It does what it's supposed to do, Number Seven thought, put it in gear, and the vehicle started rolling along the gray, monotonous tunnel.
My mother is dead.
Unbidden, the thought surfaced again. Number One hadn't intended to do that, but it had just cracked the frame the collective had built around the grief, and there it was, black, cold, and uncontainable.
2
DAVE
The tunnel terminated at the roundabout, and Number Seven turned the jeep around so it would be ready for the trip back.
Eight pairs of boots hit the concrete in sequence.
Number One entered the code at the door and executed the sequence the collective had committed to memory. The indicator light shifted from red to green, and the door clicked open.
They stepped into Navuh's private apartment, and the grief in Number One's chest receded even though there was nothing in the familiar space that should have soothed his pain. The soft earth tones and pinks, the overstuffed armchairs, and the balcony opening onto the interior courtyard of the pyramid were all frozen in time, a memorial to the lives that had been lived between these walls.
There had been love here.
The collective could sense it now that they knew what to look for.
They wouldn't have thought Lord Navuh capable of such emotion, but the evidence was right there.
"Should we search the apartment again?" Number Six asked.
"No," Number One said. "There was nothing here before, and there is nothing here now."
Number One glanced at the ornate book that had been left on the table beside the armchair.
Sullha would have loved such a book regardless of what was written on its pages, but she couldn't keep it in the enclosure, so there was no point in bringing it to her. Once they were free, though, he would get her a bookcase full of beautiful books.
A whole library.
"We should start with the ladies' level," Number Three said. "The staff who tend the bedrooms go there every morning. Encountering the empty rooms day after day might have weakened our compulsion."
Had the staff begun to question why the gowns never moved, and the beds were never slept in? If there were cracks, they would find them there first.
The Eight took the stairs down to the second level.
Nine suites, arranged around the interior courtyard, each with its own balcony. Gowns in the closets. Perfumes on the vanities. Embroidered slippers tucked under the beds.
A maid was in the third suite when they arrived, smoothing the coverlet on a bed that nobody had used in weeks. She looked up when Dave entered, and her expression went through the sequence of changes Dave had expected.
First, a small hitch of surprise, because other than the lord, immortal males were not supposed to be in the harem. Second, the smoothing of surprise into placid acceptance, because the thrall and compulsion they had laid down on her weeks ago told her to ignore and forget their presence.
Third, nothing. Her mind returned to the coverlet and the invisible wrinkles she was chasing out of it.
The thrall and compulsion were holding. Dave could feel it the moment they brushed her mind. It was not cracked, and it was not fraying, but it was thinner than they wanted it to be.
They deepened both.
The maid did not react because the thrall mixed with compulsion ran below the surface of her attention, writing itself into the part of her mind that she experienced as her own ordinary thoughts. The lord was in his apartment. Lady Areana was with the other ladies in the dining room. The lord did not wish to be disturbed. This was how it had always been. This was how it would continue to be.
He added one more layer, at Losham's request.
If anyone asked about the lord or the ladies, she would answer without hesitation that they were well and that the lord still preferred solitude and seclusion. She would not think that unusual. She had always answered such questions that way.
The maid smoothed the coverlet one last time and then moved to dusting the furniture, unaware that anything had happened.
