Elysium

Chapter 8: The White Rose

The nightly stream played against the boat's hull. The shores were mostly dark, although in the upper floors of the grey buildings standing on each side, one could see a light of an oil-lamp here and a fluttering candle there. Electrical bulbs were so far only available in the most important buildings of the town centre, and we were getting further away from there at the slow speed of our stream-carried boat.

It was cramped in the boat as we were eight - in addition to our entourage, there was Siegfried, who had not wanted to be found in the Silver Smile tavern. I and Siegfried were in the middle, acting as rowers, although we only did this occasionally to keep the boat in course; the rest of the work was done by the river.

"Lohengrin and his people will talk the Palatines away", Siegfried spoke in whisper. "The regular crowd of the place represents such elements of our town population, whose reflex response to any question from the authorities is silence."

Siegfried spoke in a bookish manner, which I wasn't surprised of. I wondered more the immediacy in which he seemed to accept us as friends. He would hardly have done so if he suspected we really had murdered Uncle Shroom.

"Who are you anyway?" I asked Siegfried. "You said you're a relative of Mr Shato's. Was it he who told you about us? How did you know where we would be?"

"I'm an engineer", he said, though that didn't seem to answer to my questions. "Sardar Alim Khan was my teacher in the school for the engineers of souls."

He looked at me and waited for me to react, but I had no idea what he was talking about, and I doubted he could see my puzzled expression in the darkness.

"Ah, you don't know?" Siegfried then murmured. "I'm talking about the old man you called Uncle Shroom." I heard a deep breathing from behind, where Chairo, Vixen and Hedwig sat, sticking to each other. "He used to be the keeper for the information systems of Sangriala before the Great War", Siegfried continued. "Later, he severed his ties with the Cerebranes. He turned... well, perplexing. You know. He withdrew from people."

"You mean, he was some sort of an I.T. support guy?" I asked. Siegfried just released an awkward laughter. I didn't see his face well either.

The boat quietly floated on in darkness, and the lights from houses got scarcer. We went under a wooden-looking bridge and came out again, so quietly that even if there were people on the bridge, they wouldn't necessarily have noticed us, and as far as I could see there were none. The moon that had climbed up to the sky cast its light upon the surface of the river, and against it, I saw Brynhilde's figure staring ahead at the prow, between the figures of Max and Roland.

"Are you part of the Resistance?" I asked. I would have liked to have asked Siegfried about the travel chest and many other things, but they were still too scattered in my mind. I wanted to organize them in frameworks I knew something about. I needed my own quiet time in order to think through each issue, one by one.

Siegfried didn't answer.

"The engineers of souls are not part of the Resistance", said a voice from behind me. It was Chairo. "At least till recently, they were resurrectionists." The boy seemed to move closer to us, and I noticed Siegfried got tenser, released his grip on the oar.

"He's a friend", I said to Siegfried, as I feared he was about to pull out a weapon.

"I know", said Siegfried. "Shato told me."

Chairo settled down. "What did he tell?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Your father works for the Palatines", said Siegfried.

"He has no connection to his dad", cried Vixen out, accidentally raising her voice but quickly restraining it again, remembering we were supposed to float out of the town in silence. "We hate our parents, both of us. We'll never return to them. Never."