Father in Heaven, I have sinned.
I shook my head and winced.
Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…
During the rainy season, the church was dank, moldy, dripping wet, with algae, frogs climbing the walls, and lizards nibbling on ants. But by now we were fully in dry season, and it was hot. Outside, stragglers caught beneath the Terrible Sun were lashed without mercy. Inside, I was developing a golden crust, but the middle of me was still soft.
The vine that had crept through the window and once stood like a branch into the open air now limped over the crumbling stone wall, burrowed tendrils all through the cracks, and sent runners all over. One wall was covered in leaves, and the adjacent walls had long shoots like branches reaching across. A branch of vine wrapped over the wrought-iron four-point-triangle of the Deanma, crushing it, and hiding it beneath dark-green spiky leaves, and on the other side, a small bird flew in and disappeared behind a knot of branches. Across the floor, mold dust and bug droppings mixed with mortar dust.
"Mother forgives you." Ahmi stood at the entrance to the church. She wore her white mini-dress and a severed ear pendant like the one Miyani gave me, only hers was fresh. At her feet, a boy who barely came up past her knee held her hand, and a red, wooden ball in the other.
She wasn't barefoot, either, but wore some kind of canvas wrap over her feet tied up with laces. She put her yellow eyes on me with a warm smile. "I'm simply saying that if your father god does not forgive you, Mother will."
I had to think about that. "And if Mother doesn't, Father will?"
"Exactly!" She giggled lightly, lifted the boy to sit in her arm and tilted her head towards the street. "Come. The xɪðiʃa has already begun, and you are late."
The matter was simple: to give us more time to train, or send us into battle tomorrow morning. Allegedly, Ahmi went to the princess demanding ten more training days, to which the princess laughed at her. She'd negotiated all the way down to one day, still got a 'no', and—I'm not going to repeat unfounded rumors—I understand she got upset. The result of that conversation was the princess agreed to settle the matter in a xɪðiʃa.
"I need you to use your voice tonight." Ahmi walked beside me; the child seated in her arm clung to her shoulder. "They will listen to the Jungle-Tested, I know it!"
Stone buildings three, sometimes four stories high held long, wooden poles out over the narrow street, covering the crowd of bodies bumping into one another with burlap shades, though at that hour only the top floors had direct sunlight. "I don't know what you said to Rosalynd to win the two days we have had…"
Only that I'd retake Praying Mantis, nothing big.
"... but I need you to work your magic. Just don't get distracted; Miyani is there."
The sound of her name sent a tingling through my loins. The thought of holding her hips in my hands, pulling her tiny body into mine while she rested her face in my chest, of feeling her thighs part for me when I thrust into her, of lying down with her, folding her into me, tasting her lips and smelling that sweet, mild, coconut blossom she put in her hair.
I wanted to bend her over and slam my hips into that meaty arse.
"Don't get distracted, Caleb, I am serious."
The day I arrived there was a nook between buildings where a circle of women held a beaten, blindfolded man on his knees. Today, the rubble had been pulled to the side, and there were several barrels of grain and carts with fresh fruits and vegetables. A throng of women crowded around with empty sacks while others scooped out grain from the barrels. As for Carthia's nearly-naked women everywhere, flaps of silk or cotton that hung down front and back leaving their breasts to sweat freely beneath the Terrible Sun, I'd gotten used to it.
One frail woman crept close to the fruit cart when a gray-black striped vita'o hissed at her. The constable riding the lizard—the lady wearing the blue silk armbands with a gold-and-silver embroidered crescent-moon—shot her eyes down at the frail woman, who backed away and went to the end of the line.
The child in Ahmi's arms reached out to point his finger. "Bu-ge!"
One woman faced the others with a writing tablet and a sharpened charcoal. On her shoulder was a green bird like the one Niraq kept. Ahmi nodded effusively and kissed her son. "You are right! That is a green bird!"
We elbowed our way past the crowd when Ahmi slowed and glanced up at me briefly. "By the way, I'm angry at Blue, and you can tell him I said that."
"What did he do?"
"While we were in the dewɪma, he and Invisible were supposed to be watching out."
"What were they doing?"
Ahmi cocked a white eyebrow at me. "Not watching out."
The old city yielded to the long rows of barracks. At this end was the shit pit where, beside the wooden maintenance door, three goats tugged at a patch of greenery amid the dry, yellow grass.
"I wanted to ask you about that," I said.
Ahmi stepped between two dark-wood barracks buildings, pulled a strap from her dress over one shoulder, and pulled out one breast. "What about it?"
The child locked his dark-green eyes onto me. Ahmi had to lower him in her arms and turn his head towards her breast for him to latch on.
"So… I said some things in there."
A gust of hot air buffeted us between the two long, wood buildings, the dry grass crunched beneath my feet, and the boy lifted his chin in perfect rhythm as he suckled. The smile on her face as she admired him, so pure. So real. So true. She snapped her attention up as a reflex and tracked a small pig just as it was about to crawl out from beneath the barracks, only to return her attention to her son.
"I blasphemed."
She lifted her curious face to me.
"When we were in that tree, I said some things." I'd compared God to some scientific Natural Selection idea. I was supposed to live as an example of faith for others. What faith could I pretend to have when that was the sort of thing that escaped my lips?
"That was your confession?" She didn't look up from her boy.
"I mocked God."
"You mocked religion, and rightfully so." She leaned down to kiss his face.
"How do you reconcile the difference?"
She looked up at me and smiled. "Mother is vast beyond comprehension. She is ultimately unknowable by a mere mortal, but if we seek Her, we come closer to Her. That is all religion is, yours, mine, or anyone's: someone's attempt to seek Her and they wrote down what they found. Anyway, you would not be the first to come out of a dewɪma having spoken words you must now contend with. Know that the words you spoke reflect a deep truth that is inside of you."
"You can't lie when you're in there?"
She smirked. "You… could… I suppose, but you don't. To lie costs energy; you have to break a piece of yourself. Whatever the lie is meant to protect you from, when you are in the dewɪma, you don't care; it's not worth the energy. Besides, if you think you are embarrassed, how do you think ɣʊŋi feels?"
"Hehe. I find it interesting that the proportions of your body stimulate optimal sexual arousal in me."
"First," she said, "they are sitting together."
"Well that's…"
"Second, how is it you were ashamed of your own words in the dewɪma, yet you mock hers? Are you that guy, now?"
I lowered my face and said nothing.
From the end of the barracks, across the open field, three long stone buildings bordered the practice yard. The one farthest left, not twenty yards from the main gate, was the administration building. Black silhouettes of people moved about within the line of stone archways beyond the wrap-around balcony on the second floor, while three more local women entered through the verandah.
Ahmi was right, and I felt like an utter shit. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen such an ugly mirror.
"Learn from it." She pulled the strap of her dress back over her shoulder; the boy seated in her arms stared at me. "And don't get distracted; you need to speak up in there. Remind everyone that you are Jungle-Tested and Sewa'a Nea Ane—they will listen to you."
We stepped along the row of stone archways that made the ground floor in search of one that didn't have a big, nasty spider stretched across it, and came inside. Ahmi brought me towards the staircase in the center that led up to a faint glow of lamplight. She climbed three steps and held out a hand to block me.
A woman's voice came through the opening above, speaking Uhuida while a girl's voice repeated the same thing in Herali. "... how can we buy grain at these prices and sell enough bread to make our rent? It's getting out of control. This can't go on!"
A second after the girl finished translating, a chorus of shouts and cheers followed. Ahmi glanced back, silently trusting me to turn the tide in this discussion, and we climbed upstairs.
The wooden partitions that made the walls had been moved to the corners, and strings of white paper lanterns stretched across the ceiling. Tall plants Rosalynd kept in her corners had been moved to the side like four green sentries with long, narrow leaves beside stone columns. A hundred people sat upon clusters of bag chairs, more sat on the floor, and people standing the perimeter had spilled out the archways onto the balcony.
Ahmi joined a man with a black eye patch and long, dark hair down his back, whose muscular body was covered in scars and tattoos. An older boy had wrapped his arms around the man's shoulder, and the child in Ahmi's arms cried "da-yi!" reaching his arms out for him. Ahmi took the ear pendant from around her neck, put it over his, kissed his lips, and sat down.
At the center of the room, Rosalynd's usual rug was the middle of a circle where the Princess sat along with her father, Commander, Didi, the Imperial Voice, and a whole bunch of other people who looked important. Other clusters included veterans, recruits, some newer recruits I'd never seen before, natives, locals…
"Caleb!" Miyani's voice rose above the numerous conversations. She sat with Blue on her left, and on her right sat Talys of Gath.
Talys.
Of Gath.
She was in Carthia.
I hadn't seen her since before she told Sarina I'd kissed Guenevieve.
"Ahem!" Bilal held a long staff with a cluster of stuff hanging from the top: a feather, a tiny copper cage with a diamond-tree stone in it, a bone, a coin. He tapped it loudly on the stone floor and scowled at me.
Blue lifted his tail from the empty bag chair and laid it over my lap when I sat down.
"When I was in the Imperial army, we trained for months. We've had two days…"
Talys of Gath.
This girl left the safety and comfort of home to walk for weeks camping out in forests, hiked through ice and snow at heights that punished you for every breath of air, descended along a ten-thousand-foot cliff through clouds so thick you couldn't see your feet only to come out in a mosquito-infested jungle with big cats, bigger alligators, and snakes that swallow you whole, to come here, to Carthia.
There might have also been a war going on.
She was dressed as the natives with a plain silk flap spread neatly over her lap. Thick, dark curls cascaded down her back and over her shoulders covering her voluptuous breasts, and she smiled at me through plush lips.
She sat next to my girlfriend. They wore matching bejeweled sandals.
Bilal had switched to Uhuida. Beside him, Card-Game-Girl translated everything he said into Herali. "I'm not ready to watch my men get killed out there. We're not ready. We need more time!"
As soon as she finished translating, he raised the staff and looked around. Men throughout the chamber hooted and raised their fists
Miyani leaned across the lizard's body to reach for my wrist, and the sight of her wicked-dark skin against mine sent another tingling through my loins. She pulled me in close to kiss my lips, but the scent in her hair wasn't coconut blossom. It was like a medley of Herali summer flowers; it smelled like one of Talys's concoctions.
I felt my eyes gaping at Talys. "What are you doing here? Why… how… when…"
From across my girlfriend, she gazed at me through emerald-green eyes and waved. Her voice danced up and down the musical register. "Hello, Caleb! It's nice to see you, too. The journey went well, difficult, but not too bad. How have you been?"
"That's not—"
"Shh!" Miyani held one finger to her giggling lips and pointed.
An older Herali man with three lines of scar down the full length of his back held the staff. He tapped it on the stone floor, and the room fell silent.
"You guys whine about not feeling ready while we're getting killed out there…"
It wasn't a week before I was conscripted. We were playing in the pool beneath the waterfall at the center of Gath, ostensibly watching over the children to make sure they didn't drown, using that as an excuse to splash and play with them.
She'd bumped into me. Brushed my body.
Her laugh lingered more than usual.
Beneath the water, my fingers brushed her nipple.
It was an accident. I apologized.
Her eyes tracked mine. I wasn't blind to her. From when we were little, I appreciated her soft, round face.
She'd struggled with Geraln. We came up with a plan. The thinking was that if he saw us together, he would leave her alone.
That was the plan.
With her arms over my shoulders, she straddled my hips.
No sooner than our lips met, my whole body flushed. It came hard, and it came fast, and my heart raced with the wind.
She rested her forehead on mine, looking down and breathing heavily. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and lowered herself in the water, sliding our wet clothes between us, down until my hard cock was pulled to one side and pressed beneath her thigh. I supported the small of her back with one hand, massaging her breast with my other, and tilted down to devour her lips once more.
Because if we were going to give them a show, we would give them a show.
Coming out of the water, she disrobed completely and stretched her clothes out over the rocks to dry in the heat of summer. The sight of her voluptuous naked body, the dark hair of her pussy glistening in the late afternoon sun, her taut nipples, the flirty smile across her face as she gave me a come-hither with one finger, standing on a boulder bringing her to my level, wrapping my fingers over her lush arse and devouring her lips while her hands explored my chest, my back.
The day I was called, I'd gone to the church to confess.
For lust.
Unrequitted lust—it was all for show.
We'd gone back to being friends.
"... I say they want training? Give them the same training we had. pʊ zuʒʊwe ʒʌgu!"
He lifted the staff, and the crowd roared. All the veteran soldiers, and easily two-thirds of the rest of the crowd shouted and cheered.
I leaned over Blue's rump to speak to Talys's barely-hidden smirk when Miyani tapped Blue's neck with her other hand raised high. He grunted and lifted his head, wrapped it all the way around, and tapped his hind legs. While Miyani took the staff, I massaged his muscles right where the ligament met the hip bone.
She spoke Uhuida and let Card-Game-Girl put it into Herali. "I spoke to the latest round of recruits coming down from the mountain. They told me that in some cases, Imperial offices were burned down in response to the summons, and Imperial soldiers were involved. I don't know what that tells you, but it tells me that in time, there will be no more recruits. It may be a year, maybe sooner, but it will come."
Her light-yellow eyes scanned the room.
"Then what?" She challenged them. "You think bread is expensive? Try no bread. Try every single one of you, your families, your children butchered in the street until the blood comes up to your ankles. Perhaps you all forgot what we're up against: the mɪwe'iʃi don't want land. They don't want your money or your wealth. They don't want your subjugation. They want your extermination. They will not rest until every single one of you… of us… is dead. The only thing standing in their path is the men coming down the pass from Heralia. Who will hold the walls when we've sent the last of them to be killed? What about you, can you shoot?"
She pointed at a local woman in a red silk yithi. The woman shrugged and shook her head.
"You'd better learn how."
God, she made my dick hard.
"We should focus our efforts on keeping the men we have alive, and that means giving them more training, more time to learn how to survive out there."
When she raised the staff, the recruits cheered, the noobs, and some of the veterans all cheered, and there were nods throughout the room.
Watching the muscles in her legs, her hips as she sat down… what the hell was Talys doing in Carthia?
Card-Game-Girl brought the staff across the room to a cluster of native women with one of them standing in the center. She touched the staff to the floor and began. "We are from the Harvester's Guild. We will not go out there. Not without protection. Debate all you want. Train all you want. We will wait right here." She lifted the staff and bathed in the affirmation of shouts and cheers from her immediate circle. Card-Game-Girl took it and looked for the next speaker.
In my lap, Blue's tail curled up and rested back down. Across from him, Miyani cupped her hand over Talys's ear, while she listened and nodded. "Oh, I see."
"Talys," I tried again. "It's good to see you, but what are you doing here?"
She answered in her musical voice. "You don't own me, Caleb; I can go where I want. If I feel like coming to Carthia, I'm going to come to Carthia, and you can't stop me."
Miyani lowered her face, and her whole body convulsed with laughter.
"That's not what I meant!"
"Shh!" Miyani raised a finger to her lips and gazed at me with a warm smile.
Card-Game-Girl handed the staff with the goofy stuff hanging from it to an older woman. "My name is yu'uʃi. I am the chief commander at Dog's Arse, you may know it as Tower Two. I need volunteers for our garrison. My offer is a full month's salary in advance…"
There was this one time, Davod and I had found this narrow path along the side of a mountain that brought us to a shelf of rock by a cliff about a hundred feet down. This was beneath a massive slant of rock, rough angle; I'd have had to climb upside-down about thirty feet to get past the edge, but the handholds were adequate.
Davod laughed at me. Dark clouds were coming in, a couple hours away from the north. His idea was to go back to the village and bring the rest of us to sit up there and watch the thunder and lightning over the valley beneath the dry overhang.
We didn't make it.
We were almost there when sheets of rain thrashed our faces. Lightning flashed across Davod's face, and he shouted over the crack of thunder. Where's Talys?
If she'd cried out, none of us heard her over the wind and rain clattering over the rocks. We ended up backtracking about twenty yards to a narrow passage beside some trees and bushes below, where we found some loose mud from dislodged rocks that washed down the side. A sudden flash of light. Enough to see her about ten feet below, lying in the broken branches of a tree.
TALYS!
She didn't move.
We tied a rope around Davod's waist, and Ryoen and Sarina helped anchor him while I climbed down to her.
TALYS!
I probed around her neck, her spine, arms and legs for fractures. Rain pelted my shoulders. My back. She lifted her arm and draped it over my neck. I started to lift, then reconsidered. Wait. Let go.
She didn't.
I steadied myself in the tree and tied the rope into a loop for her to sit in while she locked her arms around me.
Come on, I said. Let's get you back up there.
It took a while, but she allowed me to guide her into the rope chair. And while Davod, Ryoen, and Sarina pulled, I climbed alongside to guide her up. She watched me the whole time.
And when I closed my eyes, that crow ripped another scrap from his eyeball.
"... you don't have to stay with your current unit. We leave for Dog's Arse first thing in the morning."
When the commander-of-tower-two lady lifted the staff high into the air, voices murmured throughout the room. Several of them were recruits. Card-Game-Girl took the staff and looked out among the outstretched hands.
I got up and grabbed Talys's wrist. "Come with me."
She didn't move, but widened her eyes at me. "This debate is very important, Caleb. I don't think it's…"
"Will you please! Just… come with me?"
"You're causing a scene."
"WHY ARE YOU HERE?!?" And where was Sarina?
Talys smiled gently and fixed her doe eyes up at me, and she still didn't budge. An old native woman stood to take the staff. From throughout the room, eyes squinted at me and lips frowned.
I let go. "Please?"
"Caleb," Miyani took my hand. "Sit now. We talk. Is OK."
With a deep breath I sat back down, and they both fought back a giggle.
Because this was funny, apparently.
At the center of the vast room, Didi, showing her age in the lamplight, tapped the staff onto the floor. "Ahmi says we'll win this war. I don't know about that, but I've been watching these girls the past few days, and I am truly impressed. Dayumi, you've grown so much. I see the pain. Believe me darling, I know it. Deep within my heart, I know it because I feel it too. I have lived through it, as has everyone in this room to some degree. Except Kaijou."
"Doo-bo." The baby boy in Lacius's arms reached a hand out at the sound of his name.
"One thing I can say is this, because darling, I listen to the way you talk, and I am afraid for you. You know that Mother forbids revenge, but it is one thing to say the words. To feel them, you must understand them. Jezi believed in what he fought for. If you want to honor him, truly honor him, then you carry his fight to the finish. Revenge… is a distraction. It was given to you by ʃaxeŋi to take away your focus. I know you understand that."
Dayumi sat quietly on a bag chair halfway across the room with a green bird perched on her knee. She closed her eyes and smiled, and a line of moisture streamed down her cheek.
"Ghuni…"
The student with the blue left eye sat on a bag chair with Invisible's head resting in her lap. Beside her, Haron wrapped his arm around her back.
"... you look more and more like your mother each day. You're far more skilled than she was at your age, and you can tell her I said that."
An older woman beside her, who also had a blue left eye, laughed.
Didi gave her a sideways grin and turned to the student with dark, curly hair and the dull-yellow lizard resting her neck over her shoulder. "Talía, you inch closer to finding your groove; you're going to find it, baby, I promise you."
She bowed her face and took a moment, still keeping the bottom of the staff on the floor. All around her, eyes watched. She looked around at everyone and grinned. "Let me tell you how this one earned her suve maða!"
The young Goloagi sekiwa furrowed her brow and laughed. Scarecrow yawned her jaws open and croaked.
"So Scarecrow… xaŋi, you were there!"
Ghuni's mother smiled wide.
"We tried her with everyone. She was so sure she wanted to be a sekiwa, but every girl we introduced her to, it just didn't work. There was one, we thought they were getting close, but that special magic just didn't happen."
Didi cleared her throat. "Time went on, she got a little older, and most of us had given up. Then one day, she was working—they had her on the docks with the inspectors. They found a crate, and when they opened it up, there was this half-starved, covered in dust and filth, scabs over the number they burned into her arm, she couldn't have been six years old, and she was alone in this shipping crate. And Scarecrow bites her. Right then and there, she sinks her teeth into the girl's elbow. You can imagine! Poor thing was screaming, she was so terrified."
Talía turned and nuzzled her nose in the side of the lizard's cheek.
"We pulled Scarecrow aside and asked, what did you do that for? She answered, quite confidently, 'that was my suve maða. She has made me very angry.' We were even more confused. What did that poor girl do to you to make you so upset?"
Ghuni's mother raised her hands to her cheeks and answered. "Why did it take so long for her to come into my life!"
Didi's whole body shook with laughter. Throughout the crowd, a handful of chortles escaped the silence.
At last, Didi nodded and continued. "We can't keep doing this. You all remember ʃekiŋi and Smoke? Apex killed them two days ago."
Faces turned to stone. Didi gave everyone a breath before continuing. "Iyemi and Kadelou were killed at the Lake of Doom." Murmurs rippled throughout the audience. "Before that… you all know what happened before that. We need to better prepare our girls for what's out there. The training I've witnessed these past few days, I believe this is the right way to teach them. If it can be afforded, I say we give them more time."
Didi lifted the staff and was answered by a solemn applause from half the room. Natives, locals, and veterans all nodded.
Miyani leaned over and showed me a small glass vial, pointing to her hair. "Is important you say: I pay two-hundred kren at this."
"Two-hundred?!?" I nearly shouted. I leaned over to Talys, who looked back with a smirk. "You never asked more than…"
"Nope!" She lifted her chin. "That's not true! That never happened. I don't know what you're talking about!"
Miyani pointed around the room. "You say everyone this, OK? Is true. Two-hundred."
I was so confused. Talys covered her eyes with one hand, her lips smiled, and her whole body shook with laughter.
Across the room, an older Na'uhui woman with the petite, muscular build of a sekiwa took the staff in a hand missing a pinky finger. "We may have an opportunity to strike, right now! Didi, I respect you, Miyani, I know you mean well, but there's a time to be conservative and play it safe, and that time is not now. We've got six new teams of men and three new sekiwa. I say we take back what's ours!"
She raised the staff, and the crowd roared.
Ta'o stood and reached his hand out to speak next. It took a while for the commotion to calm down, but when Ta'o touched the staff to the floor, he held his chest high. "My team is ready. Send us out!"
They didn't wait for him to lift the staff. Locals, veterans, natives jumped to their feet and cheered, raising their fists in the air. Princess Rosalynd eyed Ahmi with a smug grin.
I should have said something. I should have taken a turn to speak.
Ahmi glowered at me from across the room, shook her head, and looked away.