The Burning Ground

1
Chapter 1

And now, for all you lovers out there, Bashar’s Lament.

Isaho leaned her head against the radio so that her father’s voice vibrated in the bone. Thann looked up from the sweater xe was knitting as xe’s thinta picked up the child’s reaction. Isaho didn’t fuss, but since she’d seen her brother Keleen die, shot through the head by a sniper’s pellet, she’d gone very quiet and clingy, worrying every time one of her parents went out without her. Hearing her father announcing the music assured her that he was still alive.

“Love in the daylight is sad, Ammery

Oiling our passions when our anya is gone

It is done, it is done, Ammery

Where has xe run, our gold Amizad?

Love in the darkness is sad, Ammety…”

When a shell from one of the mountain guns crashed through the hulk next door, Bazekiyl started and pricked her finger, jerking it away from the shirt she was sewing so the blood wouldn’t stain the cloth.

Thann dropped the sweater and hurried to Isaho, taking her hand, whistling soft encouragement to her. To xe’s fembond xe signed with her free hand using abbreviated gestures, +It didn’t hit anyone this time.+

Bazekiyl shivered, wrapped her finger in a strip of rag. “You’re sure, Thanny? Sometimes squatters…”

+I’m sure.+ Xe brushed the hair off Isaho’s wide brow, sighed as the femlit cuddled against her. Xe’d been so frightened for so long, xe felt only a vague relief that the shell had missed their building, could barely sense a reaction in xe’s family to the eerie whistle of the shells and the blast when they exploded.

There was a second crash-boom, a third, then silence and a plume of dust drifting past the window, past glass miraculously uncracked after years of near misses.

In the middle of the new silence there was a rhythmic rattle at the door. Isaho pulled away from Thann and rushed to push the bar out of its hooks. She jumped back as her father’s shoulder shoved it open.

Mandall came in quickly, staggering under the weight of the sack he was carrying.

Thann shoved the door quickly shut, slapped the bar home, then turned and signed to Isaho to bring her father the homecoming water. Xe snugged against xe’s malbond, basking in the waves of well-being that rolled off Mandall, the sudden burst of joy from Isaho, the quieter pleasure from Bazekiyl as she set the shirt aside and came to give Mandall a welcoming nuzzle. So much better. For the moment the war was pushed back and the family was almost whole again.

Isaho came from the room they’d set up as a kitchen, walking slowly, eyes intent on the glass she held with both hands. It had an inch of water in it, clear water without sediment, drawn carefully from the top of the cistern Mandall and his cousin had built from scraps of tin, salvaged lumber, and pipe when the water plant had fallen to the mountain guns and every drop had to be carried from the city springs.

“A glass for coming home, Baba.” She glanced toward

Thann, who signed xe’s approval, then smiled shyly up at her father.

He bowed with grave courtesy, sipped at the water. “Water shared is water blessed.” He handed the glass to Bazekiyl.

“Water shared makes a home though there be no roof on it.” She sipped, handed the glass to Thann.

Thann signed, +Water shared is a bond given by God.+ Xe passed the glass to Isaho.

The child drank the swallow left. “Water shared makes the circle whole.”

Isaho sidled up to her Baba and leaned against him as he worked the knot loose and opened the sack. He patted her absently, went on talking as he worked. “Juwallan’s oldest mallit Luzh stumbled across a way into an old grocery store when he was digging around for wood. Didn’t want it to get out, so that’s why Juwallan said it was a wood hunt when he called me at work. We got most of the food cleared out and stowed away before a scout from the Zendida Clan spotted us. More than food, too. I got some spools of thread and some needles for you, Bazhy, hammer and nails for me. Ahh, that does it.”

He spread the mouth of the sack open, began taking out cans of fruit and vegetables, setting them on the floor. “Thann, if you and Shashi can trot these into the pan-

Bazekiyl knelt, helped Isaho fill her arms. ‘.’That’s enough for now, Shashi, you know where they go. Dall, the Zendidas… was there trouble?”

“No. We had the best of what was there already, so we left and let them have it.” He grinned. “And I got this just for you, Bazhy.”

Thann saw her face change as Mandall reached into the bag and pulled out a wide ribbon, so soft and smooth it seemed to cling to her fingers. It was a pale blue the exact shade of her eyes.

Xe touched the egg in xe’s pouch, felt the babbit squirming and shifting about inside the leathery shell.

Maybe there’d be another to keep it company. Xe liked the thought of that. The egg was nearly ready for hatching; which meant that all too soon xe’d lose the pouch bond and the comfort of that wriggling weight. Just as Isaho clung to her father now, so Thann saw xeself clinging to the egg and the suckling that would live in xe’s pouch for another year, a tiny piece of joy and sanity in the chaos their lives had become. Xe watched and listened, one hand on the tiny bulge at xe’s middle.

The moment shattered as a shell crashed outside, closer than the others. The floor and walls shook when it blew.

Isaho came running from the pantry and flung herself against her father. Bazekiyl reached out to draw Thann closer, and the four of them huddled in a tight knot waiting for the next shell.

The silence went on as the light coming through the still unbroken window panes darkened and the room filled with shadows. The mountain guns were mostly silent at night.

Bazekiyl stirred. “I think that’s all for a while.” She eased herself free from her bondmates, crawled to the window, and pulled down the blackout curtain. “They must have gotten a new supply of shells from the smugglers.” She tugged the blind fight, clicked the hooks at the lower corners through the eyes screwed into the wood of the wall, then groped about for the candle lamp. “You know how wasteful they are when that happens.” A flare from a match lit her face from below, then the candle was burning. She fitted the chimney down around it. “Shashi, bring me the other lamps, will you? Then we’ll start fixing dinner.”

Thann gestured, and Isaho pushed her chair back as quietly as she could manage and stood to sing grace for the meal.

Before she was ready, a nightbird, a weh-weleh, sang its three note courting song. It was a good omen. Bazekiyl laughed and snapped thumb against forefinger, Mandall clapped his hands, and Thann whistled a soft breathy appreciation.

Isaho giggled. Then she crossed her hands over her heart and sang, “Part of the stream of all that lives/Part of the bounty the Living God gives/We come from earth, to earth we go/From God to God our lives do flow.” She had a strong true voice that sounded older than her small count of years, eleven almost twelve.

Bazekiyl closed her hand tight about Thann’s. Xe returned the pressure and swallowed a sigh at this reminder of what might have been before this God-cursed war began. If Isaho were trained, they both knew she would be one of the great singers. There was no chance of that. Not now. No teachers, no theaters, only the radio and maybe a chance of clandestine songwires passed from hand to hand, the promise in the voice, but unfulfilled. Back when Isaho was still in shell, they’d had a lot of dreams for her. No more. Staying alive was about all there was.

“Shashi and Thann and I went over to Cousin Fokoza’s for tea.” Bazekiyl slipped a kaslik on Isaho’s plate, a thin pancake rolled around chopped up meat and greens in a cream sauce. “Want some fruit on it, Shashi? Cousin Mikil, you know, the one that bonded into Yiswayo Clan, anyway she was saying her malbond was caught by a seven mal phela out looking for ablebodies, they wanted to make up to nine and they wouldn’t listen when he said his anyabond was bedbound and needed him, Da11, you be careful when you go out, I don’t know what… what was I saying.” She spooned fruit in thickened juice over the kaslik and moved around the table to Thann. “Oh. Yes. He slipped his leash after they’d been on the river a couple of days, he knew they wouldn’t chase after him because there was this Pixa phela that was coming to river and they meant to ambush it and they didn’t have a lot of time to get ready, anyway he came across this peddler on his way back here.” She smoothed her hand along Thann’s shoulder, smiled when Thann signed that xe didn’t want any fruit; xe didn’t like sweet things. “Peddler was telling him about the Holy City,, said even the Pixa don’t bother folk there. Said the peace was something you wouldn’t believe.” She finished serving Mandall, rubbed the back of her hand against his cheek, and carried the platter to her own place. “If you’ll pour the tea, Dall.”

Thann kept an eye on Isaho while xe listened to xe’s bondmates chattering on about the day, playing dream-games about Linojin. Xe could see no way of crossing the whole continent to get there, not with Impix and Pixa phelas roaming about, hunting each other and killing anything that moved. But dreams were all they had right now and would have any time ahead as far as xe could see-xe and Bazekiyl and Mandall and Isaho and the nameless egg in xe’s pouch.

And it was the same for all the Impix who lived out the wrecks of their lives in this wreck of a city. Whole families and broken families, traders twisting a dangerous living as they scurried through the shadows of war, Brothers of God who were supposed to be untouchable, but who died, too, even when they came to bless, as did the fem Sisters in Godbond who tried to mediate between the clans and the Anyas of Mercy who cared for the orphans and tended the sick and dying. Xe looked at the blue ribbon tied in Bazekiyl’s fine black hair and sighed. Small pleasures. Maybe they’re enough.

Isaho had finished all the fruit and the glass of canned milk from Mandall’s trove and had just a few bites of kaslik left; she was pushing them around with her fork, her eyes so heavy with sleep it was obvious she didn’t know what she was doing.

Thann slipped from xe’s chair, moved around the table. Xe tapped Isaho’s arm, signed, +That’s good enough, Shashi. Time for bed.+

Isaho’s mouth moved and Thann thought for a moment she was going to protest, then she leaned heavily into the anya, yawned and murmured, “Carry me?”

+A big femlit like you+ Xe finished with the flutter of the fingers that was anya laughter. Then xe slid xe’s arms under Isaho’s legs and lifted her from the chair. It wouldn’t be long before xe’s baby was indeed too big for xe to carry and the thought pierced xe to the heart.

Isaho’s pallet was in the pantry which had been a walk-in refrigerator before Mandall had taken the door off. It was the safest place in the apartment.

They lived on the second floor of a five-floor building that once had been a fancy hotel, most of which was rubble now; their rooms were in the back of the hotel’s restaurant-one of the private dining rooms, a piece of the kitchen, a bathroom whose toilet still flushed when Mandall poured the dirty dishwasher or bathwater into the tank, the old refrigerator and the laundry room which Mandall, Bazekiyl, and Thann used as their bedroom.

There was a candle burning by the sink in the kitchen and another in the pantry. Thann settled Isaho on the straw pallet, fetched a basin with a bit of water, washed her face and hands. +Now+ she signed. +Get yourself undressed while I fetch your toothbrush.+

“Ahhh, Thannny, I’m s000 sleepy. I can brush in the morning.”

Thann gave a short sharp whistle, then signed, +And all night little bugs will be digging at your teeth and when you’re trying to smile at a mallit or an anyalit, all you’ll have left are gums.+

“Mallits, hunh.”

Thann tapped her cheek, grinned at her, and went out.

As xe got a glass of water and the toothbrush, xe could hear Bazekiyl and Mandall still talking. There was that in the sound of their voices that made body parts soften and swell. Xe glanced through the door.

Bazekiyl took the blue ribbon from her hair and passed it through her fingers… her head close to Mandall’s, her cheeks flushed, a little smile on her face… winding the ribbon through and through her fingers. Thann’s thinta heated with the feel of xe’s fembond loving the silky slide against her skin…

Xe hurried back to Isaho, impatient suddenly with the child’s demands on xe.

While Isaho brushed her teeth, xe lit the nightlight, a slow burning candle in a glass bowl, and set it near the door. Xe took the brush, so Isaho could rinse her mouth and spit the foamy water into a waste water bowl. Xe dropped the brush in the bowl and set them aside, pulled the blankets up and tucked them around the child, touched her lips with a reminding forefinger, then touched hands with her as they went through the nightprayers they’d signed together since Isaho was old enough to learn what the signs meant.

As xe bent over the drowsy child to give her the night kiss, the floor shook under xe and there was a deafening explosion, then a rattle as the walls of their place fell in.

“Baba!” Isaho pulled away from Thann and scrambled to her feet. “Mam!”

Thann caught her, tried to push her back down on the pallet, but Isaho broke free again and ran from the pantry.

By the time Thann reached her again, she was digging frantically at the pile of bricks and debris just inside the dining room door, grunting, snuffling, crying, calling

Mam and Baba over and over, calling her dead brother, making the dust and bricks fly like a little chal digging in a mound of rock and earth for the mayomayo hiding there.

Thann stopped, stared through the door at the child, at the poufs of dust still floating in the air. A brick fell from the outside wall, smashed one of the windowpanes that ten years of war hadn’t broken. Xe could see the sky, Phosis’ fattening crescent visible through the veils of dust and the glowing wander of the Silkflower Road where stars were so thick the eye couldn’t separate them. And the tail of the constellation called Mayomayo after the little beast that the first Isiging had chased into the Sky. A shadow glided past, a weh-weleh on the hunt, maybe even the one that prefaced Isaho’s song…

They’re dead. They’re under all that. They’re dead. Xe looked down. Isaho’s digging had uncovered a patch of blue.

Bazekiyl winding the ribbon through her fingers… round and round her long delicate fingers… Isaho mustn’t see this. She mustn’t…

Thann caught hold of xe’s daughter and pulled her away from her frantic digging. The child fought xe, but xe held her until she finally stopped struggling and started crying, her slight body shaking with the intensity of her sobs. Xe held the child tightly against xe-leaning against the wall because xe’s legs wouldn’t support xe-the inner wall, the one still standing-it shuddered against xe, almost like Isaho, as the pounding went on and on.

Isaho’s ragged breathing steadied as exhaustion settled like a blanket over her.

When she dropped into a child’s sudden sleep, Thann lifted her and carried her back to her pallet and laid her there while xe used the water in the spit cup to clean the dust and blood off her hands.

Xe tucked the blankets around her, then went back to the dining room to continue Isaho’s digging because there was some faint chance that one or the other of xe’s bondmates was still alive, protected by the table or some vagary of the falling walls.

Xe uncovered Bazekiyl’s hand, flattened and broken yet still lovely, pale gray-green, smooth as the bark of a silk tree, almost as soft as Isaho’s baby skin. Xe pulled the ribbon free, knelt weeping and rolling it into a tight cylinder. Because xe couldn’t bear to dig any more, not right then, xe took the ribbon to the old refrigerator, set it an one of the shelves, and stood looking down at her daughter. Xe was the last alive of xe’s clan and everyone xe knew had little room in their lives for anyone else. Xe didn’t know what to do.

Isaho’s face was relaxed, her breathing slow and deep, but she was crying as she slept, tears seeping past her short thick lashes, sliding down the sides of her face to wet her pillow.

Thann went back to digging.

When xe uncovered Mandall’s head, xe’s last hope died. Xe bent and kissed the matted brown crest hair falling over his ear, the only place xe could bear to touch, then began covering him again.

Xe’d almost finished when a sound brought xe swiveling around, a piece of broken brick in xe’s hand.

Isaho. The ribbon was tied in her hair, a big awkward ugly bow. She was looking out past the pile of rubble, not seeing it because she was seeing something else, though what it was Thann couldn’t guess. Xe’s thinta read anguish driven so deep it was almost not there-and over the top of it was a frightening eagerness, a need that reached out and covered over everything like the devouring iscabu weed that was eating Khokuhl almost as fast as the shells were destroyed the city.

“Linojin,” Isaho said suddenly. “Mam and Baba and

Keleen, they’ve gone to Linojin. We have to go find them, Anya meami. Soon as it gets light, we have to go.”