Arabella of Mars(80)
The captain considered her for a long moment, his brown eyes steady on hers. “You pose me a difficult choice,” he replied, “but I suppose I have no reasonable alternative but to acquiesce.”
The four Martians led the captain, the two officers, and Arabella below. Stross favored Arabella with a withering glance as the two of them fell in behind the captain.
It was not easy to keep her step steady as she descended the ladder. She knew that she must accompany the captain, not only to increase the chances of his safe return but also to learn the fate of Michael and the other occupants of the house. But she feared that the captain had been correct in his initial assessment of the situation—that she was putting herself firmly in harm’s way.
What, she wondered as she stepped onto the gangplank, was an akhmok?
And what had she gotten herself into?
*
Arabella’s heart nearly broke as she and the officers followed the rukesh through the dispersing crowd of Martians. The oval lawn of English grass, lovingly tended and watered twice daily, that had once stretched proudly before the manor house now lay brown and neglected, trampled under many hard Martian feet. The house, too, had suffered grievously—in addition to the entire wing lost to fire, most of the main house’s windows were shattered and its clapboards bore many bullet holes and the twinned scars of forked spears. Approaching still more closely, she saw that the front doors had been smashed to flinders, with only one brave board still clinging to its hinges. The stink of smoke lay like a pall over every thing.
How could this have happened? Father had always treated his servants, English and Martian alike, with the greatest of respect, and she could not imagine Michael changing that policy. Even at times of unrest, the Ashby plantation had always before escaped harm. What could possibly have enraged the Martians sufficiently to justify this wanton destruction?
And who had survived it?
Martians armed with swords and English rifles—she feared she recognized her father’s favorite hunting-piece—stepped aside as the rukesh approached the front door, closing behind Richardson as the humans passed.
Arabella feared the worst as they entered the house proper, but though the damage in the hall was severe, with shattered plaster and shredded carpets everywhere, there were no bodies lying about, nor even pools of blood. And as they moved deeper into the house the destruction lessened, until by the time they reached her father’s office most of the furnishings, even her mother’s paintings, were still intact.
One Martian stood guard at the office door, but as they approached he bowed and opened the door as smartly as any butler. So familiar was the motion, in fact, that—despite his garish clan colors and the steel blades fixed to his carapace—she recognized him immediately. It was Hoksh, who had been her father’s footman!
She did not know whether to be reassured or dismayed by his presence among the insurrectionists, but in either case her heart pounded as the rukesh stepped aside, leaving the humans to enter the office without them.
The office itself seemed completely undamaged. Even the automata above her father’s desk looked down as serenely as they always had. Which was all the more astonishing because, seated behind the desk, Arabella beheld the most enormous Martian she had ever seen.
A hulking dark-red brute nearly eight feet high and almost half that broad, the Martian’s carapace bristled with spiny protrusions both natural and artificial. Wide stripes in every clan color painted the massive forearms, and a sharp-edged steel mantle of office rode atop the shoulders. Incongruously, the huge ungainly fingers gripped a feather pen, which scratched away in a ledger-book, over which the Martian was hunched in a posture of deep concentration.
As the door opened the Martian looked up.
The black, subtly faceted eyes immediately focused on Arabella.
“Arabella?” the Martian boomed in a deep, cultured voice. “Could that be you? My dear tutukha?”
Arabella’s jaw dropped.
“Khema!?”
20
KHEMA
“My dear tutukha!” the giant Martian repeated, and with surprising agility and grace he—no, she—bounded out from behind the desk and took up Arabella in her arms.
“Khema, is it really you?” Though many Englishmen said that Martians all looked alike, Arabella had never had much difficulty distinguishing between them. And now that she looked more carefully at the Martian’s broad face she could see that, beneath the heavy protective brows and prominent cheek-spines, it still bore the familiar lines of her beloved itkhalya. And there was a crack in the carapace of the left temple, imperfectly healed, which Arabella herself had inflicted one day in a clumsy sparring incident. “How is this possible?”
Khema set Arabella down and sighed, the air whistling through her spiracles in imitation of the human expression. “It is a long story, tutukha, and I regret each and every day the terrible circumstances which have brought me to this state.” She rapped on the carapace of her thorax with her prominent knuckles, making a sound like two stones striking together. “But, regrets or no, I am akhmok now.” Her attention widened from Arabella to take in the three officers. “Tut, tut, I forget my manners. Who are these fine gentlemen?”
“This is Captain Singh of the Honorable Mars Company airship Diana, his first mate Mr. Richardson, and his sailing-master Mr. Stross.” Then, to the officers, “This is Khema Shuthkari Tekeshti, who was once my itkhalya—my nanny, my protector, my instructor in all things Martian.” The men bowed to Khema; she replied with a curtsey of such astonishing grace that it abolished any comedic effect that might otherwise have resulted from such a formidable figure attempting the maneuver.