419 - Frogs Off Stoves

This time he smiles down into his own kaf cup instead of at me. Does this pup think he’s being fikken nice to me?  “I plan to do my job, for one, if I win.” Says he.  “Listening to the Assembly of Arko every day shall be a no-doubt humbling experience.  I also intend not to resume the dietary additives that made going crazy so easy for a number of my ancestors.  No doubt they were just as saintly as you in your youth, Intharas.”

A touch!  A veritable touch! The lad actually poked back!  Hmph.  “Hah!  No doubt.  So, not worried about Mil Itzan, Kin Kazien or Kallen being a sore loser and poisoning you, or do you have some other trick up your sleeve for preventing it that doesn't result in slow madness?”

“If I win... I shall, of course have the full security of the Marble Palace protecting me.  I am not worried about Mil Itzan... after all he throws the parties of the century rather than holds grudges. Kazien, I do not know so well. And Kallen... well the family might not remember any threat I pose. I am more concerned with the current compartment 14.8 which calls for my death, should I not win.”

“Truth, I've covered a couple of Mil Itzan’s parties.  You want him on your side, lad, hire him to do your victory banquet.  As for Kallen, if he tried something funny he'd just stab himself, probably in the behind, accidentally.  So, you're really convinced that moldy old clause will survive the next Assembly session now the Imperator's set himself against it?”

“I don't know.  It's up to Assembly and what they choose.  Though, knowing the careful path they tread, they will stall to see who wins before passing anything. Excuse me for raw speech, Ser Terren.”

I scribbled down a few word about his possibly “irrational fears” – “pathologically nervous” – “shrinking violet” and a few others, though to be honest that was stretching it.  Perhaps an angle to pursue later?  I’ve got the ideas, anyway.

But he does keep going from there.  “…you know what the old Imperator would do to people  and Kazien is making it clear he'd be an old school Imperator.  Kallen too.”

“You're apologizing to me for raw speech, kid?  It is to laugh!”  I scribbled down that he didn't trust Assembly.  “Here's an easier one to let you calm down a bit. You going to continue submitting articles?  I'm not letting you get away with Akam any more, but that's because Aan-penned columns will jump off newsstands faster than frogs off stoves.”

He looks at me completely straight-faced, but the corner of his mouth twitches as though he wants to smile.  “If you think so, Ser Terren.  I have a few ideas yet about historical pieces... but they would certainly have to come after any Imperial work. If you wish, I will certainly try.  However... you might not like some of my more radical ideas... You certainly didn’t buy the Stone Hammer Riots piece I sold to a rather more radical publication that the Pages. Most of those kinds of riots were caused by bad economic policies by the Imperators in question, in my opinion.”

I have another sip of that lovely wine.  “You're having a jest with me.  First… of course I bloody wish, see above re: stove frogs.  Second…  You really think you won't have time for the occasional scribble?  He Whose Armpit Stains Water The Earth spends three beads every fourth day war-training; you can maintain your boyish figure with a quarter of that and nobody's going to stop the Imperator from reading his own damn archives.  Third… if a head of state says something, it is by definition not radical.”

“I hear you.  I shall promise then to set aside a certain portion of my day to continue writing for you, as a personal favor.  I will gladly take suggestions from you of course, you have so much more experience than I do, Ser.”

I smack the flat of my hand against the table.  “Damn straight.  So, let's see.  Akam's fired, you, against my every editorial grain but towards my every money-grubbing instinct are not fired, what's left?  Ah, yes.  What do you think of Itrean as a Regent?  You gonna glove him –” Aan raises both eyebrows at the image of wearing Itrean like a glove.  “… give him free reign, go over his head at every turn, what?”

If the kid can stand up to one of my full blasts I can talk to him pretty freely.  Besides.  He was an employee – has just agreed… is an employee, Selestialis dump its diarrhea filled commodes.

“Kallijas Itrean, Aitzas,” he says to me, suddenly serious as a gargoyle on the Marble Palace, serious as a Mahid, yeah the kid is half Mahid.  There’s another angle to find some good stuff on him.  “…is one of the finest men I have the honour to learn from, Ser. I hope to assist him with my Imperial education as I grow into the position.  His decisions on and off the field have proven very sound.  I would be a fool to either ‘glove’ him like a butt puppet, or ‘ignore’ him.  More wine, Ser?”  He reaches for the bottle.  Nice turn of phrase that.

“Oh, yes please.  I know he's straighter-laced than a Masker's corset, and good on the battlefield, but you take a soldier and put a Regal coronet on him and Gods know what will happen.  For all I know, it'll be nonstop orgies at the Crystal Palace for two years.  Actually, I know it won't because of the aforementioned corset-laces, but something like that.”

“No, Ser.  I've seen him in the out-going Imperator's home, Ser and he was the same there, in Yeola-e. He has not changed through all his trials since he lost the duel to Chevenga. Years ago.”

Hah, I wished I’d been a fly on that wall.  “So, you're saying he's hidebound and inflexible?"

The kid actually snorts at me. “No, Ser.  Let's just say that as he judged me, I had a chance to judge him, before he agreed to be my Regent.  We did a fair amount of mutual, wary testing before we agreed to attempt this. If he agreed to regent me, and I turned bad... his name would be linked for all history with the worst mistake he could have made.  Likewise, if I agreed and he turned power hungry on me.”  And you’re not mentioning at all that the two of you… the three of you… were as peeled wide open as oysters lying on their own shells, just last night.  Dammit.  What in hayel am I going to do with two ‘pure as the driven sea-foam’ politicians? They are boring!  Well, He Whose etc. has been too and he keeps the stories coming so I shouldn’t complain.

“Fair enough.  Lad…an ancient political advisor once said that a new dynasty tends to start two ways; with a vicious act someone spends the rest of their life atoning for, or a slow descent into tyranny and brutality... Judging by your elaborate family heritage, which way to you think you will slip?”

Kid has the gall… the testicles... of a tunnel pony to raise his eyebrow at me!  “Neither, actually, ser.  That political philosopher was certainly interesting but does not cover all possible dynastic beginnings.”

Mikas’s ass-pick. A politician’s answer. But there’s always another question.

“So, now that you're not clawing at the walls to escape any more, what are your plans if you don’t win?  Can't just walk to the chopping-block, you've got family to protect.  Run and hide?  You said yourself you've had enough of that.”   Dammit… An editor can support a politician, he can weigh up the potentials and risk the reputation of his publication, but it is never a safe thing to actually like a political figure... it blurs the judgment, spoils the impartiality.

The kid goes all ‘statesman’ on me.  He’s got the old-fashioned Aan stare, uncanny as all hayel.  “I do not intend to run.  It would make my turning myself in a sham and a mockery.  I will not be such a threat to Arko.  I may take this to the courts to ask if my life is still forfeit, not being an unlawful threat to the Throne.  I might suggest that my brother and I ensure we do not have progeny and agree to live under security.  There are a number of options.”

“Well, see there?  You've got contingencies and reasonable recourse and everything.  So why scrabble like a trapped rat every time it comes up?  Something's going on there, I can tell.”

“I am not as certain of my opponent’s goodwill as I am of Assembly —”  Dang, there goes my ‘distrusts Assembly’ story – “…should I convince the people of Arko I am no threat, but that they wish someone else upon the Crystal Throne, that person might feel it necessary to fourteenate me and my little brother.  I don't want to die.  My mother's life and oath rest upon my winning as well.  If I do not win, I believe she, as a Mahid, will not choose to swear to the new Imperator.  I have only just found out I had a mother, Ser.  I should like to keep all the family I have acquired.  Mahid or not.”  There’s a snap in his tone now.  Aha… I knew there’s something there.  Mahid.  Of course.

“So, what was that like?  Finding out who your mother is?”

“Shocking, ser.”  Now don’t get all huffy and defensive of your dear, cuddly, old mum to me, lad… she’s a Mahid and can take a lot more than this old scribbler can possibly dish out.  Note to self -- get someone in there who might get what’s-her-name to talk.  “I gave my mother a stone... recently.  When I found out that Inensa Mahid was the mother I was not supposed to acknowledge, since my honoured father wished me to not think of such things.  I purchased a sun-sapphire from Ilirian and Sons and was pleased to have my mother accept it -- though she does not wear it, yet. I do not intend to ask such things until after the election, Ser.”

“Thankfully your sire’s wishes can smother, and have.  Well, she'll come around once she can swear properly.  For a Mahid, that's like getting your head on straight.  You'll just have to make sure you win.  I saw that patch on your welcomist; good start.  Could I have one to let my engraver copy for the article picture?”  I’m going to be able to work with the brat. He’s calm, level headed and taking it on the chin like most second thresholders do… if I didn’t know better I’d say I liked the bitch-son dog mother of the pus-covered genitals of the Ten.  But I know better.  Selestialis dump its tapeworm seething commodes.

“Certainly, Ser.  Let me gift you with a number of them if you wish.  My friends and my mother have been making them.”  I finish my glass of wine, feeling the bubbles fizz pleasantly against my palette.  He rises as I do.

418 - An Angelic Young Intharas

From Intharas Terren’s journal… 

– I really need to stop saying stupid things like “…it’s as likely as He whose etc. is to drop Kallijas and support Minis Aan for Imperator…” My little professional God, what an eight day.

First He Whose etc. gets nine tenths killed and it come out that He’s always, at least since His first threshold, has had this death in him.  He tells us and rushes off to Yeola-e to tell them… with a lung wound… a fikken sword having been stuck right through him only a few days ago…

Then comes back and I find I’ve been ignoring the wrong rumours… because it turns out… He IS supporting Minis Aan for Imperator.

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be the editor of the Pages, I tell you.  Drunken assed, semen-sucking, three-headed, four-thumbed, naked-handed dog mother of the crap-hole born mangy, rabid, foaming at the mouth and anus TEN.

Four reporters over this past eight day have passed on rumours that the Aan whelp is not only back in town but turned himself in to the Marble Palace… blah blah blah…  and I told them it was as likely as Shefenkas supporting Kurkas’s get for Imperator.

So.  There he is, the kid himself, thin as one of his aesthetic ancestors, sitting with Itrean and He Whose etc. cool as you please.  And I’ve not only known the kid before, as one of my weird-ass radical freelancers Minakas Akam… and paid him for his bloody-knuckled piss-palmed stories!... I offered him an apprenticeship and he has the gall to turn me down and say he’s going into the ‘fambly business’ and can’t take me up on it.

Damn his eyes.

He’s as cunning and weasely as his work… talks a good fight… Shefenkas has been teaching the kid for years apparently.  Sinimas Menden in point of fact, came and told me privately that the kid had actually hired him to run information for him during the Arkan war… to get more and better intel than his fikked up, pharmacopically addled, sperm-shooter, Kurkas.

I admit.  I was mad.  I stood up and let him have it… every word, every foul, vile thing that I was thinking I had the nerve somehow to get up and in front of the Ten and everybody, told him what I thought of him.  And he has the nerve to take it.  Shen.

The kid swallowed a little and had to fikken recover but instead of getting mad… that infamous Aan temper… he offers to let me… me and any other writer who cares to… question him under truth drug.  Shen.

I don’t want to like that kid.  I really don’t.  I mean… visions of a barrel of red ink bursting over my press-room still haunt my nightmares.  It could have been worse.  It could have been blood if he’d really been a crazy shit instead of a… well, a naughty one?

So today I go to have a private talk with the boy, Rim dawn because my thoughts have to go in the next issue.  Feh.  It’s not like I don’t write to deadline all the time. 

I get there and find the whole back garden has been torn up.  Apparently the Master of the House and his new friend Ilesias Aan managed to find an old way into the drains under the city and were lost for most of the day and part of the night… and almost drowned in their explorations because the street was being washed.  Note to self: send S to talk to the mother… get the details. Tell her to talk to the kids if she can…

So I’m all set to snarl at the kid, and find him still strung thin from his little brother’s adventure the night before… on the heels of us ripping through his guts with a meat fork, on truth-drug…  Now, I’m a reasonable man.  Distrust is a valuable and persistent trait that got me where I am today.  What can this kid  possibly say to dissuade me from a lifetime of being a suspicious bastard?

I get past his Gold-Chick with inky gloves… and they show me to this private little parlor, with the curtains half pulled to sort of hide the mess of workmen in the garden starting to put things to rights.  Who’d have thought the Aan skin-tag would have had the guts to hire an aitza to be his secretary… and that little bitch Kafiris scooped us well and thoroughly on that one… Mikas’s anal beads…

The kid comes in, pale as if he hadn’t slept and would you believe it… stays on his feet like a boy to a man.  Not like the brat at all.

“Good morning, High Editor,” says he, equal to equal but in that nose-bleed high accent of his.

“Shen on skates, boy, sit down. I'm not going to bite your head off now; I did that just yesterday morning and as you'll recall I hate to have to do work twice.”  Selestialis dump its commodes, that gets a flicker of a smile and the kid relaxes enough to sit down across from me.  He gestures at the kaf pot and the plate full of fried banets scattered with powdered sugar and gold flecks.  Of course. 

“Yes, Ser Terren... might I offer you something stronger than the kaf and pastries?”  Heh, the kid knows my reputation well… he was the one who came armed with a flask when he was still pretending to be an ass-sucking fessas scribbler.

“I wouldn't say no to a Mishenmenik white if you have one.  The fizzing wakes me up.” He nods and sends a servant to get the light, morning wine.

“My apologies for unseemly emotions last night, Ser Terren.  Perhaps I should have mentioned the truth-drug makes me weep.”  He’s worried about how he looked going under.  I just sigh inside.  EVERYBODY would be nervous going under the drug that requests and requires the truth. Second thresholders just make me want to roll my eyes sometimes.  He’s reminding me of my own oldest boy, when he’s trying to be polite. Second thresholders, honestly, more touchy than the old Imperator, every one of ‘em.

“Nah, lad, it takes about a quarter of people I've seen that way.  You remember that explosion at the cooking-oil refinery last year?  Guy whose fault it actually was got killed to death, but they had to blame someone, and the poor floor worker who drew the short straw cried so much I thought he'd ruptured an eyeball when they put him under.”  So I end up actually reassuring the kid!

“I... see...  Poor fellow.”  And you care? I thought.  I can’t help my eyebrows climbing.  I keep expecting him to start rubbing his hands together like a villain in a Piinanian Opera, revealing his true self to the audience… especially with that accent.

“Oh, that's grotesque.  The accent makes me remember your da, and trying to imagine him speaking equal-to-equal makes my brain squelch out my ears.  Don't stop, though I'd rather associate the accent with you than him.”  I startle another smile out of him.  It’s hard to think that that particular apple fell so far from the tree.  Kurkas was nuttier than sweet almond butter and oilier than melting cheese, or melting smegma, but that’s beside the point.  The kid doesn’t come across like that.  And I am certainly not going to let him know that.

“All right.”  The butler shows up with a lovely iced bucket of the sparkling white… not many people have much left of the old vintages. That vineyard got messed up during the war and is only now coming back.

“Anyway.  This is supposed to be an interview, so I guess I should ask a question at some point.  You've managed to convince me of your intentions now, and I respect that.  But power corrupts, else I'd still be the saint I was at your age.  If you win, what do you plan to do to not let it go to your head?” Yeah, we're all good friends here lad...  Just try to come up with a satisfactory response while imagining an angelic young Intharas, I dare you!

417 - Run Ili Run

The drains the boys were in were ancient and lined with brick as opposed to the modern ones built of pour-stone.  No maintenance had been done for dozens, perhaps hundreds of years and the thick strands of fungus growing like stalactites from the ceiling actually gave some dim illumination to supplement the boy’s glowing marbles.  Patches of creeping reddish light and green or dim blue oozed away from them, leaving slow dark tracks on the brick.

Nuninibas stopped and said “Look.  I think this is where we went wrong… it looks like it goes up but doesn’t really it just loops through those ways that get too narrow for us.”

“Okay.  So we go down to go up you think?”  Ili was trying to be brave but it was hard.  Jia was cheeping now… and it wasn’t a happy cheep.  Nuninibas let Flapper go and the lizard soared over to the brick arching over head, hissing at a red glowing patch.  He’d already tried to eat one and gotten a face full of a cloud that made him sneeze.

“Let’s try it… see you can see how many times we went… that slime’s all been worn away… that way… only has a little… maybe frome when we came down?”

“All right.”

Ili couldn’t help it… he put his hand out and grabbed Nuni’s shirt.  “I just need to hang on, all right?”

“Sure, Ili.”  Nuninibas wasn’t hiding how much it helped him, too.  He reached back and when the ledge of the drain dipped and narrowed to where they had to walk single file, they turned sideways and though they didn’t hold hands, they clung to each other’s sleeves in the light of their marbles.

“Hey,” Nuninibas’s voice was lighter suddenly.  “I think I recognize this!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, see? That’s where Jia and Flapper pulled apart that really big spider.”  Its body had been the size of Ili’s one hand and he swallowed hard.  “Yeah… oh here!”

The brick gave way to stone and began to rise.  Jia was cheeping loudly now and in the distance a rumble and a groan and the still air all around them began to move, thicken and push away from them in the direction they were going, a wet, stinking wind from further below.

“Oh, oh.”  Nuni whispered, then his shout echoed, deafening off the closed brick… “The washing!  RUN!  RUN ILI, RUN!”

**
 
The supposed rabbit hole was opened up and the grass peeled back.  Inside, the ancient old bags full of sand they had used to cover the small building were half gone.  Apparently the contractor had cheated the Lirens when he had originally buried the building.

The sod had been pulled open… then cut and folded back when the searchers had arrived to my shout, when I’d seen there was a partly blocked up door buried in the hill.  I was covered in dirt, and so was Gannara.  Kyriala had originally sat back but at some point she had gotten in there with the rest of us.  All of our clothes were completely caked in mud and the fine silks ruined. Roar was digging wildly now that he had been given permission and living up to his name. 

Sera Liren sat on a chair on the ruined lawn, her hands clamped so hard around her fan that she'd broken it.  Her eyes were fixed on this and us, but she was not having hysterics or getting in the way... Her only surviving boy was down in this hole somewhere.

The door behind the dirt and then what sandbags had been left, had been bricked in and the top five or six rows of brick had fallen though into the building, either as the mortar had rotted or it had been pushed in. My heart was pounding.  We’d found a button off Nuninibas’s shirt stuck in the edge of that hole so we were fairly sure we’d found where the boys had disappeared to.

All the lights were here now, making the wreckage of the hill under the folly as stark as an earthquake zone, dirt spread almost to the terrace.  I was vibrating with impatience to get in there, but the Sereniteers were checking to see if the air was safe, inside, to see that the building itself was structurally sound so that if it wasn’t… they wouldn’t lose anyone else.

I wanted to shake them and scream… but my little brother is in there already!  I knotted my fingers together and waited.  With a crash that muffled the sound of the washing bell, that signaled the washing of the street, they pushed in the last of the rotten brick and Roar tore his collar out of the watching butler’s hand. 

He went charging into the opening, knocking one Sereniteer on the rubble pile over completely… his barking echoed and boomed weirdly as he vanished into the darkness.

I was third inside, with my mirrored kraumak in hand, others had alcohol lamps behind me. Ky… she was at my elbow as was Gannara on my other side.  “ILIIIIIII!”  “NUNINIBAAAAASSSSS!” Our syllables hissed and shouted at us, distorting and mixing with the roars of the dog… I couldn’t hear anything like an answer.

We stood in the middle of an ancient Arkan bath house, surrounded by statues of men… and rampant bulls and saytrs… the pools were apparently filled by these male fountains.  The paintings were mildewed and completely dark save for a flash of eye here or purplish penis head there.  The statues had gray/green piles of mold in their eyes and nostrils and clusters and clumps of snails on their erect members where the water trickled.

The dog… his barking was at first muffled and suddenly louder as he shot out of one of the drain tunnels, scrambled out of the big pool and hid  behind Ky’s skirts… a groan on his heels and then into the deepest part of that pool, nearly empty right in front of me -- filled from that pipe.  The drain that would be man-height, over the edge, was suddenly full of water, a burst of water from somewhere deep under the streets.

And in the middle of the water… a couple of boys, choking, washed into the bottom of the pool, coughing and clinging until the water spread out no more than waist deep mixing with the greenish scum at that end. Ili had Nuni under the chin until they realize they could put their feet down.

I leapt straight down into the filty water and grabbed both of them.  “Ilesias, Nuninibas, oh my Great God!” I dragged them to the shallow end of the pool out of the spewed-out water. They both clung to me and I found myself with Ili on one arm, Nuni on the other, Jia clamped tight to my head and Nuni’s lizard thing hissing wildly as a steam kettle in my one ear.

I didn’t care. I sat down and started to laugh, and cry… all at the same time.  “You… You.. boys…”

“It wasn’t our FAULT,” Ili shouted in my ear and I shook my head.  “I don’t care I don’t care whose fault it is.  You are safe!”

“Serin Aan..” That was Nuni trying to be all grown up even while he clung tight to me and then lunged to cling to his big sister as she arrived in a slither of jewelry and sodden lace, mud-caked skirts and all.  “It was my fault. I dared Ili to—“  Ili interrupted him.  “—no I squirmed in first! It’s MY fault…”

I had both my arms wrapped around his solid seven year old warmth and  the off balance heaviness upon my own head of his favourite pet and I did not care.  The wild echoes in these ancient baths, and the slashes of light flaring here and there over almost human features or almost bovine ones, gave the whole thing an air of complete unreality.

The boys were both soaked through and I was as well from having jumped into the drain water… which was dropping as we sat in the bottom of the pool, and the street above us… or at least above these drains… was finished being flushed clean.

“Nuni found the way back,” Ili was saying and Nuni was saying… “He grabbed me when the water came up so high… too high for me to stand…”

“You saved each other.” I said, and Ky gathered her little brother to her and rocked back and forth in the filthy bottom of these old baths.  “You saved each other. A very good thing for brother’s in adventure to do.” 

Ky, her gloves wrapped around her brother’s head and shoulders, looked at me over his shoulder and smiled as if I have given her the Sunburst prize, as if I had had anything to do with saving her brother.  I smiled back and clambered to my feet as best I could with Ili and JiaKlem hanging on to me.  I must look a fright, covered in mud and domestic octopus.

“Serina.  I had no idea your establishment was so exciting.”  She twinkled back at me.  Anything was possible now that the boys were found safe… had saved each other…

“An odd, hidden mystery of the house solved, Serin,” she said quietly.  “These must have been the manor baths when baths were popular a hundred years ago.”

“Indeed.”

“Heya, Minis!” Ili said… “There’s malas of drains down there.  We couldn’t explore all of them.”

“And you are not allowed to explore any more of them!” I snapped.  “I’m going to beat your behind till it glows red and blue like a fire!”

“Yeah, big brother… I don’ wanna but you should.”

That stopped me cold.  I wouldn’t lay a hand on him, of course, but I should cease threatening such violence.

“Let’s get you boys out of this hole and cleaned up…”  Roar came roaring out of the flickering lights at that moment and bowled into us, all hair and muck and stinking dog and green slime, knocking us all down, insisting on licking every face he could reach.

 

416 - What's in His Treasure Box?

I couldn’t bear sitting next to the Sereniteer, calmly checking little boxes off her search list.  Ky and I went to sit on the hill of the folly, the highest point of land in the garden.

“We’ve searched the folly already,” Kyriala said, her fan moving steady as a machine.  She actually set her hand upon my elbow and I could feel her hand tremble though it did not show.  She didn’t show any of her emotion but I could feel it pouring through her glove, through my forearm.  She cared about her brother and Ili fiercely, wildly, and I had to draw breath.  I set my own gloved hand over hers and she accepted it.  “Twice.  There’s only a bare room and a bench that gives one a view over the manor and the wall.  It was an affectation that Great Grandfather had, to sit out here and overlook his kingdom, he said.  That was after Great Grandmother died…”

“We will find them, Kyriala.  They must be all right.  They didn’t leave the grounds, none of the guards saw them leave.”

“Yes.”  Her fan snapped shut.  “How did the truth-drugging interview go?”

“Good.  They tried to make Chevenga and I into alesinas or worse and we were both able to say no to that.”

She nodded sharply.  “Atzana’s doing really well.  She’s going to hire Skala to assist her, with your approval.”

“Certainly.  Kyriala… you realize I trust your choices.  If you need someone… hire them.”  My head turned to Gannara who toiled up the steep hillock to us and flopped down beside us.

“Nothing still.  Farasha is checking the grotto behind the kitchen garden again. I thought I’d try and track JiaKlem but the little beast has been cracking snail-shells all over this garden... there’s no clear trail… I’d hoped…”  I let go Ky’s hand and reached over to Gannara’s shoulder.

“It’s all right, heartsbrother.” I used the Yeoli term because I liked it better than the Arkan alesinas.  The Yeoli phrase didn't have anything sexual about it. “We will find them.”

“They were last seen on this hill and we did search…”

Ky and I both chimed in.  “Twice.”

“Welllll….” I said, thoughtfully.  “Is there anywhere on this hill but the folly they could have gone?”  Nuninibas’s hound, Roar, sat in the middle of the lawn, confused.  We sat and thought about it for a time and the dog came slinking up, wagging guilty as if it had done something wrong, whining up to thrust his nose under Ky’s elbow, hiding his head.  I wished I could ask the animal where the boys had gone.

“There’s no other building they could be hiding in…” Across the manor garden, shouts of ‘Nuniiiiiiinnibbaaaaassssss!” and “Illleeessssiassss!” echoed off the inner walls of the manor house.  How were they not hearing all the uproar and commotion?

When I was their age… what was I doing?  Terrorizing the city.  Not a helpful thought.  I was also finding the secret passages in the Marble Palace and learning play faibalitz with my companions. Hmmm.  I had to stop panicking.  “Ky… your butler said he saw Ili last asking after something of your brother’s?”

“Yes, it’s his treasure box.”

“What’s in it?”

She fanned herself.  “I don’t know, Minis.  It’s HIS treasure box. Mama doesn’t even look in there… I mean he showed me once when I came home.  It’s nothing important.”

“It might be.  What does he keep in it?”

“As I said.  His treasures. Feathers, stones, his glass things…marbles… a claw from a stone cat…”

“Ah.”

“Hey,” Gannara said.  “Marbles you said?  Like Minis’s marbles?”

I’d had a set of marbles from some merchant prince in Brahvniki and they were treated like real kraumaks to glow and I’d set up paths in the dark in my chambers with them.

“Yes.”  Kyriala snapped her fan shut.  “Those kinds of marbles were certainly mixed into his set.  Why?”

“Have we checked the basements?” He said.  “Maybe the boys went exploring past the lamps, with the lighted marbles?”

We all jumped up, galvanized.

**

 “Ili?”

“Yeha, Nuni?”

“Have you seen any ways up higher?”

“No… should I?”

“Yeah I think so…”

“Why?”

“I think these are still hooked up to the main drains.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“They’re gonna be washing our street tonight.”

“You mean…”  A silence.

“I think these tunnels are all gonna fill up, real soon.”

“Oh.”  A longer silence.  “Do you know when?”

“No… I don’t know what bead it is… do you?”

“No.”

“We need to find where we came down, quick I think.”

“Yeha.”

**

We all came back to the hill after searching the basements, hound included, just for a breath of air and to re-think.  “Nuni wanted his treasure box and didn’t come get it himself.  He sent Ili who wouldn’t know where to look for it and would have to ask… why?”

“I don’t know,” Farasha said.  She’d joined us half way through the basement search.  My heart was pounding and my stomach knotting up.  The longer they were missing the worse it was.  The stupid dog wandered down the hill, sniffing in the grass, between the little trees that were growing all over the back of the hill.  Very artistic I was certain. The gardener probably cut them down if they got too big.

“Has anybody found the box?” Gannara said.

“No,” Kyriala snapped.  “We’ve been looking.”

“Sorry… sorry I’m just thinking… Kyriala… sorry…”

She hid her face behind her fan, mortified that she’d lost control.  Without looking at her, I patted her shoulder.

“You know…” Farasha said thoughtfully.  “Roar has been going back to that same spot on this hill over and over again…”

I twitched upright and stared down the back of the hill to where I could just see the dog’s tail waving.  It looked like he was digging and sniffing like he’d been doing all evening.  “Well, let’s look,” Gan and I said, both together.

We got up and moved over to the fringe of little saplings where Roar sniffed and whined. “Oh… drat!” Kyriala let herself snap that much.  “A rabbit hole! The gardner is going to be upset he has the beginnings of a warren here.”

“It’s pretty big for a rabbit,” Farasha said.

“Hey!” Gannara seized a marble up out of the disturbed turf.  “Is this one of Nuni’s?”

415 - Maybe it's This Way

There was a tap at the door right around the time Grandfather gave me his hand to help me sitting up.  It was good that I had someone in the Marble Palace.  If he hadn’t been there I would have felt very bereft.  A very snide part of me, in the back of my head, said that the Gods were all very well but kind of insubstantial for every day support.

“S… ser?”  An underservant, obviously.  The senior Marble Palace servants would never stammer, even faced with the Imperial Pharmacist, the Lightning Snake in White, himself.  “M… Minis Aan is still here ser?  I have a message for him, ser.”

“He is.  Come and give it to him.”  Grandfather let the messenger in and it was one of my Dyer messengers, not an underservant at all, and he came in straight to me.

“Ser it is urgent.  Your alesinas, Gannara said ‘come right now, Ili and Nuni are missing.”

**

In the dark, in the tiny puddles of light given off by a child’s marbles, two little boys stood and conferred. “It was this way… wasn’t it?”  “No, I think it was that way.” “We just came around that way.  We’ve been around three times.” “No we haven’t.  This is different.” “No… you can see… Flapper came and sat there last time you can see the marks he made.” “Oh. Yeah.” “My mama is going to kill me.” “Minis is going to beat my behind red and blue… he said so…” “He did?” “Yeah… when I gots lost in Hyerne.” “You got lost in Hyerne? You’re pulling my kilt.””Let’s go this way.” “Ok. But we already tried that.”

A sigh and sniffled, stifled tears.  “This isn’t an adventure anymore, Ili.”

“Sure it is.  It’s just us in deep shen, not somebody else.  When Minis finds me it’ll be a funny story.  I know.  When he finds us.”

“Maybe we’re lost here forever?”

“Nah.  My big brother won’t quit.  He says that’s one good thing about Mahid.  They don’t.  Quit I mean.”

“Isn’t that just because they’re not allowed to quit?”

“No.  It’s ‘cause they’re Mahid and are like that.”

“Oh. Um.”

“We were just here.” “Yeha. Maybe we should try that way?” “Sure. It all looks the same.”

“Yeha. Icky, cold and I’ll bet there’s poop in that water down there.”

“Yeah. Smells like it.”

“I’m tired, Nuni.”

“Yeah. Next time we find a dry stone let’s sit for a bit, okay?”

“Sure.”

**

I had planned to take a nice leisurely chair ride home after being truth drugged.  As it was I sweated the last of it out of me, tearing across the city as fast as I could skate.  Even with my guards struggling to keep up to me, it was faster than the fastest express chair. 

My skates rumbled over smoothed cobbles.  I’d have to pick another route tomorrow.  The washing of this street tonight would make the street too slick.  It was a little trick I’d learned as a messenger.  The pools of lanternlight made unofficial goals for me to conquer I counted under my breath. There were only ten more, eight more, two more…

Not that speed was necessary. I would only be one more body in the hunt.  Gannara had also already contacted the Sereniteers and they would likely be there.  Has someone snatched him? Did I not leave Joras with Ili and someone decided that 14.8 should apply to ANY Aan? Gan didn’t say anything about a note so he was not kidnapped. This… is so much like the dock in Hyrene. But this time no one is going to pat me on the head and force me to wear a sack on my head. If someone has taken him hostage for any weird reason… fik being good, fik being saintly.  I’ll kill him.  Anyone touches a hair on my brother’s head I’ll fik him up with everything that Ice Eyes taught me and THEN kill him.

The Diamond on the Earthsphere was lit up like daylight, with torches and alcohol torches and reflecting mirrors shining those lights into every corner of the estate. My guard and I came tearing out of the more dimly lit, lantern-lit city into a crowd of searchers.

It wasn’t just for Ili, I knew, it was for the Master of the House too so I tried to tell myself that, but it lifted my heart.  Surely with so many looking they would be found soon?

“Gannara! Farasha!”  They were both there. I didn’t bother to remove my skates I hopped the pavement curb just over, dug the wheels in the grass to fling my arms around him… around them… “Is he found yet?  Are they found?”

“No… no, Minis.  Take a breath.  The Sereniteer there…” he waved a hand over at… a woman Sereniteer.  She was organizing the searchers who were coming back to report where they had searched and she was marking off parts of the manor systematically. There was something vaguely familiar about her but I couldn’t think of where I’d seen her before.  Probably while I was a Dyer.

I had to slow down to untie my skates and Farasha helped me when my hands started shaking.  “Thank you, Fara.”

“We’ll find them, Minis.  Gian and some of my people are here to help too.”

“Oh, thank you.”  How could two small boys just vanish from an enclosed garden?

The grass maze had been mowed to ensure they were not in there. The fish-ponds had been dragged, the lilies lying broken, like so many limp bodies on the raised edge of the pools. “The house has been searched from top to bottom but the last place they were seen was in the garden.”  That was the Sereniteer.

“Thank you, Sereniteer ---“

“—Oonilis, fessas.”

“Sereniteer Oonilas.  Has anyone checked the trees?  My little brother is a climber… and he does like small spaces –“

“Thank you, Serin.”  She was completely no nonsense.  “Why don’t you check and see if we have somehow missed something on my map here.  You’ve just rented this wing?”

“Yes, Sereniteer.”  Kyriala settled onto the bench beside me.  “I know the house.  Let me help.”

“Thank you Ky.” I was still somewhat wobbly… I could feel tears start and bit my lip and held my breath.  Blood-fire can burn almost anything out of you but it can’t be maintained long, things go flat and cold and despairing. The fire… the Sun… in the blood sets.

Ili where are you this time?  You never left the house.  No guards saw you leave by door or gate.  Where did the two of you vanish to?

414 - Nonsense

AN:  I seem to be managing these little posts at the end of the day.  I will keep this up as long as I can.  Thanks bunches!  And thank you to all who donated and contributed in their various ways over Yule!  You guys rock.
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This was the third time in my life I’d been truth-drugged.  I should be getting used to it, I suppose.  I lay back and waited and looked around at all the writers' closed faces.  Well.  Either closed or vulpine.  They’ll pick over my entrails.  I’m glad I don’t have anything to hide any longer.

Chevenga started flirting with Kallijas who turned out to be a laugher as he went under.  Everything Chevenga said to him elicited a flood of, of all things, giggles.  I felt the tears gathering in my eyes and closed them.  I couldn't swallow the lump in the throat.  I shouldn’t feel ashamed that they saw this and I was glad I was already quite a distance away from my feelings.

It was the floating feeling.  I actually liked that.  I realized why I cried on the way into truth-drug, as Krero made sure the writers knew the routine for asking.  It was because I carried so much; so much in my muscles that everything hurt a little bit all the time.  Under truth-drug, the hurts all went away.  My gut un-knotted, my neck and shoulders.  My whole torso unknotted.  It was almost shocking that it all just vanished like that and for that reason, I wept.

Chevenga started telling Kallijas more explicitly what he’d like to do and Krero asked him to stop.  If I could have turned my head I would have seen that Kallijas wouldn’t be blushing now.  He was under the influence of truth-drug.  I think I am.  I’m not crying any more.

They essentially asked us the same questions as they did in the presser.  They asked me if I lied about anything in the presser and I was happy to just be able to say ‘No.’

They asked me if I wanted Chevenga and if I was going to be his lover -- more specifically his sex boy.  Both he and I could say no to that, and did. They weren’t that straightforward, knowing that we would remember what was asked and how.  But the true point of the whole thing was that we three were willing to submit to their questions under truth-drug.

I wished I could see Intharas’s face when he asked me “To Minis Aan.  Did you lie to us in the presser earlier?”  and I answered “No.” but I was busy gazing at the Chamber Ceiling and could not turn my head.

It was a much shorter session than the press conference since we could only answer simple yes/no questions and Krero wound things up smoothly.  Servants came to show the writers out.  Krero saw to it that Chevenga and Kallijas were carried off to the Imperial bedchamber.  A servant laid a light coverlet over me which was welcome.  I missed Gannara, but he was at the Diamond looking after things over there.

The servant – a fellow I didn’t know -- didn't sit next to me and watch me direct but rather sat near the door and gave me privacy, which was nice.  I was coming out of it when my grandfather came in and sat with me, dismissing the servant.  “How are you doing, Minis?” he asked me quietly.

“Good enough.” I answered, and burst into tears all over again.  He set his hand on my shoulder and wiped my face as I sobbed… still too limp to get up or restrain myself.  “S.s.s.s.s.orry… Grandfather… I’m s.s.s.sorry…”

“No need to apologize, Grandson.”

Just hearing that, then, under that much influence still, was enough to help me gain a little composure.  But though I could stop sobbing, I still wept.  “I…still… feel badly.”

“I understand. It is merely a typical side effect of truth drug.”  He had a cool cloth as well as his handkerchief and it felt so good to have enough control to turn my own head into his hand.  “You did very well, Grandson.  It is harrowing to tell so much truth, and under coercion, even if you told the truth in the first place.”

“I don’t know if I can do this, Grandfather.”

“Nonsense. You have chosen your course and have taken the first steps to follow through to the end.  Inasmuch as you are Mahid, you will do this.  Inasmuch as you are an Aan, you can do this.  Do not doubt your own strength.  That is what children do.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”  I didn’t whine to him that I was supposedly still a child.  The drug had worn off that much. Even if I was only second threshold, I was close enough to third that I should not be doing childish things, still.

**

“Kyriala… have you seen Nuninibas?”

“No, mama.  He was in the garden with Ilesias last I heard.  I think I heard his dog barking a while ago.”

“Thank you, darling.  I shall continue seeking him.  It is time for his sword-practice and his teacher is livid.”

“Perhaps he went to sit with Ilesias’s class with Gian?”

“I’ll check dear, thank you.”

413 - Jia, Where Are You?

I like this place where we’re renting now.  Nuni’s older’n I am, but he listens to me ‘cause I have more world ‘sperience.

“Your Flapper’s okay,” I say.  The flying lizard thing is really not a real flyer but its ribs snap open and it spreads out flat and they kind of flap when it breathes and it’s pink and has scary looking fangs.  He says to be careful ‘cause the fangs... they’re ornamental and break off really easily.  And its this weird greeny pink.  I think it looks more like a girl’s pet even if it does have cool fangs and a frill and hisses.  “They’re all pink.” He says.  “No other colours.”

Jiaklem turns the same colour as Flapper and we giggle.  The butler told us we weren’t to ride the house donkeys.  They’re supposed to be working so we are soooooo polite that he jerks his chin at us and tells us we should, perhaps, consider going back out into the garden to play.

Jia’s crawling up the side of the hill the folly is built on and we’re lying on the grass though we’re not supposed to get our shirts and kilts all green and his dog, Roar, is lying with his chin on Nuni’s stomach.

“How long you think you’re gonna be here?” Nuni has a grass-stem in his gloved fingers and is trying to make it buzz by blowing through it, though you need to really have bare hands to do that.

“Until my brother gets elected Imperator.”  He’s gonna do it.  I know he’s gonna do it.  He’d make a good Imperator and Ailadas… I like Ailadas and I’m glad he’s here.  He’s still at the University so Gian and the class are coming here when he’s teaching there.  I missed him when we were gone.  He’s like a grandpa.  Amitzas is my fourth-cousin kinda GRANDFATHER. All really re-spectable.  I don’t think a Mahid knows how to be a grandpa kind of grandpa though.

“Huh.  My sister will like that.  Then she’ll marry him and move back into the Marble Palace with you guys.”

“Yeah.”  There’s only a teeny, high cloud or two over the city, in the far away Rim… like one half of an arrow target.  I pretend that it’s a lot smaller and this edge that I can see off to my one hand is matched by one on the right.  But that’s just silly.  If the pit were that small then the city wouldn’t fit.  Or the lake.  Or the woods. Flapper is snoozing in the roses and I see a big, fat snail on the tree roses over my head and call for Jia.

“Hey, Jia there’s a big one over… Jia?”  He’s not there.  He was on the side of the hill and now he’s not.  I jump up.  “Jia?”

“JIIIIIIIAAAAAAKLLLLLLLEEEEEEEMMMMMM!”

Nothing.  Nuni pushes his dog off his stomach and gets up.  “He was just here.”

“Jia!”  I run over to the hill and then up onto it.  “Jia, where are you?  Jia?” It’s pretty steep for someone to walk up it.  Nuni said it’s because it’s supposed to make you think when you put the effort into climbing up to the folly built on top.

“Maybe he went around the back.”

We worked around and Nuni’s dog started barking.  It was just at an empty snail shell but that was a sign that Jia’d been here.  “Shut up, Roar,” Nuninibas said and went to drag the dog down the hill.  “Go back in.  Go on.” Then he came up to keep helping me look.

“Hey!” My foot sank into the grass and I sat down hard.  The grass had fallen in… in a kind of hole… not a big hole.  Nobody could see it up here because a couple of little trees had rooted here and their roots kinda pulled the dirt up, and we were on the other side of the folly from the house, kinda more toward the big big goldfish pools. There was a crack in the grass.

I pulled my foot out and I could hear Jia cheeping.  He was happy cheeping so there were a lot of creeping, gooey things down there in that hole with him. Nuni looked at me.  I looked at Nuni.  “I could fit in there, I bet,” I said. “I could go get him!”  I wanted to be brave, even if it was dark.  I wanted Jia and nothing had hurt him and it was air not void down there because we could hear him making his happy ‘I’m eating’ noise.

“Oh yeah?” He wasn’t going to let a kid littler than him go ahead of him.  “I’ll bet I can fit in there too --” and he pushed me and I ducked under his arm and into the hole, wiggling, my legs sticking straight out and kicking. I kinda got stuck a little cause it was a little hole and I could hear Nuni yelling stuff but it was muffled ‘cause my head was inside.

Then something shifted under my tummy and I was able to wiggle all the way in.  I fell down and when I stopped I could hear Nuni saying ‘Wait for me!”  It was dark except for the hole I’d come in and then it went all dark when Nuninibas wiggled in and then couldn’t see him and he fell right into me and knocked me over.

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I managed a shortie little post.  I'll see what I can do...