Artemis Invaded

Adara returned from spending several days in the wilderness with Sand Shadow—and occasionally Artemis—to find that much had changed. Bruin was at the campsite when she came in with her contribution of the cleaned and dressed carcass of a young mountain sheep. He immediately began seasoning it for the spit.

“We’ve been eating a lot of fish and what small game that Kipper catches in his snares. I haven’t wanted to go far from this valley. If I wasn’t here to grab him by the ear and tug, I’m not sure Griffin would come out to eat. I’d gotten him being social, teaching Kip that marble game you folks like, and acting nearly normal. Then Ring insisted that one of the spaveks merited a closer inspection and…”

“Spavek?” Adara had been scraping the sheep’s hide for tanning and paused in midstroke. “You mean one of those things might actually work? But there are parts missing!”

Bruin nodded. “That’s what Ring insists—and Griffin believes him. Also, Leto’s been holding out on Griffin—our ‘seegnur’ was as close to livid as I’ve ever seen him when he figured that out. Leto’s been getting more and more feeling in her limbs. Leto hadn’t said anything about this, just let on that she was pretty much the same as when we got here.”

Adara had gathered that for Leto the underground complex served more or less as her body. So, when Bruin spoke of her “limbs,” he meant those devices that enabled Leto to control things like light and heat, flow of air, and all the rest. It almost certainly meant that her ability to sense what was going on in it had also expanded.

“Leto admits that charging the spaveks’ power storage cells should be possible,” Bruin continued, rubbing wild garlic over the meat. “Slow, because she claims she doesn’t have a lot of energy to spare. Still, even a bathtub can be filled by raindrops if you’re patient enough.”

Bruin made a seesawing gesture with one hand. “In some ways, incredibly so. That’s why I’ve insisted on hauling his butt out here and making him eat warm food, bathe, and get some exercise. Otherwise he sits staring at one of those glowing screens for hours, hardly moving. In other ways … Well, especially now that Griffin realizes that Leto was withholding information—she never outright lied—he’s pushing to come up with new questions.”

“Which is why,” Adara pointed out, “he keeps staring at those screens. Best as I can figure, they’re like books, except that you can get lots of books on that one page—sort of like one musical instrument can play a lot of tunes. What’s Terrell been doing? He must have finished drawing the spaveks.”

“He started out helping Griffin unrack the spavek Ring indicated and drawing what part went where. Ring got frustrated at how slowly everything was going. He’s not been very clear…”

“He’s been less clear than usual. Eventually, Terrell sat him down and talked with him. He sorted through the nonsense and came up finally with one thing—something has happened in Spirit Bay, something that is making Ring frantic to have that spavek ready so he can wear it.”

“Ring?” Adara considered. “Maybe Ring could use the thing. That’s what the Old One intended, after all.”

Bruin nodded. “That’s what Griffin decided, too, though I think it wasn’t easy for him. He’s gotten comfortable with the idea that he’s the seegnur come back. Finding out that Ring might be a bit better than him at using seegnur stuff didn’t come easy.”

“So is Terrell working with Ring on the suit, while Griffin works with Leto?”

“Not now,” Bruin replied. “When we realized that something in Spirit Bay was at the root of all of Ring’s edginess, we got edgy, too. Terrell went down to Crystalaire to pick up supplies and hunt rumors. He should be back any day now.”

“I’m sure you’ve had Honeychild keeping a lookout, but Sand Shadow would be happy to help. She’s full of mountain sheep, so she could doze near Terrell’s trail.”

“That would be useful,” Bruin said, patting his gut with contented anticipation. “Now, what shall we have with this nice roast? Young cattail shoots with wine vinegar as a salad. Sunflower tubers. And Kipper has found a cluster of snowberry bushes. A bit of sweet after the meat would be a fine thing indeed.”

When Kipper brought the news that Adara and Sand Shadow had returned, Griffin was pleased enough to put his research aside without a bit of reluctance. Ring rose from where he had been cleaning sections of blue armor, first carefully locking the chest plate he had been polishing back into the squire. Terrell had questioned him about this routine some days back, commenting that the work would be easier if Ring didn’t have to pull everything apart every day. Ring had merely given a ponderous shake of his head and responded “This is better” with such certainty that neither Griffin nor Terrell had felt any impulse to question further.

Griffin had been jealous when Ring had claimed this spavek as his own. If he had imagined anyone using any of the powered armor, it had been himself. He realized, though, that his imagination had stopped short of envisioning the equipment in use. Surely such things belonged in a museum, not worn and possibly damaged. But it certainly didn’t hurt to clean them. Even Leto couldn’t complain about Ring’s meticulous attention since, in five hundred years, even in a sealed area underground, dust had gathered.

The only puzzling thing was that Ring kept speaking of the armor as if it were complete, when segments of the arms and legs were missing. Griffin wondered if the parts were among those in the fabrication areas on the lower floor. If so, Ring would probably walk down there and pick out the ones he needed from those on the racks.

A light rain was drizzling down when they stepped outside, but the camp itself was relatively dry. Bruin had brought a large canvas tarpaulin with him and had rigged it into a sort of pavilion covering the area where they ate and socialized. Enough days had gone by that the camp had acquired all sorts of little comforts: logs as benches, stumps to serve as low tables, lanterns positioned where they best augmented the firelight.

Adara was lounging on the ground, playing marbles with Sand Shadow. From the lash of the puma’s tail, it was clear she was winning, but Adara was giving her a good challenge. Bruin was busy carving slices from some sort of roast, while Kipper arranged bowls of roasted tubers and cattail shoots.

“No sign of Terrell?” Griffin asked after he had greeted Adara and promised Sand Shadow he’d join the game after they’d eaten.

“Not yet,” Bruin said. “I think we might see him as early as tonight. He didn’t plan to stay in Crystalaire longer than it would take to gather up rumors and buy supplies. What’s drizzle here will be a more solid rain below, and the clouds aren’t moving out anytime soon. I’m guessing Terrell will take advantage of the weather to reach Maiden’s Tear unseen.”

Griffin realized he was happy at the thought of his friend’s return. Once he might have viewed Terrell’s absence as an opportunity to see if Adara might like to take a romantic stroll down near the lake but, though she was as lovely as ever, he found himself curiously numb at the idea of getting her alone.

Maybe I’m tired of being turned down, he thought. The excuse didn’t seem quite right, so he tried another. Maybe I’m starting to think of her more as a sister. That didn’t fit either. Griffin’s three sisters—Boudicca, Jada, and Thalestris—were all older than him, and he’d never been very close to them. Boudicca had many talents, most centered around sports that emphasized individual performance, rather than teamwork. Jada was the one Griffin should have been closest to but, although she shared his quieter temperament, he had never gotten over the feeling that she viewed most people—himself included—with detached amusement. Thalestris was like their oldest brother, Siegfried, a warrior by nature and by training. True, she preferred working in small units, while he had commanded large armies, but her interests and Griffin’s rarely met.

Thali would like the spaveks, though, Griffin thought uncomfortably. She’d like them a lot. A small unit equipped with them could give one of Siegfried’s big armies a real challenge.

“I learned a great deal,” Adara said. “Most of which makes me realize how much more there is to learn. Artemis herself doesn’t remember why the seegnur felt a need for a planetary intelligence.”

“That’s odd,” Griffin said. “Leto remembers all too much about her purpose. I wish she didn’t remember quite so much.”

“But there’s a big difference in what happened to them,” Adara reminded him. “Leto appears to have been shut down systematically, the way a gardener wraps roses against being killed over the winter. Artemis was attacked, actively disabled. She may not remember what her purpose was or what she could do, but those responsible for the slaughter of the seegnur and death of machines certainly felt they were better off with her gone. They went to great trouble to preserve both the planet and some of the facilities, so I don’t think what they did to her was an accident.”

“Do you think they believed they’d killed her?” Kipper asked, his hushed voice filled with awe. While he had been perfectly prepared to accept the idea of a planetary spirit in a general sense, he’d been reluctant to accept the idea of a planet who could talk to members of their company. Once he did, his disbelief had become wonder. His opinion of Adara, already quite high, had shifted to something like awe.

“I’m not certain,” Adara admitted honestly, “and neither is Artemis. All she remembers is that she was made to serve, but what form that service was supposed to take, she is still trying to discover.”

Adara shook her head. “Not yet—but she has this sense that she should be able to do so. On land, she is managing very well, especially on the surface. Over water, less so. Every day, she works on growing more complete. This has made her harder to talk with. When we first met, she was much less complex. It was difficult, but not impossible, for her to ease into perceptions a human—or a puma—could share. Now … It’s as if she has a host of senses I can’t even imagine.”

“I think so,” Adara said. “She may have the senses but she can’t make sense of them, especially as more and more information floods in. In a way, the limited perceptions Sand Shadow and I have—and the fact that we perceive differently, not only from her, but from each other—is a help.”

Listening, Griffin decided that maybe for all Leto’s indirect duplicity, maybe he didn’t have it so bad. She was more like the sort of artificial intelligences he had some familiarity with—crafted to communicate with humans and limited in scope. Artemis, though, Artemis was sounding more and more like a god.

Julyan did not doubt that the Old One was steering the Dane brothers—he refused to think of them as “seegnur,” no matter the evidence—for his own purposes. The Danes certainly were aware that the Old One had his own agenda, but they thought it involved jockeying for local power. The Old One had not told them about his very long life, nor about the complex plans that had been ruined when Adara had raided the facility on Mender’s Isle. When Siegfried had jumped to the conclusion that the Old One had been using Mender’s Isle as a secret military base, and that the men whose corpses occasionally turned up had been part of his army, the Old One did not disabuse him of this notion.

Julyan felt no urge to inform any of the Danes, not even—especially not—Alexander, as to the sort of man they were dealing with in “Maxwell.” His decision was not out of particular loyalty to the Old One, although Julyan did think his future was brighter with the Old One than with Alexander. Rather, Julyan chose to keep the Old One’s secrets because he was learning the limits of Alexander’s control and had hopes of eventually winning free.

At first that control had seemed absolute. Julyan still blushed when he thought of the things he had done then. Now he realized that unless Alexander phrased something as a direct order, he, Julyan, had some leeway in how he could comply. Even when Alexander gave a direct order—such as the one that forbade Julyan to give away what Alexander had done to him—Julyan discovered that he had some room to resist. The less specific or longer term the command, the less tightly it held. Julyan experimented by writing a report of his degradation on the damp sand. Shaping the words was so difficult that sweat beaded on his forehead and dripped onto the sand as he wrote, but he could do it—even though Alexander had forbidden such written communication.

Most of the time Julyan did comply, no matter how humiliating the act Alexander suggested. However, the hunter’s pride and self-respect were assuaged, because now he was doing Alexander’s bidding to preserve his own modicum of free will. Carefully, he hid his growing anger at being treated as a combination toy and body servant, waiting for the day when Alexander would be vulnerable and Julyan could freely take his revenge.

I’ll wait until he puts Adara under my command as he has promised he will do. Alexander will keep that promise, for he will see her forced to be my slave as an extention of his own power … I’ll make sure Adara has no room for escape through a mere suggestion. Then, maybe when his mouth is full of her breast—for I know he will torment me by using her himself, even after she is “mine”—or he has his tongue deep in her throat, then my knife will find his heart.

As he imagined raping the woman while she lay bathed in his enemy’s blood, Julyan’s eyes narrowed to slits and his breath came fast.

Julyan was given some relief from Alexander’s attentions when the Old One revealed the location of an extraordinarily well-hidden door to the Danes.

“Griffin located it,” the Old One explained, his words gentle mockery, for none of the Danes had spotted the incongruity in the placement of some machine that had been Griffin’s clue. “However, try as he might, he could not get it open.”

Alexander was recruited to assist in figuring out how the door’s locks might be unsealed. Julyan gathered that Alexander and Griffin’s interests overlapped, especially in the areas of history. Meanwhile, Falkner used a variety of devices that could see through apparently solid materials to inspect the concealed machinery. In the end, not even access to some sort of library aboard the Dane’s orbiting ship provided Alexander with enough information to figure out the lock’s complexities.

“I hate having to force the door,” Siegfried said regretfully, “but so much of the Old Imperials’ technology remains a mystery to us. Perhaps when it’s open, we can figure it out.”

Working with tools so delicate that Julyan wondered at their strength, Falkner probed and pried, eventually doing something that caused the panel—formerly nearly invisible, so carefully did it mesh with its surroundings—to hiss and sigh. Falkner rose, stepping back to catch the panel as it fell toward him.

“Give me a hand, Sig,” he said. “The damn thing’s astonishingly heavy. Bulkhead grade, maybe even hull grade. What in the name of Donin’s crossed eyes were they keeping here?”

Siegfried joined his brother. In the end, it took Alexander and Julyan as well to move the panel to one side.

“I think,” Falkner said, “now that’s it’s loose, I can figure out how to rehang it. It probably won’t be as well hidden, but we won’t need to wrestle it—or leave it open so that just anyone can go in there.”

“Or,” said the Old One, shining one of the Danes’ amazingly bright lights down the newly revealed tunnel, “so that anything can come out.”

Terrell did not make it back the night following Adara’s return, but Sand Shadow brought him into camp as the next afternoon was shifting into evening. The factotum’s long hair was so soaked the brown looked black. He’d let his usual dark shadow grow into a short, full beard, and his back was bent under a heavy pack.

Sand Shadow gave a whistling “whee-ow” of laughter and butted Terrell with her head. Terrell reached down and affectionately slapped the puma on one shoulder, then set down his burden.

“She pretty much did drag me in,” he admitted. “I lost the trail—it’s faint enough at the best of times—in the clouds and if Sand Shadow hadn’t come along to guide me, I’d have had to hunker down and wait for morning. It would have been,” he added thoughtfully, holding his hands over the fire, “a miserable night. I’m chilled to the bone, summer weather or not.”

“Dry off,” Adara suggested, holding out a towel. “Change your clothes. I’ll get you something hot to drink.”

“I don’t suppose,” Terrell said, his brown eyes large and wistful, “you could help me get these wet things off? My fingers are so stiff.”

“Fingers, eh?” Adara chuckled. “Is that all? Kipper, help the factotum. I’ll get him something to warm him up.”

“You could…” Terrell began, but his grin was playful. He did accept Kipper’s help with the fastenings on his shirt, so Adara guessed his complaints hadn’t been completely flirtation.

She put three heavy dollops of honey into Terrell’s tea, giving him the blend Bruin made himself that included sour cherry and a spicy powder made from tiny, fiery chiles. It was good for chasing away colds before they happened and tasted very nice, too.

Bruin lumbered in shortly thereafter. He and Honeychild had been gathering honeycomb, gently smoking the already drowsy bees, before breaking loose chucks of the sticky stuff. After giving Terrell an approving pat, he went to help Adara unpack the supplies.

“No wonder,” he said, lifting a skin of wine, “the pack was so heavy. I’ll be glad for this. I’ve missed my mead and beer.”

“No mead or beer,” Terrell said. “The wine’s the thick, fortified stuff. I figured we could thin it with water and it would be less of a burden to carry. Still, the last bit of the trail, I was regretting the indulgence. Where’s Griffin?”

Kipper jumped to his feet. “I forgot to go fetch him and Ring! Can you do without me, Terrell?”

Terrell winked at him. “I think so. Maybe Adara will take mercy on me if you’re gone.”

The boy laughed and scampered off. Bare-chested but in dry trousers, Terrell returned to tousling his hair dry. His voice emerged somewhat muffled.

Bruin answered. “He comes out nicely enough for dinner and usually to sleep, but he has to be reminded. By dawn he’s grabbing a mouthful of whatever is left from the night before and gone. I send in food when Ring goes to join him later. Ring makes sure he eats. He’s nearly as determined about that as he is about getting that spavek ready for a trial.”

Terrell shrugged into a shirt and started doing up the buttons. “Astonishing how cold you can get in a cloud, even with midsummer gone by. It’s the wet and no sunlight.” His voice dropped, as if he spoke mostly to himself. “I thought Griff was pushing himself. His dreams…”

Changing the subject, Adara said, “Any idea what has Ring so fussed about Spirit Bay?”

Terrell looked grave. “Maybe. Let me wait until Griffin and Ring are here, so I can tell it once. It’s waited this long. A little longer won’t matter.”

After the meal was ended and everyone was sprawled in comfort, Terrell began his tale. “Took me a while to find the right place to hear trader rumors, but when I did, I heard variations on the same story several times. Seems that almost a month ago, something huge fell into Spirit Bay. Whatever hit was so large that waves splashed along the shore, big enough to unsettle some of the smaller craft moored at the docks.”

Terrell shook his head. “Not at all. The seegnur left a lot up there and it’s still falling down all these years later. Guess they were messy.”

“The opposite, actually,” Griffin said. “They were very careful with how they set things in orbit, so that orbits took a long time to decay. From what I saw when I took the Howard Carter around, unless something happens to accelerate the process, bits and pieces of ruined satellites and the like are going to be falling for centuries to come.”

Griffin smiled comfortably. “Not at all. The autopilot will be making corrections for longer than any of us can imagine. No, I’m guessing that this was one of the satellites or maybe a chunk from a space station.”

“Funny thing, that,” Terrell said. “You’d think that bits of anything that big would have washed up but, from what I heard, nothing has. They even sent down some dive pros. They found a lot of stirred-up mud, but no indication of what did the stirring.”

“Might have hit so hard that it buried itself in the floor of the bay,” Griffin suggested. “They’ll find it when the mud settles.”

“Maybe,” Terrell said. He looked over at where Ring rested, seated as usual with his broad back against a tree. Tonight he had a mug of mulled wine resting on his gut and his expression was relaxed, almost content.

Terrell nodded. “Not about what fell into the bay, but the loremasters have decided to hold a formal convocation there to discuss recent happenings and, most specifically, the Old One. I chatted up a local loremaster who was disgruntled at not being chosen to go. She said that outrage is high over the damage to the Sanctum. The Old One can’t be found, and that’s being taken as an admission of guilt.”

“No more than you think the sun had died just because there’s a cloudy week,” Terrell said. “You still don’t understand the Old One’s mystique. If the seegnur were to return in all their power and glory, they might find themselves fighting for precedence over him—at least in this region. I’m not sure how far his reputation has spread.”

“We left Spirit Bay because we thought the Sanctum was likely to be ruled off-limits,” Adara said, “and because we didn’t want to go up against the Old One’s legend. I wonder if he will confront his accusers and what the end result would be.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” Terrell said. “He’s dared far more. I’d wager that if he handled the convocation just right, he’d find himself not only cleared of any accusations of sacrilege, but with a corps of student loremasters assigned to help him get the Sanctum back in order. We’d be cast as villains, then.”

“The Trainers might speak out for us,” Adara objected, “and some others.”

“Yes, they would,” Bruin agreed, “but even if Winnie and other of Lynn’s people came forward to tell their stories, would they be believed? It was hard enough for us to believe the Old One was capable of such things. Under his gaze, who would be believed? You said many of his men were killed in the flooding. He’d broken many of those women. Could they stand as his accuser, beneath that cool gaze?”

“And would the Old One invite a challenge?” Griffin asked. “He’s far from a fool. He’d know that even if he was cleared, some of the mud would stick.”

Adara stretched. “We need to know more but we’re not going to learn it in Crystalaire—at least not until the news is too old to do us any good. Why don’t Sand Shadow and I go down to my parents’ holding and enlist my family’s help? My brother’s wife, Willowee, has family involved in the river trade. She’s likely to know good sources of reliable news.”

“That’s a fine plan,” Bruin said, and Adara heard his pleasure not only in her tactics, but in her willingness to visit again with her family. “You and Sand Shadow can travel overland. Not only will that be more direct, but you won’t need to risk the roads and chance encountering more bandits.”

“Can I go with her?” Kipper asked, hero worship writ large in his big, brown eyes.

Adara shook her head. “I need you to keep this lot fed. Bruin’s too old to manage without help. Terrell needs to assist Griffin.”

Kipper’s obvious disappointment was mollified by being given responsible work to do. It certainly helped that Adara recognized the contributions he had made to this point.

Adara smiled. “We won’t. I promise. We won’t stay away a day longer than necessary.”

Exploration quickly showed that the tunnel behind the hidden door did not merely lead to another room or even to another section of the Sanctum complex.

“It’s an underground road,” Falkner said. “Look at the walls. See the friction marks? I’d bet my thirty-day living allowance that those were made by some sort of passenger capsule.”

“An underground transport corridor would fit in with the Imperial’s model for Artemis,” Alexander said. “The idea was that, except for a quaint village here or there, the planet would be wilderness.”

“But it wasn’t, of course,” the Old One said. “Beneath the primitive surface there were sophisticated workings. I’ve told you about the other complex I found near here—the one that appeared to conceal a hospital among other things I could not decipher, since it had been largely destroyed.”

“I agree that these ‘seegnur’ hid a great deal,” Alexander said. “It’s one thing to talk about going out to wrestle grizzly bears with your bare hands. It’s another to do without modern medicine when the bear takes off your backside.”

Julyan was puzzled. “Couldn’t they just have flown up into the skies? The lore says the seegnur could fly. You have proven it by your arrival here.”

Alexander looked as if he was about to say something condescending, but Siegfried spoke first. “That shows good thinking on your part, Julyan. The fact is, they could fly, even up and beyond the atmosphere, but such flights, especially in the early stages, can be hard on a body. To oversimplify, let me put it this way—the faster the flight, the more demands on the body. If someone was seriously injured, making him fly would be the last thing they’d want.”

“So, hidden hospitals,” Alexander finished, “hidden transportation, probably even hidden means of communication. The risks would still be there, but not as extreme as they might seem.”

Siegfried looked longingly down the corridor. “I wish we had some idea how far that goes—if it even goes anywhere anymore. It’s possible that it’s been collapsed somewhere along the way.”

The Old One had been inspecting a compass. Now he spoke, his voice as deferential as ever, but holding a note of barely suppressed excitement. “If the tunnel runs straight, I have a likely destination point. The next closest prohibited area is Maiden’s Tear—an area so secret that I have no idea what might be hidden there. However, I can tell you two things of interest. When the seegnur were attacked, many fled in the direction of Maiden’s Tear.”

“As if they thought they might find help there,” Siegfried said, his tones holding some of the Old One’s excitement. “And the other point?”

“Given the harm done to me by Adara the Huntress, I have made some effort to learn where she might have gone. One rumor I dismissed as too unlikely for belief places her in the vicinity of Crystalaire. That is the village closest to Maiden’s Tear…”

Julyan had to admire the Old One’s lies. Mostly truth but, even when he could have bragged about how he had anticipated the others’ destination, he kept the intensity of his interest veiled. He wondered if the others were fooled. He thought Siegfried might be. Falkner didn’t think about motivations—he focused on how things worked, not people. Alexander? Julyan wasn’t certain that “Maxwell” had fooled Alexander as completely as he had his brothers. On the other hand, Alexander wanted Griffin for reasons of his own and wasn’t likely to say or do anything that would prevent their meeting. Likely he would accept the surface explanation, while keeping his cynical eye on the developing situation.

“I have some gear on the shuttle that might help us judge if the tunnel remains open,” Falkner said. “Sonar would at least give us an idea how far before the first interruption.”

“Do you think the passenger capsules would have been the sort that filled the tunnel?” Alexander asked.

Falkner inspected the ceilings and floor, then shook his head. “The friction marks are only on the walls. I’m guessing some sort of oval, with clearance above and below in case they had some peculiar cargo they wanted to strap onto the capsule.”

“We have scooters up on the ship,” Siegfried reminded. “If the tunnel seems to be open, we could have Gaius shuttle them down.”

“Could he do so more … gently than your first landing?” the Old One asked diffidently. “I don’t feel any great debt to the people of Spirit Bay, but your initial arrival caused significant disturbance.”

“And,” Siegfried said with a laugh, “you don’t want anyone getting more curious than they must. I think Gaius will be able to slip the craft in more smoothly than I did. For one, he won’t have engines missing on him.”

That was an interesting tidbit, Julyan thought. So, for all their boasting about being well prepared, they have run into difficulties left over from the slaughter of the seegnur and death of machines. Wouldn’t it be lovely if there were still secrets hiding here—secrets that would lead to the death of those machines they so rely upon, secrets that would lead to their deaths?

When the scooters arrived, Julyan couldn’t see how these flimsy things could possibly be a means of transportation. Legends had prepared him for the idea that the seegnur had vehicles that moved without the need of some animal to pull them, but he’d always imagined them as having wheels or runners or something. These reminded him of long-bodied beetles, minus the carapace. Where the beetle’s shell should have been was a central shaft upon which were evenly spaced light wire frames that looked like a torturer’s idealized version of a saddle. His balls ached just looking at them.

Alexander sidled up to Julyan, stroking his backside where the others could not see. “Aren’t they fine? Gaius and Falkner designed them together. The scooters can carry up to three apiece, but we’ll go in pairs. I do hope you’ll share one with me. I’m sure Siegfried will want Maxwell available to advise. That dumb child can ride behind Falkner.”

“As you wish,” Julyan said, hoping against hope that Siegfried would decide he needed Julyan’s muscle. However, as had happened so often over the last few days, he found his skills rated as negligible. He might as well be a savage with a club. Oddly, Julyan could almost love Alexander by contrast—at least he didn’t discount Julyan entirely.

Falkner interpreted Julyan’s fixed gaze as an attempt to understand how the scooters worked. “They push against the pull of the planet,” he explained, almost kindly. “You don’t need to worry that they’ll fall, because their power source is sealed in that central shaft and it’s made of material similar to that door we moved.”

“I’m not worried,” Julyan assured him. “I was wondering if maybe I should stay here, guard the Sanctum in case anyone comes poking around.”

Falkner reached into one of his belt pouches and came out with something the size of a large clam. “This and a few of its friends will be our guard. I pity the one who challenges them.”

Julyan shrugged, looked at the Old One, but any hope he had that his employer would suggest he stay behind was squashed by that deceptively mild gaze.

“Enough chat,” Siegfried said impatiently. “We’ve restocked our supplies. Let’s load up and get moving. Keep alert for anything that strikes you as odd. I can’t believe the Old Imperials only left a door to keep out intruders, not if what’s at the other end is of any interest at all.”

“And I feel sure there is something of interest,” the Old One said softly, mounting the second seat on Siegfried’s scooter as if it were a horse’s saddle. “Somehow, I feel certain that there is.”

I will plant stars in the earth.

Ring bells in the mold.

Launch spores into air,

upon water.

They made me.

If I am not unmade to be,

I must remake

Myself into Me.