Sirin smiled and thanked him before dumping a measure of lunula into the water cup and draining it in one go. His speech explained many things. They weren’t ignorant, Gunna was just actively hostile.Lovely.
The familiar rush of lunula washed through her and she immediately set it to healing her brain injury and then her break. Oddly enough, the puncture wounds on her arm seemed to have healed already. Interesting.
She sighed and closed her eyes as the relief of healing went over her body, and suddenly, memories of the last two weeks rushed back. Hiking through the mountains, the increasingly deep snow, the bright sun. Giddy, she remembered all of the interesting species of flora and fauna she’d documented.4She blinked, remembering her fall, and how the bear had herded her. For a moment, she felt somewhat sad at the loss of her bear. He’d been her constant companion for over a week, and she’d begun to think of him as a protector.
She gasped, as she was hit with the image of Berne, in a tavern, laughing with his head thrown back in a way that made her want to throw away her worries and join him in his joy. Heat flooding her body, she then remembered her dreams,allof which had starred the man sitting across from her.
“You’re the man from the tavern! That’s how I know you!”
“Aye, I saw yeh at the tavern in Pershing. Ran into yeh along the way, thought it’d be best if I didn’t let yeh die.”
“Ran into me? Oh, after I fell you mean? I appreciate it, truly. But…” she trailed off, flustered from embarrassment when she remembered exactly how much she’d thought of him, of what she’ddonewhen she’d thought of him. At least it somewhat explained her extremely visceral and instantaneous attraction to him these past few hours, after all, she’d been masturbating to her memories of him for two weeks. She directed a bit of lunula to clear the blush from her face. There was no way he could have any idea, so she’d best just change the subject quickly.
“So trespassing, eh? Seems an odd charge for folks that didn’t have any warnings posted about private property at all. What is the sentence usually, anyhow?” Surely it couldn’t be terribly harsh, considering they hadn’t bothered to mark their territory in even the smallest way, and she hadn’t done any person or property harm.
Berne took a deep breath and cocked his head. “That’s a difficult question, particularly at this point in time.” He rubbed at his beard before continuing, immediately triggering intrusive thoughts about how she’d love to run her fingers through it. He continued, thankfully unaware. “A few years ago, it would have been death and I would be in a great deal of trouble for not having already given it to yeh swiftly. These days, though, talk has been leaning away from that, considering it now seems our L—leaders, our original ones, I mean, didn’t intend that. It’s a very serious matter, but perhaps not one we should go killing folk over. Problem is, then, if we aren’t killing trespassers, what do we do with ’em? That’s what they will be trying to figure out and what we should perhaps try to figure out for ’em. Find it always helps when yeh create a problem if yeh can come up with the solution too.”
Sirin stared at him, propped on an elbow for an extended moment. Execution? For trespassing? That was ridiculous. You simply couldn’t go around killing anyone who wandered onto your unmarked land, but Berne wasn’t laughing. He looked extremely serious and upset by the situation. She’d never heard of a culture with such a strict isolationist policy. It wasn’t tenable long term. She sucked in a breath.
“Alright, so, if thoughts have been changing, have there been any suggestions of alternatives? As I said, I am happy to arrange for fees to be paid, or I could do some sort of service for the community. I have a fair amount of skills. I could teach or I could arrange for trade relations between you and some of your closest neighbors. My research is extremely important, but I suppose it isn’t particularly time-sensitive, so I could delay it a bit if needed.”
Berne shook his head slowly, his brow furrowed in thought. “It’s not an issue of fees or service, it’s a matter of knowledge. We don’t want anyone to know about us, to know we’re here. There’s more to it, but I’m afraid yeh already know too much. Honestly, your research complicates matters worse. Yeh didn’t wander here. An’ yeh weren’t lost, yeh came here on purpose. Ach, yeh were looking for something and whether yeh knew that meant yeh would find us or not, the fact of the matter is, yeh did. And the looking is the real problem because itwas intentionaland considering yeh already blurted it out to Gunna, we are going to have some difficulty there. I don’t know we’ll be able to convince them yeh were lying, and yeh weren’t here on purpose. Looking on purpose, I mean.”
Sirin squinted her eyes. Looking was the problem? If looking was the issue, it was because there was something to hide. No one worries about people looking unless they have something they don’t want to be found. What could be so important to keep a secret that you kill trespassers? Something terribly important, certainly.
“So, what can I do then?” she asked, a tremor in her voice. “If they’re going to execute me to keep their secrets, why haven’t they done so yet? Do they want something from me?”
“I think what they want is to find some way other than killing yeh, but they don’t have any ideas on how to accomplish that yet. I’m sorely certain they are not going to allow yeh to go home, no matter what yeh want to do,” he pursed his lips ad rubbed his hands on his legs in chagrin.
“What, like imprisonment? Forever? For walking up a mountain?” Sirin asked, incredulously, her voice rising in pitch from a sliver of fear she could feel creeping into her veins like ice.
“Not imprisonment, and not for ‘walking up a mountain.’ For putting your nose into business that’s none of your concern. Whether yeh intended to or not, it’s what yeh did. I’m wondering if instead, yeh might’ve accidentally relocated here. Permanent-like.” He grimaced. “We do have newcomers now and again, but usually someone goes looking for ’em. They don’t just wander on in.”
“Look Berne, I don’t care about you or your people or whatever you have going on up here. I will gladly give my word I will never tell anyone about you all. You are so out of the way I doubt anyone would care if you exist. Certainly, no one is going out of their way to come to bother you all, or at least they haven’t in—“ She gasped, realization hitting her like a boulder to the face. “You’re the reason all expeditions were lost. The ones that came up here from the Citadel!”5
Berne pressed his lips together and paled further—if that was possible. He gave a curt nod. “Likely so. We haven’t had groups in nearly—“
“A hundred years,” Sirin finished for him. When Lord Lagrath had explained the missing people, she’d known that they’d existed. They’d been numbers to her, indicating she wasn’t the only one who wanted to know more. But now…
“Likely so, though there haven’t been large groups from your people in almost a hundred years,” he said..
Now, she found she could remember her travels north, she remembered the closeness she felt to those lost adventurers. Their shared purpose and spirits had kept her company, and the unknowable nature of their passing had kept her alert.
Knowing what had happened to them, that they’d been executed for their curiosity, left Sirin shaking. She felt cold, sick to her stomach.
“And now I might be too,” she whispered.
“Not if I have my say,” Berne said. “I’ve got an idea or two that might be of use. There’s been a lot of talks recently about these policies, and yeh might just be the troublemaker to force ’em to take a stance for sure.” He reached a hand toward her before pulling it back as he flushed.
“I didn’t come up here to cause you or your people any trouble, I only want to be left alone to do my research,” Sirin insisted. “I came up here to find the source of lunula. It is an extremely fragile resource we know next to nothing—“
“It is, aye,” he interrupted quietly. “And did yeh ever think the fact yeh know next to nothing might be by design? That if yeh were meant to know, yeh might have been told? Or if it was something yeh were meant to know, then it might not be so hard to find?” He dropped his head. “Ach so, I don’t know if we can convince them, the council I mean, to let yeh leave. We can try, mind, but I don’t think it is likely. Instead, I think yeh should try for a reasonable compromise, so it is.”
“And you are trying to tell me a reasonable compromise is moving here? Forever?”
“Ach, what I am trying to say is if you’re so intent on finding something out, it might be in your best interest to stay where yeh can look,” he raised his brows and crossed his hands over his chest.
Stay where she could look. A permanent basehadbeen a potential outcome of her journey. Ideally, she would prefer to return home with her research and bring the Lord Lunologist to his knees. If they let her stay, she doubted that meant they would let her leave to release her research. She chewed her lip. How much of her drive for answers relied on the ability to share them? Would it be diminished if she was bound to secrecy? She sat with it for a moment. She chewed her lip. How much of her drive for answers relied on her ability to share them? If she was bound to secrecy, then her research had no point.
