Titan Song Dan Stout (top 20 books to read txt) 📖

ask about Serrow.” Klare popped in another flash. “Why you covered for her, and when you’re going to stop.”

“Serrow will be addressed,” said Weylan. “She may be sent on a penance journey, or she may be ostracized. It will be decided in time.”

“In your time, on your terms.” Klare emphasized her disgust with low, threatening clicks.

“If she is ostracized, she will be shaved and left on the plains. It will not be a fate that anyone would care to share.”

“Glouchester had information on you,” she said, voice rising. “He knew you were corrupt, and he was going to expose you. And we’re not going to let you get away with it!”

I clenched my hands into fists. This was the part I hated. I spoke slowly and at volume, saying, “I’m not here to talk about the murder.”

Klare froze, mandibles quivering with silent rage. I looked away. There was no chance I could bring Serrow to trial for Glouchester’s murder. But maybe I could prove that Serrow was the sorcerer behind Vandie’s venture, and find justice for the victims of their buzzing madness and the nightmare transformations. Justice that both the dead and living deserved.

I did my best to not look at her. I was afraid that if I did, I’d beg for forgiveness. And I needed to focus on Weylan. “I’d like to talk to you about Vandie Cedrow.”

Weylan threw his head back and lowed deep and resonant, a long note that would have exhausted my lung capacity. A few moments later a pair of Barekusu, even larger and more intimidating than Weylan, came in and pressed their heads against the reporters’ backs. Furious, Klare stared at me as if I’d just betrayed her. Which, I suppose, is what I’d done.

The newly arrived Barekusu slid around the tent’s perimeter, using their bulk to herd the reporters toward the entrance. Klare pushed back, even struck one of them with a balled fist, but she may as well have stood against an ocean wave.

She screamed at Weylan, “You agreed to be interviewed! You made a deal with the Union Record!”

For his part, Jihan looked just as frustrated, but kept his mouth shut. The Barekusu weren’t overtly aggressive, but they were big. And he knew full well what had happened to the last reporter left alone with one of the caravan.

Klare shouted over her shoulder as they herded her out of the tent. “You know what? I think I can do it better than you after all. I think damn near anyone could do it better than you.”

The Barekusu guards departed along with the media, leaving me alone with Weylan.

After a long moment staring at each other, the hulking guide spread his arms wide. “And now, Officer, I believe you have questions you’d like me to answer?”

39

“YOU ARE THE HUMAN WHO lived through the manna strike,” he said. “Are you here to kill me, little detective?”

I was taken aback. “No. I’m here to find the truth.”

“Yet you might kill me, if I were to pose a threat.”

“If you posed a threat, I would subdue you.” This was not how I’d expected the conversation to go.

“And if I resisted?” He rose and stepped forward. Weylan wasn’t large for a Barekusu but he still had almost twice my mass, and I’d seen firsthand how Serrow had crushed the life from Taran Glouchester. It took all my effort to not fall into a fighting stance. But the guide merely lifted the lid of the paste pot, refilled his mug, and settled back onto his couch with a sly handful of dipping leaves.

“Well,” I said, “I’d attempt to deescalate. If not, and if you were a danger to me or others, then . . .” I left the imagery to Weylan. In all honesty, I wasn’t quite sure what I could do if he got it in his head to threaten myself or someone else. I shrugged it off. “I don’t think it’d do my career much good, so let’s not put me in a situation where I have to explain a dead Barekusu to my boss.”

“Hah.” He spoke the word, rather than laughing. “Agreed.” I wondered what Barekusu laughter would sound like.

“We are old, we Barekusu.” Weylan stripped tea paste from the spoon with prehensile lips.

“Sure,” I said. “You live a long time. Maybe what, five hundred years?”

His eye plates rose and fell, perhaps checking to see if I was mocking him or simply ignorant of Barekusu life spans. “Not quite that old,” he said, “though on the walk here, I certainly felt it.”

I kept my comments to myself.

“I believe I meant our species, Detective. We Barekusu are the oldest of the Families. We awoke on Eyjan, and wandered its valleys and mountains, its barren lands of salt and ice. We did not remember our history, of what had come before. But we learned of the Path. And we walked it alone. Until we found our first siblings, the Mollenkampi in the north and the Yaw to the south.”

Barekusu, Mollenkampi, Yaw . . . That litany triggered a memory.

“Believe Me, Young Eagles Have Such Great Holidays.” I couldn’t remember the dirtier version Hanford had composed all those years ago.

Weylan rocked to one side. “I do not believe I follow that statement.”

“It’s a memory trick,” I said. “Something we’re taught in school to remember the order of the Family awakenings. We do the same thing for the planets and colors of the rainbow. My point is, you can skip the history lesson and answer the question.”

“And this trick is how you remember things?”

“Depends on what it is. Some things we can’t forget,” I said, “even if we try.”

Weylan’s mouth worked, chewing over my words and the bitterness to be found in them. “I believe you have known great loss.”

“I’ve mourned,” I said, unwilling to give personal details.

“This is how we mourn,” he said. Delicate sly hand fingers plucked a braid of hair along his shoulder. The gray and green pattern shone with an undercurrent of reddish-gold. Two different colors.