Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) Read online

  “Pftt.” Azlii handed the last cup to Larta, took her own, and settled onto a floor pillow. “It’s Jonton who’s destroying our world, not the lumani. It’s Jonton who has to be stopped.”

  Larta’s lips turned in the slightest of smiles. “No thought to giving the orindles what they want?”

  Azlii hiked up one shoulder in a shrug. “Doesn’t affect us corentans one way or the other, no more than the lumani did. What about you, guardian? Do you look forward to being Second under the orindles’ rule?”

  “I look forward to again serving superior minds,” Larta said, and grinned.

  A sudden chill rolled through me. “Commune structures. They aren’t built like structures in a corenta or a kler. They aren’t made to withstand this kind of weather. If it keeps raining, they’ll dissolve. Commune doumanas won’t have food or shelter.”

  Home sent, Thank you for thinking of the structures, Khe. We seem to be forgotten in your conversations. Corentan structures are strong, but even we will crumble if enough water falls on us.

  Azlii’s hand was at her mouth, holding the cup she was about to empty down her throat. She sent her gaze my way. She’d obviously heard what Home had sent, but finished her drink before setting the cup beside her on the floor. “Then we must stop the rain.”

  Nez nodded. “But how?”

  “Not by blowing up a part of Chimbalay again,” Azlii said. “Someone is going to have to convince Jonton to give up her dream.” She looked at Larta. “Or maybe the guardians can help. Can’t you just seize her and hold her someplace?”

  Larta scratched a spot near her earhole. “Stopping Jonton won’t stop the rain. Not if she has the machine already programmed. We don’t know that she’s the only one who can work it, either. She said there were doumanas helping the lumani. They would know how. She could have trained any number of her orindle-sisters.”

  “If we could find the ones who helped the lumani,” Nez said, “they could stop it.”

  My throat felt scratchy. I stood and walked toward the rolling cart and the last of the zwas, cold in its pot now from sitting. “We’d have to get into Research Center Three. Jonton said the doumanas who served the lumani never left once they entered, which likely means some are still there. Jonton could have moved them out, but that would be the place to start.”

  “I doubt Jonton is going to let anyone wander around inside, tapping on doors, to find them,” Azlii said.

  I shrugged and filled my cup. “Maybe Pradat could. I think Jonton still trusts her.”

  “Even if we could find one,” Larta said, “she’d have to be willing to help. And Jonton would have to be confined — all of the orindles, since we don’t know which would fight to carry out Jonton’s plan. And every helphand. It would be impossible. Plus, we need the orindles and helphands. Doumanas get sick, they become injured — someone has to care for them.”

  Hard, fat raindrops pinged against the windows. Four heads turned to look as the water sluiced down the pane.

  “We have to destroy the machine,” I said.

  Larta turned her gaze back to me. “We’d have to figure out how to destroy it first. And then, same problem: we’d have to get into the research center. We’d have to get to the machine.”

  Slowly, slowly, Nez shifted around to look at us. “I think I know how to destroy it.”

  Sixteen

  The room was quiet. Even Home held its breath, I think.

  Nez hunched slightly into her shoulders. “Water. The machine must use electricity. All the water that’s filling the streets — we route it into the machine room and drown it. It’ll go down in a giant sizzle.”

  Larta drummed her fingers on her thigh. “That’d be quite an undertaking. We’d have to find a pool of water deep enough and figure out how to transport the water to the research center, how to siphon it down into the room. The room is below ground. There aren’t any windows.”

  “But it could work,” Nez said, the greenish-blue of hope firing into color on her neck.

  “It could work,” Larta said. “But the logistics. I don’t know how we’d get it done without being seen and stopped.”

  I sat up very straight. “Maybe we could turn the machine on itself. Did you notice that when the rain was falling at its hardest, that’s when the planet shook? I think maybe the machine is causing it. If that’s so, we could make the rain fall so hard that the machine collapses the room around itself.”

  “How would we make the machine work?” Azlii asked. “We don’t know how. We’d have to make Jonton do it, and I doubt she’s going to help us.”

  Kroot Kroot, Home sent, wanting our attention.

  Do you have an idea, Home? Azlii sent.

  Sadly, no. Pradat is coming. Walking very fast through Kelroosh.

  Azlii pulled herself to her feet. “I’ll warm some more zwas. I think we’re going to need it.”

  No color showed on Pradat’s neck to tell us what she was feeling as she rushed into the receiving room, swept off her wet cloak and removed her sodden, muddy foot casings. I wondered what it had cost her to hide her emotions like that? She had no need to hide them from us, yet I think the habit was so strong in her that to let her spots light took conscious effort.

  “You have news,” Azlii said, pouring a cup of zwas for Pradat.

  Plain-necked or not, Pradat wouldn’t have rushed here without news.

  She took the cup and swallowed down a deep drink. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “The beginning is usually a good spot,” Azlii said.

  Pradat laughed under her breath, poured a swallow or two more of zwas into her cup and downed them. She placed the cup back on the rolling cart and finally settled onto an empty pillow next to Larta.

  “I’ve been told something. I’m not sure what to make of it.” Pradat ran a hand over her scalp. “We all saw how Jonton rushed to protect Khe when the planet shivered.”

  “Trah,” Larta said, and waved one hand as if flicking Jonton away from her. “I could have lain on the floor bleeding until next Barren Season and she wouldn’t have noticed. All her concern was for Khe.”

  Pradat raised her eyebrow ridges in agreement. “She knows Khe is back in Kelroosh. I think she’s afraid the corenta will leave and she’ll lose Khe forever. Jonton has asked that Khe come again to Chimbalay. Alone. She says if Khe does, and listens to what she has to say, she will stop the rain.”

  The room was warm, flames crackling and popping in the firecave near where I sat, the smell of burning wood pleasant. I kept my feet together, my eyes cast down the way I would when called to Simanca’s dwelling in the old days at Lunge — but now it was a way to observe without seeming to.

  Pradat stood just inside the door chatting with the two orindles and a helphand who’d escorted us to the room. I didn’t know why we needed three doumanas to escort us two, and I didn’t think the casual sound of Pradat’s conversation with her sisters was the whole truth. No spots lit on any of the well-trained orindles’ necks. The helphand showed only the slightest trace of purple-gray concern. Concern for what? At Lunge, with sisters I’d lived with all my life, whose experiences were nearly identical to mine, any of us could see that color and know its cause immediately. But not here, not among strangers who saw through eyes educated by different experiences, minds filled with other ways of thinking.

  Rain fell outside, steady rivulets running down the outside of the windows — rain that had begun only moments after Pradat and I had entered the research center.

  The door irised open and Jonton came in. The three escorts left the room, leaving Pradat alone by the jambs. Jonton nodded as she passed Pradat and walked quickly across the room to where I sat. She reached out a hand and I feared for a moment she was going to stroke my neck as though we felt warmly toward each other, but she swept into the chair next to mine without our skins touching. The door shut with a whispered whoosh.

  “I’m pleased you’ve come, Khe.” She smiled, and her eyes flickered to my thro
at and mouth, waiting. I didn’t give the return smile or warm emotion colors she clearly wanted. She closed her own smile down and said, “You are a very interesting doumana, but you already know that. You know you are different — have been different from the beginning. But not static. Not unchanging. Oh, no.” She tilted her head. “Do you know what possible clay is?”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s dug from the banks of only one river, a long way from here. The clay is naturally black but can be stained any shade. The black doesn’t dim the color — it enhances it, makes it shine. Its particles are fine, smooth and densely loaded, very strong. Almost anything can be made of it. Whatever size or shape or color thing you dream up, with this clay, it’s possible to create it.”

  “Oh,” I said, not seeing the connection.

  Jonton leaned forward and patted my knee. “I was close to the Powers, you know. One of the few privileged to receive direct communication from them, to know their secrets. I know what was done in the special room in Research Center One.”

  I held very still and listened.

  “You are the possible clay,” Jonton said. “You were infertile, but we orindles changed your shape and you laid your egg. You were angry, and you changed your own shape and ran off to Chimbalay. The Powers found you — the lumani — and they changed your shape again to suit their own purposes.”

  My neck flamed. No one knew what had happened in that room — no one but Weast and the other lumani, and me. If Jonton knew, really knew how Weast had used its machine to form its dreadful egg in me, how could I bear that shame? I glared at her, glad that she couldn’t see on my throat the anger and disgust I felt.

  “The question now, Khe, is what shape you will take finally. In the end, you are the shape of our future — but what will you be? What will we be? That question must be answered.”

  I wanted to say that she was wrong, that I was Khe, just as I’d always been, but that wasn’t true.

  Jonton turned up her palms. “Pradat and I don’t have exact harmony of feelings about you. She wants to prolong your life and send you off to do whatever little things you might with your time. But, Khe — look at you. You’ve already developed the ability to see far distances and have superior hearing — yes, we know about these. You rarely eat or sleep.” She smiled kindly. “Don’t be angry at Pradat. She is quite observant, and it’s her duty to report all her findings.”

  I knew all about duty; Simanca had been brilliant at using our natural sense of it to get what she wanted. I wasn’t angry with Pradat. I understood her.

  Jonton leaned toward me. “Think what can be accomplished without those needs. I believe you will develop a heightened mind as well. Like the lumani, you will see what needs to be done and the way to do it. Think what that will mean when all of us are like you — the solutions we will find in a fraction of the time it takes now.”

  Color had begun to show on her throat as she spoke, the bright-blue of excitement and the greenish-blue of hope.

  “Think on this, too,” Jonton said. “Only you can give this gift to all your sisters and brothers. It is the perfect atonement for what you did in Chimbalay.”

  I thought of Marnka and the other weather-prophets the lumani and orindles had tried to ‘improve.’ They’d become babblers, their minds, and ultimately their lives, lost. Was Jonton one of the orindles who’d helped the lumani in those experiments?

  I glanced at Pradat. She’d been silent while Jonton spoke. I’d seen into her, though, the ambivalence she felt — wanting to spare me from Jonton, but wanting to know the same things Jonton was curious about.

  I thought quickly, wondering how much I could wring from Jonton’s greed to have me.

  “I’d like to know the answers to your question as much as you do. I’ll stay and help and do my best on two conditions. One, Pradat will be allowed to finish her treatments.”

  “Of course,” Jonton said. “We want you healthy, to become what you will become. Resonance is next year. We want you to be here to feel it, and go to your nesting site, mate, and lay your egg as is the right and duty of every doumana. We want you to live your natural span, which is also the right of every doumana, barring accident or illness.”

  I brushed my hand over Jonton’s knee. The touch made me cringe, but I knew it would make her feel connected to me, and more willing to give what I wanted.

  “The other thing is the weather machine. It intrigues me. I want to learn everything there is to know about it. How to run it, of course, and how it works, and its history — how it came to be here. Every day I will give my time and myself to you and Pradat, and you will train me on the machine.” I handed up a smile. “Seems a fair trade to me, though you gain most of the advantages.”

  Jonton crossed her arms over her chest.

  “It can’t be just you with the knowledge,” I said, pushing gently. “What if you fall ill, or are injured?”

  She waved off the worry with a flick of her hand.

  “What you want,” I said, pressing on, “is an apprentice. And people to spread the word. It doesn’t matter if you can control the weather if no one knows.”

  Jonton sniffed, and I thought I’d caught her attention, but she turned away and stared into the distance.

  “More than that,” I said, “you could demonstrate the machine, on the visionstage, to the settled world, with your apprentices beside you. Kler and commune doumanas would see your power and ability, your willingness to teach. They would see that it’s you and the orindles who should lead us.”

  Slowly, so slowly that she could have been mechanical instead of living, Jonton turned her gaze back to me.

  “Do you believe the orindles should lead, Khe?”

  “A great leader,” I said, “shows her power by what she is willing to share.”

  Jonton laughed quietly. “If I teach you to work the machine, you will endorse our leadership. Who are you that anyone should take your opinion to heart?”

  “No one,” I said, “but sister to Azlii. You know how corentans are — stubborn for the sake of it. She’ll keep quiet just to spite you, but she’ll tell the other corentans if I ask her. I am also sister to Larta in Chimbalay, and sister to all those at Lunge commune, which has some influence in the region.”

  A small smile turned her lips. “You are very clever, Khe. And you make some good points. We’ll discuss this more tomorrow.”

  Pradat walked back to Justice House with me. “Show me your wrist,” she said.

  I pulled my cloak tighter around me. “It’s still drizzling.”

  She took hold of my elbow through the fabric and stopped, forcing me to stop with her. “Show me your wrist.”

  I pulled free of her grip. “I checked this morning. All my age spots are still there, all as dark as ever.”

  “Jonton will want me to accelerate the treatments,” Pradat said. “She’s not the patient sort.”

  “Then that’s two of us,” I said, walking again. “Commemoration is in five days. Very little time left for anyone to be patient.”

  Pradat tsked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “I knew you’d feel that way. Knew you’d clap your palm against your thigh when Jonton presented her plan to you. But you have to know that rushing the treatments could have unintended consequences. We could save your life, but leave you a babbler. Or leave your body so weakened that you’d spend your last years moving between your cot and a floating chair.”

  I stopped again and turned to her. I pitched my voice so only Pradat could hear. I needed to tell someone. “I used to dream all the time. After what the lumani did to me, I didn’t dream at all until recently. Now, in my brief sleeps, I have the same dream, night after night. I dream the planet shivers and shakes more mightily than anything we’ve yet felt. I dream the shiver opens a great mouth in the world, and the mouth swallows me down and then spits me out. After, I’m not Khe any more. I’m something else. Something horrible.”

  Pradat reached out to touch my neck, but I p
ut my hand up to stop her. I didn’t want comforting now. I wanted anger and determination pounding in me. I wanted surety.

  “Jonton will starve us all to get what she wants,” I said, “and she will always want more. We have to stop the weather machine, and her. Whatever it takes.” I started walking again. “Maybe then I can take what little sleep I need in peace.”

  Seventeen

  Larta drummed her fingers against her thighs — one hand going fast: onetwothreefour, the other moving in counterpoint. One … one … one. My back was to her in the room set up for my treatments. I couldn’t see what she was doing, but heard it, the soft pad of skin on the fabric of her hipwrap.

  Pradat shifted one of her machines so its light hit the spot where my spine and skull met. The heat, and the drugs dripping into my arms, made my stomach hurt. I closed my eyes and visualized the sky at first-light, how the colors rose up in the dark to announce the new day. Pain and the nagging pinprick feeling over my body that the treatments brought — worth it all if it bought me more new days. Bought me time to start to rebuild what I’d destroyed.

  Jonton was in the room, too. I heard her shuffle a few steps to look at the readouts from Pradat’s machines. Jonton didn’t like what she saw. I heard it in the way she spit out her breath. I opened my eyes and looked from Pradat to Jonton and back again, but they were too well trained and their necks showed me nothing. The treatment went on.

  Once Pradat had unhooked me from her devices, Jonton motioned with her head for us to come with her. I followed her out of the room, down a long hall, to a doorway. Larta came third, favoring her damaged leg. I couldn’t see her, but I heard her — the uneven breath of someone unhappy with the situation. She followed behind me so Jonton couldn’t see her throat. Not that Larta had feelings in need of hiding — Jonton knew Larta didn’t trust her. Why else would she have insisted on sitting in on the treatment?