Ice war, p.12
Ice War, page 12
With a pile of wood in the fireplace, she leveled the coil pistol at the shadowy opening in the wall, thumbed the setting to low and ignited the wood with a spurt of fire from the weapon. She smiled and closed the grate. The fire roared into life, but she didn’t head straight back down to the water cavern. Yajain broke the rest of the door with her shadow dancing on the walls all around, and dim red Solna light casting the whole scene in a twilight glow.
Kaga Pillar, 8 Years Ago
Yajain paced back and forth behind Mosam, who stood at the counter of the chemist’s traveling shop rolled out on the dock. Vials of liquid chemicals and tubs of dusty solids lined the shop’s front. Mosam haggled with the lanky chemist over a vial of reddish fluid with a metallic stabilizing brace built into it. They spoke softly, so Yajain had to strain to hear even snatches of their conversation.
“Done,” said the chemist at last. “I hope you master will find it useful.”
“We feel the same way.” Mosam smiled and turned from the counter. “Come on Yajay, let’s go.”
She hefted the bag Mosam had slowly filled with the other purchases.
“You got everything?” She held the bag open for him to put the last vial inside.
He shook his head.
“This one can be volatile. I’ll carry it myself.”
“Alright.” She closed up the bag.
That vial would be found in the entrance of the armory after the explosion. One of a few pieces of evidence, including Lin’s testimony, that pointed directly to Mosam’s involvement in the blast.
The remains of the broken door smoldered in the hearth. Yajain slumped against a wall, warmed by the fire. Her memory of Mosam buying the explosive chemical kept her from returning to the water cavern despite her growing thirst. She folded the coat beside her as the room grew warmer. Even with the door open to the red-lit snowdrifts outside, the place kept in heat well. She unzipped the collar of her powered-down suit and dozed fitfully in a sitting position, leaning against the wall.
The thuds of footsteps over the crackling flames woke her. She stretched as she opened her eyes.
Mosam stood by the open doorway where snow had begun to drift inside. The red light had given way to a dim gray filtered through clouds above the reef. Yajain stood up and yawned. Mosam turned from the doorway.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
Yajain shrugged.
“I’ve gotten worse sleep on surveys.”
“Should have come back to the water cavern. Warmer down there at least.”
“I wanted to watch the fire.”
And you were down there. She zipped up her collar and walked to the door. She peered into the clouds that circled low over the reef.
“So what do we do now?”
“We’ll have to search the town. Maybe there are more supplies around. Then we can keep moving across the reef.”
“In the middle of this cold season?” Yajain asked.
He glanced at her.
“It’s not a good option, but I can’t think of another one.”
“Let’s at least wait for the storm to finish.” Yajain’s eyes met his. “We could get lost in this.”
“Better lost together than apart.”
She smiled despite her misgivings about Lin and Mosam.
“Maybe, but not better lost.”
He nodded.
“Alright. Let’s take a look around.”
“Sure.”
She picked up the coat and slipped it on. She followed Mosam outside, stepping through deep drifts of snow that formed along their side of the street. A high pitched whine echoed through the air overhead, faint, perhaps distant.
“Do you hear that?” Yajain asked.
“Hear what?”
“Up in the air. I think I hear some sort of whine.”
“Could be a flier.” Mosam’s expression darkened. “Could be tyrants.”
“Tyrant ships run silent,” Yajain said. “Isn’t that how they sneak around so well?”
“Probably true.” Mosam tilted his head back and gazed into the wispy clouds that circled overhead in thick clumps.
“I think we should take a chance.” Yajain folded her arms against the cold that seemed even more intense despite the heat of the Solna burning distant at the side of a pillar high above.
Mosam scowled.
“I don’t like it, but you have a point.”
“How likely is it there are other tyrants around?”
“I can’t even guess. Not enough information.”
Yajain shivered in the cold. Her heat layer was still disabled, and the ragged coat barely kept out any of the biting wind.
A shape hovered over the reef in the distance, framed between two relatively nearby pillars, illuminated by flickers of light on its nose. Yajain squinted at the shape as it buzzed out of the gap between the two pillars and into the open air.
“It’s moving fast,” she said.
“Headed straight this way.” Mosam’s voice sounded heavy. “Guess we’ll find out if they’re friend or foe soon.”
They watched the airborne light cut through clouds and occasional flurries of snow until it hovered large over the settlement. Mosam and Yajain hunkered down by the broken doorway and looked up. Yajain kept a hand on her coil pistol. She knew it would not be much use based on the size of the vessel floating overhead, a sleek, distinctly-human ship about fifty meters long, with swept-back wings and long guidance fins along the narrow length of the hull both above and below.
Mosam’s eyes widened as the smooth ship banked overhead.
“I know this ship!” He stood up and waved.
He and Yajain made their way into the middle of the street. Mosam waved his arms up and down. The smoke from the inn’s tubular chimney issued into the air. Yajain supposed that could have been what the ship’s sensors had picked up. She glanced at Mosam as the vessel descended over the street.
“What ship is it?”
“Harvest ships don’t have names,” said Mosam, grinning. The increased volume of the ship’s whine made him difficult to hear. “But this one belongs to Doctor Savar.”
Yajain’s heartbeat hammered as she thought of Savar. He’d manipulated Mosam into that attack on the armory all those years ago. He was responsible for Lin’s lost legs, Lin’s lost patience. Responsible for where Yajain stood in that moment.
But he’s also the only way out of this situation.
Mosam waved his arm as the ship descended to hover over the rooftops. A circular door opened in the bottom of the ship and a corded rope ladder fell to the snow in the street. Yajain glanced at Mosam.
He shrugged.
“No arc. Best way to get up without landing.”
Yajain walked to the ladder. One hand clapped to her ear.
“What is that whining sound?”
Mosam stopped beside her.
“A transmission jammer, I think. I can barely hear it.” He looked up the ladder at the passage in the base of the ship. “After you.”
Yajain climbed, Mosam right behind her. They reached the top and were greeted by a trio of men in heat masks and coats with split beam rifles, the kind one could use to shoot in two places at once. Yajain put her hands up slowly. Mosam did the same beside her.
“Who are you?” asked one of the men.
“Doctor Yajain Aksari.”
“Mosam Coe. Doctor of the Harvest.”
The man stepped back and shouldered the barrel of his rifle.
“Coe?”
“Yes. Is Doctor Savar on board? I wish to speak with him.”
“He’s not here. But he’ll have words for you, Doctor Coe.”
“And I’ll have words for him,” said Yajain.
Mosam’s eyebrows went up.
“Careful Yayay.”
Yajain bowed her head. I will not let him get away with what he did, with what he made Mosam do. She nodded.
The other two men lowered their rifles. The leader motioned with one arm as the door sealed.
“Doctor Coe. Doctor Aksari, follow me.” He led them to a small cabin. “The flight won’t be long.”
“Thanks for the rescue,” Mosam said.
“We didn’t expect to find you out here,” said the harvest soldier. “Doctor Coe, you have a lot to explain.”
“I’ll explain everything to Doctor Savar,” Mosam said.
The soldier nodded.
“The flight is about thirty minutes while we maintain stealth.” He keyed the door open. The cabin was dimly lit by a strip of lights on the ceiling and had a hammock on one side and a conventional bed on the other. Better yet, it was warm. The soldier said, “Wait here.”
Yajain and Mosam entered the cabin. The soldier left down the passage. Yajain sat down on the bed. Mosam sat beside her.
“What will you do when you see Savar?”
“I never…I never cared for him like I did for you. I don’t know.”
“Be patient,” Mosam said. “Trust me, it will be better for both of us.”
Yajain nodded.
“I trust you.”
He wrapped an arm gently around her waist and leaned into her hair.
“I trust you too.”
The harvest ship skimmed over the reef. In the windowless cabin, Yajain supported herself against Mosam, one hand clasping his at her side.
The Harvest ship hung in open air above an icy settlement near the edge of Ambana Reef. Yajain descended on the same rope ladder she and Mosam used to climb on board. Halfway down she looked over the low rooftops at the abyssal mists beyond the edge of the reef.
Tendrils formed of reef creatures extended like gnarled branches into the mist, fingers searching for something to grasp. They would find only mist for hundreds of kilometers in that direction. A lone blue Solna circled in the darkness further out, glimmering through the clouds.
Mosam glanced down at Yajain from above her.
“Strange view, right Yajay?”
“Yeah. I’ve never seen a place like this before.”
“To think, at one point living on a pillar would have seemed just as strange.”
Yajain tore her eyes from the gaping misty depths and continued down the ladder. She dropped the last rung and landed in a tiled courtyard before a long, ten-meter high building surrounded by a shorter square-cornered wall about three meters tall. The paving tiles were warm and free of frost. Icicles hung from the eaves of both the walls and the building. Yajain stepped out of the way to let Mosam step off the ladder.
He lowered himself to one knee and looked up at the clouds, tinged blue in the direction of the abyss.
“This is the colony Savar and I first visited when we reached Ambana.” He rose. “I know a lot of the people here.”
“Do they know who you are?”
“They know I’m a Doctor of the Harvest.”
“Looks like their won’t be any crops here for a while.”
“The name of the coldest season is winter. It will be more than a quarter cycle before they can plant again, but reef crops bear enough to feed them through the whole season if everything is done properly.”
Yajain looked around the empty courtyard.
“Where do we go from here?”
“To the church.” Mosam motioned toward the large building at the center of the walls. “Savar is getting old. I don’t think he’ll come outside to meet us himself.”
Yajain frowned. Whether or not I do anything now is up to me. They didn’t even take my pistol. Because I’m with Mosam they trust me. Lin, I can’t punish Savar here either. Not yet.
Mosam and Yajain turned to face the double doors of the church. He drew in a long breath.
“Are you ready to see him?”
“At least he won’t surprise me. Unlike someone.”
“I didn’t mean to deceive you, even when I was disguised as Tulem Rosh.”
“That’s funny. What else is a disguise for?”
He shrugged.
“Deceiving other people.”
“Don’t tell me you just did it too well.”
“I won’t.”
Mosam smiled. They walked to the church doors. Mosam pulled one of them open.
Darkness filled the space beyond opening large enough for both Mosam and Yajain to pass through together. Reef buildings tended toward the unusually broad and squat compared to what Yajain was accustomed to on terraces or inside pillars. She and Mosam stopped inside the doors. Darkness cloyed around them, the shades on the large windows pulled.
Yajain looked down the length of the shadowed room. Empty benches lined the room in rows.
“Warm welcome.”
“Well it is the cold season,” said Mosam. “He may be in the water cavern.”
“You sure?” Many predators prefer the dark. But Savar is a man, not an animal. Not a hunter.
Mosam nodded, face hidden in darkness. He reached for her. She grasped his hand. They walked through the dim room between the benches, benches Yajain realized, carved from wood rather than sculpted of metal or plastic. A small light flickered on at one side of the room as they passed the final row of benches.
Yajain squinted at the tiny white light. It illuminated a stairway leading beneath the main room. ]
“I think you were right about the water cavern.”
They followed the light and then down the stairs into the living depths of an expansive water cavern. Warm streams dripped from bony protrusions, flowed down support columns, ran along a floor covered in pale brown tiles reflecting shining lamps set throughout the room. Mosam led the way around one column and bowed his head to the hunched figure that sat on a chair between two lamps. The man cast a long shadow, despite his low, shapeless frame.
“Master.” Mosam raised his voice. “I have returned.”
“Mosam,” Savar said in a loud voice still recognizable to Yajain after all these years. “It is good you returned, boy. I am certain you have much to tell me, as does Adya as well.”
“Adya is not here, Master.”
Yajain swallowed. She stepped out of the shadows and leveled her gaze at Savar.
Savar raised his head and gazed at her face.
“I see. You know, Yajain, I never forget a face.”
Her eyes narrowed and she released a tense breath. The coil pistol felt heavy at her belt.
“Do you remember the face of my sister?”
“If ever I was to see either of you again, I thought it would be Linekta. Not you.”
Yajain’s fingers clenched beside the pistol grip, knuckles brushing the plasticized material. Shadows encroached, and she realized Savar had not been alone before she and Mosam had arrived. Human shapes filled gaps between slender columns. Yajain’s eyes never left Savar’s face.
“Have you told these people what you did before you came here?”
“Some things are best left in the past.”
“What if I told them?”
Savar’s hunched frame stilled for a breath before he spoke again.
“Go ahead. Mosam and I already bear all the guilt we can.”
Yajain bowed her head and took a breath. She pointed at Savar.
“You ordered Mosam to destroy that armory on Kaga Pillar. Both of you knew my sister was the only one working there. She lost her legs in that attack. That betrayal.”
“Yajain,” said Mosam in a soft voice.
She glared at him out of the corner of her eye. He looked pale in the lamplight.
“Do you have any idea what it meant to her…that her boyfriend, someone she trusted, crippled her, could have killed her?” What it meant to me? What it still means to both of us?
“Is that all you wanted to say to me?” Savar asked.
Yajain’s fingers opened and she seized the pistol grip. She drew the weapon and trained it on the old man.
“Words can’t change what happened,” she said. “Nothing can.”
A murmur ran through the people surrounding Yajain and Mosam in the shadows of the water cavern. Mosam stood beside Yajain, making no move to stop her. A tremor ran through him from head to foot.
Yajain held the pistol steady. Savar’s liver-spotted forehead nodded toward her. Wisps of white hair drifted. His chin brushed the high collar of his long coat.
“You already know nothing can change what has happened. If that does not convince you of the futility of revenge I can do no more.”
Revenge. Futile.
“You deserve this.” Her grip tightened on the pistol and her finger moved toward the trigger. Am I really so much like Lin? Can’t I forgive? Can anyone? She blinked back the start of tears.
She turned the pistol sideways and dropped it to the tiled floor of the water cavern. It hit with a dull thud and skidded toward Savar.
“But I’m not the one to do it.”
Savar’s eyes fixed on the pistol at the base of his chair. He lifted his eyes to Yajain. His dark eyes moved to the men and women gathered on either side, all of them silent for that moment.
Tears ran down her face. Mosam’s hand found hers. He leaned close to her side.
“Thank you.”
She shook her head.
“No. Don’t thank me. Because it wouldn’t have been right to shoot him.”
A murmur ran through the crowd. A man and a woman broke away from the crowd and approached Savar. The man, tall and lanky, bent over and picked up the coil pistol. He held it out to Savar.
“Looks like Dilinian military make, doctor.”
“These two have much to tell us.” Savar turned to the woman. “Please, send the congregation upstairs for a few minutes.”
The woman turned to the crowd.
“Doctor Savar is safe. He wishes to speak with these two in private for now.”
Yajain, brow furrowed, glanced up at Savar. Mosam’s hand gripped hers tightly. People moved past them on both sides and up the stairs to the water cavern. She turned toward Mosam, found his face very close to hers.
“I’m alright.” She wiped her eyes with her free hand. “Please let go.”
He nodded and released her hand, then straightened his back and turned to Savar. Yajain tried her best to remain calm as she did the same. Savar faced them with another nod. He reached up to his ear slowly and hit a silvery bulb attached to the lobe that Yajain hadn’t noticed before.
