Part 5

All Roads

           That's the last time I throw around the term 'primitive society' so frivolously. Agarin's doctoring isn't so much that of a hack-and-slash 13th century feudal surgeon as it is a modern physician's touch. The man might not know ligase from lymphoma, but his work puts Galen to shame. I must say, I was not encouraged when I found him deliberately culturing my innards with God knows what kind of microscopic communities, and being confined to a bed with fever for days, maybe weeks, did not improve my sentiments, but here I am. The prokaryotic carnival that he cultivated didn't spread or go sour, and by the time their unicellular festivities had run their course the wound was all but sealed. It's a sophisticated and novel method of treatment - a sort of bacterial bum rush to fill up the ecological niche that is the wound with innocent species before something nasty and pathogenic can get a good foothold. I know I'm retreading old ground, but the technology disparity still amazes me. It's as though I've found Vikings with submarines and snowmobiles.
           While bedridden, I had a chance to meet some of Agarin's… well, I don't really know what to call them. Subjects, I suppose, though he's too kind-hearted to be a real dictator. Not really sure what that relationship is - shaman and tribe, maybe. They're mostly nice enough people. I like the children most - not so much out of maternal instinct as simply because they look like big pudgy teddy bears. There are maybe a half-dozen of them. For a long time I was too sick to do anything except lie quietly or sleep - and even then I kept having these terrible hallucinatory nightmares about crashing in Oz and being dismembered by the Lion halfway down the golden brick road - but while I did have my wits about me I preferred talking to the kids. I like children; they're naturally inquisitive. You would think that given my experience with hrasi young I would flee out the door screaming, wound be damned, but I am a slow learner.
           Now that I'm better, though, I almost wish I were sick again. Being strong enough to do useful work has just reminded me that I don't do anything around here. At least Agarin treats the ill and sometimes lends a hand out in their fields. I suppose I baby-sit, to some limited extent, but I still have the guilt of the idle.
           Fortunately, I have some ideas. I'm never really going to be much of a physical asset around here; with the possible exception of long-distance swimming or running, there's nothing I can do they can't do better. My only real contribution is going to be the extensive plagiarism of Western civilization. It'd be nice if I had a solid background in history or civil engineering, but my knowledge of archaic technologies pretty much ends at the telegram. Damned if I know how to build something as simple and elegant as a cotton gin or a doorknob. Still, I have basic understandings of how most things work, not to mention solid grounding in the principles of engineering and physics. That's got to count for something. I'm thinking about starting off easy - something basic but useful. A printing press, maybe.
           Now if only I had any idea how that worked…
          
           -Dr. Rachel Mitchell, diary excerpt from 12/24/2182
          
           "All right, so here's my first contribution to the common good." Back propped up by a straw-stuffed pillow, Agarin sat beside her in the small house they'd appropriated. His eyes flickered between the swinging stone and her thin-lined smirk; his ears bobbled.
           "It's a stick tied to string tied to a rock."
           She held up the stick by the free end and pointed to the rock with a self-assured nod of the chin. "Ah, but it's a special stick tied to a string tied to a rock. This is a weather rock. Put this up on the outer wall above your window and it'll tell you the weather."
           "I see. And how does it [] this?"
           "Well, you just look out the window at the rock. If it's pulling the string to one side, it's windy. If it's not casting a shadow, it's dark. If it's white, it's snowy. If the rock is wet, it's raining." She paused to think. "Oh, and if you can't see the rock at all, it's foggy - that, or your house is burning." Agarin made a noise suspiciously like a groan and buried his face in her shoulder.
           "And I was [] [] that you had made something useful." But she only laughed.
           "You liked it. I know you did. Besides, it's a scientific model, see?" She tapped one side and it swung back and forth. "A pendulum."
           "A what?"
           "Pendulum. Each swing uses the same time -takes the same time, I mean." He flagged one ear and frowned in what Rachel was coming to understand as an inquisitive gesture; she shrugged and slid an arm around him. "Tell you later."
           "So have you thought about anything we might use? Something a bit more []?"
           "Well, I was thinking about using a rain-powered water wheel to operate a giant toothbrush, but then I thought, 'Rahkl, start small'…." She looked for a reaction; Agarin stared at her in utter incomprehension.
           "Tooth…brush?"
           "A joke. Yes, I just made that word up - you know, the brush for your teeth?" She set down the weather rock and mimed brushing her teeth. "Toothbrush?" He frowned.
           "I have never heard of a 'tooth brush'."
           "You don't clean your teeth?"
           "We do not have teeth brushes."
           She sagged. "Great. My big historical contribution to hrasi society? Dental hygiene. Rahkl Mitchell - inventor of the toothbrush." But Agarin shook his head and flicked an ear downward with a grin.
           "No. The weather rock."
          

---v---

           A medieval hrasi village was no place for the idle. Rachel would have guessed as much about a society that didn't even have a word for automation, but she wouldn't have expected the scope to which it was true. As soon as the downpour stopped every adult in the community went out to work. Even Agarin left. What they were doing Rachel didn't know: harvesting maybe, or trying to salvage drowned crops. Incessant drizzle reduced the ground to a giant layer of mud on bedrock, but they were out there anyway. She looked out through the window and sometimes saw a few children splashing around in the rain. Otherwise the area was eerily deserted.
           The worst part of it was the boredom. Unlike Agarin's castle, her borrowed cabin was about as intellectually engaging as a jail cell. There were no books to speak of - no writing at all. On the walls there were a few intricately-patterned cloth hangings, and the bedspread featured a ratty but well-ordered and relatively interesting quilt, but that was the full extent of the previous tenants' artistic collection. There was an aging deck of cards in a drawer, but with what looked like six or seven suits and a great handful of cards that had no terran analogues, it made for a fairly contrived and frustrating game of solitaire.
           Still, she passed the time. Someone had been decent enough to fetch her things and keep them from being completely soaked, and Agarin had very magnanimously given her a small blank pocketbook - a precious commodity anywhere in a pre-industrial society, but doubly so on an unknown island far from civilization - so she had time to consolidate her journal into a form more durable than a bag full of cardboard bits and candy wrappers. In the margin she scribbled off a few tiny illustrations - Iluin, the planet from space, the harbor, the lizard birds, Agarin's tower. She was an abysmal artist, but it amused her.
           When the writing was done she picked up her rifle and set it down at the foot of the bed. It probably needed to be cleaned. Not that she really knew anything about friearms, but if it had moving parts it had the potential to jam, and her recent sea-going adventure had convinced her that brawling with hrasi was brilliantly suicidal. The instruction booklet laid out the process sufficiently if not lucidly, and so for an hour she sat surrounded by little bits of gleaming metal, oiling pins and sanding burrs out of the loading chamber. Reassembly took less time, but it was still a laborious process. When she was done she put the unloaded weapon to her shoulder and tried the trigger a few times; it went down perfectly, and the gun clicked as she hoped it was supposed to. With a noncommittal grunt she tossed it aside.
           Across the room the door opened and a small cloaked figure opened. It was Aury; she recognized the feet that poked out from the heavy folds of slick oilcloth. "Hello," she said softly.
           "Hello." He pulled back the hood of his cloak and then tried to undo the broach that pinned his cloak together at the front. It didn't budge and he struggled with it, biting his lower lip in a surprisingly human expression. Lightning lit the cobalt sky, followed by a burst of thunder as the rain spattered on the stone floor. Rachel slid off the bed and shut the door, then knelt beside the dripping child; she undid his cloak and peeled it off him, then hung it on a small wooden chair in the corner.
           Aury sans raingear was a much smaller and much drier sight. He wiped his feet off on a threadbare rug near the wall, then spun around and jumped up to the foot of her bed. Rachel smiled. "Enjoying your day off?"
           "Off? Day… off what?"
           She laughed. "Nothing. I mean, are you having fun today?"
           "Yes. Me and Reiil [] the [], and I got him." He looked at the rifle lying on the side of the bed and he perked a bit. "What's that?"
           "The weapon of my people," she said quickly, then stepped in to intercept a curious pair of hands. Rachel snatched it away as he raised the end of the barrel up to his eye to look inside. "Don't touch it; it's dangerous."
           "How [] work?"
           "Like a…ah, a…." Rachel leaned the rifle against the bed and mimed drawing a bow. She dropped her drawing hand and made a flying arrow sound. "Pffphft." Aury blinked.
           "A []?"
           "Tha-our? thaor? Bow? Yes? Like that, but better. The… uh, the things - the things that fly-"
           "[]."
           "-yes, those: they don't…." She snaked her arm up and down in a parabola. "Don't go in a part-circle. They go in a line. Like - like where you look, you point." A blank stare. "Never mind. It is like a bow, but metal, and better." Then she smiled and held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "Very small arrows."
           "Oh." Aury leaned forward. "Do you have any food?" Was this what having children would be like? Maybe it was for the best that she was stranded far from any of her own kind.
           "Sure." She dragged her pack up onto the bed and began emptying its contents out, looking forlornly for a bit of candy or some such. Given the fare available on the island, pretty much anything that wouldn't kill him would do.
           "What is [] this []?"
           "All of my things. All that isn't gone."
           "Gone? What [] []?" A pause in mid-rummage.
           "Made a mistake. Well, a few mistakes. So a lot of my people and my things burned. But not me, and not these. I suppose that's good, fa?" She found a thin tubular package and smiled at the label. "Here you are." She opened the wrapper and took a small bite, savoring the dusty chalk sweetness before handing it to Aury.
           "What is it?"
           "Freeze-dried ice cream, the one big perk of being an astronaut. Strawberry, my favorite." And in hrasi: "just try it." Aury nibbled cautiously. "Good?"
           "It's []. I like it. Can I… can I [] it all?" Rachel waved a hand.
           "Take it."
           "Thank you." He tucked his feet up and gnawed on the ice cream, looking up at her steadily. "[] Rahkl, [] have a bow?"
           "Just to be safe. I don't know a lot of people, but I have friends, and they have not-friends. I don't think I could fight a hrasi, so I have my - my bow." She shuffled through the pack. "Look at all of this," she grumbled in English. "Why did I just lug this crap halfway across Narnia? 'Field Guide to Poisonous Fauna'? 'Edible Plants of Asia and the Americas'? I don't need that. GPS, like hell."
           "What []?" Aury asked, ears wavering.
           "Nothing." She got an odd look from him as she sorted through the things in her pack. None of the items were really so bad - even the tent and sleeping bag were lightweight - but there was so much of it, and so much packaging. Damned wasteful to drag so much useless cardboard and plastic up into orbit, especially when that weight displaced extra food or medical supplies. Minus the dross, the pack really wasn't that bad - just a slightly overstuffed duffel maybe three quarters of its original weight. "I've been carrying a lot that I'd have done better without."
           "Why?"
           "I don't know." She picked her dingy survival vest and heavy cloth cloak out of the corner. They were warm and dry; pulling them on was like wrapping up in a blanket. She crouched down in the corner there and donned her last clean pair of socks - they were funny things, laced at the top because the cat tailor had no idea how to reproduce the elasticity of the originals - then put her boots on and tightened them down. "I think I am going to go for a walk."
           "Now?"
           "Yes."
           "But it's raining [] hard." She nodded.
           "It is. But it's just water. Anyway, I've been in here for weeks. Do you know what that's like?"
           "I guess not." He paused, then brightened. "I'll go with you! I can show you the []. We just [] it last spring."
           "The what?"
           "The []. It does our [] for us. It's at the bottom of the island; it has to be so the water can feed it."
           Rachel frowned. A dam, maybe? Here? "Yes, I think I'd like that." She hefted up her pack, ensured that it was well sealed, then slung it over her shoulder and picked up her rifle.
           "Why are you taking that?" her young friend asked. "The island only has us."
           "I saw the big flying animals you have here." She smiled. "And I am not very good at running."
          

---v---

           Mah'sur were strong, tough travelers. Hrasi, less so. Their grazer companion shuffled around the tree they'd lashed him to, brimming with motion, as though he'd somehow missed the day's trek across the mountains. "He looks ready to go - impatient, even."
           "Gods, but please, no more. If I'd known how sharp the rocks were up here, I'd have taken that offer for another few animals." Atra shook her head.
           "That was nothing…. I used to walk up and down this mountain range, back and forth, every day. Did it for years." She rolled over on her stomach, splayed out on their insubstantial bedding, stretching muscles and twitching like mad as all the sores and knots worked their ways out.
           No fire - too risky in the night. It left them with a scraggly nest of cold, sweat-damped clothes and gossamer-thin blanketing that held warmth like ice. Water was not a problem, thankfully - they'd passed a well-known spring only a few days back - but without fire dinner became a handful of seed and some stringy meat from a too-trusting rodent they'd befriended earlier. He was mildly disappointed, but it was nothing beside the euphoria of being on his way and out of crisis. A wonder then that Atra looked so distant. Tense face, swept-back ears, small pursed lips: they were moody signs. He sat legs ajar next to her and rubbed at her back, kneading handfuls of hide and dense, taught muscle.
           "Hrnnn…. Lower," she murmured, and as he worked his way down her back: "No, I mean feet - gods, I'm sore." Her tail batted at him as he worked, and he beat it back with a sort of lazy, sliding parry. "Hnnnn…."
           "Used to do this every day, did you?" Raw, tender underpad showed between rips in her footpads; he rubbed down the arches of her feet and dabbed the tears and blisters on each one with his softest touch. She rumbled appreciatively. "Should've thought to take some salve and bandages. Well, but I'm new to these parts."
           "It's been a long time since I had the freedom to walk so far. It's been a long time since I had the strength to walk for more than an hour."
           "I can't imagine living on a leash."
           "I'm glad," she said. "I wouldn't want you to. Hai, enough." Atra twisted enough at the waist to grab him by the shirt and pull him down beside her. She was warm and dry and his animal senses soothed in a wash of scents that registered as friend, and yet something was wrong. It was awkward - she was unbearably still.
           "Something is wrong?" Muscle and fur brushed against him as she wormed herself into his arms. A small 'no,' not vocal but with a flicker of ear tuft across his throat. "You don't seem well."
           "Thinking" came the answer. Then a great letting out of air, a deflation: she became a weight. "What would you do if it all just broke apart around you? Just slipped away like a leaf in a stream? All your ambitions, all your dreams, all of it - just emptied out on the sand."
           "Would? What would I do?" He chuffed quietly. "I'm doing it. One simply continues. Finds a new path, or continues the old one - goals are one of few things that are truly inviolable."
           "You wouldn't… wouldn't want to stop?" Quiet, serious tones: he frowned and hugged her.
           "No. In the absence of hope, perhaps, but I don't think such a circumstance exists."
           "That's only because you can't imagine living on a leash."
           "Even then I was there for you."
           "You almost weren't."
           He flinched, stretched over her backside to look her in the eyes. They flitted away from him, stared at the ground. "Is that what this is about? I'm sorry. I was terrified at the time."
           "I didn't mean that. Well, I mean, I… I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to say that. - But you wouldn't, wouldn't just end yourself?" Vauhya's ears flattened and he couldn't get them up again.
           "Of course not. Other people need me. Besides, you have to believe every dilemma has a good out. Even if you can't see it, have no idea where it is, you still have to trust that it's there."
           She shook her head. "I wish I could."
          

---v---

           "This is amazing."
           "So you like it?" Aury scampered around the first floor catwalk, still bundled up in raingear and looking for all the world like a soggy tailed hobbit. "I think all the rain is making go faster. It's [] much slower."
           "I would think it would rip itself into pieces," she agreed. "Agarin did this?"
           "He [] it. We helped him make it." He grabbed hold up the wooden railing and leaned far over, staring down at the surging foam.
           Creaky, rough hewn planks were laid out radially from the torrent of water, which rushed down in a hissing grey column and frothed against rocks some hundred feet below. The room itself was a half-donut built out from the mountainside, the first floor of what looked from the outside to be a cross between a wooden nautilus and a psychotic's treehouse. The waterfall that ran through at the center was entirely artificial; a small stream had been partially diverted to run through what looked almost like a sealed aqueduct: it opened up above and fell down from there. The design was ingenious - merely shunting the flow of the stream would've meant that a heavy rain might wash the whole structure away, whereas the enclosed stone tunnel that snaked overland limited the amount of water that could enter. It'd been well judged, too - even with the floodwater raging down at full force, the wooden railing was barely wet.
           Next to the entrance was a flight of stairs that led up to a second floor - a maintenance room for the intricate engineering that powered the giant mill across the room. It was a real feat - a single giant tree trunk, shaved and polished down to a perfect cylinder, reached up and through a hole in the ceiling. This leviathan turned with a perpetual background groan, making a full rotation every few seconds. A giant stone ring had been secured around its circumfrence, a disk that extended out about a meter. Immediately below it the trunk ended and in its place was a stone block etched with circular grooves. There was barely a hair's space between the two stone slabs - the workmanship was beyond superb. A small chink in the rotating ring allowed you to add in whole grain at any time, at any point in the grinding cycle, and as you did it would push the ground grain at the end of the cycle into a bowl at the front of the big stone block.
           "This is the only one of this kind?" she asked softly, moving to run her hands across the railing and watch the water etch its mark into the ground far below. As a grain mill she doubted it was alone in the world, but it had a Da Vinciesque design that she imagined might be unique.
           "I don't know," Aury answered. "It's the only one here. Agarin said that we wouldn't have to [] [] anymore after we made this. It was a lot of work - probably more than just [] the [] ourselves, but I like it anyway. It's pretty."
           "It is pretty." Aury nodded.
           "Hey, you want to see something?" He didn't wait for a reply: he dashed up the stairs and disappeared. Rachel smiled fondly and then bounded up after him, pack jostling against the small of her back.
           Up top was just as amazing. Water splashed out of what looked like a giant stone spigot and turned a giant stone waterwheel, whose axle powered a gear that pushed a perpendicular gear, whose axle powered a third. That gear was connected to the gear that ran the mill itself. All of this was crowded up above, so that one could walk about freely with worrying about being ground into cat food. At the far side Aury was near a window - a glass window. Rachel did a double-take at that. The last real window she'd seen had been opposite hard space. She couldn't imagine how precious such a thing was here - even Agarin's citadel didn't sport such luxury. "Come here and look out the []. You can see the whole valley from here - everything but the [] above us." She joined him at the window. The rain blurred the window a bit, and it wasn't as transparent as modern glass, but there was still a beautiful sight out there. The mountainsides, fuzzy with greenery, sloped down and curved inward, shallowing out on long sandy black shores.
           "It's a wonderful sight." Far below a little patch of beachside shone orange, then flickered and died. Rachel squinted. "What's that light down there? Looks like a fire."
           "In this rain?"
           "Well, I don't know. Maybe it's an oil fire. Sure seems bright." Meteor, maybe? She looked down to Aury. "Want to go see?"
          

---v---

           Cities at night didn't sleep; they festered. The noontime chatter of industrious traders and weavers and hunters and glassblowers died out to the creaking of doors, intermittent far off shouts, and the scattered clicking of claws as various nare-do-wells slipped from shadow to shadow. The rich dozed soundly in their homes while the poor curled together in hovels, sleeping lightly and keeping their ears angled towards doors and windows.
           In the walled city buildings had been built on buildings - the city had grown not only outward but up. Old, sprawling, grimy Naman labyrinths were topped with whitewashed limestone structures lined with the brightly colored flags and banners of upscale market vendors; they in turn were capped by the bright marbled palaces and towers of the wealthy. Fluted buttresses, etched pillars, and brittle wooden braces held all the ramshackle constructions together. Bridges of wood and stone laced the sky; stairs roughened the edges of the buildings; ornamented ladders and ramps and simple dirt-packed trough walkways connected the city at all levels.
           The effect was profound. At the top, up in the canopy of their ersatz jungle, the lavish buildings and sky-bound gardens shone a watery blue in the moonlight, and the air was light, the scent of nighttime blooms carried on the breeze. Below, on the ground, the air hung thick with sweat and the stench of the garbage and shit that oozed in a thick sludge down piped gutters and through grated trenches in the road, and the buildings crept up so high and the bridges webbed so tightly that at night the streets were truly black with moonlight shadows and you never saw more than a small stripe of stars. When it rained, the filth drained down the walls, from on high to the earth - pure clear water rained on the merchants while a viscous, muddy syrup streamed down the walls of day-laborers' houses and the water overflowed the long obsolete sewage system, flooding the ground-bound streets with refuse and dung. Crime was rare in the canopy, perpetual on the ground.
           Iluin took the middle road. Much more of the city was open to her that way - she had no qualms about walking across roof beams, support struts, or rotting construction scaffolding. True, she made an easy target from above, but there were guards watching the nobles' manors up top, and no one minded an insomniac wandering the abandoned merchant's quarters. Shadows from Eljun'adan's crazy architecture strung the walls and overhangs like a muss of loose strings. She walked through it all, from slanted roofing to cobblestone bridge to black stone balcony and up the stairs to a widely arched, mid-air thoroughfare. It'd been a while, but she had a fair idea of where she was going. This was up at the northwest edge of the old city, where everything was ancient and where construction had risen five, even six layers deep - buildings here had actually grown into one another.
           A small cubbyhole above her walkway shone greasy orange light out of iron grillwork and leaked the raucous sounds of late-night festivities. She did not remember the name, and there was no sign. It needed none; it was a well-known stop for people who had business not to be conducted within the public's earshot. She took a staircase to an intersecting walkway that passed directly above the establishment's entrance, then swung her feet over the railing and dropped down. A young female patron, wobbling unsteadily, stood dumbfounded at the door, gazing at her with a listless expression. Drunk, in the wrong part of town to be drunk in. Iluin snorted and pushed past her.
           The layout was unchanged. Bar, stools, tables, staircase, fireplace, cheap drinks, comatose or possibly poisoned men and women slumped under the furniture and against the walls: a sort of home. The staff busied itself at the counter, passing out drinks, occasionally making a quick forage into the storeroom for some food. Certainly the kitchen was long closed - this was definitely not an eatery. One man sat behind the bar, up against the wall, and as the cooks and waiters and bartenders scuffled about him he leaned back and watched the scene. Their eyes met and she moved the room towards him; as she stopped to rest against the hardwood counter he dipped his head in a quiet salutation.
           "May I help you?"
           "I'm looking for a man. A blind man, specifically." There was a snort from behind her.
           "Shouldna be so self-conscious. You may not be tha prettiest thing to cross in here, but you don' need a blind man. Drunk one'll do - hell, I'd take you." Her ears went flat and she turned to stare venom at the cross-eyed brute behind her who'd spoken. Her hand went to her scabbard.
           "Please do not do that," the old man murmured. Iluin snapped her head back to scowl at him; he remained unperturbed. "This is a bar, ma'am. The easily inebriated are good for business." Focus….
           "Fine. The blind man: he used to lodge here, up on your third floor. He likes to say that he deals in 'educated guesses'."
           "I might know him. He a friend of yours?"
           "Not particularly."
           "Then I probably don't know him. This man have a name?"
           "Probably, but he's the sort whose name tends to change with the seasons."
           "What was the one you called him? Men like that have a habit of giving different names to different people."
           "Enum." The old man nodded directly. Good answer, she thought.
           "Still here. Same floor - first room on the right. He hasn't eaten yet."
           Iluin flicked an ear. "Well, then bring me a bowl of what soup you have left, a few dry-salted capua, and a glass of something strong." She snuck a look over her shoulder. "And put it on his tab." The old man waved a hand and looked away, no longer seeing her; a young woman scrubbing the floor bobbed up and dashed back to the storeroom. Very sanitary. She was back quickly, and handed Iluin the order on a thin wooden tray. Iluin nodded gratefully, took the food, and navigated her way through the crowd to get to the staircase. Upstairs, she found the hall a mess: a leaky, reeking, infested hole of a place. She tried Enum's door and pushed it open when it gave; it groaned and the floorboards squeaked.
           Her sun-dried, wrinkly old comrade was sitting at a low circular table on one of two squat bench stools. He had a small, rotting drawer in the far corner and a straw-leaking mattress. As she entered he looked up, ears wavering. "Kousu?" She stepped forward lightly, spreading out her weight so that the floorboards creaked as though being pressed by a much smaller weight. "Kousu? Is that you?" Iluin set down the tray on the table and he jumped. Then she padded back, closed the door, and circled back around him. Enum pushed back and rose, stumbling away and towards the mattress. His eyebrows curled around empty depressions and his lip folded up, baring his remaining teeth. "I warn you, I have friends here - one shout and you're dead."
           But she was already behind him. She swept forward to press against his back and clamped down on his mouth with a paw. "That's not much insurance," she purred into his ear. "Especially not when I have you muzzled." Iluin reached her other hand around and traced the outside of his right eye socket with a clawless fingertip. "Guess who's come to see you." When released he came away sputtering and rubbing at his face.
           "You."
           "Me indeed. Aren't you glad to see me?" His tail lashed.
           "Bitch."
           "So, those eyes haven't grown back yet, have they? Give them a few more years." She took him by the paw and led him to his stool, then slid around and took the opposite seat.
           "A real comic genius, you are. Come back to torment me?"
           "Why, you should be an oracle. Better than coming back to kill you, isn't it? And this way I brought food - some of those stinking salty fish you love so much." She pushed the tray towards him, then reached across to take his hand and run it down the edges of the goblet and saucers. He hesitated. "Go on, eat it. If I'd wanted you for a carpet I would've just broken your neck." Gingerly, he began picking at it. "By the way, this is deplorable. I've never seen you so badly off." He sneered.
           "Your gracious pity is overwhelming. This is my office; I've a place up top, rented out from a local noblewoman. Got a few servants; she keeps 'em where they belong."
           "Oh. Too bad."
           He gulped a little of the ale, then picked up a capua by the head and bit into its tail with a dry crunch. "I know you: you don't check up on your contacts just to make sure they aren't worm feed. What do you want?"
           "I want to know where Vauhya Yoichi is." That got her a spray of salted fish bits and sour booze. She grimaced and wiped the oily stench off her chin. "Thanks."
           "Are you kidding?" Emun howled. "I don't know that. If I did, you'd be far too late - I'd have sold him out long ago! You have any idea what the reward for his manged backside is?"
           "No."
           "A plot of the richest farmland between here and Losun, with a farm, keep, and stables; two hundred slaves to work it; a nobles' stipend directly from clan Yoichi; direct marriage into royal blood and an appropriate title - Iluin, I'd sell out a damned angel for a reward like that. I'd sell out a whole bucketful of 'em." Iluin's ears bowed back.
           "How magnanimous of you. But if you don't know where he is, you know someone who does, or someone who knows someone who does, or someone who knows something. I know you, Emun: your eyes are everywhere except where they're supposed to be."
           The old man feigned despair. "Iluin, you make my heart ache."
           "It's not your heart, it's your stomach, and it's not me, it's those damned fish."
           "I don't have those kinds of connections anymore. People change." She snorted.
           "The day there's a kind of connection you don't have is the day I open an orphanage. I need to know where the prince is. If you can't tell me that, tell me who can. Give something."
           "The things I would have to order done to get that information would be immoral. I don't know if I could go to church anymore if I did what you're asking."
           "When I met you you were masquerading as the headmaster of a fictitious academy to lure impoverished parents into supplying your black market associates with children to death-march across the desert and sell as slave labor in the polar north, and that was back when you were nice. I have more integrity in my bottom-left nipple than you do in your entire body, so stop wasting my time." He sat back and belched loudly.
           "Well, so I don't have a valid reason not to."
           "No."
           "But still, that's a lot a favors. I subsist on favors. Why should I ruin my business calling them all in?"
           "Because you owe me - I got you out. Because I'm the only reason you have ears and can eat solid food. And because, spiteful and easily frustrated person that you know me to be, you can imagine what I'll do to you if you don't."
           "You wouldn't-"
           "Enum, you are one of the most repugnant souls I have ever met. I'd torture you to death with flowers and sunshine in my heart. Gods, I'd probably sing bright, cheery ditties to passing children as I did it."
           "Liar - you don't know any cheery ditties. But I'll do what I can, out of my much maligned fondness for you." He lapped at his soup. "You staying long?"
           "How much time do you need?"
           "Four days."
           "Fine." She leaned forward and patted him on the cheek. "Oh, and I do like you. That's why I keep conjuring up excuses to not skin the hide off your chest for what you've done."
           "You helped me do a lot of it," he shot back. "You going to skin yourself?" She paused in mid-retort at that. "Well?"
           "I will eventually."
           "Crazy bitch."
          

---v---

           The fire died as they picked their way down through rain-thinned slop. Even before they had a decent view of the open beach they could see a thin haze gliding up into the downpour. So much for a meteor.
           When they neared the beach's tree line she got her first glimpse of it. There was a long, thin stone building, wood-roofed, with an old pier stretched out from it; its sea-facing side was a dark opening. Aury ran in front of her, stopping to stare. "That's the []!" he hissed. Rachel raised a warning hand.
           "Not so loud. What is it?"
           "Our ship is in there - we have a ship we keep to [] with. It's burning." Aury curled down onto the roots of a nearby tree. "Agarin and the other [] are going to be [] when they [] this."
           Rachel gazed out at the building, squinting and trying to make out a better picture. Lightning certainly wasn't very plausible. Fire didn't last in the rain - it would've had to burn from the inside out. "Aury, was there much… ah, things that burn there?" He shook his head.
           "I don't know," he muttered. "Wood boat." Rachel nodded. For a moment she bit her lip, thinking it over; then she moved down next to Aury.
           "Hey, listen, I want you to go back up to the mill." Rachel swung her pack around, pulled open the top, and fished out several more of the freeze-dried foil packets and a dried soup pouch, then dropped them into his lap. "Here, see, you just take that thing there and rip it open, and then hold it out to the rain to get some water, and you'll get soup. Hot, even. Sound good?" He gave her a look. "No joke. Listen: I want to go look around. If there's nothing, I'll come back and meet you. If I don't come back, wait for me. Don't go home: wait there. That's a lot of food - you won't get hungry." He blinked oversized cat eyes. They were concerned.
           "If you think the [] is here, we should go tell the []. Agarin would want to know."
           "I will," she lied. "You go back to the mill and don't let anyone see you. Okay?" He hesitated, then bobbed his head once.
           "Okay."
           "Shoo."
           He shooed. As he went Rachel kneeled down against the base of the tree and scanned the beach, but too much of it blurred in the rain. A moment of inspiration: "Hell." She unslung her rifle; there was a scope on the damn thing for a reason. It was already muddy, but she rubbed the lens with her thumb until it was merely smudged.
           Even with the magnification there wasn't much to see. She thought there was a largish something several hundred yards farther down the beach, but it was totally obscured in the downpour - boulder, maybe. Somehow she doubted it was anything but paranoid imagination - who in their right mind would sail out through a scattering of islands, with all of the nastily snarled tidal forces that such an area entailed, in the middle of a storm? So she pulled her hood far down over her forehead and hiked down to the open beach.
           No shots. Well, that was encouraging. She circled around the burnt-out dock, rifle up and ready. When she got to the pier she crawled under it, then came up on the other side and dashed to the building's entrance. It was hazy, but most of the smoke had already cleared up to the ceiling. She could see all she needed to.
           Their vessel hadn't been much to begin with - just a little sailboat that might cram ten if you didn't worry about weight - but now it was soot. Slimy, putty-like tar had been smeared everywhere - some patches on the floor had the distinctive pungency of crude. The smoke had a heavy, greasy feel to it. No doubt then: either they had guests or one of Agarin's old test subjects was crazier than he'd thought. She swore and walked out.
           There was definitely a darker outline on the horizon. Something was beached there. Rachel's gut sank as she slogged out behind the building and then made her break for the trees. She hated the fighting. Besides, things had been bad enough when she and Iluin had played tag with those harebrained fanatics - now it was just her, a fuzzy Archimedes, and some farmers. Granted, farmers that could put her down with a few arrows, but nonetheless, the gut anxiety remained.
           When she passed the tree line she kept going, clambering up the slick rocks and mud until there was a good bit of brush between her and the open shoreline. Then she headed down the beach. This time she was careful, quiet. Whatever small chance she had at going unnoticed by a bunch of cats with superb vision and perfect hearing, she wasn't going to screw it up. The distance shortened and the silhouette quite clearly focused into a ship. Not beached, but anchored not too far out. Rachel settled on the crest of a small muddy mound, laying down and breaking out the rifle's scope. Definitely a ship - a big cargo vessel, what with the fat midsection and ungainly fore. A single dark figure slunk back and forth out on the deck, likely keeping watch for those below. She panned down to the nearby beach and searched that area.
           "Bastards," she whispered. There was a small canoe-like boat pulled up almost to the tree line; they'd set off from the ship and rowed to shore in her direction. Fortunately, there was no one around. Fortunate for her, that was - they were probably halfway up the trail to the manor. She sat there and mulled over her options. Snipe at the sailor on deck, then swim out there and try to take the ship? If only she were Rambo. Turn around and go grab Aury? Sure: bringing a small child into the line of fire would certainly help things. She was too far away to warn Agarin before whoever it was got there. Smash their little canoe, maybe, but that'd just piss them off, and they'd be more likely to start killing people that way. She turned around and looked up to the top of the island valley. Suppose she could blaze a trail more direct than the established ways up. If nothing else, she might get them from behind.
           Rachel wiped the grime off her face and got to her feet. Well, shit.
          

---v---

           Black stone sheared off the bedrock and crumbled; Rachel slid back, flailing with her off arm as she latched to the edge of the ridge in terror. She managed both hands on the edge, then hung there limply, panting. The slope wasn't so bad - easily fifteen, maybe even twenty degrees in from vertical - but with the rain every handhold was slippery as snot and the mud and dirt dissolved under any sort of touch. Worse, her pack threatened to pull her off the rock face. If she hadn't lightened it earlier, she'd have already broken her neck on the rocks down below. A few-hundred meter climb up an angled igneous prominence: some shortcut.
           With a completely undignified grunt she managed to pull her legs up enough to find decent footing and then push forward. She got both arms over and immediately began lunging for a root or rock to hang from, but there was nothing there. With the pack at her back, she couldn't help but slip backwards, dragging fistfuls of mud as she went. "Shit shit shit shit!" In a last attempt to stay out of the air she swung one leg up and over. It just barely caught ground, but as she began to spill off the cliff Rachel twisted towards the ridge, rolling to sling her pack into a quickly-growing puddle up on the ridge. It was enough to keep her on the edge. "Jesus," she muttered, then stumbled up sopping wet and drenched in mud.
           The valley sloped up a good ways still, but it was already leveling somewhat - she was probably two-thirds of the way to the top. Farther down she spotted the beginning of a series of switchbacks that led up parallel to her little climb. Rachel recognized it as the path that she and Iluin had taken, though now it was running thick with muddy sludge. That path continued up the banks of a natural rain channel and into the thick forest brush. Her ridge was on a giant fold of bedrock that ran about twenty feet over the switchbacks' exit. She figured that they were nowhere near her; the majority of her climb had been above the underlying forest canopy and in plain sight, and these were probably of the type that shot first. Still, far behind or far ahead, her best shot was to get to the village and try to find the others.
           There was a long way on the ridge to go before it came low enough that she dared to jump down onto the path, and she almost slipped and splattered her skull on the rocks repeatedly, but eventually she found a spot close enough to leap from. The plateau path was a ways away, but this time she was decently oriented, and so she managed to pick her heading through the trees. In the mountain forest the trail was actually a bit drier. Here the trees and the leaves sent the rain running in rivulets through pre-existing troughs and left the rest relatively intact. The peat and topsoil squelched under her feet. As she looked down at them a bit of roughness on the soil near the path's edge caught her eyes.
           Prints, already fading. Several of them; none her own. Rachel warily brought her rifle up. She noticed that its profile seemed off - a lot like an unloaded rifle.
           Had there been hrasi about, they would've been less than intimidated at the image she struck: a muddy heap squatting down in a puddle, muttering mixed-species oaths and fishing for a clip out of her pack. Mental note: ammunition to be bagged and put on belt. The clip snicked into place and she rose to move forward, simultaneously humiliated and relieved.
           She jogged the forest as quickly and quietly as possible. The rain had stifled itself a bit, and the light had begun chasing the shadows, so she could see and hear farther. Just trees and rain and animal chirps and a slow-winding path to tough her way up. The hiking and the raw gut gave her an unusual clarity of sensation; she heard and saw everything, and kept her trigger finger twitching just in case.
           It came to her as a great surprise, then, when a hard shove from behind sent her reeling.
           Three involuntary rounds popped off as she went down, ripping through the dirt in front of her, and then she was down on her hands, the rifle breaking her fall. No one was on her, and instinctively she shed the backpack to roll over with the rifle up and ready. An arrow was embedded in an outer pocket of the pack; an orange-robed archer was slinking up from far down and behind her, drawing another arrow. In a strangely detached way, all she could think to do was grin and aim. Rachel shot from the hip and momentarily blossomed the ground at the archer's feet, but luck and recoil sent the next four rounds in a line that began with the cat's leg and trailed up to his shoulder. He dropped, but over the thunder of the rifle boomed a deep baritone command.
           "Mhusaoshiadeyh!"
           And suddenly there were robed hrasi all around her, coming up from brush and trees near and distant to dash inwards. Rachel's pulse raced and her hind brain screamed terror and death, but she wouldn't have any of it: she grabbed the top of the rifle in an unlikely attempt to dampen the kickback, angled the barrel down on the closest swath of attackers, and squeezed hard on the trigger.
           After her previous armed encounters she knew what to expect, but that truth was that it didn't matter much: at her range the Pope couldn't have missed. The hrasi stopped and fell as though hit with a tidal wave, their newly emulsified chest cavities bubbling with the consistency of a watery cherry cobbler. Not a clean weapon, this rifle. The others didn't pause, didn't so much as flinch in their surging advance. That itself was terrifying. Rachel swiveled so that the dead men were behind her and let out another ream. The roar was louder than anything she'd ever heard - just an overwhelming pounding and a stream of fireworks. Three directly opposite her went spinning to the ground dead while two more continued to advance and the surrounding foliage all but exploded. Frantically she tried to cleave down ranks that were charging her from either side; the best she could do was split open one line of heads and then throw herself out of the way of the rest of her assailants. She went rolling and sliding down the path, trying to keep her firearm steady long enough to pop off a few more shots at the group chasing down after her - as it was she sprayed fire uphill and did little more than aerate the soil.
           They all piled on her at once and she was buried under a twisting mass of fur and cloth and raking claws and beating arms and flailing limbs. The rifle was being yanked away from her - she punched the ammo release and ripped out the clip as the weapon was torn out of her hands, covering the action under her curling form and trying to think as all the air was smashed out of her lungs. Rachel squirmed and in so doing slipped it down against her thigh. Straining against them was like pounding bricks, and the claws tore when she flinched. A hand was at her throat, at her mouth, pressing hard, hard enough to break her face, clawtips forcing down on the folds of her nose and the fleshy pads under her eyes, mouth and nose full of furry palm, with the air beaten out of her, and she tried to yell but choked on her own voice. At the last she shook, pulled back, and passed out.
          

---v---

           The stool squealed and buckled under sudden weight. "Got your message - It's about damn time. Where I come from, 'day' is sunrise to sunrise - you working under a different definition?" Enum showed open palms, unconcerned.
           "What I do is an art. Art takes time."
           "Don't give me that - I can take time with my art too." Emun leaned back, claws raking down his worn wooden table.
           "You're too confrontational, even for a sher'amn. How do you get anything done without at least some semblance of tact? Where's the finesse? The friendly banter?"
           "I banter, just not with you: you respond better to threats. And I'm not a sher'amn anymore. Now what do you have?"
           "Nothing about the prince." Iluin growled and pushed up off the table, ready to kick it back. "Sit down - dammit, Iluin, sit down, you intolerable tyrant." She sat, slowly, tail whipping and fur puffed out stiffly. "Nothing specific. But there are other tracks to follow that may offer suggestions. And either way, your young object of interest may have larger troubles that require your attention.
           "You're aware, I hope, that Yoichi has invaded northern Losun, seized the capitol, and is consolidating southward." Her gut twisted on itself
           "I knew they'd moved. I didn't know that they'd succeeded so quickly - no one came to their defense?"
           "Not immediately. Word didn't travel much faster than the advance - Losun's standing army has always been mere formality. By the time their southern allies were ready to liberate the north the Yoichi advance had already stopped: they ran out of soldiers to garrison their land grabs with. My informants say that the southern Yoichi have fortified what they've taken and are grinding up the liberating forces so well that by the time they're forced to retreat back out the whole southern lakes region will be emptied and scrambling to raise militias against a second wave. But that news is already in the streets.
           "What isn't is that Lord Hahrum plans to open up two more fronts to this war. He is already positioning his land and naval forces to strike at Higa: that's the opening attack. Once they're shut down, he wants to run the Royal Navy south along the coast, picking up men and women along the way, to attack the southernmost coastal province of Sabhat and then push upwards until the northern Yoichi forces meet and clasp arms with their southern bretheren somewhere along the eastern coast."
           "So that Yoichi owns the entire east coast below the Re'jha, essentially limiting all trade from the far Eastern realms and islands to Yoichi and the Alman'queda, their longtime allies. A point I'm sure is not lost on the Alman'queda tribal leaders. But that's insane. Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts - only the idiot king would fight one on four."
           "The idiot king - how apt. But his family and his advisors would not let him do that, you are correct - he needs assurances. To win the south he'll need the armies of the north, and to send the armies of the north he'll need to eliminate the threat of the Higa, who are Yoichi's nearest equal and who are a strong match against the northern armies. So his advisors demand he find support, which he has done. Already I have reports that the Alman'queda have accepted this collusion, and are gathering to wait upon Hahrum's signal, wherein they will cut across the Re'jha and strike en masse at northern Higa. The second ally-"
           "The church," she growled, bristling. "This has been a long time in the making."
           "Just so. An Aghana named De'ruon leads an expansionistic ideological minority in the council of Aghanai - a minority that conveniently includes the Aghanai of several of the besieged provinces. However, he has long been deadlocked by a more self-serving, corrupt, and thus static opposition. De'ruon doesn't have the council votes to dictate church policy, but with all the Aghanai running scared of Yoichi he does have the votes to admit Hahrum into the council as his people's Aghana. This would be a reapportionment of power directly from De'ruon's enemies, and would give him the authority he seeks."
           "And in return De'ruon throws the Rrsai's lot in with Hahrum, suddenly expanding Higan battle lines, bolstering Yoichi's military forces, and eroding a great deal of opposition to Yoichi expansion in people everywhere. Suddenly they're crusaders fighting on behalf of deities to free the peoples from the subjugation of their royalties. Hell, Hahrum might even cede some captured land to the church out of piety." She glowered. "It stinks: these bastards are worse than we are. But what's the prince's part in this?" Enum grunted and leaned far forward.
           "You and he are part of the outstanding assurances. What is going on now is a quiet opening skirmish compared to what the coming war will be; it's a hard gamble, and they aren't ready to take it without cleaning up their domestic troubles. No armies to put down revolutions at home means no place for instigators of revolution either. They need you, because your motives are unclear and you're an assassination threat, and they need Vauhya Yoichi, because his name gives him both the means and the will to break back into power."
           "Old news, Enum."
           "Well, here's some new news: you've a choice to make. On one side of the scale, the Alman'queda and certain elements in the northern Yoichi cavalry divisions have been moving along the mountains of the central northern prefectures. Your young friend was sighted last in a trading junction named Norsghar, which is not far from there. On the other side, the Rrsai have roused like a swarm of angry insects in your wake, and are now building up on the Higan side of their enclave. My associates in Agan report a drastic increase in illicit arms sales, assassinations, and body-trafficking - sure signs of an impending coup. Hahrum himself it is said may make a pilgrimage there. If the Rrsai-Yoichi alliance forms, then Higa at least will be attacked immediately, and the full war might ensue anyway. The young prince might then have his revolution, but he'd inherit a damned mess and gods know Yoichi would crumble and collapse in on itself. Even you can't hope to be in both areas, so I fear you'll to have to abandon the one or the other."
           Those eyeless holes never looked so sincere. Iluin slumped forward, gut like stone. "You lying to me? - be irked if you are."
           "No." It was plainly truth. Gods. "What'll you do?"
           "I don't know," she lied, then rose, smoothed the creases in her shirt, and left for Agan.
          

---v---

           Blinding morning light. It was late and uncomfortably hot. Vauhya groaned and twisted.
           And caught a foot in the back.
           His skull bounced against the dirt, pain flashing in the old head wound, and he thrashed uselessly as his vision resolved. Bound hands, bound feet - wire cutting into his wrists. He sagged against the earth, heaving. Saw a number of raffish men and women standing back, weapons out. Atra was there, looking miserable. "I'm sorry."