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Tivor
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Achelous draped an arm over his head, blocking the late afternoon sun. He lay on the stuffed leather divan in the study, Boyd sound asleep on his chest, drooling on his shirt. He forced intruding thoughts away from his groggy mind, letting the fuzzy mellowness of his nap seep back. Dimly, through the closed door of the study, Marisa’s muffled voice could be heard speaking to a servant. For one of the few instances in recent memory, he was exactly where he wanted to be in the world. No other place in the galaxy held a greater attraction to him than snoozing on the couch with his son.
A startling thump brought him awake. The room was cast in deep shadow, an orange glow low in the window all that remained of the sun. He felt for his son, then looked on the floor. Boyd lay on the rug next to the divan blinking, his ebon eyes mirror copies of his mother’s.
“Papa?”
“What? You—”
Marisa opened the door to the study. “I heard a bump?”
Achelous looked past her to the lamp-lit hall behind. She must have been nearby. He reached down and picked up his son before Marisa could intervene. “He’s okay,” he said, “he just slipped off.” He smiled at Boyd, holding him up, “Kids go bumpy in the night?”
Boyd nodded, rubbing his sleepy eyes.
Marisa watched the two most important people in her life, one consoling the other. “You two were knocked out. Running around the wharf and kite-flying must have worn you out.”
He stroked his son’s wispy head of hair, “I guess we were.”
“Well, it’s time for dinner.” She left the door open, and Achelous could hear her issuing instructions for placement of the dinner settings. He sat up, sitting Boyd next to him, clearing the cobwebs from his consciousness. He could get accustomed to spending the day with his son, napping on the couch, and waking up to a feast served by a beautiful woman. Life should always be so good.
At the dining table, he noted just two place settings and Boyd’s highchair placed between them. Judging by the preparations, he didn’t need to change into proper dinner attire and instead pulled the tabletop back from the highchair and slid Boyd into it. “Just us three this evening?” he asked, a bit surprised.
As trade councilor to the aorolmin and head of the most extensive trading firm in Tivor, Marisa maintained many business contacts, and Marinda Hall was the center of much entertaining. Indeed, a rare night passed when no ship captain, storeowner, wealthy customer, Tivor nobleman, or other dignitary enjoyed the hospitality of Marinda Merchants.
“Yes,” she gave a relieved sigh, the lamp light accentuating her cheeks and playing on her eyes. “My secretary reminded me of several commitments, but it’s just us tonight.”
Achelous nodded contentedly and slouched in his chair. “Good. I don’t have to get dressed, and Boyd can stay right here.” Tivorian custom, especially for nobility and the well-to-do, dictated the children be fed separately, usually by the nanny in the kitchen. Achelous, suffering the detachment from his son, preferred to have him nearby whenever he was home. He’d gone so far as to design an innovation in dining furniture, an elevated stool he called a “highchair,” complete with an adjustable, toggled table platter that sat in front of the child and restrained him from climbing out. Marisa, originally aghast at the idea of having the boy’s father feed the lad himself, and in the dining hall no less, immediately saw the practicality of the chair. Since its first appearance in Marinda Hall, the carpenter who’d fashioned it had built several of them for other well-to-do parents. When pressed as to where he acquired the idea, Achelous demurred, “Just makes sense, doesn’t it? Sit the kids up high where you can get at them, lock them in, and let them splatter as they may.” That he subverted Dianis parenting and dining norms with a blatant case of extrasolar influence bothered him not in the least. The chair was constructed of wood and leather, and the idea was practical; any father could have thought it.
After his favorite meal of corned berga, cabbage, mashed potatoes, hot honey rolls, and a creamed tuber similar to rutabaga, Achelous sipped his wine, feeling entirely at peace. Turmoil may loom a few days in the future, but there in the Hall, at that moment, all was serene, anxiety banished to the shadows, not daring to show its acid self to the comforting glow of the manor lamplights.
“Dearen?”
“Yes, Lace?”
Marisa settled her glass of a fine Astur wine delicately on a doily stamped with the Marinda coat of arms. “Ogden lives in Wedgewood?”
In an instant, his fear surged out from the shadows, threw aside the chairs, and climbed straight atop the table. He knew the subject had to come up. Why Marisa had taken until now was only a guess. He swirled the wine in his glass, a fruity red, of galactic quality, seeking to keep his pulse down. Having made the final promise to himself to lie to Marisa only when her safety demanded it, he was determined to keep the pledge. Now that promise would be tested.
“Yes, you know that.” He glanced at her, then leaned over to fuss with Boyd.
“But Wedgewood is over a hundred leagues, four hundred miles from here,” her voice barely above a whisper. “That’s ten days hard ride, thirteen if you spare the spurs.”
“Yes?”
The corner of her mouth turned down and her brow furrowed. He wondered how many pieces of evidence she would trot out to convince him it was impossible to have gone to Wedgewood and come back in just ten days. The round trip should have taken nearly a month. Echo surely didn’t show the strain, which would not escape Eliot who already had too many odd facts to add together. The truth was, he’d gone other places in those ten days, not just to Wedgewood and back. He normally referred to a program on his multi-func that automatically tracked his in-country travels and set alerts to warn him when he was returning too soon, given his stated destinations. But this time, with Lights Out approaching and the need to coordinate a myriad of ramp-down activities, he threw caution to the wind so anxious was he to get back to her and Boyd. After four years of being with Marisa, he was getting tired of the acting and the lying. He decided to save her the pain and discomfort of calling him out. “There’s a reason why I keep the knowledge of my travels secret. And why you are the only person who knows exactly when I leave, where I go, and when I come back.”
She looked at him with an open, yet tentative expression.
“Do you believe in sixthsense?”
She bobbed her head. “Of course.” It came in a husky voice.
“Well, there is an aspect of sixthsense called teleportation.” There, he’d said it. So far so good, no lying.
Gazing steadily at him, a tilt of challenge to her chin, he realized he’d have to go into detail. “The Ancients created and mapped special locations across Isuelt and called them shift zones. They’re for teleporting a person from one place to another instantaneously. When you teleport,” and he hesitated, seeking a non-technical, non-galactic description, “you are transported through what is called the ether and back into the real world. I found, through my travels, a map of these shift zones and began to experiment with them.” It was all more or less true. Travels and found could mean many things.
She appeared to struggle with the concept, but then defaulted to asking the easiest of questions. “So, you use these shift zones to travel between here and Wedgewood?”
Her ready acceptance of the idea, that it was somehow as she expected, bothered him. How much did she know and was not letting on to? “Yes. It still takes time though, because the nearest shift zone is up by the Auro Na temple, and the closest shift zone to Wedgewood is a day’s ride away.”
She nodded and toyed with her fork. Boyd began squirming in his chair, and Marisa rang the serving bell. The maid appeared at the kitchen door, and Marisa asked her to take Boyd for his evening bath. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she said.
When the maid and Boyd were gone, Marisa asked, “Do you have this map? Can I see it?” Achelous was quick to shake his head. He expected recriminations, perhaps even anger when she realized all his trips to the Auro Na temple were not to meditate but to use the shift zone; but there was none of that. She was ahead of him, well ahead of him, and it was unnerving, and yet it was a testament to the woman he loved, the mother of his child. “Lace, you don’t keep something like that lying around. If the Paleowrights learned of it or found it, it would mean disaster for all free Western nations. The Paleos would share it with the Drakans, and then the whole continent would be open to invasion, quick, sudden, and unpredictable. All the good work that Lamar, Darnkilden, and the ‘League have been doing to keep the Nakish bottled up would be for naught.” He could see the immediate appreciation of the threat in the change to her countenance. “It’s why I’m secretive about my travel plans. If it became widely known that I can move about so quickly it would attract the attention of a Paleowright Examiner and then there’d be no rest from their suspicion.”
“Who else knows of this?”
Now came the hard part. How was he to tell Marisa that Baryy and Outish were in on the secret, but she, his lover of four years, had not been taken into his confidence. “I try to keep the list short to those who absolutely must know and who use the teleports with me.”
“And?” The word came with an insistent edge.
“Baryy and Outish. It’s proven quite effective,” he hurried on, “for my runner to move fast across the continent to check on, you know, trade prices, local conflicts, wars, a duke’s new mistress, and other things. You know, the kind of events that can impact demand and prices for arms, spices, and gems.”
“Baryy and Outish?” Her eyes began to narrow.
“I can’t do business without them. They have to travel with me.” Marisa had met other IDB field agents masquerading as part of his trading firm, but only in passing, so he chose to ignore them.
“I can imagine,” she said dryly. Either professional jealousy or irritation at being excluded from his list of confidants colored her tone, he couldn’t tell which. She relaxed her shoulders. “Akallabeth says demand for their telepaths is picking up, particularly for sending trade messages. I’ve started using them.”
Achelous nodded. “So I’ve heard. The Timbers are becoming a power in that market. With their spate of voyants and telepaths, the Mearsbirch Clan council is talking of setting up their own telepath guild. The Silver Cup doesn’t want competition, so they’re coining a partnership with them.”
Still struggling with the notion of teleportation, Marisa held those specific questions at bay. Emboldened by how much he had shared, she took another step and broached her real concern, a subject that had been occupying her thoughts for some time. “Eliot suspects you—” she glanced at the table candles, the flames swirling in the currents of the dining hall, “that you are an An—”
“Yes, well,” he cut her off; it was not conversation he was ready for. They were making progress on the tricky issue of his instantly shifting around the continent, and he wanted to stick to just that, for now. Shifting was a concept it would be good to have her understanding of in the coming weeks and months. “We should speak with Eliot. I know you trust him completely, and I accept that. Explaining the use of the Ancient shift zones, left from before Epis Exodi, will go a long way to resolving his qualms. I’m sure he must be thinking some strange things about me,” he chuckled. “Akallabeth will have to know about the teleport zones as well; he may have to use them with me to coordinate security between here and Wedgewood.”
“Can he use them without you? How do they work?”
He eased in his chair, leaning on an elbow. Marisa, an expert trader herself, immediately picked up on the body language. “Well, they’re not simple to use. There is a secret to triggering them. The Ancients, I presume, needed to protect their access so natives like...” he almost said, “you and I,” which would have been a lie concerning his heritage. He went on “...wouldn’t stumble into them. A secret I am guarding in case the Church or someone else learns of a zone’s existence. Without the secret that triggers the zones, they are just unremarkable places in the forest or mountains that don’t attract attention.” Again, he told the truth. That the “secret” required a multi-func to call up the generator interface and select a shift route was a detail he would only divulge to her at the last possible moment. Trying to explain a multi-func would be a challenge. The IDB and the other layers of his secret life he would reveal and unwind carefully, as need dictated.
Marisa averted her gaze, seemingly willing to accept the dodge at least for the moment. Turning back, her black eyes pierced him like a spear, “You know a good deal about the Ancients.”
He held her gaze, his psychometric training kicking in to keep his pulse even. The biologic triggered a response in his recombinant embed. It interacted with his hormonal system to reduce the spike of cortisol his adrenal gland wanted to dump into his blood stream. He considered giving her his practiced speech of I’ve made it my personal obsession to learn about them as much as possible. Instead, conscious that the pause had lengthened into a long moment of pregnant silence, he said, “It’s my job.”
Her lashes fluttered in consternation. She sat straighter. His job? It was not the answer she had expected. Not that she knew what to expect. What is his job? Already he’d admitted to using some form of Ancient technology that allowed him to flit back and forth across the world at will. That in itself was incredible, but now... She wanted to ask what his job was but worried she didn’t want to know the answer. Not now. It was scary enough that Achelous admitted to knowing of and operating Ancient technology. She reached out a hand and covered his. “Dearen—” she breathed, her heart pounding. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid for... you.”
Blinking, confounded, he asked, “Why?”
She drew her fingers lightly across his skin, “I’ve heard rumors. Eliot brings the whispers to me. People are—curious about you. There’s an Examiner in town.” It spilled out in a rush. “Duck Peren. He runs a mill on the Upper Torrent River. He thinks he's coy. He’s trying to conceal his true nature since Tivor is mostly Life Believers or agnostics. We’re not overly friendly to Diunesis Antiquaria.” She continued rubbing her fingers on his hand, thinking. “Akallabeth says Duck has been to the Hafflin Farm, and he’s been inquiring about burned grass. He even has one of our stone cannon balls, which by Mother’s capricious nature was found by a mushroom hunter, intact!” She shook her head at the wonder of it, then went on, “For some reason, whoever Duck talks to, he always asks about you.”
Achelous let his expression collapse to a tight frown. Duck Peren, the same man he and Baryy investigated three years ago for holding Ancient artifacts. Little did they know at the time that Duck was a Paleowright Examiner whose occupation was to find Ancient artifacts. Ever since then Duck had assumed that Achelous was a buyer and seller of Ancient artifacts himself. “Those damned Paleowrights are such pests.” He pulled his hand away and pushed the chair back, rising. “They’re arrogant bastards with no care for the life or dignity of anyone not of their own minds. You’ve heard about Murali’s? The Church dared to think they could just confiscate clan property and stroll away with impunity. They’re idiots! Seven Timberkeeps died in that fight. All because of Paleowright arrogance!”
She gazed at him, pain in her eyes, fear in her heart. “It’s why I’m afraid. What if they should come here?”
“They wouldn’t—” then they both shared a look at the kitchen door where Boyd had been carried for his evening bath.
Achelous sat. “Right,” he said with a heavy sigh.
“I’m taking precautions,” she said. “Eliot has hired guards that Akallabeth recommended. They’ll be posted tomorrow.”
He nodded. “I think that is wise. I will ask Akallabeth to keep a watch for any Paleowrights entering Tivor. You should also speak with the aorolmin. Tell him the Paleowright behavior in Wedgewood demonstrates how far they are willing to go to protect the aquamarine trade. The City Watch should be alerted.”
“But what about you? Are you safe?”
He tilted his head. His own personal security was assured until the Margel went dark in eighteen days. After that, he’d be faced with a new reality when the Ready Reaction force departed for Dominicus III. “There are precautions I can take. Let me think about it.” He said the last to ease her concerns. “In the meanwhile,” seeking to change subjects, “tell me of Patrace. I haven’t heard about her progress with the saltpeter.”
