Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  “But if you worked it out that easily, won’t the people chasing us be able to do the same?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I only left a couple of them standing. Besides, they don’t know you like I do. Though even I didn’t expect you to go to church in the middle of the night.”

  “So what were you doing there?”

  Burns smiled. “I made some friends in the past couple days. They gave me word the moment you got into town, but I wanted to keep an eye on you from a distance at first, just to make sure nobody else was watching.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing so far.”

  Clive had a question he needed to ask, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. “I take it you’re alone?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean . . .” He took a deep breath. “They shot Ma just as we were leaving, but Da was still alive.”

  “I’m sorry, Clive. Last thing I saw was one of those men give your father one right in the belly. That’s when I took off. I’d done everything I could.” Burns gave Clive a moment to take this in, but no more. “And the rest of you, your brother and the Poplin sisters, you’re all well enough?”

  “I suppose so. Alive, anyway.”

  “They have you to thank for that. Not easy leading a bunch of moody children across the country.”

  “It was only a few days. And I couldn’t have done it without Irene. She knows the land better than any of us. There were a few times—”

  “Hold up a minute,” Burns interrupted. “You’re telling me that girl from Wilmington is still with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  The sergeant laughed, loudly enough to draw the attention of the men at the bar. “Well, she sure knows what she wants, doesn’t she?”

  Clive frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Use your head, Clivey. A farmer’s daughter is out on the road, and she happens to run into the son of an Honor. Odds are he’s got a healthy living coming his way, not to mention a fancy place in the Anchor. Sure beats marrying some hick and dying young in a shack in the woods, doesn’t it?”

  The thought had never occurred to him, that Irene had only stuck around because she had designs on him. She’d insisted it was her duty as a God-fearing member of the Descendancy.

  “That’s crazy,” Clive said.

  “Women are crazy. But that one sure is easy on the eyes, isn’t she?”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on, now! You really gonna sit there telling me that girl doesn’t get your blood boiling?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  But that was a lie, of course. Even with everything else that had happened since, he’d spent more than a few nights thinking about what had transpired between him and Irene out on the mining road.

  “Sure you haven’t,” Burns said with a smirk. “Say, you want another drink?”

  Clive hadn’t even noticed he’d finished his beer while they’d been talking. “Thanks, but I should get to bed.”

  “Suit yourself. Just be sure to have everyone downstairs by first light.”

  “I will. Night, Burns.”

  Only sleep didn’t come for a long time that night; Clive couldn’t keep his brain from spinning out possibilities. His parents had prepared a life for him, one that he’d accepted without question. He’d be an Honor, and Gemma would be his wife, and they’d churn out a gaggle of little ones as quick as they could. Meanwhile, his father would be nominated to the Gloria, and someday, Clive would follow in his footsteps. Cut and dried. Pure and simple.

  Only that life was gone now.

  For the past couple of weeks, he’d been looking at his newly uncertain future as yet another aspect of the tragedy that had befallen him and his family; but now he wondered if it might also be a kind of gift. He’d been granted what so few people ever got: a chance to start again. The future was no longer predetermined; he could choose the one he wanted.

  It was a terrifying thought—and a strangely exciting one too.

  Interlude

  ANDROMÈDE OPENED HER EYES. THE fugue state was receding, along with the visions. Reality reasserted itself, heavy as a winter fur worn in summer.

  She sensed someone in the tent with her, which was unexpected. Euphrosine, the elderly otsapah who’d brewed the dreamtea and carried out the ceremony, would have left hours ago, and there was only one other person who would dare enter Andromède’s tent while she was still journeying.

  “Athène,” she said, “you’ve returned.”

  “It seems we both have, Mother. And how were your dreams?”

  Andromède thought back on what she’d seen; already the images and sensations were fading. “I’m not certain. The signs were contradictory.”

  Athène smiled impishly. “Aren’t they always?”

  “Perhaps. But what of the raid? I take it from your good humor that it went well.”

  “Two men and six women. Twenty-five horses. A week’s worth of food. And this beauty.” She held up her right hand to display the jewel sparkling on her middle finger: a ruby.

  “You should wear it on your left. It has greater properties of protection there.”

  “This is a trophy, not a charm. There’s no magic in it.”

  “There’s magic in everything. It’s said a woman who wears a ruby too often will see her beauty fade.”

  “As will the woman who wears anything too often.”

  Athène maintained an exaggeratedly serious expression for as long as she could, but it soon dissolved into laughter. The collection of copper bangles on her right arm laughed along with her.

  Andromède repressed her own smile. Her daughter had always been too quick for her own good; the last thing she needed was encouragement. “How long until the others arrive?”

  “Any moment. I only rode ahead so I could deliver the news personally. You should begin preparing yourself for the feast.”

  “Must I?”

  “The tribe will be expecting enthusiasm, Mother. Put on a show.”

  Athène was one of the few people who knew Andromède’s secret: that she preferred silence to noise, fasting to feast, solitude to companionship. They were very different people, mother and daughter, yet Athène had always been Andromède’s favorite child, doted on as only the youngest can be. Of the chieftain’s five daughters, Athène was the only one who still traveled with her mother’s naasyoon, the largest in the Wesah nation. She’d have to be pushed out of the nest soon, before her playful impieties could develop into outright insubordination.

  Athène picked up the humble brass crown that was the only visible symbol of her mother’s chiefdom. “I don’t know why you insist on wearing something so plain. They say the Archbishop wears a headdress of gold that reaches two feet into the air.”

  “Men have always been so concerned with length,” Andromède said. “Yet it’s the edge of a blade that cuts, the point that pierces. What good is the shaft?”

  Athène laughed. “We both know the answer to that.”

  “Such is our curse.”

  Andromède took the crown and placed it on her head. Then she swept out of her private tent and on across the prairie where they’d been encamped for the last month, planning tonight’s raid. She was pleased that it had come off so well: eight prisoners and twenty-five horses was a fine haul, and the beasts would come laden with a bounty of food and weapons. The Wesah eschewed traditional valuables, and ornaments such as Athène’s new ring could only be taken from a kill—one piece per life. The girl already wore a small graveyard on her long, limber arms, mostly accrued in a bloody run of raids they’d carried out up north.

  Andromède hadn’t killed in many months. She didn’t miss it.

  To celebrate the raid, the naasyoon would feast deep into the night. And when all the “liberated” wine had been drunk and all the songs of their ancestors sung, they would pack up and travel in darkness for as long as it took their otsapah to tell the tale of the flame deluge i
n its entirety—usually eight to ten hours. Only then would they allow themselves to sleep. It was a show of strength, of course, but also a necessary precaution; the enemy would eventually rally and come looking for retribution. They would find nothing. No Descendancy man moved as fast as the Wesah.

  Andromède bypassed the large canvas tent in which the feast would be held, as well as the roasting pits where the nisklaav lamoor were putting the finishing touches on the meat. She inhaled the fragrant smoke, and her mouth filled with saliva; tonight would mark the end of her three-day fast. It was one of the many rituals her daughter was so skeptical of, like the visions granted by the dreamtea, or the ostapah’s divinations. Yet who could argue with the results? Their raid had succeeded, and Athène had returned alive. Andromède’s fasting was a kind of prayer, and her prayers had been answered.

  She hiked up to the top of the mesa to look out over the valley beneath their encampment. Her warriors were close now. Andromède could see the captives, too, tied one to the next in a despondent daisy chain. They believed that tonight marked the beginning of their enslavement; before long, they would come to think of it as the dawn of their emancipation.

  “Li boon jheu paardoonaan,” she whispered under her breath.

  She returned to the feasting tent. There were no thrones among their people, so Andromède sat where she would; the ever-shifting hierarchies below her would determine who had the privilege of sharing her blanket tonight. Only Athène had a permanent seat at her mother’s right hand, though she was still missing when the nisklaav began to bring in the food. Soon after, the first of the returning warriors entered the encampment. They were loud, high on survival, shrieking their victory. Andromède could smell the blood on their armor, the blood in their veins. Nephra, who’d been charged with executing the raid, came to sit at Andromède’s blanket, greeting her chief with a slight nod. She was a large woman, her shoulders wide and ropy with muscle. Andromède raised an eyebrow and Nephra responded by holding up four fingers. More than a hundred warriors had gone out today; a loss of four was a good outcome.

  Athène didn’t enter the tent for an hour, and when she did, Andromède was surprised to see Noémie on her arm, a suspicious bloom in their cheeks. Andromède knew her daughter had amused herself with the girl on occasion, but that they’d delayed feasting in order to make love meant there might be more to it now than mere amusement.

  Nephra noticed the girls as well.

  “Youth,” she said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Can you remember it?” In Nephra’s eyes, Andromède saw a glimmer, harkening back at least a decade, to a time when they would often find occasion to visit one another’s tent in the dead of night. “Perhaps we could stand to rediscover our own childish ways.”

  Andromède allowed herself a thin smile. “Perhaps. But I have other duties tonight.”

  “Of course.”

  Duties she’d already put off long enough. She stood up, realizing only then that she hadn’t eaten more than a few bites of the venison. Her stomach growled, but the meat would keep. Once Andromède had set herself to a task, nothing could distract her from it.

  The prisoners were roped to a simple iron T stuck into the ground at the edge of camp. The women were all between the ages of twelve and twenty; most of them would be converted within the week. Put a few hundred miles between a girl and her home, show her a world in which her sex was slave to no one, in which she could fight and feast and fuck at her own discretion, instead of simply keeping her husband’s house and spreading her legs at his whim, and she would be yours for life. As the Wesah saying went, A Descendancy girl is as easy to break as bread.

  The males were a different story. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t be necessary at all, but babies had to be made somehow, and because the Wesah never raised boys within the tribe, every nisklaav had to be captured. As for baby boys born to Wesah tribeswomen, they were occasionally sacrificed, but more often left with some sympathetic dahor the tribe knew to be friendly.

  As Andromède approached the captives, she saw one of the men tugging for all he was worth at the bottom of the iron T. His fellow prisoners, exhausted after hours of marching, regarded his struggle with the apathy born of despair.

  “You aren’t nearly strong enough to pull that out,” Andromède said. Not all Wesah chieftains spoke English, but Andromède had made sure all her daughters were fluent in the tricksy, guttural tongue. It made certain tasks significantly easier.

  The man looked up at her, the veins in his neck throbbing from his fruitless effort. He’d seen thirty winters at most, and his hair and beard were both wiry yellow mops, the color of a duckling’s fur.

  “Come closer and I’ll show you how strong I am.”

  Andromède allowed herself to laugh, full-throated. “A fine threat,” she said. “Now wake up your fellow male over there. I won’t waste my time speaking to you separately.”

  “Do it yourself.”

  Andromède walked around the T, careful to stay just beyond the reach of the duckling. She kicked the other male, who sat up immediately. He was even younger than the first man, docile-eyed and anxious: practically a nisklaav already.

  “Men, my name is Andromède, and I am the chief of this nation.”

  “Nation?” It was the duckling’s turn to laugh. “What do you have here, a couple hundred souls at most?”

  “This is but a single naasyoon, just one finger on one hand of our body. And I am the head. Many would consider it an honor to be captured by me.”

  The man spat into the dirt. “That’s what I think of your honor.”

  Andromède knew of two ways to make a man submit. He could be warmed up gradually, like metal in a crucible, then poured into the mold you wanted. Or he could he hacked into shape like an arrowhead, his undesirable qualities hewn off one by one. Andromède didn’t have a preference one way or the other, but something about her mood today inspired her to mercy. She remembered a fragment of one of her teadreams—a dove flying across an icy blue sky and coming to rest on the snout of a black horse.

  “Do you know what we Wesah are?” she asked.

  “A bunch of dirty bitches,” the duckling said.

  “Warriors. We don’t need men to do our fighting for us. But we do need men. Why?”

  “To do all the thinking for you?” He laughed at his own joke.

  Andromède was glad to see the twinkling of anger in the eyes of a couple of the female prisoners. That rage would be the seed of their conversion.

  “Only if you think with what’s between your legs.”

  The man’s smile faded, hardened into hatred. “I wouldn’t let you anywhere near what I got between my legs, you godless whore.”

  Instinct moved faster than thought. The duckling hardly had time to widen his eyes before the blade was buried in his chest, just deep enough to pierce the heart. Here was the secret third way to win a man, short-lived as the victory might be. And there were benefits, in spite of the loss. The fear in the eyes of the remaining male made it clear that he wouldn’t be giving them any trouble; a few hours alone with one of Andromède’s warriors, and he’d be ready to die for the tribe. And though one of the captured women had screamed as the duckling crumpled to the ground, Andromède knew that nothing would more efficiently convey to them the possibilities of this brave new world in which they found themselves. But perhaps the greatest benefit of all was for Athène, whom Andromède had noticed watching from just outside the feasting tent. As chief, Andromède no longer went out on raids herself, so her daughter rarely saw her flex her muscle. It was good to remind the girl that her mother was still a warrior.

  Andromède bent down and pulled the knife out of the man’s chest. Then she used it to cut the brass chain of his necklace, freeing a plain silver annulus.

  “What do you think of it?” she called out to Athène.

  Her daughter approached the prisoners. She took the ring and held it up toward the crescent moon, appraising. Andromède
noticed, with no small satisfaction, that her daughter had transferred the ruby to her left hand.

  “Cheap,” Athène said. “Cheap and ugly.” She let the annulus fall to the dirt, then ground it beneath her heel.

  The duckling gurgled something wordless and furious through a cloud of red foam.

  “The wise woman knows that all lives must end,” Andromède said, kneeling down next to him. “Time is an illusion. Beyond the reach of our sun, there has only ever been a single day, in which all are born and die. The gods watch their world unspool in an instant. To them, one death weighs less than a grain of earth.”

  The man’s gurgle intensified for a moment before it abruptly stopped.

  Andromède stood up again, smiling as a strange thought rose to her mind. She’d been wrong; all this time, she had missed killing.

  “Now are we finished here?” she said to the other captives. “Or does anyone else want to call me a whore?”

  Part II

  ORPHANS

  * * *

  And seeing ignorance is the curse of God,

  Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

  —Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2

  1. Paz

  MEMORY AS NIGHTMARE. NIGHTMARE AS memory. Paz stood atop the family home in Coriander, watching her older brother launch his kite into the cobalt sky. She knew what was about to happen, but though she wanted to run to him, her body refused to obey. She tried to scream instead, but the sound was drowned out by the wind, rising quickly now, and when the inevitable gust came, the silk of the kite puffed out, strained at its leash, and then Anton was ripped from the roof, falling fast and silent as a hailstone.

  Paz woke, but the paralysis lingered. She knew from experience that no amount of willpower or physical strength could bring her out of it—her brain had simply woken up a few seconds before her body—but she couldn’t help but fight against it, straining whatever muscles she had control over, hyperventilating, sometimes even screaming so loudly that her father would come running in to see what was the matter.