Chapter 9
DHOMHES
The order holding his father's inspection unit arrived before Dhomhes reached the transport.
He read the attachment standing beneath the shelter of the landing entrance, with Sereya's touch still warm on his arm.
A mandatory audit at Refinery Complex Three. All requested survey equipment to remain available until its completion.
Authorization: the Protector's office.
His father answered the call from the operations floor. No, he had ordered no audit. His office would check the reference and preserve the records.
“I'll be there for dinner,” Dhomhes said.
“Your mother has already told the kitchen.”
For once he was grateful to be expected somewhere.
“I won't be late.”
“You usually are.”
Dhomhes sent the search commander notice of the disputed order and boarded the transport.
Yesterday's mapping crew had also been diverted to Complex Three. He put the two orders side by side. Different routes through the administration. The same convenient destination.
Below the platform, two people remained missing while offices invented work for the people who might find them.
He had been asking who wanted Fiviel and Graecey left there.
What if that wasn't the whole question?
The search would bring people onto the ground beneath the platform. People with imaging equipment. People instructed to look closely and record what they found.
Dhomhes opened his notes from the Stonebroke.
Olmed's sample. The buyer who had paid too much. He added a question to the search file: was someone trying to conceal something in the terrain?
For now he had the false seismic claim and the disputed equipment order. His father would have the record check ready at dinner.
He closed the display.
His sleeve brushed his forearm, and he remembered Sereya telling him the touch was deliberate.
She had been nervous. He had seen it in the way she prepared to speak about home, the care she took with the small boundary she offered him.
He had wanted to know more. That had not changed.
But he liked knowing that she preferred tea warm, that she could tease him without warning, that she had sent a message because she wanted to talk again. None of those things had been in the notice that crossed his desk. He hoped there would be considerably more.
He looked out as the transport carried him toward the dark side.
He would have to find a place with a clear view of the stars.
Sheira opened the kitchen door before he reached it.
“You're early.”
“I thought I would alarm everyone.”
She took his face between her hands and inspected him. Dhomhes submitted, though there was flour on her thumb and probably now on his jaw.
“Have you eaten today?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to count?”
“You could greet me before beginning the examination.”
She kissed his cheek and released him.
“Hello, Dhomhes. Sit down.”
The kitchen smelled of the thick stew she made when she knew people would arrive at different hours. A covered dish of bread stood beside the stove. Through the wall came the low, familiar vibration of the crushers.
He had not realized how badly he wanted to be here until he set his comm on the table.
Sheira put a bowl in front of him.
“Your father won't be back until the shift changes. This will keep you out of the bread.”
“An ambitious hope.”
She moved the dish closer.
He took a piece and watched her clear a space at the counter. A stack of account records occupied one end. She had brought those back from the light side, then. Along with Tivek, judging by the discarded jacket on a chair that was seldom allowed to remain in that condition for long.
“Did the quarter accounts survive your visit?” he asked.
“Barely. How are the people from the ship?”
“Some recovering better than others. They're being looked after.”
“And the two who fell?”
He shook his head.
Sheira's hands slowed. Then she reached over and broke a piece of bread for herself.
“Your father told me about the inspection unit.”
“Someone has found a way to keep it here.”
“For the moment.”
He glanced up.
“He was very quiet on his last call,” she said. “I put extra food aside for the operations staff.”
That almost made him smile.
Sheira sat opposite him with her bread untouched.
“Tivek says you asked about his form.”
“I asked why Ellon hadn't needed the same attestation.”
“Have they answered?”
“They sent me the ritual requirements. The question wasn't whether Tivek needs to meet them. It was why the office had given him an extra one.”
“He knows the difference.”
“I know he does.”
Sheira turned the bread in her fingers.
“He won't ask me whether they're ashamed of him. He asks how long these things usually take, or whether another signature might help. As though he's checking an appointment.”
Dhomhes put down his spoon.
“He hasn't said that to me.”
“He wants you to think he's managing.”
“He is managing.”
“He's still allowed to be hurt.”
He looked toward the jacket on the chair. Yesterday Tivek had been full of jokes at breakfast. Dhomhes had heard the irritation beneath them. He wondered now what else he had allowed the jokes to cover.
“He doesn't want it fixed,” Sheira said. “He wants to have been allowed.”
Dhomhes rubbed a thumb along the edge of his bowl.
“I won't do the ritual for him. I couldn't if he asked.”
“I know.”
“And I won't promise him a result. But if someone has decided to make him prove more than the others, I want that someone to explain it to his face.”
Sheira nodded slowly.
“Tell him what you're asking. Don't let him learn afterward that everyone had conversations about him in rooms he couldn't enter.”
“I will.”
She finally ate the bread.
He went back to his stew. For a little while she told him about a foreman's twins, and a delivery sent to the wrong complex, and the state in which Tivek had left his training clothes. He listened to every word with an attention no Coalition briefing had received all day.
Then she looked at him over her cup.
“There's something else.”
He waited.
“You smiled at your sleeve when you sat down.”
“It's an excellent sleeve.”
“I see.”
“Good workmanship. Very reliable.”
Sheira's mouth curved.
“Does she have a name?”
He reached for more bread.
Sheira let him have it. She did not, however, look away.
Ruthak came in carrying the audit order.
He had printed it. That was rarely a good sign for whoever had written it.
“My office has checked,” he said, placing it beside Dhomhes's bowl. “No order. No authorization. That reference number belongs to a completed inspection from last quarter.”
“Someone expected no one to check,” Dhomhes said.
“Someone expected checking to take longer.”
Ruthak washed his hands and sat. Dhomhes showed him the false seismic report beside the map.
His father studied it. “The slopes will still be dangerous.”
“I know. I want the commander making decisions from real information.”
“What do you need?” his father asked.
“The unit you offered. The operator with it. And a crew whose assignment can't be changed by the next message from an office on the light side.”
“The response office doesn't assign my crews.”
“It has managed to keep one waiting for most of a day.”
Ruthak looked down at the printed order again.
“Not another.”
Ruthak called operations and released the cleared unit and a relief operator directly to the search commander. Any reassignment request would come to him.
“You will have the names before you leave,” he told Dhomhes.
Dhomhes looked at the paper beneath his hand.
“Whoever issued these orders may try another department.”
“I have several departments, boy. They all know where to find me.”
For the first time since the midday report, Dhomhes could think about the search without seeing equipment sitting uselessly behind a locked door.
Tivek arrived while Sheira was bringing the rest of the bread to the table.
“You're in my chair,” he told Dhomhes.
“I've been in this chair longer than you've been alive.”
“You abandoned it. People move on.”
He took the place beside him and reached for the bread.
Sheira caught his wrist without looking. “Wash.”
“I did.”
“After training.”
Tivek looked at his hand as though surprised to find it attached, then went to the basin.
Dhomhes moved the bread within his father's reach. Ruthak took the last piece from the top of the pile.
“Cruel,” Tivek said over his shoulder.
“More beneath the cloth,” Sheira told him. “Sit before it goes cold.”
He sat and managed three bites before announcing that his instructor had let him complete the descent sequence.
Dhomhes listened to the account twice. The second telling included a much closer brush with disaster, which Sheira addressed with one raised brow.
“Not actual disaster,” Tivek said. “Possible disaster. If I'd been slower.”
“Were you pleased with the run?” Dhomhes asked.
His brother looked at him, briefly stripped of performance.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Tivek ducked his head over his bowl.
Dhomhes let him eat a little more before mentioning the attestation.
“I asked the office to explain the difference between your requirements and Ellon's. They haven't answered that question yet.”
Tivek's spoon stopped.
“Are they going to?”
“I'll keep asking. I'll send you what they send me.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
Tivek looked at his mother. She was buttering bread, apparently occupied with getting it right to the edges.
“I don't want them passing me because you're angry.”
“Then you'd better complete the ritual properly. Being related to me won't make the descent shorter.”
“Might make it longer.”
“Entirely possible.”
Tivek smiled. A small one, but it stayed.
After that he wanted to know about the residences, and whether the visitors had been allowed into the market terraces, and whether Dhomhes knew a dark-haired female who spoke as though she expected him to understand ordinary words.
Dhomhes set his cup down.
“You'll need to be more specific.”
“No, I won't. You noticed as soon as I said dark-haired.”
Sheira became very interested in her bread.
“What did you say to this female?” Dhomhes asked.
“I told her about the ceiling. She thought it was confident.”
There could not be two of them.
“Sereya,” Dhomhes said.