Ashes and Rain: Sequel to Khe (The Ahsenthe Cycle Book 2) Page 7

  The sound of running feet. Slap. Slap. Slap. Ragged breath. Azlii? Nez?

  “Open the door, Min,” Simanca said as we came to a halt.

  Grunts. A groan. “It’s heavy,” Min grumbled.

  Hinges, unused to being moved, squealed. Thud of something big and hard hitting dirt.

  They set me on my feet and someone loosed whatever bound me. I flung my arms wide, hoping to hit one of them and then run. Min, I guessed from the feel of her hands, grabbed my wrists and pulled them together, pinning them together over my chest. Someone else held my upper arms tight to my body. The cloak still covered my head. I couldn’t see where I was.

  “Ready?” Simanca said. “Now.”

  A hard shove in my chest, and I fell through chill air, arms and legs failing. I landed in a heap on a hard surface. I tore at the gag that stopped me from yelling and tied the cloak over my face. Before I could tear it off, I heard a door above me slam shut.

  I knew where I was the moment I got free of the cloak. Even in the oily darkness, the smell came to me. Roots — chiva, by the musky scent, harvested before Barren Season and stored for preslet feed during the cold time. There were several root caches on Lunge, but we hadn’t come far from Simanca’s dwelling. I knew which cache I was in, and how deep it was, how solid and heavy the door that sealed it.

  Eight

  The root cache was cold, damp, and dark. I rolled onto my side and levered up to one elbow. My muscles quivered. I fell back down in the dirt.

  I lay exhausted in the dust, wrapped in the Bethon Blue cloak, anger seething through me, and thought about Simanca — what she and her unitmates had done.

  Simanca had treated me badly, sending me off to the fields season after season, knowing it was killing me. But it hadn’t started that way. She’d brought Pradat to Lunge because of concern for me. She’d set in motion the chain that had let me feel Resonance and mate. It was our duty to mate, to ensure the next generation, but it was more than duty that had driven her, I was sure of that. It was concern. And caring. Now it seemed that half the world had turned into babblers. None but a babbler would throw her sister into a cold, dark cellar and leave her.

  Not that she’d keep me here long. She had use for me. She’d leave me just long enough to let me come to my senses, as she saw it. Leave me without companionship, the one thing no commune doumana could stand, until I was happy to work the fields again, if only to be among my sisters. But I had been alone before, long days and nights with none but myself for company when I’d escaped from Lunge, and had survived it. I would survive this hole as well.

  Simanca couldn’t know I had little need for food or drink, that hunger and thirst wouldn’t give her power over me. I could lie in this dank corner of Lunge commune a long time and come out no different than I’d gone in.

  There were other things Simanca didn’t know about me.

  Can you hear me? I sent to the root cellar, and listened for a reply. Maybe it had consciousness, being a hole in the ground lined with stones and small timbers, and having a door, though I wasn’t sure how much. Wall was mud, stone, mortar, and a gate — essentially the same thing — and no one would say Wall wasn’t aware.

  Can you hear me? I sent again. I need to get out. Can you lift your door?

  Curiosity — I felt that from the ground around me, but as something vague and scattered. No reply came, and the door above didn’t so much as creak at its hinges.

  Please. Lift your door so that I can leave.

  Nothing now. Not even curiosity — as if the cellar had heard my desperate whispers, and decided it was only the wind.

  Time stretched out, lost its meaning. Thoughts roiled through my mind, voices that weren’t there saying how foolish I’d been to think I could stroll back into Lunge and be loved again, and then walk away, back to my new life in Kelroosh. Azlii and Nez wouldn’t come to steal me back until tomorrow night, at the earliest. My commune-sisters could pass by for days and I’d not hear one footfall down here.

  My neck burned. I hated the lumani for what they had made me. Hated Simanca for using me up. I’d been a good doumana, obeyed The Rules, done what was best for my sisters and my community. But I’d been bad, too — had run off to live my own life under my own command and sought to have my life saved. I’d been punished for it when the lumani made me neither doumana nor lumani, but something in between.

  Rain began falling outside — a sudden squall, pelting hard against the wooden door above my head. The door was solid. No water leaked in, but the damp felt stronger, colder. I drew my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, for the warmth of my own body. I tried to sleep. If a chance came for escape, I’d need all my limited energy.

  A rumble, like distant thunder, rolled through the cache. I shouldn’t be able to hear thunder here, underground, beneath the too-solid door. I braced my arms and managed to stand, surprised I felt strong now — stronger even than when I’d come to Lunge tonight — and listened.

  A chill ran across my shoulder blades, an awareness of something that I couldn’t quite get hold of. Something that felt wrong. Worry. From the cache. My palms began to sweat. If the cache was worried, something was certainly wrong — the rumble new, or out of place, or the first note of something worse coming.

  The ground began to shake. My muscles clenched, ready to flee — but there was nowhere to run. The shaking grew, knocking me to the ground, my leg turned at a bad angle. The earth was in convulsion. It rippled and shuddered. Dirt clods and small stones fell from the walls, thudding against the ground. I curled up as tightly as I could and threw my arms over my head for protection as dirt and stones bounced on the roiling floor. The rumble grew louder and the bucking beneath me stronger. The door overhead cracked, sending splinters raining down. A thin timber from the frame that lined the cellar broke off and crashed down a hand’s breadth from my eyes.

  And then the land was still. I lay panting, my heart beating like running feet. I couldn’t make sense of what had happened. The planet shaking like that, it was unheard of. But I’d ridden it out.

  The sisters of Lunge commune must have felt it too. The panicked chatter of my sisters running above was loud enough to hear through the cracked door. I almost called out, but kept quiet. If my commune-sisters freed me, I’d only wind up in Simanca’s hands again. If they’d all gathered in community hall — the place I thought they’d naturally run to — I might escape.

  The thin light of night showed through cracks in the door. The largest slice came at the door’s edge. I hoped that light meant the hinges had been knocked loose.

  The door was high above my head. I picked up the wrist-sized timber that had fallen, but even standing on my toes the limb was too short to reach the door.

  The cache was part full of chiva, a flat-sided root we called stairs to the sky for the way they could be stacked in the field at harvesting. I took off the cloak. The sudden cold made me shiver. I laid as many chivas as I could on the cloak and dragged it back to the spot beneath the door. The light was poor, but I could see to stack them straight enough to make a step. When the step was about halfway to my knee, I climbed on it and reached for the door. It was still too high.

  I shovelled more chivas on the cloak and dragged them over. I couldn’t just keep making the step higher. It would become unstable, and I wouldn’t be able to climb onto it. I heard some of my sisters still moving around outside — stragglers, or maybe some who’d already been to Simanca or community hall and had been sent back out. If Simanca sent doumanas to check for damage, I couldn’t cross the commune unseen.

  I needed to get out of the cache.

  I made the first step just a little higher, as high as I thought it could go and still have it be stable. I leaned slightly against the step and it didn’t tumble down.

  More of my commune-sisters were outside now, calling to each other. “The beastkeep is sound.” “There’s a big crack in the wall of my dwelling.” “The hatchlings are scared but fine.”
/>   That was good.

  Chiva was hard-skinned and fibrous, used only to feed the preslets. This cache was away from the grain rooms, silos, and gourd keeps. Simanca had planned well. I hoped no one would come to check on the root cache.

  It had come to this, to distrust not only Simanca and her unitmates, but all my commune-sisters. Tav, I thought, had walked away rather than help Simanca imprison me, but she hadn’t come to set me free.

  I shook the thoughts away and concentrated on building a second, shorter step on top of the first one. When it was done, I put the cloak on and climbed onto the first step. It held firm. I took a breath and stepped up on the higher step. It wobbled. I threw my arms out to keep my balance, but it didn’t help. I crashed onto the floor on my back, the breath knocked from my lungs. I lay there a long moment, no thought in my mind — only anger burning through me. I’d been foolish as a hatchling, thinking I could come back to Lunge and be among my sisters again as though the last year had never been. That Simanca would be who I hoped her to be, a caring leader, not who she was. That I, in some way, could still be Khe of Lunge commune.

  I rolled on to my side and levered myself up, first to my knees, then to my feet. There was no sound now from the ground above, no calling from sister to sister. I pictured them all huddled in the community hall, trying to make sense of the mad shaking of the settled world.

  The fallen timber that had nearly hit me lay close by. I picked it up and again climbed the chiva steps. Sweat stung my eyes. Dirt stuck to my skin. I took a deep breath, centered my weight over my feet, and swung the timber at the door as hard as I could. My arms and shoulders ached, but the sound of the door cracking cheered me. I swung again, howling low — sound adding power to my swing — and swung again, until the door was nothing but splinters hanging on a pitiful frame.

  The rain had stopped. Slowly, afraid almost to breathe, I eased my head, shoulders, and arms through the opening and looked around. No one. Palms flat on the ground above the cache, I pulled myself up and out. My forearms, shoulders, and back ached. I would have left the now dirtied and torn cloak for Simanca, but the night was cold. I hunched into myself and ran until I reached the blind of the structures. I hugged the side of Simanca’s dwelling, the shadows my friend. The few commune-sisters I saw were heading toward community hall. Lights blazed in the structure. Something had fallen, a chunk of wall, the roof — I couldn’t tell. Doumanas were outside, pulling at the chunk, trying to move it. I slunk back into the darkness.

  When I reached the corner of Simanca’s building, the door swung open. Jit, Stoss, and Thedra, their necks blue-red with anxiety, walked into the night. Our dwelling — their dwelling — lay beyond where I pressed tight against Simanca’s wall. They would walk right past me.

  “It’s not right,” I heard Stoss say.

  Their footsteps were coming closer. Any moment, they’d round the side and there’d I’d be. I turned and ran, ducking low as I passed a window.

  “Khe!” Thedra called, but not loudly — a desperate whisper.

  I stopped, turned, and backed away from them, moving through the small open space between Simanca’s dwelling and the next. I couldn’t think for a moment who lived next to Simanca. Jit, Stoss, and Thedra lived nearly halfway across Lunge. Thedra walked toward me, her steps hard and fast. My feet felt stuck. I looked around wildly, desperate to pick the best direction to run. She took hold of my arm.

  “They told us,” Thedra whispered in my ear. “Simanca said you never meant to stay with us, despite your promise. She said you’d planned to leave us again, go back to those corentans.” She practically spat the last word.

  Stoss stepped up on my other side. “You told us why you abandoned us before. You had good reasons then. What’s your excuse this time?”

  My gaze flickered back and forth between my two sisters and out to Jit, who stood apart, staring at us.

  “The same,” I said. “Look around you. Simanca went a little mad while she had me here to push the crops. She traded for more land and hatchlings than this commune can support. I have eyes. The beast-keep is twice the size it was when I left. Two new silos have gone up. Simanca has promised future crops in trade for those debts. She can’t deliver without me. What do you think she has planned?”

  Thedra loosened her grip on my arm. She stepped back and rubbed at her nose, thinking.

  “Look at this cloak,” I said, my voice low. We were out of view of Simanca’s windows, but other sisters could come out and see us at any time. I didn’t want the sound of voices to draw them. “Bethon Blue. You know what this costs? But Simanca was willing to throw it away to keep me here. She dragged me out of her dwelling and threw me into a root cache. I only got out because the earth shiver broke the boards in the cache’s door.”

  Jit came up and stroked my throat. “I don’t care what you did or didn’t do Khe. You are our sister.”

  “Worth being shunned for?” Stoss asked, her voice knife-edge sharp.

  “No one needs to be shunned,” I said. “Go to your dwelling. I’ll disappear into the darkness and go back to Kelroosh. Simanca will never know you saw me.”

  “There are no secrets here, Khe,” a loud voice said. “Everything is known.”

  We swung our heads to look where the words had come from. Min and Gintok stood shoulder to shoulder in the dim light.

  “Come inside now,” Mintok said.

  The muddy-brown of fear covered Jit’s, Stoss’s, and Thedra’s necks.

  I stepped toward Simanca’s unitmates. “These doumanas were just about to bring me to you.”

  Gintok laughed under her breath. “Your neck should be aglow from the shame of that lie, Khe. Where has your decency gone?” She glanced over her shoulder back toward her shared dwelling. “You will all come now.”

  Tav was sitting in one of the over-stuffed chairs, her hands in her lap, her eyes on her hands. Simanca was in another chair, her back straight with eager expectation but her face composed in worry. My three commune-sisters stood huddled together, a few steps away from me, their chins sunk toward their chests. I didn’t know how Simanca and her unitmates knew we were there in the dark, but it was plain they had known, and that Simanca had sent Gintok and Min to fetch us.

  “Thedra,” Simanca said, “is everything all right at your dwelling? No damage from the — ”

  She waved her hand in the air as if it might accidently bump into the word she couldn’t find. We had no word for what had happened, the shiver and buckle of the planet. Why have a name for something that never occurs? Had never occurred.

  Thedra looked up to answer. “No damage. A bowl fell from a ledge and broke. Nothing else.”

  Simanca nodded. “Good.” She turned her gaze to me, but her words were for my unitmates. “Khe was leaving us again, after promising to stay. I’m very disappointed.” She shifted her eyes to Jit, Stoss, and Thedra. “You must be very disappointed as well. Here, your own sister and unitmate seems to return to you, takes our hospitality, pretends to love us and want nothing more than to return to her rightful place, but all the while she is conspiring with corentans to take our food, seeds, beasts and fowls — and then abandon us in our time of need.”

  She paused, waiting for my sisters to speak, but none did.

  “There are things you don’t know.” Simanca swung her gaze back to me. “Lunge has been prosperous. But suddenly we have rain. You know that if the rain keeps up, we won’t be able to plant at our usual time. What I’m going to tell you now, only my unitmates have known before this. We traded for this information when Trantal corenta was here.” She paused, building up her big moment of revelation. “The Powers, who helped us through all the aspects of our lives, have been destroyed.”

  My unitmates gasped.

  “This doesn’t seem to surprise you, Khe,” Simanca said.

  I kept my eyes on the commune leader, my gaze as level and searing as hers. “I was in Chimbalay, being treated for my affliction when it happened. There was an explo
sion. No one knows what caused it.”

  My neck didn’t warm at the lie. What sort of doumana was I becoming that I could bend the truth so easily and without shame?

  I felt the eyes of each sister in the room focused on me, but I didn’t waver from watching Simanca’s face. This was a competition Simanca wouldn’t win.

  Her gaze finally dropped away. “There is opportunity here for Lunge. With Khe to help grow our crops, Lunge will be positioned as a powerful commune, one that can become First among all others.”

  The leading commune in any region received the largest seeds, the best fertilizer, the newest machinery, the prize hatchlings. The land of Simanca’s dreams came without boundaries.

  I turned my arm so that my wrist faced up. “I won’t have the time to help you.”

  “But you will have some,” she said. “Commemoration Day is still weeks away. If you go to the beast-keep and bird pens and the seed stockpiles now, you can put the extra growth in them that we will need after you are gone.”

  A large silence grew in the room. Tav left her chair and stood by the window, leaning against the sill. The window behind her was dark. With her light-red skin and white hipwrap, she stood out in sharp contrast. Her voice, when she spoke, was small and quiet.

  “Returning doumanas are never asked to work extra in their last days. Our way is to honor the Returners, and expect nothing from them but the joy of their company.”

  I wanted to stroke Tav’s throat. No one contradicted Simanca. Ever.

  The glare Simanca sent toward Tav could have cut through walls.

  Thedra took a half step forward and sang a few lines from The Glory of Returning.

  “Praise and honor to she who has given

  Her best and her all to the task and her sisters.”

  My neck burned with gratitude.

  The spots on Simanca’s throat flamed with the brown-black of anger. She set her hands on the arms of her chair and started to rise. Jit and Stoss stepped back, but Tav and Thedra stood their place.