Page 80 of Into the West

After discovering that he’d not only managed a boxed bedframe for her, but arranged for sliding drawers to go under it, she felt terribly guilty about how she had unthinkingly assumed he’d manage just that. So after thanking him, she’d apologized. “You’re not my servant, after all,” she said. “You’re under absolutely no obligation to do any of this for me.”

“Oh, of course not.” He laughed at her. “We hertasi are so numerous that no one ever has to do anything. We help because we like to—and because in return, we have someone protecting our homes, and all the skills of the Tayledras to draw on and to learn for ourselves. We wouldn’t last long on our own in the wild, you see. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“But I—”

“I help you because I like you. It’s fun to show you things and see your reactions, and it’s a pleasant challenge to help you create the kind of environment you’re used to. So hush.” He stamped his foot, and nodded decisively. “Now, what, exactly, is a bookcase?”

“The open cabinets that my loose books were secured in. Jelavan, I think our people are kind of like yours in some ways. Hertasi prefer to—to not be seen doing what all they do. We’re used to privacy, but it feels like everything is watched by a dozen eyes in here.”

“Oh. Yes. The Tayledras are great believers in the sanctity of secrets. In a Vale, though, it’s turned on its head. The Pelagirs has all kinds of threats: infiltrators, diseases, parasites, and even more exotic things. Tayledras are this open to observation in a Vale for a very practical reason: it’s quicker to notice an infiltrator, or aberrant behavior from disease or influence, if everybody is watching, and that protects everyone.” Jelavan speed-sorted Delia’s things. “To have one thing, it costs another. We all give up most of our privacy, because out here in the Vales, there is an existential reality of danger if we didn’t. Secrecy is strategic, and privacy is available if it’s desired, but that’s an event, not a standard. It works,” Jelavan cheerfully summed up. “They know about it coming in, and all of us in a Vale aren’t bothered by it. Over time, as a people, most shyness went its way. We all see each other during bathing and a few special occasions, but as you know, we all love our clothes for their practicality and aesthetics. And expression! Like the masks you see, they are for moods, or declarations, not for hiding identities. Silvermoon and the Elders have everybody fully clothed to help your people adjust to us.”

Which implies . . .

“Now, what we hertasi love about it all is, we learn so much about everyone in a Vale that we can anticipate what they’ll want. We’re also well-known matchmakers. Someone on the far side of a Vale might never find a compatible mate or two if we didn’t see to it that they met!” Jelavan hissed his happy little laugh, then darted out again.

Kordas and Isla tried an ekele for their family, and immediately regretted it, as the boys awoke as soon as there was any light and immediately went looking for adventure. After pulling them out of the hertasi tunnels, out of trees, and out of hot soaking ponds, all before breakfast, the couple gave up and moved back to the barge, where they could at least keep their offspring out of trouble until they were awake.

There were, of course, not nearly enough vacant ekeles for people to take over—the Valdemarans outnumbered the Hawkbrothers by many times—but it was enough to allow the adaptable and adventurous to get out of barges where they were packed in like salted fish. And that permitted those who had been crowded to spread into newly vacated barges. Unsurprisingly, all the mages took to ekeles. The Six Old Men even found one big enough to share, as they had shared their tower, and went back to enjoying their bickering from their big, overstuffed pouf pillows.

But as Hawkbrothers grew fewer, the snowstorms grew more frequent, and it became harder to get out to the stock to feed them. Then the debates began: should the rest of the herds be moved inside the Veil, and take the chance they would pass sickness because they were overcrowded? There were debates about it every day—at least it seemed that way to Delia. And while she didn’t particularly mind all the scattered flocks of fowl inside the Veil—the chickens were very useful, weeding and de-bugging the gardens—some people were complaining that they didn’t like having to dodge goats and chase ducks out of soaking pools. But to move the stock outside meant exposing them to danger, not to mention that it was infinitely easier to keep them fed within the Veil. There didn’t seem to be any good answer for the problem, and the debates went on and on until she just stopped paying any attention to them.

Finally the day came when Silvermoon took down the Heartstone. Delia just missed seeing him do so, but Kordas assured her she hadn’t missed anything. There was something in his tone that meant he was sad about it.

Isla was not entirely happy that Delia had her own little home to herself. Delia was fairly certain that her sister’s main problem with it was that Delia was “unsupervised.” But really, she was no more “unsupervised” in the Vale than she had been in Valdemar Manor. It wasn’t as if she was ever alone . . . and with those thin screens in place of walls, if she’d been getting up to mischief with a young man, half the Vale would have known about it.

So matters stood, when the last of the Hawkbrothers left.

The four Tayledras stood beside the Gate that would take them to the new Vale. They were leaving the physical Gate still charged and still in place, in case the Valdemarans wanted it, although Silvermoon warned Kordas that they were severing the connection to their new Vale out of caution.

“We never leave an open Gate behind us,” Silvermoon reminded the Baron, as a rather small party gathered to see them off. “Not even I can persuade my fellows to break this rule; they are irritated enough with me that I did not completely destroy the Heartstone as we usually do. We are trusting you to take good care of this place, Valdemarans,” Silvermoon added gravely, as he and Kordas shared a quick, back-pounding embrace of the sort that the Hawkbrothers preferred to shaking hands.

“We’ll do our best,” Kordas replied, sounding quite sure of himself. But then again, Delia reflected, we’ve been here a couple of moons, and so far, we have taken good care of it.

“Then good luck, and may your gods watch over you, as the Star-Eyed cares for us.” Silvermoon waved at his three fellows, and the dyheli towed the last of the floating barges through the Gate, followed by the Tayledras—

—and the Gate silvered over, flared too bright to look at for a moment, and then shut down. Jonaton sighed. Delia folded her arms, deep in thought. Sydney-You-Asshole sat down next to her and thoughtfully licked his balls.

“We’re on our own,” Delia said aloud, and although she had not intended it to come out that way, the words sounded melancholy.

“We have been since we left Valdemar,” Isla reminded her. “We are in a much, much better position for winter than I would have thought. Look at what they left us with!” And she gestured at the in-process manor, and Silvermoon’s last gift, the maze wall.

The growing manor had finished the second floor now, and was working on the third. It had become a favorite place for the builders and apprentices to take meals, intuitively knowing that if they watched this, they’d learn astonishing insights into structural support and rigidity. But that was not nearly as important as Silvermoon’s Winter Solstice gift to the newcomers: the wall. Silvermoon had paused the construction of the manor and coaxed the thing that made the building into putting up a defensive wall—which had gone much more quickly. It was a very impressive wall, all round the edge of the Veil itself, two full stories tall, two towered gatehouses—more accurately, towers with the space for gates to be installed later, but still defensible now—and wide enough that men could walk around on the top, shielded by a parapet. Its cityward surface was textured in interweaving branches of some fantastic tree or hedge fit enough to climb, yet nearly as smooth as slate on the outer side. The “maze” of the structure’s insides was meant only to harmlessly waste the time of interlopers; its paths and tunnels wove over and under each other, to ultimately exit at a door next to its entry. Spyholes, trap doors, and murder boxes could be installed later. Despite the apparent thickness of the maze wall, its purpose was not to stand forever against all attacks, but rather to split up and channel ground troops, and frustrate wildlife. And, just in case, it could be occupied as an emergency refuge and closed off.

Delia had no idea how the Tayledras had managed to get the thing below—I just accept thoughts like, “The thing below, sure, there’s a thinking creature that filters water and grows buildings under us all” as a daily thing, now—to “grow” something like that, or the access staircases to the top inside, but Silvermoon had promised her that the manor would absolutely surprise her, and she was impatient for it to finish growing so she could see just what he meant.

The wall had only taken about a fortnight to grow, and the Valdemarans had just finished installing massive wooden gates on the two openings into it. Eventually those would be replaced by metal bars backed by the wooden gates, but that would have to wait until the Valdemarans found the source of iron ore that the Hawkbrothers had handily marked out on the maps that Silvermoon had left with them, mined it, refined, and poured it . . .

In fact, there was a great deal marked out on those maps, things that the Valdemarans were going to need. Back home, whatever they needed could be traded for and it would arrive by cart or boat. Here—well, if they didn’t already have something, they were going to have to find or extract the raw materials for it. Things like iron, copper, and other useful metals. And minerals, too. They would have to be much more careful about extracting those resources than anyone in the Empire had ever been. Silvermoon had been quite clear about that. “Clean up after yourselves. Do not poison land, air, or water. Do not be greedy. We may have eliminated the worst of the hazards here, but there are still strange things that will not take kindly to finding their world threatened.”

Delia believed him. She had gone up onto the wall several times since it had been erected to gaze out into the lands around the former Vale. Most times, she saw things she recognized. But sometimes . . . she got glimpses of things that she didn’t.

Kordas gave himself a shake, as if to jar himself out of a reverie. “Back to work for all of us,” he said aloud. “I have an idea.”

“And I have grass-mowing duty.” Delia sighed. She had hoped, now that they had finally settled in their permanent home, that she’d have some leisure time again.

But no. In the mornings, she was on the crew that supplied fodder to the herds out in the snow. While she didn’t have to actually cut the fast-growing grass—that was being done by farmers’ children, who had a lot of experience in harvesting—she was tasked with moving it. Well, she and Venidel. Venidel spun the cut grass into balls just at the limit of how much she could move a short distance. She moved the green balls of the mowed grass to one of the few floating sledges that the Hawkbrothers had left them. When a sledge was weighed down with as much as it could carry, a pair of Tow-Beasts moved it out to the outside herds and the herders spread it over the snow with pitchforks and rakes for the herds to eat.

I liked things better when I was with the scouts.