Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“Do you think it’s Servants?” he asked the guard, one with younger eyes than his own.

“It looks like it through the glasses, Your Grace. Carrying something. It’s a new one on me. I’ve never seen those fliers carry anything.”

“If you’re in attendance when they land, Captain Veil that is, assuming it does land-remember not to say ‘flier.’ The correct title, if there’s a Talker, is ‘Uplifted One.’ If there’s no Talker with them, order the bowmen to kill them as soon as they land.”

“I’ll remember, sir.” The captain flushed.

“In the meantime, perhaps you’ll be good enough to find the Deputy Enforcer and suggest he join me here … “He took the glasses back from the guardsman and peered into the wedge of sky once more. At least two Servants of Abricor, flying north of the Teeth in defiance of the treaty, carrying something. “Hurry, Captain,” he suggested through clenched teeth.

Shavin Bossit was not the only one to have spotted the flier. From a window of his suite high in the library wing, Propagator of the Faith Tharius Don stared through a glass both newer and more powerful than the one used by the Maintainer. After much searching and many trials, he had had it secretly procured from the lens makers in Zebulee, an acquisition not to be displayed but to be kept wrapped in an old sheet in the bottom of his clothes chest. He had had his own watchers posted here and there throughout the Chancery. More than one rooftop at Highstone Lees carried his men, one of whom had called his attention to the approaching blot on the sky. When he identified the winged speck as probable Servants of Abricor, he buried the glass beneath his clothes once more and stood gnawing his lip, cold beads of sweat starting out on his forehead and in the edges of his beard. Servants. Possibly one or more Talkers. If a Talker, then certainly one concerned about heresy. It had been all the fliers had wanted to talk about at the recent convocation. Heresy. By the waters of surcease, he was not yet ready for this. Not ready at all. It was too soon. But if he avoided being part of whatever confrontation was about to take place, the others would interpret his absence not to his credit, though they might assign him varying motives depending on who was doing the assigning.

“So long as they do not know my true motives, it should not matter,” he told himself. It was a kind of litany. There had been a time when Tharius Don had cared much for the opinions of others-even of others here in the Chancery. That time was long gone. Now he played the moralist, sometimes the fool, and told himself it did not matter. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he slipped out onto the stairs. Like it or not, he would have to be obtrusively present-a need with which the Maintainer of the Household might not be entirely sympathetic.

Gendra Mitiar was told about the approaching Talker by a servant sent by Shavian. “His Grace says to come to the small council room as soon as you can.” The servant bowed.

Thin and dried, a woman of great age, her face long since settled into a vertical assemblage like eroded gully walls, her skin the same dun color as the winter fields, Gendra Mitiar stared at the messenger. When she spoke, it was to reveal vast yellow teeth jutting like monuments from her pale gums; flat, inexorable teeth that ground together from time to time, making the sound of millstones. Her voice was like herself, colorless and strong, betraying an unostentatious but terrible will.

“Tell His Grace I will be with him shortly,” she said.

“And may Potipur help us,” she added to herself, grinning in vicious humor. “For it is certain old Obol won’t.”

Shavian Bossit was irritated beyond measure. “I can understand your annoyance at being … ah … flown here against your will, Uplifted One. I can appreciate the discomfort of having a whip lashed about your throat in midair and being threatened with strangulation. However, I can also understand the panic felt by our Superior of Bans. Your action was in defiance of the treaty. You admit as much.” He tapped his fingers impatiently, glaring at the Talker standing against the wall. The damn flier would not take tea, would not act like a rational creature, would not sit, though they could and often did. Shavian hated looking up at people, much less fliers, though his diminutive size let him do little else. He ran his fingers through jet-black hair, dyed each ten-day by his mute body servant, and frowned in exasperation. Where in the hell was Gendra!