Berry and I spent today getting the last of the rooms ready for the ruinmen from Cansiddi, talking and joking as we worked, and right as we were finishing it sank in that in a few more days it won’t just be the five of us here any more. It was Berry’s turn to cook, so he went off to the kitchen, and once he was gone I went to the room with the alien-books and sat there for a while, remembering the time we’ve been here and everything that’s happened, and I didn’t leave until Eleen came looking for me to tell me that dinner was ready.
After dinner we all went to the radio room to find out if there was any more news about Berry. It’s been most of a week now since the Circle elder and the Sisnaddi ruinman added their bit to the talk about the succession, and I’m sure we haven’t been the only ones listening one evening after another to find out if the electors have anything to say. Until tonight, they didn’t, but tonight the announcer started off the news broadcast saying that Jennel Risher Macallun had made a statement.
That had all of us listening, because Risher’s not just an elector, he’s also as important a jennel as you’ll find in Meriga. His family owns a mother of a lot of land in Inyana, and he’s been with the army since before he inherited the jennelship. When we lost at Durrem, in the war with the coastal allegiancies that killed my father, it was Jennel Risher who pulled what was left of the Merigan army together and got it back safe across the border in the teeth of everything the Jinyans and Cairlines could throw at him. I never heard anyone name him as a candidate for the presdency, so it’s a safe bet that he didn’t want it for himself, but no one was ever going to get it without Jennel Risher having a say in the matter.
The radio crackled and spat, and started talking in the sort of growling voice you get when you’ve spent years downing way too much of the cheap whiskey that soldiers drink. “The electors have been talking about this Sharl sunna Sheren,” the voice said. “Informally, you understand. We were as surprised as everyone else. I won’t say all of us are pleased by some of the details, but the law is what it is, and the college agreed to meet him in Sanloo on the twentieth of Febry to consider his claim.”
The announcer went on to say something else, but I don’t remember a word of it. I was looking at Berry. The rest of us had pulled chairs over to the radio and sat down, but he hadn’t, and so he was standing, staring at the radio with an expression on his face that I’ve never seen there before or since, strange and quiet and very far away. Looking at him, I knew down in my belly that he was going to become presden, and I knew that he knew it too. I had the oddest feeling just then, as though I was in two places at once, there in the radio room and somewhere else, reading about the scene in the radio room in a history book a long time from now.
I think Tashel Ban felt the same thing. He got up and left the room without saying a word, while the radio chattered on about something else I don’t remember. I heard him rummaging around in his room close by, then the clink and clatter of glasses down in the kitchen, and then came back with a bottle of Genda whiskey and glasses for everyone, and poured us all a good solid drink. Nobody said anything. He raised his glass to Berry; Berry raised his in answer, we all did the same, and then drank it down.
“Some of the details,” Eleen said then, sourly. “I suppose that means that the electors are grumbling because they have to talk to a tween.”
“Or a ruinman,” I said, grinning. “At least he’s not a lumberman. Can you imagine how they’d have carried on if that was how things had turned out?”
That chased the strange look off Berry’s face, and he laughed and aimed a swat at me, which I ducked. All of us laughed, and for a moment it was just the five of us again, instead of four of us and the next presden of Meriga and a mother of a lot of people reading about it all in some history book that hasn’t even been written yet. Tashel Ban offered everyone another drink, I took him up on it, and so did Berry, and then the announcer finished saying whatever it was that he was saying, and we went off to our rooms and I sat at my desk and thought about jennels.
Most ruinmen never get to meet one, and even though things turned out the way they did, I’m not sorry that I knew Jennel Cobey. That’s partly, well, because most ruinmen never get to meet one, but it’s also because Cobey Taggart was one of the most likeable people I’ve ever known. He never forgot for a moment that he came from an old proud Tucki family that was some kind of relation to the presden, but he didn’t go around expecting everyone else to remember that all the time, the way some jennels and cunnels do. When he talked with me, it felt like I had every bit of his attention for that moment, and it didn’t matter that I was a ruinman with dirt on my leathers and he might just become the next presden.
That was true all through the time I knew him, but it was even more true while we were traveling out here to Star’s Reach. On that trip he wasn’t surrounded by soldiers and servants, the way he usually was. He had his man Banyon with him, but that was all, and the two of them ate the same food and sat at the same campfire as the rest of us, and kept watch at night over the horses and the camp when their turns came; and we talked about everything and nothing, not just as travelers do but as friends.
That’s the way it was, all along the journey from Cansiddi west to here. It was a special time, too, though there again I didn’t recognize that until we were almost to Star’s Reach, where it ended. I wonder to this day if it was a special time for him, or for that matter if he had any idea how it was about to end.
I’ve written already about how we found the two fences and then came in sight of the low blunt concrete shapes of the antenna housings, and found the door half buried in the sand. There were high thin clouds overhead and gray sandy desert all around us, and the sun was well over to the western side of the sky. If we’d gone walking into the antenna housings for another couple of kloms we would have found the door to the living quarters where we’re staying now and spared ourselves some searching, though of course we didn’t know that yet. We got to work right away with shovels and cleared the sand away from the door, and I got the lock picked, and finally hauled the thing open despite the shriek of the hinges.
Inside was darkness, and a smell I more than half expected and recognized at once, the lightning-smell you get when there’s a mother of a lot of electricity flowing very close by. As my eyes got used to the dim light inside, I could see the thin lines of metal crossing the floor, full of current.
“Trapped,” I said.
“Can you turn it off?” Jennel Cobey asked, looking past me into Star’s Reach.
“If it’s a standard trap, I think so.” Then, staring into the darkness, I saw the little red light on the far side of the room. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll need to get my tools.”
“Do it,” he said, in a different voice. I turned away from the door, startled, and only then saw that he had drawn his gun. Back behind him, Banyon had another gun out, and moved away from the door to cover everyone else in the group.
“I’m sorry to say there’s been a change of plans,” Jennel Cobey said then, to all of us. “Don’t move or say anything, and there won’t be any trouble. Otherwise—well, Banyon and I will both start shooting, and the rest of my people will be here in a few minutes once they hear the shots. Yes, there’s been a party following us the whole way. All of you—” He motioned to everyone but Banyon and me. “Get over there, away from the door. Trey, you’ll get your tools and disarm the trap now.”
He followed me as I went to the horse that had my gear in its pack, got the things I needed, and went back to the door. I could feel the gun pointed at me the whole way.
While I did that I was trying to think, trying to figure out why he was doing what he was, and what he was going to do next, and a thought I didn’t like at all was settling in somewhere in my belly, cold and heavy as old metal. If he wanted a contract dig, he didn’t need the guns. He didn’t need them if he meant to do anything the laws allowed, and if he planned on doing something else, it was pretty clear what his next step would have to be, once he’d gotten me to open the door to Star’s Reach.
There was a metal panel in the concrete wall next to the door, with some buttons on it and some slots in the metal, mostly choked with dust. I popped the panel off with the pry bar, found the wiring behind it, and took a good long time figuring out which wires to snip. “There,” I said finally. “That should do it.”
He gave me a long steady look, and motioned toward the door. “Go in.”
I went to the door and stepped inside, into the darkness and the lightning-scented air.
“Keep going,” Jennel Cobey said.
I shrugged, and started walking. There was a door at the far end of the room; I could just barely see it in the faint light. I got maybe halfway to it when Cobey called out, “Stop there.” He stepped through the door, considered me, and said, “I’m sorry, Trey,” as he took another step and raised the gun.
His first step had been lucky. The second one wasn’t.
As his foot touched the floor, the electricity discharged with a crack and a blinding flash. I hunched down where I stood, hoping I could dodge the bullet, but I needn’t have bothered; the shock threw him forward, and though the gun went off, the bullet didn’t go anywhere near me. For just a moment as he fell, I could see his face, pale and contorted with an expression I didn’t recognize at first, and then he landed hard, full length on the floor, with something like a dozen of the metal strips beneath him. The current surged again with a series of flashes and bangs, and his body jerked and twisted and started to smoke.
“So am I,” I answered him, though I knew that only his ghost could have heard me.
Then I walked the rest of the way across the trapped floor, the way I’d done in the hidden place in the Shanuga ruins, to the little red light beside the door on the other side of the room. As I started, I heard another shot, outside, and then silence. I didn’t let myself think about what that might mean. All that mattered was stepping in the right places and getting to the door and the switch on the other side of it.
I got there, opened the door, reached through and flipped the switch. The light went from red to green, and Cobey’s corpse went limp. Just then, Thu’s deep voice echoed in the empty room. “Trey? Are you there?”
“Yes,” I called back. If it had been anyone else, I might have wondered if Banyon had a gun against somebody’s head, but nothing on Mam Gaia’s round belly can make Thu say something he doesn’t want to say.
“Banyon’s dead,” he called out. “The rest of us are unhurt.”
A wave of panic I hadn’t let myself feel broke and flowed back to wherever fears go when you don’t need them. I crossed the floor, going around what was left of Jennel Cobey, and got to the door.
For a moment, while my eyes got used to the sunlight, I couldn’t see anything. The very first thing I saw was Banyon; he was sprawled across the ground with his neck at a funny angle and one side of his head caved in. He still had his gun in his hand, but I gathered he hadn’t had time for more than one shot before he died, and that didn’t hit anything but sand.
“When the trap went off,” Thu said, “he was startled, and turned toward the door. Not a wise thing to do in the presence of enemies.”
“I don’t believe,” said Tashel Ban, “that he thought you could react that quickly, and jump that far, that fast. I certainly didn’t.”
Thu shrugged. “It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.” Then, to me: “You will need to get more training for Berry. A blind man could have told that he was about to rush Banyon.”
I turned to Berry. “I figured I could distract him so that Thu or Tashel Ban could kill him,” he told me.
“You would have gotten yourself reborn,” I said.
“It would have been worth it,” Berry said. His face was pale and he was still breathing big ragged breaths, but I didn’t doubt for a moment that he meant it.
Then I turned toward Eleen. She was pale and trembling. Scholars don’t see violence very often, and she hadn’t been a failed scholar long enough for that to change. She didn’t say a word; she came to me, put her arms around me and stayed there for a good long moment, shaking like a leaf in a wind. I held her. After a moment, Berry came and put his arms around us both, and I shifted one arm and gave him a squeeze to let him know he was welcome. Thu and Tashel Ban stood close; only Anna remained off by herself, silent as usual, watching us all out of the corners of her eyes.
“We need to get inside,” said Tashel Ban. “If he had people following him—”
That was all the reminder any of us needed. We were all pretty shaky, except for Thu, but we got the packs off the horses and hauled them inside. Tashel Ban, who’s good with horses, muttered something in their ears and then slapped them across the hindquarters, and they went galloping off eastward, back the way we’d come.
“What should we do with that?” Tashel Ban asked, gesturing at what was left of Cobey.
“Haul it outside,” Thu said. “Pour oil over both corpses and light them on fire. If his people find a sealed door with two burnt corpses outside, I doubt they will try to get in.”
So that’s what we did. Thu and I used shovels to haul what was left of the jennel out into the open air, and splashed some of our cooking oil over him and Banyon, enough to get the clothes burning. While Thu lit them, I got the door back in working order, and once he was done and followed the others inside I locked the door, went to the far side of the room and turned the switch so the light went red again.
Just beyond the trapped room was a corridor leading further into Star’s Reach. Berry had a lamp going, but the little spot of light it cast was all but drowned by the darkness of the ruin. He’d already found a stairway going down; I got a second lamp, and we shouldered our gear and started down the stairway. We didn’t say much. The thought that Cobey’s people might find some way into Star’s Reach was on all our minds, and so was getting some distance and a lockable door or two between us and them.
Two floors down, we found the rooms I’ve already mentioned, dry and not too dusty, with big metal doors that could be closed and locked. We put our gear there, found a few pieces of furniture, and sat there for what seemed like half of forever, listening for any sound that might mean that Cobey’s people had followed us. Thu went back up the stair; I sat close to the door in a metal chair that didn’t look like anyone had used it since the old world ended, and stared out into the darkness of the corridor and the stairwell beyond it. I probably should have been thinking about the fact that I was at Star’s Reach, that all the long years of traveling and working had finally gotten me to the place every ruinman had dreamed of reaching for all those years, but that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I was thinking about Jennel Cobey, of course.
I thought then, and still think now, that he meant what he said when he raised the gun and pointed it at me. I was his friend, or as near to a friend as a jennel with ambitions can let himself have, and even though whatever plans he’d made meant that he had to shoot me dead, I don’t doubt for a moment that he felt sorry that he had to do it.
That much made sense to me. What I didn’t understand, though, was the expression on his face as he fell, when he understood the trick I played on him, and realized he was about to get reborn. For what felt like hours, and probably was, I couldn’t read what it was that showed in his expression right then. So I wondered about that and waited, while afternoon turned to evening and evening to night; and then Thu and I left the others and went back up the stair.
He’d found another door to the outside, a good half-klom away from the one where we entered; it was trapped, too, but a flick of the switch took care of that. Outside it was as dark as a desert night can get, with the stars blazing overhead and the moon low in the east. Thu vanished into the night, and came back maybe a quarter hour later with word that Cobey’s people had come and gone. I followed him to the place where we’d left Cobey and Banyon, and we risked a lamp. The bodies were gone, and there were plenty of bootprints and hoofprints in the sand, but that’s all we ever saw of his people, then or later.
We went back inside, I locked the door and reset the trap, and then the two of us went back down the stair. As we walked, I wondered again about the look on Cobey’s face, and all at once I knew that it was ordinary surprise. I think it never occurred to him that he might lose.
That’s when I understood something about him, and something about the old world as well, that I never really understood before. The people in the old world never thought they could lose, either. They played with the thought now and then, or so Eleen told me once, but they never believed that anything could stop them from doing what they wanted. That’s why they kept on burning fossil fuels and all the rest of it, until they took that one step too far, the way Cobey did, and found out what was really going on just a little too late to do anything about it. I still wonder now and then how many people when the old world was coming apart had the same expression on their faces as Cobey did, the moment or so before they died.