of it ever since she joined the Baron's service; the nature of diplomacy, how one might frame a badge around what some called small talk.

Bright would have said,
Let the outsiders keep their gabble, their give and take. Morrowland is a small world, with no need for such things.

But Bright had wanted her to stay. Or wanted her to want to stay.

She had landed a sizeable pickerel and thrown back a young walleye by the time Huon got to business: “A few years ago, when we were at war with the Church Universal and Triumphant, there was an attempt on the life of Órlaith, King Artos' heir. The assassins got into Castle Todenangst. They could never have done it, but one of the kitchen staff left a storage room window open for them, and poisoned a guard.”