Thrr-gilag grimaced. So the rumors had already started. Inevitable, really. With so little to occupy their time, Elders were to rumors as liquid fuel was to fires. "Sorry," he said shortly, striding past the Elder toward the door.
"Wait a beat," a second Elder said, moving into Thrr-gilag's path. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going inside," Thrr-gilag said. "Is that any business of yours?"
"Do you have permission from the occupant to enter?"
"I have the key," Thrr-gilag said, holding it up.
"But do you have permission?" the Elder repeated.
Thrr-gilag stopped. "I have all the permission I need," he ground out. "I'll ask again: what business is this of yours?"
"This is our land," a third Elder said, his voice and manner huffy. "It's both our privilege and our duty to protect it."
And suddenly Thrr-gilag was sick and tired of Elders. "That's dead bisfis effluvia," he said flatly. "And you know it. You never paid the slightest bit of attention to Thrr-pifix-a until you smelled a chance at some gossip. That's all you want, and you can forget it."
"How dare you speak that way to your Elders?" the third Elder demanded. "We are—"
"What you are is invited to get lost," Thrr-gilag cut him off. Pushing past and through the whole group of them, he unlocked the door and went in.
He half expected the Elders to join him, at least long enough to drop a few scathing comments about his manners and the importance of respect. But if they had in fact followed him in, they were keeping quiet about it.
More likely they'd simply returned to their family shrines, to tell in great detail about the rude young male who had shown up at the mystery-shrouded home of Thrr-pifix-a; Kee'rr.
His mother hadn't lived there for very long, but even so the house was rich with memories. For a few hunbeats Thrr-gilag just wandered through the various rooms, looking at the furniture and pictures he remembered from his childhood, fingering the various pieces of edgework she'd loved to do and been so proud of. Here and there was a pouch or scarflin she'd been working on, as yet unfinished. Beside the kitchen sink were her gardening tools, painstakingly cleaned from the previous fullarc's work and laid neatly out to dry. The trowel still held a drop of water in its curved surface; picking it up, he turned it over, watching the drop dribble off.
From the edge of his eye he caught a flicker of movement. So not all the Elders had gone away. Thrr-gilag spun toward the figure, drawing a breath to tell these nosy gossips once and for all what he thought of them—
"Hello, my son," Thrr't-rokik said, his voice grave. "I'm glad you've come."
Thrr-gilag's breath went out of him in a startled gasp. "Father," he murmured when he finally got his voice back.
Thrr't-rokik's serious expression cracked, just a little. "I take it you weren't expecting me," he suggested with a wry smile. "At least not if you were about to say what you looked like you were about to say."
"No, not at all," Thrr-gilag hastened to assure him, waving an arm in the general direction of the front door. "I was expecting it to be one of the local—"
He froze, his arm still raised toward the door, the words dying on his tongue as the second shock suddenly hit him. This wasn't the Thrr family shrine. He was here, just south of Reeds Village, 115 thoustrides away.
Fifteen thoustrides outside his father's anchorline range.
"No, it's not a hallucination," Thrr't-rokik said quietly. "I'm really here."
"But how?" Thrr-gilag asked, tongue flicking in confusion.
"Highly illegally, I'm afraid," Thrr't-rokik confessed. "Of course, we'd never intended that anyone would ever find out about it." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Under normal circumstances I'm sure no one ever would have. But the circumstances are hardly normal anymore."
"Wait a beat," Thrr-gilag said. "Wait just a beat, all right? How can you be here? What did you do, have a cutting taken or something?"
"No 'or something' about it," Thrr't-rokik said. "I talked a friend into taking a cutting for me. So that I could keep an eye on your mother."
Thrr-gilag nodded slowly. Of course. Obvious, now that he thought about it. It was exactly the sort of thing his father would do. "Without her knowing about it, I suppose."
Thrr't-rokik turned away. "I couldn't tell her, Thrr-gilag. She didn't want any part of me. Never wanted to see me again. But I couldn't accept that. Couldn't just let go."
Thrr-gilag sighed. It certainly wasn't proper, spying on her that way. But on the other side, he could hardly blame his father for doing so. "You took a big chance," he told Thrr't-rokik. "I trust you realize that. If she'd ever gotten around to checking with the local cutting pyramids, you'd have been caught for sure."
"Oh, I took a chance, all right," Thrr't-rokik said grimly, "But not the one you imagine. You see, my cutting isn't in any of the local pyramids. Or in the local shrines, or anywhere else it's supposed to be. It's... well, it's been rather informally placed, let's say."
Thrr-gilag frowned; and then it hit him, like a tongue edge in the neck. "You mean you just tossed it into a—a box or something?"
"Exactly correct, I'm afraid," Thrr't-rokik admitted. "It's in a sealed container buried out back beneath the Kyranda bushes." He eyed Thrr-gilag, his face pinched in anxious anticipation. "You're shocked, of course. I can't say I blame you."
Thrr-gilag sighed, acutely aware of the irony of it all. He and Thrr-mezaz were conspiring to put their illegal cutting of Prr't-zevisti's fsss in a predator-proof box on Dorcas; and here their father had already done the same thing. It must run in the family. "Actually, I'm not nearly as shocked as you probably think," he told Thrr't-rokik. "Who did you talk into doing this for you?"
"I suppose there's no real harm in telling you," Thrr't-rokik said. "After what's happened, it's all bound to come out soon anyway. They'll undoubtedly do a complete check of all the fsss organs at the family shrine to see if any of them were tampered with."
Thrr-gilag nodded. Once again, it was obvious. "It was Thrr-tulkoj, wasn't it?" he asked. "Only a shrine protector would have that kind of access."
"Yes." Thrr't-rokik nodded heavily. "And he's going to be in serious trouble when it's discovered. But for now there's nothing we can do about that." He looked at Thrr-gilag, a sudden fire in his eyes. "What we can do something about—maybe—is the trouble your mother's in. You see, I didn't attend that big Elder meeting last latearc. I was here."
Thrr-gilag's tail twitched. "You were here?" he echoed. "I mean, right here at this house?"
"Right here," Thrr't-rokik agreed soberly. "And I saw everything. There were two of them, two young males, dressed in the sort of outfits you sometimes see in warrior entertainment dramas. They came up to the door and laid the pouch on the ground, then knocked twice and ran."
"Why didn't you alert the rest of the Elders?"
"I wish I had," Thrr't-rokik sighed. "But I didn't recognize the significance of what I'd seen. Not until the warriors came up out of cover and charged toward the house—"
"Wait a beat." Thrr-gilag frowned. "The warriors came out of cover? Where out of cover?"
"Oh, pretty much everywhere," Thrr't-rokik said, waving vaguely around him. "From the various farmers' outbuildings, out of ditches, behind scrub-plant clusters—all around the area. I didn't even notice them until they started moving."
Thrr-gilag pressed the tip of his tongue hard against the top of his mouth. "But then that means it wasn't just some sudden news or anonymous warning that got them here in time to stop mother from destroying her fsss," he said slowly. "They were waiting for it to show up. And yet you say they deliberately let those two males leave?"