Chapter 16
“So what does this word ‘crone’ mean?” Belle pointed a snout at the page in Timor’s storybook, Fairy Tales of Old Nyjora.
“Um, I don’t know,” Timor replied. His brow furrowed the way it did when he was puzzled. “We can look it up the next time we’re over at Oobii.” When she had first known this Child, such a question would have provoked a panic attack. Timor’s eyes would get wide at the shock of realizing there was a question for which he didn’t instantly have an answer. Such was the best evidence Belle had that these human creatures had once been something like all-knowing.
Nowadays, when confronted with a question, Timor would ask someone else or go to the public place on Oobii or devise the answer from materials at hand. Right now, the boy was paging back and forth through the storybook, his nimble human fingers flipping the pages. “Okay!” he said. “Here on page thirteen, the wise archeologist is talking about the lady who was called a ‘crone’ on page forty. He says she’s a ‘beldame.’”
“Belle means beautiful,” said Belle. It was her taken name, one of the earliest any pack had chosen in the human language. That had been a bold move, even if it was right after she was kicked out of Woodcarver’s cabinet, when her former name, “Wise-Royal-Advisor,” became a mockery.
Timor squinched his mouth in a smile. “I know. Hei, and I remember from the story of the ‘Princess and the Swamp Lilies’—‘dame’ is just a word for lady. So ‘beldame’ must mean ‘beautiful lady.’”
“Hmm.” Maybe she could become “Beldame” or “Beldame Crone.” Those had possibilities for chords and trills. She played with the possibilities even as Timor returned to reading the story aloud. There was a time when Belle had really concentrated on learning from books such as these, the Two Queens’ mass-printing project. Such books would surely give insights into Ravna Bergsndot’s clever plans. That was before Ravna had been deposed.
And the stories in this particular book? If you discounted the ugly tropical background, and the necessary weirdness of humanity, they were very much like the folktales of Tinish realms. In her speeches, Ravna had talked about Nyjora again and again, claiming it was a model for what she was trying to do here. That had snared Belle’s early interest in stories of Nyjora. But even though Timor liked this latest book, it had turned out to be frankly fictional. From eavesdropping on the older Children, Belle had gradually come to realize how stupid Ravna Bergsndot was. The history of Nyjora meant something deep to her, but to the Children it was as much a myth as this little book. If anybody had asked Belle (the Crone Belle Dame, that sounded even better), she could have told them that Ravna Bergsndot was headed for a fall. Which now had come.
One big difference between Ravna and Belle: Ravna still lived in what was nearly a palace. Belle had gradually figured out the politics behind that. There would come a time when Nevil Storherte could not continue to ignore Belle and her Timor—
“I’m sorry what crone turns out to mean,” said Timor, closing the book and reaching around to hug her nearest shoulders. “Do you want to read another story tonight?”
Usually Belle paid more attention to what this Child was saying. But all any of her remembered was how Timor had looked around at her a few minutes ago, when she was deep into her little fugue. Timor could rattle on for hours about this and that even when he wasn’t reading aloud. It wasn’t natural—or at least it wasn’t Tinish—how many different things he could talk about, all without making the tiniest mindsound. For a moment, she considered confessing her inattention. He seemed to guess at it occasionally. But no, she could sneak back later, when he was asleep, and find out what “crone” was all about. Maybe she should read the whole book tonight and be done with it. But then the next few evenings would be really boring.
Outside something big was banging along the street. It sounded like a six-kherhog team, pulling multiple wagons. It had to be something big to be heard through the noise-quilting that was built into the walls. There were high-pitched screeches and pings, as if the wagon wheels were throwing up pebbles against the walls of the houses. Their little house was at the south edge of town, right on Haulage Way. When it had first been built, Belle had thought Woodcarver had fallen into imperial madness: the way was so wide and so perfectly graded. Now, after she’d seen the freight that streamed along it, bound for Cliffside harbor, Belle acknowledged (to herself) quite a different opinion.
She was half-minded to go outside and scream at the drovers. Instead she fell back on something more practical. “Timor, don’t you think it’s unfair that we live in this hovel?” Never mind that it had brightness and warmth at the click of a claw, even in the northern winter. Never mind that it was more comfortable than anything that royalty owned before the Sky Children came. It was the comparison with what some others had that made it poverty.
Timor stroked her shoulders, trying to comfort her. It was strange that he had actually been with her long enough that it really did comfort. She did her best to shrug away the thought. He should despise their situation even more than she did. It was Belle’s great good fortune that she had her own personal human; it was her bad fortune that Timor Ristling was the most accepting and even-tempered and reasonable creature she had ever met:
“We could live in the general dorms, Belle, with the other kids and their Tinish friends. Or we could probably room with one of the new families. You know, like with the Larsndots, down on Hidden Island. I thought you wanted us to have our own place?”
If Timor had been one of the other counselors back when Belle was still “Wise-Royal-Advisor,” she would have been sure that this was a devilishly clever counterattack. Instead, with Timor, she knew it was absolute innocence. Of course, Belle wanted to have private quarters! How else could she keep this Child for herself, keep him from falling in with human friends or even with some other pack? Timor had been her meal ticket for almost nine years now. If she lost her status as his official caregiver, she couldn’t even afford to live in this house.
“No,” she said and made the sound of a human sigh. “I just think you deserve better. You know I only think of what’s best for you.”
“Oh, Belle.” Timor set the book down and wiggled back among the four of her. “If you really want a better place, I could complain to Ravna. I just don’t like to do that.”
Who cares about Ravna? thought Belle, but she didn’t say that aloud. The Bergsndot human was out of power, at best a minor player. On the other hand, Timor himself was becoming an important one, even if he didn’t realize the fact. Down in the New Meeting Place, Belle often lay at his feet pretending to sleep while eavesdropping on the humans.
As far as Belle could tell, Timor’s parents had had roughly the same social status as did offal collectors in the Domain. Timor had inherited their talents—and somehow those abilities were rare and precious down here. Nevil and his friends didn’t like Timor. They didn’t like his innocent opinions or the effect he had on the other Children. One way or another, Timor is my lever! The main thing was to pick the right time and issue to use against Nevil and his pals. She was already planting the seeds for that: “Maybe we could complain to Nevil, or that nice Bili Yngva.”
The boy yawned. “I guess.” He gave a little shiver. “I’m too tired to read any more now. I need to go to bed.”
When Timor had been just a puppy of a Child, she had tucked him in every night. It had become an unnecessary ritual. But the boy was still as small as he had ever been. He hadn’t grown like the other Children. And there were other problems. He weakened so easily, and he still needed a lot more sleep than any human or pack she had ever known. Even if he stayed loyal to her, she might still lose out.
She led and followed Timor up the stairs to the tiny sleeping loft. At the top was one of those wonderful little light switches. With a tap of a snout, there was a bluish glow from a ceramic square mounted on the wall.
“Huh, the light’s kinda dim,” she said.
“It’s okay,” said Timor. “But the room is colder than usual. I’ll bet there’s some problem with the steam pipes.” That happened often enough. Their little house had been one of the first with a heating tower, hence it had one of the crummiest of the devices.
Tonight’s cold was something substantive they could complain about. She checked the small glass windows. They were all shut tight, no trace of a breeze. The nearest street lamp was broken, so there wasn’t much of a view either. They’d have a very nice list when they finally went complaining.
The rest of her was busy tucking Timor in. “We’ll use extra blankets,” she said. She topped them with a frayed green quilt, her only prize from the last real shipwreck. She had almost lost Timor’s loyalty over that. He’d accused her of robbing from the dying. Hah! But who had been dying? Not a single pack. And what was left of the Tropical mob was sitting pretty now, in its semi-mindless way. Besides, no one ever came looking for goods lost in the sea.
She had used her old bone needles to make a quilt out of the green fabric, stuffing it with froghen down. It was a crude job, the stitching irregular; not a single member of herself had direct memory of sewing skills. After eight years, the stitches were coming loose, and the fabric was riddled with insect holes. Now it was Timor who insisted they keep the thing.
“Is that warm enough?” she asked.
“Yes, it’ll be enough.” He patted her nearest head.
“I’ll just listen for a while then.” This was part of the ritual too. One of Belle scooched down to the end of the bed and sat on the covers. Another lay on the floor by the bed. The other two sat a few feet away, listening and watching. She flicked off the light. “G’night, Timor.”
“G’night, Belle.”
Now the room was really dark. On this winter night with the street lamp gone and the clouds she had noticed earlier, it was probably too dark even for Timor to see. On the other hand, she could hear everything in the room, and when she emitted squeaks up in the range of Tinish thought, she could hear the walls and the floor. With work she could have even made out the shape of Timor’s face. And Timor’s heart and lungs made so much noise that even without such effort she could make out his form under the covers.
Eight years ago, when Timor was just out of coldsleep, he had cried himself to sleep every night, cried for his lost parents, cried for things he couldn’t explain. In those first years, Belle would sometimes sit two of herself on his bed, cuddling him. He hadn’t cried in years now, and he said he was too old to cuddle, but he still liked her to lie in the dark and listen for a while.
She didn’t mind. She’d always been a planner and a schemer. She’d never been fast at thinking on her feet, even when she’d been Belle Ornrikakihm and not Belle Ornrikak. With Ihm dead, she was down to four. A pack of four could be a clever person. More often it was dull and unimaginative. Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only fooling herself to think her plans were clever.
Timor was still awake and restless, but she could tell he really was tired. Funny how much she knew his mind even though his thoughts were silent. Sometimes even silent, he could be almost member useful: Without climbing, he could reach higher than some of her. His fingers could solve problems that her Tinish snouts would just fumble over. At the same time he was as smart as a whole pack, and like all the humans he had the strangest ideas.
A clever pack could see the power in those ideas.
If only I was a royal advisor once more. That damned Woodcarver had always favored Scrupilo and Vendacious, her own offspring packs. If I had guessed that Vendacious was a traitor, I could have unmasked him and now I would be second in the realm. Sigh. She was edging toward that waking nightmare, where she came more and more often: she might never climb back from the trap she had made for herself. She had not the cleverness, and with Ihm gone she had lost the last of herself who was fertile.
While Ihm was still alive, she had the possibility of trading puppies with some other pack. But she had not tried hard enough for a match, or maybe even when she was five, she still was not attractive. Now she was four barren old ugly females. Her schemes would never carry her so high that she would have the pick of a decent litter. In truth her choices were very few. She could go to the Fragmentarium, adopt some dregs. She could run away from herself. Or she could simply die off one by one, until she was nothing, as dead as poor Timor would someday be.
Timor still wasn’t sleeping. This might be one of those rare nights when he stayed awake longer than Belle. Then she noticed that he was shivering. The room must be too cold for him, even with all the blankets. He hadn’t complained, but then he rarely complained. This just proved that there was something seriously wrong with the house’s features. Tomorrow she’d advance her schedule and stuff Timor’s torment down the throat of Nevil Storherte. She and Timor would pry some really nice digs out of this outrage.…
But what if the cold made Timor really sick? He was so fragile, and he could die all at once. She’d be left with nothing.
Okay, something had to be done about this tonight. She could call in and complain—assuming the phones weren’t broken too. She thought for a moment about how these homes were powered. The teachers at the Children’s Academy had talked about that in mind-numbing detail, more than the four-sized Belle could properly remember. Hot water boils into steam, which can “do work.” So a water pipe had been laid all along the Queen’s Road, with an outlet at every house on nearby streets. The skyfolk magic was in the fact that they didn’t need a thousand bonfires to keep the water from freezing—or to make it steam. The starship Oobii had limitless fire somewhere inside and it could deliver the heat of that fire to any point that was visible from its upper hatchway. (Think on that, enemies of the Domain! Belle had often wondered why Ravna and Woodcarver didn’t make more of Oobii’s awesome deadly power. Back when she had still had Ihm, Belle had concluded that the only explanation for the humans’ meekness must be that there was an upper limit on the rate that the heat could be pumped out. She no longer understood the reasoning, but she held the conclusion close in her remaining mind.) Anyway, all the homes near the Queen’s Road had a view down upon Oobii. They should never lack for warmth, and the steam also powered the smaller magics like the lights. And the telephones?
She slipped off the end of Timor’s bed and all of her headed quietly for the stairs. She was mostly on the steps when Timor’s voice came to her, soft and half asleep. “You’re a good person, Belle.”
“Um, yes,” she replied. “G’night.” What did he mean by that?
Now back in the downstairs sitting room, she flicked on the light. The glow lamp came on, but it was so faint she could barely see it. The steam pressure must be near zero. She walked across the room, easily avoiding the knickknacks that she and Timor had collected. There were just too many books, too. She shuffled them out of the way, digging down to the telephone. It was made for both humans and Tines. A foursome could easily manage it. She was still smart enough to voice some righteous indignation on behalf of Timor Ristling. The poor Child could die with these terrible housing conditions! One way or another they were going to get the house they deserved. Just don’t waste your rage on the starship’s call director. The Oobii had a perfect imitation human voice (at least at low frequencies), but it was almost as dumb as a talky singleton. Once she had mistaken the telephone call director for a real human. She’d railed at it for five minutes, uselessly of course. No, she would just say she was Belle Ornrikak, Best Friend to Timor Ristling, with an emergency call to, hmm, Nevil? In any case, save the rant for some real person.
She held down the base and raised the receiver to one of her low-sound ears. There was no wire tone, and none of the little clicks and sputters she had grown used to. She hissed an ultrasonic obscenity. So steam pressure really was necessary for telephone service! Belle stomped around the crowded little room, whacking at whatever was in claw range—but quietly, so it wouldn’t disturb Timor. It would be hours before she could unload her wrath on the incompetents who were running things. A proper politician would use that time to sharpen its rhetoric, but she wasn’t in the mood. And in fact … Belle opened all her mouths and waggled her heads. She could feel the bite of frost on her tongues. It really was getting cold. Without cloaks, even a pack would be uncomfortable.
She hunkered down and tried to think things out. Why would steam pressure go away? Well, because the water wasn’t hot anymore! Maybe Oobii had screwed up; maybe it wasn’t targeting the heaters in this area. Since she didn’t hear anyone out in the street, complaining, the failure might be just affecting this one house. She could just go up the street and ask around. Maybe Timor could stay overnight at one of the houses that still had heat.
Belle sat in the dark for several minutes, painfully trying to figure the pros and cons of the scheme. Such an emergency move in the middle of the night would certainly prove how seriously Timor had been abused. But she was very afraid that someone like Ravna or Nevil might use it as an excuse to permanently move Timor in with others.
That thought should have vetoed any plan to get help from the neighbor Children. But now, where Belle was sitting nearest to the window, she was chilled. All this strategy is worthless, if Timor dies. The thought was strangely terrifying, even worse than the silence of mind she’d felt in Ihm’s last days.
Belle stood up, pulled her cloaks tight around her bodies. As she filed out the house’s back door, she was already plotting just how she should put the situation to the neighbors. They were Children, a married couple. She didn’t remember their names. In fact, she had done her best to keep them out of Timor’s way. Now she would have to be nicey-nice.
She latched the door behind her—and was immediately struck by the quality of the air. This cold might be deadly to an unprotected human, but it wasn’t that bad for a winter night. The clouds blocked out any possibility of aurora or starlight or moonlight, but she could feel a thick fog all around her, the humidity bringing a profound silence to all the upper reaches of sound. There was also a new sound, a hissing, low-pitched and mechanical. She had a moment of prideful insight. Maybe Oobii was still sending its ray to the local heater—but there was some leak that was stealing steam before it could get in the house. I might even be able to fix this!
She walked around the side of their little house, trying to imagine just how a fix might be accomplished. Her negativity was complaining like it always did. She really didn’t know anything about steam technology, much less leak-fixing. But she could easily sound out the leak. Maybe she could just push a proper-sized rock into the hole.
So dark, so silent in the higher sounds. Except for the hiss of the leak there were no sounds but her own breathing and her paws on the ice. Without echo location she was reduced to feeling her away along like some dumb deaf human.
She slid down the gully on the north side of the house. The leak was just a yard or two ahead, almost at ground level. Right here there was faint illumination from a street lamp way up the street. It glinted off something stringy, hanging from the wall above her. It was the house telephone line. Cut.
She took a step or two more before the implications hit her. Then for a second she froze in terror. Living with all this sky magic made you forget the life and death things you learned in your earlier life. Fog masks mindsound. In olden days, fog was weather’s arbitrary contribution to war and treachery. Now all that ambushers need do was puncture a steam pipe and they could have all the fog they wanted.
Belle quivered with the effort to see and hear. What could she do? Killers could be all around. But they hadn’t acted. Maybe if she just ignored the silence they would let her be. Surely they didn’t care about a worthless pack of four.
She turned, casually she hope it looked, though two of her started to turn in the wrong direction, straining to run off to the street below the house. As she returned to the back door, she played a human humming tune, sounds pitched low enough to pass through this fog. She strained for the echoes and at the same time listened way higher up for some telltale of Tinish thought. Now that she was searching, the clues all came together, the echoes of flesh and the faint skirling of mind. She could even see some silhouettes of heads against the dim white fields of the snows uphill. There was one pack nearby, though it might be as small as four. Perhaps one or two more packs lurked at the edge of the snow.
And still they didn’t act. If she turned again, she could walk off into the street. They could get what they wanted.
And what was that? The intruders circled the back of the little house. Timor? They wanted Timor? Why, why, why? But now they had him alone, and all she need do was walk away.
Or she could scream so loud that everyone in the neighborhood would come running. Maybe would come running.
She dithered a second more, slow of thought as always. Then one overriding thought united her. No one steals my Timor.
She gave out a shriek so loud that it would have pierced the eardrums of any human standing nearby. “HELP HELP HELP,” were the Samnorsk words. As the nearest pack charged her, she realized that it was eight. The noise of her scream echoed back at her revealing the shapes and gaits of the attacker. It had been ten years, but she recognized the villain! Chitiratifor. She would have screamed that name aloud, a single Tinish chord, but something flashed and Orn dissolved in pain. Orn’s head flew down on the rocks. The rest of her was surrounded, awash in blood and noise. Maybe she was two. One.
And could only think to scream, “TIMOR!”
• • •
That night, Ravna was in her office aboard Oobii until very late. To Nevil and his snoop programs, she was working hard on her farm assignment. In fact, she was using Oobii to check everything she could imagine about Flenser’s accusations. Even if Nevil had scams that didn’t involve using Oobii, she still knew his comings and goings and could monitor all the electromagnetic noise in the area. If he was relaying through the orbiter, there would be correlations. She drummed idly on her desk, watching the analysis for blockages and search decision requests. It was annoying to have the power to grab more computing resources—and not dare to do so. Another hour, though, should be enough. She’d have results to show Jo and Pilgrim. They should be back from the Cold Valley lab this evening with the latest from Scrupilo’s icy fab. Those results rated a big celebration. Instead, the three of them would probably spend the evening worrying about Flenser and Nevil.
A little flag popped up. “Guidance request: Widen relevance window to include local anomalies?” One of the older heating towers up on Starship Hill was failing—at least in Oobii’s infrared view. The first-built towers had never been very reliable, and she had told the ship to track their decline. So why was it bothering her now? She brought up an explanation: Okay, no physical danger, but this was going to leave people in the cold unless somebody took action. It was the sort of thing Nevil & Co. should be on top of. Maybe she could handle it, just tell Nevil that the warning message had somehow been misrouted to her. Another flag appeared, reporting telephone failures. Strange. Ravna couldn’t imagine a connection between the two problems—
She heard shouting downstairs; usually the ship suppressed game station noise better than that. Moments later, someone was pounding on her office door. Her displays automatically cut over to the agriculture research she was supposed to be doing.
“Ravna, we need you!” Someone—it sounded like Heida Øysler—was slamming against the wall so hard that the wood fasteners were cracking.
“Ravna!” That was Heida, and even louder than usual.
It wasn’t till hours later that she remembered the perfection of Tinish mimicry; this was Heida or some pack. In the here and now, she simply popped open the door.
It really was Heida. She grabbed Ravna’s arm and dragged her into the hallway.
“You gotta help us. Right now!”
“What? What?” said Ravna as Heida pulled her toward the stairs.
“Geri Latterby, she’s gone!” said Heida.
Down on the main floor now. The few kids present were clustered around someone bundled in outdoor clothing, sitting at one of the desks. Øvin Verring turned, saw Ravna. “You got her!”
Now Ravna recognized the seated figure. It was Elspa Latterby. The kids parted before Ravna, letting her near. The girl’s head was bent forward. She had vomited all over the desk.
Ravna touched her shoulder. “Elspa?”
The girl looked up. The left side of her face was scraped and she was bleeding from near her eye. It looked like she had fallen on her face. “Geri … we were almost home. Bunch o’ raggedy Tines jumped us. They took Geri. Beasly ’n’ I chased ’em … I couldn’t keep up.”
Ravna brushed her hand gently across Elspa’s hair. “We’ll get her back, Elspa.” She looked around at the angry, frightened faces. Run-ins with fragments were an occasional problem. There had even been a robbery three years ago. But an abduction? Okay then. “Lisl? You’re our favorite medic. Please help Elspa.”
The young woman had been hovering in the background, too shy to push her way forward. But Lisl Armin was one of the few who had really believed Ravna’s rants about the importance of first aid. With Lisl, and Oobii’s diagnostics, Elspa should be okay. As for Geri, “Øvin, start phoning around. There should be an auto list at the top of Emergency Procedures. We can set up a search—”
“The landlines, they’re down.” Øvin was wall-eyed.
Of course. “You’ve radioed Woodcarver and Nevil?”
“Y-yes,” he said, “Woodcarver is sending out the city troops. Nevil is—”
“Hei! Everybody!” It was Bili Yngva, standing at the outer entrance to the Meeting Place. He waved a radio at them. “I’m coordinating with Nevil. He’s spotted the Tropicals; they’re running south!”
The Children swarmed toward the exit.
• • •
You can’t be two places at once. Ravna took a chance, and left the Oobii to accompany the Children.
Queen’s Road ran parallel to the cliffs, gently descending toward the top of Margrum Climb. There were town houses along the road, their pole lamps bright circles of light. A trickle of Children joined their group, and soon they were overtaken by packs of Woodcarver’s city troops.
The Children were full of rumors, stories of attacks all over town.
Bili and his radio had something closer to hard facts—but not very many of them. “Yes, there’ve been several attacks on Children and city packs,” he said.
“Who?” that was the shout from several corners of the crowd.
“We don’t know yet! Geri and Elspa, but Elspa is okay. Edvi Verring and his Best Friend.”
Up ahead, Øvin Verring stumbled. Edvi was his cousin. Øvin twisted around and pushed his way close to Bili. “Are they okay?”
Bili lowered his voice. “We don’t know, Øvin. Both Edvi and Geri are missing. Parts of Dumpster and Beasly are dead or missing.”
“Sons of bitches!” said someone. “Best Friend” packs ranged from opportunists to groupies—to truly best friends, very much like Pilgrim. Ravna remembered Beasly and Dumpster. They had been ideal companions for the youngest.
“Look,” Bili shouted. “All the witnesses agree the attackers were Tropical nutcases. We’re on this. Nevil is almost down to the embassy.” The same direction the rest of them—and the Tinish troops around them—were going.
They were leaving the area of newest construction. The last lamppost marked the south end of Ravna’s own house. There were no lights in the windows, and the agrav was missing from its customary place behind the house.
Ravna stepped across the frozen ruts. “Let me borrow the radio for a moment, Bili.”
Yngva stared down at the gadget clutched in his hand. “I have to keep in touch with Nevil.”
She held out her hand. “Just for a moment.”
The conversation had not slowed Bili down, but he looked around at the nearby Children. He was not as smooth as Nevil, but he could recognize an audience when he saw one. “Okay, but please keep it brief.”
He handed the device to Ravna. It was one of Scrupilo’s analog radios, not a proper commset. Not that it mattered much now; Ravna only had to get through to the ship. Fortunately, what had to be done was well within the authority Nevil had granted her:
She had Oobii ping all the existing radios, repeat back their locations. Yes, Nevil was already on the grounds of the Tropicals’ Embassy. Woodcarver was on a wagon, driving down the inner road. She’d reach the embassy before Ravna. Scrupilo was at North End, trying to get airborne. Johanna and Pilgrim … their agrav was still aground at the Cold Valley lab. She punched a message through to it, ending with “… and we’ll need some active search.” She asked Oobii to relay all priority items.
“Please, Ravna. Nevil needs this radio for the rescue work and it’s already low on charge.”
As she handed it back, Oobii’s voice began babbling from the device. Bili listened for a second, then announced. “Everybody! More casualties. Belle Ornrikak is dead. The Tropicals grabbed Timor!”
Belle was the least known of the casualties. Half a year ago, Timor might have counted as the least of the human losses. Tonight … a groan went around the Children. Some of them started running, trying to keep up with the soldier packs who were steadily passing by. But the frozen, rutted ground was not kind to spindly two-legs who wanted to run. These kids were just causing a traffic jam. Ravna caught up, persuaded them to keep to a fast walking pace, at the edge of the road. Even Heida slowed down.
They were beyond most of the town houses now. Only a few of the kids carried lamps, but Ravna persuaded one squad of packs to stay with them. Their oil torches lit the way.
Tonight, that light was really needed, even by humans. The sky was completely dark, without aurora or moon or stars. She hadn’t checked the weather earlier, but the cloud cover must be thick and complete. They walked on about a thousand meters. Bili reported—actually Oobii relayed—that there were no more casualties; all the other Children were accounted for. Jo and Pilgrim were airborne and coming south.
Now at the southern horizon, there might be a break in the clouds. There was light, shifting in much the same slow way as the aurora. The kids were pointing to it now, “Strange color!”
Heida climbed the drifts by the road, stood precariously at the crest for a moment. “That light. It’s a fire!”
There was only one large structure this side of the Margrum dropoff: the Tropicals’ embassy.
• • •
The fire had not been large. It looked like only one area near the top of the central tower had burned. In the troops’ torchlight, it was hard to see much damage. The main gate was open. Two packs in military line formation guarded the entrance. Four reserve packs were visible in the shadows. Numerous ordinary packs and some Children were already here. They milled around, blocked by the troops from going further.
Ravna walked toward the gate, followed by Øvin and Heida and the others from Oobii.
Bili strode ahead, talking on the radio. “Right. Okay.” He stopped just short of the guard line and waved everybody back. “I’m sorry guys, they’re still gathering clues in there.”
Ravna took a step or two more, till she was face to face with Yngva. “What about Timor and Geri and Edvi? They could be in there.” The words just popped out; she really wasn’t trying to make trouble.
Bili lowered his voice. “Help keep these people back, Ravna. Please. Be responsible.”
“Let Ravna through, Mr. Yngva. The Queen asked especially to see her.” It was a pack in the shadows, behind the guard line. One of Woodcarver’s chamberlains.
Maybe Bili frowned, but the light was dim and the expression quickly passed. He waved her through, then turned to shout to the crowd: “Okay, Ravna is going to help us out here. She’d really appreciate it if you’d all give us some room to work, folks.”
Ravna didn’t stop to contradict him, but I could learn to dislike Bili Yngva.
The chamberlain and Gannon Jorkenrud guided Ravna back into the depths of the embassy. Both had lamps, and Jorkenrud was waving his light all around. His voice seemed both angry and triumphant. “We nailed the bastards.” He had an axe—a bloody axe?—in his other hand.
This was the first time she’d been in the so-called “embassy.” The sanctum was less and more than the stories. She saw random pieces of metal and polished stone, items chipped away from public buildings and turned into interior decorations. The walls were bare of acoustic quilting, scarred with holes that might mark recent removals. Trash lay in various depths. The ceilings were almost high enough for her to walk standing upright, but the paths through the trash weren’t wide enough for pack privacy and there were no turnouts for packs to courteously pass. Here and there, through openings in the walls, she could see Woodcarver’s troopers searching further corridors.
They passed doors that had been smashed in. Here the air was warm and humid, smelling of body odor and incense. The chamberlain led them up a round of stairs that circled the central tower. Gannon came right behind, still talking angrily about how “we done ’em good tonight.”
The stairs ended at a door with a shattered lock. The chamberlain pulled the door open a crack, and a breeze swept past them into the room beyond. There was a gobble of Interpack between the chamberlain and some pack inside. Ravna thought she heard a chord that meant contradictorily “too crowded” and “come in.” The chamberlain waved snouts at Gannon and Ravna. “You two go in, please. I’ll stay out here.” Some of him streamed down the steps, the members spreading themselves as far as they could think. The one at the bottom of the stairs could talk to the troops on main floor.
Ravna and Gannon stepped through. The draft slammed the door shut behind them.
She looked around, taking in the broken windows and the burned fabric hangings. Once upon a time—up until a few minutes ago?—the ceiling had been much lower, with hanging silken canopies. No doubt the place had been as swampy-warm as the rest of the embassy. Now it was cold and smelled of smoke. Woodcarver stood around a pile of rubbish that had tumbled from an armoire. Still-glowing embers smouldered near her feet, but all of her—even the puppy—was looking in Ravna’s direction: “We’ll find Geri/Edvi/Timor.” She spoke the three names as a chord. “I promise, Ravna.”
Nevil nodded. “We know who did this and we have a good idea where they are now.” He wore the ship’s remaining HUD tiara, but away from that, his face was sooty. Behind the tiara, his eyes were a little wide, the first time she had ever seen horror on his face. “The Tropicals must have been planning this for some tendays. They had perfect knowledge of the three kids’ habits and their Best Friends.” He kicked savagely at whatever was behind the papers, then recovered himself, brushing at his face with a faintly trembling hand. “I’m coordinating with Jo and Pilgrim. They have the agrav flying, looking for the kidnappers. Scrupilo says he’ll have Eyes Above in the air in another hour or so.”
Ravna walked across the room, looked down at what Nevil had kicked: a pack member. Two pack members. One lay in an enormous pool of blood. The other was stretched out, as though in mid-leap. Now both lay motionless, beyond any punishment. In life, they had been part of something that thought well of itself. Few of the Tropicals dressed so royally. She glanced around at Woodcarver.
“That’s two of Godsgift,” said the Queen.
“These were the only ones left when Gannon got here.”
From behind Ravna, Jorkenrud said, “All the rest must have taken off at least an hour earlier. They took their sleighs, everything.”
Nevil glanced at Gannon. “Gannon didn’t know that at the time, but—I take full responsibility. I messed up. There was a chance the kids were here; we couldn’t wait for Woodcarver—”
Gannon interrupted. “Look. I didn’t do anything wrong. We busted in, chased what we thought was a whole pack up into the tower here. The critter said they had the kids, said he’d cut their throats. We could smell fire in here, so we busted in and he attacked. We just killed two of him—and then we realized that’s all he was!”
Ravna turned to look at him. “And there were no Children either?” she said.
Gannon glared at her and visibly bit back some angry retort. “No, nobody.”
She walked over to where Woodcarver was nosing around the corpses. Ravna had never liked Godsgift, but—“I really didn’t know packs could do this sort of thing.”
Woodcarver shrugged, but Ravna guessed she was trying to look unimpressed: the Puppy from Hell had a kind of dazed expression in its eyes. “Tropicals are crazy asses,” said Woodcarver. She nosed at the one lying in a pool of blood. “I think this was the pack’s verbal center; it was a fixed point in their recent swapping. And these two always paid more attention than the others to written materials.”
Nevil looked surprised. “I didn’t know that. Downstairs, there were several smaller fires—blubber oil tossed around and lit, though nothing spread far enough to bring the whole place down.” He looked around at the charred papers. “Maybe at the last moment they realized there were secrets left behind.”
Woodcarver’s heads turned toward him. She said, “Together, these two might have been bright enough to decide what to burn first.” She shook herself. “So Godsgift maimed himself to keep a secret.”
• • •
A bit of good fortune: the cloud cover broke, and the next real storm was two days out to sea. Scrupilo’s great airship was still ten days short of its maiden voyage, but Scrup managed to get his little electric airboat into the search, circling out to the limits of its motor charge. Air search beyond that depended on the agrav skiff and the very-low-resolution pictures from the orbiter. Woodcarver’s Domain covered millions of hectares of snowfields, naked rock, and channel ice, but clues littered the bloody snows where Geri and Edvi and Timor had been taken, and not all the witnesses were dead. The best ground trackers searched all the nearby forest trails. Video from the orbiter guided them to the most likely places further out, where mountain farms were scarcely more than wilderness marked with property boundaries.
Meantime, Johanna and Pilgrim accomplished what no dirigible could: they shadowed the main party of fleeing Tropicals. They ghosted along within clouds and behind mountain walls, watching every move the Tropicals made. The mob had fled before any of the actual kidnappers could have made it to the embassy—but there might be a rendezvous.…
The main group mushed on along the East Forest Road, not pausing for any rendezvous. The embassy Tropicals had always looked so stupid, playing with their huge sleighs in the most inappropriate weather. Now for once, the weather and the terrain were ideal for a mad sleigh ride. When they got over High Knob Pass, they all hopped aboard and took a single long slalom, interrupted only by occasional overturnings and mayhem collisions. Even so, the next blizzard caught up with them as they came barrelling down upon the East Gate border garrison, their eight remaining sleighs crowded with all who had so far survived. They smashed through the Domain’s border garrison on the East Gate, causing casualties but no total deaths.
In principle, the Tropicals were now beyond Domain jurisdiction. In fact, that was where their pursuers finally moved to stop them.
• • •
Within hours of the East Gate debacle, Johanna and Pilgrim were back with Ravna, up on the second floor of the town house. Outside, the blizzard was a roaring blow, white swirling just beyond the windows. Inside was snug and warm. On the table by the windows was the cargo Ravna had been waiting for from the Cold Valley, ten thousand adders fabricated on a fifty-centimeter disk of pressed carbon. These must still be delivered to Scrupilo for testing, but Jo and Pilgrim’s mission up north had delivered the images for the next step: true processors and memory devices. If these adders tested out, the way was clear for what Ravna and Scrupilo had worked ten years to create.
The delivery should have been the joyous high point of Ravna’s year. Instead, when Jo had presented her with the carbon black disk, Ravna had barely taken the time to tilt it in the light, to admire the nearly microscopic patterning. She would get the devices to Scrupilo soon enough; he would do his testing. Meantime, three of the youngest Children were gone. Three packs were mostly murdered.
Ravna sat with Jo and Pilgrim on that beautiful carpet, and felt as cold and miserable as if she’d been in the blizzard outside.
Maybe Johanna had been crying, but all that was left was the strain that showed on her face. “We would have let the Tropicals run right on into the wilderness, except that the storm had caught up with us.” She had reported most of this by radio. She’d be saying it again tomorrow morning when all the Children got together at the New Meeting Place. She punched angrily at the big pillow she held on her lap. Pilgrim was stretched out around her, also looking tired and unperky.
“We rescued no one,” Jo said. “We discovered nothing. The only good thing that came out of this was getting to work with Jefri. He handled the ground chase, and for the first time in years we really cooperated.”
“Jefri is the best of all the humans at woodcraft,” said Pilgrim. “He and Amdi came down from Smeltertop, watching all the way for signs of small escaping parties. They were just ahead of the main group of Tropicals when the storm hit.”
“So between him and Woodcarver’s troops, the Tropicals were boxed in?” said Ravna. She had followed the chase with most of the other Children, just watching the comms from Oobii.
“Yeah, we really had them trapped, and if we didn’t stop them, they could lose us in the storm.” Jo swatted her pillow again. “We should have captured a lot more of them, though. Damn that Gannon Jorkenrud. He just charged on through, whacking Tropicals. I’m gonna complain about that.”
Ravna nodded. In fact, Johanna had already complained loudly and publicly, and her complaints had been heard by almost one hundred Children on Oobii. Jorkenrud’s attack had been ineffectual, except as it forced a complete loss of coherence among the Tropicals. “Yes,” said Ravna, “we saw.” Via the camera carried by Woodcarver. “The Tropicals were hunkered down around their sleighs, almost clumped into rational groups. Then Gannon and company came in—”
“Yeah! And poof, the Tropicals ran off in all directions, as singletons.” Johanna glared at nowhere in particular for a moment. “No way could we catch many of them in the storm.” A shadow passed across her face. “Tropical singletons in a northern blizzard. I’ll bet they’re dead now.”
“Jefri and Amdi brought nets,” said Pilgrim. “They managed to snag a few.” He shook a head wonderingly. “What an unlikely team they make. Jefri is almost as good in the woods as a pack—and Amdiranifani is a pudgy, overly nice genius who doesn’t even like to eat live food. I’ll bet the nets were Amdi’s idea. Between them, they caught more Tropicals than Woodcarver’s troops and Nevil’s idiots.”
“What did you find in the sleighs?”
Johanna shook her head. “We’re gonna have to wait for Nevil’s big meeting to learn that. We were still in the air, and Amdi and Jefri were busy with their nets. It was mainly Gannon and company on the wagons.… I swear, even after ten years Down Here, they still seem to think that the world is built just for them. If objects don’t have intentional response, or at least voice command obedience, they figure they’re broken. These bozos ended up using axes to make kindling of the sleighs and cargo boxes.”
“I saw some of what they spilled out on the ground. It was a jumble, but here and there I saw rainbows.”
“Big deal,” said Johanna. “For years, the Tropicals have been stealing tech items, mostly glittering garbage. I want some real clues. Where are Geri and Edvi and Timor? How can we get them back…” her voice became soft and sad, “… or can we ever get them back?” She looked up at Ravna. “I think Jefri is as upset as I’ve ever seen him, even when he was little. This takes us back to Murder Meadows.”