Moongather (41 page)

Mama was right, keep away from Nilis
. She grinned and dug with energy and force, clearing away clumps of leechweed, working leaf castings and storm-stripped nubbins into the sticky black earth, working slowly around the tree until it stood in a ring of glistening umber. She sat back on her heels, sniffing happily at the pungent odors circulating about her (the clean green of the suckers, the chays-smell thick as jam dropping down from the ripening fruit, the damp brown earth smell, fugitive violet and lace perfumes from the late-blooming autumn flowers hiding between clumps of grass); the tranquility of the crisp, bright morning brought her some of the same calm she found in the Maiden Shrine. She was disturbed by the violence of her waking rage; she hadn't been so bad for a long time; even last night, even when she was actually seeing Nilis babble, she hadn't been so lost in blind fury; if Mama hadn't been there she might've really hurt Nilis and however much she might deserve it, Tuli didn't want to have that memory nagging at her. She wiped her hands on the worn patched workskirt, wishing for the thousandth time she could wear her night-running trousers while she worked. It wasn't possible, it would only scandalize the ties and make her life a misery. Not worth the fuss.

She looked back along the tidy row of trees, sighing with tired satisfaction.
Not bad for a couple hours' work
. She spread her fingers out and frowned at the dirt staining her palms and packed beneath her nails.
I'll have to scrub with pumice
. With a grunt of effort she pushed onto her feet, stretched. She twisted loose a leaf and stripped away all but the center spine, used this to dig at the dirt under her nails.
Mama was right. I feel lots better. Won't bite Nilis when I see her next
. She giggled, patted her stomach. “I could eat an oadat, fur and all.” She stretched again, yawned, filled with a vast lassitude, too tired and too hungry to fuss about Nilis any longer. “Won't bite Nilis. Poison to the bone.” Giggles bubbling out of her, she scooped up the trowel and spading fork, started back toward the house, humming a bouncy tune, singing a song in her head sometimes, aloud sometimes.
Won't bite Nilis. Won't see Nilis. Won't talk to Nilis. Won't, won't, won't bite Nilis
. “Nilis is a slimy snake, Nilis is a toad, toad, toad, Nilis is a nobody.”
Nobody, nobody, nobo, nobo, nobodaddy
.

Chanting under her breath, alternating her chants with giggles, she circled the tie-village, sauntered past the barns and corrals, her song dying away as she saw the hauhaus still waiting in them, though they should have been on their way to the pasture an hour since. She stopped and looked around, suddenly aware of what she'd seen but hadn't taken note of before. There was no one about. The tie-village usually had kids playing around the houses, noisy packs of boys or girls busy at their games or fighting with each other. She remembered empty lanes. It was washday but no ties crowded the heavy grey stones of the laundry court, stoking the fires under the kettles, stirring the clothes in the boiling water, talking all the while at top speed. And no ties were taking bread to the beehive oven. Nobody at all in sight, not even Hars who was always puttering about, doing something or other around the barns. Her jubilation evaporating, she frowned at the trowel and spading fork, then hurried toward the toolshed. After a last worried glance about, she pulled the door open and stepped inside.

Teras was there, waiting for her. “Been pulling weeds with your teeth?” He reached out, brushed at her cheek and nose. “You all right?”

“I'm cool.” She thunked the fork and trowel between their holding pegs. “What's happening? How come you're here, not with everyone else wherever that is?”

“Wanted to talk to you before you went in.” He dug with his boot heel into the hard-packed dirt floor. “There's a Decsel and his Ten inside.” He balled his hands into fists and shoved them in the side pockets of his tunic, then shouldered the door open. “Don't want to talk here.”

She followed him out, pointed at the garden wall ahead. “Over there?”

“Uh-uh, not yet anyway.” He scuffed ahead of her through dry tufts of grass, kicking angrily at small pebbles not caring where they landed.

“Where we going then?”

“Haymow.”

A loaded wain was drawn up before the haybarn; overhead the loading fork swung gently from its pulley. Teras caught hold of the fork rope and began wriggling up it, climbing with a bumpy ease that Tuli watched with jealousy biting at her. She kicked at her skirt and went through a small side door into the barn.

The interior was dark and dusty except for the bright yellow light thronged with dancing motes that streamed down from the high haywindow where she saw Teras loom higher and higher, an ebon shade with opaline edges, until he stood upright in the window. With a sudden bright laugh he used the rope to send the fork trolly rumbling inward along its track, then pushed off from the window and rode the rope across the open space to drop into the high-piled hay. A moment later his head appeared over the binding stakes. “Come on up, Tuli. They'll be out looking for us sooner'n we want.”

“Hold your hair on, I'm coming.” She tucked the hem of her skirt into her waistband and started up the ladder nailed to the side of the interior mow. At the top she pulled her skirt loose, then crawled across the slippery straw to her brother and stretched out on her stomach at his side. She started to ask him about the Decsel then changed her mind. “Mama said Da was gone off.”

Teras worked a stem from the hay and chewed on it a moment, his eyes squinted to cracks, the misty light igniting the sun-bleached ends of his light brown hair into a shimmering glow about his head. “He was getting ready for bed.” He looked down at the straw, then tossed it away. “He looked so damn tired and worried, Tuli. Ahh, Tuli … how he looked … I could …” His hands closed tight on the hay making it squeak a little and his face was strained and tense. “It was hard to tell him, Tuli, worst thing I had to do since Hars made me tell him I was the one who let the hauhaus get into the grainfield and mess up half the crop.” He sighed, shifted onto his back and lay picking bits of straw off his tunic. “He threatened to tear the hide off my behind if I ever did anything like that again, specially taking you along, I had to tell him you were with me but he knew before, I think.”

“Ummm.” She rubbed at her nose. “What did he say about Nilis?”

“He said to leave her be, he'd see to her when he got back.”

Tuli sighed, pulled lengths of straw from under her, tied the ends together and began twisting them into a crinkled braid. After a moment she narrowed her eyes, turned her head, gave him a long questioning look. “You haven't said anything about the Decsel. And where are the ties?”

“In the house, even the kids. Nilis. It's all Nilis. Soon as the Decsel showed up she sent her pet viper Averine out and ordered them in, said Mama wanted them, but I don't think so. I was out with Hars in the pasture so Averine missed me first time. Not the second, oh no, but Hars told him to get away or he'd break off one of his skinny arms and feed it to him. He ran out of there like we'd set fire to.…” He broke off, his nose and ears suddenly purple-red. “Hars told me I should get hold of you and warn you what's up,” he mumbled.

Tuli closed her eyes, dropped her head until it rested on crossed forearms and she was inhaling the scratchy sweet smell of the straw. After a few breaths she exploded up, too restless to sit still any longer. Feet sinking deep into the loose straw, she lurched about the top of the stack. “I'd like to switch Nilis all the way up the steps to the top of the watch-tower 'nd shove her off 'nd see if she can fly.”

“Me too, but that wouldn't help Da. Or Mama.”

“Would me.” She staggered to the stakes, wrapped her hands about one and stared through the haywindow. “Teras.…”

“What?”

“Maybe we should just go off after Da. Not go in at all.”

“You know what he'd do.” He got to his feet and floundered over beside her. “Running off and leaving Mama to face that Decsel all alone.”

“She wouldn't be alone, there's Sanani and the ties and the baby and … well, and the cousins and Uncle Kimor and Aunt Salah.”

“You know what I mean.”

She held up a hand, turned it around in the mote-filled light. “I better change then and wash.” She sniffed, made a face. “You too, twin. You stink like macai-shit.”

“You shouldn't say that.” He sounded shocked and disapproving.

“Hah, you turning into Nilis?” She eyed the fork rope, shook her head, gritted her teeth and waded back to the ladder. As she swung herself over, she muttered every bad word she'd gathered from her years of night running, listening with and without Teras to the patrons of Jango's tavern and to the herders around their night fires when they didn't know she was there. She stormed out of the barn, thinking she wouldn't wait for Teras, but she stopped anyway and waited.

Teras dropped beside her, spat on his palms, wiped them on his tunic. “You should go for a meie,” he said, then dodged back, laughing as she swung at him. “See?”

“Brothers, hah!”

He started walking backwards a few paces in front of her as she strode for the place in the wall where the mortar had crumbled, leaving cavities that made easy climbing. “I was just teasing, Tuli,” he said, “but I really mean it; I think you'd be a good meie, or maybe a healwoman.” He grinned and pointed as she kicked impatiently at the damp heavy skirt. “You wouldn't have to wear those long skirts no more.”

She didn't answer until they reached the wall, then she set her back against it and folded her arms over her small breasts. “I don't know,” she said slowly. “When things get … get too shut in, I think about it. And then I think I'd like kids sometimes. And I know Fayd likes me and we laugh a lot at the same things and he doesn't mind that I'm no good at housework.”

“Not now, maybe, but in a couple years?” Teras scowled; he never liked it when she talked about things she couldn't share with him. He didn't bother with girls and couldn't see why she should be any different. He snapped his fingers absently, again and again. “So he's fun now,” he burst out. “But you know what his Da's like. And Tuli, I thought I saw him at the tilun, Fayd's Da, I mean.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, whispered, “Oh Teras; why does everything have to change, why can't it stay like it always has been?”

The assembly hall that occupied the greater part of the House's ground floor was filled with people. To the right, a clutch of ties in Follower black (silvergilt circled-flame badges pinned to chests male and female), unnaturally quiet children herded behind them, stood in rigid ranks, smug smiles on their faces, knowing glitters in their eyes. To the left, the other tie-families waited together, nervous and uncertain, hushing their children when the noise got too loud, talking quietly among themselves or looking around with a growing apprehension in their faces. As Tuli came slowly down the stairs, she saw the tide of black washed up to her right and wanted to spit on them. Trembling, she reached out. Teras took her hand, held it hard. In the strength and hurting of his fingers, she felt his anger and fear and knew it matched hers. They came down the rest of the stairs together and stopped just behind Annic and Sanani. Annic turned her head when she heard them, nodded unsmiling and turned back to face the armed men separating the two groups of ties. “All my children are here now, Decsel. Unless you want me to have the baby brought, he's all of four years old. I'm sure he'd find you very impressive.”

Hars stood a little apart from the other ties, his worn sun-dark face blank, his wiry body held very straight. A slight smile touched his face at Annic's speech. When he saw the twins, the smile widened very briefly, then his face was as blank as before, a mask carved from seasoned hardwood. Teras took a step toward him, but Tuli caught his arm. “Not now,” she whispered. She heard a sound behind her and turned.

Nilis was coming down the stairs, chin high, triumph in her squeezed smile, her shining eyes. (Tuli remembered her mother's words:
all my children are here
, and felt a momentary sadness for her mother and even for Nilis who didn't know what she'd lost.) Her sister's eyes swept over Tuli as if she were less than a spot on the polished floor. Tuli forgot sadness and started for her.

Teras caught her shoulder and pulled her roughly against him, whispered in her ear, “Not now. Let Mama handle her.”

Tuli leaned against her brother and drew on his calm. She needed it when she saw the Agli move from behind the massive, scarred Decsel, a hard-faced woman beside him, and cross the flags to greet Nilis. She chewed on her lower lip and held onto her temper as she saw the Agli flick a slender white hand at the Decsel.

The big man nodded, then stomped with a martial rattle of his accoutrements across the intervening space to confront Annic. In spite of his military bearing (
exaggerated somewhat, perhaps in disgust at his present duty
, Tuli thought, then wondered if she was reading her own feelings into that scarred mask), he seemed a little uneasy as if he caught a hint of how ridiculous he looked in his metal and leather, his iron-banded gloves and boots, his sword swinging with the shift of long meaty legs, marching to face down a smallish woman with grey-streaked brown hair and brown-gold eyes that often twinkled with amused appreciation of the world's absurdities or a comic exasperation when one of her children played the fool. Tuli saw her mother's cheek twitch, saw blood rush to darken the already dark face of the Decsel and felt a bit sorry for him. She knew only too well that glint in her mother's eyes, that twitch of the lips that said without words: Don't you know how foolish you look? Come, laugh at this with me and be sensible next time.
Poor man
, she thought.
After all, he's just doing his job; at least he's not enjoying this, not like THEM
. She scowled at Nilis, the Agli, the strange woman.