Chapter 12

Porter was not comfortable shaking hands with other people. In the Empire, the typical hello/goodbye combination was a slight bow from the shoulders up. Not only was the custom less messy, bowing saved time because there was no need to approach every single person in a room; bow once at a conference table and the touchy-feely stuff was done. Besides, Porter knew few wanted to squeeze his fat, squishy fingers.

However, he was not standing in the Empire and its cold manners anymore. He was sweating out his clothes and sharing his body odor with people he had only known for a short time instead. People touched each other on Anshar, and they wanted to shake his hand. Leeza forced him to bend over giving him a peck on the cheek and no one made an obnoxious noise. Harlan dismissed his hand and gave him a backbreaking bear hug and a slam of his hands on his back, which Porter returned. He hoped that he blinked fast enough to hide the tears in his eyes. With a final thank you to Captain Tyver, the Border Patrol slipped back into the forest from where they had emerged yesterday turning eastward.

Gilly and Porter sat on their mounts and watched their friends disappear. The world of Anshar seemed larger and wilder as they stood quietly in the forest. Kanji lifted her head and tested the breeze with her nose. The breeze was cooler, as if hinting of the lower temperatures of the great northern forests.

“Why do I feel like I’ve lost my family?” Porter said with a murmur.

He was experiencing a small irony that he could not reveal because of his fear of judgment. When he left home for college, his family’s relief was palpable. Not that his parents were mean or in any manner rude but the feeling he had as he shut the door with his duffle on his back was “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” They were well and done with the responsibility of raising him. Instead, in an unnamed clearing on a forgotten world on the other side of civilization’s borders, soldiers who had only known him for months were leaving him with heartfelt farewells.

Gilly heard his words and asked, “How did the old man who found your ship describe you? That you were ‘good people’?”

“Yeah,” Porter answered swinging his hamox around. “Every time I insulted him.”

“He was not wrong, Porter. Good friends are hard to come by in these days of treachery and upheaval. You make for a good friend,” she said to him.

Porter stared at her a moment with his mouth open. Such a statement had never been voiced in his presence before; the best he had received in the past were bland compliments like “pleasant company” and “kind heart.” He did not quite know what to do with it other than to say, “thank you.”

Gilly turned them north again and they plunged into the thickening underbrush. She seemed to know which way to go and Porter was happy to follow. In single file, he got the opportunity to study her figure from behind; how her hair fell to the middle of her back in a single ponytail, and how her woven blouse hugged her lithe frame. He forgot to calculate trees and foliage. He forgot nearly everything as he watched her swaying frame without interruption. Kanji had taken to her usual habit of disappearing into the brush and reappearing once in a great while.

They seemed to wander aimlessly through twisted woods, sometimes following a game trail and other times, making their own. Finally, the thought struck him, “How do you know where we are going?”

“The directions are clear for the Blue Hand who know how to locate the markings. Tyver and I were both trained to look for the signs. If we are lucky, we will also come across hidden caches of supplies along the way.”

“There is more than one way to Sky House?” Porter was confused.

Gilly gave him a smile, “The better way to understand our path is to say that there are compass like directions to follow but no paths that guide the traveler. In this manner, Sky House has remained hidden for centuries from all who wish evil upon the Blue Hand.”

Porter chewed on that bit of information for a while until he discovered what she had left unsaid. “When you said Sky House has been hidden for centuries, do you mean that there were others who have been attempting to kill Blue Hand before Iosef of the priesthood?”

“Mirela said you were smart,” Gilly said. She waited for him to pull alongside. “Are you ready to hear a history lesson of the times and trials of Blue Hand?”

The memory of the Blue Hand was long and detailed. The severing of connections to the Empire was not entirely accidental, Porter learned. The pioneers believed that the galaxy spanning entity was slowly dissolving into petty kingdoms of self-interest and corporate piracy. The vast overlay of civil service and bureaucracy masked the real decay underneath and artificially held together planets and systems whose relations had already dissipated. The pioneers had taken advantage of this vast, overly complicated government system and cross-filed contradictory forms and permits, all of which would be kicked out of the system for reconciliation when someone had the time to reconcile such conflicts. In such a system, the pioneers gamed that “when” meant “never.”

The apocalyptic visionaries or foreseers as they imagined themselves, added an additional no space leg in the middle of their registered flight plan that took them far from known space and into that hazy area of the surveyor’s territory. At one time, new planets and systems were lucrative propositions but in an age of contraction, they were overpriced luxuries.

They had planned well and for the first twenty years after planetfall, their world building continued apace and within the boundaries of expectation. Then one day magic appeared, bringing the creation of new possibilities and imminent destruction of all their technology. Current building plans were tossed out as old and useless, and a new agenda was written. Thirty years later, Timisoara was testament to their new power and a graveyard of their imported technology.

The wars between the Blue Hand and “the Pure” began with bloodletting and slaughter. Attacks and retaliation continued for over fifty years until one man finally rose up to found a kingdom, bringing the warlords and brigands under control. On one side of the throne stood the High Mage representing the Blue Hand and on the other side stood the High Priest of the Priesthood of Purity. The reality outside of the palace was the priesthood had concentrated its power within the walls of Timisoara and the Blue Hand had more support the further one traveled from the city.

For five hundred years the kingship had kept a precarious balance between the two factions. Flare-ups had occurred and mysterious deaths cropped up occasionally, but stability of one sort or another had been achieved. Gilly concluded her history lesson without answering a single question as to the nature of the Blue. The sun was moving deep into the western horizon.

Porter’s mind turned to more pragmatic concerns as they climbed yet another slope. “Are these woods full of predators as well?”

“Not as many snakes or reptiles as the east and the south. There is a distinct chill here in the mountains, which you will discover tonight, and reptiles don’t thrive well in this cold,” Gilly said.

Normally Porter would be rolling his eyes at another lecture full of obvious statements such as reptiles do not like cold weather, but he was entranced with her voice. She could have droned on about the latest advances in particle physics and he would have just stared with a goofy smile on his face. He was smitten and he knew it.

Gilly had already moved on with her lecture. “ ... and there are packs of gretzel, but usually they make a fair amount of noise. In any case, we have your Kanji with us and that makes me feel much safer.”

Porter was riding beside her with his head turned to face her as he started to say, “She is...” and something thick, rough and unyielding slammed into the side of his head. He felt himself lifted off the saddle and thrown backwards onto the ground.

His ears were ringing, and he was afraid to open his eyes. He felt Gilly kneel down beside him, giving him instructions that he could not really hear. She used her hands to probe his body for broken bones, which he really would have enjoyed if he had thought about it. After that check, she straightened out his limbs and climbed on his chest and knelt over him. Her hands reached behind his neck and cupped the back of his head. Porter opened his eyes to a hazy vision of a beautiful woman leaning over him. He could feel the dopey smile that came to his face.

He felt warmth where her fingers touched and then he felt that warmth spreading down his spine and up into his skull. Porter was confused because the sensation was not warmth exactly. Never in his life had he felt goodness or benevolence or ... he could not put his finger on it exactly. Was it love? Whatever it was, the passion of IT suffused his bones, his flesh and his nerves. Porter Pyotr Kaminitzky was truly alive for the first time in his life and sensation was glorious.