Lisaykos, at the White Shrine of Landa

"How much longer do you think he will last, sister?" Foyuna asked.

I gazed at Lord Nirirgi with body clairvoyance to gauge his level of exhaustion. "Past the fourth bell but before the fifth."

Foyuna's stomach growled loudly just then. We all had to stifle our laughter since we were in public with many eyes upon us. "Next time, eat a big morn repast because mid repast is never a certainty at these affairs," I said with some amusement. Foyuna was the youngest of us. This was her second time attending a punishment, Lord Kushamar's being the first.

Just then, I noticed Thuorfosi, who should have been in Is'syal keeping an eye on Emily. My heart landed in my stomach. Worse, she didn't come over to me. She went to the King, made her obeisance, and handed him an opened parchment. He read it and said a few words to Thuorfosi. Then he gave the parchment to the Queen, who visibly paled when she read it. All I could think was that Emily was involved, based on Aylem's reaction, but it was something outrageous but not dangerous, based on Imstay's reaction.

Aylem looked over in my direction and made a discreet hand wave at me to approach.

"You had better see what this is about, Lisaykos," Fassex remarked, "though it's probably that little Coyn kicking up trouble again."

"Replace 'probably' with 'certainly,' and I'd agree with you," I got up from my chair and approached the King and Queen. After making my one-knee obeisance next to the kneeling Thuorfosi, Aylem handed me the parchment. The seal was black with just a spider on it. I ran my thumb over it and recognized my son's aura. I flipped it over to read it.

The Blessed Emily was left alone at the Queen's apartments with nothing to do and nothing to read. Having observed that the Blessed Emily was ready to climb into the crawl spaces of the palace to study the building's plumbing, I thought it best to forestall disaster to our water system and divert her to more productive activities. I have taken the Blessed Emily to the mountains on the west side of the Valley of the Vanishing River to search for the ore of the metal called bismuth. I plan to return before the seventh bell. If we are delayed, I will visit my home first before returning to the palace.

I don't believe I need to sign this.

I found myself holding my head as I handed the parchment back to the Queen. "If I had been thinking straight, I would have sent her back to Aybhas with Thuorfosi this morning. How can such a small creature like Emily be the center of so much chaos?"

"Really, Holy One," Imstay said, "she was touched by Tiki and Tiki is a twisted god. Usruldes is reliable and will take good care of her. He owes a life debt to her now and will protect her with his own life. He will bring her back when he said he would, and the plumbing of the palace will be safe until her next visit."

"Yes, you are most certainly right, Mighty One," I sighed. "They are both capable of taking care of themselves with no help from us. Thuorfosi, what's this about the plumbing?"

"Holy One, she mentioned yesterday, and the day before that she wanted to see how water got into the holding tanks for the bathtubs and how water was delivered to the palace," Thuorfosi replied.

"She's probably designing drains and flushing toilets in her head," Aylem said with a long-suffering look. "There was a drain system and flushing toilet in her cave."

"Flushing toilet?" Imstay asked.

"It's a necessary that uses the flow of water to take the waste away through a drain when you are finished. Because of the water, they don't smell and no one has to come and collect the waste afterward," Aylem explained.

"I think I would be interested in this if today was any other day," his eyes followed his uncle as the older man ran past in his circuit around the Shrine of Landa. "For now, I suggest we take Usruldes at his word and wait for their return this evening. Priestess Thuorfosi, perhaps you should return to the palace first in case they arrive a little early."

"Yes, that sounds wise," Thuorfosi responded. "Do you know how he removed Emily from a room with a charm-warded door and a locked window in a heavily guarded building?"

"He likes to do that sort of thing," Imstay replied. "He's a bit vain over his craft of entering and leaving without leaving a trace that even magic users can find."

"All we can do is wait," the Queen sighed.

I was right about Lord Nirirgi. His heart failed between the fourth and fifth bells, and we were on our way back to Is'syal before the fifth bell. My son and Emily were not back by the seventh and last bell of daylight, but Thuorfosi had word through the citadel that there was bad weather working its way up the Upper Salt River basin.

---

Lisaykos, the King’s Chambers

Aylem and I walked to Imstay's apartments to find the address where Usruldes lived. We found Imstay well on his way to drinking himself to a stupor alone with just one worried young attendant on duty. The boy looked thankful when we arrived.

"So have you come to gloat, wench?" Imstay bellowed when he saw Aylem. He always was a nasty drunk.

"No, Imstay, we'd like to find out the address of where Usruldes lives," she replied calmly. "They are not back yet, and we have word through the garrisons that the storm we saw this afternoon is currently causing floods, taking roofs off houses, and dropping trees across roads in Black Falls and Gunndit, and it's moving up the river toward us."

"Bad storm, Gertzpul have mercy," he said softly. "Not even the weather will let me grieve. Forgive me. I am very drunk." His head drooped and he took a deep breath. He staggered to his feet, walked to a side table, and pulled open a drawer. He removed a crystal pendant on a chain.

"I am too drunk to use this, but you can, Aylem. It has a charm of location for Usruldes. You can probably use it as a guide for your clairvoyance." He unsteadily walked up and handed it to her, then stumbled back to his chair. Aylem held the crystal and probed it, then shut her eyes only to open them a breath later.

"They are safe. They have taken shelter in a warm, dry place and are sleeping. I could hear the storm outside." She put the gem on Imstay's side table. "Thank you, Imstay. Do you want me to sober you up so you are functional when this storm arrives? It sounds like the garrisons will need to be deployed."

"No, I deserve this hangover for failing to protect my family," he muttered. "Usruldes lives six doors down on Brewers' Row from the West Way. I think you'll like his fam...family."

I saw Aylem put her hand in her pocket where her personal crystal was and Imstay started snoring. Aylem walked over and picked him up. "Garki, please get the doors for me. We're putting him to bed."

---

Usruldes, in-flight on Cadrees

It was fun to surprise Emily with a warm egg, cheese, and onion roll when she woke up. We sipped hot sweet tea and waited for the rain to stop, which it did before midday. Cadrees took off to hunt down a meal and I asked Emily more questions about capturing images. I was learning all sorts of wonderful things, like what iodine and chlorine were, or how to coat copper with silver using the same force that makes lightning.

I also learned some scary things like how mercury poisoned a town called Minamata and how dumping mine wastes into a river poisoned a lake downstream called Coeur d'Alene. The passion with which she wrote made me feel like she had actually been to these places I had never heard of. The lean sentences she wrote on these horrors were all the more powerful for her sparse words and bare descriptions. What I could read between the lines left me scared.

Sometimes I felt like I was being lessoned by an ancient sage when communicating with Emily. She looked like she wasn't older than 14, but she seemed to look at the world with old eyes. Maybe that was the influence of the gods putting things in her head when she slept.

Cadrees came back with the news that the river was in flood in its lower reaches and that its sink wasn't a sink anymore, it was a lake. It was amazing to see when we flew over it on our way home. There were other lakes of water in places where there should have been lava, pooled up after the heavy rains. It looked to me that the Salt River in the distance had expanded and flooded beyond its banks.

We were approaching the Great Cracks when there was a tremendous explosion in front of us. Cadrees turned, banked, and dove to gain speed. When we were out of reach of the violence, we watched in awe as masses of rocks as large as houses fell from the sky and great bellows of steam and ash rose up in a giant cloud that grew a top like a mushroom cap. Emily was fascinated by it.

By the time we reached where the lava fields ended and the farmland began, there was evidence of the storm's passage. It wasn't pretty. Entire farms and estates were underwater. The loss of life would be bad, I feared, and the harvest of barley and spring wheat would be bad this year. It would be a long cold season eating tubers for the poor folk.

The first people we rescued were a woman and a young boy clinging to a wooden roof. Cadrees saw them, wing braked above them, and picked them up in his talons, which was quite a trick since he had to do so without killing them. The talons of a roc eagle can easily impale a soft squishy body when picking it up. He spotted the dome of a chapel shrine. There were garrison guards there who appeared to be directing people straggling in so he left them off there, wing braking right in the middle of the chapel forecourt and setting them on the ground gently, the showoff.

We picked up so many people out of the water, both Cosm and Coyn and even one juvenile griffin, that we lost count. We took all of them to that chapel shrine. Even after the sun went down, I lit up the surface of the water to help Cadrees see and we found a few more. We finally quit after we couldn't find any more living people in the water though there were plenty of dead ones.

Cadrees never once stopped to rest. He is the best of all eagles. The people at the chapel shrine started calling out to ask who we were but I just waved as we flew off to look for more people in the water or stranded on roofs, trees, or the tops of grain silos. When we were done, we had just under two wagon-days distance to fly eastward to Is'syal proper.

Most of the city is built on a large domed hill with the Salt River running just to the north. The planking on the bridge over the river was gone and the water was over the river bank. The go-downs between the river and the city wall were flooded but most of the city was safe from water. I'm sure we would see roof and tree damage in the daylight.

I lit up all the charm gem lights in my backyard from about 500 hands out. Cadrees landed just as the quarter night bell rang out from the belfry of the citadel. Emily looked tired but she never once made any complaint or did anything to impede what Cadrees was doing.

"Alright Emily, the first thing that must happen is that I get Cadrees some water. While I'm doing that, get yourself unstrapped. Can you get down on your own?" She shook her head no.

"I'll get you down then as soon as Cadrees has his water." I jumped down, grabbed a pail, and filled it from the cistern tank.

"I've got Emily, Dad," Fedso'as said as I was carrying the bucket over to Cadrees.

"Fedso'as, don't go anywhere," I leapt back up onto Cadrees to unstrap the pemmican box and very carefully slid down with it cradled by one arm. I walked around Cadrees and handed the box to my daughter. I wanted to give it to Emily but realized the box was too big for her to carry. Having a Coyn underfoot was giving me a lesson on what it was like to be a small person surrounded by much bigger people, and it also left me wondering why it took me until my thirties to discover this truth.

"Carry this as if it was three dozen eggs in a box with no lid and put it on the dining room table. Then get a chair for Emily to stand on so she can open it and make sure the contents are unharmed. Got that?"

"Yes, Dad. Emily, can you open the door? There's a foot latch on it." I watched them for a moment and then got to work getting the saddle unpacked and off the tired eagle. When that was done, I pulled two skinned rock hares from the ice room under the floor of the equipment shed, warmed them up, and tossed them to Cadrees when I got back to ground level. They disappeared down his beak.

"Thanks, featherless one." He butted his head at my stomach.

"You're a great eagle, you know that? You did well today."

"I'm tired, punk. I'm retreating to my spot for some rest. Can you refill the water for me please?"

"Sure thing." When I was done with the refill, I grabbed the canvas bags and the sheepskin cloaks and carried them into the house. I saw the shadows on the wall of people in the dining room, "hey, dear, sorry I'm late but we ran into some weather."

"I assumed that's what happened," Oyyuth said from the dining room. "That's so beautiful, Emily," I heard her say in her normal speaking voice.

I put the bag with the pemmican on the counter in the larder and carried the bag with the rocks to the dining room, and there I stopped in shock at the sight of my mother sitting at the table on Emily's right with my wife sitting to her left.

My mother, in a blue tunic, not grey, and pants no less, looked up at me: "You look like a fish, son. You should close your mouth before something swims into it." My daughter, who was sitting next to my mother giggled at my getting scolded. Realizing I was outnumbered, I pulled a working table cloth out of the linens press and put it down to protect the tabletop from the rocks.

"Oh," mother looked up and blinked, "there's more?"

Emily nodded. I pulled out the book micas first and passed one to my mother. "Fascinating," I watched her peel a thin clear layer off the top of the book mica. "It's completely clear." She flexed it back and forth, "this is really a rock?" Emily nodded. "So, is it just a novelty or do you have a use for this?"

Emily wrote on her tablet: "very useful---eye protection."

"Is that a tablet on a hand strap?" My mother was looking curiously.

"I made that for her," I said, "so she could write while we were in flight without worrying about dropping the tablet and stylus."

"What else is in the bag?"

"The black rocks are tin ore and the metallic ones with the needle shapes are more bismuth rocks," I explained, knowing it would save Emily some writing.

"What's bismuth?" Fedso'as asked.

"It's used to make medicine," my mother said.

I pulled a chair up next to my wife and sat down, "mother, I thought we would make introductions to the family at the shrine at cold season midday as I told you the other day."

"I was a bit concerned for Emily, knew she was with you, so I thought I'd introduce myself while I was waiting." I wasn't fooled at all by the innocent routine. This was my mother after all. She was enjoying every single moment of this. She hadn't lost her love of needling people. It wasn't one of her better traits.

"Grandmom's really great," Fedso'as enthused. "Why didn't you tell me I had a grandmother who worked as a healer?"

"We'll talk about that later, squirt." Then I mindcasted at my mother, "you told her you worked as a healer and nothing else?"

She mindcasted back, "you should warn her before she arrives at the shrine, but for now, I didn't want her to think I was anyone important. High Priestess is a title that can get in the way of establishing normal relationships. I wanted to meet her without any of that baggage."

"Emily," mother looked at the Coyn, "will you go back up the palace tonight or do you want to stay here for the night?" Emily pointed down at the table. "You're saying you want to stay here, yes?" Emily nodded. Mother gave her a knowing look, "I was guessing you would want to do that. Being made to dress up and having your hair done was not something you would tolerate more than once and you suffered through it twice. Now, the Queen would like to know if you could help out for a day or two in the exchequer office. It would free up another pair of hands to help with the clean-up after the storm."

Emily nodded yes.

"Wow, you can do the Queen's numbers?" Fedso'as asked, wide-eyed.

"Emily is very good with numbers," my mother said. "Are you coming up the palace in the morning, son? If you are, you can bring Emily with you."

"I can do that. Will I be seeing you again before you return to Aybhas?"

"I'm not sure," she looked a bit tired for a moment. "I've been working with the people who were hurt badly in the flood or from flying debris. They kicked me out of the shrine at the seventh bell with orders not to come back until morning. So I'll be back doing trauma care tomorrow."

I squinted and looked at her with body clairvoyance, noting the dense blue haze of fatigue clouding out everything else. Even after all these years, she hadn't changed one bit with the bad habit of overworking. "You didn't sleep last night, did you? Why don't you spend the night here instead of walking across town to get back to the guest house at the shrine?"

"Oh, yes!" Fedso'as bounced up and down at the thought. "Please, grandmom? We can have morn repast together!" Mother took one look at Fed's eager face and capitulated to the bouncy 12-year-old. Oh, I was enjoying watching my lovely daughter coerce my mother with the irresistible power of cute.

"Well," she waffled, "I need to be back at the shrine by the second bell."

"We eat at first bell," Fedso'as proclaimed. "Great! I'll make sure the guest room is ready!" She ran out of the room.

"Where does she get all that energy?" I asked the room.

"You were the same when you were 12 and maybe even a little worse," my mother smiled one of her smiles, the kind where you wonder where she's hidden the small fluffy animals she's torturing for fun as a break from torturing small children.

My wife laughed and Emily looked vastly amused.

I knew running into my mother was going to make my life more difficult. I was right.

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