Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

It turned out to be a stairway leading down into the floor, hidden in the shadows behind a tall piece of machinery.

“They’re looking for a starship, and they go down into the ground?” said Olivenko.

“We should, too,” said Param.

“We should wait,” said Umbo.

“They’re in danger.”

“And we’re safe,” said Umbo.

“How do you know that?”

“Because if it wasn’t safe for us to stay here, my future self would have told me to run like a bunny.”

“So something dangerous is happening down those stairs somewhere, and you’re going to sit here and do nothing?”

“That’s what I told myself to do,” said Umbo, “and I’ve decided to trust myself. Do what you want.”

What she wanted, after fuming and complaining a little longer, was apparently to pace back and forth but never go down the stairs.

Rigg noticed when Umbo fell behind, but he assumed that he would catch up. Rigg felt the same sense of awe at the huge machines, but he knew that if both boys stopped to look at them, Vadesh would be alone with Loaf and that’s what Vadesh wanted. Which meant that was the thing Rigg couldn’t allow to happen.

As usual, thought Rigg. Umbo feels free to be a child, easily distracted from the task at hand, while I keep my mind on what has to be done. But later, Umbo will resent me for taking responsibility.

I don’t take responsibility, I’m just left with responsibility in my hands and no one to help me carry it.

Which wasn’t fair. Loaf was there, wasn’t he? But Loaf was playing the risky game of taking Vadesh at his word, testing him.

At the bottom of the stairs was a tunnel, and in the tunnel there was a kind of wagon, though it had nothing to pull it and no cargo. But there were benches at the front and back, so people were meant to ride. Vadesh stepped onto the wagon and Loaf followed him.

“Umbo’s not here,” said Rigg.

“You wait for him and take the next wagon,” said Vadesh.

Rigg understood immediately that what Vadesh was really saying was good-bye. So he bounded onto the wagon. It was already moving forward when his feet hit the floor, accelerating so quickly that Rigg fell over and slid to the back of the wagon. Vadesh had somehow given the wagon the command to go while Rigg was still standing on the platform. If he had hesitated, if he had tried to call out to Umbo, anything but board the wagon at the instant that he did, Vadesh would have left him behind.

It’s Loaf he wants, because Loaf has the jewels.

Or maybe it’s the other way around—I have something Loaf doesn’t have. Something Vadesh fears. I have knowledge. I was trained by an expendable

, and Loaf was not.

What did Father teach me that Vadesh should fear? Whatever it was, Rigg was not aware of it. Everything Rigg could remember had to do either with trapping animals and surviving in the wilderness, or the training in politics, economics, languages, and history that had enabled him to thrive in Aressa Sessamo. If nearly getting killed a dozen times could count as thriving.

And science. Father had taught him biology, physics, astronomy, engineering. As much as Rigg could absorb. Useless things that suddenly became useful when he was getting tested by leading scholars to determine whether he could have access to the library.

Useless things that suddenly became useful. But Father couldn’t have known that I would face such a board of examiners. Could he?

One thing Father did know, though, was that one day I would face another expendable. If every wallfold contained an expendable like Vadesh and Father himself, and if the jewels somehow allowed their owner to control the Walls and take them down, Father must have taught him what he needed to know to deal with the threat of someone like Vadesh.

But all of Rigg’s language and negotiation skills had to do with humans, and Vadesh wasn’t human. He didn’t want what humans wanted, he didn’t fear what humans feared.

What did he fear? Surely the worst thing had already happened, when all the humans in his wallfold had died. What could Rigg do now that would make Vadesh want to be rid of him?

It was a joke that expendables had to obey humans. Father didn’t obey anybody, and Vadesh only pretended to comply with human commands, when he bothered even to pretend. I have no power over him. No way to make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. Because he knows more than me, I never have enough information to give him a command that he can’t weasel his way out of. Even now, we have only his word that this wagon leads where he says he’s taking us, or that the jewels can even do what he says they do.

And it bothered Rigg more and more that the two jewels that mattered—the ones that Vadesh had identified as controlling the Wall of Vadeshfold and the Wall of Ramfold—were clutched in Loaf’s fist instead of being in the bag with the rest of the jewels. It sounded like nonsense, the idea of the jewels being attuned to anyone who had grown up in the wallfold. That seemed wrong. But it was true that Vadesh must have a set of jewels of his own, and he couldn’t do anything with them or he would have done it, so apparently he did need a human to do whatever he was planning to do.