Chapter 5

DALLIN DIDN'T. Not at first, at any rate. It took another several hours before he admitted he would not learn Calder's secrets, that whatever it was Calder was running from, the fear of it was much greater than any bluff of incarcerated horror Dallin could impose. He'd found out all he was going to, as far as Calder's involvement with the grisly murder was concerned, and believed every definitive statement denying that involvement. Whatever secrets Calder kept, they had nothing to do with any guilt or complicity in the events at the Kymberly last night--of that, at least, Dallin was certain.

He propped the door open when he finally quit the room, and left the key to the manacles with Beldon. He was too tired to go through the mechanics of discharge, and for reasons he didn't want to think about, he had no desire to witness the relief when those shackles finally came off. One of the perks of rank and seniority was the right to delegate, and today Dallin used it.

"And tell him not to leave Putnam," he told Beldon as he headed back upstairs.

He slow-stepped it to Jagger's office, informed him of his conclusions and the release of the witness, then wrote his report and handed it off to Payton with a bit of scorn he couldn't help and an order to ink two copies. "Keep his papers," Dallin instructed. "He's not to leave Putnam anyway, so he won't need them, and I want to send to Lind for verification before I release them."

Orders given and details seen to, Dallin left, but not for his longed-for lunch. Anyway, it would be suppertime in a few hours.

"AH, THERE'S the lad!" Portly and florid, with an ever-present tranquil smile, Manning was of the firm belief that 'healthy' meant one could survive a months-long famine.

Dallin was only too happy to indulge him. He grinned with a small bow, then handed over the sack of sweets without fuss or flourish. "Crystalled honey with peppermint zest," he told his once-tutor. "It sounds odd, but you'll like it."

"I've no doubt." Manning shooed Dallin into his private office. "You've a look of business about you." He frowned and sighed. "Must you carry that thing in here?" He gave Dallin's holster a bit of a glare, gesturing him to the shabby little couch as he plopped into a chair by the fire. He wasted no time in digging into the sack and sampling its contents.

"I'm still on duty, I'm afraid, so yes, I must. Sorry."

Manning conceded with a roll of his eyes, though he was concentrating more on the candy in his mouth than any mild indignation. "Anyway, a fine bribe you've brought me in recompense." He rolled his hand. "Well, get on, then, spit it out."

Dallin scooted closer to the small stove in the corner and held his hands out to warm them. "I need a translation. The North Tongue, I think, or at least that's what it sounded like."

"The North Tongue, eh?" Manning's knobbled fingers stroked at his rounded chin as his brown eyes went unfocused--already thinking about where to start looking, Dallin had no doubt. "A text, a song...?"

Dallin shook his head. "A word. Two words, actually. Although...." He frowned. "Now that I think about it, one might have been part of the other. It had the same sound, at least."

Manning pished with another roll of his eyes. "Hardly a challenge," he chided. "You've got it written down? Give it here." Dallin dug into his breast pocket and retrieved a small wax tablet. He handed it over. "You've done it phonetically," Manning said, squinting. "See here, the 'guneev' would be g-n-i-o-m-h--'io' is usually 'ee' and 'mh' is usually 'v.'" His eyebrows beetled. "This 'uh-ray' you've got is likely 'h-a-i-r-e'--silent 'h,' you know, and since 'ai' is 'uh' and 're' is 'ray'...."

"That was the first one," Dallin put in, "that 'uh-ray' one. Is it perhaps a shortened version of the other?"

Manning shook his head, still squinting at the impressions in the wax. "Likely not. The language is too complex for a translation to be that simple, and not much for contractions and simplifications." He stood, distracted and distant. Dallin recognized the look as Manning's version of concentration. "Wander about," Manning told him vaguely, "shan't be long," then left Dallin to his own devices while he went to find the pieces of the puzzle and fit them into their proper places.

Dallin smiled and willingly obeyed, idling out into the great main chamber and eyeing the various shelves and their contents.

The library had been one of his favorite places when he'd first come to Putnam. Lind didn't believe in the written word, its histories handed down and entrusted only to verse and song, and so Dallin hadn't known how to read then. Quiet was what he'd craved, and dim seclusion, and Manning's library had opened its dusty arms and given it to him. Almost as tall already at twelve as most of the adults around him, people didn't give Dallin the wide berth normally afforded the mourning, as though they assumed that because he looked almost adult, he shouldn't feel like a child. The library had been the place he could come and live his grief in private quietude, watch the skirmishes behind his eyes over and over again until they lost their brilliant edges, hear his mother's voice in his ears, stern and forceful, as she dragged him onto the back of the cart and shoved him into the arms of a stranger, promising she loved him, promising she'd find him.

He'd loved the smells before he'd learned to love the ink and parchment that made them--that latter a love that hadn't come easily for him. Twelve and angry and stricken, he hadn't understood why anyone would treat ancient lumps of paper with such caution and tender care when there were flesh-and-bone people dying under flintlock and blade, old men watching sons blown to pieces right in front of them for nothing more than being alive and wanting to stay that way, mothers sending their children away and then turning 'round with a stiff back and set chin to face their fates at the edge of a sword or the end of a noose.

Manning had understood. Picture books first, slid quietly and unobtrusively to the elbow of the scraggy, too-tall youth kipping with his shaggy head on the table. Then books with words that looked like nothing so much as chicken scratch in between the pictures, month by month the pictures growing farther and farther apart, until the words finally outweighed the images and Dallin couldn't make a story out of the pictures anymore. Frustrated beyond reason, he'd drawn himself to his full height, aimed all his preadolescent thwarted rage and angry grief at his torturer, and demanded that Manning tell him what the damned letters meant. Manning only smiled--an annoying, knowing little thing--said he wouldn't tell him but teach him, and set to right then and there.

More of a guardian than the man who'd agreed to temporarily foster the too-big, too-angry young Linder, Manning patiently sat through the boy's quiet tirades and frustrated trying until he hit upon a flash of brilliance.

"Think of it as a code," he'd told Dallin.

Dallin knew codes. Three chirps of the lark and the faint snicker of a squirrel meant 'Get down and hide, don't move, don't breathe;' a trilling whistle in two short bursts gave the all clear. The long curl of the horn singing the war song meant 'Get your swords and hide your children,' only that one hadn't sounded in time when it mattered. Dallin knew codes before he'd known speech.

These codes, though--these codes handed Dallin the world in Manning's serenely gruff voice. The strange characters finally stopped looking so much like a drunken bird had tripped in paint and gone toddling across the page, and instead took on pattern and meaning and the bright, crisp lines of discovery. Every second not spent apprenticing in his foster parents' shop was thence spent reading--if not at the library itself, then in his own small bedroom, poring over whatever books Manning had seen fit to lend him.

Writing came next, then cartography and maths, along with gentle hints and prodding about hair length and hygiene. Dallin had once thought he might like to be a scribe, maybe even one day work for Manning, spending his days breathing in the must of the books and learning about the world through his fingers. Manning would never trust Dallin with the task of copying, though, and eventually disabused him of the wistful adolescent notion, saying with a kind smile that ham hands did not make for delicate work. Dallin didn't take offense. By the time he was sixteen and old enough to join the army, he didn't have to just line up and make his mark for the privilege of being a moving target in the infantry--between Manning's scholarly tutoring and Tanner's patient instruction in carbine and steel, Dallin tested well enough to qualify for the cavalry.

He owed more to Manning than just the gratitude of a student to his unpaid tutor. Childless by choice, the Tanners had been shelter, even if the barest definition of the word, but Dallin had never blamed them for the dearth of warmth. They'd volunteered, after all, to take in a refugee until his mother came to collect him. They'd never agreed to finish raising a leviathan of a foster son when she was finally listed among the dead. Still, there had never been even a question or a scarce hint of turning him out, and he was grateful to them. To Tanner and his wife, Dallin owed respect and thanks for having fed him and boarded him and taught him a trade, even if they'd shrugged helplessly and uncomfortably and looked the other way when he needed something more. To Manning, Dallin owed life.

"See here."

Dallin was startled out of his somewhat maudlin reverie by Manning standing at his elbow, head bent over a book butterflied between his thick, surprisingly deft hands and muttering under his breath.

"Aire, there's no question, there's only the one meaning," he said, more to himself than to Dallin. He peered up, brow creased and eyes bright. "How did you say you heard these words?"

"I didn't, actually."

Manning gave him a sour look. "I don't want your professional secrets, boy. I need to know." Slightly snappish, the teacher chastising the recalcitrant student. Dallin couldn't help the little grin, which only made Manning roll his eyes. "Aire has only the one meaning, as I said--it means danger. Easy enough to understand when faced with you in a dark alley, I imagine." Manning sniffed, then riffled some pages. "The other, this Gniomhaire... the possible meanings are nearly a page long. I must have some context to decide the proper one."

Dallin kept his grin, though he dipped his head in respectful acquiescence. "A witness," he admitted. "And not a terribly... cooperative one."

"Ah," said Manning with a sly tilt of his mouth. "Intimidating the citizens again, are you, great lummox?"

"Well, you'd think so, but he didn't even give me a chance. Came over all frightened rabbit the moment I walked in, and started spitting those words at me like they were poison."

"It's not a wonder," he muttered with a teasing smirk. With a sideways glance up and down the length of Dallin, Manning sniffed again and turned his eyes back to the book, once again all business. "Most of these translations boil down to an agent of some kind, an emissary, perhaps--varying types, none of which seem to fit you or the situation, although I suppose a general definition of an agent would suit a constable." He frowned. "Did he perhaps think you some sort of spy?"

"Can't imagine for what." Dallin tilted his head. "None of them mean 'guardian' or something of the kind?"

Manning's head jerked back. "Guardian?" His eyes narrowed. "Did he name you Guardian as well?"

"Well, yes." Dallin shrugged. "Several times. I didn't think it a terribly inaccurate description of a constable, though it seemed an odd one. I thought perhaps one of those other words would work out to be a translation of it, but... now I've no idea what the bugger was getting at."

Manning was silent, staring. Once again, Dallin could almost see him carding back through his memory. "Gniomhaire can also mean 'intermediary.'" Manning paused, noting Dallin's blank look, and smiled. "Middleman, perhaps--some sort of go-between." Gone vague again, Manning stared off into space. "Only those two, then, not saoi, or aingeal, or--?" He stopped, blinked. "Not Weblic, perchance? Though Weblicne might do better, I suppose--you said he was distressed...." He shook his head, annoyed. "No, no, North Tongue, so that would be.... Coimirceoir? Aisling-bridin, perhaps?"

Aisling.

Why did that ping a small echo in the back of Dallin's mind?

Dallin frowned. "No, just the two I told you. Why?"

"Amuse yourself," Manning said, then abruptly whisked away again.

Dallin blinked after him, watching him rummage about a far shelf for a moment before he straightened, said "Ah!" and swept into his office. There was a bit of banging and shuffling before Manning reemerged, somewhat red-faced and excited. "It's likely nothing," he was saying, to himself again, "but sometimes one and one don't necessarily equal two, they equal twelve instead, and there have been whispers. This would be considered sacrilegious contraband over the border, and you'd likely be hanged for even laying eyes on it, but... well. We're not over the border." Manning shoved the book at Dallin. "I shouldn't let you have this--you've not returned the other two yet--but it's too much of a coincidence." He laughed, somewhat wondering. "I'll be damned if you don't look the part. Don't know why it never occurred to me before, but... well, you were such a clumsy, angry lad, and I didn't.... Anyway, you came straight from the bloody heart of giant country, so I expect I never...." He trailed off, eyeing Dallin with a critical gaze.

"What part?" Dallin wanted to know. "Never what?"

Manning only kept staring for a moment before he frowned and asked, "What did this witness look like?"

"Why should that matter?"

"Tut-tut, ever the suspicious lawman." Manning pursed his lips. "It was the eyes, wasn't it?"

Dallin jolted. "How did you know that?"

"Mm," said Manning. "You know what the Chosen is, yes?"

"The... yes," Dallin answered, bewildered.

"It's been rumored for... well, for longer than I can remember, that the Dominion's Chosen is actually the Aisling of legend. Though why he should be frightened at the sight of you instead of overjoyed, I haven't a clue." Manning tapped at his lip, staring off into space again. "Curious."

Dallin rolled his eyes. "Dominionite religious rot, and what's it to do with... well, with anything? And what's this ash... thing... whatever?"

"Aisling. And I'll not do your homework for you." Manning pointed at the book. "Read that, and then we'll talk."

Dallin scowled. "Why've you come over all cryptic all of a sudden?"

"Because I won't be the one to talk you into believing something I'm not sure I believe myself," Manning told him. "You came to me for a mere translation, but take along a bit of advice, if you will. Call it recompense for the sweets." He tapped a meaty, ink-stained finger to the pliable cover of the book, the script in his own hand. "Read it," Manning said. "And don't let that witness out of your sight. He may be in a great deal of trouble."

"That," Dallin grumbled, "I already knew."