The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  No way to know. Dorr was dead. Poor cryptic Dorr, who spent twenty-five years trying to do something crazy enough to break herself free of her grandfather.

  I suppose it wasn’t coincidence she had fallen in love with a man the same age as Hakoore.

  “So about Dorr and Bonnakkut,” I said. “Did she really kill him?”

  Zephram nodded.

  “Do you know that for sure?” I asked. “Rashid thinks her confession doesn’t make sense.”

  “He’s right; her confession was a lie. But she did kill him. I was there.”

  “What happened?”

  He told me the story with his eyes closed, as if he was seeing it all in his mind…or perhaps because he didn’t want to look at me or the rest of the world for a while.

  Everything had started, of course, at the gathering where Tober Cove welcomed Rashid. Zephram had sat on the grass with Waggett in his lap, both of them calm and content in the early morning sunshine. The day ahead would be so pleasant—sending me off with Mistress Gull at noon, then feasting cheerfully with the adults of the village until the children returned at nightfall. Zephram could meet a Spark Lord, spend time with Dorr…

  Then Rashid’s Bozzle appeared on the Council Hall steps.

  The long-lost Steck had returned.

  As soon as the gathering broke up, Zephram headed for his house—running away, really, though Steck would know where to find him. Since he was carrying Waggett, and since he was over sixty, Zephram only got partway home before Steck caught up with him…on that path through the woods where everything happened.

  They talked. Awkwardly. About each other. About me.

  Then Bonnakkut arrived, gun in hand. He had kept an eye on Steck, thinking the time might come when she strayed from the protection of Rashid’s “force field.” Our First Warrior hadn’t seen Steck sneak out the side of the Council Hall, but he guessed where she would go: to find her old lover. (Bonnakkut was five when Steck was banished; like Dorr, he remembered. I suppose the day of Steck’s exile was the high point in Bonnakkut’s life: a Neut in the village and a chance to throw stones.)

  If Bonnakkut had pulled the trigger as soon as he arrived, Steck would have died. Our proud First Warrior would have dragged her corpse back by the hair and proclaimed his triumph from the Council Hall steps. But fortunately for my mother, Bonnakkut couldn’t resist the chance to gloat while holding Steck and Zephram at gunpoint.

  Enter Dorr.

  How did Dorr feel, now that Zephram’s old lover had returned? Zephram couldn’t tell me. “She didn’t seem upset,” he said. “It was almost as if she was liberated. As if she could pass me to Steck and start her own life.”

  I thought about Dorr as I had seen her when I went to fetch Hakoore for last rites. Dorr trying to restyle her hair. Kissing me twice out of sheer mischief. If she believed she was free of Zephram, her last tie to Tober Cove finally cut…but maybe it was just giddiness after the murder—and before the suicide she was already contemplating.

  But that came later in the morning. Before the murder, Dorr was simply walking through the woods because she wanted to visit Zephram—presumably to talk with him about Steck’s return. She must have heard Bonnakkut’s taunts and threats while still some distance away. Quietly, she stole forward until she could see everything: the gun…my father and Steck in danger of being shot…

  Dorr drew her knife and used it. Bonnakkut had his back to her; he was dead before he knew she was there.

  “And then she ran off,” Zephram said. “She called to Steck and me, ‘Be happy together,’ and ran into the woods. I thought she might be heading down-peninsula, just like that. But apparently she decided she had to invent a story; she decided she had to protect me.” He shook his head. “I never understood her, Fullin. Not really. I don’t know why she stayed with me, and I don’t know why she left.”

  He bowed his head and covered his eyes.

  How do you comfort your father?

  Pat his shoulder? Murmur sympathetic words? Hold him till he stops crying?

  Of all the people in the universe, your father is the one person you can’t touch when he grieves.

  I leaned against the kitchen counter, not knowing what to do with my hands.

  Eventually he spoke again, no more than a whisper. “It’s a pity Dorr ran away—if we all just walked straight to the center of town and announced that Dorr had killed Bonnakkut to protect Steck and me…maybe Father Ash and Mother Dust would have declared the killing justifiable. Probably the truth about Dorr and me would have come out, and maybe about Dorr and Steck both being Neuts. I don’t know. Without Dorr there, Steck and I couldn’t make the decision for her. We just tried to confuse things, so no one could piece together a clear interpretation. Steck stabbed Bonnakkut a few more times in the belly. I took his gun…”

  “What did you do with it?” I asked.

  “It’s here. In the root cellar.”

  “You have to get rid of it.”

  “I know,” he nodded. “Tonight I’ll throw it into the lake.”

  “And what if someone sees you? What if Rashid finds out about you and Dorr before then and comes to search the house?”

  “How would he find out?”

  “Hakoore knows you and Dorr were lovers,” I said. “That means Leeta too. Maybe other people—Tobers know a lot about each other’s business. If Rashid wanders around the feast this afternoon, asking questions…”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Give me the gun. I’ll get rid of it.”

  He looked at me with his reddened eyes. “You wouldn’t keep it for yourself, would you, Fullin?”

  “No,” I snapped, “and I’m not going to shoot anyone either, if that’s what bothers you. Just get the gun.”

  Stiffly, he forced himself out of the chair and toward the cellar steps. When I was sure he was steady enough to be left alone, I hurried to my old room at the back of the house. There, laid proudly on my bed, was my Chicken Box.

  I’ve already mentioned that everyone going to Commit at Birds Home carries a chicken foot, symbolizing the Patriarch’s Hand. In recent years (as the cove succumbed to Hakoore’s “materialism”), the fashion had sprung up for parents to give their children gold-painted boxes reminiscent of the box that contained the real hand. The parents also filled the box with presents, sometimes so many gifts they could barely fit in the requisite chicken foot Supposedly, the presents went to Birds Home for “blessing” by the gods, but really they were just trotted out so neighbors could see the display of wealth.

  Zephram had known what was expected of him as father of a Committing child—a box chocked with trinkets that must have been purchased down-peninsula. I didn’t even look at them as I tossed them out on my bed; I was just glad the box was big enough to hold a Beretta.

  By the time Zephram returned from the cellar, I had brought the box to the kitchen table. “You’re going to take the gun to Birds Home?” he asked.

  I nodded. “My offering.” It was tradition to leave something at Birds Home as an offering to the gods. Usually people left a token of the soul they were giving up. If you were Committing female, you might leave your spear to show that you were setting aside male ways, or if you were going male, you might give a sample of your last menstrual blood. “I don’t know what it means to give the gods a gun,” I told Zephram, “but it will be safer with them than with anyone here.”

  “And you’ll make sure no one looks in the box before you get to Birds Home?”

  “People will wonder what extravagant Southern gifts you bought me,” I told him, “but there’s no rule I have to show them.”

  “Well, then…” He held the pistol cradled in both hands, as if it was as heavy and precious as gold. Last night, I’d only seen the gun by starlight; now, with sun streaming through the kitchen windows, the weapon gleamed with sly eagerness. We stared at it for a moment, then Zephram sighed. “I’ve put the safety on,” he said, “so it won’t go off accidentally. You should
make sure it’s still on before you take it out of the box. Do you want me to show you how?”

  “I know all about the safety,” I answered. “Steck explained everything to Bonnakkut last night; I watched too. But how do you know anything about guns?”

  “A merchant friend of mine was a collector. He had nearly a hundred OldTech firearms of various types…only two of which were preserved well enough to fire. What he wouldn’t give for a gun like this….” Zephram shook his head. “But then, he’s probably dead. It’s been twenty years. Twenty years since I’ve seen anyone I used to know down south.”

  I looked at him: an old man, tired to the bone. Tober Cove had been hard on him. He’d been trapped up here by snow that first winter, and frozen in place ever since.

  “Rashid and Steck will be leaving in a day or so,” I said. “Maybe you’d like to go south with them.”

  “Steck told me she’s with Rashid now.”

  “Even so…you wouldn’t have to worry about bandits if you traveled with a Spark Lord, and maybe you could use some time away from the cove.”

  “I know you, Fullin,” he said with a weak smile.

  “You just want to claim my house for your own.”

  I smiled back. “That’s it exactly. Never mind that you deserve a vacation after putting up with me for twenty years.”

  “Well,” he said. “Well.” He looked around the kitchen with the air of a man who isn’t trying to see anything. “If I decided to go south,” he murmured, “I’d just go. Throw some stuff in the wagon, hitch up the horses, and leave. Pick a sunny afternoon when the sky was clear and I could make a good start before nightfall.” He took a deep breath. “Best choice would be a big summer holiday when Tober farmers weren’t working their fields; that way, no one would see me on the road. Just go, with no good-byes.”

  He looked at me with a question in his eyes.

  I nodded. “Sure. That’d be nice. No good-byes.”

  After a while, my father set the Beretta carefully into the box. I had already put in a towel as padding, so the gun wouldn’t slide around. Zephram picked up the chicken foot lying on the table and moved to put it into the box too; but I stopped him. “Keep it,” I said. “A Commitment Day present for you.”

  “Don’t you have to take it to Birds Home?”

  “No one checks,” I said, “and the gods will understand.”

  “So, a Commitment Day present,” he repeated. “You want me to have a symbol of the Patriarch?”

  “It’s the only thing I have to give,” I told him. “Everything else, you bought me.”

  He smiled. “I bought you the chicken foot too.” But he took it and patted my hand.

  NINETEEN

  A Pair of Fleas for Mistress Gull

  No one in the town square knew how to behave.

  There were two black barrels under Little Oak now, and two bodies on the bier—Dorr and Bonnakkut, side by side but arranged head to toe (partly for the sake of decency, and partly because they fit together better that way on the bier’s narrow surface). Hakoore and Veen stood mutely beside one barrel while Kenna and Ivis stood beside the other. Almost no one had thought to bring two cups with them from home; people had to decide which corpse to toast now, promising to come back for a second toast when they got another cup.

  On the other hand, it was Commitment Day—folks had looked forward to this for months. Every kitchen swam with the smells of food for the afternoon feast: pork roasts, crayfish chowder, and wild blueberry pie. Little boys and girls all sported new Blessing outfits made specially for the day…or at least new decorations on old clothes, embroidered or smocked by lamplight over the past few weeks. The day before, a dozen people had asked me, “Fullin, you’ll play a few tunes before you go, won’t you? Good dance tunes?” And I had said yes, because I never imagined Bonnakkut would get killed and Dorr take her own life.

  Tober Cove wanted to sing and dance. As I made my way through the square (my fiddle case under one arm and Chicken Box under the other), I felt longing eyes stare at the violin. A child’s voice in the crowd piped up, “Oooo, is he going to play?” That brought a chorus of adult shushes; there’d be no jigs or reels in front of the mourners.

  And yet…

  It was hard for people to contain themselves. The youngest were puddly with excitement that soon they’d be flying over Mother Lake…and soon too they’d wear another body, start fresh again, find out what had happened to their brother or sister selves over the year. As I passed two teenaged boys, I heard one whisper to another, “I just know I’m going to have breasts. They were starting to come last year. I’m going to have great breasts now, perfect ones, and I swear I’ll go into the woods and rub my nipples for hours!”

  Typical Tober thinking. I remember embarrassing Zephram terribly when I was a fifteen-year-old girl about to become a boy. “One thing I’m going to do,” I announced at the breakfast table Commitment Day morning, “I am definitely going to learn not to come after only, like, two seconds. Don’t you think boys ought to learn that? It can’t be difficult; I’m sure it just can’t be that difficult.”

  And parents were excited too…wistful, yes, because the quiet times of baking bread together were going to change into spear practice with the Junior Warriors, but as the old saying goes, “You aren’t losing a daughter, you’re gaining a son.”

  I’m told that means something different down-peninsula.

  Everywhere I went, people would catch sight of me, smile and open their mouths as if to shout, “Happy Commitment!”…then they’d remember the corpses a stone’s throw away and speak the words softly enough not to disturb the bereaved: “Uh, Happy Commitment, Fullin.” A few would nod at my violin and say, “I hope you don’t intend to leave that as a gift to the gods in Birds Home. Whether you Commit male or female, we’ll always be glad to hear you play.”

  “No,” I told them all, “I’m just taking it to get blessed.” And they nodded, still worried. As I mentioned earlier, a person Committing female might leave her spear with the gods to show she would no longer be male; but a spear’s too big to hide in a Chicken Box. When someone headed for Birds Home with spear in hand, it was traditional to say you were taking it to be blessed. Sometimes the words were even true—the person would come home male, with spear still in hand. But most people in the square seemed to think I intended to leave my violin with the gods.

  The opposite was true. I was carrying my instrument because I didn’t want to abandon it. After my night in the marsh, I’d left the violin at Zephram’s for the morning. If I didn’t bring it with me now, I’d have to go back for it when I returned from Birds Home…and I didn’t want to do that. I doubted that I’d ever enter that old house again.

  When people asked me where my father was, I always waved vaguely at another part of the crowd and said, “Talking to someone over there.”

  In time, I made my way to the waterfront. The atmosphere was more bubbly there—out of sight of Little Oak and its two black barrels. Kids sat on the docks and dabbled their feet in the chilly water, snapping turtles be damned. Mothers stood nearby chatting with each other, occasionally shouting an unnecessary, “Don’t fall in!” to their children. Fathers pretended to talk about the repairs they needed to make on their perch boats, but were actually watching the children too…probably trying to memorize the look of a smile or the sound of a giggle, because it would never be quite the same again.

  Cappie sat on the beach with her sister Olimbarg, my son Waggett safely between them and playing in the sand. They all looked up as I approached.

  “How’s Zephram?” Cappie asked.

  The old reflex to lie twitched in my brain; but I crouched in front of her and said in a low voice, “He’s leaving the cove. Probably on the road already. Please don’t tell anyone.”

  “He’s leaving?”

  That came from Olimbarg, who seemed to find the idea incomprehensible. Cappie only nodded, as if she’d expected something like this. Maybe she knew about Zeph
ram and Dorr; Leeta might have told her, priestess to apprentice. But all Cappie said was, “I’ll miss him.”

  “Yeah.” I gave Waggett a small pat on the knee. He was too young to understand the conversation, but there’d soon come a time when he wanted to see his grandfather. Then what would I tell him? “Olimbarg,” I said, “are you going to look after Waggett on the trip up to Birds Home?”

  “Not my job,” she answered in her snotty kid sister way. “I’m only fourteen.” Traditionally, the chore of tending first-time infants went to nineteen-year-olds when they rode with Master Crow. We twenty-year-olds, Cappie and I, flew separately with Mistress Gull.

  “Just keep an eye on him,” I said. “He knows you. And if he asks about me or his grandfather…”

  I found I didn’t know how to finish my sentence. She put on a bratty “I’m waiting” expression.

  Then someone yelled, “Master Crow!” and pointed to the sky.

  The gods came from the north—Master Crow visible long before Mistress Gull, because he was so much bigger. Master Crow had room for almost three hundred children, far more than any generation Tober Cove had produced. Mistress Gull, small and white and delicate, could only carry a maximum of twenty. This year, she would just transport Cappie and me…plus the Gifts of Blood and Bone taken from the babies of our village. Doctor Gorallin had already left the Gifts in a metal carrying-chest at the end of the main dock.

  All the bells in the Council Hall steeple began to peal in jangly clatter—no matter how many bodies lay under Little Oak, the arrival of the gods meant clanging and prattle and excited shouts as people moved from the square to the waterfront. Children old enough to outrun their parents crowded onto the beach and the docks; younger kids were turned over to the care of older siblings, or other designated babysitters. As I was still trying to persuade Olimbarg to take Waggett, a cheerful nineteen-year-old farmboy named Urgho came up to volunteer. “Let me, Fullin,” Urgho said. “Good practice for when I have one of my own.”