What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  “You are training with spears and a friend pierces your stomach.”

  “It is an error. I will not kill him.”

  “The friend laughs at the spear sticking out of your stomach.”

  “He is embarrassed. I will not kill him.”

  “The friend shakes his spear so it cuts inside your stomach.”

  “That is not my friend. That is the Pollution.”

  On and on, for hours. Caulie was alternately lulled by the cadence of Maggey’s voice and disturbed by the imagery.

  Finally: “It is the time of day when you practice reading. The words make you feel useless.”

  “I have patience. I will not kill.”

  “Your loving sister asks you to read aloud. You do not know the words.”

  “I ask for help. I will not kill her.”

  Maggey’s voice reverted to its normal tone. “Now boys, return to yourselves.”

  The boys seemed to change not at all, but Maggey watched them steadily, softly repeating, “return to yourselves.” She gestured to the boys. “This is the time of day when we practice our reading.”

  The boys frowned. Twitches and shivers blossomed across the group.

  “When you master reading, you will be men, not animals,” Maggey said.

  One of the boys spoke. “Can we play outside?”

  “No, Gippy. This is the time of day when we practice our reading.”

  Gippy continued to fret. His tremors magnified across his body. Finally crying “No!” he sprang to his feet and fled the room. Another boy who looked just like him stood and followed.

  Maggey noticed Caulie staring. “The blood-fed will follow the milk-fed. It is nature.” To the class, she said, “I will write on the wall. Which of you will sneak up behind me and kill me?”

  A thoughtful silence, and then two boys raised their hands.

  “You must not kill me,” Maggey said evenly, “for I am your sister who loves you. Show me your hands.”

  One boy had empty hands. The other held a tiny dagger with a blade the size of a paring knife. It was one of the child daggers Caulie remembered from anthropological texts—her students always laughed when Caulie showed them pictures.

  “You hate the words I write on the wall but you cannot stab the words, you can only stab me. Regard me: I am your loving sister. I am your sister who loves you.” She made the Falling Beam again. “Can you master yourselves?”

  The boys nodded and sat. The knife disappeared.

  Maggey wrote on the whitewashed walls with a knot of coal from her fireplace and set the boys to reciting the words to each other. Rather than standing over the children, she crossed the room to Caulie and guided her to the door. She lightly touched Caulie’s elbow, exactly like any doctor at a Haphan hospital would when clearing a patient’s room. They stopped in the hallway and glanced back; the boys’ diligence was already faltering.

  “I wonder,” Maggey said, “if the overlord should watch one of the other teachers instead.”

  “But why?”

  “The other girls are daughters of Mother Goldros. I’m a Galdric, one of the client families in the house. You will learn more from the others.”

  Caulie groped for an answer. She took so long to frame her confusion that Maggey mistook her silence for disapproval.

  “I am sick in my heart, Caulie. I do not have enough anger for these children. My knife has grown dull for I have been teaching now three years. I do not have the heart for discipline.”

  “Three years? You’re so young!”

  “No, I am thirteen.”

  “Where are the others, the other boys you taught?”

  “Some work in the field with Uncle, waiting for the army’s induction squad to visit. The rest are in the army. They were. They are dead on the eternal front, all of them.”

  All of her little charges, either dead or waiting to be killed. This girl . . . her placid exterior indicated careful control, not the judgmental distance Caulie had found intimidating. “Maggey, if you teach the boys and they all die, what is the point?”

  “Exactly.” Maggey checked her room again. The boys had abandoned their work. Instead, they had torn her bed apart and showered its straw on the floor. “I think we all hope for that boy who will grow up to be a man. Like your Shanter. He’s still alive, yet.”

  Caulie avoided Maggey’s eyes. “Your morning lessons with them. That was all reinforcement. You weren’t teaching them information.”

  Maggey shook her head. “The girls get books and recipes and mathematical equations. The boys mostly get behavior reinforcement.”

  “But why?”

  “So that when they are in the world they will not behave like murdering primitives.”

  Caulie needed to think. Her hangover had burned away as she watched the lessons, trying to reconcile them with what she knew from her research. She needed solitude, but there was still this lovely girl in front of her, filled with muffled emotion. For once, she decided to linger.

  “The boys are lucky to have you,” Caulie said.

  Maggey looked down, suddenly seeming very young. She might be new to her grace and beauty, but she would never have a chance to settle into it. Instead, Caulie knew, she would soon marry and turn factory. She would produce war materiel until she was as squat, wide, and caustic as Momma Goldros.

  “Yes, they are very lucky,” Caulie said, feeling deeply sad. “What happens to boys who don’t have sisters or a mother to teach them? Are they dangerous?”

  “They never have that chance.” Through her stillness, Maggey seemed to shrink even further. “The children of Ed-homse aren’t permitted into Haphan orphanages because their Pollution is too strong. For us, it is the old days still. Our orphans are killed before they turn feral. Which is why I must . . .”

  She turned back to her room and the boys.

  Chapter 32

  When she could bear to watch no more, Caulie retreated to her bedroom and curled into the blankets. She pillaged Ouphao’an’s notebooks over and over again, but found little overlap between the sorceress’s approach to control and Maggey’s approach to teaching.

  While Maggey seemed to guide and cajole the Pollution, Ouphao’an ran her servitors like machines. It wasn’t surprising, really. Since the Tachba lacked throat-me, Ouphao’an would view them as minimally conscious, barely alive. Ouphao’an dissected her Tachba. She ate their children. She launched eugenics campaigns. That was the approach of a disassociated scientist, and was not what Caulie needed.

  Caulie needed a different perspective on the Pollution. She scoured her mind but could think of only one other perspective that she wondered if she had been avoiding: Queen Fat Culleyho herself. The primary school textbooks were so full of Culleyho that it was easy to feel as if nothing more could be learned. If those childhood lessons were like the rest, however, they had been sanitized and simplified to glorify the Haphan empire.

  Her tablet didn’t contain the same volume of information about the early warrior queen as it did about the daggies, but every tablet had a generic encyclopedia or history buried somewhere. Queen Culleyho had been such a near miss for the empire that she had imprinted upon the Haphan unconscious. Caulie found her simply by pulling up an undergraduate history textbook and turning to the chapter on the early establishment.

  The obvious starting point was the famous video everyone knew: Culleyho entering the tent to negotiate the surrender of her empire, the land of Ed-homse. For two generations after the Ed-homse campaign, it had been the only public record permitted by the Gray House. Caulie was very conscious of what it might mean to Uncle Goldros if she showed him this footage of the woman when she was alive. She glanced at the door to make sure it was closed before running the video.

  Goodness, I’d forgotten. She was so young.

  Cullyho had crossed the clumsiness of youth, but she had not yet grown into the boxy body of a factory mother. She seemed a little like what Maggey would become if the girl were permitted to age. She had s
ome of Jephia in her confidence. Culleyho had arrived alone at the negotiations, and was outnumbered thirty-to-one, surrounded by flag officers from the Haphan High Command.

  This was only forty-five years after Landing Day, and Haphan uniforms still had that superfluous embroidery and tooling that made them glow in the shadows. Back then, when the Haphans could still augment their eyes, the very warp and weft of the uniform fabric indicated rank. It shimmered between insignias of rare gems and glowing battery-powered medals.

  In the hundred years since this recording, all bodily augmentation had turned external, like Caulie’s dangling earrings. The responsive textiles had been used up, the tiny batteries had emptied, and the garment machines themselves had broken down or been retooled for war. Today, austerity was the catchphrase. Even military resplendence was limited to the Haphan sashes, which were worn over the shoulders like vestments and passed through the generations.

  Surrounded by all that finery, Culleyho wore workaday leather boots and a simple gray smock that left her arms and legs bare. She had brown hair that hung with tight curls down her back, marking her out from her typically darker-haired Ed-homse subjects. She was their queen, but she wasn’t from Ed-homse—in fact, no one knew her true origin. She was unadorned except for a hammered metal ring around her bicep and a small necklace with four simple clay beads that she wore like a choker.

  If the Haphans were supposed to be civilized and the Tachba were supposed to be ravening and bloodthirsty, Culleyho seemed like some third race that bridged the two. She looked like a primordial cave girl but she out-projected the Haphans in terms of imperial presence. Caulie smirked as Culleyho moved among the officers, crossing the room several times to greet them individually—forcing the scintillating crowd of generals to rearrange themselves every time like slapstick comedians. She was surrounded but at ease, smiling easily though her eyes remained a little sad.

  In a moment, she would sit at the table and negotiate how the Haphan Empire might peacefully annex the obstinate mountain people of Ed-homse. By the end of the day, she would settle the terms, including her own execution by firing squad.

  Caulie switched away from the video before the famous tears started.

  The next record was guerrilla video, captured by a Gray House operative. It was shot from an odd angle behind Culleyho’s shoulder. Her face was hidden, but she was recognizable by her hair. The caption read, “The young queen had one face for the world and another for her people.”

  In the video, Culleyho was working with a child. Caulie recognized her posture from Maggey’s lesson. But while Maggey’s hand motions—mudras—had beendistinct and slow, Culleyho’s hands fluttered in the air like curling smoke, never pausing. She used the guttural witch voice, but the child was open and unafraid.

  That wasn’t to say the child wasn’t anxious: a delicate clay cup balanced on the palm of his open, outstretched hand. It shook, always about to fall, and his eyes kept shifting back to it. Culleyho redirected his eyes to her face over and over, but he was twitchy and the cup fell. It broke at his feet and joined a pile of other clay shards.

  Culleyho’s rapid hands kept moving, and suddenly she slapped him across the cheek. It seemed to be part of another mudra and he didn’t respond. After a few moments, she paused and readied another delicate cup over his hand—and then his face changed.

  He launched himself at her, too fast to follow. He grabbed her throat with both hands. His face clenched with hate as he throttled her.

  She didn’t fight back, but he was big enough that when he began to cause real harm, her voice turned sharp and he let go. Another slap and the boy laughed. Another slap and the boy said, “I’m hungry,” and they both laughed. Culleyho leaned forward and kissed his cheek before he could flinch away. He turned a delightful rose color. She kissed him again before he was ready. “Stop!” he cried, pleased.

  Culleyho’s hands never stopped dancing. The boy was dazzled by the pain and affection, and it progressed to the point where he couldn’t stop laughing. Culleyho laughed with him. For a long minute, the lesson devolved into a tickle fight.

  When they calmed down, Culleyho straightened her back and the child ducked his head. She placed the cup in his hand and he stared at it. Rock solid. Tears appeared in his eyes.

  “This is love with a knife,” Culleyho said, in thickly accented low Haphan. “We-speaking the Pollution but we-telling it new words.”

  The Gray House had released the footage to show how Culleyho abused children. During the loyal opposition’s next campaign to discredit a Gray House appointee, they had uncovered the historical explanation. The child was highly Polluted and a known murderer, and normally he would have been killed without a second thought by whoever noticed the crime first. Instead, Culleyho had spent several of her last days before her execution teaching him self-control.

  Teaching more than just the boy, Caulie thought. Culleyho had spoken the Haphan tongue for a reason.

  Caulie turned off the tablet. It was not a relief to know Culleyho’s method. Questions swirled fruitlessly in Caulie’s mind, doing nothing but blossoming into more questions.

  Caulie’s room darkened as afternoon moved into evening. Just as she was fortifying herself for dinner, the sounds in the house changed in a way she hadn’t heard before.

  The kitchen beyond her door swelled with voices and activity. There was a loud new male voice at the top of it.

  “Four legs. Large as a timber cart. Made of metal. Two glowing eyes!”

  She crossed the room and pressed her ear against the door.

  “We know about it.” That was Uncle Goldros. “In the last few days, all the game has disappeared from the forest. Did you see what the creature was?”

  “It’s what I just said it was. I got a good glimpse of it. Weren’t you listening, old man?”

  “Why, you snide little—”

  A scuffle.

  Then Momma Goldros snapped, “Schaxx!”

  The sounds stopped. The kitchen turned silent as if they’d all dropped through the floor.

  Into the silence, Momma Goldros continued, “If you kill the mail carrier, brother-in-law, how will you get news from the world? Instead, let’s tap a keg of summer brew and listen to his story.”

  Sounds of rearrangement in the kitchen.

  The Haphan mail was more than just make-work to keep older Tachba men out of trouble. The few men mustering out of the armies always returned home, but when there was no home to return to or the men were not welcome back, they joined the mail. They conducted census surveys, distributed decrees from the Haphans, and carried letters between Tachba who could write. Their real worth was in their far-ranging mobility. They traveled with impunity between isolated family compounds and shared news from household to household.

  Caulie decided she was just fine staying behind her door. She could hear perfectly, and if she left her room, she would become the new topic. Besides, hiding behind a door was how she’d got through most of Jephia’s parties.

  After only three more arguments, the mail carrier resumed his report. “Portents and signs, portents and signs! The sky is full of thunder, and the thunder is full of whispered words. The forest outside your walls is stalked by an otherworldly creature. Up north, a young woman killed a bird bear.”

  A chill ran down Caulie’s spine.

  “Tell us that one!” cried Uncle Goldros. “How was that done? Not that I want you girls getting ideas, do you hear?”

  “Which it were told to me by a mail carrier who heard it once removed from the original. That’s only three steps, four to your ear, so it is clean fact.”

  “Well?”

  “The mail carrier had just arrived at the compound of the family Phelaphalemsa when a bird bear attacked! They live up the Northern Trace in Old Ligae—that’s about eight weeks by foot unless you catch a Happie road convoy. They have a drought up there and the family has bad crops of blandfruit. They’ve eaten all their baxxaxx to death, and then continuing bad luc
k with their hunting. The birds have started flocking.”

  “Bad news,” Uncle Goldros grumbled. “We can probably expect the same soon.”

  “The mail carrier flees into the gates just in time but without much hope. It’s the angry type of bird bear, a giant of its kind. It is tall enough to see over the walls! The family Phelaphalemsa arms itself without much hope.”

  “Did they use fire?” someone asked.

  “Fire was mentioned, yes,” the mail carrier said.

  “The way to beat a bird bear is to walk right up to it with a long spear and—”

  “Shut up, Gippy,” said Mamma Goldros. “What about the girl?”

  “Which the bird bear is nearly at the wall, keening and buzzing, when the oddest thing occurs! So odd it is almost an offense against nature. Behind the bird bear, from the forest, emerges a strange young woman with empty hands.”

  “Strange how?”

  “Which I’m telling it if you let me. She’s tall for a maiden. Worried look on her face. No kohl around her eyes, and her mouth is much too big, as big as a man’s! The strangest thing is that she’s dressed like a Haphan. She’s dressed the way the overlords dress in the freezing north—as if she lives in a hot stove. Pants with no legs. Flimsy blouse with the cleavage. No shoes on, only sandals! Her feet are exposed to the world.”

  “O the profanity!” Momma Goldros murmured.

  “She were a middling lovely girl, the men later said, but in the moment she is their last vision before death. They behold her like the most gorgeous apparition in creation. They think she’s from the ancestors, sent to ease them through the fires and into the lands beyond. The younger men on the wall are raring to get on with her visit, if you know what I mean! But death isn’t on the list today, for the girl is a sorceress.”

  “Tall claim! I don’t believe it. What’s a sorceress?”

  “Which you must listen to understand what makes her strange. She speaks words aloud, but no one is beside her. We’re in the cold months, yet she doesn’t feel the cold. She is alone but unafraid. She calls the bird bear to attract its attention.”