The Ordinary (9 page)

Jedda was stunned, her heart pounding. “Where are we to be taken?”

“To the place where Thaan Malin has asked that you be taken,” the Krii said.

Jedda repeated the words to Tarma, whose relief was obvious, who stood and clapped hands for attendants to see her to her rooms. Jedda met Vitter's eye as she announced the three detainees and she saw the sudden relief on his face.

Tarma was already moving up the steps, under escort, into the consulate. Vitter crossed to say something to her, whispered, and she drew back as though she had been poisoned and spat at him. He drew away, laughing, and Tarma trembled and went inside. Jedda never saw her again, nor expected to. An Orminy factor might execute a member who had seen or caused such a loss of face to the caste; the opera was full of stories like that. A rumor later circulated that this was what happened to Tarma. Her own mother fed her poison and watched her die.

Fleets of hoverships were crossing back and forth from the gate, and people in the consulate were in a frenzy, packing, meaning to get out of Irion as fast as possible.

Jedda needed little time to pack her own belongings. She wondered whether to bring the stat; her escort was no help, saying merely that she should bring whatever would please her. Jedda put the useless silicate into the bag mostly because she could not quite conceive of being without it. At least she'd save herself the cost of a new one when she was freed.

Was that the right word? Was she being taken captive? Was she a hostage?

Vitter was ready quickly as well, and waited with her and the Krii. He had changed into clean coveralls and a formal shirt, his large wheeled bag on the stone floor beside him. Himmer took some time, having brought a good deal more luggage in the first place, but at last he was packed and they and their escorts, some Prin and some soldiers, headed out the consulate complex and down two levels of street to a hoverboat.

Why did it surprise her that the Thaan would make use of a modern convenience? Malin had probably come to the consulate by hoverboat herself. They climbed aboard and soon were carried across the bay to the island that sat in its center, entering a gated harbor, sheer high walls rising out of the sea. “What place is this?” Jedda asked the Prin who was her escort, a Kirith rather than a Kartayn.

“Kemur Island,” the Prin said. “The old King kept a palace here, and Malin comes here from time to time.”

“The old King? The one who departed?”

“Yes, that one,” the Prin agreed. “You've heard of him?”

“Some stories, yes. I lived in Charnos for several years.”

He used a word she did not know, and she asked him to repeat. He said, as well as she could understand, “Your time may not be my time, don't be so sure.” But there was more, there were inflections and tonal variations in the words that could shade meaning in more ways than she had learned. The same thing happened when he went on to say, “There is a monastery on the island,” as well, for he might also have meant, “university,” “cloister,” or, with the proper inflections and prenotes, which were nearly sung at times, a score of other things. The Erejhen language had layers and complications in the grammar and the pronunciation that strained the notion of a sentence having only one meaning.

The boat docked at a stone quay, steps leading to a wide lawn, buildings in the northern style; Prin and military people congregated everywhere, so Jedda supposed this must be some sort of government center. Within moments some of the military people loaded the group's belongings into a putter and them along with it, a six-seater—the three hostages, as Jedda was calling the group in her thinking, along with one of the Prin and two of the military.

The ride was long and bumpy, the putter heaving from side to side. Vitter sat across from Jedda and Himmer next to her, his soft shoulder molding to hers. On the hoverboat they had been separated by their hosts, but now they were more or less alone, and Jedda asked, “Where do you think they're taking us?”

Vitter looked at Himmer, and for the first time Jedda wondered whether there were some collusion between the two of them. They were not as surprised or concerned as she, or so it appeared to her. Yet only minutes ago Vitter had asked her to help him disappear into the Irion landscape. Vitter said, “We know this island holds a large military complex and is some sort of religious center as well. I'd guess we're in the religious part, now.”

She filed away her suspicions for the moment. “Our guide says Malin has a palace here.”

Soon enough they could see it, beyond a slope of land and then down to the cliffs that marked Kemur Island's southern shore. The palace faced the open ocean. Built of many pale colors of stone, it defied description in Hormling terms, since a building was hardly ever seen whole from the exterior. Softly rounded columns, arches with a three-pointed design, here and there a slim pointed spire. The overall effect graceful and pleasing. The putter road wound down to the wall and gate, through which they were permitted to pass, though escorted by another putter.

The Prin entered the back compartment of the putter when the vehicle was stopped at the gate. He was looking mildly from one to the other. Of Jedda he asked, “They do not speak my language, do they?”

In Alenke, Vitter told her, “I can understand it in a rudimentary way, if it's spoken slowly, as he is doing. But I can't make the sounds properly at all.”

She translated for the Prin, and he nodded. “I will speak to you, then,” he told her. “You are guests of Malin and will be housed in the Chanii house. There are some others of your kind staying there.”

The putter glided along a lane that led through a long, narrow garden and then opened into a courtyard. Three floors of stone and timber rose around the courtyard, open balconies facing the green space, a design of rocks and plants and water flowing from a fountain at the center of the court through and out the building, which arched over it. Water rose out of the fountain as though there were an endless source beneath the rock.

Jedda took her bags in hand and walked over the arched bridge leading into the building, a series of open doors, the outer ones quite sturdy, the inner ones lighter, the inmost of glass. The others were following and she had turned to watch Himmer struggling with his own luggage, one of his big trunk-sized conveyances caught on the stone base of the bridge, when a voice from behind spoke her name, “Jedda.”

She turned, and there was Brun, and Jedda's heart began to pound. “My Krys,” she said.

The tall, broad-faced woman began to laugh. “I was afraid you wouldn't recognize me after all this time.”

She was in a daze as Brun embraced her. She gripped Brun by the shoulders and looked into her face. “Opit?”

Brun closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes, he's here.”

In the confusion that followed only the thought of Opit was clear to her, that she had found him, or stumbled on him, that she would see him again. Brun held her by the elbow while Vitter and Himmer piled into the forecourt of the house, and the staff of the place found them and began to welcome them. Jedda was needed to translate for a while, her questions would have to wait; only, now and then, she stopped to look at Brun to remind herself that this was real. Brun speaking Anin, the Prin speaking Erejhen, Vitter and Himmer chiming in with Alenke, the staff of the place with accents Jedda scarcely recognized, maybe even languages she had never heard before. Like being in the language lab at the university with half a dozen linguists at work around her.

She found herself alone with Brun in a well-furnished bedroom big enough for two Hormling apartments. Brun had waited patiently in the background while they were all settled, but Jedda saw the staff deferred to her in some way, even the Krii, to an extent. Now that they were alone, Brun said, “You're looking so wonderfully well. Life has been good to you?”

“Yes, of course, whatever. How long has it been? Twelve years?”

She shook her head. “That long?” She seemed momentarily evasive. “Opit would know better than me.”

“Where is he?”

“With Malin,” Brun said. “With her people, at least. He'll be here this evening, he's anxious to see you again.”

The surprise of it all. “You're both keeping very good company these days.”

“I can't even begin to describe it,” she said. “I'm a long way from the dry dock in Charnos,” the place she had been working those years ago. “It's Opit, you know. He's become very important here.”

A piece fell into place for her, all at once. “Is he the reason I'm here, too?”

Brun blinked. She waited before she answered. “I suppose he is.” She stopped short of saying everything she knew, a flicker of something like resignation in her eyes. “You weren't expecting this to happen?”

“No.”

She went no further with that line of questioning. Jedda remembered the look that had passed between Himmer and Vitter, and said, “The other two, Himmer and Vitter. Did they know this was going to happen?”

“I should let Opit explain,” she said, and moved away uncomfortably. “It's all very complicated.”

“They did know.”

“I doubt it,” she said, emphatically, “I doubt they knew the circumstances under which they would finally meet us.” The “us” sounded quite particular, and Brun went on. “I'll tell you this much, Jedda. Some of your people have been working with us since long before the gate was opened. Opit is part of that, and so are you, now.”

“Working with who?”

“With Malin,” she said. “I don't understand it all, please don't make me tell you any more than that, I'll only get it wrong. I don't speak Erejhen that well, you know, I don't understand half what they say.”

She was being modest, Jedda could see. The two of them sat and talked, told what had happened through the intervening years, Brun's marriage to Opit, their journey to Telyar, finding a guide who would take them into the far north, places where even Brun had never been before. The connection with the Erejhen government, which Brun glossed over. Their three children living here on the grounds, about whom she spoke in loving detail. Jedda told her own side of the story, her travels back and forth between Irion and Senal, her life in the Nadi women's compound where her two daughters were adults now, with daughters of their own. Enough talk of that kind to fill the space between them, without room for additional questions on the subjects that Brun was clearly hesitant to address.

There came a certain kind of lull to the conversation and Brun said, “Look at the sun, the day's nearly over. I should let you rest a while.”

Alone, Jedda stood at the window, unpacked her bags, and put away her clothes into the storage cupboards. She went to search for a hygiene room and found one a few doors away that offered four kinds of basins for flowing water: one for washing the face, one for defecating into, one for washing the anus after defecation, and one for washing the whole of the body. More plumbing fixtures than she had ever seen in one place, all for her own use.

The windows in her room faced the sea on one side, while on the other side were tall glass doors leading to the balcony. Watching the sea, she counted forty hoverboats on the water, some headed for the gate and some headed back from it. Two large water-borne ships were sailing away from Irion as well, and she fancied she could see Hormling lining the decks. Moving to the balcony, she examined the enormous pile of stones in which she was residing, soldiers in the garden and on the putter road outside, service people in the courtyard, the side of a huge wing of a building with windows two or three stories high. A stone bridge crossed from an upper floor of that building to another, rising from farther down the cliffs toward the sea. The thought of walking in the open air that high made Jedda shiver, and she remembered the gorges of Montajhena. This place attempted to re-create some of the feeling of that one, she thought. The Erejhen turn everything into a mountain. Or a forest, she added, noting the carving of the interior of the balcony, tree branches heavy with leaves and twined with vines.

A few moments later one of the house staff asked her to help to translate for one of her friends, for Himmer, as it turned out, who was trying to ask about dinner, knowing neither Anin nor Erejhen. He was embarrassed when Jedda came in. “I need to learn this language,” he said, a little blue in the face. “I can't ask where's the hygiene, even.”

She asked his questions for him and was pleased to have her own curiosity satisfied as well. The householder, a big, blocky Anin fellow named Arvith, explained, “The Chanii is the Thaan's private guesthouse. We'll bring you supper here.”

“Here, where?” she asked.

“A room,” he said. “After the lamp-lighting is finished, someone will send for you.”

“My friend Opit will be there?” Jedda asked.

“Your friend is here already,” Arvith said, and gave Jedda an odd look, almost as if he knew her.

“Yes?” she asked.

He made a sign with his hand and smiled. He had an ungainly nose, splayed a bit to the side. “He'll be glad to see you, I'm sure,” Arvith said, and excused himself.

Himmer was sitting, staring at his hands. “They're not very forthcoming, are they?”

“It's not their way, I'm told. Though he's Anin, and he's still stubborn as a mule about answering a question directly.”

“That's a bit more unusual, I take it?”

“Yes, a bit.” She shook her head. “You knew my friend Opit was here?”

Her question startled him some. Its directness. Somehow lacking in acknowledgement of the difference in their ranks. She found herself indifferent to her own rudeness. “Yes,” he said, “I knew. At least, I knew he was close to Malin.”

“Is that why you invited me onto the delegation? Because of him?”

He considered for a long time, then shook his head. “I didn't invite you. I didn't invite myself. So I can't answer your question.”

“Himmer, there's something you're not telling me, and I think it has something to do with why I'm being detained here with you and Vitter.”

He went dumb and silent for a while. She waited.

“It will sound so deliberate if I tell it,” he began, “and in fact it's all been quite an accident. None of it made sense to me until today.” He took a deep breath. “Your friend Opit is the one who asked for you to join the delegation, that would be my guess. He's become very important to these people. We've made contact with the Erejhen government through him, from my Ministry. This is a secret even from the Orminy.” He was actually afraid, she could see it. He was far from the harmless man she had thought him. “Maybe they did plan it all. Maybe Malin did. To get us here. Vitter as well. I expect he's one of the other people working with my group; we cross Ministry lines for something as important as this.”