The Renegade Within

by Mark Johnson

  A few painted and loincloth-clad monks were scattered around the common room, softly chanting in time with one another. The few words she picked out of the chant suggested the monks wanted their prayers to bring the eyes of the Gods upon everyone in the common room, blessing their wishes and conversations—so long as the topics were pious in nature.

  Patzer hated monk hills almost as much as he—inexplicably—hated the renegades he claimed he didn’t know. He’d even forbidden Terese going near the monk hills. The hills were harmless, in her opinion, as were their monks. They didn’t, or couldn’t, weave vibration energy, as weavers did. They instead stored the vibration energy they generated in the stones in the belts slung around their shoulders. The amount of vibration energy in those belts kept cadvers far from monk hills.

  “So, what do we do now?” she said, trying to get him back on topic.

  “The mission’s got a few days left. Perhaps someone here…”—he raised his cup to indicate everyone in the low-ceilinged common room—“… knows something we don’t. A detail inconsequential to them, but essential to us.”

  As though enervated by the conviction of his words, Patzer inhaled the smoke-filled air too deeply, then coughed hard.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll be in the women’s hut tonight. If any of them are willing to speak to me, I’ll ask them.” Well, she would make a genuine effort. But so few would speak to her.

  Patzer rolled his eyes and pushed more nuts into his mouth.

  His cynicism was reasonable, for she’d had very little luck when attempting to initiate conversations with the Sumadans in the women’s huts. Some women were perfectly polite, but most clearly didn’t want her near. Quite often she’d been ignored outright, or answered with hostility, or like a child who was in the wrong place.

  Cenephans weren’t treated remotely like this back in Armer. Well, those few who still identified as Cenephan weren’t. Despite Terese’s accent, withering comments behind her back, which she was obviously supposed to hear, were that ‘they’ should stay in their Walls and worship there.

  She’d wanted to explain, to yell, that she was from Armer, and even if she were Cenephan, human beings shouldn’t treat one another like some other species.

  But what was the point? She couldn’t change these people’s minds, and they’d likely have her removed from the hill for disturbing the peace.

  “Will it be another late start in the morning?” she asked, feigning a drink from her empty cup.

  “I imagine so, lass. Yes, Patzer, you will start late tomorrow.”

  “And where then? More hills? Lijjen wanted results. I have to give him something!”

  Patzer shook his head “Don’t worry about him, Saarg. I have… a way with the Seekers of Sumad Reach. I’ll phrase everything so it’s clear you did your duty.”

  It wasn’t the first time Patzer had hinted he was more than just a bounty hunter. He believed he outranked Keeper Lijjen and possibly Holder Mathra, he ran some sort of elite smuggling group, and he had ‘contacts’ who knew something about the renegades she didn’t.

  And of all people to have the Holder’s ear? A man who hated so easily, whether that hate was directed at the Royals or the renegades or the Sumadan monks and pilgrims. Even she didn’t hate the renegades, regardless of the fact that they were responsible for her abominable year.

  “Well,” she said, pretending to not worry, “just so long as you know what you’re doing.” Making Patzer believe he knew what he was doing helped pacify him when his mood swung into rage, but they were no closer to the renegades than when she’d arrived in Sumad.

  “That’s certain, lass. Now, did I ever tell you about the cadver barrow filled with dolls? Damnedest thing I ever saw. Not Cenephan rag dolls, but the upmarket ones the Sumadans have over the border. Some had fallen apart, others were brand new. Now obviously, cadvers don’t play with dolls, but—”

  The door to the common area crashed open. Two Cenephan men rushed in, one with a flaming torch in his hand and the other with a shoddy shockpole.

  Conversation died.

  “Please, anyone,” the man with the shockpole shouted. “We’re from YanderWall.” He pointed east. “Our weavers found an active barrow! Two mornings ago, we found a slaughtered lion, and this morning were tracks right beside the Wall. We might be besieged tonight. We’ll pay as best we can.”

  Terese didn’t realize she’d begun rising until a vice-grip squeezed her forearm. Patzer’s eyes bored into hers and he shook his head. And slowly, forcing every muscle to agree, she lowered herself back to the chair, her gaze stuck on the table. A slow quiet descended on the room, and she couldn’t look up for shame.

  “Ahem.”

  A monk stood. Long of beard, painted yellow from head to bare foot, the paint flaking to show the dark skin beneath. His ribs stood out proudly.

  “I’m unable to take arms against the living or undead.” His voice was heartier than his age suggested. “I am only one, but I will come.” The monk stroked the circular length of cotton fabric slung around his neck and shoulder. Terese sensed the belt’s vibrations even from this distance.

  Three white-painted monks who had been chanting at the center of the room rose to their feet. Their beards were shorter, and they too stroked their cotton belts. The yellow monk followed the YanderWall recruiters out the door, followed by the white ones. The room stayed quiet.

  “Relax, Saarg,” said Patzer. “Four monks? They’ll have enough vibrations in their stones to make any cadver get the itches and run. YanderWall’ll be fine. It’s a sturdy enough cluster.”

  Terese wanted to yell at Patzer. Instead, she hissed: “But it’s not as good as having weavers or Seekers!”

  Patzer shrugged. “Better than nothing. They’ll be fine.”

  She sagged back on her chair, unable to put words to her frustrations.

  Why was protocol being ignored? What part of chaos tracking and hunting required secrecy? None, because Seekers executed their jobs in the public eye and were praised for it. She’d never considered the need to hide anything until Holder Moorcam had summoned her for a private meeting a few years earlier. Missionary Saarg, ambitious daughter of Armer Spire’s Holder Saarg. The solo mother desperate to prove she was capable of more than trading on her family name.

  Moorcam’s explanation had made sense at the time. But sitting across from Patzer, those explanations were lacking.

  “Saarg,” he interrupted her thoughts. “You’ve had a rough year. Traveling, failing that taking, and being all but officially demoted. You put on a brave face when you explain, but it’s eating you up. You say you’re the youngest head in Armer for a long time? I believe you. But I’ll give you some advice. Just pretend, for eight more months, that you’re no longer a Seeker.”

  She couldn’t think what to say. What did he mean?

  “Polis Sumad’s been a disaster for you,” he went on, “and all because you’ve carried out your tasks as they’re done in Armer Stone. So just between you and me, stop being a Seeker. Pretend you’re a schoolgirl again. Or back at your Seeker academy. And once you leave Polis Sumad with your complement intact and healthy, you can don your plate at the Sumadan gates and go home to your daughter.

  “Every time you try to do something, you get stomped on by our friend Lijjen, right? So just stop doing the job, Saarg. Just do the paperwork like you’re some clerk in a business somewhere. Read some books, use that swimming pool I hear they’ve got. Take up poetry, or a lover. Or explore Sumad in your plate armor, but don’t expose your face. If you’ve done everything here to your own liking and it hasn’t worked, stop fighting.”

  He sat back as far as his tiny chair would let him. “Why do you think I didn’t let you go running off to YanderWall with those painted fools?”

  “I was being a Seeker, Patzer, and yes I know we’ve got a priority mission. But being a Seeker is what I am. I knew I wanted to be a Seeker the first time I ever saw my father’s Missionary plate lying around
our apartment and I crawled inside it. Look, I know you need me to focus on our hunt, and me using my Seeker senses on a night-time defense at YanderWall would cut into our daylight searching. But it’s who I am.”

  Patzer spread his hands. “And look where being ‘who you are’ got you. Treated like a drooling reprobate barely capable of cleaning her own bedpan. Don’t deny it.” He waited.

  Everything Patzer said was simultaneously right and wrong, and she had no answers, Gods help her. She couldn’t meet his eyes, so she said the first thing that came to mind.

  “Do you still want me to ask them in the women’s hut if they’ve heard accents like mine? Or is that being too much a Seeker?” Her words tasted bitter.

  “While you’re with me, Saarg, you’re a Seeker. I know you’re capable. So please, if you can learn anything from the pilgrims, I’d like to know.”

  She pressed her hands on the table. “Patzer, look. Why do the Sumadan women treat me like that? I know how Cenephans are treated here, but this rudeness is uncalled for.”

  Patzer shifted, avoiding her gaze.

  “Well, they don’t know accents. They think you’re Cenephan.”

  She squeezed the table’s sides. “So what if I was, Patzer? What is it?”

  “Yes, Patzer, it’s best she knows.” He swirled the drink in his cup a moment, as if sifting the words to use, then said. “They think you’re a whore.”

  “What?”

  He sighed. “There’s a set of beliefs that Cenephan women may be… less pure than those further in. Sumadan children grow up with their parents telling them that. It’s the same thinking that tells us Polis Narmarikesh shopkeepers all keep unbalanced scales, or that young people from Polis Warnimor resent wearing clothes.”

  “But… but that’s impossible. What? Do they think every single Cenephan woman in the Territories is a whore? How would that even be possible?”

  “Keep your voice down. I’m not defending it.” He met her gaze. “Why do you think I always have you sit far away when I speak to Sumadans near the border?”

  Terese gaped. “You mean, you and me, walking around the Territories together, people think, what we’re really doing, is you’re in charge of my… they think…” She couldn’t say it.

  Patzer took a longer drink than necessary.

  “But, but what if a group of women were traveling together?”

  “A group of whores.”

  “A family?”

  “A family of whores. Saarg, stop.”

  She’d opened her mouth to yell, though she had no idea what to say. She dropped back into her seat with a thump and although the seat didn’t give way, something inside it popped, a small hinge forever broken.

  Patzer’s gaze fixed her in place. “I grew up running back and forth… trading over the border. Bad jokes about my mother, sisters, and my non-existent daughters were so common I’d think something odd if I didn’t get one lobbed at me every time I crossed over. The women of the Territories? Some are whores, but most aren’t.” He gestured toward the Polis’s inhabited areas, away from the Territories. “The further-in Sumadans need to believe we’re out here, suffering, dying young, because we’re worse humans than them. That we deserve it. That the border needs to be there to protect them from us, Saarg. Now, obviously, not all of them believe the ‘whores’ rubbish. And some recognize that those rumors are fear speaking, not common sense. But enough do believe the improbable, because they want to. There’s enough of those who do believe the stories, to make those who don’t, scared of treating us normally, where others might see.”

  The heat in her lessened to something despondent and small.

  “There’s nothing the women of Ceneph can do to prove their virtue. Stop fighting a battle that can’t be won.” His eyes were the sanest she’d seen them. “I hate this Polis too. I hate the life it’s forced on me. I hate the heat, the thirst and bowing to fools. So, count yourself lucky, finish your time and go home to your daughter. And leave us here with… bloody HopeWall! We’re doomed if those women who go to HopeWall are our best.”

  He took any excuse to curse the old Cenephan weaving academy, HopeWall, somewhere off to the west. He wouldn’t tell, precisely, why he resented HopeWall. Something about harboring monsters and murderers. And typically for Patzer, only he could prove it.

  She traced the circular stains on the battered tabletop with a fingertip, then wrapped her hand around her pack straps. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said to the floor.

  “Sleep well, lass,” he said. “And stay away from that hill.” He wagged a finger at her. “And those bloody fairies,” he muttered, possibly to himself.

  Her throat tightened and she rushed out the door, into the cold night.

  9

  Terese coughed at the shock of cool, clean air entering her lungs, then crossed the dusty open space in front of the monk hill: a tall, swiftly rising clay mound ringed by a fence at its base. The only sound other than her rapid footsteps were the distant monks, chanting at the hill’s peak.

  A red-painted monk guarded the entryway to the women’s long hut. He inclined his head as she passed within. The dim glowbulb spread enough light to guide her to the furthest corner, past softly laughing Sumadan women making a point of ignoring her. Some of these women were old enough to be grandmothers; others may have still been in school.

  Her thin bedroll and blanket laid out, Terese leaned on the wall, inhaling its dry loamy scent, concentrating on the smell instead of the turmoil in her head. Oh, to be alone! To have the entire hut, or even the whole settlement to herself. Just to be able to speak out loud to herself, or even whisper. But Lijjen’s spy mechanism still hummed in the back of her head, at the edge of her senses, eagerly awaiting just one word out of line or even so much as a hint that she knew more than she should about the Immersion Chamber and its renegades.

  But even more than speaking, Terese wanted to cry. And she would not allow Lijjen a hint of victory. All she could do was gather her rage and glare at the overhead glowbulb’s stuttering nimbus. She closed her eyes, leaving a purple imprint where light had been. More women came from the hill, wrapped themselves in blankets and slept. Terese didn’t move.

  Sifting through her anger and frustration, she took her time isolating exactly what had her so enraged. Certainly, she was irritated at Sumadan bigotry, but that wasn’t it. Worries over her reputation here in Sumad were nothing. Just quick, meaningless flickers at the sides of her career. Keeping her breathing constant for Lijjen and the women in the hut, Terese allowed questions to churn.

  Lijjen was hiding things. Years ago, that would have outraged her. Seekers should have little need of secrets. But after her failed taking, while her status and stability unraveled, she’d accepted the persecution. Because she had secrets and had no right to resent Lijjen for keeping his own. And because she was tied—had tied herself—to a blunder that had killed hundreds, she’d built an edifice of lies to keep her life intact.

  Gods, that was what enraged her. Patzer’s advice had been appealing.

  They were both liars, her and Patzer. They worked for other liars, chasing lies around a Polis she’d come to as part of a grand lie that had fallen apart before she’d left Armer. The only reason a creature such as Patzer could give her advice was because she’d descended to his level.

  She was no better than Patzer. This was where her ambition had led her. Far from her daughter. Sent camping in a wasteland, taking orders from a bounty hunter, trying to put right what she’d bungled. This was the end of her journey. Sleeping alone under a thin blanket in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere, while simpletons sniggered at her.

  Her entire life had unraveled over just one lie.

  Memories came, unbidden. Her parents and sister watching her being sworn in as an Assistant, at her Girdle ceremony. The Girdle artifacts imprinting ink and vibrations into dozens of backs while she spoke the oath, her mother and sister beaming, her father letting slip that smile of grim satisfaction. The
oath that she’d help others and obey the Royals. How long had it been since she’d directly assisted another human?

  This wasn’t what Seekers did! How did rounding other humans up for experiments serve the Gods, or even the Royals? Could she, Holder Moorcam and the others they’d worked with on the Immersion Chamber, still call themselves Seekers?

  Tears flowed. Gods, how had she come adrift? Her shoulders heaved and she clamped a hand over her mouth. Through the night, she stifled silent sobs. Soft snores rose around her.

  Once she heard Patzer laughing raucously in the dark distance.

  As night lengthened, her sobs came as random jolts, occasional hiccups bunching her stomach and rippling outward. She was tired but couldn’t sleep, even after a long day and month journeying the Wastes. Even with the sores on her feet and the recording mechanisms in her clothing.

  Gray light whispered through the hut door’s top grate. The teachings said it was bad luck to make important prayers at night. But night was ending. Terese slipped off her skinleaf plate, replacing it with loose shirt and trousers. Seekers weren’t supposed to leave their valuable plate armor alone. She’d even folded and taken it with her during occasional steam baths. Lijjen would know.

  Let him wonder.

  She paced out through the door barefoot and, shivering, strode to the hill. Patzer and his rules be damned.

  Another dreadlocked red monk, on guard at the break in the hill’s fence, stood at her approach. She could have played many excuses. Showing her tattoo would have worked, but she wasn’t on Seeker business.

  A faint chant drifted lightly on the dawn’s wind.

  “Please. I must ask forgiveness.”

  The monk shrugged and stepped aside.

  The stiff grass sliced at her numbing, bare feet. At the hill’s flat top, she knelt on the hard soil, her breath steaming the air. The softly chanting, brightly colored monks were focused on an orange glow beyond the eastern RimWall.