“Then I must tell you what is forecast for the lovely lands of the Ghoss. They may soon be threatened, probably by either the Frossians or the Thongal. If that happens, you may need to leave your people, your country. You may need to leave Joziré, for his sake. You may have a long, troubled time in your life. You may know sadness, and sorrow, and loneliness. You may have to work very hard just to stay alive. Or, you can forget Joziré. You can stay here. It will be safer. You will be among friends. I think it is only fair to give you warning before you put your foot on the path…”
She stared at me, into me. I know what she saw, a kind of whirlwind, doubts and sorrows and joys all spun together like the whirlwinds on Mars. Joziré’s face, his eyes, the feel of his hands. The dragonfly ship. The woman in red. What I had left. What I had promised.
I heard myself say, “Even if all that is true, every word of it, I still choose Joziré. I still choose to be queen, to rule justly, to do what he would have me do.”
And that seemed to be answer enough. She stood up and gestured. A ship edged its way over the window in the dome and dropped a ladder down. Old as she looked, Lady Badness went up the ladder like a tree rat, and I went after her. The ship was piloted by the same woman in red who had brought me here with Joziré all those years ago. She smiled at me, indicating the older, one-eyed man with her. “Mr. Weathereye, Wilvia.” I bowed, he nodded, the ship moved away.
I was not conscious of time passing, which it must have done, before we saw an enormous highland centered upon a tall, white palace. We set down in the paved courtyard.
“These are the highlands of Fajnard,” said the one-eyed man, turning toward me. “Much work awaits you here. Do you think you’re up to it?”
I simply stared at him, my mouth open.
Lady Badness said, “I have seldom seen anyone work as hard as Wilvia has done. I have faith in her.” She leaned forward and pointed through the open door of the ship. “See, there!”
A man was approaching. I looked, and looked again. He was taller, and stronger-looking, and even more handsome, and…
“Joziré,” I cried, and went running toward him.
Behind us, the ship left very quietly.
I Am M’urgi/on B’yurngrad
I found my first housing on B’yurngrad in a hostel kept by the Siblinghood of Silence. The first person I met there was a tall, dark-haired, lean-faced fellow named Fernwold, who stared at me as though I was long-lost kin. He was, so he said, the sorter-out, the questioner and annoyer who fitted awkward pegs into weird-shaped holes wherever that was possible.
“First thing,” he said, looking me over from head to toe, “is for us to learn how you came here to B’yurngrad?’
I gritted my teeth and prepared to be terse. “I was twenty-two years old, on Earth, recently identified as an over-four, being shipped out. I might have ended up on a ship that went into Mercan space if I’d told them I speak Omniont and Mercan languages, so I kept my mouth shut. I was put on an Omniont ship that was scheduled to stop here on B’yurngrad to transship its cargo to various Omniont worlds.”
He cocked his head. “You stopped at this transshipment point, and…”
“…And the ship unloaded the bondspeople onto three smaller ships that had come to pick us up. Two ships left. I was on the last one, and while it was still sitting in the port it developed something called a core resonance. Does that happen?”
He nodded. “Often killing a lot of people.”
“The repairs were going to take a long time. The shipmaster was told to get rid of his cargo, as feeding us was expensive…”
“How did you know that? Did the shipmaster tell you?”
“Of course not. I heard him talking to his superiors, whomever. They said sell us if possible, but get rid of us. I inferred that meant kill us. It seemed logical.”
“So when you said you spoke alien languages, you meant you really speak them, not just know a few words?”
“I really speak them, yes. That was to have been my lifework. Translation. Diplomacy. Understanding. And why are you staring at me, what did you say your name was?”
“Fernwold. Ferni, for short. A good friend at the academy called me that. I’m staring because you look like him.”
I discounted this as unlikely. “Fernwold. Some person or group bought us or ransomed us—at least they paid something to get us released, or hosteled, whatever. The next person I met was you.”
“The Siblinghood of Silence ransomed you,” he said, looking thoughtful. “Thus moving you from bondservice into sibling service. What’s that old saying, from the roasting spit into the fire?”
I stared at him, openmouthed. “The who?”
“The Siblinghood of Silence. You haven’t heard of them?”
“I’ve heard of something called the Third Order…”
He put his finger to his lips, eyes conveying a definite message. “No. You haven’t. No matter how well you remember it, you haven’t heard of it, but you do remember the Siblinghood.”
“A bi-or multigender fraternity of some kind?”
I thought his responsive smile rather wolfish, hearkening back to my childhood love of animal books. His eyebrows were dark and extremely mobile, two physiognomic punctuation marks that leapt about to mark each utterance, parenthetical or exclamatory. Just now they were tented, conveying amused disbelief at my ignorance.
“Rather more than that, Salvage. It is on behalf of the Siblinghood that I am here to find out what each member of the ransomed cargo may be fit for. Some of them will be easy. They’ll be kitchen help. They’ll go to the workshops of the building crew. The High-house of the Siblinghood here on B’yurngrad is always in a
