by Pam Uphoff
Well, they couldn't send him home now. He grinned and headed for his luggage and money.
Thirteen blocks, in this hilly city, weren't as easy as he'd expected. And the naked-to-the-air meat market a bit alarming. Everything looked appallingly fresh.
"Nice fresh chicken, young man? It was clucking two hours ago." He smiled stiffly and turned away. He really didn't want to think of his food as a live animal.
"Eggs, fresh eggs. Twelve points a dozen." That sounded better, and he fished out a handful of coins. "You must be new, with that shirt. Auralian, are you? Here, luv, that's a crown. And two pennies and here's your eggs."
The larger coin had a ten pointed crown stamped on it; apparently penny and point were used interchangeably. A string of garlic caught his eye, and he had to have onions. He wound up with a miscellany of fresh vegetables and too much fruit. He also bought a canvas bag large enough to hold most of it. On the way out, he waffled and bought a loop of sausage. No telling what was in it, but that wasn't all bad.
Egto accused him of going native, but ate his sausage and corn on the cob anyway.
Chapter Twenty-three
Late Fall 1361
Cific Ocean
Oscar climbed the rigging of the tall ship and savored the sea breeze. Their close and regular contact with the Oners in Fascia had resulted in their reassignment to mapping duties in the Navy. General Rufi had been of the opinion that a year or more of absence would make their recognition as "that butcher and cook" less likely.
Rufi'd enjoyed their reports on the arguments and lack of co-operation between Pax and the Oners, and appreciated that the Amma was clearly keeping his options open. "He may kick the Oners out yet."
So, here they were back in the middle of rolling hills of deep blue water. Quite apart from his love of the ocean, they were headed south as winter set in. While Karista froze, they would be in the tropics. Life was good.
Or would be until the Oners and Auralia attacked Verona.
Chapter Twenty-four
15 December 3478 / last week of 1361 Local
Karista, Kingdom of the West, Comet Fall
"I got a twitch today, down by those eastern wharf warehouses." Tony Monroe tapped his instrument package. "Tiger squad probably ought to walk the whole neighborhood."
"Good." Damien shivered. The shed made no pretense of being draft proof, and the wagons were cramped for six people sleeping and two on duty. Which they'd started doing when the first major storm front passed through. The old woman who owned the property was more than willing to rent it out for another six months, but almost anything would be better. "I need to start looking for a house in town, weather's been mild so far, but it won't last." The nights were cold enough that Damon had pulled out his magnet laden knit cap and wore it to bed. He'd be wearing it during the day, soon enough. "If it's in a high rent district, we have the synthetic stones to sell. I think we're well enough known that we could be expected to do some trading on our own. I asked Jek Nealy if there was much of a market, as I had connection to people in Verona and Auralia that cut gems. He quoted some prices and I said I'd pass that on and see if they sent me anything. Shall we give it one more month?"
Tony, straight faced asked if he was planning on someplace near the Sooty Duck. All of them but Allie had been there, and they all agreed that what the old ladies lacked in beauty they more than made up for in enthusiasm. But since he'd discovered the place, they blamed it all on him. Probably because the Sooty Duck and strolling down to the Farmers Market were the limits of their outside entertainment.
"Absolutely not."
At Mike's insistence, he'd started taking the jobs on the sea-going end of the extensive wharves. This was the first indication they'd gotten in a month of looking.
The next day he dropped his five nephews off along the stretch from river barge landings to the big wharves, and picked up locals to handle the crates and boxes he hauled through town. Code popped up as usual, even though Damien knew his way around now. "I heard something about the Temple of Ba'al the other day. Do you know what they were talking about?"
Code looked up at him in surprise. "You didn't hear about that in Verona?" He proceeded to tell Damien an outrageous tale involving either entire infants or merely their testicles being burned on a sacrificial altar, big black goats freezing armies and invisible kidnappers saving a baby. "Except that happened in another town. Here they said evil spirits stole a sacrifice to Ba'al and the statue got up and chased them down."
The loaders chimed in with salacious details, involving a voluptuous blonde, naked of course, and a black goat. "That was after the king let the Inquisitor General out of prison. Bet he wishes he hadn't let her out." After delivery, they steered him over to see the temple.
The place was impressive, a white marble edifice Code called the temple, and a lower building he said was the museum. There were smoke smudges marring the white exteriors of both buildings, damaged and collapsed facades on both. The other, smaller buildings appeared to be undamaged, but the grounds – it covered an entire city block – were over-grown and neglected.
"So the King arrested everyone when they kept barbequing babies?"
Murph chuckled. "Oh, he didn't arrest everyone, just enough to get the point across. And they didn't eat the babies. They said it gave the God life. But since then, the statue hasn't moved an inch. At least not that I've ever seen. Some people say that if you keep going back it has changed position."
Beezo shook his head. "The main problem wasn't the babies, however horrible that was. They kept a lot of guards, and started getting enough together in one place to be a danger to the Kingdom. Three thousand marched out of here once. The king put a limit on them, and when they disobeyed, he locked them up."
"The king confiscated all their land and buildings. But here they can't decide who owns the land, so no one can sell it or do anything with it." Code informed him. "Except the government, that took all the statues away."
"Some guy gave the Church some family property a century ago, and the family said he didn't have the right to give away family property, it was only a lease, and that there was a mortgage on it to boot, and the Temple also borrowed money against it, and then the government confiscated all of Ba'al's property. So it's in the courts." Murph said.
"You left out all of Ba'al's children. There's five separate groups of them suing too." Beezo pointed out.
"I thought this was a god?" Damien clucked to the horses and got them moving again.
"Yeah, when the worshipers of Ba'al sacrificed their virginity to the god, some of them got pregnant."
That, unfortunately led to descriptions of just how the virgins sacrificed themselves. Damien shook his head in disbelief. "I keep hearing about witches, wizards, mages and gods, but this is the first anyone's told me about an actual living god."
Code looked at him indignantly. "And you with Traveler's horses! Don't you believe in the God of the Roads? Don't you call on him when you're attacked?"
"Well, so far, the only people who've attacked me were you and your friends." Damien pointed out. "Maybe you should have called on the god for help."
"No! He doesn't help thieves. I don't think there is a God of Thieves. Too bad. We need one."
"No you don't. You lot make enough trouble without adding gods to it. If you were more successful, the City Guard would do something about you." He shivered as a gust of wind whipped in his face. Working in all weathers was bringing in the money, but what he wanted was a warm bed. "I need to rent a house closer to the docks." he complained.
Which led to further detours to see the property of various aunts and uncles and friends that could be rented. For too much money.
In the Sooty Duck, Damien pondered finances over a pint and a sandwich. Undisturbed. Almost.
"Most'o yer little friends decided to go south for the winter, Sussy's got family with a farm, and figured her friends ought to meet her brothers. Jeinah's the only one left, and she's so preggers she's quit
working." Barto grinned evilly at him. "You gonna miss those old girls?"
"Probably not for very long."
Barto cackled. "Aye, there'll be more along any time, city never will run out of whores." He shuffled away.
Damien sighed. "I probably ought to not rent a place anywhere near here."
"The problem is." His neighbor at the bar, a complete stranger, frowned at him. "Is that you're trying to rent instead of buy. You can't rent something fit to live in, but if you bought something practically falling down, you could fix it up."
"Really? I hadn't thought about it that way. Damien." He offered his hand.
"Call me Chance. There's place down Bass Lane that could be nice, but that bastard with the green warehouse across the alley scares people away. Go talk to Jinx Mainor about it."
It seemed like reasonable advice. Bass Lane was a narrow street lined with aging, and often sagging, houses. Damien asked around and tracked down Jinx Mainor in a bar. He hated to take advantage of the man, but the native was pathetically grateful to sell the property. "That's how I got my name. The man across the alley put a jinx on me until I sell it." He looked down at the money in his hands and sighed happily. As he left the property registry office, Damien was glad to see that he passed a bar without a glance. So maybe he wouldn't drink it all.
"You don't believe in jinxes?" Code was looking worried.
"If that neighbor wanted him gone, I helped, so he won't jinx me." Damien shook his head. Primitive superstitions.
The ramshackle little house got a solid dose of Army Can-do that had it sitting up straight and proud in a very short time. The main alteration was to the foundations and cellar. The house had a 'root cellar', a hole dug in the ground, which they promptly enlarged. By the time they were done, it was a full basement with reinforced concrete walls. Water proofed, lined with a fine wire mesh and grounded to prevent EM leakage. Allie moved the electronics from the tiger squad wagon to the basement, and put passive receivers on the roof when they fixed the chimney and retiled the roof.
Mike declared that all their own reports would go out from somewhere well out of town, in the bear squad wagon.
The freight wagon sat out in all weather, but the ramshackle stable held all four horses and the bear squad wagon. The tiger squad wagon, stripped of all its electronics, came in handy as the weather turned stormy. Damien picked up a lot of work with his covered delivery wagon. Which was just as well. Buying hay in the middle of winter was expensive. Feeding the eight of them—nine, once he realized Code had moved into the hay loft—wasn't cheap either. But they were now in excellent shape to monitor the One. All he had to do was keep everything running smoothly while the techs tried to find the Oners.
It was during the howling storms that he finally had time to rest and relax. "For all the moving about, it was a nice quiet year, an insertion without a ripple." He kicked back with a hot cider. The locals celebrated the Solstice with a bit of feasting and minor gifting. They followed the custom, trinkets for each other, and for Code, clothing, including shoes.
Sometime around the first of the year Sombrero delivered her colt. All angles and legs and head at first. Bay with just a few white markings. Damien was relieved to see that he looked perfectly normal, and put off indefinitely ending his sister's experiment. Code named him Solstice.
Chapter Twenty-five
1 Muharram 1364 / winter 1362
Karista, Kingdom of the West, Target World Forty-two
By morning the wind had died and the sun was out. There were some odd sounds . . . Usse was prowling and looking as well.
Ajha tracked the gleeful sounds to the back alley. Usse looked over the fence at his neighbors' small yard and stables. Ajha looked as well. A boy, fourteen or fifteen at a guess, was laughing at the antics of a newborn foal. Ajha felt carefully. The teenager's mind was quite clear and obviously native.
The kid spotted them and grinned. "One of the mares foaled last night! See?"
The big mare had produced a preposterously scrawny and angular creature which was attempting to run around the tiny yard that usually held their wagon. It appeared to be four legs and a head connected by a minimal spine and ribcage, a brown and white pinto.
"Your wagon is blocking the alley," Usse told the under-aged native.
"But hardly anyone ever uses it."
"That doesn't mean no one ever does. Move it." He stalked back inside. The mother horse put her head over the high fence and sniffed at Ajha.
He rubbed her face. "That's called palomino, the goldish color with the white mane and tail? Right?"
"Yep. And pinto, of course. All of Damien's horses are pintos." The boy held his hands out and the baby came to be scratched, already trusting people.
Ajha gave the angular creature another look; he really was quite funny looking. Then he ducked back inside.
"They're quieter than the last people there, no noise except for leaving in the morning, returning to swap teams in the afternoon and returning, usually late at night. You can't fault them for their work ethic, and that boy is the only child." Usse scowled. "I suppose I should leave them alone. The last tenants' children started sneaking into the warehouse, and I had to use the Discipline and Controls on them. Brats."
Ajha grinned and gathered up the books and pack that advertised his student status. He'd located the hang outs of the university students, and managed a few conversations. He was lucky today, hustling in from the cold, he found a collection of young men and women also looking like they were in no hurry to rush back out.
Ajha considered the earnest students across the table from him. "University students? I'm taking some classes at City College, just to get up to speed on the local history and all, but it's so different from what we were taught in Scoone. Why don't you let me buy you lunch? I have some questions itching at my brain, and perhaps you can help. I never have understood this thing about gods. I mean, wars between gods?"
The big blond boy sat up eagerly. He was the model of one of the common phenotypes in the Kingdom of the West. So odd, the deep toned skin with the blonde hair, it made him feel almost at home. The One, of course, had a genetically engineered dominant blonde gene that often combined with an Arab or Hindu complexion. Perhaps a natural mutation, similar to it had spread, here. Or it's their genetic engineering, so similar to ours. Identical to ours—and that needs a great deal of thought, doesn't it?
"Oh, that's mythology. Although sometimes the History department tries to horn in on it, trying to prove something-or-other."
There were five large blocks between King's University and the lowly City College. Mostly given over to houses broken into apartments for students, boarding houses or converted to cheap tea houses and eateries, like this one. Ajha figured this batch of students looked well-to-do enough to be worth cultivating.
"It is history, David. Originally there were thirteen gods, exiled from heaven and Earth. But in the Golden Ages they proliferated. Actually, historically." The brown haired boy looked sternly at the blond. "It was actually an age of atheism, with lip service paid to the beggar on the corner who claimed to be a God of the Crossroads, and all the military units had a mascot they called the God of War. Every herbwife was the Goddess and the casinos paid women to be their 'Lady Luck'. Very decadent civilization. It fell in a civil war, said to be magical, and suddenly people were back to thirteen Gods. Those are the same Major Gods the Auralians still claim to worship, even though their little shrines are to the God of Masons, or the Goddess of Weavers and so on."
"That was before the comet fell."
"That's a myth, too."
"Is not."
They can't tell myth from history, and neither can I. Ajha steered the conversation back to the gods. "So what is this Ba'al?"
The girl, Lilly, shook her head. "You Scooners should at least have left the Gods in your history books. Ba'al was the God of Virtue. His worship began in southern Auralia during the Dark Ages, which might have been the result of a comet falling
from the sky. The Church of Ba'al adopted a lot of the trappings of a bunch of little cults as it moved north. It even picked up your Scooner animosity toward wizards and witches. Well, Auralia as a whole had several periods of almost Atheism. Anyhow, the church migrated north, and its headquarters are here in Karista. What's left of it. The church is supposed to have killed the Black Goat of Scoone just about ten years ago, not that I believe a word of it, mind you. The goat they had stuffed in their museum was an obvious fake. A goat head, heavy ram's horns and a good sized elk for the body, all dyed black. Much too large to be an actual goat. And that statue of Ba'al did not get up and kill a bunch of Apostate followers three years ago. I think the Ba'alists must have been using hallucinatory herbs at their celebration and set the fires themselves."
The two boys were shaking their heads. David, the blonde one, spoke up. "No way. My dad was with General Rufi. He says the statue moved."
"He probably also told you about the mad hatter down the rabbit hole, didn't he?" Lilly smirked.
"He wasn't telling a story about Ba'al."
"Anyway, whatever happened, the King said he'd had quite enough, and outlawed the Church and arrested a bunch of the leaders and locked up the main temple. People sneak in all the time to look at the god. The god's actual body is supposed to be inside the statue." Tian, the darker haired boy, grinned. "Don't believe me? Go take a look."
Ajha wrinkled his nose. "I suppose I ought to go look. So, there was a God of Virtue. What were the other ones?"
"War, Luck, Love, Fertility, Health, Mercy." The girl rattled off, then paused to frown.
"Art, Vice, Eternal Youth, Just Deserts, Travelers, Logic." David finished up.
"No, I think there's only one Goddess of both Health and Fertility. We're missing one." The girl tapped her fingers impatiently.