The Children of the Sky

Unfortunately, there was a pack standing by the doors, glaring in their direction. That was Sharps’ boss, what would have been the royal chamberlain back in Woodcarver’s palace. Timor straightened up as much as he could and approached him. Mr. Sharps’ two walked in formation with him, then merged with its two members that had gone on ahead. All four stopped and came to attention. Sharps’ maneuver was supposed to be fierce and impressive, but to Timor he just looked like doggies with toy guns strapped to their backs.

Timor walked on forward, right up to the boss pack. He really needed to get through these doors. If Tycoon would give Ravna a fair hearing, they were all home free. The problem was, sometimes the Big Guy would go running with his preconceptions. Vendacious was always trying to take advantage of that. What if Vendacious is in there too? Timor stifled the thought.

“Hei, Boss.” He waved at the doors. “Tycoon want me now. I help with words.”

The boss pack stared back impassively. This one had no sense of humor, and today he seemed even less jolly than usual. Several of him looked past Timor at Sharps. There was a warbling exchange of views. Timor could only pick out a few of the chords, but he made up the rest with this imagination:

Boss pack: “Hei, Sharpsie. Did this two-legged clown really get an order from the Big Guy to come down here?”

Sharps, doing his best to stay at full attention: “No way, Sir. Jailer is the only one who’s been to the tower today.”

The Boss turned all his attention back to Timor, and what he actually said in Samnorsk came as a surprise even to Timor’s imagination: “You no go here. Tycoon make that real order. To me, about you.”

Chapter   33

Tycoon’s great palace might not have been where Ravna had expected, but it was every bit the grandiose thing she had imagined: huge, domed, and spired. Unfortunately, she and Jefri spent the rest of the morning stuck in the lowly outskirts of the place, even as the rickshaw whisked Ritl merrily off to some more honored destination. The gunpack guided Ravna and Jefri toward magnificent twenty-meter-wide stairs—then off to the side, where there was an awning-shaded area. Packs brought them food (yams!) and some kind of weak beer. So they sat and looked across the airfield at the airships and the long barracks-like structures beyond. Eventually the airships were wheeled into their hangars, but there was no end to mysterious comings and goings near those barracks. The clouds scudded away and the sun beat down and things got really hot, even here under the awnings. Jefri paced to the limits that the gunpack would allow, looking at everything, arguing with gunpack and the occasional servant, even though nobody seemed to speak Samnorsk. Finally, he came back, looking as wilted as Ravna felt. “You okay?” he said.

“Yeah.” This was very much the setting of the Age of Princesses, and yet another blow to her childhood fancies.

“I think this is some kind of psychological warfare,” Jefri said.

“They’re softening us up?”

“Maybe.” He looked around. “You know, a lot of this doesn’t look so regal up close. I see mildew, water stains. Choir aside, there are good reasons why Northerners never settled here. Maybe Vendacious and Tycoon came here out of weakness. Maybe they’re moving the furniture around right now,” he jerked a thumb at the palace’s main entrance, “polishing up the part we’re going to see.”

Hmm. Ravna looked across the airfield. The hangar doors had been slid shut, and there was no further activity around them. This side of the mysterious barracks, there were hectares of open space with just a pack or two, perhaps fishing at one of the ornamental water pools. This emptiness was in the middle of the most densely populated place on the planet. Somebody had some clout. Rather than fraud and façade, maybe this was Tropical reality.

The sun had slid into afternoon before they were finally ushered into Tycoon’s grand palace. Yes, it was grand inside, too. Everywhere she looked, packs hustled this way and that; most of their members had the plush pelts of Northerners. Ravna and Jefri were led through vast carpeted rooms, up more stairs to only slightly smaller rooms, their walls draped with acoustic quilting. She noticed the kinds of imperfections that Jefri had mentioned. There was a faint odor of mildew, an occasional squishiness in the carpet. But the walls soared, and the dome overhead almost seemed to float. Tycoon and company had been cribbing a lot of tricks from Domain designs and, at least indirectly, from Oobii.

After the fourth set of stairs, Ravna would have been just as happy to be back under the outside awnings.