IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
III: Responsibility
Chapter 12 A Trembling Balance Before Tipping
Friday, June 12, 2708 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: nobody can
forage like our Kiril. She finds things
that even the Cumencians overlook. She
carries her skirt lifted up before her, full of roots that no one else knew we
could eat, shoots that grew long past their season, woody mushrooms from which
a strong jaw can still chew out some calories, grubs the size of a big man’s
thumb, bitter herbs from which to boil a nutritious tea. (I did
what I could. I helped the family the
best I knew how. But nothing could save
Mama by then—it had gone too far.) Kief holds back the hungry kids and metes it out
fairly. Every time I think I’m going to
get too shaky to stand up anymore, Kiril always comes through. (So
Papa pled my case to the ship’s captain, saying, “Man, this girl can cook! But we have no food for her to do her
magic—give her that chance—why waste a talent like hers?” So the captain waved me over to the galley
cupboard and said, “Show me something”)
So far I have not fainted.
I am not the fainting kind. But I
have come close. (And then I had to go
and ruin everything by fainting. The
smell of kitchen grease was just too much for me, when I hadn’t eaten for so
long. But the captain took a good, hard
look at the bones of me, and said, “It doesn’t matter. We need a scullery maid anyway. The last one run off.” That was the last time he ever took pity on
me.) Our taverness takes pity on us when she can, slipping us
whatever potatoes, bread, and beans the soldiers have left, scraps from their
meals, even sparing a little of the chaummin-syrup to make sugar for us, and it
makes the tea soooo good! It gives us
strength to go about our chores, stitching up belts into bandoliers, cleaning
guns that see no action. But even a
small guerilla band needs a lot of fueling.
We’ve caught kids licking up the gun-cleaning oil from the rod, but we
don’t need to punish them; they get sick and then the others laugh, and so they
try not to do it again. (The others laughed
at me, though. They mimicked fainting
wherever I went, till the joke bored them. Then they found somebody else to
torment for awhile.) (The men laugh in the
mess-haul, pointing at the ragged book.
“Look at that!” they cry, “He ate some pages! The big, fat hog ate pages from his
cookbook!” And there I sit, slumped
against the bars, mortified and yet too weary just from breathing to show how
much I care, how much this indictment sums up all of the indictments of my
life, gobbling up what can never satisfy me, mere slick pictures of a world I
cannot have—it all looks so sweet, so juicy, so tempting, but it all turns out
flat and tasteless in the end. My belly
rumbles audibly, trying to digest reed-pulp and ink, and they laugh again, louder
still. Sanzio D’Arco
smiles evilly on me. “It won’t take
long, now,” he says. I try not to
believe him.) * * * Nervously our two recruits
pass the pipe back and forth between them as Kief exclaims, "Tobacco--the
sacred herb! Tobacco, the purifying smudge,
the breath of change." The
firelight inflames his face and limns out the muscles of his chest and upraised
arms, bared this night in defiance of the codes, embracing the wind in a
shivering ecstasy. "Let any who
partake inhale deeply of its hunger-vanquishing energy, feel new vigor course
through them for the smiting of our enemies." Bakr's bones outstretch his
hungry flesh, taller than Kief and slumped as though ashamed to tower over his
officer. His little brother, Aziz,
started on hunger younger and so hasn't grown enough for his years. Fuzz has barely begun on Bakr's lip, while
Aziz has skin smoother than most girls.
But both have the same big, heavy-lidded eyes and largish mouths to mark
their kinship. Which one of these toads
does Kief expect me to kiss? And what
might they turn into, really, if I did? "Let us turn its dark
powers against those who strangle the life from our land and our
people!" He speaks so earnestly,
you'd think he made up the words himself.
But Kief feels deeply all of the rebel traditions. With venom he intones, "And may the
sacred tobacco choke the life out of any traitors among us, rot them from
within, as treachery and cowardice rot the soul within, so that disease of the
soul may be made manifest in the flesh!" He gestures towards a
bucket. "Baptize them, Sister
Deirdre." Oh--am I a nun to him,
now? I soak the boys thoroughly; I hear
that rebels all over the country have added this to the rite since hearing the
acts of Father Man. On a night as cold
as this, baptism amounts to an ordeal at least as great as fire and blood. Now he commands them to
leap over the flames, one by one. I hear
that only Cyran calls followers to actually walk across the coals; I've heard
it stated as fact that no one can safely do this except in Cyran's presence,
and I've said no word to contradict it.
Ungainly Bakr becomes unexpectedly graceful in his staglike leap, a
sketch of dark against the hot-bright fire.
Smaller Aziz goes back a ways to get a good running start, but he makes
it across, too, stumbling breathlessly into his brother's arms, eyes wide and
bright with conquered fear. We all cheer. Bottles pop open and Damien, who's slipped
away for this night's ritual, strikes up the Bailebelde with abandon. Best chaummin in the whole damn country; our
hostess knows her stuff. Not very much,
of course; we must make sure that the soldiers get plenty. But it takes little, on stomachs as empty as
ours, to whirl the trees around into a blissful, dancing blur. Damien's chin and lip have darkened with the
softest brushings of his first, young beard, and he looks good. I dance to his music, trying to keep warm,
hoping to sweat the alcohol out, but I think I just spin it in deeper. Two new
egalitarians--something worth celebrating.
Two more devoted to avenging our ghosts by wits and might of arms. Two more who may well join the ranks of our
protecting ghosts, themselves, before the year turns 'round. Two more comrades to share the burden of this
terrible war. I'll drink to that. Saturday, June 13, 2708 (The troops drink way too
much. And the civilians only encourage
them, of course--I would, too, in their shoes, not that they actually wear
shoes. I've let much slide, allegedly
behind my back, brooding, they say, on that gross creature in his cage. Right there, across the table from me,
staring back at me like some nightmare funhouse mirror, as insomniac as I,
tonight. So I won't set too bad an
example to join the soldiers in their carousing, just for tonight--or morning,
rather; the dawn's not half an hour away.
They're already about as corrupt as they can get, and I don't do this
often. And by “join” I mean
figuratively, not keeping company with the beasts, merely doing as they do,
just this once. I sit here in the dining
hall, practically alone, just me and my captive. I feel a smirk come over my
face; I raise a toast to deGroot and let him think that I've thought of
something particularly nasty to do to him, but really I've got my mind on what
dogs serve under me and how they'll inevitably reap what they deserve. Oh, Layne, but you’re a
cunning one! You saw precisely how to
dovetail my plan with your own. I should
never have bared my heart to you. But
who else can I write my letters to? Why
horrify my wife? I've coddled the men with
luxuries, that's the thing, trying to entice a monster that I would rather
torture than any prisoner before him.
How dare he flatter himself to think that he, he
of all people, could speak for the hungering masses! Only when abominations like him give up their
foreign agitation can we calm the people down, to where we can go easy on them
again. Him and the abomination that
leads them all. Some people should never
have been born. So here's to you, Doctor
Malcolm deGroot, and your demoralizing influence on my troops. You seem to sweat corruption wherever you go. So? I've twisted corruption to my purposes
before. That's what makes my job
bearable, after all: the worthiness of the victim to suffer, the justice of it
all. And someday my turn will come--some
furious rebel will blow my head off or knife me in the gut, or maybe kill me
really slowly as I've done to others.
Sooner or later...it's not like I'm any stranger to pain, inside or out,
anymore than a stranger to death. It
doesn't scare me. I'll rain down
retribution on more of their wickedness than they can rain down on mine. I know my soldiers stink as badly as theirs,
when it comes right down to it, but at least mine defend something. What do they propose to replace our law and
order with--a few disjointed ideals and a whole lot of chaos in between? Friday night's always
bad. Saturday'll get worse. I guess it's Saturday already by now, so I
can expect worse. The soldiers don't
have to sneak around to drink when they're off duty--how long can I bear the
fools thinking that they’ve pulled one over on me, that I don’t know? They start in broad daylight, now, just to
distinguish Saturday from the rest of the week, and I've watched the laughing
women keep their cups filled up for them.
I hear the men singing out there, even now, late as it is, as raucous as
crows, and some of the songs they sing smack too much of subversion for my
tastes. Refill the glass. They don't sound so off-key that way. I shouldn't indulge foul
moods like this. Armies have always
attracted ruffians; maybe I exaggerate their faults. I look again at the message in my hands and
wonder why I feel so frustrated to read it--no news should delight me
more. Maybe I don't really want
to torture Dr. deGroot, not in the traditional way, though I suppose what I do
here qualifies. How much sweeter the
victory if he fell to his own disgusting vice, if I could make him hate himself
so badly that he'd thank me for any punishment that I might mete out. And then, instead, I could set him loose to
wander like the damned, getting satisfying reports, now and then, on the
progress of his self-destruction. I like
nothing better than to rip the pleasing face off of hypocrisy, to torment the
self-righteous rebel with the truth about himself. To let him do all the work while I stand by
to watch. Still, he did eat pages
from the cookbook. Can I spare one more
day, to see if he might break all by himself? Don’t make any decision
tonight, Saza. You’re in no condition. Knock back what's left in the glass, and fill
it up again. I have to admit that the
woman's true to her word--this has got to be the most palatable Chaummin I've
ever choked down in the mountain towns. And that other woman–what a
chilling strategy you’ve come up with, Layne Aliso. Brilliant and horrible, much like your
painfully radiant self. And much like
that matron of society who has made a hobby of researching and reconstructing
some of the most nightmarish devices of old Earth’s haunted past–this latest
one makes even me shudder. And yes, much
like that other, that witch from the Tilián, whom I strongly suspect has more
than a little to do with our troubles of late.
(And to think, not so long ago, that I tried to rescue
her, at a drunk’s request!) Oh, I am
beset with brilliant, horrible women!
But I follow my orders, Layne, even if you’re too much the lady to mention
them to anyone but a torturer. I don't do this often,
drink like this. Usually only on her
birthday--she who was not brilliant at all, poor thing, and had no hand in
creating the horror of her life. Yet I
do, on occasion, make an exception, for the rare case like this, for the very
specialest of cases, because I do my nastiest work with a hangover giving me an
edge, like a grindstone sharpening the hatred in me. Only for the very few
prisoners that I really, truly, honestly do hate. Sometimes you've got to
allow for diminishing returns in this business.
The more a subject resists persuasion, the more confident he
becomes. This especially holds true if
you're playing him against himself. It's
time to end this, anyway.) (He looks so boyish when
he's drunk. Childlike, almost, smiling
up at me all goggle-eyed, his mustache faint upon his face; it might be a
chaummin mustache, from drinking too sloppily.
Just a kid, really, too young for this business. Is he the best the government could come up
with? Ah, but he knows his trade too
well; he doesn't even have to lay a hand on me to weaken me, day by day. And yet...he reminds me of somebody...) |
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