Chapter 12: The Tale of Trisla and Tython pt. 1
“It’s fixed. Mostly, anyway.” Rowan said, releasing the translator drone from its charging base. With a slight buzz, it went to hover near Trisla. “Give it a try.”
Rowan had purchased the broken secondhand drone some weeks prior at the bazaar in Ebonrue, and had spent that time trying to get it up and running. Thankfully, most of Rowan’s ‘tinkering projects’ had been kept in the shed behind Begonia House to prevent the cursing from reaching the ears of company, so it hadn’t been consumed in the fire. No more than six inches in diameter, the drone’s base contained cameras allowing it to easily see everything happening around it. It hovered in front of Trisla as she began to sign hesitantly.
“I don’t know what to tell it,” she signed. At the same time, the drone interpreted her signing, speaking aloud the words, albeit in a rather stilted male voice.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Rowan winced a little and turned away. “I could only get that one voice to work. But, don’t worry. I’m trying to find additional voices on the core-net. It’s just such an old model, I’m not having any luck. Try a few more things? I want to see if I need to make any adjustments.”
Trisla began signing her recipe for lemon cake. The drone kept up fairly well, though occasionally used strange or slightly incorrect words. Rowan explained that the seller hadn’t lived in the core planets, and likely the vocabulary used had some differences from common Galactic.
Nonetheless, Trisla knew it’d be a boon to her while running errands in the city, and when interacting with staff at Wisteria House. It would take some time to get used to having it follow her around and stare at her, but she decided to think of it less like a drone and more like a pet. “I’ll call it Rigsby,” she signed.
“That’s an awful name.”
Trisla made a face and thwacked Rowan on the arm with the back of her hand.
“Well, it is. Sounds like an old man’s name. Though, I guess it does kind of speak like an old man, so… Maybe that’s appropriate.”
A silent laugh came from Trisla as she shook her head. “I’m going into town. Do you need anything?”
“Booze.”
“Lady Zara is going to have a fit if she finds out how much you’re drinking these days.”
It wasn’t enough to affect Rowan’s health, but definitely more drinking than Zara would approve. Trisla had, at least, been able to convince Rowan to keep all the liquor in the shed, but now that they were living at Lady Kessandra’s house, they didn’t have that option.
“This place drives me to drink, Tris. Back on Ankali, things were stressful, sure. But, I could deal with that kind of stress. It’s one thing when you know who your enemy is, and how they’re going to come at you. But, here on Viverides, it’s all this backstabbing bullshit. We’re all in constant fucking danger in ways I think Lady Zara is too fucking naive to realize.”
“Rowan!” No translation drone would be necessary to read the exasperation from Trisla.
“I’m sorry, Tris. I love Lady Zara, but that Astrid bitch literally had to make an attempt on her life before she’d consider the woman anything more than ‘slightly nasty’. Then she got herself entangled with that fake Tython and almost ended up dead. She puts too much stock in strangers, and thinks far too highly of people.” Rowan collapsed into one of Lady Kessandra’s many expensive silk-embroidered chairs, this one with a rendition of a garden in the rain. “If something happens to Lady Zara…”
“Nothing will happen. She has all of us to look after her.”
“Yes, but if something happens…” Rowan’s hand gripped the arm of the chair hard. “I don’t got people to go home to. This is all I’ve got. I’m not like you with some mysterious family and doubly-mysterious past. My parents died in the war on Ankali, after immigrating from Yterra to avoid war in the first place. I don’t want to end up…”
Trisla grabbed Rowan, pulling them into a tight hug. For such a tiny woman, she had a fearsome grip.
“Nothing will happen,” she signed after turning Rowan loose. “Now go find Xaz and make sure he’s not getting into trouble. Yesterday, he ate an entire pie that Madame Marie set out to cool, and she went after him wielding a spatula. I don’t think it hurts him when she hits him, but he still looked rather pathetic when she yelled at him.”
Rowan grunted.
Trisla pressed her lips together. “And yes, I’ll get you your booze.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
The streets of Ebonrue were filled with merchants of every kind. Although only merchants and artisans of a certain Imperial Grade could live and own businesses in Ebonrue, a few days a month were set aside to allow for the Great Bazaar. On those days, anyone could come into Ebonrue and sell their wares. It allowed the Adjudicants to scout among the rabble for those of exceptional skill to raise in rank. It was just such a bazaar where Rowan had picked up the translator drone because among the merchants were not just crafters, artisans, and merchants, but traders of secondhand wares, shady doctors, unlicensed augmenters, men and women of ill repute, questionable entertainers with sticky fingers, cut-throats for hire, and those who might be persuaded to sell all sorts of illegal goods. Anyone could get into Ebonrue those days, making it a much more dangerous city than usual. Even though the criminal element existed in Ebonrue on most days, the numbers of those willing to break laws swelled during the days of the Great Bazaar, keeping the local Korkudai busy.
Trisla moved deftly and silently among the crowds, her face mostly covered by the kind of veil worn by Ossran pilgrims. As few wished to interfere with the pilgrimage of widows or speak to those who had dishonored themselves, no one paid her any mind, and even several Korkudai officers stepped aside from their milling about on the walkway to allow her to easily pass. She’d traded her maid’s uniform for a simpler dress she’d brought from Ankali, a thin formless black kaftan from her home planet of Zibanna. When paired with the veil, it gave her an exotic look, as if she might be a foreigner drifting through the bazaar, potentially visiting Viverides for the first time.
Rigsby floated behind her, though certainly wasn’t the only drone in the streets. Truly paranoid concubines sometimes assigned their servants drones to follow them about on their errands, just to make sure they weren’t doing anything nefarious. Some drones advertised for market stalls by displaying ads or holding trays of samples. Above them all, delivery drones whipped around, taking purchased wares to the houses of their new owners.
The Great Bazaar filled the streets with scents and sounds not usually common to Ebonrue. Trisla briefly watched a musician play a Tani-dahmaz, a wind instrument that simultaneously created colorful dancing holograms in patterns keyed off of the notes. In some cultures, the Tani-dahmaz was considered sacred and would be used along with drug-induced trances for sacred rituals or healing. Slightly further down the road, huge piles of red nahj stood as tall as the boisterous merchant selling them, their peppery scent so intense that many passersby sneezed. A cadre of children laughed loudly and threatened to knock into visitors as they chased a small drone blowing soap bubbles. They weaved in and out of the lanes of wares, passing cobblers selling specialized shoes for augmented feet, myriad hot food stands each more tempting than the next, and farmers from the white plains whose bleached produce looked ghostly and sinister. As she moved through the Bazaar, sounds collided with each other in a cacophony. Voices. Music. The tap of a small hammer. The trickle of melting ice. The shuffling of feet, flapping of windblown awnings, and shriek of birds fighting over dropped scraps.
Sounds. Other people made so many of them. She made so few. But, she never felt melancholy over what she’d lost, only anger. The Galactic Empire took and took, a greedy machine consuming everything in its way. It took her voice. It took Rowan’s parents. It took Zara from her people. Nothing that existed remained safe from the hungry mouth of the Galactic Empire. Good people, kind and generous, honorable and righteous, could not fight against something so massive and pervasive that it could easily be compared to a gravitational singularity. A black hole. None could escape its grasp. Most would find the situation hopeless and would mourn a fate they could not hope to avoid. Not Trisla. Without the ability to scream or shriek or wail in hopelessness, she would instead vibrate the universe in another way. Her actions would challenge the inevitability of the Galactic Empire’s expansion and authority. They would hear her, despite the voice they stole, and they would tremble.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Come Rigsby. I’m going to power you off for a bit. Ladies don’t like cameras in their powder rooms.”
Trisla plucked the drone out of the air before it could even finish translating her signing. Turning it off, she placed it into the large satchel she’d brought along for carrying her shopping. With the drone no longer watching her every move, she turned and moved down a side street, this one less packed, but still containing a couple of less-impressive market stalls and some cheaper food stands. A second turn, and then a third, brought Trisla to an opening away from the center of Ebonrue’s commerce and into a run down neighborhood containing the residences of Ebonrue’s poorer citizens. Poor, but respectable. Here lived the servants merchants, pedalcab drivers, and gardeners. She walked past these to an even less savory neighborhood, the kind of area often inhabited by the forgotten and the lost, criminals and the insane. The entire place was deserted, as everyone had gone to the Great Bazaar to make money in whatever ways they could.
The house she ducked into had been deserted since they’d come to Ebonrue. A bright orange sign was stapled to the door, once reading ‘condemned’, though the end had been torn off by someone, or something, leaving it to actually say just ‘condem’. The unlocked door creaked as she stepped inside, revealing a house littered with crumbling furniture and clothing so long trampled underfoot that the original colors had given way to grays and browns. In one spot, a piece of the ceiling had given way, and now a section of insulation hung precariously from a beam, like a strange fluffy criminal swinging from an unseen noose. The smell of mold and urine hung in the air.
“Good to see you survived the fire,” a male voice said.
Trisla turned the corner into a long-abandoned bedroom which still contained most of a bed filling it. Neithan sat on the edge of it, his long legs stretched out almost far enough for the toes of his boots to nearly touch the wall. He turned at the waist to peer at her, but likely finding the position uncomfortable, stood. Dressed as one of the many itinerant street performers that would make their way into Ebonrue during the Great Bazaar, he wore colorful diamond-patterned tights beneath a long orange tunic. His jaunty hat did not match any of it.
“Why did you attack the Night Blossom Festival? Lady Zarathenia could have been killed,” Trisla signed, her hard gaze making the rest of her expression, hidden beneath her veil, unnecessary. “You should have let me know! I could have kept her from…”
Neithan held up both hands. “No, no, no. We weren’t behind that. I swear to you, the Spiral Alliance would never…”
“Then who?”
“War hawks,” Neithan said, shifting his weight. A piece of broken glass crunched under his boot. “There are elements within the Emperor’s inner circle who could profit greatly from a large-scale war with the Spiral Alliance. How else do you think such a thing could be achieved?”
Trisla frowned, a hidden gesture since all but her eyes were covered by the veil. Her signing became hesitant. She knew the answer to her next question, and yet did not want to know, “Will they try again?”
“The War Hawks? Almost certainly. The stability of the Emperor’s reign chokes their ability to make ambitious political moves. War would bring chaos they could exploit. We’re trying to get someone into their ranks to feed information to the Spiral Alliance, but it’s not been easy.” Neithan took a few balls out of his pockets and began to juggle absently as he spoke. “Anyway, this may be the last time we can easily meet. I’ll have to find some other way to contact you.”
“What? Why?”
Neithan caught each of the three balls in one hand, one after another. With his other hand, he reached into a pocket and rooted around. What he pulled out appeared to be a blank sheet of paper. It wasn’t. She pressed a finger to the bottom right-hand corner, unlocking it with her fingerprint, and the text stored in the thin datasheet revealed itself. Trisla read through the text in a hurry, the shock visible on what little of her face could be seen.
She handed the datasheet back to Neithan. “Is this true? Are you sure?”
He watched her signing and immediately nodded. “Our sources have verified it.” Now it was Neithan’s turn to press his finger to the datasheet, this time to the bottom left. With the application of his fingerprint, the page began to turn black from a chemical reaction designed to destroy the secret information. He dropped it on the ground and they both watched as it dissolved into ash.
“Don’t worry,” Trisla signed, “I will continue to be loyal to our mission, even if that comes to pass. It doesn’t change what needs to happen, only the timeline in which it will be done. However…”
Neithan raised an eyebrow and waited.
“I need you to do something for me,” Trisla continued, moving to the window to stare out at the least savory part of Ebonrue, “I need you to get me whatever you can on Lady Astrid Astor.”
~*~*~*~*~*~
When she returned to the Great Bazaar and released Rigsby back into the air, Trisla felt as if a great weight had been placed upon her shoulders. Without the ability to regularly contact the Spiral Alliance, everything would become far more uncertain, far more difficult. She hadn’t thought the danger of being on Viverides could increase exponentially, but if Neithan was right…
“Oh, Miss Trisla. You’ve got a translator drone, I see. Is it proving helpful? My brother had one and he hated it.”
Trisla hadn’t realized that she’d drifted to Madame Juniper’s vegetable stall. She tended to buy from Madame Juniper because the woman understood Galactic Sign Language due to her elder brother being deaf. She shook herself from her dark reverie, putting on an instant smile so that she could greet Madame Juniper. “It’s taking a bit of getting used to. Especially with the voice being so deep and startling.”
“That’s understandable. My grandmother said that in her great-grandmother’s time, they used to be more common for everyone before Galactic was basically spoken everywhere. Can you imagine? It must have made communication between the planets so much more difficult. Anyway…” Madame Juniper motioned to her wares with a flourish of her hand. “What can I get you today? I’ve got some Xibanese carrots on sale, the purple ones. I thought they wouldn’t grow here on Viverides, but boy was I wrong. I ended up with twice as much as I’d reckoned.”
With a polite smile, Trisla moved to the left a bit to examine the Xibanese carrots. If she were going back to Begonia House, she’d almost certainly have purchased them. But, since she didn’t want to impose on Madame Marie’s kitchen, she had no real reason to buy anything. Trisla picked up one carrot, then another absently as the sounds and smells of the Great Bazaar became washed over her like an ocean wave. She felt, for a moment, as if she might drown in the enormity of the situation.
“Miss Trisla?”
The voice had not come from Madame Juniper, who had moved away to sell onions to an old man. Trisla turned to find Tython standing nearby, the flaming red hair standing out even among the bright colors of the Bazaar’s many wares. Although she’d long since removed her veil, the fact that he recognized her with her hair down, and in her kaftan surprised her.
Trisla put down the carrots. “Mr. Tython. Good afternoon.”
The translation coming from Rigsby momentarily appeared to startle Tython slightly. He peered at the drone for several seconds, the dissonance of being addressed by a robot with a male voice after speaking to Trisla obviously causing him brief mental distress. It didn’t take long for him to recover, and he looked again at Trisla, “Boy howdy, that gave me a start.”
“I call him Rigsby.”
“Looks like a Rigby, I ‘spose.”
As Tython looked at the drone, Trisla realized that Tython was wearing an understated navy blue uniform with a number of patches on the arms and a metal badge on the chest. The outfit wasn’t Korkudai, but looked to have an official nature. She squinted at the badge, which confirmed her suspicion. “Is that not a fire brigade uniform, Mr. Tython?”
“Indeed so, Miss Trisla!” Tython puffed up a bit, looking proud of the announcement. “I’ve been released from my duties as a concubine, an’ I’ve decided to return to my prior profession. It’s right nice. They give you a bed at the station an’ pond’rous amounts of victuals. Though, I doubt it could possibly be as good as the food you make, Miss Trisla. I’ve heard you’re quite a legendary chef an’ such.”
“I thought your people were miners, Mr. Tython.”
“Welp, my people are, but…” He took off his wide-brimmed felt hat, the only part of his outfit that likely didn’t get assigned by the fire brigade. “...I trained to fight fires. They’re a right nuisance in the mines, on account of all the chemicals and the hazard of them eatin’ all the oxygen and whatnot.”
Trisla stepped away from the vegetable stand, allowing another customer to inspect the carrots at their leisure. “I suppose that makes sense.” She tried not to look at the feather-like burn mark that swept across his face, now possibly understanding more about the origin of it. “Say, Mr. Tython, would you have time to accompany me on some errands this afternoon? Please don’t put yourself out if you don’t, but I could really use your input on a few things.”
The joyous smile that spread across Tython’s face drove away much of the worry and darkness that had fallen upon Trisla just hours before. “‘Course, Miss Trisla. I’d be most honored.”