The Evolutionary Void (47 page)

“The newlyweds told them to get out,” Dinlay said. “At which point one of
the sons went and registered their residency claim with the Board of Occupancy
at the Courts of Justice. As they’d lived in the rooms for the required two
days and two nights, they were entitled.”

“Oh, Lady,” Edeard moaned. He knew how this tale was going to unfold.
There had always been resentment at the number of stopover visitors. He and
Mayor Trahaval had talked about the problem before he’d confronted the nest.
There hadn’t been an immediate solution, though the inns being built in the
coastal towns and out on the Iguru had seemed like a solution that ultimately
would solve everything. It was only by the grace of the Lady that there hadn’t
been an “incident” like this one back then.

“The jeweler and his new bride both had large families, and they were
well connected,” Dinlay continued. “Worse, no other empty cluster of rooms
would do—for the newlyweds or the stopover brothers. It had to be this one. So
the couple made their stand: Makkathran buildings for Makkathran citizens. It
was a popular cause. The stopover brothers and their mother were forcefully
evicted. By the time the constables arrived, they were already out on the
street and in need of hospital treatment from a beating. The newlyweds were
installed along with their furniture, and a huge crowd of their relatives
blocked the entrance to the mansion. Not that they really needed to; the
constables who arrived on the scene weren’t entirely unsympathetic. All they
did was cart off the brothers and their mother.

“That might have been the end of it. But legally the rooms were
registered to the brothers. So the newlyweds brought in legal help to revoke
the residency and make it their own.”

Edeard closed his eyes in anguish. “Please! Lady, no, not him.”

“Oh, yes,” Macsen said with vicious delight. “Master Cherix took the
case.”

Because the couple, legally, were unequivocally in the wrong and everyone
knew it, all Cherix could do in court was fight a holding action. A
registration of occupancy could be overturned only by an order of the Grand
Council. In order to get that, the legal case had to become a political
campaign. The Our City movement was born four weeks before the elections. Mayor
Trahaval was strictly in favor of existing law and order, as espoused by the
Waterwalker, as he was fond of repeating at every speech. Doblek, up until then
a simple formality opposition candidate, chose to support Our City. He won a
landslide majority, as did a host of Our City representatives.

The Our City movement was something its members took very seriously. By
the end of the first week every single vacant space in every building in
Makkathran was occupied and registered by one of their own. And the visitors
arriving with their dying relatives had nowhere to stay; like the brothers
before them, most couldn’t afford the inns for what might be months. It all
came to a head in Ilongo a week after Doblek was sworn in at the Orchard
Palace. Some newly arrived visitors, outraged at being told they couldn’t stay
in the city where their dearly beloved were due to be guided from, tried to
squat in some of Ilongo’s central mansions. There were riots that the
constables alone couldn’t quell, not that they tried particularly hard. That
was when Doblek acted with impressive resolution, ordering the militia in to
stamp down hard on the disturbance.

From that day on, anyone who came to Makkathran to be guided by a Skylord
and couldn’t afford a tavern room was prevented from passing through the city
gates until a day before the great event, when the Lady’s Mothers organized
their passage up the towers. Even then, relatives who’d been camping outside
were discouraged from accompanying them to Eyrie.

“Doblek really thought he was emulating you on the day of banishment,”
Macsen said. “Throwing them all out and forbidding them to come back was what
you did to Bise and the rest. And enough stupid people think the same; they
applaud how tough he was.”

“I’m surprised he had the courage to suggest such a thing,” Edeard said.
“That’s not the Doblek I remember.”

“Power changes people,” Dinlay said simply, giving Macsen a sharp look.
“And necessity. What else could he do?”

Edeard realized this was an old argument between his friends.

“I could accept that if he’d made any attempt to alter things since
then,” Macsen said. “But he hasn’t. He doesn’t know what to do, and more people
are arriving each day. Did you know we’ve only just started getting our first
visitors from the most distant provinces? And I include Rulan in that.”

“Cheap,” Dinlay muttered.

“Not really. The volume of people coming here is still rising. Doblek has
done nothing to address that. Nothing! He had to deploy another militia troop
to safeguard the route into Makkathran. The people he’d forced outside were
starting to waylay merchant carts and caravans. So now we have a permanent
presence of militia extending well out into the Iguru, and the stopover camps
are hacking down the forests outside for fuel. You know those trees were
planted by Rah and the Lady themselves.”

“The area circling Makkathran was designated a forest zone by Rah,”
Dinlay said wearily. “He didn’t go around planting seeds himself; that’s One
City propaganda.”

“Whatever,” Macsen said. “The problem is Doblek’s actions, or rather lack
of them. What does he think is going to happen, that it’ll all sort itself out?
And Edeard, we’ve heard rumors that the Fandine militia is on the march through
Plax.”

Edeard gave Macsen a puzzled look. “Why?”

“Because we’ve used our militia against their citizens. They’re claiming
the right of protection.”

“Oh, Great Lady!”

“It’s the distance,” Dinlay said. “That’s our trouble. Rumor grows with
each mile. A report of what was a grazed arm and a bloody nose in Makkathran
has become some kind of mass murder of innocents by the time it reaches
Fandine.”

“So is it true about the Fandine militia, then?”

“General Larose sent fast scouts out last week. We’ll know soon enough.”

“Militias fighting on the Iguru,” Edeard muttered in disbelief. The loss
of life during the last campaign against the bandits had appalled him. He’d
thought such horror had ended then. It certainly couldn’t be allowed to happen
again; he had never forgotten the carnage Owain had unleashed. “I must speak
with Doblek.”

“To what end?” Macsen asked. “You think he’ll back down and order the
militia back inside the gate?”

“He was elected courtesy of Our City,” Dinlay said. “He’ll never go
against the cause that put him in the Orchard Palace.”

Edeard briefly thought about using domination. He’d learned enough of
that technique from Tathal and the nest in those last few seconds to change
anyone’s mind for them. But the Mayor was only one man; it would only solve the
immediate problem—that was if there even was a Fandine militia marching on the
city with revenge in mind. It was the whole situation that had to be calmed—a
situation the Skylords had created.
And how’s that for
irony?

He recalled the meeting he’d had with Macsen and Kanseen just after
Dinlay had returned from his honeymoon with Gealee. At that point Mayor
Trahaval had come nowhere close to finding a solution to the massive influx of
people awaiting guidance. Edeard had told the others he’d try to find out why
the Skylords would accept people only from Eyrie’s towers. But there’d never
been time to ask them before his final confrontation with the nest, and this
time around he’d never bothered. Such things had been abandoned in favor of the
voyage.

If I can get the Skylords to visit other towns on
Querencia, then this will all just go away
. In the meantime he had to do
something about the stopover refugees outside North Gate.
All
that animosity on both sides is going to corrode the fulfillment which the
Skylords judge us by
.

“All right,” Edeard said. “Just how intractable is Our City?”

“It’s a one-cause movement, which means they simply can’t be moderate,”
Dinlay said. “There will never be any kind of compromise with them, so if
you’re going to take them on, it will have to be a direct election and you
change the law after you’re Mayor.”

“Sounds drastic.” Edeard sucked in his cheeks. “I’d better go take a look
for myself, then.”

———

Our City had, appropriately enough, set up its headquarters in Ilongo.
Dinlay had told Edeard with grudging admiration how their political ability had
grown since their hurried formation. Eight of the current district
representatives had stood on the Our City ticket, forming a powerful bloc in
the Council. But their greatest influence over the lives of citizens came
directly from the residency issue. If you were a Makkathran native searching
for somewhere new to live, you had to ask Our City for its cooperation. Now that
their members had legal occupancy of every previously vacant room and dwelling,
they were the ones who had to relinquish their claim before someone else could
move in. Only when they’d confirmed you were a genuine born-in-the-city
applicant would one of their members vacate the place you wanted. In effect,
Our City now controlled who lived where. And as with all political parties,
they traded advantage and made deals with rivals and other groups in the
Council and down on the streets and canals, insinuating themselves deeper and
deeper into the city’s political structure.

Edeard walked into the Ilongo district from a gondola platform on North
Curve Canal. The narrow streets in the center were a notorious maze: Most of
the district was composed of boxy buildings with walls at quite sharp angles,
creating alleys of narrow tunnels with only a slim line of sky visible along
the apex. Streets opened into unexpected squares that were like wells of light
amid the overhanging walls; fountains bubbled away cheerfully as if to
celebrate the sudden glare of the sun.

It was the first Makkathran district he’d ever walked through, he
remembered, he and Salrana gazing in delight at the weird buildings and more
than a little nervous at the sheer number of people walking through the narrow
streets and passageways. They’d pressed together for comfort and maybe just to
enjoy each other, believing strongly in the future they’d have together.

He jammed his teeth together, hating the memory, hating that despite
everything he could do, so much had gone wrong. That young happy Salrana was
lost now, gone beyond his ability to recover. As was dear little Burlal.
Unless of course I go back far enough and repeat the Weapons
Guild atrocity deep below Spiral Tower
. Even then, it would save only
Salrana. Burlal would never be born into the world that would emerge from that.

It’s no good, I can only ever save one, even if I
could bring myself to confront a living Owain again. I can only ever go forward
.

Unless, he acknowledged darkly, he lived both lives. Went back and saved
Salrana from Ranalee and herself and lived that life until it was time for
Salrana to be guided to Odin’s Sea. Then, at the very last moment, instead of
accepting guidance for himself, dive back to the time when Burlal was alive and
somehow defeat Tathal another way.

Useless
, he acknowledged in anguish.
There is no way to defeat Tathal other than the way it’s already
been done. I spent years trying. Burlal is truly beyond my reach now. My poor
gorgeous grandchild
.

And worse, attempting such a rescue would banish Kiranan into
nothingness, along with the twins’ new babes.
Unless I live
this life first, then–Oh, sweet Lady, why did you ever curse me with this gift!

He came out into Rainbow Square, named after the seven walls, each with
its furlike growth of moss. The actual surface was porous, weeping a steady
trickle of moisture, like a sponge being squeezed. Vivid emerald moss thrived
in such an ambience, its perpetually damp fronds tipped by tiny droplets that
glistened brightly under the sunlight boring down the center of the square,
creating a prismatic haze.

Unlike the rest of Ilongo’s crowded streets, this was empty. The
Waterwalker’s black cloak stirred in agitation as he waited in front of the
tallest building. Its wall leaned back away from him; in the middle was an
arching double door of some ancient black wood. A smaller inset door opened.

The leadership of Our City emerged slowly. They were nervous about the
Waterwalker, some of them old enough to remember the city’s power he had
wielded on the great day of banishment. One of them no doubt full of poison
about the Waterwalker’s malice and iniquity.

“Oh, Ladycrapit.” Edeard groaned softly at the sight of the man who was
first out of the door. Dinlay had never warned him.

Vintico gave the Waterwalker a defiant stare. He was a lanky man with his
mother’s eyes. Edeard might have guessed that Salrana would somehow get herself
ensnared in this debacle.

There were about twenty people crowding into Rainbow Square behind
Vintico, all of them staring directly at him, curious and nervous but
determined, too, resolute that their advantage and position would not be taken
from them by the Waterwalker, the epitome of “old” Makkathran.

Edeard addressed them all, remaining calm and quiet, demonstrating how
reasonable he was. “This has to stop,” he said. “People are suffering outside
the city wall. That cannot be right.”

“No, indeed, it isn’t right,” Vintico said, with murmurs of approval
goading him on. “Why should good Makkathran families who followed Rah himself
out of the chaos be denied a place to live? We have rights, too. When do we
ever hear of those being spoken by you and your cronies on the Council, eh?”

“The Lady herself has brought us to this time when the citizens of this
world are fulfilled. They must be guided to the Heart by the Skylords. This is
not in dispute.”