Part 27

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"You are comfortable I presume?" Larran approached Bursamen close enough to smell the rebel's well used clothing. Bursamen turned from watching the crowds below through the clear patio doors and walked around Larran, clearly running many pressing thoughts through his mind. Larran smiled and turned around to face the rebel.

The Minister stood a head taller than Bursamen. Larran looked to Bursamen as if he'd look down at his social inferior just as easily if it were the other way around. Bursamen didn't flinch. Larran was beneath any level of esteem he cared to consider as worthy of respect. And it was essential to his own safety not to appear nervous.

"I could have you removed.....permanently" Larran narrowed his eyes. "I don't suppose I would be wanting to do that...."

"No" Bursamen assured him with as much kindly confidence as he could feign. "At the moment, making the same decision would seem to be our mutual problem."

Larran's eyes trailed down Bursamen. Larran appeared to be relaxed to the point of being bored. "Yes...." he muttered almost inaudibly. He looked back up into Bursamen's eyes and stepped back casually. "You may go."

Bursamen turned aside and stopped to look back to Larran. "But then, I may stay." Bursamen smiled slightly, turning and walking for the door. His heart hammered. He reached the door, surprised he hadn't been shot in the back yet.

"She has" Larran spoke up to him. "The one you would insist is....the one. She has stayed here longer than any has. She may stay.....forever."

Bursamen turned in the doorway. Larran worked his sleeve cuffs better into place. "Some have. You might. Do you insist on staying?"

Bursamen smiled slightly but made no reply. It wasn't his move, he knew.

"Very well" Larran sighed. He gestured Kastara to leave with him. "You must meet her. They must meet her" Larran looked over his shoulder. "I must tell her she has visitors. Wait here- yes, and you will all see your exalted Sister" Larran smiled and walked out of the room.

---

Dense, long overgrown vegetation parted for a somewhat maintained expanse of garden, opening the view for Tannac to gaze up and see the central accommodation wing ahead. She slowed for a moment. Its ornate, antique style was even more obvious than it had been from a distance. The aged, corroded and filthy exterior was apparently once a bluish rock. Its textured, busy style was a startling contrast to the sleek, structural or smoothly flaring style seen everywhere else. She'd never witnessed anything like it.

What held her attention, though, were the three massive areas extruding in a half circle from the otherwise square building and adorned with stone carvings. The third and top most floor had a small balcony over the nearest and smallest of the extruding areas, the floor below bulging out to show a row of windows, tall enough for two stories in themselves. The windows might have been clear when new, but had aged to an uneven frosty appearance. The second extruding area, further to her left, was massive terrace with another small balcony from the level above. The third, partly obscured behind massive trees, was even more massive, seeming to take the second and third levels, and faced with windows set in some ornate metal. Those windows had aged and corroded to a filthy greenish blue grime and couldn't easily be seen through, except perhaps something up close to them, and that blurry at the clearest places.

Tannac's eyes kept returning to the greenish windows of the furthest extrusion high above. Something gave her an odd feeling she didn't recognize, but didn't like. The closest thing she could identify it with was being watched. She told herself that her feeling came from the fact that she couldn't see in through the windows to see if there was a threat watching, but that didn't seem to satisfy whatever was causing it. Whether it meant she mustn't go there or should go there wasn't clear. Tannac braced herself and approached the massive black doors of the entrance.

The doors were corroded shut. Tannac stepped back and set her sights on the terrace. A running leap got her up to hang on a carved under hang. With a yell, she threw her legs out and up, landing her shins on the railing. She then sat up, grabbed the railing and slid her legs off to hang from the railing. After pulling herself over it, she landed on the dirty stone terrace in a heap. "Uuuungh. I ought to flatten his eema just for making me do that" she muttered.

But the terrace was obviously long unused. Hers seemed to be the first footprints to settle on the thick layers of mud and rotting leaves in some time. Sure enough, the only door was fixed shut. "I'll have to blow it up" she smiled.

Entering through the smoldering doorway, Tannac looked around at the room, a sort of leisure area, with a spa to one side and a large, circular, raised living area with some seating ahead and to her left. There were signs that there had been fires scattered all around the living area. There was a single handprint in red clay on a wall near the spa. Further in, there was a large, ancient computer interface unit showcased in one room by a set of doors that adjoined to the neighboring wing, probably the modern access to this area.

Opposite the probable entrance, the area extended to a number of rooms on one side beyond the computer interface unit and a wide, ornate metal railed staircase on the other side. It looked as if it led to a loft. A sense made the loft feel like a very bad idea, so she walked up the stairs to the loft. A bed with rich bedding all messed up occupied the loft. It was all decorated in pinks and silvers on the walls, except where a section of the wall had been blown out into the loft. The section of wall lay like a bridge over a gap between the loft wall and another, older looking wall.

The hole led into a narrow passage between two high railings going through what appeared to be an empty attic room, unfinished but for the odd fancy wall covering in most places. Tannac entered, barely managing her bony hips through the narrow passage.

Once well down the long, narrow room, a cold anxiety struck her, almost crippling in its severity. The sound of her gasp seemed amplified, and it covered some other sounds, like the shuffle of footsteps and a gasping noise. Tannac turned, responding to the certainty there was someone behind. There was nothing but the still air.

The confusion dispelled the anxiety. Numbly continuing, she followed the long path through the empty, unfinished rooms until it opened to an amazing sight. Tannac gaped around at the area that appeared to be behind the furthest extruding bay of windows she'd seen. The biodome could be seen through the aged, filthy windows, if blurry. The massive, towering room was just for a pool and a few spas, backed by a row of shelving stocked with sundries.

Tannac walked to one of the spas. She dipped her nervously trembling hand into the hot water and ran her wet hand over her face. Again she had a moment of panic and looked around expecting to see someone, but no one else was there. The spas and pools were running and seemed clean, so she wandered to a doorway and entered what she'd correctly guessed was a maintenance room housing the machinery. The ancient machines looked badly deteriorated but had clearly been serviced recently, with clean tools and lubricants around the room.

A large filter of some kind laid under a service table by a few pulse weapons. Checking the weapons, Tannac found them not charged and unloaded. Since she had more ammunition, she loaded the pulse rifle and pistol and added them the armory she had under her cloak. While picking her rifle back up, her eyes caught on the filter and stared, realizing the debris in the filter appeared to be water-smoothed pieces of bone. Holding her pulse rifle firmly in front of herself, Tannac hurried from the room and across the great area to a staircase leading downward.

At the bottom, she found a wall, but it opened with a push, bringing her into the room she'd first entered. For a moment, she started moving to run back and check the rooms she hadn't seen before taking the stairs to the loft. But she quickly decided she was leaving, immediately, and continuing the search with the sebacean Orren. "Too close to madness, you ought to know" she muttered, running for the terrace railing.

---

Bursamen tried to make his wandering seem casual and aimless. He'd wandered several rooms away with his assigned watchdog following. The Bannik, however, hadn't made any suggestion to keep Bursamen from wandering around. Which wasn't surprising, perhaps, since it was one of Kastara's fellow Bannik slaves, Skarle, who had let Bursamen in the Estate.

Looking out of a window to the scattered crowds in the street outside, Bursamen thought suddenly of the lady who was being assumed to be the Sister. How it must be, trapped in this gilded cage. Seeing from windows, but no one able to see her. Unable even to jump from a window or escape through the parameter defense screen. To be trapped like that upset Bursamen's tolerance enough, but to be stuck with the likes of Minister Larran, that positively made his skin crawl.

She must be a worthy person, Bursamen had decided, after learning of her companion, the sebacean Crichton. Bursamen had never heard of such friendship. Crichton seemed helpless to effectively do anything unobserved in the Estate, but he refused to abandon her by escaping himself when he was let out. He tolerated doing some of Larran's dirty work against his will, knowing Larran would punish her further if he tried anything. For months he'd played along with a tolerance Bursamen could only admire, hoping himself and the trapped lady would find a way to escape together.

But he also suspected there must be more to it. Crichton had explained something of his situation, including something about an accident. The lady and himself seemed to think there were also things they needed to learn before escaping. Apparently they were caught in more ways than one. Just pondering it, Bursamen doubted he could stand the situation for long if it were himself in their place.

Regardless, now that a possible opportunity to confront the Minister he'd despised all his life has arisen, and he was already past return, he had two things to do. First, ascertain if he could free the lady thought to be the Sister. Second, find Larran's stash of artifacts of the Sister. Then the people could know the truth. If possible, a secondary agenda would be to kill Minister Larran, preferably letting it be known that the cause of death was Nerri's Resistance Militia. Freeing her companion wasn't important, but Bursamen had decided he'd make every attempt to free him as well, and anyone else trapped here.

To Bursamen, the trapped included Kastara. He was aware of the Bannik watching him, from a reserved distance, but with a studiousness of watching a specimen of some kind. All of the guests and visitors must be something like a specimen, creatures who live different lives in what must seem something like a wilderness to the Bannik slave.

"Not strictly proper build code, is it?" Bursamen remarked of the pre-reform decor and architecture. Not about its build quality, but the textures, forms and arts all around. Nebari decoration laws had been sparing the poor easily overwhelmed population from decadent distractions of the kind for a few centuries now. "The Minister will not mind us touring this fine, historic estate then?" Bursamen turned and walked backwards to ask Kastara. "Surely he knows where we are?"

"He always seems to know, yes...." Kastara carefully replied, a timidity in his posture.

"We've only so long before the enforcers he has probably called arrive?" Bursamen smiled at a statue of a graceful female figure.

"I'm not sure....." Kastara again carefully replied. "Sentinels though...." he made a point to wonder.

Bursamen sharply looked back to the Bannik. Could such things still be around? The thought gave him a chill, especially since this place almost seemed to be very old. If only he knew more about these things. Still, the Bannik surely didn't mention it without a reason. Bursamen brushed his pistol under his jacket with a hand. "Hm. Where has our Minister gone, do you suppose?"

"To....communicate with her...." Kastara's gaze seemed to glass over as if he were distracted with picturing her.

"Where?" Bursamen cast a hard look at Kastara. The Bannik made a meek gesture with a finger in roughly the opposite direction they were going. "How long will the Minister's migration take I wonder?"

"Minutes. It takes just over five minutes to get there."

"It's been two....let's keep wandering further from our troubled Minister and give him about, mm, five minutes before we change our direction to rejoin him. We- wouldn't want to annoy him, hm?"

The Bannik's neck tightened in a cringe.

"And your guide....? Oshana? She is your guide, if I'm not mistaken....?"

"Yes" Kastara replied while he wrung his hands "she is Stakira, she is the guide."

"But?" Bursamen waited for the clause.

"The Minister is guide of the Stakira" Kastara confirmed.

"Dag-yo" Bursamen nodded and rolled his eyes.

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