Desert World Allegiances (10 page)

Ben gave Temar one last slap on the arm before he stepped back into the field and turned his attention to the weeds. The other workers who had slowed to watch the conversation returned to their own work.

Temar didn’t say anything, but he set off for the north border, and Shan watched him for a second before hurrying to follow. The boy looked in good enough health. He was walking with a stiffness in his gait, but even good workers had trouble keeping up with Ben Gratu, and Temar wasn’t physically prepared for heavy farm work.

“I’ve missed seeing you in church,” Shan offered. He fingered the edge of the gag, feeling the soft leather and trying to ignore his deep sense of disquiet.

Temar’s step faltered for a second, but then he continued his steady walk toward his father’s old farm. George owned the land now, but no doubt he was using the water ration on his own land, without tilling the weed-infested Gazer farm.

Shan frowned, not sure how to start this conversation. Normally, slaves would come to him in confession, and when they sat down, they wanted to talk. They were hungry to sit in the dark and let their fears spill out. They wanted him to solve their problems, to tell them how to fix lives that had spun out of control. Shan had told the story of Job so often that, for all of his shortcomings in Biblical history, he could cite that book by the verse. However, he wasn’t sure how to get a reluctant slave to start talking.

“I thought I might travel to Red Plain next week and visit Cyla.” Shan hadn’t been planning that up until now, but looking at the tentative hold Temar had on his own psyche, now he was concerned about how Cyla might be reacting in a new town with a new slave status.

Temar stopped and looked at the ground in front of Shan. He chewed on his chapped lower lip and seemed to be weighing something in his own mind, but he didn’t say a word.

“Would you like to send her a message?” Shan asked.

Temar’s gaze came up to meet his for a second before those bright, blue eyes darted off to the distant cliffs. “Can you tell me if she’s well?” he finally asked, his voice whisper soft.

“I will come back and tell you everything she says and how she looks,” Shan promised. Temar swallowed nervously and then turned toward the Gazer place again.

Shan followed. He’d never felt so helpless in his life. Div would know how to approach this, but Shan never felt the guiding hand of God the way Div had. Oh, God had helped him more than once, but God hadn’t given him Div’s talent to read wounded souls.

“Has Naite come to see you and tell you his inspirational tales from slavery?” Shan finally asked. Temar shook his head, his blond hair flopping to the sides. He should cut it, but maybe Ben hoped long hair would protect the boy’s neck from sunburn.

“Naite loves to tell slaves how this can be a chance to fix your life. I’m not sure whether it helps or just makes people feel more trapped and resentful, but he does mean well. Our father was not what you might call a paragon of fatherly love, and sometimes I suspect that Naite inherited our father’s ability to completely ignore a person’s emotional needs. He’ll tell that tale, even if the slave he’s talking to is nodding off with sleep or trembling with anger.”

That made Temar look over his shoulder, his eyebrows lowering in confusion, but he still didn’t speak. For someone that Ben had accused of talking too much, Temar was remarkably silent.

“Our mother died young, just as yours did.” Shan watched the boy, studying him for some sort of reaction. Looking at the similarities in their lives, Shan was an idiot for not suspecting abuse. A man, alone with two children, isolated on a farm and not hiring in workers. Erqu Gazer and Yan Polli could have been twins.

Temar stopped and reached up to rest his hand on a line of windwood posts that marked the boundary of Ben’s land. Looking out, Shan could see the clumps of pipe trap weeds and the trailing vines of creepweed covering the land. “God’s mercy,” Shan breathed. The farm was ten times worse than he’d expected.

“Cyla and I always worked to keep the fields clear,” Temar said softly, the first words he’d spoken without prompting, and Shan believed him. One month without the two young Gazers trying to control the weeds, and the farm had exploded into a full crop of pestilence.

“Given this evidence, I dare say you and Cyla had been working hard to control the problem.” Shan bent down and tugged on a creepweed that had crossed into Ben’s property. Even though the plant had only put up two leaves, the roots were so deep Shan couldn’t pull the whole plant up, and the green of the plant broke off in his hands. “They’ve put in roots. Come harvest end, someone will bring this to the council.” Shan grimaced at the thought of dealing with George. He’d throw a fit, but if he didn’t burn off this land and bring in the deep-till equipment to rip out the weeds, he’d have to forfeit it.

“I suppose it’s hard seeing the land go to ruin like this,” Shan offered gently. Temar stood by the windwood post and shrugged. However, he stared out at his old home.

“I should go back now.” Temar glanced over, but he didn’t meet Shan’s gaze—he stared at the leather gag in Shan’s hand. Shan closed his fist around the soft leather.

“I want to help you.”

Temar took a step back as though afraid, and for a second, he searched Shan with suspicious eyes. Shan’s heart broke. Why hadn’t he ever noticed how lost and broken the boy was? “Please,” Shan said, offering his empty hand.

Temar’s eyes went from his face to his outstretched hand before darting off to the side and settling on the distant cliff. “Stable water levels were part of the terraform process.”

The change in topics mystified Shan, but the Lord did work in mysterious ways, and sometimes abused young men were even more mysterious. “The sun-net captures enough moisture from the air to replace what is lost from the ground, so yes, the system is stable.” Shan shrugged. “Or the system would be stable, if the inner worlds had finished the terraforming. Right now, we’re holding our own though, and we aren’t losing enough to threaten our lives or the lives of our children.” Shan didn’t say that, if the inner planets continued their wars, their grandchildren would be on dangerously tight water rationing, and their great grandchildren would be dying of thirst, but that was an open secret on Livre. As soon as children were old enough to study planetary ecology in school, they could complete the equations for themselves.

Temar nodded and looked out onto the fields.

“Is there something that worries you?” Shan asked. He risked taking a step closer.

“Many things.” Temar sounded so lost that Shan wanted to make a promise that he would make things better, but there was no “better” to be had. The emotion vanished from Temar’s face. “I need to go back.” He looked down at the gag again. Shan followed his gaze and found himself looking at the strip of leather, but he couldn’t bring himself to fasten the gag around Temar’s face. The boy was so devoid of words now that it seemed a cruelty to take the rest from him.

The boy reached out, and Shan allowed him to take the gag. Shan watched while Temar slipped the flat flap into his mouth and then bucked the strap around his head. He took a second to pull out wisps of hair that had been caught under the leather, and then he started walking back toward the field where Ben was working.

Shan followed from a distance, oddly bothered by the boy’s willingness to put that thing back on himself. Actually, he was bothered by many things, starting at the wary look in Temar’s eye and his obvious need of Ben’s protection and ending with that odd, disjointed bit of conversation about water. It was almost as if Temar’s mind had slipped for a second, thoughts tumbling down into illogic.

Unfortunately, this visit had done nothing to ease Shan’s worries, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say to young Temar, so he just followed him back to the field where Ben and the others worked to pull weeds that had obviously seeded from the Gazer place. With the whole Gazer farm going to seed, they would soon have more. Everyone in the valley would suffer, but with his farm next door, Ben would catch the majority of the trouble.

Ben looked up when they came close and shifted his bag of weeds from one shoulder to the other. Ben held an arm out, and Temar went immediately to his side, leaning into him as though seeking to soak up the other man’s strength. Shan had never seen a man weakened so much by slavery, and he’d never seen the psychological damage take hold so fast.

For a second, Ben held Temar in a one-armed hug, and then he gave the boy a slap on the arm. “Take this up to the incinerator, will you?” He held out his bag. Temar nodded and took it in both hands. “Are you in control enough to do this?” Ben asked, and again he brought a finger up under Temar’s chin, pressing his head up. Left on his own, Temar did spend a lot of time staring at the ground. Temar nodded. “Good boy,” Ben praised him and then patted him on the arm.

Temar headed toward the house with the bag clutched to his chest, and Ben leaned backward, cracking his back and stretching. “So, you’ve seen the mess on my north border? I used to like Erqu Gazer, which is why I didn’t make complaint about the water that would go missing from my share—it was never enough to publicly humiliate a man who had already lost so much. But I have no qualms about humiliating George. I’ll lay claim to workdays from him and have his fat ass out here pulling weeds blown down from his farm if something isn’t done.”

Shan nodded, his attention still focused on Temar’s retreating figure. “It’s your right,” Shan agreed. Really, what else was there to say?

Chapter 8

C
YLA
was sitting under the sloping eaves of a windbreak with large vats set out in front of her. “See? She’s fine. I don’t know why you’d assume she wasn’t.” Ista Songwind was angry. Angry might be too strong of a word, but she definitely didn’t like Shan.

“I always assumed she would be well cared for, Worker Songwind,” Shan said mildly. “I would not have signed off on the slave fee otherwise, but as the priest, she is still my responsibility, even if she’s in another territory.” Shan was stretching that a little, but he assumed that God would differentiate between a lie and a stretched truth told for the greater good. If not, he could always confess to Div later. The man would love a chance to have Shan reread “Ecclesiasticus” for penance.

“She hasn’t asked to go to the church, or I would have let her. I know the law.”

“I have no doubt you do, Worker Songwind,” Shan agreed. “I have heard people speak very highly of you, both your skills with computers and your fair temperament.” Shan didn’t say that he was beginning to doubt the latter. Their conversation was cut short when Cyla looked up from her work.

Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the wisps that had escaped were plastered to her face with sweat, but she didn’t look emotionally or physically beaten down. In fact, she frowned when she saw Shan standing at the edge of the windbreak.

“Shan? Did something happen?” Pulling a sheet of computer chips out of the mild acid wash, she set them to the side and started to stand.

“Neutralize the acid before you even dream of it, girl!” Worker Songwind didn’t sound particularly cruel with her order, but she made it clear there was no room for debate. Cyla gave her an unhappy look, but she took the sheet with the computer chips attached, and she moved to a second vat.

Putting the sheet on the wire netting over the mouth of the vat, she picked up a spray bottle and started spraying the cloudy solution onto the board with an even hand. Before Shan when into the priesthood, his father had purchased him an apprenticeship with a mechanic, and Shan still remembered enough to know that Cyla had been carefully taught this skill. After ten years, she might be able to challenge the mechanics’ council and claim a title as a skilled worker.

“Is Temar okay?” she asked, her hands still working their task.

“He’s fine,” Shan said. Physically the young man was fine, and Shan was not an adequate judge of his mental state.

Cyla sighed and paused for a second before finishing the spraying. Shan glanced over at Ista Songwind, hoping she would get the hint and give them some privacy, but the woman was standing with her arms crossed in a pose that suggested she was not moving. Shan turned his back on her and moved closer to Cyla.

“I promised Temar I would see how you were doing. Worker Songwind says you aren’t going to church.”

Cyla frowned and put the board to one side. Now that the acid had washed away the impurities, someone would have to go over every circuit board to remove any residue left by the base solution. But that residue would be large and crystalline and easy to remove, compared to the tiny impurities that would coat a computer surface after any time exposed to Livre’s atmosphere

“Church was more his thing than mine.”

“Maybe he needed it more,” Shan suggested, trying to give the girl some opening to explain what might have happened. However, if she didn’t know about her father’s abuse, he didn’t want to tell her. Cyla carried enough burdens now, and he knew the guilt that came with having been ignorant when a loved one had suffered.