Shadow of the Warmaster

3

Zaraiz Memeli was a small youth, black hair curling tightly about a face sharp enough to cut wood. He was digging without enthusiasm at a tuber bed, leaning on his spading fork whenever the harassed middler girl turned her back on him to deal with some especially egregious idiocy of another of her punishment detail. She had to keep watch on the garden, the laundry room and a workshed where three girls were sorting rags and stripping discards of reusable parts. Usually there would be several middlers acting as overseers. Karrel Goza found this lone harried girl even more disturbing than the aberration he was supposed to deal with this morning. Why was she alone? Was the Ommar losing her grip, letting work details fall apart? Was she letting favorites play on pride and refuse such work? He didn’t know his home any longer. His fault. The Ommar was right that far. So busy saving the world he forgot about his Family; he was almost a stranger here. For the past year anyway. Up at dawn, hasty breakfast, toast and a cup of tea, maybe a sausage if he could force it down, then the retting shed, work there till the second shift came on, midafternoon, scrub the chemical stink off his body, try to get the taint of it out of his lungs, eat if he could, tumble into bed for a restless nightmare-ridden nap; dark come down, off to the taverns for carousing or conspiring or out to the Mines to fly for Elmas Ofka, his attention turned outward always, the House too familiar for him to see it; he simply assumed that it continued to exist as it existed in his memory. By the time he reached the tuber patch off the Memeli Court, he was in no mood to put up with sass from a know-nothing bebek who was setting the House in danger with no purpose except to tickle his urges.

“Zaraiz Memeli.”

The boy looked up after a deliberate pause, his face guarded. Custom and courtesy required a response; he leaned on his fork in a silence more insolent than words.

Karrel Goza swallowed bile and kept his temper. “Come,” he said. This wasn’t starting out well and he didn’t see how he could improve things, but he slogged stubbornly on. The young overseer came at a quick trot, questions on her lips. He silenced her with the Ommar’s order, took the fork from Zaraiz Memeli and gave it to her. He tapped Zaraiz on the shoulder and pointed toward the Memeli court. “We’ll talk there.”

Eyes like obsidian, wrapped in a resistant silence, the boy strolled along, refusing to recognize the compulsion put on him. A sly scornful smile sneaked onto his face as Karrel pushed through the wicket and stopped, the noise and clutter of the busy enclosure breaking around him. Crawlers and pre-youngers littered the flags, crying, yelling, playing slap-and-punch games; older prees chased each other around the baby herds and their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins who were working, singing, cross-talking in endless antiphon, a tapestry of sound.

Karrel Goza glanced at the boy, watched his bony unfinished face go wooden and unresponsive. For a moment he felt like strangling the pest, then, abruptly, he didn’t know why then or later, the absurdity of the whole thing hit him and he laughed. “Not here, obviously,” he said and backed out. He frowned at Zaraiz. There was always the Ommar’s garden, but instinct and intellect told him that would be a very bad idea; the peace and lushness of that pocket paradise was too stark a contrast to the Memeli Court, it would exacerbate the boy’s disaffection. He thought about leaving the House and walking out to the wharves, but he was supposed to be down sick and it would be stupid to confirm the Sech’s suspicions. Problem was, except for the Ommar’s quarters, there wasn’t much privacy, Gozas and Duvvars and Memelis working everywhere, even the oldest doing handcraft and repair, and those who weren’t working were talking and watching, gossiping and prying into other folk’s business. He dug deep into memory for the places he went when he was a younger and wanted to get away from the soup of life simmering inside the Housewalls. He didn’t feel like climbing a tree or burrowing into a dust-saturated attic; he smiled, didn’t suit the dignity of the moment. It was a gray day with rain threatening; yes, the clotheslines on the roof of the weaving shed, there wouldn’t be anyone hanging out clothes today.

The lines were humming softly as the chill wind swept over the roof; it wasn’t the most comfortable place for a prolonged chat, but it was private. Karrel Goza kicked a basket of clothespegs out of a fairly sheltered corner and settled himself with his back against the waist-high wall. “Sit.”

Zaraiz Memeli dropped with the boneless awkward grace of his age, drew his thin legs up and wrapped thin arms about them. He said nothing. His attitude proclaimed he intended to keep on saying nothing.

“You don’t have to tell me why,” Karrel Goza said. “I know why.” He smiled with satisfaction as he saw the boy’s rage flare, then vanish behind the shutters he’d had too much practice raising between himself and the rest of the world. He did not want to be understood, Karrel Goza’s words were both a challenge and an insult. “Dalliss,” Karrel said. “The Ommar; arrogant, bigoted, makes you want to kick her face in, but she’s good at her job.” He pushed aside his unease; this was no time for doubt. “Within her limits there’s no one big enough to take her place. Not you, my little friend, no matter what you think. She’s got her toadies, yes. Gozas, all of them. You think I like that? I’d drop the lot in Saader’s Cleft if it was up to me. They stand in her shadow and steal her authority and tramp on the rest of us and she’s blind to it. Yes. I know. I’m Goza and I’m here, running errands for her, so you think I’m one of them, tonguing her toes and begging her to walk on me.” He shrugged, his shoulders scraping against the whitened roughcast. “I had it easier than you. I got out. When I was a few years older than you, I got out. Not divorced, just out. They tried bullocking me, sure they did, but most of the time I wasn’t here and when I was I had the clout to tell them to go suck. As long as I was flying.” He felt the jolt again, the whole-body ache that came when he was grounded, the loss he couldn’t put behind him except when he was flying for Elmas Ofka. An obsession can be a gift, giving point to an otherwise pointless life; it can be a torment when there’s a wall in the way. He glanced at Zaraiz. The boy was blank as an empty page, refusing to hear any of this. What do you want, Zaraiz Memeli, do you know? He tried feeling his way back to that time around puberty when all his certainties melted like taffy left in the sun. No. He knew too much about surviving now. The years had made him intimately acquainted with gray, the middler world of crisp unchanging black-and-white wasn’t available to him any longer. Those were shifts so fundamental that it was impossible to recapture the angst of that world. It also made it difficult to judge what the boy was thinking, what he was feeling. “Do you extend your loathing to your parents? Your brothers and sisters?”

The boy lifted his eyes, flicker of molten obsidian, then he looked away.

“I went to see the Ommar Istib Memeli last night. We talked about you. Your father is on the Duzzulkas right now, bush-peddling black-market medicines, your mother works at the Kummas Kabrikon in the Fix room setting dyes, your two older sisters work there also, handling half a dozen spinners each; Hayati Memeli, the older of them, has first signs of the coughing disease. Your third sister is only a few months old. Your two brothers are mid-youngers, still with their tutors; neither of them shows much promise with his letters, but Aygil Memeli the youngest is good with his hands, he might be a carpenter or a mechanic if the Bondfees can be found. Do they mean nothing to you?” Karrel Goza stared at the boy, trying to see past the blankness. “Ommar Istib says you’re bright enough but lazy. That could be because you haven’t found anything you think worth doing, or it could be because there’s nothing to you but flash and foolishness. Ommar Istib says you’ve shown no special talents, that you’re not interested in anything, all you seem to know is what you don’t want which is everything inside these walls.” A muscle twitched beside the boy’s mouth, but he would not look at Karrel. “You think that matters to anyone? To me? Let me tell you, I’m not particularly interested in who you are or what you think.” Another molten black gaze. Karrel Goza nodded. “Right. I’m like all the rest. That’s the way the world wags, cousin. Let me make something clear. While you live within these walls, you will show some loyalty to the others here; which means you will stop your yizzy raids as long as you are associated with this House. If you want the freedom of the streets, you can have it; the convocation of ommars will pronounce a divorcement. They will not let you endanger the rest of Goza-Duvvar-Memeli.”

Zaraiz Memeli paled, flushed, clamped his lips together, struggling to control the emotions surging in him. A moment later he lost the fight. “Hypocrite!” The word exploded out of him in an angry whisper. “You… you’re doing worse.”

“I’m not a child.” Karrel Goza fixed a quelling eye on the working, angry face; inside, he writhed as he listened to what was coming out of his mouth; he wasn’t the pompous idiot he heard himself being, but somehow he couldn’t shake loose from… from this stinking parody of all he’d kicked against since he was Zaraiz Memeli’s age. The face of authority, he thought, as his mouth went on uttering fatuities. “I’m not recklessly endangering the House for the sake of a transient thrill.” He held up his hand to silence the boy until he was finished speaking. “There is a purpose to…

“Purpose!” Zaraiz Memeli’s voice cracked which made him angrier than before; he tried to say more, started to stammer and clamped his teeth on his lower lip. Karrel Goza waited, giving the boy time to collect himself. “Y… y… YOU!” Zaraiz got out finally. “Purpose, yunkshit. Playing stupid games. Going nowhere.” He jerked a long trembling thumb at the sky. “That! that… that thing up there says you’re full of shit and hot air.”

“Maybe so.” Karrel Goza sighed. “This isn’t about me, Zaraiz Memeli. The inklins haven’t much to lose, so they can afford their rashness. As long as you are connected to Goza House, you drag us down with you.” He rubbed wearily at his eyes. “Don’t tell me it isn’t fair. I know it isn’t fair. The Ommar and her convocation have the power, you have none. Your nearkin will back her, so will we.” He hesitated. “The time will come, Zaraiz Memeli, when you’ll have a chance to change the balance of power. If you’re here to fight, if you have the will to fight. All I ask is that you think about it.”

Zaraiz Memeli shuddered, shut his eyes and dropped his face onto his knees.

Karrel Goza rubbed at his arms, clamped his cold, chapped hands in his armpits, hunting some warmth. Weariness from the abruptly interrupted drive of the past months was dropping like a fog over him, the day’s damp chill was boring into his bones. He scowled at the boy; he might feel a certain kinship with him, but that embryonic brother-sense was drowning in impatience. Come on, he thought, come on, young fool; give in or get out. There’s nothing I can do for you. Look at me. Nothing I can do for me. Not now. You’re supposed to be intelligent, I can’t see it, show me. He pinched his nose, killing a sneeze, tucked, his hand back under his arm.

Zaraiz Memeli lifted his head. “How?”

Karrel Goza blinked. “How do you usually think?”

“No.” He jerked his thumb at the sky, the tremble gone out of his hand. “That. There’s whispers. I didn’t believe them before. It is true? Have you and her figured a way to get at it?”

Oversoul’s empty navel, Karrel Goza thought, I talk too much. “Nonsense,” he said aloud. “How could we? I was talking about Family matters.”

Zaraiz grinned. His black eyes glittering, he bounced to his feet, so much energy in him, if someone touched a match to him, he’d explode. “Right,” he said. “All right. I’ll make a deal. The Slimes’ll park our yizzies for now, if so you make us part of it.” He folded his thin arms, hugged himself as if those arms had strength enough to control what burned in him. The wind blew strands of curly hair across his eyes, his mouth; he ignored that and stood there, frozen fire, dangerous to his enemies, nearly as dangerous to his kin. When Karrel Goza failed to answer at once, his excitement blew out and the suspicion and resentment that smoldered under his skin burned hotter in its place. “Or aren’t Memeli worthy? Aren’t we good enough for you?”

Karrel Goza closed his eyes. I do not need this, he thought, Prophet touch my lips or no, anything I say will be wrong. If there was just some way I could drop him in a hole somewhere until… hole? Why not. He smiled. He couldn’t help smiling though he knew Zaraiz Memeli would see and misinterpret it. He opened his eyes, got wearily to his feet. “How much weight will your yizzy lift?”

“You?” Zaraiz was still suspicious but beginning to radiate a tentative triumph.

He’s quick, Karrel Goza thought, good, he might even be useful. “Yes.”

“You and me, no problem.”

“Tomorrow night. I’ll take you out, but you’ll have to make your own pitch. Another thing, you don’t like House discipline, but the worst thing that can happen to you here is divorcement. Act up there and you could find slave steel around your neck. I’ll back you, for what that’s worth; I think you might be useful, a clever boy can get in places a man can’t reach. All I’m saying is, it won’t be easy. Come along.”

Zaraiz followed him down the stairs. Not a word from the boy. The washcourt was empty, a few raindrops were splatting down, making pockmarks on flags whitened by decades of splashes from soap, starch, and bleach. Karrel stopped, turned. “Well?”

He watched Zaraiz Memeli struggle to make up his mind; his impatience was gone, he was too tired to care what the decision was. As the boy shifted from foot to foot, he could almost write the script for what was passing through his cousin’s head. He looked his age at last, vulnerable, wanting desperately for the offer to be real, afraid of trusting it because the whole of his short life had taught him that adults invariably lied to him, broke promises without a qualm, disregarded his ideas and his desires. He kept snatching glances at Karrel Goza as if trying to surprise him into betraying his real intentions. It was no good, of course; either he trusted and said yes, or he rejected the offer and took the consequences. Karrel Goza waited, shoulders slumped, eyes half-closed.

Zaraiz Memeli’s eyes burned black again. He licked his lips, nodded, a short sharp jerk of his head. “When do we go?” he said; his voice cracked again, but this time he ignored it. “Where do we start from?”

“Tonight. The wasteflat out beyond Pervas Gorp’s last warehouse. Hour after midnight. You can manage that?”

Zaraiz snorted, his thin body stiff with scorn. “I go back on punishment?”

“Tubers don’t spade themselves. Use the time to think, eh?” Karrel Goza rubbed at his forehead. Good little boy again? I don’t think so.

“Hunh-eh!” Arms swinging, torso swaying, the boy took himself away from there.

Karrel Goza watched his pass through the washcourt’s wicket. Maybe Elli can handle him, he thought. He yawned. If I’m yizzying to the Mines tonight, I’d better get some sleep.