Destroyer

The truck smelled unpleasantly like fish.

Springs gave. Doors banged, forward. A moment later the truck lurched into gear and growled and lumbered into a turn.

They were leaving tracks that would persist in the tall grass, evident from the air. But trucks such as this one came and went without benefit of roads all the time in the country, heavy-tired, following tracks to fishing traps and boats. They had no choice but some such transport, given that the dowager was not up to the kind of brisk hike Banichi and Jago had taken last night, at what toll on unaccustomed muscles Bren could only imagine, and at what risk to the village in question, which one assumed had lent the truck knowingly to help them.

One assumed so, at least.

They jounced and bounced downhill for a long, winding trek, before they came to more level ground, and gravel under the tires. Likely they had come down to a common market route. The mainland had far fewer roads than Mospheira. By the name on the door, this one truck likely belonged to the whole village of Desigien, which meant any one in the village might use it to haul net, wood, supplies, or, daily, fish, or ice—Bren dimly recalled that an ice plant existed, central between Desigien and several other coastal villages, an essential item for fishermen who hoped to get their catch to market. They would truck it daily to the railhead at—where was it?

Adaran, Adaran was the name, whence it went to larger markets, even to Shejidan itself. If people in the district went visiting, they would walk generally, or take the local bus, which provided social co

He knew. He’d once had the job of surveying the rail systems, advising the aiji where expansion would or would not better serve the area… in those ages-ago and i

Circles. Interlocking circles. And no one went far by truck or bus. If they took their little truck out of district, it would look increasingly out of place, the farther it went from its origin. It could by no means serve them all the way to Shejidan. The train was where they were going. And how they were going to get aboard that without a fuss…

“Will we ride the train?” Cajeiri asked, as they bounced painfully about in potholes and what might be ruts, or simply an abundance of rocks amid the gravel. “Are we going to drive all the way to Shejidan?”

“We will take the train, young sir,” Cenedi’s voice said in the darkness. And because there was an obvious next question, for which Cajeiri could be heard drawing breath: “As far as Taiben.”

Taiben, it was. The aiji’s estate. If there was one place they might find trouble, nearly as efficiently as at Shejidan, Taiben was a likely place.

But it was a sprawling estate, almost a province unto itself, a maze of hunting paths and woods in which they might even lose this truck—if they could get fuel enough to get them there. He wished they could do without the train.

“Listen to me,” Ilisidi said, sternly, “listen, great-grandson, and remember a name. Desari. Remember this name, and be in debt to this village. Lord Geigi once rescued this man Desari and his daughter at sea when their boat engine failed, and when they had drifted for days, likely to die. Geigi recommended Desari of Desigien as a name to rely on, since every year that he could, on the a

“On the Ragi.”

“On all the Ragi,” Ilisidi said. “And you must remember it, boy, for another generation, a debt to him, and his whole association. The risk we have asked of them is considerable.”

“Our enemies could see the name on the truck.”

“Exactly so, if we make a mistake, and they will be in grave danger. What is the name, boy?”

“Desari,” Cajeiri said. “Desari. From this coast. From Desigien. But, mani-ma, will this Desari come with us on the train?”

“No,” Cenedi said. “He would be little help.”

“But,” said Cajeiri.

“Give us rest, great-grandson. An honest truck does not jabber as it proceeds along the road. We should be an ordinary truck, full of fish. Who knows who might hear, along the road?”

“Who would be listening, mani-ma?”

“Hush, I say!”

There was silence, then, none of them brooking the dowager’s exhausted a

There was a whole world of things which, he thought suddenly, no, the boy didn’t automatically know, simply by being born atevi. He’d been very young when he’d been shunted off to Taiben, and then again sent off to his great-great-uncle Tatiseigi’s estate at age five, scarcely informed about the world at large, scarcely philosophical when, scarcely six, he’d gotten a little freedom of the grounds and learned to ride.

That had been a disaster, involving wet concrete and a very large patio, and uncle Tatiseigi’s great indignation.

Then the lad had been whisked off to space to get an education. To get an education, his father had said.

In what? Hacking the ship’s computer? Talking to hostile foreigners? Cajeiri was quite precocious in those regards… but what had they taught him? A fondness for dinosaurs?

They might, if they had been wiser, spent a little more time on the ordinary arts of going unseen, on natural history and most of all on atevi classics, which might have taught him that badgering his great-grandmother was not productive of harmony.

Not to mention the boy’s lack of knowledge about the world itself. How could he know how this truck fit into a village on the coast? How could he know how the roads lay, or how they all went to rail lines?

The boy had, literally, dropped in out of space onto his own planet, naïve regarding the weather, regarding the geography, naïve in many ways regarding Ragi rural society, and, the paidhi supposed, ignorant of the fabric of traditional atevi life which ought to trigger appropriate atevi twitches in young atevi nerves—if those nerves hadn’t been jangled by too much sugar and too many humans and no contact at all with the planet. He’d done his most critical growing in a linear human corridor only partially jury-rigged into a dwelling of atevi pattern. He’d entertained himself with movies and cultivated human children. The atevi world—it had its rhythms, its seasonally proper foods, its rules of etiquette and ethics, all the social graces that appeased volatile tempers and stiff regional pride. The boy had had the dowager to hammer the traditional courtesies and social conventions into his head, but had the nerves ever gotten triggered in the right ways, at the right times, in the very basic sense?