The accessway was nothing surprising. There was an EVA room to the left, with only one suit left in a locker, damaged and scavenged, and breather mounts for refilling oxygen cylinders. The scrubber bin was empty. There was a shelf for spare helmets, empty. A power rig with blown cells.

“Stripped,” Natano said. “Nothing useful.”

“Nothing useful anywhere,” Second Mechanic Ĉandro said. “After six hundred years, I’d trust my ass to Provs leftovers?”

Natano pulled aside a hanging panel. The wood snapped easily. “This ship’s junk. Freezing out here and falling apart—what’s the temperature, Garsa?”

“Minus two-twenty-one and a half cee.”

“Cold as your mum’s arse,” Ĉandro said.

“Piss off,” Garsa said genially.

“Let’s move on,” Natano said.

The main corridor ran from the engine room to the bridge, lined with storage cupboards and accesses. The torch-beams played along them, and the boarding party poked around, finding mostly unidentifiable junk.

“Woo!” Garsa called. “Girlie-book!”

“Lemme see,” Ĉandro demanded. “The Adventures of Irene.”

“Gimme it back.—Cor, these clothes. What is this? Women used to dress like men back then?”

“Fiko I know. You’d be happier with a book full of—”

“Put that away, louts, and stop yelling. Can’t hear myself think. We’ll get to their bridge.” Natano tried to push a door shut, but a boot sticking out at the bottom blocked it. He swung the door open and launched backward with a shout, torch-beam dancing on bulkheads.

There was a man in the cupboard.

They all scrambled, the forgotten girlie-book tumbling to bounce off the wall and drift away.

Natano pulled his service-dagger, and the techs took defensive positions before relaxing.

“He’s dead,” Ĉandro said.

“Of course he’s dead,” Natano said. “By the God! But he gave me a start.”

The torch played across the body. It was in a pressure suit, a scudgy brown one, jammed in the cupboard, arms and hands pressed against the side. The visage behind the faceplate was twisted, mummified, gray like withered meat, eyes sunken, flat, wide, and opalescent, blind like fish eyes at the market. The mouth gaped, the teeth cracked and crumbled. The stub of a name tape remained on the breast, the terminal letters, MSO.

They looked at him in silence for a moment.

“Doesn’t look military,“ said Garsa. “A regular spacer suit.”

“They had to be short of supply by then,” Natano said. “They’d already lost the war.” He leaned in, pressing on the suit. It was rigid. His gauntleted hand passed left, right, probing, turning the dehydrated mummy. “Wasn’t shot.Wonder what happened.”

“Fika this. Let’s head to the bridge,” Ĉandro said.

Natano pushed the door as closed as it would go. “Sleep tight, mate!—Come on.”

One chamber after another opened off corridor main—berths among empty torpedo racks, the head, the mess, what looked like officers’ cabins, and finally the bridge. Natano led the way in.

“What a mess. Didn’t rip out the processors, or terminals…that’s stuff they could’ve used! Damned odd. The rest looks gutted. Merdo.” He flashed the torch. “Crank open the blasts on the windows.”

Ĉandro and Garsa braced themselves on the manuals and slowly turned stiff handles to partially open the bridge window blastshields, providing a view off the bridge towards the instrument pods and the forward weapons. A flicker of sunlight filtered in, almost drowned by starlight. It glinted off a dozen terminals arranged in a horseshoe around the captain’s chair, as black and still as it had been since the end of the long-ago Caballardo war.

“Look here,” Garsa said.

Natano drifted to the comms station. There was a piece of folded wall-sheathing jammed into a slot with a metaplastoc cartridge.

“The hells?” Natano said.

Ĉandro shone his torch on the piece of stock. “Something’s written on it.”

“GOO—“ Garsa read. “Goo? What does that mean?”

Natano looked closely. “It’s jammed under this…what is this?”

“Old data cartridge,” the mechanic said. “They used to make them like a little processing core, but you could swap them out, move functions from terminal to terminal.”

“Sounds dumb,” Natano said. He tugged the piece of stiff fiberboard, pulling it from under the cartridge. It slipped out, and the processor clicked silently into place.

He turned it in his gauntlet. “Goodbye Caballardists,” he read. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Killed themselves, maybe,” Ĉandro said. “I would’ve.”

A light came on at the comms station.

“Impossible,” Ĉandro said at once.

“We’re looking at it,” Natano replied, releasing the farewell note. It drifted away.

Ĉandro looked all around the station. “There’s no power. This thing’s dead cold!” He smacked it.

Natano pointed at the amber light. “Then what’s that?”

“I’d say it’s a light,” Garsa said.

“Merdo!” Ĉandro exclaimed.

“Battery, then,” Natano said. “But why—”

“After six hundred years, Exec?” Ĉandro protested. “I know my batteries. This cold would drain a modern one stone dry in a decade. This ship? Four years. Less.”

“Wait, what’s this conduiting?” Garsa clambered over the station.

It ran from the back of the comms terminal, poorly hidden, but not the first thing you’d see, panels artfully pried open and butterflied over to conceal it, edges filed sharp, then rubbed with carbon. Natano cursed as they sliced the canvas surface of his suit. “Oi, look at this! Look out! Watch it! This is dangerous, they’ve set a trap!”

The damage stymied them as more lights came on at other stations.

“Merdo!”

“Focus, Ĉandro! Where’s the conduit go?” Natano demanded, as they pulled themselves around and over the consoles, flashing helmet spots and hand-torches into the dark and guarded recesses beyond, wary of ripping edges. “What’s that? Check it, Ĉandro!”

Second Mechanic hooked an iron bootheel over a sprung panel and illuminated the pocket beyond. “Merdo,” he said again.

“What? What do you see?”

“Exec, you aren’t going to believe it, but there’s a mini-thorium reactor under here. It’s been on idle, and it’s powering up fast.”

Natano blinked. “That’s the trace of warmth Zmartos picked up. Shut it down, now.”

Ĉandro carefully pulled forward through the sharp debris. “Controls are smashed.”

“Pull the core rod!”

“Welded.”

“Break the conduit!”

They pounded, kicked, ripped pieces of chair from the captain’s station, and pried. The conduit broke—

“Empty! Those fikulos,” the exec swore. “A diversion! Where’s the power really passing?”

“Exec!” Garsa exclaimed. “Look!”

Natano did not have to ask at what. The terminals were coming on, one at a time, first test patterns and then pass-entry screens. The deck lights were rising as well, painfully slow in the frigid bridge, dull amber and red.

Natano hit his ship-comms booster, “Falko-4, this is Natano. You read?”

The ship-comms buzzed and squealed.

“Falko-4, I say again, this is Natano. You read?”

It sizzled and hissed, and he clanked his gauntlet against the side of his helmet, then switched back over. “My ship-comm is out, Garsa. Call Falko and let them know we’ve got a situation here.”

“Yah, and what’s the situation?”

“Hells if I know. Get on it!”

“…uh, Exec?”

“…What?”

“It’s all static.”

“Ĉandro!”

“Me too, estro.”

Natano growled, frustrated. “It’s jamming us.”

“Uh, Exec—you feel that?”

“What?” Natano said.

Second Mechanic laid his glove flat on the bulkhead. “This ship ain’t dead, estro.”

Natano slapped his hand onto the bulkhead. He felt the vibration clearly.

“Tokamak!”

“Yessir.”

“The fiko! How?”

They turned, looking down the accessway through the ship’s length. Weak lights were coming up, one after another, receding back, back, back to the engine room.

“Think you started it, sir,” Garsa said.

Natano stared at the chunk of fiber wall-sheathing still drifting away. “What do you mean?”

Garsa slapped the data cartridge. “You pulled that shim and completed a circuit. The portable reactor must have had a few watts trickling…and it was waiting for us. That cartridge jumped the tokamak off the reactor.”

Natano pushed off and recovered the scrawled note. “Goodbye Caballardists. What does that mean?”

“Maybe we should pull out that cartridge,” Ĉandro suggested.

They applied themselves to the problem. They yanked. They kicked. They beat. The vibration was strengthening, with the slow heartbeat throb of a tokamak approaching full power.

“Spot-welded,” the second mechanic announced, shining his torch under and around it. “Too late for that,anyway.” He kicked it savagely, holding the console to brace himself, until it shattered. Matters did not improve. “Merdo. This was just the servo to reboot the ship’s processing cores. Ribela Floro is awake and under power now, sir. She don’t need this anymore. She’s laughing at us.” He threw the spinning cartridge against the bulkhead.

The ship shuddered, and stars started moving across the narrow bridge-windows.

“She’s underway, too,” Second Helm said.

“That can’t be good!” said Natano. “Ĉandro! You and me, engine room! Garsa, on the comms and call the ship!”

“Ĉandro just smashed the comms terminal.”

Natano stared. “Merdo! Fiko, I dunno, figure it out!”

“Oh, aye that…”

They grabbed handholds and swung down the central corridor, their force and direction gradually returning as the ship accelerated. There was a heavy vibration behind, and Ĉandro looked back. “Exec!”

The hatch to the bridge had rolled closed.

“Garsa!” Natano yelled, hurling himself back up the passage. “What’re you up to!” He beat on the hatch. “Garsa!”

“How’d he do that?”

“Why’d he do that?” Natano snarled and battered the metaplastoc panels again. “Garsa!”

“Oi, Exec, door shut on me!” Garsa’s voice crackled, strained.

“It shut on you?” Natano repeated stupidly.

“Yah, there’s a blast warning flashing. It must have shorted, futzed a blast warning somehow.”

“Fine, get it shut down, can you?”

“I’ll try.”

“At least LASAC to Falko-4, all right?”

“Assuming their LASAC works…”

“We’re picking up speed,” Ĉandro said. “Need to be in Engineering, quickest!”

“Dammit!”

They let their legs drop and used the steadily increasing velocity from the drive to speed their descent down an access corridor that felt and looked more like a shaft from the bridge now “above” to the far end of the Ribela Floro“below.”

The tokamak, huge, occupied the entire engine room. Terminals were frantic with data.

“What—what is all this?” Ĉandro said.

“What do you mean?”

“What’s all this garbage?” Second Mechanic’s voice rose an octave, and he waved. “Look! Cables—terminals—this stuff don’t belong. What were they doing?”

“You tell me. You’re the mechanic, so what’s it for?”

Ĉandro was drift-bouncing across the engine room. “They’ve got—they’ve got enough processing cores strapped in here to run three different ship. Fiko me blind, Exec, the connections are under the panels and welded shut.”

Natano rapped the bulkhead with iron-bound knuckles. “Still accelerating… We pulled that note out, and the contact closed, and then everything started.”

“Goodbye Caballardists.”

“Aye, that’s what it said. But it didn’t blow us up.”

“But it started this ship up. Maybe they mean to run us out into the dark, freeze us to death—“

Natano snorted. “Won’t take long, only twenty-five hours on rebreathers—“

There was a scream in their headsets.

Rejection season is here again, and we’re passing the savings on to you! More action from the Falko-4 crew tomorrow as “Long Orbit” continues!

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

“You aren’t trying to cheer me up, are you?” Commandant Aydin said.

“Not at all, sir.” His exec tapped the tablet. “That’s a ship.”

Aydin slowly rotated the coarse image with his forefinger. “What’s it doing out here?”

“Drifting.”

“Drifting,” Aydin repeated. “Orbiting?”

“Zmartos is working the numbers.”

Aydin stood, nearly bumping his scalp on the curved bulkhead. He grabbed a handle and pushed himself gently into the narrow corridor to the bridge.

“Zmartos!”

The sensor tech put his head out of his cubicle. “Sir?”

“What’s this you’ve found me?”

“A dead ship, sir.”

“Thankee, I’m sure. Just what I wanted. How dead is dead?”

“Cold, sir. A couple of hundred degrees below.”

“Power?”

“The tokamak’s as cold as a stone, sir.”

“Drifting, or orbiting?”

“If it’s orbiting, it’s long, sir. Haven’t plotted it out. Not enough data points.”

“Work on that—What’ve we got? Tramp trader? Dead miner?”

“It’s big, sir,” Zmartos said. “Four hundred meters. Might even be a warship.”

Aydin sucked his teeth. A column of numbers slowly developed on the terminal. An inset image showed the dead craft hanging in space, where a reasonable man would expect to find only comets or plutino bodies like the one they orbited.

“We should take a look,” his exec said.

“We need instructions,” Aydin said. “Zmartos, radio-range that thing to within a centimeter of its life. I want to know everything we can find out from here, then we drop a line home and tell them what we’ve got. How far off is this…derelict?”

“Three hundred and seventy-five thousand klicks, sir.”

“Get to it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Aydin withdrew into his cabin, beckoning the exec in. He nodded at the folded canvas partition; Natano closed it.

“Livens things.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m a bit tired of commanding a ship that gets in these fixes, though.”

“Sir.”

Aydin counted on his fingers. “Run a bad intercept, get the blame.”

Natano grunted.

“One of Command’s precious boarding teams gets killed on Melainis? Get the blame–and get shoved out on picket-duty at the solar system’s edge. Now this.”

“Not our fault.”

“I’ll be sure to explain,” Aydin said sarcastically. “Here’s my problem, Natano. We aren’t the first ship to orbit this rock.”

“No, sir.”

“Does that suggest something to you?”

Natano looked at him uneasily. “Not exactly?”

Aydin spread his hands. “Why’s no one seen it before?”

“Maybe it’s not orbiting. Maybe it’s drifting through.”

Aydin sighed. “I want numbers out of Zmartos, fast.”

The derelict was not drifting. Zmartos watched the numbers develop for hours, then did his mathematics.

“Tell us, Zmartos,” Aydin said sweetly, “about our little discovery.”

“It’s on a high ellipse orbiting 697-KZ,” the sensor tech said. “Closest approach is about half a million kilometers, farthest shy of six million. It’s on a forty, forty-one year period. Most of the time, it’s moving about as fast as a horse trots, sir.”

“How fast is it now?” Natano asked.

“She’s at closest approach, so fifty-seven meters a second. That’s the only reason I saw her, sir. I was doing binocular exposures, looking for other plutino bodies, or incoming spaceships burning off hydrogen, and I saw her jump between two snaps.”

“Aren’t I lucky,” the commandant drawled. “That’s why no one else has seen her?”

“At her slowest, she might move five hundred kilometers a day, in the dark. No one’d ever see her.”

It was cold, it was dead, and what they could see suggested it was every bit of six hundred years old—at least Caballardo-era, maybe older. Aydin put together a terse report and LASACed Command at Odysseus. Transmission time was three hours, and the crew quieted as Aydin’s mood grew fouler. At the six-hour point, he began looming next to comms, who stared at his terminal fixedly, turning a stylus in his fingers.

Eight hours in, Aydin got an equally terse response.

See if it’s worth salvage.

He blew out his cheeks. “Good. Nobody’s pissed—yet. Natano! All hands strap for manœuvers.”

Falko-4 cut in the tuyères and moved for intercept. Zmartos kept continuous radio-range on the target, watching for even a flicker of infrared.

“Cold as deep space,” he reported when Natano ducked in. “A wreck if I ever saw one. There’s just a whisper of heat in the bow where the bridge might be, but it could be instrument error.”

“Recent images, Z.”

Zmartos opened the newest. “Forward missile tubes, and aft.” He tapped the screen. “I think that’s the conn in the bow. That bulge is a mighty big engine cluster. She’s a warship.”

Natano frowned. “Not much detail yet.”

“I’m certain. No one was running merchant-ships this big that long ago.”

“Whose?”

“No telling, yet. When we get closer—maybe there’ll be a name.”

In two hours, he had an image. “There she is!” he called, passing it to the commandant’s terminal.

“The God and His fists,” said Aydin, and he sat down in his bridge chair. “Exec!”

Natano came swinging down the central shaft from Engineering. “Sir?”

Aydin jabbed his finger at the image. “Our friend’s name.”

Natano hung on a brace. “Ribela Floro. Sounds like a Provs ship.”

“She was,” said Aydin. “The biggest they had at the end of the war. She kept skulking and raiding out here long after things settled planetside. Then she disappeared.”

Natano whistled. “Right! She was the big Provs ship in the battle of Athena.”

They stared at the image. The Caballardo was a long tme ago. The hate it created on the homeworld was long gone. Sometimes you met it out here, even now. But this–this was a real remnant of the losing side, a piece of history in a long orbit at two hundred below.

“Looks intact. Repair patches. No open holes. Torpedo tubes clear.”

“More intact than my reputation’s going to be. ‘Oh, there goes Aydin, who keeps finding that spooky merdo.” Aydin put his head in his hands. “All right, we’ll park Falko a hundred klicks off and send a boarding team.”

“Haven’t any militiamen, sir. Have to put together a crew-party.”

Aydin looked sourly at him. “Get to it.”

Natano frowned at the terminal.

Aydin raised an eyebrow. “You scared of a ship dead six hundred years?”

“Wasn’t there a booby trap on that derelict that—”

“Natano.”

“Yessir.”

“You now know what to look for.”

“Yes, sir.”

Exec Natano, Second Mechanic Ĉandro, and Second Helm Garsa suited up outside the pinnace’s narrow hatch.Second Helm tapped the RSL with a gauntleted hand.

“Arm up, Exec?”

“Other than Mechanic here, Garsa, who’ve you got to shoot?”

“Aye that.”

They boarded and belted.

“Cast off, Garsa.”

“Casting off, sir.”

The pinnace’s grapples released, the attitudes whiffed hydrogen, and the craft separated from Falko-4.

“Ready for sightseeing?” the exec asked.

“Got a fountain for pitching coins over there?” Garsa said.

Natano snorted. “If they do, I’ll throw you for luck. We need some out here.”

“What do you think we’ll find?” Ĉandro asked.

“Nothing,” the exec said. “Some girlie-books from the war, maybe, huh?”

“Something new to look at,” Garsa agreed. “Old booze?”

“If we’re lucky,” Natano said. He kept his eyes on the radio-ranger as Second Helm flicked on the bucket-sized tokamak and started a gentle burn. “More like old empty bottles.”

“I hear people find treasure,” Ĉandro remarked.

“You don’t hear merdo,” Natano snapped. “We’re seeing what’s aboard, assuming you can pry her open, and take her measure for the Fleet, and get off again. In, out. Lamps at full, don’t get hung up in hazards, or you’ll die and freeze like the bung end of a plutino. Copy?”

“Extra careful, sir,” they said.

The trip took two hours: Natano saw no reason to approach too quickly. That Provs wreck around Aphrodite had been rigged to blow a warhead, and blow it did, centuries later. He didn’t trust this one. “Garsa, lights.”

“Aye, sir.”

The spots raked the side of the ship with an actinic glare, so that she looked pale as a fish’s belly. Garsa pattered attitude jets back and forth, slowing to a drift down the warship’s length.

The pinnace was hardly seven meters. The Ribela Floro lay below like a rolled dead whale, meter after meter after meter, on and on. The surface showed combat—patches, scores, welds. Some cruder, some neater. Makeshift conduiting and instrument pods. Dents deep enough for men to crouch in. Carbon scorings.

“Took a beating, didn’t she?” Second Helm said. He lifted the lumography scanner, and it ground away.

“Yah,” Natano agreed. “Eyes out for docking ports.”

“Spooky thing,” Ĉandro muttered.

“Metal and glass and wood,” the exec said, spooked himself. “Not worth the time to look at.” He yawned loudly. “There’s the forward torpedo tubes; could be a maintenance access port near.”

There was, fifty meters back, deeply recessed. Second Helm latched the lumo-rig on the bulkhead and manipulated the attitude jets until they could see the docking pattern through the porthole beneath their feet. In—in—click.

“Easy,” Natano said. “Like your mother.”

“Tcha,” said Second Helm.

Garsa unbelted and spun the hatch handle, swinging it open. He shone a torch down. They stared at the Provs hatch. A graffito was scrawled on it.

“Friendly,” Second Mechanic said.

“Come in and die,” Ĉandro read. “Eh? How d’ye like that. Fiko you, you nells.”

“Don’t curse the dead,” Garsa said quickly. “Bad luck.”

“Shut it, both of you. Pop the hatch,” Natano said.

“Aye that.”

The sentiment had been scrawled with heavy graphite around a crude skull, and was muddied by a boot print, as if someone, sometime, had disapproved of the message as much as Ĉandro. Garsa slowly forced the hand-wheel; they felt the vibration as the bolts strained, then broke loose of frost and electrostatic microwelds and slammed home in their cylinders. The hull brrred through their gauntlets as he swung the hatch in.

“Dark as carbon-black,” Garsa said.

“I’ll fix that.” Natano beamed his torch. Shadowy bulkheads, debris, loose cabling. It looked like the ripped bowels of a sea-creature.

“Homey,” said Ĉandro.

“All right, no getting hung up. Watch for sharps. Hang on.” Natano used his chin to clack for a line back to the ship. “Falko-4, we’re about to board.”

“Aye that, Exec. Commandant says keep in contact.”

“Aye that. Out.—In we go, lads.”

Rejection season is here again, and we’re passing the savings on to you! More action from the Falko-4 crew tomorrow as “Long Orbit” continues!

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

Writing stories set in space around Tau Ceti is only a small part of what I do, but, as retrograde and even primitive as Iphigenia presents itself, they are a sophisticated civilization. I’m not saying that they could take us one on one, considering how many more of us there are and how armed to the gills with nukes we are, but they could certainly keep us planetbound and rough us up hard from space. They could not (usefully) descend, and we could not ascend, so it would be a draw.

In space, they would be the masters. Fusion engines, torpedoes, electromagnetic chain guns, the ability to cross the solar system in a few weeks at high speed, even the—perhaps exaggerated—claim of being able to rebuild their starship capacity. They outclass us on their own ground.

But they are not entirely masters of their own domain, as the saying goes. We’ll take a look at their solar system and its organization over the next three weeks. (See a repeat of the whole solar system at a glance below.)

Above is the Sunward region, the three inner planets, Achilles, Hector, and Agamemnon. Achilles and Hector are within the comparable orbit of Mercury, and Agamemnon is substantially within the comparable orbit of Venus. All three are tidally locked to Tau Ceti. The inner two are small, intensely hot on the day side, and of little use to anyone. Agamemnon has a north polar and south polar communications relay shunting signals about the solar system for the militia, a militia supply staging station, and repair docks. It has little other value, no permanent population, one uninteresting rocky moon, and only a negligible CO2 atmosphere, far thinner than that of Mars.

These militia positions are obviously important assets, so the space within the orbit of Iphigenia is entirely under the authority of the militia. There is minimal civilian presence and trade. Civilian ships may pass this way sometimes, but they are usually on longer routes to elsewhere and do not stop.

Now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

We headed right through the house: my feet wanted to drag me around the house, because my training leans towards walking the long way around and avoiding the residence where I’m likely to meet the toffs, but I tilted up my chin, and sandals-on trooped straight through. I did not get many looks, because some of the guests had departed in a bit of a huff. As to the rest, since breakfast had passed, they were mostly either at their guest villas or otherwise engaged on the grounds. The darkest look I got was from Majordomo: as with others of his type, he saw right through me. Once indentured, always indentured, and I was just a fancied-up bedgirl to him.

I also wanted to take my sandals off, even though I’ve mostly trained myself out of it, and I just do that at-home, and for Efan, which is such a relief. Lucky Barsina, pattering along aside me, unshod and fancy-free, without that gentle gnaw-gnaw at the back of your mind.

“‘Allo, Majordomo!” I said brightly. ‘You remember me, I’m Ensign-Captain Mardonios’ client, neh?”

This was not the way to win his heart, perhaps, but he didn’t tell me to skip out. “I recall you.”

“Haven’t stolen the silver yet,” I said batting my eyes, “but I would like a melon, if I may stop by the kitchens and get one.”

“A melon?” he said, somewhat incredulous. He gestured: something larger than a pilko. “Cantelope?”

I gestured wider. “Big and green.”

“Why?”

“Sir, because it is a pleasant early summer day and I should like a melon.”

“There’s some already picked in the kitchen from the hothouse. Go ask Cook, maybe she’ll spare one.”

I gave him a little bob (and Barsina a deeper one to make up for me), and we soon had Cook in our sights.

She was not so willing, and stood in the middle of her busy kitchen, hands-on-hips. “I can’t be giving melons out to everyone who comes and asks; there’s only so many ready yet. Off with you!”

“Majordomo said—”

“Majordomo can go grow his own melons; I have mine to mind. Out! Guests, and their little bits of worth-nothing,” she snapped. “Stop gawking, girls, midday is coming, hurry, hurry!”

Seeing me still there, she seized a cane, and I’ve had too much to do with Cooks and canes to not do her a bit of an obseisance and hustle out the back into the kitchen-garden.

“Dammit,” I said as we made a beeline across the herbary and out the other side. “Now what?” I scowled at what had to be the hothouse a hundred meters away, all a flash of clear glass in the sunshine, and a heavy grid of black ironmongery.

“Hello, Dardana.” The voice was overhead, and up I looked.

“It is the Sir’s brother,” Barsina said. It is hard to curtsey looking up, but she tried.

I folded my arms. “Aros, why are you up a tree? And—your name, lad, Zeyad, yes?”

Darkhaired Zeyad Theoroto leaned over the thick branch. “Eating sweet bread Aros stole from the cook, Miss Fenek.”

“Come down out of there,” I said. “You Mardonioses are all alike; you dizzy me getting into trees. And when does a banker steal sweet bread?”

“Junior banker.” Aros swung lightly to the ground and pulled a piece from his sash and broke it for Barsina and me before kissing me on the cheek. “I’m sorry I’ve not gotten to talk to you yet, but we’ve both been busy. You doubly: Hippolyta and Efan hired you on the same case?”

“I’m worth every centono.”

“He spent enough drachms buying you off of Mama Solene,” he said. “Don’t know he’d like double-dipping.”

Zeyad snorted, amused.

“He likes it well enough,” said I. “And he takes half my money, so he should expect me to work the edges.”

“I’m sure he likes that too.”

“You shan’t tell him.”

“A man must watch his own money,” he said, those Mardonios blues sparkling at me. “What did you do to peeve the cook? We asked for bread, and she threatened us with her rattan.”

“I got the same for asking after a watermelon.”

“For what?” Zeyad asked. “You can’t eat all that yourself.”

“I’m going to test killing a girl.”

“Coo-er!” Aros said. “Taking the case from Father, then, as well?”

“He’d never!” I said. “Not Hippolyta!”

“He’s not a happy man, but he’d never,” he agreed. “We’re just epistarchs; he’s not old-fashioned enough, he has too much loose money, and it would look pretty bad. Property rich, sure, and aristoi—that’s honor, and sure he’d hang her. Take her head off, maybe, if she was lucky. Not him. But a convent, though? She’s not marriageable now, so maybe that. Father’s not made up his mind, so it’s going to be hot for her if she has to leave with Mum and him.”

“Damned bad thing, and you know it’s Rodrigo’s.”

He stared. “Excuse me?”

“Yah, the same match your da is trying to make, she’s made already. There’s a little Mondegrin-Mardonios growing in her right now.”

“Well, that’s jolly pointless,” Zeyad said.

“But you’ve got these Cornero-Syagrioses hip deep in this wanting Mondegrin drachms,” I said.

Aros nodded. “The dealing over Rodrgio was hard. Mondegrins were won over by liquidity. We wanted him, so we had to sling the tosheroons to get him. It helped that she seemed to like him, and he her.”

“Seemed,” I said. “They were charvering the whole time.”

“Now this Bonomosso patro is coming down to complain to the magistrate about how his girl Franĉesa’s been done wrong by the Mondegrins. Mondegrins are on the outs with us, so guess who else is coming in?”

“Phillina’s da,” said I. My heart sank. “Going to be a catfight. And you know I feel about cats.”

“Patro’s on the edge of clearing out and taking Hippolyta with him. We don’t want the scandal.”

“Pity Efan ain’t here.”

“He’s with the local law jawing with the magistrate. He’s trying to find out what he can there.”

“Oughtn’t be much,” I said bitterly. “They did a coddy job of it here. Still no body, just the damned head.”

“The melon,” Zeyad said.

“Ah, that,” I agreed. “I’ve got me a blade, and I mean to see what damage a woman could do with it.”

“That isn’t legal.”

“No! But I don’t mean to do it where I’ll be seen. But they won’t spring with the fruit. Where’s Barsina?”

We looked around, and I was double-alarmed, as you might guess, with a known or suspected decapitator roaming about the grounds with a free hand for hornets.

“There she is,” said Aros.

My Barsina was trundling back from the hothouse, a simply huge green melon with dark green leopard spots all over it, probably just a bloom in a hot-frame back at Festivalo time, when this horror-show began.”

“Irodiada!” I exclaimed. “Oi, you two, help her before she drops it.—Barsina, what have you got to say about stealing Cook’s melons?”

She was red and puffing. “The Sir the Majordomo said we could ask Cook for a melon, Miss.”

“Aye that, but she said no.”

“Majordomo is master of the house below the patro and matro,” she said reasonably. “He did not say that you could not have a melon.”

I put my hands on my hips. “And she said no. Since when do tank-girls defy Cook, eh?”

She curtseyed low as Zeyad held the giant thing in his arms, her eyes lowered. “I regret my fault if I made one, but she did not say we could not have one from the hothouse.”

Aros chuckled. “Tank logic if I ever heard it. She has you here, Dardana.”

“I won’t argue with that,” said I. “We can’t lug this thing all the way back to the villa. Cook’ll see us if no one else, and it weighs I dunno what.”

“Come on, Aros, let’s scarper with it,” Zeyad grinned.

“Family honor can’t get driven down any lower,” Efan’s brother said philosophically, and he pulled off his shortcape and draped it over the melon. “Come on.”

We four trooped around the house.

“Do you think it a fair test, Miss?” Barsina asked.

“Whacking through a thumping big melon? I should think it would. If I can do that, Philinna could’ve.”

“But the neckbones, Miss. That would be harder.”

“She’s right,” said Aros. “Not a true test.”

I saw the gardener working another flower-bed, presumably skull-free, just down the hill, and I kicked up my brown heels and trotted down. “Good day again,” I said. “Mind if I borrow that hoe?”

He straightened with a grunt. “A hoe, Miss?”

“The very thing.”

“Miss taking up gardening, eh?” he said.

“Just a little. I’ll bring it back.”

He shrugged and handed me the hoe. “Be good with her.”

“I’ll treat her as well as any other girl is around here,” said I.

Back at the villa (from which Hippolyta and Franĉesa were ominously missing), I found a soft spot in a granite planter and had Aros and Zeyad, strong men that they were, break the iron head off, drive the handle like a beanpole into the dirt, and pound it home with a rock. I fetched the shawl-wrapped weapon from the sleeping-garret above the little kitchen as Aros carefully jammed the melon in place, about head and shoulder high to me, like it was a person. I gave the shawl to Barsina, who watched nervously as I illegally handled the thing.

“Sure you don’t want me to?” Aros said.

“Just testify you did it if you have to. I don’t care to be questioned at this stage in my career. I like the height I am, and I think that bumpkin country ensign-captain would be happy to stretch me some extra centimeters.”

Barsina looked pale, but I pulled the falcata out of the sheath and passed that off to Zeyad. I had never handled a sword before, except to gird Efan’s onto him, which I really liked to do. I hefted it. It was heavy for me, slightly curved, and bright steel.

I knew that aristoi girls sometimes went in for fencing, but Philinna looked slight. Hippolyta hadn’t ever, but she was pretty muscular.

Now, I am a tough thing, but I am not large—smaller than Philinna. I imagined her, her stance, how she might hold it, and how angry or venomous she might have been, a poor bondgirl who’s never done her any harm. I looked at the fine edge, all sharp and prepared for someone else’s neck, maybe, and at the dark spots I thought were blood in the groove.

I walked around and around, and took a breath. “Step back, then,” said I.

They took shelter under the arcade. I pulled the blade back over my shoulder, and swung with all my strength.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

I looked at it, lying there in blue velvet, the ring of wire and gems. The shimmering clasps. The aura of instability, as if it might melt away as it lay there. The intensity of it. More real than the case it was in.

“That,” I said.

“Yes, that,” the First Councilor said, terse.

“That is our gift to you,” I said. I smiled.

His eyes were unfriendly. “A gift. A visit unasked for. An ambassador unasked for. A gift unasked for. Many gifts have tricks about them. For instance, a man touched this thing—Ambassador.”

“Touched it?”

“He put it on his head yesterday morning.”

My heart tightened. “What happened?”

The First Councilor’s lips twisted. “He’s in hospital, raving about nonsense. A pity, because I’m told he’s a talented technologue. A deadly, deceitful gift, Miss Ambassador.”

“There was no deceit. I have come to teach you how to use it. It has not killed him.”

“Is not the mind the sign of a man? If your gift has killed that, it has killed him.”

“If I could see him—”

“Not at this time.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “It was meant to be presented properly, demonstrated properly. It is the most important part of my cargo. It is not jewelry.”

“I shouldn’t think it is, with dangers like that. Some prior indication would have been appreciated. But then, you launched a probe at us that smashed down only tens of kilometers from settlements, with what I would describe as a malicious disregard for safety.”

“I am sorry about that also. The sample case was meant to show what we were bringing. There was a failure in the descent. It should have been gentle, parachuted.”

“You have apologized twice now in less than the space of a downed wine-cup. What else will you apologize for, before this meeting is complete?”

“I am here,” I said, opening my palms to him, “in friendship, to show you how to use the technology properly.”

He closed the lid; it clicked. “Oh? So we can make it ourselves? Are you providing designs? Electronics?”

“It…is not that kind of a device.”

“Of course not,” he scoffed. “I did not think it would be.”

I struggled to explain, their language still slippery in me. “You must learn the mathematics first, before you can imitate the construction. There was another made, the twin of this one, on Seoribyeol. Do you understand?” I could tell by his expression that he did not appreciate the question. I hurried on. “They were made together, and are linked, no matter where in the universe they go. And from this I can perceive Seoribyeol, and speak to them as if I were there. I can make a window, here, in your mind’s eye, in this room through which you can also see them. I can show you—I can give you the chance to understand what I am offering, as the Ambassador from my world. It can change the universe. It can change everything, First Councilor.”

“Change!” He made it sound like a curse: Ŝanĝo! He passed the box back to Lysander, who seemed amused while the older men were tense and resentful of me. “That is not a thing we welcome. You speak of universe-altering effects from a common diadem? Any wealthy woman has the same in her jewel casket.”

“Yet you tell me a man’s mind was disordered by putting it on.”

“A man’s mind is confined inside his skull.”

“But the entirety of the universe we can imagine inside our minds.”

“Imagination is nothing more than an illusion,” he retorted.

“What the aenseobeul does is bring reality to us from far away, at once, without delay, even from twelve light years off.”

“I see. You can make a man instantly mad with visions from another star.”

“I know a better way she can drive me mad,” someone muttered.

“Vimsonhalo,” the First Councilor said severely. “Politeness to the ambassador!—Miss Ambassador, you see to suppose this…ability is a useful gift, though it might indeed take a madman to explain the virtue of it to me. But bringing it all the way from Epsilon Indi seems a misuse of resources. I can summon a gemsmith for a diadem for my wife and have her driven just as mad for mere copper and rubies. It requires no starship.”

“Women’s minds are weaker. Our local product suffices,” another man jested. “To control a man’s mind, you must send off to another star.”

This amused them, and I felt even more vulnerable than I had, shrinking back in my chair. Psamathe was motionless behind me—I had scarcely noticed her, but suddenly I realized she was, very lightly, touching my shoulder from behind, with just the tip of a fingernail. It was comforting, a little.

I took a breath, trying to ignore their eyes, their tight faces, slightly bared teeth. “I assure you,” I said, reasonably, “that if you allow me to put it on, I can demonstrate—”

Another of my opponents—for were they not?—tall, his skin a dark, glossy brown, and his hair black, curled tight and short, and graying at the temples, wore something manifestly a military uniform of heavy blue cloth with ribbon and metal decorations on the left breast and a crimson sash around his waist. He’d been looking at me with even more dislike than the First Councilor had been.

“Absolutely not,” he interrupted me, making a slashing gesture in the air. “First Councilor, she must not be allowed to touch this thing. We have no idea of the full capacity of what it is designed to do. Opening the air to madness and visions from Epsilon Indi? Well! Why not a door to admit troops? Or an armed squad to grab you and leave again, First Councilor? Or an atomic device?”

“No, no!” I said. “Not at all! Information only can pass.”

“Information,” someone said drily. “I am sure that is far less dangerous. Please, provide more information; I am sure it’s harmless.”

“Harmless enough to damage Thurkio’s mind.”

The First Councilor gestured behind his shoulder for quiet. “Young woman, I would first ask, are your people’s intentions towards us benign?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

He leaned forward. “Absolutely! You are privy to all of your government’s thoughts?”

“So far as this project is concerned, yes.”

“Excellent. When did you last discuss matters with them?”

I shook my head. This was not reasonable. “When the Yi So-yeon launched. But their intent has not changed.”

“Oh! So recently, then. A hundred and fifteen years ago. Not so very long, as these things go. Very good, very good. So, Ambassador of Soribiol, explain: how are you so well informed about their present intentions towards us, mm? Perhaps you have another—what did you call it, ansible?—to contact them with? Instead of the singular one you say you have? What would we find if we examined your ship and cargo more closely?”

This cut close to the mark, and I could hardly withstand his sharp look: the dream state, the samech vision, was inexplicable, disturbing. I had been trying to understand since I had awakened from interstellar sleep, grasping my mind’s tatters together again. NABI had no theories other than my own knowledge of the numbers; I did not have the ansible, but even while deep in sleep, somehow I had looked ahead into lives hardly born yet, and looked back into memories of the past as if I stood there again in life. Perhaps you have another aenseobeul? Perhaps I did. But I could not admit to that, and I could not lie, and his eyes were penetrating, demanding quick answer.

“There is only one ansible,” I said. “Only one that is here around your sun. You can tear my ship to pieces, and those pieces to atoms, and those atoms to quarks, sir, and you will not find another on it.”

“You assume we would not know what to look for,” the dark officer said. “You think we are children, perhaps.”

“Deniz, Deniz,” the First Councilor said, turning to him. “You frighten her with your barking. If the girl says there is no other ansible, then I am sure she is correct.” He looked back at me, eyes heavy-lidded, glittering. “What are your qualifications to teach us anything?” the First Councilor said. “Eh? Did you dream up this mathematics, this contraption, this madman’s mission from your star?”

What did I tell them? That I might have? That I did? That I was named Seong Hee-young, that I was raised in Eunhaeseong, that I was not my parents’ daughter?

That I had no mother, no father?

That I had only a sister?

“Only I know the Byeon numbers here,” I said. “There is a book in that box, First Councilor, that explains them, but if there is anyone on this world but myself who can understand the equations, I would like to meet her.”

He studied me in a long silence, and I became more and more aware of Psamathe’s presence, like a shadow across my mind.

“It will be put to the full Council what to do.” He rose. “Director Anthept, do we have the use of Zacynthos?”

“Of course,” the man said who had spoken of this man Thurkio’s mind. I looked at him, and at Lysander, and knew he was the younger one’s father.

“Then we shall send the Ambassador there for now, and settle the matter at our leisure. You are a guest of the government, woman from the stars,” he said to me. “But I would prefer you not be a troublesome one.”

I stood. “I represent my people, sir, and their interests.”

“That is my concern,” he said.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

Archimendo made his way from the inn to the Academy grounds. The grass was sere, and the tree leaves were touched with brown along their edges. People had a pinched, hungry look, and he noticed that the prices in the marketplace were no better here than in Suryapur. It was Fivesday, and the labor market was open, but though it was crowded with thin agrios daughters, there were few buyers and the bids were low.

He wondered what would become of them all. Labor-ganged and worked to heatstroke, he supposed, or left to lie in the market until someone had a use for them or they starved. He and his wife had seen more than a few bones on the way from Surpayur from the vantage point of the creaking, jostling bus: the skulls and long-bones of dead road-labor whitening in the ditches.

Ganged road-labor, or dead refugees. The word refugees made his skin crawl. History was young on Iphigenia, and the memory of the Drought, the Famine, and the war that followed was crystal clear in every policy-maker’s mind, and in every farmer’s as well.

There might be some passing advantage, though, to him. He looked at the tired faces, though avoiding the hopeless eyes. He hadn’t thought of an epistarch of the Academic level like him being able to afford a girl to do his wife’s work, but perhaps…

Perhaps he and Cleona would come back later.

“Archimando, you old badger!” Someone clapped him manfully on the shoulder. He jumped guiltily.

“Seviĉo!” He wrung his friend’s hand. “ I was hoping I’d see you here.”

“Wouldn’t miss it. Lecture hall’s this way, come on.”

“So soon?”

“There are people already gathered; I’m sure you want to see some of them. You’ve probably met half, read them all.”

“I’m sure. The Council sent you?”

“Jolly well did: sent me and came with me on the theory I wasn’t capable of the business myself. The Director of the Environmental Ministry himself button-holed me the instant he saw me four days ago, and here I am with his deputy—where’d the man go? Well, he’ll turn up. ‘I want to hear Biosphere’s excuses,’ the Director said. ‘No more than second-hand. Clivo goes with you.’ Clivo’s the boy’s name.” Seviĉo shook his head. “Council’s getting antsy. Talk is about another Caballardo if we have another famine.”

Archimando stopped. “Are they mad? They can’t be serious.”

“I stretch the bow,” Seviĉo said with a cynical smile. He was a big man, too big, so the price of food was doing him a favor. Archimando noticed a bit of loose skin on the plump. “No one thinks that. Certainly no one says it out loud. But a second Famine in less than three hundred years? That might strike the mark. Powers that be don’t like talk like that either.”

“There’s been deaths of hunger already. I’ve seen the bones, the graves. And my innkeeper told me about grasshoppers flying in swarms, and swarms of mice crossing the countryside in search of food. It’s like reading a story—but living it.”

“Rumors so far, but it wouldn’t surprise me.” Children ran up to them across a quadrangle where grass was shriveling into dirt. Their hands were outstretched. “Off, off,” he said. “It’s almost as bad as Aulis,” he said to Archimando. “Off! I have nothing for you!”

“They’re children,” the academic said.

“Adopt one then, and have done. Give them nothing, or we shan’t be shut of them. They’ll meet us here every day, coming and going.—Off, I say!”

The two men strode up into the lecture hall while the militia guards kicked the children away. “Give a dog a bone every day and you have a friend for life,” Seviĉo said. “Ho! Clivo!—There he is.—Look who I have found.”

This week’s prompt challenge was from…me. Because that’s how the cookie crumbles. It was a good prompt too, but I didn’t have the heart to use it and grabbed a spare instead. This a follow-up to a MOTE prompt from over a year ago…

See all the challenges and responses over at More Odds Than Ends!

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

They got me back to the villa. I felt ill, frantic, and flushed—that sudden creeping heat and malaise that makes you realize, quite suddenly, that you are ill, when you have been denying it for hours. I paced the residence, sweating, until I fainted in the bath, to their cries of panic.

They got me to my bedchamber, undressed me, put me in a wrap despite my protests, put me under blankets with Conĉata industriously fanning me, and called Dr Thoomb.

“I do not wish to see him,” I said. “Not after the tales you tell of what he has said.”

“He has been called, Miss,” Poornima said.

“I shall not see him,” I said stubbornly.

But they made me lie abed, and sullen, I stared at the ceiling like a child banned from table until I fell asleep.

The doctor woke me, and it was midafternoon, after dormeto, the sun slipping hot light through the shutters. My head throbbed.

“What day is it,” I muttered thickly.

“Foursday, Louhi.”

“Still?”

“Still.”

“It feels as if I slept all night.”

“Not yet.” He took my wrist and measured my pulse. “A little sick, are we?”

“Who tells you that?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I told them not to summon you nor permit you to see me. I shall beat them.”

Poornima and Margoska’s faces were perfectly blank, as tank-girls’ were, but Conĉata looked tearful.

“They are yours to handle as you wish,” he agreed. “But it would be unjust. They are quite worried.” He looked back at them where they huddled by the wall-painting of swans and archers, and he laid a fever-stone on my brow. “Don’t move.” He silently counted seconds. “Thirty-nine degrees, my dear. You are ill.”

“Nonsense.”

“Have you been sleeping?”

“Well enough.”

He looked at my women. “Girls? Does she sleep enough?”

“If the Miss says she does, she certainly does,” Poornima said diplomatically.

“Trouble sleeping,” Dr Thoomb said. “How is your weight?”

“Are you asking me?” I said coldly, removing the fever stone and handing it back to him.

“I wanted to eliminate all possibilities. You are of an age…”

“Dr Thoomb!”

“My dear, I delivered you.”

“The midwife delivered me.”

“I observed.”

“And if I let you prod me anymore today, you’ll surely bury me as well.”

“A woman has changes as she approaches fifty—”

“I am not,” I interrupted, “approaching fifty. I have scarcely left thirty-nine behind, sir.”

He had a reader from his bag and was passing it over the sliver in my arm. “Hold still, Louhi.” The reader chimed lightly. He frowned, and passed it over again for another chime. “Have you a lover right now?”

“My dear Doctor, if you were a manservant I’d have you lashed and sacked.”

“Fortunate that I’m not. You have spoken to me of lovers before. But now? Ruggiero?”

“I forbade Ruggiero.”

“And Vocorix?”

“I have never admitted him to my bed.”

“He has averred—”

“You will not believe him.”

“No. But—”

“Would he be defaming me if he were in my bed?”

He sat back with a pained expression. “You’ve heard this?”

“I think everyone may be hearing it. Lies from Vocorix, all of them.”

He sighed. “No lovers, then.”

“None.”

“None?” he insisted. I did not like that raised eyebrow.

“None, Doctor. None at all. You understand the concept of nought, sir?”

He rolled the flesh in my left upper arm gently between finger and thumb tip.

“Really, Doctor?”

“Your sliver is reporting hormone balances that I don’t like,” he said confidentially. “It’s been a decade since it was turned set to prevent your monthlies, and that is as far as I will trust the little thing. I am going to reset it and let it cycle.”

“I beg your pardon? It?”

“Your fertility, my dear. And the sliver. Avoid lovers for sixty days, and it will have recalibrated with you; then I’ll start it again.”

“So I can get stuffed for two months?”

“At your age?”

“What did I say about my age, Dr Thoomb?”

“Probably not for three weeks.”

I folded my arms. “Perhaps that’s the sort of thing you should enquire about beforehand.”

“I did,” he said. “I asked in many ways. You have no lovers. Here’s a paper of dissolvules for the fever.”

“What will you give me for a baby?”

“My obstetric skill—and my advice.”

“Which is?”

“Avoid lovers for the next ninety days.”

“You said sixty.”

“It often lags. Your Grisanda over there, I put her control in for your factor two months ago, but she could still get pregnant for another four weeks.”

I threw up my hands. “She’s Conĉata now. And you cannot be comparing me,” I said, “to a new-indentured servant.”

“Your honor is greater, but your bodies are the same.”

“My honor is infinite,” I said coldly, “and as to her body, she is chattel on her knees.”

“A very pretty one as well.” He patted my arm before he left. “Rest, Louhi. You may have wine with the dissolvules.”

Conĉata, still feigning pained feet, rushed to bring me a cup right away, and Margoska brought me a fresh cold wet cloth for my forehead.

Poornima sat by me on the bed and fed me ice chips from the kitchen freezer. “Miss must be careful. Miss cannot…” She put her hand over her lips. “May my tongue be stricken from my mouth.”

I looked at Conĉata. “Young woman,” I said, “you are my possession. I had full power of justice over you when you were a tenant’s daughter, and now I have power of life and death over you completely. Since you serve me, I will trust you as though you were a bird I was warming at my bosom. But if you prove an adder in my breast, I will make an end of you and have you buried under the tree I hang you on.”

“Yes, Miss,” she whispered.

“My words are for your ears only.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“The same to you two: even your, Poornima, though I love you, die the hour you repeat what I say.”

“Yes, Miss,” they echoed.

“I have,” I said to them, looking at each, “taken a lover.”

They drew a breath, slow, soft, through red lips, as one, and first Margoska, and then Conĉata, sat on the bed as Poornima did.

“Is he a beast, Miss?” Poornima asked.

“He is a man, dear heart,” I said. “But an extraordinary man. I have never met a man like him. I have never had a lover like him, save my husband.”

“Miss cannot…” Poornima bit her lip. “To risk—to lie with him now that Dr Thoomb—It is to say, Miss…with a child…of even an extraordinary man…”

“It cannot happen at once,” I said. “And women have arts.”

“Uncertain arts, Miss,” Margoska said.

“Certain enough, for my body will be sleepy in its fertility for a while.”

“I will fetch herbs from the wise woman tomorrow,” Margoska said at once.

“And though I have taken a lover, I may never see him again. I will certainly never take another.”

Poornima, however, continued to fret. “Miss’s honor is at stake,” she said. “The rumors—the lies—”

“They are not,” I admitted, “all lies.”

“It is impermissible for people to speak of Miss so, regardless,” she said.

“And it is not for you to decide what citizens may or may not say. Are you embarrassed? Dishonored?”

She bowed her head. “I have no honor, Miss. I am a tool.”

“Correct. You cannot take offense.”

“I worship your honor. Your honor, exposed at the fête…”

“Ah!” I said. “We come to it. My glory decreases, then the glory of what you worship decreases, if I am made a geck and gull of at the fête.”

“My pain is meaningless to Miss. I am the footstool of the Goddess and of you. But still I will agonize on her account, and she loves me.”

I hesitated at that. It was true. It should be true. I had always known this to be true. I had never spared her a blow or tongue-lashing as she earned them, but she would suffer on my account for her love and loyalty; I suddenly remembered the impassive dark eyes of the blue man as he lifted and carried me, despite my blows and curses, to safety.

A tool, even lower than an indentured, if such a thing could be conceived, and it was right that they should suffer silently, both she and he. He was not even human.

And yet I declared to them I had taken him as a lover. So human he must be. I would not lie with a beast. I would not touch one, nor permit one to touch me. He was a man. I declared him a man. My word as aristoi granted it to him. This Rados, being Rados.

The fever must have moved from heat to cold, as they will in an ague. I shivered.

“I will not avoid it, even for you, Poornima. I have honor, so I must face my friends and my enemies and defy their scorn, and be imperious, and they will not dare speak one word against me. They shall hold their tongues. I am the last of the Dorothymri, and I will not show cowardice. I will go, and no one will dare me.”

They kissed my palms and feet, and the mosquito-netting was arranged, and the shutters closed, and Poornima, softly singing, lay next to me, wrapping her arms around me as the dissolvules lulled me into another nap. And when I awoke for a late dinner, the garden was filled with the calls of bats and nightjars, but no one else had come into my garden.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

She couldn’t help but see, and there I had it in hand, hardly screened by the shawl. She caught the door jamb as she swayed. “Hinata?”

I nodded, sharp.

We all stared. What would she say? What would she do? Would she faint? Some women go in for the swooning, though I never saw the point myself. Indentureds, if you go down, you better go down face down and lay there a while. Only citizens can get away with a languid hand-to-the-brow collapse.

No one ever brought smelling-salts for me.

She did not faint. She grew pale, pale, and sat down on the edge of the lavatory, but happily failed to fall in. You know how slippery these fancy loos can be, specially with the bidet. I hate comedy with my tragedy.

“Where did you find it?”

I told her.

“Who used it?”

I took a breath. “I have an idea,” I began again, but she interrupted me.

“Rodrigo?”

“I don’t think,” I said, at Hippolyta’s pleading look, “that he did.”

Franĉesa digested that, and looked at Hippolyta, and put out her hand. They clasped, and then the bereaved looked at me.

“You know,” she said. “You know.”

“I don’t know know,” I said. “I need proof.”

“Dardana’s smart,” Hippolyta said. “Smartest woman I know. She knows. She just needs the proof for Efan, because he’s a regular Freetroop lad.”

Franĉesa looked at me, hard. “You’ve said she’s smart.”

“Solved the murder of Fortunato, didn’t she? Got Efan out of that, too.”

“Yes she did. Come on, Dardana: who is it?”

I thought I needed to get control of the situation. “Here, now, I don’t know. I think I know a motive, but it just points to someone, but it doesn’t even mean that she—or he—did it, even if I am right.”

Hippolyta perked up at that she. “She?”

“Or he, or it.”

“It, I’d like to see that, I would. Barsina, is this killer here at the estate?”

Barsina’s eyes went wide. “Miss must know that my Miss would not have me speak of her thoughts.”

“Your Miss? Yah, well, you’re Efan’s handgirl, and I’m Efan’s sister, and you’ll jolly well tell me.”

“As Efan’s concubine,” I said, “she’s under me—”

“That she is,” Hippolyta said.

“—and she’ll hold her tongue. Don’t try to break the poor girl’s mind open like a walnut,” I said. “It ain’t worth it to you to worm it out of her, and you’ll just annoy Efan and me.”

“It’ll do no good anyway,” Franĉesa said sadly. “If Rodrigo didn’t do it, that only helps you, Hipnjo. And my father, if the killer had to pay a fine.”

“Speaking of paying, Fenek, I’ve paid you to prove Rodrigo didn’t do it,” Hippolyta said. “Maybe you should be updating me.”

“Oi,” I said.

“And why’s she half naked?” Franĉesa said. “And what’s that mark on your back?”

“Whilst finding that blade,” I said, “someone put a hornet down my back, and it gave me a sting.”

“Someone!” Hippolyta said. “Now, why’d someone do that?”

I sighed and stood so Barsina could cover me and tie my willets back up where they belonged, the poor girls. At thirty-and-some, they were getting a bit tired of being perky, I’d begun to notice, even without having had wee yins. I shuddered to imagine what a hornet would have done tumbling down between them. “People like giving Dardana Fenek a hard time,” I said. “And I rather that that sh—that whomsoever did me a hornet, that person wanted me to give up on the maze. On account this sword was hidden in it.”

“There’s that she again,” Franĉesa said, eyes narrowed.

“Ladies,” I said, “please don’t overthink this. You’ll make the case impossible for me. When’s Efan getting back?”

“Convo him yourself,” Hippolyta said. “Certainly didn’t tell me, Miss Mystery.”

“Will do,” said I, and curtseyed out with the sword, not liking at all the conspiratorial look those two were giving each other. After some thought, I climbed up above the tiny villa’s tiny kitchen into a tiny garret where a skivvy could sleep, and hid the damned thing under the roof tiles.

“I don’t need but myself and you,” I said, climbing back down the ladder to Barsina. “I don’t need a couple of amateurs mucking up the joint. Let’s go to the big house; we’ve not seen enough of it yet.”

Barsina didn’t bother putting her sandals on when we left the house, since the grass was dry and lush and she’d just have to put them back in her girdle when we got there, and we went arm-in-arm with me in thought. I wasn’t lying to Hippolyta: I really didn’t know if Philinna had beheaded the poor lass. I wasn’t even entirely sure she could. The fact she benefited by it hardly made her liable, and even if she had, it would just be a public embarrassment, and her da would pay for the girl, and maybe a fine, if that. But preserving Hippolyta’s marriage by preserving her friendship with Franĉesa by getting suspicion off Rodrigo—

And what had become of the body? Buried off somewhere in the forest off the estate, maybe. Or rolled off a real bridge on the road, where the stream ran into the Mallargafluo. And where’d that go? That must end in the big river as it ran south of Argoshaan—the Yasindra, which ran all the way to the sea.

“Think her body could have reached the sea, Barsnjo? If it got to the Yasindra.”

Barsina considered. “More like to get caught in rocks or logs,” she said. “I have heard the Yasindra is narrow and swift and deep, rough and dangerous. It is sad,” she added. “So sad.”

“Damned sad.” We headed up the stairs onto the terrace. “There’s Miss Pari—and look who.”

“Ah,” Barsina said.

Inside the villa, around a low table, Miss Pari reclined on a dining couch facing Miss Philinna, each attended by her handgirl, and a housegirl brewing coffee, and another peeling grapes, and a page to watch them all puffed up and self-important, even though the housegirls both looked tank, and hardly needed him with all his studs and velvet to tell them what to do.

Typical. Boy supervising, women doing the work.

Pari, of course, was happy to see me. Philinna, naturally, less so.

“Oh, I am taking it easy today,” I told Pari. “I got stung by a hornet. Be careful of the laby-rintho-maze-o thing they’ve got. There’s a whole nest by a tree in the middle.”

“Ouch! A big one?”

“Felt like it,” I said. “Barsina saw it. It flew off.”

“Very large, Miss Pari.”

“How dreadful.” Pari shook her head. “Didn’t make the center?”

“Not I. Felt like someone quite smacked me with it,” I said. “I hared off lest there was more.”

Philinna sniffed. “I’ve never been in there myself. It is alarming.” She took the coffee from the girl making it, and Barsina got the lass on making one for me. “I should hate to get lost in there.”

“They ever search it for that poor girl’s body?” I asked.

“I’m certain I don’t know.”

“Ah. You were here that night. Just wondered if you heard.”

She shrugged. “Perhaps. I have never been in there.”

They had not searched it—I knew that from the militia report. The theory had been no one would go in because it was too complicated. At least, the militia declined to go in, on account of same. I smiled at her as she sipped her black, burnt-sugared coffee. “A pity about the marriage, you think?”

“Very a pity. She’s your patron’s sister. And carrying a child. It must be frustrating for the family. What will be done with it?”

“Not for me to say.” With professional interest, I watched the girl pouring over my coffee. I was a dab hand at it before, and I can still do it if Efan asks. “Think anyone will marry him now, eh?”

“He’s a valuable match.” Her eyes gleamed an instant. “That kind of wealth would satisfy any amount of a woman’s avarice.”

“I say,” I agreed. “Ever think of pitching your bowl at the mark, eh?”

“That is hardly a matter I would discuss with one of servile origin.”

Well, I knew I was of servile origin. I had some scars and two implanted teeth to prove it, and every cell of me had my serial stamped right in the DNA from the instant it was printed out and rolled up. She wasn’t going to insult me that easy. “Rather a natural though, eh? Shipping, deutero-whatsit, -terium. Deuterium, shipping. ”

“I suppose.” She sipped her coffee through the sugar cap. “My sister is married already.”

“Leave you,” I said cheerfully. “Oughta point it out to your patro.”

“I am at my father’s disposal,” she said. “Whatever is best for the family. Oh, pardon me, Pari,” said she, and she put down the coffee and darted off, her girl hurrying after.

“What’s she off about?” I wondered.

“I saw Rodrigo cross the bottom of the garden a minute ago,” Pari said. “I imagine she was waiting until he was out of sight. You, sirrah page, take those girls, and you may go with them.”

I watched her scurry past the pool and fountain. “Can’t say I like her.”

“Is she your killer, Dardana?”

“She’s after Rodrigo,” I said. “Her family would make a fortune.”

“She’s truthful about her sister,” Pari said. “Second child, married into a rubber fortune.”

“Any more of her at home?”

“A younger sister, not of marriageable age. But those two are her father’s wife’s children. Philinna is recognized, but as the daughter of a citizen concubine has only a petty inheritance. She has four younger sisters by that woman and another, indentured concubine. All wear the collar. Three were gifted, and one quite frankly ascended the block.”

“Jolly rich, her mentioning my servile origin!”

“She’s a proud beauty, but has little to stand on save what she can get for her father.”

“You know quite a bit!”

“I’ve been using your methods on her. The guise of friendliness to her, and flattery of her servant.”

I clucked my tongue. “I thought you were on holiday, Pari.”

“My dear,” she said. “That is not how you make money. One must take advantage of every opportunity.”

“A prospective fiancée for the Mondegrin fortune is not an opportunity.”

She leaned over and put her hand on my arm. “How an amateur views things, my dear. How long have you known me?” she laughed gently. “If you learn one thing at all, learn that everyone is, indeed, an opportunity. The secret is in making her not someone else’s opportunity.”

I pondered that for a bit.

“Barsina?” I said

“Miss?”

“Let us find a melon.”

“Miss?”

“I will make an experiment.”

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

She did summon food: she did not ask what I would like. She opened the door and was immediately confronted by an armed man in blue.

“Miss requires a meal,” she said, assuming a humble posture. He nodded, gave me a look, curious more than threatening, and shut the door again. Presently, three silent women brought a rolling wooden handcart with food. All wore the same sort of clothing and necklace (though theirs were plain and unornamented) as Psamethe. They went barefoot and were attractive: two in a foreign, round-eyed way, one the color of night, one paler than I, and the third more like myself, but somewhat darker-skinned.

They did not look at me; they did not speak to me. Psamathe whispered orders to them which they deftly obeyed, and then flowed out in almost ritualized curtseys and elegant gestures

The food I will not describe, for you would find it common, but I was puzzled, tentative, and thankful for the rice. It was better than the ship’s, though some of the flavors seemed similar.

I sat in foreign clothes handling foreign utensils and ate foreign food served by a foreign woman.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

Again, a flicker in her eyes, this time of shock, that she smoothed away. “It is improper to eat in your sight.”

I considered that. There was much to learn about this world from what she said, and I did not think I liked it all. “What is this? Is it a berry?”

She struggled in her face again. “It is an olive, Miss,” she said. “It is a kind of fruit from a tree. Miss has not had olives?”

“No.” I tried it, and I have liked them ever since, most kinds, and these of the islands here I have liked them best.

She edged away from me then and folded and refolded my manifestly (to her) unclean clothes on a white marble table in the corner. As I ate a kind of fish, I watched her fingers handling the artificial cloth of the flightsuit, the machined stitches, and then settled on the zippers—the pockets, the breast. She handled the tab, and drew one straight down, and then slowly back again.

She looked at me when she didn’t think I was looking, and at the zipper, and back at me again.

“Do you want to ask me a question, Samat-hee?”

She looked relieved. “I’ve not seen this sort of closure before, Miss.” Zip-eep. Zip-eep.

“It’s called a zipper,” I said.

“Zhip-eo,” she murmured. “How curiously all of your clothing is made.” She unfolded the suit and held it up, then smiled. “Oh, I understand. I have seen things like this in pictures! Old ones, of old times. Before the Caballardo, Miss.”

“Caballardo? What is that?”

She gazed at me with a fixed smile, and it was the look you give a madwoman whom you humor. “The war, Miss. Long ago.”

This was a revelation, hugely fascinating, more than all of my people had known of this place. A war. Long ago.

“The cloth is well made,” she said. “I am a good weaver, and this is as good as any fell that has passed through my fingers.”

She put it away on the table and began to close heavy wooden shutters across the windows and latch them.

“What are you doing?”

“It is dormeto,” she said. “The sun is high, you have eaten, one slumbers.”

“A nap? I’m sorry. I come from…from very far away. We don’t do that there.”

She curtseyed and began to cover the bowls, as if I was a child from whom the dishes were to be whisked to the kitchen. I stood, and bathed my hands and face in the bathroom—puzzling out the sink-fixture’s handle—and then she, by bowing and touching my elbow, encouraged me into the bedroom. It was dim and cool, and I lay down, and she lay down next to me, folding her hands and staring at the ceiling.

I looked at her, as puzzled as—well, not as you would think, my child—but as any of my people would be. After a long moment, she turned her head and looked at me with her pleasant, open face, as if expecting something. I stared at her, bemused as to why she was there, and turned on my side. She made the faintest of sighs, and quickly seemed to fall asleep.

Yes, I know that now, my child, of course, but I did not know that then.

And so I fell asleep myself, exhausted.

My dreams were muddy. I felt as if I walked by Sarkis in a strange place. I felt surrounded by many voices speaking of me. I felt…I saw home from a great distance, my younger self, as a cadet, and Dr Byeon, and a monitor on which the numbers moved. They were as things are in dreams, unreadable, and in time I slept deeply.

I awoke to the sound of opening windows, golden light flowing in.

“So soon?” I wiped my eyes.

“I have let Miss sleep long. But Miss will have visitors. Most important visitors. The militia guard informed me.”

“Who? Lysander Anthept again?”

“It is not for such as I to know names,” she said pleasantly. “I am to assist Miss, such is the duty I am favored with.”

Government figures, I thought nervously.

She did assist me. She could scarcely keep her hands off. She assisted me with the impossible garments in the bathroom. She assisted me with my hair, brushing, pinning, and tying it. She assisted me with a patterned silk shawl over the back of my head and over my shoulders. She assisted me with a pair of high laced sandals.

“Inside? What kind of person wears shoes inside?” I demanded.

“Miss,” she said, shocked, “that is for agrios farmers, even though they be citizens, or for children, or for low ones such as I. You are a fine Miss. Miss must wear them.”

And she assisted me into a chair she had selected by the windows, the evening light falling on me, arranging me carefully, pacing back and forth and resorting me before she was satisfied.

“You are grand and dreadful,” she said, and darted in to give me a kiss on the hand, and then retreated to the door, her eye on a confusing clock with only twenty-five hours.

I did not wait long. There was a rap at the door. Psamathe flitted to it for a brief negotiation with a soldier, then swung it wide.

Six men entered.

I rose and gave them a slight bow. They responded with ones even slighter, and then they and I regarded one another.

One was Lysander Anthept, who carried a small wooden case. “Miss Hijong, a pleasure! You’ve eaten? rested?” He looked at Psamathe with a raised eyebrow. “Refreshed?”

“I have.”

“May I introduce to you the First Councilor, Demetri Rimondi.”

I bowed again, but he did not repay the favor, and in fact slowly took a chair. He was tall, sharp-nosed, with gray, thinning hair and a hard expression, in dark jacket, trousers, and high boots, and a deep violet sash around his waist. He examined me carefully, hands on his knees. “So you are from Epsilon Indi,” he said at last. “You do not look extraordinary.”

“I am Seong Hee-young,” I said, sitting again: Psamathe seemed almost to broadcast with her presence that I should. “I am the ambassador of my people.”

“I fail to recall requesting one,” he said humorlessly.

“Our worlds have been separated too long,” I replied. “I was sent to bring—”

“Yes, gifts, minerals, machines.” He flapped his hand indifferently, as if starships arrived here every day. “We are cataloging such things on your ship—which is objectionably intelligent and aware.—And math, so I hear, of all things. Metalmongers and artsellers I have met. Mathmongers, I have not. I do not know what to expect of you. I confess it isn’t to my liking.”

“A new mathematics, First Councilor.”

“Unnecessary, I assure you. We have command of our own.”

The other men seemed to find his statement amusing. I did not smile. “It is a new discovery, sir. A new kind of number.”

“Which you are to teach us.” The corner of his mouth lifted, but his eyes were unamused. “Schoolteacher or ambassador, what are you?”

“I am both.”

He looked at Anthept, who stepped forward with his case and gave it to the First Councilor.

“Begin, then,” Demetri Rimondi said, “by explaining what this is.”

He opened the case.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

I haven’t mentioned this area of the world overmuch, though I did some fairytales and fragments of history connected to the Queen of Penesthelia, a Zenobia-esque figure from the Caballardo-era. I have, however, twice this week written the words “Telmyrnan jungles”, so I figured I’d update this map, and went ahead and indicated terraformed and unterraformed regions, and brought in the top end of the islands map from Fallen From Stars, which will get into the islands soon enough as I edit. The jungles are supported by warm currents, even though they are north of the lattitude of Aulis, which is not, nor are its adjacent territories further east, really jungle territory. The Telmyrnan area is sort of marginal for that, but just warm enough, and supports rubber trees. Dardana, with Miss Thelumene, has been (by plane) to Zarvanipur.

This is some big territory. I think the map is about 1,500 kilometers east-to-west.

Now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

Were there rumors? There certainly were. Poornima and Margoska passed among the servants, listening to not-so-delightful gossip.

The indentured own nothing, not their names, not their clothes, not least their own bodies. Their lives are a gift granted at my whim and sufferance in exchange for toil that is mine to compel to my enrichment. This makes them better servants, for the morsel of food or cup of water at their lips, the garment at their backs, the sandal on their foot (if I so deign them to be shod—the better sort of the house only, of course), my very restraint at their beating, should it come: their dependence and abjectness makes them more eager to serve, in any way I choose.

Therefore their only currencies are gossip spread by kiss and whisper, and bright-eyed eagerness in bed, and rumor flows like wine amongst them, as they hasten about the villa, the grounds, the estate.

Had a wakeful vineyard girl stirred on the straw in her sleeping-shed next to her warm, drowsing bondsisters? She had heard a great tread among the vines, found and wrapped her garment around her sunkissed-flesh and crept out to see, under the moon, her great and terrible Miss carried by like a swooning maid in the arms of a huge blue Man.

Had a lowly kitchen-skivvy, arms powdered with flour, and sticky in dough, been tempted by a rumor in exchange for kisses from a resplendent page in brocade and red velvet? She had, and had learned that her Miss had kissed a manlike creature, muscular, handsome, and blue, and said she loved him. Such lies, or half-truths, at least. But you will be no more surprised than I was to learn that the page was Mousallemo.

Had an undermaid run to the village marketplace on Fivesday to buy spices for Cook, stood blank-eyed and anonymous next to the spice boxes, by Dr Thoomb and the Biosphere Corps man in the market-morning sunshine? Had Tulin of Biosphere said, “The Kaleva Mines are certain the creature escaped during the lambda riot. They consider it dangerous and must be destroyed. The body will be given to us to dissect the brain and nerves, to understand what drove him to travel so far.”

And Dr Thoomb nodded and said, “Regrettable, but I agree: the reports begin to sound so. People have seen it—people who have not reported it, I think. People who know better than to keep silent. Lady Dorothymri has seen him—perhaps has been in close contact with him, according to tale-bearers.”

Indeed, such a conversation took place!

Had the wine-buyer driven his waggon to the cellar’s Great Doors, to take on long, slender jars of blood-dark vintage, and chucked under the chin a girl who brought him a cup to sample? Had he said, “Isn’t it your Miss who has a beast-man lover?”

“La, Sir, I hear nothing.”

“Well, they hear it in Brauron, how can you miss it here, eh?”

“One hears many things, Sir.”

Such had passed.

These tales Poornima brought me, and Margoska four others, and even words from the men, which they were loathe to speak since men are crude, but I ordered them to. Even wretched Conĉata came trembling before me and confessed she had heard from her sister, who was still a citizen, and wed and pregnant, and come to carry Conĉata a sweet cake, that someone in her home vilaĝo had told a story that I had mated with a blue lion in the forest, sent by the Goddess, who mounted me an the manner of an animal and spilled his seed in me and in the dirt to bring luck and rich crops to my land. It was, of course, less elegantly put in Conĉata’s words. Frankly, I found them offensive.

Enraged, I had Margoska bring my rattan, and Poornima cord for the binding, for a Lady performs her own punishments, since she or the Sir of the land is the fountain of justice. Conĉata tearfully flattened herself on the floor and kissed my feet. Cintron crossed her wrists with cord and secured her ankles to my staff of authority to expose her soles, with another page to hold it up with him for my blows. But as Margoksa placed the supple cane in my palm, Poornima said, “It is great bravery Conĉata showed in bringing you this tale, and great bravery she shows you, which is a reverence to you, Miss.”

“Are you attempting to save her a beating, Poornima?”

“I delight in Miss’s justice,” she said. “What pleases her, pleases me.”

“Flatterer. It’s been years since you enjoyed these attentions. Would you join her, for effrontery?”

“I submit gladly,” she smiled, eyes down and hands offered.

Conĉata, for her part, lay with her eyes shut tight, pale, biting her lips.

“I am not some dumb-show of fertility, Poornima, am I? Some ritual in the harvest furrows, the clods and stubble breaking under my back and bum among the gleaners’ leavings?”

“You are sacred on your lands, and responsible for them.”

I tapped and stroked the rattan thoughtfully on Conĉata’s soles, which I have found raises the anxiety of the waiting guilty. “Then what of these others?” I demanded. “These wine girls, these dough girls, these grape girls. These varlets and footmen Margoska mentions. I shall sack the men, dismiss Housekeeper for having such disorderly girls? Have a labor broker take these, what—was it ten bowed necks, Margoska?”

“Eleven, if it please Miss.”

“It certainly displeases Miss. Shall I have them taken to Lucus Ariatho market for their loose tongues?”

“A thing of beauty to see and it is to Miss’s pleasure and profit, and so I am delighted at that. But,” Poornima added with dangerous wisdom, “the rumors are not confined. They come from without the villa and from within. Most have heard. The entire staff must be replaced at the same cost or more, so nothing may be gained. Perhaps Miss may choose not to do so.”

“At the least I shall sack Housekeeper and evict Conĉata’s family. I shall have them beggared.”

“Miss is just,” Poornima agreed.

I looked at her sourly. “The rumors are not confined. Do you wish to be?”

“I have endured the pantry cell,” she said, “in hopes of seeing Miss again.”

My rage drained suddenly, and I was weary. “Then Housekeeper and this wretch’s family I pardon.” I gave Conĉata a single blow, enough to pain someone as gentle and delicately made as myself, but some dull, agrios-bred like her, who’d never worn sandals in her life? I doubt she felt it, and I’m certain she feigned her exclamation.

“Release her,” and it was done, and she fawned over me, and I kissed her lips and said, “Keep your ears clear for any tales, and bring them straight away, but Margoska! Teach her the proper words to use for love between men and women—or even beasts and beasts. Irodiada forfend! I will not have my flesh described as though it wallows in a barnyard. I like pleasant girls, and well-spoken. She shall recite her lessons to me for my full favor.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“I’m Miss’s footstool,” Conĉata said, and I couldn’t help smile at her earnestness, and sent the pages away, and my least girl limping after, the dissembler, fetching wine for me.

“I can at least write the priestess in Lucus Ariatho enquiring if she would wish Mousallemos’s service granted to her? Is that permitted?” I said dryly.

Poornima curtseyed low. “Stationery is at your desk, and a stylus ready, and the particulars of his favoriting to your household by the Bisino family are lying prepared.”

I kissed her. “My Poornima is always foreseeing, and terribly loyal, but too soft-hearted as regards your sisters in service here.”

She curtseyed again. “Not so to the pages.”

“Fortunate.—Saving Cintron?”

“Him alone, Miss.”

Having composed and written my letter and enclosed for inspection the warrant of householdship sent me by Bisino patro when the lad was favored on me three years ago, I double-sealed the missive and directed an honest footman to take a horse and deliver it directly to avoid the mails. Perhaps my anger would cool. Perhaps the priestess would decline the offer. These were matters for another day, and as I was discovering, the future is often mysterious.

I took the cup from Conĉata and sent her to Housekeeper for medicine, since the girl did not forget to imitate a limp, then went on a walk.

My path took me to the far stretches of the gardens, almost within sight, and certainly within earshot, of my busy workshops making pottery and ironmongery and such. There was a stone wall between the lane and my peaceful repose, and here and there were old grey granite statues of the family fatas, positioned every few score meters to ward off ill fortune, their priapic members extended towards the road. The first one we came to had been smeared by some idle, malicious hand with dyer’s woad, foot to head and member between, and was as blue as blue could be, and for no other reason than one.

I flushed, and I stared. The statue had never commended itself to me before, though I had passed by since I was in my nurse’s arms, but now…now…

I climbed over the stile and into the dirt road, Margoska and Poornima nervously following with my parasol.

Its eyes regarded me, brooding and dark now that it was daubed with woad. I became aware, also, off to the left, the long, jungled ridge where he had—had taken me. In every sense. In every way. In a nest of grass. Like some forest beast.

The day was hot, and humid, and ragged rows of clouds were rolling in to pour sheets of rain within the hour, golden and warm in rays of sunlight, but that is not what brought the perspiration…no, the sweat to me. What would that free being, that Rados who was being Rados, think of me today? I had performed justice with my hand, and I had also shown mercy. What would he think of that? And why did I care?

The blue-smeared granite face was judgmental, and, not at all contrite, I squirmed inside. Conĉata should have taken all her blows, I thought, like a stubborn schoolgirl. I do not care what you think.

But I did, perhaps. I had liked the blow, but I had liked the pity more, and the warm, grateful lips.

The words she had used ran through my mind again, the farmer’s daughter’s blunt speech, the syllables of a crude mechanical. Insertion, shuddering, filling, spilling, withdrawal, associated with my name, my face, my hips. My eager womb. Selection for the mating as if I was Poornima or Margoska chosen for the breeding, mounted and covered by a chosen footman. Gravid with a page—no. No, a servant-girl. I could not recognize such a get. She would be fostered among the agrivilla girls, and never know me.

My breath was quick. The fata’s blue-wiped hands reached wide. What would he think of that choice, Rados? His child raised in servitude as he’d been? I touched my upper left arm, and felt the birth-control sliver in my skin. I would never have a child, could never have a child. That chance had passed and filled two graves.

I imagined him kissing me and taking me gently by the shoulders, turning me to face away, kneeling me down, lion on lioness, breath hot on my neck. Hot like a lion’s. Hot like a footman’s. Hot like any aristoi lover’s.

Hot like Rados, being Rados. Handling me, and on flanks, like I was the least servant-girl, covered and sent barefoot back to work as a miracle unwound and grew inside me, to increase the wealth of the mistress of Dorothymri. The wig-maker coming, buying, cropping my hair short about my ears and pinned up, the new little mother, its growing length the natural clock of my body, showing to all who had eyes when I was ready again.

All under the dark eyes and the silent strength of Rados.

“Miss,” Poornima was saying, far away. “Miss!”

“She will faint,” Margoska said. “Help her sit!”

“Oh, she is angry!”

I was laughing. “Angry?” I said. The laughs clanged like a hammer-bird’s. “No! It’s foolishness. Who has done this, I wonder? It is a crude job.”

“As Miss says,” Poornima said, dubious.

“We shall go back,” I said, and they helped me, looking at each other, back over the stile.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

The cutter approached the coast of Kandiers, riding green waves, its rocket-pod aimed at the town. The fortress was white and shining: the concrete towers, carefully reinforced by a layer of metaplastoc, loomed over the polis of Thisbos. The ships had all run, little coastal craft scattering toward Smyrid, or across the deep water against the Cycladices.

“Give them a taste, Commander?”

First Weapons slapped the rocket pod. Commander Fonseco finished his cigarette and tossed it into the sea. “Not yet. Unless our political officer has a better idea?”

The polkom walked down the deck, looking disapprovingly after the cigarette. “Filthy propertarian habit,” he said. “And a filthy propertarian town. I’d blow it apart,” he added, “but our orders are to win their hearts.”

“You win their hearts,” the commander said, “and I’ll mind my munitions.—No, First Weapons! Thisbos will live to trouble us another day.”

“The place has a dragon, I hear,” First Weapons said. “It guards the entrance to the bay, I heard. We may need these rockets later.”

The commander cocked his head. “Eh? A dragon? What the hells are you talking about, dragon?”

The polkom snorted. “You can stop such propertarian talk,” he said. “Dragons. Much too lax, Commander Fonseco, to allow such nonsense. Swearing. Drinking. Dragons. Cigarettes.”

“In no particular order,” the commander said easily, leaning on the fo’c’sle rail. “You do have a rough life, Ensign-Captain, policing our foibles.”

“I’m doing the people’s work,” the polkom said.

The polis council—some of it—was gathered on the docks, and they waited a respectful distance as the landing party swarmed ashore. The polis flag was pulled down, and the Provisional Government’s was run up. The polkom took custody of the old banner. The polis nomarch had left two hours ago, heading into the interior.

“But we don’t need his kind here anymore!” the First Councilor said. She was the new First Councilor; two other councilors had left as well, in the company of a number of young men who had not sailed away.

“Certainly not,” the commander said. “I’m Carmelo Fonseco, commander of this vessel,” he nodded at it, “the Savanto. We’ll be searching for weapons, securing the fortress, suppressing Caballardists, and we’ll recruit for the People’s Marine Force.”

She beamed. “Of course!” she said. “We are eager to assist.”

“Those who resist will be shot,” the polkom interjected.

“My political officer.” Fonseco nodded at him. “Ensign-Captain Thoas. He sees to such things from time to time.”

The woman beamed even more. “Oh, I am happy to hear. This has been a hotbed of Caballardists lately, and they are not all gone. I will be sure—we will be sure,” she looked at the rump Council, “to point them out.”

By then a sally party was arriving from the fortress. The leader saluted, a somewhat rough-looking subaltern. “Commander.”

Fonseco saluted. “I hear you’ve had a time.”

“This is the first time in seventy-two days I’ve stepped foot out of that thing. We were taking half-rations this week, and that just because you were coming. I’m not sure what would have happened.”

“How is your unit? You radioed about casualties.”

“We started with twenty,” the subaltern said. “Two shot outright before we barricaded ourselves in there. Two others lingered and died. Another man shot off the walls. Five.”

The commander raised an eyebrow. “This was a peaceful area; what made them turn Caballardist?”

“An infection, it was like. Religious mania.” He waved at the town. “Started talking about their goddess, and said she’d send a beast from the sea.”

The polkom scoffed. “I know the cure for that,” he said. “Lead. Not a goddess that ever was will stand up to lead, Mist’ Subaltern. The Provisional Government takes a dim view of this, and I take a dim view of your performance.”

“Sir,” the unshaven subaltern said. “But,” he added, “the beast’s been seen. I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen no such thing,” the polkom snapped.

“I’ve seen something.” The tired man gestured at the rocky promontory enclosing the bay. “While we were under siege. Under the moon, I saw—”

“Nothing!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” the commander said. “I’m certain something was seen. I’m certain it was no beast. No dragon. We have business other than fighting over what was swimming around out there, shark or porpoise. We need to secure the polis, reestablish the Provisional Government’s authority, and neutralize the Caballardists. Agreed?”

“Quite,” snapped the polkom.

“Yessir,” said the subaltern.

The sun shone on a green sea, and nothing moved in it, but golden clouds rolled overhead, and seabirds circled the deep of the bay.

This week’s prompt challenge was from AC Young: “The entrance to the bay was guarded by a sea-dragon.” My prompt went to AC Young. See all the challenges and responses over at More Odds Than Ends!

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

You may not think that lock-picking is the sort of thing an indentured woman should be good at, and for the most part, you’d be quite right. Who’d want that? Nobody. Girls oughtn’t be doing it. But Mama Solene had had many uses for Barsina—hands, ears, mind, and body—and my Barsnjo was good at everything. She could pick a desk drawer or a locked book or a bedroom door quick as quick, and had, too.

A country temple treasury door, especially a little door like that, wasn’t going to defy her for long. And Irodiada, or Isahara, or both had given us permission, and so it was that after only a minute of difficulty occasioned by rust, the latch popped and she smiled at me, bright-eyed and pleased.

I swung the door open.

The treasury in the great temple in Aulis is large, fitting many tables and priestesses and staff. This space was about the size of a small closet or cupboard, with five shelves lined with lamps and flasks of oil, silk-wrapped knives, and the usual sort of thing you’d need.

I stared at them all. We went through each shelf. Pots of incense, balm, spice, cedar needles, salt. Folded linen.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. Bowls, pitchers, basket. Cups. All on the up and up.” I ground my bare heel on the marble floor. What with the pain in my back, I was in a mood.

Barsina knelt. “Sharpening stone for the knives. Rhabdos. Water basin. Silk. Mirror.” She looked up at me, frustrated. “This is disappointing.”

I didn’t want to criticize, so soon after being given permission to do a smash-and-grab at one of the Goddess’s own houses, but I wrinkled my nose and began looking through everything again, tipping them to the side to see if anything was simply dropped in to conceal it.

“But what!” I said. “What the—!” I strangled back a curse. “What are we even looking for?”

Barsina was handling the whetstone, and she looked up as I muttered. Her blue eyes looked up and up, past me, and then she pointed. “Perhaps that.”

I looked up. “What?”

“Lean forward.”

I did.

Between the door-frame and the stones was a narrow gap, less than half a hand wide, with bits of lathing to anchor the frame in at the back. There was something long and slender wedged in there, in the shadow, and I put my hand out to Barsina. She put a lock-pick into it, and I tapped the object with the metal sliver. Metal and lacquered wood. Out came the torch, and I shone it up and down.

I whistled, low. “Well, well, well,” said I. “What have we here?”

“Oh, Miss.”

I slipped off my shawl, wrapped my hand double in it, and pulled out a sword.

“Oh, Miss.” Barsina looked almost in tears. “That poor girl.”

“No wonder She let us break in,” I said grimly, “with this unholy thing in here.”

I took it out into the light. It was an officer’s sword, with the militia swords and shield on the side, but it looked pretty old, battered on the lacquer, and a touch old-fashioned in the hilt design. I put out my hand again, and she put her shawl in it.

Of course, touching weapons is illegal for me—I’d get such a caning—and death for Barsina. Handling them with cloth won’t do any good to protect me in the law’s eyes, but me being a private inspector, I know all about fingerprints, and I wanted to damage none if I could help it, nor leave any of my own, and then there’s DNA as well. But I wrapped my girl’s shawl around the hilt and drew it half out.

“Give me a hair, love. La, there you go. Drop it over the edge…”

It fell straight onto the edge and was cut in two, tumbling to the ground.

“Someone’s been busy.” I peered at it closely. The metal was rippled and calypscined like blue water. “Only the best for militia,” I said.

Barsina looked at the edge. “Fresh-sharpened, Miss.”

There was a tingling at the back of my neck. “That’s nasty.” I leaned in. The blood groove had been cleaned, but I whipped out my magnifier and decided I could see spots of blood deep in its imperfections. “I wish,” I said, “Efan was here. I wish my tablet had a lumo lens. But no! Gotta be a real militia inspector to have access to a device like that.”

“I am certain Sir tried.”

“Oh, yah, I’m sure. But if aristoi can’t get ‘em, I positively can’t. So we shall have to take it with us.”

“Are you sure?”

“You want to leave it here for our horneter to fetch again?”

“Do you think?”

“Dead certain.”

I wished I’d not said dead.

We wrapped it in two shawls, and Barsina locked up, and we began the long process of unwinding ourselves from that place.

It was not easy, and it took half an hour, but we’d gotten a little sense of the place, and at a sticky point Barsina had taken good notes, and with luck, and probably the Goddess’s help, we suddenly popped out and ran across the estate as fast as we could go to our guest villa.

About then I began complaining about my back again.

“Miss must have medicine. The little horzel has left a welt.”

“A welt! That’s a way to put it. Like someone put a knife in!”

“I am certain it is not so bad,” she said firmly. “There will be something in the bathroom.”

Barsnjo hustled me in, found the bath, and set me on a stool at a font. In a wooden cabinet in the corner, she found a green glass bottle, unbound and unbuttoned me and pulled my clothes to my waist, and began applying some anti-inflammatory.

My back had begun to agonize me something dreadful, but it cooled and numbed as she rubbed the ointment on, and after a while of rubbing (and I did not tell her to stop), she nodded with satisfaction.

“The red is going out of it. Better, Miss?”

“Better,” I said, and she gave me a kiss. I shrugged and waggled my shoulders and arms, but the pain had stopped.

Hippolyta walked in on us, with Noora.

“Oh,” she said. “You two. Sorry. Didn’t expect you.”

“You look dreadful,” I said.

“You don’t look half bad, even if you look half naked.”

“Barsina would say especially.”

“Of course, Miss.”

“Someone put a hornet down me.”

“Did they?” Hippolyta sighed. Noora was unlacing her and seating her on the facilities. “I feel like a hornet’s been put down me. Franĉesa crying half the night. Me crying half the night. Noora crying half the night. And poor little Hinata dead.”

I passed her the basket of sanitary paper as Barsina buttoned my sleeves again, tied me crosswise, and laced my girdle. “Pretty bad, that. You’re really not marrying Rodrigo?”

“Well, how can I now?”

“How can you not, you’re stuffed.”

She shrugged. “I’ll recognize her,” she said. “My little bastard. And raise her in a temple, and that’s my life. Prayers and incense. Father and Mum aren’t speaking to me.”

That didn’t sound much like them. “You did throw a bit of a fit,” I said. “And you haven’t been where they can.”

“I convoed them,” she said tartly. “And nothing back. As if I’d fired off a radiogram at the plutino cloud.”

Noora assisted her.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “We were out last night and spied out some things, and went out again a-snooping. And this time, we found this.”

I reached over to the corner and lifted up the shawl-wrapped weapon, shaking the cloth off the hilt-end.

Hippolyta’s eyes widened. “What in the name of the Goddess’s sandal-strap is that?”

“It killed Hinata.”

Hippolyta whistled as Noora led her to the laving-basin. “Damme,” she said concisely. “You sure?”

“Sure as a tenner.”

“But who did it?”

I considered her, then shook my head. She might not be able to control herself. She would not be able to control herself. She was too hot-blooded. “I’ve an idea,” I said, “but I want to talk to Efan about it first.”

“You’ll be waiting all day; he’s gone to Cahinias to meet with his droll counterpart there.”

“Ugh. Dammit. Well, that’s too bloody bad. I’ll have to stow this thing now. I could use a talk to him, I could.”

“Perhaps Miss might speak with the Sir Mist’ Sarastro Mondegrin,” Barsina suggested. “Or the Miss the Lady Mondegrin.”

“More likely to speak with Pari,” I said. “She might have some advice for me. I’m not sure how a house full of annoyed aristocrats and epistarchs will respond to my springing accusations loose, much less with weapons I can’t touch.”

“I’ll touch it,” Hippolyta said at once. “And good and hard.”

“I’m afraid of that, rather.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Nor do I trust our killer—”

“I should say not!”

“I don’t trust her, hmm, him, eh? not to kill again. This blade is freshly ground, last night, I’ll warrant.”

“What blade? Franĉesa said, walking in, and then of course she saw it.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

She was taller than me, but no older—leaving aside my century in sleep—with black hair carefully braided on the back of her head, hanging in coils at the back of her neck, an oval face, and medium dark skin, a color I had begun to decide was common among the Ipijeneians. She wore a loose gray dress with medium-length open sleeves—buttoned at the top with six buttons—made of a thin, crinkled fabric, slightly transparent with the light behind it, a broad slate-gray laced girdle, and a white shawl over her left shoulder, pinned with a sort of brooch on her right side. The dress came to her shins, circled with dark stripes and designs. Her feet were bare, and she wore a brass ring around her neck, open a few centimeters at the front of her throat, the terminal ends tipped with brown-red, and engraved around and around with some motif. Her hair was suspended in braids by a silvery, fringed cloth with stitched geometric designs, tied from her brow to the back of her head.

Did I say she looked at me with wonder? She did. Did I say I recognized her? That I looked at her with wonder? For I did. I had dreamed her, on the Yi So-yeon. Beloved, beloved, beloved, you come to me quickly! she had said. The princess asleep in the temple.

I thought she would drop the towels. But I have never, from then to now, seen her drop anything. Instead, she did a curious bow, lowering-at-the-knees and crossing-one-foot-behind-the-other. In so doing, she solved a mystery: the word riverenco, frequent in the green books, which I had not understood. The curtsey.

“Forgive me, Miss. I should not have spoken.”

“That’s—that’s all right.” I stared. “You know me.”

“I dare not say you know me, Miss.”

Another word again solved. Sinjorino, yes. Respectful: lady. I knew this. Sinjorinomastrino. Lady mistress. A word I’d not been taught. Reverent. She looked at me as though I was fit for worship.

“I know you,” I said.

The woman did the bow again. “Miss will permit,” she said, “Sinjorinomastrino permesos,” and carried the towels away, backing out, head lowered.

I turned and began my arrested walk again, to look out at the city.

The windows stood open, the view extraordinary, the drop deep. Flowers bloomed there as if I could step out into a garden, instead of a fourteen-story drop. There was a park, spread out wide, rich with trees, paths, monuments. In the distance, in a round promenade, there was an old, old, old style drop-lander, or the imitation of one, blazing with chromium in the sunlight, squatting on its legs. I could view it from one of two ornate couches of dark, gilded wood. Beyond the roofs of a great city stretched on, and on, and on, and beyond that, from my great height, I could see a gleam of sea.

The room smelled clean, though not sanitized, like a hotel suite in Eunhaeseong would. The floor was white stone with a heavy carpet laid across the middle part, and when I got on hands and knees and examined the racing spotted animals and leaves and horsemen, I decided it was woven by clever human fingers. There were few signs of machined or manufactured things, which was consistent: even the Falko-4 had looked so. A world largely made by hand.

“Is Miss all right?” She had come back.

“Yes. Just—looking at the carpet.”

“It’s Penesthelian,” the woman said, as if that explained everything.

“Ah,” I said, bemused. I got up. “You work here?”

She laughed, covering her mouth in a charming way. “Apologies, Miss. I am yours.” She lowered her head and spread her hands.

“I’m sorry?”

“I am your servant, so long as I am commanded. I attend you.” She folded her hands in a curious movement.

“You—you don’t have to,” I said, confused.

“I wish to. More than anything in the world. I have dreamed of you all my life, and I knew you would come.”

I studied her, uncomfortable. She had wide, round eyes, as they mostly did, of a color neither quite brown nor green, rather like Sarkis, with a hint of a raised fold at the corner, almost like a regular person. She did not quite meet my gaze but seemed untiringly eager and attentive. I wondered how long she’d stand waiting.

“Do you have a name?” I finally asked.

“I am called Psamathe. Miss will call me as she wishes.”

“Samat-hee?”

She curtseyed again.

“You say you’ve dreamed of me.”

“All my life.”

It must be the numbers, I thought, the least of the equations, the samech-numbers that the technologists could almost understand. But this was not the way it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be careful, and controlled. I would put the aenseobeul on my brow, the device they had built, our counterparts to Sarkis’s eggheads. And in the manner of a radio, I could speak to a mind on a world twelve light-years away.

But lying in sleep, falling in towards, frozen in time, I had dreamed of people unborn, who had seen my approach from a century away.

“This is not quite right,” I said. “This should not be this way.” I pressed my hand to my temple.

She smiled, uncomprehending. “It is as Miss wills.”

“Who are you, then? Where do you come from?”

“I am from the Sir’s estate on Zacynthos. I am of his household. I come from the labor facility in Calypso.”

“How old are you?”

“I was devesseled twenty-eight years ago. It pleases me to tell you I am one of the senior girls in the Sir’s household.”

“Devesseled?”

She seemed confused. “You understand? Brought out. Removed from the tanks? In crèche. I am made,” she said. “I am tank. I am a Psamathe, and we are graceful and clever. But which tank-girl is not?” She smiled.

I sat down carefully on a low couch, troubled. “You were made.”

“Surely I was never a citizen.”

“You are a clone.”

Her lips parted as she thought. “Yes,” she decided. “I have heard the word. Clone. Yes, Miss is of course correct.” She seemed puzzled, and wanted to ask me more, but some instinct or tact prevented her from being direct. Instead she made herself wide-eyed and pleasant.

“Where am I from, then?” I asked. “Do you think?”

The simpleminded tranquility was disturbed by a flicker of intellect. “Miss knows where she is from,” she said after hesitation.

“Where do you think I am from?”

“I cannot guess.” She seemed adamant on the point.

I remembered the young woman and her brother not two hours ago, responding blankly to Lysander Anthept’s questions about a person from the stars. Was she even intelligent enough to understand where I was from? Plainly, no one had told her the nature of her charge, which bothered me as well. “What were you told of your duties here?”

“I was to serve a great Miss,” she said. “And la, you are!” She pressed her hands together, palm to palm. “There will be dinner later, you shall be served alone, and you shall sleep here. They are fine rooms. Tomorrow—I have not been told. Miss will bathe?”

“Bathe—” I stood. In a hundred and fifteen years, I had not had a bath, or a real shower, with really hot water. I could imagine the sensation. Suddenly my hair felt matted with grease, my face caked. The clothing foul. “Is—is there a shower?”

“There is a shower, and there is a bath. Miss will have me undress her?” She stepped back, gesturing with hands and the knee-bow towards the bathroom.

“I’m capable,” I said. “No need. This way?”

“I’ll show Miss.”

The servant moved quickly but gracefully to a door, stepping within and doing the little bow.

The bathroom was startlingly large, as big as my student housing flat on Seoribyeol. I asked her to explain the controls, and she scarcely could hide a troubled look as she did so.

It apparently put her quite over the edge, for she stubbornly tried to remove my flight suit. Only the zipper, apparently alien to her, prevented her. I almost swatted her hands away.

“Unnecessary,” I said. “And there’s a clean one in my bag. Please bring it and clean underwear in here.”

And I showered, and oh! if I could have made that shower last for a hundred and fifteen years!

And I wished I could have, because when I stepped out, there she was, unasked for and unwanted, and she did not hold my clean flight suit but a light native garment, pale yellow, and crinkled like her own, but less transparent.

I blushed, and held up the towel. “Samat-hee—”

“Your garment must not be worn,” she said, faintly reproving.

This was a side of her I’d not expected. “They’re my clothes—”

“I have seen Miss in my dreams. She is worshipful and proper. She must not wear such garments. Others have been provided. She must not look like a laborer in the great cloaca beneath Aulis.”

“I don’t even know what I’m looking at.”

She beamed. “I shall dress Miss,” she said, and I saw that I was outfoxed. I should fight her for the towel, and be undignfied and naked inthe end, or tolerate her simple-eyed foolishness and permit her to do things as she wished.

So she tied on an odd sort of underthings, which made me realize that until I learned them, I would depend on her when I needed to use the facilities. The outer garment settled over my head and was buttoned on and bound around ribs and breasts with a sort of red corded ribbon, two or three meters-worth, it seemed, and tied off in back where I could not easily reach it. Lastly, another sort of shawl or girdle, wrapped tight around the waist and hips. I did not see my ship-boots, or any other footwear.

“How do I take it off?”

She smiled angelically, lowering her eyes. “I am at Miss’s command.”

“I see.”

She raised them again, and pressed her hands together at her lips, smiling as if she’d created art. “La, Miss is lovely. And now, I shall summon food.”

She took my hand and, alarmingly, kissed it, and led me into the main room again.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

The lions had escaped. The mauled man died. I had some visitors asking after me, and I declined to be at home for most of them, but I did admit Dr Thoomb.

The old man sat smiling by me and patted my hand, as he had when I was just a lass. “My dear Lady Dorothymri, you must take better care of yourself. Facing lions! Thrown from horses! There are men that I have seen who would not deal well with one or the other, much less both within a couple of days.”

“I am stronger than you can imagine,” I said.

“I think it’s true. Your legs and feet—the dermaplasts are applied well.”

“My girls are skilled.”

“May I?” He examined my calves, shins, ankles, feet. “There will be no scarring,” he said, replacing one and adjusting others.

“A relief.”

“The medicine is discharging, and the mycelium is carrying it everywhere through your skin. These plasts are already withering here; everything’s absorbed.” He plucked them off like dead leaves, and the skin was perfect and glossy dark under them. “No cuts or punctures or cuts on your soles—It’s as if you carried yourself through the forest,” he smiled.

“Rather like.”

He sat back, looking rather sadly at me, I thought. A pity the doctor was so old, and only an epistarch, I reflected. He would make a kindly lover.

I crossed my ankles and folded my hands on my lap as I lay on the reclining couch: a reward or a torment for him, I did not know which.

Dr Thoomb smiled at my women. “Well done, girls,” he said, and they smiled at the floor and bobbed deeply at the knees.

“Before you know it, I’ll be a-horse again. Certainly I shall be at the estate-fête next week.”

“Don’t push yourself,” he said mildly.

“You always say that, Doctor.”

“Every doctor must say that,” he agreed. “But it seems a good time to stay home, with your tiring adventures, and the lions still at large, and the ape.”

“Ape, Doctor?”

“Mist’ Tulin was speaking of it to me the other day. An ape has been seen.”

“The gibbon,” I said, dismissive. “He mentioned it to me.”

“No mere hoolock,” Dr Thoomb disagreed. “Far larger, far stronger, bigger than a man.”

“There are no apes that size on this side of the world,” I laughed. “The agrioses see a shrew and think it’s a rat, they see a fox, and think it a wolf.”

“Ordinarily I’d agree. But Tulin’s interest makes me think that something has gotten away from them.”

“They are always playing with genetics, Doctor. But a man would be something extraordinary to make.”

“An ape,” he corrected.

“Of course, I meant that—since he was larger than one. Or she, I suppose.”

“And this one was an extraordinary color.”

“Had he a color?”

“Blue.”

“That seems an unlikely color.”

He studied my face, then took off his glasses and cleaned them. “I agree.”

“What would make an ape’s fur blue, anyway?”

“What would make a blue man,” he said meditatively.

I moved my hands elegantly to distract him. “I have seen a jackal with mange. It hardly seemed a beast, and more a monster. Perhaps in the damp of the forest a gibbon has grown moss on itself. Agrioses are afraid of everything.”

“Better witnesses have seen it. Last night, for instance. Men in the forest saw it moving, and not just beaters, but men ahorse with good eyes, huntsmen and landowners alike. Taller than a man, wider than a man, blue in moonlight, face in shadow.”

“Then Tulin’s people have lost an animal.”

“He certainly seems interested enough.” Thoomb settled his spectacles on his nose again. “He even mentioned, offhand, getting the militia involved.”

I smiled. “I am sure it will not come to that,” I said, “because I am sure that it does not exist. And if Biosphere has lost an animal, then they had best take care of it themselves. I do not wish a lot of trigger-happy boys and conscripts roaming my lanes and vilaĝos.”

Dr Thoomb went his way, and Poornima brought wine before I even thought to ask.”

“He will be well, Miss,” she said.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “He will not be run to ground; he seems likely to be a rational creature. He will leave this country, head south through the forest to the farmlands belong, and enter the grasslands.”

“It might be difficult to hide in the grasslands.”

“All the more space to hide,” I said. “I shall not see him again…”

Mousallemo was there, bowing, and I looked sharply at him. “Sirrah, you must learn to knock.”

He bowed, a faintly insolent expression in his eye. “More notes wishing you health,” he said, extending them.

I nodded at Margoska, who took them. “Find duties elsewhere, boy; you are tedious today with your notes.”

“I live to serve the mistress.”

“You may serve better elsewhere. I fact,” I said, “I am certain of it. Absent yourself.”

He bowed again, and backing away, resettled his stitched and beaded velvet cap on his head and departed.

“How long was he there, Poornima?”

“I do not know, Miss.”

“Do you suppose he overheard me?”

“It is possible, I suppose, Miss.”

I furrowed my brow. “I do not like that boy. I wish him gone. Factor is unhappy with my plan for the wretch, and I suppose that he is correct. The Bisinos would be annoyed. If I find sirrah Mousallemo at fault, however, I shall write the temple in Lucus Ariatho for certain!”

I went riding the next day, south, away from the ridge, with great deliberation. The sun was out and the wind fresh, dry off the grasslands, as the weather wand promised. The road led through some of my vilaĝos and along a feeder canal and past a small pumping station. There was a taverno there, with an old, tall banyan nearby, and a woman was getting wine at saddle.

She gave me a nod and saluted me with the cup. “Louhi.”

“Aarhana.” A lad ran me a bowl, and I saluted her in return. “How is the ride?”

“A hot day after hard rain. I’m glad of the wind. Seen any lions today?”

“I have not, and I wish to see no more.”

“Lions,” Aarhana said. “And apes, now, apparently. The lions had best go back to the grasslands where they belong, and the apes we do not need.”

“I had heard something of that,” I said vaguely.

“I imagine you have,” she murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Since it was seen on your land,” she said, smiling over her cup. “I’m told.”

“I think it’s all nonsense. I would like Biosphere Corps to deal with both problems, since if there is an ape, it is surely theirs, and they are responsible for the lions.”

“It’s not nonsense. I was speaking to Vocorix, and he said it was walking along, just like a man, not like a beast, twice as big, and blue as a thrush, half a kilometer from your house.”

“Vocorix wouldn’t know,” I said. “He’s not permitted on my land any longer.”

Aarhana laughed. “Nor would he wish to be.”

“He wished well enough the other day when he came calling. It proved he doesn’t like lions any better than I, and had less stomach to face them.”

“So many creatures you have seen,” she said, beckoning for another drink.

I looked at her with a fixed smile. “So many I shall not see again. And no apes.”

“Perhaps a kind of man, then, since it walked like one. Vocorix is satisfied that it is manlike enough to satisfy a woman with sufficiently low morals.”

“I’m sure he’s an expert at low morals, but I’m not sure what you are speaking of, nor why he wishes to avoid my land, other than my express command.”

“He would not wish to be,” she explained, “because he learned that there are women there who lie with beasts and beast men.”

She watched my face closely, and I held my face still, with a faintly disbelieving smile poised on my lips, but there was heat in my cheeks. “So he leaves me to lions, and to punish me for his—shall I say cowardice?—he says the girls on my farms prefer lions to me? They should, if men are like him.”

“Lions, perhaps. Apes certainly. They declare their love for them and kiss them good-night, word has it.”

“No woman would do that,” I said. “Lying with animals?”

“If she were low-born enough, she might. I rather think it possible.” She saluted me again, me and my burning face, downed her cup, passed it to a girl standing waiting, and she and her women and guards rode off.

We rode in the other direction, Poornima and Margoska and Cintron and I, and I had him ride ahead, ostensibly to scout out a woodsy bit by the canal-side road for any beasts.

“What was she speaking about?” I demanded.

“Miss, someone has seen something when he brought you back.”

“Impossible.”

“And yet, she insults you.”

“Aarhana always insults me,” I said. “As if she should! She is a citizen by recognition only. She stains the Chiaramonto name. She is a tank-girl maid’s brat and fit for a collar. Had I been her father, and I knew what a gossip and she-jackal she’d become, I’d not have recognized her. I would have sent her to labor in the vineyards. She cannot even inherit. I should like to see her beaten.”

“She is jealous of Miss,” Margoska said. “And she’s well-liked, even with her birth.”

“Feared for her razor tongue, maybe. She speaks too much to Vocorix,” I said. “And I have a Bisino viper in my breast, and I will have trouble pulling him out. Mousallemos may think him safe from the knife, but I now am implacable. Have him sent to the Little Villa with girls and footmen, say I wish it aired out, to stay the night there after the fête instead of coming all the way back. Get him away from me. He has too many eyes.”

“As Miss commands,” Poornima said.

“And find out,” I said, “what rumors are loose.”

She pressed my hand to her brow. “The servants know all,” she said. “We will discover.”

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

“Oi!” I shouted, striking out after the figure. It was all cloaked up against the morning’s damp. “Oi you!”

Then there was a stabbing pain in the middle of my back.

“Irodiada!” I cried, dancing about and looking over my shoulder. “They’ve done and put a pin in me!”

Another girl would have screamed, but not Barsina. She was at my back before you could say knife. “Hold still,” she said. “Let me look—There’s no blood—there’s no wound—there is a pocket kerchief—”

“Pocket kerchief be damned, there’s something been put in me, and it hurts like vilhelm-o! Ow! Like a knife. What is it?”

She fussed about for half a tock then suddenly gave a little shriek and dropped the pocket kerchief.

“What! What!” I cried. Something crawled on my neck and buzzed in my ear, and I did scream.

“Oh—oh, a hornet flew out of it!” Barsina said. “Someone put a hornet down Miss’s chiton!”

I yelped again for good measure. I dislike small and creeping things, and I hate a bug specially; a hornet I hate most, saving web-weavers and all their legs and their nets in your face and hair in a dark hall. “Oh, the furies you do, you! Shoving bugs on people! Come on!” I said hotly, and ran down the path back into the thick of the labyrinth. I meant to lay hands on this mystery horneter, you see, whomever it was.

I was outrun, though I heard this person down other paths, feet pounding, and as well heard Barsina, rather plaintive, following behind, vexedly trying to keep an eye on her half-finished chart. Poufing, I had to stop, then backtrack to find her before we got hopelessly separated: satyrs again. Ot aristoi. Or hornet-weilding whomevers. She stayed on the other side of the yew hedge for a while as we struggled to meet again, but once hand-in-hand, we clung together until suddenly the labyrinth expelled us… at the central shrine.

We gawked at each other, and then at it.

“Well,” I said. “Lawks. Found it.”

Barsina looked at her notebook, and a flicker of frustration crossed her face before she smoothed it away. “I do not know how we arrived, Miss, nor how we shall get out.”

“Hm,” I said. “Set that aside a bit, and consider this. Here we are, now what did Miss Philinna want here?”

“Something inside?”

“Not much inside to it,” I said, rubbing my stung shoulder grouchily. There didn’t seem to be: outside of the steps and foundations, it wasn’t much more than eight long paces across, round as a thimble and domed the same, with neat terra-cotta tiles cunningly fit like the heart of a sunflower-blossom. There was a tiny font a-drip by the steps, and we washed our hands and faces and took off our sandals to leave on the grass, and worshipped, and then went up into it, silent-foot.

I prayed for some sort of immediate revelation, but it was not forthcoming; the She does not work that way. It was open and airy and lightly echosome, the damp marble floor cool under our soles. The image overlooked Her place from a curved half-wall of white stone, and the mood here was light: She bent over slightly, loosening Her sandal, Her hand supporting Herself on the wall behind, and was otherwise nude but paid us no mind. The curved surface behind was painted with rushes, herons, and flying waterfowl. She at her bath, you see.

We performed the appropriate rites, kissed the floor, and then went to work.

In a big temple, of course, the figures are always touched with silver and gold for the deme has the scratch to spend and no ephor would be seen to neglect the Goddess’s houses. This was a little one, but She had copper earrings, bracelets, and armbands inlaid with glass. The brass lamps on the altar could’ve stood a polish, and it was all I could do to forbear from going-to, but I’m sure She understood we were pressed for time.

In a big temple too there’s always a priestess and novices present and serving girls besides—I always wondered how you got lucky enough to be bought by the temple—but I suppose the mistress of the estate performed the rites as the priestess here. With some suspicion, I examined the altar right outside the door at the top of the steps, holding my hands firmly behind my back as Barsina watched uneasily; the burnt surface was scoured, and if anyone had done anything heinous there, there was certainly no evidence that stood out from the usual marks of lamb’s blood.

“Nothing,” I said softly. We curtseyed to the Figure. “Walk around?”

She nodded, and arm in arm we walked—sunwise, mind you—around the holies to the back, which was squared off and had a heavy door in it.

“Ah,” said I, laying my fingertips to it. It scarcely moved under them.

“Miss, you cannot.”

“Can’t,” I agreed, without a lot of conviction.

Consider a big temple; the treasury behind the holies is a treasury indeed, with a staff, velvet-covered tables for the coin, and an eagle-eyed woman watching everything. It’s a regular little counting-house in there, where the equipment of the temple is protected and the wealth of the rites. Here there was a miniature treasury smaller than a wardrobe, and I was intensely interested in it.

Barsina shook her head. “It is a temple.”

I wanted to say it was a small one, and the crime I contemplated was correspondingly small, so perhaps we’d only be hit with bees instead of lightning. I bit my lip, put my arm in hers, and walked around to the front again, and down we went again on our knees.

I jerked my head, and she sighed, took out her lock picks, laid them out in a row, and lowered her face and palms to the floor, and I pressed my hands together.

I said the usual words, clapped lightly once, and pled my case.

“Lady,” I said, my voice echoing in there, “there’s a girl been murdered here, and her Miss deprived of her love and service. And another girl about to be deprived of her inheritance for the sake of love but gain nothing for it. And in her, Lady, is another girl a-growing. There’s been a wickedness done steps away from Your house. Four women need justice, Lady, blood crying up out of the ground. I beg you permit my patron’s servant and me to lay hands on Your treasury here and see if there’s something hid within to solve this crime. And if there is,” I said in a probably unnecessary afterthought, “it’s a crime against Your house.”

And flat I went like Barsina.

I probably sounded as harsh as a fishwife.

Of course, now we were in a pickle, because though you hear of statues moving in the holy or crows calling or lightning striking, you don’t expect any sign yourself, and, as I say, it’s not Her way to spend time talking to mortals.

But we had to get up sometime, and as the senior of us I was going to have to make the decision if She’d answered favorably, not answered at all—or worse. It’s not a role I ever relish.

But as I lay there, trying to decide how I was going to brazen my way through this, a hornet came down out of the rafters and bumbled fatly on the floor.

I cocked my eye up and froze: there was a little nest of them building in a joint up there, cousins of the one that had been shoved in my clothes. The labyrinth was apparently a happy home for lots of the little beggars.

What sort of sign is this, wondered I.

She was lumpy and long, with her bright yellow tail flexing and her brown legs scrabbling. She had red cheeks and glossy black eyes, and paced back and forth and came within a handspan of my face, horns twirling.

I did not breathe. Here was an answer enough for me, if I could get away without a welt on my face to match the one I felt on my back.

She turned round and about and toddled towards Barsnjo, whose blue eye I saw peeking and tracking her. The insect paused on the pavement again, then climbed onto one of Barsina’s lock-picks and paced it like an acrobat on a line, her bottom flexing out her needle as she did.

Then, with a hunch of her shoulders, the little horzel’s filmy wings spread and carried her up with a buzz. We raised our heads, and watched her pass the Figure and go round the wall.

As one, Barsina and I sat back on our heels, and looked at each other. There was an expression of marvel in my girl’s face, and I think there was one in mine, but she gathered her tools into her kit, and she and I leaped to our feet, curtseyd low once more, and pursued the insect around.

We did not see her on the door, but Barsina had a slender bit of iron ready, and like the hornet’s sting, she laid it in the lock, and went to work.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

Less a map than a diagram of one segment of the truly vast construction that has—successfully!—been dug in the surface of Iphigenia north of the Little Thalassa in the Eastern Hemisphere. Thousands of kilometers of canal, longer and more capacious than the Nile several times over, filled by pumping from natural reservoirs trapped below the surface, surrounded by jungle forest, farmlands, cities, towns, vilaĝos, and great estates, steadily modifying the climate and slowly bringing the Little Thalassa back to life.

The society of this world may be held objectionable, but we cannot too much admire the marvels they are performing on the planet.

Now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

They called it the Kosmohaveno. There were rockets, dark, heavy, thick, and brutal-looking, sharp fins at their joints, and their service buildings. The landscape alternated in stripes of green and wide dirt airstrips carefully tended. I tried counting launching installations, but lost track at a dozen because we were quickly leaving them behind.

“I suppose this seems familiar,” Lysander Anthept said smoothly. “Yours are much the same?”

“Yours are more spacious, and larger.”

“Yes, it’s a remarkable facility. It’s been expanded since the last time one of your people landed here. It handles many freighters a day.”

“Private ships as well,” I said.

“I volunteered my craft to fetch you. A signal honor to host the, ah, Ambassador of Soribiol.”

I inclined my head.

“Why an ambassador? You’ve sent two robot craft, which were happy to inform us you felt they required no living crew.”

“It’s difficult to ask someone to leave home, who will return home in over three centuries,” I said. “It’s a kind of death.”

“You feel so?”

“I’m never going home,” I said. “Everyone I knew is dead. So I am as well.”

“How charming she is,” he said. To Sarkis? No, he sat there impassive, staring straight ahead. To me? No. To himself as audience. “How charming. You sound as if you were a hundred and fifty years old, yourself, Miss Hijong. Delightfully old-fashioned. An educated amaĵastino from the stars.”

The word conveyed nothing to me then, though I learned it later.

“Why are you here now?” he said. “Why another ship? Why an ambassador who cannot communicate home? Why a woman?”

“A woman wouldn’t serve as well as a man?”

“A woman may serve well.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “Well indeed. You’ll not be a disappointment, I think. But though we’ve never received ambassadors from anywhere, not even in the very earliest days of settlement—as I understand the word, you represent the interests of your world. What interests can Soribiol have here?”

“Seoribyeol sends gifts. Rare earths and precious metals scarce here. Things of our world you cannot obtain. Works of art. Instruments. Technology. Mathematics.”

“And you’d have gifts back, I imagine.”

“If it pleases you to send them.”

“You’ll have no cause to look down on poverty,” he said. His brows drew together. “We’re not a poor people, Ambassador.—You mention mathematics. We’ve full mastery of mathematics. I’m curious what you have to offer.”

“There are new discoveries. Things that you must be shown by another person. Things that cannot be understood merely from paper, sir.”

He laughed and raised two fingers on each hand, and brought them together. “Two and two make four, Ambassador Hijong. I think we’ve that mastered. Better still,” he raised two fingers, put them together, then put one away. “One and one make one, in any world.”

“A clever biological jest. But I’m thinking of something more than love, sir, or arithmetic, or algebra, or even tensor calculus.”

He put his hand down. “I took tensor calculus in Academy, Miss Hijong. I’m familiar with it, though no expert.”

“I don’t wish to offend. But we’ve invented something new, and we wish to give it to you. It’s so precious a gift, that I was sent with it.”

“Are you the custodian of the math textbook, then? I had a page carry mine about between classes.”

“I am the math textbook.”

He regarded me a heartbeat. “As you see, we’re leaving the Kosmohaveno: we cross the aerodrome, then enter the hills. Beyond: Aulis.”

The car windows darkened slowly, and I realized my face would be invisible outside. Propeller-driven planes, two, three, four engines ascended and descended, and once I saw a craft that seemed more sophisticated, beige-colored, settling directly out of the air, a shield and two swords painted on its side. But we soon slipped through a gate with high pillars topped with stone winged beasts with women’s faces and bare breasts.

And down a road.

Such a road! Rough, rutted, amended with gravel, slumping into ditches filled with flowers or tall reeds. I’d never been on such a poor road, and it must have been a major thoroughfare. It was not crowded, but it was busy. There were trucks of unfamiliar design, and waggons, and people on horseback. Once we passed a long row of men, stripped to the waist, energetically working with pick and hammer and slabs of stone to repair damage.

It was all startlingly primitive, barbaric, even. It looked like a picture from Earth’s history.

I tried to conceal my shock.

We drove through a cluster of buildings at a crossroads: cottages, maybe, fields, stone walls, orchards, small woods and copses. A square stone building with a tiled roof and columns painted white and red. Kilometers of farmland. Fieldstone walls. An old house empty and ruinous. Orchards. So much sun. So much clear sky. Strange vegetation, horses in paddocks. Vines strung along hillsides on hundreds of meters of trellis. White country homes in the distance. Things part familiar, part mysterious, part fairy-tale. Carts, donkeys. Squat hilltop windmills with cloth sails.

Anthept watched me carefully as the car slowed to pass a herd of sheep and a boy with a long stick and a dog, and later,two girls walking barefoot in the dirt with a flock of large, feathered animals with long necks.

“Is this not like Soribiol?”

“No,” I said.

“Is it your intent to change us, Ambassador?”

“It’s our intent to offer communication, Sub-Director.”

“To whom will you communicate?”

“To all of Ipijenia.”

He laughed. “All of us? Such generosity.” He looked out and then made a gesture. The car slowed, stopped, and the door opened. Dust rolled by, in, and I coughed. “You! Come here.”

On a green bank covered in flowers, a boy and a girl had scrambled up with their goats, the boy tapping at them with a stick. The girl was wrapped in a sheet of cloth, pinned and tied at one shoulder and at the waist, and the boy wore a tunic tied at his waist that stopped above the knees. Their feet were bare, and dirty, and they were brown-skinned and pale-eyed, and stared at us, in the machine, apparitions from evidently a very different world.

“Come, come,” Lysander Anthept said. He beckoned and held up a circle of silver metal embossed with blue enamel. “I’m no premgrupestro, child. I’ve a question.”

The girl pushed her brother (I guessed) behind her and advanced slowly. She gathered the edge of her garment and bobbed at the knees, looking at us: soldier, aristocrat, woman from another star.

She said something in accents beyond my comprehension, but Lysander laughed. “A simple question, child.”

Her eyes wide, she nodded.

“What would you do,” he said confidentially, “if someone came down from the stars, and taught you arithmetic so you could speak to another world?”

Her fingers fondled a pendant on a cord around her neck, a glass bead of whorled color. She shook her head slowly and stepped backward as if retreating from danger.

He threw the coin: it landed heavy in the dirt. She scooped it up and ran up the bank. Her brother moved in front of her, scowling.

Anthept gestured, the car closed, and rolled away.

“As you see, Ambassador, there’s nothing that you can say that will mean the least thing to them.”

“How much was that coin worth?”

“To me? Nothing. A cast at the least gamble. To her? A month’s wages. They live like animals, Ambassador. She’s worth…almost nothing herself.”

“People have value in and of themselves, as human beings, Sub-Director.”

He smiled. “A conversation for another day, Ambassador.”

The road shortly began passing more buildings and other intersecting roads, and the fields in the hills were thick with flowers. Women clipped them and laid them in hardcarts. There were more orchards and vineyards, and suddenly larger houses edge to edge, the farmland ceased, and we were certainly in a city. He made another gesture, and the glass darkened so I could hardly see out, but we went more slowly, on sharply turning streets. Shadows loomed outside, and I heard the bustle and clamor of a crowd, and wheels.

“We’re in Aulis, Sub-Director?”

“Yes.”

“Where am I being taken?”

“La Stela Meridiano.”

“I’m sorry, what’s that?”

“A hotel. You know what that is?”

“Yes. A residence away from home, for hire.”

“Mm, something like. But many people stay in it, on different floors. All the best people, I assure you. You’ve a floor to yourself. The Council procured it.”

“The government?”

“The Council directs the government. The Councilors direct ministries,” he said. “And here we are.”

The windows clarified. We were underground, among columns, dim lights glowing in the ceiling. There were other vehicles parked, some elaborate and organic, almost like shells, others more staid.

There were four soldiers waiting, in blue uniforms, stony-faced, harsh-looking, and we were quickly conducted into a lift, a lattice of iron, rattling quickly through the building, floor after floor.

I counted fourteen, then we entered a hallway. Two soldiers took positions at the lift, closing it and sending it away. Two followed us.

The floor was wood, well-worn. The walls were plaster, painted red from the floor to chest-height, then with elaborate and entirely obscure paintings that brought to mind the curious novels I had read on the ship: goddesses, shepherdesses, horned animals leaping through forests. Ships on seas, with spreading sails and oars. Doors were painted with names: Red Room, Lilio Room. Fazano Room.

No, indeed, my daughter, I did not know then what neither lily nor pheasant were. The corridor was lit at the ends with wide windows, and there was a smell of cool age. We stopped.

Star Room.

Anthept swept a short bow. “I must leave you and confer with others. Armsman Sarkis will accompany me.”

“I—I’m sorry, I’ll be here alone?”

“These men are here for your protection.”

The soldiers looked at me without favor.

“They are highly motivated,” he went on. “They’re under strict orders to let no one pass this door.” He smiled toothily. “You’re quite safe. Even if, through misfortune, the door were passed, the others guard the lift. There are two stairwells—also guarded. You are…secure, Ambassador. So long as you remain here at La Stela Meridiano.”

“On this floor?”

“Oh, quite.”

“In this room.”

“There are many within, but for our purposes: yes.”

“Of course.” I looked at Sarkis, who stared down the hall at nothing, arms behind his back.

“But you’re not alone, never fear,” the Sub-Director smiled.

Opening the door, he ushered me in, closing it behind me.

I stood in sudden light from tall windows, surrounded by odd furniture, and more painted walls, a small fountain tinkling, and plants flowering. I was drawn forward to see the city, but before I had taken three steps, a young woman entered from elsewhere, a stack of towels in her arms. When she saw me, her lips parted, her eyes widened in shock, and she looked as though she’d seen a marvel.

“It is you!” she cried softly. “La! Oh, it is you!”

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

I’d heard about the Lodge orbiting in the Rings of Apollo, but you hear lots of things. Space aliens. Invaders from Earth. Cometary treasure. Hidden gold. Lost mines. Lost colonies. Ghost ships. Stuff that doesn’t exist. But spacers talk. And they talk.

“Oh, I’ve seen it before,” the drunk said at the bar of the Neutron Stream.

“No, surely not,” I said.

“Aye, lass, at the north pole of Marpessa, shiny like a toy, all glass and steel and ice.”

“Who’d build out there?”

“Aristoi on the homeworld,” he said. “Eh? Wealth beyond the dreams of men. Wasted happily.”

“Is it used?” I asked. I’d heard it was abandoned.

“Nay, lass,” he said. “Buy you a drink? Rano, a drink for the little gel. Cup of turbo.”

The drunk slapped down an obol. “Now, it was forty years ago I saw it. We were crossing the Rings, for—”

He stopped.

“For?”

“For reasons.” He grinned. “Never ye mind.”

“No one crosses the Rings of Apollo,” I said. The cup of turbo clacked down in front of me. “No one honest.” I downed it, held it down, rinned at him, and turned it over and clacked it on the bar.

He nodded approvingly. “Honest or no,” he said, “I was navigator on my little tub, and we were going at speed, for reasons I’ll not bother ye with. And I saw her, as we crossed the Gap—little Marpessa, and a white dot atop her—the Lodge.”

You may wonder why I would risk my ship to go there. The answer was easy. I was desperate. I had a paying share in an asteroid with an osmium vein, I had a bundle of cash wrapped in a shirt, and I had letters of credit with the Manzo. I also had the paid balance of the mortgage on the ship, and I might have been worth something myself, if I were desperate.

And a woman could be desperate: and there was just me to steer the Mia Muŝeto.

I climbed into her cabin and kicked on the heaters, because if I lost toes to frostbite, I’d be a poor crewman. I could have tried to hire a hand, but none would have shipped with me for any money: women, they say, are bad luck as crew, and worse luck as passengers—though, mysteriously, not as cargo, or if the fee to book passage is high enough to make the ship’s fatas look the other way. The main cabin was a sphere of acrolyte, and I could see every direction.

“Tipeia Station Control,” I said. “Tipeia Station Control, this is Mia Muŝeto. Permission to release and enter the shipping corridor.”

“Granted, Mia Muŝeto,” Control said. “Take Route D one hundred kiloklicks and then santé, Mia Muŝeto.”

“Santé, Control.”

And away we went.

I say we, because between comms and the radio-ranger I’d wedged a lumo. Two figures, one sort, one tall, on Aphrodite Station promenade. The little one looked up at the taller one, holding his hand, and forever they jostled together, four seconds of motion and smiles, caught by some promenade lumographer for an obol and a half.

I touched the lumo. And way we went.

I wasn’t that busy, so I didn’t expect to be exhausted. But the route from the rock Tipeia to the vast world Apollo was long at any time, and it wasn’t close now, except that desperation made it seem so, compared to other things. I hardly slept, waking constantly to check my acceleration until I reached coasting-point, and then waking constantly to check environmentals and radio range the vast arc of space around me for bits of debris or unexpected worlds. If I didn’t do that, I did maths, over and over again, a miser looking at her fuel mass, rubbing her cold hands together.

Then I turned the tiny ship and kicked on the engines again, decelerating for three days as a tiny, pale-orange orb grew and a shimmering set of rings began glittering. I slowed. I adjusted our angle with a costly burn, and then there I was, gliding, a little ship over a silver plain, gliding in over it a hundred kilometers above it.

I hadn’t seen anything so lovely before. I found the Marpessa Gap, after a few hours crossing, and turned over it, the sharp-edged cut in the grooved Rings, and with a ghost of fire from my engines, I began stalking the tiny world of Marpessa.

This week’s prompt challenge was from Leigh Kimmel: “I wasn’t that busy, so I didn’t expect to be so exhausted.” My prompt went to nother Mike. See all the challenges and responses over at More Odds Than Ends!

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now

I woke, expecting the brilliant sunlight and singing birds I felt the weather-wand had predicted, but a soft rain fell instead, water running silver over the paths in the garden and turning the bright green grass the color of old moss. Poornima and Margoska dressed me, and Conĉata laid out breakfast, bobbing at the knees and backing into a corner, head bowed. I was pleased she had progressed so much in only a few days. Sparing her a thrashing had not ruined her after all.

“What wishes Miss to do today?” Poornima asked.

“I must look at my tablet first,” I said. “And see what convos I must respond to.”

There were many, tediously many, all in the vein of Dear Goddess of Mercy, are you well? To which I replied to the effect of, My dear X, or my dear darling Y, I merely became lost and found my way home. I took the trouble to make a copy of my message in the pastebin and repeated it, with charming variations as they suited my interlocutor.

“Pidakroro,” I said suddenly, looking up from the frustrating device.

“He showed long legs and good sense,” Poornima said. “And so did Mousallemo. He was on a pony scouring the edge of the woods in case you walked through, and found your horse, and took him to groom.”

“Mousallemo! Did he! Disloyal but sensible of my horse. Fortunate for Mousallemo, disloyal but sensible as well. I will not be rash in my decisions with him.”

My factor begged admittance, and the door-maid brought him to Concata, who admitted him to my presence.

“Lady Dorothymri,” he said, bowing. “I’m relieved to see you uninjured. What happened, if I may ask?”

“I shall discuss it another time,” I said. “It is a dull story. Suffice it that I lost my horse.”

“The horse threw you?” My factor looked surprised and pulled out his tablet. “The veterinary will be called and see if he needs mentism. Lucky not to break your neck.”

“I do not blame the horse entirely,” I said.

“Disoyal but sensible, I heard you say.”

“It can be applied to others. I may be ridding myself of a page.”

“Mousallemo?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you think so also? Well, he did catch my horse. I waver on him.”

“He is still close to the Bisinos. I have not trusted him. He has a sly face when he thinks no one is about, and I have seen him look longingly at your private papers as you work on them”

I colored and pressed my hands together to keep them from making fists. “Oh, does he?”

“Twice in the past week alone, Miss.”

“I have considered sending him to the temple in Lucus Ariatho, for the Goddess’s choir. I’m now strongly inclined. He’ll need gelding.”

“I see.” He looked unhappy at the proposition. “And I heard you mention rash, as well,” he added.

I folded my arms. “You are critical, sirrah.”

He bowed. “I tend your lands and the family name alike, Miss. We depend on the Bisinos to allow our cattle to cross to the south meadows.”

“I have spiteful reasons against the Bisino family,” I said.

“Exchanged pages are not meant to fuel spite, Lady,” he said, distinctly reproving.

I scowled, making my face unlovely, I am sure. “Neither are they meant to spy. I shall write the priestess and ask her if she will take him on.” I frowned. “She may not. She may not wish to harbor Bisino spying any more than I. But keep your knives sharp, sir, for if she does, he’ll be unmanned before he leaves. I will not tolerate such insults.”

“As Miss wills,” he said. “I shall have Pidakroro looked after?”

“I don’t wish his mind tampered with, but the veterinary must make certain his body is healthy and uninjured. What of these lions?”

“They were shot at, but there was no blood sign found. A man was badly savaged, and then the beasts escaped.”

“Whose man?”

“From the Merantos estates. A small-farmer. It’s said he will die. He’ll leave a widow and five children.”

“A pity. Send his family a token of our esteem.”

I sat on the terrace afterward, and my heart was as gray and low as the clouds. I had Poornima recolor my nails, and Margoska read aloud, and Conĉata rubbed my feet with hot oil. The forest was visible beyond the estate gardens, dark behind the pale sheets of water sifting from the sky, and above all, the low ridge , half-visible, where Rados had made his bed. I wondered if he was there, brooding by himself, sitting on a slab of stone and looking south at me as I looked north at him.

I felt old, and ugly.

I raised a hand, and Margoska fell silent in mid-sentence. “Poornima.”

“Miss?”

“You and I shall both soon be forty-five.”

“Miss is gracious.”

“In five years, you will be manumitted.”

She sat back on her heels, putting aside her paints and brushes. “It is true,” she said soberly.

“What do you wish, when it comes? How shall I arrange your life?”

“Miss shall arrange it as best pleases her and profits her. My will is to be her delight.”

“You are good with my affairs, so good I have not required a private secretary since old Pantormo died.”

She smiled and blew on my nails.

“I will pay you,” I said, naming a sum, “and give you a house on the grounds—the Rose Cottage, I think.”

“Miss shan’t send me away from her?” she said, worried.

“No. We shall grow old as antique lovers together,” I said quietly. “Drink tea in the morning. Margoska shall be First Girl. But I must think of arranging matters, for I will have no heirs…Sylvandro has no heirs…It will all fall to the Tullos family.” I examined the scarlet and green handiwork on my nails. “Lovely.”

“Miss’s toenails have been ruined by the forest.”

“Mend them. I must visit the Tullos villa to discuss matters.—And I need more pages. Do not speak of it,” I looked darkly at Conĉata, who as a former citizen doubtless had a loose tongue, “on pain of a severe beating!—but I will rid myself of Mousallemo soon, and that leaves me with five. Darling Cintron will go to officer academy next year, leaving me with four. The Tulloses will give me one as a gift after we discuss matters. But Margoska, I shall have you bred for a boy soon, and you will raise me a fine page also, to serve us in our old age! In fact, I shall need three, I think, so, Poornima, you must gather the genetic reports of all the tank-born maids, and we shall match at least two of them with the handsomest footmen I have. Do you fancy one specially, Margoska?”

She blushed. “Footman Kusnir is very handsome,” she said, looking at the book in her hands.

“I suppose you and he—?”

“Of course, Miss, since it is not forbidden to him nor me.”

I laughed. “A house of love for all. Have Dr Thoomb examine him and his genes, then, Poornima, to be certain.—Conĉata, you look positively delighted. I don’t see the reason: you’ll not bear at this time. You’re really not of an age nor a condition I should like to have you with child. You are still terribly undernourished and unhealthy, and that would reflect on the quality of the baby.”

“La, Miss, I was just happy to hear that Page Mousallemo might go.”

I was amused at the effrontery, even as Poornima and Margoska looked shocked. “Oh? You feel you are at liberty to dislike him, and so soon?”

She was not yet clever enough to understand me entirely. “He tempted me with sugar lumps to give me kisses.”

“And it is your duty to give kisses,” I said, “since I have not forbidden him to ask. Though I quickly will. But note the footmen you like, and another year, you shall provide me with a strong girl to follow you into service.”

“As Miss pleases.”

“Poornima, my feet. Margoska, read.”

“Miss must have love also,” Margoska said, opening the book.

Conĉata was infecting them with wilful talkativeness, perhaps. “Miss has Poornima, and you, and whoever else she wishes,” I said. Did I not? I thought.

She looked solemn. “And we love you.”

“But?” I said.

She bowed her head.

I stared at the ridge in the rain, heard the water pat-a-patting on the leaves and in the flowers. “But.”

There came tapping at my door again, and the door-maid ushered in Cintron.

“My child,” I said, permitting him my hand as Poornima beamed at him. “I was just speaking of you.”

He bowed. “Good things, Miss, I hope.”

“You are exemplary. I look at you with pride, and I know that Poornima does also.”

He bowed. There was a heavy packet in his hand, green and gilt paper. “A message from Agrivilla Tullos.”

“And they were in my mind as well. A world of rainy-day coincidences. Thank you, Cintron.”

He bowed and whisked away as I broke the scarlet wax seal. “They wish after my health,” I said, perusing closely. “And they invite me to an estate-fete.” I studied the guest list. “Everyone will be there. Everyone.”

“Miss will attend,” said Poornima.

“I would not miss the opportunity to look Vocorix in the eye,” I said. “I absolutely will attend.”

I reclined in my seat and sent Conĉata for wine. “Everyone will be there,” I repeated.

But my eye was on the ridge in the slow, smothering rain. Not everyone would be.

The Pearl Crucible: A Dardana Fenek Mystery (Incidents on Iphigenia Book 4)(Amazon link)

Sci-fi Romance and How I Learned to Love Reading Again, by T. A. Leederman (review)

And more—now out!

On Amazon!

Subscribe now