Commitment Hour

by James Alan Gardner

  “Cappie won’t—”

  “She will,” he interrupted. “She went on about my very presence provoking…” He stopped. “I don’t suppose she could have done it? Just to prove her point?”

  “Never! Never…”

  Rashid looked at me curiously. I didn’t speak, but I admit, I suddenly wasn’t as sure about Cappie as I wanted to be. Fighting last night in the creek, she’d shown how well she could manage the spear, even if she was female; she might be able to take Bonnakkut, especially if she caught him by surprise. I couldn’t imagine why she’d want to—but now that I thought about it, Bonnakkut had made those leering insinuations about wiving her. If he saw how good Cappie looked today…if he had talked her into meeting him in the woods, then tried to force her into something she didn’t want…I could believe Cappie might slash him in the heat of the moment. Then she might run up the trail, wipe Bonnakkut’s blood off the spear head, and wait for someone to discover the body…

  …whereupon she arrived in response to my calls, playing innocent as a crow.

  Last night I’d believed Cappie was possessed by devils. Since then, I’d let go of that theory, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  Rashid knelt beside Bonnakkut’s body. The Spark Lord’s armor wasn’t quite flexible enough for him to lean in for a truly close look, but he did his best.

  “This is exactly how you found him?” Rashid asked.

  “Give or take a few ants,” I replied. The insects had begun to take an interest in the corpse, scurrying over Bonnakkut’s bare arms as if he were no more than a log.

  “Did he have any enemies?”

  “Steck,” said Cappie.

  Rashid looked at her sharply. “Do you have any solid reason to suspect Steck?”

  “Bonnakkut tried to shoot her last night,” Cappie shrugged. “Maybe Steck decided to return the favor.”

  The Spark Lord shook his head. “My Bozzle had no grudge against this man…and even if she did, she wouldn’t act on it before Master Crow and Mistress Gull get here. Steck has been pining for this day too long to mess things up so quickly. All she can talk about is showing me how the children go off to Birds Home…”

  I bit my lip.

  “No,” Rashid said, “my Bozzle has her faults, but if she really wanted to kill someone, she’d have the self-restraint to hold off until the festivities were over.”

  “Suppose it was Bonnakkut who wouldn’t hold off,” Cappie suggested. “He tried to kill Steck last night. Suppose he gave it another shot and she fought back.”

  “Then she wouldn’t run afterward,” Rashid answered. “The Patriarch’s Law recognizes self-defense, doesn’t it?”

  “Certainly,” I said.

  “So Steck would walk straight into town and announce she filleted a man who tried to kill her. She’s not the sort to be shy about that.”

  Rashid said that with the rueful ghost of a smile.

  “It’s not funny!” Cappie told him.

  “I know.” Rashid stood up, his armor clicking over itself as he readjusted his position. “What happened to the gun I gave him?”

  “Gone.”

  “Any chance he just left it at home this morning?”

  Cappie and I gave him “Who are you kidding?” looks.

  “All right,” he grumbled, “it was worth asking.” He glanced around at the woods. “Tree trunks are too thin here to hide behind. The killer couldn’t just leap out and take this man by surprise. Unless…” Rashid looked straight up. “No, the trees aren’t sturdy enough to support a man’s weight. You couldn’t wait up there, then jump on your victim.”

  I looked at the trees myself. The Knowledge-Lord was right: poplars and birch are the herons of the tree world, with spindly stems and limbs. Even someone as slender as Cappie couldn’t climb one or hide behind a trunk. “So what are you saying?” I asked Rashid.

  “The victim knew the killer,” he replied. “Otherwise, Bonnakkut wouldn’t have been taken by surprise. After all, if you met a stranger with a knife coming down this path, would you let the guy get within throat-slitting range?”

  “Bonnakkut might,” Cappie said. “He was a cocky fool.”

  “Mmm.”

  Rashid sounded dubious. Loyalty demanded I back Cappie up. “If Bonnakkut ran into a fugitive,” I said, “he might try to take the fellow single-handed. That was Bonnakkut’s style. He’d draw that gun and say, ‘Surrender or die.’ ”

  “And if the fugitive tried to knife him,” Rashid replied, “Bonnakkut would fire, wouldn’t he? You’d hear the shot all over town.”

  Cappie gave him a look. “Provided the gun worked.”

  “It worked flawlessly last night,” Rashid answered in a wounded tone. “So unless the idiot forgot to take off the safety catch…” He waved his hand dismissively. “It’s possible, but I don’t like it. Too convenient. Anyway, I need to take a closer look at the cuts…but we should call your Town Watch before I start playing with the body. I don’t want to tread on official toes. You do have a Town Watch, right?”

  “You’re looking at it,” Cappie answered, gesturing toward the corpse.

  “Oh. Right. Then again, it gives me a free hand, doesn’t it? You,” he pointed to Cappie, “bring me your local Healer. Expert medical advice.” There was only a trace of irony in his voice, just enough to suggest our Healer was a country bumpkin who couldn’t tell her ankle from her adenoids. “And you,” he pointed to me, “find Steck. I don’t want her wandering too far away with killers on the loose.”

  Cappie and I exchanged looks, but an order from a Spark could not be ignored. She headed into the village to get Doctor Gorallin. I went the other direction, hoping Steck wasn’t at Zephram’s house but certain that she was.

  Steck sat with my son on her lap. Her Neut lap. Zephram was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s my father?” I asked.

  “Busy,” she answered. “You’ll have to make do with your mother.”

  I stormed forward and pulled Waggett roughly away from her. She made no effort to prevent it. Waggett made a soft bleat of surprise, but decided not to be scared. When I clutched him to my chest, he snuggled in complacently.

  “He’s good-tempered,” Steck observed.

  “What do you want here?” I asked.

  “Honor thy father and mother,” Steck said. “It’s the Patriarch’s Law, Fullin.”

  She continued to sit in the chair as if nothing was wrong. My chair, the one I had sat in for years before my legs were long enough to touch the floor.

  “How can I honor my mother,” I asked, “when she chose to Commit as Neut?”

  “You might think of it as a brave choice rather than a stupid one.”

  “It’s more than stupid, it’s blasphemy.”

  “Then why did the gods put it on the menu?” she asked calmly. “You haven’t Committed yet, Fullin. You’ve never faced Commitment Hour and heard that voice ask, ‘Male, female, or both?’ There’s no sneer in those words, none at all. There’s no suggestion the gods think ‘both’ is only an option for heretics. People may have decided that Neut is bad, but the gods are more broad-minded.”

  “The Patriarch said—”

  “Fuck the Patriarch,” Steck interrupted. “A depraved old zealot who perverted everything Birds Home stood for. Before him, there were plenty of people like me in the cove: people who believed that ‘both’ might be the answer most gods wanted to hear…that the tired old stereotypes of male and female were too deeply embedded in the monkey brain, and the only way out was becoming something new. But the Patriarch was too insanely jealous to allow the best of both worlds. Not only did he anathematize those who refused to restrict themselves, he regimented male and female roles far beyond anything you find in the South.”

  “Southerners can’t choose,” I answered. “We can. If we choose male, we choose the male role, period. Same with female. It would be ridiculous if we Committed male, then still acted female.”

  “What does it mean to act
female?” Steck demanded. “Both sexes eat. Both sexes sleep. Both sexes sweat on a hot summer’s day. I shouldn’t have to tell you how similar they are, Fullin—you’ve been both. You’ve felt both. Were they really that different? No. No difference, except the way people treated you and the jobs they told you to do.”

  “You obviously don’t understand anything,” I said, “which is why you’re a Neut. There’s no point discussing it further.”

  “This was a discussion, was it?” She gave me a look. “Here I thought we were having a fight…and I was blessing the gods for my luck, not to have missed your adolescent rebellion phase.”

  “Is that what you came here for?” I asked. “To make up for twenty years when you couldn’t nag your kid?”

  Steck didn’t answer right away. It seemed as if she thought deeply before words came out. “I came here for a lot of things,” she said at last, “like the off chance that I’d look at you, you’d look at me, and something would happen. Something besides disappointing each other for being the wrong kind of people.” She stood up; she was as tall as me. “What’s your son’s name?”

  I hesitated, then decided to show I was well brought up. “Waggett.”

  “Amazing—that’s what Zephram called him too. I wondered if you’d lie to me. About my own grandson.”

  “Rashid wants you,” I said. “On the trail back to town.”

  “He’s probably found some kind of beetle he’s never seen before.”

  “Not quite,” I told her.

  She turned away, then abruptly turned back. “I’ll make you a deal, Fullin. Spend the morning with Rashid and me, until you have to go to Birds Home. Do that and I’ll stay away from Zephram and Waggett.”

  “I won’t be your son,” I said.

  “You are,” she replied, “and for twenty years, I’ve told myself that means something. I won’t talk you into Committing Neut, if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’re my child, and I want you to have every freedom to choose who you want to be. But this is our only time together, Fullin. A single morning for the rest of our lifetimes. Years down the road, this day will be as important to you as it is to me. Even if you decide you hate my guts, at least you’ll know. Trust me, not knowing hurts to the bone.”

  I hate it when adults say, “Trust me.” It’s not that I think they’re lying—it’s that they’re telling me I’m too green to appreciate some great truth they’ve learned from experience. The more painful the experience, the more mysteriously profound they believe the truth must be…when most of the time, it’s as plain as dung in the street and they’ve just been too thickheaded to notice. “You only want to spend time with me?” I asked.

  “That’s all,” Steck replied.

  “And you’ll leave Waggett and Zephram alone?”

  “I’ll leave Waggett alone,” she said, “and I won’t seek out Zephram. If he comes to me, that’s his choice.”

  I thought about it. I didn’t like the picture of my father deliberately approaching a Neut (my foster father seeking out my mother), but if he had ghosts he needed to lay to rest, I could hold my nose and suffer through. After all, Steck wanted me close by her side, didn’t she? So I’d be there to keep things platonic if Zephram came calling.

  “All right,” I told Steck, “you’ve got a deal. Give me a minute to talk to my father.”

  “He’s in the back.”

  For some reason, I bowed to her slightly before leaving the room…but I took Waggett with me.

  Zephram was in his bedroom with the door open. He wasn’t doing anything—he was sitting fully dressed on the bed, staring bleakly into space.

  “Maybe,” I said, “I should have warned you she was here.”

  After a silence, he answered, “That would have been nice.”

  “I swore an oath to keep it secret. On the Patriarch’s hand.”

  “Oh, well then…”

  He didn’t finish his sentence.

  Eventually, I said, “It must have been a shock.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you recognize her yourself, or did she approach you after?”

  “I recognized her, Fullin. Even though I’d only seen that face once, twenty years ago…I recognized her. No one else did—I looked around the crowd and they didn’t seem to see her at all. They had worked so hard to put her out of their minds. I never understood why anyone would want to forget something…” He shook his head. “No, I guess I understand.”

  “Are you going to be all right? I need you to look after Waggett.”

  “Can’t you do it, Fullin? Today of all days…I’m not so good all of a sudden.”

  “Look,” I said briskly, “you need something to take your mind off Steck. And she’s promised to leave you and Waggett alone if I go with her.” I plunked Waggett down in Zephram’s lap. Dully, as if it was a great effort, my father put his hands on either side of the boy’s small ribcage to hold him in place.

  “There you go,” I told him. “You’ll have fun together. And you know what to do—you saw me through all my Commitment Days.”

  “I’m feeling old today, Fullin.”

  “Children make people feel young,” I answered. “Everyone says that. You be a good boy, Waggett.” I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, then left before Zephram could argue more. Frankly, I couldn’t see why the old man was making such a fuss. He only had to babysit a well-behaved toddler. I was stuck with the Neut.

  “How’s Zephram?” Steck asked when I came back into the front room.

  “You rattled him,” I said. “If you cared about him, you shouldn’t have given him such a shock.”

  “Things are simple for you, aren’t they, Fullin?”

  “No. Things are just complicated for everyone else.”

  Steck sighed. “I hoped you’d grow up like Zephram. Instead, you grew up like me. I’ve never believed in heredity before, and I don’t like it.”

  She stood up, smoothing her dress and overshirt selfconsciously; it must have been a long time since she’d worn such aggressively feminine clothing. I found myself peering at that V neckline again, and forced my gaze away. Next thing I knew, I might be staring at her crotch.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “Sure, Steck.”

  “Call me Maria—Rashid thinks it would be better if I use a Southern name today. Heaven forbid that my presence ever remind the town of ugly deeds twenty years ago.”

  “So you don’t want me to call you Mother?”

  She looked at me pensively. “If you ever call me Mother,” she said at last, “I’ll know you truly hate me.”

  “Then let’s go, M—” But I couldn’t finish the word. “Maria,” I substituted.

  Steck gave a tiny smile. “Show me where Rashid is. We have a full morning ahead.”

  TWELVE

  A Kiss for Dorr

  I had no chance to watch the look on Steck’s face when she saw Bonnakkut’s body—the path through the trees was too narrow for us to walk side by side, so I was obliged to take the lead, with my back to the Neut.

  Approaching from this direction, we could see the murder scene from twenty paces off. Not that we could see the corpse itself: Rashid knelt on the ground in front of it, conducting an examination of the wounds. As we drew closer, I saw he had snipped off Bonnakkut’s bloody shirt to provide a clear view of the belly injuries. Rashid’s nose was only a finger away from the body as he peered through a magnifying glass at the slashes.

  “Not a beetle after all,” Steck said behind me.

  I turned. She wore a guarded expression, very contained. It could be the look of a person who was clamping down on real shock; it could also be the look of someone who’d been preparing for this since committing the murder.

  “Do we know who did this?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Definitely a surprise attack,” Rashid said without looking up. “No defense wounds.”

  “What’s a defense wound?” I asked.

  Steck ans
wered. “Cuts on the hands or arms from trying to block the blade. You see them in almost every knife attack…unless the victim was dead before he knew what was happening.”

  “You two have seen a lot of murders?”

  “Enough. When someone important like a Governor or Elemarch gets killed, it’s best if a Spark conducts the investigation. More impartial.”

  “And that’s what they do down south—kill Governors and Elemarchs?”

  “If ‘down south’ means Feliss,” Steck said, “the answer is no. Feliss is a bourgeois little province that’s too self-satisfied to indulge in assassination. But there’s more to the world than Feliss.”

  “I know that.” Theoretically, I was supposed to have memorized all the provinces and their capitals—Tober Cove had a good Elemarchy School that taught such things. But even if I’d never gone to the trouble of learning the list myself, I’d heard Cappie recite it enough times when her father demanded. Two hundred and fifty-six provinces; Earth was a big planet.

  “The stabs in the belly were likely made after death,” Rashid announced suddenly. He straightened up and brushed hair out of his eyes. “The throat slash came first: one slice, that was it. Hard to be a hundred percent sure without any real equipment, but that’s my guess.”

  “Sounds like a crime of passion,” Steck said. “The victim’s dead on the ground, but the killer still wants to stick him a few more times.”

  “Either that,” Rashid agreed, “or someone wants us to jump to that conclusion.” He turned to me. “Do people read OldTech mysteries in this town?”

  “People read all kinds of things,” I answered. “We have a library.”

  “With almost fifty books,” Steck added disdainfully.

  “Hundreds of books,” I retorted. “The cove has come a long way since you lived here.”

  “So much outside information,” she marveled. “It must drive Hakoore wild.”

  I didn’t answer…but I couldn’t help remembering what the old snake said about prosperity corrupting our people.