Desert World Rebirth (14 page)

Shan stopped breathing as Cyla went right to the heart of the issue. She might be angry and hurting and more abrasive than Lilian and Naite combined, but she wasn’t stupid. Usually. When she’d played detective on the George Young farm, leading to all the damage that had led to both of them getting sentenced to slavery… that had been spectacularly stupid, even in hindsight. Even Shan, who had a real lack of talent with making plans, could see that.

“I… um….” Temar winced and looked to Shan for help. The silence grew heavy as Cyla turned to him, waiting for the answer.

“The two of us are possible candidates for having to negotiate with this new alliance that’s formed,” Shan said. It was stretching the truth but not entirely breaking it, since Lilian and the others hadn’t technically gotten approval from the other councils. One of the other councils might have their own team that they would propose as an alternative. And water might fall as rain out of the sky. No one went up against Lilian unless they had a very good reason. Shan mentally promised the Lord two prayers of contrition for the sin.

“You two?” Cyla didn’t even hide her surprise.

“Yes, us. You don’t have to sound surprised that someone might think we can negotiate,” Temar said, the aggravation back in his voice.

“You can’t even remember to eat without me nagging you,” Cyla countered. “Why aren’t they sending Lilian Freeland or Kevin Starwalker or even Bari Ruiz? Why you two?”

“They all have families, Cyla,” Shan pointed out. “We don’t.”

“So?”

She still looked confused, but then it occurred to Shan that she probably thought they would negotiate over the communicator, or maybe she thought that this new alliance was coming to Livre. In hindsight, Shan should have suggested both those alternatives before committing someone to going to space. He’d been an idiot. However, after reading how much those early settlers loathed the same world that made Shan feel so close to God, he’d almost felt like outsiders would corrupt his world. They certainly were going to look down on the people of Livre if they realized how poor they all were. The early settlers had complained bitterly about being limited to four hundred pounds of personal belongings, but Shan knew very few people who owned more than they could carry on their backs. He didn’t want these people to see that. He felt no shame in poverty. Christ had lived in poverty and had made it abundantly clear that any person who wouldn’t walk away from their possessions had no place in the kingdom of heaven. However, he didn’t need to see these strangers dismiss them for the way they lived their lives.

“The negotiators will be traveling to a station six light-years away to discuss the terms of a trade,” Shan explained.

Cyla lost every bit of color in her face. “But…. You can’t…. Really?” The last word came out as a whisper.

“Really,” Temar agreed. “So, I won’t be here to try and get you and Naite to be nice to each other. Naite’s the farm manager. You need to learn to be nice to him without me being there to distract him.” Temar reached over and caught Cyla’s hand.

Cyla gritted her teeth so hard the muscle on the side of her jaw stood out, but she didn’t comment. Maybe she understood that Temar had changed… he wouldn’t follow her blindly anymore. Shan picked up his fork and started eating again. He seriously hoped he wasn’t blindly leading Temar into another disaster by agreeing to leave the planet. They’d be trapped up there, relying on these people’s need for optic-quality glass to earn them a treaty and a ride back home when they finished.

“Great pancakes,” Shan offered when the silence continued a little too long. Temar pulled his hand away from his sister and nodded his agreement as he started eating his own. He muttered something that might have been, “Really good,” but it was hard to tell with his mouth full.

“I just wanted to make sure you ate something,” Cyla said, looking at Temar. Before either of them could answer, she got up from the table and headed for the other room. “You should get some seed. George Young would pay through the nose for some new genetic lines of wheat or corn to play with,” she called out. Temar almost choked.

“Cyla, a little quieter, please,” he begged as he left his plate and chased after her. Considering they were on a farm surrounded by workers, she really was talking a little too loud. She and Temar had grown up on their land without workers, but it was a different world here. There might be privacy on the upper levels, but not on the first floor, with workers wandering by the windows.

Low, insistent voices drifted in from the front room, but the actual words were lost in the general murmur of unhappy tones. A door slammed, and there was a dull thump as something hit the floor, but it didn’t sound like a body, and as long as they weren’t throwing fists, Shan figured he needed to stay out of their fight. Shan kept eating, watching the doorway until Temar returned, his shoulders angled as though carrying a weight heavy enough to take him down.

“She tells me I should stop trying to run her life,” Temar said. He sat down and stared at his pancakes before pushing them away.

“You should eat.”

“If I were hungry, I would,” Temar answered sharply.

Shan put his fork down and watched Temar.

Slowly, Temar became aware of the scrutiny and he shifted in his chair, looking around before he finally demanded, “What?”

“If you aren’t hungry after this morning’s sex, I’m clearly too old to do it right,” Shan said as he scooped up his last bite of pancakes and eyed the last one on the serving plate.

“You are not old.”

“I’m older than you by a good ten or eleven years, and I’m feeling older than that if I can’t even make you work up an appetite.”

Temar frowned at Shan for a good minute. “You’re trying to manipulate me into eating.”

“Yep,” Shan agreed with a smile. His plan worked, because Temar shook his head and gave Shan an indulgent smile.

“Fine, I’ll eat.”

“Good, because you need to keep up your energy for ambush attacks,” Shan said as he stabbed the last pancake and tried to pull it over to his plate. It disintegrated into a pile of pieces and crumbs that he had to scoop off the platter.

“She acts like she knows everything… like I’m being unreasonable and she’s indulging me.”

“So, she’s acting like Naite?” Shan summed it up.

Temar snorted. “Yeah, but I like Naite better. At least he calls you an idiot and then does what he can to help. She calls me an idiot and then stands around to repeat it until I agree.” Temar shoved a large bite of pancake into his mouth.

“She’ll grow up,” Shan said. Temar gave him a quizzical look. “Some people take longer than others,” Shan said. “Until I was thirty-one, I was hiding in the church because I didn’t want to deal with relationships and feelings and fears that I couldn’t understand.”

Temar swallowed, coughed, and grabbed for a glass of water. “Hiding?” he asked. “You were a great priest. People loved you.”

“I was hiding as a priest. I couldn’t remember Biblical passages, I fixed the church roof more often than I went out of my way to counsel members of that church, and I was generally confused. And if people loved me it was because I never told them the hard truths I should have. Maybe if I had talked more about hell and the need for confession and forgiveness, Ben wouldn’t have gotten out of hand.”

“You think… do you really blame yourself for that?” Temar leaned forward, his bright blue eyes focused intensely on Shan.

“Most days, no,” he admitted. He stopped, swallowing as an old memory caught him.

“Shan?” Temar’s hand rested on his arm.

Part of Shan wanted to push his memory away, but that felt disrespectful, both of the lover who wanted to be part of his life and the mother who had loved him. “Have I told you about my mother?”

Temar shook his head.

With a smile, Shan thought about her in her prime, the way he would sit on the step after Naite had gone to school and watch her in the fields with his father and the one worker they could afford to hire. “She was really something. She used to get out there and have furrow races with the hired worker and my father to see who could plant a row without missing a spot or ruining a seedling. She had this laugh… like she couldn’t stop until she was out of breath and grabbing for something to keep her upright. She lived so big.” Shan stopped, his emotions threatening to escape their reins.

“Did she die in childbirth?” Temar asked. It was a logical question, since so many did, either because of the lack of water or lack of the right nutrients or the lack of any real medical help, but Shan shook his head.

“No, she got hurt on the farm, and an infection set in.”

Temar’s fingers tightened on Shan’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

When Shan breathed in, the sound stuttered for a moment as he tried to focus on what he wanted to say. This wasn’t about him throwing himself a pity party. “When she was alive, my father would sometimes get… not angry, exactly. It was more like he wanted revenge on anyone who hurt him, even when it was only one of his sons making a stupid mistake. But Mom would step in and read him the riot act. She’d pull him to one side and rip into him in this soft voice.” Shan tried to figure out how to explain what he was feeling.

Temar watched intently. “What would she say?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’d catch a few words of it. She’d talk about his father, talk about the future. Sometimes I’d hear her talk about God or Div, who was the priest even back then. But she’d have this intensity, and Dad’s anger would turn into this embarrassment that would make him avoid the house until it was so late that Naite and I had gone to bed.” Shan pushed his plate away. “She reminded him that he needed to be good. She never raised her voice, but she would tear into him with this intense tone that would make him stop and really think about what he was doing. Sometimes Div would do that when people came to see him for counseling. But Temar, I never did. I never tried to warn people away from doing evil, so I can’t pretend that I didn’t have some part in the evil that grew in Landing.”

Temar reared back. “You can’t blame yourself for the fact that other people chose to be evil.”

“I was a council member. I was the priest. Who else is supposed to stop evil?”

“I don’t know, maybe the people who are being evil?” Temar had this expression of utter confusion on his face.

Shan scratched his chin. He hadn’t shaved yet, and he itched. “But I certainly didn’t have any inspiration from God when it came to Ben and schemes.”

“And neither did anyone else. I was happy when he bought my contract,” Temar pointed out. “Shan, you’re not responsible for anyone else.”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Shan whispered. Taking refuge in Cain’s excuse didn’t seem like a particularly good idea, but then again, Cain had committed murder. Chronic naiveté seemed like Shan’s worst sin. He hadn’t understood himself or his calling or Ben.

“No, you aren’t,” Temar said firmly. “You didn’t see Ben’s evil, and you thought my father was evil when he was really just weak, and I thought you were some stuffy priest who didn’t have a life beyond reading the Bible all week so he could preach on Sunday. Clearly we all have some version of sandblindness that only affects how well we see other people.”

Shan lowered his voice until it was little more than a whisper. “So, the planet is relying on two idiots to negotiate a treaty?”

Temar made an expression of exaggerated horror. “We’re all doomed.”

Shan laughed, the negative emotions slipping back into the shadows of his mind. “If we don’t live up to Lilian’s expectations, we will be.”

“Then we’d better start doing a little research.”

“Research? On what?” Shan asked.

Temar tilted his head, looking at Shan in surprise. After a second, he leaned in closer and whispered in an earnest voice, “Which chemicals did they want to export? Where are the mineral deposits? What did they need other than optic-quality glass? How much optic-quality glass did they hope to export every year? How much water did we get shorted in the terraforming? How have the prices of raw materials changed in the last eighty years?”

Shan leaned back in his chair, shocked at how much of an idiot he’d been. He knew all about the colonists’ machines, and he’d read their diaries and their journals. He knew how they saw Livre, and how much they’d hated it. He knew a lot of things, but listening to Temar’s quick list, he realized he didn’t know anything important.

“Clearly, I’m a moron.”

“What? No, you aren’t,” Temar quickly disagreed.

“No, really I am.” Shan shook his head at his own foolishness. “Well, it sounds like we have some researching to do in the next week. I’m sure we can find the answers either in the relay station computers or in one of the downloads.” Shan broke off as he heard the door slam. He was on his feet, his heart pounding for no good reason, as Naite walked in the door.

Chapter 13

TEMAR could see the way Shan relaxed once only Naite appeared in the doorway. They were both as jumpy as sandrats. The council would have been better off choosing negotiators who didn’t start at shadows, but Temar suspected it was too late to change plans now, and he wasn’t going to allow Shan to go off-world alone. Naite sat down at the table, shadows under his eyes. Grabbing an apple, he looked at the serving platter. “I don’t suppose you saved any food?”