Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“I don’t understand,” he said, gritting his teeth, trying to reach her with his voice as he had been unable to reach the fliers. “I thought if we got to the Chancery, we were safe! I haven’t seen any humans at all except the guards and someone in a veil and some half-wit carrying buckets. Why were those foul poultry allowed to misuse me so? I don’t understand any of this. Help me understand it.”

“Shh, shh. Ilze. Be thankful you are alive. I am thankful I am alive. You were not the only one mistreated, so hush. Think. You will need to think.”

“Think of what? I’ve done nothing but think since I’ve been here, and I’ve been here forever. I need some answers.” “I meant for you to think strategically. Listen to me. We came here, to the Chancery. We demanded to see the Protector. Instead, we were sent to the Accusatory and sometime later were there questioned by the Servants of Abricor. But there were human Accusers watching, Ilze. Behind the veil you may be sure was a human Accuser.” Her mouth twisted bitterly at these words, as though she needed to spit. “And the Servants of Abricor didn’t take us away. We stayed here.”

Her hand on his arm stopped his quick, angry words. “We stayed here, Ilze. And we’re alive.” He was forced to consider the implications of this. “You think … you think it was some kind of agreement?”

“I listen in my mind, Ilze, for hints of conspiracy or ignorance or trouble. What words were said here? I can imagine what the Talker said, the one who came for us, the one you forced to bring us here. He demanded that you and I be bound securely and given to them. And then Lees Obol, the Protector of Man, would have said, ‘No, no, my friends, my treaty mates, but these are humans. Humans are not sent to the Talons. Humans must be examined here. By us.’ And then the Talkers would have blustered and demanded. What would they have said?”

Ilze thought about this, frowning, realizing he knew quite well what the Talkers would have said. “They would have said they did not trust the humans. They must question us, they would have said, because they did not trust the humans. Perhaps that is not what they said, but that is what they meant.”

“Such was my own thought. A certain lack of trust. So, the Protector, for some reason-which I will learn if Potipur grants me time-allows us to be questioned by the Talkers. But not taken away. And not seriously injured. I will not even have scars.” Think about that, she urged him silently, wanting him to realize that both of them had been equally mistreated. Both of us, Ilze. When you leave here, you must remember they tortured both of us.

Ilze, who believed he carried scars he would never lose, did not reply to this. “And now?”

“And now something else. Some further part of the game. These fliers … oh, but they are concerned with Rivermen. Endlessly they asked me about the Rivermen. They asked you as well, I suppose. Always about the Rivermen.” About which we know nothing, she urged him silently. Nothing at all. Either of us.

“They did. But I know nothing about the Rivermen! I’m not one!”

“But they must find out, Ilze. If they cannot find one who knows, then they must ask those who do not. They must find out.”

He ignored the illogic of this, still trying to comprehend. “I didn’t know the Servants could talk. I didn’t know they had … had a society of their own.”

She became very dignified, almost prim. “Just as there are secrets seniors do not share with juniors or novices, so there are secrets Superiors do not share with seniors. You would have learned all about the Talkers in time, if you had earned advancement. As you would have done.” Oh, yes, she told herself. He would have done. And pity the Tower he would have headed in his time.

“These others, the Talkers … ?”

“There are not many of them. They come from the flier caste, from the Servants of Abricor. They do not seem to run in particular lines of descent, so I am told. They are hatched infrequently, once in a thousand hatchings. It is what our scholars call a sex-linked characteristic. All Talkers are males. When the ordinary flier males breed, they die. The Talkers are identified while still young; they are fed a special diet to prevent both breeding and death.”