by Nathan Long
Lhan looked over the side again, chewing his lip. “It is a lovely sentiment, Mistress, but… but I must think.”
“Take your time.”
I leaned back on the rail and looked around, just happy to be out in the fresh air instead of our stuffy little cabin, but then I saw something that made me cock my head. There were some barrels under a little awning behind the cookhouse, which was up at the front of the ship near where we were leaning, and as I glanced past them I saw a balding head bob up behind them, then disappear again. At first I thought it was somebody cleaning up a spill, but then the head came up again and I saw it was the bean counter, Yal-Faen.
His head disappeared behind the barrels again, then came up again a second later. Was he looking for a contact? Was he shooting craps? Then I noticed that he kept crossing his wrists in front of his mopey, red-lipped face and whispering to himself.
I nudged Lhan. “Ain’t that Aur-Aun’s bookkeeper?”
He looked around, then frowned. “So it is.”
“What the hell is he doing?”
“It appears he is praying, Mistress.”
“Oh. Uh, to the Seven?”
“I would presume so.”
“So, should we be worried?”
“Worried?”
“Well, we’re kinda fighting the Seven right now, right? So isn’t it a little weird for one of our gang to be praying to them?”
He shrugged. “I think you will find the Aldhanan and his men still worship the Seven. They do not see this as a war against the gods, only the church, which they believe has corrupted the original teaching of the Seven.”
“Okay. So why is he praying behind those barrels? I mean if you wanted to pray in private, wouldn’t you pray in your cabin?”
“But he shares a cabin with Aur-Aun. He—” Lhan stopped, blinking. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Maybe he’s praying for something he doesn’t want Aur-Aun to know about.”
Lhan nodded. “You make an excellent point, Mistress. I shall warn the Aldhanan.”
“Good plan. Meanwhile, I’m gonna watch that little dish-rag like a hawk.”
“Aye, Mistress. I as well. Er, what is a hawk?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
RIOT!
After my fourth day in the stateroom from hell, I finally heard the magic words I’d been waiting for. Up on the deck Captain Ku-Rho was calling for gas to be let out of the bag, and for the crew to pull in the sails and clear the deck for landing.
Thank god!
It was after dark when we went up on deck to wait for touch down, but both moons were up and full so I got a good look at Rivi as we came down over it, all picturesque with its rooftops frosted in the moonlight. It was built in a little bowl of a valley, with the market square and the temples down in the middle, and all these little round-topped houses climbing up the sides of the surrounding hills like six-sided bee-hives. At the top of the highest hill was a sturdy little hexagonal castle with sandy walls, a couple of fat towers sticking up, and dome roofs on all the structures inside. That’s where we were heading.
It was all so pretty from up there it should have been a travel poster, but while we’d all been cooped up in our stateroom, Master Shal-Hau had told us—in way too much detail—that the place was hurting bad. It was an agricultural town. All the hillsides that didn’t have houses on them had been cut into steps like rice paddies, and they grew a kind of vegetable called an Uehl Bean. At least they did when there was any rain, but over the past few years the rains had been coming less and less often, and the farmers had had to buy water from the Temple, which had cut their profits down to nothing. Half the step-farms on the hills had gone out of business in the last two years and were just sitting there dry. The town was becoming a ghost town, and also, Sei-Sien said, a hotbed for anti-church heretics, who held their secret meetings—according to his sources—in the back room of the farmer’s guild hall. He was all excited to have a enthusiastic audience. I was just excited to be out of the funk of unwashed heretic and old-man farts I’d been living in. I wanted to breathe and stretch my legs.
We came down onto a leveled off landing area right outside the castle gate, while a ground crew with lanterns waved us down to the mooring rings.
I looked over at the Aldhanan, who was standing at attention behind Aur-Aun like the guard captain he was supposed to be, the satchel full of water tokens slung over one shoulder.
I gave him a nod. He returned it.
Then the landing crew caught our lines, threaded ’em through the rings and winched us down. It was showtime. The sailors trundled out the gangplank, then stood aside as we all walked down to meet the welcoming party that was marching out of the castle gate—a bunch of guards and nobles with a big, grizzled guy up front. He had long hair and scars, and he was barking at us before we got halfway to him.
“Back again, Aur-Aun? Was it not only yesterday you cut my heart out and called it six percent? This time it’ll have to be my head, for there’s no other way I’ll let you take what I don’t have.”
Aur-Aun gave him a quarter-inch smile. “The same complaint, Gura? And yet you always pay in the end.”
“Aye. It is my end that pays, that is certain.” He crossed his wrists and bowed to Aur-Aun, then clapped him on the shoulder. “It is bad, though, brother. This year worse than ever.”
Up close he looked like half a dozen old bikers I’ve known in my time—weathered face, easy-going eyes, drinker’s nose, hard arms and a beer gut. Except for the purple skin he woulda fit in at any road house in America. He turned back toward the castle and motioned for us to follow.
“Come in. Come in. I can at least give you a drink to wash away the disappointment my coffers will—”
“Gura-Nan.”
“Eh?” The Dhanan turned, and frowned around. “Who spoke?”
The Aldhanan pulled back the hood of his cloak a little, and smiled at him. “Do not speak my name.”
Gura sputtered like he’d swallowed his tongue. “My—my…”
“I am but a captain, friend. And a thirsty one. You mentioned wine?”
Gura reeled in his eyes, which had been bugging out like a Boston terrier’s, then laughed. “Aye, Captain. Wine. And stories, I’ve no doubt. Come then. I need a drink now, that’s certain.”
As Aur-Aun and his men followed the Dhanan into the castle, the Aldhanan looked back at us and bowed.
“Best of luck with your tithe gathering, Priestess.”
“Likewise, Captain.”
Little red-lipped Yal-Faen took a last leery look back at us as he scurried after his boss, then vanished into the castle with the rest of ’em.
“He’s gonna try something, I know it.”
“He will be in the presence of the Aldhanan and Aur-Aun, Mistress. And they have been warned to watch him. What can he do?”
“I don’t know. But I wish I was gonna be around to stop him doing it.”
***
Rivi was as bad as Sei-Sien had painted it. Worse, actually. I’d seen towns like this back home—Carolina textile towns that had dried up into bitter little husks when all the jobs moved overseas, dust bowl cow towns after drought had wiped out the local ranches. The farmers were still here, too stuck in their ways to move on, but they were like zombies, wandering around like they were in town on business just like the old days, except all the stores were closed down, and they had nothing to sell at the exchanges. The only places open were the bars.
As we got closer to the center of town I started to see them on every corner, ratty little places with leathery red-necks—maroon-necks?—sitting outside or standing in the doorways, all with the thousand-yard stares of men who were putting as much hard work into their drinking as they used to put into their farms. The bars were as quiet as funeral homes. No laughter. No singing. Just, every now and then, the occasional shout and smash of a fight, but even those sounded tired.
This, it turned out, was a bad place to be a priestess of Laef. Well, it was a ba
d place to be a fake priestess of Laef. A real one woulda cleaned up.
It started as we were passing the third bar. One of those poor dead-eyed bastards looked up and stared after me as we walked by, then he nudged his buddy. A second later they were standing up and calling after me.
“Priestess! Come back!”
“A blessing. Please! For a farmer down on his luck.”
We kept walking, but now everybody was standing, and more were coming out of the bars and crowding the porches. A guy got in front of us and crossed his wrists to me.
“I beg you, Priestess. We have not seen rain this season.”
“Nor the last,” said another guy.
A woman caught my arm. “I have nothing to feed my children. If you could grant us only enough to live on.”
They were all around me now, pulling on me, holding their hands out to me, looking at me like I was their last hope. I couldn’t deal with it. I started to sweat.
“I—I’m not— I can’t—”
Lhan and Shal-Hau spread their arms, trying to shield me. Sei-Sien, the dumb-ass, started shoving guys away.
“Back, layabouts! Let us through! We are on important business!”
Lhan pulled him back, but it was too late. In a split second the crowd went from pleading to pissed. They started surging around, grabbing and pushing and shouting. I was starting to wish I had my sword, but it was back on the ship. Didn’t go with the costume.
“What is more important than saving our lives!”
“Stuck up bitch!”
“Too busy fucking your escorts to help honest farmers?”
“Why don’t you give us a fuck?”
“Won’t make up for dead beans, but at least we’ll get laid.”
Shal-Hau was covering his head and Lhan was doing his best to protect me, but Sei-Sien was swatting and shouting at them, and I could feel a rage coming on too. I tried to hold it down. I didn’t want to hurt these people. They had a right to be pissed. But if one more of ’em grabbed for my tits…
“Goddamn it, I can’t help you! I’m not—”
Lhan cut me off with a shove, then stepped in front of me and raised his arms. “Friends! Friends, listen! We are here to help, I promise you! Please! Listen!”
The crowd quieted down and waited, like a ring of wolves.
I gave Lhan a sidelong glance. “Hope you know what you’re doing, bro.”
“As do I.” He spread his hands. “Friends, forgive us. Priestess Le-Cir cannot bless you individually, but we go now to the farmer’s guild hall where she will bless all of Rivi and its residents collectively.”
I practically did a spit take. I hissed in his ear. “What are you doing? You said I wouldn’t have to do any of that—”
He ignored me. “Please, friends! Follow us now to the guild hall and you will all receive Laef’s blessing!”
The crowd cheered and started down the street, pulling us along with them like we were driftwood on a river. Shal-Hau and Sei-Sien were giving Lhan looks just as dirty as I was.
“You call me fool?” Sei hissed. “At least out here we might have run. In the guild hall we will be trapped.”
Shal-Hau nodded. “Truly, Lhan. I see no good outcome here.”
I motioned around at the crowd. “Whaddaya expect me to do for these guys? Tell jokes?”
Lhan grimaced and gave me an uneasy look. “Er, well, the traditional blessing is given in the form of a seductive dance, I don’t suppose…?”
“No fucking way, Lhan. Not without a bottle of Jim Beam first, and even then, unless you think the Texas Two Step is seductive, I’m fresh out. I ain’t never been a stripper.”
They all looked at me like I’d started talking Swahili.
“Right. Sorry. Short answer. No. I don’t dance.”
Shal-Hau cleared his throat. “There is another traditional ceremony, but it, er, involves a partner.”
I didn’t know what he meant until I saw Lhan go from lavender to mauve.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CEREMONY!
I turned on Shal-Hau, ready to slap the shit out of him, even if he was an old man. “Are you out of your mind? You think I’m going to say yes to live sex on stage when I said no to the hoochie-koo? No way!”
“Indeed,” said Lhan. “I refuse to share so intimate an act before a crowd. Besides, we are not—”
Sei-Sien clutched his arm, angry. “You must do something! If you reneg on your promise they will tear us apart!”
“And whose fault is that? It was you who angered them in the first place!”
Shal-Hau separated them. “Easy, friends. We are here.”
I looked up. We were being carried up the steps of a big hexagonal building with a decorative band of curly-cue vines and stylized fruits and veggies running around the top just under the eaves. A statue of a chick who looked a hell of a lot like me in my current get-up stood out front on a pedestal, holding a basket of fruit on her hip and a wine bottle in her other hand. Shal-Hau had been right, Laef was a strapping gal.
A trio of older guys in robes that had the same curly-cues and vegetables on their collars and cuffs stood at the top of the steps looking down at everybody with confused frowns on their faces.
The guy in the middle stepped forward. Even in his robes of office, he still looked like a farmer—a sun-blasted face and big, hard hands. “What is this?”
One of the crowd bowed to him. “Guild-master, a priestess of Laef comes to bless us. She invited us to the hall.”
The guild master looked at us, eyebrow raised. “And to what do we owe this unexpected honor?”
Lhan was going to say something, but Sei-Sien stepped ahead of him and made a funny sign with his left hand while hiding it from the crowd. It was like he was giving the guild-master the finger, except he was using the ring finger instead of the middle finger.
“I can explain everything, brother.”
The guild-master looked from Sei-Sien to his finger to me, and then the crowd. Then shrugged and bowed.
“Welcome then, Priestess. We’ll not say nay to what we so badly need. Please, enter.”
Him and his pals turned and led us into the guild hall, which was a high-ceilinged room that was half the hexagon, with a big stage on the dividing wall and wedges of church pews angling in toward the center.
As we walked down the aisle the crowd filled into the pews and Sei-Sien whispered to the guild master.
“We did not intend this, brother. We meant to come in secret, on matters pertaining to the church.”
The guild-master laughed. “You have failed at secrecy, brother, but this makes a good cover. We will speak after your priestess gives her blessing.”
I coughed. “Yeah. About that.”
But we were already going up the steps to the stage, and the guild-master was turning to the crowd and raising his hands.
“Guild-brothers! Friends! Silence please! We are fortunate to be visited by a most beauteous, bountiful priestess of Laef, who has graciously agreed to bless us and our beleaguered fields. Please join me in prayer as she petitions the goddess on our behalf.”
The room went quiet and everybody looked at me as the guild-master backed off. My heart was hammering in my chest. What the fuck was I going to do? I looked over at Lhan. He looked back, licking his lips. There was a gleam in his eye and a bulge in his loincloth that even the people in the cheap seats musta been able to see.
I rolled my eyes and whispered out of the side of my mouth. “Lhan. Are you kidding?”
“I—I am sorry, Mistress. I know it is wrong. I know we have parted, but for some reason….”
I flushed. The thought of him being turned on by this was turning me on too, and I looked around. There was a kind of altar table on the stage. It looked a little small for getting down on, but…
But I couldn’t. Even turned on, I couldn’t. I know people think all biker chicks are crazy-ass free-love extrovert sluts who will show their tits at the drop of a hat and don’t thi
nk twice about having sex on a pool table in front of a whole bar, and sure, some of them are. But that ain’t me. Sure I sleep around, and I’ve been with girls and guys and couples too once or twice, but wild as I am, that stuff is private for me. I ain’t interested in putting on a show for anybody, so, as much as I wanted to pull Lhan’s loincloth off and go to town, I wasn’t gonna do it here.
Which was a problem, because I had a hundred people waiting for me to do something, and we weren’t going to be able to talk to Sei-Sien’s heretic pals unless I did. Hell, we probably wouldn’t be walking out of here alive unless I did. To buy time, I put my hands together like I was praying, then turned away like I was building up to something.
Lhan raised an eyebrow. “Have you thought of something, Mistress?”
“Sorry, I’m fresh outta— No, wait!” I had it. Thinking about the heretics had given me the way. “Okay, listen. You’re going to announce that I’m taking a few lucky winners to the back for a ceremonial gang bang. I’ll point ’em out to you, okay?”
He looked horrified. “Mistress!”
“I’m not really going to do it, Lhan. It’s a trick.”
I turned and beckoned to the guild-master, trying to be as grand and priestessy with my movements as I could.
“Here. Come to me.”
He looked behind him, like he thought I was pointing to someone else. Then realized I meant him, and he swallowed.
“Not me, priestess. I—”
“Not for that, you idiot!” I whispered. “Come here!”
He shuffled out like a kid in a school play and I spoke out of the side of my mouth. “Stand beside me and tell me who the heretics in the crowd are. I’m going to point ’em out and bring them in the back.”
He his eyes bulged for a second, then he smiled. “Ah, I understand. Very well.”
I turned back toward the crowd and raised my arms. “Now, Lhan.”
Lhan stepped forward, smiling nervously. “Friends, the Priestess has determined that woes of Rivi are too deep, too grievous, to be banished by a simple blessing. To heal your wounded town and bring her fields back to their proper fruiting glory, she must perform her most private and intense rituals. For these rituals to work, she must perform them with those who tend this land, and suffer from its privations.”
