He crossed the marketplace and headed for the edge of the village next to the foot of the hills. When he got there, he saw that the narrow path that led up through the rocks, was now choked with weeds. There was little trace that his or the Lady Marche’s footsteps had ever weighed upon the ground. Pushing the weeds aside, Daenek started up, following the small indications that were left.
Soon he emerged onto the level fields above the village. The top of the old house was visible in the distance, surrounded by the rustling weeds. He trudged towards it, as another man wearing a mertz-er’s jacket and cap had so many years ago.
The door of the house was open, tilting out at a crazy angle from the ripped-apart hinges. Daenek leaned through the opening and saw that the interior had been gutted by a fire. The walls were blackened with smoke. There was nothing recognizable inside.
He turned away and walked further on up the hillside. The bright sunlight pressed on his neck and shoulders.
The little pool in the rocks was still shaded by the over-hanging trees around its edge. Daenek sat on his haunches beside it and tossed a mossy pebble into the center. When the ripples died away, he leaned forward and looked at his reflection in the water.
The mask relaxed and his own face re-emerged, slowly after more than a year of being hidden. He studied the narrow, high-boned features, as if for a clue to something. After several moments he lifted his gaze from the dark water. The mystery was still intact, unbroken by any effort of his. There’s nothing for me here to find out, he thought. All the answers are still ahead of me. He got to his feet and started back down from the rocks.
A little while later, as he was crossing the village towards the caravan at the quarry’s edge, he saw a sociologist interviewing a group of the village women. Their drab grey clothes looked even duller clustered in front of the resplendent white robe. A tape recorder was slung on a strap around one of its great, white-feathered wings, and it pointed the microphone at each of the women in turn.
Daenek was too far into his own dark thoughts to pay much attention, but as he passed a few meters away from the sociologist it glanced away from the women and into his face. No emotion crossed the sociologist’s face, and it turned back to the women.
Daenek’s insides clenched, though, as he realized that he had not re-assumed his mask-face after leaving the pool’s edge. He was walking through the village with his own face, the face of a thane’s son. He quickly looked around himself and hurried on.
None of the villagers seemed to have noticed. But the sociologist . . . there was no way of knowing whether it suspected or not. Daenek cursed himself as he ducked into the shadow of one of the buildings and tightened his face into the mask.
“I’ll be glad when we pull out of this dump,” said Rennie as Daenek entered the little room aboard the caravan. She was lying on her bed, lazily inspecting a small pile of gold coins on her stomach. Daenek wondered idly how busy she had been with her seek-light since they parted at the inn.
“So will I.” He tossed his jacket and cap onto his bed. “Gives me the creeps.” He had decided not to tell her about the sociologist in the village, but the thought of his own error still burned inside himself. If all our precautions turn out to be for nothing . . .
“Well, this is one of the last stops on the run.” Rennie pushed the coins into a little mound. “We should hit the Capitol in a month or so.”
Silent, Daenek nodded. There would be no way to avoid whatever was waiting for them.
Chapter XV
“We’re leaving the caravan. Rennie and I.”
Benter, the head mechanic, looked up at Daenek. The older man was sitting on his bed in his own private quarters, wearing the clean uniform he saved for going into the Capitol. “For good?” he said. “No, don’t bother answering. I already know.”
Daenek gazed around the room. Pictures of the man’s wife and children, so far away in the mertzers’ home village, were on the walls. Benter would probably spend only a little time in the few inns that were closest to the unloading area and warehouses, and were prepared for the bi-annual flood of mertzers eager for a spree. Instead, Daenek supposed, the head mechanic would spend most of his spare money on trinkets and toys for his family.
“I guess I knew for a long time now,” said Benter, “that you’d be leaving when we reached the Capitol.”
Somehow, Daenek was not very surprised at what Benter said.
The suspicion had been growing in his mind over the last two years that the mechanic knew more than he talked about.
Something about the man’s quiet, unemotional manner had kept Daenek from worrying. “How’d you know that?” he said.
The head mechanic leaned over the end of the bed and drew his footlocker closer to him. He raised the lid and rummaged through the contents, reaching down to the bottom. He held out a small cloth gathered into a ball and tied with string.
Daenek took it from his outstretched hand and undid the knot. The cloth slowly opened like a flower, to reveal the fine-linked chain and little square of white metal that his mother, the Lady Marche, had given him when she was dying.
Daenek’s heart accelerated as the chain uncoiled and the metal dangled from his fingers.
“It was clenched in your hand,” said the mechanic. “When we found you out in the storm. None of the others saw it. I’ve kept it hidden all this time.”
“Do you know what it is?” Daenek held it out between them. It shone as it slowly turned.
Benter shook his head. “It belonged to the last thane. It was always in the photographs of—your father. I know you’re his son. The other mechanic, the one who was landed, wasn’t the only one of the thane’s followers aboard the caravan. Some of us just knew how to keep quiet. I recognized immediately the resemblance between yourself and your father. Others would have as well, eventually, if you hadn’t disguised yourself. That was smart of you, however you did it.”
“Did anyone else know?”
“Just the old translator. Just before he grew sick and died a few months ago, he told me that the letter the subthane’s men came aboard with, did say who you were. He was one of your father’s old followers, too, so he didn’t give you away.”
They both fell silent, looking at the gleaming metal.
“There’s nothing else I can tell you,” said the mechanic finally. “I don’t know how or why your father died—that’s what you want to know, isn’t it? Then go into the Capitol.”
Daenek pulled the chain over his head and tucked the square of metal into his shirt. “Yes,” he said, his own voice sounding distant. The chain was cool against his skin. “That’s where the answers would have to be. If they’re anywhere at all.”
Benter nodded and got to his feet. He stepped across the room and began to open the door, but stopped as Daenek turned towards him.
“It hurt so badly,” said Benter quietly. “When we first heard of your father’s downfall. All of us who had faith in him. It was as if all the hopes in the world had died. And we never even knew what we were hoping for.” He pulled the door open, then closed it gently behind Daenek as he stepped through.
He gazed down the long corridor. The caravan was eerily quiet, the engines shut down and nearly all the mertzers already departed for the nearby inns. He hesitated outside the head mechanic’s door, as if listening for a sound that never came, then turned and walked toward the stairs.
Rennie was waiting for him in the room they had shared for the last two years or more. “What took you so long?” she demanded.
“Nothing.” He picked up his bag and hoisted it onto his shoulder. “Let’s get going.”