Reclamation

A flood of travelers poured down and around the wide road today. Clear, dry spells were not to be wasted, war or no war. Even in the traffic, though, they clung together in knots of their own kind. Caravans of Bondless shouted over their creaking sleighs and snorting oxen. They gave a grudging berth to a gaggle of Bonded trotting along with their overseer. An enclosed sledge that bore the ribbons of some Noble house rattled along at the center of an entourage which shoved an impartial path through the rest of the traffic.

Along the side of the road, framing the scene, the bundles of Notouch women in their ragged motley picked their own paths between the rocks and the weeds. The girls who could walk struggled to keep up with their mothers, aunts, and older sisters. The babies were carried on the stooped backs of the oldest women.

Jay frowned at them. Those roving bands were what was making it so impossible to track Stone in the Wall. If only the Ancestors had been a little more obvious in designing their servants, but, aside from the trained telekinetics, there were no differences between these walking artifacts that could be seen without a gene scan. Uary had theories. The Notouch might have been the "untouched," blank slates that were the control group for the Ancestors' work, or kept to use for later modification. That the telekinesis could crop up anywhere lent credence to the story from their "apocrypha" about the war against the Teachers that drove the power-gifted into hiding and humiliation until they'd learned their lesson.

Or until the others learned they couldn't live without them, thought Jay, watching the ragged parade of so many men and women and so few children.

But none of these theories explained what Stone in the Wall was, or why her family was relegated to the Notouch caste. The traits that made her what she was were not shared by the caste in general any more than the telekinesis was shared by all the Nobles. Cor had met Stone in the Wall in Narroways. She came from a cluster of huts that had no name, and probably wasn't even there anymore. Like most Notouch women, she spent her time roving between cities and farms as a "hired" hand while the men stayed in the village and kept the place from being washed away. By the time Cor had tried to track her family, Stone in the Wall's band was gone and no one would admit to knowing anything about her. Trail and Cups hadn't even been willing to say they'd come to Narroways with a work band.

Chaos, it was all chaos. This was what happened when there was no vision, no conscious plan. Entropy laid hold of individual minds, and everything that had been built…collapsed.

Jay squinted over the Notouch's heads toward the longest of the caravans. Its masters, at least, weren't completely oblivious to the hostile state of affairs between Narroways and the Orthodox world. Men displaying the tin helmets of hired guards balanced on the overfull sledges, clutching their axes and metal-studded clubs so anyone who glanced toward them could see they meant business.

The sight didn't say much positive for what the local feeling was about the Seablades coming across from First City. Jay forced the frown out of his features and scanned the roadside for Cor.

She was easy to pick out because she was almost the only still figure in the canyon. Cor leaned against the driver's perch of her sledge, watching the parade. Her oxen chewed the tree branches nearby and she patted the slablike side of the one closest to her absently.

Jay sidestepped toward her. His boots loosened a small scree of stones and Cor tilted her head up.

"You're looking grim," she said as he picked his way down to her.

"I'm feeling grim. There are no messages from May 16 and it's getting later by the second."

Cor glanced at the sky and at the slant of the shadows. "In more ways than one. I'll cuss the Vitae and bureaucrats out later." She unknotted the oxen's reins from the tree branch. Her hands had been marked with the broken triangles of the Bondless class. Unlike his Noble swirls, her marks were real tattoos. But then, it was her job to immerse herself totally in the local culture. That way, she could bring an intimate picture back to the Family and she could get the locals used to the idea that the odd-looking strangers coming to their world were just like them, really.

Jay clambered into the back of the sledge.

"It'd be easier if you'd just learned to ride," she remarked, watching him with an amused smile playing around her mouth. "The oxen are slow and quiet. It's not that tough."

"I am from an overcivilized and decadent people," said Jay blandly as he settled himself on one of the boxes that served as seats in the awkward construction. "I just can't do it."

Cor shrugged, hollered at the beasts, and they all lurched forward.