House of Reeds

'I can try. What do you want to test? Is it far from here?'

Malakar made a rumbling sound and rose up, joints creaking, using the shovel for a cane. A long arm reached out, and slung the leather bag over one pebbly shoulder. Metal clanked against metal. The long head turned, regarding her with a lambent emerald eye. 'I will show you an old thing, as old as I have ever seen, if you wish to follow.'

Gretchen stood, brushing dirt from her work pants and held up the comp to the skyline. There was a warbling squeal in her earbug – the sound drowned out Magdalena cursing luridly and trying to warn her hunt-sister not to go into the cave!

'I will.'

Anderssen's boots rang on polished stone, and she reached out to take hold of a railing embedded in the wall. Below her, the old Jehanan was treading carefully on terribly worn steps, testing each one with her weight before proceeding. They had spent a long time pacing down abandoned tunnels and descending broad curving rampways. Gretchen wanted to ask how deep they had come, but the gardener refused to speak, only stomping along with the leather bag over one shoulder, lost in her own thoughts.

These chambers – they seemed vast, though Gretchen hadn't attempted a sonosound reading to gauge their size – swallowed the faint radiance of a single blue light carried by the Jehanan. They followed a smudged path across an endless dusty floor. Anderssen wasn't sure, but it seemed the ground was made of a polished ceramic.

Someone has come this way before, she thought, feeling more and more oppressed in spirit as another vaulted doorway loomed out of the darkness before them. But only one set of footprints, I think, repeated over and over.

They turned at the doorway and did not pass on into the limitless darkness beyond, but followed along the wall instead. Gretchen caught sight of a row of sconces, much like the ones in the tunnels above, but these were dark. They did not hold any of the blue eggs. Malakar's steps slowed and they entered a smaller hall, this one of a size Anderssen guessed a Jehanan might find comfortable. Vague shapes loomed in the faint light, and the scuffed path wound among piles of debris – broken machinery, if her eye encompassed the splintered wooden gears and cracked wheels properly – and into a still smaller passage. This, she thought, was an actual hallway and a far cry from the cyclopean proportions of the chambers outside.

Her medband beeped quietly, the sound almost lost in the endless curve of the passage.

'Malakar…' she whispered, afraid to disturb the tomblike silence. 'This air is poor. You shouldn't stay long…my band can counteract the toxins in the air, but you…'

'I have passed this way before. After a twelfth-sun passes one begins to hear voices, or see flashes of light where there are none. This is the place I wish to show you.'

The old Jehanan stood before a circular door in the wall. Gretchen blinked, realizing the entire hall was lined with similar openings. All were closed. Malakar leaned heavily against the wall, claws on either side of a recessed panel.

'What is on the other side?' Gretchen unzipped the collar of her field jacket and tugged out two breathing tubes. Pressing one clip to her nose, she let the other rest against her chin. 'Were these the first chambers cut into the hill?'

'No…' the Jehanan sighed, slumping before the door. 'There are other levels below, but the air is so poor, even the strongest takes ill and the weak die. Torches fail, and even the gipu' – she raised the glowing blue egg – 'sputter and fall dark.'

Malakar brushed dust away from the panel. 'When I was only a short-horn fresh from the egg, this was a busy place. Often I was brought here – the air had not turned, there were lights in the dark places, some of the elders even held conclave here, as their ancestors had done. But then the gipu began to fail and shadows spilled in from the walls. Foul air rose from below and everyone moved up and away, closer to the gardens, to the terraces.'

Another mournful hooo escaped the creature's slitlike nostrils. 'Now my hide grows tight and brittle, and what was once clear in mind fades.' A claw tapped on the door, making a sharp tinking sound. 'The last Master of the Garden to tread these hallways is long still. The new Master sees only the sky, gardens, and bright chambers with tall windows. He cares only for the favor of the kujen and filling his claws with shatamanu. There is talk among the tough-hides of closing off these tunnels, filling them in, keeping the short-horns from mischief.

'When I was fresh from the egg, this chamber was filled with gipu-light, almost as bright as day. Our voices were very sweet, when we sang…'

The creature fell silent, crouched before the door. Gretchen waited patiently, sitting at the edge of the circle of light. The oxygen tube under her tongue made a quiet hiss-hiss sound as she breathed.

'That's odd,' Parker said, squinting at a portable holovee sitting on his stomach. He had been flipping through the channels, half out of his mind with boredom. The windows were dark; night had come, bringing heavy clouds, but no rain, only a tense, oppressive stillness. Inside, without the cold night wind to stir the air, the ozone-stink of the comps and surveillance equipment made the room feel stifling.

Gretchen had failed to reappear on their scanners. Magdalena was certain the woman had been taken captive and horribly murdered. Parker didn't think so, but he was beginning to wonder what they would do if she were. Go in after her, I guess. But how would we find her in there?

'Hmm?' Magdalena was in her nest, legs and arms curled across her chest, clutching her tail and staring at the ceiling. 'You don't like the dancing monkeys here?'

'The shows are fine. Unintelligible, but fine.' Parker clicked back to the previous channel. 'The Imperial 'cast channel is showing some footage taken by one of the Jehanan stations, with a translation running over the original voice track? But they don't match up.'

The Hesht rolled over, staring at him in mild interest. 'So?'

'So,' Parker said, sitting up. 'The news 'caster said the footage was of an anti-Imperial demonstration in one of the southern cities – the port of Patala I think. But that's not what the Jehanan narration said – they said the 'demonstrators' were some kind of local religious festival – one of those slice-of-life bits – but I guess down south they set things on fire to pay homage to their gods.'

'Huh. That does seem odd. You think the Imperial 'cast just got a bad translation?'

'Maybe…' Parker scowled. I should have kept one of those rifles. I didn't and now we might need it and I don't have it.

He set the holocast set aside and paced to the nearest window. Miserable, he wedged his shoulders in beside a thick bundle of cables running up to comm-scanning antennas mounted on the roof of the building. The city below was filled with faint lights – the flickering yellow glow of lanterns and candles, here and there the dull red of bonfires or forge chimneys – a far cry from the jeweled splendor of human cities. The hill of the mandire, in comparison, was entirely dark and silent.

'Mags – how long are we going to wait for her?'

'As long as it takes,' the Hesht growled, lying back down and fiddling with her earbug.

Parker heard a high-pitched whining sound and craned his neck up. A low layer of clouds blanketed the city, gleaming softly in the lights from below. An aerocar, he thought, feeling a sharp stab of envy. We need an aerocar – be easy to land on the top of the hill and snatch Gretchen from the jaws of death if we had an aerocar. If we had an aerocar, there would be something for me to fly. He scratched the back of his head, suddenly tired of waiting.

'She's in trouble, kit-cat. We're going to have to go in there and get her. I'm going out.'

'To do what?' Magdalena's yellow eyes fixed on him. 'We are supposed to wait.'

Parker picked up his jacket. 'Get some things we might need later.' When we have to bug out of town. I know we're going to have to leave all a'sudden, with the lanterns and whistles of the keisatsu shrilling behind us.

The Hesht made a hissing sound, but did not stop him from leaving.

'Somewhere below,' Malakar said, rousing itself, claws rasping on the floor, 'lie many rooms filled with pushta. Thousands of them, each filled with more words than a single Jehanan could read