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

  I rubbed my arms, though I wasn’t cold. “You don’t understand what it’s like to be a commune or kler doumana. Nez was right in what she said. Most things have always been decided for us. We could choose our own mate during Resonance, but everything else was decreed. When the lumani were destroyed, our comfort was destroyed too. Rill doesn’t want to make a mistake that might harm her sisters.”

  “It’s true,” Nez said. “For Rill, striking out with a choice of her own is likely terrifying.”

  Azlii’s neck lit bright with the brown-yellow of annoyance.

  “Give her a bit to think about it, Azlii,” I said. “She’ll find her decision.”

  “She’d best be quick about it.” The corentan tossed her collar into a corner of the room — a thing I’d never seen her do before. “We have obligations, and our own, to worry about. The day after tomorrow we leave for Bethon commune, and after that we go to Lunge.”

  I sat on the edge of my cot in the hazy half-light of dawn, listening to Nez’s even breathing as she slept. My left hand lay heavily in my lap, palm up, my wrist turned so that even a glance would show what I was afraid to see, but felt compelled to look at. I said a small prayer to the creator that Pradat’s treatment had worked, and looked at my wrist. My heart sank. Thirty-five age dots, each one as dark and bright as they had always been. I’d hoped at least they might fade a little, a sign that I might regain my normal lifespan.

  Maybe it was too soon. It was only three days ago that Pradat had come up with a new idea of how to reverse the accelerated aging that pushing the crops had caused. I could be patient. Had to be patient. What good would frustration do?

  Nez, Azlii, and I made our way down the meandering streets of Kelroosh towards the communiteria. Commune paths and kler streets were designed to move a doumana from here to there as directly as possible. In Kelroosh, there were no straight paths, the dwellings and structures having been built wherever they and their doumana chose. We greeted each dwelling as we passed, and nodded or said good morning to the few doumanas we met on the way.

  Nez drew in a great breath. “What is that glorious scent?”

  Overnight, tayhosh had sprouted alongside the paths and put out its delicate blue-green flowers for all to see. Even without looking, I couldn’t miss the powerful, sweet aroma. I supposed tayhosh needed such a strong scent since it bloomed for only three days, which wasn’t long for a plant that needed insects to pollinate it. Lucky us, getting to enjoy its sweetness. Fortunate us, too, who would get to eat tayhosh berries later, if free-roaming insects found the flowers before they faded. The true soil of Kelroosh was shallow and very little would grow in it, which made the sudden appearance of flowers a special joy.

  Azlii saw where I was looking and laughed. “Still a farming doumana in your heart, aren’t you?” Her voice stayed light but one emotion spot showed a trace of the blue-red of anxiety, and another the dark-lavender of curiosity. “Are we going to lose you when we get to Lunge commune?”

  My stomach clenched and my neck went hot, but colorless. I still missed Lunge and my sisters there, even after what they’d done to me. I felt safest here, in Kelroosh, with Azlii and Nez — as true or truer than any sister at my former commune. Truth was, I didn’t know how I would feel when Kelroosh set down outside Lunge a few days from now. Would the anger at having my life stolen flood back, or would love for those who had been my sisters crush my heart? I was glad that Simanca never let the sisters go to a corenta, calling them places of evil.

  I decided I’d stay in Kelroosh. That way I would be spared seeing those I had known and loved. Those who had betrayed me for a few extra pounds of crops.

  Five doumanas wearing cloaks of the brightest blues, reds, and yellows I’d ever seen stood waiting at the edge of a large field at Bethon commune. I was caught by the fabrics’ dazzling colors. I wanted to run my fingers over the threads, to know how that vividness felt. The desire hit me hard; I’d never had that want before. Behind them we could see doumanas hand-harvesting zind, one of the few crops that bloomed in Barren Season and set seeds in First Warmth.

  “We call them the Eager Weavers,” Azlii said, her voice low so as not to carry. “They do everything by hand at Bethon, no machines except for harvesting a couple of the five crops they grow to make their cloth. Their guide is very proud. She’ll likely give us the full walking tour, especially now that I have two fresh faces with me.”

  The five waiting doumanas stepped forward to greet us, spread out like flying birds with the one I picked as the commune’s leader in the front. Her cloak was an exquisite blue — the color of the clearest Growing Season sky. Her skin was a light-pinkish-red, and she was shorter than her sisters, the energetic sort, I thought, who always walked ahead of others. Who probably thought ahead of others, too, the way that Simanca did. I hoped she was kinder than Simanca.

  When the short doumana reached us, she and Azlii didn’t exchange neck touches the way Azlii and Rill had. Instead Azlii shared our names with the weavers, and the weavers’ leader, Fundid, shared the names of her unitmates. That done, Fundid turned and began walking quickly across the field, never looking back to see if we were keeping up, saying loudly enough for us to clearly hear, “We grow five crops here for their natural dyes. We are, of course, best known for the remarkable shade we produce using binion: Bethon Blue.”

  Fundid chattered on, leading us across fields, most of them fallow now, and past various outbuildings. Through an open, wide doorway we saw a team of lean doumanas with bunched muscles in their backs, legs, and arms, beating bundles of thick, hard binion stalks against sharp metal spikes set in the dirt floor. No sound came from the building but the slap, slap of the stalks against the spikes and ground. At Lunge, we would have had a song to make the work go easier, and to keep a rhythm. It seemed Fundid gave about as much thought for the doumanas in her charge as Simanca had, maybe less.

  I didn’t want to think about Simanca; we’d reach Lunge soon enough.

  I glanced at Nez. Her eyes were as wide as full moons, watching the weavers beat the stalks into fibers. Kler doumanas had no idea where the staples and luxuries they took for granted came from, what it took to make them. I touched her neck and smiled.

  “I wish I could think-talk to you,” Nez whispered. “My mind is spinning.”

  “We’ll talk in Kelroosh,” I whispered back.

  We came to what I guessed must be Fundid’s dwelling from the way her back suddenly straightened. I blinked, surprised at the brilliant color on the walls, a blue so pure it would have lit my spots with joy — Bethon Blue. I wondered how they’d dyed the stones to get that color.

  Just before we went inside, I caught sight of a doumana who stood alone near one corner. Fundid passed by her without acknowledgement. Around that corner stood another lone doumana. Fundid paid her no mind either.

  Shunned. The cruelest punishment any set-place doumana could receive. I wondered what they had done to deserve such mean treatment.

  The door of the Bethon Blue dwelling was as crimson as the day-ending sky. Inside, the walls were painted the pale-green of contentment, and yet the air seemed to shimmer with the gray of worry. I didn’t know if I actually saw or felt it, or just imagined a color to go with the sudden tension that seized Fundid’s muscles and changed the look on her face.

  There was no long chair in this room. Instead the five commune doumanas and the three of us sat in a circle on wooden chairs upholstered in a thick weave as soft and comfortable as anything I’d ever felt. I couldn’t help myself. I ran my fingers over the fabric and wondered if every dwelling in this commune had chairs with whisper-soft fabric dyed in this precious and expensive color, but I doubted it. If this commune was anything like Lunge, the leader and her unit lived finer than the rest of the sisters here.

  They’d prepared for our visit. A tall, clear cylinder filled with thick, dark-yellow liquid sat on a table in the middle of the circle. A stack of goblets sat beside it. One of Fundid’s unitmates twisted t
he bung open and began filling the mugs. No one spoke. Each doumana lifted her mug as she received it and sipped the drink. It was warm and sweet at first, but had a bitter, unpleasant aftertaste.

  “Binion leaf,” Fundid said, answering an unasked question. “You saw them thrashing the stalks for Bethon Blue dye. We also make a yellow dye from the leaves, and a purple-red dye from the roots.”

  We sipped our drinks for a bit, and then Azlii asked, “The same amount of fertilizer and mulch as last year?”

  The weaver’s leader smiled. “Same as last year, and the year before, and the year before that.”

  Of course, I thought. They plant the same crops in the same number of fields, likely only rotating fields so the crops didn’t deplete the soil. This visit was more courtesy than necessity. After Rill’s reaction at Two-ling commune, Fundid’s certainty was a relief.

  “And we’ll need three new threshing stakes to replace some that were damaged.”

  Azlii nodded, adding the orders to those she already carried in her head. “Anything else?”

  Fundid leaned forward. Her eyes were flat and serious. The gray I sensed in the air seemed to grow darker.

  “News from Chimbalay,” she said. “Is it true the energy center blew up and several of the Powers Returned to the creator?”

  “Where did you hear that?” Azlii asked calmly.

  “Kelroosh isn’t the only corenta plying its trade in this region,” Fundid said, and shrugged. “Doumanas talk. We saw some of it on the visionstage before all the stages went dark.”

  My breath froze in my throat. What would Azlii say? Oh, yes. It’s true. And here’s Khe. She destroyed the Powers and plunged the doumanas of Chimbalay into a near-freezing Barren Season, and now the doumanas of Two-ling commune don’t know what to plant, and who knows what other consequences of her actions are still to be discovered?

  Azlii leaned back in the chair. “That sort of information is expensive.”

  “No doubt,” Fundid said. “How expensive?”

  “Very, I would think,” Azlii said. “Seven new cloaks, woven here and dyed Bethon Blue.”

  Fundid huffed. “Since when is gossip worth that sort of price?”

  “When it isn’t gossip, but firsthand accounts.”

  The Bethon doumanas drew in their breaths as if they were one being.

  “You were there?” Fundid asked.

  “I was,” Azlii said. Her voice was neutral, factual — as though she were about to say nothing more important than if the sun shone outside or the sky was covered in clouds.

  Fundid rested her chin on her fist and considered. I didn’t need to see her neck to know that she desperately wanted to hear this tale.

  “All right,” she said. “Trade.”

  I wished I could see Azlii’s neck behind the collar, to know what emotions ran through her.

  Azlii steepled her fingers. “The Powers were not special doumanas, as you thought; they were creatures from another world. They ruled us for generations, so long that only we corentans know the stories of the time before they came. The creatures are gone now. Every one of them. We own our world again.”

  “Creatures from another world,” Fundid said and laughed. Her sisters laughed with her until they realized Azlii, Nez, and I weren’t sharing their emotion.

  Fundid leaned forward then, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders high. “What game is this you’re playing? Your lies are an insult to our history of friendship and trust.”

  Azlii bolted to her feet as if slapped. She glared at Fundid, then reached up and undid her collar, showing her neck. There were emotion colors there — the ocher of impatience, the brown-purple of exasperation, but not a trace of the brown-green of shame. Not even a corentan could lie and not show shame colors on her neck.

  Fundid stared a long time. Her shoulders dropped back to their normal position.

  “For seven cloaks, I need the whole story.”

  “Pftt,” Azlii said, and sat again. “Eight cloaks. One in apology.”

  Fundid’s lips pulled tight, but she nodded.

  Azlii cleared her throat. “The Powers, or the lumani, as they called themselves, discovered they couldn’t reproduce on our world. They were growing old, and wanted to find a way to keep their hold on us. They devised a method of mating with doumanas.”

  Two of the Bethon doumanas shuddered.

  “Unfortunately for the lumani,” Azlii said, “they picked the wrong doumana for their experiments. She destroyed them. In the process, the energy center in Chimbalay was also destroyed. It’s been rebuilt now.”

  I laced my fingers together in my lap, and made myself listen as though this story had nothing to do with me.

  Fundid still looked skeptical, but she couldn’t deny the truth of Azlii’s neck, which had shown only the colors of a disturbing memory as she told the story.

  “How did this doumana destroy the lu… lu…”

  “Lumani,” Azlii said. “But that is another story. And will cost you additional.”

  I could tell Fundid wanted the tale, as did her unitmates, but her mind was clicking in other directions at the same time. She stared ahead at some sight that wasn’t there.

  Azlii leaned forward and touched Fundid’s hand. “You have a question.”

  The touch drew Fundid back from her thoughts.

  “Every year, the Powers sent us directions on what color dyes to use, how much raw cloth to weave, how many cloaks to sew. Who will tell us that now?”

  Azlii clenched her hands tight in her lap. The Bethon doumanas didn’t seem to notice, each with her eyebrow ridges raised now in worry. One pleated the ends of her beautiful hipwrap with her fingers.

  “You could decide for yourself,” Azlii said evenly.

  Fundid blinked. She sat quietly for a long moment — so long that her unitmates fidgeted in their seats, settling and resettling. Nez and I followed Azlii’s lead, sitting as still as trees.

  Slowly Fundid stood and undid her collar. The orange-yellow of confusion showed on nearly all of her spots. She looked at one of her unitmates.

  “My Second will bring the cloaks. We are done here.”

  “There’s more to the story,” Azlii said, clearly surprised at this turn of the conversation. “Sit, and I will tell you.”

  Fundid shook her head. “I’d hoped you would tell me the rumors were false.”

  She turned and walked out the door of her own dwelling as if she had found herself in a strange land and was lost.

  The shunned doumanas still stood at their lonely corners outside Fundid’s dwelling. I could see Nez was trying not to stare, but she couldn’t stop herself.

  “What do you think they did?” she asked, her voice low.

  I shrugged. My mind was crowded with angry thoughts. I pushed the strap of the carrying bag filled with two of the lovely cloaks higher onto my shoulder. Azlii and Nez carried three cloaks each, in similar bags.

  We took a more direct route back across Bethon, crossing a fallow field of rich, dark loam. I angled Azlii off until we were away from Nez.

  “I’m glad Fundid didn’t want to hear more of the story,” I said. “In the future, if you want to tell your part in what happened in Chimbalay, do it, but not in front of me. I don’t need reminding of what happened.”

  Azlii startled out of her own thoughts. “Did you see Fundid’s neck after I suggested she decide what her commune would do? We’re in for trouble, Khe, and I don’t have the first idea how to stop it.”

  She sped her step, leaving Nez and me behind. A slight rain began to fall.

  Five

  Wall left the gate open behind Azlii, waiting for Nez and me to follow through. The misting had turned into true rain, with drops as soft as hatchling down dusting our skins. I leaned on Nez’s arm. She walked slowly, but made it seem like it was the pace she wanted, rather than the only speed I could manage.

  “You’re angry at Azlii,” she said as Wall shut the gate behind us. “I can feel it through your skin.�
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  “Turn of phrase?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I can feel your emotions. Sometimes, back in Chimbalay, I could feel Mees and some of the hatchlings, but not all of them. I never told anyone.”

  “But you’re telling me.”

  She shrugged. “There’s no one on this planet more strange than you, Khe. I trust you to keep my secret.”

  Strange was an interesting choice of words. Interesting, too, that she thought she could tell me because as different as she might be, I was more so — and therefore safe.

  We trundled slowly toward the central commons, our hoods drawn up to protect our scalps from the falling rain. In the distance I could see a small group of corentans gathered in commons, their cloaks thrown off, their faces turned to the sky. I was different — and had sharper eyesight than any doumana should. Another gift from the lumani.

  “What’s it like,” I asked Nez, “to feel a doumana’s emotions?”

  She shrugged again. “I can’t describe it. It’s knowing someone’s true passion, in their depths. We see our sisters’ spots light, and we think we know what they’re feeling, but we don’t. We only imagine that they feel what we do when that emotion arises, that we’re the same. But we’re not. I never would have known the difference without feeling.”

  “Maybe you are an empath after all,” I said. “It would make Inra proud if you were.”

  Nez sniffed, and I didn’t have to be an empath or see her spots to know that thinking of her kler-sister, destroyed by the lumani, made her sad.

  “Perhaps I’m her legacy,” she said.

  My heart closed like a fist, resenting the idea. I couldn’t say why but, in my depths, if Nez were to be anyone’s legacy, I wanted her to be mine.

  We were close enough to the commons now that Nez, too, could see the rain-loving doumanas. More had joined them while we walked. Azlii, who’d already reached them, waved to us and rushed back, the crimson of joy lit on her spots, all thought of Fundid and any coming troubles evidently banished from her mind.