Golden Witchbreed

Book 386: Gateway Essentials

by Mary Gentle

Genres: Fantasy; Science Fiction; Dark Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

Orthe - half-civilized, half-barbaric, home to human-like beings who live and die by the code of the sword. Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent here to establish contact and to determine whether this is a world worth developing. But first Christie must come to understand that human-like is not and never can be human, and that not even Orthe's leaders can stop the spread of rumors about her, dark whisperings that could cost Christie her life.And on a goodwill tour to the outlying provinces, these evil rumors turn to deadly accusations. Christie is no offworlder, Church officials charge: she is a treacherous and cunning descendant of Orthe's legendary Golden Witchbreed - the cruel, ruthless race that once enslaved the whole planet. Suddenly, Christie finds herself a hunted fugitive on an alien world, where friend and foe alike may prove her executioners. And her only chance of survival lies in saving Orthe from a menace older than time...

Release date: June 24, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 456

Sample

Lynne de Lisle Christie, envoy

Sam Huxton, marine biologist, head of the Dominion xeno-team:

Timothy Eliot, xeno-biology

Audrey Eliot, xeno-ecology (land)

John Lalkaka, geologist

Margery Huxton, xeno-ecology (sea)

Elspeth Huxton, her daughter

John Barratt, demographer

Dr K. Adair, medical research

Carrie Thomas, xeno-sociology

Maurie Venner, assistant sociologist

David Meredith, envoy

Dalzielle Kerys-Andrethe, T’An Suthai-Telestre, Crown of the Southland, also called Suthafiori, Flower of the South

Evalen Kerys-Andrethe, her daughter

Katra Hellel Hanathra, First Minister of Ymir

Katra Sadri Hanathra, his sister, s’an telestre

Sadri Geren Hanathra, her son, shipmaster

amari Ruric Orhlandis, T’An Commander of the Southland army

Ruric Rodion Orhlandis, her ashiren, called Halfgold

Sulis n’ri n’suth SuBannasen, T’An Melkathi

Hana Oreyn Orhlandis, First Minister of Melkathi

Nelum Santhil Rimnith, Portmaster of Ales-Kadareth

Telvelis Koltyn Talkul, T’An Roehmonde

Verek Howice Talkul, his son

Verek Sethin Talkul, his daughter

Sethin Falkyr Talkul, Sethin’s son

Asshe, commander of the northern garrison

Jacan Thu’ell Sethur, T’An Rimon

Zannil Emberen n’ri n’suth Telerion, Seamarshal of Morvren Freeport

Arlyn Bethan n’ri n’suth Ivris, T’An Kyre

Talmar Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen, a Crown Messenger

Achil Maric Salathiel, l’ri-an to the envoy

Aluys Blaize n’ri n’suth Meduenin, a mercenary

Kanta Andrethe, the Andrethe of Peir-Dadeni

Eilen Brodin n’ri n’suth Charain, an intelligencer

Cethelen Khassiye Reihalyn, a minister in Shiriya-Shenin

Tirzael, an Earthspeaker

Branic, a Wellkeeper at Terison

Rhiawn, a Wellkeeper at Terison

Theluk n’ri n’suth Edris, an Earthspeaker

Arad, a Wellkeeper at Corbek

Dannor bel-Kurick, Emperor-in-Exile

Kurick bel-Olinyi, ambassador from Kel Harantish

Gur’an Alahamu-te O’he-Oramu-te, a barbarian woman

Speaker-for-the-People, a fenborn of the Lesser Fens

the Hexenmeister of Kasabaarde

Tethmet, a fenborn of the Brown Tower

Havoth-jair, a sailor

Orinc, of the Order House Su’niar

A ramshackle collection of white plastic and steel buildings stood at the edge of the concrete landing strip. Beyond the trade station grey rocks stretched out to a startling blue sea. A fine dust sifted down.

I walked away from the ship’s ramp and stood on the hot concrete, the pale sun burning down on my head. The light off the sea was harshly brilliant, dazzling; Carrick’s Star is nearer white than Earth-standard yellow.

Behind me there was the bustle of the shuttle-ship unloading. I was the only passenger disembarking on Carrick V. On the FTL starship, now in orbit, I’d been busy with hypno-tapes of the languages and customs of the world. Orthe was the native name, or so the first expedition reported. Orthe, fifth world of Carrick’s Star, a sun on the edge of the galaxy’s heart.

I shouldered my packs and went across to the station. Shadows on Earth are grey. At their darkest they have a tinge of blue. Orthe’s shadows are black and so sharp-edged that they fool the eye; while I walked I had to stop myself avoiding shadow-holes in the concrete.

A moss-like plant clung to the rocky soil, and from its dense blue clusters sprang small crimson flowers on waist-high stems. A hot wind blew off the water. There were whitecaps. The arch of the sky was cloudless, the horizon amber-hazed.

Pin-pricks of white light starred the sky.

I took a deep breath and stood still. The mark of a world on the edge of the core of the galaxy, these were Orthe’s daystars. For a second everything – sea, wind, rock, sunlight – stood out shockingly alien.

A man walked out of the trade station, waved a careless hand, and headed towards me. He wore shirt, britches, high boots – and a sword belted at his hip. He was not human. An Orthean.

‘Your pardon, t’an, you are the envoy?’

I recognized the speech of Ymir.

‘Ah – yes.’ I realized I was staring. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

For my part, I prefer aliens that look alien. Then when they ritually eat their first-born, or turn arthropod halfway through their life-cycle, it isn’t so much of a shock. You expect it. Humanoid aliens, they’re trouble.

‘And so am I pleased to meet with you.’ He bowed slightly. The speech inflection was formal. ‘I am Sadri Geren Hanathra of Ymir.’

His papers authorized him as escort for the Dominion envoy: they were made out and signed by the head of the xeno-team, and countersigned by someone I took to be an Orthean official: one Talmar Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen. Like everything else on this mission, it had the air of being a haphazard arrangement.

‘Lynne de Lisle Christie.’ It being customary to give country of origin, I added ‘Of the British Isles, and the Dominion of Earth.’

He stood well under two metres tall, about my height. His yellow hair was short, the hairline somewhat higher than I expected. As he glanced back, I saw that it was rooted down his neck, vanishing under his collar. Either the custom was to go clean-shaven or the Ortheans had little body-hair. There was none of that fine down that marks a human skin; his – as he held up his hand in greeting – I saw to be smooth, slick-looking, with almost a hint of a scale-pattern.

He was young, with a cheerfully open expression, but with the air of a man accustomed to lead rather than follow.

‘Christie. Not a Southland name – but of course not.’ He gestured. ‘Come this way, I’ve a ship waiting off North Point.’

Drawn up on the rocky shore was a dinghy, attended by two Orthean natives. The older one took my packs and stored them at the prow. Geren scrambled in and sat at the stern. I followed, less agile. No one offered help. The two Orthean males pushed us offshore, climbed in, and began rowing.

‘There is my ship,’ Geren turned to me, pointing. ‘The Hanathra, named for my telestre. A good vessel, but not as far-travelled as yours, I think.’

A telestre was something between estate and family and commune, I thought. I wasn’t sure of the details. Hypno-tapes always give you that feeling at first: that what you’re hearing is never exactly what the other person is saying, and that you can never find the right words yourself. It wears off with use.

A sailing ship lay anchored offshore, the kind of craft the Ortheans call jath. It was no larger than a galleon, though not square-rigged: triangular lateen sails gave it the rakish look of a clipper.

‘Have we far to go?’ I asked.

‘A week’s journey, perhaps, if the wind favours. More if not. We’re bound for Tathcaer, for the court there.’ Geren’s smile faded. ‘You must realize, t’an, you’ll be the centre of some attention. You should beware intrigue.’

The word he used was not precisely intrigue, or conspiracy, or politics; it is an untranslatable expression that includes the Orthean term for challenges and games.

‘Thank you for warning me. It’s kind.’

‘If I mean what I say?’ He laughed. ‘I do. I’ve no love for the court. I’d sooner sail the Hanathra. But don’t believe me just because I say so. Take no one at their word.’

It was a taste of that same intrigue. I was certain he did it deliberately and I liked him for it, but it emphasized how much of an unknown quality Carrick V was, and what a series of locked doors I would have to open.

Coming out from the shelter of the point, the dinghy began to rock. The water was clear: the pale green of spring leaves. A fan of spray went up, polychromatic in the white sunlight. We crawled through the troughs of the waves toward the ship.

There was a pause while they tossed a rope-ladder down the hull, then Geren went up it like an acrobat. I looked at the wet, dark timber, and the rushing gap between the ship and the rocking dinghy. The rope-ladder jounced from the rail, rungs rattling against the hull.

The boat rose on a wave crest and I grabbed at the ladder and went up it, swinging dizzily, missing my footing and barking my knuckles. Acres of canvas gleamed and swung overhead. Feeling sick, I got two hands to the rail and heaved myself onto the deck.

A barefoot Orthean woman in shirt and britches leaned over the rail, neatly caught my packs and set them on deck. She and another woman swung out davits, the two men came up the rope-ladder as if it were a staircase, and all four of them began hauling the ship’s boat onboard.

The distant island rose and fell gently. I had a last sight of the starship’s shuttle towering over the trade station.

‘This way!’ Another woman shouted and beckoned.

I followed. The deck was crowded with men and women furiously working; I kept dodging out of one person’s way only to find myself in someone else’s. Masts towered. Canvas blocked the sun, shaken out to snap on the wind.

A door below the poop deck led, by a dark, narrow passage, to small cabins.

‘Yours.’ The Orthean female opened a door. She wore a corded sleeveless jacket, and her thick black mane was done up in a single braid. Her skin was faintly patterned, and there were webs of lines round her eyes.

In the dim light her eyes seemed to film over as she watched me, and then clear again. The Ortheans have a ‘third eyelid’, a nictitating membrane like a cat’s eye. And something else. I looked at her calloused hands.

Put them side by side with mine and they would be no wider, but she had five slender strong fingers beside her thumb. And thick nails, kept filed down on all but the little finger, which sported a hooked claw.

‘Afraid you’re sharing,’ she said, ‘but I’m mostly nightwatch so we shouldn’t get in each other’s way.’

‘Thanks. I’ll try not to cause you bother.’

‘You think I didn’t fight for the privilege?’ She had a surprisingly human grin. ‘I want something to tell my children about the famous Otherworld envoy.’

‘Surilyn!’

The woman’s head jerked up. I recognized Geren’s voice.

‘I’d best get to the helm.’ She turned. ‘The shipmaster’s cabin is there, call t’an Geren if anything’s too unfamiliar.’

I went into the cabin. It was narrow; bunk bed one side, sea-chest the other. A square, iron-framed port with inch-thick bolts let in green-gold light. I had to stoop. The ceiling – the underside of the poop deck – showed beams a foot thick. There was the constant creak of timber and the lap of waves against the hull.

I sat down suddenly. The ship shook throughout its length, quivered, and settled into a steady pushing rhythm, driving ahead. It was an uneasy motion.

Sitting there, with the blankets rough under my hands and the sunlight sliding up and down the wood, I had a moment of stillness. This was not a starship, not even a sea-going ship on an Earth ocean; the voyage would not end at London or Liverpool or the Tyne. Sadri Geren Hanathra and the woman Surilyn, they were not conceived, born, or brought up on Earth.

I began to accept the fact that here, on this world, I was the alien.

The Hanathra, under intermittent wind and plagued by cloud and squalls, sailed on into the Inner Sea. At the end of the first nine-day week Geren told me the season was famous for fogs and summer calms. I spent time below decks, talking to whoever was off duty; and every day I stayed a little longer in the intense sunlight, getting acclimatized.

Zu’Ritchie, the youngest of the crew, had what I took to be a birthmark covering most of his face. He was unusually pale-skinned, and the mark took the form of grey dapples, like fern-patterns on the skin, that extended from his forehead down over his cheek to his shoulder.

‘That?’ Surilyn said. I questioned her when the boy wasn’t around. ‘That’s marshflower. It only means his telestre borders the Fens.’

I had to be content with that. Later, in warmer waters, some of the crew stripped to the waist and I saw that the ‘marshflower’ extended over his torso. The pattern grew larger and darker, almost black in places. Natural markings, I realized. Zu’Ritchie was not the only one with it, though his was most pronounced; and he was a little teased because of it.

The second shock – and it was only a shock because it was so like and yet unlike humanity – came when I saw the rudimentary second pair of nipples that both sexes carried low on the ribs. Most of the women were small-breasted compared to the Earthnorm, their bronze-brown nipples as small as the males’. I suspected that in times past, if not now, the Ortheans had littered a larger number of children at one birth than we ever did.

I watched Surilyn coiling a rope, the muscles moving smoothly under her brown skin. Her black mane was unbraided, and I saw that it rooted down her spine to a point well below the shoulder-blades.

My own hackles raised at the thought. Almost us, and yet not us.

I wondered what other, less visible, differences there might be between our two species.

A thin line grew out of the haze and became solid. Surilyn, leaning beside me on the rail, pointed.

‘Those are the Melkathi Flats … see those hills on the horizon? That’s the beginning of Ymir.’

We were not close in to the coast, I noted. No passenger was going to jump ship and slip away … Not that I would; at the moment I needed to act through official channels.

‘How long until Tathcaer?’

‘We’ll be in on the noon tide, if the wind holds.’

Carrick V has no satellite and therefore only solar tides, low at dawn and sunset, high at midnight and midday.

‘I’m going below,’ Surilyn yawned. She squinted at the dawn haze, which showed no sign of clearing. ‘Noon. If the wind holds.’

‘Christie,’ Zu’Ritchie called, ‘t’an Geren wants to see you in his cabin.’

‘I’ll be right down, tell him. Sounds like my holiday’s over,’ I observed.

‘I’m sorry,’ the black-maned woman said. ‘All you’ve told us, about the Otherworlds, they were fine stories.’

‘But did you believe them?’

She grinned. ‘Can’t say that I did. But I’ll be sure and tell my children.’

‘You’re going home after this voyage?’

She shrugged. ‘The ship’s due for refitting, I’ll stay aboard. Likely Suan will bring them down from my telestre, they’re old enough. She’s their milk-mother.’

I had no time to press the point.

‘Till I see you, Surilyn.’

‘Till we meet, Christie.’

I went below and found Geren in his cabin. He straightened up from the map-table as I entered.

‘Drink?’

‘Thanks.’ I smelled the spicy odour of herb-tea brewing. I crossed the swaying cabin to look at the charts.

The first was a single-hemisphere map. There was no indication of what the survey satellite showed in the other hemisphere: a myriad islands, none with civilization above the stone age level. This was a map of the oikumene, civilized Orthe.

It had the look of all old cartography, ornate and inaccurate. There were two continents joined by a long island-archipelago. Most of the northernmost continent was left blank, but its southern coast was filled in with what I assumed were cities, kingdoms, ports – and was annotated Suthai-Telestre, the Southland, and so must be our destination.

The southern continent seemed only to be occupied round the coasts. The centre of the land mass had hieroglyphics I couldn’t decipher.

‘We sailed from here,’ Geren said, putting his finger on a group of islands far out on the edge of the map. ‘The Eastern Isles, here, and then we –’ he drew his finger across and up to the southern coast of the Southland ‘– sailed so across the Inner Sea, to Tathcaer.’

Tathcaer was marked at a river mouth midway along the coast. A good central base for an investigative xeno-team, I thought – but not if, like the one I was going to meet, you couldn’t leave it.

Geren handed me a bowl of herb-tea. He didn’t smile when he spoke. ‘I hope you’ll forgive my calling you in like that, but I wanted to talk to you before we dock in Tathcaer.’

‘Geren –’

I thought, would it be better to wait until I reached the officials at Tathcaer before beginning discussions? Geren Hanathra was little more than a messenger.

‘No, wait. I must say this.’ He sat on the table, oblivious to the swinging lamps and the shifting pale light. ‘I don’t press advice, usually, but …’

‘But now you’re going to?’

‘It’s perhaps not wise. You’re the envoy, after all.’

I leaned against the table. ‘I’d like to hear it, Geren.’

‘This, then. I am of the party that supported contact with your Otherworld. I have even met – though not to speak to – those of your people who are present in Tathcaer.’

‘And?’

He rubbed six-fingered hands through his yellow mane, then looked sharply at me. His eyes veiled. ‘And so I likely know as much about you as any here, though that is little. But I know how you, envoy, will seem to those at court.’

‘Yes?’ I had to prompt him again. He stood, pacing in that confined space. I wondered whether all Ortheans had that grace.

His eyes clouded again. He had the marshflower also, I saw, faint as a watermark.

‘It is not good. T’an, they will look at you and say: here is a loose-haired and swordless woman, with a child-face and eyes like stone –’

I laughed, choked on the herb-tea, and coughed myself into sobriety. ‘Geren, I’m sorry.’

‘I say only how you seem to us. And much of it is custom only.’ He faced me. ‘I suppose strangeness of dress is to be expected, and hair neither cropped as in Ymir nor in Peir-Dadeni braids – and that you never blink, and lack the witch-finger; well I dare say we look as strange to you. And in a priest’s skirt, too, and you are no priest … and, Christie, you are young.’

‘Twenty-six. Less for Orthe, your years are longer than ours. As for youth,’ I said, ‘time cures that soon enough.’

He chuckled reluctantly. ‘You’re not offended?’

‘I’ve come here as envoy,’ I said. ‘I must be awkward, I must deal with your people as I would with mine. I’ll make mistakes, yes, that’s not to be avoided, but it doesn’t matter. Watching me, you’ll see the truth of Earth. I can’t bring books or pictures to show you what we’re like, all I can do is be. I’ve come to see – and be seen.’

After a moment he nodded. ‘Yes. Of course. T’an, it was foolish of me to think that you would not know your trade.’

‘I’m no expert.’ It was true enough. My two previous appointments had been with established embassies, this was the first time I’d worked alone.

I looked down again at the maps, marked with the imprints of the Hanathra’s many voyages. So much I didn’t know about Orthe, so much data lost, or mislaid in the rush to get someone – anyone – here. But under the circumstances, that was inevitable.

‘But you must promise me you will at least bear a harur blade. It is the one thing that will tell against you.’

I was silent. It was not a promise I was prepared to make.

‘Christie, I’m thinking only of your safety.’

‘I know. I’m not offended.’

‘No,’ he said, exasperated, ‘I believe you’re not.’

I left him. The dawn mist hung in pearls on the rail and deck, glistening and cold. Restless, I went below again. I lit the oil-lamp in my cabin, shuttering it in its thick glass casing. The air was damp. Surilyn was asleep. I didn’t disturb her.

On the sea-chest lay the traditional paired Southland blades: the harur-nilgiri, too short to be a sword, and the harur-nazari, too long to be a knife. I picked up the longer of the pair, the rapier-like nilgiri, gripping the cord-wrapped hilt. I flourished it, remembering old pirate fantasies, childhood games. The weight was unfamiliar on my wrist. I did not know how to carry it, wear it, or use it. I put it back.

Sadri Geren was wrong. Even if etiquette demanded it I had no business carrying a harur blade. That required a lifetime’s training, and a lifetime on Carrick V, not Earth.

By noon the haze had thickened into fog, and the wind dropped.

From the deck, the masthead was invisible. The sails vanished into grey moisture. Zu’Ritchie descended from the crow’s-nest wringing wet, and reported no thinning of the fog at that height.

‘Drop anchor,’ Geren ordered.

‘How long?’ I asked.

‘Summer fogs don’t generally last above a day or so in these waters.’

‘Can’t we go ahead anyhow?’

‘You’re not a seawoman, are you? Despite your British Isles. We can anchor here safely. Further west and we’d come to the mouth of the Oranon River and be drifted south. And there are the Sisters Islands not far south of here.’

When he spoke of the sea you could tell where his heart was. Then he was not thinking of the court at Tathcaer, or the ship and crew, but only of rocks and islands, tides and currents, and the prevailing winds of the Inner Sea. Some care more for inanimate things than for people. Geren was like that.

‘You must guest at my telestre,’ he said, his face animated again. ‘If they ever let you outside Tathcaer, come to Hanathra. If you had the time I’d take you voyaging down to Quarth, Kel Harantish, even the Rainbow Cities – an envoy should know the sea-routes. The Southland isn’t all of Orthe, no matter what they say in Tathcaer.’

‘I will if I can. How far is it?’

It was unlikely I’d have time for contacts other than the strictly official, at least to begin with. Still….

‘A good-weather voyage to Quarth and Kel Harantish? Perhaps six or seven weeks. A half-year to Saberon, first of the Rainbow Cities, and further to Cuthanc.’ He looked up and was suddenly serious. ‘Christie, remember I make you that offer in all honesty. If you should need to leave Tathcaer, come to me.’

It was cold on deck, despite the coat I had on over jeans and tunic. I shivered.

‘All right, Geren. If I need to.’

By night the fog had dispersed, and for the first time I saw the Orthean summer stars. Carrick’s Star lies on the edge of the galactic core. The sky holds thirty times as many stars as Earth’s; I stood on the deck of the Hanathra and the starlight was brighter than Earth’s full moon.

And before the next morning’s mist had burned away, the ship came to the estuary of the Oranon River.

Sails flapped wetly as the ship tacked to come about. The light of Orthe’s white sun on the water was blinding. I went forward out of the way, and looked ahead.

To the east mudflats gleamed. Spider-thin shapes flew up from the reedbeds, wide wings beating; their metallic cries came loudly across the water. Rashaku – lizardbirds. They triggered a flood of associations. Long-horned beasts grazed the blue-grey water-meadows – marhaz? skurrai? No clear visualization came with the terms. Beyond them, chalk headlands retreated down the coast into a distant haze.

There is always some degree of haze on Orthe. Not weather, specifically, but a quality of the planet’s atmosphere; the same quality that makes radio transmissions impossibly distorted.

With radio, I thought, I’d’ve been talking to the xeno-team in Tathcaer by now. No, with radio, I probably wouldn’t be here at all…

If my predecessor as First Contact envoy had had radio, he might have had the benefit of satellite weather transmissions; might not have died when the Eastern Isles ship was caught in a storm.

‘Christie,’ Zu’Ritchie paused briefly as he passed me. ‘Look – Tathcaer!’

The vast estuary was choppy, and wide enough still to be mistaken for open sea. The ship wallowed. The wind dropped, caught, the sails snapped out – hills and a crag loomed up, and we were driving straight for a harbour.

Two spurs rose up, and the harbour lay in the crescent between them. The early sun shone on the buildings rising behind it, packed closely together. I gripped the rail, dampened by spray, as we came under the shadow of the fortress-crowned eastern spur. Rivers flowed into the harbour from the far side of each spur; the same river, it came to me. The Oranon split some dozen miles upstream to enclose the island that was Tathcaer. An island-city. And the land to the east was Ymir, and the land to the west, Rimon.

The ship glided in between other anchored ships in a forest of bare-masted jath and a multitude of smaller craft. Some boats threw ropes and guided the Hanathra’s bulk into the anchorage under Easthill. The nearer river was shallow with many bridges while the other outlet of the Oranon by Westhill was wide and deep. I watched the bustling activity.

I have seen cities (not only on Earth) that stretched as far as the eye could see, horizon to horizon; cities it would take a week to drive across. So I could understand why the xeno-team’s tapes referred to Tathcaer as a ‘native settlement’. Settlement? I tasted the word in my mind, looking at the myriad buildings cupped between low whaleback hills, at the sprawling confusion of white and sand-coloured low buildings. And the bulk of Westhill just clearing the haze way across the harbour, crowned with another squat brown fort pocked with the black shadows of windows. Snouts and cries came from the moored boats, and from the docks beyond.

It came to me that there was more of this city over the saddleback between Easthill and Westhill. And that, call it settlement if you like, Tathcaer is nonetheless a city.

Geren came across the deck.

I picked up my packs. ‘You coming ashore yet?’

‘No, I’ve to see the Hanathra safely docked, then report to the court. I may see you there.’ He squinted at the quay. Half his mind was on the ship still. ‘They’re sending a boat. There’ll be court officials to find you a place, staff; show you the city.’

The first thing they could show me was a bank, I decided, then I could change the money-drafts that our respective governments had decided were valid. The shipboard holiday was finished, it was back to routine – but a new world is never routine.

I said goodbye to Surilyn, Zu’Ritchie, some of the crew, and Sadri Geren himself. Then I climbed down into a ferry, the rowers bent to the oars, and we glided away from the Hanathra. I saw her furled sails and the line of her hull sweet against the river, then faced front as we went into the confusion of the city.

*     *     *

The quay was stacked with crates and cloth-covered bales, and crowded with Ortheans. Back against the buildings (I supposed they were warehouses) stood canvas-sheltered food booths; the smells of cooking were unfamiliar, pungent. Shouts, the squeals of pulleys, the ever-present creak and sway of the ships’ masts … Dung and other unidentifiable odours came from the harbour. Longtailed scavenger rashaku yammered over the dirty water. A gang of young children tumbled past. There were children underfoot everywhere; on the foodstalls, in the warehouses, on the moored ships.

I stood on stone paving, between bare masts and high buildings. They were flat-roofed with many-angled walls and, as far as I could see, windowless. I looked round to spot anyone who might be there to meet me. My balance was a little off. That must be the sea: Carrick V’s gravity is only an imperceptible fraction less than Earth-standard.

I knew the xeno-team must be in Tathcaer, if only because my first priority was to get them travel permits from the Crown. But I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to find them on my own, when I caught sight of a middle-aged Orthean obviously heading towards me.

‘Envoy?’ At my nod, he bowed. ‘I’m Haltern n’ri n’suth Beth’ru-elen, of the Peir-Dadeni telestres.’

The same Haltern that countersigned the travel permit? One of the minor official contacts the xeno-team must have with the authorities, I guessed.

‘Lynne de Lisle Christie, British Isles.’

‘The Crown sent me to meet you.’ He used that informal term for the ruler of the Southland, the T’An Suthai-Telestre. ‘When you’re settled in, we can arrange for an audience. End of the week, perhaps?’

This was said all in one breath. He had a cropped blond mane brushed forward, disguising its retreat into a mere crest, and watery aquamarine eyes. That whiteless stare was forever alien, Orthean. Over the shirt and britches that were common Ymirian dress he wore a loose tunic, green and a little threadbare, with a gold feathercrest on the breast. Harur blades hung on worn belts. He had a vague, harassed look about him. If Geren had anyone in mind when he warned me about intrigue, I thought, this is just the type.

‘No audience before the end of the week?’ I queried.

‘There’s a residence to be found. Staff. Wardrobe. Marhaz and skurrai. L’ri-an. The Crown would not wish you to come to court before you feel ready.’

Before you’ve learned not to make a fool of yourself, I translated bleakly.

‘After all,’ Haltern added reflectively, ‘when God made time, She made enough of it to go round, don’t you agree?’

The skurrai-jasin slowed on the steep hill. The sky above the narrow twisting passage – you couldn’t call it a road – was a star-dotted strip. Featureless walls intensified the heat. Kekri flies clustered on open drainage channels. They rose as we passed: long-bodied, thick as my thumb, wings flashing like mirrors as they hummed on a low-pitched note. Some of the walls supported vines, but their fist-sized blue flowers couldn’t prevail against the stink.

Haltern, leaning forward, spoke to the driver. The jasin-carriage swung left up an even steeper hill, into an even narrower and more convoluted alley.

‘Can they m