Alector's Choice (3 page)

On Novdi afternoon,
two glasses before sunset, Dainyl and Lystrana stepped through the center
archway and into the concert hall of the Palace of the Duarch of Elcien. Dainyl
wore the blue-trimmed gray formal uniform of a Myrmidon colonel while Lystrana
wore brilliant blue trousers and a matching shimmersilk shirt, with a short
vest of paler blue. The vest was short enough that the wider, silver-gray belt
that matched her boots was fully visible.

Dainyl surveyed those
already seated, without seeming to do so.

“Seventy five,”
murmured Lystrana so softly that only he could have heard her, even with
Talent-boosted hearing. “We’re late.”

He repressed a faint
smile, as they moved forward. “Not too late. The Duarch isn’t here.”

Twenty five tables
were arrayed in an arc on the polished marble floor. Five chairs were set
around one side of each circular table, positioned so that all five could view
the dais on which four empty chairs awaited the performers. The center two
tables—reserved for the Duarch and his wife and guests—provided an unobstructed
view of the dais.

The octagonal floor
tiles of green marble were linked by smaller diamond tiles of gold marble, and
each tile was outlined in brilliant bronze. The center of the floor just below
the performing dais was inset with an eight pointed star of golden marble a
yard across, also outlined in a thin line of a brilliant bronze. The hangings
on the side walls were green velvet, trimmed in gold, and set at precise
intervals to damp echoes without muting the quality of the sound.

“We can sit with
Kylana and Zestafyn,” suggested Lystrana.

“Of course.” Dainyl
understood that his wife’s mild words were anything but a suggestion. Kylana
was the assistant to the High Alector of Transport, and her husband was
officially the Duarch’s liaison to the regional alectors. Effectively, he was
the head of intelligence for the Duarch of Elcien.

“Your mother is at
the next table,” murmured Lystrana.

“I wouldn’t have
expected her. She usually avoids chamber concerts.”

“Exactly.”

Dainyl continued to
the table ahead, then stopped and bent, smiling at the black-haired woman—not
that any alector had hair other than shimmering black—who looked no older than
her son. “I hadn’t expected you here.”

Alyra returned her son’s
smile. “Every so often I do come to a concert.” Her smile widened slightly as
her eyes moved to Lystrana. “Congratulations, dear.”

“Thank you. Might I
call upon you in the future?”

“Always… you’ve done
so much for Dainyl.”

Dainyl kept smiling.
Lystrana had done much for him. She’d advised him and guided him for nearly
thirty years, long before they were married, from when he’d been an
undercaptain with few prospects—and he’d listened and learned,.especially about
enhancing his Talent. He’d never been able to learn much from his mother, not
with her arrogance.

“He’s done it all
himself, Alyra. I’m just good at listening.” Lystrana smiled warmly, projecting
warmth in a way that Dainyl had great difficulty emulating. “We must talk
later. I see Kylana beckoning.”

Dainyl kept his smile
in place until they were well away.

Lystrana squeezed his
hand gently, then spoke to the woman at the table they approached. “Kylana… if
we could join you?”

“We’d be delighted.”
Kylana gestured to the seats to her husband’s right. She was extremely short
and slender for an alector, not even quite two yards tall, with a narrow face
and deep-set golden eyes—a throwback to a bad translation by her grandmother,
she’d claimed. Dainyl suspected it was the result of her own translation from
Ifryn to Acorus, not that he would ever have said so.

Lystrana eased into
the chair beside Zestafyn, and Dainyl took the one to Lystrana’s right.

“The word is that you
had an interesting day in Tempre on Octdi,” offered Zestafyn, turning to
Lystrana.

“The missing golds,
you mean? They weren’t missing at all, it turned out. Just misrecorded.”
Lystrana paused as a lander serving girl appeared. “The Vyan Amber Crown.”

“The same,” added
Dainyl.

The server girl
nodded politely and slipped away.

“Victyn was most
relieved,” continued Zestafyn. “He is a good sort, especially for a lander, and
he does try very hard.”

“Sometimes, those are
the worst,” observed Kylana. “They wish to follow every rule and procedure.
They forget who gave them those procedures. I wish that we were allowed to tell
them of Ifryn and the power that resides there. Then, they wouldn’t forget.”

Dainyl had his doubts
about that. Even alectors tended to forget about powers that were distant and
not exercised. That had been one of the points of the public execution— public
only to alectors.

“Dearest,” replied
Zestafyn, “that may be, but it’s a waste of time to blame a tool for operating
the way it was designed.”

“Zestafyn is so
philosophical,” said Kylana.

“Just practical.” The
liaison’s deep voice was matter-of-fact.

Dainyl nodded as
politely as he could, hoping that it wouldn’t be too long before the Duarch
appeared and the concert could begin. Unlike many, he’d actually come for the
music. At times, he had to wonder what a concert might be like in Illustra,
with a full orchestra and thousands of compositions from which to select. Then,
if Acorus were to be chosen to host the master scepter, there would be more
music, and plays, and a greater flowering of art and innovation.

A single high chime
interrupted his thoughts—and the conversations around him. All the alectors
stood as the Duarch entered the concert hall. At three yards in height, he was
an impressive figure even among alectors, with his bril-liant white face,
flashing purple eyes, and hair so deep and black that, paradoxically, it seemed
to radiate light. His smile and the Talent behind it warmed the room.

“Please. I apologize
for being late. Let us enjoy the music.”

Beside the Duarch was
his wife, who also functioned as a regional auditor, and her smile was almost
as warm. One hundred and seven alectors now sat at the tables in the concert
hall. Roughly two thirds of the alectors assigned to Elcien, reflected Dainyl,
a trifle low for a concert, but then all had heard the quartet before. The
novelty was not in the players, but in the latest compositions sent through the
great translation tube from Ifryn with the infrequent translations of Myrmidon
rankers or other lower level alectors.

Dainyl was in fact a
rarity, a senior Myrmidon officer born on Acorus who had worked his way up from
being a ranker into the officer corps. That he had not tested well as a youth
so many years before had always put off his mother and doubtless had retarded
his progress. Then, too, it had not helped that he had been thought to have
limited Talent and had no ties to the Duarches and no close personal links to
any of the high alectors, and had not had any until he had met Lystrana—and
those were but indirect. Under the circumstances, he’d done extraordinary well.
Myrmidon officers with limited Talent and no connections seldom rose above
majer, and never above colonel.

He glanced up as the
four performers, all in the black and green of music, walked onto the dais and
bowed to the Duarch before seating themselves, the hand harpist on the far
left, beside the five string violist, and both across from the side flautist
and knee bassist.

“They’ve been
practicing this recital for a month,” Lystrana said mildly.

That such practice
took place after the musicians’ normal duties was understood.

Three notes from the
hand harp, slow and deliberately struck, filled the hall. Then, the slow deep
tones of the bass followed, joined by the viola.

Dainyl let the music
wash over him, pushing aside the worries of the week.

Standing easy in his
maroon and gray uniform, Mykel waited on the platform to the west of the river
towers for the coach from Faitel to Elcien. South of the platform was the River
Vedra itself, channeled between eternastone walls. Each river wall held a causeway
wide enough for four transport coaches abreast.

“Think it’ll be
late?” asked a Cadmian ranker several paces away.

“Never seen one late
yet,” replied his companion. “Alectors want the coaches to run when they’re
supposed to.”

With an amused smile,
Mykel shifted his weight from one boot to the other, then glanced to the
western end of the platform, where a handful of alectors waited beyond the
stone railing separating the two sections. While the alectors never showed age,
not any that he had seen, Mykel knew that the ones waiting were younger. Senior
alectors traveled by pteridon, or through the mysteries of the Halls.

The captain snorted.
Mysteries, indeed. For all their greater height and strength, the alectors were
still mortals, although they had their secrets and guarded them zealously.

Low in the western
sky, he could barely make out the half disc of the larger moon, Selena, more
golden near the horizon. The green moon—Asterta, the one some called the
warrior moon or the moon of misery—had set glasses earlier, well before dawn.

He turned, his eyes
taking in the nearer of the two green towers, a cylinder with a pointed tip
that soared more than a hundred yards into the silver-green sky. Between the
two towers were the major piers for the boats and barges that traveled the
river carrying everything—the steel pigs and dreamdust from Iron Stem, the
wines from the Vyan Hills, and the grains and livestock from the fertile
rolling plains between Krost and Borlan. All of it came down the Vedra to
Faitel, where the iron was off loaded for the artisans and engineers, and what
was not off-loaded went first to Elcien, then south through the Bay of Ludel to
Ludar.

Downstream and to the
west of Faitel were the shipyards, and upstream and east of the center of the
city were the ironworks and the golden walled compounds of the engineers’ and
artisans’ guilds. If Ludar could be called the artistic heart of Corus, and
Elcien the spirit and intelligence, then Faitel was where art and spirit were
forged and almost everything of great value was fabricated—from the bronzed
coaches pulled by the sandoxes to the great ships that had conquered the
oceans.

Mykel’s reveries were
brought to a halt by the double chime of the bell that announced that the coach
to Elcien was coming. He looked eastward as the sandoxes turned into the
concourse on the north side of the platform. There were two—each more than four
times the size of a draft horse—with even more massive shoulders, and scales
that shimmered purplish blue. The deep set eyes were golden brown ovals, with
pupils blacker than a starless night. In the middle of the broad forehead was a
single triangular scale a good ten times the size of the less distinct purplish
scales that covered every span of the sandox. The sandoxes were harnessed to a
modified cross rig with wide black straps and leather-sheathed chains.

Behind the pair were
the bronze sheathed transport coaches, each nine yards long. The forward coach
was split into two sections, the front compartment for alectors, with wider and
well cushioned seats, and a rear section with far less luxurious seating. The
second coach contained a single compartment, all standard seating. The drivers’
seat high on the front of the first coach had ample space for the two alectors
who controlled the sandoxes and the coach, and was provided cover from sunlight
and weather by curved bronzelike metallic roof sheet.

Just as the sandoxes
and coaches slowed to a halt, there was a shout from the river side of the
concourse platform. Mykel turned, as did the two women to his left, and the
pair of Cadmian rankers to his right.

A man jumped onto the
top of the stone railing of the western platform and leveled a weapon—an
ancient crossbow—at the nearest alector. Before Mykel had taken more than a
single step, the bearded figure had fired, and the quarrel slammed into the
shoulder of the alector, spinning him half around. Before Mykel took a third
step, the alector on the forward coach had lifted his light knife. A bluish
beam struck the bearded man, and his entire figure flared into blue yellow
flame. Within instants, a blackened body pitched off the railing.

Mykel’s mouth opened
as he realized the crossbow quarrel had bounced off the alector’s shoulder. He
had the feeling that the alector was in a fair amount of pain, but he couldn’t
have said why. Still, from such close range, the bolt should have gone through
the alector. Absently, he recalled what his father had said. Arrows bouncing
off alectors didn’t seem so far fetched, after what he had just seen. But how
did they do that? Was their skin that tough? Or were those shiny clothes
special? Or both?

His lips quirked. He
wasn’t likely to find out. Not anytime soon.

The concourse bell
rang rapidly, and Cadmians in the uniforms of the road patrols appeared from the
station west of the concourse. Within moments, the charred figure had been
lifted into a handcart and pushed away. The injured alector had vanished.

“Never seen anything
like that,” muttered one of the rankers beside Mykel.

“Maybe one of those
Ancienteers,” replied the other.

“Thought they just
hid away in the peaks and stuff.”

“Crazy folk, never
know what they’ll do.”

Mykel agreed with
that, especially about some of the strange cults that had appeared in the
outlying lands of some regions, like the IronValleys, North Lustrea, Deforya,
aad the higher mountains in the southern part of the CoastRange. He’d hadn’t
heard much about the Ancienteers, except as a group that worshipped the
vanished ancients. His grandfather had once said that the true ancients were
beautiful women with wings who were colder than ice. They didn’t sound like
anything Mykel wanted to worship.

The boarding bell
rang, a quick triplet, and Mykel eased a silver from one of the slots on the
inside of his belt before moving toward the steps down to the embarking area.

The two Cadmian road
patrollers on the mounting steps scarcely looked at Mykel as he handed his
silver to the attendant and stepped through the open door and into the coach.
He settled into a window seat three rows back. As in all of the coach
compartments, save the forward section for alectors, there were four narrow oak
seats, two on each side of a center aisle. With the thin seat cushion, they
were almost comfortable on a long journey. Almost.

Mykel noted an
attractive woman in dark blue, hoping she would take the seat beside him.
Before he could offer, a squarish man wearing a brown tunic and matching boots
eased into the seat. “Sorry, Captain, but there’s not that much room.”

“There never is,”
replied Mykel politely, guessing that the man was some sort of factor.

A single long chime
sounded, and the attendant closed the coach door. Mykel glanced around the
coach. Most of the thirty-two seats were taken, although the attractive
brunette was sitting alone. With the slightest jolt, the coach began to move.
Before long, the sandoxes had the coach up to speed and coolish air flowed
through the louvers forward and overhead.

With nearly three
hours ahead of him for the seventy odd vingt journey, Mykel surveyed the river,
taking in the barges being towed upstream by the steam tugs on the inner
causeway. An ocean freighter—he could tell that because it did not have the
sails of a coaster nor the narrower beam and shallower draft of a river
craft—forged downstream. Above the bridge flew the pennant of the Duarchy, two
crossed scepters, both metallic blue, not quite identical, set in a sharp eight
pointed, brilliant green star.

“Strange business
there on the platform,” offered the man seated beside Mykel. “You ever see
anything like that before?”

The captain turned
from the window. “No. I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

“I meant the arrow
bouncing off the alector. I’ve seen crazies before.” He paused. “Makes you
think. Maybe there are reasons we don’t know why they’re alectors… besides
they’re being big and tall.” After another pause, he smiled. “I’m Floriset,
crop factor.”

“Mykel, captain,
Fifteenth Cadmian.”

“Wouldn’t want your
job these days. Everywhere you look, there’s another bunch that thinks they can
do things better than the Duarchs.” Floriset shook his head. “You seen much
action against them?”

“In the north
Westerhills against the Reillies last year.”

“Tough, they said.”

“Not that tough. We
didn’t need to call in the Myrmidons, the way they did in Soupat.” Mykel laughed,
quickly asking, “How is your business?”

“Some days are good.
Some aren’t. Had a mild spring, with rain in most places, and a bit more rain
through the summer. Good hot late summer and a dry early harvest Makes it
hard.”

“That sounds good,”
offered Mykel, “not bad.”

“Too good. Bumper
crops all over the place, especially in wheat corn. That’ll drive the prices
down. Be hard on the farmers way to the east Might speculate in some land
there. The factor laughed. Just have to buy as much as I can and hope next
year’s weather’s worse.”

“Did the Reillies
make things hard last year?”

“Hard on folks to the
north, but I’d laid in more stocks, and when the prices went up after they
burned the granaries in Harmony, I made a few extra silvers.”

“More like a few hundred,
I’d wager,” suggested Mykel.

“A few.” The factor
grinned, but for a moment. “Works the other way at times, too. Couple years
back, I’d figured that the short drought would last another year. Was wrong
about that, and had to unload stocks as I could. Storage charges woulda eaten
me alive, otherwise. Took a loss of more than a half copper a bushel.” He shook
his head. “Like to have done that one over again.”

“Life’s like that,”
Mykel replied.

“It is indeed, but
you can’t help wishing.”

Mykel nodded, then
leaned back and closed his eyes. It would be a long ride, and he could use the
rest.