“I love you Therman. It’s Arylis.” She wiped a little wetness from her face. It was hard to deliver her personal access code in the deadpan tone necessary for the spellware, but she managed. Sheer stubbornness kept her from changing it, even as difficult as it sometimes was to speak the phrase clearly on the first try.
The hummer chirped happily. She glanced up and saw it return to feeding.
“Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”
She waited.
And waited. And waited. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. This message was far longer than the MSS survivor’s message had been, and she wanted it-wanted it more badly than she’d ever wanted anything in her life! But it would take however long it took, she told herself firmly…and was just about to poke at the crystal chip to see if it was seated properly when it finished.
“Arylis, my love,” Therman’s voice said from the reader, clearly him, but with the extra rasp camp-recorded messages always had. “I’m fine. Things have been rough out here. I’ll tell you about it when we all get home. The war, well, its war, but I’m okay and I’ve seen Iftar. He’s fine, even if he isn’t any happier about this whole damned mess than I am. Pass that on to your sisters and give them my best, as well. And I’m sorry about putting you in this position, but I knew you’d find a way. I love you.”
The message continued with just soft rasping over silence while Arylis stared at the crystal chip. He was sorry? About what position? Then the reader’s spellware clicked on a second time.
“Personal message for soldier 2AS-Actual. “Message decryption in progress. Please wait.”
Arylis’s mind froze. 2AS-Actual?!That was…that was ridiculous!
Her husband, Fifty Therman Ulthar was 2AS-5 °C-03-73524, the Fifty commanding Third Platoon, Company C, Second Andaran Scouts and assigned the lineal number of 73524. But 2AS-Actual was the commander of the entire Second Andaran.
That was the Duke of Garth Showma himself.
She was still staring at the reader in shock when the hummer tilted its long beak away from the tip of the icing bag and gave a bright chee-dit. It was done feeding, and her hands moved as if they belonged to someone else as they loosed the fine bird. It tapped the cage’s floor once, its complex enchantments received the signal that the message had been completely transferred, and with a blur of wings, it was gone. Arylis’s eyes tracked it automatically as it disappeared
“Decryption complete,” said the message crystal reader. “Message ready for replay.”
* * *
The well-fed hummer landed at North Portalis Hummer Aerie. The delay while it was fed had also delayed its confirmation that its message had been downloaded to Arylis Ulthar’s reader. That meant its implanted crystal had been active when Arylis spoke her access code and Therman’s brief message played itself. That wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did occasionally, and the privacy laws were clear. When it did, any scrap of personal information which had made its way onto a hummer’s crystal was immediately deleted. But in this instance, when it returned to its aerie and the scrap of conversation uploaded to the central traffic crystal, someone who shouldn’t have even known about it read it before it was deleted it.
* * *
“Straight to the Duke,” Arylis told herself. “Just take the message straight to the Duke.” She almost laughed. Of course Therman had thought that would be easy; he hadn’t been living in northern Garth Showma these past six weeks. He didn’t know what they’d been hearing about the war. Instead he’d been experiencing the truth of it.
She shivered at that thought, because it shouldn’t have been that different. What she’d been certain of and believed with absolute conviction and what she thought was probably true now, after hearing Therman’s version-they shouldn’t be so opposite.
Not knowing what else to do, she packed up the half frosted cake in its beautiful red striped carrier and matching satchel. One of her sisters had given her the thing. A cake carrier bespelled for freshness and balance to keep the frosting from messing even if the whole thing was tumbled end over end…and just a little greater in diameter than the flat, round spellreader. She put the reader into the fitted satchel first, then slid the cake carrier on top. The rosy bubble over the cake stuck out a half palm’s width more than it should have, but with a little effort Arylis still got the satchel to close. Tinkling bells played a soothing arpeggio and the Ransaran company logo on the satchel changed from pale rose to burgundy. Good, it had sealed.
She hung her apron on its hook, wrapped the satchel strap twice around her wrist for a good hold, and set off for Portalis. The duke was in residence, and he wasn’t likely to be anywhere else when she arrived. Not with the news services’ daily, breathless reports about the closed sessions of the courts-martial.
Arylis Therman didn’t follow those reports…mostly because she already knew exactly what their outcomes should be. Her family’s memories of Mythal were long, deep, and bitter. None of them had ever been bound in service to the vos Hoven line, but one shakira clan was very like another, and what she’d heard of the charges against him told her precisely what sort he was. Magister Halathyn would have spat on his shadow, she was sure.
The memory of the dead magister sent a fresh stab of grief through her…and an even hotter stab of fury. She hadn’t actually read Therman’s message to the duke; that was between him and his CO. But he’d wanted her to know at least some of why it was so important for that message to be delivered, so he’d included a brief synopsis just for her. Which meant she now knew that the official stories coming from official government spokesmen-the stories she’d put down to an effort to control the rage of every garthan in a hundred universes-were actually the truth. That they hadn’t been fabricated to still the outrage, as journals like the Herald Times trumpeted in every issue. That the “scoops” from “official sources speaking on condition of anonymity” were the lies. The Sharonians hadn’t killed the magister; their own troops had! And like her brother and her husband, Arylis could think of only one reason-and one group-with the motive to lie so consistently, so passionately, and so convincingly about it.
And vos Hoven’s part of that same stinking, lying, twisted sewer of shakira, isn’t he? she thought bitterly. Well, at least maybe he’ll get what he has coming! And if Ulthar and Therman are right, the Duke may just see to it that another batch of the scum get what they’ve got coming, as well!
She hugged that thought to her, but at the same time, a fresh shiver of concern melded with the hot fury, like an icy wind through the throat of an angry volcano. If Therman was right about what was happening, then the odds against Sir Jasak Olderhan were even worse than she’d feared they were. Like virtually every garthan, Arylis knew about the bitter hatred between the Olderhans’ faction of the Andaran nobility and the shakira. That was one reason she’d been so proud when Therman was assigned to Hundred Olderhan’s company. But if Therman was right about how high the lies and the manipulation had to go, then Sir Jasak had to be in the sights of whoever was truly behind it. And no one had to tell a garthan how deadly any shakira line lord’s malice could be. And if there truly was some sort of general conspiracy behind all of this…