Chapter 14: The First Daughter

Olivia Treas, First Daughter of Yeley, sat outside of her parents' apartments, attempting to emulate grace and patience, as her heart thumped at the opportunity that she had been waiting for. She held her hands together in her lap, and her back was straight upon one of the ancient wooden waiting chairs in the sunlit open corridor within the temple of Det’em.

She was purposefully not paying any attention, nor wanting to acknowledge the existence of her personal guard, Kinen Efreet, who was making noises every time he leaned over in his exosuit in an attempt to see whether she was still angry with him. Which she was.

He had been there with them, the new guests that Harold had welcomed earlier that day, and he had told her nothing about them at all. Not even when she ordered him to. While she applauded his loyalty to orders, he had also been with her long enough now that he should have known when it was appropriate to break rules. This was one of those times. She heard his armour shift again as he peered down at her.

“Not yet”, she said in response to his nonverbal inquiry. He straightened up and looked back out of the window to the city of Det’em below. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He really did have a pained expression on his face. Usually, he had a proud expression cast on his tan skin, under the neatly trimmed dark hair cut that was standard for the Temple guard. Now, he just looked like a regretful child, caught red-handed.

She listened closely at the door again, but could only hear muffled voices. Her father was currently in his security meeting with Captain Moran, head of the Temple guard. A more and more common occurrence nowadays. No doubt discussing the political uprising that was being seen on Yeley. She knew that Harold was in there, but she knew that in meetings like this, he usually remained quiet. He would observe, and then once the meeting was done, advise. Hopefully, he would fill her in on what was happening.

Harold was often the same in their lessons. He would bring up a topic for Liv to break down, and then, once she had explained as much as she knew about the subject, with brief but important questions from Harold, he would formally start the lesson. According to Harold, she was being taught wisdom. She thought she was being taught how to be a bureaucrat.

“I was ordered not to my lady,” said Efreet from her other side.

“And I ordered you to tell me everything”, she turned back to him and gave a harsh look, “And you still didn't”, she snapped. Even she recognised it, but if she was going to start official actions as the First Daughter of Yeley, she was going to need to throw her weight around a bit more.

He sighed deeply and dropped his head in defeat, “You are right, I am sorry, Lady Olivia”. She watched him for a moment, opening her resonance, and seeing his threads, the strands of energy belonging to people that were only visible to her. His faint purple threads were fewer in number than usual, and they seemed to droop slightly as they moved around him in the torus field.

“Shh!” She didn't want him to know that she was paying that much attention to him. She continued to listen at the door.

Suddenly she heard footsteps coming towards the door and she straightened herself up quickly, trying to act as composed as possible. The door opened, and Captain Moran walked out of the apartments, his big frame almost taking up most of the door. He looked down with his bald head and thick black moustache, and bowed slightly to her.

“Lady Olivia”, he said in his genial voice. She bowed her head to him but remained seated, as was decorum.

“Just keep an eye on them, Moran, that’s all”, said her father from the doorway, easily leaning his lean, tall body against the frame, with his blonde hair held up in a loose knot atop his head. His usual flowing white robes were worn more loosely than when in public. The Captain agreed and bowed down to both her father and herself as he left. She heard the Captain tap Efreet on the shoulder as he left.

“I thought I told Harold to move these waiting chairs to the other side of the passage?” said Pac Traes, looking down at her with a wry smile on his face. She stood up, in fine dignity and looked up at her father,

“I asked him to move them back, they look better on this side”

“And they let you listen in on my meetings better”, he added teasingly..

“And that”, she admitted, walking through the door and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Who does Moran need to watch? Is it Grasci again? What have they done this time?”

“Yes, Grasci, and no, they haven't done anything yet, which is why we just need to watch them. We don’t want to force them into the very actions we are trying to avoid. I would have thought that Harold would have spoken to you about security dilemmas?”

“He did”, she responded easily, seeing his point. She entered the main entrance of her parents' apartments. It was a large, half-covered patio made of the same stone as the rest of the temple, and it gave a view over the entire city and the fields that surrounded it. In the far distance, though not visible to her, she knew that the small farmhouse that her parents kept lay hidden in the trees. The large stone hands of Det’em hung just above this level, and they always covered the view in a fine mist, which refracted into a rainbow. It had been her favourite place in the temple as a child.

She joined the large wooden table on the patio where her parents hosted their various meetings, after giving her mother a sweeping kiss on her cheek, too, but she was distracted by something in her hands. Her mother, Eher Traes, was slim and blonde, like her father; in fact, it was only Liv out of her family who had dark hair.

Her mother flashed her a quick smile and then returned to the item that Harold was showing her. Liv peeked over to see what it was as she was taking a seat, while trying to be as professional as possible. It was, after all, a big day. Hopefully, today, she would be able to start performing official duties expected of the First Daughter of Yeley, something that she had been waiting for for years. It was only because of these new guests that she might be getting the chance to do so.

She took her seat and received a wink from Shilu Salfour, the personal guard of Harold. She was a Hulfean, like Harold, and held the normal traits that were familiar in all Hulfeans, bar Harold himself. She was well built, sturdy and had what Liv liked to call ‘Hulfean determination’. Something that even Harold appreciated the concept of. She didn't know what else to call it, but to her, all other Hulfeans that she had ever met had a steeliness about them. A sharp focus on what was directly in front of them.

Efreet went and stood next to Shilu, looking sheepish as the taller woman gave him a knowing smirk. She heard the woman very quietly say,

“You could have told her, you know,” to which Liv nodded to Efreet, ensuring that he knew that she had heard. Her attention was quickly pulled back to her mother, as she said to Harold,

“And it has to be this coin?” holding up an old coin.

“And only that coin, Lady Eher”, said Harold, his bald head glistening in the light, and his eyes barely open with his usual smile.

“That’s from our guests?” she tried to strain her neck without lifting from her chair. Her mother noticed and chuckled, handing the coin over to her.

“Refugees is more appropriate, I think”, said her father, taking his place at the head of the table and wrapping his fingers around the neck of his wine glass. Harold just smiled.

“They were sent here by one of your contacts, correct, Harold?” She recognised her overly formal tone and received knowing looks from all in the room, including the guards. “What I mean to say is, who was this contact of yours? You trust them?”

“I do, Lady Olivia, I do. In fact, I trust that person as much as I trust myself,” he said with a wink.

“So then you know why they are here?” This was the question that she had been dying to ask. Why would three people be sent to a planet with less than a day's warning and be asked to be placed into the planetary Head’s home, all in secret? Who were they? What were they running from?

“No idea”, said Harold softly, smiling at her. Liv just looked at him for a moment, and she could see the unease on her parents' expressions. She opened her resonance for just a moment, and saw the unease in her mother's usually easy-flowing white threads, and even momentary jitters in her father's yellow structured threads, normally a complex structured torus. It was only Harold's that seemed to be unchanging with its familiar vibrant blue with occasional green flecks. Both guards had their threads severely dampened, but that was more due to the effects of the exo-suits than the situation.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“We ran all three biometrics once they arrived”, said Shilu Salfour, stepping forward in the vacuum of anything concrete from Harold. “It also seems that Harold here,” she said, placing a firm hand on the back of his chair, “hasn't got out of character yet either.” Harold didn't react, “He put on his finest senile act that I’ve seen so far”

“So that’s an act, is it?” her father said with good humour. He waved for Shilu to continue, and the guard placed a small bead on the table, which shot light into the air and formed a hologram with the spinning images of someone called Paba Rebapa.

“From what we can tell, Paba was a researcher within the core, at the Manin University on Seviv, where she studied Neurodynamic programming as well as Cognitive Computing Architecture with a specialisation in Synaptic Network Arrays. That was until a year ago when she vanished from the system, but no information about her leaving seems to exist,” Shilu said as the image of Paba spun. “She is apparently casting herself off as a pilot at the moment”

“Clever girl,” said her father.

“Seviv’s prestigious. You need to have some talent to get on that planet. Talents are documented, this is all you can find?” said Eher from Harold's side, her long limbs folding in on themselves.

“Yes, my lady. From what our team mentioned, it looks as though some information has been redacted,” a crime in itself, thought Liv. Her mother's threads slowed as she thought about that.

“Next, is Lieutenant Angela Lawrence”, continued Shilu, and an image of a tough-looking woman with short greying hair showed up on the screen.

“Hulfean?” Liv instinctively. Seeing that same steely determination that she was used to. Shilu bowed her head,

“Yes, my lady. From Tole,” the word rang silence in the room, and Liv suddenly felt rather sorry that she had said anything. She knew very well what Tole had meant to Hulf. Shilu pressed on clearly not wanting to linger on lost systems. “She was part of the 37th Reon during the war. They were right on the front lines for most of the war. She stayed in the military after the war was done, at which point it looks like she placed a transfer request to the Dorlec that didn't appear to have been approved, but that was nearly twenty years ago, and it's the last mention of her”

“So she probably did move over to the Dorlec?” said Eher, looking up at the woman, who, now that Liv knew that she was a soldier, couldn't see her as anything else.

“Presumably. It is not uncommon for Houses to share military personnel, but it is uncommon for a Hulfean to join the Dorlec. There is very little love lost between the two Houses. Also, there is nothing in her record that suggests she would be a candidate for…clandestine operations”.

“That we can see”, Pac Traes said from the head of the table. “No indication as to where she has been?”

“Their ship's logs have Gol as their last location. It’s a small moon about a day and a half’s jump, but there doesn't appear to have ever been anything there”

“Is that why you mentioned clandestine operations?” Liv said, wrapped in all of this.

“Or it could have been a waypoint where they collected the ship. We dont know. Military records and thorough, what’s suspicious is how patchy hers is” The room went silent for a moment, and Liv knew that everyone was thinking the same thing: A former researcher that needed to vanish, and an ex-soldier with a dubious past just walked into their home, and they had know idea why they were here.

“The last one?” Liv said, hoping that this would provide answers to some of the questions that had been swimming in her mind. Shilu took a deep breath, and the hologram changed to a young man about the same age as her. His skin was not pale, but almost greying, and his hair was a mess of knots, but he wore a genuine smile, and…Liv looked up at the Hologram again. It only had his name, just one name.

“This is Meno, and, unfortunately, that is all we know about him”, Shilu said, seeming embarrassed.

“Not even a last name?” said Eher, leaning forward now.

“No, My Lady, in fact, we can’t find any trace of him, anywhere that we look. We are taking his word that Meno is actually his name. He has no identification number, no place of birth, and no trace that we can find anywhere. I’m sorry, but that’s all we have for now, but we do believe, as he was the coin bearer, and due to the lack of information about him, that he may be the one needing protection.” Again, the room stilled. Liv just looked up at the boy. How was that possible? There were records on everyone. You couldn't use money without an ID, you couldn't live on a planet without being registered, you couldn’t go anywhere without Holocams tracing your every move. How could he effectively not exist? She needed to know.

“Tech, resonance scores?” said Pac, his eyes caught on the boy.

“Meno and Paba have comms tech, same model and there is nothing strange with it. Lawrence has nothing on her at all, which is the reason why I think clandestine services.” Shilu nodded down to Liv in answer to her previous question. “No resonance indicators have been picked up yet, but I would appreciate a seer’s opinion”. For the first time, Liv recognised that this briefing was happening without Moran, the captain of the guard. Was this being played that close to the chest?

“I can do that”, Liv said, knowing that her resonance would be a fit. “When can I meet them?” She was met with silence and a shared glance between her parents. She looked at her mother, from whom she had received the promise. The promise that she would start to take on official duties as First Daughter.

“I’m not sure this is the best time to start your duties, Liv”, said her father, supporting her mother. Liv started, but Pac raised his hand gently, “You’ve just seen how little we know about these people? One of them is a soldier…”

“And Harold has placed them in apartments right outside the guard's barracks”

“Liv,” her mother said sympathetically, “This one might just be…”

“They are going to be our guests, correct? Harold, I assume that they have not come with a definitive leaving date?” the old advisor tried to hide a snigger. “So I’m bound to run into them at some point?”

“Olivia”, her mother said, but she pressed on,

“Besides, I see this as the perfect time for me to take up the role. If it were me making the decision, it would be as plain as day” she said to a cocked head from her father. She quickly corrected herself, “I will be within the temple walls, surrounded by soldiers and will have both Efreet and Shilu in company when first meeting with them. We can even alert the rest of the Guard. Shilu just said, a seer's eye would be appreciated”, she added defiantly, before slinking back into a very ladylike manner. Her father just looked at her with a sigh. She looked over to her mother, “And you promised” Her mother chuckled, and her father placed his elbow on the table and rested his forehead in his hand. Harold gave her a wink.

She heard the whistling of the air moving out of his nose, which he always did when considering something.

“You will take Harold with you as well. Shilu, alert the guard to this. I want an escort,” he conceded as Shilu nodded sharply. Liv beamed around the table, feeling the air around her power her up. “You,” he said, pointing at his daughter, “Will have a shield on when you enter the room. Go with Efreet now to get it equipped” he looked at Efreet, “One of the new ones. Harold and Shilu will join you shortly”

“Thank you, father”, Liv said with a graceful bow. He nodded sarcastically and watched her move from the room with far too much enthusiasm. Liv swept across the floor with Efreet following close behind.

Pac waited for the door to close, and for a brief few seconds to pass - she was, after all, always listening at doors - before he spoke again.

“You really don’t know who these people are?” Eher said directly to Harold, breaking the silence.

“I do not, my lady, but…” he said, holding up the small coin, “The boy, Meno, brought this, and as I said before, only a very select group of people know about this coin”. Pac shook his head. It was just a coin, but it was also Harold telling him to trust it. Since the day that he arrived, he had trusted Harold, and he had never led them astray. This was his daughter, thought. He held out his hand, and Shilu picked the coin up from Harold and brought it over. He passed it in his hands and saw that it was just an ancient Hulfean, metal coin.

“The one who gave this to the boy, he’s one of you?” asked Pac. The advisor bowed his head in agreement.

“What promise does it come with?” Pac asked, turning the coin over in his hands.

“The one who is given it should be protected, and I am coming”, Pac looked over to his wife, who wore the same expression he felt on his face. That deep worry that sinks into the bones and squeezes the head. That sickening feeling which makes you question all of your decisions.

“So that is why they are here? For protection?” Harold again nodded, though this time solemnly.

“I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you, Harold, that we are already under pressure. We do not need anyone coming here looking for them”

“My Lord, they are here because they need the same level of protection that you have offered to…”

“That’s precisely the point, Harold”, interjected Eher. “Them being here may have just put Liv in jeopardy”

“I understand my lady. I will only be speaking to the Kvasir this evening, until then, I will not truly understand why they are here”. Pac believed him, but at the same time, awful thoughts circulated through his mind.

“Is this possibly connected to Grasci’s rise?” said Eher, voicing his own concerns, like she always did. Harold shook his head.

“That is not what this coin's purpose is. It does not mobilise, nor does it bear any warning. It simply establishes trust”. Pac locked eyes with his wife, and they held them there for a moment, a moment where they truly understood each other.

“Meet with them, Harold” Pac said picking up his glass of wine and leaning back in his chair, “Make sure Liv uses her threads to understand them better, and…” he passed a heavy glance to Shilu, “Regardless of what this coin may mean, if you see anything out of place, or if my daughter is in any type of danger, kill them immidiately” he recieved a reluctant nod from Shilu and Harold. His wife nodded to him. Regardless of what was to come, Olivia was their number one priority. Nothing would change that.