Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“During the Progressions. Of course. I saw the golden ship. Everyone does. The last Progression was years ago.”

“So long ago that the next Progression is almost due. Once each eighteen years the Protector makes the trip, taking six or seven years to visit Northshore, allowing himself to be seen at every township. You have seen him!”

“I’ve seen him.” He was sharply attentive. Why was she telling him this? “All citizens are required to observe the Progression.”

“I remind you of that so you will remember it. The Protector exists. He lives in the northland. He heads the Chancery. He is my Superior, as I am yours. I work at his command.” She reached for the man before her, reached into him. By all the gods, this unworthy tool must bend to her purpose-for all their sakes.

“I understand.” He did not understand, though his hard, clever mind was beginning to chill, beginning to listen attentively. He had accepted that his life might depend upon that. She smiled at him approvingly.

“There is a treaty between the Protector and the Servants of Abricor. It is the treaty which prohibits the Servants from … from troubling us. It prohibits our troubling them as well. If the Servants are troubled by men, the treaty requires them to report it to the Chancery. This Rivermen business, this heresy … if there is something like that going on, they think we have something to do with it, we should be summoned by rite Chancery, not by the Servants themselves. Do you understand that?” She was begging him, and for the first time he came out of his own bewilderment to hear her. He thought she was frightened for herself, and this focused his attention.

“I … yes. Yes. If this Servant is disturbed by something we’ve done, something it thinks we’ve done, it should have gone to the Chancery about it. And they would have questioned us.”

“Yes. Exactly. And our one chance of coming out of this alive is to get to the Chancery. Not go with this one to the Talons. We go to the Talons and we’re dead.”

He did not ask her how she knew. It did not seem to matter. His heart was drumming, and he felt the blood rush to his fingers, making them tingle. “Can we escape from the Tower?”

“They will see us. They see well at night, and there are dozens of them.”

There were dozens, of course. All around the Tower top, the bone pits, here and there in the forests. Ilze himself had counted up to twenty of them in the air over Baris at one time, as many over the neighboring towns. “Stay inside where they can’t get at us? Send a messenger? Ask for help?”

“We could not live locked inside the Tower that long. The Chancery is half a year away, through the Teeth of the North by way of the Split River Pass. It is how the Protector comes down to make the Progression. By the Split River. We could walk there in a year or two if we stopped for nothing.”

“And the Talons?”

“Not so far. East instead of north.”

“How do they plan to get us there?”

“In a basket, the leader said. In a basket, carried by two or three of them. Through the air. For four or five days. He spoke of flying without stopping. He spoke of a ‘tailwind.’ I can guess what that is.”

He had looked at the Talker only briefly, but it had not looked unlike the usual Servants. The long, almost human like king legs with their feathered, two-taloned feet. The folded wings, tips almost dragging the floor, three-fingered hands at the wrist joint. The face, not long-beaked like the small fliers but flat-beaked; so that in profile it did not look unlike his own except for the absence of a nose. Ear tufts. Wide-set, round-orbed eyes surrounded by plumed circles. The chest, protruding at the center like the keel of a boat. And the neck. Not really long, but it would be stretched out in flight. He thought on that, anger moving him now, a well-known kind of anger. So, they would misuse and mock him, would they. They would break the rules of respect. Well then.