by Mark Eller
"Better get the horses out of here," Amanda told the woman. "We couldn't avoid some attention, but let's not draw more." She held her head with one hand. "Mister Turner, I hope you have some of those aspirin things left, because I need a few dozen?"
"We'll clear the excess people and horses out of here now," the woman said. Turning, she faced her four remaining people. "ALL RIGHT, LADIES! Tie 'em together and get 'em moving."
Amanda leaned heavily on Aaron as the wagons drove off. "I need to lie down or throw up so you better transport me home."
Her voice sounded weak now that they were alone.
"We need to pick up Heralda and the guards," Aaron reminded her. "I can flit Heralda over to your apartment, but our guards have to walk. They don't know about me."
Amanda groaned. "And that means we all have to take a cab. Sir, I think you better lead me to some path less traveled, because I got to heave. No need for me to do it near a walkway. That would be impolite."
Chapter 22
"Klerrrrrdirrric"
Aaron brushed at his ear and turned onto his side. Grumbling, he wrapped the blanket tighter around himself and wished they would leave him alone.
"Klerrrrdirrric Perrrterreet"
Weight climbed onto his shoulder. His ear felt wet, and he remembered he was alone in a room entirely too full of women.
"I'm married and faithful," he said.
A tongue probed his ear again. Warm breath blew against it.
"Klerrrrdirrric"
He popped open his eyes. "I SAID --."
"Sorry, Bringer," Heralda said. "Zisst is being rude."
"Oh." Aaron felt carefully around his head. His fingers met fur. Zisst. Gods! Zisst! The thing was sticking its tongue in his ear!
"Gahhh! Get it off me. Get it--."
"It is off! It is off!" Heralda exclaimed. Then quieter. "I really am sorry. It will not happen again."
Sitting up, Aaron pushed Zisst aside and rubbed a corner of the blanket against his dripping ear. "The--the--the thing stuck its tongue in my ear."
"Purrrrleet," Zisst said.
"It is the earwax." Heralda sounded apologetic. "Earwax is his favorite treat. Normally people roll it into balls, but Zisst sometimes likes to get it right out of the ear."
"Earwax." A memory came of when he first met Zisst. The animal had been sticking its tongue in Aaron's mouth, going after something the children had dropped.
Earwax. The kids had stuck a ball of earwax in his mouth, then let Zisst lick it out.
He gave Heralda a dirty stare. He gave Zisst an even dirtier one.
They ignored him so Aaron turned his attention to rubbing his aching eyes and then his temples. Not enough sleep and too much stress had given him a mother of a headache.
The Two Gods had given people caffeine to help handle mornings like this. Rising, he stumbled into the kitchen, wending his way through the many recumbent and sleeping bodies on the floor. He almost stepped on one woman who, he vaguely recalled, went by the name of Camp.
In the kitchen, he discovered Miss Bivin's propane stove already had a teapot simmering over the front burner. A woman sat at the small kitchen table, one hand wrapped around a steaming tea cup, the other holding down a newspaper.
Aaron made his way to the counter where clean cups and fresh tea were set out. After preparing his drink, he went to the table and sat down.
The woman gave him a thin smile. "Name's Mistress Gilcrest, and I'm in charge of your protective detail."
"Aaron Turner."
"I'm aware of that." She pushed her paper toward him. "You might want to catch up on the news."
Shrugging, Aaron turned the paper around and started reading.
Rumblings of discontent had broken out with New Madrid, Isabella's closest neighbor to the south. The government of New Madrid was not happy with Isabella's annexation of Clan lands, claiming this unhappiness was due only to humanitarian reasoning. The new lands were too vast and too untamed for Isabella to properly care for both the lands and the natives, the complaint went. New Madrid asked that Isabella open the new acquisitions to other nations so they could assist in the governance and education of the native people. Perhaps the land could be divided into sections, each section governed by a different country.
Isabella politely refused New Madrid's offer to take control of a large segment of these hard-won territories. A few rumors of war had started floating, but she scoffed at the idea. Isabella proper was more than twice the size of New Madrid. Isabella had recently fought a war so she had experienced troops and generals who could take the field against New Madrid, a small country that had not known war for over fifty years. Even with Isabella's disadvantage of a restless native population likely to go rouge, New Madrid would not dare push matters to a confrontation.
Frowning, Aaron saw an op-ed column that claimed Emperor Klein of the Chin nations had broken his long silence. Apparently he now wanted international recognition for his budding empire. The article had a great deal of fun with this idea. What Helmet called his 'empire', the writer claimed, was no more than a collection of previously rival tribes now warring against other tribes. She predicted that Klein's political structure would soon collapse.
This writer obviously did not know Helmet as well as Aaron did.
Finished with the national and international sections, he went back to the local news. Aaron flipped past a couple pages, then paused when his eyes fastened on his name.
A citizen's committee called for an investigation of the Turner Houses. It claimed they were nothing more than a new way for Aaron Turner to turn a profit at the expense of others. The committee stated that although it was true that no laws as presently written were provably broken, a number of laws were being bent. Some members demanded that the Houses open their doors for a full investigation.
Aaron paled. They would not leave him alone! They wanted everything he owned, and now they were going after the orphanages, the one thing Aaron had started that was wholly his and completely benevolent. His N'Ark Houses were costing him a fortune, draining his resources dry, and yet he was still being criticized for starting and supporting them.
Disgusted, he folded the paper and pushed it back toward Mistress Gilcrest.
"If any of these matters will impact our assignment, you need to tell me now," she said.
Aaron rose. "They shouldn't. A lot of it is lies, and the parts that are true don't affect us at all."
She nodded. "Good enough for now. Try not to wake my people. They just came off shift so they'll be down a good six hours still."
Once back into the living room, Aaron saw that only two people still slept on the floor.
"I hope you're ready to go." Amanda's voice came from the bedroom doorway. "We have a number of things to do today, not the least of which is to get you and the young lady some fresh clothes. Miss, is that thing housebroken?"
"Never broke a house in its life," Heralda assured. "This thing is Zisst, and it belongs to Death."
"Death?"
"The Bringer," Heralda clarified. "Chosen."
Amanda cast inquiring eyes on Aaron. He shrugged and thought Amanda looked like hell. A Herculean effort had been made to clean her up the night before, but it had been mostly in vain. Streaks of blood, some of it fresh, trailed down her purple-bruised cheek. Old blood, dry and flaking, was embedded in her hair.
"Clothing, baths, office," she ticked off on her fingers. "We need to look our best, because I strongly suspect we'll be interrogated today. In fact, Mister Turner, I would prefer that you make yourself scarce. If they can't find you, they can't give you a summons. If they can't give you a summons, they can't order you to reveal the location of certain recently misplaced items."
"Baths are good," Heralda said. "Zisst is in need of cleaning."
Aaron shook his head in perfect time with Amanda. "No animals in the public houses," Amanda said. "The attendants wouldn't stand for it."
"Barbarians," Heralda muttered.
No
one was quite sure what to do with Zisst. In the end, they laid down the discarded newspaper for the animal to relieve itself on, fed it soup from a can, and left it to the tender mercies of the sleeping guards.
Aaron followed Amanda to the retail clothing store. Once there, he randomly pulled clothing of the right size off the rack. Amanda helped the saleswomen discover the right sizes for Heralda. Their shopping expedition didn't take long. The guards were so good at their jobs that Aaron barely noticed they were there.
Purchases in arm, they headed for the baths. Once arrived, the group separated and went to their respective places. One guard went in with Heralda and Amanda. The male guard went into the baths with Aaron. Two female guards, after a thorough search of the empty baths, stood outside in the hall.
* * *
Heralda disrobed with a nonchalance that spoke of a disregard for clothing. Instead of using the available pegs, she left her clothes on the floor, not caring that her trousers lay in a small pool of water. Amanda used this opportunity to study the girl more thoroughly than she had the previous evening.
The girl was a contradiction. Amanda had only known Heralda for a few hours, and many of those had been spent asleep. Still, the impression she had gathered was that the nomad was more child than adult. Heralda laughed and giggled and sometimes didn't seem to have a serious side--and yet her face sometimes showed a seriousness Amanda was not used to seeing on even the aged matrons of society.
Heralda seemed to be paying as close attention to their surroundings as the guards, though Amanda suspected for different reasons. Everything here would be new to her. The steam rising from the hot pool especially captured her attention.
Heralda's face may have begun prematurely aging. She already looked ten years older than her real age, but her body proved to be that of a fourteen-year-old who had just recently begun maturing. Her skin was smooth, and her musculature appeared firm. A body like Heralda's normally would have attracted Amanda's attention, but it did not, for Heralda's body carried something Amanda had never seen before, a hideous scar, tale-teller of a wound, directly centered between her breasts. Pale and puckered, it was an indentation horrible to see. When Heralda stepped into the pool's hot water, her back showed a matching scar where the missile had emerged just off center from between her shoulder blades.
Amanda was not an expert on war wounds. She had never fought in a war and had no desire to do so. Even so, she knew this was nothing as simple as a wound. It was death.
Trust Aaron Turner to attach himself to a mystery.
Heralda entered the sloped pool one step at a time. Something, her young body with her too-old face, or the unashamed way she walked, something seemed to unconsciously emphasize the scars. Her bearing drew the eyes of the other half-dozen women in the baths. They seemed to be fascinated by her, and yet Heralda did not notice.
Amanda grabbed soap and two scraping sticks and followed behind the girl. She handed one stick to Heralda and started soaping herself down. "We can do each other's backs," she said. "That's the real difference between men and women. Men all have dirty backs because there's seldom someone in their baths to help them scrape down."
Heralda smiled faintly, but her attention was on a girl younger than herself. The young girl looked back.
"Did it hurt?" the girl asked, her green eyes filled with pity.
"Hush," her mother said. "Erin, you're getting too personal."
"I do not mind," Heralda said. "Yes, it did hurt. It hurt terribly." She took Erin's hand, raised it so the young fingers could explore Heralda's abused flesh. Erin's face was a mixture of fascination and distaste.
"You must have been sick for a long time," she said.
Heralda shook her head. "Hardly at all. The crossbow bolt, fired by one of your own guard, entered right where your fingers are touching and went out my back. It went completely through me and wounded one of my friends in her arm."
Heralda's face transformed. The rough beginnings of leather softened and reformed. The changes were subtle, the loosening of a tense muscle here, the faint tightening of skin at the corners of her eyes. Amanda suddenly realized that she gazed at the most beautiful woman she had ever seen.
"I fell down," Heralda said gently. "I thought I was dying. I cried while a friend held me, and then I did die, but a force came over me as I left my body. I felt the strength of the One God. I saw the face of His Son. Strength poured into me. My flesh joined. The blood stopped flowing, and all the pain I felt washed away into an Ecstasy. I doubt I ever shall feel such intensity again." She smiled, and her smile was almost divine. "I never shall again," she repeated, "though I feel its cousin when the One God allows me to heal through the touch of His Hand."
"Blasphemy," one older matron spat. "We are a land of faith here, a land where the Lord and Lady are properly worshiped. I won't listen to heathen superstitions."
"I do not blame you," Heralda replied. "You have been taught of the Lady and Her Lord. You have been taught of Their works and the glory of Their ways. I know of them. I have given them my love and worship."
"Then what's this talk of the One God?" the woman demanded. Her eyes burned fury.
Amanda frowned. Religion was a serious matter. Blasphemy, when it reached certain stages, often resulted in a rope necktie, but Heralda had barely started on her topic. Besides, she was obviously Clan. Her appearance and accent gave that away. All of Isabella knew the clans worshiped differently from Isabellans. The government and most religious leaders encouraged tolerance until the Clan had time to assimilate to the true religion.
"There is no doubt the Lord and Lady exist," Heralda told the woman. "It was His touch that healed my body. His Lady's touch instructed my mind on the wishes of the One God. The clans know of Their ways just the same as you know Their ways. Unlike you, however, the Clan also knows Their Father, the One God. We know the One God created the universe. We know He created this world for our use, and we know He created The Lady and called Her His Ward. The Lady created Her Lord, and the Lord created us."
"Your theology is faulty, and your doctrine is suspect!" the woman snapped. "I'll see to it you are reported. They'll hang you for this."
"If that is my fate, then it shall be," Heralda said. A small smile played about the corner of her lips. She backed out of the pool until she stood no more than ankle deep in the water. Spreading her hands wide, she turned in a slow circle before them. Her flesh seemed different, seemed to shimmer as if it did not entirely exist in the world.
"Look at me carefully. I do not carry that thing you call a Talent Stone. I stand naked before you."
"You do," Erin's mother agreed.
Heralda might be Stone-free, but she had cast a spell none-the-less. All the watchers were mesmerized, including Amanda.
Stepping back into the pool, Heralda approached Amanda. Amanda felt trapped as Heralda's hands rose. One of those small hands rested against the good side of her head. The palm was wet and warm and sent soothing waves throughout Amanda's body. Heralda's other hand touched Amanda's split cheek. The pounding in Amanda's head intensified as Heralda's eyelids narrowed. The small smile still played across the girl's lips. She put pressure against Amanda's face, but the pressure brought no new pain. Instead, it gave a warmth Amanda had never felt before. The warmth suffused her, ran up and down her spine. The headache she'd fought the last several days pounded heavier, then started to recede. One thudding beat at a time, the pain and throbbing dissipated until nothing remained but the slightest hint of discomfort buried deep within her left temple, and then that, too, disappeared.
Amanda heard gasps. When Heralda removed her hands, her face no longer appeared exultant. Instead, it looked tired and strained, once more the young and worn and almost homely features of a nomad.
Erin stared at Amanda. Her mother came forward, and so did all the other women.
"It's gone," one woman said.
Uninvited, she trailed fingers down Amanda's wounded cheek--only there was no pain. Amanda
felt no pain at all. She felt only--complete.
Heralda stepped out of the pool. She had not used soap or the scraper, but she owned the cleanest body Amanda had ever seen. She ached for that cleanliness as Heralda picked up her new clothes and pulled them on.
Pushing inquisitive fingers away, Amanda felt her own head. There was no swelling. She ran her fingers higher and yes, the cut in her temple was gone.
The young mother scrambled out of the pool, her daughter following. "Who are you?" the woman demanded.
"I am just a girl," Heralda said. "I am Clan, and I have been blessed with being prophet and shaman. The Lady has taught me. Her Lord has healed me, and The One God bids that I come among you to speak the Word."
"Come with me," the woman begged. "Stay with me."
"Are you sure?" Heralda asked. "I have fought your people. I have killed them and been wounded by them, and now I speak of beliefs they do not hold." Her eyes suddenly held meaning. Some of the unworldly glamour returned to them for a brief moment. "Call me to you if you will, but I warn you now, the way will not be easy."
"Stay with me," the woman repeated. She pulled on her own clothes and handed others to her daughter as she talked. "I've been searching for a long time. I've always known the Answer was incomplete."
Heralda nodded. "I will stay with you, but the day may come when you rue this decision." She touched the woman gently and then her daughter. "You shall be my first disciples."
They left Amanda alone with her stunned guards and the remaining women.
"Trickery," the matron insisted. "Nothing but trickery."
But when she stared at the side of Amanda's face, she did not seem entirely convinced.
Amanda pulled herself from the water and moved over to the rinsing pool. She dunked herself under, rose, and went for her own clothes. She pulled on her undergarments, slipped on her trousers, and was holding her blouse when her eyes fell on its label.