Desert World Allegiances

by Lyn Gala

  “You aren’t the first to do something he never meant to,” Naite said, his voice far gentler than Temar had ever heard it. Usually Naite was the sort of man who bellowed orders to workers across fields. Naite stepped forward, and Temar mirrored the movement by stepping back. His back hit the wall of the shed, and he had no more room to retreat, so he could only watch as Naite closed in on him. A work-roughened hand reached for his wrist, and Temar neither helped nor fought as he watched Naite wind a length of rope around his wrist. Naite reached for his other hand and repeated the complex patterns of knots and loops, so that Temar was tied with intricate bindings. A long leash trailed from the knots around his left hand, and Naite took that in hand and pulled. Temar had no choice but to step away from the wall. His eyes felt sore and swollen, and he could feel the tears threaten to start, once again.

  Naite slapped him on the shoulder, as one man might do to another. “You’ll be fine, boy. You’ll be better off than those seedlings in the field you washed out. It’s been a lot of years since anyone on Livre has seen honest mud, and hopefully after this, we won’t have any more young people decide to play these games with water.”

  Temar set his teeth deep into his lower lip and stared at his bound hands. Whatever he said would be seen as an attempt to justify what could not be justified, and if he railed against Landholder Young, the council might well decide that he was mentally unbalanced and potentially unsafe.

  Knowing no other way to mitigate the trouble he was in, Temar waited as Naite stood in front of him. Temar’s bare feet looked tiny next to Naite’s heavy, leather boots, and Temar amused himself by imagining himself so tiny that he could walk along the folds in the leather. He could shrink down so small that he could walk out between the cracks in the door and vanish from sight. He could slip between grains of sand and live in the shade of a wind tree leaf.

  The rope tether pulled tight, and Temar followed out into the sun as Naite led him to the squat council building. It had once been a huge complex, but most of the metal had been bastardized for equipment, leaving only one small structure with thick glass windows stood in the center of town. Most buildings in town had steeply leaning walls, built to shrug off the wind, but this one was a box, with upright walls that defied Livre’s winds instead of bending to them.

  The sand was hot under his feet and slid between his toes as he padded after Naite. A woman with a young girl at her side sat against the council building and wove, her fingers twisting and braiding rope, like the one binding him. She watched from the sides of her eyes, her gaze darting from him to her work and back to him. If Temar were a townie, he would know her name, but he only knew those he had schooled with. Like Tith Starson, who leaned against a parked sled and watched him. Temar could feel his face heat, and not from Livre’s sun.

  Naite pulled open the door to the council building, and their feet tracked sand inside. With his eyes on the floor, Temar couldn’t see much, but that was a blessing. He didn’t want to see the condemnation or the pity. In fact, all he wanted was the answer to one question.

  “Cyla?” Temar whispered his sister’s name. Naite hesitated and raised his hand that held the leash. Temar tracked the movement as Naite’s hand stopped just short of his arm. He watched the loop of the rope between his bound hands and Naite’s fist. Oh gods. Don’t let them have exiled her, he prayed. He tried very hard not to think about his sister’s body lying in the sand with the sandrats and wind pulling flesh from her bones.

  “No one may know a judgment that hasn’t been given,” Naite said. He pulled his hand away and dropped it.

  “For God’s mercy, Naite, you could at least reassure the boy.”

  “Shan.” Lilian Freeland’s voice rose above the two Polli brothers’. Temar closed his eyes and struggled to breathe. They were going to exile them. His legs turned so weak that, had his knees not been locked, he would have fallen to the ground.

  “Young Temar, your sister will get no worse punishment than you.” Lilian stepped up in front of him, and Temar studied her feet and the worn cuffs on her jeans. His father had always spoken so highly of Landholder Freeland, of her ability to run a farm and command respect and ride a tractor through a sandstorm. She’d risked her health with no fewer than seven children on a world where water and medicine were both far too rare, and she was like a sandrat that kept living, no matter the odds against it. However, he suspected her opinion of him was not as high.

  Bracing himself for the certain death sentence they were about to pronounce, Temar raised his chin and tried to find some lingering wisps of dignity. He’d fall on the floor and beg if it would help, but they had already voted, and his begging wouldn’t improve matters now. Lilian looked him in the eye, and Temar felt a warm tear roll over his cool cheek.

  “Your crime is too serious to ignore. We have decided that you are responsible for 800 square rods of seedlings being ruined, the loss of two tanks of water, and a measure tap being damaged.” When she lined up all his crimes so neatly, Temar felt nauseous. It was half a lifetime’s wealth that he had destroyed in one night.

  “You are sentenced to slavery for no less than ten years, unless, in the testimony of your master and the determination of this council, your service is so exemplary or substandard to warrant amending your sentence.”

  For a second, Temar thought he had heard wrong. They were enslaving him and not exiling him. True, he had never even heard of a slave being sentenced to ten years, but it wasn’t death. It was a hope for life and for eventually regaining his freedom. Temar was so surprised that he swayed, as if the emotional blow had physically knocked him off balance. Bringing his hands up, he had to catch himself on Naite’s arm.

  Naite’s hand came up under his elbow and steadied him. This time, the tears that slipped out of Temar were of relief instead of fear. He wasn’t going to face exile, and since Lilian had promised him that his sister’s punishment wouldn’t be worse than his, that meant she was going to be safe too. A month ago, he would have railed against ever being enslaved, but right now, it felt like a great stroke of luck.

  Not all of the faces in the room looked particularly happy, though. Dee’eta Sun, a woman with shoulders almost as wide as Worker Naite’s and a white streak in her black hair, watched him with a guarded expression. Any chance he’d ever had to be an artisan was gone. By the time he’d earned his freedom, he would be too old to apprentice, and he’d likely be an unskilled worker for the rest of his life. That was still better than exile.

  The priest, Shan Polli, didn’t even bother to hide his unhappiness with the judgment. Shan was a smaller version of his brother. Where Naite was a monster of a man, Shan was tall and sinewy… and intimidating. His leaner frame made his beak-like nose and sharp eyes more frightening, even though Naite had the same features.

  Sometimes, when his father was well and truly drunk on pipe trap juice, Temar had used church as an excuse to walk into town and sit in the quiet and just listen to the sound of the wind whispering through the cracks in the boards. He’d been young when his mother died, but he remembered sitting in her lap and listening to the hum of the church. It was a rare and cherished memory—one that he clung to after his mother had died and his father slowly turned into a drunk. Many times Temar had sat in the last row, listening to the wind against the roof and Shan’s voice, watching the man move with a precision and grace and power that Temar had rarely seen in anyone.

  “Don’t think this will be easy. You’re going to learn to work and respect the land that you seem to have so little regard for.” Naite’s words were gruff as he pulled his hand back, leaving Temar to stand on his own feet.

  “I know,” Temar whispered. Now that the fear of exile had passed, the fear of slavery was starting to creep in. As long as they didn’t sell him to Landholder Young, he’d survive. He just wasn’t sure that anyone would pay a slave price for him, and without a buyer, his papers would go to Young to repay him for the damage.

  “I very much doubt that you do under
stand.” Shan spoke for the first time, and Temar ducked his head, eager to avoid the disapproval he could hear in that voice. He should get used to it. Even after his slavery ended, he would likely be known as a water thief for the rest of his life.

  “Two landholders have requested your papers.” Lilian quickly filled the silence left in the wake of Shan’s comment. “I don’t think you’ll be surprised to know that Landholder Young filed a request.”

  Temar looked up, horror drawing his gaze to the councilwoman’s face. Lilian gave him a small, crooked smile. “I think our reaction was similar to yours,” she said, humor in her voice. “He’s angry, so I think we can all agree that you are best placed somewhere else.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Temar agreed. The thought of Young having rights over him was enough to make exile sound pleasant.

  “Ben Gratu has offered a fair price.”

  Temar closed his eyes as relief flooded him. Ben owned the farm on the other side of his father’s land. He was a fair man who had always gone out of his way to offer the family a few kindnesses or a spare flat of seedlings. “Thank you,” Temar managed to say. His legs felt like jelly, like the time he’d fallen from the valley cliff wall, only to be caught by the safety rope at the last minute. That sudden burst of fear and then the realization that he hadn’t been crushed into a bloody mash left his body limp with relief. That’s how he felt now.

  Shan took a step forward, his sharp eyes focusing, so that Temar felt uncomfortably trapped inside the man’s gaze. “Should you need anything, you know you have the same right to come to the council that anyone else has, correct?”

  Temar frowned, not sure why Shan would imply that Ben Gratu would ever do anything that warranted coming to the council. However, he answered as politely as he could. “Yes, sir.”

  Shan sighed, clearly not happy with the answer.

  Naite looked angry enough to chew glass. “Brother, we are not Blue Hope, and I hope you are not suggesting that Ben Gratu is anything like that pig shit they had hiding in their territory.”

  “I am not suggesting anything.” Shan snapped the words out, and the two brothers glared at each other. “I am simply reminding Temar that slavery does not mean that he loses all his rights.”

  “Any rights he loses, he loses out of his own foolishness.”

  Lilian held her hands up. “Enough!” she commanded. She was a tiny woman, shorter even than Temar, and he was small compared to most people on Livre, but both brothers stopped at once. She looked from one to the other in clear disapproval.

  “There are days that I question the wisdom of having both of you on this council. Were it in my power, I would ask your groups to name another.” She turned away from them and walked to the table. Sitting down in a chair on the near side, she looked over the whole room, like an artisan considering her supplies and finding them lacking. Finally, her gaze settled on him.

  “Temar, you do keep your right to speak to the council. You have a right to food and water. You have a right to be safe from injury or danger. All other rights and names that once were yours now belong to your master. Do you understand that?”

  Temar nodded. He didn’t trust his voice, not when his emotions were pressing so hard against him.

  “You will work where ordered, live where ordered, and obey your master. You will be restrained however your master determines.” Temar went cold at the thought of being tied and tethered like a beast, the way he was tied now, but he also knew that would be Ben Gratu’s right. He nodded again.

  “Child,” Lilian said softly, “if Ben restrains you, it will be to keep you from making an even more disastrous mistake. If you damage your master’s property maliciously, show recalcitrance in following orders, or attempt to escape, the only punishment remaining will be exile. If you are placed under exile, your name and image will be sent to all the territories, and no settlement will share water with you. Do you truly understand that?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. His voice cracked halfway through the word.

  Naite pulled the rope leash tight. “It’s not that bad, boy. I got fairly good at plowing a field when chained to the wheel.” Naite almost made the experience sound amusing.

  “Naite, take the boy to his master,” Lilian said. “I suspect we will need more time to speak with his sister.”

  Temar’s head snapped up at the mention of Cyla. “Could I….” He looked around the room with a desperate hope that they would allow him to see her. Bari and Kevin studied the papers in front of them. Dee’eta watched with that same impassive face she’d worn the entire time, and Shan had an expression that Temar couldn’t hope to interpret, but it wasn’t good. It was Lilian who answered him.

  “You were told to go to your master, and you are ready to disobey already. You need to remember your place.” The matronly warmth she had shown just seconds ago had vanished, and she frowned at him.

  “It’s not so easy to give up your freedom,” Naite answered for him. “He’ll learn.” Naite gave a sharp tug on the rope leash, and Temar had to stumble forward to keep his balance.

  “Naite!” Shan said sharply.

  “You’ll learn to weigh your words before you assume that your needs are more important than the rules,” Naite said to Temar, ignoring his brother. He strode out of the room with long strides, and Temar was forced to trot after him, his arms stretched out in front of him as Naite half dragged him out of the building and to the waiting sand sled. Silently, Naite threaded the rope leash through the handle of the door, pulling Temar’s wrist close to the polished wood before tying the rope off. Given a few hours of privacy, Temar might be able to use his teeth to free the knots, but with a few townies standing around and watching, Temar was going to be forced to stand by the side of his new master’s sled, tethered and waiting.

  He blinked and turned his head away from the hot wind. For long seconds, Naite stood next to him, his body making a long shadow against the sand. “I know how hard this is, boy.”

  Temar glanced up, not sure what he was supposed to say. Naite made no secret about having been enslaved himself, but he hadn’t faced ten years.

  “It does get easier. And the ability to think before acting is a skill worth developing. Work hard to please your master, and Ben will give you credit for it. He’s a fair man, and you could shorten your sentence by earning his respect.” Naite gave him another slap on the arm, and then he was gone. Temar watched Naite walk toward the line of storage sheds, lined up along the edge of town to keep the worst of the winds off the houses. As he walked, his footsteps made divots in the ground that slowly vanished as the wind shifted the sands. Out of some perverse need to test his bonds, Temar pulled against the leash, but he didn’t have more than an inch of room, and the bindings were far too well tied for him to free himself, even if he put in an honest effort to do so.

  Instead, he watched Naite go into another of the empty feed sheds. Before Naite could come out with his sister leashed and ready to hear her sentence, Ben Gratu came out of the general store, already slipping his sand veil over his hat as he walked toward the sled. Time to learn to be a slave to his master. Temar’s stomach was knotting already.

  Chapter 4

  SITTING in the passenger seat, Temar held tightly to the hand grip. With his hands still tied, he was having trouble keeping his balance as the sled lurched and bounced over the sand slopes. The engine whined as it pushed them up to the top of an enormous dune. For a second, they balanced on the ridge, and then the sled tipped over onto the downward side. Temar braced himself as the engine cut out to allow gravity to drag the sled down the far side.

  “I have to admit, I’m a little flummoxed about what to do with you,” Ben Gratu said, once the noise of the engine had fallen. Only the wind answered, whistling past them as the sled slid down the sand. Clouds of dust followed them. Temar coughed. His own sand veil had come off when Landholder Young’s men had grabbed them, and the sand stung his eyes and made his throat burn. “We’ll be home soon enough. We need
to get you a veil. I thought you were smarter than to wander around without one,” Ben said, but then the engine kicked on as they reached the bottom of the dune, and they couldn’t talk over the scream of the machine as it shoved them up the slope of the next dune.

  In the past, Temar would have insisted he was smart, but now that was somewhat questionable. His wrists ached, not as much from the rope as from the fact that he kept instinctively trying to pull his hands in different directions as the sled listed from one side to the other. A smart man wouldn’t have ended up a slave, and a smart man would be smart enough to stop fighting the bindings. Obviously, he fell a little short of the mark.

  With a final lurch, the sled reached the top of this new dune, and Temar could see the rocky ridge that marked the beginning of Spence Valley. His father’s farm was a narrow strip pressed up against the west rockface, with Young’s farm on the far end and Ben’s farm on the near end. Temar had driven past Ben’s place dozens of times, but now he’d be living and working there. The sled’s engine cut off again, and Ben deployed the sails from the sides to guide the sled toward the south entrance to the valley.

  “I know you’re not the best on a plow, so maybe we can find some other work for you,” Ben offered. Temar wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. He’d work wherever he got assigned. “Your father always bragged about your math. He thought you’d join the skilled workers and take up pipe work, or maybe electrical or engine work.”