Skolian Empire - Quantum Rose Part 21

When the fading light turned the mist a darkling pearl color, Lector slowed his stag, letting it find its own way. Finally he stopped. As he jumped down, his cloak swirled away and icy air clapped around Kamoj.

He eased her off the greengla.s.s, sliding her down to the ground. "We cannee ride any longer. It be too dark."

She tried to nod, but the day's drizzle had turned to snow and she was shaking too hard. Watching her, Lector removed his cloak and gave it to her. As she wrapped it around her body, he tapped his stag with a signal to wait. The greengla.s.s stamped its feet and bared its teeth, its breath curling out of its nostrils, heavy with a spiced musk odor, adding condensation to the fog.

Lector led her forward into the darkness. The scents of the wet forest permeated the air, eddying and flowing around them. Even after Kamoj contracted the membranes in her nose, she was swimming in a sea of smells.

She pulled the cloak tighter. "We need shelter."

Lector leaned down. "Eh?"

"Shelter." Her teeth clattered together from the cold. "We need shelter."

"Aye." He guided her around an upended tree with moss hanging from its roots. They approached the looming shadow of a hillside, closer and closer, until its darkness folded around them. When Kamoj reached out her arms, her hands brushed over dirt walls laced with roots.

"You best wait here," Lector said.

She stopped, listening to the tread of his boots. A spark jumped in the air about ten paces away. Then a sphere of light appeared, with Lector at its center holding a lamp. They were in a burrow with earthen walls held together by networked roots. The wavering light threw shadows on the walls, revealing bags of food in one corner, along with a blanket.

"It inna so bad, heh?" he asked.

"Lector, let me go," she said.

"I cannee do that, Gov'nor Argali."

"What if I just left?"

"I would have to stop you, ma'am. I'm sorry. I be liege to Ironbridge. I cannee fail him."

Kamoj hadn't really expected otherwise. She doubted she could have survived in the forest anyway, on this freezing night, dressed as she was, having eaten only one meal in over two days.

Lector set the lamp on a ledge formed by a tree root. Then he took the blanket from the corner and spread it on the ground. "For you, Gov'nor."

"Thank you." She sank down onto the blanket, grateful for the solidity of the ground. "Are you cold?"

He settled himself on a large boulder near the entrance. "Heh?"

"Cold." She offered him the cloak. "Aren't you cold?"

"Please keep it, ma'am. Cold never much bothered me."

Like Jax. Unlike Jax, however, Lector seemed to notice when it bothered others. Grateful for a bulwark against the chill, she wrapped the cloak around herself again.

Lector stretched out his legs and leaned against the wall. "I can tell you what makes ice on my spine. The magics in these woods. You be better off without Lionstar. That demon prince would trap your soul."

"I don't think it's magic, Lector. It just looks that way. And Lionstar is no demon."

"Heh?" Lector leaned forward. "Who is the demon?"

Her voice caught. "Me. I caused these problems."

"Why do you say that? You hanna done nothing." His voice gentled. "This madness will end. You will see."

She swallowed. "It's kind of you to say that."

"I've a daughter your age. When I look at you" He shook his head. "It be a father's nightmare."

The sound of dirt skittering across leaves came through the entrance, followed by the tread of boots. Lector stood up and drew his sword.

"Step and call," a woman said.

"Come," Lector said. Sheathing his sword, he stepped aside to let Tera and a stagman enter, followed by a taller man. Jax.

The Ironbridge governor glanced around, his gaze sc.r.a.ping past Kamoj as she got to her feet. To Lector he said, "Did you have any trouble?"

"None at all, sir."

"Good." Jax sat on a boulder. The soldiers sat then, too, Lector on the other boulder and the others on the ground. With five people crowded into the burrow, Kamoj stayed on her feet, pressed against the earthen wall.

Jax regarded Lector. "I need your counsel."

The stagman sat up a straighter. "It be my honor."

"I must decide a course of action," Jax said. "Everything has changed now."

"What happened, sir?" Lector asked.

"Lionstar insisted I let him speak to Governor Argali." Jax made an incredulous noise. "Seventeen stagmen and one old hag, and he threatens me.

When I gave the order to my archers to fire, it was like ordering the slaughter of bi-hoxen."

Kamoj dug her fingers into the wall. The question Is he dead? hung in the air like a mist-o'-mime.

"What did they do?" Lector asked.

Jax leaned forward. "One of Lionstar's bodyguards drew his weapon so fast it made a blur. An essence came out of its end. It made orange sparks in the air.

The tree he pointed it at exploded in a burst of orange light. Lionstar's other bodyguard swept her weapon through an arc and more trees exploded." He grimaced. "As fast as an archer can knock a ball, his bodyguards could have killed my entire company."

"It be sorcery," Lector said. "I feel it in these woods."

"It just looks like sorcery." Jax considered Lector, then the others. "Do any of you read?"

Hai! Kamoj wanted to shake him. How could he talk about reading now? Was Vyrl alive or dead?

"I can read and write my name," Lector said. "My wife's name too, and those of our children. I know a few other words."

The other stagman spread his hands. "I cannee read at all."

"I be knowing my name," Tera said.

Jax looked disappointed, but unsurprised. Kamoj wondered what it was like for a man with his intellect to live in a place where almost none of the population could even read, let alone offer him an educated discussion.

"A codex in my library describes weapons similar to Lionstar's," Jax said.

"They rely on something called 'particle physics.' The source of the orange light is a sub-electronic particle called an abiton, the antiparticle of a biton. It has a rest energy of 1.9 eV and a charge of 5.95 raised to the negative 25th power. Whatever that means. And this charge is called Coulomb. It's the same as the name in the Amperman line, I'm sure of it. The gun uses a magnet of 0.0001 Tesla and its accelerator needs a radius of five centimeters." He held up his hand, his thumb and forefinger a short distance apart. "This is a centimeter."

The others remained silent, watching him as if his words were an incantation.

"If his people have these weapons," Jax said, "they may well have other devices described in the old codices."

"It be a bad omen," Lector said.

"Is it? Or the promise of the future?" Jax rubbed his chin. "Then there is Lionstar's language. He speaks pure cla.s.sical Iotic."

"You mean Iotaca?" Lector asked.

Who cares what they speak? Kamoj thought. Tell us what happened.

"That's right," Jax said. "The temple language."

"But no one understands it any more," Lector said.

Jax shrugged. "That's only because the ancient glyphs are different from the ones we use now. And the temple priestess has a different accent than Lionstar. I have trouble understanding the priestess, but Lionstar is easy."

"I cannee understand him at all," Lector said.

"Your dialect is more removed from Iotic," Jax answered. "Cla.s.sical Iotic was the language of the highborn here, in the days before the Current died.

Lionstar probably inherited it the same way I did, as a n.o.bleman descended from an ancient line." He paused. "But I don't think it's the native tongue of his people. Petrin told me that on the Ascendant, the crew spoke a language he didn't understand."

Petrin? It took Kamoj a moment to figure out he meant the Ironbridge stagman Vyrl had stabbed, the man the metal bird had taken to the Ascendant.

"Yet they all speak Iotaca to Lionstar," Lector said.

"They are his lieges," Jax pointed out.

"He does seem to have authority," Lector acknowledged.

Kamoj began to relax. If Vyrl had died, surely Jax would have said something by now.

"It's more than his authority," Jax said. "He's valuable to them, beyond being their prince. His people would kill every one of us to protect him, if it became necessary. And how do they move so fast? What do they have inside their bodies that lets them do that?"

"It be a bad affair," Lector said. "Like that old sorceress who rides with him."

"They don't use sorcery," Jax said. "Just knowledge we've forgotten." Longing showed on his face. "What must their armies be like? It stretches the mind to imagine it."

"I cannee imagine it, sir."

Jax exhaled. "We had better try. We have to know what we're fighting." He glanced at Kamoj. Although she averted her gaze, it wasn't before she saw his pain, the vulnerability toward her that he hid almost as soon as it escaped his defenses.

"None of Lionstar's party were close enough to decipher my wife's outburst,"

Jax said. When she looked up, he was talking to Lector again. "But it has spurred the Ascendant's people to investigate. They are bringing an 'Arbiter'

tomorrow to resume the Inquiry. If we don't cooperate, they threaten to use force."

"If they be so powerful, why do they hesitate with this 'force'?" Lector asked.

"They don't want to exacerbate the situation," Jax answered. "Apparently I'm one of the leaders they expect to deal with when they inst.i.tute 'formal a.s.similation procedures' here."

"I donnee understand that," Lector said.

Dryly Jax said, "Nor do I." He fell silent and the stagmen waited. Finally Jax said, "Well, Lector, what do you think?"

"Sir?"

"Give me your opinion on the situation."

"You must never give in to Lionstar. It would weaken your authority."

"My thought also." Jax blew out a gust of air. "But by the Current, man, how do I maintain authority here?"

"I donnee know, sir. But you must."

Disappointment flickered across Jax's face, but he seemed unsurprised.

Although he glanced at the others, he didn't seek their counsel. It didn't surprise Kamoj. What could they say? He was so far beyond them in intellect and education that his asking for their advice was like Vyrl asking her how to sail a sky boat.

Finally he said, "My wife and I will remain here tonight, in case Lionstar violates the truce his people set up and tries to find her. I will need the three of you on watch outside."

"It be our honor," Lector said.

Jax nodded, then dismissed them. After the soldiers left, the governor continued to sit on the boulder, staring at the ground. Finally he looked at Kamoj. "Come here."

She walked over to him. Even wrapped in Argalian wool she was still s.h.i.+vering.

"Why are you wearing Lector's cloak?" he asked.

"I was cold. He gave it to me."

"Delicate Kamoj." Bitterness edged his voice. "Pretty delicate rose. I truly am a fool, because I still want you."

"Jax"

"No." He shook his head, denying whatever remained unspoken on her lips.

"Tomorrow you will be asked to sign the merger and annulment contracts before witnesses, with an X since you can't write your name." He regarded her with a steady gaze. "You will do this, Kamoj. I will tolerate no more betrayals."