by Mark Eller
"I had no way of knowing," Filmore protested. "The woman's credentials looked good. I ran background checks and interviewed neighbors she lived near as far back as fifteen years. I talked to her school and her tutors and people she claimed she worked beside."
"And the man?"
Filmore grimaced. "The same as always there. I took her word Crowley was a safe capture. I trusted her the same as I trust all my women once I hire them. There's no other way to do it."
The Mister leaned forward. "I made my own inquiries. The school records never existed until three weeks before you checked on them. The only factory I investigated did not exist when Larns was supposed to work there. You have been sloppy, and now you owe me. I had a chance to take all Turner's funds and power, and you failed me."
"I want my money," Saundra said, bracing herself for his anger.
"Where is Turner?"
"I was contracted. I delivered. I want my money."
The Mister leaned back in his chair and folded his hands beneath his chin. He studied her critically. A sardonic smile flickered across his features.
"You're aging, my dear Miss Clarice. In a few years you'll be too old to bear. What will you do then? Steal a child?"
She shook her head. "It won't come to that. Doctor Hastings can straighten me out. Besides, I don't want to raise the brat. I just want to kill it like I did the others. I will have my money."
"You will," he agreed. "You'll have it. Filmore, you are dismissed. I have business to discuss with this not-so-young lady."
"There are still things I can do for you," Filmore insisted. "I know people."
"We will speak when I'm finished with Miss Clarice. Go now."
"Yes, sir."
Saundra waited impatiently while the dwarf left. Her palms itched for gold and silver. Her body ached for the sensation of a child growing inside it once again. This was nothing new. Her body always ached for her children, ached to grow round and huge, to be pummeled from the inside, and to finally tear painfully apart as the child ripped its way between her thighs. The memory of the pain made her weak-kneed and excited. Killing the red and wrinkled things while they were still covered with her blood was the most exciting thing she had ever done.
"There's little chance we can get his money," the Mister said. "That opportunity is past."
"I can kill him," Saundra offered. "Killing is easier than all this sneaking around."
"No, I don't want him dead. Not yet. I want him to suffer. I want him to wish he'd died with his bitch of a wife."
"So what do you want me to do?" Saundra really did not care why the Mister chose the orders he gave. She just wanted to hear those orders and feel the weight of his money fall into her hands.
"Start a fire."
"Okay."
"And Saundra, do something fatal to the dwarf. People don't fail me twice."
"Oh." Pale shades of disappointment washed through her. She really did sort of like Filmore. He was small, perverse, and cruel, and his mind was as stunted as his body.
The Mister tossed something. She automatically reached up to grab a heavy pouch out of the air.
"Payment for your last job," the Mister said, "and advance payment for this one."
She untied the bag's draw and peered inside. Everything within was gold. Well, damn, she would miss the little guy. She looked back to the Mister and caught his eyes.
"Can I put him in a bib and diapers?"
"If you want," the Mister said. "Just be sure he's dead when you're finished."
Gods but she loved the Talentless bastard. He gave such beautiful orders.
He smiled a beautifully cruel smile. Saundra smiled back. She wasn't upset anymore. Hell, she could always find another dwarf. If not, she could chop the legs off some fellow and make her own.
Chapter 12
Delmac raised his voice in a high-pitched scream. Aaron didn't understand one word, but Delmac's voice had a galvanizing effect. Within moments, a babbling crowd surrounded them.
Delmac raised his hands for silence.
"Ap agee nu farsid," he said. "Gebace le mak mor fagerace mak Lieber."
Stepping forward, a woman grabbed Aaron by the chin. "Fragace mak Lieber," she sneered. "Na agee op el widermall."
Irritated, Aaron shook off her hand.
She slapped him. Hard.
Aaron jerked and straightened. His muscles tensed. He wanted to swing back, wanted to feel his palm flatten against her cheek. He wanted to punish, to salve his pride, to affirm his manhood.
He could not. She stood taller and looked stronger than he, and she was surrounded by her friends, her family, and a large portion of her clan. To touch her would be a mistake. It might even be his death.
Besides, Aaron could never strike a woman.
Aaron watched as her hand continued its journey past his face, stopped over her left shoulder, and swung back. He clenched his teeth and fisted his hands at his sides as she backhanded him.
His head jerked. His cheek split and bled. His fingers and knees quivered. His mouth turned dry. Light sparkles danced before his left eye.
The sparkles faded away. A drop of blood fell from his chin.
They faced one another, eyes locked tight. Aaron waited for the next blow, fighting back fury and fear.
Her dark features grew pale. She dropped her eyes. "Nebiga," she said, and then she raised her hand, fingers trembling, almost as if she wanted to wipe the blood from his face. Her hand stopped in midair, inches from his skin, then dropped to her side. Cringing, she backed away.
"Sorry," she begged in heavily accented Jut. "Forgive."
Before Aaron could react, she pushed past the crowd and hurried away.
Aaron slowly turned to look at the others. The crowd filled with murmurs and motion. The fringes peeled away. The main body started breaking up, and a child began crying. Another joined it. Three people ran off. One woman fainted, and then he and Delmac were alone on the street except for the fallen woman. Aaron looked to Delmac.
"What just happened?" he demanded. "What did you tell them?"
"I told them Lieber has arrived, Delmac said, "that the Hersat was among us. Gerhase doubted my word. She tested you and failed her own testing."
Confused, Aaron shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. None of this made sense.
"What test? What did she fail?" He grabbed Delmac's shoulder and jerked him around. Delmac's eyes were filled with despite and anger--and fear.
"What names did you give me?" Lieber and Hersat. It had to be those. Nothing else made sense.
Delmac's lips became a thin line. He shoved Aaron's hand free and took a quick step back, spear clenched tightly, held defensively, as if it were his only shield.
"She feared, and ran from her fear, infecting those around her. She ran because your names are true."
"The names! What names did you give me!"
"I gave you none you do not already know," Delmac snapped. "You bear their weight from your own choosing. I have only seen the truth and given it voice."
"The names!" Don't. For the love of the Gods, don't tell me. Lie. Please lie.
"You are Lieber, Death, and you are Hersat, Bringer."
A bitter chill ran through Aaron. "I'm not a killer. I'm not a murderer."
Delmac shrugged. "I know what I see. I look in your eyes and see pain. I see anger and hate and despair. I see a man who has embraced death and yet battles his desire for it with every breath. You have brought death. You seek the death you brought." His face grew serious and composed and wary. "Know this, Aaron Turner, I would destroy you for what you have done to my people. I would gladly shove this spear through your guts even if I knew I died in the next instant."
"Why don't you?" Aaron whispered. Familiar despair fell across his shoulders. "Why don't you just kill me? Get it over with."
Delmac's spear point glistened sparks of light. Aaron imagined what it would feel like to have that thing enter into his body, to pierce his belly and drive up i
nto his heart. The flint was sharp and cruelly fragile, likely to chip and shatter while traveling through him. The blade would break off inside his heart and stay there until that heart decayed and the broken flint fell into the dust. That would be a good thing, an appropriate thing. It would end his guilt and crimes.
"Do it," he whispered again, and his eyes pleaded. "Do it."
Delmac's smile became grim. "Nothing I do will punish you so greatly as you punish yourself. I will watch. I will enjoy your pain. Before long, you will take your own life."
Aaron shook himself to throw off the darkness. "You can kill me, but I'll never suicide."
"Yes, you will," Delmac replied. "You will kill yourself, and I will be there to watch."
Closing his eyes, Aaron shuddered. A picture flashed through his mind, an image, a memory. Like a thousand times before, Sarah took shape before him. She held a baby, Ernest, in her arms. She rocked him in the chair they had set beside the grocery counter. Her smile was soft and sweet and gentle as she looked into Aaron's face--and then the smile faded, disappeared to be replaced by accusation and pain. Flames burst out of her skin. Ernest screeched as fire spat from his lips, his eyes, and his ears. They both fell into ash, crumpled to the ground, and Aaron wanted to lie in their ashes and weep until the world went away.
He opened his eyes so the sun would drive the dark images away. Delmac's face loomed, filled with satisfaction, shadowed by fear and longing and knowledge.
"Death," he said. "You are Death."
Aaron gathered his resolve. "I am Death," he agreed. "But I won't be Death forever."
Delmac smiled knowingly.
* * *
Within two days Aaron discovered that the people of the Thirty Clans were not the savages he had thought. They did not own a sophistication equal to Isabella's, but they did own a society and an industry uniquely their own. Their hide tents were rough in appearance but cleverly constructed, made waterproof by oils, and designed to be easily raised and lowered. These were their homes when they traveled but not their only homes for, as it turned out, only a small segment of the clans were nomads. Only those who owned restless feet and adventurous spirits followed the herds, lived by the spear, the arrow, and their wits. The nomad population was in flux. Some people joined for a season or a year before they decided this was not the life they desired and headed back to their permanent homes. Others stayed five years, or ten, or more before making a decision to go back to the villages. Some few were born as nomads and remained so their entire lives. The nomadic life was harsh and uncertain, but appealed to those who wanted nothing better.
The only clanspeople Isabella had dealt with during the war were the nomads, and the nomads were not typical of all the clans. Their way of life required a great deal of land, and because of this the closest permanent Clan settlement was more than a month's travel from the pass. Delmac told Aaron that the Isabellan Federation had been told of these settlements, but did not believe in them. The government thought the tales were nothing more than an attempt to garner greater respect by a defeated people.
And they were a defeated people. Few of the adults did not carry scars from the wars. The ratio of men to women in Isabella was about four to one; among the Freelorn nomads, the ratio was closer to twenty to one. Isabellan snipers had taken every opportunity to kill a male whenever possible. Aaron had seen the pressure of men being a minority in this woman-dominant world, but never as badly as among the Freelorns. The dance of woman and man was intense.
Because Delmac was not immune to this dance he spent more and more time with Aaron. When Aaron asked why, Delmac said that when they were together manners dictated that the women could not proposition Delmac unless they did the same to Aaron. This, Delmac explained, would not happen. Clan women found the thought of laying with Aaron, or any other Isabellan, repulsive.
For the first time since leaving Last Chance, Aaron felt safe and free from pursuit.
The clanspeople carried flint-headed spears and arrows, but had bronze knives hardened from a heavy concentration of tin and bauxite. Aaron had no idea what type of metal bauxite was, but he had heard Jorrin mention it so he knew it was an alloy that allowed bronze, when heated in the smith's fire, to become as malleable as steel.
The knives were not the only bronze objects the Thirty Clans owned. Bronze urns and statuettes stood inside the longhouses. Tables and chairs had bronze and brass and copper fittings. Decorative gold wire weavings hung from the walls, some forming baskets and carriers. The Freelorns ate off clay plates that had been fired for strength. Close inspection showed that much of the workmanship was rough even on those items possessing an intricate design. These were not objects of a high civilization, but were the signs of a hearthside industry, of a knowledge base larger than Aaron had expected. Nor were these objects usually carried by an ordinary nomadic clan. According to Delmac, these were the normal accouterments of a permanent village. The Freelorn had been camped in this space for more than a year, but even that much time was not enough to account for all the goods Aaron saw. Much of it had been carried from clan strongholds, because all the Thirty Clans understood that this new village would become permanent. New residents would soon be filtered in to replace nomads who wanted to move on.
The longhouses, or great halls, drew Aaron's attention. Their exteriors were mud and wattle woven around wooden posts set deep in the ground, but their interiors were scenes of industry. Clan members set and placed stone blocks on the inside of the wattle walls while more and more people pulled down their tent homes and moved into the larger, more permanent, buildings. Essentially, these people were building a building inside a building. The original structures had been easily set up but were temporary, needing constant care and upkeep. The real longhouses were being built beneath the protection of the first constructions. To Aaron's amazement, every stone block was being cemented in place by one young girl many of the others treated with a distant respect and wariness.
The clans lived rich and full lives. They were intelligent and industrious, curious and completely illiterate in their own language. They passed knowledge down by oral tradition and were limited in the amount of knowledge they could accumulate and pass on to the next generation. To balance this, the nomads among them were passionate with quick tempers and joy in violence and danger. Very few things frightened them; Aaron was one of those things. They took his new name to heart, but that name seemed to have a different meaning than he expected. He wished he knew what that meaning was, because their reactions gave him no real clue.
In the next few days Aaron learned more. He learned of problems with the observance of the treaty. The clans, or at least the nomadic portion, were defeated and had agreed to a peace. They also had agreed to allow themselves and the land they claimed to fall under the Isabellan Federation protective umbrella. They had agreed to open their lands and play friendly with the newcomers. However, they had not agreed to give up title to every acre of their homeland. They had not agreed to be herded into small enclaves located on the worst land, and they had not agreed that they would be forced to stay on that land with no chance to leave. They certainly did not agree to give up all the rights and privileges of full citizenship in the Isabellan Federation, never mind about some recently passed law requiring that a person had to be born inside the Isabellan borders in order to be a citizen. Besides, if the clans wanted to get technical, every Clan member had been born on Federation land since the conquered territories now belonged to the Federation.
Aaron had to admit the clans were right. None of those disputed items were in the treaty, at least not in the copy he had read. According to that copy the Federal Government was entitled to no more than twenty percent of the total available nomadic land inside the territories, but only of those clans who had fought in the war. Of that twenty percent, the government was allowed to choose ten percent, and the combined council of the nomads chose the other ten. The nomadic clans were to become citizens prosecutable under Isabellan law, bu
t gained the right to vote and every other right of a natural born citizen. They were free to travel on their lands and could not be constrained without just cause.
Sadly, the official policy of the Federal Government was not in sync with the policy of the guard commanders, the power barons, or those who wanted to be homesteaders. The latter poured through the pass by the caravan load, leaving through the fort's gate in any direction they desired, not bothering to ask permission or directions. They parked their wagons and set out stakes without knowing if the land they claimed was available for homesteading. Often these people came into contact with the Clan. When this happened the new settlers mostly died, but their deaths were followed with retributions by the guard. Usually the Clan lost those skirmishes. Their organization was no longer as cohesive as it had been, and they no longer were guided by a prophet or a Talent Master. Versase el Hectorate Mar Torac, the sacred wand of war, was lost, and most of their leaders and chieftains had been killed in the recent conflict.
The power barons were in on the act, too. The Balandices and the Morans and the Hargraves and a dozen others already had their representatives on this land. More than seventy men and women in their employ had crossed the pass with caravans full of supplies and hired hands. According to popular rumor, not one of the power barons staked out an area of less than five thousand acres, and a few claimed ten times that much. Their actions were against good conscious and the law, but that did not stop them. Their hirelings gathered power and people and used both to force the smaller bands of nomads onto rocky land worthless for herding or hunting. Many of these displaced clanspeople were trapped between powerful forces, unable to move on with their herds, and so were forced to eat those herds as the animals fell from starvation.
Then there was the military. Aaron discovered that some guard commanders were fair and respected. Regrettably, they were a minority and only had the power to enforce their laws on their assigned territories. Other commanders were amassing attractive amounts of gold and silver for their retirements. Many of these were in league with the power barons; in some cases they set up their own private estates. Colonel Wheeler, the often-absent woman in charge of First Chance, was one of those. Unfortunately, she also was the only person who could stop the massive flow of illegal immigrants through the pass.
