The Last Green Tree Page 10

  Dekkar smiled at her, as cool and distant on his side as she on hers.

  Something about his placid manner must have made her angry, because she went on. “I understand you’re a friend of Mr. Figg’s, but I can’t have you interfering with my management of the child. He is a responsibility entrusted to me.” This was another of Nerva’s voices, one that she used to address other adults. She sounded like one of the old volunteer school proctors who used to visit in the Reeks.

  “I do understand. It’s just that I’m quite sensitive to pain.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I’m quite sensitive to pain. If someone near me is in pain, I often feel it.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. That sounds absurd.”

  “Does it? Try me again, and you’ll see just how sensitive I mean.”

  She started to say something and he raised a hand. She stopped so suddenly it was almost as if it were against her will.

  He said something to her in a language that brought a deep flush to her neck, and a look of fury. Turning, he walked a few steps away and said to Keely, “My room is just down this way, young man. If you need me at all, for any reason, come and find me.”

  Keely had dissolved his Disturber insect to goo and was fixedly kneading it into a ball in his hands, pretending to have heard nothing.

  Nerva closed the paper partitions and paced the big room. Vividly colored and angry, she glared at Keely once, but he was using his ring to make a set of pieces of an action figure that he would have to put together. She was speaking to him in the voice again—she was trying to make him forget. He was aware he should pretend to be younger than his age, that he was not losing the bad memories this time, that he was remembering the things he wanted to tell Uncle Figg about her. He had become adept at the art of watching adults while pretending to do something else and was on the alert for the moments at which Nerva stopped and glared at him, fierce, as if she wanted to use the voice on him more, or make him do the math box the rest of the night.

  “That man said the rudest thing to me,” Nerva said. “And in my own language, too.”

  She paced again as Keely started to put the toy together. She was thinking. Looking into her bag, she started to paw through her stat, jewelry, freshener kit, but Keely already knew what she was looking for. The brooch with the black gem that she kept in the silver box. She would open the box, take out the brooch, press it in her hands, lift it to her mouth, close her eyes. He had watched her do this many times when she was alone with him. Now she lifted out the silver box but held it in her hands without opening it. She walked to the sliding panel, opened one, then closed it again. She stood in the middle of the room, using the voice again, closing her eyes, turning slowly in the room.

  “I don’t have any choice,” she said.

  This was not a voice Keely knew, and he held perfectly still, heart beating.

  She opened the box, did the ritual as he remembered it. Nothing happened. At one point she glanced at the sliding panels as if she expected to be interrupted, but no one came to the room. She held the ornament in her hand a long time. Though it was a pretty, shiny brooch, she never put it on her clothes like other people did with their jewelry. When she was done, she closed the box and put it in her bag again. After that she looked more peaceful.

  She came and stood near Keely. “What do you think, young man?”

  He hardly knew what she was asking and froze for a moment, then continued to put the toy together as if nothing were happening to frighten him. She would use the voice and hurt him. She had that kind of cool edge to her voice, a sound of danger.

  “You missed a lot of practice with the math box. Do you think you can do more?”

  His heart was pounding. It was no good to be afraid, now. He looked up at her and shook his head. “I’m sleepy.”

  “Sleepy? You’re lazy.”

  “I want to go to sleep.”

  “You’re lazy, and you’ll never learn anything. I don’t know why anyone wants to bother with you.”

  There was nothing in that sentence that required him to answer so he kept still, an arm of the superhero he was putting together dangling in his fingers.

  “You didn’t think that priest fellow frightened me, did you?”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s good. Because you should realize that I can handle twenty of him and not even think about it. Exactly the way I handle you. Do you understand?”

  She meant the voice. She was getting ready to use it again, so he would know what she meant.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll make you forget afterward.”

  “Please,” he said.

  “I won’t let you make a sound, though you won’t be able to help but try.”

  He was starting to shake, waiting for the first wave of agony.

  She watched him tremble for a while, then sat next to him and put her hand in his hair, gently. “All right,” she said. “It’s enough to see you frightened. If I’ve done nothing else for your training I’ve taught you fear.”

  “Can I go to bed?” he asked.

  “It’s barely dark yet.”

  “I want to.”

  “Don’t you want any dinner?”

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “All right then. Go in the privacy and wash your face and ears and clean your teeth with the good solution, not that candy-tasting stuff you like.” She was watching him indulgently now, even fondly, as if she had not frightened him out of his wits only moments ago. He did as she ordered immediately. He took a long time in the bathroom because he could be alone there but hurried to finish when he heard her stirring in the room. In his bed he pulled the covers high and tried to make it dark by covering his eyes. She hardly ever bothered him when he slept, though sometimes he heard her using the voice in the dark.

  He was more tired than he knew and plunged quickly into dreamless sleep. The last thing he heard rang in his head. Her voice, crisp and hard, this time in the tone she used for talking to herself. “This charade only has to last till morning, anyway. Then I’ll have a bit of fun with this Prin, maybe, before we go.”

  “Go where?” he would have asked, if he had trusted her, but instead the question slid away and he escaped, for a while, from fear.

  Later, while he was sleeping, he dreamed of the voice of Father again, the kindly light hovering over him, illuminating the bed and the white wall of the pavilion. “Tomorrow will be a good day,” Father said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve sent my friends to find you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Friends?”

  “Yes. Though at first you may not like them. You’ll have to be brave.”

  Keely felt as if he were wearing the math box, he could hear the music that it made in his head, the sound filling out the dream, rhythmic, matched to his heartbeat, as if he were hearing inside himself. “I’m not brave.”

  “You’ll be frightened at first, you won’t be able to help it. But you’re called to do something very important.”

  The thought of that made him feel warmer and maybe a bit safer.

  “You won’t be in any danger yourself,” Father said.

  “What am I called to do?”

  “To serve your father. To offer yourself. The gift of yourself.”

  He felt uncertain, until the light brightened and flooded him with a feeling of love and warmth. After a while, he said, “All right.”

  “If my friends hurt some of your friends tomorrow, just try to remember that this is the way it has to be. It can’t be helped.”

  He was supposed to be happy and to smile while the words drifted over them, he was supposed to say yes so that Father’s voice would have permission to change him, to pacify him when the time came. Father’s voice was like Nerva’s voice, only stronger, capable of more delicate, more lasting work; but he always asked permission, in a way.

  “I don’t w
ant you to hurt my friends,” Keely said, but the love that was already pouring out at him was so strong.

  “It won’t be my plan to hurt anyone, but your friends will never understand how important it is that you come to me as soon as you can.”

  Keely could feel himself softening.

  “I need to have my family near me,” said Father.

  To be needed, to be part of a family, flooded Keely with a feeling that carried him away. “You have to do bad things sometimes,” Keely said, “to get what you want.”

  “It’s true,” Father said. “You do.”

  3. Kitra

  Kitra spent some time in the flitter looking for an open route to Jarutan, something relatively free of military traffic; she tuned in to the flitter traffic control station and routed herself on a flyway just east of Flat Head Farm. Certain routes had been commandeered for the military and were closed to all other traffic, so she picked her way carefully. She was flying late in the night; the trucking lane below was moderately filled but the passenger lanes were lightly traveled. She made good time, calling Shanes on the way, making a date to meet at Shanes’s cousin’s house in a suburb of Jarutan, Piney Haven. Most of the northern continent was rural, the larger cities clustered along the southern coast, the settlement pattern designed to keep the denser part of the human population more distant from the Dirijhi. Jarutan was a city of millions, but from above it was as green as a forest except for the skyscrapers in the city center and along the harbor. Kitra keyed the address of Shanes’s safe house into the flitter, and it found her a public flitter pad only a few blocks away. She rented a putter for the rest of the trip.

  Nobody was looking for her, so she made no effort to conceal her travel, using a credit chit to pay for the putter and parking at the flitter pad. The streets were crowded with military traffic. The house was nondescript, a box on a tiny plot of land, heavy with vegetation, a path leading through the wild growth to a door. Shanes greeted her with a furtive glance outdoors; she’d put on a few pounds at the middle and looked a bit thick. Her hair wanted combing, and her clothes were a bit of a mess, as if she’d been lying down.

  “You’d think the Prin were after you, with all this business of a safe house.”

  “I know this seems kind of dramatic.” Shanes opened the door and squinted a bit at the sun.

  “Are you on the outs with somebody important these days?”

  “I just don’t think it’s too smart for us ex-PFAs to be talking too openly right now.” Her expression was grim. The tiny apartment had a grimy look, old-fashioned construction, cheap striped curtains pulled over blinds drawn and closed. Shanes led Kitra to a tiny sitting room crowded with electronics, a lot of it jamming equipment.

  “Are things bad here?”

  “The city’s hot. People are mad as hell about the news they’re getting, and PFA is scum here at the moment. People were prepared for some bloodshed, but what’s going on in the south is slaughter. And no matter what you’re hearing on the broadcasts, we all know it. Chong isn’t fooling anybody.”

  “What happened?”

  Shanes opened the curtains at the window, drew up the blinds. The window looked onto a tiny garden centered on a huge old tree—a sweet maple, maybe, a native tree named for another tree it resembled on Senal. She spread her hands at Kitra’s question and shook her head. “The Dirijhi made fools of us. Exactly the way you told me they would, what was it, five years ago?”

  “Ten.”

  She shook her head. Remembering herself, she offered Kitra a drink, but Kitra asked for water, nothing harder. The super-sleep pill had made her thirsty, and she would likely have to take another for the flight back.

  “Did the PFA change the military targets?”

  “No. And you’re not seeing PFA troops anywhere except near Jarutan. But there are millions of troops heading out of Greenwood that we never knew anything about, and we’re taking the blame for all of it.”

  “We hadn’t heard that much.”

  “I think the PFA is going to have to pull out of its own war.”

  They sat in the quiet amid the calls of a cherub in the sweet maple. Kitra caught the flash of red wings as the cherub flew away.

  “How soon?”

  “Pretty soon. Whatever these monsters are that the Dirijhi sent south, they’re killing everything that moves. There’s not going to be anything left outside the twin cities in another day.”

  “You think the PFA are going to make a truce with the Prin?”

  “Won’t that be a sweet surprise to everybody?” Shanes was looking more awake now, smoothing her hair, sipping her tea, looking entirely satisfied. “The rebels start a war so terrible they have to turn on their own allies to stop a genocide.”

  “It would be a delightful irony if there weren’t so many bodies on the vids.”

  She looked stricken, shook her head. “That did sound callous, didn’t it? This will set us back fifty years.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe the Mage will see the mess that’s left after this and decide she may as well let us govern ourselves.”

  “What, out of good-heartedness, or contempt? You have such a rosy view of things, Kitra.”

  “I didn’t until she reformed the Common Fund. I’m on record.”

  “But now?”

  “But now I’m willing to let her do whatever she wants for a while. If we had our own planetary assembly, would they have the guts to pass the kind of laws she just imposed on everybody on Senal?”

  “You trust her too much. Besides, I have the feeling the Mage would always overrule an assembly if she felt the need. Who could stop her?”

  They sobered, hearing the sentiment they’d just expressed, a commonplace among the Hormling for three hundred years; but somewhere here on Ajhevan was a match for the Prin, and maybe more than a match. Kitra said, “Does anybody know who these new allies are or what these things are they set loose on Jharvan?”

  “No. Nothing. They’re calling these monsters shadow mantises, the rebels came up with that name. But there are a couple of other things down south that we weren’t warned about, according to Ruth.”

  “Your contact?”

  “Yes. She was angry when I left, and she stayed in touch with me to tell me how bad things were getting.”

  “Did you see the footage of that one in the town? Flores?”

  She nodded. “Everybody here was watching it. The bodies are their fuel, you know. They fight for a while and eat for a while. Did you see the footage of that big one shitting?”

  “Oh, no. Please.”

  “It looked toxic. My God.”

  After a while, Shanes said, “I called Pel.” Her expression was shockingly soft when she said his name.

  “And?”

  “He’ll be here first thing in the morning.”

  “He’ll guide us?”

  “Yes. The only problem is that his boat is tied up at Dembut. So you’ll have to go through there.”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “Yes. Pel’s good. He showed me parts of Dembut I’ve never seen before the last time we were there.”

  Kitra gave her a mischievous look. “You traveled with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you—”

  Shanes stretched her arms over her head, looking pleased with herself. “I love Erejhen men. They’re the only kind I can stand.”

  “I thought you hated men altogether.”

  “I do. I hate Aramenians and especially I hate rebels, at the moment. But Erejhen men are different. They can’t make babies with you.”

  “You tramp.”

  “Careful you don’t take to him yourself.”

  “You know I like girls, and only girls.”

  “Those were my famous last words. From what I’ve seen, you might find a spot in your heart for Pel. Go ahead. I don’t mind sharing. It’s a long trip up there.” Quiet again. “So you’re serious this time? You’re getting Binam out.”

  “Yes. I have
a way to feed him. That’s what I never had before. I can keep him alive.”

  Shanes looked her in the eye, almost spoke, then shook her head. “I know it won’t do any good to say anything.”

  “No. My mind’s made up. I don’t know what I’ll do with him after I get him out, but I’ll think of something.” It was on the tip of her tongue to mention Dekkar, to mention that she had help. But she had no idea what kind of help he could be; the Prin who had accompanied her before had never expressed the least confidence in their own ability to deal with the dangers of Greenwood beyond a point.

  “You’re always presuming he’s going to want to escape with you. What if he refuses?”

  “That won’t happen,” Kitra shook her head. “You didn’t see how unhappy he was.”

  “That was ten years ago.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She set her jaw, looked Shanes in the eye. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  They settled down for quiet, for sex and a snatch of rest. About the time Kitra was looking for her super-sleep kit, her link unfolded with an urgent message and she was listening to Dekkar’s voice in her subaural. “Are you there?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “I need you to come back to the farm as quickly as possible, we have less time than I thought.”

  For a moment Kitra was conscious of the warm body and warm bed that surrounded her. She took a breath, shook herself alert. “I can get under way as soon as I get hold of the river pilot. He was expecting to leave in the morning.”

  “Leave him if you can’t find him. We’ll go back for him.”

  “Dekkar, what’s wrong?”

  A sudden crashing noise, distant, chilled Kitra, and she waited with her heart pounding. Dekkar said, “Good lord, I have to go. Get here as fast as you can.”

  He broke the link and left her there, staring at Shanes wrapped in the sheets, skin moist, a breeze running across them both so delicious it was a sin to waste it, though she had no choice.

  Citadel

  1.

  Vekant’s apartment in the Citadel was tucked away in a corner of the inner cloister, in the Western Tower, the oldest of the twelve stone towers. The apartment was near the top, beneath the suites that were maintained for use by the Mage on her periodic visits. Vekant managed to seclude himself after the first hours of the fighting, after the initial shocks. For a few moments he sat in his favorite chair looking out the broad corner window at the winding of the river Nayal through the old city of Feidreh; the Nayal flowed into the Trennt at this juncture. The twin cities were largely built of red-flecked granite, including the skins of the skyscrapers that packed themselves along the riverfronts. It was as if the whole immense city were one vast, jagged building. Vekant had often sat here musing on the Citadel stonework he could see, the gargoyles on the eastern choir halls, the stone lacework along the colonnade leading into the park, the precisely pointed arches, overshadowed by the taller structures surrounding the Cloister and the Citadel itself.