Law of Survival

by Kristine Smith

  Where are you, ní Dathim? He focused his hearing in the still dark, straining for the distant wail of ComPol sirens. He had heard them now and again since the start of his vigil, their cry like the keen of the Rauta Shèràa alarms that had declaimed the arrival of the Laumrau bombs.

  Ní Dathim?

  Tsecha shifted in his strangely comfortable Haárin chair. Nowhere did the framing stab him. Not once did the angle of the seat threaten to tumble him onto the stones. He looked at the other dwellings—the enclave seemed as deserted in the darkness. No lights showed through windows. No Haárin sat outside and contemplated the water, or walked the stone-paved lane. So different than the born-sect who lived in the embassy, who discussed points of philosophy upon the veranda throughout the night, or sat in the archives and studied…

  …or waited in the Haárin sequestration for their suborn to return. Tsecha fussed with the cuffs of his overrobe, tugging them low over the sleeves of the coldsuit that he wore beneath. Blessedly warm though he felt, he shivered as a breeze wafted off the lake, bringing with it the promise of the hellish winter to come, and the chill of more immediate concerns.

  Ní Dathim…where are you?

  He heard the distant crunch of footsteps upon the lane, and felt the clench in his soul. I will not call out. What if it was a guard, who had followed him from the embassy? Or Sànalàn, who seemed to beg his forgiveness each time she saw him, even as she challenged his every thought and action. Or Shai, come in person to demand an explanation for his visits to the sequestration.

  This is my place, Shai—am I not Haárin, as declared by Temple and Council? Is not my name of Sìah Haárin? Tsecha. “Fool.” Have I not been as outcast since the war? Even more so since you removed me from my station and ordered me to remain on the grounds of this waterbound place?

  The footfalls grew nearer. Stopped before the door of the house. Then, slowly, turned and circled toward the veranda.

  Tsecha rose to his feet as the footsteps rounded the corner, heart tripping as the figure darkened the veranda entry, then slowing as he recognized the strange, sheared head. “Ní Dathim. You could announce yourself.”

  “That would sound foolish, nìRau. Why would I announce myself to an empty house?” Dathim picked up a weighty metalframe seat and placed it beside Tsecha’s. He sat heavily, in the humanish sprawl that he preferred, and rubbed a hand over his face. His chair matched Tsecha’s in the height of its seat, so that he sat at the same level instead of a higher, more respectful one.

  But such are Haárin—all the same within themselves. Such chairs as these had not been designed with the idea that Chief Propitiators would sit in them. “So, ní Dathim?” Tsecha sat down as well, then leaned forward so he could see the Haárin’s eyes. For such purposes, sitting at the same level proved an advantage. “Where were you so long? Did you have trouble in the city?”

  “No, nìRau, I had no trouble. I have been back for some time. I sat in the skimmer and thought…about many things.” Dathim stared at the ground at his feet. “Humanish are strange.”

  “I know you think that, ní Dathim. You have said it before.” Tsecha waited for Dathim to say more, but the Haárin’s face held the grim cast of one not inclined to speak. He thought to wave his hand in front of him, as he had once seen Lucien do to Jani when he had asked her a question and she did not answer. But before he could make his attempt, Dathim raised his head and looked at him.

  “So. I saw her. Your Kilian.”

  “My Jani! She is unhurt?”

  “She limps. She said that she fell during the shooting, and hurt her knee. It is not serious.” Dathim looked out over the water. “The lieutenant is with her. Pascal.”

  “And he is well?”

  “He was shot here. A grave wound, he told me, and truly.” Dathim placed a hand beneath his soul, near his right hip. “He walks. Slowly, but he walks. He is pale, and tired. But still he watches, as he did here. Nothing escapes him.” Dathim shifted in his seat. “He watched me, every move I made.”

  “My Lucien watches, Dathim, as you said. Such is his way.”

  “Kilian said it was because he had never before seen an Haárin with short hair.” Dathim sat forward and let his hands dangle between his knees. “You would say Pascal is her suborn?”

  Tsecha gestured in strong affirmation. “Yes, ní Dathim, I would, and truly. In the way that humanish can be true dominant and suborn, they are. My Lucien provides my Jani protection. She provides him status. It is a most reasonable arrangement, as far as I can see.”

  “Then she must know him well, and I must defer to that knowledge.” Dathim turned his attention to his hands, and picked at his nails. “I gave the documents to her.”

  “Did she seem as angry?”

  “I could not tell, nìRau. She is most as a wall. Even now.”

  “Now, ní Dathim?”

  “Now that she is as Haárin.” Dathim turned his head—the incident light reflected off his broad, bare brow. “She is as Haárin, nìRau, and truly. She does not move as humanish. Her gestures are too smooth. Her hands and wrists—too long and thin. She walks as idomeni, as well. Even though she limps, her stride is long and smooth.” He looked back at his hands. “I saw one of her true eyes.”

  Tsecha felt the shocks of the past days redoubled. “How did you do such?”

  Dathim gestured in the humanish manner, as though such startling details held little import. “It is not yet as mine. The center is still too small, the sclera too pale.” He gestured in disappointment. “And they are green, like Oà. Why did her doctors make them green, instead of gold as Vynshàrau?”

  “That was their color before, Dathim.” Tsecha tried to imagine Jani’s eyes, tried to extrapolate the hints and shadings he had seen revealed in the bright sunlight days earlier. “John Shroud had tried to leave her a little of what she was before. He thought it important.”

  “Hmph.” Dathim did not sound impressed by that which John Shroud thought important. He turned back to the water, his great head stilling like an animal’s on alert as the patrol skimmer made another traverse. “She denies she is your heir.”

  Tsecha gestured reluctant acceptance. “Humanish deny, ní Dathim, until that which they deny buries them. Such is their way, and truly.”

  “She does not want to be as Haárin. She is ashamed.” Dathim’s tense posture eased as the patrol skimmer darted away from them. “Her eyefilm broke. When it broke, she sought to hide her eye with her hand. When I forced her to show it to me, she grew so angry. She would have struck me, nìRau, but she restrained herself. Even though she is smaller than me, she would have injured me, and truly.”

  Tsecha slipped into Low Vynshàrau to convey the bluntness of his feeling. “My nìa does not like to be coerced, ní Dathim.”

  Dathim sat back with such force that his chair legs scraped along the stone. “And as we shelter your nìa who does not like to be coerced, who speaks to the Elyan Haárin and their broken contracts?” He spoke in English, blunter and more forceful still, a barrage of hard and sharp sounds that hammered the ears as bombs. “Who promotes the final order you so desire, nìRau? The harmony of Shiou that follows the upheaval of Caith? Is it nìaRauta Shai, who speaks for the Oligarch without thought as to what the words mean? Who wishes us back to the worldskein, to serve only our dominants as we did before the war? Is it the humanish ministers, who think only of the money they lose if they allow Haárin to live among them? Who speaks? You cannot—you have been silenced. I cannot—I am as nothing. But your nìaRauta Haárin knows Haárin and humanish, life as it is and as it must become. But where is she now, as the Haárin converge upon this cold city and Shai prepares to hammer them with Cèel’s words? In her rooms, asleep, with her strange lieutenant who watches and the humanish tricks that cover that which she is!” Dathim fell silent, his breathing labored as though he ran a great distance.

  As Dathim’s words echoed in his mind, Tsecha again felt the wind brush in from off the water. This breeze, however,
he did not find as chilling, but as a warm gust that riffled the flowing sleeves of his overrobe, pushing them up his arms.

  He brushed down the soft material, then fingered the red banding that edged the sleeves. So long had he served as ambassador, as teacher, as irritant to his enemies, that he at times forgot his place as priest. But he still understood signs, the hints of order and disorder by which the gods informed him of their will. Thus did he know that he felt Caith in the strange warm wind, as he had felt her many times over the past days. Her ever-present whispers, in the hallways of the embassy, in the wind itself, unveiled his old disorder and reminded him of that which he once had been. Warrior. Killer. Walker in the Night. “My Jani. You would have her here to meet the Haárin, ní Dathim?”

  Dathim gave a humanish nod. “If she came here, the born-sects would not dare to keep her out. Shai would admit to your power if she did so, a power she claims you no longer possess.”

  “The humanish Ministers would fight her presence. Anais Ulanova would lead them.”

  “The humanish Ministers, I have learned, have to answer to their reporters, who batter them as ax-hammers and carry news of their actions to all. These reporters would ask them why they do not permit your Jani to see the Elyan Haárin, and how would Anais answer? Would she speak the truth, that the Haárin are better at humanish business than humanish, and she must therefore work to keep them away from her poor merchants because they cannot compete? Away from the many other humanish who would buy from Haárin if they could?”

  “No, ní Dathim—my Anais is more intelligent than that.” Tsecha stood just as another gust of rebellious wind whipped at his sleeves. He walked to the veranda entry, clasping his hands behind his back as he did so to keep his cuffs fixed in place, and hidden from Caith’s laughter. “She would say my nìa is unfit because of the crimes she has committed. She will talk of Knevçet Shèràa, and the death of Rikart Neumann. She will make my nìa appear most unseemly, and truly.”

  Dathim rose and stepped to Tsecha’s side. He made no attempt to edge even a small step to the front of his propitiator, as would have been seemly. “Then let your Jani answer. She has met challenge before, nìRau—she wears the scars. She knows how to fight, and will continue to fight even as she bleeds.” He held out his own arms and rolled back the sleeves, first one, then the other. Even in the darkness his scars showed, the ragged fissuring dark as ebon ink. “If I brought her here, she would see how it is for us, and she would fight for us. You say she fights for her own, nìRau. Who are more her own than we?”

  Tsecha stepped off of the veranda and onto the lane. Past the dark, silent houses, then over the short stretch of dune toward the beach. He struggled to maintain his footing as his boot soles slid on the loose sand.

  “You forced her yourself, nìRau.” Dathim’s voice sounded from behind, like the call of a tracking beast. “In the summer, you forced her to accept her first challenge, to fight nìaRauta Hantìa in her first à lérine. You did not think it such a bad thing then, when you used her against Cèel. But now I say we should use her for Haárin, and you hesitate. Why, nìRau? Is the chance to anger Cèel not great enough? Is the shock to the humanish when they see your Jani as she really is not great enough? Or are the Haárin not important enough?”

  Tsecha wheeled, the sand dragging at his feet like undercurrent. “I warn you, Dathim! You vex—!” His words stopped as he watched Dathim mount the dune and stand astride it as a humanish statue—

  —and as another Haárin mounted the dune and took her place beside him—

  —and as the other Haárin scaled the short summit and took their places on either side, until the entire ridge filled. Shoulder to shoulder they stood, thirty or more, in their trousers and shirts and boots. Their overrobes, they had left behind. Their looping braids and nape knots, the males had sheared as Dathim had, while the females had undone theirs, or bound them in long tails in the manner of humanish females.

  “Are we not important enough, nìRau!” Dathim stood with his arms hanging low, his hands curled in front of him, palms facing up. Not a gesture of idomeni, but of humanish question. “We who go out into this damned cold city so you can be as you are!”

  Tsecha took a step back. Another. The Haárin made no move toward him, yet still he felt them push him back. “The battles will be fought in the embassy, ní Dathim! Against those who refuse to accept the truth as I know it will be!” Behind him, he heard the rumble of the lake, the dash of the low waves. The Haárin beach was not smooth sand as was the embassy’s, but rock-strewn and rutted. He felt the water-slick rocks beneath his boots, and battled for balance on the uneven ground.

  “Your truth, born-sect! The truth as you see it!” Dathim advanced a single stride down the dune, arms held out to his sides for balance. “But we have our truth, as well. Our truth is that we want to live here, in this damned cold place. As the Elyan Haárin do on Elyas. As the NorthPort Haárin do on Whalen’s Planet. And the Phillipan, and the Serran. This is our colony, here! We will choose an enclave, here!”

  “The humanish will not let you. Not here!” Tsecha tried to take an advancing step, but the strange warm wind swirled from his back to his front, stopping him in his tracks. He felt it rush up his sleeves, and damned Caith for her disorder. “They are not as us. They cannot leave alone. They will not allow you to live as you wish—you scare them!”

  “Then they will scare. And your Jani will show them how not to fear.”

  “But they will fear her most of all!” Tsecha raised his arms above his head—a pleading stance. “It must be done my way, Dathim. First the embassy, and the meeting rooms. First, the Ministers, and the generals. Then the city. The city cannot come before. Humanish will not understand!”

  Dathim had grown still upon the slope. He maintained his balance without laboring, as though he had always stood in such a way and could do so forever. The Haárin on either side of him remained in their places, silent, watching as he spoke their words, said that which they wished to be said.

  “We are here,” Dathim said from his slope. “We will stay. I have asked your Jani to help us in this, and I will ask again. It is your decision, nìRau, if you join us or not. You of the Haárin name and the priestly life. Your decision.” He backed up the incline and disappeared over the other side. The other Haárin followed him, in ones and twos, until the ridge showed clear.

  Tsecha listened to the rustle of the grasses, the rumble of the lake. He pulled down one skewed sleeve, then let his hand drop away, and heard Caith’s laughter in the wind.

  CHAPTER 26

  Tsecha walked back to the embassy the same way he had come. Through the trees, across the lawns, toward the veranda.

  He entered the sheltered haven with the timorous step of someone who now felt unsure whether he belonged, and looked around. Since her challenge, Sànalàn had taken to spending great stretches of the day and night in meditation, or in conversation with nìaRauta Inèa. Her accidental meetings with him had been frequent; Tsecha did not esteem these encounters, but now he anticipated them even less. With Caith’s presence infused in the very air, who knew what disorder could ensue?

  But the air felt cooler on the veranda than it had outside. He hoped it meant that Caith had been warned off, that Shiou and the other six gods had forced her back to her domain, a distant land of storm and upheaval. Much as this place. Tsecha turned, and looked out the entry toward the lake. Storm and upheaval and shifting rocks beneath my feet.

  Tsecha looked around the veranda’s main enclosure, and found it emptier than usual. He chose to take that as a favorable sign as well, and tucked into a darkened corner furnished with a pillow-seat and a low reading table. From there, he could observe the rest of the area as well as the entry from the embassy. If Shai or Sànalàn appeared, he could contract into his space like a cava into its shell and remain unobserved.

  He lowered carefully. His hip no longer complained, but he must have twisted his right knee during his flight down the beach a
way from Dathim. The joint ached when he walked, and burned when he bent it. He took some time finding a comfortable position, and finally sat with his leg straightened before him. The mind-focusing ability of pain held no power for him now. He felt old and tired and discomfited, out of place in this most odd city that he had come to think of as his own.

  You would live in Chicago, Dathim? Somewhere out in the storm and upheaval, amid the sirens and the shootings and Caith’s strange winds. The humanish are different here—this is their homeworld. Tsecha rested his head against the stone wall that enclosed him, damning himself for his caution but unable to quell his apprehension. He who had gone out into the city so many times, in disguise and as himself, felt the raw stab of fear at the thought of Dathim Naré doing the same.

  Dathim does not hide. The tilemaster displayed his work freely, and went about his business as though he lived in a worldskein colony. He showed his cava shell tilework to Anais Ulanova, then walked into her office and stole documents. Then he took them into the city as though such was something he did each day. Granted, his visit to Jani’s home had upset him, but his was not the discomfort of an idomeni exposed to the ungodliness of a humanish house. He did not ask for absolution, or worry after his soul. He wanted to convince her, persuade her. Or, most likely, order her to assist him in his plans for the enclave. And my Jani does not take orders. Both idomeni and humanish had been forced to that conclusion long ago.

  Tsecha felt his eyes grow heavy. It had become most late, and now that Dathim had returned safely from the city, he felt tired. He lay back in a half-recline, his head abutting cold stone, his sore leg braced against the hard edge of the table, suffering just enough discomfort to keep awake. Dathim’s chairs felt most comfortable. Short hair, easeful furniture, no fear of humanish rooms—how readily Dathim Naré had adjusted to change. More quickly even than I. Tsecha felt a twinge in his soul, as though the pain in his knee had altered in location. More quickly…