Reign of Fire Read online

  Megan nodded, leaning against a tall yellow wheel. Sometimes she thought of Susannah as a lovely, earnest child, naive, often self-righteous in the way of children.

  That’s the real reason we can’t let her in on it all, she mused, thinking of Stavros and their plan to thwart Clausen’s claiming of the planet’s mineral resources for his megacorporate employers. She still thinks everything should be open and aboveboard, as if all parties really were equal before the law.

  “Seen Stav anywhere?” Susannah asked suddenly.

  Megan started guiltily. “Huh? No. Why?”

  Susannah smiled, shrugged. “Just thinking about him.”

  “I’ll tell him. He’ll be delighted.”

  “Oh, Meg…”

  When the caravan had cooled and napped for a few hours, rekindling their heat-dulled appetites, a wooden horn blew a tenor version of the priesthorns’ basso boom. It was a less impressive call, but it sent the loungers scurrying for their platters and utensils. Susannah packed up her samples and analyzer and woke Megan from her doze.

  The apprentice Dwingen reappeared, stripped to the waist, his curls still dripping wet and pale sand clinging to his thin brown legs. He dug in the back of the wagon and produced a stack of oval eating trays. He presented one each to Susannah and Megan, then scampered off with one of his own to join the long line piling up at the nearest FoodGuild wagon. The queues were noisy, an encouragement to singing and wagering debates, but there was little impatience. The accepted order seemed to be that the children be served first and sent out of the line, so the adults could help themselves in relative calm.

  Susannah and Megan hung back in the Infirmary wagon’s shade until Megan could no longer repress her anxiety that the food might be gone when they got there. Susannah trailed after her with less dispatch. Food lines reminded her all too unpleasantly of home.

  But there was food enough when they got there, and they carried well-laden trays back to the medical wagon to find Dwingen and Phea already finished eating, and Xifa, Ampiar and the two older apprentices just settling down to their meals. Phea giggled as Megan attacked her food with a spoon and fork retrieved from her field pack. The Sawls used fingers or made neat scoops out of strips of flatbread. Susannah judged the hot grain mash bland but filling, and the stringy pinkish flesh of the roasted tubers delicious. They drank the golden river water and fresh hekker milk brought around by a FoodGuilder in jugs stacked in a brightly painted two-cart. A grateful munching silence prevailed and Susannah observed privately that the only time the Sawls were truly quiet was when they were eating.

  Ghirra and Aguidran joined them as they were finishing. The Master Ranger ate on her feet, leaning against the rear wheel, her eyes flicking constantly from her food to the river, down the line of wagons and diners, to the sky above the canyon walls. Ghirra sat cross-legged at her feet, eating with slow care.

  Susannah was full of questions about food and eating. Ghirra’s statement about the wild creatures being part of the whole and venom as a guard against extinction had set her thinking about the issues of ecological systems. She perceived an odd duality within the Fiixian food chain.

  “We eat what we grow only,” Ghirra had said to her once, after the planting of the fields at DulElesi. She had taken this as an expression of his pride in the Sawls’ self-sufficiency, but now she heard his words differently: ‘We only eat what we grow,’ was perhaps what he meant, missing the proper English syntax, or alternately, ‘we can only eat what we grow.’

  There was no guild of hunters within the Sawlian social structure. The only flesh eaten was that of domestically raised animals. According to Ghirra, no human went out foraging among the wild plants, though the four-legged creatures were certainly encouraged to graze, without apparent ill effect.

  I must note specifically what the animals eat and do not eat, Susannah decided. And I must try to isolate this toxin of Ghirra’s from my samples.

  This restricted eating pattern was not a luxury due to abundance. The Sawls survived only through careful management of limited food resources. From her own observations. Susannah knew that all vegetable scraps and the rare leftovers were collected and mixed back into the hakra feed. Human and animal waste went back into the fields. There was no such thing as a trash dump in the Caves, only storage awaiting recycling.

  She extended her inquiry beyond the realm of edibles. The leathers, wool and skins used for clothing, bedding, parchment, boots, harness and countless other articles were all derived from the domestic beasts. She had learned that every other planting cycle, a portion of the cultivated acres was given over to fiber plants for paper and a cottonlike thread. The fine woven linen used in the Physicians’ Hall was traded for in Ogo Dul, as was the reed and cane and rush for basketry.

  Susannah ate automatically, now hardly tasting the sweet chewy tubers. Had Ghirra actually meant to say, “We consume only what we grow,” as in “use” as well as “eat”? Could it be that the Sawls, except for the air that they breathed and the water that they drank, lived in their own perfectly closed system, coexisting with but apart from the rest of the Fiixian ecology?

  Was this odd arrangement choice or necessity? Philosophy or survival?

  The Sawls’ birth, death and survival rates would have to be minutely well adjusted to their production capabilities in order to allow for such autonomy. If it was isolation by philosophy, say the ethics of a religion, she wondered, were they not tempted during the hardest of times, even forced, to raid the resources outside their own system? Or were these resources truly unavailable to them by cause of natural defenses they had been unable yet to penetrate’?

  “Ghirra,” she ventured at last, “there’s something I don’t understand.” But she stopped, confounded. There was so much she did not understand, too much in fact to be able to shape the questions she needed to ask. She recalled Megan’s earlier tantrums of frustration over too much data and too little insight, and finally empathized, several weeks too late, Taylor Danforth had questioned the validity of his data, Megan her own competence, but both had the right idea.

  There is something odd going on here, something… special.

  Ghirra awaited her question, a bread scoop full of grain mash poised between tray and mouth. The patience in his dark eyes could be interpreted as sympathy with her own expression of sun-baked confusion, But her mind was in a mode that questioned the easy interpretation, and she could pinpoint exactly the moment when she had lost confidence in her ability to read him accurately.

  Damn Emil and his rocks!

  But she smiled as she shook her head. “It’s not important.”

  He finished his mouthful, chewing thoughtfully.

  The older apprentices gathered the empty trays and trotted off to the river to wash them.

  “There’s lots I don’t understand,” Megan chuckled, applying yet another layer of sun-block to her freckled skin. “But aren’t you the one in favor of not worrying about it until insight sits down with you at breakfast?”

  “I guess,” said Susannah with scant conviction.

  Xifa and Ampiar excused themselves to go visiting down the line. Megan yawned, looking at the high, fat sun and then at her wrist chronometer. “Jeez, it’s six a.m. No wonder I can barely see straight. I’m turning in.”

  But before she could lay her blankets out under the wagon, Stavros arrived, his black hair sleek and wet, his dark eyes surveying them with restless interest. Young Liphar trailed along behind, curling a strip of bread to mop the last bits of mash from his tray as he walked. His wagering pouch bounced heavily on his hip, Stavros had shed his smart ship’s whites and was back in his Sawl clothing, though like most of the Sawls he was wearing very little, just the loose light-colored pants that tied at the waist. Evidently he had gone this way for most of the day, for his olive skin was already sun-darkened. He had always favored an air of secrecy, which Susannah admitted was one of the things she found attractive about him. Now he seemed bursting to share his secret,
whatever it was.

  He greeted Aguidran with a hint of ceremony. The Ranger’s look was more intently speculative than a mere return of civilities. Susannah noticed a new deference in her usually curt nod, and Ghirra’s smile held honest welcome. Stavros lowered himself to the sand between Ghirra and Megan. His arrival was like a bolt of energy shot into their languid dinner circle. He settled among them as if he had great news to impart, yet he sat without speaking, his legs pulled up to his chest, arms wrapped boyishly, about his knees.

  He and Susannah regarded each other covertly.

  “Don’t see how it’s going to be possible to get a good night’s sleep in all this heat and sunlight,” complained Megan idly, though she did not look particularly uncomfortable.

  “Be grateful while we still have light to see by,” Stavros returned, and Susannah was perversely relieved to see a trace of his old glower.

  “The night lanterns will give light during the darkness,” Ghirra offered, then corrected himself with a smile at the linguist. “I mean, Ibi, the stars.”

  Liphar’s tray was finally scrubbed as clean as he could get it. He set it aside in the sand, unfastened the cloth pouch from his belt, then emptied its load of colored wood and stone disks into his lap and began to count them back into the sack. Only little Dwingen paid this much heed, eyeing the bright lapful enviously from his perch on the driver’s seat. Finally, as if reminded of more childish playthings left at home, he asked Ghirra’s permission to visit his family’s campsite.

  When the child had trotted off, taking Phea with him, Megan stretched her thick legs with a sigh as if some restraint had been lifted. Aguidran set her empty food tray on the lowered tailgate and hunkered down beside her brother so that their shoulders nearly touched. Ghirra sketched absently in the sand. Stavros rested his head on his knees. Liphar counted busily under his breath. Somewhere nearby, a single piper blew a sweet melancholy air, joined by a few murmuring sleepy voices. The scene was all very relaxed and casual, yet to Susannah, the sensation of being odd man out was suddenly undeniable. She sat apart from the circle, though not physically, waiting for someone to tell her what was going on.

  The silence stretched uncomfortably until Stavros raised his head to gaze directly at her. The straight line of his mouth softened with an expectant smile.

  And then the moment was gone. The tableau broke, all five moving simultaneously. Megan resumed the laying out of her bedroll. Aguidran rose, grasped her twin’s shoulder with brief affection and departed to give orders to the weather watch. Stavros drew the healer into a discussion of the next day’s route. The two of them sat side by side in identical postures, chatting like old cronies.

  But Susannah knew she had witnessed a true moment, though she could not tell what it meant. She began to suspect that however she tried to plot this five-way relationship, it would always take Stavros as its center. She pictured him among the cheering throng, raising the embroidered banner of the PriestGuild like a young warrior from another age, and she wondered once again, What the hell is he up to?

  … and if Meg’s in on it, why didn’t she tell me?

  It was clear that they did not trust her with their secret. The realization made her defensive and instantly lonely. It was one thing to remain aloof and objective within the constant company of a shipload of colleagues, but out here in a wilderness inhabited by lethal flora and fauna as well as hostile weather, she needed to know she had friends around her.

  But no, that was not really it. She knew they would be there if she needed them. She simply did not like feeling excluded, and yet could not bring herself to confront them and force them to lie to her.

  She waited until Megan had stretched out on her blankets and fallen asleep. Liphar finished counting and joined the two men in their discussion, which had fallen into Sawlish as it became more complicated. Susannah regretted that because Ghirra had acquired sufficient English so quickly, she had let her learning of his language slide. She rose casually, making an elaborate show of combing out her long hair, and wandered around to the far side of the Infirmary wagon.

  As soon as she was away from their sight, she struck out across the sand, heading south at random, along the river, having no purpose in mind but to escape that unspoken comradery that did not include her. She broke into a trot, her stride lengthening as the release of running on the hard-packed river sand took over. She passed wagon after wagon, each sporting its painted or carved guild plaques. She passed clusters of smaller, slat-sided wagons and the single-family two-carts with freshly laundered clothing drying on their traces. Some families relaxed in quiet conversation, the children digging in the sand or playing stones, but most had laid out their blankets and rugs and fallen into a well-deserved sleep.

  Beyond the last wagon, she slowed to pass through the dairy herd, and, already out of breath and sweating in the humid afternoon sun, she continued walking after she had left the placid hekkers behind to continue their destruction of a certain variety of yellow brush growing up the side of the canyon.

  Well, there’s one place where the two food chains meet. It was a small satisfaction, but she found totally separate ecosystems too neat for comfort.

  The river slipped lazily around a wide bend. Out of sight of the caravan, away from the dust and noise and the constant jostling. Susannah’s paranoia eased and she began to feel foolish that she had let it carry her even this far. As she was turning to go back, she noticed a section of the canyon wall ahead that had collapsed and spread itself in a jumble of ocher and white across half the canyon floor. The river curled languidly to one side of the obstruction, leaving some of itself behind in a deep pool held within the arms of the fallen rock. Clumps of the thick-trunked succulents sprang from between the boulders. The tallest leaned out over the pool to dip spiny amber leaves toward the water.

  Susannah approached the bank, coveting the small shade of the golden trees across the water. She was hot again and sticky from her run. She wondered if Ghirra’s rule about small creatures being dangerous extended to whatever might be living in the brown depths of the pool, then reflected that she and everyone else had already thrown themselves into the river without mishap. She stripped and waded in.

  She felt cautiously among the sand and pebbles with her toes. When she stirred up nothing ferocious, she ducked into the water and swam a rapid nervous crawl across the pool to the rockfall. Nothing rose from the shadows to grab at her. She treaded water, holding on to a low, jutting ledge, then pushed off again to swim in slow, luxurious circles. The water cooled her as it slipped across her bare skin. The busy caravan was reduced to mere echoes sliding along the canyon walls, the hekkers bleating, a piper’s sweet trill, parents calling their children to bed. Susannah’s loneliness mellowed as she savored her first true moment of solitude in many months. The magnificence of the landscape was company enough, golden trees, towering walls of pink and amber rock. She lay back in the water and smiled up at the cloudless turquoise sky.

  In that water-lapped stillness, she heard approaching steps, Stavros picking his way slowly along the stream, intent on the ground as his bare feet chose a careful path among the broken stones.

  She thought, perhaps I had this planned all along, and made no move to retrieve her clothes.

  He halted when he reached the pool’s edge, and considered her for a moment in silence as she floated in the center, gazing back at him with as neutral as stare as she could muster. Finally, he loosened the tie at his waist with a quick defiant gesture, let the soft trousers fall and stepped out of them. He dove and came up swimming, his body slicing neatly through the water, speeding past her as she floated expectantly, heading toward the rockpile and its welcoming trees. He pulled himself up on the rock ledge, dripping, as sleek as a water animal, and stretched flat on his stomach across the warm stone.

  Isolated still, treading water in the middle of the pool, Susannah could not repress a crooked smile.

  Why is nothing ever simple, ever as you imagine it will
be?

  She considered swimming back to shore and leaving him to bake in the sun alone. It would serve him right. But he was decidedly beautiful, lying on the rock like an unwitting, handsome shepherd from a Greek myth. She did not feel very much like the proverbial goddess and he was hardly unwitting, but she decided suddenly that the game between them had gone on long enough. She swam toward him and hoisted herself up to rest by her arms on the overhanging rock. Her eyes were level with the back of his head. The smooth muscles of his back were within easy reach. Susannah did not reach. She waited.

  “The most remarkable thing happened to me,” he muttered at last, his face turned into the rock. He raised his head to stare abstractedly at his open palm, stroking a forefinger across it in wonder. He looked at her then, seeming to discover her nearness, and reached to touch her cheek with some of the same wonder.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said.

  When she smiled and did not back away, he moved impulsively, arching his body across the rock to catch her behind the neck and pull her mouth up to his.

  What has taken us so long? she asked herself when they drew apart.

  Stavros laid his head on her folded arms and murmured, “Will you come up on this rock with me?”

  “Gladly,” she replied, for her body could not have refused him.

  Later, she stroked his drying hair and asked, “What remarkable thing happened to you?”

  But his answer was to kiss her with gentle passion and whisper, “You, I meant. Only you.”

  As Megan had predicted, Stavros was not to be a casual lover. During the next twelve hours of travel, he did not leave her side. He walked beside her in the sun, matching his stride to hers, helping her cut samples from the spined and needled plants along the way. Now and then, he caught her hand and held it until the damp heat or the roughness of the road forced them apart. When the caravan stopped for the mid-throw meal, he flopped down in the shade of the yellow wagon, and drew her into the crook of his arm while she laughed self-consciously and the others looked on like indulgent parents. Ghirra seemed oddly relieved and Liphar grinned as proudly as if he’d made the match himself.