“How come we haven’t been found yet?”
“Oh, that,” Jean chuckled. “Take a look outside. You’ll know.”
The answer didn’t reassure her, and Zaja felt prompted to ask, “And what do we do now? I’m awake.”
“Decidin’ whether to charge the front door or the wall right next to it,” Jean said. “Both you and me know I could do a hell of a lot of damage … maybe too much to help the guys.”
“So we’re stuck?”
“I’m cognatin’!” Jean snapped. “I ain’t usually the gal with the plan! I just … hit things. And I’m really good at it.”
Despite their recent experience, if they were in no danger, then Zaja was in no hurry. She paused by the door, considering taking Jean’s prompt to have look outside.
“Bit of advice?” Jean offered. “If someone asks you to help them out with something and you can, you do it.”
Zaja cocked her head. It wasn’t that she disagreed with the sentiment, but the warning seemed strange. “Why?”
“That’s just how they are here. You can get anything you need from anyone … but be ready to give just the same.” Jean rolled her shoulder, stretching it. “Spent half the day as a delivery girl. Had worse times than that earnin’ my bread.”
Not entirely sure what to make of Jean’s advice, Zaja thanked her just the same before stepping out.
*
There wasn’t anyone around, but the commotion was very near. Something had torn through this village long ago—to Zaja’s disbelief, the wreck of a house she and Jean were hiding in was among the nicer ones. There was a ring of buildings in a worse state, along with the remnants of a bridge that crossed over the dry riverbed. She stepped across it, curious to how long it had been since it still flourished.
Although the hardened structures were more like skeletal remains, a living town had long since sprung up to overtake it. A field of tents littered the sight, and they became denser as she approached the commotion. The size of small houses, the tents’ spikes had been hammered into earth hard and lifeless, the ropes dirty and frayed from more than a generation’s wait. There was no sign that these tents would be abandoned anytime soon.
When she arrived at the bazaar from whence the noise came, Zaja grasped the meaning of Jean’s little joke—she could not be found because she didn’t stand out. A number of Omati people walked the flooded streets. There were others, too—Earthen people, TseTsuan people, and other humans of nuanced persuasions that she had never seen before. That Aaron had sent soldiers after them, there was little doubt—but would they know who to look for after two brief encounters? It was more likely that they were remembered as a collection of empty stereotypes than as complex human beings.
A river of people rolled before her, and Zaja stepped against the tide, finding herself overtaken. When one person accidentally caused her to fall over, there were three more to help her stand: “Whoa, sorry about that!” “You okay?” “I should have been more careful.”
While wading through, it struck Zaja that she had never met such a crowd. The population back in Quema had been robust, but it was also managed stringently. In Yeribelt, there were no walls dictating the limits of space, and she tried to fathom why this makeshift city hadn’t expanded upward to quell the sweltering heat and the stink of a swollen population.
Zaja slipped out of the stream of people, falling back against the bar of a small diner, where she hit her backside on the counter. Plates and glasses rattled at the collision.
“You alright, Omati girl?”
Surprised to be addressed, she looked to her right. Sitting beside her was a man whose features were strikingly like Flynn’s. No, not quite, she corrected herself. The elderly, graying man beside her was less beastly, less misshapen. Where Flynn looked as though something unnatural had been dumped upon him, this man looked like something nature intended, with ears more softly pointed and straight where her friend’s were crooked.
“Uh, sorry,” she said. “I’m still getting used to the crowd and I … I’ll watch where I’m going next time.”
“No need to apologize,” he replied. “If I’d seen you coming, I’d have caught you and spared you the injury. We’re both at fault here.”
She was taken aback by his sincerity. He didn’t owe her such kindness.
“Conelus Rocao,” he introduced himself, extending his hand to shake.
“Za—” she accidentally bit her tongue in her haste to stop herself, making a pained face as a result. “Quinan Envus,” she settled on, using the name of her favored mentor.
We’re still being chased, she reminded herself. She didn’t know what they knew about her, or what a man such as this might report.
Conelus smiled. “It’s a pleasure, Quinan. You’ve been looking around with such overwhelm and wonder. Bite my tongue if I’m in error, but you were brought only recently to the arms of the Living God, yes?”
Zaja blinked. It took her a moment to realize it was a metaphor. Faith was quieter thing on Oma, and most back in Quema didn’t subscribe to it.
“Ah, yes,” she nodded. “A few days ago.”
“You’ve learned the local tongue well. I’ve met a few of your people and heard their tales … seems that of all the worlds, the Omati race has suffered most cruelly.” With a swig of ale, Conelus washed away some bitter memory.
Feeling as though she were guilty of something, Zaja wanted almost to apologize for her life of comfort and privilege. Yet with her festering body, it seemed stupid to bow for something she happened to be born into. Nonetheless, she hadn’t known the hard times that people outside her walls had.
“Is it not so bad where you come from then?”
Conelus laughed a little at this. “I don’t think I’ve met a person yet who hadn’t had it at least a little bad, though that is what sets us all apart. It’s why we’ve been chosen to be here. We haven’t given in to the madness, haven’t let the hostility of our neighbors demean us as people.” He set his mug down, lost in thought. Some memory had crept up in him.
“Why is everyone here?” Zaja was reluctant to ask, worried she might give too much away. “I mean, there’s so many people—why not build real buildings, pave the streets? Things like that.”
“None of us hope to be here long,” he replied. “The day will come, and there are those here whose grandparents were young when they waited to see it. The Living God will break his chains and rise to bring us all into a new world.”
The Living God: Taryl Renivar. There was no doubt in Zaja’s mind that they were one and the same. The stories she had heard from the others matched what she gleaned now. Before, she had pictured a lonely man bound to the earth in the middle of nowhere. So much had sprung up around him in the centuries that had supposedly passed since his defeat.
Yeribelt, she realized, is a place of promise.
“What will it be like? The new world that the … Living God is going to make?”
“Peace,” Conelus replied. “Peace for the good people of humanity. Peace from hunger and sickness and war and pain. Peace in knowing with certainty that an ever-loving God is watching and will be there when you need Him.”
“Sickness …” Zaja murmured. A flutter of hope welled in her chest, and she asked, “And if one were already sick?”
Conelus’s expression was one of concern, but he asked nothing, said nothing. He did not light up and sing promises of hope. “Such miracles are yet beyond his means, but he has promised: when the time is right, they will no longer be.”
*
Zaja spent a few hours wandering Yeribelt. The day was waning faster than she was comfortable with, though it was an improvement on the uncertain cycles of the World Between. The rush of human traffic generated enough warmth around her that the cold was never something to fear, even as rain sprinkled down.
When she could and when asked, Zaja lent a hand. A basket of fruit had tilted over, and she joined other locals in helping pick things up. A barrel had broken, and
she helped swap the wheel while two others held it fast, lest its contents spill. A child who had lost her mother waited with Zaja while several others went to find her. It was a matter of blending in. It was also human kindness at work.
In the same way, Zaja took what she needed, replacing her outfit with cleaner and less ragged clothes—things that warmed better and weighed less. Following a few whispers, she found her way to a back street where the traffic thinned and approached a soup kitchen. It was little more than a ruddy tent, and puffs of steam billowed through holes in the ceiling. The Omati sign above it named the place Vestus’s Noodle Shack, with the name translated into several other languages in smaller print below.
She took a seat at the wooden bar, distracted for a moment by the material before noticing the backside of a man with blue skin darker than hers, and hair bordering on black, busy stirring a large pot of noodles. He’s probably not more than a year older than me, Zaja considered, before realizing that he had taken notice of her. His light purple eyes stayed with her for a few minutes after he said, “Just a tick!”
He came over, wiping his hands on a white apron discolored with stains. The chef and sole proprietor, Vestus was welcoming and cheerful. “Looks like we’ve got a real cutie coming over! Have a seat anywhere you like! As you can see, business is bustling, but I’m sure I can fit you in.”
Contrary to Vestus’s claim, there was no one else around. Zaja decided to play along, asking jokingly, “So this is a salad bar, right?”
Vestus cracked a wry smile. “Most of us are more excited to get real Omati noodles all the way out here on Terrias.”
“Had some a couple weeks ago.” Zaja’s grin dissolved to a sheepish, “Sorry.”
Vestus began preparations, first setting the water to boil. “As you’re new in town, I can close up shop and show you around. I know all the good places … even the private ones.” Vestus leaned on the bar and looked Zaja in the eyes, telling her, “And out here, in Yeribelt? Finding someplace truly private isn’t easy.”
Resting on one elbow, her cheek in her hand, she asked, “You’re not coming on to me, are you?”
Disappointed, Vestus smiled reluctantly and nodded. “If you want me to stop—”
“I’ll … politely decline your advances,” Zaja responded. It wasn’t entirely out of disinterest, though she wasn’t sure if Vestus was quite her type. It was mostly that she was uncomfortable engaging a relationship. It wouldn’t last forever. As things were, it wouldn’t even last a lifetime.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Vestus replied, backing off with a polite smile. “But the offer to tour around still stands—lechery-free.”
The two continued to make small talk while Vestus prepared a bowl of noodles for Zaja. She was dismayed to learn that he was out of Maula shavings—extracted from an Omati moss that gave the broth a nice, warming kick. But enjoying her noodles plain took nothing away from the conversation, and Zaja found quickly that it was nice to be back among one of her own people.
“So full …” she groaned after the third bowl. She hadn’t realized just how hungry she had been until she had a hot meal in front of her face. It wasn’t a surprise once she thought about it—Jean had said she’d been out for two days, so it had to catch up with her sooner or later. “How much do I owe you?”
“Not a thing,” he replied.
“I know that there’s no money here, no exchanges … but how do you know I’m not going to just eat and run?” Zaja asked. “You know, not return the favor?”
“If you don’t then that’s okay,” Vestus just smiled at her. “You’ll do something for someone, and maybe they’ll do something back for me.”
Zaja was impressed. “You have a lot of faith in my character.”
“Hey, they brought you here, didn’t they?” he asked. His smile faded, and Vestus turned melancholy. “We all want the same thing.”
“Long life and passionate romance?”
“And prosperity,” he nodded, blushing slightly at her forwardness.
“And that’s what brought you here?”
Vestus seemed reticent to share, to drudge up old memories. Before Zaja could stop him, though, he spoke. “I lived in Lausus.”
Zaja drew a blank, having never heard of the place.
“It was at the edge of the net, where the stone bled into the mountains and climbed above the cloud level,” he explained. “It was still cold—find me a place on Oma that isn’t—but it was livable.” Vestus seemed pained at the next part. “Until it started dying. The hot springs turned chill and the wildlife migrated away as the cold, no longer kept at bay, crept in over the mountain ridge.”
“Then you had to leave?” she asked.
“Where would we go? We stayed in Lausus, because some of us didn’t want to give it up, and others knew there wasn’t a livable place we could reach.”
Vestus took her empty bowl to a basin of water to clean it.
“I had to bury my mother first. She was still holding my tiny baby sister to her breast when she died. They were frozen together, beneath seven layers of blankets and furs.” Zaja’s throat went dry. She wanted to tell him to stop, that she’d heard enough. He was watching the water intently as he cleaned her bowl, and she felt then it would be ruder to interrupt. “A few cousins and me were all that was left when the cold finally won and drove us from Lausus. We traveled for days before we found Crescen waiting for us, with hot soup by a campfire.”
“Crescen?” Zaja asked. She hadn’t heard the name before and thought she had just missed something.
“He wasn’t the one that brought you? He serves Lord Renivar and searches out worthy souls to bring here. It wasn’t hard to sell us on a better life. We’d seen the cruelty an uncaring world could dish out, losing fingers and toes to the frostbite as we struggled to bury the last of the people we loved so much in life.”
In his hands, Zaja saw the losses Vestus spoke of. Yet for all the hardship he had endured, the young man before her had made it here, and had not become a colder person for it. Zaja realized then that Yeribelt was a place she could easily stay in. More, as she watched her new friend’s mood lighten as he prepared a serving for another who had just approached his bar, she realized that she wanted to. There was a simplicity to this life, and it was one where she didn’t have to be treated as an invalid, and could even function for a while until the worst of her Nyrikon’s Syndrome finally overtook her. And just possibly, if Conelus was right, there was the chance she could be fixed and made whole. But she would try hard not to rest her heart on a miracle.
*
He had spent a great deal of time avoiding looking at her, avoiding talking to her. He was changed from when she first met him, more than half a year past. But she knew him, and she smiled at him.
“You’re Flynn.”
At her words, he dared at last to look upon Zella. When his eyes caught the light, she found a rage hidden within them, borne of contempt for the world and himself.
“Hey, missy!” Mack practically threw himself at the bars. “You know Flynn-o?”
“We met some while back,” she confirmed. “He sought me out. He wronged me. I’ve been here since.”
“You’re the one he betrayed to Aaron,” Chari realized.
As they’d heard the tale before, it saved Zella the need to tell it again. Brushing her hands along the walls of her cage, she remembered days when the room was brighter, and she could come and go as she pleased. It had once been a place for an elite few who had much in common and were working to support each other in the face of a difficult decision. Much of it was barren now; only the barest necessities were provided. The bars were new, and no doubt owing to what she had done decades before.
“Why are you here?” Flynn asked. “Why was I hired to bring you in?”
“I am a human sacrifice to the Living God,” she replied. “Taryl Renivar’s freedom depends entirely on me at this moment in time.”
Zella took care to make sure her bo
dy was covered well. She was not bashful or ashamed of what she was, but her markings were not meant for mortal eyes, and she knew the pain they caused to look upon. No other had borne them for as long as she, for those who sacrificed their lives before had only received the marks on the eve of their final act. An exception had been made though, for Zella the Runaway.
“What makes you the girl for the part?” Mack asked. “I mean, you’ve got those neat glowy marks—”
“They’re words of power, of consecration,” Chari reasoned. “They transcribe her purpose in purity. It was an old Saryu practice in the earliest days … little doubt where Saint Renivar lifted the idea.”
Zella nodded confirmation.
“Then why are you still here?” Flynn asked. “It’s been over half a year. Are they just drawing this out to make you suffer, or are they waiting for some phase of the moon or alignment of the planets?”
“I’m surprised that you would show concern for my suffering,” she said, and she genuinely was. “What happened to you?”
Flynn hung from the bars, resigned. “I don’t really know.”
She smiled at him, but it faded quickly. “You took my innocence, my inherent faith in the goodness of humanity. And I have no doubt that for each of those you touched and took along the way, you’ve changed as well.” Neither Chari nor Mack had anything to say in Flynn’s defense. “I am here because I am not yet ready to be sacrificed,” Zella went on. “It requires a free and willing heart to take its own life, to give up what it is for the greatness of another. Let alone a god.”
“He’s not a god,” Chari coldly insisted. “Taryl Renivar is man and material. He is tangible, and if the stories of Airia Rousow are anything to go by, he can be killed. Gods are something higher, something that cannot be placed … something absent.”
Zella didn’t respond. There was no solace in getting upset and nitpicking the nuances of what words were perceived to mean. They merely had two understandings of the same idea.
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