“Who are you and where did you live your first twelve years?” she asked him in a chuckling voice.
“My name is Prince Joziré. I lived on Fajnard with my mother, the queen. We had to go into hiding. The Gardener took me, and also a girl named Wilvia. We went to B’yurngrad, to school…”
“And then where did you go?”
“To the academy, on Thairy. I forgot about Wilvia. Oh, how could I have…”
“Don’t worry about it. How long were you there?”
“I was there for four years. I met my best friend there. His name was Naumi…”
“And then?”
“Then…I went to work for the Siblinghood, on B’yurngrad. That’s where I met M’urgi…But they wouldn’t let me stay there, I forgot about M’urgi, I forgot Naumi, I remembered my mother, and I remembered Wilvia, and we were married. We ruled the Ghoss together, for five years. We were expecting our first child, then the Thongal invaded at the behest of the Quaatar…”
“And then, after that?”
“I forgot about being the King of the Ghoss. I forgot Wilvia. I was taken into the Siblinghood, I went here and there, I found M’urgi again, and Naumi…”
I, Margaret, was crying very quietly while all this went on. After Lady Badness left, Ferni and I spent a great deal of time together.
Time went by on Cantardene.
Though bondslaves were still being imported onto the planet from Earth, the rituals atop Beelshi were no longer conducted, not there, not on any similar site elsewhere on the planet. No one was left alive who knew the procedures, the incantations, the purpose. The standing stones that had existed in all the sacred places began to fall to pieces. Beelshi itself was rumored to be a place of ill fortune, and no one went near the hill…
Except, that is, for Mr. Weathereye, who spent some time spying on a few surviving and exceptionally wealthy K’Famir. This surveillance eventually led him to the buried city of the Pthas. A short time later, Gentherans began arriving through the gate in the darkness of moonless nights, traveling to the buried city and taking away everything that could be taken—including all the K’Famir who had known where the place was—and burying the rest beyond finding again by any save themselves. After their final visit, they built an impenetrable wall inside the mausoleum, covering the door and joining the incoming to the outgoing gate for the lengthy time Caspor said this link of the one road would stay in place.
Time went by on B’yurngrad. The Siblinghood moved among the tribes in great numbers, pointing out the historical connections among death-and-honor religions. Those capable of understanding were let alone; those few who could not be reached went to the newly constructed Death-and-Honor Walled-Off on Tercis. Since Death-and-Honor religions were male inventions, almost entirely, so was the population male, almost entirely. So much had been learned from Tercis. For those impervious to history, only sterilization and quarantine are efficacious.
Inevitably, those among the tribes who knew the location of the great treasure hoard talked about it to someone who passed the knowledge on. This great trove, as well, was added to the wealth of the Siblinghood.
Time went by on Chottem.
Sophia summoned the people of Bray to a meeting and told them what d’Lornschilde had done. He was arrested, tried, and sentenced to be deprived of his tongue and sold into bondage in the mines of Cantardene. Saving aside some treasure to implement her own good works, Sophia added the balance of the riches of the House of Lorn to the wealth of the Siblinghood. Subsequently, Sophia met a very likeable young man of nonaristocratic family whose wooing she gently encouraged. When the leading families of Bray and Lorn looked askance, she did not seem to notice.
Time went by on Fajnard.
The Frossian underlings were touched by the same wave of ill fortune that had taken their leaders. The planet no longer appealed to them. The world was too slow, too uncertain, the umoxen were increasingly reluctant to be herded. One day, as if by prior agreement, the Frossians began leaving Fajnard, waves of them. On the day the last of them departed, the Ghoss returned to the lowlands, and the umox hum could be heard to the outer edges of the atmosphere.
Very soon thereafter, on the heights of Fajnard, a great reception was held for the King and Queen of the Ghoss, long separated from their people, now returned as though from the dead, both somewhat changed, but recognizable. As the couple waited for the fanfare that would summon them to the high dais of the Council Hall, the queen turned to her spouse, rearranged the lace collar that fell in delicate folds at the throat of his velvet jacket, and said, continuing a previous conversation, “…I don’t think my adoration of you is at all strange. Three-sevenths of me loved you to distraction already.”
“True,” he said, eyes fixed, for some reason, on the curls of hair around the queen’s ears. “Obviously, your very best parts.”
The queen smiled and blushed.
Trumpets sounded in the Council Hall. Footsteps clattered far away, down the hallway. Ferni looked into nothingness and the queen followed his eyes, wondering what he was hoping to find there. Answers?
“I was thinking about that fleet of ships above B’yurngrad. When those aboard died, the ships went into automatic orbit, the Gentherans boarded them and sent them into the sun. Everyone on Quaatar, Cantardene, and among the Frossian worlds knew what they had set out to do, but none of them knew what happened. The Gentherans won’t tell them. So far as the vile races are concerned, everyone who set out to kill off humanity simply vanished. When asked about it by inquisitive members of other races, those in the Siblinghood merely say, ‘Well, of course. What did they expect?’”
The queen smiled. “So, we have become nemesis. Not a bad thing, on the whole. And all Flex’s armaments? Where are they
