05

All characters are over the age of eighteen

Chapter Four

She slept after, all that day and until morning, exhausted. When she woke, Havelen had shifted, facing him, his hand spanning her hip and her hand in the center of his chest. She had to pee and her eyes felt swollen. She looked up. He was already awake. He watched as she drew away, sitting up, Havelen avoiding his eyes and trying to get her hair in order.

They didn't speak, the silence heavy, Havelen feeling emptied and hollow. After breakfast, she looked at the top of his head as he bound her feet again and she spoke in Aleth. "In my mind, I eyed you married."

He glanced up at her and down again, speaking in the same language. "The Rangisins don't marry."

"Is it almost the same, with your bands and the promise?"

"How do you know about that?"

"I read it. The sixth ashi collected books about the Rangisis. She was interested, for some reason."

"I haven't given my promise, no. We'll stop in a few hours and make camp and get there tomorrow."

Havelen nodded and looked away, studying the horizon line, her chest aching now. "I'm happy not to marry the heir, Kohl. I know you came for the prophecy and not for me, but it's a relief to me not to marry him."

He was quiet for a time, finishing the wrapping. "Is he so cruel to you? You're beautiful."

She didn't answer. "How long have you been away from your home?"

"Almost ten years."

* * *

As he'd promised, they only walked for a few hours. When they camped, it was still light. She sat in front of the purple fire, the color serene, startling in all the monotone sand.

"King Erepi Leopol-át is sick," Kohl said in Lews, watching her.

She frowned lightly, looking at him, answering in the same. "Vincet's father, yes. He's only expected to live another few months."

"Most of the Alethean kings haven't been interested in the desert Rangisins, doing what they want to the villagers but leaving us alone. We know the desert. The sand clogs the Alethean skimmers. To find us, the wardens would have to come in on foot. Before, it was too much effort."

A bad feeling was growing in her stomach. "That's changed?"

"The heir made the announcement after his father became ill. All the Rangisins of the three tribes have been ordered to come to the Alethean garrison at Sedik Village to be registered and resettled in a camp there."

"What?" she said faintly.

"The desert Rangisis are to be subsequently redistributed among the villages. Any desert Rangisins who haven't been registered will be hunted by the wardens and executed."

She stared. Vincet didn't want the desert Rangisins registered. He was going to do what he'd always threatened and wipe out the tribes. "I know you don't want to, Kohl, but you have to bring the tribes to Talmyth."

"It's not my choice, and it's not our way."

"Your way? You won't be anything. You'll be dead. Vincet will find some excuse and send the wardens. Once he's king, he won't even need an excuse. What choice do you have?"

"We could go into Nabed and make ourselves more difficult to find. Even for wardens, Nabed would be dangerous. It would give us more time."

"Time for what? The wardens won't stop. What is Nabed?"

"The Rangisin tribes live on the edge of the truly deep desert, but not in it. We live in places we know there's water, where the animals have what they need. Past that is Nabed, a vast wasteland, and it's not a place very many things can survive. There's not enough food there."

"And you want your people to go there?"

"It's not my decision. But I wanted you to know that you didn't draw a warden to the tribes, or to me. They were already coming for us."

"That's not comforting. How much time do you have?"

He shrugged. "A little less than four cycles."

Her eyes shifted to the fire. Vincet. How she hated him. "What's this prophecy you took me for?"

"The prophecy says that in Shosa, the ashea will find a shield against the wardens."

"A shield," she echoed. "Do you know where the prophecy came from? I don't understand how the Alethean ashi could be in a Rangisin prophecy."

"My uncle always believed the Sadun planted the prophecy."

"Who are the Sadun?"

"A story we tell."

"A story? Why do you think they're real if they're a story?"

"Because our stories are sometimes true."

She was staring at him, not understanding. "Don't you know?"

"The people of Talmyth are like our ancestors were in Shosa, before the attack. They have technology and they write Lews down in print language and make books, as you saw in the library. The villagers are really just the people of Talmyth, living happily underground out of the view of the Leopol-át except when they're required to risk themselves on the surface. But the Rangisins who stayed on the surface of Iskel were a tribal people even before the war with the Aletheans, and we don't write Onsagi. We have very little technology. We use stories to tell our histories."

"So the stories you tell are true?"

"Not all of them. We have stories about how people were made by being fashioned out of clay and Iskel was once a garden, and nobody thinks any of that's real. But some stories are more likely. When I was brought into the room where they were holding my uncle, he said something to me before he was struck by the warden. He said: "Take the ashi to the Hall of Memory." He said ashi, not ashea, and he said it in Onsagi. I didn't even know he knew about you, and I'd never heard of the Hall of Memory. When I returned to Talmyth, I was going through his papers and found two references. The Hall of Memory was a real place. One reference spoke of a room in Shosa, the Rangisin capital city. Another was an old document, unrelated, that made reference to the prophecy and accessing the Hall of Memory from the Statue of Amel."

"Who is Amel?"

"I don't know, but our stories say that there used to be a huge statue in the mountains behind Shosa. Nobody knows what it looked like, and it was supposed to have been destroyed in the attack. I didn't put it all together until after I got back to Talmyth."

"You never told me about any prophecy."

"You were supposed to become the Queen of the Aletheans. I would appreciate it if you didn't mention to people in the tribes, by the way, when we get there. I didn't want to tell you the Rangisins had a prophecy in which you betrayed your people to your enemies."

Her stare was blank, and when she spoke, it was in Aleth. "Rangisins and Aletheans aren't enemies. The prophecy doesn't say Aletheans. It says the wardens."

He switched to Aleth. "The wardens are Aletheans in Rangisin eyes."

She was stung. "What's your blather? We're not the same as them. They aren't Aletheans like us. They're weapons for the Leopol-át. We can't fight them. Nobody can fight the wardens."

"The Rangisins don't know your people. We've only met the wardens and the guards. We've never been to Herun."

"Work the lever, Kohl. We haven't got a Talmyth to hide from the wardens. We don't have a desert to get past their reach. You've got ten wardens on Iskel. We endure forty. They walk our stairs in the Commons and do what they like to us." She stopped, looking away. "So you decided to take the Alethean ashi to Shosa for the prophecy. What's there?"

He was studying her. "Nobody knows. We don't go there. There was no reason. Shosa was destroyed and then buried under centuries of sand, and whatever technology we once had to make it possible to live in such a harsh environment has been lost to us. Our city is underground now, and the ruins are a week's travel into Nabed."

She looked back into the fire. "I guess we'll learn."

"You'll still go with me into Nabed?"

"Of course," she said absently. Not looking at him, she pulled the blanket closer, curling up into a ball under it, sitting with her arms around her knees. Cold, always cold.

Kohl rose, one graceful movement, walking around the fire, her eyes following him. He sat behind her and took the blanket, putting it around her shoulders. His arms came, drawing her closer, between his legs like he used to. Her fingers came out of the blanket and touched her necklace.

"What are you thinking about when you do that?" he said. "The young man you knew?"

Her chest was aching. He saw it now, yes, and pitied her. She nodded and pulled her hand back inside the blanket.

"Do people write in the Commons?" he said after a time.

Havelen still felt off-balance, unsure how to interact with him."No. Were no writing there, nor reading. There were stories to tell, but we knew tales from truth."

"You didn't tell stories about the past?"

"What's to say?"

"Your history as a people."

She didn't answer for a time, trying to figure what he meant. It was real or imagined, not both. "The aunties told things that had happened. But they weren't stories."

"Who were the aunties?"

"Any old woman over thirty-five."

"Old woman over thirty-five," he echoed. "Tell me one of the stories."

"It's not really the stories we tell, but just what happened," she repeated.

"Like what?"

Her eyes went up, trying to think of something, and then she had to translate it so he could understand what she said. "Before she died sick in her lungs from the fumes of the factory, the auntie who was my father's mother used to speak of the Commons from when her mother's mother worked in the mines and the people in the Commons tried to organize to fight against the Leopol-át. The auntie used to say that when she was a child, the guards decided which building had the most talk and two wardens started at the bottom and worked their way up. It was still talked about, how people went to the top carrying those who couldn't walk, young and old, and threw themselves off high floor for the mercy of it."

He was quiet for a time. "That's true?"

"It's what happened," she repeated again.

* * *

The next day, they arrived at the camp for Kohl's band in Shaga Tribe. It was Kohl's childhood home, as he'd spoken of it when she'd known him, although it wasn't a single place. The tribes were nomadic, traveling the same routes for hundreds of years.

She admitted she was curious. She had always been curious, having read about the tribes in the books in the ashi's collection, thinking about Kohl, but nobody really knew that much about the desert Rangisis. And, of course, Kohl had talked about them when they'd spent time in the grove. He might have lived in Talmyth for a time, but he'd always spoken of Shaga Tribe as his home when she knew him.

The camp was a huge ring of tents with geometric designs set on flat land sheltering under craggy hills, with packed sand and mesas in the distance. It was hot, as usual, and she felt filthy and sweaty, wondering if Kohl found it strange to be coming home. It was impossible for her to tell, Havelen glancing at his face, which was, as usual, alert and slightly expressionless, guarded.

The fronts of all the tents were open, the cloth rolled up. As monochromatic as the terrain was, inside the tents were brilliant colors, textiles, pottery, rugs and blankets, fat square cushions and tables. Outside, in the common space in front of each tent, more colorful and intricate rugs were lying bare on the sand with cushions.

"The rugs are woven from hetspah wool?" she said, breaking their silence.

"They are, yes," Kohl said.

People came to the front of the tents and seemed to recognize Kohl right away, greeting him with low murmuring voices, not interrupting their passage except for a man who came and took the cart Kohl had been pulling, nodding at him, Kohl nodding back. None of them looked at her, treating her like she didn't exist.

Kohl spoke to her in Aleth. "Until you speak to the madi, it would be disrespectful to notice you."

"Are the hetspahs really invisible?" She'd read that.

"Invisible?" He sent her a glance, humor in it. "No. Hetspahs are mimics. They change color as a defense mechanism in relationship to the source of a perceived threat. So, if you're standing in front of one and you scare it, it will stand still and its colors will change to blend into what you're looking at so it seems like the hetspah's not there. When the people of Taka Tribe, who breed them, want a certain color wool, they bring a hetspah into a tent with that color on all four walls and scare it."

"The animals sound remarkable."

"They're stupid. The Rangisins have to put bells on them so they don't wander off while we're looking at them. Hetspahs are so stupid that when there's a storm, they change color facing the wind like that could save them. They're not the truly interesting animals of the desert."

"What animals do you find interesting in the desert?"

Something came rushing out from between two tents, moving fast, and changed direction, rushing toward them now. Kohl didn't react, acting like he didn't even see it, although there was no missing it.

She froze, looking at it and then at Kohl and back to the monster, beginning to breathe fast.

"Kohl?"

"Yes?" he said, stopping, his brows crooked as if there wasn't a horrifying animal charging toward them with a fixed gaze.

It was as high as her knee, a deep rust-red color and plated with six multi-jointed legs with delicate pointed hard toes supporting a body that barely moved as it ran. Over a thick neck, it had what looked like a helmet that swept back, ending in a scalloped edge, a long and flat face. Black eyes were set in front over a round mouth with long dripping and slimy tendrils of flesh hanging that wobbled and flapped as it went.

She couldn't move. It crossed to a low trough. The animal leaned and vomited into it, a milky substance, Havelen making a helpless sound in her throat. A woman walked out of a tent and gave it something, its blubbery tendrils clinging to her hand and stretching a little before separating when the animal took it. The creature made a low muttering sound. Havelen swallowed heavily, rocking a little. It skittered away sideways without facing in that direction and rushed toward her again.

It got to her and slowed, its black eyes regarding her for a moment as she stared back, and then it skittered past. Not having done so since she'd first seen it, Havelen took a breath and began to walk slowly with Kohl, stiff, turning to look after the creature, her heart pounding.

When she faced forward, the animals appeared on her right, penned between two of the large tents, next to her now, only a small distance away. They were much larger versions of the smaller creature, which must be a juvenile. They were as high as Kohl's shoulder, huge insectile creatures, and they were all muttering, like a conversation she couldn't quite hear, their many legs.

As she stopped, watching, one of them walked in that same dainty, skittering way and vomited into another larger trough, more milky white substance hanging off its skin flaps, a long trail from its mouth that it coughed out. She shuddered, her voice tight. "What be they, Kohl?"

"The interesting animals in the desert. They're sukas," Kohl answered, his voice smiling in an annoying way. "Desert scavengers."

Something touched her on her right arm. Havelen gave a high-pitched scream and jumped away, crashing into Kohl, whose hand came back from around her, sweeping her into his arms and laughing, setting her down on his other side as they arrived at the largest tent.

"End it, Kohl," she cried in Aleth, switching to Lews. "I can't believe you did that."

Kohl laughed again. She saw a man sitting on cushions on the ground inside the large tent, watching them. This would be Mishë, Kohl's brother.

Kohl had told her that Mishë was the madi, which meant he wasn't just the head of this particular band, but also the leader of all the bands of the Shaga Tribe. That had been in her books. She was worried, meeting him, unsure if the desert Rangisis would be unfriendly or if they might tolerate

her, an Alethean. There hadn't been a way to ask Kohl.

Kohl surprised her by squatting in front of her, drawing off her shoes. Her feet were still in bandages. It was the custom, she realized, as he shed his own and she followed him into the shade of the tent.

Except for the fact that they were roughly the same age and wore similar clothing and had similar coloring, the two men didn't look alike at all. Kohl was big, with strong features and clever upturned eyes, ridiculously handsome, with a restless manner. Mishë was a wiry man, not as tall, from what she could tell, with a long austere face and green eyes, startling in his face. But Kohl had green eyes behind the dye, she reminded herself.

Walking to sit on one of the two cushions, Kohl gesturing for her to join him to his right. She was even more nervous now, the madi's manner not giving her any clues. Kohl loosened the scarf across his face and threw it back, almost all in one motion. Mishë watched as Havelen drew the scarf away from her face, pushing it off her head. Kohl's brother went still, looking at her, and then he looked away.

A man came with a tray, a bowl of water on it, and Kohl washed his hands. She copied him, the sound of the water drops loud in the space. The man returned to take the bowl and deposit three small cups with no handles, one in front of each of them, his eyes sliding to look at her before he left, a quick sweep. Inside the cups was a purplish liquid. The madi and Kohl raised theirs and drank.

Havelen brought hers to her lips, sniffing subtly. It smelled sweet. When she tried it, she was surprised it was warm, but it had a pleasant and mild taste, rich. When they were done, Kohl set his cup in front of himself and she copied him.

Mishë's gaze at Kohl didn't seem particularly friendly, and Kohl was just as undemonstrative. It might be that the madi was angry that Kohl had brought her here. It seemed like a cool meeting between brothers who hadn't seen each other in ten years.

"You come at a dangerous time for the tribes, Kohl," Mishë said. "Maybe you should have stayed in Talmyth."

"That wasn't what I wanted, Madi," Kohl said.

"And you still do what you want?"

"Maybe what I want is worthier than it used to be, Madi."

"Maybe. I was sad to hear about Ethen. He wasn't related to us, but he raised you like a son after our parents died."

"He was good to me, Madi."

"Rumor has it you were taken by the wardens and that you escaped."

"A little more complicated than that, Madi, but the result was the same."

"The wardens are skebold, sandshit. Despite our differences when we were young, I found my thoughts turning to you when I learned of it."

"I also thought of you. The last we saw one another, Madi, we weren't grown men yet."

"Perhaps we can come to know each other better this time. Who is this person?"

"Madi, this is Havelen, an Alethean and the ashi."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Madi," she said in Lews. Kohl had given the honorific every time he spoke.

Mishë studied her. "Your beauty is like the stories. You learned a language of the Rangisins, Ashi."

"Yes, Madi."

"Why did you?"

"I wanted to know it, Madi."

"That answer buries the question. Why did you?"

"Because Kohl spoke it, Madi."

The madi turned to Kohl. "Where did you find the ashi?"

"At the Sanctuary where Ethen brought me, Madi. We knew each other there when we were young. Later, I stole her from the Leopol-át heir who ordered the wardens to capture me, the same one who ordered Ethen killed."

"But you didn't just take the heir's woman. You took the woman he would have married, the one who would have been the Alethean's queen. Isn't that so, Ashi?"

Havelen's eyes darted to Kohl, who had told her not to say anything about this.

"Yes, Madi," Kohl answered for her.

The madi's eyes returned to him. "And then you brought the woman here, to the tribes."