Serpent's Reach

Parn took his hand in hers, put her arm about his shoulders. He was not sure that he had done the right thing; Pare herself had disagreed. But if some message had gone ahead, if the ship had even done something so i

vi

“Warrior,” Raen called softly.

It stirred, let go its hold on the emergency grip.

“Warrior, we are docked now. It’s Raen Meth-maren.” She came and touched it, and it must touch in return, and examine Jim as well, swift gestures.

“Yes,” it said, having Grouped.

“Jim.” Raen gestured at the nearby lift. Jim manoeuvred the baggage cart in, pressed himself against the inside wall as Warrior eased in, and Raen followed.

The doors sealed, and the lift moved. The air grew very close very quickly with the sealed system and the big majat’s breathing. Warrior smelled of something dry and strange, like old paper. The chitin, still wet-looking from shedding, was dry now; where Warrior had broken his old shell, the ship’s crew might find a treasure-trove…none of the Drone-jewels, of course, but material which still had value in ornament: so the hive paid a bonus on its passage. Warrior regarded them both, mildly distressed as the lift reoriented itself; the great head rotated quizzically: compound eyes made moiré patterns under the light, shifting bands of colour buried in jewel-shard armour.

It was beautiful. Raen stroked fits palps to soothe it, and softly it sang for her, Warrior-song.

“Hear it?” Raen asked, looking at Jim. “The hives are full of such sound. Humans rarely hear it.”

Again the lift shifted itself to a new alignment, hissed to a stop. The doors opened for them. Azi on duty fled back, giving them and their tall companion whatever room they wanted.

There was the hatch, and a wafting of the cold, strange air of Istra station, dark spaces and glaring lights. Crew waited to bid them farewell, a changeless formality: so they had surely wished every passenger departing over the long voyage; but there was the strained look of dementia in their eyes and behind their smiles. Andra’s Jewelcould go home now, to safe and friendly space, to ordinary passengers, and her staterooms would fill again with beta-folk, who never thought of Kontrin or majat save at distance.

Raen lingered to shake hands with each, and laughed. Their hands were moist and cold, and their fingers avoided the chitin on her hand where they could.

“Safe voyage,” she wished them one and all.

“Safe voyage,” Warrior breathed, incapable of humour.

No one offered to help them down the ramp. Jim managed the baggage, struggling with the cart which they had tacitly appropriated. They boarded the conveyer and rode it down.

There at the bottom of the ramp stood the Istran pair, inside the security barriers, with a clutch of business types and three other: who might be azi, but not domestics: guards. Raen moved her hand within her cloak, rested it by her gun, calculating which she might remove first if she had to…simple reflex. Her hand rested comfortably there.

The moving ramp delivered them down, and there was view of a drab, businesslike vastness, none of the chrome and glitter of Meron, none of the growing plants of Kalind, or the cosmopolitan grandeur of Cerdin station. This station wasted nothing on display, no expensive shielded viewports. It was all dark machinery and automata, bare joinings and cables and every service-point in sight and reach of hands. It was a trade-station, not for the delight of tourists, but for the businesslike reception of freight. Conveyers laced overhead; transport chutes and dark corridors led away into narrow confinements; azi moved here and there, drab, grey-clad men, unsmiling in their fixation on duty.

Raen inhaled the grimness of it and looked leftward, third berth down, hoping for exotic sights of Outsiders, but all docks looked alike, vast ramps, dwarfing humans, places shrouded in tangles of lines and obscured by machinery. A few human figures moved there, too far to distinguish, tantalising in their possibilities. And she could not delay to investigate them.

“Lost,” Warrior complained, touching nervously at her. The air was cold, almost cold enough to make breath frost. Warrior was almost blind in such a place, and would grow rapidly sluggish.

And the Istrans came forward, further distressing it. Raen reached left-handed to comfort it, and gave Merek Eln a forbidding stare.

“I’d keep my distance,” she said.

Ser Merek Eln did stop, with all his companions. His face was ashen. He looked at the tall majat and at her, and swallowed thickly.

“My party is here,” he said. “We have a shuttle engaged would you consider joining us on our trip down, Kont’ Raen? I…would still like to talk with you.”

She was frankly amazed. This little man, this beta, came offering favours, and had the courage to approach a majat doing it. “My companions would make that rather crowded, ser.”

“We have accommodation enough, if you would.”

“Beta,” warrior intoned. “Beta human.” It moved forward in one stride, to touch the strange human who offered it favours, and Raen put up her hand at once, touched a sensitive auditory palp, restraining warrior. It endured this indignity, fretting.

Merek Eln had not fled. It was possibly the worst moment of his life, but he stood still. Her respect for him markedly increased.

“Ser,” she said, “our presence here must be very important to you personally.”

“Please,” he said in a low voice. “Please. Now. The station is not a secure place to be standing in the open. ITAK can offer you security. We can talk on the way down. It’s urgent.”

All her instincts rebelled at this: it was dangerous, ridiculously dangerous, to accept local entanglements without looking into all sides of the matter.

But she nodded, and walked with them. Jim followed. Warrior stalked beside, statuary in slow motion, trying to hold to human pace.

Their course took them along the dock, nearer and nearer the Outsider berth.

Raen tried not even to glance much that way: it distracted her from the general survey of the area, which her eyes made constantly, nervously. But there were Outsiders; she knew they must be such, by their strange clothing and their business near that berth.

“Are such onworld too?” she asked. “Do they come downworld?”

“There’s a ground-based trade mission,” Kest said.

That cheered her. She could bear it no longer, and stopped and stared at a group of men near them on the dock…plainly dressed, doing azi-work. She wondered whether they were true men or what they were. They stopped their work and stood upright and gaped…more at the majat, surely, than at her.

From Outside. From the wide, free outside, where men existed such as Kontrin had once been. Until now, Outsiders had seen only the shadows of Kontrin; she wondered if they knew—what betas were, or if they had the least comprehension of Kontrin, or realised what she was.

“Sera,” Eln said anxiously. “Please. Please.”

She turned from the strangers, reckoning the open places about them, the chance of ambush. Warrior touched her anxiously, seeking reassurance. She followed the Eln-Kests at what pace they wanted to set, uncertain whether they were evading possible assassins or walking among them.

BOOK FIVE

i

“The old woman has something in mind,” Tand said. “I don’t like it.”

The elder Hald walked a space with his grandnephew, paused to pull a dead bloom from the nightflower. Neighbouring leaves shrank at the touch and remained furled a moment, then relaxed. “Something concrete?”