Monday, June 22, 2708, continued

          I totter upslope in rags that don’t keep out the gusts of mountain winter, dulled to the crunch of frost with each numb footfall, through a landscape of gray and white.  I clutch my hammock around my shoulders by way of shawl, having given my blanket to a shivering brother and sister to share between them, and my poncho to a young boy blue with cold.

          The mountains look jagged all around, raw rock as yet unsoftened in this still-young range of active vulcanism.  Spearpoints and blades thrust up, pitted and corroded yet sharp enough.  I’ve climbed so high, so far from anything my trapmappers—pardon me, mission-planners—had in mind for me.  So why does it feel that I keep sinking and sinking deeper all the time?

          (“Don't worry,” I whisper to Jake, even as he loudly and rudely groans, “Ohhh no!” at the office doorway, seeing our two 'trapmappers' .  “Don and I won't let her eat you alive.”

          “Come on in,” Zora singsongs, smiling ironically under her goggle-thick glasses, her various braces in the same black leather and chrome buckles as the rest of her attire, blending right in.)

          Then I remember who planned this mission.  Jonathan.  And my heart plummets even further than before.

          (Incense, as ever at her side, leafs through printouts.  Her wildly mismatched scarves and beads and layers of skirts, and her fluorescent henna’d hair, look out of place in the stuffy air of an Agency office, as she probably intends.  “I see you've already begun to study Toulin.  Why are we not surprised?”

          “Hey!” Jake lunges for the papers.  “That's confidential!”

          “A pity,” Zora sniffs.  “Rules, rules, rules...I keep forgetting that I'm not an outlaw anymore.”)

          I keep forgetting that this wasn’t even supposed to become a mission at all.

          (“I will see you in court!” Jake shouts, and turns to leave, but Incense grabs him by the arm, letting papers flutter to the floor.

          “Technically we didn't break any rules,” she cajoles, leading Jake to a seat.  “It's all in your personality profiles.  Mission-planners have legal access to that much, at least.”  Don and I take seats beside him—discreetly ready to grab him, if it comes to that.

          Zora pretends to pout.  “Oh, 'mission-planner' sounds so fussy.  I like 'trapmapper' much better.”

          Jake grates, “It is not a compliment.'

          Zora's eyes glint behind the glasses as she grins and says, “Yes, but it has pizzazz!”

          Don gesticulates like he pats down boiling-over emotions in the air.  “Okay, Zora, we all acknowledge your pizzazziness...”

          “If by that you mean criminality,” Jake mutters.

          “...so can we get on with the business at hand?”  Don finishes, ignoring him. “What'n'earth does Toulin need an agent for?”

          Incense laughs in that patented disconcerting way she has. “We don't know!”)

          What did I—what did either of us know?  Take a break, he said, “...to help your poor ol’ mentor retire.”  Yeah, right.  “They’ve offered me the ambassadorship as a synecure, but I think I can still serve Lovequest in my last days, on a quiet scale.”  He figured, he said, that I could use something easy, after my illness in Camelot.  “Enjoy a little pampering and culture along the way,” he urged me, “a vacation of sorts, really.”  I remember his exact words.  “The country does have a few misguided insurrectionists,” he admitted, “and a few unwise policies that could use some readjustment, but nothing pressing, nothing that you and I can’t solve together, with a little love and patience.”  How was I to know, from the information given me, what this nation really needed?

          (Serious, now, Zora puts in, “But we do know that they need agents.  A team.  Don, did Jake show you the crystal?”

          Don shudders and nods.  “I haven't touched anything that toxic since I got hold of that pendant that Incense stole from you.”  Then, seeing Jake and me gape at him, he quickly adds, “Second worst—not quite in the same league.  I'm not...I'm all right, okay?”  He turns back to the women, saying, “The odd thing is, I got a distinct impression of children handling it.  Nobody but children, till the adult who mailed it to us touched it.”)

          When he spoke of “a few” insurrectionists in the hills, did he guess how many?  Did he picture children when he said it?

          (“That fits,” Zora says, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes, “since the call came from a boy's boarding school.”  Disturbingly, she reminds me of Jake when she does that.  “Believe me, lads, this one has given us headaches.”

          “And nightmares,” Incense adds, her eyes wide and solemn now.)

          Nightmares.  That’s what turns my thoughts to him, I guess.  I keep having these nightmares of Jonathan offering me a swig from his bottle—and then his face turns into a skull.

          (I hear a knock at the door, so I get up and open it.

          “Lisa!” I exclaim, and give her a quick hug before Don sees.)

          God help me, sometimes I take it.  I get so lonely for understanding, for just one person to remember who I used to be.  But I always wake up with my heart pounding in horror.

          (“Am I late?” she asks as I help her out of her coat.

          “No, we're just starting.”)

          Somebody who knew the Deirdre who finally finished dying with Kief.

          (Zora calls out, “Not that you'll ever start, kidita.”

          “But you should,” Incense adds, cutting a brief glare at Zora.  “We need to give them a chance to do the sensible thing.  So we have to train you, too, as if you'd go to Toulin with the rest.”)

          In some dreams I ask Jonathan to snap my spine in two, so that I can never march again.  It makes sense at the time.

          (“The sensible thing,” Zora singsongs, “The logical, predictable thing, exactly what they need—so of course they won't go for it.”

          Incense shakes her head.  “We could really use a telepath on the case—ideally, a member of the same friendclan.”

          “Tall enough, strong-jawed enough, flat, more handsome than pretty—you'd make a fine boy, my dear.  You'd blend right in. Except you won't.”

          As Lisa glares at Zora (and Don and I do, too, and Jake never stopped) Incense adds, “and we need you for another reason as well, one we haven't yet dragged up to words—yet precisely the same reason that they won't have you.”)

          “They do have a caste system,” Jonathan admitted when I met him at the train-station in Naugren.  “Nothing oppressive; all castes have rights, by law, and upward mobility’s actually fairly easy—it’s more class than caste, really, and all but a few malcontents are happy with the status quo.  But it’s not healthy, you understand.  That’s precisely why I want to retire there—to help them find a healthier way .”

          And then he drove me to my hotel-room full of books.  I spent the next few days lounging about and studying, glad of the rest...soaking up all the textbooks full of lies, and lies and lies!

          Because I trusted him, even with this startling, last-minute admission.  He had planned all of my missions.  He had loved me since I was a little girl.  Jake’s the oracle, not me; why should I pay attention to the clenching in my gut?

          (Lisa sits down on the arm of the couch besides Don and mutters, “The last thing I need is an oracle for my trapmapper—let alone a pair!”

          Jake fidgets uncomfortably, but Incense and Zora both laugh.  “But that's what makes us so good at it,” they exclaim.  Simultaneously.

          “How's that supposed to help us,” Lisa cries, “When we can't understand a word you say?”

          “That's all right,” Incense says with a smirk.  “We can't understand ourselves, either.”

          “It's okay, Lis,” I tell her.  “I've got experience in unraveling oracle-speak.”  I turn to our mission-planners.  “Carry on, Weird Sisters—I just hope you've got better advice for us than for Macbeth.”

          Zora appreciates a good jibe.  She laughs out loud, crying, “Why, little Baptist! You feelin' a wicked-fit coming on?”)

          Immersion into study—I appreciated the excuse to stay in my room and avoid the misogyny of Naugren.  We, the Tilián, say that it’s all right, women can leave Naugren freely if they wish, and the nation has been such a good ally for generations, now.  How freely, realistically?  How many places do we allow a certain wickedness, which we would quickly oppose elsewhere, because they’re such “good allies”?  And how many other secrets does Archives hold close to her chest, not nearly as visible as the things that we choose to ignore?

          (But this time Incense plays the sane one for a change.  “Seriously, people.  All cards on the table.  We know that something has gone wrong in a boy's school in Toulin, something not apparent to the eye just yet, but powerful enough to charge a magentine crystal to hell and gone with evil.  Something way bigger than the school, or the entire nation of Toulin.”

          “A snag in a mothhole,” Jake barely breaths the words.  That old saying, again.  He keeps referring to it lately.)

          Oh, I couldn’t wait to get on the Shuttle to Istislan!  To deal with the “minor issues” of a “pleasant” country.  Yet my heart kept rising and falling like the motion of the jet.  Even before we arrived I felt a wrongness, Jonathan’s words notwithstanding.  How much of Jake’s talent flows back to me, in the link between us, anyway?

          (Zora sobers, telling us, “We have a rare opportunity, in that the Headmaster has gone completely against Toulin isolationism and arrogance, and indeed against his most profound training, to invite us in.”   She shrugs.  “Of course I get the distinct impression that he himself might be an untrained oracle, and knows when to do the unexpected.”

          Jake groans.  “Oh, that's all we need!”

          I silently agree.  Even with full training, people like Jake take a lot of handling.   Knowing what I've read about the culture, I ask, “How’n’earth did such a man become a headmaster in Toulin, of all places?”

          Incense glances at Jake before addressing me.  “No one can find an oracle who wants lost.  I think he has hidden his nature even from himself.”

          Zora adds, “And, until now, nothing in his society has threatened his stability.”

          Quietly Jake adds, “Except whatever trauma made him an oracle in the first place.”  Louder he says, “But that will only make the inevitable meltdown worse.”

          “Which is why,” Zora says, holding Jake's eye, “We need an oracle of our own on the case.  One with layers of hidden resources.”  And all four of us sibs of Fireheart Friendclan sit very, very still.)

          I force myself to straighten under the weight of the rifle on my shoulder and the bandolier that Damien gave me, tangled with my hammock-shawl.  I have more resources than Jonathan ever realized, the poor, self-blinded fool.  The way he pampered me on the cruise from Istislan, all because I’d picked up a little fever in Camelot.  I think I have proven beyond all doubt that I’m not that Deirdre, no more than the Charadoc is the paradise of his fantasies.

          And I will finish his mission for him, to usher in the better Charadoc that he’d hoped to someday see.  That will serve us both better than any apology, from either side.  For I have infiltrated the very wound that he studied indistinctly from a distance; I myself have become one of the corpuscles inflaming it, fighting for the chance to heal.

          (Incense breaks the spell.  “Infiltration should pose no real problem, with the headmaster's help.  Poorer families often take years to save up enough money to send a son to the academy, so you will always find a smattering of borderline adults even among the sophomores.”

          Zora's eyes twinkle again, in their unfocussed way.  “You do remember how to behave like borderline adults, don't you?”

          Incense laughs loudly, like the barmaid that she used to be. “Study hard, m'boys,” she says with a wink to Lisa.  “Go out there and practice immaturity!”

          “With all due Tilián earnestness and attention to detail,” Zora adds, mock-primly, with folded hands.  “Feelin’ up for another trip to the Rat’s Nest?”

          Jake leaps to his feet, but I shove a notebook in his arms before he makes another move.  So we gather up the materials they give us, and get out of there as fast as we can.)

* * *

The temperature drops rapidly with every vertical mile.  Come nightfall we all huddle together for warmth, villagers and warriors tumbled together like thin and restless puppies, with our few blankets and cloaks and anything similar thrown over as many as possible.  I look at all the children's faces, grubby and sleepy and you could almost believe innocent.  Do hellhounds have puppies?  I can't help but wonder.  Do they look cute at first?  How old before the eyes begin to burn, the fangs begin to grow?

Bad thoughts, Deirdre—no more of that.  We’re the good guys, remember?  Maybe they’ll look better in the morning.

I nestle in with the others but I don't expect to drowse much under the circumstances.  No one in this close crush of bodies smells anything like apple blossoms, that's for sure.  I remember briefly sharing a hammock with Kief, the feel and the scent of him when he clasped me to his breast.  I remember when I wouldn’t have minded snuggling up to him one bit.

How old were you, Kief?  Borderline adult?  Younger than that?  And what will Damien sing about how I killed you?  Did I save the troop?  Did I murder my officer?  Or did it simply happen—will he sing of leaf and exhaustion and one too many deaths?  Weird, to think that the young lad with the thambriy and the gun shall determine my place in history.  It's all, it's just so...

"Real.  That's all it is—just real."

I sit up in a sweat at Kief's voice; Lufti and Kiril whimper when my motion jars them.  I settle back down uneasily.  I must've drifted off and not even realized it.  Good—that's just the ticket, sleep.  Everything I want...

          Aron, Aron, please fend off Kief's ghost from me and let me rest!