Three Acts of Penance [01] Attrition: The First Act of Penance

by S. G. Night

  “I…I don’t…” Elias stammered. Then his face blossomed into a gleeful grin. “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver, Thanjel, really. This’ll be more than enough to get the business back on its feet. I can’t wait to tell Eileen….”

  “Your wife, right?”

  Elias nodded, tucking back into his soup, the smile still spreading over his lips as he chewed.

  “I remember her,” Racath said slowly. “She helped us get the new safe house in the city a few years ago, right?”

  “That would be my Eileen, yep,” Elias answered.

  Racath dunked his bread in his soup, pursing his lips. “And you’ve got two kids, right?”

  Elias bobbed his head. “Two little girls, yeah.” He gobbled down a few more bites of soup. “How about you, Thanjel? You got any family?”

  Racath frowned and looked at the table. “Not really. Not since I was a kid. My parents, they…” he trailed off.

  Elias looked at him sadly. “I see. Sorry, friend.”

  “It’s nothing,” Racath muttered. Then a question found his mind. He struggled to keep it back for a moment, then relented. “Elias…do you love your wife?”

  The Human looked up at Racath from his soup, dubious. “She’s a nag and her cooking could be used for compost, but yeah, I love her. A lot, actually….Why do you ask?”

  Embarrassed, Racath shrugged. “I dunno…” He bit his lip nervously. “What’s it like?”

  “What’s what like?” Elias asked, confused. “Being in love?”

  “Yeah.”

  Elias looked at Racath for a long, hard moment. “I forget how young you are sometimes,” he said. “It’s hard to tell. You keep it hidden under that shadowy exterior of yours. How old are you again?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Damn. Really young. How old were you when we met, then? Back when you were my handler?”

  “I had just turned sixteen,” Racath answered.

  “Damn…” Elias repeated, shaking his head nostalgically. “Well, anyway, being in love…” He set his spoon down in the bowl of soup and laced his hands together, seeming to think for a moment. “It’s not easy to describe…I’m not one to wax philosophical either. But it’s like…like…” he made grasping gestures, as if hoping to find words mixed with the tavern air. “Like fire.”

  “Fire?”

  “Yeah,” Elias answered. “Like a fire starting. At first it’s all spark and bright flames bursting up. Makes you feel tingly, excited, it draws you in. But if you leave it, it’ll flare out and die. You have to work at it, feed it and give it something to live on. You can’t smother it, either, or it’ll go out just as quickly. It’s not something for the lazy, or the faint of heart. But if you really have the desire to make it work, you can build a hearth fire out of it, something that’ll keep you warm when winter’s coming. You feed it, it feeds you. And it’s…home. No matter where you go, you’re home, so long as that hearth fire is with you.”

  Racath frowned to himself. “You’re lucky in a way, you know that? Being a Genshwin affords me some freedoms that you Humans lack…but at least no one’s stopping you from having something like that.”

  Elias nodded. “Right…” he remembered. “I’d forgotten that your master was kind of…I dunno, uptight—”

  “The word you’re looking for is crazy,” Racath said bitterly.

  “Yeah. Crazy. About all that stuff.” Elias took another bite of bread then asked: “Why is it he forbids relationships again?”

  Racath rolled his eyes. “He says that romantic entanglement is weakness, that it gives your enemies something to use against you. And that if he let the Genshwin have relationships, have children, we could compromise our infrastructure. Which is kind of true, if you think really hard about it, but not even I’m that cynical. I mean, the man is insane. He utterly fails to understand the fact that our people are on the verge of total destruction. There are maybe three hundred of us left alive, shouldn’t we be, I dunno, trying and reproduce and rebuild our race? No, of course not, that would make too much sense! Instead he makes romantic entanglement a crime!”

  He was very near shouting at this point, and he noticed one or two people were starting to stare at him from other tables. Blushing, he stopped his rant, and returned sullenly to his soup.

  Elias looked at him blankly. “You don’t like your master much, do you?”

  “Does it show?” Racath snorted, trying to keep his voice down this time.

  “A little bit, yeah. But I agree, that’s just idiotic. And cruel.”

  Racath nodded crossly in agreement. They ate in silence for a minute or two. Racath’s ears began to survey the room, just to have something to do. After a moment, he noticed a trio of voices chittering behind the bar: the serving girl, and two of her friends.

  “…Where? Which one?” he heard one of them demand eagerly.

  “That one, over there,”

  “Over where? I can’t see him,”

  “There, at the table in the corner.”

  “What?! The lanky old git in the raggedy shirt? Jess, have ya lost yer—”

  “Not that one, stupid, the other one, the one next to him in the cloak.”

  “Ohhhh…well, faul me sideways. He’ll do, now won’t he.”

  “Dammit, Jess, how come you always get the good ones? S’not fair.”

  “Well, girls, if ya’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go grab me some o’ the brandy-tap and—”

  “Oh, no ya don’t, Ruth, I saw him first!”

  “Alright, alright! Ya selfish bint...but I expect a vivid report later on, deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Some giggling followed, and then a moment of silence. Racath frowned into his soup, perplexed. He was about to try to restart his conversation with Elias when the serving girl came by and interrupted him.

  “Everything alright over here?” She asked with a toothy smile.

  Both men nodded.

  She looked at Racath, like she was expecting something. “Nuthin’ else I can get for ya, luv?”

  Racath shook his head. He could have sworn her bodice was lower than before.

  “Ya sure?” the serving girl asked, drawing the word out meaningfully. “Nuthin’ at all? No more ale? Maybe some of our red wine? Glass of brandy-tap?”

  The Majiski gave her a puzzled look. “No…thank you, I’m fine.”

  The serving girl huffed a little and stalked away.

  Elias gave Racath an appraising stare, then made a face like he was holding back laughter.

  “What?” Racath demanded.

  “You don’t spend much time in this city, do you?” Elias observed.

  “This is my first visit in a few years. What’s your point?”

  Elias rolled his eyes. “Not only are you younger than you look, you’re a lot more naïve, too.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That girl was coming onto you, idiot,” Elias said, enunciating each word as if talking to a simpleton. “Brandy-tap isn’t a drink, it’s something that Milonok barmaids offer to a customer they’re interesting in sleeping with.”

  Racath felt a hot flush rising in his ears. His eyes dropped involuntarily to his soup bowl. “Oh…I didn’t realize—”

  “I can tell,” Elias cut him off, stifling another laugh. “Don’t look so confused, Thanjel. You might not realize it, but you’re a fine lookin’ kid. If I’d had your looks when I was your age, the girls would have been hanging off me everywhere I went.”

  Racath mumbled incoherent. He could feel himself blushing, his enigmatic façade crumbling away into his potato soup.

  Suddenly, Elias regained his composure and arched a pensive eyebrow at Racath. “Thanjel…” he said slowly. “Mind if I ask a question?”

  “I would never stop you from asking,” Racath replied.

  “Okay then…” Elias began. “Are your kind….What exactly makes a Majiski different? From Humans, I mean.”

  Racath frowned at him. “How do you mean?”

>   “You know,” Elias said, making a vague gesture. “Physically. I mean, if any Human man of your age had gotten an offer like that from a girl like her, he’d be gone in a heartbeat. I honestly expected you to take off with her and leave me here. But you missed it entirely—”

  “Yes, we’ve established that.”

  “But also,” Elias continued. “When you talk about your master…you make it sound like he has no trouble keeping all you young Genshwin in line about the whole entanglement thing.” He grinned. “Trust me, if you put three hundred young and spry Humans together in a fortress and tell them not to go at each other, you bet your skin they’d be at it like rabbits. But you Majiski aren’t…so I’m wondering, is there anything…different about your people in that regard.”

  Racath knew what Elias was getting at, and he wracked his brains for what little knowledge of natural constitution Mrak’s library had provided for him.

  “There are a few things,” he started carefully. “We develop differently than your kind. You already know some of the differences, like the shape of our eyes, or our strength and speed. Other than that, a Majiski child could easily pass for Human.

  “But when we hit adolescence, we develop a markara on our arms — something we Genshwin keep hidden under our Shadows that look like…I don’t know, organic tattoos. Everyone’s markara is different. We use it to shape and direct magic. At that point, our bodies also start to grow muscle, which doesn’t decay like a Human’s does if it goes unused for too long. Excess energy goes into rebuilding dead muscle tissue, since we can only store a limited amount of body fat. And our adrenaline is different too — it’s called etheria. It makes our reflexes and combative instincts work overtime.

  “We age at the same rate as you until we’re about twenty-five, but then the aging slows down. By the time a Majiski has reached the same physical age of an elderly Human, we’re usually around two-hundred years old.”

  Elias listened closely, watching the Majiski with rapt attention. “Fascinating…” he whispered. “And what about in terms of...” he dropped his voice bashfully. “…procreation?”

  Racath almost laughed at the Human’s question. “As far as I know, we share the same processes, if that’s what you mean. But our…attentions develop differently. As you said, young men of your race have strong urges to…”

  “Chase after young, blushing serving girls?” Elias contributed.

  “To put it bluntly, yes,” Racath chuckled. “Majiski do not. You Humans develop emotional attachment as a result of physical attraction, right?”

  Elias waggled his hand back and forth. “More or less.”

  “My people are the same, but reversed,” Racath explained. “From what little I’ve been able to read, in the time before the Demons came, the Majiski were known universally as romantics. Our desires, our urges to breed, are, for the most part, not impulsive. A Majiski might find a potential mate attractive, but won’t necessarily be attracted to them. The physical attraction stems as a direct result from the development of an emotional relationship.”

  “That’s strange,” Elias commented, furrowing his eyebrows.

  Racath shrugged. “We’re a lot like wolves in a way — in fact, in old texts, wolves are often allegorically for my race. While Humans take one mate and then stay with them for a lifetime, that’s really the result of societal expectations of fidelity. You aren’t biologically driven to remain faithful. Wolves, like Majiski, find a single mate and stay with them for the rest of their lives. Not only are we emotionally and socially tethered to our mates, but also attuned to each other’s chemistry.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  Rolling his eyes, Racath interjected. “When two Majiski grow very intimate emotionally and fall in love, the physical attraction begins. When they first mate, their physiologies and psychologies mesh. We call it the Mingling. After that, the appetites remain, but only for each other. And the physical attraction toward each other never fades, either. Most Majiski can’t be attracted at all by anyone other than their spouse.”

  Elias sat in silence for a moment. “Hmm,” he said finally. “That’s…interesting. But…”

  “Yes?”

  The Human hesitated a moment, then asked. “If Majiski couples never lose interest in each other…then why did the Majiski never…run rampant and overpopulate the world? You’d think you’d be having babies left and right.”

  Racath smiled knowingly. “And in that’s another wolfish thing about us. Your females go through monthly blood-cycles, yes?”

  Elias snorted and nodded. “You have no idea. Why, do you not have that?”

  Racath shook his head.

  “Lucky bastard.”

  “There are several things that make it difficult for my people to have children,” Racath elaborated. “Such as the lack of innate carnal desire. There were dozens of theories as to why that makes any sense from a physiological standpoint, and the best explanation I can think of is that, in a society like the old Io — where Elves, Humans and Majiski coexisted — it was specifically for the purpose of preventing overpopulation. So that, during our long life spans, we don’t spawn like rabbits and take over everything. But that’s operating under the assumption that the old Jedan God’s plan for coexistence was, indeed, divinely instituted.

  “Regardless,” he continued quickly before Elias could get too tangled up in the previous statement. “For whatever reason, we are designed to reproduce slowly. So, unlike you, we cannot conceive during a broad window every month. Like wolves, Majiski females have four or five heats during their lifetimes.

  “In the past, Majiski would typically find spouses at about the age of twenty, twenty-five. The female cycles begin after the Mingling, but the process is much more drawn out than yours. While a Majiski couple would mate just as often — or more so — than a Human couple, we can only conceive during the female’s heat. The first heat comes about a year after the Mingling occurs. The subsequent ones follow every forty years or so. Each heat lasts about a year, but end as soon as there’s a conception — only one child with every heat.”

  Elias frowned. “A year? That’s an awfully large window.”

  “It needs to be,” Racath replied. “Another factor working against us is the integrity of our own bodies. We don’t get sick, our immune systems are too robust. Unfortunately, that means our bodies will involuntarily attack and destroy foreign contaminants.” He gave Elias a significant look. “Any foreign contaminant.”

  “Ahh….” Elias made an understanding face. “I see.”

  “Right,” Racath said. “Hence the wide window and the intensified urge to mate with one’s spouse during heat.”

  “I gotcha,” Elias nodded. “I imagine that’ll only make it harder for you, though. Saving your race, I mean. You already have so many factors working against you.”

  “We’ll manage, I hope,” Racath said quietly.

  Elias gave Racath a thorough look. “You have a strange way of talking about this, you know that?”

  Racath cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “You keep using all these fancy, technical sounding words,” Elias explained. “I don’t know anyone who would explain those kinds of things without resorting to all sorts of innuendos and pretense. Don’t get me wrong, I’m an architect, I understand the need for jargon. But last I checked physiology isn’t something an assassin would take his time to educate himself on.”

  Racath shrugged. “My master has books. I like to read. And I like understanding things. Knowledge is power, I figure. Why else would the Demons try their best to stamp most of it out?”

  “Fair point,” Elias conceded.

  Something prickled at Racath’s curiosity, something he’d been meaning to ask. “Might I ask my own question, Elias?”

  “Go ahead,” Elias prompted, waving him on.

  Racath paused, unsure of where to start. “Everyone in Io…all of us have suffered because of the Demons. Both my kind and yours. But…we’
ve suffered in different ways. I’ve spent most of my life with the Genshwin. The few years before that, I lived in hiding in the mountains, away from the Dominion. We’ve all been oppressed, sure. No one’s really free anymore. But, as a Genshwin, my life has been freer than it might have been. I have the means and the ability to live outside of the Dominion’s direct control. I might not be lawfully afforded any rights, but at least I’m able to take some of them for myself. A Genshwin’s life is very, very different from a Human’s. And so I’m wondering…what is it like for you? For Humans? How do the Demons affect you, day to day?”

  Elias made a face and blew out a sigh. “That’s a big question. I don’t really know how to answer. I mean, I’ve never known anything other than the Dominion. Neither did my father. My granddad did, I think, but he never really talked about what life was like before the Wall went up. Too scared, I guess.

  “It’s a bit different for me, though,” he gestured at Racath. “I’m a little more in the loop than most people. I mean, you’ve been in hiding so long, pretty much everyone think of you as a myth now. And the Demons only reinforce that, telling stories about how Majiski are like gremlins who steal children from their beds. But I know differently.”

  “And that’s hard for you?”

  “Sometimes,” Elias admitted. “But not always. The Genshwin haven’t shown me much, but I know more of the shape of the world than most.” He looked down into his bowl; the soup was gone now. “But my life is touched by the Demons just like everyone else’s. I was raised on their religion, their gods, taught my trade by their tutors. I avoided enslavement, thank heaven, but only because I hire out my business to the Dominion from time to time. Like everyone else, every Simtag I’m made to worship at the shrines and contribute some voluntary service,” he almost spat the words. “to the Church. Their taxes are brutal. Their laws are oppressive. They restrict the hell out of Human-owned enterprise. They’re inspections are tyrannical. And…” he trailed off.

  “And?” Racath said expectantly.

  Elias took a hesitant look around the taproom, then leaned closer to Racath. “All of that stuff can be lived with, can be tolerated,” he said, his voice low and conspiratorial. “What really gets you is the fear. The fear that grabs you whenever one of their Goblin hordes comes into town. The fear that chokes you when you see a guard eying your wife. The fear that, at any moment, you could say or do something that they don’t like and they’ll just kill you. No hesitation, no explanation, no nothing. Just dead.” Elias’ eyes were wide and his face was stiff and brittle as thin ice. “That is what life is like. It’s fear. Every moment of every day. It starts to fade into the background after a while, but it’s still there. Quiet. Hiding.”