by Nathan Long
That’s what I wanted to hear. We marched Sai back to the main road, then all the way to the Doshaan Airfield.
The ship was still there. It was even smaller than the one Kai-La’s pirates had nabbed us on, and it looked like it would fall apart if you looked at it wrong. Its balloon was patched like a clown’s pants.
The captain, a fat, moon-faced guy who dressed more like a pirate than the pirates had, bowed us on board. Lhan had paid him so much he didn’t give me a second look. In fact he was so happy to see us he wouldn’t leave us alone. He followed us around, grinning like a Tijuana strip-show tout until Lhan gave him one of Sai’s gold bracelets to make him go away.
Our cabin was smaller than an Arkansas jail cell. Lhan and I weren’t about to spend more time in that closet with Sai moping and moaning than we had to, so after we took all weapons and sharp objects away from him and locked him in, we went up on deck to wait for him to fall asleep.
Captain Happy was just casting off. We leaned on the rail and watched Doshaan drop away from us in the double moonlight.
It wasn’t like flying over an American city. There was hardly any light, just the occasional soft glow of a torch or a cooking fire in some courtyard. The moons were so bright the fires were practically invisible anyway. The silver of the rooftops against the deep black of the alleys made it all look like some huge, cubist black-velvet painting.
Funny how a little mood lighting made me goofy for a festering snake pit that had treated us like shit and tried to kill us. Kind of like seeing your psycho ex in a bar and thinking, “What a hottie,” before you realize who it is. Happened to me on Waar time and again. For every nightmare situation it threw at me, it would show me something so beautiful that I wished these medieval morons had invented the camera already.
Lhan’s sigh brought me out of dreamland. “They must be wed. Apart they are a danger to themselves and others.”
“No kidding.”
We stared into space some more. I had a question, but I was nervous about asking it. I did anyway. “But wouldn’t you rather have Sai stay single, and... available?”
Lhan froze. “I... I know not what you mean.”
“Come on, Lhan. You gonna tell me ‘beloved’ has more than one meaning in your lingo?”
Lhan gripped the rail. He looked straight ahead. “Will you betray me?”
“Betray you? Why?”
“Things must be different in your land.”
“Not as different as you’d think.”
He shook his head. “’Tis an impossibility here. Even if Sai shared my... sickness, we would have to hide our love or be killed. And I’d not hide it. I’d shout it to the world.” He chuckled. “No, they must wed, you see? Once he is safely removed within the walls of matrimony, honor will not allow me to make an adulterer of him. I will no longer be in such danger of indiscretion.”
He grinned at me. “Know you how close I came to kissing him when you rescued him in the arena?”
I nodded. “But they hate each other. What if they don’t get together? You gonna be able to resist temptation forever? Aren’t there other guys you could...?”
He waved a hand. “Men, women, it makes no difference. I take my pleasure with both equally. That is not the problem. The problem is that there is only one Sai, and until he and Wen-Jhai are joined forever, I will be as a blossom, unable to turn my gaze from the sun.”
My heart lurched in my chest. Lhan was a switch-hitter too? Suddenly I was all for Sai and Wen-Jhai tying the knot. That is if Lhan would even look at me after I betrayed Sai and killed Kedac. My guts went sour as I forced a smile. “Well, then pardner, you and me got some work to do.”
***
We started in on Sai the next day, tag-teaming the poor guy so hard we made his pretty little head spin. Lhan sat him on his bunk and looked him in the eye. “She doesn’t love him, Sai. In your heart you know this.”
“Then why did she run to his arms?”
“To spite you, of course. To fan the flames of your jealousy. She wants you to come after her. To save her from her fate like a true Dhan of Ora should. Twice now you have failed to rescue her. Yet all will be made right again when you...”
“Rescue her? From what, pray tell? She enjoyed it! By the One, she was wallowing in it, like a filthy, depraved animal. Aldhanshai or no, no man can marry a woman who has... so spectacularly thrown away her virtue before marriage.”
My turn. “Just like you wallowed with Captain Hot Pants.”
“That... that was different!”
“How?”
“I but tried to win our release. I used the only weapon at my command to try and soften the captain’s heart.”
I pushed the image of that weapon out of my head. He was right. That was different. That was almost honorable. “Well, yeah, but... but maybe that’s what Wen-Jhai was doing.”
That caught him. He looked a little unsure of himself for a second, then he came back strong. “But she enjoyed it!”
I laughed. “You didn’t enjoy it?”
“Certainly I enjoyed it. Am I not a man?”
Here we went again. “And Wen-Jhai is a woman. What’s the problem?”
“’Tis different for men. We must slake our animal natures or... go mad. Women are innocent creatures who...”
“Captain Hot Pants was an innocent creature?”
“She’s not a woman. Not a lady. Ladies do not...”
“Oh yeah? Ain’t Wen-Jhai a lady?”
“She... that decadent corrupted her. He turned her into a lustful animal.”
I nudged him, buddy buddy. “Isn’t that how you want her to be with you?”
“I... but within the bounds of matrimony all is permissible.”
I turned on him like a trial lawyer. “Ah-ha! So you’re not mad at her for becoming a lustful animal, you’re mad at her because she didn’t wait for you to be the one who did it to her. So really you’re just pissed at her for being unfaithful, and you ain’t got a leg to stand on there, bucko.”
Sai was practically in tears. “Mistress Jae-En, you make me dizzy. I know not what I think anymore.”
Lhan’s turn. He patted Sai’s shoulder like the good cop. “All she means, Sai, is that we have all sinned. Are any of us above reproach? Forgiveness is the greatest virtue of an Oran gentleman. And the hardest won. Can you not do this noble thing?”
“Gentleman? Can you call me that after all my failures? Perhaps I am not worthy of her. Twice have I let courage fail when brought to the test. No Lhan, I am no gentleman. I am the lowliest insect. Kedac-Zir is a true man. What a hero he looked, swinging to her rescue.”
Man, Sai squirmed more than a centipede on a hot plate. I was ready to give up on the little piss-ant, but I thought about losing my chance at Kedac and dove back in. “Who’s more of a hero? The guy who brings the whole navy with him, or the guy who tries the impossible, with just a sword and his pals to back him up?”
“The hero is he who succeeds.”
Well, he had me there, but I kept at it. “Okay, he’s a hero, but he’s a hero with tap water for blood. Did he call her beloved? True heart? My love? Did he even call her by name for fuck’s sake? No, he called her ‘betrothed.’ Did he kiss her? Nope. Did he hug her? Only to carry her up the ladder. I still say he doesn’t love her.”
Even now he wasn’t buying it. “Mistress Jae-En!”
“Sorry, Sai, he comes half way around the world to rescue her and then doesn’t even swap spit with her? It just don’t add up.”
Lhan raised an eyebrow at that, but Sai put his hands over his ears. “Please do not slander an Oran gentleman. He must love her. He would not marry her else.”
“Yeah? Well, if that’s a sample of his love I’d hate to see his blank stare.”
“And yet she went with him.”
“Because you didn’t do the job.”
His shoulders slumped, but I could hear the gears grinding. Lhan and I exchanged a glance. Would he or wouldn’t he? Finally...
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“Well, if we meet again, and if she will speak to me... then I will speak to her.”
The only reason Lhan and I didn’t high-five behind Sai’s back was because Lhan didn’t know how.
Now we just had to make it to the church on time.
***
We switched ships in a little patch of desert that had apparently been an Oran naval outpost back in the day. The only thing left was the plant that made the “levitating air” and the shipfield, which made it a perfect place for smugglers from the north and south to gas-up and trade.
Our layover lasted six endless days. Sai and I chewed our knuckles to the bone. If Kedac and Wen-Jhai got married while we were stuck in the ass-end of nowhere it was over for both of us.
But finally, after I’d given up for good a hundred times, a scruffy ship came over the horizon and touched down to drop cargo before heading back to Ora.
Lhan closed the deal with the smuggler while me and Sai hid in the local bar. Lhan wanted Sai out of the way so he wouldn’t say something stupid and blow the deal. Me? Well, you could never tell what people were going to think of me. The guy was happy to take three passengers, particularly when Lhan didn’t bat an eye at his asking price.
But later, when he had us standing on his deck he changed his tune. The problem was that he knew who we were.
He was a meek-looking old geezer with a mousy beard. It made me wonder how he had the cajones to be a smuggler. I decided to call him Captain Mopey.
He shot me a nervous glance, then bowed to Lhan. “My apologies, noble Dhanan. I knew not who you were until I spied... er, until this moment. Know you that there be a price on your heads in Ora?”
Lhan stared. “A price? For what?”
The captain looked embarrassed. “Forgive me. You are charged with aiding the Pirate Kai-La in the kidnapping and enslavement of the Aldhanshai Wen-Jhai. In addition to the Aldhanan’s bounty, Kir-Dhanan Kedac-Zir personally offers a fortune to know your whereabouts. ’Tis not worth my life to carry you.”
Lhan gave him the hairy eyeball. “How much of a fortune?”
The captain named a price. Lhan gave him half of Sai’s jewels and let him see the other half. “Here is double that. And likely six times what your life is worth. Now what say you?”
Mopey practically licked Lhan’s boots. “Noble Dhanans, we will slip into Ormolu like ghosts. None will know of your presence.”
Lhan scraped him off with a couple “thank yous” and smiled at me. “A man is so obliging when he knows you have more left in your pocket.”
I was more worried about the price on our heads. “What’s this bounty shit? Who’s been telling lies about us kidnapping Wen-Jhai? Who even knows we got attacked by pirates? Did anybody get away?”
“One person. Kedac’s cousin.”
“Who? Oh yeah, the She-Wolf, but why would she make shit up?”
Lhan looked lost in thought. “I am beginning to wonder, Mistress Jae-En, if there is not some substance to your suspicions about Kedac’s wooing.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BETRAYED!
We came down over Ormolu at sunset eight days later. It was amazing—a huge honey-gold city in the middle of an endless patchwork of fields, all red, purple and aqua. The Ormoluans—Ormolunians? Ormolites?—had built the city at the junction of a river and three of the Seven’s super-highways. It was walled, but the walls couldn’t hold it all anymore. Whole neighborhoods of chunky, colorful houses spread out beyond the massive fortifications like hexagonal Legos spilling out of a toy box.
There were crumbling shacks, tenements, ritzy townhouses. There were swarming open air markets where you couldn’t see the cobblestones because the tents and stalls and shoppers were packed so tight. There were arenas like the one back in Doshaan, race tracks, parks, gardens. There were wide streets, twisty little alleyways, and the super-highways which, once inside the walls, became high-rent, tree-lined boulevards lined with swanky shops.
But the thing that made my jaw hit the deck was the tower at the meeting point of the three roads. It was huge! Bigger than that Eiffel Tower thing in Vegas, but shaped like a six-sided, art-deco rocket ship—lots of fins and flanges, all stepping back as it got higher, until it came to a point, which was topped by a steel needle half again as high as the whole thing. It had no windows and it was as shiny and white as a showroom mini-van. The super-highways formed a mile-wide traffic circle around it, and inside that circle was a large park dotted with the biggest, richest palaces in town. They looked like mice surrounding a great Dane. There was no way these bow-and-arrow bone-heads had built that tower.
I grabbed Lhan’s arm. “What the hell is that?”
He smiled, proud. “That is the temple of Ormolu, High Lord of the Seven. ’Tis for His temple that our city is named, and what permits us to claim the honor of being the greatest city on Waar.”
“But... but you guys never built that!”
“Of course not. ’Tis a relic of the Seven. Each of the seven holy cities is built around a temple, but this is the temple of the High Lord; the largest and finest.”
“Man, these Seven guys had the toys, huh? So, you pray in there? It must hold a million.”
Sai looked shocked. “None but the priesthood may enter, and then only those of the highest level. We pray at the chapels in the temple grounds. That is where Wen-Jhai’s... wedding will take place, if it hasn’t already.”
I watched the thing as we sailed by it. Silhouetted against the sun it suddenly looked like a giant prick casting its shadow across the city. You might think, after all my whining about not getting any, that I’d see that as a good thing, but I didn’t like it. It seemed to sum up the whole Oran daddy-knows-best culture in one big phallic “fuck-you” middle finger. It gave me a weird, big-brother-is-watching-you feeling. The feeling you’d get if you had a nuclear missile for a next door neighbor—or a police station.
***
We landed just as the sun went down, in the largest shipfield I’d seen yet, a mile square if it was an inch, with ships rising and sinking all over it. In the purple sunset it made me think of a giant lava lamp.
When we went to leave the ship, Captain Mopey came up, hemming and hawwing. “Er... beware, gentle sirs, there is danger for you in Ormolu. You have been most generous for my small kindnesses in the past. Let me take you to a safe place while I scout out the lay of the land for you. Whatever information you require, I can obtain it for you.”
Lhan smiled. “For a price, of course.”
Mopey bowed. “The Dhanan is most kind.”
Sai frowned. “You have already been paid double for our passage. Can you want more?”
Lhan pulled Sai aside. “He offers a valuable service, Sai. Unjustly accused though we may be, we are still wanted criminals. Until we know where and when Wen-Jhai’s ceremony takes place we must remain hidden. If having won this far we are stopped at the very gates of happiness...”
“This happiness you speak of is a presumption I can’t share, but if you wish it...” Sai shrugged.
Lhan turned back to the captain. “Lead on, sir.”
***
Mopey drove us out hidden in a cargo wagon, so at least I had company under the tarp this time. He put us up in a second-story rat-trap over a barrel-maker’s place in a shabby slum near the shipfield. There was an airmen’s tavern on the corner. We could hear them singing dirty songs.
Lhan gave Mopey another fraction of Sai’s jewelry and told him to find out when and where the royal wedding was taking place, or if it already had, and where Wen-Jhai and Kedac were staying. Mopey went away promising news and food within the passing of a moon.
We settled in to wait, and wait. It was cramped up there, two rooms with nothing in ’em except one chair and a three-legged table that was supposed to have four. The windows on one side looked out on the street, but Mopey told us we’d better keep the shutters closed. I thought it was overkill, but Lhan agreed, so we didn’t even have a view.
&
nbsp; There was nothing to do. We should have slept, but we were all too busy thinking. Could we get to Wen-Jhai or Kedac the wedding? Was it already over? Would we have to crash it?
Sai was probably worrying about whether he could beat Kedac, and Lhan was probably worrying about whether Wen-Jhai would actually talk to Sai even if he did. What I was worrying about was whether I was going to go through with my plan at all. Now that Kedac was almost in reach I was feeling guiltier than ever. All that bullshit I’d told myself about Sai thanking me for killing Kedac went right out the window. Sai would hate me. Worse than that, Lhan would hate me. Sai might be a weenie, but Lhan and I had become friends. We got each other’s jokes. We’d gone through hell together. How was I going to look him in the eye after I’d jumped ahead of Sai and cut Kedac in half?
I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. I’d be catching the next train back to Earth as soon as I could anyway. But would I? Once I killed Kedac you can bet Sai would put the kibosh on hooking me up with his father-in-law the Aldhanan pretty damn quick. Shit, the guy probably wouldn’t even be Sai’s father-in-law if I killed Kedac. If Sai didn’t do the job himself would Wen-Jhai even give him the time of day? The more I thought about it the more I realized how much killing Kedac was going to fuck everything up. Everybody would hate me and I’d be back at square one as far as getting off this boondock planet went. I went back and forth about it so much I wore a trench in my brain.
To kill the time, Sai and Lhan taught me a game they played when they were kids. It was a cross between horseshoes and marbles. You drew a circle on the floor, then stood across the room and tossed pebbles at it. Everybody started with the same number of pebbles, but once you threw all you had, you could only start the next round with the ones you’d managed to land inside the circle. The last guy with pebbles left won. Lhan won every time, the bastard.