Of Bone and Thunder (13 page)

“Rickets, what do we do?!” There was no way Jawn could defend them both from a horde of this size, even if they were predominantly youngsters. He needed control in order to construct and implement a thaumic process. Manipulating the forces of nature was not advisable for those with shaky dispositions.

For at least the third time that day, he knew he was going to die.

“Stay calm, and look like you're capable of something,” Rickets said.

It might have been sincere, but all Jawn heard was disgust. It was his first day in the war and he was falling apart.

I can do this
, Jawn told himself, forcing his gaze to unfocus. The difference was that for the first time in his life, it wasn't a matter of choice but of necessity. He pinched his nose between the index finger and thumb of his left hand, closed his mouth, and breathed out through his nostrils. The pressure popped his ears and left his head feeling fuzzy for a moment. When it cleared, he knew what to do.

Fear is a reaction. I am action.

Fear is a tool. Use it
.

Jawn drew in a deep breath, plumbing himself until he found his core.

I am pole and ground
. Energy flows through me
.

He reached out his right hand and laid it on the steel rim of the cartwheel. His skin tingled with the first charge of energy.

My body is
—

“Belay that,” Rickets said, touching Jawn's shoulder, then quickly drawing his hand back as a thin bolt of lightning arced between them. “Sweet bloody hell, that stings!” He was shaking his hand. “Why aren't you screaming?”

Jawn clenched his jaws and slowly let out his breath. “It's . . . complicated. And it's . . . dangerous to interrupt a thaum during a process.”

“Noted,” Rickets said, blowing on his fingers. “But it was that or knock you cold.” He held up a sheathed dagger with a large iron ball for a pommel on the end that looked purpose-built for that very task.

Jawn opened his hand and let go of the cart's wheel. He didn't bother with discharging, as Rickets had conveniently taken care of that.

Jawn finally saw why Rickets had him discontinue the process.

Slyts now streamed past them, their manner unchanged from before. Jawn and Rickets were in no apparent danger. Jawn tried to imagine a similar-sized group of men acting in such a manner and the only thing that came to mind was a funeral.

“What are they doing?” Jawn asked. The slyts moved slowly but with obvious purpose. The humid night air muffled what little noise they made, making their procession all that more eerie. Only the rustle of their clothing and the soft scuffing of their woven grass sandals marked their passage.

“Whatever it is, it's happening just up there,” Rickets said, pointing to the next intersection.

Jawn straightened his back and stood up in the cart. He tensed, expecting some kind of reaction from the endless stream of slyts, but they ignored him.

“They're forming a circle, but I can't see what's in the middle of it,” Jawn said.

“Just stay calm, and don't make any sudden movements,” Rickets said, jumping down from the cart and walking forward to their porter.

Jawn wasn't sure if he should stay in the cart or get down but decided he'd rather be on foot if things went bad. He grabbed his two bags and jumped down.

Slyts moved past him with barely a glance. It was as if he were a stone in a river of fish—they simply eased around him as if he'd always been there. He peered closely at the torchlit faces as they passed, looking for signs of possession, madness, disease . . . anything that would explain this behavior.

Jawn clicked his tongue against his teeth and forced his body to relax. These slyts weren't going to attack them. He rolled his shoulders back and stuck his chin out.

I'm a thaum. They must sense it, just like Rickets did.
Jawn placed his hands on his hips. He stood a full head taller than the slyts and probably had a good seventy pounds on them. He was a trained thaum
and
trained military officer in the Kingdom's army. He was in the best physical and mental condition of his life. Now he needed to act like it.

A radical thought popped into Jawn's mind. He stuck out a hand and grabbed a slyt carrying a shovel by the arm. “Excuse me, but what's going on? What are you protesting?”

The slyt stopped and looked down at Jawn's hand in obvious surprise. He didn't yell or swing his shovel at Jawn, but merely tugged his arm, trying to break free.

“I'm not going to hurt you; I just want some answers,” Jawn said, keeping a firm grasp on the slyt's arm. It was as thin as a young girl's, but through the light fabric Jawn felt ropey muscle.

“He's an illiterate farmer's son—he doesn't have the foggiest what you're asking him,” Rickets said, appearing at Jawn's side. “Best to let him go. They're ignoring us for now, but I can't tell how long that will last.”

The dark tone to Rickets's voice worried Jawn. He released the slyt.

“They must be protesting something,” Jawn said.

“The government,” Rickets said. “They're all sons of farmers, fruit pickers, dosha growers, and the rest of the slyt peasantry. They're always upset about market prices.”

“What's dosha?” Jawn asked, wondering if his question would set Rickets off again.

Rickets nodded. “Right, I do keep forgetting you are new here. Dosha is the main staple here. They eat it like we eat potatoes, except it's different. Imagine a potato the size of your eye with a black rind and the inside filled with white slime.”

Jawn grimaced. “That sounds horrible.”

Rickets smiled. “It is. The trick is you don't chew it. You douse it in spices and swallow globs of it down.”

Something Rickets had said just before his description of dosha came back to Jawn. “Wait, you said they were all sons of farmers.”

“Firstborn sons to be precise. Sent them into town to agitate.”

“Is that normal?”

Rickets continued scanning around them as he talked. “It's a cultural thing. The firstborn male is sent in his father's place. Makes sense. Dear old Dad needs to stay in the orchard or whatnot, and if this turns out to be
dangerous, well, Dad's not the one that gets the chop. Meanwhile, the other sons are still safe on the farm.”

“What about us?”

Rickets looked up at Jawn with a cat's grin. “If it comes to that, I'm old enough to be your father.”

“DO YOU THINK THIS
is connected to the slyts from the Western Wilds?” Jawn asked. Young slyts, all male from what Jawn could see, continued to stream along the road and move toward the intersection. “Maybe you were right about the Forest Collective stirring up trouble.”

Rickets nodded. “The Forest Collective aren't just in Western Luitox. They're here, too.” He waved his hand at the crowd. “But I don't think this is them. The Fuckin' C's wouldn't congregate like this in the open. They aren't that stupid, especially if there was a chance the Luitoxese army could snatch them up.”

Jawn wanted to scream. None of this was how his war was supposed to start. He was vulnerable and all but alone and the air was so hot and wet he found breathing a challenge. He longed for the terrifying moments on the rag's back, if only to feel a breeze.

“Enough of this,” Jawn said, pushing his way through the crowd toward the circle. He wasn't going to stand around one flick longer waiting for something to happen. The repeated shouts of his army instructor rang in his head:
Doing something is better than doing nothing
.

“Hoping for that first medal, are we?” Rickets asked, walking just behind Jawn.

“I'm done with following,” Jawn said.

“So I see,” Rickets said.

“You don't have to come along,” Jawn said, not bothering to soften the statement. If Rickets departed right now Jawn wouldn't be upset in the least.

“Oh, I think I'll see this through,” Rickets said, not sounding the least bit offended. “You're quite the commodity the Kingdom has invested significant treasure into training. As a crown representative it's my duty to see that investment isn't squandered or otherwise misappropriated.”

“You mean killed?”

“That too. At the very least, I should stick around to gather up your parts if things go bloody.”

Jawn didn't respond.

The two arrived at the open space in the ring of slyts and stopped. A circle fully ten yards in diameter had been marked out on the pavers with white and red flower petals. A space wide enough for a slyt to walk through interrupted the petals every twelve paces. At each of these openings, additional rows of petals radiated out like sunbeams. Slyts walked past Jawn and Rickets going in the opposite direction, extending the petal rows.

Jawn bent down and reached out to pick up one of the petals but stopped when he sensed he was being watched. He looked up. Every slyt near him was staring at his hand as it hovered over the petals.

“Rickets?”

“I'd say they'd prefer you didn't touch them,” Rickets said.

Jawn twitched his fingers, toying with the idea of snatching up a petal, but the part of his brain focused on survival screamed bloody murder and he pulled back his hand and stood up.

An audible sigh rose up from the ranks of slyts.

“That was strange,” Jawn finally said.

“Welcome to the Lux.”

An elderly slyt with just the faintest wisp of gray hair on his head, wearing a bright green sheet wrapped around his legs, across his chest, over his left shoulder, and down his back, strode into the circle. He calmly directed a dozen young slyts dressed in similar green sheets, who were quietly accepting the farm implements from those present and then placing the tools in neat concentric rows within the circle.

“Do you think they're planning on going back to work tomorrow?” Jawn asked. The slyts continued to ignore them, instead walking around them as they handed over their cudgels, hoes, rakes, shovels, axes, and more. Soon, the rows of tools were stacked three feet high. Spaces had been left to allow the slyts to walk from the edge of the circle toward the center, where the senior slyt continued to oversee the activity with small hand gestures and the occasional nod of his head.

Rickets shrugged. “The government needs food for the army, so they put levies on the farmers' crops. In the last two years, the levies have doubled, and then doubled again. Add in the skimming, the bribes, and the outright theft, and the farmers are close to starvation. You can imagine how much the peasants appreciate it.”

Jawn could. He could also see how such tactics would only work to push the slyts away from their own government and into the arms of the Forest Collective rebels. “Then why risk alienating the population?”

“Wars ain't cheap,” Rickets said as if that explained it all.

Slyts holding large, shallow wooden bowls two feet across began walking among the crowd. Each bowl was filled with a pyramid of white powder.

“Now what?” Jawn asked.

“That's dosha flour. They use it for all kinds of ceremonies, everything from weddings to funerals.”

Each slyt in the crowd received twin stripes of the powder on his forehead. The slyts holding the bowls then took a small portion between their fingers and sprinkled it into the outstretched hands of the slyt before walking on.

A slyt with a bowl stopped in front of Jawn and Rickets. The slyt hesitated, his powder-coated hand hovering over the bowl as he looked at them.

Rickets leaned forward, offering his forehead.

“What are you doing?” Jawn asked. “We still don't know what this is.”

A gasp arose from the slyts around them. Jawn tensed. The slyt with the bowl looked back toward the elderly one in the circle, who peered at Rickets and Jawn and then nodded. The slyt turned back to them and smeared powder on Rickets's forehead before sprinkling a small amount in his outstretched hands. Jawn sensed the eyes of the slyts on him again.

“No, thank you,” Jawn said to the slyt holding the bowl.

The slyt turned to look at the elderly slyt again, who shrugged. The slyt with the dosha flour moved on.

More slyts began walking among those who had gathered, tossing dosha flour into the air. Jawn coughed as he drew some in, and soon all around them was clouded with the fine particles.

More and more flour flew into the air, making breathing and seeing increasingly difficult.

“If we stay here we're going to suffocate,” Jawn said, grabbing Rickets by the arm and hauling him away from the circle.

Rickets coughed. “You'd think the humidity here would keep the dust down, but damn if it doesn't feel dry enough to fry an egg.”

Jawn stopped. The air was dry. When had that happened? He wiped his forehead with his fingertips. Not a droplet of sweat. He looked over at Rickets. His balding head no longer glistened. Jawn pounded his fist into his thigh. He'd been so focused on trying to understand the big picture, he'd forgotten to pay attention to the clues right in front of him.

The air was desert dry. He looked around. The dosha flour hung in the air like a thick fog.

“What is it?” Rickets asked.

Jawn turned back toward the circle. The elderly slyt stood in the center of it, his arms outstretched. He held a hoe in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. The tines of the pitchfork pointed to the sky, while the metal of the hoe rested on the ground. His eyes were open, and he was chanting. Jawn couldn't understand the words, but he felt their meaning.

“Oh, fuck . . .”

“Well now, young man, that kind of language is—” was as far as Rickets got before Jawn yanked his arm and began pushing through the crowd.

“Run,
run
!” Jawn kicked and shoved his way through the kneeling slyts, heedless of where he stepped.