Exile's Return

Without shifting his gaze from the window Arras Muscadeine reached blindly for Mahafny Annendahl’s shoulder, aware he dared greatly in touching the eumedico, striving to comfort. Despite her advanced years, she was still an elegant woman, and Muscadeine suspected she’d been striking in her youth, though no less daunting then than now. Truth be known, he wouldn’t have minded some consolation himself, but few attempted such familiarity with a leader and lord, just as few dared it with the eumedico. Well, so far his hand was still attached to his wrist. They both continued their vigil as the wheaten-robed figure grew smaller in the distance, a crazy-quilt marked ghatt capering at his side. A flash of black and orange and white caught the sunlight as the ghatt leaped, tagged the carved knob on the figure’s sturdy walking stick.

Turning her back to the window, Mahafny shoved hands up her sleeves to hide the palsy. A flow of blue-gray steel melted off the adjacent window ledge and Saam padded beside her, yellow eyes searching her heart ... and her mind. She still wasn’t easy with it, wasn’t sure if she’d ever be, but she was learning. The ghatt had lost as much or more than she through time—his Seeker Bondmate Oriel Faltran, once Doyce’s lover, brutally murdered; his desertion by the Erakwan lad Nakum, now ensconced high in the Marchmontian mountains with his great-great-grandmother Callis, devising ways to save the sacred arborfer trees. And what had Saam gained in recompense for those losses—her? Hardly a fair trade to her analytical turn of mind.

“Have you set your sights on someone after I’m gone?” His answer mattered more than she cared to admit; so few in her life she loved now, or even risked caring about. A wasteful, weakening thing, love. And now two of her weaknesses, Harrap and Parm, had gallantly marched off on an uncharted journey. Oh, the road might be clear, but not the travails they might face. “I don’t want you having false illusions—I certainly don’t. ”

He rubbed her knee, cajoling her to remove a traitorous hand from her sleeve and reach gnarled fingers to stroke his head. “You’re lying to yourself again. You know what you have isn’t fatal, but you wish it were. You just can’t abide being useless. Your usefulness lies in your mind, not in your hands. I think you’d better reconcile yourself to having me around for a long, long time.”

“A poor bargain on your part, then, though I take comfort in it. ” Straightening, she saw that Muscadeine had sat down beside her desk, his mustache twitching. As a Resonant he was familiar with strange gaps or changes in the conversational flow, the internal dialogue of his own kind, or Seekers mindspeaking their ghatti. Only a eumedico, not a Seeker, but still she’d been chosen as Saam’s companion, a gift beyond price.

He steepled his hands in front of his lips, schooled himself to restraint. Oh, he had doubts as well, but if you let doubts paralyze you, nothing could be accomplished. “You know we’ve had Hylan Crailford watched for the last two octs, ever since Jenret and Faertom and I sought her out. The Monitor’s people have kept her under surveillance as well, though not as closely as I might wish. My reports say she’s readying herself for a journey, where, we don’t know. She’s left her chickens and spoilable goods with a neighbor, shuttered her house, and started packing a cart.” He swung round, dark eyes challenging. “Would you let her wander without supervision? A mind like hers endangers her as well as others.”

“But Harrap and Parm? A man who’s still unsure if his stronger allegiance is to the Shepherds and his Blessed Lady or to the Seekers? And a ghatt with the personality of a court jester?” Even love couldn’t blind her to Harrap’s and Parm’s flaws; after all, they knew hers just as clearly.

A blandly polite expression masking her face, she shook her head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing but rather as if waging internal war with herself and her thoughts. She stopped, suddenly self-conscious at his look. Damn, was the palsy betraying her here as well? She forced herself back to the conversation. “But Harrap and Parm are so innocent!” And hated herself for sending them on such a lonely, precarious mission, nothing and no one to counterweight their innocence. Why not herself, irascible, skeptical, ever on guard? Or Muscadeine, strong, assured, wise in the ways of intrigue and war?

Saam leaped to the desk, sprawled across her papers as if to barricade her from Muscadeine’s expectations. “You know, someday we ought to give him a taste of a verbatim transmission from Parm. All that lovely subtle wisdom interwoven with ‘oops’ and ‘by the way’ and digressions enough to make his head spin.”

“Hullo! The Lady’s Blessing on you!” Sandals flapping, Harrap strained to match strides with the woman pulling the small two-wheeled cart behind her. She’d almost crested the hill when he’d caught a glimpse of her in the distance, quickening his pace, galloping up the hill as she surmounted the top and started down, momentum and the cart’s weight speeding her descent. He drew a hand over his tonsure, wiped it on his robe, made a face. A hot and sweaty way to meet someone. Exertion had overcome the nip to the fall air, left him radiating warmth like a stoked furnace.

“Yes.” Arm and neck muscles strained as she struggled to control the cart’s downhill speed, gravity almost stronger than she. Concentrating, apparently absorbed in maneuvering around a wheel rut, she launched a complete sentence in his direction, made him stumble with its unexpectedness. “Barnaby doesn’t like cats.”

“But Parm doesn’t mind dogs, rather likes them, in fact. And he isn’t a cat, he’s a ghatt.” No, this wasn’t going to be easy, gaining her confidence, discovering what she had in mind. He chastised himself for meekly agreeing to befriend her, watchdog her movements, determine what danger she presented. False pretenses—a sin. He’d not been sent to give aid and succor as a Shepherd should. And as a Seeker, his role eluded him even more, despite instructions from Mahafny and Muscadeine, who knew even less about being a Seeker than he. Eyes screwed shut, brows beetling in dismay, he chanted a brief prayer, lips moving silently so as not to offend the woman beside him.

“I know.” Sweat darkened her serviceable gray work shirt in a wide line front and back, her pantaloons dusted with road grit. For a moment he panicked—what did she know? Found out already, his cover blown? “Too big for a cat.” Harrap exhaled a sobbing sigh of relief. “Don’t particularly hold with Seekers, prying into minds like that. Or Shepherds preserving the status quo ... ‘if not in this life, perhaps another,’ ” she twisted the sacred phrase until it sounded like bogus cant. “In other words, be satisfied with what you suffer here on earth. Always promise the candy, but dangle it out of reach.” She swiped at her face with a sleeve, surreptitiously studying him, he realized with a start. He shifted the leather pack strap from one shoulder to the other to grant her more time.

He played for time; his duality still caused him discomfort, distress, this constant stretching between polarities, both of goodness and rightness, but so very dissimilar at times. “Sure I can’t help with the cart?” His big hand reached for the closer shaft. Surely it had been meant as a goat cart, but she no longer owned a goat to draw it.

“Impossible!” she nearly spat the word at his feet. “Some things, some people, can never coexist, shouldn’t even share the same world—” and broke off as a cart wheel balked, then rolled over a rock. The cart swayed and tilted; she tried to muscle it back before it overturned, but it was too top-heavy. The dog’s claws scrabbled as he slid down the tarp and hit the ground.

“Here, let me.” And, without waiting for her permission, Harrap threw his weight against it to level it. She gave him a grudging look of gratitude and he continued holding the shaft, drawing the cart forward. “Easier with two,” he added, her hesitant smile and nod of agreement more precious than anticipated.

Jenret sidled along the trail, anxious not to brush against branches, not scuffle or worse, slide and fall on the slick carpet of wet leaves, treacherous after last night’s drenching rain. The rain had dislodged more leaves, improving sight lines, but keeping track of Addawanna was a daunting task. Whatever the conditions, the terrain, she melded with them without a betraying trace, almost as if she were part of the land itself. The elderly Erakwan woman moved wraithlike, checking for tracks, beckoning them along with an imperious hand. He paused, intent on Rawn’s mindvoice as the ghatt prowled the undergrowth, while Faertom’s impatient breath steamed the back of his neck.

“Anything?” Hope soared in Faertom’s voice and Jenret wondered sourly how he remained so optimistic after all this time. Easy, he supposed, because each day dangled the lure of locating Faertom’s relatives, reuniting them at last. Well, Faertom still hadn’t found his relatives, and what did Jenret have to show for fourteen days of drudgery? Nothing, not a single confirmed sighting.

“No,” disliking himself for his cursory response, but he was tired, very, very tired of dragging the anchor-weight of Faertom’s hopes. His responsibility. Not to mention the rest of them ragtagging through the woods at his behest: Yulyn Biddlecomb and her husband Towbin, with Sarrett and T’ss bringing up the rear. Two Resonants, one Seeker, one Seeker-Resonant, one Normal, and an Erakwan guide whose goals didn’t coincide with his—at least not from the results so far.

“Perhaps she’s not so sure she wants them found, ” came Yulyn’s comment, then a hesitation. “After all, the Erakwa don’t seem to object to the Resonants’ presence in their ‘backyard,’ so to speak. That’s more than I can say about Canderisians in general. Perhaps she feels if they’re doing no harm, they shouldn’t be bothered.”

Faertom stretched his arms as if to reach out to both of them, connect them. He sounded strained. “Please, please,” he tried again, “don’t bicker! Set your minds free to do their work, that’s why we’re here! How can you project reassurance, reconciliation, when we’re squabbling amongst ourselves? Even if they can’t hear us, they can sense our annoyance. Anger carries farther than our mindvoices. Project, and listen for them to respond. ” Sadness weighted him as he concluded aloud, “If they’re here at all, anywhere near.”

Surprisingly enough, Tobwin strode to his side to offer solace, although as a Normal he’d missed most of the conversation. His pockmarked jaw worked as he searched for the words. “Don’t give up, lad. Between them, my Yulyn and Addawanna can find anyone. Yulyn’s had the most Resonant training of you three, no matter how she came by it. If there’s a Resonant to hear, she’ll hear him. And Addawanna can track where yesterday’s beetle crawled.”

“But our physical presence, unarmed, will prove we mean no harm, not pretty mindspeeches. The one thing you Resonants don’t have,” Sarrett emphasized, “is the ability to discern the truth. Only the ghatti can do that. That’s why T’ss and I are along, as well as Jenret and Rawn. You may have lived without the need for Seekers, but surely even Resonants know our reputation for truth-speaking.”

They hurried after Addawanna, aware they’d never match her preternatural silence, her earth-bonded communion with the very land itself. Jenret and Faertom crawled up a shallow rock slope mantled with sodden leaves, T‘ss and Rawn already poised on its edge, peering over. T’ss’s tail swept once, while Rawn remained motionless. “Approach slowly, raise your hands over your head,” Rawn instructed Jenret, “and tell the others to stay well back unless we instruct otherwise. Especially Faertom.”

After a whispered colloquy, Jenret complied, his heart sinking. So, they weren’t the only ones seeking, searching, and it looked as if they’d been found first. A horrible thought, others searching for Resonants, stalking them like wild game. Still, jumping to conclusions did no good, and Rawn hadn’t indicated anything either way. He dug toes into the loose shale, surging upward, unsteady without the use of his hands. As he rose higher, he caught sight of Addawanna at the center of the clearing. She stood, hands on hips, foot tapping. “You wan be meetin’ Gleaners, Res‘nants, you meetin’em den. Sorry I not introduce you, but for one of yours, he look like he know what hatchet for. Figger you younger Addawanna, you test and see. Not what I here for.”

Her raised chin and bittersweet smile made Jenret trip as he looked where she pointed, at last puzzled out the shape of a tall young man dressed in greens and gray-browns, blending with the fir trees behind him. He held a hatchet poised to throw, a second one ready in his other hand. Just beyond he glimpsed the rigid line of an arrow, jutting as no branch would. How many were there? The strangers held the higher ground, could pick them off as they crested the knoll. Battle was the last thing he wanted, despite Sarrett’s ability with a sword. So what now—a battle mind to mind, Resonant pitted against Resonant? But that wasn’t why he was here, indeed, the exact opposite. Did Resonants perpetually live with the fear pricking at him now—of constantly being outnumbered, the minority, backing down, retreating despite their superior skills? Damned if he’d back down.

“My tabard proclaims me a Seeker Veritas,” he pitched his voice to carry. “I must speak with you, see if we can’t find alternatives to this senseless running.” He made the transition into mindspeech without pausing, “What you can’t judge from my outward appearance is that I’m a Resonant as well as a Seeker ”

He waited, but no one rose to his bait. Were they Resonants—or hunters, foresters, surprised, wary at their unexpected, unexplained presence? “Where’s your ghatt, then? Anyone can don a tabard, play Seeker.” The hatchet never wavered, although Addawanna had sat, doughty and clearly bored. The hidden bowman still targeting him left Jenret less sanguine. A squelch of wet leaves behind him as Rawn called “Coming!” and sprang to his right for easy visibility. But a loud crash resounded leftward, and the bowman stepped clear of the maze of branches for an unhindered shot, bow bending as he drew it.

“Faerbaen! Baen, don’t hurt them! It’s me, Faeralleyn!” The bow jerked, arrow flying wide of its mark. Faertom, more accurately Faeralleyn Thomas, spun toward the arrow’s source. “Faerclough, you never could hit anything smaller than a barn door!” But the next arrow landed neatly between his feet.

“Then why’d you expose us, reveal us as Gleaners for all the world to see when you dropped your Transitor-cover, trotted off like a besotted fool to join the Research Hospice? Were you crazy? Everyone knows why people go there now. With you in cahoots with them we might as well have posted the island: ‘Gleaners Live Here’.” Faertom’s mouth dropped at his elder brother, Faerbaen’s, bitterness.

“But, Baen, I never meant ... he wailed, but a short, grizzled man appeared at forest’s edge, gesturing to Faerclough and Faerbaen to lower their weapons. “Father!” A wellspring of eager supplication in that one spoken word as Faertom began a clumsy run, cast himself at the man’s feet, glowing with relief.

“Get up. Go back to them, they’re your people now, not us. You made your choice.” The order gruff, irrefutable. Faertom staggered up, arms imploring, unsure which way to turn. His hurt smote Jenret, the same hurt he’d lived with ever since his own father had tried to disavow his younger son’s potential, kill the child to ensure he never attained his brother Jared’s perverted skills. Now his father had naught but a dry husk of a mind, a gaping emptiness. If only his father had believed there were other ways, that it was a gift, not a dangerous taint. Opposite reasons for paternal anger, but the end results were all too similar. And for the first time Jenret foretasted what his own relationship with his unborn child might be at some future day.

“Faeraday, wait!” From behind the shielding trees a tall, statuesque woman joined them, clear where Faertom and his brothers had inherited their height and coloring. “You swore we’d talk first, not condemn out of hand!” She didn’t so much dwarf her husband as diminish him, his fiery disposition and sharpness tempered by the honor and goodness emanating from her.

“At last someone wid common sense.” Addawanna rubbed her hands together, “Woman, whad else? ‘Lowed bring od’ers up to talk? Not left like scaredy badger huddlin in hole?” He’d completely forgotten the others, Sarrett and T’ss, Towbin and Yulyn, still massed below the slope, able to hear but unable to see what transpired. Without a doubt Sarrett had split them into defensive positions, attempting to shadow their movements by their voices.

With a look that cowed her husband, the woman called her agreement, Jenret retreating until he could glance downward, gesture them forward. Not a word of mindspeech had he heard from their captors, shut out, not fully accepted as one of them. Which side did he belong to, where did he fit in, caught between two worlds?

“By the havens, Faeraday, can’t we at least sit and discuss this rationally?” The woman greeted Jenret and the others as they surmounted the rise. “I’m Claudra Thomas. My husband Faeraday, and my two elder sons, Faerbaen and Faerclough.” She motioned them close, a son on either side of her as she stood behind her husband, hands lightly resting on his shoulders, so balanced and complete a picture that it appeared no room for Faertom had ever existed.

Their closed solidarity was emblematic of the meeting as a whole. No matter how Jenret and Yulyn pleaded, argued, persuaded, nothing convinced the Thomases of their goodwill, the good intentions of most of Canderis. Less than no help at all, Faertom hovered in the background, biting his lip, ill at ease, unable to scale the barriers walling him out. And in her turn, Addawanna remained scrupulously neutral, her silence a weight, refusing to tip the balance for either side.

“We’re not going back.” A pounding fist on palm reiterated Faeraday’s determination. “We’ve left everything behind, what choice have you all given us?” And Jenret knew “you all” included him, no allowance to be uniquely himself. Sides had been drawn before he’d learned the rules of the game, let alone the name of it. All stood stiff, uncomfortable at the mounting tension. “We’ve tasted fear before, our own fears and the fears of others, and we worked so they’d find no fault, no reason to direct that fear toward us. Now it’s all over, all out in the open—thanks to Faeralleyn, here—at least for us.” He glared at his youngest son, but Faertom’s eyes were fixed on his feet. “Never satisfied, never happy with what you were but that you had to go wishing to be something more. Satisfied now, boy? Satisfied we’ve had to pull up stakes, start over somewhere else?”

A snap of the fingers; the toss of an empty hand dramatized their loss. “The boat business, gone. The house, the island, left behind as if plague-ridden. But we’re the plague, aren’t we? Liable to infect anyone our minds touch. Havens! Why would I want to ‘speak a Normal mind? We don’t know for sure if Marchmont’ll welcome us as refugees—untutored, untrained, scum! That’s how they’ve always viewed us before—why alter that view now?” The flood of invective dizzied Jenret. Why would Marchmont think that of them? How much did Marchmont even know of the Gleaners’ precarious existence? After all, Venable Constant had believed he’d brought all the Resonants to Marchmont, safe from the Plumbs. If they’d known some had been left behind, why hadn’t they helped before this?

“It doesn’t have to be like that, not if you don’t let it,” Yulyn persisted, not ready to yield. “Canderis may be frightened of what we represent—what they think we are—but they can learn. But only if we’re willing to show them our decency, our potential to improve their lives. Any group harbors good and bad, we know that. Would we have Vesey Bell seen as our exemplar? Our actions must repudiate what he stood for, the pain he caused, because that was never our way. Nor do the Reapers stand for Canderis as a whole, they’re a distinct minority.”

Uncomfortably aware that he and Sarrett represented all Normals, Towbin looked funeral-somber, careworn. “You take getting used to, you know. Considered fleeing far as I could when I discovered what Yulyn was, but I couldn’t outrun our love, even if I didn’t understand how her mind worked. Scared the living daylights out of me time and again. Has its advantages, though,” and a ghost of a smile flickered at one corner of his mouth. “Lets your wife mentally caress you in public, with no one the wiser. No censorious looks. No flouting of decency laws. Scandalously sexy!” A dimple flashed on Claudra Thomas’s cheek, but her husband scowled, red-faced with mortification.

“Two octs, that’s all I ask,” Jenret took their silent challenge. “Stay here at camp for sixteen days before you push on to Marchmont. I can’t ask for longer, winter’s coming. If other Resonants are hiding nearby or passing through, ask them to wait, hear me out when I return. I’ll broaden our search as much as we can, try to find stragglers, direct them to you.”

“And what can you promise by then? That Normals will magically come to terms with the idea of us, let alone our reality? That we won’t be corralled together, imprisoned, ghettoized? We’ve heard rumors of a bounty for each Gleaner discovered.” Faerclough spoke now, the middle son, as tall as the others, but more slightly built and more fiery tempered, his father’s son.

“Then ‘truth will out,’ as they say. That’s what we Seekers Veritas have always stood for, truth.” Jenret spoke evenly, cloaking his despair. Sixteen days! Too short a time, you fool! Too short a time to negotiate with both sides for some sort of agreement, a face-saving compromise. Where to begin? Why had his stubbornness, his pride, led him to this impasse? But any truce was a start.

“Never could credit the ancient history books talking about ‘endangered species’ on Olde Earth, all kinds of different creatures lost because they couldn’t survive a changing environment. Now I do.” Faeraday Thomas ignored Jenret’s outstretched hand. “Mind, though, I don’t plan for my offspring to become extinct. I’ll break the old rules to make sure of that. See that the terms hold.” Not a threat, but a calm explication of what could come. What old rules? And again Jenret felt lost, at sea, wondering what was meant?

As they readied to leave, the Thomas clan sliding away, canny as forest creatures eluding the hunter, Jenret at last heard a mindvoice. “We’ll wait, Seeker. And take good care of my boy, my youngest. Yes, he’s impetuous, but he may just have the right of it. Old ways have to change, have to grow, or we will become extinct. ”

Overwhelmed by the scale of the task they’d set for themselves, they settled around the fire at a deserted Erakwa camp that night. Addawanna’s chuckle broke through their silence. “Now you know true what it like be ou‘cast. Dey don’ wan you, an you see any od’er Erawka ‘cept me here? Erakwa don’ wan you ed’er. Oh, I don’ mind you, used to you, used to sharing after so long, but don’ need share ev’ryting wid you!” Her innocent mirth seemed particularly mocking in the chilly night air, flaying their petty pride. Despite his genuine liking for her, Jenret glared back, defiant but unsure what he defied. Addawanna bridged two cultures, had ever since her liaison with a trader who, in truth, was Prince Ludo of Marchmont, father of her child, Nakum’s long-dead mother. If Addawanna could bridge two cultures, so could he, Jenret thought, his respect for her growing.

Faertom stayed, face down-tilted, peeling thin strips of bark from a twig. Any desire to communicate had dwindled, died since his abortive reunion with his family, all his emotions, all thoughts barricaded inside his brain. Jenret yearned to ease his hurt but hadn’t a clue where to begin, contented himself with patting his shoulder. It had comforted him when Darl Allgood had done it. But Faertom gasped at Jenret’s alien, awkward touch and bolted from the firelight, crashing through the undergrowth.

“That’s obvious. So?” He remembered his earlier thoughts about his father, his father’s fears for what his younger son might be, but Jenret had been too young to challenge him. Jared as well, though his untrained Gleaner skills outstripped his youth. And if there wasn’t a father to challenge, as there really hadn’t been in his case when he’d reached adulthood, you chose a surrogate. He stiffened, realized he hadn’t thought of it that way before. Syndar Saffron, his mother’s lover, had played that role for him.

“Don’t you see?” Yulyn shared a secret smile with Sarrett. Why had he expected that? If he still couldn’t understand Doyce, did he have any chance of understanding Yulyn and Sarrett? Was this another bridge he’d be responsible for building—the one connecting men and women? Unfair, since he was hardly the first to discover the crossing tenuous. But Yulyn went on, “Conflict is one thing, it’s to be expected. But he’s not being allowed the battle he needs. By denying him that, by denying him, pretending he doesn’t exist, Faertom’s lost his way. Without them, who is he? Who or what is Faertom?”

He was beginning to grasp Faertom’s plight, but it was an imperfect understanding at best. After all, he was still a Seeker, no matter what else in his life had changed. “So Faertom’s doubly doomed? He can’t be what he was—that innocence is shattered—and he isn’t sure what he is, without the battle to prove it?” He shared a look with Towbin, saw that he had no plans to enter the discussion. A wiser man than he’d realized—or more used to Yulyn than he. “Ah, I see,” though Jenret wasn’t entirely sure he did, and let the discussion drop.

A life so circumscribed that real life loomed impossibly large and elusive was almost beyond Jenret’s ken, but pondering it wasn’t going to do any good, he decided. Not when he had more pressing problems—such as reassuring the Resonants of his group’s honorable intentions on their behalf. He dug out his leather writing case, licked a pencil point, and began to marshal his thoughts. If only he could convince the Monitor of what had to be done. He hoped, selfishly, that Faertom would reappear, at least by morning, so he could carry the letter to Gaernett. Haste was needed. And putting some distance, physical and emotional, between Faertom and his family wasn’t a bad idea for a few days, at least.

Dismounting and tying his horse to a post, Bard scanned the barnyard nervously. Simply too much bustle and life for his liking, and he fervently wished he could mount and flee the commotion, the dust, the debris, chickens squawking as a cockerel challenged a rooster, geese hissing and flapping at his horse from their protective ring near the scummy watering trough.

“Plenty of activity, that’s for sure,” M’wa remarked from the safe vantage point of his pommel platform. “Easy to get mislaid in it all.” A piglet squeezed under the fence, ran at his feet and butted, eager to have its ears scratched, for all the world like a puppy. Someone clearly treated it more as a pet than as a prospective dinner, and he prayed it wasn’t Lindy.

Two quick back steps, one hesitant step forward, edging around him to see M‘wa on the pommel platform. “You be the twin, the brother. How is she, how’s my Byrta? Did her leg heal? How’s P’wa?” Blue eyes devoured him, ready to swallow his good news whole, as if its digestion would soothe a craving inside her hungry for word. A man stood at the barn door, arms folded across his chest, expression too distant to read. A taller shadow behind him, sun glinting off the prongs of a raised pitchfork, and Bard winced at the recollection.

M’wa had sprung down to rub against the girl’s shins, diverting her while Bard considered what to say, uneasy, hand crushed around the velvet bag in his pocket. “You’ll have to tell her sometime,” the ghatt commented, allowing small hands to caress his neck and head, his ears with the familiar earrings removed.

He knew it, had known it all along, but had always avoided this part in his mind, jumping directly to his gifting her with the velvet pouch containing Byrta’s and P‘wa’s earring sets, two gold hoops and gold balls. Had concentrated on Lindy’s gratitude, her thankfulness for his largesse. Bard the laconic, honoring his sister by honoring the child. When one of a Bond-pair died, the survivor’s earrings were removed—and hadn’t he and Byrta been more of a Bond-pair than he and M’wa, she and P’wa? Wordlessly, he thrust out the pouch, almost dropped it on M’wa’s black head with its white forehead star.

The girl spun in a semicircle, both hands clutching the pouch, unsure of its contents but recklessly pleased with it, charmed by the deep blue velvet pouch itself. “But, Da,” she protested, “it’s not a stranger! It’s the other twin pair, the Seeker brother Bard and his ghatt M‘wa! How could ye not recognize’em? Like peas in a pod, she told me.”

He’d interposed himself between Bard and the girl, the shelter of the house behind them. “Why, so it is, Lindy, so it is.” His mouth relaxed marginally, but Bard was too intent on his own thoughts to pay much attention. “Why don’t ye thank’em for the gift and scoot back to the house? Yer mither’s wanting ya, I’m sure.”

“No, wait!” Bard swallowed, but the lump remained, lodged like rock-hard bread, able to go neither up nor down. He felt light-headed, sick, bereft, head empty of everything except M‘wa’s comfort, Byrta’s voice vanished, gone so long now. “She should ... she should ... know.” Down on one knee, both to see the child’s eyes and to steady himself, he clasped both hands over her own on the pouch, totally unaware of how exotic his honey skin and hair looked next to the homespun child. He gently loosened her grip, poured the pouch’s contents onto the palm of his hand. “Not gems, because you’re all your father’s gems and he’s no need of more, but a bit of jewelry. Byrta and P’wa wanted you to have them.”

The girl’s mouth opened slightly, not in mounting excitement, but rather with dawning apprehension, reading the unsaid words on his face. “W ... wanted me ... to have them?” But she pressed on, and Bard admired her resolve, though the next words dug a trench through his soul, “Why ... why couldn’t she give them to me herself? Is she ... ?” She shook her head once. “She’s ... dead, isn’t she? P’wa, too?”

No comfort in her speaking the dreaded words instead of articulating them himself. Indeed, coming from an outsider they hurt more than the private litany he’d devised, the constantly whispered reminder, “She’s dead, she’s dead she’s dead,” that echoed in the void her mindvoice once inhabited.

“Lindy! House! Now!” And strong hands propped him against the water trough, fanned him with a straw hat. “Simon, get the boys to scrub out the trough, damn geese’ve been swimming in it again.” The words prosaic, homey, wonderfully distracting, as was the screeching protest of the pump, the splash of water in an old tin mug.“Didn’t recognize you at first. Should have, but wanted to block that episode out of my mind, out of Lindy’s mind, more likely, if I could.”

“Out of Lindy’s mind,” Bard parroted, holding the mug like a sacramental chalice during Bethel services. Not that he and Byrta had often attended services, he thought irrelevantly, against his Sunderlies grandfather’s wishes, against the old religion. M’wa smashed his head under his hand and splashed the mug’s contents across his face. He gasped in shock.

Blankly Bard thrust out the mug for more water, and the farmer obliged. It dawned on him that he didn’t know the farmer’s name, thought of him only as Lindy’s father. “I’m Bard Ambwasali. My Bondmate M’wa. There wasn’t much time for pleasantries when last we met.” He stuck out his hand, only to grasp the refilled mug.

“Might try drinking it this time. Marlin, Japeth Martin.” He toed the piglet aside as it struggled into Bard’s lap. “Warned her again and again not to make such a pet of it. Have to eat it, you know, sooner or later.” Bard shook his head in agreement. “So, what did she die of? Leg get infected before it could heal proper? ’Twas a bad break.” He shifted his concentration from the piglet, dying sooner or later, for food, not for love, and realized the man spoke about Byrta.

Pulling himself up the water trough, he dusted himself off, ran a hand through the close-cropped hair, tiny curls colored like maple syrup shavings, heritage of his mixed Sunderlies-Canderisian parentage, as was the honey-gold complexion, the smoke-haze eyes. Neither dark mahogany like their father, nor blonde and pale like their mother, he and Byrta had been unique: in their coloring, their twinness, their secret speech unchallenged by others. Upright now, less chance to pity a man who stood on his own feet. “No. No, the leg healed fine. She died in the wars up north this spring,” couldn’t bring himself to say more, to say she’d been beheaded, and hear again his inarticulate cry of grief as he’d caught the severed head, pressed his lips to her mouth. Nor speak of P’wa, head crushed and bloody, lifeless.

“Aye. It’s been over a year now, nine octants, belike, since we sheltered Byrta in our barn waiting for you, waiting for the eumedicos. Late summer, almost autumn then, now it’s autumn, near winter. We can’t do a thing about those dreams, the wife and I, though we’ve tried. Wakes up screaming in the night, most every night, wakes up all the other childers as well.” He shrugged, a vaguely pleased gesture, “And we’ve a brood of those as well as all the animals you see here.”

“I wish, wish we could get her away somewhere else, send her someplace different, mayhap a change of scene would take her mind off it.” He sighed, apologetic. “Can’t exactly pull up stakes here, decide to farm elsewhere. Offered to send her to my sister’s, two towns over, but she wouldn’t have a thing to do with that, kept saying it was too close to the hospice there. None of us has got a full night’s sleep for so long now. Half the time I can’t fall asleep waiting for her to scream.” Picking at the straw hat’s brim, shredding it, he confessed, “Feel like I’ve failed. Fathers are supposed to be big and strong enough to chase away the night terrors.”

“We must help. She aided Byrta and P’wa without thought of her own life, now we have to help her.” The ghatt’s words stung his soul, shaming him. What could he do, how could he help, and why, why should he ever involve himself with another human being? “Didn’t Byrta say the girl had a knack for dealing with little ones, children? Used to dandling them, diapering them, and training them on the pot?”

“But you can’t just snatch a child, haul her to Gaernett, and put her in the house with Doyce! I don’t know anything about Japeth Marlin and his family, and he knows naught of me. I could be stealing his child for all he knows!” But Bard had a strange feeling a decision had been reached, whether he and Marlin knew it or not. What set his mind shying was that earrings were part of the traditional bride-price, as if he’d purchased the child, buying her just as his grandfather had bought his three wives before their trek from the Sunderlies to Canderis with their precious cattle. Just as he’d sent back jewelry, gold, and cattle to buy Sunderlies wives for his other sons, Bard’s uncles. Only the twins’ father had fought tradition, earned his bride with love. “You can’t buy a human being. ”

Maroon felt bedroom slippers whispering secrets to the carpet, the Monitor belted his robe more snugly, shuffled over to poke at the fire he’d just coaxed to life. And didn’t he know what would coax it to life even better—some of those damned letters over there in the tray for starters! Paperwork, paperwork, more bloody correspondence to read, digest, answer. Why had he bothered to drag it all into Marie’s little sitting room instead of just girding his loins and taking his place behind the desk in his office? Ruddy light reflected against the blue and white tiles framing the fireplace, and he scuffed to the window, lifted the white cotton curtains with their eyelet lace edgings that Marie kept so scrupulously starched, even with servants here to help her. Even missed the ironing, if she were to be believed. A gradual lightening, as if the sun might consent to rise. At least some things were still constant in life, he decided as he puffed on the glass, watched his breath mist. Overcast again today and that suited his mood.

The real reason he’d sought refuge in the sitting room rather than ensconcing himself in his office was because it still felt so empty with just him there, working through the dawning until it was time for official business to begin. “Oh, Aelbert, I miss you,” he whispered to his ghost reflection in the windowpanes. And N’oor, too, the poor little ghatta who had loved too well, though not too wisely. Gone now, gone forever, and had he ever truly known either of them? Obviously not. Aelbert, so efficient and so self-effacing, a Seeker whose special uniform marked him as part of the Monitor’s staff. Why did you have to yearn for what couldn’t be yours, strive for it in a way that could only harm you?

However justified Aelbert’s dreams, they’d been unrealistically grandiose—a rankling desire for full acknowledgment as a scion of Marchmontian royalty, a place amongst them. And capable of working with Prince Maurice’s perversions to succeed. This, this hadn’t been the young man he’d cherished, depended upon, and he, he’d had no idea what seethed in Aelbert’s brain. But then, why should he? He’d treated Aelbert as useful, necessary, indispensable, but hadn’t viewed him as a human being fraught with his own longings and needs, hadn’t treated him like the surrogate son he’d longed to be. If he had, would it have stemmed Aelbert’s other desires? He’d failed again ... by omission. But, by the Blessed Lady Above, what was he supposed to be—miracle worker, mind reader?

In the adjacent bedroom Marie sighed dreamily, the bed creaking as she shifted, resettled. Listening to make sure she’d fallen back asleep, he touched a spill to the fire and lit the oil lamp. Spreading the papers on Marie’s sewing table, he surveyed them with mounting disgust. Reports from this, reports from that, summary papers from each High Conciliator recounting what had transpired in his or her province each octant. And the letters—from Canderisian citizens urgent to make their voices heard, their views count. Concerned citizens fearful of Resonants, airing their grievances, their woes; and a few from Resonants as well, attesting to their fears, their desire to have their voices heard and counted. Many of those were anonymous, and with good reason, he knew, but a few showed defiant, scrawling signatures as if they’d emblazon their names across the sky and be damned. “This is who I am,” they seemed to cry, “like it or not.”

He worked as rapidly as he could and still remain thorough, gave each piece its due, though many were due a great deal less effort and interest than they believed. Scribbling notes in the margins, at the bottom for his secretary to decipher and send responses. Both justified and unjustified complaints needed soothing; many could be turned over to the Seekers Veritas to determine the truth of the matter. Still, it was one thing to rationally know you were wrong, misguided, and another to actually believe it in your heart and soul. Fears festered, perceived injustices rankled. The sky outside turned lighter, though not especially bright and he could hear the servants beginning their kitchen fires, brewing cha. How he needed it, that first steaming cup when he’d slip back in bed beside Marie to sip it, feign a sleepy wakening that wouldn’t fool his wife, though she’d conspire with him to pretend she did. Of such indulgences, of such shared little lies is life made.

Damn all, how’d this letter land in that folder? Should have remembered it had arrived. He’d known Faertom had made a hurried trip back to Gaernett with this, Darl had told him so. Should have been on top of the pile, who’d shifted it? Probably himself in the shuffling of papers. Scratching his scalp vigorously with his pencil, he pursed his lips as he read:

Dear Monitor:

I’ve spoken with such Resonants as I could find and who were willing to reveal themselves to me. Precious few, I might add, but luckily I stumbled on Faeralleyn Thomas’s family. I’ve begged them to give us time, two octs—though 16 days is hardly sufficient—to demonstrate our sincerity in including Resonants as an integral part of our society. Without such reassurances, I fear they may either emigrate to Marchmont, which may not be prepared for such an influx, or remain sequestered in the forests, letting justified anxieties fester into anger and very possibly rebellion.

They will no longer be content as lesser citizens of the shadows, grateful for the bitter dregs a shadow existence offers them, but want to quench their thirst for equality. The stakes are high: we need them and their abilities, although not everyone realizes how much they have to offer. I hesitate to speak out of turn, but it’s clear to me that they have much to share with the eumedicos. You may not be aware, though all Seekers are aware, that eumedicos no longer possess their vaunted mindtrance skills, the inner “sight” that plumbs mind and body to seek out ailments. It’s possible certain Resonants can assist in training our eumedicos to regain that skill, perhaps become superior eumedicos themselves. Please speak with my aunt, Mahafny Annendahl, about this, for she, at least, is likely to be pragmatic about the situation and not dissemble about the lack.

The Monitor was amused by Jenret’s assumptions. “Give me some credit, Wycherley, I wasn’t born yesterday.” He liked and respected most eumedicos he knew, Mahafny most of all. In fact he’d worship at her feet if she could devise a way to accurately identify Resonants. Interesting to think Resonants might know something about mindtrances, only the gullible believed in such eumedico hocus. Not that he’d ever take Mahafny to task for her eumedico rituals. If it worked for most of the populace, who was he to gainsay the practice? Mahafny’d often said half the healing comes from the mind itself. But Jenret’s point was well-taken. He went back to the letter.

Finally, we must have an edict, a proclamation, some sort of law unequivocally stating that Resonants are equal. This may seem overdone, unnecessary, because we know all citizens are equal. We need more than mere lip service to what we know as truth. Further, that any discrimination will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of our laws. Perhaps we need new laws granting special protections to this group, spelling out the rights and responsibilities of all citizens so that no one group usurps the rights of another—Normal over Resonant, or Resonant over Normal.

Your speedy response will be greatly appreciated as time passes more quickly than we realize.

I remain, faithfully yours,

Jenret Wycherley
Seeker Veritas/Resonant

And is there a mountain or two you’d like me to move while I’m at it, Wycherley? A raging torrent to swim? Postpone, ameliorate, that was the best he could do. He couldn’t even whip the High Conciliators into a cohesive group. So delay, dance and delay, and preserve the status quo. Don’t make it worse, but don’t make it better. The Monitor scrubbed at his stubble. Well, let’s see, I could make sure the applicable sections of the laws are printed and distributed, along with emendations that explain in crystal clear, indisputable language that the laws offer equal protection to Resonants.

That was within his powers without a vote. Possibly an innocuous resolution of some sort where he could bluster and cajole, arm-twist to gain a simple majority, thirteen out of twenty-four High Conciliators’ votes, that’s all he’d need. Darl would help with that, help him think up what the resolution would resolve. He smiled, tested the phrase. “This resolution hearby resolves, this declaration declares...” He waved Jenret’s letter as if graciously acknowledging a throng of people. Bet the King of Marchmont does that all the time.

What was stuck to the back of Wycherley’s letter—another piece of paper? He pried it loose, rolled off the bit of pine pitch with his finger before he studied it. As was his custom, he quickly glanced at the signature to see if the name gave a hint of the problem. Anonymous, blast, blast. Pinching sticky finger against thumb, he scanned the printing, almost prissy neat, each letter perfectly aligned. Well, surely not a eumedico, never could read their writing. More likely some sort of very precise, fussy individual, a Transitor or an engineer of some sort, they wrote like that.

Dear Sir:

I regret to inform you that you unwittingly harbor a Resonant in your midst, one who has insinuated himself into your trust and the trust of the people. Indeed, for too long he has perverted the people’s trust and respect, serving first as a Chief Conciliator and now as a High Conciliator, putting himself and his ilk first against the needs of the majority of Canderis. Darl Allgood is a viper nestling in the bosom of Canderis. Do not let him spread his perversions, work his wiles with his tainted skills. Cut him down, cleanse your house before it is too late! Reveal him, shame him, destroy him and his kind before you are tarred by the same brush. Protect him, and you, too, may face the just punishment awaiting him.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen of Canderis

A shiver ripped through his body and he ground his teeth to conquer it, tried to let the letter drop, but the pitch worked against him again. At last he shook his hand violently and the paper sailed free to land on the carpet, its white outline smugly self-righteous, its black print like loathsome, disgusting tracks of slime. Rubbing his hands together as if to cleanse them, he strove to calm himself, to quell the rising nausea flooding him.

Poppycock! Unabashed, unadulterated poppycock! But the word wasn’t powerful enough to efface the filth he’d let enter his mind. Oh, he’d read worse anonymous rantings in his time, but ... but.... His mind boggled. Not Darl, not after he’d come to know and respect the man, consider him a friend. A deep breath, and he held it, finally exhaled.

If it were true, did he like or respect Darl any less for being a Resonant? But if it were true, he was angry at Darl for not being forthright about it. After all, keeping him on as High Conciliator would show the Resonants they were trusted enough to be part of government. And that was exactly the sort of thing Wycherley was looking for, something in earnest. He worried it through again, found solace in the fact that the few Resonants he knew, Faertom and Jenret, Yulyn Biddlecomb, that man he’d briefly met—Fahlgren claiming his murdered wife’s body—had made no mention of it. Surely they would have said, given some indication. Ergo, Darl Allgood was not a Resonant.

The letter was nothing more than a foul, corrupt piece of garbage, slanderous lies. Body limp with relief, he got up and walked to the fireplace, stirred the fire higher, and used the poker to impale the treacherous letter that had temporarily shaken his faith in Darl Allgood. The sound of it crackling, the sight of its edges curling as it burned, made him feel better. Done, stirring the pieces of ash into the coals, he left the sitting room and reentered the bedroom, crawled into bed beside Marie, warmly drowsy and welcoming.

“I tell you, it’s unbelievable! Absolutely knocked me off my feet, my foot, when I heard!” Parse waved one crutch in extravagant celebration, nearly spearing a passerby, then stumped to catch up with Doyce. Walking through the brick-streeted maze of Gaemett’s old quarter, they breasted a sudden freshet of students pouring out of school, their scholars’ robes the iridescent shade of a mourning dove in the afternoon sun.

Preceded by her stomach, Doyce tried not to crowd Parse off the narrow walkway, let alone others coming from the opposite direction. Sometimes, especially in cramped quarters, she feared she’d sweep aside everything in her path. A shift leftward gave Parse more space to wield his crutches. Except—where had that man come from?—the one she’d nearly pinned to the wall. He glowered, then gave a mock bow, an “after you” gesture on noting her condition. The decorative pin on his high collar caught her attention as he bowed—a crescent moon shape, or perhaps a scythe, pinned over a piece of wheat. Rather like the rank insignia the Guardians wore.

“Don’t you know? You’ve been locked in the library too long. They call themselves Reapers.” Per‘la and Khar drew closer behind them, vigilant, Per’la’s new tail ribbon fluttering in the cross-breeze from intersecting alleyways. “Reap what was sown, and Reap thoroughly till not a gleaning or a Gleaner is left. That’s supposed to be their motto.”

How could he act so blasé? Did everyone take the Reapers’ existence as a matter of course? Or had the world indeed changed while she did her research? As she continued on, her gaze swept over each person she passed, ceaselessly searching for more insignia, another mark of madness, ready to deny a segment of humanity its existence. After a time she managed to put it into perspective—almost—and acknowledge that there would always be those who disagreed with something. The question was whether they’d be content with simply disagreement or decide to take more decisive action. What would poor Harrap, with his Shepherd’s ways, think of all this? Tell her to love them despite their flaws? She sniffed in derision, concentrated on Parse’s forced but cheery prattle, appreciating his attempt to distract her.

She’d half allowed herself be swept along by Parse’s news but refused to let her enthusiasm get out of hand. A retired Seeker 103 years old living in the Elder Hostel and she hadn’t been aware of it. Amazing! And not claiming retired Seeker status and benefits, but living as a private citizen. Still, she’d checked the old records herself before leaving and had found Maize Bartolotti’s name and that of her ghatta An‘g. A brief four years of service before the notation of An’g’s death. “Parse, best not get too excited. At 103, we don’t know what to expect.” Possibly the woman was still alert, interacted with the present on a daily basis, but hardly likely.

Parse negotiated a broken piece of pavement, concentrating on planting his crutches. A satisfied grin flashed when he dared look up, eyes merry. “Think I’d have dragged you out of your musty, dusty library lair without checking? Though frankly, Per’la and I are convinced you need fresh air, more exercise.”

“You’re mother-henning me worse than Swan and Mahafny, and she’s a eumedico. Do this, don’t do that. It’s a perfectly natural process, and it’s not my first time, you know.” Though it had been years, another life since Briony’s birth and her subsequent death at Vesey’s childish hands. That longed-for pregnancy, that birth, had restored at least a limited confidence after her failure as a eumedico, as long as she didn’t dwell on the torment after that. A completely separate issue, a completely separate tragedy. Or were there other Veseys to threaten this baby? What if hatred were like a coin: Vesey’s perverted Resonant skills on one side, and on the reverse, a Reaper capable of slaying a child who inherited Jenret’s Resonant powers?

“Firstly,” Parse chattered on, oblivious to her distant expression, the protective hand on her belly. “I checked with the Matron about Maize Bartolotti’s condition—and it’s astoundingly good. Secondly, if you’d looked at her service dates more closely, you’d have made the connection that she served as a Seeker Veritas during Magnus deWit’s final days. You know what that means, Doyce.”

She whistled. Magnus deWit and his ghatt Ru‘wah had challenged Crolius Renselinck, Seeker General at the time, and his ghatta V’row, for control of the Seekers nearly 150 years ago. Some correspondence existed from that period, material she’d given Parse to study, as well as later commentaries, written well after the fact from an historical perspective, but this, this was a chance to reach out to history, to almost touch it. Although Maize hadn’t been born when the actual incident took place, she had, perhaps, heard firsthand from deWit what had happened. Very possible, since Maize had worked in the infirmary far more often than she’d ridden circuit. Possible, if deWit hadn’t been senile by then.

Parse halted, panting but triumphant. “True, true, but you’re forgetting my precious, that if Maize heard the story directly from Magnus deWit’s lips, likely An’g heard it as well, judged whether he lied to himself or not.” Jubilant at quelling both Doyce and the ghatti, Parse huffed on, picking up speed, reckless with anticipation.

A sunny, small courtyard, the last roses of the season climbing its low walls, beckoned them off the street. No mistaking this place: elderly residents sat on benches or lay on lounges, basking in the sun, some aware of their surroundings, others clearly not, whimpering, rocking, conversing with nonexistent visitors. Shame seethed within her as she patted the crumpled letter in her pocket. Their mother wasn’t well, Francie had written, but she couldn’t, she mustn’t be ready for a place like this. To be abandoned in these final years, infirm of body or of mind, or both. Waiting, simply waiting-for the next meal, the next activity, the next nap, or for relatives who never came. But the real visitor they were always alert for—some with happiness, some with fear-was death, the final caller.

Although not terribly common in Canderis, Elder Hostels did exist for those without close relatives or with relations unable to assume the burden of caring for an aged family member. They were, she lectured herself sternly, a necessity, not an admission of defeat. Indeed, given her sister Francie’s crippled condition, could she properly care for their mother when that day came? Given her own career as a Seeker Veritas, how could she cope, make a home for them when she so rarely was home, barely had a home of her own? The choices narrowed before her eyes, closing her in, binding her with shame. And how to make a home for the baby? Hadn’t she thought any of this through?

Throat constricted, forcing herself to focus on inanimate objects not people, she let Parse chat with the Matron as they stepped inside. The smell, faint as it was, assaulted her nostrils: disinfectants, antiseptic cleaning smells so familiar from her time as a eumedico, the heavy aroma of vased roses, pine boughs hung over doorways all lightened but couldn’t entirely dispel the other scents-urine, decaying bodies, steamed food, and most of all, the stench of hopelessness.

They traversed tiled halls, the tiles, she noticed, etched with textured waves to afford elderly, slippered feet better purchase. Not as easy to scrub and disinfect, but far safer footing. Worn but polished handrails at two different wall heights offered support and balance. There was no time for more exploration because the Matron stopped and tapped at a closed door, and Doyce wondered, hoping against hope, what awaited them inside.

“You’d best not be fooling me, girl! You’re a nice young thing, but you’ve stretched the truth before,” came a voice through the door. “Always promising it’s for my own good, but that’s debatable, in’it?” A scrambling noise, then the creak of a rocking chair. “Well, come in, and there’d better be ghatti. Not right to lie to an old woman, get her hopes up, her heart a-racing.”

The Matron swung the door open, and Doyce hovered on the threshold, almost loath to enter the world of the elderly, Parse peering over her shoulder. Uninhibited by her reserve, the ghatti had already glided inside, inspecting the petite figure ensconced in the rocking chair. “Oh, pretty ghatti,” Maize Bartolotti breathed. Large-knuckled hands twisted with excitement, suppressed joy as both Khar and Per‘la planted front paws on chair arms, stretching so she could reach their heads. “Sleekest tiger stripes I ever did see, such a perfect pink nose,” she crooned as she traced the markings on Khar’s head before shifting to Per’la. “And that tail ribbon, absolutely perfect. Wear it with pride, as a badge of honor, I’m thinking, am I right?” Her face gleamed with a hectic gaiety, a restrained longing. “Too much to ask, after all this time, but ... mindwalk if ye will.” And leaned back, stiff with resignation, not daring to hope.

“I know, I know, too prideful, mayhap. And what I once shared is long past, long done.” Bird-bright black eyes tore themselves from the ghatti to inspect her human visitors. “Well, sit, sit. Hurts my neck craning up at you like this,” and her head tilted in exaggeration. Doyce complied, sitting on the foot of the bed, hands jammed in the pockets of her overvest to wrap it around her stomach. What had possessed her to choose something pumpkin-colored? As if she needed that particular comparison! A brief moan took her mind off her lack of fashion-sense as she realized Parse was debating what to do. Lady bless, she’d forgotten his problem, hadn’t asked for days how he fared. Apparently Twylla’s salve had offered no salvation as he reluctantly hitched his hip on the cluttered nightstand beside the bed.

The black eyes regarded him, head cocked, assessing his behavior, his obvious discomfort. An embarrassed shift, a squirm, and Parse grazed a small, framed portrait. “Easy, boy, easy,” Maize rescued the tarnished silver frame. “Let me guess, let me guess. Don’t mean to be personal, like, but what is it? Boils? Bed sores? Not been up on those crutches all too long by the looks of your maneuvering. Spent too long in bed, belike?”

Rummaging in the nightstand, she extracted a capped jar, squinted at the label, put it back, dug farther inside, as if excavating. The second jar pleased her. “Here, try this, this instant. Likely you’re allergic to the soap they wash the sheets in, too much disinfectant. Wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.” Parse clutched the proffered jar. “I said now, boy, dab it on now. Hide in the comer if you’re bashful, but I doubt you’ve nothing I’ve never seen before, your friend here either, given the state she’s in.”

Struggling to remain solemn and, worst of all, desperate not to follow Parse with her eyes as he stumped into the corner, Doyce interrupted. “I do apologize. I don’t believe we’ve offered our names, although the ghatti have introduced themselves. My red-haired friend, the pantless one,” Parse grumbled at her description, “is Parcellus Rudyard, Parse for short, and I’m Doyce Marbon.”

Too lively, too sharp to be immured in an Elder Hostel, although she didn’t know what infirmities or ailments of old age the woman might suffer. “Haven’t you realized? She can’t walk more than a few steps at a time. Didn’t you notice the crutches by the door, the outline of braces under her dress?” Her heart thumped once in understanding, sadness. No wonder Maize empathized with Parse’s plight.

Where to begin? How to build a connection from the here and now to the past? How to show Maize she was still wanted and needed—not only for the past stored in her head, but to actively involve her in the process of discovery? Could Maize discern implications of the past in the present? Or was it too much to hope?

“Wasn’t a Seeker very long,” Maize sounded dubious, the chair slowing as if they’d both run down simultaneously. “Spent longer at other things. Only four years of my life, not much to tell. You’ve both served longer than I, and if I added your ages together I’d guess it would come out, barely over half my years. Think you’ll play Sixteen Questions, test the old lady’s memory? Just like the eumedicos- ‘Who’s the Monitor? What did you have for dinner last night?’ I asked one what he’d eaten last night and he couldn’t remember!” Something, something had made her pull back, distance herself, whether she misered her thoughts, her memories, or whether she honestly doubted she had anything of value to share.

The tarnished silver frame now rested against Maize’s rib cage, near her heart. “My An‘g? My An’g.” And despite the fact that Doyce had mentally spoken the name when she’d read the records, she’d not realized it was pronounced with such a soft sound, more the “g” in “angel,” rather than the hard “g” in “angle.”

“So much beauty, so much beneficence, so truly clever but always so frail. Her body never thrived, though her brain was so incisive. I worked in the infirmary as much as I could in hopes I’d learn something that might help her.” A wavering hand thrust the portrait in their direction. Rescuing it, Doyce studied the small oil portrait of An’g. A thin, triangular face with large, almost translucent pink-white ears, slanted eyes the color of citrine. Snowy white with a gray cap and tail and the hint of three gray patches on her lower back.

Somehow mollified by their silent homage, Maize snatched the picture back, fingertips caressing the frame. “Aye, the best part of me and for too short a time. After that, somehow didn’t matter that I married, had children, created another life for myself far longer than the one I’d shared with An‘g. Everything was pleasant, nice, but nothing ever quite lived up to that brief time. And after losing An’g, even losing my own child and grandchild didn’t seem any worse, any more painful than that. Horrified some when I said that, but it’s truth. Perspective, I guess. Different perspective, dif ferent values after that. Even makes living here palatable enough. I guess.” She returned the picture to the nightstand.

Parse bounced on the bed, boils either forgotten or truly painless. “Oh, yes, yes! If you could-anything, please! He died shortly after you left the Seekers Veritas. I’ve been reading some of his old correspondence, piecing the story together. But to hear anything he might have told you about it, even so long after the fact, could be priceless in evaluating the situation.”

Caught in the grip of his enthusiasm, Parse managed to come to a halt while Doyce tried to gauge her reaction. Maize had been absolutely correct—no, they weren’t here to discuss her life, but to hear what she remembered about another’s life. Not exactly flattering, viewing Maize as the vessel carrying that information.

So, still canny enough to remember how the game was played. What was the bargaining chip to be? Hardly money, Doyce thought. Her own chapter, or perhaps An’g’s own chapter in the book? A promise to visit again? But she’d already promised herself that Maize would be receiving more visits from Seekers and their ghatti Bondmates. Her service, however brief, no longer overlooked.

Merrily we’ll roll along is a pain in the fan-danny! Doyce inwardly fumed as she heaved and shoved the wheeled chair across grass overdue for mowing, dips and hollows lying in wait to trap the wheels. Naturally their goal was the far end of the Seeker burial grounds, several acres distant from Headquarters where the earlier graves lay. Parse’s assistance was minimal, not that she’d expected much, but just when she relied on him to brace himself, help push the chair over a rut, one crutch or the other would sink into the lawn, bringing him to a screeching halt until he could extricate himself.

“Leftward, sharp now,” Maize commanded and Doyce, sweaty and tired, pushed her scabbard out of the way and complied. The wheeled chair resembled an oversized version of a baby’s carriage, front wheels slightly smaller than the rear ones, the front pair incapable of independent action, their axle anchored straight across, not set on a floating pivot. What they did with frequency was jam. Cornering was not its strong point either unless she tilted the chair, shifted her weight, practically lifting one rear wheel clear while she swiveled the chair on the other. Surely Parse, with his love of puzzles, could create something superior to this overgrown wicker perambulator with its unwieldy wheels. Perambulation was hardly an apt description for such grueling labor.

“Over there! I can see it! Shame they haven’t mowed more recently.” An imperious arm now pointed right, and Doyce sighed, heaved her weight in that direction. Her shoulders ached—and her back. Impossible to put her whole body into the effort with her belly constantly in the way. “Now! Stop here!” At last Maize called a halt.

Not sure how she’d haul herself up, but not particularly caring, Doyce flung herself on the grass, Parse collapsing beside her. Joy and rapture, now she’d have to pull him up as well! She peered at the small white stone, its incised lettering blurred by moss and lichen, an old wreath from the Annual Remembrance Day dried and faded at its base. “An’g—Beloved Bond of Maize Bartolotti. 146-150 AL” Parse stretched to retrieve the flowers Maize clutched in one shaking hand, the other crushing a handkerchief. Levering himself across the grass with his good leg, he arranged the flowers at the stone’s base, saluted respectfully.

“Wasn’t what you think it was like, back then, not a bit of it. Don’t know if you can credit what it meant to be a Seeker back then.” Maize’s voice cracked and she bit her lip. “Oh, I wouldn’t say you’ve got it easy now, but things are more regulated, regimented, almost a regular job rather than a vocation.”

The words stung. “Hardly a job,” Doyce protested. “It’s still a vocation, a calling. One you’re called to with no warning, no say in the matter, but to serve and serve your best. There’s no backing out when you’re Chosen. You don’t ‘choose’ to be a Seeker, study for it, pass some examination.” She certainly hadn’t-already convinced she’d been a failure at everything she’d tried. Her failure as a eumedico, unable to accept the necessary lie that the emedicos’ vaunted mindtrance truly let them “see” the illnesses within their patients. Her failure as a wife and mother—bereft by husband’s and infant daughter’s deaths at the hands of her stepson, Vesey. Naturally she’d expected to fail at being a Seeker Veritas.

“It was all so silly, you know, ultimately childish.” Maize shook her head, staring off into the distance before twisting to look behind her at Headquarters. “They didn’t even have a real Headquarters then, not while Crolius was Seeker General. Oh, had the idea for it, wanted and needed it, but Seekers were leery about settling in one place. Most they had was a stone house they’d built a few years before, someplace for the records, a place for the Seeker General to hold meetings and off duty Seekers to gather.”

But Maize continued, implacable once she’d begun, and Doyce feared she’d missed something. “Changes, changes were coming, and people don’t always get along with changes. Think they want something new and different, yet in their hearts they want things just as they’ve always been. You see, Crolius and V’row had already been making changes, had a vision of the way they thought things ought to be. Not easy having visions, ideas nobody else has thought of yet.” She began to tick off points on her fingers.

“Formalized training for newly chosen Seekers, not just serving a ‘catch as catch can’ apprenticeship, riding circuit with a seasoned Seeker. Drew up formal circuits, schedules so Seekers would know when and where they’d work and for how long, and be entitled to time off. Not wear themselves out young for the good of others. Convinced the Monitor and the High Conciliators that Seekers were an essential service, deserved to be paid, not live hand to mouth like mendicants, dependent on others’ largesse for food or clothing, shelter or transport. ’

“But to Magnus’s and Ru‘wah’s minds, all this organization, this formal structure, meant the Seekers were becoming soft, losing their purpose, their goal of serving all without fear or favor when it came to the truth. No, Magnus and Ru’wah weren’t alone in mistrusting these changes; others did as well, though not as many as Magnus might have liked, but enough, enough.”

Maize looked through them, straining to recapture another era. “Even in my day things were more open, more candid communion amongst Seekers and ghatti-as if we were all a part of one big happy family. Rare to say ‘Mindwalk if ye will.’ Who needed privacy? We were all part of the same family, and in Crolius’s and Magnus’s time it was an even smaller, closer-knit family. They’d experienced some of the fears, the taunts people threw their way when it came to believing, to trusting an animal to read the truth in their minds. Nothing like what Matthias Vandersma suffered at the beginning, but there was still worry-probably still is.” Clearly, Maize hadn’t forgotten, was perceptive enough not to assume all doubt would fade with time. Skeptics, the fearful, always existed.

“Now in any family there’s generally a bit of grumpiness, arguments, and feuds. But the resentments of the traditionalists, Magnus and his cohorts, turned to backbiting, and then worse-to an open contempt for the changes Crolius was so painstakingly instituting, easing into place. He realized he couldn’t change things overnight.

“It all sounds so petty now, and perhaps it was even then. The few times Magnus spoke of it in his old age he’d bluster, sound defiant and yet almost embarrassed, shamed somehow. It’s said that Ru’wah died of shame, of having ad-_ hered to the truth so rigidly he blinded himself to the greater Truth.

“Yes, Henryk. ‘Frog-belly pale,’ Magnus called him, ‘whiter than a winding sheet and with pinky-red eyes.’ Even after all those years, Magnus acted uneasy when he described Henryk, Matthias’s uncle, though Henryk was seven years younger than Matthias. Henryk had commissioned architectural renderings of how he envisioned the new building, what it should be constructed of. He loved that mottled rose-gray granite, and it came from the quarries he owned. Once the Plumbs had stopped exploding for good, apparently he’d gotten rich from all the major building going on.”

“What you forget nowadays, discount, is that remnants of different social classes still existed. The technicians who came over on the ships, who monitored all the mechanical devices now forbidden us. Some said it was their fault the Plumbs had begun exploding, though they’d done their best to figure out why it was happening, how to stop it. Then there were the artists, the folk who’d paid for the expedition to this new world-a world of raw materials waiting to be carved, sculpted, molded. Folk forced to abandon their creative dreams, their artistic visions, just to survive. And, of course, Magnus was descended from temperamental artists, while Crolius was pure logic, technician-stock all the way. Talk about the twain never meeting!”

Doyce shifted, intent, envisioning what it must have been like with two such headstrong people, each convinced that he, and he alone, had the right of it. For a moment it seemed all too much like her relationship with Jenret. “If Magnus didn’t like the marble, I’ll wager he hated the architectural plans as well.”

“Right you are, my girl.” Maize beamed at her. “The plans were unaesthetic, horrid, ugly, and he made no bones about using those words, and worse, to describe them. Lady bless, he didn’t even approve of the Bethel-said the love of our Lady didn’t translate into natural artistic talent. Well, I know my spirits soar when I go in there, and it’s not just from being nearer to our- Lady.” The Bethel was beautiful, and so was Headquarters, Doyce thought as she caught a glimpse of its cupola beyond Maize. Homey, right, somehow. “And strangely enough, Magnus disliked the idea of the statue even more. ‘We are Matthias Vandersma’s and Kharm’s living memorial, the Seekers Veritas, not some cold, bronze-cast statue that can never capture what the two were truly like,’ he told me time and again.”

Maize fixed him with a gimlet stare. “Lad, you’ve muddled your dates, or worse yet, never bothered to notice. Cornerstone says 135 AL, 135 years After Landing. They didn’t break ground until the year I was born! Didn’t complete it till ten years later. We’d almost outgrown it before it was finished, so the wings were added twenty years after that.”

But Per’la took Parse in hand before Doyce could argue. “It’s one thing to join in a casual conversation amongst Seekers without permission. But never, never, do we purposely eavesdrop, listen to what isn’t meant for our ears or minds to hear. It’s wrong, as if you hid and listened to Doyce and Jenret talking privately.”

“An‘g could never figure that out either, why Crolius and V’row were so forbearing. Had all she could do not to probe Magnus’s mind for the answers. What she did gather was that Ru‘wah had also told Magnus something else, something beyond the gold’s location that gave Magnus a hold over Crolius. Sort of a tit for tat, ‘You accuse me of taking the gold, and I’ll tell the world that ...’ ” Maize trailed off, face wrinkled with the same perplexity she’d undoubtedly exhibited on first hearing the story. “All I know is that Henryk didn’t make a fuss, either.”

“Ah, hit it right on the button, lad.” The old Seeker hunched forward in her chair, as if drawing them in closer to her. “What An’g and I always wondered, and I ponder it even more lately, is if ... if....” She shared a glance with Khar, her mouth grim, then sat back, sinking into herself like a snail retreating into its shell. “Doesn’t matter what I think, no good spreading slander, lies, after all this time if I’m wrong.”

Relieved to be back on safer ground, Maize continued. “Magnus and Ru‘wah were marginalized, ostracized after what happened, because everyone knew what they’d done. Most of his supporters dropped away, and Crolius found it easier to institute his changes. But it wasn’t until Crolius was on his deathbed that the gold ‘magically’ appeared, shall we say? As if it were Magnus’s final peace offering to a long-term yet respected foe. Crolius never had the satisfaction of seeing the new buildings, but at least he died knowing they’d be built. And the building of them gave Magnus a place to die, a peripheral part of what he’d tried to spurn. Sad, isn’t it? Crolius at least got what he wanted, but I’m not sure Magnus ever did.”

Maize’s voice had run down, her story done, as much told as she’d dare tell. She shivered once as the sun began its final descent, the burial grounds already shrouded in early dark, marble tablets and pinnacles strangely luminescent, ghostly shapings against the tenebrous shadows of dense yews, twisted oaks. A corresponding shiver coursed through Doyce, as if she, too, bore the guilt of knowing more than she told, though she had no idea what. They’d dragged a 103-year-old woman from the safety and comfort of the Elder Hostel, prodded her to relive the past—and all without so much as a lap robe or a cup of cha to sustain her, keep her warm. Forced her to relive memories she might not have wanted to recapture. Didn’t she have enough of her own like that? “Time to get you back.” Hating the falsely brisk efficiency she projected, she clambered to her feet, back and arms strained and sore, legs rubbery. A groan at the thought of fighting the contrary wheeled chair back through the burial grounds. She kicked a crutch in Parse’s direction, futilely sought its mate’s hiding place.

“For Maize, or for Parse and me?” Doyce stretched and bent, tried to recollect when she’d had a waistline, gave it up as a lost cause. A more likely lost cause made itself apparent : the baby pressed on her bladder, hard. Either a rapid retreat was in order or a quick but embarrassing trip behind a grave marker.

The young Seeker-in-Training, Cady, and her ghatt F’een, herded Davvy ahead of them, shooing him along each time he veered off course, leapfrogging grave markers, dawdling to read inscriptions. Apparently Swan had insisted her “dragon nursemaid” get some exercise and fresh air, and appointed poor Cady as dragon-keeper. Finally focused on their task, Davvy fussily competent and concerned, they wrapped Maize in a woolly afghan, thrust a metal cha flask into her cold hands. The two manhandled the chair around, Parse hopping in and out of their path, shouting instructions and commands. Taking advantage of the distraction, Davvy jogged to Doyce’s side, held his hand palm-down over her stomach, waiting for permission to stroke the curve. A brusque nod and his hand touched, moth-light, the baby arching like a trout breaking water, then settling. Davvy fled behind the chair, grinning nervously.

Khar had jumped from the jouncing chair, rejoined her. “A tale at only one remove. Ru’wah was long gone, remember, so Magnus could have reinvented the tale, emphasizing some parts, diminishing others. And since then Maize may have rearranged the story, emphasized the parts she remembered best. But,” the ghatta thought it through, “for the most part, I don’t think so. She has a memory almost as fine as one of the ghatti.”

“Sleeked yourself out of that one, didn’t you? Or should I say ‘sneaked’? Fine, never mind, then.” It struck her now that the baby had shifted again, the pressure on her bladder less urgent. Mayhap if she walked slowly, thinking, things would fall into place, the said and the unsaid. A detour to Oriel’s grave would be nice, a tribute to things past, a way to honor his memory, not forget it. Perhaps even sit on the bench there for a bit and recall those days, what might have been. Oriel had been nothing like Jenret. Mayhap someday she’d be like Maize, reciting the past to an anxious scholar seeking truth.

“... take foot... out of ear!” “Ouch! Finger in eye!” She whirled, wondering at the echoes of childish voices. The way they carried on the early evening air, floating away in the distance. Well after dark, they should be inside, safe, loved. Distracted, she looked for Khar, found her perched on the bench she’d halted beside, pink nose planted on the curved swell of her belly, amber eyes almost crossed with concentration.

Diary entry completed, he’d debated scrawling his farewells on his slate but wanted it to be more lasting, as if by saving the letter Granther and Henryk could save a part of him. Much as it hurt, he opened the diary to its final blank page and tugged, praying he wouldn’t rip the delicate stitching. Finally, he tore the paper at the top, near the binding; it gave with a protesting RRIIP loud enough to wake the dead. Guiltily he swung around, but Granther was snoringly asleep, and Henryk’s bunk revealed its usual lump of limp boy, buried in blankets and pillows.

The pencil was short and stubby, lead worn to a bluntness that favored his broad strokes, his lack of control in making precise letters as his thoughts ran ahead of his spelling ability. Henryk spelled better than he already, but then Henryk had learned earlier. Besides, given Henryk’s poor eyesight, reading was a delight, the printed page in front of his nose clear to his vision.

With care he stowed the diary in his sack, pocketing the pencil stub rather than letting it vanish in the sack’s vastness. The ghatta stretched at ease on the hearthstones, but her eyes had been following his slightest movement, ever alert, skin twitching with impatience. Or, mayhap fleas, Matty supposed. He scratched an ankle reflexively.

“Almost.” He stood, gathered his sack tight, though what could rattle, he wasn’t sure. One wool scarf, a pair of knit stockings without shaped heels, better he keep outgrowing the worn spots, Granther said. A clean shin. A cracked clay mug wrapped in the scarf, stuffed in the dented tin pot with its bale so it could be hung over a fire. Some old twine and leather laces for snares and, the thing he’d hesitated over taking-that made him cringe with guilt, almost like a thief-Granther’s second-best knife. An old jacknife, its pearl grip missing on one side. But a knife was a necessity. Considering, he opened the sack and fumbled through it, retrieved the knife and stuffed it into his pocket along with the pencil stub. If he lost the sack and its contents, at least he’d have the knife. Taking anything more would deprive Granther and Ryk of things they needed to survive, and Ryk would soon enough grow into the few clothes he’d left behind.

His feet had rooted in place, and he shuffled the overlarge boots. Feet shifted inside boots, but he couldn’t bring himself to lift one, take the first step. “Come on!” Kharm cajoled. When had she moved to the door, taken the first step? A shallow breath, and when he exhaled he felt an unexpected lightness, as if he could float out a window, or even up the chimney with the smoke. “Things to see, things to do!” So there were, so there were.

The cold air hit him. Killing frost tonight, he could smell it, taste it in the sharp air. Still, everything that could be harvested had been except for the more hardy cabbage and kale, turnips and carrots, earth banked around them. Stars spangled above him, his breath steaming whiteness into the night air as he set off down the dirt road leading away from the village center and the well. Only one true light burned that he could judge, the other minor glows revealed banked fires, a faint, bloody translucence shivering the thin, scraped hide windows. Soon winter shutters would block even that amount of light.

“Of course. But we aren’t enemies as you and the Killanins are. We’re all part of the chain of life. I need the lesser creatures to survive, and they need me to survive. Otherwise too many might breed, overrun what food they’ve stored for winter.” A ghatta chuckle. “Besides, I don’t think they’d willingly march up to me if I sat and waited.”

“True. Nor would I willingly march anywhere near the Killanins. However, I do think they’re one of the lesser links on the chain of life, despite their size. ” Everything he discussed with the ghatta forced him to think, reassess things, even when they bantered, and now their banter had carried him almost to Mad Marg’s house.

Ryk screwed up his face, naked somehow without his tinted glasses, unneeded with the dark to shelter his sensitive pink eyes. “Are you finally going?” As usual, his hands nestled under his armpits, arms crossed protectively over his chest, shoulders hunched. A wail of reproach, muted not to carry in the night, but still clear, “And you didn’t even say good-bye!”

But after Kharm’s earlier lecture, Matty banished the thought, appealing as it might sound. “No. They can make trouble on their own, they don’t need our help.” He hefted the sack again, debated, then slung it over Ryk’s shoulder. “Come on, you can walk with me a ways. Know you like being out at night.” True, darkness provided Henryk with at least minimal safety, the freedom to enjoy the world without looking over his shoulder for danger, human danger. Whatever might stalk him, harm him in the night was natural, a risk, but a risk to be savored without fearing the superstitious malice of his fellow humans.

With a gasp, Henryk threw himself into Matty’s arms, face plastered against his chest, arms wired around his waist, and Matty looked up to see Marg looming in front of them. Though not as ghostly pale as Henryk, her stealthy, silent movement was even more frightening, should have been impossible, given her bulk. “Why didn’t you warn me she was here?” he threw in Kharm’s direction as the ghatta closed the distance between the two boys and Marg. “Were you going to let her ambush me?”

“Here.” Marg thrust a cloth-wrapped bundle in his direction, rested it on Ryk’s head as if he served as a convenient shelf, nothing more. “Forgot food, didn’t you? It’s the obvious things in life that men and boys forget.” The smell of fresh baked bread reached his nose, plus the ripe scent of cheese, the sweetness of dried fruit. His mouth watered; he hadn’t eaten much dinner, throat constricted, stomach tight as he’d planned for the night.

A brusque nod of thanks, and he unwrapped a cautious hand from around Henryk to take the bundle, wondering how to slide it into his sack. But Henryk had scooted behind him, arms still locked around his waist, thrusting the sack in his hand and letting Matty stand as his bulwark in front of Marg. “You knew, too?” Incredulous, his voice slipped up a notch, turning question into accusation. He’d believed only he held the village’s secrets, but now someone knew his as well. It made sense that Ryk had found him out; those in constant danger always watch closely. But Marg? He saw her so seldom.

Marg swiped at her face with a handkerchief, and Matty’s nose wrinkled at the pungent smell, astringent, faintly alcoholic. Witch hazel, he guessed as she pressed the cloth against her temples, half-shrouding her face. “Of course. Breezes talk to me, whisper secrets. I’m trying not to listen now. Those as are different always have to seek their way.” Lowering the handkerchief, Marg nodded with utter seriousness, the moonlight highlighting her once fine features, forcing him to remember how beautiful she’d been.

“Everything talks to Marg.” She shifted conversational tracks again. “I put in a bit of dried fish for that larchcat of yours.” Her body seemed to deflate, spread as she stooped to stroke the ghatta. “Always hearing tiny, distant voices, but they never hear me. Funny, though, couldn’t hear the eumedico at all when she came, try as I might. Mayhap if I’d had a cat like this to share my thoughts, I wouldn’t be the way I am.”

The ghatta cradled against her ample bosom, she looked up, almost shyly. “Don’t harbor any thoughts about going to Marchmont. Venable Constant and his ilk have no use for us-the likes of me with the little I glean, or the likes of you. You’re too different from what they know. Now, follow downstream far enough, you’ll hit the River Vaalck. Might still be a trade flatboat or two this time of year, but won’t be much longer. Where the river goes, I don’t know, but that’s up to you.”

He wanted to protest that he couldn’t influence the river’s direction, but dimly realized that wasn’t her point. “I thank you for the food, for the advice.” He already knew enough not to go to Marchmont, why journey to a land of outcasts? He swallowed, longing to beg one further thing, a favor, but it wasn’t wise to rile her. Regardless, he opened his mouth to ask, and she put a finger to his lips.

“Don’t look back, just go. There’s nothing more to say.” Marg ceremoniously placed the ghatta in his arms, and he set her on her feet, began walking faster and faster until he was running. Don’t look back, don’t look back! But he broke his vow once, thought he was distant enough that one final glimpse wouldn’t matter, couldn’t hurt, and saw two backs: one large and one small, each on opposite sides of the roadway, as separate from each other as they could be yet still somehow remain linked. The tears started in earnest, his feet stumbled, but he continued running. Running from Coventry where he’d been born, but where would he be buried? What far town or city, what distant place? Alone? Unloved? Unmourned?

Matty leaped for the pier, caught the hawser that Solange threw to him, snubbed it around a piling. By the time he’d finished the hitch and done the same with the stem rope, Kharm had paraded halfway down the pier, drawing glances and comments from the dockers on the adjoining landings who were repairing cracked pilings and splintered boards. Tail high, sauntering along as if she owned the pier, she stopped to sniff here and there, exploring canvas-draped boxes and bales, hitching a claw into a loose flap to see what lurked underneath.

Busy double-checking the ropes, sliding the plank walkway out to the raft, Matty lanced a mindthought in Kharm’s direction. “Easy, easy! Wait up and don’t go exploring until I’ve finished here. You know the rules. ” Oh, she knew the “rules,” but sometimes they seemed to float right out of her head, curiosity conquering common sense.

“And if I had?” he huffed, sliding the planking farther until the crossbar on the underside butted against a similar crossbar on the pier. Absurdly pleased with the ease with which he’d accomplished it, at his gain in strength in just two octants on the river, he preened and flexed, proud of his hard-earned muscles. But the vision of the ghatta wandering alone, viewed by strangers as dangerous, wild, spoiled his private posturing. “Kharm, we don’t know anyone here and they don’t know us. We need to winter over someplace, river’s about ready to freeze, and Gilboa’s as good a place as any. If you don’t muck things up, ” he added dark-humoredly.

Carrying on simultaneous conversations, one internal, one external, and not entrapping himself in either one to the exclusion of the other was still an ordeal. Mostly if someone noticed his conversation fading or faltering, it was viewed as distraction or woolgathering, hardly unusual in a teenaged boy. It almost happened now, but he was already bouncing along the walkway when Gheorghe shouted, “Ye need an invite, Matty-lad? Let’s git unloaded.”

Without paying any overt attention to the ghatta, he shot a parting admonition her way. “Now, just sit and wait for me. ” He didn’t bother watching Kharm plunk herself on the pier, tail wrapped around toes, its tip flickering, her mouth prim. She was close to full grown now, weighed nearly ten kilos, but was still prone to exhibit the actions and reactions of a ghatten as she referred to herself, more often than not.

So they’d both grown. Not a bad two octants, all in all, other than the continually increasing cold and ever-dampness of the river gnawing at his fingers and toes, chapping his cheeks. Some early mornings with gray scum ice webbing their moorings, he’d thought his fingers might crack off as he hammered ice loose. No sense waiting for the sun to melt it when the work always warmed his fingers enough to flex. Good thing.

He’d journeyed southeast that first runaway night, following the stream that flowed into the River Vaalck, had continued tracing the river course until he’d found a likely spot on the bank for a raft tie-up. Nothing for it but to sit and wait, shivering with nerves and the dampness of exertion. A light rain began to fall, dripping off his nose, slithering down his collar. Sat with Kharm draped across his lap, wondering if his granther or anyone followed him. Didn’t know if he’d be glad or sad to be found, forced to return home. Kharm’s silence matched his, but her purring soothed, convinced him he’d done the right thing. Only once had she spoken, “Right thing, wrong reason?” but he’d refused to be drawn into that discussion. And after a long, rainy day of lonely waiting, at dusk he’d sighted a raft sliding down the river, its stately progress broken as it was poled diagonally to coast bankward. A grating thump as it nosed the mudbank, and he wiped a damp sleeve across his eyes to see better.

Solange and Gheorghe Aadestok had been reluctant to take him on, but Gheorghe’s accident had made it necessary, his right hand cocooned in bandages, smashed when he’d tripped and fallen while skip-footing across a boom, his hand jamming deep between two logs as they’d shifted and resettled. Ultimately Solange had insisted Gheorghe take him on. “Pay?” he’d inquired in his best adult voice, concerned about his earning power.

Brown eyes hooded, Solange had pouched her lower lip, thrust it out as she studied him and he’d studied her back, daunting to bargain with a woman who looked as hard and as solid as the sweep oar on which she negligently leaned. First salvo to her, “No pay. Food and shelter, more clothes if ye need’em. Works out, a bonus at the end when we tie up for the winter. Assumin’ trade’s been good.” Did that mean it hadn’t been good thus far?

“No pay?” Incredulity and a sinking heart. Food, shelter, additional clothing were blessings not to be denied, but how could he put money aside for lean times? Not that much money circulated in Canderis, most things were bartered, traded. Truth be told, he’d seen little money, actual coinage, in his life, but the concept appealed to him, the idea of earning it, saving it, counting it, buying what he wanted. Well, he and Kharm would survive, one way or another.

Gheorghe fiddled with the wrappings on his hand, long black hair falling over his forehead to hide his expression. “Another mouth to feed, boy. And a useless one at that. Mayhap even worse than useless, destructive, belike. Clawing at bales, scratching at cargo, who knows what else? Wild creature like that can’t be trusted, has its own ways. Raft’s no place for a larchcat.”

He’d sensed his chances slipping from between his grasping fingers. Yet again he digested the bitterness of what it meant to be saddled with Kharm-rejected, outcast-and they didn’t have an inkling about her mindpowers. Spurn her? Cast her off? Impossible! He squared his shoulders, wet jacket clinging, molding to him. No sense whining, pleading, he had to convince on rational grounds.

“First, she’ll eat a share of what I get, and I won’t beg or steal more for either of us. Second, she can hunt for herself when we tie up each night. Third, if she destroys anything, claws and damages something,” he took a deep breath, because Kharm did enjoy clawing things, and even the logs of the raft itself presented a temptation, “I’ll go without food the next day.” His belly growled at the thought; he’d been cautious about eating too greedily from the limited supplies Marg had given him, not sure how long they’d have to last him. “Finally, I’m small, neither of us will take up that much space, but I’m strong.” A slight exaggeration, but not too great a one, he’d hoped. He’d do what he had to do, learn how, no matter what. Besides, hadn’t Granther always said, “Work smarter, not harder.”

Now Matty’s worries blossomed. Should he, could he trust them? They were hard-bitten, strong, implacably adult in the way Granther was but his da had never managed. The decision had been tossed back into his lap. But Kharm had decided for him, springing aboard, shaking damp fur as if she were a dog. “They’re good, they’re true. Think I’ll even eat leftovers, scraps.” With a deep breath, he’d stepped aboard as the raft rocked against the shore, had shaken hands, wondering what he’d gotten himself into, but content to wait and find out.

It hadn’t been so bad, Matty reflected. Kharm had behaved herself and he’d learned as well: how to read the river, its snags and deadheads, its currents, how to spot the ragged, flapping flags that signaled cargo to be shipped. And cargo consisted of most anything, from livestock to salted fish to iron kettles. For the most part they floated down the Vaalck, the current doing the work, although three times they’d poled like the possessed against it, retracing their route to deliver something of importance upstream for double pay. Medicine it had been once, though they’d done that trip gratis.

And once, one night just two days past, he’d been scared witless when the Vaalck reared up and ran backward, lifting them willy-nilly, heaving them upstream as if a giant watery hand refused to let nature take its course. Distant thunder preceded the watery shock wave, yet the night sky was clear, the moons bright. A deep rumble, then a chain of sympathetic answering rumbles as he’d watched the waves reverse their lapping, race toward them. “Tide tripper!” Gheorghe had screamed, “Unlash the stern lines, Matty!” while Solange had run for the bow, not waiting to untie the mooring ropes but severing them with an ax. He’d whipped out his knife and sawed away at the lashings, Solange thrusting him aside, ax striking hard at the pitiful fraying he’d accomplished.

The raft floating free, they’d ridden the reverse tide nearly a kilometer, the raft dipping and plunging, bobbing like a wood chip. Clinging to each other, to anything they could grasp, at last they slowed, the raft beginning to drift back, retracing its normal course as if nothing had happened. Unsteadily, the three managed to pole and paddle the raft around so its minimal prow faced the right way. “What was that?” he’d asked, concentrating on pushing debris away with his pole.

Balancing her own pole in its rest, Solange had looked somber, afraid. “Plumbs, lad. I’d say a string of them popped jest above where the Vaalck merges into the Kuelper, jest afore they runs into the sea. When the earth shifts and heaves, the water backs up, the ocean surges in, runs in ways it shouldn’t, sometimes floods the banks if it’s bad enough.”

“I’m thinking if that many Plumbs went off, belike they won’t have any more ‘sploding for a while. Be needing hands to repair the damage. Why not us? Matty here? Kin live in the raft hut if’n we have to, though it’ll be mighty cold once the river freezes and the wind whips ’cross that ice. Or mayhap find a hut on land. Nice to be on land again.”

And how, as the sunset came and the wind picked up, gulls screaming in salt marshes, hovering over the tidal flats, he found himself with money in his pocket. Not much, but some, plus some bartering goods in his sack, and Kharm by his side, walking down the pier, waving good-bye to Gheorghe and Solange, striding off into the world again. “Toes cold,” Kharm complained. “Hungry.”

“Well, you napped all afternoon, nice and snug under that canvas. I saw the lump you made.” His own fingers throbbed, cold, stiff, and bruised; one foot ached where he’d inadvertently rolled a barrel over it in his haste to unload. “We’ll find someplace for dinner.” Where, he couldn’t say, but a place as big as Gilboa, so much larger than Coventry where he’d grown up, had to boast a place to eat. Not that he’d ever been inside such an establishment, but he’d heard about them.

The thought of pea soup, of the stuffy, companionable warmth, did sound inviting, more so than he wanted to admit, and he shivered, not from cold but from the unknown. Instead, he tucked his scarf tighter around his throat. “Come on, Kharm. It’s an adventure. No one knows us here, knows what you can do. And I want it kept that way, do you hear? Don’t tell me what I don’t need to know!” His mindvoice snapped and stung more cruelly than he’d meant, but he had to impress the need on her. Had to have a chance to be his own person, his own, not Kharm’s. Mayhap even fit in here, find a new home.

“Wha ... ?” Doyce’s head tossed almost wildly, confused as to where the comment came from. Why, in the name of the havens, was she sitting on a bench in the burial grounds? Dark out, too, and she flexed her hands, fingers swollen and cold, callused and rough as if she’d been pressed into heavy manual labor in the raw wind and damp. “Khar, what are we doing out here?”

A white paw patted at her hands, convinced her they belonged to her again, warm, well-cared for, a hint of callus where she’d hold the reins, nothing more. Well, the swelling still persisted, and her feet pinched, tight in her boots. Hardly an unusual occurrence, given her pregnancy. At least she wasn’t suffering from terminal bloat; it only felt like it sometimes. The paw tapped again, insistent, on her hand, then feet on her shoulder, a warm nose, tickling whiskers scrubbed her face. A tongue rasp under her nose brought her fully awake. “Ooh, sandpaper! Khar, don’t do that! You know I hate having my nose licked!”

Her brain clutched scattered facts, the expedition with Parse and, most of all, with Maize. Their visit to the burial grounds where Maize’s Bondmate An’g had been laid to rest. Her own detour by Oriel’s grave, and apparently she hadn’t journeyed any farther—but to daydream for so long? And why did Khar remain balanced like that, eyes interlocked with her own?

“Why should they? Sometimes we eat at Headquarters, sometimes we don’t. You aren’t very predictable-about meals anymore,” and Khar concealed her deeper worry at Doyce’s newfound protean ability about when and where and how she could imagine Matty’s life. It had to be Khar’s fault, failing Doyce, failing the Elders. Wasn’t she controlling things properly? Or had Matty’s past assumed a life of its own, relived through Doyce? Neither possibility made sense, but at least Doyce hadn’t suffered from the experience.

Sliding her forearm under Khar’s forelegs, Doyce tilted the abstracted ghatta from her shoulder. “Well, if you’d let go, I could get up, see about doing something about dinner—for both of us. I feel incredibly hungry, as if I’d been doing stevedore work all day! Nothing like heavy dock work to make you famished. And I definitely have to go to the bathroom now!” Rising, she smoothed her overvest, began to move cautiously through the dark, dim white shapes hovering phantasmagorically in the periphery of her vision. Over there a small, frightened boy, here an implacable, bulky woman, and there the striped afterimage of a ghatta.

Too real, too similar, Khar moaned inwardly, one life blending with another! Distract her, find an excuse, make her fixate on Now, on us! “Of course, wheeling Maize and that chair through this jungle wilderness might have something to do with it, especially after Parse insisted on leaving the path and heading cross-country!”

“True, all too true!” Doyce hesitated, waiting for Khar to lead the way as always. “Dinner at the mess must be done, but I’m sure we can snag some bread and meat, some fruit, from the kitchens. Eat it there? Or take it back to the house?” The thought of the Headquarters kitchen, bright with lantern light, fires, the muted rattle of clean up, sloshing dishwater, and setting up for tomorrow’s breakfast, appealed. Surely someone would have time to chat. Other Seekers, especially Novies, were prone to slip in for snacks. Going home to the empty house, their final quarrel still resounding from the walls, was too painful to contemplate. Which one of them was more stubborn? Well, Magnus and Crolius hadn’t resolved their differences either, not exactly a comforting thought.

The Plum wuz scary. I didn’t noe water culd run the aposite way like that. Hope not miny people wer hurt. Gheorghe an Solange an i will wintur in Gilboa. I hope Kharm liks it and that i doent have two worry whut she tells me and i hope i make new frends. It wood bee nice to shair wit someone what its like to noe what Kharm tells me. Awfull nice.

Shaking her head to clear it, Doyce squinted at the scrawling lines. Lady bless, reach for a sandwich and lose her place! But it was so difficult to decipher that each time she picked it up her mind drifted toward other thoughts, an ongoing fantasy she’d been having about Matty and Kharm. Somehow she knew far more than her research had told her, conjuring up the textures and details, the emotions and times more deeply than her scant facts indicated, as if she’d taken a preliminary sketch and expanded it into a full-color panorama. Strange. Entirely too suggestible, just because she thought she’d made out the name Kharm in the diary.

Paw poised to snag the cheese overhanging the bread, Khar stiffened. Trouble! Best act quickly or she’d have some explaining in store for her, impossible since she couldn’t explain it herself. “It’s probably short for Carmen, especially given the way that person spells-you complain all the time. She sounds a. bossy sort.”

“You won’t dream, I promise. I’ll be there to guard your dreams.” And Khar would do everything in her power to ensure Doyce’s sleep flowed dreamlessly tonight, no monster ,sandwiches chasing her through the’burial grounds, or anything else, let alone another episode from Matthias Vandersma’s life. Not until she discovered how and why Doyce was able to override her control.

Hylan slung the dripping bucket onto the cart’s tailgate, began untying the tarp shielding its load. Pretending to concentrate on her task, she let her eyes dart guiltily, hoping against hope that Harrap remained where she’d left him, stirring the evening’s porridge. The dog, Barnaby, whined once, fretful at her worry, then splashed in the stream, muzzle darting as he snapped at a minnow. The slope sheltered her from prying eyes, no reason for Harrap to watch her. After all, her excuse rang genuine: wash the dust off the wagon, soak the wheels so the spokes would swell, tighten from the water. The old rackety goat cart had taken a pounding on the dirt roads, deep rutted from the harvest wagons.

Dragging off the dirt-encrusted tarp, she eased two burlap-wrapped bundles free and plunged them into the bucket. Could almost hear the hungry sucking sound as they absorbed the water. Most of the leaves had dropped, and she fingered one regretfully. After all, it was late autumn, that-not to mention the trauma of the move-explained it, but a few hung tenaciously to their spindly twiglets, still green but curling around the edges.

The best time of year to transplant; let them settle into their new homes, lie dormant through the winter, and burst forth with new foliage in the spring. Each a promise, a future hope, a way of culling Gleaners from normal, average folk. A salvation, a promise for the future, a future free of Gleaners, of Resonants, or whatever fancy name they might call themselves, and no chance, no hope they might someday contact the stars, call mind-to-mind to any Spacer ships that wandered into their purview. No, it was her sacred duty, her obligation to liberate Canderis and the whole of the planet Methuen from any taint from space. They’d survived this long without it after that first abandonment, nearly 250 years ago, and nothing, nothing was going to change it if she had her say. Her penance, her sacrifice to erase those last memories of the Fifty who had come so close to seducing her as a child. She was not a child any longer.

She gently grasped the two precious bundles by their thin trunks, much the size of a switch for whipping a recalcitrant child, let the excess water drain from the balled burlap and reverently returned them to the cart. Took two more bundles and repeated the process before scooping a fresh bucket of water. They thirsted, just as she thirsted for the assurance that everything would continue safe, well, unchanging. After a moment’s thought, she positioned herself between the shafts and backed the cart deeper into the water, let it soak hub-high. Harrap would notice if the wheels weren’t wet.

Were eight saplings enough? She hoped and prayed they were. Lucky to root eight, have them live through four years. Four years since that horrific yet miraculous night when the sky had plummeted at her feet, a relic of what existed out there to harm. Others had died, bark winter-stripped by hungry rolapin, or roots never setting deeply enough—these eight the strongest. Even some of the righteous always died. Well, eight it would have to be, a lucky number—put it on its side and it indicated infinity. Funny that eight meant so much to Harrap as a Shepherd, the Eight Mysteries, the eight Disciple moons of our Lady. Yes, eight could encircle, a protective litany-one each at Alkmaar, Ruysdael, Coventry, Gilboa, Waystown, Neu Bremen, Free Stead, and home again to Roermond. Insurance for the future.

Her pantaloons dragged wet and muddy at ankles and shins. A minor inconvenience, a very minor reminder of the trials and tribulations she faced, the discomfort, the pain. Pain that had been, pain that would be, but it was all worth it, would be worth it if she could save the world. She’d never asked for that role, oh, no, not in her wildest dreams, had been content with her solitude, eking out a meager living. Always someone in need of a dowser, able to search out water, precious lost objects, her pendulum of needle and thread swinging to determine the sex of a child in the womb. The vibrations always told her, minor skills, but skills all the same, something her family’d had down through the generations.

But she’d had been called, chosen, the night the sky had fallen, a star flaming across the heavens, burning bright, a lurid false dawn. Had she been the only one awake to see it, tremble with awe at its blazing, seductive majesty? Been the only one to rush out, quailing, eyes shielded from its dangerous, devouring glare, certain the world was ending, would explode in a mighty burst of flame? Oh, yes, sinners burned, burned forever. Harrap might not believe that, protest the Lady was kind, always ready with another chance, but she knew better.

Brighter, brighter, a soughing of wind that lifted the hair off her head, made it lash her face, stinging, a searing heat arcing downward in a flaming, rending sword stroke. Huddling on the ground, Barnaby crouched beneath her, she’d sheltered herself and him from the blinding vision. A crashing eruption, the scent of charring wood, and all was blessed darkness again. Except for the spangled lights that played before her eyes and made it hard to focus. Barnaby had quivered so hard beneath her she’d feared he’d shake himself out of his skin. Realized she was shaking as well. When she’d dared open her eyes, before she could even see properly, she’d followed her nose, followed the stink of burning. Had crossed the back pasturage to the stream and seen the old witch hazel tree quivering, leaves dropping, a black, scorched scar blasted down its middle. Embedded in its trunk, a piece of glowing metal, piercing to the heartwood. It looked like a tiny stabilizer fin, the outer edge of one, anyway, the same shape as the ones in the drawings of a spaceship. Warned, yes, she’d been warned that space was a garbage midden, could cast its debris their way. Her father had ranted how their ancestors had corrupted not just the land with their technology, but the very skies themselves. But who had ever believed before this heavenly sign? And the heavens, the starry firmament was hellish.

Why the tree hadn’t died from that trauma, she could never surmise, but the next spring it had bloomed a cascade of yellow, threadlike petals, thrived, grown fuller, faster, invigorated by the near calamity, the metal still embedded in its heartwood. She’d taken a forked cutting from it, was stripping the leaves, trimming it into a dowsing rod when the two had arrived. She didn’t know them, though she’d seen them before on the roadway beyond the house sometimes, the man with the ropy, twisted scars up the side of his face, often accompanied by the lovely, elegant young woman who wore a white coat, who worked as a eumedico in the Research Hospice farther on. As far as Hylan was concerned, good neighbors left each other alone, and she’d always scrupulously done that. Had no truck with eumedicos, their faltering skills, their lies brought sorrow. What right did they have to invade her property like this?

Gripping the forked stick in her hands, she’d willed them to be gone, leave her be. And to her surprise the stick had risen and dipped, vibrating up and down without her knowledge, without her help, as if seeking and scenting what it had before it. Her hands trembled as she tried to hold the rod still.

She hadn’t trusted herself enough to speak beyond a bare “Aye.” Something clawed at her brain, unloosening old memories, old fears ... a night, a night, a night of laughter, song, sharing ... and then sorrow. Torches, the deaths, her mind vibrating like a tuning fork. Ah, grant me the strength of the deaf adder who stoppeth her ears, who refuses to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he ever so wisely! In self-defense she raised her hands to her face, leaned her forehead into the fork of the rod, the branches shielding her temples. And glory to the Lady, the pain eased!

No, she reflected, she hadn’t known then to whom she had spoken, but she’d learned shortly after. Had not sensed power like that since ... dead, dead, gone ... had spawn survived? Vesey Bell, the notorious, twisted Gleaner, and Evelien Annendahl Wycherley, Gleaner and eumedico both. Hylan pulled the goat cart forward, turning the wheels to let the top halves soak. It paid to be patient, thorough. Blind before, but now she could see, just the barest premonition of a premonition. They’d come again, would win this time. But she could identify them. Else why had she stuck that freshly cut dowsing rod into the moist ground, cut other twigs and planted them round, hoping they would take root?

And now that premonition was coming to pass. But what to do about Harrap, not to mention that blasted ghatt with him? What did they represent? A part of her plan or an anathema ? She worried at the thought, set another two balled saplings to soak. She liked the man, and that was a danger. How long would he continue with her like her faithful shadow? He seemed content enough to follow along, keep her company. What had he said? That his soul was hungry, that he was on a pilgrimage to visit as many Bethels, large and small, as he could? But the few stops he’d made had been perfunctory at best, always rushing to catch up with her, breathless, face florid with fear that she’d disappeared.

But he wasn’t just a Shepherd, he was a Seeker as well, and Seekers bore a passing similarity to Gleaners. Still, perhaps their skills were natural, unperverted-the ghatti native to the planet, best not harm something that belonged here, at least until she could decide, be sure. She longed for the sting of the supple rod on her shoulders, her back, scourging the doubts from her mind, scourging the answers in. And that was denied her with Harrap along. Grunting, she towed the cart clear of the water, dropped the shafts, and rubbed her palms. How they itched for the scourge.

In a few days they’d reach Schuylkill, two more days and two nights to decide. To see if Harrap would persist in accompanying her, if she could convince him to travel on about his own business. Little enough time to do what she had to do, make the circuit, planting at the major stops. Eight weren’t enough, but it was the best she could manage to erect a barricade against the voices that might shout to the skies, and what would follow would be answering voices form the starships.

Barnaby whined, pawed at her sodden pantaloon leg. Returning to the present, she saw Parm watching from the rise, perky and curious and all-knowing, his motley markings a ludicrous blur of colors. He gave a chirp of greeting, rolled on his back, all four feet pointed skyward, opening himself to receive danger from above. Barnaby galloped to meet him, shook water all over, and terrier and ghatt began to wrestle, romping and rolling. No, the ghatt had no portent, was only a ghatt. Nothing dangerous about Parm, but about Harrap she’d have to reserve judgment. Not that he was intrinsically dangerous but that, despite his best intentions, he might present a danger to what she had to accomplish. Must accomplish.

Too often each day melded into the next, research and write, write and research, don’t think about the baby, don’t think about Jenret or Swan, don’t think about the future. At times the tidy progression of Seeker history could almost obscure her daily life, swamp her concerns about Swan each time she visited, mask the passage of her pregnancy. Except when the baby fluttered and shifted, swayed to its own inner music. Everything in neat, precise black-and-white-except for her gray thoughts. Being busy meant less time to worry, so she stockpiled them until later. She’d have whole winter’s worth to sustain her by the time she finished.

Rawn and Khar conversed through the ghatti mindnet, carried word to her from Jenret, circumspect, flavorless messages, filtered through too many minds concerned for her well-being. Several times Doyce had startled, strained, almost swearing she could hear Jenret faintly in her mind. Yet no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t relax enough to grasp the sense, the words of the message, each effort blocking her tighter and tighter. Unlikely, anyway, fool’s fancy. Why bother to listen, why should he send? How foolish to deny him, deny herself the comfort. Besides, what did she expect? She wasn’t a Resonant. Mayhap someday, mayhap never, and each possibility boasted its own inherent fears.

Repenting her vow not to listen, this night she tried again before bed, sitting by the open window, bundled in an old navy robe of Jenret’s to ward off the chill. With her eyes shut she could pretend he wrapped his arms around her, the closest she could come to him these days. For a moment her mind eased, and she almost believed it. Already curled at the foot of the bed, Khar squinted a sleepy eye at her, and she hoped when she finally gave up and went to bed the ghatta would cuddle close. Except then she’d be forced to leave her arm outside the covers, and goose-bumped at the thought.

Her waking came like a detonation, abrupt, shocking, her senses swimming. Bells pealed, not in measured tones to announce the passage of night, but in a frenzy of tolls, clanging across the city, outshouting each other. A strange brightness writhed, glowing against the far wall, not morning light but something almost alive, moving. Why was the light moving? Stock-still, hands clutching the sheets, she sought her bearings, concentrating on making sense of the clamor before venturing up. But Khar wedged through the window she’d left open a crack. Head through, Khar heaved the sash higher, the screech abrading Doyce’s senses, her nostrils dilating at the whiff of smoke. She hugged the sheet to her mouth, gagged.

Arm yourself to go fight a fire? Without elaborating, Khar dashed off, but her command jolted Doyce into action. She dredged up her pantaloons, boots, slung Jenret’s old robe around her as an overcoat. At least it covered her long bed shift, half stuffed into her waistband. Fire? Maize? The Elder Hostel on fire? Not fire, please! A harried poking around the darkened bedchamber finally unearthed her sword, its leather sheath dusty beneath her fingertips. The belt mocked her, unable to cinch around her waist when she attempted to buckle it on. Hissing with frustration, she slung it across her shoulder and pounded down the stairs and out the door.

Lights flashed in Headquarters windows, and in the distance she could make out other Seekers piling outside, running toward the brightening sky to the west. The acrid stench of smoke and burning taunted her lungs even at this distance. Praise the Lady, there was no smell of charring flesh as yet! Nothing to do but set her own pace, belly swaying rhythmically, and pray her jog trot would carry her there in time. The streets rapidly filled with clots of people, late-night revelers, half-awake, half-clothed citizens tumbling out of houses, wanting to know what was happening. Others joined her in running, passing her, colliding with her, and now the streets became further clogged, bottlenecked as people ran in the opposite direction, fleeing the fire. She slowed, a stitch crimping her side, was almost shouldered off her feet, slammed against the wall. Drawing shuddering gasps of air she calculated—a risk, yes, the streets less well-lit, more roughly cobbled and potential ankle-twisters, but if she cut through the old quarter she’d make better time by not having to fight the crowds.

As she pounded by Myllard’s Inn, a wagon pulled around the gaudy building, sweeping wide as Myllard lashed the horses, his nightgown-clad wife Fala standing in the wagon bed behind him, steadying herself against his shoulders. The wagon looked jumble-loaded with blankets, buckets, other necessities. Somehow Fala caught her trembling outline in the shadows, yanked at Myllard to haul up, and Doyce tumbled up beside him, breathless but relieved. Of course Myllard would throw himself into the thick of things, an honorary fire chief, and with good reason, given the flammability of his three-storied wooden inn.

He concentrated on handling the team, urging them along dark streets, around tight comers, through narrow alleys. Fala, nightdress gleaming white beneath Myllard’s old coat, hair in braids down her back, answered for him. “Back delivery door. Everyone always tries to come through the front. Only firemen note other possible entrances and exits. And tradesmen who deliver ale at the back door. You,” a cuff stung Doyce’s head, caught her by surprise, “should have stayed put. In your condition! Think you’re birthing a fire-brand?”

Giddy from the blow and the wagon’s sway, she spun on her hip and shouted at Fala, “Much as I’d like it to happen as soon as possible, I doubt you’ll be tending a birthing tonight. Just give me plenty of space to maneuver and I’ll be fine.” Sheer bravado, a patent lie, and she was relieved Khar wasn’t there to catch her out. Not fire again, even if it had cleansed Vesey’s soul.

Reining the team short at a hastily erected barrier across the street, Myllard gave a bellow for the firefighters to pass him through. Doyce hushed him, groaned inwardly at the profusion of collars boasting silver crescent sickles, winking fiery orange-red in the light. Not firefighters, but the foe, Reapers. “Keep them talking,” she hissed at Myllard, and rolled off the tailgate without being seen, she hoped. Blocking their view as much as she could, Fala began a vociferous argument, distracting attention.

Edging along the alleyway, Doyce at last spotted the back kitchen door ajar, a beckoning vertical slice of gold against the dark walls, surmounted at roof level by smoke swirls spinning in the updraft. Flames danced and surged out of upper windows. Dangerous to open the door further, cause a bigger draft, suck in air to fan the flames higher. Exactly what had happened the night she and Varon had rushed home to find their baby Briony in jeopardy from Vesey’s childish revenge. Apostle moons protect me, but I need a way in. Maize is inside, Khar as well. This time I’ll save them!

Setting her shoulder to the door, she pushed, prayed her body would block the draft, pushed harder, the door balking, partly jammed. Her sword dangled under her arm, clunked against the door, reminding her she’d never drawn it, and she began to fumble it free as she leaned her full weight against the door. From the street front she could hear streams of water surging, arcing from the hand pumpers against the building, playing over the roof, steady and hard, then a sucking hesitation as a pumper ran dry, was dragged clear, and replaced by another.

Mesmerized by the flickering, shifting lights playing deep within as she wedged herself through the door, she ignored the murkiness beneath her feet. Stepped on something solid yet yielding, foot nearly twisting beneath her as she squinted at the shapes of two bodies, no, three. Her penchant for accuracy made her giggle hysterically. One appeared to be garbed in white kitchen gear, while the others wore darker clothes. Bending, she patted and fumbled at collars, the sharp point of a miniature sickle lancing her finger, keen answer to her fears.

Something slammed her behind the knees and she buckled, tumbling forward, gasping in shock, arms rigid to break her fall, protect her belly from smashing into the floor. The air whooshed above her, exactly level with where her head had been, and she sensed the racketing trajectory of a broad, heavy object propelled by ferocious strength and equally strong arms. A sound, half-clang, half-thud, like a berserk gong, vibrated in her ears and the door pinched hard on her extended leg.

“Head cook has a powerful long reach,” Khar leaped over her, landed with back arched, tail fluffed defensively until she appeared twice her size. She held the pose, allowing herself to be identified. “Best identify yourself as well. Jenret’s robe isn’t as professional-looking as a tabard, you know. Hurry, I deserted Maize to rescue you!”

A woman of flour-barrel girth and massive arms hefted the large cast-iron skillet as if it were light as a pancake flipper and cocked her wrists, ready to swing again. “Seeker Veritas Doyce Marbon and her ghatta Khar‘pern at your service, ma’am.” The, skillet sank marginally, not toward Doyce’s head, but toward the woman’s shoulder in a modified rest position.

“This way! Maize’s upstairs.” The smoke still rankled and stung the back of her throat, her eyes watery, but the heavy smell of doused wood, soggy ashes, and wet plaster told her the worst of the fire was under control. The halls were hazed, wreathed with smoke that made it hard to see, but she glimpsed a few elderly bodies collapsed along her route, some almost peaceful-looking, as if they’d drifted off to sleep, others contorted, faces cyanotic blue, a few charred bodies. Hostel workers collided with firefighters and Guardians, evacuating residents, coaxing them from behind barricaded doors. She counted four bodies with the silver sickle crescents pinned over wheat sprigs, dodged a firefighter feinting his ax at a cornered man, defiant with a club.

Where was Khar leading? Her mind blurred the Hostel’s layout as much as her stinging eyes; she’d not absorbed the sense of it on her previous visit to Maize Bartolotti, too intent on journey’s end, rather than the route there. Up the stairs. She took them cautiously, charred wood crunching beneath her feet. The shifting shape of a ghatt awaited her on the top of the stairs, two other ghatti faintly visible in the gloom and hanging smoke. More ghatti, in fact, wherever she turned.

“Maize sounded the distress call. Begged any of us within hearing distance to come to her aid.” Paw poised in mid-step, Khar halted in concentration and tilted her head toward the sunroom, strangely cavernous and foreboding. It spanned the whole west end of the house, its glass panes shattered, glistening like ice fragments loosened from a tree by the sun’s heat after an ice storm. Plants lay broken and battered, spilled dirt and crushed greenery underfoot like a dying jungle, the smell sharp with battered, bruised leaves, almost pleasant, though somewhat overcooked.

As she skirted closer, the darker shape of figures took on definition at the far end of the sunroom. A Seeker Veritas, weaponless and wounded, held his ground beside Maize Bartolotti, protecting an old man huddled on hands and knees, blood stringing across his face and scalp. Three Reapers-the sight of one of them brandishing an actual sickle made Doyce’s hair rise with an atavistic fear-jockeyed to gain ground, kept at bay by two ghatti, claws as lethal as the sickle as they flowed in and out of the smoke, disappearing and reappearing where least expected. Alternately threatening and blustering, the three stumbled into each other’s way more often than not.

With a piqued hiss, Khar launched herself into the fray. “Humans are so impossible sometimes! Absolutely no interest in a Seeking to determine the Truth. That would be too simple, might convince them they erred.” Sharp ghatti teeth punctured an unsuspecting Reaper’s unprotected calf. Panic-stricken, the man screamed, tried to kick loose, Khar’s jaws still latched tight. Not easy to levitate a ghatta weighting almost twenty kilos who’d now wrapped all four legs around his. Wavering, he grabbed his comrades for support, and Maize’s arm shot out, the crook of a purloined cane lifting his other foot off the floor. Too easy, almost unfair, and Doyce let her sword point caress his throat as he lay flat, stunned. His two comrades required no further invitation to depart as quickly as possible. “Others’ll scoop them up,” Khar promised.

Other supporters, Seekers, firefighters, and Hostel attendants poured into the sunroom, chasing after the escapees as Maize collapsed into the remains of a chair. “Took you long enough. Not as spry as you once were, eh?” Maize wheezed, coughed black phlegm, her face and nightshift soot- and dirt-streaked, wet spots exhibiting a midnight black muddiness. “Still, not too bad, any of you, ‘specially this young’un here.” The tall, wounded Seeker Doyce had assumed was male turned out to be Cady Brandt, pale-faced, pinching together a deep sickle gash in her upper arm. “She tossed two over before they ganged up on her.” An affectionate pat as high as Maize could reach grazed Cady’s waist. “Wasn’t sure if anybody’d come when I sounded my distress call, but the ... ghatti remembered.” With that she fainted.

The cleanup, the succoring of survivors, the removal of the dead consumed the rest of the night, Doyce helping until she was drained and numb of spirit at the wanton, senseless destruction. At last Myllard and Fala pulled her away and frog-marched her to their wagon, now set up out front as an impromptu aid station, dispensing bandages, hot cha and sandwiches, blankets, and odd pieces of clothing to half naked but still upright senior residents.

The cha scalded, tasted smoky, the predominant taste and scent of everything, including the lining of her mouth and throat. The next sip tasted better, the added honey soothing. “What happened?” she pleaded. “I still don’t know what really happened. Everyone’s been too busy to ask, even Khar.” And Maize was beyond asking as well, unconscious, gently carried outside on a makeshift stretcher piled high with blankets.

Myllard hitched his suspenders higher, tucked his night-shirt into his trousers where it billowed in the back. “Pays to be on good terms with the fire boys.” Well-pleased, he tugged at his side whiskers to restrain himself and thumped Doyce on the shoulder, began to rub her back. Myllard tended to be a tactile man, and tonight, this morning, whatever it was now, she relished his touch, leaned into the massaging hands. “From what I can gather, about a dozen young toughs broke in well after midnight, overpowered the night duty attendant. Began running from room to room with torches shouting for Max Lewinton. That if they didn’t find him, they’d burn the place. Began to live up to their word.

“Some poor old souls were too petrified to unlock their doors. Wasn’t meant to provoke the Reapers, ’twas simple fear. Reapers kicking down doors, throwing torches inside, sometimes they’d drag the resident out, sometimes not. Smoke took some, others died of fright.” He stared into the distance, wrapped an arm around Fala, “Neither’s a good way to die, whether you’re young or old.”

From the shelter of his arm Fala added, “When you think how many couldn’t see or hear well, walk well, you could hardly expect them to march out meekly and prove they weren’t Gleaners.” Her voice broke. “All they knew was that they were scared, weren’t sure what the ruckus was about, best stay safe in their rooms. Safe indeed!”

“Apparently a few, led by your friend Maize, put up some resistance along with the other night duty attendants. They may not have been strong, but they were canny. They lured the bulk of the Reapers away while Maize hid in the sunroom with Lewinton.” Myllard looked admiring. “Once the fire boys doused the sunroom, she figured at least they were safe from the fire.”

Myllard continued rubbing the back of her neck. “I gather that he’d claimed bragging rights on it recently, now that being a Resonant might be good, or at least interesting, but the attendant said he bragged about anything, loved to bask in the center of attention whenever he could. Tall tales: ” He shifted gears suddenly.

“Tell you, did she?” Fala beamed. “Thought you’d like that for your friend, and better for her if she didn’t wake up in the hospice, sure the end was nigh. Once they think that, it’s often true. Those as needed it have been admitted, but we’ve been trying to place the other residents in temporary homes nearby, make them part of a family for a bit.”

Doyce sank back in relief, head lolling. Lady above, she hadn’t realized the depths of her exhaustion and dread, or how afraid she’d been. Myllard and Fala grabbed her arms and boosted her into the wagon bed. “We’ve done enough here, all we can do tonight. Now we’re going home and you’ll pass the night with us. No sense going back to that empty guest house.”

“ ‘Nother surprise there for you as well,” Fala announced boldly, and Doyce glimpsed Myllard’s face as it darkened, then relaxed, wistfulness mingled with pride. “Claire and the baby are visiting. Just visiting,” she emphasized in her husband’s direction. “She’s not going to apologize for marrying that peddler, and you won’t apologize for making her run away to do it, so you can leave it lie, Myllard.

She sat in the corner where the Seekers traditionally congregated at Myllard’s, forearms resting on the table, hands clutching a tankard of weak cider. “Barely had time to turn,” Fala had assured her, “scarce no alcohol at all.” Sleep had been equally sparse in the remains of the night; after being ensconced in the Inn’s marvelously pink porcelain bathtub, soaked and scrubbed clean, she’d tried, but to no avail. On top of everything else it brought back memories of her last bath in this extravagance, the night she’d learned of Oriel’s death, discovered she wasn’t pregnant with his child. It seemed so long ago, far distant-had it truly been only a little over a year ago?

The Inn was nominally closed, but a steady stream of weary firefighters, Guardians, and citizens who’d helped control the blaze wandered about, breakfast plates stacked high. Others, too spent, too smoke-sickened to eat, sprawled on benches—one snored on the floor-still caught up in the companionship, the brotherhood engendered by overcoming a disaster, and the opportunity to relive its dangers with those who grasped the risks entailed.

She’d spoken briefly with Maize as dawn broke, but the woman was still too weak to comprehend much. Indeed, Doyce suspected there wasn’t a great deal to comprehend; few had the scope to understand such a heedless, vicious act. But Maize was adamant that Max Lewinton was no Gleaner, no Resonant. “Never a hint in all the years I’ve known him. Never.” And the look she’d fixed on Doyce was acute despite the exhaustion dulling the once lively eyes. “I think Seekers are more sensitive to it than others, don’t you? Always had an inkling about certain people, something a bit peculiar about them, An‘g and I did. Or rather, An’g did, though she’d seldom say more.” Her burned hand shifted, stroked the ghatta on the bed beside her. “Ask Khar.”

A discomforting idea. But none of the ghatti had ever specifically identified a Resonant, ever pointed one out through all the years, except recently, when they’d been so ordered. Puzzling. The ghatti had been innocent about what Arras Muscadeine and his kind represented when they’d visited Marchmont.

“Of course we didn’t know.” The ghatta’s fur stood up in spikes from the damp toweling Claire had given her, scrubbing off as much soot and smoke-smell as possible. “They never opened themselves to us, not until Muscadeine permitted M’wa to search his mind. Even so it almost surpassed belief if it hadn’t been the truth.” The fur around her face looked especially sleeked, as if she’d been caught in a heavy mist. “But occasionally through the years as we ghatti Sought as part of the ceremony, we’ve run into a mind with potential, sometimes witting, sometimes not. If the mind posed no threat to the person harboring it or to others, why say a thing? Their minds are theirs, not ours.”

She wasn’t in the mood for the joke, not with the somber thoughts that crowded her mind. “How many years, Khar? How many years can hate persist? Senseless, vicious hatred of innocents? No wonder they’ve kept themselves well hidden. But what makes it suddenly fester like this?” Equally tired, the ghatta dragged herself onto the bench, rested her chin on the edge of the table, hazel eyes meeting amber ones. “How many years can hate go on?” she repeated more vehemently.

“Eight times eight times eight. Octad times octad times octad or more. You brought it with you when you came to this world, prideful at being a citizen of a specific country, a member of a spedal, group. Factions meant more than the whole to you. Hatred, the fear that the tirst Spacer telepaths were responsible for the Plumbs, drove Venable Constant and the Resonants to escape to Marchmont, not just his desire for kingship. Or animosity between technicians and artists, like Crolius and Magnus. And now mistrust of Marchmont, of Resonants, rears its ugly head again, even if it’s dimly remembered, like fairy tales of old.”

A fair question; what was the answer? Her old spartan room at Headquarters? The house she now shared with Jenret when he was here-and where was he, by the Lady, why hadn’t he gotten in touch with her? The house she’d once shared with Varon and Briony and Vesey, burned as well? A shudder wriggled under her skin. Strange, once she’d dashed into the thick of things last night she’d locked her terror of Vesey’s final pyre in a far compartment of her mind, refused to let it battle free. A good sign or not?

Still pondering, she crossed the taproom. Was home the little village near Ruysdael where she’d been born, where her mother and sister still lived? This was how Matthias Vandersma and Kharm must have felt during those long years of wandering. Well, she and Khar couldn’t hold a candle to that first great Bond-pair. Downright presumptuous, vainglorious to measure herself against the founder of the Seekers Veritas.

“Don’t I have a place here in Gaernett?” Mayhap Khar had the right of it, mayhap she was just broody, hormones surging, searching for security, feeling utterly abandoned. A shamed downward glance thrust her into the present: she wore a clean nightshift and robe of Fala’s, nothing more. “Were you going to let me go out like this?” she sputtered. Out loud, apparently, because Myllard turned in her direction.

“Can if you want-if you dare!” the ghatta taunted. And just to have the last say, she stalked out the door, fuzzy knit slippers on her feet. Thank the Lady it was early morning still, and few around to view her like this. The baby kicked and the robe billowed. “Well, come on. I’ll go get changed and head for the library. ” It was the best interim home she knew..