Off-Grid
The Tree House
The comm chimed.
Tekelia looked up from the screen with a frown. Comm calls were something of a rarity, and usually presaged an emergency.
Chest tight, Tekelia rose, crossed the room, and touched the receive switch.
“Yes?”
“Tekelia!” Aunt Asta’s voice was positively brilliant. “I’m glad I caught you at home. Could you come to me, please?”
Tekelia glanced over a shoulder, to the screen and the letter from Blays, Visalee Village’s Counsel to Chaos. There was much to think about in that letter, and while an answer would have to be made soon, it was by no means urgent.
“Shall I come to you now?” Tekelia asked.
Aunt Asta laughed.
“Now would be perfect. I’m in the library.”
* * *
The library table held two large, and three smaller, cases, a tea service, and a tin of Entilly’s cookies.
Aunt Asta was sitting by the tea service. At Tekelia’s arrival, she smiled, and picked up the pot to pour.
“There you are, dear! Sit, refresh yourself, and tell me about your lover.”
Tekelia paused in the act of pulling out a chair to consider her.
“Did you bring me here now in order to pry into my affairs?”
“Not at all, dear,” Aunt Asta said placidly. She placed the full cup, poured another, and looked up.
“Tekelia, do not loom. I do indeed have a use for you, but I thought we might indulge in gossip over tea.”
“Before we get to the heart of the matter. I see.” Tekelia sat down, and tasted the tea, deliberately not looking at those cases.
“Who told you that I had a lover?”
Aunt Asta beamed.
“Why, Bentamin, of course. He said you glow, and I see that he did not exaggerate! One of the traders, I think?”
Tekelia sighed. “I wonder if Bentamin can be persuaded to take a lover, so we could gossip about him.”
“That will be a worthy topic, when it occurs.” Aunt Asta pushed the cookie tin forward. “However, it has not yet occurred. Until it does, we may talk about your lover.”
Laughing, Tekelia chose a cookie.
“Her name is Padi yos’Galan Clan Korval. She is brilliant and brave; thoughtful, snappish, loyal, Liaden, witty, and altogether astonishing. If I sound besotted, I am.”
“I must meet her,” Aunt Asta stated, sipping tea.
“I will try to arrange it. Understand, her first business is to do with the trade mission, and it keeps her twixt dance and daggers. It may be an abrupt meeting, and not long.”
“That will do,” Aunt Asta said, with vast serenity. “Is she a Child of Chaos?”
Tekelia swallowed the bite of cookie hastily, and washed it down with tea.
“She interacts with the ambient like a Haosa. She tells me she hasn’t been Sorted. Possibly, she’s too bright for her teachers to See properly.”
“I may be able to help there,” Aunt Asta said. “If she permits, of course.”
“Of course,” Tekelia said politely, setting the cup down.
“Now that we have discussed my lover—Aunt Asta, why am I here?”
“I need help moving,” she said simply, and waved her hand at the cases.
“Moving where?”
“To Ribbon Dance Village—or so I hope! I tried to call Administrator poginGeist, but I was asked to leave a message.”
“Arbour had business away; she’ll be back in the village tonight, and would have returned your call tomorrow.”
“Which may well have been too late. I have . . . a feeling that I ought to move—soon.”
Tekelia sighed.
“I think you’d better tell me from the beginning.”
“Yes, you’re right, of course.” Aunt Asta refreshed their cups. “I am retiring from my position as Oracle to the Civilized.”
“Has another Oracle arisen?” Tekelia asked carefully, beginning to get a glimmer as to the reason for haste.
“Civilization no longer requires an Oracle. Let us say that I have Seen it.”
Tekelia looked at her.
“Have you? Seen it?”
“I have seen that Civilization will end, and also the Haosa,” Aunt Asta said, quite calmly. “But we can speak of that later. First, I must move—myself, and those things which I cannot be without. Hyuwen will pack the rest into storage.”
“And you need to move before Bentamin has time to notice?” Tekelia asked. “Aunt Asta, we’re in the Wardian.”
“So we are,” she agreed, sipping her tea. “And you came to me here, in the Wardian, because I invited you, thereby circumventing the wards.”
“Very true, and entirely separate from removing you—and your cases!—from the Wardian.”
She sighed.
“I told Bentamin that I am retiring, and that my ultimate goal is to travel. He was horrified, of course, poor child, and made the suggestion that perhaps I might retire to Ribbon Dance Village, as a sort of reflexive compromise.”
“And now that you’ve had time to consider it, you think it’s a very good notion, as a first move.”
Aunt Asta smiled.
“Exactly. And it must be done before Bentamin, having likewise had time to think about it, realizes that he has given me leave to go.”
Tekelia looked at her in awe.
“Aunt Asta—”
“Look at the wards,” she interrupted.
But Tekelia was already examining the dense weaving of Rule and Intent that made the Wardian the impregnable fortress it was.
The weaving was exceptionally dense with regard to the Oracles, who were Talents of no inconsiderable strength. Not a few previous Oracles had objected to being imprisoned in the Wardian, a Wild Talent at the heart of Civilization. Tekelia looked to that portion of the wards that specifically tied Aunt Asta into the Wardian—and blinked.
There was a gap—a very tiny gap, in that large and complex weaving. But there was give.
Tekelia could work with give.
“Tekelia?”
“I See it.”
Tekelia rose.
“If we’re to do this, then now is hardly soon enough. I will take you first. You may have to reconcile yourself to the loss of your cases.”
“Hyuwen will put them on one of the trucks to Peck’s Market, if you can’t manage them, dear.” Aunt Asta rose with a smile. “I did try to plan for contingencies.”
“Of course you did,” Tekelia murmured, considering the wards again. It was going to be tight.
But not impossible.
Stealth, however, was out of the question. Tekelia sighed. Well, so be it. Certainly Aunt Asta had earned a rest—even the Warden thought so. The give in the wards proved that.
“Just a moment, dear,” Aunt Asta said. “I’ll bring Entilly’s cookies.”
There was a small scraping sound as the lid was put on the tin. Tekelia smiled as Aunt Asta stepped near.
“You’ll guest with me this evening,” Tekelia said. “We’ll talk to Arbour tomorrow.”
“Whatever you say, dear,” Aunt Asta said meekly.
Tekelia laughed, and reached for the ambient.
It took long seconds to make the connection, but eventually it came firm. Tekelia thought of the great room in the house at the edge of the trees.
Mist swirled.
The library was empty.