Skies (21 page)

Lhaurel sped up until she was walking alongside the tall woman. She had grown used to looking up to her, though it had been a hard habit to form. Among her own people Lhaurel had only been surpassed in height by the men. Here, among the Orinai, even the women made her feel small. Only the priestesses were close to her own height.

“And what would they have done about it? I doubt it would be appropriate for Sisters to be seen fighting with one another on that scale.”

“If no one who witnesses it remains to tell of it,” Talha said, walking in time with Lhaurel, both staffs hitting the ground within seconds of one another, “what harm is there in it?”

“You’re saying . . .”

Talha nodded and gestured to the right with her staff, indicating that she wanted to put more space between them and the wagons. When they were a good dozen spans away, enough distance to no longer be overhead, Talha continued.

“Sellia would have everyone here killed just to avoid anyone ever discussing the fight. Just the little spat we had here is worse than what she would have allowed. Aiam and Alcine are almost as bad.”

Lhaurel shuddered. “That’s horrible. Why would they do that?”

“It is in their natures. It is also the way of their Progression.”

The words resonated within Lhaurel on a subconscious level, only increasing her disgust and confusion. “Their Progressions condone the murder of innocents just to cover up their own dishonorable acts?”

Talha stopped and turned to look at Lhaurel, an ink-stained hand rubbing her forehead. A strand of blood red hair slipped free of Talha’s bun and danced in the slight breeze in front of the woman’s eyes, in harmony with the movement of the long grasses through which they walked. Talha’s face held a rapt expression of utter incredulity for half a moment, then she burst into laughter. It was a pure, honest laugh, the kind that works its way up from the toes and permeates every fiber of one’s being. Talha laughed until tears streamed down her face, then she gasped a ragged breath and seemed to regain control of herself. Still, a smile remained on her face.

“I forget your naïveté sometimes, though, even with it, you remain true to your Progression. It’s remarkable.”

“What’s remarkable?” Lhaurel demanded. She wasn’t sure if she should feel insulted or not at Talha’s outburst.

“It’s remarkable how well you typify the ideal you represent with your, um, history.” Talha resumed walking, though this time there was far more liveliness to her step. Part of the levity remained and, for reasons Lhaurel couldn’t even begin to name, let alone understand, she was glad of that.

Grass crunched beneath their feet and Lhaurel waved a hand to clear away the dust billowing from the wagons ahead of them before she could reply.

“What?”

“You are the representation of Honor. Not just in the ideological sense, but in a physical one as well. The people we lead, the Orinai, they will look to your acts and your deeds as examples of what honor is. In a way, you will
become
the definition of honor. I have studied many writings of past Sisters and a number of discourses on the subject. You represent it well. Sellia and the other Sisters will be well pleased, I think. Remarkable.” Talha paused, pursing her lips in the way she did when thinking about something. The wind tossed Lhaurel’s hair in front of her face and she had to brush it away. She also wrinkled her nose as she caught a whiff of Grunt’s foul stench, which the wind had brought with it.

“Actually,” Talha continued, “it’s not remarkable at all. You do not find it remarkable that a bird learns how to fly. It simply does what it was created to do.”

Lhaurel found herself chewing on her bottom lip both in response to the smell and Talha’s words. If Talha noticed the lip biting, she didn’t say anything, though she did make a face and wave a hand in front of her nose.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Just now, that indignation about Sellia and the other Sisters and how they would treat others, that is something anyone honorable would have done. When you agreed to come with us in order to save your people, that was also the honorable thing to do. It was the
only
honorable thing to do. It is not always the easy thing, or—arguably—the
right
thing, but it is the honorable and moral thing to do. Ah good, the wind’s shifted. I’m not sure how much more of that smell I could take.”

Lhaurel remembered an old man dying, his death hastened by her uncontrollable powers. She remembered the woman who had been drained of her life blood at the moment Lhaurel needed it to destroy the genesauri. Those had not been the acts of someone with honor. They’d been acts of desperations. Acts of a monster. Of a
Sister
.

Lhaurel started to say something, to voice her thoughts aloud, when she stopped herself. She hadn’t told Talha everything that had gone on in the Sharani Desert for a reason. Those memories were private, the last bastion of the former self she had left. Talha knew a lot about the people there and some of their customs, but much of her knowledge was simple guesswork. Lhaurel wasn’t sure she wanted to profane those memories, the dignity of her people, by sharing that knowledge with her just yet. No, Lhaurel still struggled too much with her own identity to let go of the memories.

“You should try riding behind the thing. The smell is from the gatheriu pulling my wagon.”

Talha chuckled, but then her expression sobered. “Despite all you have seen, child, still you doubt. I see the conflict within you. Elyana’s memories battle against the woman you were becoming among your old people. You are neither of those women, Lhaurel. You are something far greater. As a Sister, as one who has reached the pinnacle of the Iterations and now follows the Progression through endless incarnations, you
are
holy. You
are
one of
the deities of this nation. You are eternal.”

“I have memories of aspects of the religion that are foreign to me, Talha,” Lhaurel said, struggling to articulate how she felt. “The Rahuli have no real sense of religion, not by that standard. We know of the seven hells and that each of us will someday go to one of them, but that is the extent of our beliefs. Our actions in life determine what level of punishment we receive after death.”

“And old interpretation of the Progressions,” Talha said, brightening even further. “I do wish we had more time for me to interview you on the ways of the Rahuli. It amazes me what things have remained intact and what has become perverted over the centuries. A population raised in isolation changes in so many interesting and unique ways. Do you suppose your people can still breed with the stock of their ancestors?”

“What?”

Talha paused again, one hand patting her robes as if searching for a book or something with which to write. She looked up and smiled, showing her painted teeth.

“Never mind. Once we reach Estrelar there will be plenty of time for us to speak of this further, for now, perhaps we should catch up with the wagons?”

Lhaurel looked up to see that the last wagon had pulled ahead of them by several spans. The only reason she could see them at all over the long grass was because they were slowly cresting a rise in the otherwise flat expanse around them.

“One last question, Talha,” Lhaurel said, quickening her pace. “Back on the ship, with Elva. What is House Kelkott and what did you mean about politics?”

Talha’s smile slipped a little and she pounded her staff into the ground a little harder than normal. “I guess I will have to teach you eventually. Our lessons will resume tomorrow morning once we reach the Geithoorn locks. I will teach you of the Great Houses and the great game they play with each other.” She sighed and made a sour expression, and Lhaurel hid a smile.

It was nice to have the old Talha back again.

“The Progressions were a belief stolen from the Relao, then changed once the Seven Sisters gained prominence in the religious capacities of the Orinai.”

—From the Discourses on Knowledge, Volume 15, Year 1023

Lhaurel smelled Geithoorn before she saw it. According to Talha, Geithoorn was a small town compared to just about any other place in the Empire. It wouldn’t have existed at all if it weren’t for the locks and the lake next to which it rested. Lhaurel only had a vague idea what the locks were, but she’d gathered from context that it had something to do with a means of transportation by water. Talha had briefly explained that the Sisters controlled the canals and the locks when they’d caught back up with the wagons earlier that morning. That control granted them a knife on the economic pulse of the Empire—whatever that meant—through the tariffs and tithes charged for their use. None of that, however, explained the smell.

“What is that horrid stench?” Lhaurel asked, unable to take it any longer. Next to it, Grunt’s odor was rather pleasant.

She and Talha were sharing the same wagon now, Talha having mostly returned to her normal absentminded self. Talha looked up from her book, which lay open on her lap, and glanced over at Lhaurel, blinking as if she had just woken up from a deep sleep.

“What’s that?”

“The smell. What’s that smell?” Lhaurel said. She brought a hand up to cover her nose and mouth.

Talha frowned and sucked a deep breath through her nose.

“It’s not Grunt, here, Honored Sister,” the wizened wagon driver said. “It’s the smokeweed. They bring it down from the plantations up north, see.”

“Ah yes,” Talha said, tapping one finger against her nose. “That must be it. I’d forgotten it was harvest season.”

“Aye,” the driver said, flicking the reins. “They have to be getting it done before the snows move down this far. I heard the winter’ll be bad this year. Snows in the mountains, crazy clouds up in the sky. The weather’s been something awful east o’ here, I heard. Crazy storms and the like.”

Talha mumbled something incoherent and turned back to her book.

“How can you stand it?” Lhaurel asked, nearly gagging.

“You get used to it,” the driver said. “Most don’t even notice it anymore. You’ve been gone from the big cities for a while if you’ve forgotten the smell . . .” The man trailed off and he suddenly gulped, as if remembering to whom he was speaking. A bead of sweat appeared on his bald head and dripped down over his nose. “Forgive me, Honored Sister. See, I didn’t mean to imply nothing.”

Lhaurel waved him to silence with her free hand, catching a glimpse of buildings on the horizon as they passed over a tall hill. Dozens of squat little buildings clustered around what appeared to be a rather wide street. Low walls rested on each side of the main roadway, blocking it off from the buildings near it. The buildings themselves looked to be a ramshackle array of stone and wooden structures, though Lhaurel was only able to catch the merest glimpse of most of them before they passed behind a hill and it was all lost to view. What had fascinated her, however, wasn’t the buildings or the oddly constructed road. No, the fascinating part had been the people scurrying back and forth between the buildings.

There had been dozens of them, each looking as if they were about their tasks, walking intently and with purpose. Though Lhaurel hadn’t truly been alone since leaving the Sharani Desert, she longed to be able to see other people who weren’t Sisters, priestesses, or those they’d hired. Talha constantly spoke about the Sisters being scions of the Orinai people, yet Lhaurel had not yet ever really seen an Orinai, unless you counted the smelly driver or the sailors back aboard ship. They’d been part of the Orinai people, tall, well-muscled, light-skinned, and powerful in their own right. But they’d also been either so afraid of Lhaurel and Talha that they’d not really been worth trying to understand or they were the opposite, like Elva, too intently loyal and fervent to be much of a target for actual understanding and learning.

“I just saw it,” Lhaurel said to Talha. “Geithoorn. It’s just there, over the next rise.”

Talha didn’t look up from her book. “I know child, now sit down before you make a scene. The town watch will have been alerted by now and sent runners to ready the barge. We shall not be here long.”

Lhaurel would have made a face at the woman, but it wouldn’t have been appropriate for either her station or her age. Still, Lhaurel considered it for far longer than she should have.

After a moment, Talha closed her book and turned in her seat, gesturing to her priestesses in the wagon behind her. Lhaurel watched as a pair of them leapt from the wagon and rushed forward.

“Run ahead with your sisters,” Talha ordered. “Make the barge ready to travel. Let Alcine’s priestesses know we will be leaving immediately. We have no time for ceremony today.”

“Yes, Sister,” the priestesses said together and hurried away at a jog. Talha’s other priestesses clambered down from the wagon and hurried after their companions.

Talha then turned to Lhaurel and raised a single red eyebrow. “Might I implore the use of your priestesses as well, Lhaurel?”

Curious, Lhaurel nodded. “I never know what to do with them myself. I’m sure they’d welcome being able to do something other than sit around.”

Talha’s lips twitched, as if unsure if they should slip down into a frown or up into a smile, but the expression was gone in a moment.

“Go into the town and seek out the market,” Talha said to Lhaurel’s priestesses. “Fetch the supplies we’ll need for at least a three-week journey. I do not wish to have to stop once we are on our way.” Talha reached inside her flowing skirt and pulled out a thick leather pouch, which clinked as she tossed it to one of Lhaurel’s priestesses. The priestess who caught it glanced at Lhaurel momentarily, who nodded, and then shifted to the side of the wagon so she could climb down.

“Oh, and no fish,” Talha said. “We’ll get enough of that in Estrelar.” The priestess bowed and rushed off. Talha waited for the space of half a heartbeat and then looked back at Lhaurel’s other priestesses. “Well? You think she can carry supplies for all of us by herself?”

The other priestesses scrambled to obey. Lhaurel watched them go until they disappeared behind a low hill.

“Are we really in that much of a hurry?” Lhaurel asked.

“Much more so, actually, though there’s nothing to it. We have to take the canals now, instead of travelling over land as I was originally planning. It will still be a long journey, and your studies will still need to be concluded before we reach Estrelar. Now hush. We’ll be entering the town soon.”

When they rounded the bend a few minutes later, Lhaurel got her first real view of the town. Several dozen people waited for them in front of the town proper, their backs to the buildings that lined both sides of what Lhaurel had thought was a road. It wasn’t.

It looked like a river or stream, but contained within walls that had obviously been constructed solely for that purpose. It was at least thirty spans across, about the length of a ten people across lying lengthwise. As Lhaurel looked, she saw it stretched off into the distance as far as the eye could see. Some sort of flat, elongated craft about half as wide as the canal itself sat on the water, long, thick ropes holding it in place against one wall. Several structures, almost like little huts, rested in the middle of the craft and people clad in white scrambled on and off it, carrying supplies and other goods into the small buildings. Made of a dark, polished wood, it looked like nothing short of a tiny floating village.

She knew that it was a barge—the word recalled, Lhaurel assumed, as part of the memories and knowledge Elyana had given her during her first and only meditation, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. The thought of someone else’s knowledge embedded in her mind still frightened her. It was one of the reasons why she’d not ever gone back to her meditations after that first night.

“Hold, Grunt,” the driver said, pulling on the reins.

The wagon ground to a halt in a cloud of dust. The gatheriu grunted and made a noise that sounded like falling stones striking one another. The creature jerked slightly in his leads, barely more than a simple shifting of weight, but it was enough to pull Lhaurel’s attention away from the barge. Talha had gotten to her feet without Lhaurel noticing. The Sister stood near the rough ladder that led down the side of the wagon, peering down at the trio of men who had come forward out of the crowd. Lhaurel glanced down at them as well, noting the low hum of voices and trying hard not to focus too much on the stink in the air.

The man in the center of the trio was a portly fellow, his stomach barely contained by the straining green shirt he wore. His pants were tight fitting and black, though Lhaurel could only guess at the material as over half the pant was covered by knee-length brown boots with brass buckles so heavily polished they gleamed in the sunlight. Lhaurel glanced up from there, noting his round face, squat nose and thinning black hair. The other two men were more simply attired, with loose white shirts and brown leather vests, flowing grey pants, and calf-length leather boots. Neither of their shirts looked as if the buttons would burst at any moment either.

“Welcome, Honored Sisters,” the portly man said, throwing his thick arms wide in a welcoming gesture, though he kept his eyes lowered in an obvious sign of subservience. “It’s been several long years since any of the Seven Sisters had passed through the Geithoorn locks. I would have had a feast prepared, had I known you were coming. Regrettably, the priestess neglected to inform me.”

Talha’s back was to her, so Lhaurel didn’t see the expression on her face, but Lhaurel did notice a slight shift in the woman’s posture that indicated that the man had said something wrong. The silence that fell over the rest of the small crowd also gave Lhaurel pause. When Talha spoke, the cold iron in her voice took away any doubt.

“There was no neglect, steward. Do not forget your place. I will inform the Great Houses of your arrogance and conceit upon my return to Estrelar. I do not doubt your position of influence here will be, regrettably, granted to someone more deserving than you.”

“I—what I meant was—I mean . . .” The portly man’s words trailed off into wordless grunts. While Lhaurel wasn’t sure what the man had done wrong specifically, part of her had been offended at the man’s tone, so she didn’t feel much sympathy for him.

Talha ignored him completely, instead addressing the other two men who had come with him. “Our priestesses are already within the town making the appropriate preparations. You will assist them in getting this completed in all haste. Now.”

Both men bowed low, bending at the waist completely. They turned and headed toward the barge, one of them towing the portly man along with them. Lhaurel watched them go, doing her best to ignore the battling emotions within her at the sight.