The Water Road (12 page)

“You better be right,” he said,
moving for the door. “Now, I hate to be a rude host, but will you please get
out of here?”

She nodded and walked through the
door as Yaron held it open. Thankfully, the hallway was still empty, except for
the two of them. Strefer dashed over to the stairs, pausing for a moment to
look back at Yaron. He was on station at the door, as stable as ever. “I’m
sorry,” she said in a barely audible whisper before she scampered down the
stairs. She made her way quickly to the front doors and then down the front
marble steps. The crowd was larger now and seemed to be getting restless. At
least it would make it easier for her to slip away.

She was about to disappear into the
crowd when she heard someone say, “How was Keretki?”

Strefer stopped and turned to find
a Sentinel standing at the bottom of the marble steps, a few feet away. The
face was familiar, but Strefer could not match it with a name. “I’m sorry,
what?” she asked, trying to work through her confusion.

“Your meeting,” he said. “I assume
it went well?” His face changed from one of polite confidence to concern.

It came back to her just in time.
“Oh, yes, the meeting. Right. It went very well, thank you for asking.”
Thankfully, a press of people seeking entrance to the building demanded his
attention. Strefer did not wait for any further chances to chat. She walked out
into the crowd and began to make her way out of the compound.

Because the
Daily Register
was published in the Telebrian capital of Sermont, it was there that Strefer
first went when she was hired. When she was formally transferred to Tolenor, she
went by land, the way that most people traveled to Sermont by the Sea. She went
by common carriage, down the Coast Road that wound along the rocky cliffs next
to the crashing waves. The road led onto the Grand Causeway, across which she
gained entrance to the city. It was a scenic route, but not a very quick one.
The journey took five days, from what Strefer remembered, and included numerous
stops to replace horses as well as dispatch and take on passengers. The quality
of the Coast Road itself slowed progress on occasion.

Strefer concluded that she did not
have that much time. The sea route to Sermont would be better. It was brutally
direct, 160 miles from the island, but prone to rough seas. It was a quick
jaunt, even on a ship that still relied on sails for propulsion. The winds
along the coast were consistent and favorable. If she could find a steam ship,
that would be even better.

Finding passage proved more
difficult that she imagined, given the short notice. There were a few ships leaving
for Sermont that night, but none had available berths. In frustration, she gave
up dealing with the ship representatives directly and instead focused on
passengers. With some coin, as well as a little luck and charm, Strefer managed
to find a couple that would sell their berth on a steam ship early the next
afternoon. It was the best she could do, and they drove a hard bargain.

The time before her ship left
allowed Strefer to return to her apartment briefly to pick up a few things. As
she walked there and back, she went over in her head once again just what kind
of plan she was working on. After she made it out of the Triumvirate compound,
Strefer had decided that she could not simply go to the
Daily Register
office and write up the story. If someone figured out that the red notebook she
was carrying in her pouch had been taken from Alban’s office, Sentinels would
be pounding down the door almost immediately. The same held true for her
apartment. She packed quickly and wasted no time there.

She had decided to go to Sermont
and, more particularly, to go to the publisher of the
Daily Register
and
tell him about her discovery. It would cut Tevis out of the loop, and Strefer
felt a quick twinge of guilt about that. The Grand Council was his beat, after
all, and if he took the story from her and made it his own she would have no
right to complain. But she was unwilling to let this story get away from her.
It felt too important. Strefer was also keenly aware of what breaking a story
like this could mean to her career. It would take Olrey’s approval to run the
story, at any rate. Her best course of action, she decided, was to go directly
to him and eliminate any intermediary.

When Strefer left Tolenor she was
almost completely broke, as her passage had cost more than anticipated. At
least she had a nice stateroom to show for it. The ship on which she traveled
was a long-haul passenger liner. It would pause at Sermont long enough to
shuffle some passengers off, and others on, before returning to sea. Though small,
the room she bought from the couple at the docks was intended for a lengthy
occupancy. It was comfortable and stylishly, though sparsely, appointed, with a
bed, a chair, and a small desk. Each was carved from wood the color of light
chocolate, in a style that mimicked some of the Neldathi craftwork Strefer had
seen before.

More to the point, it provided
Strefer with some privacy, which she would have lacked had she purchased a
ticket to share standing room on the main deck. Up there, it would be impossible
to get away from others. And they would want to talk. Strefer had a face that
made people open up to her. It was a useful trait for a reporter to have, but
she was much more interested in anonymity right now.

Strefer slumped down into the chair
and relaxed for a few moments. She dared not lie on the bed, for she would
surely fall asleep. The time on the ship needed to be put to better use. After
a few moments, she took the notebook out of her pouch and set it on the desk.
She took out a notebook of her own and set it next to the other, open to a
fresh page. Pen in hand, she began to leaf through the notebook for the first
time. Within minutes she was dividing her attention between the old red
notebook and her own while she furiously scribbled notes:

handwritten

do not include in official reports

Neldathi

clan against clan

Sentinels, agents

use gods

holy wars/clan feuds

maintain hostility between clans

no objections

By the time Strefer finished her
first quick read of the red notebook, Strefer knew in her gut why Alban was
killed. If this halfbreed girl who worked for him found this red notebook and
could read what was written in it, she could have become so angry that she
lashed out at her mentor. Logically it made little sense. Neither Alban nor his
predecessor who wrote the book played any role in implementing the policy it
described. All they did was report it. But emotionally, Strefer could see how
it could all unfold. Maybe the halfbreed confronted Alban about the plan and he
lied to her about it. Perhaps he tried to justify it. Even if she was uncertain
of the details, Strefer was certain that the red notebook was the catalyst for
the killing.

She was also certain that it would
be a huge story when it was published in the
Daily Register
. Strefer was
not a great student of Triumvirate history, but she had never heard of any plan
like this. At the very least, it was not common knowledge. Why else would it
have been locked away? Why else would the Grand Council order the first clerk
not to include this summary in the official record? After all, it addressed the
Triumvirate’s foremost reason for existing. The public would have been greatly
interested in its contents.

But would the public still be
interested? Maybe Rurek was right and the people that read newspapers are only
interested in blood and debauchery, rather than learning something about their
world. After all, the Neldathi were almost universally reviled by Altrerians.
They weren’t really a threat anymore, outside of stories told to scare children
into eating their vegetables. Given that the strategy had apparently worked,
would people care that the Triumvirate had, in their name, spent the past
century setting Neldathi against Neldathi the same way that the nomads in the
Badlands set blood worms upon one another for sport? Strefer knew it was far
worse than that. Blood worms knew no better and were bred to be fighters. The
Neldathi had to be provided with reasons to kill each other, motivation to keep
them going after one another in spite of the terrible cost.

Strefer shook her head. In all
honesty, she had never given much thought to the Neldathi problem. She had seen
a couple in her travels, the kind that aristocratic Telebrians kept like pets,
curiosities to be exhibited to friends and other important people. They seemed
docile enough, in Strefer’s experience, but she realized that they had been
broken.

Aside from those brief encounters,
all Strefer knew was what she had read. She never had a basis, or a reason, to
question the standard portrait of the Neldathi as ruthless, barbaric savages of
the kind that were so dangerous they should best be left alone to kill
themselves. But they weren’t blood worms. They were people, after all. Not the
same as her, but people nonetheless.

With that thought now implanted in
her mind, Strefer bolted for the corner of the room, where a spittoon rested on
the floor. She fell on her knees and threw up. When she stood up again, her
legs were weak beneath her. She shuffled to the bed, lay down on it, and began
to stare at the ceiling. There was no time for self-reflection, however. She
would have to read through the red notebook again, more slowly and with greater
care this time. She had to know if her initial impressions were right. If she
was going to tell this story to the world, she had to make sure she knew every
word, every pause, and every possible meaning of what was written there. And
she had to have it all in some kind of draft form by the time they reached
Sermont.

That goal motivated her to try and
get up and go back to the desk. But her knees buckled when she stood and her
head began to ache. She lay down again and started to organize the article she
would write in her head. Once she did that, putting it down on paper before the
ship reached port would be easy. As she focused on the proper lede for the
story, Strefer’s eyelids grew heavy. She began to sleep.

Only the sound of a porter knocking
on the door of her stateroom roused Strefer from her rest. When she heard him
announce that they had arrived in the port of Sermont on the Sea, Strefer
bolted upright in bed, seized by a fit of panic. There was no article started,
much less finished, for her to give to Olrey when she met him.

The panic subsided somewhat when
she saw the clock on the opposite wall of the room. It was already 8 past apex,
and the
Daily Register
office would be closed for the night. At the very
least, Olrey would already be gone. Strefer calmed herself and decided she
could find accommodations for the night and be at the office first thing in the
morning. In the meantime, she could write the article. She gathered up her
things, making sure to stuff the red notebook as deeply into her pouch as she
could, and walked off the boat.

~~~~~

Strefer arrived at the
Daily
Register
office the next morning with a very rough first draft of the
article in her pouch. Her overnight accommodations had been barely adequate to
the task. To her shock, the lodging she rented was smaller than her room on the
ship had been, big enough only to accommodate a rough approximation of a bed
and one chair. She had to use her notebook as a hard surface on which to write.
The evening spent in that chair, hunched over the end of the bed where she had
spread her things, caught up with her when she awoke. Her back was tight and
was prone to the occasional spasm of pain. Nonetheless, she was here when she
needed to be.

The
Daily Register
was
housed in a large building perched on a bluff near the coast that offered
spectacular views of both the sea and the city below. The building was home to
the paper’s business office and printing presses, as well as the local
correspondent’s bureau. It was accessible only by a road that wound its way up
the hill, hugging close to the edge of the bluff. It was too early for a hire
cab to take Strefer up the hill. Besides, after paying for her modest lodging,
she could not afford such luxury. Bad back or no, she chugged up the hill in
hopes of meeting Olrey when he first arrived, before the routine work of the
day began.

Olrey was something of a legend in
the newspaper business, as well as in his own mind. In a society that was
largely stratified, where a person’s life story was determined more upon who
your father or grandfathers were than on personal merit, Olrey defied those
expectations. As the bastard son of a Telebrian noble, he was cut out of the
upper level of society due to the scandalous nature of his birth. Instead of
being raised in Sermont among the wealthy, he was shuffled off to Groshke, a
small town on the northern coast near the Badlands, along with his mother. By
nine years old he was out on the street trying to support her and his siblings.
He did odd jobs and, when necessary, engaged in petty thefts in order to buy
food. Along the way, he discovered a knack for mechanical skill and
problem-solving.

One day while he was going door to
door looking for work in the town square, Olrey came to the office of the local
newspaper, the
Examiner
, a weekly with a very limited circulation. They
were in the process of printing that week’s edition but the press had jammed.
None of the employees had any idea how to fix it. Olrey asked if he could take
a look at the problem. He had never seen a printing press before, much less had
any idea how it worked. He took a few moments to walk around the massive
machine, poking his head underneath various bits to explore them more closely.
Then, with the kind of confidence only found in those young enough not to know
any better, he took a wrench and jumped underneath the press.

The old man who owned the
Examiner
looked on with a confused look on his face, but he did not object. Nor did
anyone else. A few minutes later, Olrey popped up from the floor, his forehead
smudged with grease where he had absentmindedly wiped the back of his hand. “I
think that might do the trick,” he said. “Give it a try.” One of the workers
went to the press and began to operate it. Not only did it work, but it was
more efficient and smoother than it had been. The owner offered Olrey a job on
the spot.

With a foot in the door at the
Examiner
,
Olrey never looked back. He began by doing whatever the old man and his
assistants asked him to do, until he became one of them. As the others either
died or moved on to more lucrative work, Olrey moved up the ladder until he was
the editor. He was given free rein by the old man and made great changes to the
paper. He revised the layout and format, then changed the publication schedule
from once a week to three. Under his guidance, the
Examiner
went from a
small paper that struggled to sell more than a few dozen copies, to the leading
newspaper in northeast Telebria.