by J. C. Staudt
“Is there something you require, Brother Travers?”
“Nope.”
Bastille laid down the scalpel she’d been cleaning. “Why don’t you read to us for a few minutes? Sister Severin, do you mind?”
“No, kind Sister,” the acolyte replied, marking her place.
Brother Travers flipped to the beginning of his book. When he began to read aloud, his eyes darted across the page with an effortless boredom that he conveyed through his toneless delivery and rushed enunciation. “Advancements in the field of surgery have shifted in recent years from a focus on medical knowledge to one of improved technique and methodology…”
Sister Bastille let him go on for several minutes before she stopped him. “That’s enough, Brother Travers. You read as if you’ve done quite a lot of it.”
“I grew up on Spearhead Point, working merchant vessels on the Slickwash. The captain of a ship I was on for a while was a book enthusiast. He taught me to read and let me borrow from his collection whenever I wanted. Lots of time for reading aboard ships.”
“Fascinating. And you, Sister Severin? How did you learn to read?”
“My mother taught me,” she said. “I didn’t want to learn at first, but she made me. She told me it was good for me, that I’d find a use for it someday. Now I’m here, and… seems she was right.”
Whenever Sister Severin opened her mouth, Bastille couldn’t help but think of the sound her teeth had made when they crunched into the flesh of that dead mouse. This one will do what she must to fit in around here. That should prove a useful insight to keep in mind. “Indeed, your mother was right. Plenty of reading yet to be done for you both. Please continue to read to yourselves quietly.”
Silence resumed for a few moments.
“Sister Steel?”
“It’s Bastille, Brother Travers. Yes, what is it?”
“Is this all we’re going to be doing in here?”
“What you will be doing in here, kind Brother, is exactly what I instruct you to do. Today, I have instructed you to read.”
“When are you going to teach us the rites?”
“When you have finished reading.”
“I’m finished.”
She looked up at him. “Read something else.”
“I’d really like to start in on some hands-on stuff. I’m good with my hands. It’s how I learn best.”
It’s how most people learn best… which is why I’m not letting you do it. “All in due time, kind Brother. Each of us must earn our stripes. It’s only your first day. Have a little patience.”
“The other acolytes are calling you the surgeon priestess.”
“Beg pardon?”
“They say you’re the only one left.”
“The only one of what?” Bastille asked, knowing full well what he meant.
“The only one who can make Cypriests. Until you teach us to.”
“I have little tolerance for insubordination in my classroom, Brother Travers. I’ve told you several times now that our class period today is to be spent in study. There will be opportunity for hands-on learning in the future.”
“Do you do it for the Order?”
Bastille was growing angry now. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Do you perform the Enhancements as a show of your devotion to the Order?”
“Everything I do is for the Order—and none of it for show. Why else would I do it?”
“So people will like you.”
“That’s an impertinent thing to say. Being liked is an unfortunate byproduct of being needed. Though I do sometimes wonder if anyone appreciates all the other things I do around here.”
“I do,” he said with a grin.
“You don’t even know what I do.”
“I appreciate it, though.”
Aren’t we droll. “Read, Brother Travers. Or I’ll report your disobedience to the high priests and let them deal with you.”
Bastille resumed her work, shaking her head in annoyance. This young man is too inquisitive by far. He’ll soon learn where asking too many questions gets him. She could already tell she was going to have trouble stalling one so eager to learn. What an ironic turn of events, she thought. I’ve been hoping for a talented student for so long. Yet now that I’ve found one with potential, I suspect the high priests are plotting to get rid of me. What I wouldn’t give to have my previous class of acolytes back again. Those three were as promising as a thief’s honesty.
It wasn’t until a few days later that Brother Travers finally called Sister Bastille’s bluff. “We’re wasting our time with all this reading,” he said, tossing his book on the floor, where it hit the stone with a loud smack. “Why should we have to wade through thousands of pages of useless drivel when you already know everything you need to teach us?”
“What’s your hurry, Brother Travers? Do you fear you have anything less than a lifetime with the Order in which to become proficient?”
That seemed to hit a nerve. “Bring me to the high priests if you think I’m out of line, but I’ve seen women in charge before, and it never ended well. I say the longer you’re the only one with the experience here, the worse off we’ll all be.”
Bastille inhaled through her nose. Without a word, she rose and went into the back room. The gurney’s wheels squeaked as she pushed it into place beside her cold lockers and unloaded the corpse of one of the two initiates who had died during the most recent recruitment period. A bony man of about thirty, he had a small nose, thinning brown hair, and one arm that was noticeably shorter than the other.
This was the initiate who had fallen victim to the contamination in his gut. Bastille had seen Brother Travers sitting with him at meals a few times during their initiation. She could smell the rot when she opened the locker door, and she knew that what festered within his swollen belly was likely worse than any novice could overcome.
Wheeling the body into the front room, Bastille slid him onto the slab and pushed the gurney away. Then she removed her robes and instructed the two acolytes to do the same. Now we shall see how bad off we are, she promised. “Sister Severin, if you’d be so kind as to stand to my right. Brother Travers—behind the slab, if you please.”
Both acolytes did as they were told. Brother Travers blinked when he saw who the corpse belonged to. Bastille handed him a scalpel and stepped aside. “The sternum is the long frontal bone of the chest to which the ribs are attached by the costal cartilages. The small extension of cartilage at the lower end of the sternum is called the xiphoid process. Brother Travers, are you left-handed or right-handed?”
“Left-handed,” he replied, licking his lips.
“With your right hand, please locate the xiphoid process.”
With some reluctance, Brother Travers placed two fingers at the base of the corpse’s sternum, shivering in the cold of the room. “Okay.”
“The scalpel in your left hand has a number-ten blade with a number-three graduated handle. Assume the palmar grip by holding the handle between your thumb and middle finger. Place your pointer finger above and behind the blade to provide downward pressure, and extend your index finger to serve as a guide. Make a midline incision starting at the base of the xiphoid process, following the linea alba, curving around the umbilicus, and ending just above the pubic symphysis.”
Brother Travers gave her a sidelong glance, his face white as milk.
“Something wrong, kind Brother? You’ve had several class periods to review the provided texts. I’m sure by now you’ve familiarized yourself with the requisite terminology.”
The acolyte’s brow deepened. His mouth took on a determined wrinkle. He set the blade below the two fingers of his left hand. After a deep breath, he began his incision. The cut was clumsy, and not at all straight. When he was done, Travers lifted the scalpel and looked to Sister Bastille for guidance.
She stepped over to inspect his work. “You’ve barely broken the skin. There’s a layer of muscle and collagen which must be penetrated
before we can gain access to the viscera. Try again, Brother Travers. Add more pressure this time—but not too much.”
Travers began again. This time, when the blade sliced through the muscle, the corpse’s bulging abdomen deflated with a hollow belching sound. There was a wet, rancid smell that made Brother Travers stop where he was. He swayed on his feet, eyes rolling back. Then he leaned over to conceal his face behind the slab and grunted. Something splashed on the flagstones.
Sister Bastille had to smile. “Are we ready to continue?”
Travers let the scalpel clatter to the slab and fell to his hands and knees, where he gave the flagstones a second washing. His dreadlocks hung heavy and limp, soaking in the puddle.
No? Alright, then. “Sister Severin, kindly help Brother Travers to the privy.”
When the acolytes returned twenty minutes later, they found the corpse removed from the stone slab and Sister Bastille back at her desk. “There are two mops in the back room,” she told them. “Brother Travers, I trust you’re feeling well enough to spend the rest of today’s class helping Sister Severin tidy my floor, which you’ve so deftly defiled.”
Sister Severin rolled her eyes and groaned.
Travers gave a pained nod and shuffled off to get the mops.
CHAPTER 9
Conscription
Lizneth had finally made it back to Tanley, but life in her small village was hardly back to normal. She had told her family the whole story of her travels, starting with her recreational trip to Bolck-Azock and ending with her journey through the blind-world with Neacal Griogan and his calaihn. She reserved the more accurate version for when the nestlings weren’t around, which happened so seldom it took her quite a while to relate the whole of her journey’s events to her parents. She told them everything, except that she had taken a mate while she was abroad.
Not a day passed in those early days of her return to Tanley that Lizneth did not fear Sniverlik’s wrath. News of the war with the calaihn came often and was frequently accompanied by some dire prediction about the conflict’s outcome. ‘The calaihn will win and drive us all into slavery,’ some said. ‘Sniverlik will win, and we’ll all be back where we started,’ others claimed.
The news came from all over, but the truth was never easy to discern. One day someone would claim Sniverlik had all but driven the calaihn back to their homes; the next, Neacal Griogan’s calaihn had somehow gained the upper hand and were pushing deeper into ikzhe territory. The morale of the villagers seemed to sway from one extreme to the other on a near-daily basis. But for that first nerve-wracking stretch of time, war never reached Tanley.
It was on a particularly trying evening, after a day in which Lizneth’s brothers and sisters had been as boisterous a bunch as they were capable of, that war did come to Tanley. Not by means of a battle, but in the arrival of an army.
Lizneth had just begun telling the tale of the Lake and the Cotterphage—a yarn she had spun at least half a dozen times since her homecoming, to a crowd that had grown with each retelling—when the outer tunnels came alive with an ear-splitting racket, the likes of which she had never heard before. The goatbrothers Nurnik and Skee lost interest in Lizneth’s story and hurried off on their staves, returning to their herds to guide them up the high road to the moonwell for the night’s grazing. Several frightened nestlings scampered off for the safety of their homes while Lizneth’s siblings crowded around her.
“To the mulligraws. Quickly now,” she instructed, though she wasn’t sure who or what was coming.
Together they ran for the family fields, diving through the underbrush and tucking themselves between the leafy folds. When they were all safe inside, Lizneth crept to the edge nearest the path and poked her snout through for a scent. The mulligraws hung fat and crisp from tall green vines wet with dew. Above their earthy aromas Lizneth scented something familiar: a salt-damp haick, slick and clear blue.
When the first of the troops marched around the tunnel bend, Lizneth saw her nose hadn’t failed her. It was a sizeable force, loud with the rumbling of gruff voices and the clinking of rough-hewn armor, like an avalanche of pots and kettles. There was no stealth or espionage in their manner; no strategy in their movement. Such things were left to the burrow-kin and the bolck-zhehn, who survived their close proximity to the hu-mans only by going unnoticed.
It was the first time Lizneth had seen the Marauders since the battle in the above-world. They stamped down the road and crossed the river bridge, where the deserted banks showed muddy signs of their recent occupants. These were not the same Marauders who had faced Neacal’s calaihn on the mountain ridge, Lizneth realized. The column was loose and disorganized. The soldiers’ garb and weaponry was newly-forged; their armor gleamed in the dark, absent of the markings and ablation of battle. Reinforcements, then… or fresh recruits, she surmised.
In the village square—or what might’ve passed for one, if Tanley had possessed a proper square—the Marauders dispersed into an amorphous cluster and carried on with their noisy banter. All across the frontage of nearby shops and cottages, Lizneth saw windows shuttered and curtains drawn. These defenses were soon rendered ineffectual, for out of the mob emerged a brown-and-white banded buck Lizneth knew all too well. Rotabak, once Sniverlik’s lowly foot soldier, was now kradacht over this entire contingent of Marauders. She knew it by the zithstone amulet which hung about his neck—a far smaller stone than the one Sniverlik carried in his scepter, but a symbol of power among the Marauders nonetheless.
A ripple formed in the crowd as Rotabak shoved his way through and lumbered up the rise toward the mulligraw fields. Lizneth shrank back from the edge, though the massive buck didn’t seem to have noticed her. She felt movement at her feet and looked down to see little Raial cowering between her legs, his arms wrapped around her shins and his tiny claws digging into the flesh of her calves. She dared not say a word, so instead she lowered a hand to stroke him behind the ears. Further back through the foliage, she could see two more dark balls of fur, Hasquol and her little sister Thrin, their eyes bright with curiosity and fear. Where are the others? Lizneth wondered with sudden panic. But there was no time to look for them, and no way to do so without rustling the vines.
Reaching the top of the rise, Rotabak turned to face his guzpikhehn; they in turn quieted and gave him their attention. “Vilck-zhehn,” he began, and his voice boomed through the depths and echoed from house to house along the village road. “Se chevehr. Se chevehr ungh furgesch dyur twozhehn ungh dyur cuzhehn. Tanagh shekh chevehr, nugh azhbol Sniverlik-eh.”
A silence fell over Tanley. The Marauders glanced around, searching for the brave soul who would be the first to respond to the order. For some time, no one did.
Then a door opened, and two elderly ikzhehn stepped into the street. Lizneth recognized them at once: Rhi and Taznik, one of the poorest old couples in Tanley. They were potters, and like Lizneth’s own parents, their age had begun to hinder their work. Perhaps the couple’s most notable trait, however, was that they were Sniverlik’s adoptive parents.
Rhi offered a hand to help his mate step down onto the hard-packed road that ran past their modest cottage. His chin-fur was snowy white, as were the thick patches covering his chest and back. Taznik was a petite dam of meek carriage, but Mama said she had never lacked for conviction. One would’ve needed a firm temperament in order to raise a buck like Sniverlik. It was probably Taznik’s idea that they be first to stand and be counted, Lizneth reflected.
Slowly, other doors began to open. Villagers came reluctantly forth, bringing their young and their old alike, just as Rotabak had commanded. By Sniverlik’s order, he had said. Lizneth had watched the Marauders take tithes of food and supplies and nestlings many times before, but this was different. There was an urgency to this visit that belied the Marauders’ usual reckless bullying, as if the calai invasion had suddenly made them the local heroes by default.
When Rotabak spoke again, his tone was informal. He used the Aion-speech an
d picked up where Sniverlik’s command had left off. “Step forward, all of you. Each and every resident of Tanley is required to present himself for inspection and delegation.”
Delegation? thought Lizneth. Delegation to what? A new movement in the foliage to her right caught her attention. Malak, ever the bravest of her young siblings, was making his way through the mulligraws, following Rotabak’s decree. Lizneth considered making a grab for him before he could emerge, but her little brother was too far out of reach.
“I can fight,” said Malak as he marched out into the open, bold as a billy goat.
Rotabak turned to squint at the nestling, whose head came just shy of the Marauder’s waist when he stood on his hind legs. “Can you, now?” he said with a laugh. “Why don’t you go down and stand with the others?”
“I’ll stay up here with you,” Malak insisted.
“You’ll go where I tell you, or I’ll make sure you…” Rotabak broke off, as if unable to find the words to scold the youngling. “Alright. You stay with me. But you stand still, and you pay attention. Say, where’d you come from?”
Malak shrugged, then pointed sheepishly at the mulligraws.
Rotabak whirled. His whiskers twitched, flexed like steel wires. He began to pace along the first row of vines, sniffing the air and peering through the leaves. Lizneth shuddered when his gaze slid past her, certain she’d been spotted. He stopped for a moment, so close she could see the twitching lid of his lazy eye, thin and pink and hairless. Lizneth held her breath. Then Rotabak continued on down the row, speaking as though he weren’t quite sure who he was talking to, or who to scent for.
“Out of there, you. Out, now… if you’re in there. This is the only warning I’m going to give you. Come out, or I’ll come in and get you.”
Lizneth didn’t move. She was gripping the scruff of little Raial’s neck with one hand and the hilt of her dagger with the other, ready to run or fight. She’d taken to wearing the dagger around town since she’d been home, though all she got for it was flak from the villagers, who said she was better off leaving such things outside of town where they belonged.
