WARP world (30 page)

They were not children anymore.

Seg bowed first, palms upward, eyes down, as he had been shown; Stevan returned the gesture, then it was Ama’s turn. When Stevan reciprocated, they walked to the holy man, as their escort slipped away silently. This was the first time she had seen Stevan in this environment and Ama found his emotionless stare and cool demeanor disturbing.

“Lord Eraranat, you have effectively dispelled a myth too long held by the Kalder family,” Stevan said, not casting so much as a sideways glance to Ama.

“Your holiness?” Seg asked–with the perfect amount of humility in his voice.

Stevan held his hands out in front of him, fingers spread and tips pressed together to form a wide triangle. “We have long assumed that Amadahy refused her many suitable offers of marriage due to a flaw in her character, an unwillingness to conform, if you will.”

Ama felt her molars grind at Stevan’s pompous speech and the way he spoke as if she weren’t standing right in front of him.

“However, by her agreement to form a union with yourself, a Damiar Lord, we must now concede that her perceived selfishness was, in reality, a choice to save herself for a more worthy mate. In this instance, I am most grateful to be proved incorrect.” He inclined his head slightly at Seg, then raised both palms skyward and added, “Praise to the Shasir’kia, our most revered Sky Fathers.”

“Unfortunately, as joyful as I am regarding this union,” he continued, “I must request your patience somewhat further and ask you, Lord Erananat, to return to the waiting hall, temporarily. There are important family matters I must relate to my sister before the blessing can proceed.”

What could Stevan be talking about?
Ama wondered.
Important family matters?

This was definitely not normal. It was, however, the opportunity they needed. Stevan’s lectures were infamously drawn out and Ama knew how to provoke him into even longer discourse, if necessary.

Seg bowed and agreed to step out of the room. When he was almost at the door, Ama said, “Excuse me, Shasir’dua,” walked quickly to Seg’s side, placed a hand on his arm and kissed his cheek, through her veil. Before she pulled away, she brushed her lips close to his ear and whispered, “Go now, I’ll keep him busy.”

The nearly imperceptible shift in Seg’s gaze, told her he had understood.

Her action had been risky but Stevan would hardly be surprised at his sister behaving rudely. She dipped her head and shuffled back to her place, feigning embarrassment.

Seg exited and she steeled herself for the volumes of lectures she was about to have heaped upon her. Explicit directions on how a Damiar wife should behave and stern warnings regarding the consequences, for herself and Stevan, should she fail to uphold her wifely duties.

Stevan looked at the door, then around the room, and when he was satisfied they were alone, he grabbed the flesh of Ama’s arm, just above the elbow and dragged her to the far corner, behind the heavy curtain.

She gasped as he gripped her by the shoulders, locked a set of angry eyes on hers and hissed in a barely contained whisper, “What in the name of Nen do you think you’re doing?” She was too shocked by her brother’s use of the Kenda title
Nen
, to answer. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that man is?”

Behind her veil, her mouth fell open.

Stealth, Seg understood, was in large part of a matter of mindset. Even the conspicuous can be hidden in plain sight with the
proper motions
and mentality. Look unobtrusive. Look as though one belongs.

As he walked down the corridor, Seg lowered his shoulders, decreasing his profile. He added briskness to his pace that suggested he had somewhere to be. Where appropriate, with the lower orders, he met gazes and immediately gave them a visual brush-off, as if to suggest that he was in a hurry and merely marking his path against obstacles. When he encountered Shasir functionaries, he made way politely and slowed down in order to respect his betters.

It wasn’t the gilded bowls and statues that the Shasir treasured. While the artifacts had measurable quantities of vita, the readings were not in keeping with a holy place. But Seg knew that, at the very least, the Shasir the troopers had captured believed large portions of the nonsense they delivered to the masses. As such, there would be wellsprings somewhere within.

A technoshamanic society, one that believed their technology was, at some level, magical. He had to find their technobaubles, or get into their vicinity. Armory? Perhaps, but their weaponry wasn’t very compelling. Hangars for the airships? Probably. Most certainly their communications arrays.

The airships would be easy enough, and plausible enough, to search for. After all, mastery of the sky would impress the nobility, and serve as a clear caste demarcation between Shasir and Damiar. Better still, it would involve a clearing from which he could likely locate the communications arrays.

He pulled a servant aside to make a quick inquiry and proceeded on his way.

The landing strip was busy. Garish, ornamental airships were tied-off at various moorings and as he watched another one was guided in.

Yes, these were better readings. The airships themselves were worthy objects, though a more comprehensive calculation was needed to ensure that the volume of material sent through the warp would justify the expenditure of the intrans.

He was only allowed within about 200 meters of the landing area but it was close enough. Reaching into his left sleeve, he extended the spidered directional antenna for the VIU, then raised a hand as if to shield his eyes from the sun.

He blinked. The directional antenna had, by necessity, an extremely tight range of focus, and something had blipped it prior to being pointed at the airship. He tilted his head down, self-consciously wondering if he looked the fool, as he tried to pick up whatever gave the blip.

The blip came again; he narrowed his eyes and studied what seemed to be the source.

The airship mooring posts. The battered, old, un-ornamented mooring posts. Something about them was producing vita in an up-funnel effect.

He closed the antenna and maneuvered for a better look.

Each post had a basket in front of it. There was something significant there. Maybe when they extracted Ama’s brother, he could explain their origins and meanings.

He made a thorough circuit of the field, playing the tourist, then proceeded toward the communication arrays.

Ama gaped at her brother. Dangerous? What did Stevan know about Seg? Had his cover been blown somewhere in his travels?

“Stevan, he’s just a Damiar, from the—”

“Just a
Damiar
, exactly. You don’t find anything strange in that?”

Stevan was as agitated as she had ever seen him. His controlled manner of speaking, his usual verbosity, were gone.

“You need to calm down,” Ama said, hoping her measured tone might do the trick, “and explain why you’re panicking just because I’ve chosen to marry above my class.”

Puzzled, she watched her brother pace in a small circle, then pull the ridiculous hat off his head. “These are dangerous days, Tadpole,” he said, in a low voice, as he drew close to her.

He hadn’t called her Tadpole since… She couldn’t remember that he had ever called her by her nickname.

“Stevan,” she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, “talk to me. I’m your sister. You can trust me.”

“They have spies everywhere,” he answered, casting his eyes skyward to indicate the Shasir’threa that lived aboard the skyships. “Looking for treason. It’s no coincidence you were courted by a Damiar. One of the Shasir’threa has gone missing from the Ymira valley; they suspect he was kidnapped or even murdered. His guards were found dead, without a mark on their bodies. No one had access to the man except the guards and other Shasir, so naturally—”

“They suspect someone on the inside,” Ama nodded, “and of course they’ll look at all the members of the order who are Kenda.”

Stevan smiled, “You should have stayed in the Lesson House, you know. You’re too smart to spend your life ferrying Dammies around.”

“I know Seg’s not a spy,” she said, even though it wasn’t technically true. “But even if he were, what do you have to worry about? You’ve always been an ideal student and a loyal Shasir.”

Stevan lowered his eyes and took a deep breath. He pressed his face close to Ama’s and whispered in her ear, in the secret language of the Kenda, “Blood for water.”

When they parted, Ama was speechless. Those were the long-dead words of the Kenda Resistance.

Her brother was a traitor.

As Seg had suspected, the communications arrays were covered with gaudy bric a brac and devotional offerings. Fortunately, that made access easier than it might have been otherwise. These Outers thought of their comms as conduits to the gods and treated them with appropriate reverence.

He wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that the ‘communing with the gods’ they claimed to do was in reality only their interpretation of random static intercepted from the radio
frequencies
. It would be in keeping with their ignorance of their own technology and with their mystic bent.

He couldn’t be too critical in that regard, though. Much of the People’s technology, such as the chatterers that let them translate other languages, was barely understood, if comprehended at all. Where the principles and the equipment could be assimilated they were, but oftentimes only the raw technology itself could be stolen away. Sometimes, as with the chatterers, the technologists could figure out how to effectively and efficiently replicate it and the technology would proliferate. Other times, they could duplicate items but only at prohibitive expense, and such ventures were abandoned to avoid waste. Finally, there were times when they simply had to write off captured material as unusable, unsalvageable, or worst of all, with indiscernible purposes. Their own pace of invention was haltingly slow, and almost always derived from technology acquired during raids.

But at least the People were pragmatic about the wonders of science.

He resumed sweeping.

All that existed between Ama and her brother was the weight of Stevan’s words. When at last Ama found her voice, it was colored with both awe and fear. “How long?” was all she said.