Chapter 23
Bread, Sadness, and Howls
The smell of baking bread filled the air, sweet, doughy, and almost entirely unhealthy. Roasted fish was also being cooked somewhere, probably outdoors. This part of the continent was consistently warm, and cooking outdoors was not unusual. The smells shouldn’t have been that strong, and Saan realized her windows had been opened; the familiar white noise of ocean crashing against shore mingled itself into all those wonderful smells.
“Time for lessons, Troublemaker,” groaned a melodic, deep voice. It was Uncle June, he was early. “Get up, get cleaned, get dressed, get geared. You know how it goes.”
“Not today,” Saan-Hu pleaded in a sticky, whiny morning voice, covering up her head with her second feather pillow. “Please? I stayed up too late last night.”
“Hmph,” grunted Uncle June disapprovingly, but you could hear the humor in that version of his grumble. “Hanging out with your towner buddies? Doing what? I’m going to guess... stealing. What would your mother say if I told her?”
That got Saan awake very fast. The girl sat up in bed with a start, the second pillow accidentally flung away to hit a wall in her small bedroom with a dull thump. Uncle June stood next to her bed, arms at his hips, glaring down with that ever-present humor in his eyes. He was tall, with short dark-blond hair stirring thanks to wind from the window he opened. He towered over the sixteen-year-old Saan. His shape was lithe, sinewy some called it, mostly the women who looked at him with hungry, half-lidded eyes. He was an incredible surfer and almost as good of a bowman, and insisted on being the one to teach Saan the latter.
“No, no, no!” Saan said too loud, and put her hands over her mouth in surprise at her volume. She continued far quieter than before. “Don’t tell her, please, please don’t tell her. She has no idea...”
Saan cut herself off, stared at June. The haze of too little sleep was driven away by the thought of getting into a lot of trouble. Now that she was very suddenly fully aware, she realized that he should not have known where she was last night. Saan was indeed “hanging out” with the boys from the town up north. Her beachside tribe village was part of the Ko Monasi clan, meaning they were isolationists and insisted on living as free from the taint of the Social Cypher as possible, and she was very much not allowed to have friends from the “unclean” world.
Saan tried to keep contact with Uncle June’s eyes and failed, casting her vision down at her sheets, all pastel green, her favorite color. “How’d you know?”
“I was told by someone. He came to visit yesterday and happened to mention it to me. Or at least he mentioned that you had done it before. I only guessed that you did it yesterday.”
“Visited,” Saan said, bewildered again. Then it clicked, and she spoke with a grimace. “The Saint. No one else new came into town yesterday. He told you.”
“Yes, it was him,” June said, smirking.
“Why?” Saan’s face was screwed up and tight with annoyance, and she found it difficult to make any other expression when talking about the Polluted One. “What did he have to do with me? Why’d he have to tell you?”
“Full of vigor, I see. Well, let’s hope you can use that in the field later.”
Saan curled both hands into fists and slammed them down pointlessly onto her soft mattress and sheets, but still kept her voice low to keep her mother from hearing. “Stupid Saint! He’s gonna get me in trouble!”
“Oh, it’s his fault you did what you did?” June said, almost prideful, a teacher giving a scalding he saw coming from an island away. “You’re not in trouble yet, not real trouble unless you count how much I’m going to grind you to dust the rest of the week for it. And calm down about Saint Dastou, he’s not so bad.”
“How can you say that about a thing that’s part of the Cypher!? I can’t believe he told on me, like I’m some... some...”
“Some kid?”
Saan grunted angrily.
“Hmmm,” June started. “Who told you to hate him?”
“I just... do.” She knew that was a pathetic answer and was deflated after giving it.
“Because others deride him,” Uncle June added. “Who told you the Saints are a part of the infrastructure system?”
“I’m not dumb,” complained Saan. She hated being talked down to. “I hear people say it. Mom. The chiefs.”
Uncle June sighed with a laugh, then sat at the edge of the bed, making it creak a little. He spoke in his normal tone of voice now, none of his numerous educator’s cadences in place. “You trust me, I know you do, and I know you will take me at my word just like I don’t take you at yours sometimes. You really are a terrible liar, by the way. Don’t know how your mom can’t tell.”
Saan laughed, the small smile on her face distinctly different that the tight, muscle-straining grimace she had a moment before. She was hoping this was the beginning of a different conversation. Anything at all would be more wholesome and useful than talking about that thing with weird eyes.
She met his eyes again. “Yeah, what a shock.”
Uncle June smiled, warm and genuine. “But the point is that you trust me, you know I wouldn’t lie to you, and I have something I should tell you.” He looked away, took a deep breath, and Saan’s smile faded. He took another deep breath, looked back at her.
“Uncle... is something wrong?”
“Hah!” he laughed. “No, not even close, kid. Something is incredibly right, actually.” Uncle June, as usual, glimpsed all around, wherever he could, only making eye-contact when he felt like it. She’d noticed she started picking up that habit, which irritated her mother, but she didn’t care too much about that. “Look. Ugh, alright, may as well just say the damn thing.”
She moved to sit on the edge of the bed now, too. This was always a better position for lessons, sitting next to him as he spoke, and Saan felt like that’s what was coming. She stayed quiet, waiting for the always joyous Uncle June to say something serious.
“Saan. The Saints, they’re not part of the Social Cypher like you think, not at all.”
Saan did everything she could not to grimace again, to show her disgust, and found that it was easy to simply listen. June was completely solemn right now, and it wouldn’t do to disrespect her favorite person in the world, no matter what he was saying.
“I talked to Saint Dastou yesterday,” June continued, “when he came to visit, like I told you. We ate together after he left a sudden meeting with the chiefs, while you were out playing.”
Saan was still keeping it together, but by a hair’s breadth. “You talked with him? Shared a meal with him?”
Uncle June nodded. “I’ve shared a meal with him and his mentor a couple of times if I’m coming clean about things. The first was when you were around ten years old, the same day you passed your first nominations.”
Saan settled her emotional state for a curious impassivity – it was at least more comfortable than the constant sneer she wanted to keep on while this subject was being talked about. While she calmed down, a flash of memories of people with knowing glances and half smiles passed through her, always at a time when she was switching moods quickly. It had been happening ever since her twelfth birthday and she couldn’t stand it – she was not some moody teen going through “changes,” she was just annoyed by the behavior of some of those adults. They weren’t as smart as they pretended to be. She let the flash of memories pass, settled down yet again, and realized she had a question.
“How did you know him and his mentor from that long ago?”
A too-loud guffaw escaped June. “’Long?’ That was six years ago, kid. Sure, that’s more than a third of your life, but not a long time when you’re grown.”
“Percentages.”
“Percentages,” Uncle June repeated with a sideways nod. “Anyhow, my older brother is a member of another entourage, so I’m connected to the Sainthood through that.”
“An older brother?” Saan whispered, trying to understand. “No one’s mentioned that at
all. I thought you only had the little sister and youngest brother, my dad.”
June raised an eyebrow, looked at her sideways. “Yes, your father and my sister would be the only ones anyone talks about for a very good reason. We’re Ko Monasi, and my big brother is in an entourage. Take a stab in the dark at what happened.”
Saan-Hu waited a moment, thought about it, then answered: “Excommunicated.” It was the worst punishment given by their clan. “Exiled and banned from returning.”
June nodded slowly. “My brother Sigrid and I make arrangements to see each other on occasion to catch up. Secretly, of course.”
“Of course,” Saan agreed, still only muttering, trying to place the name Sigrid as something that was ever been uttered and failing.
“I’m known to that group thanks to my brother,” June continued. “Three years ago, when my brother came this way to meet me at the northern town, Dastou and his mentor came along, too, and we had a long drunkenly fun dinner together. Saint Dastou sought me out when he came to visit Nebasht yesterday. We ended up talking for a while, first about my brother and what Sigrid had been up to since his patron Saint died about two years ago. Then we got to what Dastou has been up to.”
Saan still couldn’t believe it; talking to a Saint, an unclean monster according to everyone she knew and respected. Except for Uncle June it seemed, and she respected him the most. He never did have much of anything to say if talk turned toward the Sainthood. Most of the time he politely exited the conversation with some excuse or another. Some would give him strange looks when that happened, though she assumed it was because they thought he was rude. She always made sure to keep a mental tab of anyone that didn’t like June and to dislike them intensely on his behalf, and that list was made of people his age or older exclusively – ones who’d best remember the banned brother Sigrid.
June went on after a short pause. “Saint Dastou’s a nice guy. Gloomy, though, that was easy to tell. He talked with me for a few hours, almost as if he hadn’t talked to anyone seriously in a long time.”
“A few hours?” Saan muttered, as if he was revealing to her that he had an incurable disease rather than a chat with another person.
“Yes,” Uncle June said while stifling a laugh at her reaction. “He seemed a little lonely, troubled, worried. Just like anyone would be with some of the stuff he told me about his life. Never too many details, he made sure of that. I could tell one thing: he was incapable of being dishonest for the sake of it. Everything he told me was the absolute truth. It was strange.”
“Strange that he told the truth?”
“No, no. I’ve only met three Saints: my brother’s mentor, Dastou’s mentor, and Dastou. They all seemed almost ridiculously, arrogantly honest. What was strange was how he had changed. I told you I met him before yesterday, he was thirteen I think. He was brash, confident, but funny and kind. Yesterday he was muted. He still had his humor, and we enjoyed joking around, but it was like he was forcing it, like he wanted to enjoy himself completely and couldn’t get there.”
Saan was speechless. She felt that way a couple of times in her life, too. Specifically, when her own father died a few years ago. She felt lost, confused, angry at everything including herself but trying to pretend as if she wasn’t. Her face and skin and movements were hollow; she was a shell.
“Did... someone he cared about die?” she heard herself asking, almost without thinking.
“The way he talked, he was doing a lot of things on his own, and last I heard from my brother, he was starting some kind of school with that mentor, Saint Ornadais. Now it looks like that Saint is no longer around. I’m assuming that’s who passed away.”
A mentor, essentially a father-figure. Saint Dastou lost that and now he’s empty like she was. Saan winced – just from this conversation with her uncle, she had started to think of the Saint as a person instead of a horrible living taboo. Uncle June, manipulative teacher that he was, smiled at her, knowing what her state of mind was leading her into thinking.
“I have decided I’m busy right now,” Uncle June said. “Meet me at the grounds in an hour.” He walked out the room with no more words and no backwards glances, softly opening and closing her bedroom door, which featured painted flowers she smeared on by hand when she was six.
The time Uncle June gave her was outrageously generous. It would have only taken her thirty minutes to get ready at a casual pace. He was leaving her alone, with no distractions, knowing she’d end up thinking about what he said, about Saint Dastou’s hollowness, his sadness. About how he was an honest, broken man. About how he was a man.
She heard a wolf or something like it howl nearby, which was odd. She started wondering what would happen if the wolves that inhabited the depths of the nearby forest decided to come into town, and the haze of this dream began to coagulate like some combination of smoke and oil, and her awareness changed as she began to wake.
Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 34