The League of Peoples

by James Alan Gardner

  I didn’t know the farm country Tobers as well as I knew people who lived right in the village, but Urgho and I had been friendly enough in Elemarchy School. He was right too—this year, he would come back pregnant from Birds Home, and a little practice with kids wouldn’t hurt. I bent down beside my son and said, “Do you know Urgho, Waggett? This is Urgho.”

  Urgho crouched on his haunches and gave my boy a friendly smile. “Remember me, Waggett? You and your dad’s friend Cappie came out to our farm last spring. Remember when you saw the sheep?”

  I vaguely recalled Cappie telling me she’d gone to some farm to buy wool from the spring shearing…but Waggett clearly had a much more vivid memory of the event. “Baaaaaaa!” he called out immediately. “Baaaaaaa!” He giggled at his own voice. “Baaaaaaaaaa!”

  Urgho winked at me as he lifted the boy into his arms. Waggett kept baa-ing happily, unafraid of being taken away by a stranger.

  The gods flew toward us, unhurried. Master Crow left a drifting trail of white behind him—he was so holy that even in the heat of a summer’s day, his breath turned to steamy cloud. Mistress Gull, always more demure, simply flew without leaving a mark…in contrast with real gulls, who left plenty of marks, all over the waterfront.

  For a moment, I glanced at Beacon Point, checking if Rashid and Steck were up there watching. They weren’t in sight, but I could imagine them on the grass in front of the old lighthouse, maybe staring at the gods through an OldTech telescope.

  Rashid would be talking about airplanes and trying to identify what kind he was looking at. I wondered whether my mother had got muck-mired in that same mindset…or if, perhaps, she could still look up at the sky and think, “gods,” not, “aircraft.”

  Steck had wanted to be priestess once. She must still have some tiny bit of faith. Or was I just trying to believe good things about my mother?

  Master Crow—or perhaps I should say Master Crow’s airplane disguise—sped over Mother Lake in a long low glide that suddenly ploughed up a furrow of water as he skimmed down onto the surface. Unlike mortal crows, the god always landed on the lake: he had special feet shaped like skis which could buoy him up, no matter how many children he held. He came to a stop perhaps two hundred paces from shore.

  I don’t want you thinking he was an OldTech seaplane like you see in books. For one thing, he was much, much bigger than any antique seaplane; my father had once toured a partly preserved seaplane in a Feliss museum, and Zephram assured me it was tiny compared to Master Crow. Furthermore, Master Crow looked more birdlike than a common OldTech plane—he had a sharp black beak, and sly shiny eyes in place of the windows that OldTech pilots peered out.

  Master Crow didn’t need a pilot. He was a god, guided by his own wisdom, flying by divine power. Even on solstice days crackling with thunder, he speared his way safely through the storm.

  Mistress Gull, smaller and quieter but no less strong, splish-splashed her way to a landing two minutes after Master Crow. She rode low on the waves, like a real gall—pristine white in the sunshine, as calmly beautiful as a new mother sleeping. Looking at Mistress Gull, I suddenly wanted to hold Cappie’s hand; but after our talk in the Patriarch’s Hall, I was sure Cappie wouldn’t want to hold mine.

  By the time Mistress Gull settled comfortably, Master Crow had already sent out his “chick”: a boat with a hull of black rubber, as if an OldTech cart-tire had been stretched big enough to hold twenty children. The boat moved quickly over the waves, giving off a smoke that smelled like hot asphalt. Kids always curled up their noses at the stench; ten-year-old boys made fart jokes, and when they couldn’t think of actual jokes, made fart sounds with their armpits. (To ten-year-old boys, any notable odor reminds them of farts.)

  Children began to line up on the main dock, with the older teenagers maintaining order and safety. This was a point of pride for our generation: the adults remained back of the line of sand where the beach began, while we “youngsters” took care ourselves. We needed no final sermon from Hakoore…no muddled good wishes from Leeta. Of course, the parents looked on with a keen watchfulness—just as I refused to take my eyes off Urgho and Waggett—but this was the children’s responsibility. Our moment.

  I say “our”…but Cappie and I remained on the sand while the others organized themselves on the dock. We were not adults yet, but we were not Master Crow’s passengers either. We would never ride between his black wings again.

  “How are you doing?” Cappie suddenly asked.

  I looked at her; she’d been watching me. After so many years, growing up together, she knew me so well she could almost read my mind.

  “It’s strange not being out there with them.”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes met mine for an instant, then turned quickly back to the dock. “Waggett looks happy enough with Urgho.”

  “Waggett’s a happy boy.”

  “Do you wonder what he’ll be like as a girl?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’ll be happy,” she said. A moment’s silence…then: “Whatever happens between us, Fullin, will you let me visit him once in a while? I’ve watched him grow up this far…”

  “It’s a small village,” I told her. “He’ll always be just around the corner.” I gave a tentative smile. “You can visit Waggett and I’ll visit Pona.”

  She nodded. We continued watching our child.

  It took the black boat four round-trips to carry all the children to Master Crow. Waggett and Urgho went with the second group. I sighed with relief as they climbed the steps from water level and vanished into Master Crow’s interior. It was always hushed inside there, where the feathery padding on seats and walls soaked up the edges of sound. I could picture the older teenagers patiently buckling seat belts around the smaller children, just as it had been done for generation after generation back through the centuries.

  As the last boatload left the dock, I felt Cappie tense beside me. Mistress Gull had lowered her own chick—smaller than Master Crow’s but similar. A boat of white rubber.

  My stomach was full of butterflies. The lake was calm, but I suddenly worried that the rocking of the boat might make me sick.

  “Well,” Cappie said, “shall we?”

  She stood. In one hand, she carried her spear (“just taking it to be blessed”). Under the other arm, she lugged her Chicken Box…bigger than mine and intentionally so. Nunce didn’t want his daughter to be shown up by an outsider’s child. I lifted my own load—Chicken Box, violin—and we waddled together to the end of the dock.

  People shouted, “Happy Commitment!” after us. I imagined I could hear Zephram among them, but I knew it wasn’t true.

  Cappie emptied her arms before boarding the boat, then I passed her all our baggage: spear, violin, and the two Chicken Boxes. The butterflies in my stomach took an extra flurry as I handed her the box holding the gun, but she stowed it under a seat without comment and turned back to me for the final piece of our load—the metal case containing blood and bone.

  “Careful,” she said.

  I gave her a wounded look…but then, Cappie was just being a mother, concerned for her child’s welfare. In a sense, Cappie’s baby was inside the case: the Gift that would let Pona live a normal girl/boy childhood. I care about Pona too, I wanted to say; I’ve changed Pona’s diapers on occasion.

  Rare occasions. Too rare.

  Was that thought just sentimentality, or was I becoming female again? I couldn’t tell, and maybe it didn’t matter. Carefully, I passed Cappie the case and waited for her to stow it securely.

  When I was ready to board the boat, she held out her hand to help me. I took it.

  Mistress Gull’s boat made the same smelly fumes as Master Crow’s, but to me the odor was more nostalgic than unpleasant. (Fullin the near-adult: finally past the, “Ooo, fart!” stage.) Water rocked gently beneath us as we slipped away from the dock. The sun sparkled. A light breeze played with Cappie’s hair; even cut short like a man’s, her hair was lush and silky. I thought
of her as priestess, dancing the solstice dance with daisies curled around her ears…

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Cappie asked.

  “Picturing you taking over from Leeta.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” It surprised me too. I’d told her the truth as if it was an easy thing—as if my habit for lying had fallen asleep with the gentle motion of the boat. “So how long have you and she been discussing that you’d…”

  “Just a few days. Leeta only got the bad news from Doctor Gorallin last week.”

  “And you’ll still have time to learn everything?”

  Cappie shrugged. “Leeta thinks so. There aren’t that many rituals. Last rites, birth-naming, solstices and equinox…” She paused. “If you have the urge to be priestess instead of me, you could pick it up easily…provided you decide it isn’t a ridiculous Anti-Patriarch heresy after all.”

  “It is a ridiculous Anti-Patriarch heresy,” I told her. “That’s its charm.”

  She smiled—a smile that neither believed nor disbelieved me. A “summer day on the lake” smile.

  The boat docked at a small landing stage that extended from one of Mistress Gull’s feet: “pontoons” as Nunce called them. Cappie scrambled up and we began to unload, beginning with the case that contained the blood-gifts. When I handed it to Cappie, she went straight up the steps into Mistress Gull—no leaving it on the landing stage where a sudden wave might tip it into the lake.

  While she was gone, I simply waited: smelling the wet rubber of the boat, watching the sun dance on the water…

  Something moved. Something under the surface.

  Working on the perch boats, I’d seen fish brush the surface many times. The biggest were muskies—as long as your arm or even your leg.

  The thing I’d just glimpsed was bigger…a huge dark shadow.

  I held my breath. The sunlight on the water made it hard to see anything below. Like any fishing village, Tober Cove had its share of campfire tales about monsters lurking in the deeps—giant snakes or squid or octopi. “Myths,” my father had said. “Maybe in the ocean but not Mother Lake.” And yet…

  Cappie’s spear was in the boat. I reached for it slowly and eased it into attack position, ready to stab down into the water if I saw another hint of motion.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Cappie asked. She’d come back out to Mistress Gull’s doorway. “If you spear a hole in that rubber, you’re going to regret it.”

  “There’s something in the water,” I answered in a strained voice. “Something big.”

  “Probably just a school of fish,” she said. “When they’re all swimming together, they can look like one big creature.” But as she came down the steps she kept her gaze trained on the lake. “Let’s just get the stuff on board and…shit!”

  I snapped my head up. She was staring wide-eyed at the shadowed patch of water between Mistress Gull’s pontoons.

  “See something?” I whispered.

  She held her hand out. “Give me the spear.”

  “Are you sure…”

  “I’m not a helpless woman, Fullin! Give me the damned spear.”

  Reluctantly, I placed the spear shaft into her outstretched hand. She immediately swung the tip of the weapon into position for a downward jab.

  “Now you handle our gear,” she said. “Get everything inside Mistress Gull.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Stand guard. Whatever it is, maybe it’s only curious about Mistress Gull. If it’s just having a look, I won’t provoke it. But if it decides to attack…”

  She readjusted her grip on the spear handle.

  Trying not to make noise, I leaned over the side of the boat and laid our remaining cargo on the landing stage: the Chicken Boxes and my violin case. As I clambered out myself, I glanced back toward the land. All of Tober Cove had clustered on the beach, shading their eyes and peering at us, no doubt wondering what we were up to. If they got worried enough, a few fishermen might venture out in a boat to ask what was wrong…but that was a last resort. People past the age of Commitment were forbidden to approach Mistress Gull, for fear of scaring her off forever.

  Holding my violin case by the handle, I wrestled with the Chicken Boxes until I had one under each arm. Cappie remained as still as a cat watching a mouse, spear at the ready. Now that I was on the landing stage, I could see what she was looking at: a dark blob as big as a man below the surface of the water. In the shadows beneath Mistress Gull, the blob was greener than the water itself.

  The butterflies in my stomach fluttered furiously. I had a nasty suspicion what I was looking at.

  “Get on board,” Cappie ordered grimly.

  Weighed down by the Chicken Boxes, I plodded up the steps to the entry. Mistress Gull’s interior was a smaller version of Master Crow’s, tinted white instead of black: rows of plush chairs covered with a feathery padding that muted sounds to a whisper. I stashed the Chicken Boxes under a pair of seats and belted my violin securely into a seat of its own. The quiet emptiness of the cabin had an eerie quality to it—in my previous years, traveling with Master Crow, there were always the other children, rustling and shuffling, chattering in subdued voices.

  I went to the door and called down, “Ready.”

  Cappie glanced at me and nodded. Then suddenly she raised her spear high. I had time to shout, “No!” before she thrust with all her might at the dark blob in the water.

  Violet flame exploded upward. The head of the spear must have vaporized instantly—hot gas blew from the lake’s surface like a geyser. By then, however, the violet fire had continued up the spear shaft, incinerating wood to ash in the blink of an eye. Cappie screamed as the blaze ripped into her hands, burning bright purple for a lightning flash. Then the flame faded and she crumpled to the deck, her hands black and smoking.

  With one jump I leapt down beside her, grabbing her arms by the elbows and thrusting her hands into the water. Steam curled up lazily. Cappie’s eyes flickered toward me, then slipped shut. Her whole body slumped, fainting from pain.

  “Damn,” I whispered. “Damn.”

  I had seen many cremations up on Beacon Point: all the Tobers who had died in the twenty years of my life. The bodies were wrapped in winding sheets before they were put on the pyre…but sometimes the sheets fell open, exposing a bare arm or leg to the flames. I had seen skin turn brown and tight like a roast, sizzling until it split.

  Cappie’s hands were worse than that.

  In front of me, a green helmet broke the lake’s surface. Moments later, a second head appeared close by: Steck wearing a glass-faced swimming mask. She had metal tanks strapped to her back and a mechanical contraption thrust into her mouth—no doubt an OldTech scuba device, like you read about in books. Rashid had nothing like that; presumably his armor, supplied to the Sparks by traitors from the stars, had its own air supply.

  “Why did she do that?” Rashid demanded. His voice boomed hollowly inside the helmet. “Couldn’t she guess it was us?”

  “Perhaps,” I answered bitterly. “But I think she decided you needed a lesson. Don’t you know it’s blasphemy, trying to interfere with Mistress Gull?”

  “I’m not interfering!” he growled. “How often do I have to say I’m just here to observe?”

  “Tell that to Cappie. Or Bonnakkut or Dorr.”

  “She was the one with the spear,” he protested. “And she knew about my force field—she saw it on the river bank.”

  “But she didn’t see it later, when it vaporized all those arrows. She didn’t know what it could do.”

  I hadn’t told her. When I talked to Cappie about what happened in the woods, I’d spent all my time describing how quickly Bonnakkut had taken the gun as a bribe—jealous backbiting, instead of telling Cappie what she needed to know.

  Steck pulled the scuba gadget out of her mouth. “The people on the beach have seen us,” she said, pointing.

  “They’ll be putting out boats in a mi
nute.”

  I turned around. Men were running down the docks, heading for the perch boats. It wouldn’t take long for them to slip the mooring lines and grab the oars.

  Rashid grabbed the edge of the landing stage and heaved himself out. “We were just going to ride the pontoons,” he said, “but it looks like we’d better head inside.”

  “You want to ride in Mistress Gull!”

  “Yes,” he snapped. “We’ll see this through all the way.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Steck said to me. She pulled herself up on the landing stage too; since I’d last seen her, she had abandoned her green dress for a skintight suit of green rubber. “If you wait for the boats to get here,” she said, “they’ll all try to spear Rashid. Is that what you want?”

  “And the best thing for Cappie,” Rashid put in, “is to get her to Birds Home. Look at her hands, Fullin! Even my brother the Medicine-Lord couldn’t repair that damage. But if she Commits male or Neut, she’ll be all right. Uninjured and whole.”

  I wanted to scream curses at them both; but I gritted my teeth and said, “Fine—come to Birds Home. Straight to the sanctuary of the gods. Let them decide what you deserve.”

  TWENTY

  A Mechanical Welcome for Rashid

  Steck and I carried Cappie up the steps into Mistress Gull. Cappie was not entirely unconscious; her eyes were closed, but she groaned as we gingerly tried to maneuver her into a seat. I strapped her in, then took the place beside her.

  “You’ll be all right,” I whispered to her. She merely grimaced, either because she disbelieved me or because she was too lost in pain to hear.

  “What happens next?” Rashid asked, flumping into the seat behind me and unscrewing his helmet. “Do we push a button to show we’re ready to take off?”