Jane Carver of Waar (12 page)

I grinned. “Nice save, bubba. Alright, I’ll wear it, but you gotta let me fix it up a bit.”

“As you will, mistress.”

He didn’t say anything when I ripped the muumuu’s sleeves off, or when I cinched the waist tight with a belt, but when I started strapping the armor on over it he had conniptions. “Mistress, please, in Ora a lady does not fight. She neither bears arms nor wears armor. It would be unseemly to appear in Oran society this way.”

I turned on him. “Was it
unseemly
when I killed One-Eye and bought our way out of camp? Was it
unseemly
when I threw you over my shoulder and leapfrogged our asses away from those cannibal killers back there?”

Sai backed off. “I...”

I stayed nose to nose with him. “I don’t trust this planet. Ass-kickings happen way too frequently around here for my liking. You say it’s civilized down there? Well, until I see a 7-Eleven and a Kentucky Fried Chicken I ain’t takin’ any chances. I’m keepin’ the armor and the sword, and if you don’t like it I’ll be glad to take you back to the Aarurrh and you can fight your own way out of the stew pot.”

“Mistress Jae-En, forgive me. I meant no slight. You have been the soul of valor and are entitled to wear anything you please. I merely hoped to save you the embarrassment of becoming a spectacle. Dressed this way, you may be stared at, even mocked.”

I snorted. “Sai, look at me. I ain’t exactly gonna blend in with the crowd down at the local bar and grill no matter what I wear.” Then I got it. “Wait. You’re not worried about me. You think
you’re
going to be mocked. You don’t want to be seen with me.”

Sai opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn’t know where to look. “I... I...”

Poor little idiot. He looked so pathetic I couldn’t hold on to my mad. All of a sudden I wanted to cuddle him and pet his little head, among other things. I sighed. “Aw Sai, I ain’t mad at you. I just feel safer with this stuff on, okay.”

He tried a smile. “I... I shouldn’t have thought that you would be afraid of anything, Mistress.”

I laughed. “I’m a million light-years from home, bro. I’m afraid of everything.”

***

Sai was right. We got plenty of stares. And no wonder. We looked like a comedy act. I could have passed for a halfback at a toga party, and Sai looked like the movie poster for “Male Models in Distress.” Slogging down the long, red dirt roads, we caught all kinds of gapes and gawks from the local yokels. It reminded me of my punk rock days, with my green mohawk and black lips, asking the normals, “What are you looking at?” And not getting the irony at all.

The hicks were poking what looked like short sections of bamboo into the dry dirt of the fields that spread out around us.

I pointed. “What are those?”

Sai looked around. “Lasi shoots. They grow into tall stalks with delicious leaves. A perfect compliment for krae meat.”

“Huh. You cook too?”

“I? Cooking is servant’s work.”

“That so? You got somebody to wash your back for you too?”

Sai was insulted. “I left the nursery years ago, Mistress.”

***

After a while we came to a bunch of the little hexagonal huts huddled around a well. There weren’t any shops, so I’m not going to call it a town. The huts were covered in piss-yellow plaster, with beam ends sticking out through the walls. Single room huts were one hexagon. Bigger places were a bunch of hexagons stuck together. Dirty purple kids in grimy smocks stared at me like a tree had walked into town. Scrawny purple women peered out through glassless windows and made the same touching the eyes and mouth gesture Sai had made when he first saw me.

Sai got a couple doors closed in his face at first. It steamed him up. “Peasants! Know they not a Dhan when they see one?”

“Maybe if you scraped off a couple layers of dirt.”

When the villagers realized we weren’t leaving until someone talked to us, a scared, scarred old hard-case with a bulldog face and working man’s muscles came out holding a hoe like it was a spear. He was looking at me as much as he was at Sai.

“What want ye here?”

Sai glared him up and down. “Do you threaten me, lout? I am Dhan Sai-Far, son of Shen-Far, Dhanan of Sensa. Lower your weapon.”

The hick’s jaw dropped. “A... a Dhan? But...” He shot another look at Sai’s loincloth, then a scared one at me.

Sai went livid. “Dare you insult me as well? A Dhan wears what he chooses. And travels with who he chooses.”

The attitude did it. The hick dropped the hoe and did the bow-and-crossed-wrists gesture as fast as he could. Poor guy. How could he expect to meet the upper crust out here in East Bumfuck. “Beg pardon, sir Dhan. Us blind, sir Dhan, not to see it.”

Now that he’d had his ass properly kissed, Sai relented. “Come now, enough. Rise, please. I mean you no ill. My temper has been frayed by recent adventures. Merely tell me whose lands these are and we will no longer trouble you.”

I stared at Sai, my jaw almost as slack as the hick’s. I’d never seen him like this. Our whole time with the Aarurrh he’d either been mopey and suicidal, or terrified and apologetic. Now that we were on his home turf he was suddenly all lord-of-the-manor. Not even his ratty hair and dirty rags could hide it.

He had the whole village bowing and scraping in five minutes. He knew where we were and where we should go. He also managed to talk the hicks out of a skin of water and some dry little cakes that tasted like the paste I wasn’t supposed to eat in kindergarten. We hit the trail again, this time with a spring in our step.

Sai was smiling like a Hare Krishna. “These are the lands of Dhanan Zhae-Gar. I have not the honor of his acquaintance, but by incredible good fortune, I am best of friends with the scion of the Dhanan whose lands border these. If Lhan-Lar is home we will be welcome and safe.”

I had to burn brain cells to unravel all that. “So, you don’t know this guy, but we’re going to your buddy’s dad’s place, which is next door.”

“Succinctly put, Mistress Jae-En.”

“Thanks. It’s a gift.” We walked a few more steps. “Uh, Sai?”

“Mistress?”

“What’s this mean? I saw the villagers doing it.” I did the touching the eyes and mouth thing.

Sai looked embarrassed. “It means ‘I do not see and will not speak.’ One makes the sign when one sees something unholy. ’Tis one of the commandments of the seven not to see or speak of evil.”

“Evil, huh?”

“They mistook you for a demon, as I did, mistress. Take no offence.”

“None taken.” I was used to scaring hicks. Back home a bunch of bikers rolling into some little burg always had the locals slamming doors.

***

Getting to the place next door took another day. These Oran nobles had estates like Texans have ranches. We passed through endless fields and countless little clumps of houses. Most of the time we traveled on the little red dirt roads, but once we came across a highway that looked like the Ventura Freeway—eight lanes wide and made of rubbery gray stuff without any seams or potholes in it. It was smoother than the highway to Vegas.

Looking down that long, straight stretch made me ache to have my old Harley between my legs; traveling down a wide open road, new countryside to explore. If only Big Don was here riding beside me, seeing all this. Suddenly I had another ache. Big Don would have loved this. While the other bros would just roar from rally to rally, Big Don would pull off the road now and then, just to look at the scenery.

We met like that, actually. Up in the Dakotas. I thought he was broken down. He told me to turn off my bike and listen to the night. I thought he was crazy. Then I heard the wolves howling and fell for him like a ton of bricks.

Poor Don. Even if I got back to Earth, I still couldn’t have brought him here, not unless Sai’s people had some kind of magic that could bring a man back from being a hundred yard smear of red under a speeding semi.

I swallowed. My throat was rough. Fucker. For a dead guy, Don sure had a hell of a long reach.

Sai seemed to think the road was something special too. He touched it with his finger tips before we stepped up on it, then touched those fingers to his heart and forehead.

I frowned and poked at the road surface. Hard as a Super Ball. “Damn. What is this thing, Sai?”

He turned. “This is the road to Ormolu.”

“Yeah, okay, but I mean what’s the deal with it. You guys never built this. You haven’t even gotten around to inventing flintlocks or sliced bread.”

Sai looked insulted. “You suggest that mere tae built this wonder? This is a gift of the Seven. We are blessed merely by walking upon it.” He made the chest to forehead gesture again.

I’d heard him mention the Seven a few times back in the Aarurrh camp. I’d figured them for the local gods and forgot about ’em, but no gods back on Earth had ever come across with a turnpike.

“Who are the Seven?”

He gave me a strange look. “You truly are from far away, Mistress Jae-En. The Seven are Ora’s gods, who made this world and all that is in it. They made the sky and the land, the Tae and the beasts, the roads and the Seven temples, the holy weapons and divine relics.”

Holy weapons? Divine relics? Was this just religious hoo-haa, or was there more stuff like this road? “Where are the Seven now? Are they still making goodies like this?”

Sai shook his head. “The Seven warred, long ago, against The One, and we, their children, betrayed them. They have retreated to heaven and left us behind as punishment.”

Typical religious bullshit. Make the rubes feel guilty. Yadda yadda yadda, but maybe there was something to it. Maybe these guys were in some kind of dark ages. Maybe I’d landed in some Road Warrior time when everybody’d forgot how to make the factories go. That would suck, because I was guessing the teleport disk that got me here was one of the Seven’s ancient wonders and there weren’t going to be any mechanics around to get the thing up and running again.

***

We made it to Sai’s pal’s house around noon the next day. It was the size of your average mental institution, with thirty foot high walls built out of dusty orange stone. There were six-sided towers at the corners, and domed roofs and pointy steeples inside, but no windows on the outside. Nice place, if you’ve got a thing for prison architecture. It made me nervous. Too many bad associations.

Sai had me wait out of sight while he presented his bonafides to the muscle at the main gate. They looked down their noses like he was street trash, but eventually sent a message inside. When word came back the gorillas changed their tune, bowing and kissing ass and throwing the doors wide open. Sai waved me forward.

The guards saw me and looked like they were going to change their minds, but Sai barked at them. They stepped back uneasily, like dogs who don’t agree with their master’s decision to let a stranger into the house. A servant led us across a flagstoned yard toward a long, narrow building butted up against the inside of the thick outer wall.

Sai frowned. “Where do you take us? We are here to see Lhan-Lar.”

“Dhan Lhan-Lar is in the stables, sir. There has been an accident.”

“An accident! What has he done this time?” Sai hurried forward. I followed. There was a mournful hooting coming from the stables that sounded familiar.

We went in. A wooden loft built over the stalls had collapsed and stablehands were clearing away wood and bags of black tubers. Other guys were trying to raise the fallen beams. There was a dead krae pinned under the cave-in, and one that wasn’t dead, but wasn’t in good shape either. That was where the hooting was coming from.

A man was kneeling at the krae’s head, stroking the thing’s neck and whispering to it as workers tried to lever a heavy joist off its back. The guy was covered to the knees in krae shit and straw, and blood was drying to a sticky brown on his hands.

Sai ran toward him. “Lhan! Are you hurt?”

The man looked up at Sai, then glanced over at me. One glance wasn’t enough. He did a double take and gave me a long head-to-toe, but otherwise kept his cool. He was handsome, not in Sai’s league, but enough to get him a job on the soaps, and more bright-eyed than Sai. He had the rubbery face of a born class clown, but with a goatee and a ponytailed mohawk to keep him up with Waar fashion.

He turned back to the krae. “One moment, Sai. Old Chirrit needs a little peace and quiet just now.”

We waited as the workers lifted the beam enough for Lhan to guide the nervous krae forward. The poor thing stood up with a cry. Lhan immediately felt along its legs, then stood to check out its back. He scowled. “Well, ’tis a life of loafing and lovemaking for you my lad. You’ll heal all right, but your racing days...”

While he finished checking out the krae I gave him the once over he’d given me: swimmer’s body, broad shoulders, narrow waist, zero body fat. He’d do in a pinch.

Lhan handed the bird over to a servant, then turned to us, a dazzling smile breaking through his blues like a jump cut. I could tell he was curious about me, but he wasn’t going to get all googly-eyed about it. “Your pardon, Sai. A disaster of my own making. I became bored with country life and decided to redesign the loft to provide more room down here. I thought if I cantilevered... Well, there it is.”

Sai was still anxious. “But you’re not hurt?”

“What? You can’t tell krae blood from noble blood? No, I am wounded in my pride only. You however, were walking in the lands of the dead the last I heard.” He flashed a sidelong look at me. “I see you have brought a spirit back with you.”

Sai glanced at me, obviously seeing me with Lhan’s eyes. “Er, Mistress Jae-En, this is Lhan-Lar of Herva, my dearest friend. Lhan, this is Mistress Jae-En of... well, she...”

Lhan held up a hand and motioned us out of the stables. “She is a story that deserves our full attention, and therefore will wait until we have washed away the blood and dust of our recent adventures.” He hustled us across the yard to the castle.

It wasn’t nearly as prison-like on the inside as on the outside. The entryway was a high, wide hall with a big curving stairway and lots of jumbo doorways. The ceiling was a bunch of criss-crossing arches, like a cathedral, except they reached down almost to the floor, and sat on stubby painted pillars that bulged out in the middle like they couldn’t take the weight. The walls were hung with colorful tapestries showing big battles happening under a sky with seven stars in it. Between the tapestries, they’d mounted wild saw-toothed and spiked weapons like they were art.