Worlds Apart (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  “And that’s all she wanted?” Nikos said incredulously. Nikos had always been the rashest of the brothers.

  Apollo frowned. He was the oldest child and had been the peacemaker whenever they fought. “Don’t be so nosy.”

  “It’s all right,” Prax said. He felt closer to his brothers than he did to almost anyone. In the years he had lived with his shame, they had stood by him when others had shunned him for his crime. “That was all Rishi required of me. She was different the next day, when the wine had worn off.”

  Apollo grinned. “Daphne is like that. She asked me to marry her after two glasses of berry wine.”

  Prax smiled at his brother’s revelation. It was good to see them again.

  Apollo turned serious. “The off-world woman came to the Zemikis three nights ago. She talked to Great-Aunt for quite a while. She’s been back twice since then.”

  Prax nodded. “She came to our campsite last night. She told us that Great-Aunt had invited her to the gathering.”

  “I’d heard that,” Apollo said. “There was some grumbling about outsiders, but Great-Aunt paid no attention.”

  “She wouldn’t,” Prax agreed.

  “Why has this woman come back, Prax?” Apollo asked.

  Prax didn’t answer right away. Finally, he said, “She wants me to go back with her.”

  “Doesn’t she know that you can’t leave again?” Nikos asked.

  “I told her,” Prax said. “She doesn’t want to accept it. She’s not good at taking no for an answer.”

  “Would you go with her if you could?” Apollo asked.

  “Yes,” Prax said simply. “I love her.”

  Both his brothers were silent.

  Apollo let out a deep sigh. “You should have fought the verdict. If you had been older, you would have known.”

  “If I had been older, it wouldn’t have happened. And I was guilty.”

  “Then you should have contested the punishment,” Apollo persisted. “It was too harsh.”

  Prax shrugged. “It’s too late now.”

  Prax asked after Apollo’s children. His older brother had two young sons, and a baby daughter, born shortly before Prax had left with Rishi. Apollo said they were all fine. The baby was growing at a rapid pace.

  “At least she lets us sleep now,” he said. “She was worse than her brothers about that.”

  Prax remembered what his father had asked him to do. “Father said to remind you both to visit Mother and Grandmother.”

  Apollo and Nikos weren’t paying attention to him; instead, they were staring over his shoulder. Prax turned around to see what was attracting their notice. Rishi was approaching, with Tinibu right behind her. The big Terran wore his Trahn security uniform; between his clothes, his size, and his dark skin, he was almost as noticeable as Qualhuan would have been in the crowd of Elliniká.

  “Hello, Praxiteles,” Rishi said when she came close.

  “Hello, lady,” Prax answered. He switched to Standard to say hello to Tinibu.

  “Hello, Prax,” Tinibu answered cheerfully. “Good to see you again. I seem to be attracting a lot of attention.”

  “You could have stayed back at the flyter,” Rishi said in Standard. “I told Hari I’d be fine.”

  “Sorry, Mistress,” Tinibu said. “I have my orders.”

  Prax awoke to the fact that he hadn’t introduced his brothers. He did so in Elliniká, and Rishi responded in that language.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Praxiteles has told me a lot about you.”

  Nikos had never seen Rishi. He shook hands with an appreciative look. Rishi’s dress was cut like an Elliniká gown, but made from a deep red fabric that looked well against her golden skin and black hair.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, lady,” Nikos said. “Thank you for saving us from the outlaws.”

  Rishi smiled. “I don’t need any more gratitude from the Elliniká, thank you. I want more than gratitude.” She gave Prax a very pointed glance.

  Prax felt his face suffuse in heat and knew he must have been as red as Rishi’s dress. Apollo hid a smile, and Nikos grinned openly. Even Tinibu seemed to catch on.

  “Are the three of you entering any of the contests?” Rishi asked, ignoring both Prax’s embarrassment and his brothers’ amusement.

  “Nikos will try his hand at shooting,” Apollo said. “He does very well at that. I like boxing myself, but Nikos is too vain to take a chance his face will get marked.”

  It was Nikos’ turn to look mortified.

  “How about you, Praxiteles?” Rishi said.

  “I hadn’t planned on coming,” Prax said, “so I haven’t practiced at anything.”

  “Oh, come on, Prax,” Nikos said. “You were the only one who could ever match Father in throwing a knife. None of us got his skill except you.”

  Prax frowned. “I see no need to show off.”

  “What’s a gathering for if not to show off?” Apollo said.

  Prax said nothing.

  Rishi didn’t pursue the subject. “Your great-aunt has asked me to sit down with her at dinner. I understand there’ll be dancing afterwards?”

  When Prax didn’t answer, Apollo took it upon himself to speak. “There’s always dancing, lady. We make bonfires, and men dance around them in a line.”

  “Don’t men and women ever dance together?” Rishi asked.

  “That comes later,” Apollo said, “on the last night of the gathering.”

  Rishi smiled warmly. “I’ll look forward to it, then. Goodbye.”

  They watched her walk back through the crowds that were gathering for the start of the contests. Tinibu waved a hand at Prax and followed her. After a few minutes, all they could see was Tinibu’s head and shoulders above the crowd.

  Prax realized his brothers were watching him.

  Apollo grinned and shook his head with pretend resignation. “You might as well go and pack your bag.”

  Prax frowned. “It doesn’t matter what she wants. I can’t go.”

  Apollo’s smile grew wider. “She’s like Great-Aunt. If she wants you to go, you’d better resign yourself to going.”

  Prax walked back to his family’s wagon with his brothers. They found their mother setting things up for cooking and cleaning, and complaining all the while about the closeness of the wagons on either side. Gatherings always meant closer quarters than usual. Otherwise, they could never accommodate so many of the Elliniká in one place.

  Circe was happy to see her sons. She hugged them each in turn, even Prax, whom she had seen only an hour ago.

  “You’d better go and pay your respects to your grandmother,” she scolded her eldest and youngest sons. “I don’t want to hear complaints from her that I haven’t taught you to be respectful.”

  Apollo and Nikos went off to their aunt’s nearby wagon. Prax stayed and unloaded crates from the wagon for his mother.

  “That woman was here looking for you,” Circe said abruptly.

  “She found me.”

  His mother sniffed. She waited but Prax said nothing else.

  “Well?” Circe said finally, in exasperation. “What did she want?”

  “Nothing much. She asked if we were going to enter the contests.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “She told us she’s having dinner with Great-Aunt Melina, and she asked about the dancing.”

  His mother sniffed again. “Hardly worth the trip.”

  Prax agreed with her. When Nikos and Apollo returned, their mother put them to work building a fire for her, as she wanted to make some tea.

  When Konstantin came back, he found them all sitting around the fire having tea. Circe handed him a cup.

  “Where’s Iphigenia?” she asked.

  “Looking for boys to flirt with,”
Konstantin said. “I left her by the wrestling circle, watching some practice matches.”

  Nikos laughed. “She’s going to give you trouble. It’ll be a year or two before she’s really old enough to marry, and she’ll be a handful until then.”

  “As if you weren’t trouble?” his mother said, boxing his ears lightly. “You never gave me a moment’s peace. What with getting into fights and sneaking off to go to the city, I never slept well until the day you married.”

  “I wasn’t that bad,” Nikos protested. “Apollo got drunk at a gathering. At least I never did that.”

  Apollo started to protest his innocence but Prax interrupted.

  “No one was as bad as I was.”

  His brothers and his parents were silent.

  His mother set the teapot back on the warming stone. “That was my fault. I should have known what was going on. I should have seen what that little witch was up to as soon as she came back.”

  Prax looked up, amazed. They had never discussed his affair with Zoë. He had no idea his mother blamed her more than him.

  “You were always so quiet,” his mother went on. “I never thought to worry about you. I should have. I could have stopped it before it went too far.”

  Konstantin took her hand and patted it. “Now, Circe, there’s no need to go blaming yourself. There’s plenty of blame to go around. I missed it, too.” He put one arm around her shoulders for a brief second.

  Prax and his brothers, uncomfortable with such open intimacy between their parents, looked away hastily.

  Circe Mercouri sighed and shook herself. “No use weeping over it now. Too much to do, anyway.”

  She proceeded to give them all directions to help her get started preparing food. The first night of the gathering, all the clans ate together. The heads of the clans would sit in the center of a circle of bonfires. Sons, normally parted from their parents by their marriages, would bring their wives and children to rejoin their clans and eat dinner in a giant circle around the clan leaders. It would be an enormous picnic after dark.

  After a while, Nikos and Apollo had to go help their own wives. Prax was left to carry stones to construct an oven. Circe would bake dozens of the tiny loaves of trail bread in the makeshift stone oven, enough to last all three days of the gathering.

  Later in the afternoon, his brothers came and tried to persuade Prax to join the knife throwing competition, but he wouldn’t go.

  “I have too much to do,” he said. “Besides, I’m too old. Leave it for those who are young enough to enjoy the contest.”

  After a while, Nikos and Apollo gave up and went away without him. Prax stayed around the campsite for the rest of the afternoon. When it began to get dark, he helped his mother and father carry their blankets and food to a spot not far from the ring of bonfires. Nikos and Apollo were there already, Nikos with his wife, and Apollo with his family. Circe exclaimed over the baby and made a fuss over how tall her grandsons were growing.

  They ate and drank surrounded by cheerful conversation from their neighbors and occasional hails from boyhood friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. Torches placed here and there gave more light where it was needed. After a while, the moon rose, a round silver disk in the blackness of the sky.

  Prax sat and watched Rishi eat her dinner. There was no sign of Hari or Tinibu. Rishi was the only outsider inside the ring of bonfires, and she seemed right at home. She made conversation with Melina Zemikis and others. Prax even saw her lean over to speak to Eugenie Mercouri.

  When the dancing started, Prax rose to leave. His mother looked up, concerned.

  “I’m all right,” Prax said. “I just want to go back a little early. I’m tired.”

  She said nothing, so Prax walked back to their wagon. He had just built up the fire so he could make tea when he heard footsteps. He looked up with his heart beating fast, but it wasn’t Rishi. Instead, he saw Tinibu and Chio standing in the light of the fire.

  “Hello Prax,” Tinibu said. “We didn’t get a chance to talk earlier. The chief said he thought it’d be all right if we came over. He saw you leave.”

  Prax looked out into the darkness. “Where is he?”

  “Over on the far side of the field,” Chio said. “He’s got a night scope with a distance lens, so he can keep an eye on Mistress Trahn. She wouldn’t let anyone go with her, so he decided he’d watch from a distance.”

  “Sit down,” Prax said. “Would you like some Celadonian tea?”

  They both said yes, so Prax fetched the pot and opened the canister of tea leaves. He looked up to find Tinibu watching him.

  “What’s so interesting?” Prax asked.

  “You,” Tinibu said. “Back on Subidar, you always looked a little out of place. Here you fit in perfectly; we’re the ones who look out of place.”

  “This is my home,” Prax said.

  Tinibu nodded. “Is that why you left? You got homesick?”

  “No.” Prax sat back on his heels and stared at the fire.

  “She wants you back, Prax,” Chio said. “She hasn’t been the same since you left.”

  “I can’t go back,” Prax said. “I’m not free to do what I want.”

  “You mean there’s someone else?” Tinibu asked in surprise.

  “No. But I owe a debt here. I can’t leave.”

  “What kind of a debt?” Chio asked.

  Prax thought for a moment, choosing his words carefully. He didn’t want to tell his friends the nature of his crime, but he wanted them to understand how serious it was. “I did something that cost someone her life. I have to make up for that. I owe my clan a life.”

  “Did you kill her?” Tinibu asked.

  Prax shook his head. “No. She took her own life.”

  Tinibu looked at him incredulously. “Do you mean you have to stay here forever because you made some woman so unhappy she killed herself?”

  “There’s more to it than that.” Prax checked the water in the pot and then dropped in three bright orange teaplant leaves.

  Chio looked equally disbelieving. “It’s crazy to give up Mistress Trahn for that, Prax. You don’t know what she’s been through.”

  Prax swirled the leaves in the pot. “Did she take it badly when I left?”

  “Take it badly?” Tinibu asked. “She had a first class fit! First she got mad at the chief. She tried to have a shouting match with him, but he wouldn’t shout back. Then she started to cry. She shut herself in her office for a whole day, crying. She wouldn’t eat or anything. Then, when she came out, we could tell she had a plan. She sent for that guy who taught you how to read.”

  “Why?” Prax asked. He couldn’t imagine what Rishi could want with his tutor.

  Tinibu shrugged. “She didn’t tell us why. But she talked to him for a while, and then she went back in her office and stayed there. She spent five days with Merschachh—hardly gave the poor man a break. Then that other Shuratanian showed up—Parnochh or whatever. She worked with him a couple of days. That’s when the woman got there.”

  “What woman?” Prax said, perplexed.

  “I don’t know her name,” Tinibu said. “She was a Terran, but she was from Celadon. According to Lidiya, she started teaching Mistress Trahn to speak your language. That’s when she had the big fight with the chief.”

  “Lidiya had a fight with Hari?” Prax asked. He poured the tea into three cups and passed one to Tinibu and another to Chio.

  “No, no,” Tinibu said impatiently. “Mistress Trahn had a fight with the chief. He found out she was going to use a drug to help her learn Elliniká more quickly. The chief blew his stack with her because it’s dangerous. In some cases, it can fry your brain a little around the edges. The chief actually quit—turned in his papers and everything. She did it anyway, and he came running back to see if she was okay.”

  “Why would she
do that?” Prax asked. “Why would she take such a drug?”

  Tinibu shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Chio blew on his tea to cool it. “We figure she needed to speak Elliniká for her plan to work.”

  Tinibu nodded. “That’s what she’s been doing, day and night. She turned everything over to Merschachh and the other Shuratanian, and she practiced all the time with the woman from Celadon.

  “Then, about two weeks ago, we got orders to report to the Golden Hawk, and here we are.”

  Prax drank his tea and thought about it. Why had Rishi come here? Her desire was obvious, but her plan was a puzzle. “What is she going to do?”

  “Hell if we know.” Chio sniffed his tea cautiously and then took a sip. “We don’t understand a word of your language, and that’s all she’s been talking lately. We thought you might have a guess.”

  No matter how much he turned the idea over in his head, Prax still couldn’t see what Rishi’s plan was. “She’s gone to my father’s clan. My Great-Aunt Melina is the head of that clan, but she has no say over me or what I do. I’m a Mercouri, and it’s the Mercouri who bind me to Celadon.”

  “What about this little get-together?” Tinibu asked. “Is it significant that she came here?”

  Prax shook his head hopelessly. “I don’t know. The gathering is held once a year. All the clans meet. Not everyone comes, of course, but almost as many people come as stay away. There’s lots of food and lots of drinking, and the men show off with tests of skill.”

  “Not the women?” Chio asked.

  Prax almost laughed. It was like his first few days on Subidar but reversed; they were asking him questions. “The women are here for business.”

  “What kind of business?” Tinibu said.

  “Clan business. The clans are run by women. A man has no say in his own clan because he leaves it when he marries. The women of a clan elect a leader who serves until she steps down or someone challenges her successfully. The married men who live with a clan have their own council, but it has no power over the clan itself.”

  “So what kind of business do clans have?” Chio asked.

  “Marriages, births, deaths, disputes, inheritance—even divorce, but rarely.” Prax waved a hand to encompass the surrounding area. “Any problem or dispute that isn’t within a single clan is dealt with at the gathering.”