Martians armed with swords and English rifles—she feared she recognized her father’s favorite hunting-piece—stepped aside as the rukesh approached the front door, closing behind Richardson as the humans passed.
Arabella feared the worst as they entered the house proper, but though the damage in the hall was severe, with shattered plaster and shredded carpets everywhere, there were no bodies lying about, nor even pools of blood. And as they moved deeper into the house the destruction lessened, until by the time they reached her father’s office most of the furnishings, even her mother’s paintings, were still intact.
One Martian stood guard at the office door, but as they approached he bowed and opened the door as smartly as any butler. So familiar was the motion, in fact, that—despite his garish clan colors and the steel blades fixed to his carapace—she recognized him immediately. It was Hoksh, who had been her father’s footman!
She did not know whether to be reassured or dismayed by his presence among the insurrectionists, but in either case her heart pounded as the rukesh stepped aside, leaving the humans to enter the office without them.
The office itself seemed completely undamaged. Even the automata above her father’s desk looked down as serenely as they always had. Which was all the more astonishing because, seated behind the desk, Arabella beheld the most enormous Martian she had ever seen.
A hulking dark-red brute nearly eight feet high and almost half that broad, the Martian’s carapace bristled with spiny protrusions both natural and artificial. Wide stripes in every clan color painted the massive forearms, and a sharp-edged steel mantle of office rode atop the shoulders. Incongruously, the huge ungainly fingers gripped a feather pen, which scratched away in a ledger-book, over which the Martian was hunched in a posture of deep concentration.
As the door opened the Martian looked up.
The black, subtly faceted eyes immediately focused on Arabella.
“Arabella?” the Martian boomed in a deep, cultured voice. “Could that be you? My dear tutukha?”
Arabella’s jaw dropped.
“Khema!?”
20
KHEMA
“My dear tutukha!” the giant Martian repeated, and with surprising agility and grace he—no, she—bounded out from behind the desk and took up Arabella in her arms.
“Khema, is it really you?” Though many Englishmen said that Martians all looked alike, Arabella had never had much difficulty distinguishing between them. And now that she looked more carefully at the Martian’s broad face she could see that, beneath the heavy protective brows and prominent cheek-spines, it still bore the familiar lines of her beloved itkhalya. And there was a crack in the carapace of the left temple, imperfectly healed, which Arabella herself had inflicted one day in a clumsy sparring incident. “How is this possible?”
Khema set Arabella down and sighed, the air whistling through her spiracles in imitation of the human expression. “It is a long story, tutukha, and I regret each and every day the terrible circumstances which have brought me to this state.” She rapped on the carapace of her thorax with her prominent knuckles, making a sound like two stones striking together. “But, regrets or no, I am akhmok now.” Her attention widened from Arabella to take in the three officers. “Tut, tut, I forget my manners. Who are these fine gentlemen?”
“This is Captain Singh of the Honorable Mars Company airship Diana, his first mate Mr. Richardson, and his sailing-master Mr. Stross.” Then, to the officers, “This is Khema Shuthkari Tekeshti, who was once my itkhalya—my nanny, my protector, my instructor in all things Martian.” The men bowed to Khema; she replied with a curtsey of such astonishing grace that it abolished any comedic effect that might otherwise have resulted from such a formidable figure attempting the maneuver.
“I will always be your itkhalya, Arabella, and you my tutukha.”
The captain bowed again. “We regret imposing upon you at this unsettled time, but my men require food and water.”
“I am given to understand that you have obeyed the proper forms of greeting in time of conflict, and therefore my people will extend to you all reasonable hospitality.” At that, Richardson’s lips pursed, his eyebrows rose, and he inclined his head to Arabella in a silent gesture of acknowledgement. “I am sure that some of our foodstuffs palatable to you can be found.”
“We also hope,” the captain continued, “to negotiate with you for coal, and the use of the furnaces in your drying-sheds.”
Before Arabella could protest that his request, understandable though it might be, was directed to the wrong party, Khema said, “The stores of the manor house, including the coal-sheds as well as the larder, are not ours to share. We occupy this property only temporarily, in the absence of its legal owner.”
“Where is Michael?” Arabella burst out.