by Mark Johnson
Words didn’t form easily. She’d watched every word for so long that even the thought of speaking her mind scandalized her. So much energy had been wasted on pushing away uncomfortable thoughts that she stumbled over the right words.
Speaking to any Polis other than Armer wasn’t forbidden, and Polis Sumad was the only one who could hear.
“Sumad, God and Polis. Twelve years ago, I took an oath to serve Your brother and His people. To help others progress by not fearing the Darkness. And I fulfilled those vows. But I stopped helping people help themselves. Instead I worked for abstract rewards, chasing the illusion of progress and help. I was not good to others, working instead for things I was promised if I closed my mind and ignored my heart.
“I have received the rewards for following a twisted path, and they are lacking. Give me a straight path, Lord Sumad. Forgive me my choices. Please Lord, show me the way back.”
She dropped her hands into her lap and took a long breath.
The sun edged over the horizon, a cloudless sky turning red, then blue, warming her face, neck, shoulders. More monks came to greet the dawn. In soft harmonies, the men swayed and bowed to the light as they had done every day for Polis knew how long.
‘Protect us, Lord,’ they called in slow harmonies. ‘With Your light, bless our prayers.’
Other figures gathered as the sun rose. Terese wasn’t certain where they’d come from. Their robes were the lighter colors and styles of the ancient paintings and friezes adorning Sumad Reach’s corridors. Young and old, watching the sun rise, some seated and some standing, listening to the monks’ chant.
She’d seen none of these figures in the hut nor the common room and their robes were of no style she’d seen in Polis Sumad. None of the monks seemed to notice the new arrivals.
She should have been surprised or shocked by the spirits’ appearance. She guessed they did not often show themselves to either monks or pilgrims. Instead, all she felt was the sun’s warmth and a sure confidence that somehow everything would work out. Terese joined the apparitions’ rhythms, humming past the words she didn’t know.
Then, the melody changed. Terese opened her eyes. The sun was higher, and pilgrims were emerging from their huts.
She was alone.
Patzer emerged from the men’s hut. Bleary-eyed, hair askew. He blinked against the sun and scowled at her in greeting. Even yesterday, she’d have risen off her pack to meet him. Just to keep his temper in check and make her day easier. Now, she didn’t care.
“Did you find anything?” she said.
“There were sightings of four young men with strange accents trying to cross over the border,” he said, and kicked a small rock. “Perhaps three months ago.”
She didn’t drop her eyes this time. “They’re not here, Patzer. They’re nowhere near here. Possibly they’ve gone further in or left the Polis. Whoever these contacts of yours are, they’re wrong.”
Patzer’s pointed finger trembled in the air. “That’s enough, Saarg! I know what I’m doing.” He retracted his finger and looked around as if worried they’d be overheard. “There are dozens of places they—”
“They’re… not… here,” she interrupted, not raising her voice.
Patzer’s face turned as red as she’d ever seen it. She’d just shut down a tirade that may have taken him an hour to complete, had she let him.
She stood to face him. “When I was a Missionary, I was charged with leading a squad to a small town named Rastreen. My nine squad members and I spent two weeks bothering the daylights out of the locals, hunting an elusive chaos pulse that Armer Stone insisted was right there. We were told we weren’t searching well enough. Eventually, I marched us home and reviewed the Royal transmission. Turned out, the hologram had said ‘Lake Rasten’, a resort up north. Assistant Leilaan. She transcribed the hologram. I had her giving geography lessons to her cohort for the next six months. Now she’s a Missionary, she’s very precise. It’s not your fault, Patzer. Go tell your source they’ve wasted your time, and demand compensation for wasting Seeker time and resources.”
Patzer’s face had run through every expression she’d seen from him, and some she hadn’t. When she was finished, he frowned into the silence, then threw back his head and laughed, before doubling over and clapping his hands in delight.
She couldn’t tell what he was laughing at.
“All right, Saarg. Let’s head to Sumad Reach!” He laughed again. “Very well, Patzer. Perhaps we should.”
10
Terese and Patzer stepped off the rattling tram and hurried through the Sumadan streets, their hoods up, avoiding eye contact with passing locals.
Sumad Reach Chapterhouse, its gray stone walls blackened with age, loomed above the tallest nearby apartments and buildings. The fortress had been designed five thousand years earlier to withstand uprisings and assaults. As five millennia of upheavals rose and subsided outside Sumad Reach’s thick walls, the chapterhouse had sustained itself with its open courtyards, water pipes and the Sumadan accelerated farms. Sumadan chapterhouses were far larger—and fewer—than back home, and didn’t require much external trade to sustain themselves.
As the last sunlight faded and the city glowbulbs brightened, Patzer produced his commission badge for the gate guard and they bustled into an open courtyard where guests could refill their water skins from the fountain. Rain seldom came to Polis Sumad, so roofless spaces were common.
Terese extended her hand to Patzer, smiled and lied. “If you hear anything about the renegades, I’d appreciate knowing.”
He seized her hand and leaned toward her, grinning. For a horrified moment she thought he would kiss her cheek. “Oh, I’ll find them, Head. I’ll find them and I’ll tell you all about it.”
They parted company, Terese leaving the courtyard by a corridor of frieze-laden stone walls.
Home.
Out of view of the courtyard, she galloped up the stairs three at a time.
On the third floor she unlatched the bulbs at a corner window and watched Patzer from the darkened corridor. Still in the courtyard, he lingered between rows of precisely-planted date and palm trees. Leafy vines climbed the enclosing four-storey walls before looping the thick iron grilling at the top.
It was normal for bounty hunters to wait at a Seeker’s pleasure, so she was surprised when the elderly Keeper Deridden approached Patzer within minutes.
Their body language was wrong. They gestured like equals. She squinted. Interactions between a Sumadan Keeper and Cenephan bounty hunter should have been like her finding herself in the presence of Royalty.
Together, Patzer and the Keeper entered the administration building, still gesturing in conversation.
Lijjen would not expect her for debrief yet. Protocol required her to present herself within an hour, so she had time. She wended through the corridors at speed, entering the top levels of the administration building unnoticed in the after-hours.
This was a risk. There was nothing wrong in her being there, but if she were suspected of snooping, she’d lose whatever credit she’d gained in the last month. After taking the long route through the less-frequented common rooms and staircases, she caught Keeper Deridden’s deep baritone, Keeper Lijjen’s decisive declarations and other voices she didn’t know. But Patzer’s booming lay atop all other voices. She tracked them down carpeted hallways where bulbs hung on walls between large oil paintings of historic Sumadan events, into the administrative wing’s heart.
She stopped. They were headed toward Holder Mathra’s joint office and residence. Whatever Patzer’s involvement with Sumad Reach, it went to the very top.
Stop, Terese. You’ve learned enough.
It was common sense speaking, sending a cold finger up her spine. She turned and retraced her steps, running when she found the corridors empty.
She turned the key in her door for the first time in a month. A home away from home, despite everything, was still a home. After so long outdoors, her room’s stale a
ir made her nose wrinkle, and she opened her window. This had been her longest field excursion, ever. It was a privilege to have a room as large as this to herself, though she wondered if she deserved it, given what she’d done back in Polis Armer.
She looked about. Her room had been searched! An expert would know to replace the papers on her desk exactly as she’d left them, or to look for head hairs strung in unusual places. Instead, Terese examined the slight folds she’d memorized on her well-made bed, rumpled just a little differently to when she’d left with Jools and Toornan a month earlier. The haphazardly stuffed clothes in her tall dresser, which she’d measured with a spread thumb and forefinger, had moved slightly. So had her cosmetic pouch.
She almost whimpered when she saw the pouch had shifted. Hopefully whoever had searched her room hadn’t closely examined the pouch’s contents.
Thank you, Gods! Her vial of nail lacquer and her perfume bottle hadn’t been disturbed.
She didn’t consider herself a ‘nails and perfume’ type of woman, and she’d worried that suspicious eyes may have noted that inconsistency. But no. For all Sumad Reach’s spies knew, Head Saarg’s cosmetic bottles were benign beauty accessories, submerged amidst her nail clippers, combs, earrings and hair ties.
Finally, proof she wasn’t paranoid.
She fell back into the padded chair next to her bookstand, kicked off her boots and flexed her hot, cramped toes. She sighed and closed her eyes while her mind raced.
If he could speak so casually to Keepers, Patzer somehow ranked close to the Holder of Sumad Reach. His return to Sumad Reach had been more important than hers to Lijjen, if he’d gone straight into a meeting upon Patzer’s arrival. Patzer had been given bad information about the renegades from a reputable source. For some reason, Patzer hadn’t been curious about her, which made no sense. Just that initial round of questions during the trek to his waste hideaway, and that had been it. Why had she spent a month in the wastes? And why had his odd friend Drool been there? Something was ‘off’ with Drool. The tall man hadn’t made her feel ‘watched’ in the way men often would, but ‘studied’, instead. He’d been gone the next morning, when she’d awoken with the mother of all hangovers. She would’ve asked more about Drool, had she thought she’d get a decent answer.
And then, there was her certainty that Patzer knew the renegades.
Someone knew a lot more about what had gone wrong in the Immersion Chamber than she did. If that person wasn’t on a first-name basis with Patzer, she’d eat her helmet.
Her mouth dropped open. She couldn’t speak to herself out loud—she was likely still under surveillance even in her own room—but she could laugh. A long despairing guffaw. The only people with any helpful answers, her only possible allies, were the renegades.
Was she now on their side? Did that make her a renegade also? A secret renegade, perhaps. One a little more removed from the Seekers than before she’d entered the Wastes.
She stood at attention in Lijjen’s office, her face neutral. She studied his closely shaven face. Had his opinion of her changed from a month ago? He was still in uniform, over three hours since her return. It was perfectly permissible for him to dress casually at this hour, so he mustn’t have returned to his rooms. A bachelor, Lijjen didn’t reside in the married officer housing complex on the fortress’s other side. She’d been waiting outside his office for hours. So, he’d been busy with Patzer up until minutes ago.
Still unchanged from her skinleaf plate and loose waste clothing, she knew how she smelled. She would have taken a steam bath had she known how long he’d keep her waiting.
The Keeper’s eyes looked through and past her during her recounting of the past month.
“You’re back two days early,” he interrupted.
“Yes, sir. Patzer wanted to consult with his informants once he finally determined the monk hills were a bad lead.”
“No further leads on this dark workshop operation your two Missionaries informed me of?”
“No, sir. I’m reluctant to claim it was one, as evidence is circumstantial. Patzer had us mostly in settlements and populated areas.”
“And you came back unsuccessful. Why, Head?”
“Patzer’s contacts are not as reliable as he believes, sir. We wasted four weeks, convinced the renegades were at a monk hill somewhere near Chastity Territory. Patzer couldn’t be reasoned away from it.” She spread her hands. “When he finally decided his leads were erroneous, the trail was cold.”
Lijjen sighed and ran a hand through his gelled hair. He slumped in his chair. “Very well.”
Months, she’d stood in this room, answering idiotic questions, her judgement criticized every time she opened her mouth, and he’d never relaxed around her until now. She didn’t move a muscle.
“Your mission has not borne fruit.”
“No, sir.”
“Considering your lack of progress under optimal conditions, I am fully outsourcing your quarry hunt to bounty hunters.”
“Yes, sir.” She wanted to grin and laugh in triumph, to dance and sing and ruffle Lijjen’s perfect hair.
A slight vibration hummed within Lijjen’s desk, beneath the blinking artifact light. There was nothing unusual or interesting in that, but she’d have wagered her twelve years-worth of pension that Lijjen’s recording mechanism had just signaled him it had collected the data from her light plate armor.
She fought a grin from her face. He’d find absolutely nothing on that recording, save a month of Patzer boasting, and her polite, resigned acknowledgements.
“Complete an excursion report within three days. You’ll be given a domestic command,” he said, looking down at a folder on his desk and making a show of shuffling papers. The man was a terrible actor. “You’ll perform a segment of the rostering duties, replacing Head Chuddar.” He looked at her a long moment. “Ask Chuddar if you need help. You begin when the ten-day cycle renews.” He paused again, waiting.
It would look odd if she didn’t ask, so she said, “Sir, if you don’t mind my asking, what came of that workshop?”
“We found nothing more than your Missionaries reported. We cleansed the place and left.” Did Lijjen seem more… relaxed? “Dismissed.”
She clicked her heels and took her leave.
If the renegades couldn’t be found by a bounty hunter of Patzer’s evident stature, she looked a little safer. Host chapterhouses didn’t have the authority to demote foreign members and her whole complement still had to finish off the year’s mission if they couldn’t find the renegades.
Gods, she owed Patzer a favor! The awful man had soothed some paranoia, convincing Lijjen to disregard her and put her to shuffling and spreading names around duty rosters. It was an essential position in any chapterhouse, but an awful one. Especially in a chapterhouse this large.
Her mind wandered, threading back to the past. She paced the corridors, unwilling to return to her apartment.
“Wonderfully done, Terese,” her father had said at the reception celebrating her promotion to head, his Holder robes freshly laundered. “Now,” he chuckled, clapping a hand on her shoulder, “you get to do rostering. Just remember it will all be over when you get your next promotion, and that nothing you do will be right and every Missionary, Assistant and Apprentice will be convinced you’re picking on them for the worst duties.”
A smile and bodily contact from her father at the same time. It had almost been the same thing as approval.
Lijjen had chosen her for rostering because she had an eye for detail and because it was the perfect assignment for a Head he wanted to forget.
She could recover. Just wait it out quietly. Patrol the streets when she needed space, sit in the officer’s courtyard when she needed sun. She had a large room with a wave speaker so she could listen to music by herself. She could probably get her Missionaries to visit her apartment with little fuss or notice. At the end of the year she would leave Polis Sumad with clerical experience and her head still firmly on her sh
oulders.
I should be happy, all things considered.
But the indignity of being humiliated for doing everything right!
Sumad Reach was doing something illegal, something possibly related to those hundreds of deaths back home. Somehow. Had she not worked within the Immersion Chamber she could shrug and turn a blind eye, marking the days left on her calendar.
Yet, because she’d ignored the rising queasiness in her gut, because she’d used the Immersion Project as an opportunity to progress a career based on the suffering of others, she couldn’t let it rest.
She had to fight it, whatever it was. But how? Where? More than anything right then, she needed a friend. Someone reliable, with good intentions.
She stopped where two corridors met to check the duty roster on a cork board and spied a name. She smiled. How appropriate that she should see it now.
Her eyelids weighed more than they should have and there was a sore spot under her foot. A month of dust and sweat clogged her pores and tangled her hair. She wanted to bathe, but that would have to wait. Instead she returned to her room, finally removed her plate and dug out a hooded, woolen jersey and simple trousers. She didn’t want to be recognized. She paused and rested her head on the door, her cheek cool against the darkened wood, then exited her apartment.
Many people walked the corridors in civilian clothing and nightwear. Given entire families lived in Sumadan chapterhouses, sundown saw relaxation of the rules.
She winced past common rooms of teenagers listening to music composed of complicated drum-beats. Her nostrils filled with wisps of cardamom and cinnamon near kitchens where late-night desserts simmered. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since that morning, when she and Patzer had passed over the border from the Refugee Territories. The scents dissipated once she stepped out into the cold, night air of the battlements atop Sumad Reach.