Elai frowned at that. She had to, being First; and smiled after, bleak and cool, amused at Paeia warning her. “But he’s coming,” she said. “I asked him to.”
Taem took three days, with the pattern growing worse each one of them. But come he did, with his riders across the Cloud, enough to raise the dust, to veil the shore in amber clouds.
He crossed the Cloud alone then, just himself with his caliban.
“Been a while,” Taem said when he stood in hall where Paeia had stood.
It had. He had not changed. The presence was the same. But it added up differently. There was no son. And she herself had changed. She met his eyes, saw him for what he was worth in the daylight as well as dark. He was straight and tall. Ambitious. Why else had he wanted her, in those years? She had no grace, was not fine to look on. He was.
Din’s father–he had come too, and stood by her now, one of her riders, nothing more. Din was there, against the wall; and Paeia stood close by her side. And Cloud and Cloud’s father, one of the long line of Cloud, same as Paeia, but of Windward Tower–he had come. So all her men were here, and their kin; and two of her sons.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” Taem asked her outright. And that was like him too.
205 CR, day 51
Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee
Elai has called the seaward towers to her aid, brought in this former mate of hers… Taem’s father. Taem Eldest of New Tower. He’s dangerous. You can see the way the calibans behave, up on their four legs, crests up. His caliban is trouble, Elai said once. I see what she means This manis trouble.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” he asked her right there in hall, and everyone seemed to be asking himself that question. I think he was insulted she hadn’t tried. He came with all his riders, all of them just across the river, but he came into First Tower alone, and that took nerve, the kind of craziness Calibans instill. I think he was reading Patterns all the way, that he could get away with it. That he had to come because she wouldn’t come out to him; that he had to swallow the fish’s tail, they say on the Cloud, when they mean that’s all you’ve got left for choices. It galled him.
Elai just looked at him, never getting up from her chair, and made some sign I couldn’t read all of, but it was something like dismissing him as a threat, which didn’t please him. “This isn’t Styx,” she said then. “I don’t have Jin’s manners.” It was absolute arrogance; and his caliban bristled up and Scar bristled up, and those two calibans sucked air and stared at each other like two rocks determined to go on staring nose to nose forever.
“How’s the boy?” Taem asked then.
“He’s well,” she said. Taem had to know about his son, that Elai’s Taem had gone down to the Weirds; too much news travels unspoken, everywhere. But news about the Weirds, that have no name–well, that could be different. “I saw him this morning,” Elai said.
He’s a handsome man, this Taem. I see what attracted Elai to him in spite of other troubles. He’s none so old, this Taem Eldest: good‑looking, straight and mean and trim; wears his hair braided at the crown, and a tot of ornament: he’s rich as a Cloudsider can, be, and those riders of his are part of it. I never saw a man move like that, like he owned whatever space he was in.
“When do we go?” he asked, not patterning this: it was himself and Elai talking, two humans, that was all, and there was something electric in it as if something from a long time ago were back for a moment.
O Elai, secrets. You loved this man, that’s what. And you’ve got him puzzled now.
Young Din was standing over against the wall with Twostone all this while, his little face all hard and scared. First born. I think he’s in danger. If anyone in that hall would have knifed that man, Din might.
The thing is, with Taem’s son gone among the Weirds, Taem Eldest is lost from the First Tower pattern, as if there had never been a son. Thatwas the change in the pattern, I think, that let Taem in.
And Paeia–lean and mean as they come, that old woman, always in riding leathers and always carrying a knife. Paeia was right by the door when Taem went outside again, back to his own riders across the river, and that sent the chills up my back. That woman rules Second Tower, and she’s mateless at the moment; and there was thinking in that look she gave him.
Solutions occur to me, that I don’t like to write down. I know this Taem thought of them. “I don’t have Jin’s manners,” Elai said. Meaning that she’s thought about it. The affairs of princes. Old, old problems. I read the patterns the best I can and they scare me.
Elai is the key, the peacemaker, Scar’s rider–the only one who can dominate the others and hold Cloudside together, and if anything should happen to her now it’ll fall, everything will come apart in chaos. Taem–he was challenging her the same way: See if you can hold the Seaward Towers without me. But likewise he knew, I think, he couldn’t do without her. Neither can Paeia. Not in this moment.
I look out the window and it’s crazy out beyond the river. Calibans. Everywhere. And already the grays are reworking the Pattern out there, broadcasting it to anyone who’s not Pattern‑blind.
xlvi
Message, Station to Base Director
Survey picks up increased activity on the Cloud, a frenzy of mound‑building answering this advance of the Styxsiders from the upriver. It seems clear that Cloud River is aware what is happening, through spies, perhaps. The mounds suggest ramparts, but they are curiously placed as defense, and the lines change constantly. We observe no such activity on the part of the Styxsiders. They only camp and advance, averaging thirty kilometers a day.
It seems clear that there is a massing of calibans for defense or attack at the Cloud River settlement. These have come from the two seaside settlements and their numbers are being augmented hourly.
…Observers in field are at hazard…
Message, Base Director to E. McGee in Field
Genley and team are missing on Styxside. Do you know anything?
Memo, Security to Base Director
Agents in field are proceeding with utmost caution. War seems imminent. Field agents are reporting unusual aggressiveness on the part of calibans.
Memo, Base Director to Security
I don’t think there’s any question Genley, Kim, and Mannin are with that movement toward the Cloud. McGee is also out of touch. Don’t take unwarranted risks in observation. Start pulling the teams back.
xlvii
205 CR, day 60
Cloudside
The corridors were unnaturally still, empty of calibans, of Weirds, unnaturally dusty, because no one was sweeping them, and that, thought McGee, was because of that gathering out on the riverside, that milling about of calibans. Fisher‑nets got tangled; someone hauled in a gray by accident, but it survived. Something large surfaced in the river, just a great gray back, and no one saw it again– curiosity, someone said. They’ve noticed, but McGee had no notion who that theywas, unless seafolk.
Great calibans moved in that no one owned, just arrived–presumably from upriver, from the forest. There were giants among these newcomers, but Weirds kept them to the Pattern across the river, and they tried none of the local calibans.
Wild, McGee thought, or tame. There was no distinction. And they remained, harbingers of trouble up the Cloud, while Elai delayed to move. The riders fretted; the calibans seemed indecisive. It all seemed wrong. And the halls grew dusty with neglect, under the wear of feet both shod and clawed; the sun shafted through clouds within the inmost halls, dustmotes dancing.
So she came on Din, in a little‑used way, a shadow in the dustmotes. She had not looked to meet him.
“Din,” she said by way of greeting. “Haven’t seen you.” He had not come for stories. She missed that. He remained a shadow to her, mostly, with Twostone close against the wall, a caliban silhouette out of which the light picked tiny details, the color of a nose, a lambent eye too shadowed for color, staring at her.