I couldn't tell the time for the thick clouds overhead, but the day’s training was over and all of us were drenched in sweat with hardly an exertion. That baby vita’o lizard creature thing ran up to Geraln and circled around at his feet, and he picked her up and put her back on his shoulder. “Here you go, Chirpy.”
She rubbed her tiny head in his cheek.
“Chirpy?” I asked.
Geraln answered, but his attention was on her. “They haven’t given her a name yet; I’m just calling her that for now.”
Davod furrowed his brow. Kelint, Rock, and Northstar had gone off to spend the money, and the five men from Kyoen looked on in disbelief.
As we gathered in the practice yard, Ales emerged from the medical ward with a smile on his face. I ran up and gave him an effusive hug.
“Ouch!” he cried.
“Sorry. I can’t believe you’re alive, man! You should be dead right now!”
He smirked, “well fuck you too, man!”
“Consider me fucked, then!” I couldn’t help but chuckle. I looked all over his face. His cheeks were flush, his heavy brow and deep-set eyes peered back at me, and his strong lips fixed in a solid grin. “I’m glad you're alive, but it's still a miracle.”
Geraln spoke between us, “maybe, Caleb, you don’t know everything you think you know.”
His imp chirped in agreement.
Massi stepped close to join us; the scars that split his eyebrows glistened of sweat. “Yeah, man. He got stabbed; what’s the big deal?”
I turned to him. “Do you know what sepsis is?”
“Why?” Massi grinned. “Is she pretty?”
The others laughed. They didn’t know. How could I explain? The friar in Ulum had said gebu’i could cure the lover’s pox; he didn’t say anything about sepsis, and none of these men had the slightest idea how revolutionary that was. Revolutionary was an understatement. Everything I knew—everything I thought I knew—was turned upside-down the moment I saw Ales emerge from the medical ward. If the secret got out, millions upon millions of lives could be spared.
The old woman at the apothecary was right—gebu’i was a miracle.
A man came from around the building and approached us, and Massi’s eyes shifted from Chirpy to him for a moment. He was a native—average height with exceedingly dark green skin, long white hair, and bright yellow eyes. He was about our age, I guessed, with a sturdy, muscular build and wore nothing but a black silk rectangle for a loincloth embroidered in gold thread with the image of a snake fighting an alligator. As he approached, his bright yellow eyes bulged for a moment as he looked at me, Geraln, and Davod, then back to me again. Then, he shook his head vigorously and faced Davod. “Davod of Gath.”
Davod stepped forward. “I am he.”
“ʃʊsi xeŋise… dowa ʒʌgosa peyumi”
Davod raised one corner of his lips and looked at me with his brow furrowed. I shrugged.
Faren answered him with a smooth vibe. “ʃʊsi means please, and se is you. So he’s asking you to do something. I think.”
Geraln added, “se is the subject form of you, sa is the object form. dowa is want… uh… that’s all I got.”
I gaped at how much those two knew already; I was falling behind. The man passed his eyes back and forth between Geraln and myself, then faced Davod and repeated in Herali with a fluency as though he’d been born in the mountains alongside us. “Please come. Peyumi wants to speak with you.”
“I knew all that,” I said. “I was waiting to see if you two would figure it out.”
Faren chuckled. Geraln shook his head and smiled. “You’re lagging. I’m disappointed.”
A hiss filled my ears, and I turned to face it. Massi’s eyes were wide and fixated on Chirpy. By the time I looked, he’d snapped his hand back from her tiny jaws.
Geraln shifted his body to move the shoulder she sat upon to the opposite side. “She doesn’t like that.”
“Come on!” he said, then shuffled around Geraln to come over to her side. Geraln kept turning to avoid him while she dug her tiny claws into his shoulder strap and her legs trembled. Massi grinned wide and lifted his finger again, and started moving it closer to her body. She hissed at him and snapped her jaws next to his hand once more.
Our visitor looked squarely at Massi. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Aww, I'm just playing,” Massi pursed his lips and turned to face Borel, who stood smiling with his arms crossed next to Jame, who was busy inspecting the arrows he’d recovered from our little tournament.
As Davod left with the man. Geraln had stepped away from Massi to unstring his bow, and we all thought Massi was finished, when instead he once again crept close to Geraln and shot his finger up to poke Chirpy in the side. But before he could pull his hand away, she whipped her neck around and clamped her jaws around his finger.
“AAAAAAAAHHHHH!” Massi screamed.
Geraln snapped at him, “serves you right!”
But as Massi tried to pull his hand away, Chirpy didn’t let go. Blood began to trickle down his finger and over his wrist. He tried jerking away, but she’d latched on tight. More blood flowed from his finger. He shouted at her, “FUCKING LET GO!”
But she didn’t.
He tried waving his hand back and forth; that didn’t work. Instead, blood poured out from his finger where she’d latched on; the more he moved about, the worse it got. “LET GO!”
Geraln tried to pull away, but she held on tight. Massi yanked, trying to pull his finger, only for more blood to squirt out. Chirpy dug her claws deep into Geraln’s shoulder strap and wouldn’t let go.
“COME ON!” Massi slapped her head hard, and more blood flowed down his wrist and all over his arm.
A loud shriek bellowed across the training ground, and at once everyone’s attention was turned towards the administration building from where emerged Chirpy’s mother, who then took several strides towards him. Men pacing the ramparts turned to watch, others in the practice yard stopped and looked our way, and two figures appeared on the balcony. Not three yards from where Massi stood struggling with the baby, a large brown lizard with a black diamond pattern on her back roared out.
Chirpy released him and pointed her head towards the ground. Geraln knelt low, she then jumped off his shoulder and scurried over to her mother.
“FUCK!” Massi screamed and looked longingly at his finger where the skin had been shredded and blood oozed out. Borel and Jame stood laughing at him, while Geraln merely shook his head. I opened my field kit and started towards him.
Mum lowered her head to receive her child and turned away to usher her off. She'd made it three steps when Massi screeched out, “I’m gonna kill that fucking thing!”
Immediately, mum turned back around and crouched on all fours, coiled her neck and hissed hard at him. She hissed and hissed again, snapping her teeth and pawing at the ground with her forelimbs.
Everyone backed away, myself included. Jame blurted out, “I think she heard you.”
“No shit!”
Mum lifted one paw up and stretched out her claws, then bared her teeth and hissed again. She continued to step, crouching low to the ground and coiling her neck, and hissed hard at him again.
Massi fixed his eyes on her completely and reached his bloodied hand behind his right thigh where his knife awaited. Then, no sooner than he could unsheath the blade, she pounced.
It happened so fast. With all four legs, she launched herself at him, snapping her neck out and clamping her teeth around his throat. She knocked him clean onto his back and passed over him, moving her whole body away as he swung his knife around. Then, with a few rapid shakes of her head, she sliced through his throat and ran off.
Massi lay on the ground with a gaping mass of torn skin, broken sinew, and scraps of connective tissue where his throat had been. A geyser of blood sprayed out from the base of his neck and flooded the ground about his head. He opened his mouth and his chest heaved, only for another splattering of blood to spray out from the gaping hole where his trachea used to be.
“MASSI!” Borel ran up to him with Jame in tow.
His chest heaved several times in rapid succession, only for more blood to spray from the wound. His body turned to the side, but his head flopped about while gallons of blood flooded the grass beneath him. His eyes and mouth gaped, and he reached trembling fingers up to the hole, covering them with blood as well, and his whole body tensed. His chest heaved, and another geyser of blood sprayed out in response.
I couldn’t move. I couldn't turn away. I couldn't blink, and I could scarcely breathe.
Massi’s body jerked, more blood poured out from him, and his eyes blinked only to open wide once more. Borel knelt beside him with his hands over his body, his fingers trembling hard. He cried, “what the fuuuuuuuuuck!”
Massi’s mouth gaped. He tried to close it somewhat, only for it to open once more. His body jerked and rolled onto his back, and once more his head flopped around.
Borel looked at me and screamed. “AREN’T YOU A MEDIC? DO SOMETHING!!!”
“The fuck,” I said. “You want me to put some ice on it?”
The pool of blood beneath Massi’s head had saturated his hair and the grass all around for several feet, and his spasms began to abate. He continued to move his jaw up and down while his eyes stared blankly into the cloudy sky, the blood pouring out from his body devolved to a trickle. The spasms grew weak and infrequent.
“No…” Borel whimpered and stroked his friend’s face. “What the hell, man? Not like this!”
Geraln slipped away. I caught sight of him just as he dipped behind the medical ward, and decided to rush after him. As I turned the corner, I saw him leaning his back against the stone building, looking at nothing in particular while breathing heavily.
Behind me, I heard someone heave. Gino had doubled over, clasped his knees, and wretched, leaving a pool of yellow sludge with bits of partially-digested food on the grass. I couldn’t breathe. When I turned back to Geraln, he’d turned and started walking away again.
“Geraln! Wait!”
He turned and shouted at me, “HE ASKED FOR IT!” but his hands trembled hard.
Behind me, Gino was still doubled over, coughing and heaving out the last of whatever had been in his stomach. “What the fuck just happened??”
Geraln got angry and pointed at me. “He fucking asked for it! He fucking asked for it! He FUCKING ASKED for it!”
“Yeah, man,” I assured him. “Sure he did.”
At that, Geraln squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. Tears flowed down his chubby cheeks.
I felt Gino’s hand on my shoulder. His eyes were wide with panic, and his whole body heaved up and down with every breath. Then he scrunched his eyes and turned away, bared his teeth, and tried to shake it off. “Gods! What the fuck, man!”
My voice wavered as I tried to speak. “Let’s… let’s just sit down a moment.”
Geraln’s chest heaved and he shook, but he nodded, as did Gino. We tucked into the corner behind a wooden shed of sorts, with the front end open filled with food scraps and covered in fuzzy green mold. I peeked all around us but didn’t see any of the other men.
I closed my eyes. Then, unable to get the image of Massi’s gaping neck out of my mind, I opened them again and watched my fingers shake. She’d sliced right through the Orca tattoo on his neck, leaving a bloody mass of ripped flesh behind. It all happened so fast.
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Gino had pulled his knees up to his chest, buried his face in his hands, and whimpered, then turned to the side and wretched again. Geraln leaned back against the stone wall with his eyes glazed open and looking off in the distance, when we heard a familiar chirp.
The little green baby was back, standing next to Geraln on her gangly legs, looking up at him, and chirped again.
Geraln looked at her and swallowed. Gino gazed at her with his eyes bulged, and his chin trembled. I looked as well, while Chirpy gazed up at Geraln and chirped again.
He then wiped the sweat from his brow and took in a deep breath while looking down at her. “What now?”
She chirped.
Geraln stared at her. He blinked several times in rapid succession, then stood. She scampered around his feet, looked up at him, and chirped again. Then, he reached down to pick her up, and set her back on his shoulder.
“You can’t be serious!” I said.
Chirpy rubbed her head in his cheek.
Gino looked at me with his eyes wide, and we both stood. “Your friend is insane! After what just happened…”
Geraln tilted his head into her for her to rub his cheek again, closed his eyes, and answered. “It’s not her fault.”
“Like that matters!” I nearly shouted.
Geraln opened his eyes and looked at me directly. “She’s bonded to me. I don’t know why, but she is. If I took that away from her now, after what just happened, I think that would damage her.”
Gino answered, “it’s an animal.”
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Geraln continued, “they’re intelligent, emotional creatures with strong instincts for social connection. Chirpy needs to know that I still accept her.”
Gino shook his head. “How can you trust them? She… the other one… you saw what she did!”
“I agree,” I said. “How are we supposed to manage when that shit just happens randomly…”
“It wasn't random,” Geraln reached his hand up to stroke Chirpy's neck. “Generally speaking, taunting a baby whose mother is a four-hundred pound apex predator is not a good idea.”
My mouth gaped, and Gino and I looked at one another in disbelief.
“Point is…” Geraln shook his head and took in a deep breath, blowing it out slowly.
Gino pursed his lips.
I looked at him.
Geraln continued. “These people… the Na’uhui… they grew up here. Look at them; they act like nothing’s amiss. The vita'o aren't fenced in; they can go wherever they want, and no one here is afraid of them. Why should we be?”
Gino asserted his chin towards him. “Because we just watched a guy get his throat ripped out? That sort of thing makes me afraid.”
Geraln shrugged. “They told us, don't pull a weapon. Massi went for his knife. If he hadn't… I don't know, she was pretty upset at him, but maybe we'd have been able to talk sense into the situation. Maybe.”
I shook my head; I had my own liver to worry about. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.”
“Come on,” Geraln said, then turned away.
“Where are you going?” I said.
“Away from here. I’d like to avoid those other Kyoni if I can.” With that, he shot a glare at Gino for a moment.
Gino excused himself. “Borel, Massi, and Jame grew up together; I only met them the day I was called. Same with Renou.”
With that, Geraln nodded and wandered towards the old city while Gino and I followed. We soon came to the library, and while Gino marveled at the place, Geraln approached a cart on the street opposite the building where an old native woman was selling bright-green coconuts. Before he could reach her, a cute young Tobori woman with alabaster skin and a number branded into her arm wearing nothing but a black silk loincloth with small tassels at the hem approached him and cooed, “oooooooh, she adorable!”
Chirpy looked at the woman and tilted her head some.
The woman smiled. “So cute!”
She’d tied her wavy golden hair in the back, allowing Gino to stare at her bare breasts. His eyes traversed up and down her body and he grinned. I could tell he tried to fight it, but he glanced at me and blushed.
The woman curled her voice up and spoke to Chirpy, “hi there!” before turning to Geraln. “What you name?”
“Geraln of Gath…”
Another woman approached, “awwwwww!”
This one was a native whose bare chest wore a necklace of silver threads woven in the shape of a spider’s web. Geraln passed his eyes back and forth between them and smiled nervously before glancing over at me with the two women fawning over the friend perched on his shoulder. I couldn’t help but laugh that off.
The Tobori woman spoke, “I Sarewisa.”
The native woman nodded and batted her eyelids slowly, showing silver eyeshadow. “gu’emide.”
“Uh…” Geraln answered.
The two of them glanced at one another briefly and smiled back at him. Sarewisa continued, “maybe if you like you to help at us, yes?”
Geraln shrugged. “I suppose?”
“We want sibling me and Gu’emi. You give us this, yes?”
It took a while for what she was asking to register in his mind, but I could see the moment he figured it out. His whole face turned red and he pulled back. “Uh… uh… I… I can't. Right now. I can't talk right now. I'm sorry.”
“Think about it,” Sarewisa pursed her lips and pointed at one of the grassy dome clusters to our left. “We live there.”
With that, the two women said goodbye to Chirpy and walked off. Gino’s eyes followed the Tobori woman while Geraln stood like a statue with his eyes wide.
“You alright?” I asked him.
“Did they… were they offering…”
Gino rested his hand on Geraln's left shoulder, keeping himself opposite the finger-snatcher. “Yes, man. You heard it right.”
“I just watched a man die, and then two random women walked up to me… offering…” he swallowed and shook his head vigorously. Then with a quick glance at the direction they’d gone off to, Geraln approached the coconut vendor. She was a stout old woman wearing an embroidered cotton loincloth, leaving her wrinkled, sagging breasts out in the open. As he came close, she looked at us with a warm smile less a few teeth.
Geraln spoke, “zhipi pozu… uh…”
The old woman nodded to Chirpy, laughed, and sounded it out slowly for him. “ʒɪ-pɪ ko-ka-ŋo po-zʊ.”
Geraln repeated it a few times. After he’d gotten it down, she smiled and nodded. “zaduθʊpi… Haff kren.”
He took two metallic-red quarters from his purse and handed them to her. “Zaduthupi? That’s half a kren?”
The old woman smiled and selected a prime coconut for him, then held up a knife to chop it open. “za is piece, make fraction. θʊ is number thing. Two-piece, one of them. zaduθʊpi, one-haff. Here you go!”
“ŋʌvɪdesa,” he smiled.
The green globe was chopped at one end, leaving a brown circle about an inch wide with a layer of white coconut meat on the inside surrounding a pool of fresh juice. Geraln lifted it to his mouth and tilted it up for a drink, and then he held it up for Chirpy. The creature brought her nose close to it, stretched out her tongue to taste it, and then dove her whole head into the thing only to lift up after several seconds and allow coconut water to drip down her neck and dive in for more.
Geraln laughed lightly to himself, and then continued his way across the street to the library as though Gino and I weren’t even there.
Inside, an older Goloagi woman, naked as everyone else but with a number branded into each arm, sat at the water organ plinking a melody that echoed off the stone walls and filled the space with music. Gino gaped at the majesty of the second and third-story balconies overlooking the central area beside the front desk flooded in multicolored light coming through massive stained-glass windows. I nudged him in the side. “They have a whole section dedicated to illegal books upstairs!”
Geraln turned towards us and pointed down one of the halls on the ground floor. “I’m going to look over there. I’ll meet you two back here?”
“Alright,” I said.
Gino followed me up the curved staircase and down the hall past iron sconces embedded in the stone walls, past balconies with gorgeous half-naked women reading to the view of the towering walls of the inner sanctum beyond. I led him to the forbidden books section and directly to the shelf where the most forbidden of tomes had rested the day prior.
But it wasn’t there.
“What are you looking for?” Gino asked with his eyes surveying the numerous titles in that section.
“Indictment.”
He pulled his face back and opened his eyes wide. “No way! It’s here?”
“I saw it yesterday; I held it in my hands.”
His eyes went wide and his cheeks flushed. “The Indictment. They have a copy here, in Carthia?”
“The one and only! Someone must have checked it out, though.”
“Damn,” he shook his head. “Something always burned me about that book…”
That made me laugh.
Gino giggled and smiled wide. “Why does it have to be checked out? I feel like that’s cruelty beyond measure.”
“I don’t know,” I shook my head, “but when I find out who took it…”
Gino laughed and began to look around at some of the other titles. “Oh,” his eyes found something. “What’s this?”
He pulled a brown, leather-bound tome from the shelf. Imperial Caste.
“You'll probably get locked in the tower for reading that.”
He smiled and leafed open the front cover. I, on the other hand, found a tome of black pages written in white ink with vertical stick-like letters and picked that up.
“What's that?” Gino asked.
I shrugged. “I dunno, but I'm going to read it.”
“Can you read that?” he smirked.
“This is the language the natives here speak. I saw a pronunciation guide downstairs by the front desk.”
Gino laughed and shook his head. On several pages were drawings of plants and animals, and many of the words were separated by lines and grouped into boxes. “It’s probably a cook book.”
I laughed. “Whatever it is, the Sweu’oni banned it, or it wouldn’t be here. Anyway, I have to do something; you heard my friend Geraln with the coconut vendor. I'm falling behind.”
Downstairs, we approached the desk to check out our books when I heard a woman’s voice to my side. “New man!”
It was one of the women who’d greeted me from the second floor balcony as Faren and I came out of the church. She was average height and wore a white silk loincloth with a circle pattern embroidered in black and gold thread that didn't even come down mid-thigh. I was still getting used to this—she wore nothing else beyond a necklace of silver chain with a pendant of a silver claw holding a teardrop ruby to dangle between her bare breasts.
She put a finger beneath my chin to lift my gaze to her face. “What I’m?”
“Trouble. You’re trouble.”
Her face was round with flat cheeks and doe eyes, and she’d pulled her long, white hair behind her shoulders, but what captivated me the most were her large, flat lips which she cracked open in a smile and spoke with a delicious accent. “I’m trouble? And what does this make you?”
“Lost,” I fought back a smile. “My friend Gino and I, we’re so new. We only just arrived here, we don’t know the language, and we don’t know where anything is. I wish we had someone to…”
Suddenly, she looked off to her left and gasped. She then stepped away from me and right up to Geraln, gazed up at Chirpy, and cooed. “zawa! ɣʊdʊ ɣʊdʊ ɣʊdʊ ŋeθuʃise! Awwww.”
I froze, unsure what to make of that. Gino stood with one eyebrow raised and watched silently as the woman held up her wrist for Chirpy to sniff. She chirped at her, and the woman then rubbed a finger under her chin.
“I’m Sæwi,” she turned to Geraln. “What’s your name?”
“Geraln of Gath.”
“Gath,” she repeated. “That’s in Osenia?”
I asked, “you've been there?”
“No,” she glanced at me briefly before returning her attention back to Geraln. “I hear the whole side of the mountain sparkles, that the wind passes over the trees like a wave of glitter’n the sun.”
Geraln explained, “that’s the diamond trees. It’s only like that in early spring; the sap exudes from tiny fractures in the bark and hardens in the winter.”
“It sounds beautiful.”
“Not as beautiful as you,” I quipped.
Sæwi scrunched up her eyebrows at me and turned back to Geraln. “He’s always like this?”
He and Gino answered her in unison, “yes.”
“That's what you’re reading?”
Geraln looked at the book in his hand and blushed. Principles of Vapor Mechanics. “Hehe… it's not supposed to be. I… I came in here to look for a story book or… something for my friend, here.” Chirpy held still during their conversation, turning her head so as to keep one eye on each of them. “I mean… I was looking at this one for a little bit, and she just… started getting excited. I've no idea why.”
Sæwi smiled. “She wants t’read what interests you. Tell me, this’s physical science; you're an intellectual?”
“Uh…” Geraln brushed his fingers through his hair. I’d never seen a girl… or a woman act that way around him before.
I answered for him. “He won the knowledge tournament for the entire Duchy last winter.”
He blushed and lowered his eyes. “I took third.”
Sæwi smiled wide at that and rested her hand on his arm. “You should know that Carthia women love intellectual men.”
“Oh, really?”
“Of course! I like t’have something interesting t’talk about besides how pretty he thinks I’m.”
Of course. Geraln asked, “do you mind if I ask, what do you… uh… what do you do here?”
“Of course I don’t mind! I’m inspector. Ships come in, I inspect. They go out, I inspect. Most of what I do’s counting things. Very exciting. What about you? You're what kind of man before you came here?”
Geraln looked at me briefly; I could see his heart fluttering through his flush cheeks. “I uh… I read a lot. Mostly I cook diamond tree stones while I try to figure out what I want to do.”
“Cook?” she asked.
“Yeah. The raw sap dissolves in water, so they have to be stabilized. Basically that means cooked in fine sand with lye, chalk, some other minerals. Every family has their own secret recipe, and it’s a very delicate process. The temperature has to be just right…”
“Yeah,” I still tried to insert myself into the conversation though it was clear where things were going. “I burnt mine once.”
Geraln smirked at me, “you ruined an A6, man! That thing would have been beautiful!”
Sæwi continued, “that’s why th’stones from Ozaria are a yellow color?”
“Yeah,” Geraln smiled. “A lot of the clans there add potassium salts. They have a trick in Ulum, I still haven’t figured out how they do this, but it’s some combination of malachite, lapis lazuli, iron ore, some other stuff. You look at the stone from one angle, and it’s perfectly clear. Turn it, and it’s like a rainbow prism.”
“Maybe you’ll figure’t out one day,” she smiled.
“Maybe,” he smiled back.
Sæwi glanced back and forth between me and Gino before turning her attention back to Geraln. “May I warn you?” she said.
Geraln furrowed his eyebrows. Gino and I leaned in.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that relative to the women from your home, Carthia women’re more forward.” She checked all three of us as she spoke.
Geraln chuckled. Gino and I did as well. “We’ve noticed!”
“Be careful with that; it’s a different culture. A lot of your men come here’n don’t understand until it’s too late. They’ll put you into three categories: those who’re useless, those who’re good for stud, and those who’re husband material. If you don’t know how to respect a lover, you’re useless…” she glanced at me, “calling grown women girls among other immaturities. That, you may grow out of it. But once you’re called stud, that's all you’ll ever be. Many men fuck every woman who came to him thinking that's what he wanted and was left feeling empty. But they’ve no use for you after that.”
She glanced briefly at Gino and I and continued. “You can have whichever you want, but not both. If you want to fuck a hundred women, you can do that… until they're bored of you and then you’ll sleep alone. But if you want to feel love, to feel companionship, closeness, that you must earn.”