Desert World Allegiances

by Lyn Gala

  Light brown eyes looked up at him, and Temar opened his mouth and closed it silently. He chewed on a lower lip for a second before he tried again. “I thought George was a monster, and I liked Ben.”

  Shan took a deep breath. He’d thought the same. He’d also thought his brother had stolen their father’s love and that Yan Polli had given Naite all his attention out of love. “We don’t even really know each other,” he confessed.

  Temar looked at him with a deep sadness reflected in eyes. “That’s a lonely way to live. I prefer to think that we have to work to get to know each other. After all, I did get to know Ben.” Temar hesitated. “And you did eventually get to know both your father and your brother.”

  Shan sucked in a fast breath, shocked that Temar had touched so close to his thoughts. But he was right. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we just need time to know each other as people,” Shan admitted. He didn’t add that he thought it was equally hard to get to know himself. “We should volunteer to ride over to Blue Hope. Or I could go alone,” Shan added. Naite was here, and apparently he’d brought a whole lot of friends, so Temar was safe enough staying here.

  “No, we can go together.” Temar smiled at him and reached out to rest his hand on Shan’s arm. “It’s not going to be easy to explain any of this.”

  “No,” Shan agreed. “It’s not.”

  “Then, we do it together,” Temar said in the same tone of voice he’d used to insist he was coming on this adventure. “Only….” Temar closed his mouth.

  “What?” Shan asked.

  Temar looked up, almost apologetically. “I would never say this to Naite, but he is right about your plans. If you have any more ideas about running off and saving the world, do you think that maybe you can be the person not planning the rescue?”

  “You’re insulting my plan?” Shan was shocked.

  “Yes,” Temar said firmly. “I respect that you trust God, but that was a little too much trust in God.”

  “It worked,” Shan pointed out. Now that the danger was over, his legs felt like water, and he could admit that the plan hadn’t been exactly well thought out, but it had worked.

  “And next time we have to save the world, we’ll come up with another plan that works, only this one will rely a little less on God and dumb luck. You know,” Temar said slowly, “I wasn’t sure about the existence of God. When Ben had me, I thought that no God would ever let that happen. But after seeing how He rescued us from this mess, I’m almost ready to believe. I think that means you’re a pretty good priest, if you managed to convert a doubter,” Temar pointed out, the smile softening the insult.

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Shan agreed. He let his hand rest on Temar’s shoulder as they headed out into the corridor. They’d need to get more help, and then each council would have to deal with their own citizens. Livre was in for a hard time, but at least the truth was out, and the evil was visible. Shan wondered if the man who’d raped the woman in Blue Hope had been part of the conspiracy. Once you started thinking your needs were more important than anyone else’s, it wasn’t a big leap to that sort of abuse.

  “We’ll all be fine,” Temar promised him. They passed a room with a half dozen workers standing near an inner door to another room.

  “I should be reassuring you.”

  Temar shook his head. “I don’t need reassurance. I’ve had time to figure out that I’m strong enough to survive this. The rest of the world… they’ll need a little more help.”

  Shan hadn’t thought about it that way, but it was true. They’d all been betrayed and abused. They were silent then, until they reached the surface. The storm had passed, and the sky was a brilliant red, the stray pieces of fine dust lingering in the air after the sand settled. And each piece of dust seemed to reflect the sun, so that the world caught on fire. It was beautiful.

  “Am I evil for being just a little relieved that Ben will be condemned for what he’s done to Livre and not what he’s done to me?” Temar asked as they both stared up at the sky and arranged their sand scarves.

  “Don’t you want him to pay for what he did to you?” Shan asked, not understanding the conversation. It didn’t help his mood that Naite would have understood in a moment.

  “I want him to pay,” Temar said. “I just don’t want to spend my life wondering if my anger sent him out to be food for sandcats. I don’t want to be that angry.”

  “Then you’re a better man than I am, because I am angry,” Shan confessed. If Ben were in front of him right now, Shan thought he could gut the man and watch his blood spill out onto the rocks.

  When Temar looked over, Shan couldn’t see the emotion beneath the scarf that hid his face. “I never said I wasn’t angry. I said I didn’t want to be angry.”

  The words sank in slowly. The saying went that the truth was finer than sand, that it slipped into uncomfortable places, unbidden. This truth did exactly that. Temar was strong, but he wasn’t healed. It was a truth Shan needed to respect. “That’s a place to start healing.”

  Temar nodded and then headed out toward the sand bike. Shan followed.

  Chapter 25

  SHAN sat down on the carved windwood bench that sat outside of Landing’s council house. Temar looked up in surprise. “I didn’t expect you out here.”

  Shan shrugged. “Div’s in there making judgments. If they think he’ll be more merciful, they’ve never seen a man angry at the thought of all the babies he’s baptized dying.” If Shan had doubted his right to feel angry about the conspiracy, Div had dispelled that thought. Actually, talking to Div again had made a lot of things come clear. “Where’s Cyla?” She’d been outside the council, thin-lipped with anger and pacing the whole time. No one would tell her what exactly had happened to Temar, but she’d understood enough to turn from vitriolic to this quiet sort of furious that worried Shan even more.

  “Hannal took her back to Tom’s for a good meal.”

  “And she went?” That surprised Shan. The way she looked at every one of the conspirators who came out of the council or the barn, he’d been sure she was waiting for a chance to gut one with a dull knife.

  Temar shrugged. “I’m not sure if it was an invitation or a military strike. Hannal sort of invaded, scooped Cyla up with a hand around her shoulders and shoved her into a hauler while Cyla was still objecting.”

  Shan could imagine the scene. Tom did tend to have a thing for strong partners, that’s for sure. “Did you testify yet?” Shan asked. He couldn’t imagine how difficult that must have been.

  Temar nodded.

  “Are you okay?”

  Temar took some time to answer. “I can talk about it, or I can remember the feelings, but it’s like I can’t do both at the same time. If I talk about what Ben did, how he….” Temar stopped and shrugged. “If I talk about it and think about how I felt at the same time, it’s like adding too much heat to the glass. I feel like parts of me are going to slide off. Do you know what I mean?”

  Shan thought about his horror on the one night that his father had crept into his room, his large hands finding Shan’s leg and feeling up the length before Shan had kicked him in the stomach. If it hadn’t been for the pipe juice, Shan might have been in the same position as Temar and Naite. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I feel like it’s unfair that I escaped the fire out of dumb luck.”

  “I thought you put faith in God, not luck.”

  Shan gave a small laugh, without any humor. “I wish I could change things.”

  “I can’t think about that. It happened. I’m moving on,” Temar said firmly. “It wasn’t the end of the world, and on those days that I feel like it was, I remind myself that I’m alive and I have water to drink if I need it and friends I can talk to. It’s more than Ben has right now. And I think I’m a little vindictive, because I really like the fact that he spent the night tied up, with his shoes taken from him.”

  “That’s justice,” Shan said. The door to the council house opened, and Shan stiffened, expectin
g to see guards escorting Ben out. He was the first of Landing’s accused to go before the council, and most of the town had managed to find some reason to come to town. Shopkeepers stood in front of their shops. Chalta was fixing a sand bike in the middle of the road, and Houghten had set up an informal ballad circle, singing to children in his soft, low voice. Shan couldn’t hear the words, but he noticed all the eyes came to the council house in time to see Naite step out with a thunderous expression on his face.

  “Naite?” Shan asked. His brother walked over and sat on the end of the bench nearest Shan.

  “They kicked me out,” Naite said with a shrug. “Apparently, I don’t have the proper emotional distance from the situation to judge fairly.” The sarcasm was thick enough to cut and serve for dinner.

  “What did you say?”

  “I suggested that we tie the bastard up and drop him on a sandrat nest,” Naite said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t sorry he’d said it.

  Shan rolled his eyes. “And they thought you were too emotional? Unbelievable.”

  “That’s what happens when someone is exiled. I don’t know why you’re so fond of turning the other cheek. I mean, the Bible is fine, but sometimes a little rope and a nest of sandrats is better.” Naite glared at the people gathered along the street, and most of them went back to pretending they weren’t waiting on the council’s decision. Most expected exile. Very few had argued for the mercy of slavery or the stripping of adult rights, at least not for Ben. A few of the others had their supporters willing to beg for mercy. Several people in town had vocally demanded more bloody and personal forms of justice, but Shan doubted the council would give in to a call for bloody vengeance.

  “And I’m clearly a very poor priest, because part of me agrees,” Shan admitted. Naite looked over, not bothering to hide his surprise.

  Temar reached over and actually patted Shan on the leg. “You’re allowed to hate him. We can hate him together.”

  “Priests are supposed to be better than that.”

  Naite snorted his disgust at that answer. “Priests are human, and humans are mean, selfish creatures.”

  “Just some of them,” Temar said. Naite didn’t correct him. For a time, the three of them sat on the bench, and like the rest of the town, pretended they weren’t waiting on the verdict. Shan caught one or two words of Houghten’s ballad and frowned. It almost sounded like the man had sung Shan’s name. “What do you think they’re going to do?” Temar finally asked in the relative silence.

  “They’ll exile him,” Naite quickly answered.

  Shan sighed deeply. “And for the first time in my life, I don’t even want to go in there and argue for leniency.”

  “Good,” was Naite’s sharp answer.

  Temar shook his head. “Now that he’s locked up, there’s a little part of me that feels sorry for him. I can’t ever forgive him for what he did, but….” Words failed Temar and he fell silent.

  “It’ll pass,” Naite said confidently.

  “It’s just… he was so sure that he was right. I don’t know how anyone could get so twisted around that they can’t see right from wrong like that. I mean, sometimes I think he really did believe he was protecting me. He really did believe that, in using that ship, he was saving a part of Livre, not condemning an entire planet to death.” Temar shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Temar.” Shan stopped, not sure what to say. The anger he understood, but when Temar vacillated between anger and this awkward forgiveness, Shan wasn’t sure what to say.

  “He probably did,” Naite said before Shan could collect his thoughts. “People like that… they don’t connect well with reality. However, I still say the best thing is to toss them out into the sand and hope they aren’t as stubbornly attached to life as my brother. The more interesting question is what the council is going to do about their own mistakes.”

  “Their mistakes?” Temar sounded genuinely confused, but Shan understood the moment Naite said it. Before Temar’s case had ever come to light, they’d talked as a council about how unhappy they were with the council out of Blue Hope. A young woman in slavery had been raped. Yes, the council had exiled the man who’d abused the girl, but they hadn’t taken any blame for allowing the man to purchase her contract. A council made decisions, and right or wrong, they had to be accountable for those decisions.

  “We voted to allow Ben Gratu to buy you,” Shan said softly. He didn’t have the money many of the others did, so he wasn’t sure what compensation he’d be asked to pay, but he’d pay it. It would never be enough to give Temar back what had been taken from him with such force, but he’d do what he could.

  “You’re the only one in the clear, as far as I’m concerned,” Naite disagreed. “You were very loud and annoying in your arguments against slavery. Hell, you warned us that something like Blue Hope would happen again, and we all thought you were just being a prissy little pain in the ass.” Naite paused for a second. “Or maybe I was the only one who thought you were being prissy, but the rest of them agreed to go along with the slavery. So any payment that’s due Temar, you won’t be paying it.”

  “No one should pay except Ben Gratu,” Temar said firmly. “If you’d asked me, I would have named Ben as my first choice in owners. You can’t be blamed for a mistake.”

  “Like mistakenly dumping two tanks of water onto a field?” Shan asked. Temar closed his mouth on whatever argument he was about to make. “And I was part of the council, so I won’t challenge any punishment they assign. We all share in this.”

  Temar was still shaking his head, but he looked confused.

  Naite slowly smiled. “Look at it this way, you’ll probably end up owning a lot more land than your father did. You’ll definitely get Ben Gratu’s land, after what he did, and since George Young still hasn’t burned off those damn pipe trap plants, you can take him to the council and demand work days from him.” His smile grew wider. “That would be a sight to see.”

  Shan sighed. “It doesn’t fix any of this. It doesn’t change the fact that the council is going to have to exile not one person but forty-three.” That loss of life tugged at Shan’s soul. By stopping the rocket, they’d saved so many lives. The councils hadn’t released the new water figures, but the planet would last for years, maybe decades longer with so much water, especially since the water-use predictions everyone had been using had included the stolen water, siphoned off year by year over almost twenty years. Their water technology was better than any of the skilled workers had calculated. However, by saving the planet, Shan had his part in condemning forty-three people he knew.

  Naite rolled his eyes. “Forty-three men and women from Landing agreed to abandon the rest of us to die. I don’t feel guilty, and once they let me back in there after Ben’s judgment, I plan to vote for exile on every one.”

  Shan frowned. “Every one of them?”

  Naite sighed. “Unless they can come up with a very good excuse, yes. Every one. We have an obligation to apply the law fairly, and water theft of this seriousness can’t be treated lightly.”

  “What about any that you decide to show mercy on?” Shan asked. Other than exile and fining, Livre had only one punishment.

  “We need to monitor more closely, but I’m still not against slavery, Shan.”

  “By God, you are stubborn.”

  “You both are,” Temar interrupted.

  “That we are,” Naite agreed. “And we need to make changes, but there isn’t a better solution. And I’m saying that as someone who has both survived a long slavery sentence and is facing another.”

  “You… what?” Shan asked, his stomach souring at Naite’s casual attitude toward slavery after all these horrors.

  “Why would you be slaved out?” Temar sat up, his face alarmed.

  Naite snorted. “I’m likely to be slaved out to you, Temar,” he pointed out. “I don’t have any training, and I definitely don’t have money for fines, so I’ll be working your farm for a time
. It’s fair enough. Ben ran a tight ship, but a lot of unskilled laborers avoided the place because he did have a real prejudice against kids on his farm. Kids or retired folks. Most unskilled workers want to make connections on farms where they know they’ll be welcomed when they’re too old to work. If I’m there to get the workers back in shape, you’ll get it running smooth faster.”

  “But… a slave?” Temar made a moue of disgust, and Shan didn’t blame him. He felt the same way.

  “It’s that or hand over half my pay for the rest of my life, and trust me, I’d rather be slaved out for a time and have it done and over with.” Naite got a thoughtful look on his face. “I wonder if I can serve on the council if I’m slaved out. Huh.” He looked more curious than alarmed at the idea he might lose his position.

  Temar was still shaking his head. “I don’t want you as a slave.”

  “Then I’ll slave out to someone else, and you’ll get the slave fee,” Naite said. “I’d rather you ask the council to avoid selling me to George Young. I’d earn extra years for telling him exactly what I think of him. The man might be brilliant at breeding plants, but he’s a sandrat about most else.”

  Temar scooted to the edge of the bench. “But I don’t want you slaved out at all.”

  Naite sighed and looked over at Shan, but Shan wasn’t saving his idiot brother from this. He’d been clear that he didn’t like slavery, and that was even before all this mess. “If I don’t repay you for my part in this, I’ll live with that guilt. It’d be kinder to let me work it off.”

  “But you don’t owe me anything,” Temar protested.

  Naite didn’t answer right away. He looked up at the sky. “I know what Ben did. My father used to do the same, and I hated it. But even though I knew better than most what was out there, I made a poor judgment call. I trusted Ben when even my idiot brother knew that something was wrong. I didn’t check to make sure you were safe, and because of that, you suffered. You suffered things that I understand all too well. You suffered when I would have seen the signs if I’d just paid more attention. One trip out to the Gratu farm and I would have known to take you in hand until I figured out the truth, and as a council member, that was my job.” Naite looked at Temar. “I understand better than anyone else on that council how much we owe you, and for my part, putting Ben Gratu’s farm in order is the least of what I can do to repay you. I am sorry.”