Danach stared at em, and then said, “I should just turn you in.”
Ingray, having used the last minute or so to muster up more of a frown, dropped her towel and crossed her arms. “I should turn you both in. Do you think that permit will be approved once everyone knows where those vestiges are?” Danach and Garal both turned to stare at her. “We had a deal,” she said to Garal.
“When we made that deal,” Garal said, very patiently, “we didn’t know about people digging up the ruin glass, did we.”
“You won’t turn us in,” said Danach dismissively. And to Garal, “She’ll get over it. And you’d better remember where you put those vestiges.” He blinked and looked off into the distance. Brought his focus back to Ingray and Garal. “In the meantime, I have to get ready for a party. Taucris Ithesta’s naming is tonight.”
“What?” Ingray was startled out of her posed anger. “Did Ocris finally make a choice?” Ocris was Ingray’s age, had been a quiet child, ill at ease in large groups. Ingray had liked them, but once she’d claimed her own adult name she’d seen very little of Ocris. Had almost forgotten them.
Danach gave a short laugh. “I thought they—sorry, she—never would. She never did like making up her mind, and if she was going to be content to stay a child playing at cops and robbers for the rest of her life, well, she can do as she likes, her nother is rich enough to support her. But I hear her nother threatened to cut off her allowance if she didn’t declare. Honestly, I think most of her friends had written her off. I certainly had. I wouldn’t be going tonight, except her nother is very rich, and Mama is considering another run at prolocutor. So there’s no avoiding it.” He rose. “We’ll talk more in the morning.” And he left.
Ingray looked at Garal, who said nothing. “Well,” Ingray said after a bit, wary of servants, or of Danach having some other way to hear what went on in her room. “I suppose it can’t be helped. But there are still … financial issues.” Danach had taken the bait, swallowed a good deal more of the hook and line than she had ever expected, much sooner than she had expected. But there seemed to be no chance to get any money out of him, not as things stood.
“Don’t worry,” said Garal. “We’ll work something out.” E seemed remarkably untroubled. “Maybe since your mother is going out tonight, we can have our supper up here. It might be a good idea to look at some maps and pictures. I’ll see if I can’t … remember something.”
“No,” said Ingray, summoning the household schedule into her vision, and blinking through it. “Netano’s guests aren’t going to the party. They need to be up early tomorrow morning for their trip to Eswae Parkland. They might decide to eat in their rooms tonight, but they might not. I’ll tell staff we’ll be at supper at the regular time—that’s in about an hour and a half—and we’ll go to the sitting room afterward. We can play counters.”
“That sounds fun,” said Garal, perfectly seriously.
6
Eswae Parkland was a bit more than an hour by groundcar from Netano’s house. The land had been owned by one of Netano’s predecessors in the Assembly, who had donated it to the people of the district quite a long time ago. Kilometers of grass and tree-covered hills, of little streams edged with outcrops of ruin glass running down to the Iogh River. The whole parkland was strewn with great boulders and piles of colored glass, and it was a common belief that the hills were made of the stuff. Certainly quite a lot of the parkland was just a layer of soil over glass rubble. Not terribly convenient for buildings or farms, which was why it was a park instead.
Ingray mostly knew it as a place to pose for photos—just a few years ago, Netano had negotiated the passage of a resolution in the Assembly that among other things had funded the renovation of several walking trails in the parkland, and so of course she and her family had been there at the reopening, clean, neat, and smiling in front of Eswae’s most famous landmark, a broad tumble of huge glass blocks, red and blue and yellow and green, some of them ten meters or more wide, in all sorts of eccentric shapes. Blocks and slabs and twisting arcs, an entire hillside of them sloping down into the river. The rest of the hill was grass, a copse of rovingtrees at the top. The public vestige from that event was a smooth slab of basalt, lying flat in the grass at the foot of the hill, beside the path, with the date of the resolution’s passage cut into it. Yesterday’s rain had washed the sky a cloudless blue, and the day was bright and warm. It was late enough in spring that the rovingtrees weren’t shedding anymore, though here and there a tuft of gray fibers was caught in the grass.
Ingray had never been as strangely obsessed with ruin glass as Omkem visitors all seemed to be. But this glass, this hillside in the parkland, was a landmark. One of the most famous landmarks in Arsamol. It was part of her home, and the thought of digging mechs pulling it all apart … “Surely you don’t mean to dig this up,” said Ingray to the foreign woman. Her name was Zat, and she had been unfailingly cheerful on the groundcar ride and the subsequent long walk into the parkland. “Not the hillside.”
“Oh, goodness, no,” Zat replied. The man walked beside and just behind her—Hevom, he’d named himself when Ingray asked, though of course Zat never said his name, or spoke directly to him. “I wish I could dig up that hill! I would love to have confirmation of some of my hypotheses—or denial, yes, that’s always a possibility, you know. Perhaps what I find elsewhere on the site will help convince others to support me in exploring the hill. But for the moment, it’s out of reach. Still, I can learn quite a lot from being able to take various sorts of images. Perhaps that will tell me a great deal, yes?”