“I know,” Piemur murmured. Smiling, he put both hands on the rail, one on either side of Jancis. When she became aware of the maneuver, he grinned down at her, waiting for her reaction. “And what do they say about Journeyman Piemur?”
She dared him, the dimple flashing in her cheek, a dark spot on her moonlit face. “What they say about any harper journeyman, of course. That they’re not to be trusted for a moment.”
Slowly, so she could escape if she really wanted to, and he hoped very much that she did not, he lowered his head and brought his arms up to hold her. “Especially not on moonlit nights like this, huh?” He touched her lips very gently with his, aware that they were parted in a smile and that she had no intention of ducking away at the last moment. Abruptly she was pushed forcefully into his arms. He tightened them to keep her from falling just as her arms went around him to steady herself. “Thank you, Stupid, that’ll do quite nicely.” And Piemur made excellent use of his runner’s headlong assistance.
If Piemur and Jancis were preoccupied with each other the next morning at the dawn breakfast that Master Robinton had ordered, the others were far too intent on arriving on time at the Plateau to notice. D’ram would convey the Harper, Piemur, and Jancis to the ADMIN building. Lytol had declined to go along.
“I think he’s noticeably fading,” Robinton murmured to D’ram as they strode to Tiroth’s clearing. “Jaxom remarked on it to me.”
“He’s fine, Robinton, really he is. It’s just that like all of us, he can’t do as much as he used to,” D’ram replied, his expression sad. “Jaxom’s news about a second child cheered him.”
“It cheered me, too. Ah, Tiroth, you’re very good to haul us to and fro,” the Harper said, giving the elderly bronze an affectionate clout as he climbed up to sit between the neck ridges. “Hand Jancis up to me, Piemur. I’ll see she’s safe. You can hold on to me as tightly as you wish, my dear.”
“You keep your hands to yourself, Master,” Piemur said in a mock growl, ascending first and then assisting Jancis to the position behind him. He ignored the protests from his stiff muscles and tender bruises.
“Where’s your respect for my age, my position?” the Harper demanded, laughing as he mounted just in front of the journeyman.
“Where it always has been, Master,” Piemur assured him heartily. “Where I can keep my eye on you!”
D’ram was chuckling as he mounted, and Tiroth’s powerful upward leap brought Jancis’s arms clutching at Piemur’s. He covered her hands on his chest with his, very pleased to feel her pressing so tightly against him. They all had a good view of the Dawn Sisters shining in the morning sky before Tiroth took them between.
The Sisters were still in sight when they arrived at the Plateau and skimmed up from the landing strip to the dark shadows of the mounds and the spot where the light of many glowbaskets told them the excavation crew was all ready to go. Indeed, they learned shortly, Master Fandarel had already outlined the area to be dug and the first shovelsful had been removed.
“Master Robinton, D’ram, good morning. Jancis, Piemur. We calculate a full span’s encrustation. I also deemed it wise to remove the tiles, so obviously a temporary cover. Last night I compared them with some still in place on the flying ships, and I believe that it is the same material, though none of the ships seem to be missing any significant number. That confirms my theory that originally there were more than three ships.”
“I think that’s likely,” Master Robinton agreed, shivering a bit in the cool dawn air. “The fire-lizards’ images always suggest more than three. Twice that many, and even with six the labor of transporting all those things from the Dawn Sisters to the surface here would have been astounding.”
Someone brought stools and hot klah so that Master Robinton and D’ram could be made comfortable while the digging progressed. Jancis and Piemur stood to one side, sipping at the klah. Piemur tried to suppress the irritation he felt that their private little dig had turned so official. Jancis was rather more subdued than he liked. This was her find, her hunch. She should be directing the work. True, she could not really expect to take precedence over her grandfather, but they all seemed to have forgotten that the whole effort was due to her discovery of the ancient drawing film. It had been one thing to ask Jaxom to help, but not the whole bloody Plateau, The lumps on his head began to throb.
As the sun came up, he realized that someone had worked hard during the night to strip the tiles from the roof. The panels stood completely clear, a long finger-length above the original roof. Some of the cladding remained on the walls, but a trench had been cut through the soil, right down to the tar-based material with which the ancients had paved the walks and roadways between their buildings.
Suddenly a cheer went up. Grabbing Jancis by the hand, Piemur pushed past the crowd clustering in a loose circle about the dig area. Master Fandarel and Master Robinton had been ushered to the newly uncovered door. It was not one of the common sliding doors of the ancients but had instead two equal-sized panels.
“I beg your pardon, Master Fandarel and Master Robinton, but this building was Jancis’s hunch, and she should by rights go first!” Piemur heard Jancis gasp in astonishment and felt her pull against his grip. He ignored the bemused expressions of the two Mastercraftsmen as he hauled Jancis right up to the doors. He heard Master Esselin’s indignant exclamation and Breide’s acid comment about harper arrogance, and the ripple of surprise passing back through the small crowd. Jancis tried to pull him back, tried to free her hand.
“You know, you are right, Piemur,” Robinton said, stepping to one side. “We have usurped Jancis’s prerogative.”
“After you, Jancis,” Fandarel said. He spoke with the utmost courtesy but looked thoughtfully at Piemur.
Seeing that Jancis was too dismayed to act, Piemur stepped beside her, looking for the method of opening the door. He could see none, but there was no way that he would have turned back to the Smith for assistance. He scrutinized the door more carefully. There was an unusual hinge arrangement, but no knob or latch. He put one hand on an obvious doorplate and pressed. There was the resistance of long unmoved parts, then dust and ash showered down from the gap between the doors. He pushed with both hands, and the door began to move inward. Jancis rallied from her embarrassment sufficiently to lend her weight, and suddenly the door swung completely inward, marking its path in the fine dust that had filtered inside over the Turns.
Piemur pulled the other side back, opening the doors wide to the fresh morning breeze blowing softly up the Plateau and swirling the dust in the corridor. Then he turned around, gesturing for one of the glowbaskets. Soon the sun would bring light into the hallway, but he did not want to delay a single moment. A judicious two paces behind Jancis and Piemur, Masters Fandarel and Robinton entered.
“A corridor to the right,” Piemur said, holding the glowbasket up in his left hand while he kept his right one firmly around Jancis’s wrist. She was not resisting him anymore, he thought, grinning to himself. She just needed to assert herself a little more and no one was going to do her out of her rights, not while he was around.
Now that he was making the first footprints the ashy floors had felt in who knew how many Turns, he was beginning to be appalled at his own brashness, but he had gotten away with it—again. He grinned. He turned to his right again, and with the added illumination from the glowbaskets carried by Robinton and Fandarel, he could see more tiling, whitely gleaming at the end of the short hallway. “They sure weren’t taking any chances with aivas.”