Book Three of the Travelers (5 page)

A
fter she'd been taken back to the hospital, Loor had an argument with the nurse, tried to get up, and then collapsed back into the bed. As she was lying there, breathing heavily and fuming at her own weakness, the door opened and Erran entered.

The tall, distinguished councillor looked down at her. “The nurse tells me you have given her trouble,” he said with a grin.

Loor frowned.

“Do you have anything you want to say?” Erran asked.

Loor shrugged.

“I am sure you are angry,” he said. “We sent you into the desert under false pretenses.”

Loor was feeling blindsided and confused by the whole situation. “I just tried to accomplish my mission. I still feel like I failed.”

“What did you learn from the mission?” Erran said.

Loor thought of the instruction that both Erran himself and the one-eyed warrior had given her.

“Never make the first move,” she said.

“Meaning what?”

She frowned. “I am too quick to attack. I entered that canyon full of those rock piles without checking to see what they were. If I had not been in such a hurry to attack, I would have realized that it was an ambush.”

“So why does it serve you not to make the first move?”

“If you let the other person attack, they expose themselves. They reveal their strategy.”

Erran studied her for a long time. She noticed for the first time that there was something odd about his eyes. All Batu had dark eyes. But Erran's eyes seemed to have a flickering blue depth to them.

“Good,” he said finally. Then he stood, walked to the window, and looked out. “The thing one has to be aware of, of course, is that one's enemy may not show his hand on the first attack. What if the first blow is a ruse designed to reveal a false strategy? Maybe the real strategy lies below that. Or maybe one ruse is concealed beneath another.”

Loor felt frustrated. This was too subtle for her. She interrupted him impatiently. “Then…how can you ever know?”

Erran turned and leaned against the window frame. “Well, that is the real problem. With the best strategy, no one
ever
really knows. Not until it's too late.”

Loor sighed and leaned back in the bed. “This is making my head hurt,” she said.

Erran laughed loudly. “Good,” he said.

Loor didn't really see what was so funny. Erran was
an important man, and he seemed to have taken a lot of interest in her. Which was flattering. But she still wasn't quite sure what he was thinking.

“The important thing is that ultimately you made all the right decisions on your mission. That indicates good judgment. You can teach a person how to fight. You can teach a person how to add and subtract. You can teach a person to read. But you can't teach good judgment.”

“I wonder…,” she said.

“What?”

“Well…every time I had a choice to make…the truth is, I just followed that silly bird.”

Erran's eyes widened slightly. Not as if he were shocked. More like he was interested.

“I followed the hindor,” she said. “That's all I did.”

Erran raised one eyebrow, then shrugged lightly. “It brought you home, yes?” He smiled.

She rubbed her face. She felt like something was going on here, something underneath the surface. But she just couldn't figure it out.

“Yes…but…something has been bothering me,” she said finally. Normally Loor felt certain about things. But right now she didn't. Maybe it was just because she was so weak. Or maybe it was something else. “I feel like everything that I found out is creating problems between us and the Rokador. Maybe we were better off not knowing how much water they have.”

“Information is truth,” Erran said firmly. “You led us to the truth.”

“But are you sure that—”

Erran looked serious now. “I would never intentionally
create discord between our people and the Rokador,” he said. “You must believe that.”

“Well, of course!” she said. “I would never even
think
a thing like that.”

“The Batu and the Rokador are like a brother and a sister.” He splayed his fingers out, then intertwined them. “Family. You see? We need each other. Family.”

 

After Erran was gone, though, she wondered. Erran had said that with the best strategy no one
ever
knows what you're up to. Erran had deceived her once. What if underneath all his talk of Batu-and-Rokador-as-family, he had some other plan?

Loor couldn't stop feeling that somehow she was being used. But how? She really couldn't be sure. What possible good could come out of conflict between the Rokador and the Batu?

As she was lying in her bed, staring at the ceiling, a man dressed in a doctor's garb appeared in the doorway. Strangely, he was not a dark-skinned Batu, but a pale-skinned Rokador. And yet there was something unusual looking about him. He was much darker than the normal pasty-faced Rokador. Dark like a desert tribesman, his skin tanned by the sun.

The odd-looking doctor glanced up and down the hallway, as though trying to make sure no one was watching him.

Loor sat up, alarmed. What if he were some desert tribesman sent here to kill her? What if…She let her fingers slide up to the knife that she kept hidden under her pillow.

But as soon as the stranger entered the room, a woman followed behind him. It was Loor's mother. “I've brought a visitor, Loor,” Osa said.

“Hello, Loor,” the man said, taking a seat next to her. “I hear you've had quite a revelatory week.”

That was an odd way of describing almost dying in the middle of a desert. Loor nodded. “Maybe,” she said.

“Well, buckle yourself in, kid,” the odd-looking Rokador man said. “Things are about to get even stranger.”

Buckle yourself in?
What did that even mean?

Osa must have seen the skeptical look in Loor's eyes. “Loor,” Osa said in her soft, firm voice, “I'm going to leave you two together. But understand that as strange as everything he says will be, it is all true.” She stood. “Now I will leave you together.”

Loor watched her go. For some reason she wanted her mother to stay. “Listen,” the man said, leaning toward her. “Listen carefully….”

As the man spoke, a shadow fell on his shoulder. Loor looked behind him. Perched on the ledge outside her window was a massive black bird. The hindor.

From a distance the hindor had always looked noble and regal, soaring slowly on the breeze. But now that she had a chance to study it, hunched there on the ledge, there was something about it that she didn't like, something coiled and hidden and savage. Maybe it was the eyes. They were like Erran's, now that she thought about it. At first glance they looked dark brown. But when you looked closer, you saw that they had a flickering blue depth. Strange. For a moment she thought—

But of course that was ridiculous. A man cannot change into a bird!

Loor shivered.

“I apologize,” she said. “What were you saying? Something about a traveler?”

S
ea trash. Siry Remudi had always been interested in things that rolled in from the sea. Strange things. Unusual things. Things which hinted that outside the comfortable, small village where he lived lay a vast and very different world.

So when the wave boiled in and smashed on the beach, and the odd-shaped thing rolled once and came to rest on the sand, Siry walked toward it.

It was about the size of a man, but it was made of strange, raglike material. He was several hundred feet away, so it was a little hard to tell. Maybe an odd bundle of seaweed? A log covered with algae or kelp? He started walking rapidly toward it. There was something intriguing about it.

Then the next wave crashed and another odd-looking object washed in. And another. And another.

He'd gotten within a hundred feet of it or so when the first object moved. It sat up.
That's no log!
Siry thought.
That's a man!

Which was when he realized that the rags were clothes. Which meant—

He turned and began to run.

“Flighters!” he screamed. “Flighters! It's a raid!”

 

The Flighters were cut to pieces. There had been nine of them. They'd fought like demons. But they were no match—either in numbers or in skill—for the guards who'd come flocking out of the village of Rayne. One had drowned in the surf, two had fallen under the cudgels of the guards, five had escaped into the sea.

And one was captured.

After it was over, Siry caught a glimpse of the captive. He'd expected the Flighter to be a man. But it wasn't. It was a woman. Well, not even a woman. A girl.

She had struggled like an animal, scratching and shrieking as the guards dragged her off the beach and up toward the village. She had barely seemed human. Her clothes were wretched and falling apart. Her hair was matted. Her skin was streaked with dirt.

And yet there was something about her. As she was dragged off the beach, she passed within a few feet of Siry. Their eyes met briefly. She had brilliant green eyes, wide set, over a freckled, triangular face. Her hair was an astonishing red color unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

“Ahhhh!” she screamed, lunging at him. When Siry jerked backward in surprise, she spit on the ground and laughed at him.

The guards yanked her off her feet. “We'll see how funny you think that is after a couple of days in the hole!” one of them shouted. The girl kicked and wriggled, still laughing in a high, wild voice.

As they hauled her around the corner of a small hut, Siry's father, Jen Remudi, came around the corner. He had a gash on his arm and carried a club.

“There you are!” Siry's father said. “I was worried. I didn't see you anywhere.”

“I'm fine,” Siry said. He pointed in the direction that the girl had disappeared. “What are they doing with the prisoner?”

Jen sighed. “We'll have to put her on trial.”

“For what?”

Jen frowned. “I forgot, you were barely five or six when the last wave of Flighter attacks happened. When we capture a prisoner, they're tried by the tribunal.”

“And then what?”

Jen looked off toward the sea. “Best not to think of that, Son,” he said.

Siry shrugged off his father's hand. “I'm not a kid anymore!” he said. He was tired of being treated as if he were five instead of fourteen. “Tell me what will happen to her.”

Siry's father looked at him soberly. “I suppose you're right,” he said. Then he sighed sadly. “They'll put her to death,” he said finally.

“They?” Siry said. “Don't you mean
you
? You're a member of the tribunal.”

Jen Remudi cocked his head. “What's gotten into you lately, Siry?”

Siry shrugged. He didn't know what his father was talking about.

Jen clapped his son on the shoulder and smiled. “Anyway, good work today. If you hadn't spotted those
animals, there's no telling what might have happened. I'm really proud of you.”

Siry looked out at the water. He wondered how they had gotten this far. Had they made a boat? It was common knowledge that Flighters were subhuman. A Flighter couldn't figure out how to make a boat. Maybe they'd stolen one.

He kept thinking of the strange girl. Only she could tell him the answer. He wanted to talk to her, find out what she knew.
Everything
she knew. Too bad Flighters couldn't talk.

“I gotta go, Dad,” Siry said.

“Look, Siry,” Jen said, “there's something I need to talk to you about.”

“I gotta go,” Siry said again.

S
iry kicked the sand as he wandered up the beach. Okay, so maybe his dad was right. He felt like he'd been in a bad mood all the time lately. And he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was that was bugging him.

It was just that it seemed as if—well, he remembered when he was younger, there had been times when adults had told him things that he knew weren't true. And when he confronted them, they'd always say things like, “Siry, you're too young to understand.” As if he were supposed to be satisfied with that answer.

Back then it had just been little stuff. The time he'd figured out that all those presents that appeared overnight on Simmus Eve weren't really brought by fairies, for instance.

But now he was starting to feel it was bigger. Like all the sea trash he'd collected over the years—he was starting to be quite sure that some of it was man made. He'd found a piece of something, blue and flexible material that had raised letters on it. The letters didn't make any sense, but it was easy to see they were letters.

And yet when he showed it to his father, Jen had just said, “Well, I know it looks like letters. But it's probably just an accident. Some sort of coral maybe.”

An accident? Did Jen really expect him to believe that?

Siry wandered off the beach and began shuffling through the town. Here and there, people called out to him. “Nice work, Siry!”

Siry didn't even acknowledge them. He just kept walking and thinking. No, there was something else out there. Something his dad wasn't telling him about. Something the elders were hiding. But what was it?

Without really making any particular decision, he found himself standing in front of the small hut where the occasional prisoner was held. Several guards stood outside. The hut was made from bamboo, topped with thatch. It hadn't been used much since most people in Rayne behaved themselves, so it was decrepit looking.

Siry knew both the guards pretty well. They were big, solid men, friends of his father.

“Hello, Kemo,” Siry said. Kemo was the leader of Rayne's guards. “Is she in there?”

“Yes,” Kemo said. He held up his arm, showing off a set of purple teeth marks on his skin. “Look at that, huh? You better believe I gave her a good hit after that, huh?” He grinned. “Nice job, spotting these animals.”

Siry shrugged. “Hey, I was just standing there.” He looked over Kemo's shoulder. There was a small window, barred with bamboo. “Can I look at her?”

Kemo narrowed her eyes. “Why such an interest in the Flighter?”

“I just want to look at her,” Siry said.

Kemo waved at the barred window. “Just be careful. They're tricky. Don't get close or she's liable to try to attack you.”

Siry walked over to the window and peered in. The Flighter girl was huddled on the floor. Her shoulder was bruised and there was a large cut on her leg.

“Hey,” Siry said. “Can you talk?”

The girl didn't even look up at him. Siry studied her for a while. Other than being a little skinny, she looked perfectly healthy. If he'd seen her on the street, in different clothing, he'd never have known she was a Flighter.

As he was staring at her, a gaggle of little kids came by and joined him in the window, pointing and laughing at the Flighter. They were all eating juba nuts from a bag. After a minute one of the kids threw a juba nutshell at the girl. It bounced off her forehead and fell on the floor. Another kid threw a whole juba nut. It hit the girl in the face. The girl pounced on it, smashed it on the floor, and began picking the meat out of the broken nut.

Other kids began hurling nuts at the girl.

“Hey!” Siry said. “Stop!”

The kids backed away from him. One of them, a little girl with blond hair, started crying. Kemo gave Siry a nasty look. “Siry, what's wrong with you?” he said. “They're just kids having a little fun.”

Siry turned back to the window. Inside, the girl began ravenously swallowing the nuts as if she'd never eaten before. When she was done, she went back to staring blankly at the floor.

After he'd stared at her for a while, he said, “Hey, Kemo. Who's bringing her food?”

Kemo's eyebrows went up. “Well—uh—usually when somebody's in the jail, their families bring them food.”

“You're saying you don't have any food for her?”

Kemo shrugged. “I didn't really think about it.”

“I'll go talk to my father,” Siry said. “He'll have some food sent over.”

 

Siry came back with a steaming bowl of vegetable and meat stew. Kemo let him into the front door. Inside was a small chamber in front of two separate cells. The girl was sitting in the exact same position she'd been in when he left. There was a slot near the floor that was obviously made for pushing food into the cell. Siry slid the bowl through.

“Sorry,” Siry said to the girl, “I know it's nothing special. My mother died when I was young and my father only knows how to make two things. Vegetable and meat stew…and meat and vegetable stew.” He laughed tentatively.

The girl showed no sign of hearing him, much less of thinking he was funny. She just grabbed the bowl and gobbled up all the stew, scooping it with her hands. He had given her a bamboo spoon, but she ignored it.

When she was finished, the girl threw the empty bowl at him and growled. The bowl clattered off the bamboo bars, splattering him with the remains of the stew.

Siry laughed. “Well, you have some bite, anyway,” he said. He pushed a bucket of hot water and soap through the same slot as the food. “I don't know if you Flighters
understand the concept of washing,” he said. “But just in case…”

He made a motion with his hands, running them over his body as if he were bathing. The girl started drinking the water. Then she took a bite out of the soap, spit it on the ground. Siry laughed again.

The girl glared at him as if he'd tried to trick her.

“No. Soap,” he said. “Soap!”

He reached through the bars, grabbed the soap off the floor. The girl made an attempt to stomp his hand, but he was too quick for her. “Nice try,” he said with a grin. Then he rubbed the soap on his hands. “See? Clean. Like this.” There was a large sink and a shower on the far side of the room. He demonstrated how soap worked. “Look. See? Nice and clean.”

The girl stared uncomprehendingly at him. He tossed the bar of soap into the water. Then he pushed a set of clean clothes through the bars. “They were my mother's,” he said. “I don't know if they'll fit. My father would be upset if he knew I was giving these to you. My mother's been dead for years. But he's never thrown out any of her things.” He sat down on the chair opposite her cell. “It's kind of sad, you know? He still talks about her all the time. I guess he loved her a lot.”

The girl took a piece of juba nutshell and started picking a piece of meat out of her teeth.

“She wasn't really my mother, though. I was adopted. My dad always says he found me floating on the waves. Isn't that a strange thing to say to your kid? I suppose it was a nice story when I was young. But now? It seems like an insult to my intelligence.”

The girl finally freed the piece of meat from her teeth, held it out on the juba nutshell, looked at it, then popped it back in her mouth and swallowed.

“I have to say,” Siry said, “your table manners could be better.”

She spit on the floor.

 

After he left, Kemo put one large hand on Siry's arm. “Son, look, you probably don't remember the last time that Rayne had serious problems with the Flighters. We spent three solid years clearing the jungles and pushing those monsters back from Rayne.”

“Okay…,” Siry said.

“What I'm saying is…” Kemo cleared his throat. “That thing in there—it looks as if you cleaned it up, it could be one of us. Don't be fooled. It can't be. It's an animal. It's sea trash. It's dangerous.”

“Yes, sir,” Siry said.

Kemo narrowed his eyes. “I'm serious, Siry. That thing in there'll kill you and rip your throat out. And it won't blink an eye.”

“Yes, sir,” Siry said.

But as he walked away, he felt sure that Kemo was wrong. The only question in his mind was this: Was Kemo lying? Or did he just not know better?

 

Later that evening, after they'd eaten supper together, he said to his father, “Where do Flighters come from?”

Jen Remudi broke his gaze from his son's. “The other end of the island,” he said, staring down at the table.

The explanation didn't sit right with Siry. Some
how it seemed that these people were from somewhere farther, somewhere that would explain why they had become so different. “But—they look exactly like us. A little dirtier, but otherwise—”

“Appearances can be deceiving. They're not like us.”

“But how would we know? We never talk to them. We never see them. All we do is fight them.”

Siry's father looked back up at him, folding his hands together. “Look, Son, Kemo told me that you were talking to the girl we captured.” He paused. “I know if you cleaned her up, she looks like she'd be pretty and sweet. But—”

“What are you
talking
about, Dad?” Siry said angrily.

“They don't feel things like we do.”

“Feeling? Who's talking about feeling?” Siry said. “Every day I see stuff around here that doesn't seem to add up. Sea trash. What is it? Those bottle-shaped things with writing on them? Those pieces of flexible material that you can see through?”

“Don't fall in love with a Flighter. Okay?”

Siry stared at his dad. “I'm talking about trying to understand the world. And you're—I don't even know
what
you're talking about!”

There was a long silence. Finally his father said, “Son, she's going on trial the day after tomorrow. If the tribunal finds that she's broken our laws, she'll be…” He sighed. “She'll be put to death.”

“Put to death!” Siry felt a strange lump in his stomach.

“It sounds cruel, I know. But you don't remember what it was like.” He took a deep breath. “I've always
told you that your mother died of a disease. But it's not so. Those things, those Flighters, they raided Rayne for food one time. There must have been close to a hundred of them. Breaking in to houses. Smashing things. Dragging children into the jungle. Your mother tried to stop them from taking you. They—”

Jen Remudi's eyes teared up.

Siry blinked. He felt horrible. But at the same time, he couldn't help thinking,
Another story that turns out not to be true!

“She saved your life. But she gave up hers in the process.” Jen Remudi put his face in his hands. Tears started running out through his fingers. “I couldn't save her. I should have been at the house. But I was with the guards, trying to protect—” He looked up, his eyes rimmed with red. “I love you so much, Son. But I just wish you had known her. I feel like I could have done so much better if—”

Jen stopped and stared out the window. “Anyway. The trial's in two days.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Finally Siry stood up and said, “If they're animals, how come you give them a trial?”

Siry waited for his father to answer. But his father said nothing.