Reap the Whirlwind

by C. J. Cherryh

  The boy stared at him blankly for a moment—then burst into tears.

  Zorsha just held him, rocking back and forth a little, weeping with him. It was all he could do.

  Gods, gods—who made him hold all this inside? Who left this to fester? Or—gods, are they all like this? Every survivor down in that camp?

  Appalling sobs shook the child, tearing themselves up out of his throat and racking his thin body.

  In that moment Zorsha learned how to hate.

  * * *

  The study was very dark; very quiet. Felaras listened to Zorsha's tight-voiced recitation with growing nausea. She had no doubt that he was retelling the tale exactly as the boy had told it to him; he was white as salt, and just barely under control. She had never seen him so angry—she rather doubted anyone had. Zorsha the calm, the easygoing, the half-asleep—Zorsha had just been awakened to something he'd never anticipated.

  When Zorsha finished, she steepled her fingers just below the level of her eyes and looked at him as searchingly as she had ever measured anyone.

  His face was as tightly controlled as his voice had been—but just beneath that tight control there still was a terrible and implacable anger. Merely speaking had not purged him of it; if anything, it had intensified it. She was finding herself very glad that she was not the object of it.

  "And your analysis?" she said, finally.

  "I was trained to always demand both sides of a story, Felaras. Frankly, I don't care to hear the other side of this one. I really don't want to know what could bring men to act like that—like rabid beasts. All I want to do is destroy the beasts and the thing that made them that way. Which, to my analysis, is the Talchai and the Suno."

  "That's not a rational way of looking at something—"

  "I don't want to be rational!" he hissed. "You weren't with the boy down there; I was. You didn't look into that dead little face—into those hopeless eyes. This was a fourteen-year-old boy, Felaras! A child that age couldn't make something like this up!"

  "I never suggested that he had," she said, overcome by a profound weariness for a moment. Why me? Why is it me who must face this? Deal with this? Somehow rectify this? "Is he all right?"

  "I think so. As all right as he'll ever be. When he ran out of strength to cry, I carried him back to his room; Kasha got Boitan and Boitan gave him something that made him sleep. Boitan said he thinks this actually did the boy some good—'catharsis,' he called it." Zorsha shook his head, and only now did Felaras see that his eyes were red from weeping of his own. "I stayed with him until he was under. Kasha's with him now, and his dog." He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair; a white-knuckled grip that would have cracked weaker wood. "Felaras, the weapons the boy suggested are inhumane—and I want to construct them. I want to use them. I want to drive home the lesson that what the Talchai did will be paid for. I want them to think that every god above and every demon below has turned its hand against them. I want to make retribution so terrible that no one will ever contemplate atrocity like that against anyone again. And I want the Talchai, above all else, to know the reason why this is falling on them."

  She parted her hands and looked at them with surprise; they were shaking. She'd thought her control was better than that—but the story had gotten past her defenses enough to make her tremble with the effort of holding in her own reaction. "Do me this favor, Zorsha. First, sleep on it. Second, speak with Jegrai and Northwind. Then decide. If you still want to construct these things—I'll back you. Reasonable?"

  He nodded curtly.

  "I'm going to ask a very personal question, and remember, it's because I've made you my successor and I have to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Why this boy? You haven't—" Her face flamed with embarrassment, and she looked away.

  He read the embarrassment correctly, and snorted. "No, Felaras, I'm not a pederast. Gods help him, that would be the last thing Yuchai would need! No, set your mind at ease on that subject; I still want Kasha, quite healthily, let me tell you. It's because—I look at Yuchai, and I see myself all over again. He's enough like me inside to be my own son—more like me, probably, than a son would be. I've come to love him for his brave little soul and his bright mind as surely as if he'd been born my son." His face hardened. "And they hurt him. Hurt him in a way no physician can deal with. I think that no matter what Boitan says, the only thing that's going to truly let him heal and let him put his mind on something besides revenge is to get revenge. Or at least the promise of it."

  Felaras nodded, slowly. "That makes a peculiar kind of sense." She cleared her throat a little. "I shouldn't admit this, but I agree with you. On everything. Just follow through on those promises, all right? Let's at least give this the appearance of rational thinking."

  The chair legs scraped harshly on the floor as he pushed away from the desk and stood up. "I'd like to stay with him in case he has nightmares. Boitan thought he might."

  "Fine, go ahead," she replied absently, still trying to make some kind of sense out of the catalog of horrors Zorsha had recited so tonelessly. "Send Kasha back here, would you?"

  She stared at the flame of the single candle on her desk, letting it mesmerize her, trying to see some reason, any reason, behind what seemed so unreasonable. The things the Order, as a group and as individuals, had endured in the past—those things were actually understandable. Fear of the unknown, hatred for the foreign, greed, the desire for power—all normal human motivations. But this—

  Even at third hand, it chilled her. Jegrai hadn't gone into the personal details of what had happened to his Clan. If he had, she might well have given him his bargain months before. But then again, she might have suspected an adult of fabricating at least part of the story—

  Poor Yuchai. She couldn't begin to imagine what it had been like to live through it.

  A shadow passed between her eyes and the candle flame, and she started.

  Kasha was sitting on the edge of her desk, and had just waved her hand in front of Felaras's eyes to get her attention.

  "I had a word with Shenshu and Demonsbane," she said quietly. "They've been figuring the boy for a breakdown for a while. Seems his father is one of those stone-faced, iron-willed types who finds any show of emotion something less than honorable. They're relieved, both that it came, and that Yuchai had an acceptable father-substitute with him to get him through the worst of it. They couldn't speak too highly of Zorsha, both for his handling of the situation and for his compassion. Right now, so far as Shenshu's concerned, Zorsha hung the moon."

  Felaras shook her head. "That's not what's bothering me. It's why. How could human beings do that to other human beings?"

  Kasha sighed. "I can only tell you what they told me. First, that this Khene Sen is just as charismatic and persuasive as -Jegrai—and he's twelve years older. He had a lot of time to get his people brought around to his way of thinking. Second, that Sen's mother was Suno; an alliance marriage. Now think about what Teo told us: the Suno consider all other races to be inferior. Fit only to serve, to enslave."

  Felaras nodded, seeing the pieces falling into place, seeing the pattern start to emerge.

  "Put those two things together, add what the Suno have probably been telling Khene Sen, about how superior, how great a leader he is, and about how much they can give him—and then produce Jegrai. Charismatic, brilliant—and young. Young enough to beat Sen just by outliving him. And you get?"

  Felaras sucked in a breath. "A very frightened man; a man who sees the possibility of being cornered staring him in the face. A man who sees the way to exterminate that threat now if he just acts quickly enough."

  Kasha nodded. "That was basically what Demonsbane figured. 'Exterminate' is a good word-choice—remembering that Sen is half-Suno."

  "Uh-huh; I can see that, especially if he's been doing his best to ignore the nomad half of his breeding. He wouldn't let his people see it as anything other than exterminating a dangerous predator—no worse than killing, oh, a plague of rat
s. But why not just use assassination?"

  Kasha shrugged. "Damned if I know. Maybe because if Sen had pulled that little trick, he'd have lost everybody but his own Clan. The other Clans would have reckoned that if Sen would use a dishonorable tactic like assassination on Jegrai, he'd be perfectly willing to use it on anybody. Remember, even Sen pays at least lip-service to honor."

  "So he makes it look honorable—at least to his own folk—to take Jegrai out by getting rid of the entire Clan?"

  "Exactly. And by the time he got finished speaking to his fighters, they'd be ready to exterminate with enthusiasm. Remember, I've been there when Jegrai primed us to go hunting the rebels; I know what that kind of speaker can do. Frankly, we are just damned lucky Jegrai is rational, reasonable, and willing to listen to anybody's side."

  "But why haven't we seen other children as emotionally scarred as Yuchai?" That was the last piece that wouldn't drop into place.

  Kasha looked sick. "Felaras—we haven't seen any, because there aren't any. Haven't you noticed? Yuchai is the only young adolescent. Fourteen and over—now eighteen and over—were out with the herds. Younger than ten—some managed to hide and didn't see the actual slaughter. But all the rest, including Yuchai's peer group, were out in the open and cut down. That poor boy is the only child that saw what happened and was old enough to remember it clearly."

  "Oh, gods—"

  "Felaras, if anyone can purge him of this, it'll be his own people and ours working together. He's in the best possible hands." She smiled, a kind of rueful, self-deprecating smile. "I never knew Zorsha had this in him, frankly. One of the things that always annoyed me a bit was the way he seemed to drift through emotional encounters without ever getting pulled into the current. Teo has always cared passionately for things, and showed it. Zorsha always seemed . . . half asleep. I guess I was wrong about him."

  "Looks like you might have been, a bit. But if you were, so was I." Felaras stretched out her ringers, and winced as the knuckles popped. "Kasha, you have just done me a world of good. I didn't know what to make of this story. It sounded like these Talchai were all mad, or drugged, or—or bespelled."

  "Oh, no doubt there was some of that last, too. Demonsbane thinks Sen has a whole stable of very powerful wizards. With enough folk luck-wishing him while he was speaking, he could likely get anybody to believe anything."

  "That, I can deal with. That, I can defend against. Furthermore—" she paused as a thought struck her. "You know, it would do no harm to spread a couple of these stories of Yuchai's about the Order. Let our people get some notion of what's out there. We won't frighten the timid ones any more than they already are, and we might give the complacent ones some food for reflection. I think that most of them can add two and two—and realize that even if we'd had nothing to do with Jegrai, mad dogs like the Talchai seem to be would still tear our throats out in passing."

  "Done," Kasha nodded. "I'll get Father and Boitan on it, and Kitri. Now, as your duly appointed watchdog, I say you should hie yourself off to bed before you fall over at your desk. You're beginning to sound a little drunk, and that's nothing more than fatigue."

  Felaras stood up slowly, and wanted to groan—every joint ached. "Rain coming," she observed. "Before too long, by the way my knees feel."

  As if to substantiate her observation, a very distant murmur of thunder mumbled at the open window, and there was a barely visible flicker of light that showed against the edge of the mountains beyond.

  "Then you need to get to bed," Kasha said sternly.

  "I need to make my rounds, first," she replied just as stubbornly. "Then I'd like to look in on the boy, I think. Have a word with one of the other nomads myself, first."

  Kasha shrugged, and spread her hands in defeat. "All right, have it your way. You will anyway. I'll tell you what, I'll put everything to rights, and then catch up with you. I'm not exactly ready to embrace the god of slumber myself just yet. Too many things to think about."

  "And most of them grim." Felaras moved around her desk, and paused in the door. "Thanks . . ."

  "Oh, get. You're so tired you'd make more of a mess than you'd clean up, putting things back in the wrong places," Kasha mocked. "And then tomorrow morning it would be 'Kasha, I can't find this, Kasha, have you seen that, Kasha, where did I put my stylus—'"

  "Enough, enough!" Felaras ducked her head and winced. "I yield, I yield! I'll see you in a bit."

  "Don't let anyone trap you into a night-long discussion."

  Felaras let the door close on that last admonition, and headed stiffly down the corridor.

  Gods. I'm getting old. I feel it more every time it rains. She sighed, and rubbed the knuckles of her writing hand. I should complain—there's a child in the room next to mine with a soul in ragged little shreds. There's a young man down at the bottom of the mountain with the lives of his people literally in his hands. My successor has just learned the hard way how vile men can be. And I'm fretting because my bones ache when it rains.

  The Fortress could well have been deserted; the lamps along the corridor were turned to their lowest, and there was nothing to break the silence except her own footsteps. Being so high up on the Pass was a mixed blessing in summer—the air cooled down rapidly at night, but that same cold gave nearly everyone over the age of forty stiff joints overnight.

  Still, the cool of the corridor was a blessed relief from the blazing sun that had baked its way even into Felaras's study. This was the time of year when the Master's Folly was not so foolish after all—if you were young enough not to have to worry about aching bones when there was dew on your bed come the dawn.

  Selfish, selfish, thinking about myself, my aching bones. Or—is it? Maybe not. No, I'm not fretting because my bones ache—I'm fretting because that aching is the sign that my time is getting shorter. I'm getting old—my joints are going, but how long does my mind have? Or the rest of me? Will I have enough time to give Zorsha the training he needs? Did I wait too long before picking one of the lads? Gods, I wish you'd give me some notion of how much time I've got left.

  As if answering her unspoken prayer, thunder boomed almost directly overhead, so close that she could feel the stone of the Fortress vibrating with it under her feet.

  She sniffed, and took the turning that led to the old dead-ended corridor lined with workrooms on both sides. Telling me that's hubris, gods? Or just warning me that however long I have, it's not going to seem like enough time?

  This time there was a pause before the thunder pealed again, and she almost smiled at the realization that she had been on the verge of looking to the thunder to answer her.

  The corridor was properly deserted at this hour—but it was part of the rounds. If there was anyone working here this late, Felaras wanted to be aware of the fact. Gods, I'm as bad as Diermud. Next thing you know, I'll be talking to quartz crystals—and listening for answers. If fancies begin, can senility be far behind?

  Something impinged on, then disrupted her thoughts. A current of air, a shadow that didn't belong—whatever it was that alerted her allowed reflex to save her life.

  She only knew that she sensed—wrong—and dropped to the floor and shoulder-rolled without a thought for aching joints and fragile bones.

  And a stone came hissing past the place where her head had been to smack into the stone of the wall and clatter to the floor.

  She was on her feet again with her back to the wall and her eyes scanning the corridor in two heartbeats. And cursing the carelessness that had left her belt-knife on her desk, where she'd used it to slit open some letters.

  A blot of shadow separated from the rest and moved toward her, bulking huge against the wall. Blocky, looking like it should be clumsy—and moving like a hunting lion. Only one person within these walls looked and moved like that, or carried himself with his shoulders so high and tense.

  "Zetren," she whispered.

  He moved into the light. "Witch," he snarled, as thunder crashed again overhead. "Bitch-queen, thin
k you're going to be a queen, don't you? Think this pretty boy barbarian's going to set you up as Mother-Goddess and then conquer the world for you, do you? Reckon you can use the rest of us as a staircase to a throne—"

  "Zetren," she said, honestly bewildered, feeling the wall behind her for support. "What in hell are you talking about?"

  He ignored her—really, it didn't even seem as if he'd heard her. "Going to make us all your little fetch-and-carrys, like you did with those three lackeys of yours, aren't you? Figure you've got us all outsmarted—"

  "Zetren—"

  "I was too smart for you, bitch. I saw where you were going, even if nobody else believed me. I had you figured. And you can ill-wish me all you want, but this time it isn't going to stop me—"

  He lunged for her, and she dodged and spun herself out of his way with real, cold fear closing around her throat. This corridor was deserted; there were no eager young Hands down here this night. Zetren was stronger than she was—faster; she couldn't possibly outrun him, even if she could get past him into the clear corridor.

  She couldn't outlast him, either.

  And she didn't dare take him on hand-to-hand; he hadn't been spending the last few years pushing papers around, he was in better shape than she was. He'd make pulp out of her.

  "Zetren, what in hell do you think you're doing?" she gasped, sidestepping a deadly blow aimed at her neck, throwing herself away from him, and coming up against the stone wall with force that would leave her bruised. "You hurt me, and—"

  "Not going to hurt you, bitch," he snarled, the red madness of the bear brought to bay in his eyes. "Going to kill you—"

  He lashed out again; this time she managed to get in a quick side-kick of her own to his midsection and get out of grabbing distance, further down toward the dead end, before he could react. He oofed under the impact, but recovered quickly and pivoted into a counterattack faster than she would have believed possible.

  "Going to kill you," he growled again, as thunder shook the walls, destroying her hope of anyone hearing a call for help. "Drop you down your own damn staircase. Senile old bitch trips and falls—no one'll think anything about it."