Northshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Ilze thought about this, frowning, realizing he knew quite well what the Talkers would have said. ‘They would have said they did not trust the humans. They must question us, they would have said, because they did not trust the humans. Perhaps that is not what they said, but that is what they meant.’

  ‘Such was my own thought. A certain lack of trust. So, the Protector, for some reason – which I will learn if Potipur grants me time – allows us to be questioned by the Talkers. But not taken away. And not seriously injured. I will not even have scars.’ Think about that, she urged him silently, wanting him to realize that both of them had been equally mistreated. Both of us, Ilze. When you leave here, you must remember they tortured both of us.

  Ilze, who believed he carried scars he would never lose, did not reply to this. ‘And now?’

  ‘And now something else. Some further part of the game. These fliers … oh, but they are concerned with Rivermen. Endlessly they asked me about the Rivermen. They asked you as well, I suppose. Always about the Rivermen.’ About which we know nothing, she urged him silently. Nothing at all. Either of us.

  ‘They did. But I know nothing about the Rivermen! I’m not one!’

  ‘But they must find out, Ilze. If they cannot find one who knows, then they must ask those who do not. They must find out.’

  He ignored the illogic of this, still trying to comprehend. ‘I didn’t know the Servants could talk. I didn’t know they had … had a society of their own.’

  She became very dignified, almost prim. ‘Just as there are secrets seniors do not share with juniors or novices, so there are secrets Superiors do not share with seniors. You would have learned all about the Talkers in time, if you had earned advancement. As you would have done.’ Oh yes, she told herself. He would have done. And pity the Tower he would have headed in his time.

  ‘These others, the Talkers …?’

  ‘There are not many of them. They come from the flier caste, from the Servants of Abricor. They do not seem to run in particular lines of descent, so I am told. They are hatched infrequently, once in a thousand hatchings. It is what our scholars call a sex-linked characteristic. All Talkers are males. When the ordinary flier males breed, they die. The Talkers are identified while still young; they are fed a special diet to prevent both breeding and death.’

  ‘A special diet?’ He thought about this before answering. ‘When we’re through with the workers, we drop them in the bone pits and the Servants of Abricor eat them. We all know that. No one cares. Who do the Talkers eat?’

  ‘Our flesh is poisonous to the flier people, Ilze. In time you would have studied our history, how we came to this world to find the Servants already here; how they grew monstrously in number until the world could not feed them, until the herds of thrassil and weehar were gone; how they hunted us, only to find us poisonous. You would have read of Thoulia, one of their Talkers. Thoulia the Marvelous. It was Thoulia who showed them how to soften our flesh with the Tears of Viranel, and it was then the wars began in earnest between our two races. We killed them by the hundreds, Ilze, and they killed us, until there were few of them left and not many more of us. Until the treaty was made at last which allowed them to take our dead …

  ‘Our dead are what they eat. Do you see why they fear the Rivermen so?’

  He did not see. He could not see because of his anger. He did not realize she had not answered his question.

  She went on, voice calm, willing him to listen and understand. ‘If the cult of the Rivermen were to prevail, the fliers would die. All the Talkers. All the Servants. They would starve. There would be nothing for them to eat.’

  Gradually he perceived the implications of this, implications so enormous he could not face them. All the philosophy, the theology, all his studies – oh, one knew there were evasions, one knew there were euphemisms employed, but still. Basically, one believed. Every senior Awakener knew that all the dead go into the worker pits except the Awakeners themselves. Even knowing this, still, still one believed. One understood the need for a pious mythology to keep the ordinary people quiet, but that did not nullify the essential truth. Senior Awakeners knew that truth. They had been accepted as the elect of Potipur. Common people – common people had to be led, instructed, used, then purified through that final agony. It was not Holy Sorters who put the sainted dead in Potipur’s arms, it was the Servants of Abricor who carried their souls to Potipur. The common folk could not expect a fleshy resurrection, but that did not affect the spiritual one. But for Awakeners – for Awakeners it was a real immortality. In the body. It was the Servants of Abricor who carried the bodies of dead Awakeners directly to …

  The thought stopped, blocked, destroyed by what she had been saying. Obviously this was not true. Obviously.

  ‘What happens to us, to the Awakeners?’ he snarled at her, his fingers digging deeply into her arm. ‘If the Servants don’t carry our bodies directly to Potipur, what really happens to us?’ He hated himself for asking the question, sure she was laughing at him as he had always laughed at Pamra.

  ‘If we are not clever and if our colleagues detest us sufficiently to take vengeance, we go into the pits with common folk,’ she said haughtily, ignoring his grasp. ‘With our hair rebraided to make us look like merchants or carpenters. In this way the myth is kept alive that no dead Awakener is ever seen in a worker pit.

  ‘If we are more clever, or less disliked, we are burned to ashes at one of the crematories of the order. There is one here, at Highstone Lees. And if we are very clever, if we do our jobs well and cause no trouble to the Chancery or the Talkers, we are given the Sacred Payment. We are given what the treaty requires we be given, the elixir. If we receive that gift, we live a long, long time. Hundreds and hundreds of years. So be clever, Ilze. Let go of me.’

  He let go of her, let go of her entirely, left her, did not try to speak with her after that. He had seen angry laughter in her face, bitter amusement. It was not unlike the amusement he had hidden so often from Pamra. The lady Kesseret thought him funny. Because he had believed. He burned with savage, humiliated shame at this. Because he had believed!

  When the day came, he went before the Ascertainers, a kind of court with several humans sitting on high chairs to hear what was said. These, he was told, were members of the Court of Appeals of the Towers. Judges, he thought. His Superior, the lady Kesseret, was there. She appeared little worse for her experience, though Ilze knew he looked like shit. Bruised, uncombed. They had not let him put his hair in braids, and it hung about his face like tangled rope. The Talkers were there, both the ones who questioned him and others he had not seen before. Old ones. With silvered feathers.

  It was one of these who asked for the Accusation.

  ‘Ilze, senior of the Tower of Baristown, is accused of heresy; of conspiracy to aid and comfort the Rivermen; of sheltering a Riverman spy in the Tower. He is accused of erroneous beliefs. He was led astray by lust. It may be he is essentially orthodox.’ The humans on the bench accused him. He did not believe it.

  He was given no chance to answer these charges. The silver-feathered ones merely nodded as they turned to the human people on the high chairs, and one of these said clearly, not looking at either Ilze or the lady Kesseret as he spoke, ‘We will allow the Uplifted Ones to be present as Ilze is examined by the Ascertained.’

  The Talkers left. Ilze stood in the room alone with Lady Kesseret, he in the cage they had put him in, she behind the railing that separated him from the others.

  ‘Poor Ilze,’ she said. ‘If you can withstand it, they will let you atone.’ There was a strangeness in her voice that he could not identify. Only her words were sympathetic.

  She went away then, saying nothing more. In the days of pain that followed, he remembered her words.

  They threatened him repeatedly with the Tears of Viranel. He defied them. ‘Give them to me. I don’t care anymore. I might as well be dead.’ They did things to him, things he had in the past done to others to shame and hum
iliate them. Ilze, however, felt no shame, only a slow, burning fury. He knew too well their purposes, but he learned his resolution and understanding could be weakened by pain. When they hurt his body, it insisted upon healing itself so they could hurt again. When he tried to starve himself out of fury at them and to deprive them of their obvious pleasure in his pain, they fed him by force. They would not let him kill himself. And through it all the veiled watcher stood, listening, peering, silent except for the sound of millstones.

  And yet, even throughout it all, he knew they were not hurting him as much as they could. It was as though they did not really want to break him. As though they were playing with him. Waiting.

  Finally he demanded they give him the Tears of Viranel in order to prove he was telling the truth.

  The Talker was amused.

  ‘Accused, if these Ascertainers gave you the Tears, all you would tell them would be the truth. Then we would eat you. A temporary pleasure which would not advance our cause.’

  ‘Oh, by the lost love of Potipur, isn’t the truth what you want! Isn’t that what you’ve been putting me through this pain for, to get the truth!’

  ‘Oh, no, accused. If we wanted only the truth, we would have given you the Tears long since.’

  The winter wore on. He was moved to a cell below. Gradually, through the pain and his own anger, he realized what they wanted. Something to confirm their suspicion. Something to save them embarrassment before the Chancery officials. Something to justify their opinions. Not merely whatever it was Ilze did or did not know, but something more. Not the truth that he had, but some future verity, something they could build upon to make themselves secure. It came to him slowly, through the agony of their knives and pinchers. It came to him slowly, and clever as he was in the ways of submission, he did not realize they had led him there.

  ‘If you will let me find Pamra,’ he said at last, believing he had thought of it himself. ‘I will find what it is you need to know. Just let me find her.’

  ‘Well,’ mused the Ascertainer who twisted the iron, ‘it would serve her right. To have repaid your concern in this fashion was an abomination. To have treated you so when you had been so kind to her. This accusation came about through her, Ilze. Your pain is due to her, Ilze. If it weren’t for Pamra …’ Against the wall the veiled watcher made the sound of grinding.

  ‘Let me find her,’ he begged.

  After that there was a long quiet time when the pain passed and was more or less forgotten. ‘Your heresy came about through her,’ they told him, both the human Ascertainers and the Talkers who watched. ‘We’re sorry for your suffering, but it was all her doing.’ It was a revelation that he knew to be absolutely true. He had almost compromised his own future. Because of her. Because of Pamra. If they had not been so understanding, he would have been condemned, because of Pamra.

  ‘Are you feeling well, Ilze?’ It was the lady Kesseret once more, rather gaunt and wan looking, as though she had been many nights without sleep. She wore a robe he had never seen before, one that covered her hands and feet. When she moved, she winced. ‘Are you recovered?’

  ‘Quite recovered, thank you.’ It was early spring. He had recovered. Obviously, the lady Kesseret had not.

  ‘The Ascertainers met this morning. I was in attendance. They have ascertained that you were not entirely guiltless, but misled. Tricked. You have been offered an opportunity to atone through special duty. As a Laugher, I understand, for Gendra Mitiar, Dame Marshal of the Towers.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his anger hot at her tone. It would be more than atonement.

  ‘I am told they plan a reward for you when your mission is done. A Tower of your own. An initial offer of the Payment.’ Her voice was without emotion or encouragement, uninvolved in this, as though it had happened quite separate from her life and without any connection to it.

  He bowed, silent. Hatred moved him, not ambition. When he felt his wounds, hatred moved him.

  ‘The Payment comes from the Talkers, and they must approve its recipients. That they have done so speaks well of your future expectations, Ilze.’

  Hot curiosity still burned in him. ‘Tell me again about the Talkers. Who are they?’

  ‘They are the leaders of those who lived here before we came.’

  ‘What was it they ate before we came?’

  ‘Beasts, so they say. I’ve told you.’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘They ate hoovar and thrassil and weehar, animals with hot juicy bodies. They ate them all. All but a very few who survived here behind the Teeth of the North. The Protector has small herds of thrassil and weehar here in the Chancery lands. A few hundred animals. The hoovar are extinct.’ She rose, moved about the room, stiffly, uncomfortably. Again, Ilze wondered what they had done to her. ‘When all the beasts were gone, they had no choice but to eat us – us or fish.’

  ‘Why not fish, then?’

  ‘Because, as they say, fish eaters lose the power of flight and thereby blaspheme the will of Potipur, who made them fliers. Some essential ingredient is missing in fish. Eating fish changes them in other ways, too – makes their females more intelligent, for example. The female fliers are as you have seen them. Dirty, quarrelsome. I am told they, too, can talk but do so very little. Eating fish makes them less aggressive, as well. There is a tribe of fish eaters somewhere, so they say, a tribe called the Treeci. In their language, “treeci” means “offal.” Talkers speak of fish eaters as we do of heretics.’ She winced, sat down, cradled her hands as though they pained her.

  ‘No, given a chance of eating fish or dying, they might well eat fish. However, they prefer to eat us. And the Talkers eat us alive, Ilze. Not dead. There are not many Talkers. Two or three living humans taken from each town each month are enough to feed them. You will learn how to do it when you are Superior of a Tower. It will be your task to recruit citizens for this purpose. The Talkers do not eat the dead. The fliers would not eat the dead if they had anything else to eat.’

  ‘So they might feast on me, or on you!’

  ‘The Servants have nothing else to eat,’ she said simply, as though his statement were irrelevant. ‘They are the Servants of Abricor. We worship Abricor. We worship Potipur, and Potipur promised them plenty.’ These are truths, her voice said. Truths beyond question. ‘Do you think you will be able to find her? Pamra?’

  Was this another test? He stared through her, not seeing her. Who was she, really? Another like himself or one of them? A betrayer? Or a betrayed? Had she, too, really been tortured? If she had, he knew with sudden certainty, they would have told her the suffering was Ilze’s fault, and she would have had no choice but to use him as he would use Pamra in turn. What was she up to now? ‘I will find her,’ he said.

  ‘Find her. That’s good. Bring her back to the Tower.’

  ‘I will give her Tears.’

  ‘No, Ilze. You will not. That is an order. Not at first. She can only tell us the truth if you give her Tears. We must have more than truth. The Talkers need more than that.’

  He knew that already. The Talkers needed far more than truth. He had learned there were occasions the truth did not serve, when only the presumptive lie would serve at all. He had not yet learned what they needed to know, but he would. He was resolved upon that.

  They set him down in the glowing springtime upon the Rivershore far west of Baris. His scalp had been shaved clean and covered with a curious dark helmet, close as a second skull. None of the scars they had put upon him showed. He turned his face to the west and began the hunt. Pamra. Rivermen. Along the river in both directions others like him moved; others with similar scars. Everyone called them Laughers because of their scornful cries, ha-ha, ha-ha. Even the Rivermen they sought called them that. And they never really laughed.

  15

  On an evening not long after the Gift had been repaired, Pamra stood on the quiet deck watching Thrasne lay out the boom lines while the ship rocked gently along a pier at Sabin-bar. The Melanchol
ics had gone ashore, even Medoor Babji, who these days seemed reluctant to leave the Gift. The sun lay low along the River, making a dazzle that beat against their eyes. Neff stood in the dazzle, and her mother stood there as well, bathing in that effulgence as though to draw nourishment from it. Delia was lost in it, a black shadow obscured by brilliance, so that she, Pamra, could not distinguish one from the other but merely stood at the edge of a glowingly inhabited cloud. All was very still. Sometimes at this hour an expectant hush would fall upon the Riverside, upon the waters themselves, calming and stilling them, making the song-fish hum in voices one could scarcely hear, so soft they were. So it was tonight.

  And so it was that Ilze appeared at the edge of her vision like a striding monster, all in black, the black soaking up the glow as though to empty it, to absorb it all, and it flowing toward him as water flows toward a drain, whirling down into blackness.

  ‘Ilze!’ she breathed, quiet, her stomach telling her the truth of this more than her eyes. There was a striding figure there on the River path, but she did not truly perceive it. Her belly saw it before her brain knew who it was. Then it shivered her, all at once, like a tree cut but not yet fallen, and she collapsed across the rail. ‘Ilze,’ she breathed in a tone of mixed relief and horror. ‘He is a Laugher. Come for me.’ It was relief he had not seen her yet, horror to know he was seeking her, a verification of everything she had known all along. He bore a flask at his waist, and she knew what it contained. Tears, and a little water to keep them fresh. They would last like that for years, remaining potent to the end, her destiny there swinging at his hip, a threat more monstrous in that she had almost escaped it.