The Children of the Sky

cripple had popped up all undetected in the middle of a blizzard in the heart of Woodcarver’s most secure city. Ravna couldn’t resist: “How did you manage this, Flenser? I thought you were down on Hidden Island—”

She heard the characteristic sly laugh. “And I was, all tidily bundled up in the Old Castle, with Woodcarver’s police watching the entrances three packs deep, and her secret cameras watching my ‘innermost’ haunts. Yes, I know about those cameras. Ha ha. And I know Woodcarver knows. But she can’t see me when I’m in other rooms or down in the catacombs. I have ways out of my castle, and I still have a few truly loyal retainers. With the Inner Channel frozen, it was easy to sneak me across to the mainland.”

Ravna knew that Flenser had used that trick in the past, to visit Steel’s remnant on the mainland. She hadn’t told Woodcarver, partly because the visits seemed innocent, and partly because it would have revealed Ravna’s “magical” surveillance system. “So sneaking over the ice got you to the mainland. That’s still six hundred meters down from where we’re standing now. How did you get yourself up here all unseen?”

“I would have been noticed on the funicular, that’s for sure.” He gave her a sly look. “Who knows, Ravna? I’m a master of disguise; perhaps I came up separately.” He let her chew on that for a moment. “But I’ll let you in on the secret: call it evidence of my good faith.” Or evidence of the well-known vanity of all Woodcarver’s creations. “You see, while you and Woodcarver and Scrupilo were congratulating yourselves about Newcastle town’s water and sewage system, I was more interested in the fault map that Oobii devised. Using that map, it was an easy matter—well, years of labor, actually, since doing it under Woodcarver’s snouts was a nightmare—to dig a stairway. It’s a narrow thing, almost as narrow as my member tunnels of old. You remember those?”

“Yes,” Ravna said shortly. Amdi and nine-year-old Jefri had come close to being burned alive in something similar—though that had been on Steel’s orders. “You couldn’t get the wheelbarrow through one of those tunnels.”

“True. On the stairs, I use a special sling for my White Tips”—the maimed one—“but even so, the climb is excruciating. Isn’t that so, Screwfloss?”

“Yeah, Boss.” The voice came from immediately behind her. She flinched and turned: Screwfloss was practically treading on her heels—which put him barely two meters behind Flenser. That was amazingly close for packs. Okay, the snowfall attenuated mindsounds considerably—but perhaps Screwfloss was one of the old White Jackets, a Flenser lord. Those had been trained to give up hunks of identity when their master demanded it.

Screwfloss continued. “I had to drag White Tips up 151 stairsteps. It will be worse going back down. We won’t get home till after tomorrow noon twilight.”

She turned back to Flenser and tried for nonchalance. “Okay, you’ve shared a real secret with me. What do you want?”

“Simply to help, my lady. It’s as I’ve always told you and your co-Queen, from the very first day that you and she met the New Me.”

“But you’re not sharing this with Woodcarver?”

“Alas, she is so untrusting!” He paused, struggling to roll the little wheelbarrow through a shallow snow drift. “And now I fear we are dealing with a new Woodcarver. No, not something evil, but maybe something worse. Something foolish.” He layered a regretful chuckle over his words.

“Foolish? I’m sure Woodcarver knows that Nevil is trying to manipulate her.”

“Of course,” said Flenser. “And she thinks she is in control of the situation. She’s dead wrong and—well, I’m here to rescue you both. I’m cleverer than Woodcarver ever was. And you—”

“I’m the utter fool who didn’t see even the most obvious parts of all this conspiracy.”

Flenser’s wheelbarrow came to a halt. All of his members were staring up at her, and his voice was suddenly somber and uncoy. “No, Ravna. You’re not a fool. You’re an innocent, too pure of heart to live on this real world. Outside of damaged packs and saints, I’ve never seen that among my people. Tell me. Is this a feature of star-born culture? Are there places where such minds as yours can survive?”

I’m doing my best to change! Aloud she said, “You packs have your innocents. What about Tyrathect?”

“Heh. But she didn’t survive as a mind, did she?” Flenser shrugged, looking back and forth at himself. “Tyrathect graduated to being an attitude, the bane of my otherwise happy life.” He pointed a snout at his maimed member. That creature’s rear was hidden in blankets, but its eyes were large and dark, and right now it was staring at Ravna. “If White Tips dies before the rest of me, things will suddenly become very interesting for the Domain.” He gave a theatrical sigh. “In the meantime, I would find it quite amusing to be your special secret advisor. Please, I’m at your disposal.”

They walked some paces in silence. Powers! There were consequences, good and bad, stretching in all directions. What if Woodcarver thought Ravna and Flenser were conspiring against her? What if Flenser was using Ravna just as Nevil had? There was that little threat analysis program she’d found the other day; it could probably list a hundred more possibilities. I have to talk to Pilgrim and Jo. Meantime, here and now, what was she going to say?

The wily pack just let her stew.…

“Okay, Flenser. Your advice would be welcome. Not that I feel any obligation in receiving it.”

“Oh, of course, of course. And this first meeting was mainly to establish our trusting relationship. I have one major insight and few minor facts for you. You see, Nevil has made such a mess of you.”

“That’s an insight?”

“Even now you don’t truly know. And Woodcarver, my overconfident parent, is equally ignorant. She thinks Nevil is just a simple-minded dilettante.”

“You think he’s more.”

“In himself? Certainly not. But what you’re both missing is that Nevil is the tool of persons much more clever than he is.”

“Huh? I know the Children, and there’s no one else in Nevil’s league.”

“I agree. Nevil’s senior partners are Tines—and not in the Domain at all.”

Flenser rolled on, leaving Ravna to stand for a moment in the falling snow. “Impossible!” she said, then trotted to catch up. “Most of the older Children don’t have close contacts with packs. Nevil Storherte certainly doesn’t.” Nevil treated packs cordially enough, but she suspected he was as much a racist as all extreme Straumers, hell-bent on achieving their special form of Transcendence.

Flenser shrugged. “I didn’t say they were his friends. They use him and he thinks he uses them. The combination is dangerous, especially if you and Woodcarver don’t know about it.”

Ravna slowed again, boggled by the possibilities—but there were things about the claim that didn’t make sense.

Flenser wasn’t slowing. He said something in Interpack. She couldn’t pick apart the chords, except to understand that it was an interrogative. A second later there was a reply from ahead of them. “Ah,” said Flenser, talking to her again. “I fear we’ll have to cut this short. We’re almost to the exit of this convenient alleyway—and you should be back on the road ahead of Nevil’s spy. I’ll get all the details to you soon.” One of him came back to her and grasped her mitten in its jaws, drawing her forward.

“But, but…” All the minutes he had spent on build up and now he had no time for the details! That was Flenser for you! She dug in her heels. “Wait!” her whisper was almost a hiss. “This doesn’t make any sense. An international Tinish conspiracy? Who is involved? And how could you know the details?”

Flenser didn’t relax his hold on her mitten, but his voice came from all around her. “How do you think, my dear? The conspirators think I’m on their side.” Two more of him came back and gently pushed her out onto the Queen’s Road.

“Now, shoo.” His last words faded into the sound of the falling snow.

Chapter 15

Johanna and Pilgrim both agreed that Flenser’s news should be passed on to Woodcarver immediately. Pilgrim reported back the next evening: “I told her the claims Flenser made, leaving out the details of just where