Soon a new round of judgments would start. And she would be their target. With more than half a lifetime of practice, Aisha put that thought from her. For now, though, she would pretend that she was no different from any woman in the caravan. Like them, she sat clothed in leather so supple it clung to her body like fine cloth. Like them, she wore jewelry: only one ring, in her case, but a rich one.
Aisha arranged her cold fingers on the reins and waited to be discovered. They rode past wall and steading, past field and farmer and rider, hastening to call the clans together to vote upon a new kapetein. The richness of the air pressed down upon her: it was too much. It was for other women, fruitful women, who could retreat here and have healthy babies. It was not for her to savor as she anticipated children of her own. She would be punished.
The next time Oom Karl looked at her she flinched. They had come to their journey’s end. She had come to the end of her courage, and she was disgracing herself. Though the air was warm and moist for Haven, she shuddered. As she had learned in the years of tears and curses, she drew into herself. After awhile, the tears ceased to prickle at the corners of her eyes, and she began to hope she might be ignored.
The caravan stopped beneath a ruin. To Aisha’s surprise, Barak rode at her side.
“The bunker,” he pointed out the ruin. “My mother used to like to go there when she was a girl. That’s the place from which Ruth was taken out and hung on the cross; and which we took when we took Eden.
“When you took Eden from us,” muttered Oom Karl’s kinsman.
“We are one people now,” the physician muttered. “We are one. We are.”
Honored the place was, but it bore all the hallmarks of disuse.
Ruth’s Day, Aisha recalled, was supposed to be a day of reconciliation. It would take more than one day, she thought.
A woman whose height marked her out among the stocky Bandari ran from a nearby building and headed toward the caravan. Her hair was silvered and her face lined. Despite that, she moved with astonishing speed. Three people came out after her, one of them a stocky man wearing the furs and felts of the tribes. The marks burned into his shield, emblazoned on his garments were marks Aisha knew well: long ago, she had borne them, too, when her father ruled the tribes near Tallinn town.
She thought she recognized the man. Kemal. In another life, he had bowed to her father and stammered out how far along he was toward saving up a suitable bride gift. By now, he could even be a grand-sire, Aisha thought. He looked well-fed and secure in his place. Emissary from his father Tarik? She thought she could recall that Tarik took over the tribe when her own father . . . left it. Her eyes flicked over the knots of people. Sure enough: many men of the tribes, come, no doubt, to join the celebration for Ruth’s Day, reaffirm the old alliances--and keep eyes out for any sign that the Pale was splintering now that the old kapetein was dead.
What would they make of her presence here? And who was it betraying?
For the first time in her life, Aisha backed away from an ordeal. Immediately, the doctor was at her side.
“Steady there,” he murmured.
She glared at him. Just let her sink into the background was all she asked. She would not run away; where could she go in this Pale that she would not be found and stared at and returned in disgrace?
At least no one had seen her nerve falter except Oom Karl, and he had seen worse than that.
“Barak!” cried the Judge. Praise Allah, she hadn’t noticed. “Son!”
“Hey there, it’s the new kapetein!” came a shout from across the way.
The first woman out flinched. For an instant, her face went pale.
“Not yet, he’s not,” muttered Hans Haller.
Barak shook his head at the people who had greeted him. “Anyone who wants that job deserves to get it!” he called. Despite their torn clothing and dust-smeared faces, the crowd laughed, and he grinned back.
“You haven’t got it yet, boychik,” growled a man whose red-scrubbed hands showed he had left his farm just recently to ride in for the funeral.
“Watch how you talk to him,” snapped a woman wearing Gimbutas clan signs. “Can’t control yourself, can’t control your people. So let people who can . . .”
The Edenite farmer purpled under his weathering and started toward her, to be stopped by Oom Karl’s companion. “That’s not the way. You know that’s not the way.”
Aisha was certain that three of the tribesmen at least turned around and studied the quarreling Bandari as if they were traders calculating discounts at market.
“To honor Judge Ruth? It certainly isn’t,” Barak said. “And she was one of yours before she became one of ours, too. Remember this, chaver. I wasn’t the one who started this disrespect.”
Kemal of Tallinn’s eyes narrowed, allowing it to be seen that he too assessed the disagreement and what it might gain him.
Standing near him, the older woman closed her eyes in aggravation. Or concentration. She would be sorting out voices and tones, Aisha suspected. Her hearing must be as keen as Aisha’s own. And her wits, if she balanced factions, tribes, and ambitions, must be as sharp as the blades that her long-dead husband had once forged of the finest wootz.
Though a generation separated them--and did not--they were of a height. And in looking at the taller woman who ran to her son with the speed of a much younger woman, Aisha saw herself as she would be if she lived so long.
Judge Chaya withstood her son’s hug. “How’s it been, mother?” Aisha heard him ask and watched his mother’s shoulders shrug minutely.
“How should it be?” she said. “The Edenites--Hallers and Tellermans--are raising Cain again. Just when I thought they’d give their women clan vote, Kosti Gimbutas’s third son had to run off with one of the girls. That one . . . don’t know how he manages to walk. And then, old kapetein Mordecai, rest his soul ... he sure picked his moment.” She shook her head. “I’m glad to see you, son.”
Barak turned, one arm still about the older woman. She smiled kindly at Sannie and the others, then nodded graciously at Oom Karl and the man he rode with. “A good trip, Karl, Oom Hans?” she asked carefully. The man nodded shortly.
“I thank you for notifying my son,” the Judge added, her tone consciously gracious.
Another short nod.
From the corner of her eye, Aisha saw Oom Karl grin crookedly. When he saw her watching, he winked at her and gestured with the flat of his hand: keep your chin up.
For a moment longer, Judge Chaya’s polite questions were met with nods; questions and answers had the air of ritual, performed by actors well-versed in their roles. The kapetein was dead now; all the roles might change. The old rituals seemed to quiver with tension because of that.
The nomads’ dark eyes flashed as they listened to the Judge: they listened, Aisha wondered, they actually listened to a woman who raised her voice and spoke with authority in public.
Karl Haller nodded, his eyes shrewdly narrowing. She’s going to pull it off.
The Judge did not look at Aisha. Would she even speak to her? For a long time the careful politenesses went on. Finally, with a gracious, “but you must be anxious to get home,” Judge Chaya ended the audience.
“You go on ahead,” Oom Karl told him. “I’ve got medical reports to file. And then you know the other clan elders want to see me. Surprise.” He grimaced, and he patted his shoulder. Clearly, he had been dismissed, but he lingered.
“And now . . .” she turned toward her son. “Your last message . . .”
“I bring you,” Barak gestured at Aisha, “a kinswoman. She has been quite ill.”
Aisha put up her hand as if it were a shield or a veil for her weathered face. The sunlight winked off the great red stone that she and the woman facing her had both worn. Her hand trembled, and she brought it to her lips to still their quivering.
(She had been such a pretty girl when the screaming started. One moment, she had been a princess, the favored child of the tribe’s chie
ftain, whose mother delighted in combing her hair and adorning it with the coins of her dowry. In the next, women’s wails had told her; her mother was dead, hanging, her tongue all black and puffed out--though they would not let her see. And her father . . . they wouldn’t let her in to see him, and they’d said it was by his orders!
She couldn’t understand it. Always, always, even when he sent everyone away, she could coax him into smiles. So she had broken through the guards and found him, his hands pressed to the bleeding wounds that had been his eyes. And then she had learned the truth: that he had been father and brother both.
Aisha’s world had reeled. To go from favored daughter to . . . what could she hope for in the tribe? Nothing but a lifetime of sidelong glances while her father brother wandered and died fast, if he were lucky--and he was not a lucky man. Better to die with him, she resolved. And then the tall woman, who looked just like her mother, had sent a boy to her, running, carrying a great red stone. It had been more talk; more rumors; but all had known that the Bandari woman judge had greater strength than was a woman’s lot.
They had been kin, but Aisha’s pride had made her choose exile with her father instead of the alms of a stranger who was also sister and aunt.)
That stranger now faced her. And, after all these years, Aisha faced the need to accept her charity at last. At least for now.
Abruptly, the weakness of Aisha’s first days with the caravan struck her, and she flung up a hand. Sunlight caught the ruby and sparked fire from it off Chaya bat Lapidoth’s face. The woman blinked fast, then returned to watchfulness. Sauron watchfulness.
“Khatun ...” Her throat closed. The man from the tribe that had cast her father out affected not to watch, a pretense she did not believe. She sensed the stiffening in his shoulders, saw the minuscule widening of pupils: his very body betrayed him.
Once he had sought her as a bride.
Aisha wanted to toss her head, but she was afraid she might fall. She would not use the titles of the tribes that had cast her out and dishonored her.
Warmth at her side: Oom Karl, her own personal djinni. She stepped away. This was family; no one could help her. And yet she was not Bandari. Frantic, she recalled an Americ title she had heard once in her wanderings.
“Your Honor . . .”
The older woman shook her head, rejecting title, rejecting Aisha’s hand outflung to ward her off.
“Tante, child, or Chaya. Whichever you prefer.” She seized her in a grasp that Aisha knew was strong as her own, despite the Judge’s age.
“Welcome.”
The woman’s eyes locked into Aisha’s. Black eyes, keen, proud, and profoundly experienced ... as her mother’s eyes had been before they bulged and glazed in her purpled face, as her father’s had been before he gouged them out. In the early days of exile, Aisha had changed the bandages and fought against her horror not to gag or shake.
She shook now, shuddering with half a lifetime’s anguish. All the weeks of illness, all the years of exile came up on her like spoiled food.
To her horror, she was shaking. She felt Judge Chaya’s shoulders shake, too, then steady; and she embraced the older woman, her aunt and sister.
“Let’s get her out of here,” she heard Chaya mutter. “If she breaks she’ll hate herself.” The Judge paused as if considering. “Worse than she already does.”
Aisha felt herself steered into a building, thrust into a leather framed chair, and held, always held, by those strong hands. Other footsteps followed; for once Aisha couldn’t count them.
“No, Karl, I don’t think she needs a sedative. Did she cry once while you were nursing her back to health? Not even once? Then she has got to cry it all out. Tell me about it, little one, little sister.”
Little one? The last person who called her that had been her father--when he still had his sight. It was the compassion that broke her where exile and even the caravan’s care of her had not. Aisha tried to break free of Judge Chaya. When she could not escape, she turned her face into the chair’s high back and wept, sinking down until she was curled up on its broad seat like an injured child.
Her tears poured down without drying this time. That too was a survival reflex, here, in this moist place, her body could afford the release of tears.
“They didn’t even bury him,” she sobbed. “The cyborg ... he broke my father’s arm--I heard him scream. He told my father ‘the Breedmaster was an idiot who threw you out.’ He looked at me, and I had to fight him or he would have ...” She shuddered, fighting for control, and she drew deep breaths of the valley air. “I killed him, but they have slain my father’s honor.”
Chaya rocked her as if she had been an innocent. What a luxury; to be weak, to be little. She didn’t think she ought to allow it. She didn’t think she could stop it.
“I didn’t hear this,” she remarked over Aisha’s tumbled braids. “What have the mamzrim . . . the Sauron bastards . . . done this time?”
“Ran into a Sauron patrol on our way back from Nurnen or thereabouts. Apparently”--Barak lowered his voice--”they dug old Juchi up, quartered him, and put him on the wall for everyone to see. She overheard, of course.” Mother and son sat beside her and held her with a strength equal to her own.
“Karl, you had reports . . . ?”
“I haven’t released my patient,” Karl Haller announced.
Aisha looked up in time to see the Judge transfix the physician with one significant glance. Trouble? Her tears dried immediately.
“Reports, Karl. Before cousin Hans thinks we’re trying to bribe you. Besides, young Kemal is probably prowling back and forth, dying to interrogate someone. I don’t like it when any of the warriors from the tribes get that impatient. People have a way of dying.”
“Of conspicuous knife-wounds,” the Judge agreed. “Bad for your patients.”
“Apart from the damage to my patients, they cause feuds. And this near Ruth’s Day or with the election ...”
“Definitely counterproductive.” Ivrit and Edenite grinned at each other, allies for the moment.
Karl Haller nodded, his face thoughtful. “Allies, they call us. Honored brothers. Right. Like Cain and Abel. I can drive that, at least, through my cousins’ thick heads.”
Edenite and Ivrit nodded, in perfect amity.
His hand went out, almost irresolute, and Chaya’s grasp on Aisha’s shoulder tightened.
“Aisha is my kin, remember? I’ll take care of her for you.”
He was out the door before Aisha could thank him.
“I think . . .” Chaya began deliberately, “he likes you. And he’s a fine man. I think we might help you build a very acceptable future. His wife has been dead long enough . . .”
Aisha jerked away. “I have to go back. I have to avenge my father.”
“He . . . my brother is dead,” Chaya said flatly. “I left my husband Heber for others to bury and came back here where I was needed. . . . And that was my life, and that was my honor.”
“With a young son . . .”
“Barak wasn’t born yet,” Chaya said.
“They didn’t bury my father. They dug him up! It stinks to heaven, and Allah weeps ...”
“God,” Barak muttered, “don t let Hans Haller hear you say that.”
“Quiet, son!” Chaya snapped. “Aisha, you are our blood kin. We’ll do what we can. Judge’s honor. My honor.”
All over the Pale, books were being balanced before Ruth’s Day. People who had not spoken for a year, clans that had snapped at neighbors or snapped up their land or livestock were talking again, hesitantly. It was not easy--whether you were Bandari or Edenite--to admit error, and no easier to accept forgiveness than to offer it. And there were a few people who would be skimping all year after paying back their debts.
Aisha, dressed in yet another fine new suit of leathers, followed Judge Chaya and Barak toward the Pale’s meeting place.
“We have some of Judge Ruth’s belongings. Would you care to see them?” Chaya aske
d.
“Watch it,” muttered Barak.
“Oh?” Chaya raised a surprisingly elegant brow. “Kemal. He’s coming our way.”
Aisha braced herself as Judge Chaya greeted him in the language of the tribes and smiled as he flicked fingers at heart, brow, and lips. “Khatun . . . Judge, I must speak with you,” he began, though he faced Barak.
“We are on our way to show our kinsman Judge Ruth’s belongings. Come with us?” asked Chaya. She turned to lead the way.
That left Kemal and Aisha standing, staring like fools, at each other. Like a girl more than twenty years her junior, Aisha lowered her head, waiting for the warrior to speak first, longing for the protective status of the yashmak she had renounced when she chose her father’s exile. She felt her hand coming up to veil the lower half of her face and forced it back down.
“It is a long time, Aisha,” he muttered.
She nodded. She did not understand why he feared the meeting. Tarik’s son; possibly the next chief; probably married at least once to sleek women with no hint of a family curse about them. It was she who stood defeated, a beggar at her sister/aunt’s ample table.
“You must have many sons,” she observed.
“Three. And”--he turned to the Judge--”all dishonored. We are kin, all of us, in the tribe. And it shames us for one of our own to lie rotting under Cat’s Eye.”
You cast him out! Anger and a kind of astonished gratitude warred and kept Aisha silent just as surely as did Judge Chaya’s hand upon her arm.
The Judge’s hands worked deftly, unfastening a lock. “I say,” she began deliberately, “that this is Ruth’s Day when debts are acknowledged, quarrels are resolved, and all books are balanced. I honor you as a good guest.”
She switched into the language of the tribes, in which the word “juchi” meant “guest.”
“The man you speak of was cast out by his tribe, but acknowledged by his blood kin, who stand here. We shall not let him suffer dishonor, nor share in it.
War World III: Sauron Dominion Page 22