by R. Lee Smith
He made himself stop there and take a slow count of six breaths before he really lost his temper. He’d had too little sleep…which was a poor excuse and he knew it. A Sheulek was supposed to be the master of his emotions at all times, even when dealing with insolent, self-important bureaucrats. If he had to wake up to someone this early, why couldn’t it be a woman?
‘And now I want a woman,’ he thought, striding to the table to reclaim his clothing. He didn’t mind being naked in front of another man as long as he looked intimidating while he did it. He minded very much being extruded and undignified.
“If the temple wishes to show its obedience, it can bring me hot nai and a meal,” Meoraq said, strapping on his loin-plate and cinching it biting-tight. “The exarch here shall see to my rations for travel, but he had best be quick about it. I mean to be on my way by fifth-hour.”
The abbot gave his assurances and bowed his way out. Ylsathoc watched him go and then watched Meoraq dress. His spines were stiff enough to quiver slightly with his pulse. The scales at his throat were still striped with yellow as bold and bright as paint.
“Have you something more to say?” Meoraq asked.
“Forgive me,” said the exarch, sounding anything but apologetic. “But how does the honored one expect me to meet his demands before fifth-hour? I did not come to Tothax with a tea box.”
“Inlaid,” Meoraq reminded him. “And I expect you to purchase whatever you do not have, the same as any other man must do when a Sword of Sheul takes his conqueror’s privilege. If I learn that you have turned my list into your own and demanded it as gifts from this city, I will see you judged for theft.”
The exarch was quiet for a time, although Meoraq could see the yellow patches at his throat moving with unformed words. At last, in a voice as edged as any blade Meoraq carried, Ylsathoc said, “I will have to purchase several things on credit to meet your demands.”
“So?”
More silence. More hard, hoarse breathing. More yellow.
Meoraq put his boots on and pretended not to notice or care. He waited, grimly enjoying himself and reminding himself to meditate on the cause of that enjoyment because it really was a terrible sign of his true character.
“My father will have to pay those notes.”
Meoraq finished buckling the last strap on his boot, then straightened up and looked the exarch directly in the eye. “You have your orders. Leave me.”
Ylsathoc managed half a stiff bow and then burst out, “This is spitefulness and nothing else! What did I do but my given duty in informing you of your House’s need?”
“You did not inform me,” said Meoraq. “You summoned me. And then you stood me in your borrowed chamber and dared to interrogate me, much as you are daring to protest to me now.”
“I am an exarch over all the eastern lands! My father’s House stands as champion over Chalh, the city that champions all Gedai! I had every right to—”
“I do not care if you are the high chancellor over all the city-states of Gann,” said Meoraq, folding his arms. “All men bend before the honor-blade.”
Ylsathoc looked at those blades now and at Meoraq’s hands so close to them. He lowered his voice before he used it again, although he still spoke with an indignant hiss. “You cannot need half these ridiculous things for your journey!”
“You sound very sure.” Meoraq leaned forward, holding the other man’s stare. “Where is it you think I am going?”
“Why, to—” Exarch Ylsathoc frowned. The yellow stripes at his throat finally began to fade, just a little. “To Xeqor,” he said after a long, puzzled pause to search Meoraq’s eyes. “Your House requires a steward.”
“And if that is Sheul’s will, it will be me,” Meoraq agreed. “But first I will know that it is Sheul’s will.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It is not necessary that you do. Your role in this is ended, or will be as soon as you have met my demands.”
“But…” Ylsathoc retreated a step, then appeared to suddenly notice the tablet still in his hand. He looked at it as if reading it for the first time. “But all these things…Where are you going?”
Meoraq smiled faintly. “Xi’Matezh.”
The exarch rocked back and stared at him with such astonishment that Meoraq could not resist twisting the knife. He leaned in even closer, close enough to be threat as much as insult, and smiled. “Seen in that light, I haven’t asked for too damned much at all, have I?”
“That will take…days!” Ylsathoc sputtered, backing away again. “A brace of days! Two braces at the least!”
“Three is far more likely.”
“Winter is all but at the gate! The cold season—”
“I know about cold.”
“You will never make it there and back across the mountains before the snows!”
“I do not expect to.”
“You cannot mean to leave your House empty so long!” Ylsathoc grappled visibly with the humility he had been warned to demonstrate, but outrage soon defeated him. “It is the founding House of Uyane’s bloodline, the line of that great oracle’s descent! Its steward champions all Xeqor, who champions all Yroq, who sits at the very heart of all that is left of this land! Where is your sense of duty?”
“I have a duty to more than one father,” Meoraq replied. “He who sired my clay would surely understand that I serve He who hammered my soul first. Sheul has called me to a pilgrimage. Have my things waiting at Eastgate by fifth-hour and if you dare to protest just once more, I swear to you here in the sight of Sheul that your father will receive a note for the cost of your funeral along with the rest of your expenses.”
Ylsathoc looked down at the list and up again. He opened his mouth.
Meoraq waited, ready to draw. He was well aware of his own propensity to be impatient, particularly with those of the lesser castes, and he would even admit to the spitefulness Ylsathoc had alleged (although never to the other man’s face), but in spite of his divine right and his frequent threats, he had never killed anyone just for rudeness. Scarred a few, though. And he’d by-Gann be scarring this one if he said one more word.
But Ylsathoc only sighed and shut his mouth again. He bent his neck in a sullen sort of bow and swept out past the returning abbot, reading his list and muttering about impropriety to himself in much-offended and very soft tones.
The abbot waited in the doorway while the boy he’d brought labored his food-laden tray over to Meoraq at the table and poured the nai. Then he said, without reproach, “It is a mark of great favor to be born under the sign of the Blade, honored one.”
Meoraq grunted and broke open his bread. It had been stuffed with gruu, fried in fat to a crunchy paste and should have been very good, but Meoraq could not eat without thinking of the previous night’s trial and how a few rows of gruu, more or less, had killed a Sheulteb. All things served God and Meoraq knew he’d done His work well, but still it made the bread bitter this morning.
“Fewer yet are called to be Sheulek,” the abbot continued.
“No one feels that privilege more deeply than I, priest.”
“But do you feel the privilege, honored one, that He continues to show you? Not one Sheulek in sixty will ever stand as steward of his bloodline or Lord of his House. You are the Sword He raises highest.”
“No,” said Meoraq, tossing his inedible bread down on the tray. “I am the Sword He has sheathed! And if that is His will, I accept it, but before I submit to that end, I will hear it in His own voice.”
The abbot’s boy gaped at him. The abbot himself merely bowed.
Meoraq looked at his untouched food, then drank off his nai and banged the cup down empty. “I am done with this,” he said brusquely. “I am taking the rooftop. See that I am not disturbed.”
“Yes, honored one.”
“I want to wash first,” said Meoraq, which was not the truth. He did not want the bath; he wanted the woman whose task it would be to bathe him and he didn’t care who kne
w it.
The abbot bowed again, silent in his assent. He gestured to his boy, who took up the tray. They left, shutting the door softly behind them.
Meoraq sat alone, staring at the ceiling and counting his breaths.
“Fuck,” he said, and went to the roof without his bath. He still wanted the woman, but he suspected he needed to pray.
* * *
Somewhere between the third hour and the fourth, the rooftop door scraped open.
Stretched out on a bench to watch the clouds roll by, Meoraq raised the samr he had been idly tapping against his boot and called, “I do not wish to be disturbed.”
“I know.”
Meoraq sat up and sheathed his sword. “Nkosa,” he said, surprised.
“I shouldn’t be here,” his blood-kin admitted, still lingering by the stair. “And if you don’t want to see me—”
Meoraq gestured at the bench beside him, his spines forward in invitation. “How did you get up here?”
“I relieved the guard below,” said Nkosa, settling himself uncomfortably on the very edge of the bench. “And as soon as his real relief shows up, he or I or all three of us are probably going to be whipped. I just…I heard about Rasozul.”
Meoraq grunted and looked inanely at the rooftop wall, which had nothing at all to show him. “I envy him,” he said. “He sees our true Father’s face tonight.”
“Well…I’m sorry anyway. I know you were looking forward to seeing him at home.”
Meoraq glanced at him and frowned at the wall some more. “I will see him in the Halls of Sheul.”
“Until then,” said Nkosa quietly, “I’m sorry.”
The wind blew.
Meoraq’s stiff spines lowered some. “Thank you,” he said. He wasn’t sure that was the thing to say, but he didn’t know what was. He’d killed many men in his time of service, but he had never had to suffer a loss of his own.
Nkosa tapped at Meoraq’s knee with the backs of his knuckles, awkwardly proving his sympathies, then took his hand back. “Everyone’s talking this morning. They said that exarch was here to appoint you steward?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t let him?”
“I had to pray.”
“About what?”
Meoraq flicked his spines and stared at the wall.
“Now they’re saying you’re leaving for Xi’Matezh?”
“Yes.”
“Xi’Matezh?”
“Yes.”
Nkosa waited, his head tipped to encourage further explanations that never came. At last, he blew out a rude breath and said, “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, O mighty Sword of God, but if you want to kill yourself, you can just jump off the wall.”
Meoraq tried and failed to catch the laugh that coughed out of him. He eyed his cousin, rubbed his snout, and sighed.
“Marriage isn’t all bad,” said Nkosa.
“That would depend on who you get,” Meoraq muttered.
“At least you’ll have a choice.”
“For all it matters.” Meoraq sat up straighter and looked at his blood-kin. “I don’t want a choice, ‘Kosa. In fact, you could say that I am going to Xi’Matezh so that the choice is made for me.”
“I could.” Nkosa flicked his spines in polite incomprehension. “And why in Gann’s grey hell would I say that?”
“Sheul lit that fire in the sky for me,” Meoraq said, stating it as plainly as such a statement could be made. “I thought it was to bring me here, but even when I first saw it, I knew it didn’t lie directly in the line of Tothax. It was further east.”
Nkosa frowned, uneasy. “In the line of Xi’Matezh, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t possibly know that. You can’t sit on the roof in Xheoth and know where Xi’Matezh is.”
“I know,” Meoraq insisted.
“Fine, then point to it.”
Meoraq looked out at the wildlands, his spines low, scowling. “I can find it.”
Nkosa snorted. “So could I. East to the mountains and over into Gedai, then east to the Ruined Reach and up along the end of the world until you trip over the shrine. That’s the thing about legends, everyone knows how they go. But don’t sit there and tell me the burning tower was pointing the way to Xi’Matezh because you can’t know that.”
“It was.”
Nkosa slapped a hand over the end of his snout and rubbed it, hard. “I really hate talking to you when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
“A fucking Sheulek.” He dropped his hand. “You’ve been a good friend to me and I’m proud to hear you call me cousin like it was truth, but ‘Raq, are you sure you aren’t looking for reasons to do something you already want to do?”
“Why would I want to walk across the whole damned wildlands this close to winter?” Meoraq asked reasonably. “Why would anyone?”
Nkosa shrugged his spines, still looking troubled.
“For twelve years, Sheul has spoken through me,” said Meoraq. “Now He is finally calling me to Him. I have to go. My father’s…My House will wait.”
“What are you going to do when you get there and He tells you to go home and get married?”
“If that is what He has called me to Xi’Matezh to hear,” said Meoraq with confidence, “then I am sure He has a particular woman in mind.”
Nkosa looked at him for a long time before saying, quite matter-of-factly, “That sounds like you expect God to provide you the woman.”
Meoraq thought about it, then shrugged his spines.
“That is the closest thing to true blasphemy I think I’ve ever heard anyone say.”
“’Kosa, he summoned me out of Xheoth with a pillar of fire. Does that sound like He wants me to go home and take the first woman I see?”
“How many women do you expect to see in Xi’Matezh, you idiot?”
“One,” said Meoraq. “The one He means me to marry, if He means me to marry.”
Nkosa rubbed at his brow ridges, plainly choosing his next words with great care. He settled on: “I hope this isn’t what you told the exarch.”
“I don’t have to tell him anything,” said Meoraq, dropping back against the bench with a dismissive wave. “I have a whole year before Uyane has to present a steward. I could crawl to the Reaches and back in that time.”
They sat, Meoraq watching the clouds and Nkosa watching him.
“You’re going to make me say it,” Nkosa said finally.
“Say what?”
“Sheul is not going to give you a woman.”
“So,” said Meoraq, untroubled. “That will be a sign of something too, won’t it?”
“Did you sleep through the lesson the day they were supposed to teach you about sophistry?” Nkosa demanded, still trying to laugh as if this would all turn into a joke if he just believed in it hard enough. “What makes you think you’re even going to get through the doors?”
“Nuu Sukaga.”
Nkosa leaned back, his spines flaring all the way forward. “What’s that mean?”
“I have no idea,” said Meoraq and smiled.
Nkosa stared at him some more, then grunted and heaved himself up on his feet. “All right, please yourself. Give me a tap, crazy person,” he ordered, palm out.
Meoraq smiled. Ignoring Nkosa’s outstretched arm, he rose and put his hand against his blood-kin’s heart like a brother, then pulled him close in a rough embrace. It didn’t last long and wasn’t entirely comfortable, but he was glad he did it, if only the once.
“Come back before the year is up, if you can,” said Nkosa, slow to back away. “I know you won’t be able to after you take your House and I’m going to want to see the man who walked all the way to the ends of the world just to get dipped.”
“I’ll be back in the spring,” promised Meoraq. “I’ll even stay with you and do you the honor of sharing your wife.”
“Ha. Only if you share yours.”
“Done. Now get out o
f here,” he said gently. “I can’t stop them from whipping you every day, you know.”
“Well, in that case don’t bother coming back at all.” Nkosa raised his hand, hesitated, and then curled it into a fist and touched his heart in a real salute. He turned his back at once and went quickly to the door, checking the stair with a look of resignation, then slipped through and was gone.
Meoraq stretched back out on the bench and clasped his hands behind his head. The clouds above him blew eternally onward. To the east, he noted. Toward Xi’Matezh.
His destiny.
BOOK III
LOST AND FOUND
In retrospect, the trouble with Scott started immediately, but it took a few days before Amber caught on to just how bad it was. She knew she was as guilty as everyone else of letting him take over. She also knew that she didn’t want to be the one in charge when the whole human race was just forty-eight people on an alien world with a handful of supplies camping in spitting distance of the melted remains of a ship that could very well be radiating cancer into every living thing for miles around. Oh no. Fuck that. Scott could be in charge of that mess all he wanted.
And if there was one thing Scott was good at, it was putting himself in charge. Before the sun came up over the remains of the Pioneer, he’d made two trips to the top of the ridge and compiled a complete inventory of what they had left, which wasn’t much but was still more than they should have had.
Tents, for example. All the tents that had been up on the ridge had been incinerated in the Pioneer’s explosion. Not just burned. Erased. There was nothing left up there to prove there’d ever been a camp at all except a melted heap of glass and metal that had probably been one of the solar generators. But as bad as that was, it could have worse.
Not knowing how to set up an outpost, Scott had apparently just dumped the supplies in piles wherever he thought he might like to put a building someday. Most of those piles had been up on the ridge, but he did have a number of tents down by the lakeshore, marking the proposed site of the colony’s pump house and filtration station, to hold the necessary equipment and materials until he’d decided exactly when and where to begin construction.