Warrior arrived around the corner of the house, through the narrow front-back access, Raen squinted in the light, anxious about any majat at the moment.
And Max opened the front door, let them both into the shade and coolness of the inner hall. “You’re all right, sera?”
“All right,” she confirmed. “Don’t worry about it. Merry will tell you how it was.”
Warrior stalked in, palps twitching.
“Do you scent greens?” Raen asked. “Greens attacked us. We killed some. They killed humans.”
“Greensss.” Warrior touched her nervously, calmed as she put her hand to its scent-patches, informing it. “Greenss make shift. Reds-golds-greens now. Weakest, greens. Easy to kill. Listen to red-Mind.”
“Who listens, Warrior?”
“Always there. Warrior-Mind, redsss. I am apart. I am Warrior blue. Good you killed greens. Run away greens? Report?”
“Yes”
“Good?”
“They know I’m here now. Let them tell that to their hive.”
“Good,” Warrior concluded. “Good they taste this, Kethiuy-queen. Yess.”
And it touched and stalked back outside.
Jim was standing over against the wall, his face strained. Raen touched his arm. “Go rest,” she said.
And when he had wandered off to his own devices, she drew a deep breath, heard Merry coming in the side door—looked at Max. “No trouble at all while I was gone?”
He shook his head.
“A cold drink, would you?” She walked into the other room, on into the back of the house, toward the comp center.
Messages. The bank was full of them. The screen was flashing, as it would with an urgency.
She keyed in. The screen flipped half a dozen into her vision in rapid sequence. URGENT, most said. CALL DAIN.
One was different. I AM HERE, it said simply. P.R.H.
Pol.
She sat down, stricken.
BOOK SEVEN
i
More reports. Chaos multiplied, even on Cerdin.
Moth regarded the stacks of printouts with a shiver, and then smiled, a faint and febrile smile.
She looked up at Tand.
“Have you made any progress toward the Istran statistics?”
“They’re there, Eldest. Third stack.”
She reached for them, suffered a fluttering of her hand which scattered them across the table: too little sleep, too little rest lately. She drew a few slow breaths, reached again to bring the papers closer. Tand gathered them and stacked them, laid them directly before her. It embarrassed and angered her.
“Doubtless,” she said, “there are observations in some quarters that the old woman is failing.”
From Tand there was silence.
She brushed through the papers, picked up the cup on the table deliberately to demonstrate the steadiness of her right hand . . . managed not to spill it, took a drink, set it down again firmly, her heart beating hard. “Get out,” she said to Tand, having achieved the tiny triumph.
Tand started to go. She heard him hesitate. “Eldest,” he said, and came back.
Near her.
“Eldest—”
‘I’m not in want of anything.”
“I hear rumours, Eldest.” Tand sank on his knee at the arm of her chair; her heart lurched, so near he was. He looked up into her face, with an earnestness surprising in this man . . . excellent miming. “Listen to me, Eldest. Perhaps . . . perhaps there comes a time that one ought to quit, that one could let go, let things pass quietly. Always there was Lian or Lian’s kin; and now there’s you; and is it necessary that things pass this time by your death?”
Bewilderment fell on her at this bizarre manoeuvre of Tand Hald; and within her robes, her left hand held a gun a span’s remove from his chest. Perhaps he knew; but his expression was innocent and desperately earnest. “And always,” she whispered in her age-broken voice, “always I have survived the purges, Tand. Is it now? Do you bring me warning?”
The last question was irony. Her finger almost pulled the trigger, but he showed no apprehension of it. “Resign from Council,” he urged her. “Eldest, resign. Now. Pass it on. You’re feeling your years; you’re tired; I see it . . . so tired. But you could step aside and enjoy years yet, in quiet, in peace. Haven’t you earned that?”
She breathed a laugh, for this was indeed a strange turn from a Hald. “But we’re immortal,” she whispered. “Tand, perhaps I shall cheat them and not die . . . ever.”