In town, Spinel soon learned the new rules. Anything better than a pocket-knife was forbidden to the villagers. A town pass must be carried at all times; to get one, Spinel stood in line outside the garrison, which had taken over the Three Eyes Inn. A pass was an oval slip of metal stamped with a number and thumb print—“goat’s tongues,” people called them, on the sly. But it paid to weigh one’s words. One evening outside a taproom, just before curfew, a regular who’d had a bit too much leered at a corner guard and said, “Know what the Sards call you? ‘Hollow Horns,’ that’s what.” The butt of a probe slapped him to the sidewalk. The Dolomite proceeded to beat the man’s face in, with a cold, grisly thoroughness that left him unrecognizable. Every detail etched in Spinel’s memory, from the broken sprawled legs of the victim to the blood that mingled with oily streams in the gutter.
Resentment smoldered in hidden ways. There were codes and secret signs to spread uncensored news and ways to escape town without a pass. Local pride flourished, and it seemed that every child that was born had to be named Chrysoberyl, Chrysotile, or Chrysoprase.
At Spinel’s home, the Dolomite “lodgers” were tolerable. Rhyol was gruff but quiet, contemptuous of regulations, staying out till all hours but never unmanageably drunk. Ceric was a thin-haired reed of a youth, younger than Spinel, who bit his nails and lived in constant terror of Spinel’s mother. At dinner, Galena would glower at him across the table. “Eat, you stringbean! Don’t let your officer complain I starve you.”
The first time that happened, Spinel froze with shock, his eyes fixed on Ceric’s neuralprobe. But the private only blinked, his Adam’s apple bobbed a bit, and then he ate a little faster, while Rhyol stuffed himself in bored silence. Both men drank glass after glass of water as if to drain the ocean dry.
Now that he was home, Spinel wondered what to do with himself. Most of his old friends, even the women, were signed into trades or out in the fields. The deaths of several in the uprising appalled and depressed him. He escaped by hanging around the house and reliving his adventures on the Ocean Moon for anyone who cared to listen. He pestered his mother while she hunched over her account books, trying to cheat on the Dolomite taxes.
“You mustn’t sell any stone to moontraders,” Spinel told her. “It makes Sharers sick. Besides, traders charge five times what they pay us.”
“Hm. Transport must cost something.”
“Why, they even put starstones up for ordinary sale.”
“Scandalous. Well, they haven’t sent us any orders lately. Perhaps you can tell me why Sharer medicines cost ten times what they used to.”
“We did stop trading awhile,” he admitted. “That was because—it’s kind of complicated.” Where to begin?
“Strange,” said Galena. “Zircon the peddler says that Sharers have flouted Patriarchal laws. They face the same fate as Pyrrhopolis, he says.”
“What nonsense. You know how traders talk, Mother. A nasty lot—why, they even dumped me into the sea, once.”
“My poor boy.” Galena poked at a silver box that spewed out digits flashing like minnows.
“That’s new,” Spinel remarked. “How did you afford it?”
She turned her head slightly, as far as her neck could manage. “Do you really want to know?”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
“Your father was in the habit of leaving a coin on the dresser, after a good night. I saved them.”
“Mother, really!” Spinel squirmed in embarrassment.
“You’re a man now. Who else will tell you how the world turns, if not your mother? The Patriarch Himself must have had one.”
Spinel fled downstairs.
In town, Spinel soon found that the unmarried shop girls chased after him. With his ocean-honed muscles, purple-black all over with sea-green eyes, his leg ostentatiously scarred, he came off as exotic, to say the least. For his part, the way the girls dressed unnerved him now. Their tight waists and packed bodices could only exaggerate the curves underneath. Compared to Lystra, they seemed fragile and frivolous, flowers to be plucked and tossed aside. So he made the most of their curiosity, tickling them with outrageous tales of the Ocean Moon, even to the point of embroidering a bit the way the moontraders did. But he stopped when Merwen’s image rose in his mind: Merwen, who shared only the truth that she knew.
When the winter rains let up, he coaxed Catlin the drover’s daughter to hike out with him to Trollbone Point. They chased and scared each other among the dusty bleached bones, then they settled down to more serious fun. Spinel fumbled impatiently at her dress—so many buttons and underthings. Then she pulled him on top of her, and the rest came very fast.
Spinel looked up, satisfied but uncertain. The girl was silent. Breakers thundered on the cliffs below, their salt scent blown over by fitful winds.
“Oh, well.” Catlin sat up, flounced her hair, and began to reassemble her clothes.
“Hey, what’s the rush?”
“Well, it’s over, right? I’ll catch it, if I don’t get back. Besides, you popped two buttons.”
“I’m not used to all them things to pull off.”
“Sure you’re not,” she snapped as she brushed out her curls. “Carrying on with naked women all day.”
“I did no such thing!”
“Well, what else did you do on the Ocean Moon? I should think at least you’d be better at it.” She gathered her skirts and left.
Spinel was crushed. He had tried his best, but it all came so fast, and she just lay there the whole time—and now she blamed him. Lystra, though, had always made it last a long time. Even if it wasn’t the “normal” way. Strange how certain things could set off Lystra’s fury, yet for himself, alone with her, she had endless patience. She would find someone else soon enough, he thought bitterly, someone not a “malefreak.”
He returned to the market square, where late-afternoon shoppers pawed through Ahn’s vegetables. Ahn’s good eye peered at him above the shrunken beak of her nose. “If it isn’t the stonecutter’s son! Tell the truth, Spinel; are they really all witches up there, those moonwomen?”
“I think one bewitched me.” He sighed.
Ahn clucked her tongue. “You look bewitched. Here, try a papaya. Surest cure for a broken heart.” She held out the sweet yellow fruit.
“How would you know?”
“Nasty thing, you! Ask the Patriarch himself. You, there, almsman,” she called, a disrespectful summons for a Spirit Caller.
Uriel turned slowly in his faded robe.
“Come, almsman,” said Ahn. “Call and ask the Patriarch: do papayas cure a broken heart?” She flipped a coin into his bowl. Her coarseness embarrassed Spinel. Home seemed a perpetual embarrassment, since he came back.
Uriel said, “Does a broken heart need curing, so much as clearer sight?”
“Fie, that’s no answer.”
“That’s what Merwen does!” Spinel exclaimed. “A question for every answer.”
“And who is he?” Uriel asked.
“She’s a Sharer lady. She spun and wove seasilk under Rhodochron’s tree.” That shady spot stood vacant now.
“Ah, yes.” Uriel shook his robe, and interest flickered in his eyes. “We spoke at length, before you left.”
“So you did,” Spinel remembered.
“Curious things they said, about faith.”
“And about ruling. ‘Who rules without being ruled?’ The Dolomites, that’s who.” Spinel sullenly scraped his toe on a cobblestone.
“Are you sure?” Uriel asked.
“What? Just look around you. Does the Patriarch’s justice rule them?” The guards were everywhere, watching the vendors hurriedly packing their goods in time for the six o’clock curfew. “Not a man would dare stay here tonight.”
“Why not?”
The question took him aback. “They’d get beaten up, that’s why.” Yet Merwen and Usha had kept their spot under the firemerchant’s tree. How had they managed that, anyhow?
On impulse
, Spinel walked up to a Dolomite guard. “Please, sir, couldn’t I stay late in the square, just once? You see I’m up to no harm—”
The stick of a firewhip slapped him to the ground. Stunned, Spinel felt someone lift up his arm. His elbows were bruised, and blood dripped from his chin. Uriel helped him away, beyond the wharf to the beach, where he could rinse his face off. Spinel winced as his arms burned in the salt water.
Uriel said, “Some things you can’t just ask for. Freedom is one.”
“I hate them.” Spinel’s hoarse whisper swelled with an anger he had never known before. “I want them dead, every one.”
“What use is hatred, except as a step toward love?”
Spinel shivered as the evening wind chilled his damp skin. Uriel, he thought, was still a bit touched. You had to watch for that in Spirit Callers.
“You there!” came a strident voice from the street. “Get on home, Chrysolite scum.” The guard made an obscene gesture, then jabbed a six-point star because of Uriel.
“I hate them,” Spinel whispered again, nursing his swollen chin as he walked with Uriel to the street. Without weapons, hatred was indeed useless.
Yet Lystra had hated stonetraders, and she had gotten the better of them. For weeks she had barred the shop doors, been dumped in the sea, and come back for more, and all the while shamed her sisters into keeping the boycott. Lystra knew no fear, except for stone. Spinel’s throat ached with longing.
What was the matter, here? Did death select all the brave ones, like Harran, so that only the sheep survived?
Spinel looked again at Uriel. Of all the villagers, this old fellow at least showed no fear. Was that just his craziness? “Uriel, you got a place to stay tonight? You can sleep on our floor.”
So the pair of them sat in Galena’s study and talked late into the night, sharing lore of the rafts and of Valan backroads. And a plan emerged, a plan that Spinel thought might just be crazy enough to work.
3
IT WAS NOONTIME in the market square. “Melas,” Spinel insisted, “what would happen if every one of us just stayed in the square tonight?”
The farmhand was on his back, fixing a bent wheel on his produce cart. “You’re moonstruck.”
“No, listen.” Spinel was mindful of Uriel, who stood close by. The air was cold, but sunlight from between shifting clouds warmed his back a bit. “If everybody stayed, even women, customers too.”
“You’d see the biggest massacre this side of Iridis.” Melas grimaced as he pulled out a bent nail with his hammer.
“No, you wouldn’t. Think, Melas: What use to them is a market full of corpses? Who would run the town?”
Melas threw down his hammer, picked himself up, and clapped dust from his hands. “They’d ransack the town and rape the women. Or didn’t your sister tell you how it was?”
Blood rushed to his face, but he kept himself steady. Spinel could only begin to guess what his family had undergone. “At least Harran tried something. Why didn’t you?”
Melas leaped and swung at him. Spinel caught his fists; he was easily the stronger, now. Melas wheezed as they grappled, until another voice interrupted. “Easy, there,” urged Picrite the barber, distracted from shopping. “What’s all the fuss, gentlemen?” Picrite added in his smooth-tongued way.
Melas wiped his face. “This young cur came back from the Ocean Moon just to taunt us in our chains.”
“I’m saying there’s a way out, Melas. Even the Patriarch says so; just ask—”
Picrite’s gaze fell. “Your own brother-in-law died trying,” the barber said.
“But there’s another way.”
“Look,” snapped Melas, “if the Patriarch wanted us to be free, why did He send Dolomites to ravage us?”
Spinel looked to Uriel, whose robe swirled in the breeze. Uriel said, “The Patriarch knows that men must make their own freedom.”
Disgusted, Melas turned away.
Picrite looked furtively about, then whispered, “A Spirit Caller might do something. Dolomites are superstitious folk; they even want their beards cut a certain way, depending on which planets are up.”
“That’s just it,” said Spinel. “Uriel will stand with us.”
“Stand where?”
Melas shouted back, “If you get even ten men to stay, I’ll join you.” With a surly shove at his cart, he moved off.
Spinel clapped his hands. “Here we go. We’ll fill the square yet. It’s simple,” he explained to Picrite. “We just stand here, all bunched together, and don’t leave. And Uriel—”
“I will lead an Open Calling at that time,” Uriel said, “A time for us all to call to the Spirit of the Patriarch.”
“To call for the freedom of Chrysoport?” Picrite was definitely keen on it now.
“We start a half hour before curfew,” Spinel added.
“Hm.” Picrite rubbed his chin. “I have to get back to my shop, but I’ll let my customers know. Might even smuggle some knives for protection.”
“Oh, no, you can’t do that. A flash of a knife could touch off a massacre, like Melas said.” Spinel’s own words startled himself. This was not just a game, he thought uneasily.
Uriel’s hand lifted. “Weapons are inappropriate for Spirit Calling.”
“Ha; the Patriarch Himself has enough of them.” But Picrite assented and went his way.
Elated, Spinel moved on with Uriel among the vending stands to recruit others. The next two they approached shook their heads, but several more were receptive. A few women were particularly eager, some who had lost a son or a husband in the uprising. The message spread throughout the town.
By evening, when Spinel reached home, even his father had heard of the plan.
“Yes.” Cyan sighed. “Rhyol told us.”
“Rhyol—oh.” The Dolomite “lodger.” Fear crept on Spinel then; it had not occurred to him that the enemy was bound to find out beforehand.
“Rhyol is worried,” Cyan added. “He urged us to stay home and bar the door.”
Spinel hardened his resolve. “I’ll bet he’s worried. Too late to stop now, and I’ll be there, if none of you are.”
“We’ll all be there,” Galena called from the hall. “You can tell Rhyol his dinner’s on the stove.”
Above the market square, the sun sank into a bed of pink clouds, rich as the velvet lounge of the Cristobel. The shadow from Rhodochron’s tree crept over the cobblestones to where Spinel stood.
Uriel held a bell overhead and rang it steadily, signaling to begin the Call. Spinel looked around self-consciously, wondering who would respond. A few villagers warily drew near.
A guard stepped up to Uriel, his lips set in a grim line. “You’re not intending any trouble, are you, Father?”
Uriel inquired, “Do you address myself or the Patriarch?”
The guard muttered some reply and sketched a six-point in the air, just above his ruby stonesign. He strode off to rejoin the group of Dolomites at the square’s main entrance, twice the usual number. Nonetheless, a crowd soon grew around the Spirit Caller, huddling together for warmth as well as for safety.
To Spinel’s amazement, some women brought their children along. Surely they knew what they were getting into? His eyes darted nervously, then froze. “Mother!”
Galena pushed her way through the crowd, with Cyan in tow, who carried Oolite on his shoulders. And Beryl actually brought her infant Chrysoprase, mercifully asleep in her arms. “Not the baby!” Spinel exclaimed.
“I said all of us,” Galena told him. “Have we a nursemaid at home?”
“But—” Spinel lowered his voice. “Beryl, this could get rough.”
“Tell me about it, Spinny.” Beryl’s cheeks were drawn tight. “You think we’re any safer at home?”
Spinel looked down: there was nothing to say. In Torr’s name, how had his own town come to be a battleground? With men disarmed and helpless, children became victims and soldiers both. But that was not the plan, was it? Anxiously he looked ba
ck to Uriel, who had lowered his bell and now stared solemnly at the sky.
An amplified voice blared overhead. “All citizens immediately disperse to your homes. Anyone who violates curfew will face prison, repeat, prison. All citizens disperse immediately…” The voice roared on, repeating its message.
“It’s not even six yet,” came an indignant shout. Villagers nodded and moved closer together. Uriel stood still, deaf to the world. Spinel peered above heads, trying to gauge their numbers; at least three hundred, he figured, counting children.
A disturbance stirred the edge of the crowd and rippled inward. The Dolomite captain was elbowing his way through to the Spirit Caller. “Enough of this foolery,” he told Uriel. “No loitering in the square after curfew.”
Uriel showed no sign of recognition. His rapt face watched the heavens.
“Enough, do you hear! No standing in the square!”
“He can’t talk now,” a woman said. “He’s calling the Spirit of the Patriarch.”
“To free Chrysoport,” another added.
The Dolomite turned in disgust. “You’ll never be free; we’ll sell you to the slavers,” he told the crowd. “Five minutes, and we start to haul you off.”
From farther off, Albite the baker cried, “Then who’ll make your bread for breakfast?”
The Dolomite stiffened and yelled, “For the last time, no more standing in the square!” His beard shook and his voice echoed from the storefronts across the street.
Very slowly, Uriel sat down, still staring skyward. Spinel did likewise, and automatically others followed. With a wave outward, the entire crowd was lowered, until none but the guard stood in the square.
He turned so crimson, he might have had a stroke. Instead, he stomped roughly out of the crowd, heedless of whom he stepped on.
Spinel let out a deep sigh and shut his eyes a moment. When he looked up again, he saw all the people wedged calmly together, desultory frocks and caftans like a meadow of wildflowers, and beyond in the street a solid wall of soldiers. Light was fading fast, draining colors away, until flashlights poked through the dark; somebody had been smart enough to think of that. Voices were murmuring, and a few infants wailed.
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