The Braided World (48 page)

After their stories were told, she thought that there was a confluence here of the things both of them had to do. She had always known that this man would change her life; she just hadn't realized he would change the whole Olagong.

Mim signaled Gilar that she was anxious to be on the move.

Gilar rose. Soon Oleel will bring her boats against the king's. So I will bargain with him. To bring the hoda to his side.<

“Vidori will bargain hard,” Anton said. “You might not get all you want.”

Gilar thought that perhaps Anton did not quite understand her strength. The judipon have carried much of the fight so far. But when Oleel brings the uldia to battle, many of the king's soldiers will refuse to kill them. They are bound by ties of the birth waters. < She fixed him with a direct gaze. My sisters and I have no such ties.<

He smiled at her. “A good strategy.” Then: “I'd like to help, Gilar.”

She had the bitter thought that perhaps he might have helped before. But she let it drift away. She'd take help where she could get it.

Mim paddled forward, signaling Gilar to hurry.

Anton looked at the skiffs. “A larger force of your sisters would be helpful.”

That she knew. Oh yes, but I need the radio for that.< She prepared to jump into her skiff.

“I'll paddle,” Anton said.

Gilar considered this startling offer. Accepting him into her boat, she gave Anton the paddle. He propelled them into the river, with the sisters following, amazed.

It was on that trip up the Sodesh, while Gilar and Anton shared a skiff, and made what plans they could, that the main forces of king, judipon, and uldia met in the great river.

Anton could hear the renewed din of voices and gunfire. As he and Gilar's force approached the confluence of the Amalang and the Sodesh, the battle scene spread out before them, clogging the river with barges, skiffs, and smoke.

Somewhere in that chaos was the man they must find.

Anton and Gilar reconnoitered on the north side of the river, tearing lengths of cloth and smearing them with black mud, in an attempt to be identified with the king. But black banners would not guarantee a positive Dassa reaction to seeing hoda with weapons.

As a canoe filled with black banners paddled by, Anton hailed it. The soldiers frowned, and might have fired on him, but one among them thought better of it and said he'd bear a message forward to Romang, who was close by.

On the muddy bank, Anton and Gilar took a quick meal among her band of hoda. Watching them, listening to them, Anton learned that they had more than one way of speaking. They had a tonal language, one that, remarkably, they had kept secret. His first thought was to tell Nick. Why he couldn't, all the reasons why, darkened his view of the river for a time.

Before they could set out again, Romang appeared out of the murk of the river, his great war canoe expertly guided by warriors. It sliced into the bank, and Romang debarked, his face covered with soot. He scowled at the sight of this force of hoda. But he agreed to take a message to Vidori, who was now engaged with Nirimol on the upriver front of the battle. Anton's message was that he was back, and wished to discuss whether he should stay, and under what terms.

As Romang's face darkened to hear things put that way, Anton hastened to add: “The hoda will fight for the king.”

It was Gilar's choice. Before they could expect the king to make concessions, the hoda had to prove themselves. Gilar had chosen rightly; Romang and his soldiers needed to see a display of loyalty.

“How does the king fare, Romang-rah?” Anton asked.

The war chief paused, considering. “He is outnumbered by the judipon and uldia.” Then he added, in a low and feral tone, ‘And my soldiers will not enter Oleel's palace.”

“Romang-rah, we will do so.” He let that sink in with the man, who warily eyed a nearby hoda. “But,” Anton added, “you must tell your people that it's proper that the hoda fight the uldia.” Romang's look was a weapon by itself.

Anton pressed on: “We'll take Oleel if we can. But it can be no disgrace for us to strike her down, or her uldia. Do you agree?”

After a moment, Romang nodded. “Do it.” And this was all the promise Anton got, or was likely to get.

Romang didn't tarry, but settled into his canoe then, slipping out into the Sodesh, to bear all the news to Vidori, including the tidings of the Lady Joon, and where her body lay.

Together with three dozen hoda, Anton and Gilar entered the realm of the uldia: Oleel's pavilion. Cool and quiet, it gave no evidence that it was even occupied. If Romang had the full picture, the uldia were on the river, attacking with impunity among a demoralized royal force.

Gilar knew the pavilion well, and so did Anton, from the layout Nick recorded in his notepad, particularly his sketches of Oleel's courtyard and gallery. As the group split in two, one followed Anton to the courtyard, and the other Gilar to the second-story gallery.

Short of the courtyard, Anton signaled for the women to wait, then brought out the point drone. He watched his
palm screen as the drone flicked around the corner, sending images back to him.

The drone revealed an empty courtyard streaming with sunshine, and with the edges in shade from an overhanging mezzanine held up by pillars. Also relayed was the sound of fighting from the river, which Anton hoped would cover the whir of the unit's motor. Moving higher, the drone captured a view of the gallery. A lone figure sat across there, in a section of the gallery opposite where Anton stood. He recognized Oleel, sitting next to a machine.

Recalling the drone, Anton turned to the sisters, as they referred to themselves. After they'd conferred they climbed to the mezzanine from the nearby stairs and waited there for his signal. Then Anton crept forward, his rifle in his arm, into the courtyard, hoping to be able to take dead aim at Oleel. But her position was set back from his line of fire.

She was speaking to someone. After a time the sense of what she was saying came to him, and the realization that she was using a radio transmitter. She was rallying the Dassa, those who sat by receivers along the rivers trying to fathom what was happening to the Olagong, and whom to fight for. Oleel was answering that question in no uncertain terms.

Crouching, he braced the rifle on his upraised knee. He would make a noise, and then she would came to the edge of the mezzanine.

Her voice, when it came, startled him. It was resonant and full.

“Venning promised that you would not stay, yet here you are.”

Anton had heard her voice only once before, but he hadn't forgotten it, and probably never would.

Her voice commanded the hall. “He lied. We see how you deal with us.”

Watching for her in his scope, he responded, “If you wanted to know my plans, you should have asked
me.”

He saw her head for a moment, her square head with its gray bun of hair. But then she retreated out of sight. “Have you come to kill my ladies for the sake of the king?” She didn't wait for him to answer. “Oh yes. But have you thought, Captain, what you will do if I win?”

“You won't, Oleel. There are more set against you than the king.”

“Such as you?”

“Yes. And the hoda. They are here with me.”

A pause. Then: “Venning said you liked outcasts.” Her voice was smaller as she added, “But they are few.”

“You are fewer now too, Oleel. Joon is dead. I saw her die.”

A strange sound came from the gallery. It was the sound of a moan, amplified by a large frame.

“Saw her die?” the voice came, splintered.

“She drowned in the Sodesh. An accident.”

Her voice rose again. “No, not my sweet Joon.” She came forward, but remained hidden by a pillar. “Not, not Joon …”

“Consider that you killed her, Oleel. Her tie of birth waters meant she would do all for you. And she has.”

Though her voice was soft, it carried with surprising fidelity in the stone hall. “You say the river took her with its hands?”

His silence answered her well enough.

Then Oleel emerged from her hiding place and walked into full view at the edge of the deck. Anton had her in his sights. But she just stood there, exposing herself, like a non-combatant. And Anton hesitated.

She looked down at him. Her voice thinned, but its whisper carried. “So you have brought us all to ruin after all. Was not one world enough, that you must take mine as well?”

Behind him, a murmur rose from the sisters, impatient to have him shoot. But Anton paused. “There is room enough on this world for twenty humans, Oleel.”

“Room enough?” She gazed over his head, at the window on the opposite side of the mezzanine, as though looking beyond it, to the variums. “Oh, enough room for born to bear, do you say? Enough room to cast away my world and all that we were?” She looked down at him suddenly. ‘And you as leader of the degenerates. Is it so?”

For an answer, Gilar moved out onto the gallery from the stairwell nearest Oleel.

“Oh yes,” Oleel said, “the slave again.”

Gilar walked forward. Behind her stood the sisters, all armed, quietly armed.

The big woman's upper chest was wrapped in bandages. Over this dressing she wore an open robe. For the first time, Gilar noticed she leaned heavily on a staff. The woman's pri was weak, yet she stood like a monument. Nearby sat the radio transmitter the chief uldia had been using.

Oleel looked at Gilar with the ghost of a sneer. Her face, never expressive, still had room for contempt. “We knew about your singing language. It was how we kept track of hoda schemes.”

By way of answer, Gilar sang, We killed your guards.

Oleel's gaze flicked over to a place where she might have expected reprieve. Her face hardened.

From the courtyard came Anton's voice: ‘Ask the king for mercy, Oleel.”

“Do you think I care for Vidori's mercy? I will follow Joon, of course. Despite what the Olagong made her, I forgave her everything. The palace, her father, her state—nothing stood between us, nor ever will. I forgave it all.”

Gilar knew that Oleel was right. She must follow Joon.

Jump, then.

But Oleel was already looking out over her courtyard, her realm. Then she took one step into the air, and fell. On the stone floor below, her bones shattered, and her skull.

Gilar stood at the edge, looking down on her. Blood was pooling on the stone floor, at the place where one floor stream came out from the west and joined another from the south. An analogue of the Sodesh and Amalang confluence.

The two streams began running red.

The haze-filled air fed a purple sunset. Through the
bruised smoke, Anton sped along in the royal canoe, attended by the king's guard. Once Gilar's skiff carried Oleel's body into the river for display, the uldia put down their arms. The battle was over.

Anton's craft passed boats, skiffs, and barges full of supplies and soldiers, many of them wounded. Then, approaching a pier surrounded by boats, Anton's canoe plied its way to the dock. A figure waited there, his hands clasped behind his back, and dressed in black and gray.

Vidori was alone on the pier. Behind him, in a makeshift camp, thousands of soldiers thronged among pitched tents. The guards sprang from the canoe. But it was Vidori's hand that came down to help Anton onto the dock.

Anton took the offered help, the first time he'd ever actually touched Vidori. It was a human gesture, that hand-to-hand. It seemed a good beginning for what came next.

As always, Vidori was scrupulously shaven, but the signs of battle lingered in his clothes, covered as they were with
soot. His face brightened at the sight of Anton standing next to him on the pier, empty save for the two of them.

“Anton-rah,” the king said.

Anton raised an eyebrow. Here was an early concession. “Rahi, I am glad to see you.”

Vidori didn't lead him from the dock, where they were most likely to have privacy.

After a moment Anton said, “Joon drowned by mischance on the Sodesh, Vidori-rah. The tree fell, and pinned her. I'm sorry.” He'd told Romang the details. That he hadn't killed her, but would have, if his aim had been better.

“The braid took her,” Vidori said. He stepped past Anton to the very end of the dock, looking out on the great river. “Do you know what we say, Anton, about those who have no burial?” He went on without waiting for a reply. “That they have no rest, but swim until the braid releases them. Sometimes never.”

“Rahi, I did bring her from the river. I told Romang where her body was.”

Still facing outward, Vidori said, “But he put her into the river again, where she will swim, thankfully.”

It chilled Anton to hear him say that. The cost of the retribution chilled him. He heard the cost in the man's voice.

Vidori turned back to Anton. “She wanted to die.”

No, she wanted to be queen
, Anton thought, but withheld saying.

“She was bearing a child within her.”

Now Anton was truly speechless. And just as the idea was taking root, Vidori added one sentence too many:

“It is sometimes the result of human sex, I believe.”