The Unauthorized Rescue of Toda, Royal Messenger

Eight days of blinking from Jergan's bookbindery, to the little stone cell in someone's royal kitchen. Eight days of not knowing a word the guard spoke. Eight days of the kitchen being just a bit busier than yesterday. Eight days of speaking the magic words: "Lenni, Palla, Please?" and holding up Lenni's key. Eight days of being sworn at as the guard was made to leave her or his post to do kitchen work. Eight days of taking a small cup of fruit or fruit juice, and reaching through the bars to unlock that little box with a book inside. Eight days of dashed hopes as she reappeared in Jergan's bookbindery, still hobbled, still an innocent convict, still a slave.

On the ninth day, the guard just looked at her and swore, and dashed to fill the order, no magic untranslatable words necessary.

On the tenth day, the guard didn't swear, he just ground his teeth and balled his fists. But Lenni had given her new magic words, "Show me, I will get it."

The guard bit his lip and let her out. She already knew which cabinet held the tiny jars of juice. Three more days of feeling his glare as she ducked into the room beside the blink-in cell and unlocked the box and book that would forcefully blink her back to Jergan's bookbindery.

Three days of seeing the one book out of many whose title was in her native script and so close to her native tongue that she could taste the etymology if not the exact meaning of the title. Three days of not taking it down. Three days of returning to slavery because the guard, half her size and a third her age was watching. And might report. And might get Lenni in trouble. And might end her chances of a complete escape.

After eleven months of unjust punishment, of unjust hobbling of her innate ability to blink where she willed, of returning on foot every night to the government dorm where all the convicts turned in whatever wage they'd managed to earn toward paying off their debt to their victim, or to society in general, returning every night on foot to sleep, or to try to sleep. After eleven months of walking, even eleven days of book-induced blinking, seemed like freedom.

Her dreams were strange, no longer the nightmares of a hobbled convict. Nor the happy dreams she'd generally had when she was a royal courier, honored for her speed. The fastest blinker in two kingdoms and the longest-ranged endurance courier in at least four.

No, the dangers hadn't vanished, but with an illusion of her speed returned to her, for once her dreams let her outrun anything. And yet the anticipation wasn't happy, there was a dark bitterness, a storm of envy and hatred.

One more time Lenni showed her that he'd saved up more than a day's worth of palla juice and showed her the handsign for luck. One more time she took his key and blinked into the cell, went and picked up a jar. And walked past the guard the other direction. And one more time she got the box down and unlocked it and removed the key from the lock. But today she was alone, and didn't use the book inside. Today she hid the key in the book box as she and Lenni had planned, Where only the matching key of his smaller hobbled or travellame or travelblind or something friend Ashokan could retrieve it. And she took down the other book, the book that seemed to be titled "Our-Auspiciousness-real-estate [for a] Houses" all one word, and let it blink her somewhere new.

A walled garden with many oddly small stone tables spread in amongst the flowers. Luckily there was a gap in the wall, with almost pointless little buttresses and a roof. So there must be enough hobbled and travellame around for the builders to have chosen to be accommodating.

Outside she found a wild space that was even more closed in. Not by buildings and stone but by trees. Trees taller than herself. Taller than buildings. Taller than any buildings she'd ever seen. And wider than doors.

And the vines. The vines that hung from the trees here and there, were bigger around than any tree trunks she'd seen before blinking into this place, some were even bigger than her elbow. There was only one path, so she took it.

And found herself in a village where people saw the stones of her bracelets, and looked away out of fear, and envy, and respect, not out of fear and disgust. Odd. They spoke a language so similar to hers that she wanted to rebuke their accent. But she knew better so she paid attention to it. So that she'd be able to mimic it soon.

She sold her hobble bracelets to a jeweller in exchange for money, a map to the capital, and a letter of introduction to his family's governmental representative. What a strange way to run things.

She blinked her way to the capital in half an hour, but took two days to deliver the letter.

Capitol

She blinked her way to the capital in half an hour, she'd met a House Thris representative within an hour after.

The representative was unmoved by her request to become a courier, he had a network of mind readers at his disposal, what need had he of her services?

To be unneeded is the loneliest number.

There were other representatives, but none of them needed a new message courier. After all, none of them got to be where they were by trusting someone off the street with a sensitive task like that.

But there was one who didn't assume she was a rival family's spy, or a merchant conglomerate's spy either. It seemed he was one of the mind readers himself and though he didn't quite believe the knowledge he pulled from her mind, he wasn't going to dismiss her without a demonstration.

Once the demonstration was complete he sat back and glared at her. She grew bored and tried to look into his mind, but he sensed her instantly and pushed her out. And crossed his arms.

"Sorry," she gulped.

"Sorry for what?"

"Intruding."

"You mean you have a choice?"

"Of course."

His glare intensified. Finally, he spoke, "How old were you when you gained control of your ability?"

"Five years, same as my brother. Though most of my friends did not until six or more."

He nodded, and looked away. Finally, he returned his attention to her. He uncrossed his arms.

"I'm willing to offer you the employment you've asked for, but there will be conditions."

"Of course, Such as?"

"My family will become your first loyalty. You will marry inside the family, and train your children to be your replacements. To hold their loyalty to the family before their loyalty even to you or your husband."

"But..."

"No, I don't care in the least who you pick for a husband as long as his loyalty matches or exceeds my own.

"Your work will take you among very many mind readers, some as strong as myself, a few stronger, some weaker. If you harbor disloyal thoughts, eventually you will be caught, and depending on how much trust has been shown you so far, you will be killed, since we couldn't imprison you, even if we wished."

"Please don't," she shuddered.

He raised an eyebrow, and she reached for his mind to check for the question. He must have dropped his shields at some point.

"It is possible to imprison me," she shuddered, "I'd tell you how if I didn't prefer to die."

"That's alright, I just saw both methods, and your opinions of each," He dropped his shields further, he was kindly disposed to her, and wanted to keep her talents away from rival families.

"Please don't trust me with anything that dangerous. I want to be a courier again, but I don't need to know the message I carry, just who it's for, and whether to wait for a reply."

"Carry a paper, to carry a message." His tongue worked the inside of his mouth, "I hadn't considered that. How far can you reach in a single 'blink'?"

"It depends on how high the tavelstone I want is above the swell of ..." Mother's pregnant belly.

"So without travelstones, you won't be able to go as far?"

"No," she said, "Farther, it was the un-mined travelstone in the ground that blocked me from going exactly where I wanted before."

"So how far can you reach?" this time he indicated straight down.

She looked, and after two fathoms of building, and two more of dirt there was no more fuzz of minds too tiny to reflect a color of their own. There were minds there, so far distant to seem pinpricks. She was momentarily dizzy but it was nothing compared to when she'd first arrived and seen the stars through the forest canopy and thought there were holes in the roof and couldn't calculate the distance to the stars or to the forest canopy because of the intermittentness of each.

After a moment she saw a pattern in the colors of the minds. She took a firm hold of her impulse to travel, and reached out for one of the larger of the unusually colored minds. There was no place to stand. Not only that, but the person was under half a mile of water. And outside its mind, the creature wasn't even person-shaped.

With a start she found herself halfway to the floor gasping and coughing. She sat still a moment, trying to relax, trying to still her shivering.

"Amazing," said the man, "You are amazing."

"But what?" she shuddered, and latched onto his mind, if only to give herself a solid point of reference while she regained her mental balance.

"Merphinoi," he said, people who live in the sea.

"But they're not ... people shaped?" she said.

"Neither are euama, but what does that matter. Interesting that you see their minds as a separate chord of colors."

She said nothing.

"Can you pick your travel stones out from the rest?"

"The rest of what, they are the only travelstones," she pointed.

He nodded. "Your first assignment is to retrieve them and bring them here." He said.

"But..."

"But what?"

"I can't carry them back." she stopped, "I mean, I'd have to walk back."

"Or ride a boat, like the rest of us. I understand your hesitancy to undertake such a tedious journey. Hmm. What can and can't you carry?"

"I can carry anything I can lift except another mind or a travelstone."

"So, no passengers either. That is disappointing."

"Sometimes it's possible to carry one's own children until they reach a certain age. And sometimes pets and slaves, but it's unusual for the trust level to be high enough."

"We'll have to work on that."

"What do you mean?"

"If we could put a travel stone right here," he tapped his desk, "And one in my study at home." he shrugged, "There's a week-long boat ride I have to make twice a year that I wouldn't mind skipping. If you could carry me."

"Oh,"

"As it is." he said, "You'll go get the stones, carry them to the next village, pack them in boxes and ship them: one here, and one to my summer home."

"Except there are four of them." "Alright," she said when she'd made sense of the details and his reasons for them.

"Alright, half and half then," he agreed.

But she could already see her next assignment forming in his mind, travel around the world by quarters, or maybe eighths, and draw maps of what she could see through the floor, based on the predominant mind color and elevation. He'd have a professional artist turn them right side up when she returned. It was odd, she'd heard theories that the pregnant shape of the ground continued all the way around, but she'd never really grasped the thought of living on a ball, until she was on a completely different ball, one her travelsight could see right through to the other side.

And her assignment after that was to connect to his brother and see if he could reach through her and talk to him, or if he'd only be able to read Toda's mind, as she read his brother's. Toda knew her connection could carry information both ways, but unlike Council member Phrintha, she could only connect to one mind at a time.

He went to a drawer and retrieved some coins. He hesitated before handing them over.

"Dicker," he said, "Not hard enough to bring attention to yourself or your stones, but strongly enough that no one will guess that the money isn't yours. Strongly enough that people will think it's three to six month's wages for you. You should be able to bring almost half of it back."

"Alright."

He held out twelve tiny gold coins.

"Umm," she said, I don't know if I've agreed to all your terms.

"I don't think you'll know until we've worked together for a month or so." he said, "I'll try not to assume too much until you do decide."

"Alright."

Dickering

She took the money and reached for her stones, reminded herself that though they were large enough to see from a distance they were too small to blink to. But she could easily find the jeweller and the super welcoming butcher next door, and... she found a place to stand in the street and blinked there.

She walked into the jeweller's and remembered that the hobbles had almost as much goldsteel in them as the gold in the money she carried. Could she convince the jeweller... or get just the stones without arousing suspicion?

The woman ahead of her handed her money to the jeweller, he wrote it down in his little book, and told her something. She began begging, he glared at her, then consulted his book.

"Alright," he said, "You still owe me threepence, that's little enough I don't need to hold your bracelets." he went to a cabinet and brought them to her. Large silver bracelets with simple rope-work along the edges.

She thanked him and left. Toda smelled tears on her as she hurried past.

"And what can I do for you."

"I borrowed money too," she said and stepped to the counter.

"I don't remember that."

She tried to call up a picture of the hobble, but all she could remember was the sight of the jeweller coming at her with a pair of snips, and the relief of having it off. She pushed that into his mind.

"Ah," he said, and went to a different cabinet, "I thought that was a buy, not collateral."

"Then you gave me too much silver and not enough iron and lead."

He looked taken aback, and weighed the metal in his hand, shaking it to re-measure density.

"At least, I expect it's worth more to me than it could be worth to anyone else."

He finished examining the end to find the iron core in the cabling then shrugged and put it on the counter.

She put two coins on the counter, he'd given her eight for it, but they were much bigger and of a heavier whiter metal.

He looked at them, and shook his head, retrieving the bit of paper he'd had wrapped around the hobble. He copied it into his book made some sort of calculation. He told her how much she owed. It was complicated. He pictured two white coins and two brown. He knew she'd be watching his mind and tried to think slowly and clearly for her.

She tried to look upset and put one more coin on the counter. He nodded, picked up all three, wrote something down in his book, calculated again, brought out her change, and pushed it and her hobble across the counter.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"Where's your headband?" he asked, quietly but very firmly.

"I don't," she said.

He'd pictured a white band with red stripes and symbols. He knew she'd see what he was talking about. He knew that she had a secret, but he seemed confused about what kind of mind reader she was. She wasn't supposed to bring attention to herself, maybe she should pretend that she was the regular kind of mind reader, whatever that was.

"I don't have it right now," she said, "I need to go buy it, too."

"Ah," he seemed to hear, 'buy it back also' and seemed to feel even gentler toward her now.

"Thanks," she said again.

She bought some bread and some fruit, and walked toward the river, turned upstream and walked to the next village. By the time she arrived she wished she hadn't bought the fruit, there were tremendous amounts just ripening all along her path. On the other hand, if she hadn't bought it to start with, she wouldn't have learned from the fruit vendor how to know when it was ripe, what signified high quality. And how to avoid the pieces with parasites in them.

Along the way, she was startled to meet a rabbit-shaped creature as large as her leg, who had been equally startled by her approach. After a tense moment, he scampered the rest of the way up the tree to what he must judge a safe lookout point and screamed at her, or to his friends about her.

She reached out to him and found his brain a bit on the small side, but very insistent on friendship. Once she'd brushed him with her travelsight, she found she couldn't disengage. When she tried, he would start screaming his song again and scamper a step closer along the only branch that led in her direction.

There was one method that would always force travelsight to disengage. So she picked a spot two paces closer to him and blinked there. He started and scampered back to the bole of the tree. She looked around again, nothing had changed since the creature had caught her by her travelsight. Nothing except that her travelstones were sitting two paces behind her on the path, instead of safely in their settings in her pocket.

She retrieved them and continued on her way. Along the way, her thoughts wandered.

Am I really doing this? She thought, Giving up on Asho or Lenni coming to take me home again, now that I'm unhobbled? Giving up on a world where I'm normal in exchange for a world where I'm exceptional. Where I'm lumped in with a suppressed group with a kind of mind reading that doesn't lend itself to travelsight at all. A group that is thought of in terms of their capabilities, and loyalties, instead of as people... not that that isn't exactly what I've been working toward all my life. But that was succeeding on merit, this is the risk of slavery or expulsion depending on how far I'm trusted to keep my travelsight out of other people's secrets.

And look where my loyalty and reliable hard work got me.

Disowned, imprisoned, enslaved, and now ... exiled, collected, gloated over, and ... wanted for breeding.

She passed the familiar stone wall and took the chance, she re-entered the garden where the travelbook had blinked her, and explored each alter until she found the travelbook for leaving again, it showed the royal-looking kitchens she'd blinked through before. Good. I have a way back, even if I have to argue and beg the guard, and admit to fleeing imprisonment. I can get home, and depending on whether Jergan cared more about his secrets or my imprisonment... once I'm back in Jergan's workshop, maybe I can blink across and out of the country before anyone recognizes the need for precautions.

She looked at the other book in that alter, it was not a journal, so much as... a bulletin board and to do list? She copied the style. "Asho & Lenni: Thanks for your help. I'll probably be in the capitol now and then, if Asho can't find me the regular way."

She signed it by her new designation: "Your friend and debtor, Toda of House Phrintha, courier."

She stood and turned toward the gatehouse, sighed, and started on her way.

{End Chapter 1}