Otis stopped dead in his tracks, a low growl escaping his throat. He turned to Tarn, looking carefully at the young man before him. After a time, he nodded and held out a hand. “A pleasure to meet you. So we finally know who her Guide is.”
“Uh, not exactly, Sire.”
“You’re not her Guide, the one we were told to expect?”
“I might be, Sire. When her need was greatest, I was there. I believe that was the promise?”
“Then why are you uncertain?”
“I’m no longer uncertain, Sire. I am the Guide, but not her guide.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, turning to Krys.
“Neither did I, at first,” she said. “I was looking for someone to guide me, when that was not what the Leaf People promised at all. They never promised me my own guide, only that the Guide would find me. My visions are for others, Otis, and I’ve never been able to interpret them. Tarn has. He’s their Guide.”
Otis nodded thoughtfully. “You’ve had more visions then. Your skills have improved?”
“Marginally. I wish I had someone who could teach me.”
“You know your next stop must be the Queen.”
She nodded. “I knew the moment I saw you. I’ve not yet met anyone who knows where she is.”
“There’s not a more carefully guarded secret. Keep that in mind.”
“I’m a little more grown up than when you last saw me. Don’t worry.”
“You’re still a cub as far as I’m concerned. Both of you,” he said, looking back and forth between the two. “How have you managed so well?”
“I have a wonderful crew, and your brothers have played their part. We’re all better at what we do because of them.”
“I expect no less of them.”
“But they did it without proof, Otis. They had some hard choices to make, and they made them without proof.”
When they reached Rappor, Krys presented Otis to the crew. They all bowed to him, but he would have none of that.
“Stand, all of you,” he demanded. He looked the crew over carefully and nodded his great head. “A Rress and a Schect. No wonder you managed so well.”
“The whole crew is exceptional, Sire,” Krys said. “Gordi’i and Kali’i are excellent gunners, and they’ve demonstrated their skills with hand weapons as well as ship’s weapons. Engineer Gortlan has managed to get us through several beacon changes, not a fun process.”
“It’s possible to change a beacon?” Otis asked in surprise. “The Queen would have benefited from an ability to do that.”
“It takes special equipment and training, Sire,” Gortlan said. “It requires shutting down the AI completely while in transit. The pilots have an interesting time holding things together while I reboot.”
Otis eyed them all hard. “Your new First Knight transited 800 light years without an AI. His Rider and your Queen kept the net functioning while he made all the jumps manually. It took the better part of a year.”
Stven looked at M’Sada in shock. “You embarrass us, Sire. We struggle to hold things together for a couple of hours.”
“Well, in your favor, the First Knight and the Queen did not know that what they were doing was difficult.” He turned to Krys. “Tell me your story.”
“I think yours is much more interesting.”
“My story is the Queen’s story. It will be told in private.”
“Otis, if your crew was so small that she had to be in the net, I think you know what life is like aboard a small ship. There are no secrets between us. There can’t be.”
Otis sat almost at attention as he considered. “You’re right, Krys. You know, of course, what happened to the treaty mission.”
“We only saw the wreckage. Tarn, Stven, and I were there. We had hoped to rescue you, but I knew we were too late long before we arrived.”
Otis nodded. “We escaped, but someone had altered the navigation program. We ended up far from where we intended. We fled to the nearest world, a world classified as an emerging world. The Chessori tracked us, and a running battle that had begun at the treaty site continued.”
“Tracked!” Stven exclaimed. “I knew it.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“We’ve suspected it. And they have some way of calling ships through hyperspace.”
“We believe they have an interstellar communicator. The Empire does not have the capability, and it places us at a tremendous disadvantage.”
“So that’s how they keep finding us,” M’Sada said. “We hadn’t followed the line of logic all the way.”
“No one else has, either, not with these Chessori. We’re learning as we go,” Otis replied. He looked at Krys. “Remember your first vision, all those years ago?”
“I remember it well. I spent years trying to figure it out.”
“It was fulfilled on the emerging world. I won’t mention the name of that world. You’ll have to be Tested before that happens.”
“Tested!” Stven exclaimed again. A puff escaped from one nostril, despite the presence of a Knight of the Realm.
Otis’ head swung slowly in his direction. “Your next stop will be the Queen. Surely you know that. Do you fear a Testing?”
“No, Sire. I just… well, I never expected to meet a Knight of the Realm, let alone the Queen.” He looked to Krys for support.
Otis turned back to Krys. “She needs you by her side as quickly as you can get there. She’s alone.”
“Alone!”
“In her mind, she’s alone. All her Knights are away on various tasks, and I don’t doubt that Chandrajuski is, as well. She needs a friend, Krys.”
Another puff escaped, and M’Sada was forced to leave, his upper hands working overtime on his antennae as he raced for the exit. Otis looked at Stven with a peculiar look. “Isn’t that considered bad form among the Rress?”
Stven’s head lowered on his long neck. “Sorry, Sire. There’s a reason I’m here instead of there, something about a weak diaphragm. I’m quite the reject.”
“Then I wish there were more rejects. Stand tall, sailor.”
“Yes, Sire,” Stven said, his neck lifting slightly, still mortified.
“You said the vision was fulfilled,” Krys said. “Most of it I understand now, but who is the man of dirt?”
“I can’t say without revealing more than I can before you’re Tested. Let me just say that you could not have been more precise in your original description of him. All your descriptions fit.”
Krys’ eyes rose to the ceiling as she remembered the words of Daughter’s vision.
“You will be so much more, and have so much less. They will best you, but a man of dirt will come to your aid.”
Alone among all her visions, she had been uncertain of one word. The word dirt seemed to carry more than one meaning. The actual word that had come to her was earth, or Earth, but the sense of dirt came through strongly. Her eyes grew large as she considered Otis’ words, but she remained mute as he continued.
“The only survivors of a ground battle on that emerging world were the Queen, her daughter, the nanny, a Rider whose host was dying, myself, and the ‘man of dirt,’ as you call him. Without his help, none of us would have survived. The Queen was forced to do a terrible thing. She stunned this man from an emerging world and permitted a newly fissioned Rider to enter his body.”
Krys sucked in a breath.
“Yes, somewhat akin to what happened to Val, isn’t it? But for the man of dirt who knew nothing of our ways, it was a difficult awakening. It took many months for him to accept the Rider. I might add that the Rider played a major part in another vision, Krys: your vision with Chandrajuski.”
Krys remembered the words:
