Conquerors' Heritage

Kl

Thrr-gilag frowned at her. He'd been under the distinct impression that the Mrachani mission was going to be kept a fairly close secret. "How in the eighteen worlds did you hear about that?"

"Never underestimate the ingenuity of a trained searcher," Kl

"And you just happened to be sort of leaning up against the shelter wall at the time?"

"Me?" Kl

Thrr-gilag grimaced. Human-Conqueror. The term had even made it out here. "They're hardly my people anymore," he told Kl

"I gathered as much," Kl

"My own fault," Thrr-gilag told her. "Apparently, the rule is you kill prisoners rather than let them escape."

She eyed him. "Do I detect a trace of bitterness?"

"More strong indignation than bitterness," Thrr-gilag told her. "And mostly on your behalf, actually. Speaker Cvv-panav pressured the Overclan Prime into putting a Dhaa'rr in the group; and because he was mad at me, he picked Gll-borgiv instead of you."

Kl

"He's still nowhere near as good as you."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," she said. "Still, I don't really think you should take the blame for my missed chance at glory."

Thrr-gilag looked at the encampment ahead. At the predator fence, the shelters... and the white tip of the pyramid sticking up over them. That was something else they hadn't had on those training expeditions ten cyclics ago. No fsss cuttings with anchored Elders there to act as communicators.

Or to listen over your shoulder, whether you wanted them there or not. "Is there someplace where we can talk privately?" he asked Kl

"I'm sure we can find one," she said, her tone faintly amused. "I thought you didn't have much time."

"I'm not talking about that," Thrr-gilag said, feeling his tail speed up with both anticipation and a faint embarrassment. "I mean, not that I don't want to be close—but that's not what I meant. I meant talk. Really talk."

"Oh," she said, frowning up at him. She followed his line of sight to the pyramid. "Well... sure. I've been wanting to check out some of the farms around the other side of the ridge, anyway. And that would give me a chance to show you what we're doing here. Let's go see if Prr-eddsi will let me take out one of the floaters."

Ten hunbeats later they were in a floater, heading out from the encampment. Thrr-gilag waited until they were well outside the Elders' five-thoustride anchorline limit, and then told Kl

She listened in silence. "You're sure about this?" she asked when he'd finished.

"I don't know if you can ever be sure about Elder rumors," Thrr-gilag said, gazing out at the rocky Gree landscape flowing by beneath them. "All I know is that my father thought it was solid enough to warn me."

"Yes," Kl

"Maybe none of your Elders here have heard the rumors," Thrr-gilag suggested diplomatically.

She threw him a scornful look. "Oh, come on, Thrr-gilag. You get a rumor started anywhere in the eighteen worlds, and every Elder's going to hear about it. You know that better than I do—you wrote your searcher thesis on it. Our Elders here know, all right. They've just decided not to tell me about it."

Thrr-gilag shrugged uncomfortably. "I suppose you can hardly blame them. All your Elders here are Dhaa'rr, after all. They're probably less thrilled than even your leaders about having me in the clan."

"Well, that's just plain stupid," Kl

"Except that your pyramid's safely inside a predator fence," Thrr-gilag pointed out. "His aren't. Anyway, that's not really what they're mad at him about."

"They can't blame him for Prr't-zevisti, either," she said firmly. "I know he was my clan and I should be sorry he's dead; but what happened to him was at least as much his own fault as it was Thrr-mezaz's. No one ordered him to stay with his cutting—he could have gone straight to his family shrine and stayed there."

"Unless there's a link between the cutting and the main fsss organ we don't know about," Thrr-gilag said doubtfully. "Maybe if you destroy a fsss cutting, the Elder dies whether he's anchored there at the time or not."

"No," Kl

"You're right," Thrr-gilag said, a small fraction of the weight lifting from his shoulders. "I hadn't thought about that. Still, I doubt it's going to make much difference to the Dhaa'rr Elders."

"No, of course not," Kl

"We're not going to give up," Thrr-gilag told her. "That much is for sure. The only question is how to fight back."

"Yes," Kl

"We can point out how antiquated these prejudices are, too," Thrr-gilag suggested. "We've had open territorial borders for a hundred cyclics now—strictures on interclan bonding ought to be obsolete, too."

"Right—let's toss in a little shame and embarrassment," Kl