by D. J. Butler
“How old were you then?”
Eirig shrugged. “Five, maybe.”
Dyan looked at his stump. “Based on what I know of his son, I don’t think something as little as a broken leg could have killed him.”
Eirig grinned. “So, Jak’s family raised me. His mom Rosyn, she was a fine old lady, but she had her hands full making a living with her own husband dead, so really, the only mom I knew was Jak’s sister, Aleen. She’s the only parent I remember well. She kept me dressed, and fed, and in school with the Magisters.”
“And Jak kept you out of trouble.”
“Ha!” Eirig thumped the ground with his fist. “That shows how little you know Jak. He was the one always getting into trouble. Whenever I went along, I ended up getting all the blame for whatever we did.”
“So did you stop going along?”
“Nope. I just got used to being blamed.”
“I don’t know any parents,” Dyan said.
“Yeah, I heard that,” Eirig said. “I guess I have a hard time imagining what that means.”
Dyan looked down at the slate gray Lull Sea with its toothpick boats, and the toothpick stockade wall around bustling Nemap. “It means that I remember the Nursery, but only a very tiny bit. It’s hard to be certain the memories are even mine, really, and not memories I invented based on later visits to other Nurseries.”
“I don’t know what a Nursery is.”
“Imagine rooms full of cradles. Magisters caring for little babies, other rooms to play in, toys, singing.”
“Mothers?”
“No mothers. Like I said, I never knew my parents. I remember Magisters, and sometimes other visitors. I remember being observed through glass windows by adults. Not by anyone’s mother.”
“Until when?” Eirig asked. “I mean, I assume you didn’t just leave the Nursery to come down to Ratsnay Station for the Selection.”
Dyan laughed. “No. A child in the System is moved every two years. Two years in one Nursery, then two years in another, and then the child moves into a dormitory and the Creche. And every two years after that, a new dormitory and a new Creche.”
“That’s a lot of changing.”
“Sometimes you have the same Magister more than once, or the same Crechemates. I think they want us to know a lot of people.”
“Yeah, but nobody really well. I think they want you not to have a family.”
He was right, Dyan thought, but she didn’t say anything.
“What’s a Creche?” he asked.
“Five kids together in school,” she said. “Training. Experiments. Games. Contests. Everything you can do to get ready to be an Urbane. An adult.”
“A Systemoid.”
“A Systemoid,” she agreed.
A speck in the stream of people and animals moving in and out of the Nemap gates individuated itself in the moment of turning off the road and moving up the long grassy slope in their direction. The speck became a blob as they watched it come closer, then a roan horse and rider, and finally Jak. Mounted.
He threw a bale of cloth on the ground when he arrived. “New clothes for everyone!” he said. “New saddlebags, too, that don’t look like System issue. Some dried meat and fruit, a map.” He dismounted. “This mare isn’t the big Outrider beast you’re accustomed to, but she should carry one of us at a time, and our gear. We can take turns.”
“Your trading has been productive, Jass,” Dyan told him.
“Thank you, Dana.” He bowed.
“And your face, my good friend Ass?” Eirig asked. “I mean, Jass. Has your face accomplished everything it set out to do?”
“In fact,” Jak said, “it has.”
Dyan shivered at the news. “Really?”
Jak nodded. “A trader asked me almost immediately if I was any kin of that farmer, goodwife Alyra, over in Marsick.”
Dyna gasped. She didn’t know if she was more excited for Jak or for Eirig. Or maybe even for herself. If Aleena could be Eirig’s family, maybe she could be Dyan’s as well.
“What are we waiting for?” she asked.
***
Chapter Fifteen
“I look Basku,” Dyan said.
“No, you don’t,” Jak rejoined. “You’re way too fair.”
“And dirty.” Eirig scratched himself.
“How dirty am I, then?”
“You’re so dirty, that’s not hair on your head, it’s hops, growing in your scalp.”
Jak cuffed him. “Do you have other jokes?”
“My old mom taught me never to use a new joke when an old joke will do. That’s thrift.”
“You didn’t know your old mom.”
“I meant your sister.”
“You call goodwife Alyra old, and she may indeed teach you some new jokes.”
“Ah, that’s a risk I’ll take to see her again.”
Dyan rode. She wore a light wool serape over wool tunic and trousers. Jak hadn’t been able to get new footwear for anyone, so she still wore her riding boots, but they were scuffed up enough that she didn’t think anyone would give them a second glance. Her serape was woven in red, white, and green, the traditional Basku colors, and her red beret matched the red in the serape. She knew about Basku clothing and colors like she knew other things about the Basku, such as that they herded sheep, and ate spicy sausage and ewe’s milk cheese with hard bread. She had learned these things from the Magisters. She’d seen the occasional Basku in Buza System, or on the road in field excursions, but she’d never actually spoken with one.
And now she looked the part.
The boys, on the other hand, had simple brown cloaks over their grey shirts and trousers. They had sturdy wool shoulderbags and they walked with their spears like staffs, which made them look like a lot of the Nemapi they passed on the road.
To avoid puncturing the disguise, the items they still had that looked like System manufacture—Dyan’s coat, the bow and arrows, the bola, all the small devices—were tucked away out of sight. This made the bow a little inaccessible, because if she wanted to use it, Dyan would have to dig it out from under cloth camouflage and restring it.
“What I don’t know,” Dyan said, “is why I look like a Basku shepherd girl, and you two don’t.”
“I’ve never looked very good in girls’ clothing.” Eirig shook his head dolefully.
“You’re worried that we don’t match?” Jak laughed. “You and my sister should get along very well.”
“I’m worried that our disguise looks ridiculous.”
“I thought you’d like some color.”
“I’d like not to get caught.”
“Which is why this disguise is perfect. Some Systemoid Outrider tries to talk to you, you pretend you only speak Basku.”
“What if one of the Basku tries to talk to me?”
“He’ll know you’re a fake. He’ll probably be irritated that you’re dressing like one of his people, and he might think you’re ridiculous.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“But he probably won’t turn you in to the Outriders.”
Dyan considered that. “Fine,” she decided. “But for my disguise to really work, I can’t be traveling with two Nemapi scoundrels like you.” She snapped the mare’s reins and urged the mount on ahead, leaving the two laughing boys behind her.
Cresting a broad, slow rise, she saw Marsick below.
The Snaik here flowed not through the deep, rock-walled canyons as it did around Ratsnay Station, but through the middle of a broad valley, the bottom of which was forested. In the middle of the valley, the track Dyan was riding on hit the river at its widest, and she guessed it must be a ford. A knobby ridge overlooked the ford and was crowned with a stockade wall. The valley was littered with small farms.
Dyan let Jak and Eirig catch up, and the three of them rode to the nearest farm building. They found a burly sweating man, deeply bronzed, wearing only a pair of trousers belted under his prominent belly with rope, carryin
g bales of hay from a barn into a cattle pen.
“Goodman!” Jak called from the split rail fence.
“I’m busy,” the farmer grunted. He heaved his bale of hay to the ground and ripped twine from it. Lowing cows drifted in the direction of the bale, and the farmer turned and rolled back towards the barn.
“I’ll help,” Jak said. Eirig followed him, and suddenly Dyan was alone, sitting astride the mare in the middle of the road, holding both their spears.
The rumble of male voices from the barn blended with the occasional buzz of bees and the distant cry of a hawk. Dyan surveyed the valley. The houses were built of chinked logs, but their yards were tidy and smoke rose from the chimneys. From her position on the road, Marsick looked pretty, alluring, and incredibly remote.
Eirig emerged from the barn first, a bale hoisted across his shoulders and steadied with his one hand. Behind him came Jak and the farmer, chatting easily now, and once the three of them had unloaded their bales and broken them open for the cattle, Jak thanked the farmer, and the boys picked up their spears and rejoined Dyan on the road.
“Across the river,” Jak told her. “Left at the crossroads, in the canyon.”
They descended into the valley. Dyan was so distracted by the people that she nearly rode twice into fences, and was only saved by the mare’s natural and sensible balking. Finally, Jak took the animal’s reins and led her.
What the people of Marsick did, Dyan thought, wasn’t peculiar at all. They were just going about their daily business. They leaned over fences to talk to each other, they congregated on the wooden stoop of a building labeled GENERAL MERCHANDISE AND POST—YOU CAN ALWAYS GET IT OF ORVYL RICH, HE IS NEVER JUST OUT, they pinned wet clothing to lines to dry. It was just normal life. But for some reason, Dyan found it fascinating, and she tried to figure out why.
She had seen Landsmen before. She had ridden through Nemap with more than one Magister, and of course, she had been to Ratsnay Station only a week or so earlier. Those had been different, though. Ratsnay Station she had seen at a special moment, she realized, because it had been the Selection, the harvest festival. She had seen bonfires, feasting and drinking. And when she had seen Landsmen on other expeditions, there had always been an invisible wall between her and them, the wall of the Magister’s presence and Dyan’s status as a System Crecheling.
Or, from the Landsmen’s perspectives, a Systemoid.
Maybe they had been a little more guarded then. She had seen them salute the Magister and regard her with veiled distance. Now it was different. She was one of them. A stranger, maybe, and apparently a Basku, but someone who could be part of the community. As she descended down into Marsick, led by Jak’s steady hand on the horse’s reins, Dyan felt a curious warmth begin to grow inside her.
The Snaik was bigger here than by Ratsnay Station, much further across, but shallow. Dyan slid down off the horse to walk in the water. Eirig tried to insist that she get back on the horse, to which Jak only smiled broadly and kept walking. Finally, all three of them sloshed through the river together.
At the crossroads they turned left, and when the rutted track they followed spun off a branch into the narrow mouth of a canyon, from which drifted up a lazy spiral of smoke, they took the smaller path. The natural stone gate of the canyon mouth was supplemented by a rail fence, whose gate was held shut with a loop of braided leather rope. Jak unlooped the rope and then looped it behind them again. Past the gate, they walked through a bowl-like meadow surrounded by walls of stone and full of grazing sheep. On the far side of the bowl, perched on a shoulder of earth that nearly shrugged shut the narrow entrance into the next, higher stretch of canyon, was a cabin.
Jak practically skipped up the gravel path to the front door of the cabin. Wooden slats nailed together made the door, and it was hung with leather hinges hammered into the doorframe. Dyan had to race to catch up to Jak; she didn’t want to miss his reunion with his sister. She wanted to be part of it. Eirig trailed behind with the horse.
Jak rapped hard on the doorframe with the butt of his spear. “Ho, the house!” he called. “Alee—Goodwife Alyra!”
Dyan heard a bustling sound within, and then a woman appeared in the doorway.
She might have been five or six years older than Dyan herself, but she looked much more than that. Her skin was bronzed and deeply lined, and there was gray in her dark hair.
And still, she looked just like Jak. She had his big head and hands, only somehow, where the oversized parts made him look gangly and uncomfortable, Aleena looked graceful and at ease.
Wild currents of emotion ran openly across her face. Her eyes widened, then screwed into tight beads. Her jaw fell open, her lips quivered, she ground her teeth. Her hands clasped and unclasped and clasped again.
“Aleena,” Jak said, grinning. He looked like he was a dog that wanted to be scratched behind the ears for having fetched a stick.
“No,” she finally said. “I’m goody Alyra, and if you’re looking for a place to stay, I’m afraid you can’t stay here.”
“Aleena?” Jak looked stunned.
Eirig reached the door, leading the mare. He shook his head and said nothing.
“You might try Orvyl Rich’s place, across the river. He rents a room in the back of his shop. Of course,” her words came tumbling out, too quick, unnatural, “there’s no work in Marsick anyway, now that the harvest is over, so you’re better off moving along.”
“Aleena …” Jak spoke slowly. Uncertainty and confusion filled his eyes. “Aleena, I was Selected.”
The woman burst into tears. “I’m not Aleena,” she sobbed. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but if you’re hungry, I can spare a little food.”
“Maybe we can come in,” Eirig suggested. “Share a few jokes, like old times.”
“No!” Aleena snapped. “No, you stay out here. I … I’ll get you a loaf of bread and some mutton.”
She disappeared back into the cabin.
Jak shook his head slowly. “I don’t get it,” he said.
Dyan reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. She wanted to do more, but didn’t know what.
“That’s Aleena,” Eirig said. “I’d bet my last arm on it.”
Dyan tried to laugh, but neither of the boys seemed amused.
“I’m going in there,” Jak said. He reached for the door—
“Ho, strangers!” boomed a loud male voice.
Dyan turned and saw the newcomer. He was a sturdy man, tall, with the bronzed complexion and leathery skin that comes from working in the sun all day, every day. His hair was long, oily and curled, like Cheela’s, and he had a long black beard to match. He walked with a long staff, crooked at the tip, which she thought probably marked him as a shepherd. Only he wore a surprising amount of jewelry for a shepherd, rings on several of his fingers and a chain around his neck that looked like gold.
“Hello, Goodman,” Eirig greeted the man.
Dyan waved a hand in greeting, uncertain if she should be pretending to be Basku still.
Jak nodded and looked at his feet.
“If you’re looking for the owner of this place,” the man said, “you’ve found him. I’m Narl.”
“I’m Jass,” Jak said. “These are Arik and Dana. We’re traveling through. We thought maybe you had a place by a fire we could curl up in tonight. Even a shepherd’s lean-to in the high pasture would be better than the trunk of a tree by the roadside.”
“Basku?” Narl asked, looked at Dyan.
She nodded.
“No,” Jak said, at the same moment.
“Hmmn,” Narl said. “Well, I can do better than that, travelers. If you’re willing to leave your spears outside so my woman doesn’t feel nervous, I can give you a place by my own fire, and a bowl of lamb stew.”
The door opened and Aleena emerged. She had a cloth bundle in her arms, and she had regained her composure. “Goodman,” she said. “I was about to give these strangers a loaf and send them on their way.”
Narl stroked his beard. “By all means, give them a loaf,” he agreed. “But let’s have them by our fire tonight. They can eat the loaf tomorrow on the road.”
Aleena held out the bundle, but Jak didn’t take it. Dyan tried to read his eyes, but found them inscrutable. Her heart ached for him. She imagined what it would be like to find her own mother and be turned away, and her eyes stung.
“Are you sure?” Aleena asked. “They seemed to be in a hurry.” She offered the bundle again, and Jak kept his arms at his side.
Narl laughed, a sound like rolling thunder. “Would you make me out to be stingy and a bad host to these strangers, Goodwife?” he boomed. He gestured with his hands like he was sweeping Jak, Eirig, and Dyan into his cottage. “In, in!” he roared. “I can smell the stew from here, and I’m hungry!”
Dyan took the bundle. It smelled of fresh bread, and despite the strange tension in the air, her mouth watered. Aleena resisted, but when Jak made no more to intervene, she let go and Dyan took the bread.
The bundle made a crinkling sound as she pressed it to her breast.
“In!” Goodman Narl bellowed again.
Jak leaned his spear against the outside wall of the cottage and Eirig followed suit.
“What about the horse?” Jak asked. “May I hitch her somewhere?”
“She can’t get out,” Narl shrugged. “I suggest you take off her saddle and bridle and let her graze in the pasture. The sheep won’t hurt her.”
Jak lightened the horse’s load and turned her loose with a slap to her rump. She trotted away into the pasture, and as Dyan ducked to pass through the cabin’s low doorway, she saw the animal cropping contentedly at grass.
Jak set the horse’s saddlebags, including the bow, on the ground outside the door. He and Eirig followed, then Aleena. Narl came last, and dominated the room. He was as large as any two of them, and he had to stoop to stand.
The room was lit by crude glass windows and by the yellow flames of the cooking fire. A black iron pot squatted in the fireplace, and the stink of many human bodies in a small space was overwhelmed by the savory smell of lamb and rosemary. A large wooden bedframe filled a third of the cabin, beneath a crawlspace reachable by a short ladder. There was a large table with four chairs, and animal skins on the walls and floor.
