Not wanting to compromise their safe houses by duplicating their route south, they left the river behind on their second day. Tiyat and Kajpin let the others off near a cave a few cha’ari short of the Tolal bridgehead, and then went on alone, returning the powerboat to the livery, where Tiyat made a show of disputing the damage done to the hull when they’d run the boat aground. Finally Kajpin waved the extra charge off and said expansively, "It’s only money! Pay the woman—we’ll make it up on that rakar deal." Which led to comfortable small talk about the new rakar plantations, and then to amiable farewells, called loudly over the pounding rain as Tiyat and Kajpin moved off toward town.
"It’s only money," Tiyat echoed irritably, as they stopped in the Tolal market district and spent their last few bahli on salt.
"Don’t worry," Kajpin told her when they were out of earshot, heading out of town on a road that went northeast. "We can jump a caravan next season!" When they were sure no one was behind them, they veered overland and doubled back toward the south at a trot.
Reunited at the cave without further incident, the party left roads and rivers behind and traveled instead through an endless rolling landscape. Stopping periodically to listen and watch and stand nose to the wind, the VaN’Jarri became increasingly confident that they’d escaped detection. Indeed, there was little left in this monstrous, lovely, depopulated land that bore the imprint of mortal mind or hand. For hours, walking without haste but without rest, they saw nothing but low-growing clumps of lavender-leaved plants with bell-shaped blooms that nodded on wiry stems, battered by rain as warm as blood, and heard nothing but the drumming of rain and the squelching of footsteps, and the lilt of Nico’s singing.
"You don’t mind?" Sandoz asked the Runa as they walked. "Someone could ask Nico to stop singing."
"I don’t mind," Kajpin said.
"It’s not as beautiful as Isaac’s music," said Tiyat, "but it’s nice."
The foreigners carried communications gear, and answered periodic status calls from the Giordano Bruno with laconic reports that sounded bored.
"It’s rainin’here like the third ring of hell," Sean said once. "What’s the weather look like for tomorrow?"
"Clearing up," Frans told him.
"Thank God for that," was the heartfelt reply. And Sean closed the connection.
THEIR SLEEP WAS BROKEN EARLY NOT BY THUNDER BUT BY THE RADIO transponder’s whistle, clear and musical in the scrubbed morning air. It was Frans Vanderhelst, hailing anyone from the Giordano Bruno. Sean answered, yawning, and heard Frans say, "Is everything okay down there?"
"Shit, yes," Sean answered irritably. He nodded agreement as Joseba, bleary-eyed, leaned over to put the transmission on conference so everyone could listen to both sides of the conversation.
"We’ve lost live traces from three of the four GPS implants. What’s going on?"
That brought them fully awake. They had expected questions about the implants eventually, but not this one. "Three of the four?" Sean looked at his companions and saw the story on Nico’s face, rosy in the cloudless dawn. Joseba moaned and put his head in his hands. The VaN’Jarri roused as well and began to ask questions, but Sandoz hissed a warning as Sean raised a hand for silence.
"We have three GPS signals at the rendezvous showing no movement for three days," Carlo was saying. "There’s another one two hundred and forty kilometers northeast of the site. Are you all right?"
"Yes! We’re fine, dammit, except y’woke us all up! Can we talk later? I was havin’ a very fine dream—"
"So what’s going on with the implants?" John cut in. "Why can’t Sofia’s escort find you guys? They said the campsite smells of blood. For a minute there, we thought you were dead and eaten! We just talked to Sofia and she’s convinced Emilio’s been kidnapped by renegade Jana’ata-she’s ready to come after you with an army! What’s going on?"
Kajpin’s ears folded back at the word "army," and the other VaN’Jarri began to show signs of stress. Sean yawned theatrically, and looked around with large, desperate eyes while sputtering, "Christ! Is that you now, Candotti? One question at a time! We’re fine, I tell you! The blood was—" Sandoz, struggling to get a brace on, glared a warning at him. "Hang on, now. Sandoz wants to speak to you," Sean said, and handed the transceiver to him with some relief.
"John, this is Emilio. Tell Sofia she watched too many old Westerns with me," Sandoz suggested with a very nice imitation of amusement. "We don’t need the U.S. Cavalry riding to the rescue! Wait—have Frans put me through, yes? I’ll talk to her directly."
They all waited, tense and silent, as Sandoz walked a little distance away and stood with his back to them. Even so, they could hear his side of the conversation clearly in the still morning air. "Mendes? No, listen to me! We’re all right—. Oh, God. Don’t cry, Sofia! I’m fine. Truly…. Yes. Everything is fine…. Calm down, okay?" He looked at the others and winced, shaking his head slightly: never tell a woman to calm down. "No, Sofia, listen! That was just a froyil that Joseba shot! Yes—we barbecued it! I decided we should move camp so the blood wouldn’t put the escort off. We’re not far away."
"Relative to Earth," Joseba muttered.
"I don’t know what to tell you about that signal north of the rendezvous site," Emilio said then.
"Not one lie so far," Sean whispered, impressed.
"Maybe the implants are defective?" Sandoz suggested, pacing now. "Or the software’s no good?" A pause. "Well, it doesn’t matter, because we’re fine, okay? Listen, Mendes, we were up kind of late last night and everybody’s pretty tired, so we’d like to get a little more rest before we—. Sure! Yes, have them wait right there for us! That’s perfect!" he cried, standing still, eyes wide with relief. "You, too. Go back to bed—. Then have breakfast!" he said, smiling now. "Are you all right? Sure? Don’t worry about us! We’ll be in touch."
"Christ," Sean breathed as Sandoz returned to their circle and sank to the ground. "Remind me never to play poker with you again."
BACK ON THE SHIP, DANNY SHRUGGED. "D. W. YARBROUGH ALWAYS SAID Sofia Mendes could think too damned quick for her own good."
But Frans Vanderhelst was looking at Carlo. "There’s nothing wrong with those implants."
"Oh, yeah?" said John. "Look at the screen."
The fourth trace had just gone dead.
"I’M SORRY, DON EMILIO," NICO REPEATED AS JOSEBA POUNDED THE GPS transponder to pieces between two rocks. "Frans said—"
"It’s all right, Nico, I understand. You meant well," Emilio muttered, "for all the difference that ever makes."
"The army is coming," Kajpin said. "They think we’ve taken you hostage—"
"And they know where we are right now," Joseba told them.
"But Sandoz bought us some time," Sean pointed out. "They think we’re safe and camped somewhere near the rendezvous site—" Then his face fell further than it normally hung, and he stared balefully at the remains of the GPS implant. "Fack."
Joseba, rock still in hand, went motionless and then closed his eyes, realizing the deception had just been revealed. Only Sandoz had a clue as to what he said for the next few moments, but the burden of his speech was clear even to the VaN’Jarri. "Apologies," he said finally, his face flushed with shame. "I acted in haste."
"Go on without us," Sean urged the VaN’Jarri then. "We’ll go back and meet the escort. It’s us they’re concerned about. Soon as they know we’re all right, they’ll relax. We can figure out how to get to the N’Jarr later—"
"How much farther is it to Inbrokar?" Sandoz asked Rukuei quietly.
"We could be there by second sunrise today, if we move fast."
"It takes time to mobilize troops," Sandoz said. "We’re three days away from the rendezvous site, and it will be farther for them, because they’ll have to come overland the whole way, won’t they?"
"No, they can use troop barges, but that’s slow, too," Kajpin said.
Tiyat began to sway. "They don’t need the troops—there’ll be militia alerted all over the country. We’re cooked."
"I’m sorry," Nico said again. "But—what if we told Signora Sofia that we’ll bring back her son? We tell her, Don’t follow us. If you do, the deal is off. You cooperate, your boy comes back to you, no harm done." He looked around, hopeful that he had redeemed himself.
"It might work," Sandoz said after a time. He started to laugh, but then sobered and lifted his chin thoughtfully, grew somehow heavier and older before their eyes, and when he spoke it was in the hoarse tones of Marlon Brando, resurrected in the Rakhati sunlight. "We make her an offer she can’t refuse."
Joseba looked at Sean, who shrugged, and then put the call through to the Bruno. Emilio took the transceiver and cut off John’s demands to know what the hell just happened to that fourth implant. "Don’t ask, okay? Just don’t ask. I’m going the extra mile, John. I can’t tell you more than that. Have Frans put me through to Sofia."
The others watched while he waited, still grinning, for Sofia’s connection, but the sense of fun died almost immediately. Reluctant to threaten, he began with an appeal to friendship and trust, but met an icy wall of objection.
"You’re right, Sofia," he said. "Absolutely. But we are not under duress—. Listen to me!"
Instead he listened, letting her warn him, plead with him, threaten him, condemn his judgment. "Sofia," he cut in finally, "I have to do this. There is something I have to see for myself. All I’m asking is that you give me some time to work this through-a couple of weeks, maybe. Please. I never asked you for anything before, Sofia. Just this one thing, okay? Give me a chance to see for myself…"
There was no reasoning with her; there never had been. He turned to look at the VaN’Jarri-their faces tight with anxiety, pinched with hunger—and listened to the uncompromising words of a woman he had known long ago.
"Sofia, you leave me no choice," he said finally, hating himself. "I believe I can locate Isaac and bring him back to you, but only on the condition that we are not followed. That’s the deal, Mendes. Back off, and I’ll do what I can to bring your son home to you."
He closed his eyes as he listened to her tell him what she believed he had become. He didn’t argue. Mostly, she was right.
AT MIDDAY THEY CRESTED A LOW RISE THAT GAVE OUT ONTO A FIELD rank with weed, and from that vantage the ruins of Inbrokar could be seen in the milky haze of prairie heat. For a time, Emilio gazed silently at the blackened rubble. It was not the city of his dreams, but the charred gates seemed familiar, and if he closed his eyes, he could almost picture the chiseled stone walls that had once given an illusion of safety.
"Can you smell it?" Rukuei asked him.
"No," Emilio said. "Not yet." Then—a faint sweetness: corruption’s ghost. "Yes. I smell it now," he said, and turned to meet Kitheri’s eyes: beautiful, haunted, and as weary as his own. "Wait here," Sandoz told the others, and walked with Rukuei down the sloping hill onto the battlefield.
"I was twelve," Rukuei said, measuring his stride to the pace of the small person beside him. "The war was as old as I was. Thirty thousand men died here in a single day, and then a city full of refugees. Within another year or two—a civilization."
Weather and the work of scavengers had made dust or dung of all but the densest elements of bone, but of these, there were many. ’Their blood has been shed like water, round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them,’ "Sandoz murmured. Here and there, the glint of fragile rusted metal caught the eye as they walked. Bending to examine a helmet, Sandoz saw a single tooth, flat-crowned and broad. "Runa," he remarked, with some surprise. "When did they start wearing armor?"
"Toward the end of the war," Rukuei said.
"I’ve heard it said: Choose your enemies wisely, for you will become them," Sandoz told him, and was moved to apologize for frightening the young man so badly at their first meeting, but fell silent when he saw Rukuei stiffen.
"My father wore silver and gold," the Jana’ata said quietly, walking toward a gleaming scrap of metal. A finely wrought fastener, ripped loose, trampled into the mud, concealed from gleaners for years, weathering out again sometime during the last rainy season. Rukuei bent to pick it up, but stayed his hand when he noticed something white nearby. The tough, compact bone of an opposable toe, perhaps. And there, a fragment of the heavy nuchal crest from the base of a skull. "We—we cremate our dead," Rukuei said, straightening, looking at the ruins now to escape the sight of scrappy remnants lying on the ground. "So, in some ways, it seemed acceptable that so many died in the fires, after the battle."
But this, he thought. This…
The mechanical whirr of the foreigner’s hands brought him back to the present, and Rukuei saw in flesh what had once been merely dream— Emilio Sandoz, on the battlefield of Inbrokar. Stooped over, reaching for the bits of bone and teeth. Carefully picking each small piece up, gathering the remains methodically: Runa and Jana’ata, mingled in death.
Without speaking, Rukuei joined him in this task, and then the others came to help—Kajpin and Tiyat, Sean Fein and Joseba Urizarbarrena, and Shetri Laaks, silently bringing the anonymous dead together. Nico removed his shirt, spreading it out to collect the relics, and soon the quiet was broken by the plaintive melody of "Una furtiva lagrima." As fragmentary as the remains were, there was too much scattered across too broad a field to do right by it all, so when the makeshift shroud was filled, they counted themselves done, and carried what they had gathered to a place inside the ruins, where the smell of weathered char was stronger. They added to it with a smoky pyre built of half-burnt wood pried from what had once been a storage building near the Embassy of Mala Njer.
"What I remember most clearly is my small sister’s voice," Rukuei told them as the fire crackled. "All the Paramount’s freeborn children were in the embassy—he must have known how it would end, but hoped that there would be perhaps some respect for diplomats." Rukuei laughed—a short, hard sound—at his father’s naïveté. "My sister was somewhere in the fire. As we ran from the city, I could hear her call my name. A silver wire of sound: Ru-ku-eiiiii…"