Commitment Hour

by James Alan Gardner

  Father Ash and Mother Dust were sizing up Rashid just like everyone else. We were lucky this Father and Mother both had clear wits—not always the case, when the sole criterion for gaining the position was being older than anyone else. The elderly man and woman squinted up at the lord with thoughtful expressions on their faces, while Rashid returned their gaze calmly. He didn’t make the mistake of trying to charm them with a politician’s smile, but I thought he looked pleasant enough: a good-natured man, well-groomed and respectful.

  Mother Dust whispered something to Father Ash and he whispered back. I found it hard to believe they were seriously discussing the option of denying hospitality to a Spark Lord—more likely, this was only a token gesture to assert their independence from the Sparks, the mayor and everyone else.

  Then again, it was possible they really were talking it over. Offering the town’s hospitality to Rashid and Steck was almost like making our visitors official Tobers; it was a sober commitment, an honor that had only been bestowed once before in my lifetime (to Governor Niome of Feliss). Furthermore, Ash and Dust were above trying to curry favor with anyone: they were close enough to the embrace of the gods that worldly blessings had lost their shine.

  That’s what we were taught anyway. And since Father Ash and Mother Dust had been taught the same things ninety-odd years ago, they believed in their own impunity.

  “All right,” Mother said in a whistling voice. “You have our hospitality.”

  “Both of you,” Father added.

  On her knees beside me, Cappie shuddered. I wondered what bothered her more: that Rashid had been granted full access to our Commitment Day ceremonies, or that Steck had been officially welcomed back to Tober land. The hospitality of Father Ash and Mother Dust had the legal force to override the decree of banishment imposed twenty years ago—my mother was no longer an exile. And the hospitality had not been won under false pretences; Ash and Dust surely knew who Steck really was. I couldn’t remember if they’d been present for the council meeting in the middle of the night, but Teggeree would never request their indulgence without making sure they had the facts. Our mayor had a knack for his own expedience, but there are some lines you just don’t cross.

  “What’s done is done,” I told Cappie, “and they knew what they were doing.”

  “Sometimes,” she answered, “nobody knows what they’re doing.” And she got to her feet so fast, for a moment she stood tall while the rest of the town stayed crouched on their knees.

  ELEVEN

  A New Name for Steck

  Mayor Teggeree dismissed the assembly. The result was a general milling about, with some people trying to push their way through the crowd in order to rush home, but many others staying to chat with neighbors, or shuffling in search of their closest cronies so they could jabber about the Knowledge-Lord. The talk all amounted to, “A Spark here in the cove…well, well, well!” but everyone felt compelled to offer his or her variation on that theme. People who’ve heard surprising news are like wolves staking out their territory—they have to piss on it to prove it’s theirs.

  From where I stood with Cappie’s family, I couldn’t see Zephram and Waggett, but I assumed they were tied into one of the knots of people babbling about our distinguished visitor. Eventually they’d come looking for me, and I didn’t want that—not if Steck was in a position to connect me with my son.

  “Olimbarg,” I whispered to Cappie’s sister, hanging close at my heels while pretending complete indifference to me. “Can you do me a favor?”

  “No,” she answered automatically.

  She didn’t mean it. “Can you tell Zephram to take Waggett back home without me? There’s something I have to do here first.”

  “What do you have to do?” Olimbarg asked. “Paw up my sister?”

  “Don’t be jealous. You can be nice to have around when you aren’t jealous.”

  That was true…not that I’d ever seen her keep the jealousy in check for more than a minute at a time.

  “Who’s jealous?” she said with unconvincing haughtiness; then she went to give Zephram my message, walking with a flouncing swing of her hips because she knew I was watching her. I couldn’t tell if she intended her walk to be sexy or belligerent…but then, she was fourteen and likely didn’t know which she wanted either.

  It took a full ten seconds for me to pull my gaze from Olimbarg—not because I felt lustful urges toward a bratty kid, but because I wasn’t eager to turn back to Cappie and her family. If Cappie wanted to “really talk” right away, which part of me would be ready to speak? The part that liked the curve of her breasts under suspenders, or the part that lied and evaded as easily as scratching an itch?

  I finally took a deep breath and wheeled around with words tumbling out of my mouth, 4 ‘All right, if you want to talk, we should just—”

  Cappie was gone. In the distance, her father was bustling her away, with the rest of her family still clustered close to hide her clothes and hair. I don’t know why she didn’t resist them; maybe she’d had a tweak of nerves and was suddenly not so eager to thrash out our problems either.

  I watched her go…and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dorr, Hakoore’s granddaughter, watching me. She must have seen me when I spun around, talking to thin air. Dorr’s expression was more than curious; her eyes had a focused astuteness, as if she knew everything about

  Cappie and me, as if she could see clear as a soap bubble into my mind.

  It made me wince. Dorr always had a witchy, watchy way to her, especially around me. When I was a fourteen-year-old boy, and she was a nineteen-year-old girl, I sometimes noticed her lurking in the woods outside the house where I lived with Zephram. I told myself then I should be flattered that an older woman had a crush on me…but after a while, I found it more creepy than pleasing.

  Now I turned toward Dorr so that she wouldn’t think she could shy me off. “So,” I said, “a Spark Lord. What do you think of that?”

  She only shrugged and turned away. Dorr didn’t talk much in public.

  The square began to empty as people headed back to whatever last-minute preparations remained for the festivities. Nothing formal would happen before noon, when Master Crow and Mistress Gull came to take the children away; nevertheless, there would be small celebrations in homes all over town, private gift-giving or special breakfasts, that sort of thing. Every family had its own traditions. Still, a few folks remained in the square, moving closer to the steps rather than walking away: children, teenagers, and others without immediate duties, all of them crowding up to talk with the Spark Lord.

  “Have you ever fought a demon?” “Can you really ride lightning?” “How much do you have to study to be a Knowledge-Lord?” The questions piled on top of each other, exactly the things I’d be asking too if I didn’t have a horror of looking gauche in front of a Spark. Perhaps Rashid groaned inwardly at such questions, the way Tobers groaned at outsiders who wanted to know male/female things; but he paid attention anyway, easing himself down to sit on the steps and answering the questions he chose to hear amidst the barrage. I listened for a while in spite of myself—yes, he had fought demons, although he preferred to call them “extraterrestrials,” and they weren’t all as bad as the stories claimed….

  When I finally pulled my attention away, Steck was no longer standing on the Council Hall steps.

  Perhaps she had retreated into the Council Hall itself. There was little risk of people recognizing her after twenty years—as I said, she looked completely female, and with a different face than when she was a woman living in the cove—but maybe she was playing it safe by staying out of sight. Quietly I drew away from the pack around Rashid and circled to the hall’s side door.

  Don’t ask me why I wanted to see where Steck was. If she’d suddenly appeared before me, I wouldn’t have known what to say. How do you speak to your mother, when she doesn’t feel like your mother at all? My mother was still a corpse drifting among the reeds of Mother Lake: a woman who migh
t be illusory but who had lovingly held my hand through childhood bouts of loneliness. I had prayed to my drowned mother; I had seen her in dreams; I had occasionally dressed as she must have dressed, and worn my hair in the way I imagined she wore hers. That fictitious woman was my mother, even if she never existed. Steck was just a Neut who gave me birth.

  And yet…I went looking for her, even when I would have flinched to meet her.

  She wasn’t in the Council Hall—there was nothing in the building but the smell of varnish, since the big meeting table had been recently refinished. Steck must have left through the same side door I’d come in; and she must have left soon after the welcoming ceremony finished.

  Where would she go in such a hurry?

  The natural answer was she wanted to find me, her beloved child. But I had been standing in plain sight near Little Oak; if she wanted to shower me with maternal kisses, she knew where I was. Steck had bustled off in a different direction…and I asked myself why. What other business did she have in Tober Cove? Whom else could she want to see apart from me?

  When the answer thumped into my mind, I wanted to smack myself in the forehead. Zephram. Her old lover. Of course she’d recognize him and want to talk with him. And like an idiot, I’d let him carry Waggett so Steck wouldn’t take an interest in the boy. Even now the damned Neut might be chucking my son under the chin and talking to him like a proud grandma.

  I stormed out of the Council Hall and ran toward Zephram’s home. He’d lived there since his earliest days in the cove—Steck would know where to find him. She might even catch him before he got to the house. As I’ve said, Zephram’s place stood apart from the rest of the village, with a good stand of birch and poplar between the property and its nearest neighbor. For some reason, it seemed more sinister if Steck caught up with my father and Waggett on the path through those trees. I could imagine her standing athwart the trail like a toll collector…maybe even with her knife drawn.

  Twenty years had passed since Steck and Zephram had been together—twenty hard years for Steck, and who knows what crazy resentments she might have developed? Maybe she had talked herself into believing everything was Zephram’s fault; after all, he was the one who told her about that other Neut who lived “happily” in the South. Had Steck come to Tober Cover for revenge against my father? And what would she do to the boy Zephram was carrying?

  I ran faster.

  As I entered the woods between the town and Zephram’s home, I slowed to a quiet trot. If Steck really was up to no good, it might be better to catch her by surprise.

  The trail wound as all trails wind on Tober land, shifting in response to the ledges of limestone that slab up out of the earth. The ledges seldom rose higher than my waist, but combined with the shimmering leaves that drooped down from the trees, there were places I could scarcely see a dozen paces in front of me.

  That’s why I didn’t notice the body until I was almost upon it.

  It lay near the halfway point of the woods, curled into a fetal position on the path. The back was toward me; I could tell it was a man but not who it was. Not Zephram, at least—my father didn’t have any sleeveless shirts, and this man, whoever he was, had muscular arms bare to the shoulder.

  Before I approached the body I froze and listened. The breeze rustling a forest full of leaves hissed up enough background noise to cover any quiet movements of threat nearby. I couldn’t see anyone in the neighborhood, and there wasn’t anywhere within ten paces that someone could hide…unless the killer was lying behind one of the low rock ledges, waiting for the moment I turned my back…

  Don’t do this to yourself, I thought. After thirty more seconds with no sign of trouble lurking, I slipped warily toward the unmoving form.

  It was Bonnakkut: our First Warrior. A slash across his throat dribbled blood onto the dirt. Red blobs low down on his shirt showed he had taken some gut jabs too, but the throat gash had all the finality a man required.

  I didn’t need to take his pulse or check for breathing.

  The ground was scuffed, but it didn’t look like there’d been a major fight. Bonnakkut’s beloved steel ax still gleamed sharp and unused, secure in the leather housing that Bonnakkut had made himself—a sort of hip holster which allowed him to whip out the ax in a split-second. Either he hadn’t had time to defend himself…

  …or he’d decided to pass up the ax in favor of shooting his attackers with his brand-new Beretta.

  I didn’t see the gun anywhere. Not in his hands. Not on the ground nearby.

  “This is not good,” I whispered. Much as I hated Bonnakkut having a firearm, he wasn’t the worst type of owner: the worst was someone who’d kill Bonnakkut to get the gun.

  Suddenly, I had a twitch in the small of my back—the queasy feeling of someone dangerous right behind me. I spun around, but there was no one…just shimmering leaves, stolid rock, and a dawdle of insects flicking through the pockets of sunshine that penetrated the tree cover.

  Whichever way I turned, I felt there was someone just a hair behind me.

  “Help!” I shouted. “Hey! Anyone hear me? Help!”

  Ten seconds later, Cappie came running from the direction of Zephram’s house. She still carried my spear, and she held it ready for trouble.

  What was she doing here? I thought she’d gone home with her family.

  “Fullin,” she said, “why are you making all that…oh.” She stopped. She had seen Bonnakkut.

  “I didn’t do it,” I told her.

  Cappie didn’t answer. Her gaze was on the corpse.

  “He was like this when I found him.”

  “Don’t be so defensive,” she said, but there was no snap in her voice. She looked quickly left and right; I don’t know what she expected to see. Oddly enough, the twitch in my back had disappeared the moment Cappie showed up. We were alone now—I could feel it.

  “His gun’s missing,” I told her.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  She squatted in front of the body, an unladylike pose made decent only because she was wearing pants. Her hand reached out toward Bonnakkut’s slashed throat, but I grabbed her wrist in time. “Don’t be crazy,” I said.

  “I’m not a woman yet,” she answered.

  “Bonnakkut might not care.” Everyone knew that a woman should never touch a man’s corpse, just as a man shouldn’t touch a woman’s. If Bonnakkut’s spirit hadn’t left his body yet, it would be lonely and maddened; one touch from Cappie and he would suck her soul into his corpse to be his death-wife. Some Elders claimed that was impossible—before Commitment, we couldn’t marry, either in life or in death. But I didn’t trust Bonnakkut dead or alive, and I didn’t let go of Cappie’s hand until she shrugged and eased back from the body.

  “We should tell someone,” she said.

  Her eyes met mine. I don’t know what she was looking for, but her face had a focused seriousness that I found beautiful in its intensity. After a few seconds, I asked, “Do you want to stay with the body or shall I?”

  She actually smiled faintly. “Thanks. Trusting me for once.” She drew a breath. “I’d better be the one to stay. I’ve got the spear.”

  As I ran back to the center of town, my brain rattled with questions. Who killed Bonnakkut? That was my top concern. And my top suspect was Steck. Someone callous enough to Commit Neut was callous enough to commit murder…but I couldn’t see a motive. Bonnakkut was only five years old when Steck left Tober Cove; she shouldn’t have any longstanding hatred for him. Anyone else might have killed Bonnakkut to steal his gun, but Steck had no reason to do that. Working for a Spark Lord, she could have any weapon she wanted, just for the asking.

  It was possible there might be a criminal hiding nearby; as I’ve said, fugitives occasionally came up-peninsula to hide from the Feliss Watch. It was also possible one of the muscle-brains in the Warriors Society had decided to take the Beretta for himself. It was even possible someone else in town hated Bonnakkut enough to do the deed…but I h
ad trouble believing it.

  We were Tobers. We didn’t ambush other Tobers in the woods and kill them. The only homicide in my lifetime was fifteen years earlier, when a man named Halsey killed his brother in a drunken fight. A town like ours didn’t get cold-blooded murders. Especially not the morning of Commitment Day.

  I told myself the killer couldn’t be a Tober. Better for it to be Steck or a fugitive—some outsider.

  But I didn’t just think about the murder; I thought about Cappie too. She had come from the direction of Zephram’s house…so what was she doing there? Just returning my spear? Or had she come for that talk with me?

  For a guilty moment, I felt glad about Bonnakkut’s murder—even Cappie couldn’t expect me to discuss our future with a corpse at our feet.

  And I thought about more immediate questions: whom should I tell about the murder? Officially, the Warriors Society kept the local peace, but with Bonnakkut ready for worm-fodder, it was a joke to think of turning to Kaeomi, Stallor or Mintz. Mayor Teggeree was no better; he was good for speeches and organizing storage of our spring wool, but not for surprise crises. Leeta was dither-headed, and I refused to go to Hakoore. Father Ash and Mother Dust? They would pronounce sentence when the time came, but you didn’t just run up to them shouting, “Help me, help me!”

  Which only left one choice.

  Lord Rashid still sat on the steps of the Council Hall. He stood when he saw me running toward him—they say Sparks have an instinct for recognizing trouble.

  The Knowledge-Lord didn’t ask why I wanted him; he told the people around him, “Sorry, I have to go,” and waved away the few who tried to follow. It was only when we were out of the square that he murmured to me, “Problem?”

  I nodded. “A murder.”

  “Damn!” he whispered. “And I bet that girl Cappie is right on the spot to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”