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“When do we go?” he asked, not patterning this: it was himself and Elai talking, two humans, that was all, and there was something electric in it as if something from a long time ago were back for a moment.
O Elai, secrets. You loved this man, that’s what. And you’ve got him puzzled now.
Young Din was standing over against the wall with Twostone all this while, his little face all hard and scared. First born. I think he’s in danger. If anyone in that hall would have knifed that man, Din might.
The thing is, with Taem’s son gone among the Weirds, Taem Eldest is lost from the First Tower pattern, as if there had never been a son. Thatwas the change in the pattern, I think, that let Taem in.
And Paeia–lean and mean as they come, that old woman, always in riding leathers and always carrying a knife. Paeia was right by the door when Taem went outside again, back to his own riders across the river, and that sent the chills up my back. That woman rules Second Tower, and she’s mateless at the moment; and there was thinking in that look she gave him.
Solutions occur to me, that I don’t like to write down. I know this Taem thought of them. “I don’t have Jin’s ma
Elai is the key, the peacemaker, Scar’s rider–the only one who can dominate the others and hold Cloudside together, and if anything should happen to her now it’ll fall, everything will come apart in chaos. Taem–he was challenging her the same way: See if you can hold the Seaward Towers without me. But likewise he knew, I think, he couldn’t do without her. Neither can Paeia. Not in this moment.
I look out the window and it’s crazy out beyond the river. Calibans. Everywhere. And already the grays are reworking the Pattern out there, broadcasting it to anyone who’s not Pattern‑blind.
xlvi
Message, Station to Base Director
Survey picks up increased activity on the Cloud, a frenzy of mound‑building answering this advance of the Styxsiders from the upriver. It seems clear that Cloud River is aware what is happening, through spies, perhaps. The mounds suggest ramparts, but they are curiously placed as defense, and the lines change constantly. We observe no such activity on the part of the Styxsiders. They only camp and advance, averaging thirty kilometers a day.
It seems clear that there is a massing of calibans for defense or attack at the Cloud River settlement. These have come from the two seaside settlements and their numbers are being augmented hourly.
…Observers in field are at hazard…
Message, Base Director to E. McGee in Field
Genley and team are missing on Styxside. Do you know anything?
Memo, Security to Base Director
Agents in field are proceeding with utmost caution. War seems imminent. Field agents are reporting unusual aggressiveness on the part of calibans.
Memo, Base Director to Security
I don’t think there’s any question Genley, Kim, and Ma
xlvii
205 CR, day 60
Cloudside
The corridors were u
Great calibans moved in that no one owned, just arrived–presumably from upriver, from the forest. There were giants among these newcomers, but Weirds kept them to the Pattern across the river, and they tried none of the local calibans.
Wild, McGee thought, or tame. There was no distinction. And they remained, harbingers of trouble up the Cloud, while Elai delayed to move. The riders fretted; the calibans seemed indecisive. It all seemed wrong. And the halls grew dusty with neglect, under the wear of feet both shod and clawed; the sun shafted through clouds within the inmost halls, dustmotes dancing.
So she came on Din, in a little‑used way, a shadow in the dustmotes. She had not looked to meet him.
“Din,” she said by way of greeting. “Haven’t seen you.” He had not come for stories. She missed that. He remained a shadow to her, mostly, with Twostone close against the wall, a caliban silhouette out of which the light picked tiny details, the color of a nose, a lambent eye too shadowed for color, staring at her.
Din said nothing, but bowed his head and stood aside for her to pass.
“Din–are you all right?” she asked.
Notes, coded journal Dr. E. McGee
I talked with Din today. I don’t think he understood. He’s seven. He’s wiry, all elbows; you want to give his face a washing and comb his hair; and then you look into his eyes and you wouldn’t dare. He’s a boy that’s thinking hard right now, how to stay alive. That’s the way it is. He’s not mature, not in all ways. He’s growing and awkward and he took a stone when I was trying to talk with him and threw it. Like a child. He cried, trying not to let me see.
I don’t want to die. That’s what that meant. He just threw the stone and it bounced off the wall and hit me. I never let on it did. I just stared at him the way you have to do with that boy to let him know he doesn’t impress you; and he just broke into tears then and turned his face out of the light.
“Jin scare you?” I asked.
“No,” he said, and sniffed and wiped his eyes and tried to pretend he hadn’t ever cried, all sullen and arrogant. “Not scared.”
“Look at the sea,” I said. That puzzled him, us being inside, in the dark. “Look at the sea next time you’re out.”
“Why?” He’s a little boy, always ready to suspect someone’s playing tricks on him.
“You just do that.” I started to talk about boats, which we had talked about before. He just made that stone‑dropping move. I don’t want to talk.
“You be smart,” I said. “You want to live to be a man?”
That got his attention. So that was what he was thinking about.
“Just be smart,” I said, not knowing how to advise him, because it’s not my world; it’s his. “Your mother wants you alive, you know that? That’s why she’s got that Taem around; because what’s coming up that river is mean and it’s coming here, you know that?”
He squatted there thinking about that, and then I figured out that scene on the roof, where he defied his mother; where his little caliban took on Scar, who makes ten of him. Scared. Just scared and full of fight, this boy. Elai’s son. I tousled his hair; no one touches him much: it’s not Cloudsider way. He set his jaw and ducked, but he looked pleased as that sullen little face of his does these days. Poor boy. Your mother loves you. I do.
“I like you,” I said then. He looked pleased. If he were a caliban his crest would have settled. That kind of look. His caliban moved up and nearly knocked him off his haunches, putting its head in our way. They know where the sunlight is. The attention. I don’t know how they know, or how much they understand. “Fight,” I said, “but be smart.”
“Elai say that?” he asked.
I lied about that, but I thought she would if she were not busy; but she said I should take care of her sons for her, so I guess it was in a way the truth.
I talked to Cloud too, but that’s nothing. Cloud’s too young to know much. And Taem knows–who knows what a Weird knows, but too much for any five year old, and too different to hear anything I could say. Scar talks to him. All the grays and ariels do. Presumably that’s enough.