by Sharon Lee
It was oddly spiced, the soup—not bland, like the tinned supplies they’d eaten from in Runig’s Rock; and not sour or sweet, like Mrs. ana’Tak’s soups. Syl Vor ate his, doggedly, as he had used to eat the tinned soup, before it had become something that was ordinary and even, in its very blandness, comforting. The bread was good; chewy and brown, but the milk was the most unpleasant that he could recall drinking, speaking as one who did not favor that beverage.
While they ate, Ms. Taylor asked each of them in turn a question. For Tansy, it was the health of a younger sister, which was reported to be, “Much bettter, ma’am, and my ma thanks you for asking.”
Syl Vor listened as he spooned soup, and drank milk in small, loathsome sips. Anders worked after school at Bentler’s Brewery, as “scrubs,” which Syl Vor gathered had to do with cleaning the equipment; Delia was walking a beat with a Patrol team…
“And, Syl Vor, how do you like Surebleak?”
Hastily, he swallowed the last of his milk, and took a breath.
“I’ve hardly seen much of Surebleak, yet, ma’am,” he said, remembering that Grandfather had told him in polite conversation to be as truthful as was gentle, and as gentle as was wise. “But what I have seen, I find interesting.”
“Interesting,” Rudy Daniel said in a low hard voice, from the next chair. “Bosses brat.”
“Rudy? Did you have a question for Syl Vor?”
The other boy’s face turned a dull red.
“No, ma’am,” he said.
“Well, then,” said Ms. Taylor. “Have you decided whether you’ll try out for the All Street Stickball Team?”
If possible, Rudy’s face got redder.
“No, ma’am. I—I think I won’t be signing up for that.”
“That’s too bad,” Ms. Taylor said. “I think you’d be an asset to the team.”
Rudy swallowed and stared down into his soup bowl. A moment passed, then Ms. Taylor asked Vanette how her mother was recovering from the flu.
After lunch, they returned to the schoolroom for arithmetic, which was boring; then calisthenics; then prep-groups-for-reading.
Syl Vor’s partner was Peter Day, who just shook his big head at the book, and leaned back in his chair.
“Naw, I ain’t no hand at letters, the way they always move around like they do. You just read it at me and I’ll say it back when it’s my turn.”
Syl Vor frowned at the page—just a plain paper book with the words printed in big Terran letters.
“These letters don’t move.”
“Not for you, they don’t. For me, they don’t set still. Got something wrong with my eyes. Just read it out, like I said. Nothin’ the matter with my memory.”
There didn’t seem to be anything to do, but what he was told. Syl Vor put the book on the desk, so Peter could look at the words, too, if he wished, pushed the bracelet up out of the way, and read out their two assigned pages about a girl named Hannah, who had gotten separated from her elder brother on the wrong side of the toll booths.
Peter leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, not watching the page at all, nodding his head slightly.
After reading—or, in Peter’s case, reciting—was dismissal.
“For tomorrow,” said Ms. Taylor, “everyone bring a news report from the Council of Bosses. Walk alert! Taxi’s waiting for Moravia and Townsin!”
Anders and Vanette dashed toward the front door, while the rest of the class headed toward the back, coats open, and heads bare. Standing by his seat, Syl Vor sealed his jacket and pulled on his hat and gloves. If it had gotten so warm that he might do without either, he could always take them off.
“How did you like your first day of school, Syl Vor?” Ms. Taylor asked him.
He looked up into her face, but found no immediate words that were either gentle or wise.
The teacher smiled.
“Speechless, eh?”
That was Padi’s sort of joke, and Syl Vor returned Ms. Taylor’s smile.
“In truth, I am not certain what I think. It has been…different from what I…” He took a breath, and decided on a flat truth, as the others were far too complex. “To go to school is not something that I have done before.”
“Gotcha.” She nodded. “But, you know, that’s the case for all the other kids here, too. School’s a pretty new concept. And a school that’s not on your turf? With kids from all over? That’s just radical.” She smiled again. “We’re learning, though. All together.”
She touched his sleeve.
“I’m glad you decided to give school a try. You come on back tomorrow, OK? It’ll be less different.”
“I plan to come every day,” he assured her.
Her smile grew broader, and she patted his sleeve, walking with him toward the back door.
“That’s the spirit! You go on home, now. I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.” She opened the door.
“Thank you,” he said, and stepped out into the alley.
- - - - -
The door closed behind him, and Syl Vor spun, suddenly remembering that Larnce had brought him to the front door this morning, and would be waiting there for him.
Face hot, he thought about going back inside. Ms. Taylor would think he was a foolish student, who couldn’t even remember his arrangements for going home. That did figure into his calculations.
And also that, really, there was no problem. All he had to do was go ’round to the front. Brehm Alley to Rendan, go right at the corner, then up six doors. That was his route.
Nothing could be simpler.
Decision taken, he turned right, toward Rendan Street.
A hand hit his shoulder, hard enough to send him staggering. Before he could catch his balance, another blow landed, and he fell.
Something heavy pinned him face down to the alley floor before he could roll, and a strong hand grabbed his arm, pulled it back at a painful angle, and tore the bright brass cuff from his wrist.
“Interesting, ain’t it?” asked a voice, and the weight was gone, amid the heavy sound of running.
Syl Vor rolled to his knees, took a couple of deep breaths. His arm hurt, and his back did, and so did his shoulder, but he didn’t think anything hurt bad enough to be broken. He got to his feet and thought about running after Peter Day. Then he thought that perhaps that would be one of those “stupid notions” that Mike Golden had particularly asked him not to act upon.
He scrubbed at the grit on the front of his coat, and gulped, the alley blurring out of sense as his eyes filled with tears.
He gulped again and squeezed his eyes shut.
When he was pretty certain that he wasn’t going to really cry, he resumed his walk down the alley to the corner, on the alert now.
He wouldn’t be surprised again.
Chapter Fifteen
From his cot to the fire was scarcely a dozen steps, which Rys accomplished, leaning heavily on the child’s shoulder with his good hand, balanced on his right leg, the ruined left dragging painfully behind.
By the time the fireside was accomplished and he had half-fallen onto the rug there, he was damp with sweat and shivering with reaction. The child gave him a thoughtful look and went away, returning almost immediately with the blanket from his cot, which she silently draped over his shoulders.
“My thanks,” he said, hearing his voice shake. “It is a kindness.”
“No thanks,” she answered, sounding sharp.
He bowed his head. “I meant no offense.”
Kezzi shook her mass of black hair back from her face. “There’s tea. Would you like some?”
“Tea would be welcome,” he said courteously, and watched as she poured from a blackened kettle.
When the mug was in his good hand, he took a sip, then rested hand and mug against his thigh.
“Is it permitted that I sit alone for a time?” he asked. “I wish to…order my thoughts.”
The child’s eyes widened, and she came to her feet with such alacrity that he feare
d he had again given offense. When she spoke, however, her voice was soft, even reverent.
“Of course it is permitted. If you have everything that is needful, Malda and I will go. I will tell stop at Jin’s hearth and tell the luthia that you are praying.”
Praying? Rys thought. Yet, if it gained him a hour of solitude…
“I have everything that is needful,” he assured her, and gave her a smile.
She inclined from the waist, hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater, an oddly solemn gesture, then straightened and turned away, snapping fingers for the dog, which yipped once, and ran after her.
Rys watched them race toward the clustering hearths that bloomed dark red at some distance from the one he sat beside, until he lost their silhouettes amongst the larger shadows.
He closed his eyes, and listened.
A small breeze kissed his cheek, wanton in the darkness, scented with smoke, and hot bread, and dust. From overhead came a quiet, steady rumble, which he realized that he had been hearing constantly since his first waking here. It was neither a large sound, nor alarming—rather, it comforted, as the steady hum of life support might comfort a seasoned spacer.
He considered that thought—but no, most certainly he was not on a ship. Had not the grandmother asked after his enemies, when first he’d waked? And had she not supposed that those enemies were located in the City Above?
He was, therefore, situated on a planet, beneath a city, assuming that Silain-luthia was more practical than alliterative. If he might bring himself to recall which planet, or yet, what city…
But, there. That was the heart of the thing, was it not? He could not recall.
His stomach clenched, and he swallowed bile. Carefully, he opened his eyes, raised the mug and sipped tea. From the direction of the grouped fires came a series of high sharp notes, supported by a low thrumming. Music, he supposed.
The tea calmed his stomach; the music calmed his thoughts.
Perhaps, he thought, he might fly another course with more profit. What did he recall?
That was scarcely less distressing. He recalled…he recalled tending the smudge pots with his elder cousins through a frigid, long night. He recalled weeping with relief the next morning, when his father said that the vines were no longer in danger. He recalled his pride at being given his own set of shears, and a row to tend.
He recalled his grandmother straightening his collar and abjuring him to be clever for Master Pilot pin’Epel. And he recalled the feeling of bewilderment upon learning that he had somehow qualified for pilot training, and that the season just commenced would be his last among the vines.
He recalled, the sight graven into his bones—the shadow of the wings flickering across the long rows of grapes, hugging the contour of the hill, staying secret and hidden until…
He was sweating. Putting the cup carefully on the rug next to his knee, he used a corner of the blanket, clumsily one-handed, to dry his brow.
So, then, he asked himself patiently. What else could he recall?.
The cave—oh, very clearly, he recalled the cave and the long hiding, after which the rescue, and the crowded transport to the nearest refuge—a Terran station.
He recalled sitting in the trade bar, a nothing staring at nothing—clanless, kinless, and lacking a future. And he recalled a thump and a scrape as the chair across from him was taken. He looked up into a pair of mist-blue eyes.
“I’m Jasin Bell, mate on Momma Liberty. We got crew work, if you’re lookin’.”
Work—that had gotten through. Even a man without kin needed work.
“You lookin’?” Jasin Bell had snapped, and that roused him a little. Roused him enough.
“I am looking,” he answered in his careful, textbook Terran. And then, because his grandmother had not raised him to be a fool. “I will see the contract, if you please.”
Rys took a hard breath and deliberately drank the rest of his now-tepid tea, putting the empty mug beside his knee. His muscles were quivering as if he’d been doing the hand-stacking on a dock where the gravity was high.
Jasin…His recollections of Jasin were vivid. But just…there was something, about Jasin—no! Beyond Jasin! His thoughts were abruptly in a turmoil, scattered like grape-spiders from the impact of a man’s boot. He snatched after them, and gasped, tears starting. Clumsily, he drew up his good leg and leaned his forehead against his knee, weeping with terror and confusion and loss; glad that there was no one to see.
- - - - -
Perhaps he drowsed, weak as he was and worn out with trying to remember. Indeed, he must have drowsed, and dreamt that he was on-comm with Jasin, demanding to know in what mad port she had abandoned him, broken and desperate as he—
“Well met, Brother,” a soft voice uttered.
Brother? thought Rys, the dream making him sticky and slow. He had no living brothers, and none that would address him so—least of any Jasin’s brother.
“I overheard my small sister say to the luthia that you prayed, Brother. I do not want to intrude, but I thought you might wish not to be alone, when you are done.”
Rys raised his head, looking across the fire at the shadow that addressed him.
“Good e’en,” he said, both cautious and courteous. “Brother.”
It might have been that his caller sighed. Certainly, it seemed so.
“May I sit with you?” he asked. “I have a pipe, if you will share smoke with me.”
No, decidedly it was not Jasin’s brother, who had never once offered him a kindness. Rys blinked, trying to focus his thoughts.
“It is a joy,” he said, even more careful, “to share with a brother.”
“Glad I am to hear you say so,” the other said, and stepped round the fire. He dropped, crosslegged, onto the rug at Rys’ right hand, and gazed at it for a moment, useless and strapped to its board, before raising his head and meeting Rys’ gaze.
“I am,” he said quietly, “Udari. It was I who found you, and brought you to the luthia for healing. I hope you will forgive me.”
“Surely, you have saved my life,” Rys protested, and added, “Brother.”
“Surely, I did,” Udari agreed. “But perhaps it would have been better, had I walked ’round the corner, smoked a pipe, and granted you time to pass the gate. It would not have been many breaths more, of pain, and you would have risen whole and filled with light in the World Beyond, full able to tend those things that a man should and must.
“As we have it now, the luthia says that hand will not grip again, and the leg will never bear you. A man in his prime—as we are, Brother—might argue that those losses are bitter.”
“They are,” Rys said slowly. “But I hold the hope that…some assistance may arrive.”
He meant Jasin, come to find him, and the autodoc unit in Momma Liberty’s sick bay.
Udari nodded, slow and solemn, and reached into the neck of his sweater. He withdrew a drawstring bag, and a small glass pipe that caught the glow from the dying fire and gave it back with a heart of red.
“There is something in what you say,” he said, as he filled the pipe’s bowl with a pinch of stuff from the pouch and tamped it with his thumb. “It might be that help will arrive. I will dream on it.”
He pulled the strings of the bag tight and replaced it within his sweater, then extended his hand and plucked an ember from the edge of the fire.
Rys sat up straight with a wordless gasp—but Udari was perfectly composed, holding the ember to the stuff in the pipe’s bowl whilst drawing on the stem.
Fragrant smoke came from the bowl—reminding Rys of sweetsuckle blooming amid the still leafless vines, bloomed and dead within two sunrises, crumbling by the fourth, giving itself to nurture the soil.
“Ah…” Udari sighed, and offered him the pipe, stem first.
“Go carefully,” he advised as Rys took the thing, his clumsiness betraying his unfamiliarity. “The smoke is hot, so draw slow and steady. I will put something more on the hearth.”<
br />
So saying, he rose, leaving Rys alone on the rug, puffing cautiously on the pipe. The smoke was hot, and the perfume caught at the back of his throat. He coughed once, and puffed again, gratified to see the bowl glow orange.
“Here.” Udari was back, dropping lightly to his knees, and placing something Rys didn’t quite see on the fire. Flame licked up, showing a long face dominated by a bold nose and a pair of liquid dark eyes. He sat back with easy grace, legs once again crossed, and took the pipe from Rys’ hand.
“Enough smoke makes a man wise,” he murmured, drawing until the bowl glowed scarlet. He raised his head, eyes closed, seeming not to breathe—then sighed out a cloud of scented smoke with a smile.
“Too much makes a man foolish.”
That, Rys thought, sounded familiar. He sighed softly.
“No more for me, then, Brother. I am already fool enough.”
“Say you so? But I have tasted wisdom’s draught. Show me your foolishness, Borther, and I will tease sense from it.”
Rys looked at him, this ragged stranger, who was in truth neither brother nor comrade…who had saved his life, and who had come on purpose to bear him company when he was alone and frightened.
“I cannot remember,” he said, speaking frankly. “I have lost who I am, and the path I walked, that led to this place.”
Pipe in hand, Udari nodded solemnly.
“Your soul has gone a-wandering, which souls are apt to do, when we are weak, or when we are undecided. You must grow strong, and be decisive. At that time, you will no longer be lost, and will recall all that you are and have been.”
There was certainly nothing to argue about in that, Rys thought. And then he thought that the little smoke he had ingested had indeed made him foolish. He felt as if he floated, pain-free and undistressed, some few inches above the top of his own head, and was looking down into Udari’s face.
“How fare you, Brother?” that one asked.
“Very well indeed,” Rys answered. “I thank you, Brother, for your care.”