Home Ground (Darshian Tales #4)

by Ann Somerville

  Juimei tapped Wepizi’s wrist with the pencil he held. “Come on, man—we’ll do our best. But now we have work to do.”

  Wepizi brought his mind back to the many other tasks demanding his attention. One bright spot was one of his grois turning up to say they had managed to retrieve some of his personal possessions from the barracks, along with more urgently needed equipment and items.

  “Have them delivered to my residence, groi,” Juimei said, still writing a note on a report from the mayor, not even lifting his eyes as he spoke. “And let them know that he and two other people will need accommodating in my room, or close by.”

  Wepizi looked at him in surprise. “Your highness?”

  Juimei met his gaze, revealing nothing in his expression. “I’ll explain shortly. Can you do that, groi? The tezrei will be sleeping up there for the foreseeable future.”

  “Yes, your highness. I’ll tell lep Tovoi, sir?”

  “Yes, thank you. Carry on, Groi.”

  The prince waited until she left before clearing his throat. “Ah...in the interest of discretion and security, I’d like you to take personal charge of these two youngsters. Keep rumours from flying about—if they’re as skittish as you say, the fewer people they have to deal with, the better. Do you agree?”

  “Yes, I do. I can’t stay at the residence forever. It’s bad for morale.”

  “Yours or theirs?” Juimei asked, his lips twitching. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a fast moving situation—who knows what tomorrow may bring? Now, about those cracked cisterns at the barracks....”

  Half an hour later, just when Wepizi was growing a little concerned at the length of time Neime and the others were spending with Laovei, they all turned up. Neime looked calm, the other two a little uncertain, but perhaps less so than before. He rose and closed the door, then turned.

  “How is she?” he asked Neime.

  “Asleep. They’re giving her drugs for the pain and they make her drowsy.”

  “I wish they hadn’t had to take her foot,” Iome said, wringing her hands. “I don’t know how she’ll manage back—”

  As she clearly remembered she was supposed to keep that secret, Jozin scowled. “I’ll take care of her,” he said stoutly. “Like the others.”

  Juimei, having stood to greet them, cleared his throat politely. “Uh, Wepizi? Please make the introductions.”

  “Oh, my apologies, your highness. Allow me to introduce Jozin and Iome. They’re friends of Laovei. Jozin, Iome, this is Prince Juimei of the line of Godiw—he’s this region’s governor.”

  “Prince? What does that mean?” Iome asked curiously. Jozin wasn’t giving his reaction away just yet.

  “Ah, it simply means my father is the king,” Juimei said with a reassuring smile. “If you were his daughter, then you’d be a princess.”

  “A king—that’s important, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, my dear, it is. My father with his councillors govern the whole of Andon, and try to protect it from the warlords and those who would attack our country. My father’s grandfather helped drive the warlords from this land.”

  She still seemed confused. Jozin looked distracted, and Wepizi realised he was staring at Juimei’s cane.

  “Why do you talk funny?” Jozin suddenly blurted out. “It sounds like you’re eating while you speak, and Nuveize says that’s rude.”

  Juimei stiffened, his hand clenching over the top of his cane. Beside him, Neime’s expression went blank.

  Then the prince smiled, though rather tightly. “My apologies—I can’t actually help it. Would you...uh...care to sit?”

  Iome hesitated as the prince and Neime cleared a place for them. “Sir, could we...?”

  “Yes, my dear?” Juimei said, clearly trying to sound friendly.

  “Where’s Timinke buried? Could we see?”

  An excellent way to get these two away from the prince before they offended him again. “Yes, of course,” Wepizi said. “His highness is going to have you to stay in his own home, so why don’t I take you to the gravesite, then I can bring you up to his residence. With his highness’s permission, of course.”

  There was a distinct flash of relief in Juimei’s eyes as he answered. “Of course. Good idea. Go along, we’ll meet you up there.”

  “Neime?” Iome asked shyly. “Will you come too?”

  He didn’t smile as he replied, “I’ll be at the residence later—I want to speak to his highness first.”

  She seemed a little perplexed at her new friend’s cool manner, but Wepizi took her hand. “Neime’s had a long day and a long night before it, my dear. Come along. Jozin?”

  Grateful to get them away from the prince, he lost no time in taking them out of the shop and out into the square. As they walked across the square, Iome looked around curiously.

  “Never been in a town before, my dear?”

  “No, sir. Not this big.”

  He wanted to know exactly where she had been but was anxious not to reawaken Jozin’s suspicions. The lad slouched along beside them, seeming rather lost in his own thoughts. Iome clung to Wepizi’s arm—he wondered how old she was. Physically, she could have been anything from fifteen to twenty-five, but her child-like innocence and insecurity suggested more fifteen than the other. That could be equally the result of long isolation as much as youth. The two were a paradox.

  “Why does he talk funny?”

  Wepizi stopped. Jozin looked at him with something surprisingly close to embarrassment. “Because he was injured some years ago, falling from a doig. He can’t help the way he speaks, or walks. I’m sure Nuveize wouldn’t have considered he was being rude,” he said, giving Jozin a look which he hoped conveyed the message that someone else had been—very rude indeed.

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Joz,” Iome said, wagging her finger at him. “You hurt his feelings.”

  “So what?” Jozin muttered, a long dull lock of his red hair falling forward over his face as he stared at his feet. “He’s just a normal like the rest of you.”

  “Even normals have feelings,” Wepizi said mildly. “His highness is very sensitive about the way he speaks because he’s been mocked over it, and someone he loved very much turned him away because of his injury. Perhaps it might have been kinder not to have mentioned it.”

  Jozin still wouldn’t meet his eyes. Iome did though. “But that person didn’t love him back? If she could do that, she must have been mean.”

  He didn’t think it was worth correcting her assumption. “Well, I think so, certainly, to judge a person for something they have no control over. You know what that’s like, don’t you, Iome? Jozin, did the people in your tribe hate you, because of your Blessing?”

  Jozin jerked up, then scowled. “They were stupid—I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, or do anything! And I didn’t, hardly, but they were all scared of me, and then my father said we had to try to keep it secret. But it didn’t work,” he added angrily. “They still hated me.”

  “Me too,” Iome whispered, putting her hand on Jozin’s arm, though for her own comfort or his, it wasn’t clear. “I was just playing. I never hurt anyone.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, either of you,” Wepizi said as kindly as he could. “People...are frightened by what they don’t understand. And they react unkindly sometimes.”

  He urged them to keep walking, and they fell into step with him. “You’re not scared,” Iome said. “You act like you know all about us.”

  “Well, I do, in a way. I have a friend who had the Blessing of fire, though only a minor Blessing.”

  “Like Kilinze...oh, I wasn’t supposed to say!” Iome covered her mouth just as a child would, caught in a mistake.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” he said soothingly, wondering who Kilinze was, and how old he was. “Anyway, Romi’s told me a lot about the Blessed—the Gifted as they called them in Darshian—and I know the problems you have.”

  “Who’s Romi? And what’s Darshian?”

  Benevolent go
d, the child knew almost nothing of the world. “Another country, south across the ocean. Vast and empty, like this one, only not so cold. Romi’s a soldier like me. His lover was raised by two minor gifted, and is close friends with the truly Gifted. One of them is Blessed with fire too. He has two friends with your power, Jozin—they take him flying, he said.”

  “A normal?” The boy blinked in shock. “They take a normal with them? He’s a friend?”

  “Yes, indeed. A very close one. He’s even helped one of his friends—who has the power of mindspeaking as Nuveize does—to have two children with her lover. Maybe one day you might meet him—he’s talking about coming to visit me here.”

  Jozin seemed dumbstruck by the idea that a normal could be a friend of the Blessed—and more than that, be a friend back. “You’re lying. Making it up.”

  Wepizi shrugged. “Ask Nuveize to read my mind. I can’t lie to you, Jozin—not while she can see everything.”

  The boy scowled again and set off in long, angry strides down the main street towards what was left of the city wall and gates, past the new barracks, and then out into the field that had become a graveyard. Wepizi didn’t push—he had nothing to hide, was speaking the barest truth, and wanted Jozin to think, not react. He understood why the children were so defensive, and, if he was right in his guesses, why they were so sheltered and inexperienced too. But they had to join the real world at some point, and the real world included people like Karik and Romi as much as the warlords.

  Their path took them past the worst of the ruination of the town, and out into open farmland and clearings. Ahead of them lay the camp, the tents rising squat and reliably in clumps, people sitting outside them, eating, talking, resting. But their business was not with the living, so they turned away from the river, towards what had once been a place for holding excess stock from the market, now a sea of turned soil and mounds. Rough wooden fences that once kept animals penned, now marked the boundary of the town’s newest and most unwelcome amenity. It had wanted an infirmary, but had got a graveyard instead. The irony was bitter indeed.

  They weren’t the only visitors. Here and there, people knelt or stood beside the piles of earth marking the resting place of a loved one, weeping, holding each other, some murmuring prayers for the dead. Wepizi felt his own heart swelling with sympathetic sorrow and grief—so much misery, so much pain people would have to learn to swallow, just as he did. He found it hard, even after all this time, to remain calm when surrounded by so many who felt as he had, still did.

  “Wepizi? Where’s he buried?”

  He collected himself, cleared his throat, made himself smile a little at the girl. “Let’s speak to Tinwis Kiein—he has the records.”

  The elderly holy man, dressed not in the traditional green and black of the mourning attendant, but in his more simple white, now rather dirty robes—all that he had left after his shrine was half-crushed—prayed before one of the graves, unmarked like all the others, since there had not been time to make decent grave stones. Wepizi waited until the man finished the familiar prayers for the dead, joining in with the last, piously murmured “we beseech thee, oh Benevolent father”, and bowing his head to show his respect to this soul, one of so many. Then the tinwis turned, his lined face calm but very weary—he’d had a long day, and been up all night. Wepizi didn’t know where his stamina came from.

  “How may I serve, tezrei?”

  “Tinwis, these are friends of the boy, Timinke, and wish to pay respects. Do you have the list of the graves?”

  “Of course.” He drew a small sheaf of papers from his sleeve, and scanned down the list. “Yes—over there. Come with me. I’m trying to visit all the graves today, but I fear I may not achieve it. I know Sephiz will pardon my human weakness, but still, it’s a shame.”

  “We’re all grateful for what you’ve been able to do, Tinwis,” Wepizi said quietly, guiding Iome with a hand on her shoulder to follow the holy man’s footsteps. Jozin kept to himself, but he was obviously affected by the emotions of this place, the mourners and the sad ranks of fresh graves. It would take a heart of stone to remain indifferent to the quiet pain visible all around them.

  As they passed through the narrow lanes between the rows, Wepizi saw a small family, weeping as they clung to each other. As they drew closer, the father suddenly broke down, collapsing to his knees. Wepizi recognised them now—it had been the man’s elderly mother who’d been killed. She’d been at home, tending the house while the rest of them had attended the prize-giving—oh, how long ago that seemed.

  He excused himself and went to speak to them. The woman and the girl stared at him with weary, miserable eyes, perhaps wondering from where he’d sprung. “My friends, please accept my sorrow at your loss. May Sephiz keep her spirit safe.”

  The man looked up, then burst into tears again. It was unnerving to see such raw uncontrolled grief, and his wife and daughter helpless to comfort him. Wepizi knelt, heedless of the knees of his best-uniform.

  “Sir—Frisenze,” he corrected, recalling the man’s name. “You should take your family back to shelter, calm yourself, perhaps have some drizu or tea. Sitting out here won’t help you.”

  “I can’t leave,” he whispered. “If I hadn’t left her, she’d not have died. I swore to look after her when Father died, and I abandoned her. She died because I left her.”

  “No, Fri,” his wife cried, “you couldn’t have stopped it!”

  “You don’t know! What if I could have got her out? I could have made all the difference.”

  He buried his face in his hands, heart-rending sobs shaking his body. His daughter clung to him, her face a mask of misery, forced to parent her father while she grieved for her grandmother in her turn.

  There was nothing Wepizi could do for them, not now. He looked up and found Tinwis Kiein looking at him.

  “Leave him,” the tinwis said quietly. “I’ll come back and sit with them later. People need to grieve in their own way.”

  Which was true, but Wepizi still felt a failure walking away from someone in such pain—such pointless grief, for truly, no man, no woman, could have resisted an earthquake that strong. If the man had been in the house, most likely he and his mother both would have been killed. He put his hand on Frisenze’s shoulder.

  “The pain will ease, my friend. Don’t punish yourself with choices you couldn’t make. Only Sephiz is all knowing. We’re not.”

  He had no way of knowing if the man heard, or paid the least attention. With a heavy heart, he climbed to his feet. No point in trying to brush the mud off his knees—mud was everywhere in this place, as if the earth cried too. Jozin and Iome were both solemn-eyed and silent—he wondered what they made of all this, the world of normals, a world they thought they had no part of.

  “Come,” he said gently. “Let’s find your friend, and you can say your farewells.”

  Home Ground: 17

  Neime went to the door and closed it again, turning around, an apology already on his lips. “Jui, I’m—”

  Juimei held up his hand to forestall him. “Don’t. He’s but a child, and thoughtless. Not your fault. I should be over this, don’t you think?”

  “He’s not that much of a child, and it was still cruel. I don’t think he meant it—they’re not really used to people, any of them.”

  “Yes, I noticed. Don’t work yourself up. I do have a funny voice, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  But it still hurt. He was just getting used to being seen as a proper governor, being listened to for what he had to say, not how he was saying it, and this boy had come along and spoken the truth for what it was—Juimei sounded like someone speaking with their mouth full, ludicrous to any normal person.

  He made himself pretend he didn’t mind, because Neime was upset on his behalf and Sephiz knew the lad had more than enough on his mind.

  “Wepizi said we don’t know where their friends are—did you get any more information?”

  Neime shook his hea
d. “No, they talked through their friend. Wepizi explained about that?” Juimei nodded—it was rather unsettling to know that this unknown woman even now could hear his words and thoughts, but then he had nothing to hide. All his weaknesses were there for the world to see. “They’re still determined to take her away, even though she’s in no state to even get out of bed, and Iome seems to realise they have no way of caring for her. It’s Jozin—he’s so stubborn.”

  “He’s a child trying to act the big man, so we have to reassure him and calm him down. I’ve put Wepizi on the job. He seems to have the knack with young people—I surely don’t.”

  “You do! You were wonderful with me when I first came into your service.”

  “Perhaps. I’m not the man I was then, though it’s kind of you to say it.” Sephiz’s beard, he was tired, and feeling every inch the cripple he so obviously still seemed to everyone. “The infirmary? You owe me a report.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now,” he said somewhat testily. “Just because you’ve been holding that girl’s hand for days, doesn’t get you out of your proper job.”

  Neime straightened up. “My proper job is to attend you, your highness. I’ll admit to neglecting you, and I hope not to do that again. But I haven’t neglected the task you gave me.”

  “I didn’t say you had—oh, let’s not quarrel, lad. I’m sorry—the boy unsettled me. Just give me the brief details, then we can rest.”

  He hauled back his temper, because Neime didn’t deserve even a grain of it, but for the first time in days, he felt a headache coming on, his neck tightening into iron bands. Ridiculous to manage the fate of three thousand people without a twinge, yet one thoughtless child made a foolish remark, and his body decided to be a traitor.

  He made notes on Neime’s suggestions, and they gave some thought to the now pressing need to get the less seriously ill people out of the crowded infirmary to reduce the risk of disease. They decided to transfer those who could be moved to the mayor’s residence, and those people already in the residence, would have to be billeted out. The mayor’s housekeeper was summoned, and the arrangements discussed—she said they would be put into place by the following morning.