Eyes of the Calculor (64 page)

"They hate me," she said bleakly as he knelt before her.

"Only failures are hated by nobody," replied Dramoren.

"Oh. Who said that?"

"I did, just now."

"Ah. So it's not some wise saying?"

"Do I have to be long dead but in print before my sayings become wise?"

A screen was placed between Dramoren and Lengina while her servants and chambermaids changed her into clean clothing. By the time the screen was removed yet another group was washing her hair.

"They threw things," sobbed Lengina.

"Lucky they didn't shoot things," replied her beloved without much concern evident.

"They were waving sticks."

"Ah, then you cross-block with a nice little arc-parry, then cut across to the temple. A very underrated target, the temple."

"Dram! I've just been attacked!"

Dramoren now knelt beside her recliner and took her hand in both of his. "Dearest Frelle, the average Dragon Silver in the Dragon Librarian Service currently has 1.64 deaths on his or her hands. For Dragon Gold it is 2.78 deaths, and the averages are slightly higher for women. On my way to Dragon Black I fought eleven duels and killed six senior librarians and the champions of another two, as well as inflicting some rather serious wounds. Speaking of wounds, I have more like the one on my face."

There was a tittering among the maids, who now realized that Lengina had never seen her beloved with his clothes off. This affirmation of her virtue felt more like a loss of face to Lengina, who ordered them from the room and began to towel her hair dry by herself.

"Jemli can sway people, she can reach into their hearts," she said dispiritedly.

"So can a vendor of chocolates."

"Be serious!"

"I am being serious."

"I went out at a random time, on a random date, into a street chosen at random by your Calculor. Even so I ran into dozens of militant Reformed Gentheists. If that is a sample of Jemli the Prophet's support, then half of the Commonwealth must be ready to take up stones on her behalf."

"Frelle Lengina, there are any number of people who knew that route up to ten minutes in advance. Preliminary tallies show twenty-eight people arrested. Twenty-eight! How hard might it be to keep twenty-eight, thirty, even three dozen men and women at the ready, waiting to rush to your Alms Day ceremony as soon as the traitor alerts them? Actually only five or six were probably behind today's mob, and I would be surprised if more than one or two of the real leaders have been arrested."

"You have only fought duels, this was a mob. Being set upon by a mob is different. It is like being judged by the voice of the people."

"Do you really think so?"

"As of today, I know so. Jemli has something about her. Perhaps it is God's will. I don't know, but I did feel as if a greater thing had judged me today. I plotted to turn the Commonwealth against Woom-era, but no matter what I do, peace breaks out. God is judging me, and finding me wanting."

Dramoren walked across to the shuttered window, pushed the shutters open, and looked out over the city. By now order had been restored, and it was as if the incident had never taken place.

"I disagree," he said without turning. "Woomera is going out of its way to be a good neighbor to the Rochestrian Commonwealth, and in affairs of state, a good neighbor is a neighbor who wants something."

Uramoren was cloaked and masked as he strode down the darkened street in the rain. An identical figure fell into step with him.

"The righteous are within the palace," the stranger reported.

"Can they be detected?" asked Dramoren.

"They carry nought but their convictions and instructions. What of your task?"

"The device is in place and cannot be detected. It has Southmoor markings aplenty, so they will be blamed. What of the Woomeran Overmayor?"

"A worthy sacrifice, one life to save millions. This is the Word as revealed to the Prophet Jemli, the Enlightened One."

"All praise to the Deity and the Word from the Prophet Jemli. One life to save millions."

■Vlartyne spent as much time in the taverns of the commoners as he did in the more refined establishments such as Marelle reigned over. The Filthy Swine was actually a lot cleaner than the name implied and served a special wood-brewed beer whose reputation was known right across the Commonwealth. Having helped train several flyers to fly the super-regals and having completed a dozen trips to the mainland and back, Martyne had been granted a few

days' leave from service in the Avianese Civil Flock. He decided to visit Rochester.

"Beer off the wood," he said to the jarmaid as he sat by the first fire of the season.

The man rubbing his hands before the flames wore an eye patch, and the skin of his face had either been diseased or burned in the past.

"Brave scar on the arm," he remarked as Martyne reached out to accept his beer. "You'd be a veteran, then?"

Martyne's scar had not been visible to the man. This was his contact.

"Got it in action," Martyne admitted.

He had been told that his contact would guide the conversation, and that he should not flinch from any subject or suggestion.

"Aye, then, you'd be in Rochers for the One Day of the Year?"

Martyne thought quickly. "Yes, but just to watch."

"Why? All march in the ANZAC parade, even old foes, even aviads."

By now a circle of drinkers had either fallen silent or were speaking more softly.

"But not a veteran of the Avian regulars."

The room fell totally silent. Nobody had ever heard of an official Avianese fighting force, although they were suspected to exist.

"Then who were ye fighting with, and where, young Fras?"

"The Skyfire Flock during the Battle of Launceston against the Yarronese Americans. I shot down three of their wings. Now I am with the Second Armed Kitewings, although on secondment to—"

"Fras, Fras, march back a little!" called a genuine veteran, sauntering over with his beer. "D'ye mean flying machines?"

"Yes."

Martyne expected a dangerous confrontation over matters of fueled engines and heresy. The actual reaction of the company took him by surprise.

"There's been a war in the air?" exclaimed the veteran.

"Yes, but it only lasted fifteen minutes. Things move very fast, you see."

"Americans attacked Avian?" called a rather overweight, bearded bombardier who was smoking a pipe.

"Yes, but we stopped them."

"Bastards! Teach 'em to attack our aviads."

There were mutters of assent. Martyne could scarcely believe his ears. Our aviads?

"It was only one American faction, most others are rather nice," he now explained. "One of their flyers is my sweetheart, she fought alongside us."

"A human fought with you?" asked someone from behind Martyne.

"Yes, a Bartolican."

"Young Fras, this seems to smell of a lie, dressed to get you free drinks for the rest of the night," said Martyne's contact. "Now, a real flyer would wear his sweetheart's colors just below his right elbow, a sort of bundle of ribbons. That's what I got told by the Dragon Librarians who questioned that American fella shot down last January."

"Oh, you mean these?" said Martyne, throwing back his cloak and holding his arm up to display Samondel's colors.

There was a loud, involuntary cacophony of gasps, oaths, and cries of amazement.

"Young Fras, is your girl close?" asked the jarmaid. "We must meet her."

Martyne lowered his arm and stared at the floor.

"She is missing in action, Frelle, and that action was three weeks ago."

In a matter of hours Martyne found himself to be the toast of Rochester. In a city overflowing with veterans for the ANZAC parade, he was a veteran of a type not seen for two thousand years. The next day he found himself standing before the parade committee, and beside him was Terian.

"If you insist that there is goodwill in Rochester, then we Avi-anese are willing to march," Terian was saying.

"Second Armed Kitewings and Battle of Launceston are to be

the two banners, yes, we'll have those completed in time," said the secretary. "Will you accept human youths to carry them?"

"The Avianese veterans would be honored, Fras," said Terian. "I can arrange three for the parade."

"Three flyers?" asked the committee president.

"Yes."

"Ah, and one of them is yourself?"

"No, I am of the Fifth Wingfield Lancers, Outrider Guards."

"Fras Harbean, another banner," the president ordered, turning to the secretary. "Did you catch the title?"

Forian, North America

KJn the other side of the world another veteran of the same conflict was not being similarly honored. Samondel was standing before the eleven other members of the Council of Mounthaven Airlords who had been willing or able to gather in Forian. The mood was one of impatience and distraction, and while they had actually met to discuss the Australican venture, the matter of the disintegration of their own domains weighed far more heavily on their minds. Most had oil-stained hands from having to help maintain their own compression engines. That was a bad sign.

The sudden availability of a frontier the size of a continent with no human population at all, practically limitless ancient cities to mine for resources, and the availability of game and farmland that put Mounthaven to shame meant that the ancient American states were hemorrhaging citizens. The majority of those who were leaving were young, strong, bright people who otherwise had no more prospects than inheriting a family cottage, while following a trade producing some minor component of some warden's gunwing. By comparison, the idea of owning a wilderness freehold the size of a warden's estate, living in a newly built cabin, and calling nobody master had scarcely less allure than a bag of gold lying in the middle of the road.

Many workshops now contained only guildmasters and a few children. Fields of fuel crops lay untended, and wardens often worked in their own fuel distilleries just to stay in the air. Among the ancient trades, only the gunsmiths were prospering, but even these were packing their workshops and stock onto carts and setting out for the frontier settlements where new markets were booming. The demand for hunting rifles was particularly strong, while the guildsmen producing bullets were accumulating wealth to rival that of their former wardens.

All of this was at the back of Samondel's mind as she spoke, however. Airlord Sartov's conspiracy to attack the Australican wing-fields was a matter of honor that she gave even higher priority than that of Highland Bartolica's disintegration.

"I have seen stupidity on a scale that I did not believe possible," she cried, slamming the butt of the speaker's mace down on the floor. "Resources wasted that could have been used to bring hundreds of young horses across the ocean. Instead the Avianese annihilated your sailwings with their rocketwings. It took minutes! They can climb faster than sailwings can dive!"

"Where did they get those things?" asked Sartov, furious yet unsettled.

"They developed them from ancient texts; do you think nobody but us can fly? They have the ultimate defensive wings, Airlord Sartov of Yarron: limited range, exceedingly high speed, and very simple to build. They only need our artisans and skills for developing civilian transport wings."

"Transport of featherhead brats, transport of bombs, transport of carbineers, it is all the same," said Sartov.

"You never change, do you? A carefully planned, secret raid over an impossible distance against seemingly overwhelming odds, that is your way. Well, it might have worked against Bartolica, but Avian stopped you."

"We have twenty-five horses, and the two oldest are with foal," said the Airlord of Cosdora, anxious to end the debate and move on to the loss of most of his worthwhile subjects to the former Callscour

frontier. "A young bull and four cows as well. Surely Venture Aus-tralica can be declared a success?"

"The Airlord of Highland Bartolica should be commended for a most remarkable feat," added the Airlord of Senner.

"The Airlord of Highland Bartolica has killed over ten dozen of our finest and bravest wardens and air carbineers," retorted Sartov.

"Your terrorists," countered Samondel.

"The wings and compression spirit belonged to us all," said Sartov. "You betrayed us, you sacrificed them to the featherheads. You have cost us more in handcrafted wings, compression engines, and fuel than the entire featherhead war!"

"You organized the conspiracy that cost us all that!" shouted Samondel. "Without you we would have kept every wing, and gained as many horses as our explorers and carbineers could ride."

"Wardens Jemarial and Feydamor are dead because of you."

"Fact! I shot down Warden Jemarial in a Yarronese triwing. Fact! Serjon Feydamor, Mounthaven's greatest flyer, was shot down by Martyne Camderine, Australia's greatest flyer."

"Fact! Sair Camderine was flying one of those monstrosities that moves faster than the bullets from our reaction guns! It was no fair or chivalric fight—"

"Fine words from the airlord who organized a terrorist attack on Launceston Wingfield."

"That was not a civilized wingfield, just a strip of grass that barbarians ascend from—"

"In wings vastly superior to ours. My lords, think upon what I have told you, and upon the reports sent back earlier from Sair Feydamor himself. The Avianese now have adjuncts, pennant poles, colors, wing names, champions, and standards of chivalric honor."

"But they have no airlords or wardens," the Airlord of Cosdora pointed out.

"And we have no Highlibers, Dragon Librarians, or beamflash captains," replied Samondel. "That makes us barbarians to them"

"Powerful barbarians," warned Sartov. "Remember what happened to Greater Bartolica in the war."

"And remember what happened to your one hundred twenty-one terrorists, Airlord Sartov. All dead."

"They were betrayed."

"Wrong. They were killed before they had a chance to betray. Their motive was based in hate, just as yours is. You perverted our venture, you wasted our resources—"