brand new colony

They haven't actually seen much of each other since Peredwr and Danbrann stumbled on the archives, that first time; in the intervening fortnight there's been too much else to demand their attention. But now there's a calm space, a sudden quiet, and Peredwr finds it even more unsettling -- unsettling because the city itself is still so overwhelming, so busy, so full of other people doing things, half of which he can't figure out.

So one warm evening, while Danbrann is absorbed in mending their winter clothes -- she's always done what sewing there was to be done, as neither Peredwr nor their mother was any good at it -- he finds his way back to the library building, and in among the ramshackle stacks like a bird returning to the forest.

Lanselos has been out of Camallate for three weeks, seeing to the King's business in one of the little towns out past Bredigan -- a town that's growing somewhat faster than anyone expected it to, and which now needs a peace enforcement presence to ensure that what's orderly stays orderly. When he gets back, the first place he goes, as always, is to Arthur. The second is Gwen. And the following morning, he's up early to go find Galade.

The two of them get along easily enough, these days, but Lanse often feels a little guilty. His son should be more of a priority, but habits are hard to change, and he feels Gwen and Arthur's lack far more keenly than he misses Galade. Which is wrong, he guesses. So he sometimes over compensates; this morning is like that. He plans to take breakfast with his son, and then to see how Galade wants to spend the day. Maybe they can go to the range, or down into the city. Whatever Galade wants, Lanselos will try to give him.

It's well before the regular morning activity gets underway when Lanse knocks on the door of Galade's little room, just down the corridor from his own. He looks only a little sleep rumpled, and his easy smile is convincing enough.

The Queen is likely to turn up almost anywhere in the Hall on a given day, checking on various operations, making sure everything is running smoothly. The library is not one of her more common stops, being both nonessential and outside the main compound, but it's not unheard of for her to drop by to check some record that's not in the main computer, or just to see that things are as they should be.

Today her reasons are not entirely administrative, however. She stops a moment to talk with the staff member on duty -- there's never more than one at a time -- and then goes to lean in the doorway to the hard-copy room. She moves softly, and for a moment she studies the young man at the desk in silence. Then she straightens up a little, scuffing deliberately against the threshold. "Auelon?"

The first few days in Camallate, Galade wasn't sure he'd be happy. The capitol city is nothing like any place he'd ever been before in his life--tall, imposing buildings, the scores of people, and the rich market culture. The tight-knit freighting community with its house tattoos and coded language is secretive and undemonstrative. Everything in Camallate seems bigger and brighter and louder, and at first it was hard to imagine he'd ever feel comfortable.

And then the Voice sent him to the library.

Camallate's library is tiny and underfunded, squeezed into an old transport station a block from the Hall. Most of it's tapes for the consoles, either the entertainment kind that project holos or the kind that just spill text across a screen. But the bored librarian directed him to a side room full of real, genuine books, stacked into aging metal shelves, completely uncategorised, full of everything from manuals on animal husbandry to a text on obscure Chinese characters, and Galade is about as in love as he's ever been in his life. Best of all, though, there's the past.

His new project is mapping the history of the planet. There's enough here, both in paper and in tapes, to get a good start, and halfway through raiding the archives he found a series of recorded interviews with the first colonists to the planet. The librarian seems baffled by his fascination with the inventory, but willing enough to let him do what he wants. The Voice helps, keeping him company and giving advice.

Galade has always been grateful for the Voice, for telling him what God wants and for being his friend; he's not had many friends.

And the library has eased his passage into the city considerably. Almost every day he's there, copying and rerecording and making notes for his records. He's been diagramming battles, collecting inventories of products shipped in, keeping lists of the live births per hundred women, and the cattle farms, and as many details as he can find about the life of Vtere Liung.

It's a warm day outside, but Galade is in the side room with his things, working away steadily. He's humming an obscure hunting song Brinol taught him as a child, and tapping his brush against his shoe as he reads. The Voice is silent, but then some days it is. He's happy.

When Amite's letter arrives, Lanselos has to read it four times over just to get it to make sense to him. It's not that it's badly written or somehow indecipherable -- it's that he can't really get his head around the thought that she's dead. And yet here she is, asking him to take on their son. The letter had been written ahead of time and then dispatched as a provision of her will. You could say a lot of things about Amite Brisen, and God knows he has, but the woman was organized.

The first thing he does is go hunt down someone who'll have been monitoring trade channels and news postings from Escalot, to confirm that this isn't a trick of some kind. (He feels bad about that, but it's her own damn doing, him thinking this way.) But it all checks out -- a hit on her convoy, the same sort of thing that brought him to her the first time, and Amite shot. He doesn't know how to feel about any of it.

Lanselos spends an afternoon locked in Athyr's study, sorting arrangements and getting his head right. (Kind of right, anyway. Athyr always has perspective Lanselos lacks.) Two days later, he's in Escalot, heading toward the Brisen compound to find his son.