Grail - Elizabeth Bear [110]
She waited, and when they finished—and found nothing, as Tristen had half expected and half feared—it was Tristen who had to go back to her and tell her that they were done, and her folk could return to their residences and their work. Cynric would have done it for him, of course, but he felt he owed it to the woman who inhabited his daughter.
“You’re not sorry,” she said, walking him back to the lift lock, where Cynric waited. “Will you even tell me what you were looking for?”
He studied her, the sway of her hair, the line of her shoulders. He laid a hand on the hilt of his sword—which had been Sparrow’s sword—and felt the weird intelligence in the blade yearn toward her. Mirth did not care if Sparrow’s mind inhabited Sparrow’s body.
He said, “Are you going to tell me you don’t know?”
“I don’t have the Bible,” she said. “Or the sword. I have no desire to rule this sad old world of yours, Tristen Tiger, that all you Conns squabble over with such ferocity. Exactly as if it meant anything at all.”
There was something in her voice, in the levelness of her tone, that took the splinter of unease working through him and froze it to a spike of ice. “Do you know who does have it?”
She let her lips stretch across her teeth. “You know who has it,” she answered. “And you know she isn’t here.”
Tristen was not a cursing man, but sometimes he made an exception. “Don’t fuck with me, Dorcas.”
“Old man,” she said, “I would never. But I’ll tell you what: if I find her, I’ll take care of it for you.”
* * *
It was a long ride home, but as much as Danilaw would have liked to spend the trip getting to know Amanda better and exploring the sprawling reaches of the Jacob’s Ladder, there was enough work to fill almost every waking hour—work complicated by the headaches and malaise caused by the Jacob’s Ladder’s stressed and possibly toxic environment, to which Danilaw was not adapted.
Somewhat to his surprise, language lessons were the least of it. The Jacobeans learned quickly, and once Danilaw had texts sent over the q-sets, they mostly managed by self-study, using him and Amanda for conversational practice. He also could not miss the signs that all was not well—politically speaking—with his hosts. When he asked, Tristen told him that an assassin was at large, one who wished to provoke armed conflict between the Jacobeans and the people of Fortune.
“But don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll find her.”
Still, by the drawn look of his features and the apparent lack of time or sleep among any of the senior crew, Danilaw suspected that they were not growing closer to a solution. More critical to Danilaw personally was time spent managing the situation on Fortune. If on the trip out Danilaw had been surprised by the ease with which he managed his duties remotely, now he was surprised by the degree to and speed with which everything could fall apart.
Administrator Gain was nearly impossible to get ahold of. She sealed herself behind a wall of staff, and whenever Danilaw called, she was unavailable—which, he had to admit, was reasonable, given that conversations with Administrator Jesse—and Danilaw’s own obsessive checking of newsfeeds and the planetary infosphere—provided intelligence of a sticky situation on the ground, indeed.
“People are frightened,” Jesse said. “There’s a good deal of disbelief that one of us committed the sabotage. We’re taking steps to encourage cooperation and discourage hoarding—”
He sighed. They were on audiolink only, and Danilaw could hear the shrug in his voice. “Lifeboat rules,” Danilaw said. “Stay on it. What’s up with Gain?”
“Factionating,” Jesse admitted. “She seems to be coming around to being an open proponent of isolationism. Do you know if she’s been in contact with anyone on the Jacob’s Ladder?”
“Except through official channels?” Danilaw, secure in his own invisibility, allowed himself to rock back and fold his arms for the defensive comfort of the gesture. “What makes you suspect