David Weber - The Road to Hell

The tea was chilled with ice brought down from the mountains and deliciously sweet on his tongue. The cookies were rich enough to replace his lunch if he could have had a dozen more of the petite dainties. Kelahm brushed the crumbs off the front of his slightly oversized shirt and complimented the Whitterhoo League of Women Talents on their baking skills.

He could easily have refrained from eating the food and drink meant for the voters, but he had to play his part. This first day in a new cover was always the hardest.

He needed to convince the other interns he was entirely as they expected him to be, with his personal depths being limited to quirky tastes in music and perhaps a bit more naivete about the world than they themselves had. Once they had him mentally slotted he could do whatever he had to do for the real job: Darcel Kinlafia’s protection.

Privy Voice Yanamar’s blonde assistant brought out the next load of sweets. Kelahm corrected himself, Voice Yanamar’s assistant. She’d made it quietly clear that none of the campaign workers were to use her previous title while she ran Voice Kinlafia’s staff. Especially not here, where feelings about the Calirath dynasty remained a bit ambiguous. That was the sort of detail she never got wrong.

Voice Yanamar was an excellent, if massively overqualified, campaign coordinator, and none of the staff she’d selected were a threat to Darcel, so Kelahm had moved quickly past them after his initial review reconfirmed their loyalty. Unfortunately that meant he’d met everyone but didn’t really know any of them yet.

Istin of the pale Bernith Island skin and driven professionalism common to all the Privy Voice’s Talented proteges settled beside him as if he’d decided to have some cookies himself while out of sight of the team supporting Kinlafia in the main hall, and Kelahm suppressed a smile. The young man was almost certainly after the same view that had attracted him to the small rise in the first place.

Kelahm hadn’t stopped scanning the crowd for threats while taking his break, and he’d picked out a spot where he could see the train station and a good stretch of the track. His Talent worked at close range as well, but he’d already scanned the group inside for the complex instability that might presage an attack on Kinlafia. Outside, he had more range to deal with and redirect those who really shouldn’t be allowed within arms reach of the candidate Emperor Zindel had assigned him to protect. Watching the train station let him keep an eye on the cars on which Kinlafia and the Privy Voice would head to the evening’s next stop. He couldn’t see the backs of the cars from here though, and the crowd looked to be thinning, which marked the nearing end of their stay at Whitterhoo.

Istin was doing a poor job of showing any interest in either his tea or the half eaten cookie in his hand. His head turned back and forth with the careful slow movements used to pass a scene to someone whose inner ear balance couldn’t automatically adjust for the regular bobs of someone else’s normal head motion-specifically to another Voice. Unless Kelahm missed his guess, Alazon Yanamar had just received an update on how many voters remained outside and how likely they looked to stick around long enough to fit into the packed assembly hall.

Kelahm knew a lot about more Talents than he could count. That knowledge was part of what made him such an effective bodyguard, and so were his own Talents. He was a Chameleon, able to blend so unobtrusively into the background that he could evade even trained security personnel who knew he was there and were trying to keep track of him. He couldn’t physically disappear; he was simply…not there even for people who looked right at him. It was a vanishingly rare talent, virtually unheard of outside the families who’d served the Calirath Dynasty for generations. And he was also a Heart Hound. He couldn’t read minds or emotions, but he could tell, unerringly, when a person was acting under duress or about to do something he deeply regretted. In other generations the Talent might have had the most use in the courtroom; in this one it proved remarkably useful in ferreting out unwilling agents caught in Emperor Chava Busar’s cruel control. Heart Hounds were less rare than Chameleons, but the Talent was still highly uncommon, and so long as the Uromathians didn’t recognize Kelahm was one, he had a very good chance of keeping Darcel Kinlafia safe. If Chava ever figured out how or who so consistently blocked his infiltrations of the Calirath household, on the other hand, the nature of those attempts would abruptly become much more difficult to detect and Kelahm chan Helikos would become merely an exceptionally dedicated personal guard. And speaking about guarding…

He nudged Istin’s shoulder when he seemed to have finished Sending.

“Want to go take a walk over to the train station?”

A pale face already beginning to redden in the sun blinked at him, and Kelahm wondered for a moment if Istin didn’t know he was trustworthy. Then Istin nodded slowly.

“Yes, let’s take a look at the other side of the cars.” He paused a moment. “Lufren and Torhm will come out and see to the pastries. We can go ahead. Voice Yanamar expects another hour to go before they break for the overnight trip.”

Kelahm tucked the two names away his memory, and noted Istin had just completed another lightning fast communication with their boss inside to ensure the campaign stop continued to run smoothly.

“Okay. Let’s go then,” he said, and they meandered down across the rails to the other side of the train station. The campaign train with its small private engine and car remained undisturbed.

Istin frowned at it.

“What?”

“We should’ve had the new engine here by now.” Istin’s frown deepened. “The new one’s bigger and can haul more cars. There’s some more campaign supplies coming with it, and it’s got a much better paint job, too.”

In the waning afternoon light, Kelahm examined the engine in front of them. It looked pristine with clean lines and, to his eyes, a fine coat of road-worthy gray paint, but Istin slapped the side of the machine with irritation.

“This’s supposed to say, ‘Elect Kinlafia Now’ on one side and ‘Darcel Kinlafia for Parliament’ on the other. We’ll update the slogans as soon as he wins, of course.”

“Of course,” Kelahm agreed though it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone would bother to paint political slogans onto a train engine at all. A check of his extended senses gave him no warnings of ill intent, but a thrumming vibration in the railway and the distant shriek of a whistle announced an inbound train.

“Do you suppose that’s it?”

Istin cocked his head slightly, and his eyes glazed for a few moments. Not safe, Kelahm’s instincts screamed, but the young Voice of course couldn’t hear him. He was instead communicating with someone assigned to the railway.

“No.” Istin scowled. “Not it. That’s the train the railway rerouted our engine for. Diplomatic priority, even though we submitted our timetable first.”

A magnificent, if unadorned engine squealed to a halt at the Whitterhoo Station trailing three unusual carriage cars and the normal motley of freight.

Istin Leddle groaned and trailed unwillingly behind him as Kelahm chan Helikos hotfooted up to the train station to see who might disembark.

“Don’t talk to them!” Istin called after him. “It only makes them more curious!”

No one had left the newly parked train before Kelahm arrived on an empty platform and discovered he wasn’t the only one with a sense of curiosity. He stopped quickly and his eyebrows rose as a dolphin’s left eye, set on the side of a long gray face, examined him from one of the windows. What Kelahm had at first taken to be normal carriage cars were actually filled with water and glassed in. The cetacean flipped in place as Istin arrived beside him, and another pair of small dolphins took to examining Whitterhoo from the large window in the next aquarium car.