David Weber - The Road to Hell

The young Voice scanned all three and breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank the Gods, it’s just dolphins and porpoises. At least they can be reasoned with!”

“Really? You’re a Cetacean Speaker?” That hadn’t been in the file Kelahm had seen on this particular Voice, but the Imperial Guard had no reason to give him full details if Istin was Talented beyond his publicly-acknowledged exceptional Voice Talent.

Not unless they had some reason to classify Istin as a potential threat, at any rate.

“No. I just did an internship at a cetacean embassy.” Istin waved off the suggestion. “They’ll have brought an interpreter with them. All the cetaceans hear just fine. It’s the listening I’m worried about. Just be glad there isn’t an orca,” he added darkly.

The Voice took his fist to the freight cars and began banging on each in succession until a weary young Cetacean Speaker climbed out of a car stacked high with dried cod. The young woman looked distinctly unwell and stepped gratefully off the train onto the platform.

“I am never, ever volunteering for one of these trips again!” She declared. “Just like being on a boat, my ass!” In spite of the green tinge to her own skin, the young woman turned back to her freight car and began hauling out stacks of dried fish to present to the dolphins and porpoises enjoying the afternoon sun in their cars.

“Trainsick?” Istin inquired.

“Yes!” She groaned. “And we were supposed to be in port and back in the ocean yesterday.”

“Oh?”

Kelahm gave the Voice a sidelong glance. Somehow he suspected Istin already knew what the cetacean train’s listed schedule had been.

“Yeah.” The Speaker sighed heavily. “I’m Forminara Pelgra, by the way.” She paused a bare moment for a formal introduction. “These are Nnnnmmmll, Llllooouooo, and Mmmmunnnll. But they’ll try talking to you even if you don’t get the pitch right. And don’t worry about memorizing the names, if you see them again, they’ll probably have picked other human names by then.”

“Those aren’t human names,” Istin pointed out.

Forminara shook her head. “I know, I know. But they like the sound of those letters, and they are human letters. There was this orca, and-”

“Never mind,” Istin interrupted. “I understand; I’ve met orca.”

One of the dolphins squealed something that sounded like laughter.

“Oh. And they’d like you to know my nickname is Sings Badly. It’s a joke.”

The dolphin’s musical response raised a blush on Forminara’s face.

“Okay, not totally a joke, but,” she added defensively, “I’m getting better.

“Say, have you seen any porters around here? We’re supposed to have a load of fresh fish at this stop, and there’s also supposed to be a politician they wanted to meet. Have you ever heard of a Darcel Kinlafia?”

* * *

Her husband knocked lightly on the wood frame doorway of the tidy office Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal kept for herself at the Cetacean Institute. Once he wouldn’t have needed to draw her attention so overtly. But Shalassar was a Cetacean Ambassador and founder of the Cetacean Institute in Shurkhal-work that continued even as she grieved for the loss of their daughter-and Thaminar Kolmayr tried to shield her from the overflow of his own mourning while she was working. Even so she felt the pain that mirrored her own and sensed him searching for a light topic for their luncheon conversation.

“Should we support Darcel Kinlafia, do you think?”

Shalassar looked up from the piled correspondence on her desk. She’d forgotten for a moment that the lean, tough man who served as her rock was there in the room instead of pulsing support through their marriage bond from their seaside home.

Grief could black out her world like that. Still.

Thaminar knew her well. He lifted the net bag with their bowls of marinated grilled beef and expertly spiced vegetables and cracked the fitted lid to waft the welcome smells of comfort food. Her stomach growled in response, and Shalassar reluctantly moved back from the desk, her mind shifting away from the pain of their lost Shaylar and back to the present.

Lunch called and the lapping tide outside her window marked the never ending pulse of time passing by, whether she wished it to or not. She followed her husband to the break room for a late lunch, thinking about Darcel Kinlafia as the present political candidate instead of as Shaylar’s past colleague.

“Darcel has a chance to win, you think?” she asked him, settling into the comfortable chair at the break room table.

“Yes. The news reports say he’s well ahead. Not our district, but some of the letters, from-” He waved at the wall behind her indicating the green star flag hanging over the covered dock on the other side of her office, not visible at all from where they sat in the break room. “-are asking if they should vote for him.”

“Oh, them.”

The green star flag had been adopted by families who’d lost a child to Arcana, but this one was special. It was the very first green star flag, made to memorialize Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr. The other survey crew families had needed something too, so the flag had become the banner of a small group of families united by grief. But then, last month, the size of the group had exploded when all Sharona learned the war had been reignited by Arcanans attacking under cover of a truce they’d sought.

The war was horrific, in every sense of the word, and to have it resume in the very midst of peace negotiations only made it worse. Even as a diplomat-or perhaps because she was a diplomat-Shalassar found she had trouble thinking of the Arcanans as humans, and then the families of fallen soldiers had written her about their lost soldiers and asked to use the flag. She could hardly say no. But still…

“I’d rather hoped they’d stop writing us,” she said.

Thaminar paused mid bite to give her a look she didn’t need the marriage bond to read.

“Okay. No, not really. I just hoped it would get easier, is all.” She sighed. “They’re really asking us who to vote for?”

“Not at all,” Thaminar said. “They’re asking you . And reading between the lines, they’ve already decided. They’re asking you to endorse him and want to make political contributions as Green Star Mothers. Most of the letters are only to you and not to me at all.”

“Well, I’m not the most famous grieving mother anymore.” She pointed out. None of the other extended family members of the lost portal exploration team were as famous in their own right as Ambassador Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal. And none of Sharona’s slaughtered children had been well known as Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr.

Until now.

‹ Janaki.› Grief over the new losses slipped through Thaminar’s best efforts and she pulsed encouragement of her own back at him.

‹At least there’s a more famous mother now,› she pointed out.

Thaminar snorted. “No one’s going to be writing Emperor Zindel and Empress Varena expecting a reply or wanting to know if they’ve gotten their flag dimensions right. As if anyone would be going around policing grief!”

Shalassar’s wry return smile matched her husband’s. People had tried. None of their true friends were so crass, but the publicity-seeking social commentators who made their livings harassing public figures had reveled in it.

“Speaking of idiots,” Thaminar continued, “a rep from VBS stopped by again asking for a meeting off the record.”

“Not Krethva?” Shalassar gave him a look. Krethva wasn’t the only one to try to market Shalassar’s grief or to try to provoke her for shock value with snippy accusations of grieving in the wrong way. But she’d had the sharpest tongue and had inevitably become the one Shalassar publicly humiliated in a live Voicecast. She dreaded the moment when the woman found a way to return the public set down-not because she expected the reporter to be able to find words more painful than the hurt Shalassar already felt, but because she didn’t expect to be able to stay civil and coherent if Krethva managed to actually get a display of her grief and rage. Shalassar was half afraid she’d emerge from the interview with blood spattered everywhere and no memory of how it all got there other than a deep sense that Krethva has gotten what she deserved. And that Arcana deserved worse.