So I didn’t notice her till she was walking up the steps to the platform. I’d seen her out of the corner of my eye but, so? There were a million people out there, what was one more? Even if she was walking down the aisle and coming up on the stage. But the walk was familiar. I wasn’t looking at the person but the way she moved was familiar.
It was familiar. She was. It was Ralas.
She seemed perfectly calm. Well, she was always perfectly calm. It occurred to me she was like a dragon that way, or anyway like Hereyta. Someone falls at Ralas’ feet with bright red blood coming wham wham wham out of somewhere so you know they’re not going to last long, she’s still calm. I saw this once. I’m the one stood on the wound—because I was too small and feeble just to press on it—to stop the rest of the blood coming out while she dribbled a little green herbal goo under his tongue and stuck a xan leaf on his forehead with a little dir paste and then got out her needle and thread and went to work. He lived too.
What was she doing here? She looked up as if she felt my eyes on her—she looked up so quickly it was like she’d been waiting to feel my eyes on her—and gave me a friendly, level look back like she was going to be interested in what I had to say for myself and she was keeping an open mind. She’d given me that look when I’d brought Sippy to her the first time, after I’d bungled setting his leg. I don’t know why I always expected her to yell at me. She never did. She was always kind and she always had an open mind.
What was she doing here? I couldn’t think of any way it was going to be good news. Maybe she was going to tell them how I always meant well even if I usually messed it up. But that was hardly worth dragging her all this way for. They must have sent for her—they must have sent a dragon for her—before I woke up and told them I didn’t have a clue how Hereyta got in and out of the Firespace and I couldn’t tell them how to do it and no, I wasn’t going to make a habit of waiting till she was a league in the air and then dropping Sippy over the edge and jumping after him. Not even for Hereyta. If I’d’ve done it for anyone, I’d’ve done it for Hereyta, but . . . no.
There was an empty chair on the other side of Dag and she sat down in it. She smiled at me. It was a ʺthere are more people out there staring at us than there are in the world and this bothers you why?ʺ sort of smile. I came a little more out of my daze for that smile. But I still kept my eyes away from the audience. Sippy had to say hello to Ralas of course but she even makes crazy foogits calmer so he said hello and then he came back to me and lay down, sort of wrapping himself around my ankles like he was making sure I didn’t try to run away.
The old guy stood up and everybody fell silent like they’d all turned to stone. I would ask Dag again after this was over (if I lived that long) who he was. The problem was that both times I’d seen him before the experience was so extreme I forgot. And this time was going to be even more extreme so I’d probably forget again, and harder, if you can forget harder.
ʺWe’ve called this general session to tell everyone what happened three days ago during First Flight and so, we hope, put an end to the rumours. What did happen is quite remarkable enough and the absurd stories that are already being told and listened to and passed on are doing no one any favours, least of all the Academy.ʺ He said this in such a way that anyone who’d let one of those rumours go through them would now be feeling about ant-sized.
No one moved. Maybe the rumour-tellers really had turned to stone, and when everybody else got up to walk out, they’d just stay there forever.
Then he started explaining what had happened, starting with what he’d told us yesterday about choosing the First Flight list, but the moment I heard my name—ʺCadet Dag also took his younger brother Ern with him on Hereyta, and Ern’s foogit, Sippyʺ—I went back into my daze again and stopped listening. So I don’t know how long that part of the story lasted or how he told it, but I don’t think it was very long and I don’t think he’d have made it any more gruesome than he had to.
Then there was a staccato bit when different voices spoke, and I think that was people from the audience asking questions and the old guy answering them. After a few minutes it started getting sort of uproary like the old guy had said it would. I kept hearing my name. Early on the old guy turned and looked at me, and I probably had ʺno one homeʺ on my face, even though I was staring at him again. I was staring at him because staring at Ralas would only make it harder to stay in my daze because I kept wondering what she was doing here, and I still didn’t want to look at the audience. He got that amused look again, and then turned away and answered the question. I think he had been thinking about asking me to answer the question. It’s a good thing he changed his mind.
I heard Dag say something twice, I think, and Setyep once.
And then the next thing I knew was that everybody in the audience was getting up and filing out. I was so surprised I looked at them. There was a heavy sense of disappointment and frustrated curiosity in the air and a few audience members looked back over their shoulders as they left like they knew they were missing something and didn’t want to—I was reminded of the way your parents send you to bed when you’re dying to know what’s going on and they think you’re still too little—but that was as rebellious as anyone got. Most of the ones looking over their shoulders were looking at me so I didn’t look back at them very long. But I doubted anyone was going to lurk around and then press their ears to the door either.
The old guy must have turned the rumour-spreaders back to human again because everyone left.
And then the eight of us on the stage were coming to our feet (I got up because everyone else did) and following the old guy out behind the stage, another way than the way we’d come in. And we were in this hallway, and there was a door with someone in hsa livery standing by it and we all went in and were waved toward a long oval table with chairs around it and pots and ewers and stuff to drink and plates of other stuff to eat in the middle of it. Like we were all going to sit down and relax and have a nice cozy chat. Because you always notice the stuff you don’t want to notice when you’re trying not to notice, I noticed that there were more chairs and plates than there had been people on the stage. So there were going to be more of us now.
I found myself sitting between Dag and Ralas, with most of Sippy wedged under my chair. I kept scraping my knuckles on the bottom of the chair when I leaned over to pet him. Ralas poured out some blastweed and put it in front of me. When I made no move to touch it Dag pushed it a little closer to me. Oh, well. I took a big gulp and it half scalded me going down. Which brought me out of my daze . . . just long enough for the old guy to nail me.
ʺErn,ʺ he said, ʺI realise this will not be popular with you, but the fact is that this meeting is mostly about you. We want to know—we badly want to know—how you got Hereyta into the Firespace and how you got her out.ʺ He was almost half laughing as he said it at the same time as he was absolutely deadly serious. The other old guys—they were all old—around him mostly weren’t bothering with the half laughing part. Their stares really were like being stabbed. All but one of them, and he was just sitting there smiling like somebody’d given him the biggest present in the world and he hadn’t got over it yet. Some of the wrinkles on his face were scars and there were two sticks leaning on the wall behind him and I wondered if, just maybe, he was Carn. I didn’t think he’d been on the stage. But he was smiling and he was the only one, so without thinking I smiled back and his face just lit up. When he spoke I figured some of the wrinkles on his neck must be scars too. ʺErn. Anything you can tell us. Please.ʺ