Chapter 10

Seye stood before the wooden desk, shuffling her feet and twisting her hands together. Her heart had just about stopped when Anrit’s runner had caught up to her. She had spent the majority of the evening running through her entire meager wardrobe time and time again to find her best outfit before fruitlessly trying to get some measure of sleep. Of course it had eluded her, and she had been on her way to the interview nearly three hours before she was due.

Her anxiety wasn’t helped in the slightest by the fact that the two who sat quietly talking to one another in front of her were the same ones who had witnessed her humiliation by the Prime Shentet, Vernlat herself. Seye wrung her hands together once more before she shoved them to her sides. She barely managed not to grab her trousers to keep them apart.

Finally, the pair finished their conversation and gave her their full and terrifying attention. The man’s coloring and markings told of a foreign birth, as her own did, but the woman’s marked her as a local almost as much as her impressive reputation and history in the city.

Everyone in the palace knew of Ternat. Even if they had not seen some glimpse of her machinations in the innumerable ledgers and records kept there – on subjects ranging from farming, to industry, to commerce –, they had heard tales from other clerks or traders. Anrit himself had often considered asking her to come in and teach the occasional class to new clerks, but he would have needed to overcome the education department’s long-standing edict that instructors could only come from the ranks of the palace-trained – of which Ternat was most definitely not. Everyone knew that she had developed her staggering business acumen over a lifetime of hard trades and experience.

Her new partner, however, was a relative unknown, although one of the rumors that had recently started circulating was that he was a noble from a distant land on some sort of pilgrimage. In a city the size of Couset, a newcomer, noble or not, would not be of much interest to many. What made him noteworthy was how quickly and completely Ternat had seemed to attach him as an adjunct to her own dealings – something historically anathema to her, which meant that his skills must have been formidable indeed. Not a few rumors suggested that his elegantly handsome features and build must have influenced her decision as well.

There Seye stood, in judgment before them both. She gave up trying to keep her hands still and grabbed hold of her trouser seams.

“That poor girl,” Ternat mused once the interview was over. “I think a few more minutes and she would have melted completely into the floor.”

Ashur took a sip of the tea in front of him and grunted his agreement. If the emotions he’d sensed radiating off the flustered young clerk had represented even a small part of what she’d really been thinking, he was amazed that she had even made it through the door in the first place.

“I will admit that Anrit had a point though,” she continued. “When she matures, she will be very good at whatever her future employers put in front of her.”

Ashur grunted again. “She had a very quick mind. Even under as much pressure as she was under, her answers were thorough and well thought out. I think the only time she got caught out was when you asked about her future plans. You would think she would be better prepared with an answer if she’s close to finishing her tenure at the palace.”

Ternat belted out a bark of laughter. “She wasn’t caught out by the question, you dolt! She was caught out by you stretching as you asked it. Even I find it hard to focus from time to time when you do that ... or when you bend over.”

The Brenphan form of a blush suffused Ashur’s neck and arms, which wasn’t helped by Mera’s healthy chortles echoing in his head. He smothered an uncomfortable cough with an almost equally healthy gulp of his tea. “Fine, fine,” he said once he had his embarrassment somewhat under control. “Either way, though, what do you make of her? Will she do as an assistant?”

“Oh yes! She’ll be just fine. Otherwise Anrit wouldn’t have suggested her. This was a personality test more than anything, and she’s too young to have really developed one yet. You won’t have to train any bad habits out of her.”

Ashur gave his mentor a frustrated look. “I don’t know what good habits to train into her, let alone what bad ones to train out. All the clerks I’ve worked with were already trained and had years of experience.”

Ternat patted his arm. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Just have her follow you around during the day and you’ll both work out the details. And since most of your day is spent following me around, I can help you settle her in.”

He gave one last little harrumph and sipped from his tea again.

She will be a good match for you, you know. Mera’s voice was soothing. She’s got a quick mind and very little in the way of preconceptions.

Yes, but will having someone tagging along help or hinder me while I’m trying to find our helper? He worried about Mera and the work she was doing deep under the Library. It seemed to him as though the instabilities that stemmed from the unfinished work she and Xakelle had done to the magical structure of the building were getting worse, which was the entire reason Ashur was wandering around this alien world in the first place.

Mera’s mental shrug made its way across their telepathic link. Honestly, there’s really no way to know. We don’t even know how to be certain that we found the right person. At this point, you could quite literally trip over them without knowing it.

Ashur grunted to himself once again and turned his attention back to Ternat.

Melat nudged Seye as they stood over their large workspace once again. “I heard you got a contract.Who with, and do they need someone else?”

Seye shuffled a few papers around in an odd sort of embarrassment. She was back in the palace and had just started to reacquaint herself with the project that she and Melat had been assigned.

On one hand, she was excited to be working with someone as famous as Ternat, but she was acutely aware of how flustered she had been during the meeting, and how much she’d stammered. She’d always believed that she would be collected and serene during her first interview and had silently berated herself throughout the entire thing for being so wrong.

To make matters worse, her trepidation had only increased over the few days since. Neither Ternat nor her new boss, Ashur, had told her when her first day of work would be, except that it would be some time in the next week and they would give her a few days’ warning. The intervening time had only served to make her more nervous about her new role.

“I did,” she said quietly. “You know how the Prime was speaking with Ternat and her escort who was attacked at the party?”

“No!” Melat’s incredulity burst out loudly, and Seye waved a hand at him to quiet down. He glanced around guiltily and bent down closer to her. “You got a contract with Ternat? How?”

“It’s not with Ternat, it’s with her escort. Apparently, he’s taking on a lot of business really fast and needs an assistant. I’m not sure what my duties are yet, but that’s the contract I got.”

“Oh wow,” Melat breathed out. “I’m not sure if I’m jealous or not. I’m still looking for openings. Please let me know if they need someone else.”

Seye nodded to him. “I will, and I’ll let you know if I come across anything. In the meantime, what else have you found here?” She waved at the piles spread out over the table.

Melat sobered and drew her around to a small stack set apart from the rest. He picked it up and handed her the first sheet. “I don’t like it. This is a list of payments that I can’t quite track down. I know there’s something there, but it keeps slipping away from me. It’s like they came from accounts that don’t exist and went to other accounts that don’t exist, but the accounts do exist, because the numbers are there. I just can’t find where they go.” He gave her the rest of the stack. “This is all I’ve found so far, but you’re the best there is at finding hidden patterns, so I figured I’d give this to you, because it’s making my head hurt.”

Seye accepted the papers and sat down to look through them while Melat returned to his work.

Over the next few hours, she began to make up her own list of files to research, and only looked up when Melat dropped another page or two in front of her. The figures she was looking at weren’t very large in terms of caravan sized deals or city business contract payments, but the accounts they were being paid into looked like individual business accounts linked to personal accounts.

Time and time again, she went to the shelves to pull or return a file or two, but by the end of the day, it seemed as though neither she nor Melat had made any progress. As they began to gather their things to leave, Seye was starting to feel frustrated yet excited by the deeper puzzle Melat was handing her.

She was at the top layer so far, and a thin one at that. It felt as though she was standing at the edge of a vast forest, unable yet to tell what kind of trees stood before her, let alone the shape of individual leaves, but something inside told her that there were monsters lurking in the shadows of that forest, and it was her job to find them. That same feeling also told her that those monsters were dangerous indeed.

Ashur walked into the room he had rented as an office and whistled to himself. There were still small piles of paper upon his desk, but they had been organized into three distinct, labeled categories.

Seye sat at another desk and was quietly making annotations in a ledger book while consulting other paperwork. She looked up as he entered the room and smiled. He waved a hand at the lack of mess and grinned back.”I think this is going to work out just fine.”

He sat down and closed his eyes, turning his thoughts inward to give Mera his full attention. In his mind’s eye, they sat at the kitchen table in the Library living area. He could see his partner sitting across from him, her cobalt skin dimmed. She was twisting a cloth napkin in her hands in a rare lack of composure.

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” His question was unnecessary, but it started off the conversation.

She nodded tightly. “Yes, it is and I’m not sure how to fix it anymore. It seems like just as I get a handle on one of the Edits we did, another warps out of place and I can’t quite get the patterns to line up. I’m missing something, but I don’t know what. Galemir was the one who finalized the design down there and was much better at this than I am. He had an instinct for finding where the balance was off just by looking at it. I feel like a novice with just a needle and some rough thread trying to hold together the work of a master tailor.”

Ashur nodded imperceptibly. “What if I just abandoned this and came home? I could help you keep things together, and we can try this search again once we get it stabilized.”

The Caretaker shook her head in negation. “It wouldn’t help. There’s really nothing you would be able to add or fix without me guiding you, and at that point, it would be just as fast to do it myself. We need someone who understands the way the Words are laid out. I know that Galemir laid everything out into sections and then subsection after subsection, but I just can’t get a handle on the pattern he used. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a way to call Xakelle back and have her explain what I’m missing”

Ashur’s response was cut short and his eyes shot open as Ternat exploded through the door.

“I knew it,” she crowed. “I knew there was something going on!”

She dropped down into a chair across Ashur’s desk and slammed an open palm down on it. From the corner of his eye, Ashur saw Seye grab at her chest in surprise. He returned a piece of paper that Ternat’s enthusiasm had blown partly across the desktop and looked at his mentor questioningly.

“I love being right,” she continued. “Do you remember when we first met, I told you that I thought Fetud-Pra was starting to have inclinations of expansion?”

“Vaguely. You threw a lot of information at me, and I’ve had other things on my mind since. What about it?”

Ternat pushed back in her chair and pointed in the general direction of the palace. “The night of the party, one of my informants saw several people being hustled into a side entrance. He thought he recognized one of the members of the Fetud-Pra council, so he got closer. When they came out, he saw it was almost half of the council! I knew it!”

Ashur put his head forward in a Brenphan gesture of confusion. “So what does that mean?”

Ternat practically vibrated in her chair. “With that many councilors, it means that they were meeting with someone at the palace, and I can guarantee that they weren’t there for a personal chat with one of the cleaning staff. I’m willing to bet they are trying to make a play for expansion.”

Both Ashur and Seye watched as she leapt from her chair and half-danced around in what little spare room the office had to offer. That went on for several seconds before she stopped abruptly. She stared at Ashur with a look of horror while sinking back down into the chair and chanted “Oh shit” under her breath until he waved a hand to get her attention.

“What’s ‘Oh Shit?’”, he asked. Glancing over at Seye, he saw a similar look of trepidation.

Ternat’s eyes flashed around the desktop. It was obvious to Ashur that her mind was racing.

“What’s ‘Oh Shit?’” he repeated. She got up and moved around the office once again, ; though pacing instead of dancing. Her lips were moving in silent muttering, and her hands waved in general motions as though she was gathering and then throwing away invisible objects. Ashur turned to Seye with a questioning look. The young clerk’s eyes were locked on the older woman, and she had started to spin a stylus between both thumbs and forefingers.

“If Fetud-Pra is looking to grow,” Ternat grumbled, “and they are meeting with our government in secret, it means that there is a good chance they want to grow in our direction and start taking our lands – and whoever they were meeting with is probably helping them.”

Seye’s stylus dropped to the desk in a clatter. “Why would anyone want to help them invade?” she exclaimed. “Wouldn’t they suffer too?”

Ternat pulled her chair over to Seye’s desk and sat back in it. She crossed her legs and steepled her fingers in a very human gesture that Ashur was mostly certain she had learned from him. “I know politics above and beyond a basic understanding isn’t in any of your courses, so I’ll give you a lesson now.

“Those in power at the height of someone who would be in the palace won’t suffer for two basic reasons. One: they’ll have informants skilled enough to give them time to pull out of the city and escape days or weeks in advance. Two: they are helping with the invasion, and will receive some sort of reward for it when the dust settles. Either it will be a similar position of power, or enough money, lands, titles, what-have-you to make them willing to be a treasonous facilitator.”

Seye piped up. “How do they know the invaders won’t double-cross them and hurt them when they invade?”

Ternat waved a hand and scoffed. “That only happens in fiction. Unless your traitor has some sort of attack of conscience and tries to sabotage the whole thing, it’s better to keep them in some kind of high position – albeit powerless – so that they can help afterward. After all, they know the current system – where all the pieces and parts are, and how they are fitting together right now. It’s a massive pain to rebuild from the ground up.”

She leaned forward and tapped a long finger on Seye’s desktop. “Read up on your history, girl. The only ones affected in most revolutions are the topmost levels. The day-to-day, menial government workers still go to work while the new leaders are giving their speeches. It’s only after weeks or months that they are phased out and new ones put in their place, because it would be far too disruptive to do otherwise.”

Having made her point, she leaned back again, turning her thoughts inward once more, but she was interrupted by Seye.

“But what about everyone else not in the palace? Will we become slaves or something?”

Ternat looked over at Ashur with a grin before chuckling at Seye.

“You really have read too much fiction, haven’t you? No, we won’t all become slaves. However...,” She paused with a thoughtful look., “ ... Fetud Pra hasn’t exactly been known for its gentle treatment of those it conquers, either. The last country it added to itself was drained in less than ten osapts.” Her look darkened even further. “Maybe your fiction isn’t as far off as I thought. We have a lot of resources for them to siphon off. Give me a moment to think, here.”

She stood and leaned against Ashur’s desk. The edge almost reached the top of her legs. From his sitting position, her posterior was right in his line of sight, and the human part of him took notice.

I was starting to wonder if you were dead from the balls out for a bit there, Mera smirked in his head. This is the first time you’ve actually seen her as a woman, isn’t it?

Ashur had to admit that it was. During the months he had been in this world and this city, he had still been thinking of himself as human, and that mindset had caused him to see Ternat, Seye, and all of the other Brenphans as different and “alien,” which had precluded any thoughts that might have been arousing. He found himself a bit confused, and admitted as much to Mera.

I didn’t see you as exotic. I mean, the blue skin might have thrown me off for a second or two, but I remember ogling you the second day we knew each other.

True, she replied. However, you’re forgetting that I’m still ‘human-shaped’, blue skin notwithstanding. I’m no different in your eyes than anyone else from our world. On the other hand, the Brenphans have a different bone structure and hair growth patterns, their faces are shaped differently, and even the way their mouths move to speak is not something that you knew as a child or even as an adult. When you first arrived, they were alien, but now, you have spent so much time as one of them, the part of your mind that saw the differences has gotten bored and given up. Because of that, you don’t notice the differences anymore and you can definitely appreciate the view in front of you.

Ternat was still sitting propped up on his desk, her mind still working through events and possibilities, but Ashur found that his thoughts weren’t on politics at all. He saw the shapely curves of an attractive woman whom he had grown to care about, and a sharp, disturbing thought hit him.

I’m not falling in love with her, am I? he asked his partner.

Her soft laugh filled his mind. No, my love, you’re not. It’s simply a mix of sexual appreciation and friendship. Her thoughts curled around his mind, stroking it as though she was there running her fingers up and down his arm. Would it be so bad, though?

What?!?, he mentally yelped. Would what be so bad? If I fell in love with Ternat? Years of stodgy upbringing shoved a fear of betraying his lover to the forefront of his mind. Of course it would!

Why?

What do you mean why? I couldn’t ... wouldn’t hurt you like that!

Mera laughed in his head. You can’t, you silly man! In case you forgot, I know what you are thinking, and I always know how much you love me. Remember when we talked about how love can be shared, and grows when it does? It’s not going to hurt my feelings if you share your heart with another –; especially with someone as amazing as Ternat! I’m fond of her, myself.

Ashur’s brain skidded to an abrupt, crashing halt, and Mera’s chortles rang in his mental ears.

Oh, my love, you have so much to learn!, she crowed, and he could feel her bend over at the waist and grab the bookshelf next to her. He began to feel a bit sullen about her amusement at his expense, but realized that Ternat was waving a hand in front of his eyes. His conversation with his partner had gone longer than he’d thought.

“Are you alright?” Ternat was looking perplexed and mildly amused herself at his distraction.

Sitting upright, he rubbed his hands across his face and, having been made aware of the differences between human and Brenphan once again, made note of how his altered appearance felt. He decided he would think again about Mera’s observations on the nature of love later on, when he had some nominal privacy.

“Umm, yes,” he replied, “I was focused on something else. Sorry.”

Ternat leaned over his desk to study him, and he began to perceive Mera’s point. Ternat, as a specimen of her species, was alluring. Her coloring was pleasant, and the patterns of her mottling were somewhat mesmerizing in places. Unlike many women he had been attracted to before, she wasn’t exactly busty but the average Brenphan woman didn’t tend towards much in that area. They were too slender and wiry a species for that to be much of a normal characteristic. Nevertheless, Ternat was a highly attractive member of race and a tingle whispered its way down to a part of him that hadn’t felt much of anything since arriving here.

His mien came across as unfocused again to the object of his scrutiny, so she reached out to tap him on the nose. He jerked back with a yelp and nearly toppled out of his chair backwards, causing three women to laugh at him simultaneously.

“Do I have your attention now?” Ternat bubbled between guffaws. Seye had both hands over her mouth and was doing her best to stifle her giggles, presumably not to accidentally offend her new boss.

“Yes,” he muttered, but was unable to keep a small smile of his own from creeping across his lips. “I’m awake, I promise.”

“Good. Now why don’t we all go and get something to eat? You and I can come back to this later on.”

At Ashur’s assenting nod, Seye excitedly set her desk to rights and followed them out the door.

Later on, back at the palace, Seye grabbed Melat by the hand as soon as she saw him and bodily dragged him into one of the small unoccupied rooms that the clerks often used during their resting breaks. She shoved him inside and tried not to slam the door shut.

Her fists made small circles in front of her and her body trembled in excitement and Melat found himself backing against the wall away from her. “You are not going to believe what I heard today! You won’t believe it!”

“What?” he asked warily. “What has got you so riled up?”

She recounted Ternat’s news of events at the palace, along with her interpretation and conjectures.

Melat’s exclamatory response filled the tiny space. “Do you think it could be true? Do you really think we could be invaded?”

Seye peeked out the door to make certain no one else had heard him. “I don’t know. Ternat seemed to think it was a possibility, but who would be helping them take over? Why?”

Melat sat down at the diminutive table that occupied a good portion of the room’s floor space while Seye pulled out the other seat and joined him. “It could be someone who wants to be more powerful or wants more money,” he said... “Maybe the council members were meeting with the leader of a secret spy ring that could only have met during the excitement of the party!”

He seemed more excited about following his inner narrative than considering the effects that an invasion would have. Seye admitted that she probably would have, too, if Ternat had not brought those ideas up short. She had spent the walk back to the palace trying not to think about Fetud-Pra soldiers running amok through the city, slaughtering everyone and burning all of the buildings, despite Ternat’s amused reassurances. She hadn’t been born in Couset, but the city had become home to her, and she was loath to see anything happen to it.

Melat went on for a good fifteen more minutes, laying out one fantastic idea after the other, and the longer he talked, the more elaborate the supposed schemes got. Eventually, Seye cut him off mid-speculation because he had worked himself up to a multi-country retaliatory war against Fetud-Pra, which had conquered all of its neighbors in bloody battles. He had even fabricated heroes to turn the tides of his imaginary battle.

“Alright,” she said, “I can’t take any more. Look, Ternat said she was going to find out about it, and she’s got way more connections than we do. Anyway, we couldn’t do anything even if we wanted to.”

Melat’s exuberant expression deflated so rapidly and completely that she took pity on him.

“Don’t worry. If she finds anything out, maybe she’ll tell Ashur while I’m around and I can pass it on to you.” He perked up a bit at that. “No promises, though. Remember that I’m still the new hire.”

His posture remained slumped. “I know, but it sounded so interesting.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “We may as well get back to work.”

He nodded, and they made their way back to the patiently waiting files. They worked together in near silence for a few hours before stopping to move around and stretch.

Seye took several turns around the table and let her eyes wander at random over the pages that littered Melat’s side. An entry caught her attention, and she paused. Its description was out of the ordinary for regular palace business, but she was certain she had run across it several times during her own part of the job. She picked up the page and paced for a little longer before bringing it over to Melat.

“How often have you come across this one?”

He took the sheet and looked hard at the entry she’d indicated. With a small moue, he studied it and then set it aside. Pulling three separate stacks away from the rest, he rifled through them, extracting the occasional page. When he was done, he handed her close to twenty documents, none of which had been dated later than three osapts prior. She handed them back and gestured for him to follow her back to her side, where she riffled through her own work, finding another fifteen pages.

“What are we looking at?” Melat inquired, picking up his original pile.

Seye took it from him, cleared some space, and picked up a blank ledger sheet and pen. “What are the dates of those?” she asked.

He took a moment to shuffle them into a chronological order then started listing off dates and amounts. When he was done, they both looked at the list. None of the entries were of money coming in. It was all outgoing, but the account it was going out to wasn’t listed in the entry sheets. That wasn’t unusual in and of itself, since clerks sometimes got careless or lazy and forgot to list the connected account, but for all of the entries for a specific account to have that particular omission was certainly suspicious.

Melat gave her a quizzical look.

“I’m not sure,” she replied to his silent question. “Something about it just stood out to me.” She started to make a list of the files the pages came from, uncertain if she was wasting her time, but, at the moment, it seemed as good a strategy as any.

“See,” he said, “didn’t I say you were the best at pattern solving? Do you need help with this?” When she shook her head, he nudged her shoulder and went back to his side of the table. She finished compiling her list and spent the last few hours of their work day searching the archives for the corroborating binders that would have more information about where the money from the entries had gone. By the time she had finished, Melat was packing up his things, and she could feel her eyes drooping.

“This double work is going to be the death of me,” she mused to her friend. She looked at the time and realized that she would get only a few hours of sleep before she would be back in Ashur’s office.

“You’ll get used to it soon enough,” Melat said supportively, “and by the time you do, you’ll be old enough to drop dead.” His smile was infectious, and she found herself grinning back as they left.

Mera was jolted out of the cot she had set up in the Vault. The rumbling and shaking around her wasn’t so much violent as it was profound. It was as if the entirety of the vast room was moving around her - even the air.

She ran to the edge of her platform and stared around at the titanic columns of Writing, desperately attempting to find the source of this new disturbance. To her horror, she witnessed not one or two places of disruption, but a full twelve.

Seizing the controlling podium, she drove the platform for the nearest problem area and shoved her mind into it, then reeled back as her thoughts were forcibly ejected. Goggle-eyed, she watched as the Words swirled in jagged and nonsensical patterns, forming phrases that were irrational and incoherent. Mera tried once again to insert herself into the literary mire, but found herself forced back out yet again. Her heart clenched in fear, and she took long, deep breaths to compose herself enough to think clearly again.