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

“This is a cutting of my friend’s mane. Woven into my own hair, close to my body. I carry her and her memory with me.”

I nodded. “She’s always with you.”

“Wherever I journey, she is there,” he said. “But not for always. Her hairs are entwined with mine. Over time, the coat grows out and falls away. Over time, the same with sorrow. We carry them until they are shed, as all things eventually shall be.”

I’d felt something like that myself. It had taken me a long time to say goodbye to Jenny. And I’d carried a connection long after her death.

I stepped to one side, tilting my head as if getting a better look at the fur, making note of the speed with which Weylan tracked my movements. The aging Barekusu was able to follow me easily. I didn’t think it would be impossible to get the jump on him, but near enough to make the idea useless.

“When you spoke of Serrow,” I said, “you said she’d be ostracized, shaved and abandoned.”

“I believe I did.”

“So she’d lose her loved ones’ hair as well as her own.”

“You begin to understand.”

“Not really,” I said. “I don’t understand why Serrow was helping Vandie Cedrow. But I think she wouldn’t have done that without your instruction. So that’s my question, Weylan. Why did you help Vandie alter the geo-vents? What’s in those vents that you wanted to find?”

The amount of governmental protection draped over the Barekusu meant I might not be able to arrest him, but I sure as Hells could push him for the truth.

“We found the other Families over the centuries as they awoke.” He was back on the history lecture. “Though they woke with missing memories, scattered thoughts, and shattered languages, we helped them unite. Through it all, the way of the One True Path was a beacon.”

“Tell me what’s in the vents. What are you looking for?” I stepped to the side, stooping slightly to peer up in between the eye plates. The movement seemed to shock Weylan and he reared back, sliding off the couch and raising a thick-fingered show hand between us. But the motion was defensive, and I had no fear he might strike out. Not then.

“Why do you want to know what’s down there?” I held my ground. “Validation of your faith? Proof that the Path is great and glorious and eternal?”

“For a detective, I find that you do not listen as well as you might.”

“Insults won’t distract me. I want to know what you came here to find.”

“We are here because of the manna strike, as everyone knows,” he said. “And when everyone believes such a thing, it must be true.”

There was something different in his voice. I didn’t have enough experience to read Barekusu body language and tones, but even I could tell that the idea of belief versus truth was a sore spot. An interesting hang-up for a guide.

“You came into the city singing a song,” I said.

“‘Requiem for the Titan’s Hade,’” he said. “You weep for the Titan, correct? It seemed a respectful choice.”

“Respectful is a funny term, considering you paid to burrow into his tomb.”

He ignored the jab, humming a low note as he lifted the white rocks from the table, one in each show hand.

“What’s in the vents?” I asked.

“Evidence, Detective. Something you should appreciate.”

He was getting on my nerves. “Evidence of what?”

“Evidence of absence. There is nothing there but foul-smelling hot air. There is no Titan. There never was a Titan. You and I and all of us are playthings for whatever it is that watches from the shadows, laughing and weeping at our failures in equal measure.”

Stunned, I found myself falling back on grade-school lessons. “The Titan blazed a trail. He’s a sain—”

“A saint of the Path? A forgotten god? A divine being who somehow can’t get out from under a pile of dirt and rock?” Eye horns creaked, and four irises spun and separated, studying me as he lifted the pair of white rocks from the table, balancing them like the scales of justice. “No, little detective, your mythical friend blazed no trail, and did not create the Path.”

“Then what did?” I struggled slightly to keep my tone level. I hadn’t realized how much Weylan’s self-righteousness angered me.

“We are all stray pups,” Weylan lowered one of the rocks, allowing it to disappear behind the fringe of fur, “plucked up by forces we don’t understand.”

“What kind of forces? Saints, demons, or sorcerers?”

“That is the question, little detective! That is the question indeed. Perhaps it is something alien, or perhaps mere superstition.” He raised the other rock overhead. “The first Barekusu on Eyjan were alone and scared, so they created a methodology. Having no memory of what had come before or what was ahead, they decided that behind and ahead were merely more of the same. An eternal path, looping back on itself. Think what it must have been like, when my grandmother’s great-grandmother awoke. The Path let her focus on the moment. And that was needed. And when we found the Mollenkampi, what did we do? These small but powerful warriors who lived in the far northern reaches, who had no memory and were just as confused as we had been?”

“You taught them.” The words came automatically, a recital of the simple lesson taught in every school around the world: The Barekusu taught the Families about the Path. In Titanshade it was as ubiquitous in textbooks as drawings of a handsome Titan, chained beneath the Mount.

“Not quite. They asked questions and we encouraged them to come to their own answers.” He drew his right arm back from underneath his fur, the three grasping fingers of his show hand empty. A bit of stage trickery. He’d no doubt transferred it to the sly hand on that arm. “Telling isn’t effective. Skillful teaching is to let others come to conclusions on their own, never knowing they’ve been guided. And the most skillful of teachers convince the students that the questions