Semper (New Eden)

by Dudley, Peter J

  "I see. Thank you, Freda—you do prefer to be called Freda, and not Freda Tailor? Ah, good. Thank you, Freda, for sharing that with me. And Dane," he says, turning his attention my way, "you have not said much yet. Freda, we know, is a seamstress. What shall we know of you?"

  I sit, stony, holding his gaze and revealing nothing. I try to think of him as Baddock. Would I tell Baddock the truth and hope he believes me? I am the ousted rightful leader of Southshaw, exiled by my father's murderer—no, he won't believe the truth. Time for a lie that sounds truthful

  "I'm just a sheep herder. I live in the southern part of Southshaw, in the flatlands not far from the southern wall." I pause to see if he reacts, but he only glances at Tom and then looks back at me. His pleasant, patient expression is driving me crazy. I keep my voice expressionless. "These clothes were, in fact, made by my mother."

  He sits and looks at us quietly, then slowly leans back in his chair. He pushes his fingertips together as he thinks. Freda also sits in silence, unmoving, and I'm reminded of her interview with me and my mother. Was that only just last night? When she sat stoic and relaxed through my mother's three minutes of silence?

  But he is waiting for more. The lantern's light seems to have dimmed, and the guard by the door is now in shadow. Fobrasse's face is more difficult to make out, and the air seems thicker, warmer, wetter. As the silence drags on, my throat begins to tickle in the stale underground air. The odor of the rock, acrid and thick, presses into my nose and makes my lungs burn.

  Fobrasse leans his head to one side, studying us both in turn. He puts a finger to his lips in contemplation. He straightens his robe. He puts his hands on his knees. And still he sits in silence while the guards stand motionless around us.

  Thirst has gripped my whole body, from cramps creeping into my thighs to aches in my shoulders. My throat is screaming for water, or a cough, or an ahem. Something. If Fobrasse doesn't speak soon, I will have to break the silence myself. Either with my voice, or with my fist.

  That's it. It's all I can take. I'm sure his next question would be why we were exiled, so I get ready to tell him. I'll say we stole one of my neighbor's sheep, that we cooked it and ate it in the woods. That we spent the night together and lay together without being married. That we were exiled for our sins. That really, we are nobody, and they should let us go. Believable.

  "He is lying, of course," Freda says just as I'm drawing breath for my performance.

  "Of course," replies Fobrasse, apparently not surprised by the outburst in the least.

  "Dane is the thirteenth Semper of Southshaw, and I am his wife. We were exiled because Darius, Dane's uncle, wanted to be Semper himself."

  Fobrasse nods slowly. Although his expression has not changed noticeably, I can tell he is thinking this over, treating it as if it could be, at least in part, true.

  Freda goes on. "Semper is, well, what you might call the mayor of Southshaw. Southshaw is our land, on the other side of the wall where Tom and these others... found us."

  Fobrasse nods slowly again. "Thank you, Freda. I do know a little about Southshaw." She has broken the log jam. I see in his posture that he's holding back, that he wants to pounce but also does not want to show eagerness. I see all this because it's how Baddock has described me when I think I've gained the upper hand.

  "You mentioned, Freda, that you are Dane's wife. And that Dane is Semper of Southshaw."

  "Yes, that's right. I did."

  "How, then, if you are First Wife, were you given these clothes by the First Wife?" With a casual, dismissive wave of his hand he indicates our scratchy, heavy garments.

  "I believe I said the new First Wife. Surely you recall."

  "So you did. Which brings me to a new question." Fobrasse holds back a grin.

  "Who is the new First Wife?"

  "Exactly."

  "Judith."

  This causes Fobrasse to sit up and raise his eyebrows. His surprise could mean anything. But is almost certainly means he's heard of my mother before.

  Freda does not wait for his response. "She gave me a note to deliver to you."

  Fobrasse has recovered from his surprise, but he no longer hides his interest. "Oh, did she?" He leans forward, focusing on Freda and ignoring me. Which, frankly, I'm not sure I enjoy. I am Semper, after all.

  "Yes. I do not know what it says, but if you look in our satchel, you will find an envelope addressed to you."

  Fobrasse gives another quick glance at Tom and seems satisfied with what he sees. I continue to stare in silence at Fobrasse, ignoring the others. But once again I'm beginning to feel left behind. Freda is trying to make Fobrasse an ally, but she doesn't realize she's ceding all the power to him. He's pounced on her innocence. If he thinks we're important, he'll never let us go. If only Freda had learned diplomacy and leadership from Baddock. She's such a child in some ways. But if I interfere now, it will seem like panic. I'm trapped.

  The guard at the door hands my satchel to Fobrasse. He lifts the flap and paws around inside it like a bear groping a tree for bugs. After a few seconds, he withdraws his hand, the honey colored envelope dangling from his fingers. He studies it in the dim light.

  "It is Judith's handwriting, no doubt," he says, mostly to himself. "And the wax is intact." He peers at Freda. "So it appears you have told me the truth after all. At least in part. Still," he muses to no one in particular as he leans back in his chair, holding the envelope up in the dim light, "isn't it odd. The First Wife allows her own son to be exiled. Even provides him clothing for the excursion! And she gives him a note addressed to the leader of a people she does not yet know."

  As he turns the envelope over in his hand, the tone of his last words begins to echo with sinister malevolence in my ears. Long after his voice has disappeared into the darkness down the hallways, the words return to me. The envelope flips over in Fobrasse' hand again and again, Judith's note inside marked by a shadow of deeper brown.

  "I wonder, too," Fobrasse says to the envelope, "where Linkan is and why he himself has not come." The envelope disappears into his palm with a harsh snap, and he sits up straight and stares into my eyes, intense and angry. "Why, after weeks of nothing at all, does he send an errand boy and a smooth-talking waif to deliver a message? Are you that expendable that he would send you here with such a starry-skied story? And the note, not even from himself?" He glances at Freda but then lunges out and grabs my shirt, twisting it tight in his fist and pulling me toward him. He's inches from my face when he spits, "Why, errand boy? It's time you spoke."

  "I'll speak," I hiss as I leap up, pulling him along with his fistful of my shirt. Later I'll take deep pleasure in the memory of his sharp gasp and the startled shock in his face. My arm spins up and drives back down, wrapping the rough fabric around his arms and cinching them under my own. In this one swift move I pull him toward me and down as I slip the shirt over my head and off, then spin around behind him.

  Before the others can move, I have Fobrasse on his knees under me, with his arms cinched together and his head covered by my shirt. I pull back on the fabric and bore my knee into his spine, tugging until I have just enough tension to let him know that if I wanted, I could pull both arms from their sockets.

  The guard behind me starts to move, but Tom barks out, "Stop!" Fobrasse grunts while Freda sits frozen like stone, wide-eyed in her chair. The ghost-man next to her, the one whose ribs I broke in the forest, seems content to stay where he is. As cool air drifts across my bare back, I imagine I've got Baddock underneath me. I snarl at him. "I am no errand boy. I am the thirteenth Semper of Southshaw. And you will never again call my wife a liar." To emphasize my point, I press my knee harder into his spine.

  Tom holds up both his hands, empty. Good. His expression is hard to read in this dim room, but I see he understands the hurt I could cause. And he understands that I chose not to. This Tom, as I thought, is smart.

  "You must know," he says slowly, his deep voice filling the room with a quiet insistence, "tha
t we won't let you out of this room if you hurt him."

  "I figured you wouldn't let me out of this room anyway," I answer.

  "That's not our way."

  "And I should believe this... why?"

  "I see your point."

  Something in the slow manner of his speech and the way he does not seem terribly troubled says to me that he isn't entirely unhappy to see his mayor in this position. Perhaps Tom has wanted to do this to the mayor himself from time to time.

  No matter. For the moment I have their attention.

  "You want to know why Linkan doesn't come to you himself? He's dead, that's why. Killed by his own brother. My uncle. The same uncle that kicked me out and named himself Semper."

  Fobrasse has stopped his grunting and struggling. He must be listening. I reward him by easing up with my knee, but I hold tight enough to keep him from wriggling free.

  "You want to know why Judith sends a note through us? Because Darius controls everything, even her. He took her as his own wife after he killed my father." The more I talk, the more I tighten my grip on poor Fobrasse. Although I feel the need finally to release my rage on someone, Fobrasse is not the one, and now is not the time. I loosen my cinch again and take one deep breath.

  In my pause, Freda speaks. "I don't know how Judith and Linkan corresponded with you in the past," she says quickly. "Whatever ways you used before are unsafe now. Judith is all but a prisoner in her own house."

  I see Tom glance over my shoulder and give a minute shake of his head at the door guard. "Dane. I give you my word that we will not hurt you if you release Mayor Fobrasse. My word, Dane."

  I don't need to study his expression or ponder his tone of voice. I've learned enough from Baddock over hundreds of lessons. Tom is one I can trust, one who understands. Fobrasse and Freda can banter and bicker, but Tom and I have seen things beyond what they know. Tom and I have a history already. This is, by my count, our third encounter. And the first not involving Lupay.

  Slowly, slowly I let the tension out of the shirt and pull my knee back, until Fobrasse is loose. To his credit, he does not scramble free like a scared dog. He rises without any sense of haste, and he doesn't turn to face me until he's fully upright and composed. Only then do I feel a bit naked with my shirt in my hand rather than on my body. Quickly I slip it back on, happy that no one attacks me as I do.

  As my shirt settles over me and the rough cloth makes my arms itch, I ask, "Well?" Freda and Fobrasse frown with a tinge of confusion, but Tom raises an eyebrow. For his benefit and mine, I finish my question.

  "Well? What now?"

  CHAPTER 17

  "I can't believe we only talked for an hour," Freda mumbles as the door closes behind us.

  "It feels like ten hours," I respond, feeling the full weight of our conversation with Fobrasse sinking through my bones. "Anyway, how do you know it was only an hour?"

  "You didn't hear the chime? Every fifteen minutes. I counted."

  "Oh." I should probably be impressed, but I'm just too tired. "Where's the bed? Tom said something about a bed. Or did I imagine that?"

  "You didn't imagine."

  The cave—Tom had called it an apartment—was recently vacated by a family. They had just had a baby, he'd said, their third child. I missed much of the rest because my thoughts tripped over the idea of a ghost-baby. I had seen ghost-men so far, but I had yet to encounter a ghost-woman. Would a ghost-baby be pink and raw like a regular baby, then turn white over time? Or was it born white like its mama? Would it cry for its mama's milk? Would it lie in a cradle by its mama's bed?

  "Dane, look at the wall."

  "Yeah? So what? They have that glowing moss all over the place." It's glowing at me right now, only a foot away. "Did you notice that if you breathe on it, it glows brighter?" I puff out a warm breath, and thousands of tiny, leaf-like tips brighten from a dull olive glow to a bright, shining aqua. They hold the color for a few seconds before fading to their otherwise constant green.

  "No, the other wall."

  I turn around to face the other wall, which is almost as close as the first one. "These ghosts—"

  "Don't call them that," Freda snaps.

  "Why not? Oh, whatever. These—what do they call themselves? Subterrans? Okay, these Subterrans sure do like tight places, don't they?"

  "I suppose it would be hard to make big, open houses underground."

  Of course she's right, as she always is, but why does she have to put that edge into her tone? I'm not being mean or stupid. I'm just remarking. The room is narrow. The halls are narrow. All the ceilings are low, and I have to stoop to go through doorways. We're alone. It's not like I'm going to hurt their feelings.

  She steps up next to me, and in the cool of the dim cave I can feel her halo of warmth. "See? Look here." She points at the wall, which at first looks like it's swirled with different colors and shadows. Her hand moves over the wall, tracing shapes that emerge from the shadows into pictures. "A man, and a woman... and two children. It's a mural." She touches the larger of the two children, rolling her fingers around its outline.

  "The man—this must be the father," she says, touching the middle of the drawing. "He's holding a rope or something." The figure of the man is only fifteen or so inches high, and as my eyes adjust I begin to make out more details. He's drawn in white, of course, being a gho—I mean Subterran—and he's wearing a blue shirt that's too long. So long that it looks like a dress. The man has no hair, like the few Subterrans I've met. His legs are bare below his knees, and simple sandals cushion his feet.

  Freda's finger follows the rope-line away from the family, to our left, back towards the door. "There's another family down here, she says, moving a few feet left and crouching. "The other end of the rope is held by a little boy."

  I am not really interested in little boys holding ropes. This man in the blue shirt is holding hands with a woman in a red shirt. Her garment is like his, wide on her shoulders and falling down past her knees. Same sandals, too. She's also bald, but a little shorter than the man. Besides the height and the color of their clothes, the only thing to distinguish the man from the woman is that she has enormous, round breasts bulging under her shirt. I reach out like Freda and trace the lines of the painting with my fingertip. Up one leg, around the breasts, down the other leg...

  "Dane!"

  I yank back my hand with a jerk. "What!"

  Freda looks up at me from where she crouches. "I think this is a history of the family that lived here. Look. This father also holds a rope that leads to another little boy over here."

  I want to say I really couldn't care less. So what? Every family has a history. Every family lives somewhere. Why should these ghost-people be any different? Other than that they're bone-white, have no hair, all dress like girls, and have never seen the sky, or a tree, or a mountaintop. "I guess," I say because she expects me to say something, "they just don't have much to hold on to to remember who they are."

  Freda touches her finger to the wall and traces another rope-line from one woman to a little girl, then from that little girl's mother to another little girl, and one more. "I wonder what their names were," she muses as she drifts farther away from me, tracing back three, four, five generations. "They all look so alike... I can't tell them apart."

  Meanwhile, I've continued to study the one family before me. This must be the family that's moved out. It seems strange that we could meet them. Maybe bump into them in a hallway. If we could get past the guard outside, that is.

  "I wonder if they all lived in this cave," Freda asks no one in particular.

  "Apartment," I correct.

  "Mmm-hmm. The pictures, Dane. They're so detailed. But—" She shakes her head.

  I know what she means. I've been looking at the faces of the man and woman in the family before me. The artistry in the illustration is beyond anything I've seen in Southshaw, exceeded only by the intricate drawings in the book I found in that ancient house. Each dab of paint, each stroke of the
brush is exquisite in its precision. Each of the figures seems to step right out of the stone wall at me. When I run my finger over the woman again, I realize that the stone is not smooth like a canvas would be, or a wooden board. It's rough, with dimples and bumps to match the painted figures' contours.

  "They all look exactly alike to me," Freda finishes. "Maybe I just don't see them the same way they see each other."

  "You mean like how Missus Dandray is the only one in all of Southshaw that can tell her twin girls apart, including her husband?"

  "Yes, in a way," Freda says.

  "But this family looks different from Tom, and Fobrasse," I say. "It's creepy, how... same these pictures are. It's like they were all built by the same hand or something."

  "Maybe they're just symbols," Freda sighs as she stands. "Oh, ow. My back hurts. Like someone's been hitting me with a stick all day." She twists and writhes, stretching out her legs and back and arms. As she leans this way and that, her rough woolen shirt rises and exposes an inch or two of her bare belly. In this strange, blue-green light her skin is an odd shade of silver-violet.

  She puts her hands on her back, her elbows out to her sides, and leans backwards. She doesn't get far before her head hits the stone wall behind her. "Ow!"

  It's hard not to laugh, but the last thing I want right now is to give her any reason to be mad at me. What I really want is to lie down with her again, here under the mountain as we did under the stars only a few hours ago. I want her warmth to touch me and wrap all around me, feel the press of her breasts against my arm as she lies against me.

  She lifts both her arms and rubs the back of her head. The shirt rises again, lifting and showing several inches of her tight, smooth stomach. How soft her skin would feel under my fingers as I run them along her outline, like I did with the picture of the ghost-woman on the wall... as my fingers trace up her sides, lifting the heavy shirt farther, until they bump along the ridges of her ribs, up to the smalls under her shoulders, where her arms meet her torso... as my hands slide from her sides around to her front—