He caught the door. “I could think of no place better. It’s always been a short walk, only ten hours over the mountaintops. You are a guest of the family Goldros.” He hesitated fractionally. “And I might as well apologize for them now.”
* * *
Mrs. Goldros was an imposing woman who seemed to tower over Caulie, even though she barely rose to shoulder level. Caulie opened her door just as the older woman passed, making her skitter sideways in alarm. The woman froze and stared up at Caulie with eyes like scalpels.
Caulie had hoped for a quiet hallway in which to prepare herself. Instead, her bedroom door opened directly onto an expansive kitchen in the same style as her room—simply constructed and indestructible. What distinguished this as a northern Tachba household as opposed to a southern one were the stoneware plates, clay mugs, and the brown, wax-topped jars of preserves lining the highest shelves, out of reach of children. There was organization here, evidence of planning and of thought given to the future—in short, it was the women’s domain. This was how the northern Tachba thrived despite the winter seasons when food grew scarce. The xeno-anthropology textbooks theorized that these kitchens had given rise to the concept of dashtalaxan, the women who organized men, which in turn had paved the way for the wider acceptance of manleaders and queens. None of these concepts seemed to have taken root in the South, where food could be foraged year-round and foresight made little difference to survival.
Caulie forced her eyes back to the small, formidable woman in front of her. She shouldn’t pretend she was in a textbook simply to make this place less intimidating. Next she’d be accused of Haphan inscrutability, staring at everything with judging eyes.
“Mrs. Goldros,” Caulie said. Though she hadn’t been introduced, there was no mistaking the mistress of the house. “I’m afraid I must announce that I am Caulie.”
The woman squared herself under Caulie’s chin. “So, look at the overlord in my kitchen. Her fancy talk, afraid of this and that. How she stares! She must feel like she is suffering here.”
“Not at all!” Caulie backed away, but the door had silently closed. It met her like a mountain cliff.
“Tell me, overlord,” Mrs. Goldros continued, “How many of my sons have you caused to die?”
Caulie flinched. She probably should have stuck to the anthropological observations in her head. Silence grew as Caulie groped for a response.
“I have caused none of your sons to die, I should very well hope,” Caulie said carefully. “Quite the opposite. I spend all my time keeping Shanter alive.”
“And look at me now,” Shanter said from across the room. An enormous table, with benches and chairs, filled the far side of the kitchen. He was sitting on a slab bench built into the wall and resting his head on the whitewash at a crooked, uncomfortable angle. “None the worse for wear.”
“I put twelve of my sons into your army,” Mrs. Goldros said. “And what do I have back? I have one son back.” Her eyes lanced over to Shanter. “The worst one.”
“Momma thinks I bit her when I was in the womb. I keep telling her it was my blood-fed. My twin brother, I mean.”
“Well?” The woman seemed to buzz like a storm just beneath Caulie’s chin. Caulie wanted to rear back but she was already plastered against the door. “Overlord, I have eleven boys that I will never see again. What do you say to me?”
“I . . . ” Caulie hesitated. She didn’t think she was supposed to apologize. She said, “I’m hungry.”
“That’s what you say to me?” Momma Goldros stared at her. “You’re hungry?”
“Yes, ma’am. So hungry I could kill a small town.”
Momma Goldros finally turned away and pinioned Shanter with her gaze. “What does your pet alien eat, Shan-shan?”
“She likes battle smear,” he grinned.
“You think you’re joking,” Caulie said, “but it’s my favorite.”
“She doesn’t know how it’s made, Momma. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. She was so happy about not having to chew.”
“You’re telling me the overlords are eating stew now?”
“Only Caulie. You’ve never met a woman who hates chewing more than this one.”
Momma Goldros frowned at him, then turned back to assess Caulie once more. For a long moment, the two women searched each other’s faces. To Caulie, it seemed like the first person to smile would be scorned, and the first to lose their temper would be laughed at. It was a disorienting moment that she navigated simply by feeling anxious.
Finally, Momma Goldros shook her head and wobbled back to the cooking area, joining three more women already at work. All of these were pregnant and older—a far cry from the charming, talked-about maiden variety. They looked as solid and immutable as the rest of the house. When Momma Goldros’s eyes touched them, they returned to work, chopping and stirring as if they hadn’t been watching like a flock of hungry birds.
Maybe Caulie was off the hook. She circled out of her doorway, keeping Momma Goldros in view, and backed up until she hit the large table. She felt for a chair and sat across from Shanter. “You told me this was a safe place.”
“It is safe. Nothing dangerous dares to approach while my mother is here.”
“I can’t tell when you people are joking. Can’t you give me a sign or something?”
He had that small quirk in his lips. Caulie fought back a smile. “Miss,” he said, “are you asking me to be subtle?”
“Some pre-agreed signal, maybe.” The smile kept coming.
“I think you’re trying to trick me, Caulie.”
“Oh? Am I?”
“You want me to reveal my spy-craft, but I’ve already told you I’m not a spy. That is my story and you won’t shift me from it.”
“I’m only asking for a code word or a wink, Shanter.”
“Spy, spy, spy, that’s all I hear.”
Caulie laughed out loud.
The women in the kitchen turned and glared. Momma Goldros had a wicked-looking knife in her hand—a narrow, long blade with an S-curve. Caulie tried to fathom a possible culinary purpose for it, but came up blank. Maybe she used it to terrify the food before serving.
Shanter waited until the women went back to work. “Seeing this through your eyes, it does look a little strange.”
“How could she possibly hate me?” Caulie realized how that sounded and tried again. “A young woman might wonder if Mrs. Goldros blames her for the eternal front.”
“Okay, sorry. No more teasing.” Shanter pushed off the wall and leaned forward, every movement careful. “There was a mention of eleven dead boys. Is it my eleven brothers that the pretty young woman is thinking about?”
Caulie ducked her head. There was really no reason for Tachba men to always throw in “pretty young this and that,” except to savor her awkwardness. The worst was when Shanter did it. She said, “The pretty young woman is asking on my behalf.”
“There’s a story there: I’ll tell it to you. It’s unclear how many of Momma’s boys are dead, but I doubt we’re at eleven. Definitely at least eight—we got letters from the Haphans. The other three came through trench telegram. You know what that is, the trench telegram? Boots repeating messages to each other, spreading them up and down the front on the chance someone will know the proper recipient. If you need solid information, well, you’d have better luck drinking the queen’s blood to learn her middle name.”
“Drinking blood to . . .” Caulie shook her head. “That can’t be a thing.”
“Translates poorly from the Tachbavim, la.” His eyes twinkled. “Some of us think Momma secretly loved her boys, and therefore it’s our fault for making her bitter by dying all over the place. Yet I’ve never seen her more tickled than today. She can be a funny creature when she lets herself be happy.”
“Shanter.” Caulie leaned in so the kitchen women would not hear her alarm. “Is your mother in a good mood?”
“Obviously! The last time she met an overlord, she was a littl
e girl, so she doesn’t realize how delicate you really are. I think she doesn’t want you overlording in her house. She’s in charge, and this house is a working concern that keeps twelve people alive, plus children, if you count them as people. She won’t tolerate some froufrou actress from Falling Mountain telling us what she wants.”
“Oh no. The first thing I did was tell her I was hungry.”
“No harm. She also hates when people don’t tell her what they want.”
“I really just wanted to change the subject from your brothers.”
“Caulie.” He tapped her hand. “It does you credit to worry. And she is sad. Most factory mothers are very sad, because the Pollution doesn’t steal that from women. But you could wake up early, dig all day, and never find where the sadness starts. Those words she says into the air—those words aren’t from the sadness. We will never see the real part. We can hear her words and never need to feel compassion.”
“If you say so. It seems alien to me.” She thought about her parents, and how their names were no longer spoken, least of all by her. “I can hide things even from myself.”
“As to that, we Tacchies also have problems with lying, even to ourselves. The Pollution on us all, la, it hates us to nurture an untruth. The end result? Everything you wish to escape will be spoken anyway.”
There was that. Caulie had not considered the Pollution’s role—it worked differently for Tachba women, but none of her colleagues had deemed studying it worthwhile. Questions filled her like an algae bloom. She didn’t want to abuse his voice, it was still so soft and weak, so she picked the most nagging one. “Why would your mother think I’m a froufrou actress from Falling Mountain?”
“That’s another story!” He spread his hands on the table and furrowed his brow. “Once, when Momma was a little girl, a Haphan work crew passed through and built the water purifier in the town water well. While they worked, they let her watch a movie in their truck, which was against every rule. They soon learned why. It was a movie about a Haphan princess—a Haphan lady who had no obvious employment and no babies to trip over. Does that make her the local empress? Regardless, Momma didn’t like how everybody in the movie seemed to lie to each other, so she left the truck and stabbed the foreman. Her criminal record started at eight years old! No one in this house has ever done better than that.”
He noticed Caulie’s face. “Don’t worry, the foreman lived. He sends candy in the Haphan mail every year on that day. We call it Stabbing Day. Long story short, when she thinks someone is too pretty or deceptive, she calls them a froufrou actress from Falling Mountain.”
“That story would be funnier if your mother didn’t actually want to stab me.” Caulie glanced over, found Momma Goldros still eyeing her, and leaned away from Shanter. “Why is she still holding that knife?”
“It’s her discipline knife,” Shanter said, not needing to look. Then he grasped Caulie’s hands, making her jump. “Now, Caulie, listen to me. We’ve had a moment to sit and be normal. You’ve met Momma and impressed her, and there will be no stabbing you now. We must talk about the enemy wizard with the thunder and what happened with the artillery battalion.”
Her fragile mood turned to ash. “No, Shanter.”
“Those barrages are the worst manipulation. The Pollution can turn us into machines and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He leaned forward, whispering urgently, squeezing her hands until her bones rubbed together. “Caulie, I need to understand.”
She shook her head. She would need hours just to begin to explain.
“What happened to me after the gallows? I was about to die—I was ready to die. I felt my neck separate. I know we Tachba heal faster than the overlords but I have never heard of anything like it, coming back after being so close . . . how can I just snap back together? How can I think I’m me when I can be repaired like a broken chair and then steered like a corpse cart by the sounds of a barrage?” He squeezed harder. The more she leaned away from his hoarse voice, the tighter his grip became. “Please? I have been patient; you know I have been patient. I did not fret. I trusted you. I kept myself in service. I did everything I know to do, to be deserving—”
“I know, Shanter,” she blurted. He dropped silent. “I know, but not now. Soon? Let me think just a little longer.”
He didn’t have a chance to reply.
Momma Goldros dropped a massive stone bowl beside them, the impact sounding like the doom of humankind. She set it one place away, perhaps so no one could accuse her of serving the Haphan. She added two wooden spoons to the bowl and said, “Battle smear.”
She stared at them until Shanter released Caulie’s hands, which she hid under the table. “I can’t believe how lucky I am, Mrs. Goldros,” she said quietly. “I’ve never seen battle smear of such . . . color. I am famished.”
“There’s no meat in this,” Momma Goldros warned. “But then, we haven’t had a battle in these parts recently.”
Caulie glanced at Shanter in alarm. He gave her a slow, laborious wink.
Chapter 29
“Helpie, since you asked, I have been considering how to explain the enemy wizard.” Caulie used her superior tone, the one that made her sound like an insufferable Haphan. Shanter blushed. “I have been thinking about what makes him so insightful and quick to adapt.”
“I have been thinking differently about him,” Shanter said sourly.
“After all, the wizard has none of our understanding of acoustics, logic rings, and physiology—don’t worry what all that means, I’m just thinking aloud. Worse, the wizard is on the southern side of the eternal front. If what we believe about the Southies is true, they are not only less organized than we are, they are also much less willingly organized.”
“Everything you believe is true, and probably more.”
“Oh?”
They were strolling around the multi-family compound, exercising Shanter’s stiffness in an afternoon sun that actually felt warm. Inside the palisade walls were clusters of buildings. Every open space given over to stockpiles of rustic supplies that Caulie recognized mostly from her nursery books: lumber, drying twine, coal, straw, smoke racks currently empty of meat. Their path was a kind of benign obstacle course perfect for Shanter’s current abilities, but Caulie saw nothing more than a fire hazard. Shanter had convinced her to stay inside the compound gates, no matter how peaceful it looked outside.
“Have you been to the southern side of the trenches, Shanter?”
“The Moon Kingdoms? No. It’s a place of spirits and nightmares. They were never civilized by the Haphans like we were. We couldn’t live there. They hardly live there.”
“In that case, how could you know what’s true about the Southies and what isn’t?”
“If you spend any time in the squeeze—what we call a rotation on the front—you also spend time between the trenches. Eventually, you meet one of the southern monsters and have a nice chat. It’s not all violence and bloodshed; they love talking, too. Whatever we know about them is something they told us, or something they let slip, thinking we already knew it.”
They navigated around a cluster of little boys in their path. They were shirtless, tanned nut-brown, perhaps seven or eight years old. They had destroyed one of the drying racks to make spears for their next game. The compound was overrun with children, the boys of three families all mixed together. It turned out the Goldros family was the smallest of the three—Momma Goldros had fallen out of factory years earlier. Her final tally was exceptional: twenty-four boys, four of whom had died as children, twelve who’d been sent to the front, and eight still at home. And two girls.
How terrified she must have been, Caulie thought. It must have seemed like the children would never end. For Tachba women even a single act of procreation would result in years of pregnancies and births—more of the cruel mechanics of the Pollution, which made women productive as possible when the men were fighting distant wars.
“When the Haphans brought civilization,” Caulie
said carefully, “we suppressed some of the behaviors we found. Things the Southies still do.”
“I don’t know what was suppressed. It was before my time. But the Southies know facts about things we only know as rumors, and they seem surprised by what we don’t know.” When he finished, he fell silent, waiting.
“Very well, Shanter. In my work at the university at Falling Mountain, I was studying some notebooks found in a cave. They were the collected works of a daggie intellectual who lived maybe a thousand years ago in these very mountains.”
“The daggies are the moaning crabs from the stories. The magical fairy creatures. They could dominate entire lands if you let them grow too strong.”
“They were real,” Caulie told him. “In fact, they are still extant today. They have little islands scattered around, not worth visiting and easy to overlook. They’re privitives, now, but at one time they were very sophisticated. They covered the continent.”
“It’s called the Long War in the stories,” Shanter said. “They tried to take our world and turn it into a fairy world. Our ancestors fought them to extinction—though apparently they didn’t. Strange to think that the Long War might be true and not just something the factory women made up in the kitchen.”
“My daggie was named Ouphao’an, and she studied the Pollution like I do, except her understanding was more advanced. She wrote about something called obtained men.”
“I’ve never heard that term.”
“It’s the Haphan translation. I don’t know what it might be called in Tachbavim. An obtained man is someone who has been built out of other men.”
This time, Shanter didn’t answer. Caulie couldn’t tell if he was concentrating on their path, thinking, or merely avoiding her gaze.
“You know what the Pollution is for,” she said. “Long ago, some advanced race we still can’t identify decided to engage in highly illegal experiments on a human population. The humans were twisted into as perfect a fighting force as possible for some forgotten interstellar war. Thousands of years later, those people are what we now call the Tachba.”
What the Thunder Said Page 24
