Tallas Fallen Temple Ch 10

Zhair'lo was in pretty terrible shape by the time Talla's message actually reached him.

It had been a long week of waiting and worrying on his end.

He'd sent his message to Talla, trusting Zoe to carry it for him, and then he'd waited. The only thing he could say about the time was that his constant worry had focused his attention on his archery to the intensity of a burning afternoon sun. Any motionless target less than forty paces away from him might as well be dead. Even Lyric was pleased, if Zhair'lo was interpreting the man's barely perceptible eyebrow twitches correctly.

In the meantime, he'd received one other message, but it had come from a pair of girls he didn't know and it hadn't been from Talla. It had been a Summons for another Form upgrade.

He'd done that, too, wondering if he could find another ally.

But no. She'd been a girl of Iron and, Zo'kar had been right, coming on a girl's stomach wasn't much fun even if the women of Form didn't make the whole thing so dreadfully colourless and technical.

Besides which, the girl in question had not come to his bed the following night. Somewhere, out of memories that he was sure were not his, a soft voice echoed up from the deeps.

'Iron and Tight always go random', Zoe's smile came through with a flash of red hair. 'Just to be extra proper and boring.'

There were no allies to be made in those Disciplines anyway, so Zhair'lo supposed that his consolation prize -- an Initiate from Lips -- was just as well. He hadn't licked a girl in quite a while. It had made for a nice change and a distraction from his worry.

What had happened to his message? He was fairly certain Zoe hadn't been sent to betray him, but what if she'd been caught somehow? What if, even worse, Talla had been caught, message in hand? No one had come to get him to drag him back to Form to -- worst of all his nightmares - whip her again. Was Zoe holding on to the message? If so, at least none of this fell on Talla as her fault.

Why in the nine hells had he trusted Zoe anyway? Smooth talker, that was for sure.

Every night, his mind went through all the permutations as sleep eluded him bell after bell. He alternately reassured himself that nothing was wrong and cursed himself for endangering Talla yet again.

That was the state of his mind when the two messenger girls arrived once more in the butcher's kitchen where he was still required to spend much of his time cleaning up animal carcasses. The only good fortune was that, this time, they showed up just as he was laying out the knives.

"Zhair'lo M'han?"

It was a new voice, unusually soft and melodious. It felt as if she were singing his name instead of merely speaking it.

When he turned to look, he saw a girl with wavy, blonde hair that glinted orange and red at him in the light of the rising sun. Facial, no question. What was she doing delivering messages?

He noted the sashes that crossed her breasts. A Neophyte to boot? Zhair'lo remembered fondly most of the messengers that came to him -- remembered mostly how they looked walking away in their tiny skirts. But a Neophyte? When had one of them delivered a message?

"Yes?" he answered.

Behind the Neophyte, a Virgin in a knee length skirt piped up.

"Etta," she said. "I didn't see his name on the list."

"Scroll was in the other bag," Etta said quickly. "Didn't you see it?"

"Um -- no. I guess not."

Etta the Neophyte moved quickly to Zhair'lo and handed him the scroll. It didn't look anything like any scroll he had ever seen. Upgrade Summonses were decorated in green. They'd used black when they called him to be tested for loyalty to the Temple. Red was usually his least favourite colour -- it was the one they'd used when it was time to move, leave his newest friends behind and learn yet another vocation.

This was neither black, red nor green -- which meant it didn't come from the Office of the Goddess, or any Queen or Sorceress.

This one was a plain brown cylinder with paper wrapped around it. That was mysterious. The kind of thing that Is'ka used to order kitchen supplies, or Lyric to report the results of a Hunt, brown was for mundane, day-to-day business. Zhair'lo, in his multi-vocational, constantly changing life, had never been involved with a brown scroll.

Etta shrugged at him, casual as could be, but didn't let go of the scroll immediately. With her back to her junior companion, she locked her grey blue eyes on his.

"You can read it whenever," she said, keeping her voice light. "Nothing urgent, I'm sure."

Her eyes, however, said something different. For just a moment, without tilting her head even in the slightest, her eyes flicked towards the farthest corner of the room. Zhair'lo, realizing that she was trying to tell him something without alerting the Virgin, did not give the game up by following her quick glance.

There was only one thing in that corner of the room anyway and he already knew what it was.

"Thanks," Zhair'lo said, trying to make it so only his eyes conveyed his understanding.

Etta nodded.

"Let's go, Yvette," she said, and hurried the other girl out the door.

Glancing around quickly, Zhair'lo unrolled the scroll. Leaving it around and reading it later wasn't an option, obviously. It wasn't very long and had been written in the short, terse sentences women used when they wanted men to be able to understand them.

-----------

Zh,

We are working hard to find a way.

The more you can send us, the better.

I will test each one you send. I will make sure she is safe.

We may need your help, when the time comes.

Find all the friends you can, but be careful.

Trust Zoe, Tina, Illya and Yua.

I will find a way for us to meet.

T

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Underneath, a last sentence had been added in different handwriting.

-----------

Trust Rika and Etta, too.

Zoe

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Zhair'lo scanned the letter as quickly as he could.

'Gods damned dangerous', was his first thought. 'Listing those girls' names there.'

But what if it was a trap? An attempt to get him to send back the names of the men he'd been talking to? How could he trust this letter was actually from Talla?

Either way, it had to be destroyed. He already knew the names on it, except for Zoe's apparent additions of Rika and Etta. He wouldn't know Rika to see her, of course, but if she identified herself to him, he supposed that would help.

'Only ... what if someone lies and pretends to be "Rika"?' Zhair'lo thought with a shudder.

This could be a real attempt at contact from Talla, in which case he was endangering all of them by holding on to it. At any moment, someone could walk in and demand to see the letter.

But it could also be fake, designed to trick him into admitting that he had sent the first message. And what then?

He unravelled the scroll from the cylinder, spinning it off the central spindle and tearing it loose. Something fell to the ground; a tiny bundle that had been wrapped up close to the centre.

He snapped it up off the cold grey floor and looked at it. It was a tiny piece of white cloth, no longer than his thumb, cut in the shape of a triangle. Into it had been woven what he first took for a short piece of red thread. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a long, red hair.

Authenticity, he realized, was the purpose.

The meaning of the triangle couldn't be more clear. Who besides Talla and Illya would know that Zhair'lo kept a similarly shaped piece of woman's clothing in his bedside table, buried amongst his own clothes?

The red hair? That was for Zoe's addition to the message.

So the message was from Talla. And Talla swore to Zoe's loyalty. And Zoe vouched for Etta and Rika, whoever Rika was. He wondered for a moment how all of these loyalties were assured. Talla seemed very certain, but he couldn't imagine the source of her certainty. It would have to be enough that Talla trusted this particular chain of women.

Zhair'lo grimaced as he jammed the little white triangle into his pocket and walked to the back corner of the room -- the corner to which Etta had directed her clandestine glance. There was only one thing in that corner, an iron stove, and only one reason Etta had directed his attention to it.

He opened the heavy door of the furnace just enough to admit the paper that he slipped in. It was incinerated in seconds.

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"It's the waiting that's getting to me," Yua said with a frown.

She, Talla, Tina, and Illya were sitting in their favourite spot, the little bath off to the side of the main pool; the one that no one else ever wanted to use.

"You spent as long as I did waiting," Illya pointed out.

"It wasn't like this," Yua said defensively.

Talla, however, was long inured to any of this. She'd been beaten and felt the pain of the whip not just upon her own flesh, but echoing back through the mesh. And why? Because she wanted to have the mesh with one particular man more than any other. Because it was better with him. Because that mesh was special.

But the Temple wouldn't let her have it.

Talla felt fury and hate boiling up inside her and let the roiling cauldron drive out any fear like a blast of steam. From that wrath, she decided she could trust Zoe's loyalty and would just have to hope the girl had the competence to match. The message would get through. It would find its way to Zhair'lo and be quite safe.

It had to.

"There's nothing we can do for now," Talla said, sighing inwardly, pushing her worries into a corner of her mind. "The messages have to be slow for now. All that matters is that we have a way to communicate. He knows we're working and we know he is."

It was Tina's turn to frown.

"But what good are men?" she asked.

"They have penises," Illya pointed out helpfully. "Which are nice."

Tina rolled her eyes.

"You know what I mean," Tina said. She took a glance around. "With what we're trying to do, what good are men? They're not going to come over the walls. He's taking a risk revealing himself at all."

"We don't know how we're going to do it," Talla replied. "It's like any board game you've ever played. You pile up your resources and try to find the fastest way to the end."

"That only makes sense if you know the rules," Tina said. "We don't. We don't know how to -" another glance around "-do what we're doing. We don't know what we need. For all we know, men are irrelevant and we'll finish the game in last place with, with-" she stammered, reaching for a metaphor from a familiar board game "-a giant pile of useless wool."

Talla sighed. She did have to listen to Tina. She couldn't let the anger-driven bravery turn her to foolishness.

"Zhair'lo will be careful," she said. "He's smart and he -- he cares about me. He won't endanger any of us."

"That's true," Illya confirmed, a faint taste of regret in her voice. "He feels terrible about -- about that."

No need, in this company, to clarify which 'that' she meant.

"Besides," Talla pointed out. "Men should be free, too. Just like women. That means he can do what he wants."

There was silence for a while.

"Is it time yet?" Yua asked.

"Pretty close," Tina said. "Wouldn't want to miss it."

Four naked girls climbed out of the hot bath and if the water streaming off their heat-softened skin parted to reveal breasts a little out of proportion to their age and the clothing towards which they moved, no one paid any mind. After all, this was Endowment's pool, where the breasts generally did run pretty large.

Towels and clothing were near the exit. Dry air spilling in through the open doorway evaporated much of the water that was left on skin. Goosebumps formed and nipples perked up.

They were in no hurry, towelling off in patient silence before donning their clothes. Tina wore the sashes and knee length skirt of a Neophyte. The rest wore the tiny tops and skirts of Initiates, just one rank lower.

A casual pace was set towards Endowment square and out the giant bronze gates into the Goddess's triangle. There was nothing peculiar about girls this age, their duties presumably complete, wandering about at will. They could even leave the Temple if they wished, so long as they didn't go far or break any rules about fraternizing with men.

They weren't going that far though. They only had to be somewhere near the main gates of the Temple sometime around the third bell. That had been the plan at least. If nothing happened, they would just come back.

So they milled around the plaza inside the main gate, pretending to read the plaques and admire the statues. They splashed their hands in the water and generally behaved like a bunch of silly, low-ranking girls were supposed to behave.

But always one of them was watching the gate for women coming in.

"Amazing," Talla said, looking up at the statue.

"Harissa," Yua read the plaque, "second Goddess of Gern. So?"

"Look at her body."

The statue was, naturally, a nude. What hue or colour the woman's skin had been, Talla had no idea, but she had full, heavy breasts, a gorgeously sculpted face and a thick mat of hair between her lean, muscular legs. The sculptor had made her pose with her feet together and her arms wide, palms and face turned up to the sky.

"That's what they stole from us," Talla said, her bitterness threatening to break her voice out past a whisper.

"Hit," Tina whispered back, urgency in her voice, as she nodded towards the gate.

As they had agreed, Tina turned her back so Talla could casually look towards the gate.

There was Etta, coming through the gate with an empty satchel around over her shoulder, scanning the crowd.

Her eyes found Talla's. A slight hiccup in her movement was all that betrayed the moment of recognition. Talla watched the Form girl carefully. To anyone else, Etta's movements would appear completely casual. Only she and Talla, as well as a precious few others, knew what to look for.

Etta's right hand reached across her body to touch her left shoulder, adjusting the strap of her satchel. She ran that hand down the length of the strap, between her breasts, to her right hip. Etta then turned and moved off towards the gates of Form.

Talla nodded in satisfaction.

"She made it," she whispered to the other girls. "And he knew it was dangerous so he probably burned it right away."

"A reply," Tina asked, pointing at the statue and pretending that she had asked a question about it.

Talla looked up, too, and answered.

"I guess not," she said. "We'll have to wait even longer."

"This seemed like such a good idea at first," Illya put in. "But it seems to mean a lot of frustration."

"We have time," Talla added. "Lots of time."

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"That's odd," Maksa said.

"Hm?" her Sorceress asked.

"The Sealed Virgins," Maksa explained.

"What about them?"

Maksa gathered a pile of genealogy parchments.

"We've gone through five years' worth of Initiations, right?"

"Indeed."

"This pile here is all of the girls whose Discipline choices didn't match with my calculations."

"Quite," Pussy agreed.

Maksa then pushed about a third of the stack aside and pointed at the remaining pile.

"And these," she said, "are all of the ones who were Sealed Virgins."

The Sorceress's eyes widened as other Officers of Pussy gathered around.

"That's quite remarkable," she said. "We'll have to run the numbers to be sure, but that can't be close to proportional to the general rate of Sealed Virgins."

"Definitely not, Mistress," an Officer put in. "I can't remember exactly but the general rate is less than five percent."

"What you are suggesting," the Sorceress said, "is that these women were Sealed Virgins because they chose the -"

She stopped suddenly as there was a collective inhalation of breath. Around the room, orange clad Officers paused in their work to stare at her.

Pussy pursed her lips, frozen for a moment, as everyone else in the room wondered if she would actually say it out loud.

"Because they chose the wrong Discipline," she finished.

Eyes were cast aside and all cringed.

"We can't be sure yet," Maksa said, bravely trying to recover the conversation. "We have to look at other Sealed Virgins. We have to look at the Sealed Virgins who did choose the right -- I mean -- who chose what I guessed they would choose. There a lot of -"

"Possibly," the Sorceress interrupted. "But if this is truly the case -- if we can convincingly demonstrate this to be the case -- we will raise nine hells when we announce it."

"Announce it, Mistress?" an Officer asked with a gasp.

"We have a duty," Pussy replied firmly. "For the good of the girls. If they have truly chosen incorrectly, then we ought to correct them and get them on the right path."

"Nine hells," Maksa intoned. "No one will want to hear this."

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As common rooms went, the one belonging to the Carters had to be one of the largest. Talla had never Served in a place so large, save the giant, grey cave-thing the Quarrymen called home. The Carters didn't really seem to have a particular theme going, at least nothing too obvious. The place was all wooden pillars with fires scattered about under sandstone chimneys. A lot of different colours of fabric were used to cover the tables and just as many hues were used for the drapes that screened off sections of the space to give the illusion that this wasn't just a single, immense room. Around the edges were nooks where the men played games and drank their ale.

Cozy enough, if you were into that sort of thing.

While Talla looked around, women were still filing in. The group from Endowment had arrived first and had sorted themselves out with the Oranges at the front and Whites to the back. Talla hung around next to the doorway as the muscular Form women filed past her and filled out the group. Coming through the door and taking a place next to Talla was an Initiate with golden hair and a skirt so short it probably revealed her genitals to those -- like the men seated in the room -- whose eyes were at the level of the hemline.

Golden Hair turned to look at Talla, first at her face, then her breasts. She was wearing one of Tina's tops, which left little to the imagination. The other girl's eyes widened a moment before making eye contact again.

"Talla, is it?" she asked in an idle conversational tone.

Talla paused. This wasn't anyone she could remember. She'd come in with the Form crowd and, by the glow of her hair, was clearly from Facial. Talla eyed the girl carefully. There wasn't anything suspicious about her either. In fact, she was quite casually peaking over the shoulders of the women in front of her.

"Am I that famous?" Talla replied drily.

The other girl stood up on her tiptoes, pretending to look past Talla so she could put a hand around Talla's shoulders and lean in close. She was wearing a strong, fruit-scented perfume.

"We've been looking for you," she whispered.

She came down off her toes and let her hand slide down Talla's bare back and over her skirt.

Talla shivered as the fingertips touched her cheeks under the hem of her skirt.

"Why?"

The hall grew quiet and the women in orange began calling for their men.

The Facial girl put her head on Talla's shoulder, leaving her hand still gripping Talla's rear.

"No time now," she said, the vapid smile on her face having nothing to do with the danger in her voice. "Snuggle up close."

Not really having a clue what was going on, Talla figured it was best to go along with this pretended friendship. She put her arm around the other girl's shoulder, just under the long, wavy curls of blonde hair.

"What's your name?" Talla whispered.

Though their heads were close together, the girl turned to look Talla in the eye -- and winked.