Desert World Allegiances (2 page)

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“The valve is stuck.” Cyla grunted as her fingers slipped off the tank, and her knuckles hit one of the struts with a dull thud that reverberated softly through the entire tank.

“Unlucky stars,” she hissed before sticking her knuckle into her mouth.

“Let me.” Temar got his fingers around the valve and tried to turn it. Even if it was stuck, years of pulling weeds had given his fingers an advantage. He twisted the piece, feeling the metal groan under his fingers as it started to yield. Then the unthinkable happened. Something snapped with a crack that echoed through the tank, and water gushed over his hands. Warm water, in quantities he’d never seen, poured over his skin, like a smooth fabric sliding over him.

For a second, Temar was too shocked to even react. He knelt as water—actual running water—spilled over the ground and tumbled over him in unfamiliar patterns. Even when he finally got his hands moving again, he couldn’t find any way to reverse the direction of the valve. Something had snapped, and now the nut spun loosely around the end of the pipe. “It’s broken!” The water pushed against Temar’s fingers as he felt for any mechanical cut off or valve or emergency switch, but there was only the tank and the pipe and water pouring over him in unholy quantity.

“Shut off. Where’s the shut off?” Cyla shouted in her desperation, and a siren ripped through the air with its high-pitched wail. She ran to the other side, her feet actually kicking up water that had dirt suspended in it.
Mud
. The unfamiliar word floated to the top of his memory from school. They had it on Earth, where water ran over the face of the planet, but on Livre, where nearly every molecule of water had been harvested from the larger of the two moons, melted, purified, and then carried to Livre, mud didn’t exist. Or it
hadn’t
. Temar found his knees slowly sinking into the softening field.

Footsteps pounded the ground, followed by the sound of men and women slipping and cursing and the strange slap of hands and bodies against water. “Where’s the cutoff?” Cyla’s scream carried above the siren, above the chaos of the night. Now Temar had his hand flat against the pipe, the water spraying out like the tail of a peacock from a child’s book.

Hands caught his arm, pulled him, and Temar slid in the wet earth, falling on his face into mud that pressed itself to his mouth and nose until he pushed back, choking on it. More hands caught him, pulled him, and Temar didn’t fight.

Chapter 2

S
HAN
looked out the thick glass at the twisted trunks of the wind trees and at the barchan dunes. The sand inched south in the wind, and when the afternoon came and the winds changed, the same sand would move back to its original position. More or less. The trunks of the trees were scarred white from the constant attack of weather and wind and sand, but right now, Shan’s attention was focused on the three men and two women behind him. He suspected that he was about to lose the argument, and maybe it was the masochist in him, but he refused to give up. Slavery was evil. He would not participate in enslaving others.

The eldest member of the council leaned forward, her fingers steepled in front of her face as she stared at them with great concentration. “This is more than a petty crime.” Lilian Freeland’s voice was soft, but full of the authority that came with wealth, or what passed for wealth on such a poor planet as Livre. Her sheep and her crops provided for half the valley, and in such difficult times, that was wealth enough. “This is not a child’s prank, calling for a simple fine.”

“I doubt either intended so much damage.” Shan didn’t turn around when he addressed the group. Instead, he watched their ghost images in the reflections of the glass. Naite rolled his eyes, but Shan didn’t expect anything else. They were brothers, and some tie in the blood meant that, whatever side Shan took, Naite took his own position opposite.

Bari Ruiz spoke, his voice slow and careful. “They are both very young. The young make mistakes.”

“Young people break dishes, not water tanks.” Naite leaned forward, his large hands braced on the polished table. “Look at the water they wasted, the crops they ruined! Do you know how long it will take to repair the tanks? Our supplies of welding materials and metals are limited, and these two idiots risked permanent damage to get revenge for some imagined insult George Young offered their dead father.” His voice rose until it boomed in the small room.

George Young’s name put a sour look on even Bari’s face, and there was not a more generous and forgiving soul on the planet. Bari had been voted in to represent those who focused on raising children, and his patience was endless… until someone brought up George Young. Clearly, Landholder Young could annoy even the most patient man on the planet.

For a moment, Bari followed the grain of the wood in the table with his finger. “They grieve their father.”

“Their grief should not cost the community entire fields,” Naite quickly answered.

Shan hesitated, not sure how to convince the older members of the council to show a little more forgiveness. Before he could organize his thoughts, Kevin Starwalker cleared his throat. Lilian tilted her head to the side and rested her cheek on her hands as she considered him.

Kevin stood up, his eyes carefully avoiding all their gazes and his heavily calloused fingers playing with a small carving. Tiny white scars stood out on his dark knuckles, the mark of a carpenter. Shan knew that he would look for a practical solution. Right now, he was pressing his lips together so tightly that they were nearly as white as his hair. “I dislike ordering young people into slavery, but if we don’t, what will happen to these two?” Kevin finally looked at each of them, his dark eyes obviously looking for any other solution—any way to protect the community without condemning two young souls.

Shan finally turned and stepped forward. “I can take them into the church until they decide where to take employment. Their father’s land can go to Landholder Young, to repay him for the damage.” Shan fervently prayed for them to listen to his words, even if he was the youngest on the council. As the representative of the church, his opinion should carry some weight. Hopefully, it would carry enough weight to keep these two young fools out of slavery. Of course, they would still suffer the loss of their father’s land, but that wouldn’t hurt as much as loss of their freedom.

“Their father’s land wasn’t worth two tanks of water.” Lilian dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. Like Kevin, her hair had turned white, but she was pale, with washed-out blue eyes that made her look almost fairy like, as though she had slipped out of some Earth novel and landed on Livre. But he doubted a fairy would choose their poor world—a world so poor that they just could not afford to leave able-bodied workers living in cells and eating the food provided by those who fought Livre’s dunes to carve out fields.

However, Shan wasn’t ready to give up. “We could enter a judgment and order them to devote half their wages to repaying Landholder Young.”

Naite’s face left no doubt about his opinion. “They aren’t trained. The work they’ll get will be little more than they need to feed themselves.” Naite crossed his arms, daring Shan to disagree with that. Lilian held up her hand to stop any more debate.

“They aren’t children,” she said firmly. “They may have only meant to damage the irrigation system, but even that would have killed the seedlings, and as the children of a farmer, they knew it. They are too old to claim the ignorance of youth and too young to offer anything in compensation.”

“Lilian.” Shan stepped forward, begging her with his gaze not to condemn these young people by taking a position against them. “Slavery is not a system that reflects well on us as a community. Every time we pass judgment on someone, ordering them into bondage for some length of time, we damage ourselves—our own souls.”

Shan prayed that she would listen to him. He couldn’t sit still and allow slavery to take more lives. True, both of them were of legal age, but Temar sometimes came to the church, watching from the shadows. He was such a lost soul, such a young soul. Shan remembered feeling that lost. Someone else had reached out to help him, and now his heart ached with a need to help this young man who had stood in the back of his church and who had obviously never found what he was searching for. Maybe if Shan were a better priest, he would have found a way to connect with Temar before he had done something so idiotic.

“This is an old song,” Naite said, his voice heavy with disapproval. “Are you going to sing it every time the issue comes up?”

“If I have to.” Shan worked hard to keep his voice and face free from the annoyance he felt.

“I’ll sing it for you.” Sarcasm dripped from Naite’s words. “Slavery is unfair and evil and not godly. But there is a problem, little brother.” Naite stood up and walked the length of the table before coming around the end to face Shan. “Cyla and Temar are not being unfairly targeted. They have no good judgment of their own, or they wouldn’t have tried such a dangerous stunt. A few years of being treated like the children they are—of having to work and live where they are told and facing the consequences of their actions—that’s the best thing for them. I don’t think it’s unfair to give these two time in a structured environment in order to grow up.”

“It’s unfair for anyone to lose his freedom.”

Naite laughed. “When I was sold for three years, I didn’t see you coming to save me, and it’s a good thing you didn’t. Three years with Landholder Sulli taught me discipline and honesty I never would have learned from our father. Cyla and Temar could use a few of the lessons I learned when I had to work to regain my freedom.”

“Yes, Landholder Sulli is a good man,” Shan agreed. He held up his hand to prevent his brother from getting them all off track. Naite defended Tom Sulli the way most men defended their parents or their lovers, but Shan didn’t think his brother had ever been in Tom’s bed, during or after his time working for the man. “You were lucky, and I thank God for that every morning, but not all people are as good as Tom Sulli. What happened in Blue Hope—”

“Blue Hope is not here!” Naite threw up his hands and walked away, his back stiff with anger. “That sandrat in Blue Hope paid for what he did, and I would never put up with hatefulness like that in our community.” Naite dropped into his chair on the other side of the table. “Just because one sick pervert in Blue Hope abused a slave does not mean that the system is corrupt.”

“And just because Tom Sulli helped you turn your life around does not mean that the system works.” Shan felt his carefully hidden frustration rising in his chest.

“The system has worked for fifty years. It works better than expecting the laborers to raise crops and feed people who are jailed. Trust me, if criminal convictions led to jail time, half my workers would be out stealing water in order to get condemned to a little rest and free food.” Naite laughed like he had made a huge joke, but then Naite’s sense of humor had never been his best trait.

“The fact that the jail system failed does not mean that the system of slavery is our only alternative.”

“No, it’s just the best one.”

“It is evil.” Shan pronounced each word carefully, because he could feel a need to scream them recklessly.

“There’s slavery in the Bible.” Naite smiled, a smug expression that clearly suggested he’d planned that little attack.

“So are incest and infidelity and hate. God is not endorsing any of these acts. God did not wake up on the eighth day of creation and say, ‘Let there be slavery.’”

“He didn’t say, ‘Let there be sanctimonious priests’, either, but look what we have, anyway.” Naite had a smug look on his face now, and Shan could feel the childish need to tackle his brother to the ground and start pounding on him.

“Naite Polli.” Kevin Starwalker spoke the name, and even though he didn’t have any inflection in his voice, he still managed to make his disapproval clear. Naite leaned back, his dark face pinking slightly.

“Perhaps you should look up the root word in sanctimonious,” Shan said, not even feeling guilty about the fact that he was getting the last word only because Kevin had stepped in.

“Perhaps both of you should look up the meaning of manners,” Bari said, his voice a whisper that might not have been heard, only the room had gone silent, save for the wind whistling against the metal joints of the square building. However, when Shan glanced over, Bari didn’t offer an apology. “We must think of what is best for Cyla and Temar. If we take their wages, they will not have any sort of life. A term of slavery would allow them to finish their punishment and move on.”

Kevin spoke up. “They could learn from some hard labor. Their father may have blamed George Young for his troubles, but his crops died because he never took care of them. Disliking Young is one thing, but blaming him for theft is unacceptable. He’s honest, even if his values leave something to be desired. If Cyla and Temar work the fields, they’ll learn what their father should have taught them.” Clearly Bari and Kevin were both leaning toward condemning two young people to slavery. Shan didn’t even bother looking at Naite. He looked to his last hope—Lilian. She had withheld her judgment until now, which meant she was unsure. When the woman felt passionately about an issue, she had no qualms about manipulating and cajoling the rest of the council to do whatever she wanted. However, this time she had remained largely silent.