“Father, listen. Rigo Yrarier killed at least two Hippae. I don’t know how many men died in the ruckus we left behind us, but some must have. I’m remembering the stories of Darenfeld estancia. How it was burned after somebody wounded a Hippae. How all the people in the village died. The people at Opal Hill village, the servants here in the big house, they’re our people, lather. Commons people.”
“How many at Opal Hill?”
“A hundred and a bit. If you can get Roald Few to send out sonic trucks …”
“Will the people be ready?”
“Sebastian is on his way to the village now. If you can get the trucks we use when we go into winter quarters, they can bring the livestock in. They’ll need their animals….”
A long silence. “Can you bring the foreigners from the estancia?”
“His Excellency, yes. His secretary and her sister. The old priest. That’s all.”
“Where’s the wife? The children? The other priest? Yrarier’s fancy woman?”
“Asmir Tanlig took Eugenie to Commons this morning. None of the others are here, but I don’t have time to explain about them now.” He left the tell-me and ran through the dwelling, stopping all the servants he met. They were all from the village. Some he sent to find Father Sandoval and Andrea Chapelside and her sister, telling them he could allow only an hour for packing. Waiting even that long might endanger Rigo’s life, but he could not simply gather up the women and fly away, leaving all their belongings behind. They would need things. Women always needed things.
Marjorie. She, too, would need things. He gathered three of the maids together and told them to pack Marjorie’s things. “Her clothes,” he said. “Her personal things.”
And Stella’s? Would Stella ever be found? What did Stella value?
“How long, Persun? What shall we pack?”
“Never mind,” he said in frustration. “Take a few sensible clothes for Marjorie and Stella, their jewelry and treasures, and leave it at that.”
And perhaps it was all mere supposition, mere paranoia. Perhaps the Hippae would do nothing to Opal Hill at all. Perhaps the village would be safe.
And perhaps not. In panic he went back to the tell-me.
“Roald Few has borrowed four cargo trucks from the port,” his father said. “They’re on their way. He agrees on the importance of saving the livestock.”
Well then, it was not merely his own fear. Or, if it was, he had been successful in spreading it about. He scurried through the place to Marjorie’s study, intent upon saving anything there that she might ever want again. He came face to face with the panels he had carved for her, a lady moving among the trees of a copse, sometimes clearly seen, sometimes hidden, her lovely face always slightly turned away. Like a dream, just out of reach. There were birds in the trees. He reached out to touch one of them, stroke one of them, wondering foolishly if there were time to cut the panels out and save them. He broke away with an exclamation. No time.
When he had gathered together what he could, he picked up Sebastian and those who were ready and drove the aircar directly to the hospital near the Port Hotel. The doctors carried Rigo away; Andrea, her sister, and Father Sandoval went to the port hotel.
Asmir was there. “Where’s Eugenie?” Persun asked.
“I don’t know. Wasn’t she with you?” Asmir asked in return.
“This morning she wanted to come in to Commons.”
“She told me she’d changed her mind. I just came to pick up some supplies.”
Persun counted his passengers on his fingers and ran to ask them where Eugenie was. No one knew. He flew back to Opal Hill, anxious to use all the daylit hours. In the village the trucks were loading: people, livestock, necessary equipment. Another truck landed as he stood there. Sebastian was driving it.
“I can’t find Eugenie,” Persun yelled at him.
“His Excellency’s woman? Isn’t she in Commons? Didn’t she go in with Asmir?”
“She didn’t, Sebastian. She changed her mind.”
“Ask Linea, over there. She took care of Eugenie.”
Persun chased the indicated woman and asked. Linea didn’t know. She hadn’t seen Eugenie since early this morning. She thought Eugenie must be in her own house, or perhaps in the garden.
Persun ran back up the trail to the estancia, to Eugenie’s house, cursing under his breath. She wasn’t there. Soft pink curtains blew in the spring wind. The house smelled of flowers Persun Pollut had never seen. The woman wasn’t there. He went out into the grass garden and searched for her, down this path and that, the mild spring airs moving above him and around him, the perfumes of the fragrant grasses like a drug in his nostrils.
He called, “Eugenie?” It did not seem a dignified thing to do, to walk about the gardens calling her by her first name, but he knew no other name to call her. It was what everyone called her. “Eugenie!”
From the village the trucks rose with a roar of engines. He went there once more, plodding. A few remaining people. A few remaining pigs, chickens, a lonely cow lowing at the sky. The sun, down in the west, burning its hot eye into his own.
“Are they coming back?” he asked. “The trucks?”
“You don’t think we planned to stay here with everyone gone, did you?” an old woman snapped at him. “What happened? No one seems to know, except that the Hippae are coming to slaughter us all in our beds.”
Persun didn’t answer. He was already on his way back to the house to try one last time. He went through the big house, room by room. She wasn’t there. To her own house again. She wasn’t there.
He did not think to go to the chapel. Why would he? The people of Commons had scant use for chapels. Some of them claimed religions, but they were not of edificial kinds.
He went out to the car, offered the old woman a seat in it, loaded her crate of chickens aboard, and took off
