House of Reeds

The Gemmilsky House Gandaris, "Peerless Foundation of the Vaults of Heaven"

Two aerocars lifted from the rear garden of the mansion, their repeller effect rippling the conical trees and making their trapezoidal leaves rattle musically. Both vehicles bore nondescript colors and flew no warning lights, though the house and grounds were still wrapped in night's cloak. Standing in the watchman's alcove of a more traditional Jehanan building across the street, a figure in a long leather coat watched the 'cars rise silently and then speed away across the hills. The peaks behind the city – a long arm of snow-covered mountains reaching down from the massif of Capisene – were painted pink and silver with the first brush of dawn.

Rubbing cold hands together, the figure watched the mansion gate for a quarter-hour before stirring as the wooden portals opened. A Jehanan bundled in thick furs and enormous padded boots emerged, long snout puffing white vapor in the chill air. The house cook shuffled across to a locked wooden box beside the street and produced a key.

While the cook was taking out the day's delivery of eggs, freshly cut zizunaga fillets and imported Bandopene molk-cheese, the man in the long coat walked quickly across the street and ducked through the gate. With a furious expression, he strode up the curving carriage drive and let himself in the front door with his own key.

A three-toned chime sounded in the entryway as Gemmilsky unsealed his coat, stripped off his gloves and hung a drover's hat on its accustomed hook in the coat closet. Brushing back short-cropped sandy hair, the nobleman paced down the main hall and almost immediately encountered both old Nuskere Pol – who was majordomo of the current residence, just as he had served the venerable Gandarian mansion torn down to accommodate the whim of a mad asuchau out-lander with far too much money for his own good – and Corporal Clark. Despite the early hour, both the human and the Jehanan were completely turned out for a day's business.

"Viscount," Clark said, surprise hidden behind a neatly trimmed dark beard. Nuskere Pol bowed, long hands clasped together in front of his fur-lined brocade robe.

"If there is business to discuss, we can speak by comm -" Clark fell silent. Gemmilsky had such a look of restrained fury on his sharp face that the adjutant realized any attempt to speak reasonably was doomed to failure.

"I have come for my personal effects," Johann said. "Nuskere, if you could wake the servants and have them pack my things, I will be speaking to the cook."

Clark frowned. "Sir – I assure you, nothing of yours has been touched."

"Almost truth," Nuskere interjected in a whispery voice, snout wrinkled in distaste. "The young kujen drained every last egg of voodku in the house."

"That will be paid for!" The corporal twitched slightly, trying not to glare at the majordomo. "Mi'lord, I was careful to pack away all of your clothes and other personal effects and -"

Gemmilsky's eyes narrowed. "Very thoughtful," he said coldly. "Some of my men will be arriving outside in short order. Bring all of my carefully packed belongings downstairs and see them properly stowed. A bill has already been submitted for the rest to the Legation in Parus."

Clark nodded, hoping the man wouldn't lose his temper and have to be restrained. Gemmilsky turned to the old Jehanan and produced a sheaf of documents from his coat pocket.

"Nuskere Pol, I am pained to inform you that I will no longer require your services or those of the staff." Johann pressed the heavy documents into the majordomo's claw. Clark could see they were affixed with wax stamps and different kinds of seals and some were bound in metallic thread. "Here are papers of release from your service to the household and severance pay. Generous, I hope. There are also letters of recommendation, for I trust you will find a worthy household to serve in future."

The corporal stiffened a little at the man's tone and was about to speak sharply with him when the front door banged open and the cook burst in, bags of eggs clutched to his heavy coat. The Jehanan was hissing and warbling at a tremendous rate, far faster than Clark's translator could keep up. Old Nuskere stiffened in alarm, but Gemmilsky – his face softening for the first time – replied to the agitated cook in a calm tone, managing a very respectable version of the same wavering hoots and trills.

Catching a bit of the conversation, Clark stepped to the open door and looked out warily. The front gates had been thrown wide and a procession of enormous hairy behemoths was striding up the drive. Each hrak – an untranslatable word the corporal's translator supplied from context – bore a creaking howdah of wooden slats and leather fittings. The lead hrak slowed to a halt, guided by a tiny, short-faced type of Jehanan the corporal had never seen before, and then knelt with a snuffling groan.

"Wouldn't expect to see mammoths here, would you?" Gemmilsky said, coming to stand at Clark's shoulder. "They're not the real thing, of course, just an unusual Jehanan analogue. True mammals, too. Quite rare on this world. A biologist I consulted in Parus thinks they might actually be native. Now, you had carefully packed baggage to bring down, didn't you?"

The corporal nodded, tore his eyes from the hrak settling onto the lawn, and hurried back down the hall. Old Nuskere was wringing his hands, watching the near-legendary hrak and their drivers with wide eyes, when Johann turned from the door himself.

"Master? Are you…are you going to the Cold Lands? Truly?"

Gemmilsky nodded, a faint sparkle in his eyes. "I am. Too many Imperials here for my taste. I hear many wild tales of the lands beyond Capsia. I would like to see the cities in the ice for myself, if they truly exist."

The Jehanan shuddered and pushed the door closed with both hands. "Horrible fates await those who pass the White Teeth, master. Horrible…you should stay here – I am sure the brown-faced men will leave soon. This is your home!"

Johann looked around the hallway with a pensive, sad expression. "It was, for a little while. Now, I want you all out of here before the sun is high. No one is to stay! Let these Mйxica and their minging lapdogs feed themselves." He paused, a grin starting to twist his lips. "Tell cook to give all the food and drink in the house to the poor. My gift to the city. And I give you and the other servants all the bed linens, towels, everything but the furniture and the manse itself."

Nuskere stared at him for a moment, then began to trill helplessly in laughter, sides shaking, hiding his snout in stiff old hands.

Tezozуmac waved cheerily at a Gandarian nobleman moving quietly through the scrub higher on the slope and looked down quizzically at Colmuir. The master sergeant was down on one knee, the long-barreled rifle at the ready.

"What was the name of that one?" The prince pointed over his shoulder. "The one with the particularly long snout and the green and black felting on his jacket?"

"Lord Pardane Fes," the Skawtsman whispered, tensely scanning the plane trees rising above the high grass. "Cousin of the kujen I believe and an avid hunter… Mi'lord, you really should lower your profile. The xixixit – -"

"What exactly is this fearsome creature?" Tezozуmac interrupted. He was feeling rather good – the aerocar ride had cleared his head a little, the day was pleasantly cool, and there had been a fine selection of beverages laid on by the kujen. While the natives had not made their way into the hills by air, they still managed to put on a very respectable luncheon in a pavilion under spreading trees. "Dawd tried to show me a picture, but I was busy throwing up at the time."

Colmuir did not look up, keeping his attention focused on the upper branches of the nearest copse. The Ghuhore district lay in the rain shadow of jagged mountains on the southern side of the Kophen. The vegetation ran to grassy hillsides spotted with clusters of dry-leaf trees and thickets of a spiny bramble. Steep ravines filled with thick brush split the slopes. The tu grass varied in height from two to four meters, which made visibility difficult for men on foot and excellent hunting territory for the triply-winged, uncannily silent xixixit.

"A native wasp, mi'lord, of uncommon size and ferocity. Hangs in the trees like a three-meter-long bat. Carries a bifurcated stinger – the poison dissolves the innards of the victim – very grisly, you understand."

Tezozуmac frowned, checking his teeth for bits of grilled meat. He had found the roast zizunaga fillets very savory. "Are they colored like a wasp? I'd think yellow and black would stand out in this country…Or are they sort of a mixed brown and green with tan legs?"

"Sir, I don't rightly – what did you say?"

The prince pointed, Colmuir snapped his head around and an enormous, mottled insect burst up from the high grass between Tezozуmac and Lord Pardane Fes and his loaders. The master sergeant hurled himself between his charge and the xixixit, swinging the rifle around. Shoved off balance, the prince fell backwards into the grass, broke through a screen of immature tu stalks and tumbled down the hillside.

The wasp, crystalline wings blurring into near-invisibility, darted to the right. Colmuir's rifle bellowed, spitting a long tongue of flame and sending the crack! of a gunshot echoing across the hillside. Lord Pardane's servants bolted, the noble Jehanan flung himself flat on the ground and the slender tree above him burst into flames as the self-fusing high-explosive bullet smashed into the trunk and blew apart.

Colmuir cursed, jacked back the ejector lever on the side of the rifle and groped for a fresh round. The Jehanan lord bounced back up, shrilling lurid insults at the clumsy human and caught sight of the xixixit blurring downslope, weaving between the isolated trees with fluid grace. Burning branches falling around him, Pardane Fes braced his rifle, took aim and squeezed the trigger.

The master sergeant felt the air over his head snap with the passage of a bullet, and rolled up himself, shouting in alarm. "Mi'lord! Mi'lord Prince, where are you?"

Downslope, the Jehanan bullet narrowly missed the fleeing xixixit and blew apart in a stand of red-barked brush. Flames licked up from the wounded trunk, caught among dry leaves and began to smoke furiously. The insect dodged into the unexpected cover and daintily wiped its feeding mandibles clean of fresh blood. Having only whetted its appetite, the xixixit then noticed a bipedal figure stumbling through the brush at the bottom of the slope and took flight, pleased at the prospect of a second meal so soon in the day.

Pardane's servants, meanwhile, followed their lord headlong down the slope. The long legs of a Jehanan were well suited for bounding between the tufts of high grass, but one of the loaders stumbled almost immediately and when he'd picked himself up, stared in horror at the eviscerated carcass of a young molk, entrails scattered by the xixixit's cutting mandibles. The servant had only an instant to wonder why a calf had wandered this far up from the valley before the hooting bellow of his master summoned him to the chase.

Tezozуmoc, half-blinded by dirt and clouds of tu pollen, crashed through a wall of thorny brush and stumbled into a stream. An algae-slick rock immediately turned under his foot, pitching him into the water with a splash. For a moment, he lay stunned in the current, shivering as snowmelt rushed over him, and then the prince heaved himself up and crawled onto a muddy bank.

Exhausted and in shock, Tezozуmoc rolled onto his back in a drift of fallen leaves and tried to clear his eyes. The first thing he saw was the blurring, jerky flight of the xixixit as it darted through the stand of trees hanging over the stream. Bluish plates of fresh chitin gleamed under older sections of brown scale. The long, pendant legs and cutting mandibles tucked against the bipartite body gleamed jewel-green.

The prince groped for something to use as a weapon. In the incongruous silence, the sound of an aerocar turbine idling was jarringly loud. Tezozуmoc tipped his head back and caught sight of a woman – a human woman – in a silk blouse, field trousers and a sensible sun-hat.

The xixixit blurred forward, glossy black stingers flaring down for the paralyzing strike.

There was a deafening crack-crack-crack directly over the prince's head. The smell of propellant and atomized metal choked Tezozуmoc and he flinched into a tight ball, hands over his ears. Three armor-piercing rounds smashed into the thorax and head of the xixixit as it lunged across the stream. The fluoropolymer-coated bullets tore through the armored chitin and splintered into dozens of razor-sharp sub-munitions, which tore through the soft inner organ sac.

A hand seized the prince, dragging him to his feet, and Tezozуmoc opened his eyes in time to see the xixixit blow apart in a cloud of shattered chitin, lubricating fluid and gossamer wing fragments.

"Christ on the Stone," he gasped, "that was an excellent shot!"

"Thank you," a rich alto voice purred in his ear. The prince turned in time for the unexpected woman to wrap his fingers around a still-smoking Webley AfriqaExpress hunting pistol and then swoon gracefully into his arms.

"Ooof!" Tezozуmoc staggered, taken by surprise, and managed to hug the woman to his side before he dropped her. The hot barrel of the Webley burned his arm, but – juggling both unexpected objects for a moment – he managed to seize the pistol grip. He looked down at himself in dismay. He was soaked and coated with mud. "Ah…curst wilderness! Another good shirt ruined! I hate hunting -"

"Mi'lord!" Colmuir crashed out of the thicket on the far side of the stream, rifle at the ready. The master sergeant stumbled to a halt, gaping at the scene in front of him. Pardane Fes was only a step behind and the Jehanan let loose a hiss of astonishment. The crowd of servants behind him spilled out onto the bank and then everyone looked up, shielding their faces from blowing grit and dust as an Imperial aerocar settled between the trees. Dawd hung over the side, one foot on the bottom step of the boarding ladder, the Whipsaw tracking across the chuckling stream.

"You killed it?" Colmuir stared in amazement at the shattered remnants of the xixixit scattered in front of the prince and the woman. The master sergeant blinked, recognizing her. "Madame Petrel?"

Behind the Resident's wife, still in the arms of her Imperial savior, the pale faces of two young ladies peered over the side of an aerocar, then squealed in relief to see the horrendous monster stricken down. Colmuir stepped back, eyes narrowed in suspicion, and let the Jehanan hunters – nearly everyone had now arrived, drawn by the gunshots – stampede past to examine the insect carcass. Tezozуmoc was staring around him, bemused to suddenly find a striking woman in his arms and two young girls clapping in delight and thanking him for such "quick thinking."

Pardane Fes rose from the shattered xixixit, shaking his long scaled head in appreciation. "Not sporting," the Jehanan boomed, "to use such a keen blade, but a well-placed shot withal – straight between the thorax plates. Well placed, well placed."

Clinging tightly to the prince's rather narrow chest, Mrs. Petrel's brilliant blue eyes fluttered open and she looked around, apparently so overcome she'd forgotten where she was. "Oh – what was that horrific beast?" There was a hesitant pause, then, in a ghoulishly fascinated tone: "Was anyone killed?"

Eight hundred kilometers away to the south, Itzpalicue grunted and her wrinkled old face screwed up into a disapproving grimace. "Cut that last," she growled to Lachlan and his editing team, who were hunched over a double-wide set of v-displays in the operations center. "She always overdoes these things… Cull the rest, make it look presentable for a handheld cam and squirt it to the t-relay on the Tepoztecatl. They'll want to forward it on to the core worlds as quickly as possible."

Lachlan nodded, watching approvingly as the two girls from Editing winnowed out everything which would have made the prince less presentable – such as the look of stark fear on his face when the xixixit burst out of the trees – and recast the crystal-clear video from the spyeyes into a fuzzier, lower-def format. A body-filter was already processing the prince's torso, adding muscle and definition.

"We'll have a final edit in about twenty minutes," the Йirishman reported after a moment. "Anything else we need to track from these spyeyes today? I'd like to route them back to Gandaris to recharge."

Itzpalicue shook her head. The old woman leaned on her cane, keen eyes roving across the workstations crowded into the low-ceilinged room. Everyone appeared entirely focused on their work, which pleased her greatly, and a particular, familiar tension was building in the air.

"Soon," she said, clicking her teeth together in consideration. "I can feel the index peaking. We'll have our war soon…" Coming to a decision, she rapped the top of Lachlan's console with her knuckles. "I'm going out to see to my Arachosians. They are getting impatient."

Shaking his head in dismay, Corporal Clark stepped through the ruins of the kitchen and pushed the door of the ice locker closed with a dull thump. Every edible scrap of food was gone. Nearly all of the utensils, pots, pans and other cook-ware had been hauled away. Some eating tines wrapped in a damask napkin lay forgotten on the floor. The rest of the house was in a similar state.

Chasing off the last of the scavengers – once word had circulated around the neighborhood about the viscount's departure, every short-horn in the district had descended on the 'asuchau house' to get their share – had taken the whole afternoon. The genteel ambience Gemmilsky had worked so hard to establish had been destroyed, leaving only an echoing, empty house filled with scattered litter and forgotten trinkets.

"Well, this will take some fixing," the adjutant said, squaring his shoulders and tapping his comm awake. "Hello? Is this the Gandaris consulate? Yes, this is Corporal Clark. I'm acting factotum for the Prince Imperial while he's in the city…Yes, that one. Yes. Listen now, there's been a bit of a problem with the servants at the Gemmilsky house." Clark paused, listening to the consul babble in his ear. The corporal's face grew still, then turned grim.

"You say the Resident's wife is coming with him? She's not injured? Good. But her vacation party has been invited to stay with the prince?" Clark's dark eyebrows drew close over brown eyes. "And where would her luggage be? At the palace? No? Ah, the train station. I see. Well, sir, if you wish to remain employed by the Imperial Diplomatic Corps, I suggest you tell me how to acquire thirty properly trained household staff and hot dinner and drinks for thirty in…" Clark raised his wrist, glanced at his chrono, then peered out the window at the sun. "Three-quarters of an hour. As, sir, there are no staff here. They have all fled to the four winds."

There was a pause. Clark waited, trying not to tap his boot on the floor. Eventually the consul spoke again and a begrudging smile lit the corporal's dour face.

"Does the kujen have an Imperial-addressed comm? He does? Excellent – what's the number there? Good. Now, can you send a man to get her Ladyship's baggage? I will be very busy here, very busy."