> A Sjocelym farmer came across a poor Aesvain in the market one day who plucked at his sleeve, asking for work. “Ye honored,” the Aesvain said, “spare me a coin and I will work the plow in your stead.” The farmer refused, not having much coin to his name, but the Aesvain persisted, saying: “Ye honored, when you return I’ll have plowed day and night. I’ll have near worked my fingers to the bone. Pay my wage now and I’ll have done your work twice over before you return from the market.” The farmer, won over by the Aesvain’s earnest promises, handed the man a spare utel and bade him work. He went about his business in town for some time content that the hard labor was being done in his stead, but when he returned home he found his fields untouched. The farmer went home in a rage, cursing the Aesvain for a thief - but upon returning to his delighted wife he found that the Aesvain had been true to his word, if regrettably nonspecific.
>
> - Sjocelym joke.
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The cobbles of Sjan Saal quickly gave way to the packed dirt of the valley road, which snaked along the muddy river for several miles until the soil grew rocky and sloped up to a gentle rise. The roads were clear, for the most part, with the few rickshaws and handcarts they encountered moving quickly aside to permit them passage.
They traveled in silence. The scent of smoke from the conflagration at the carriage house still permeated the cab. Tasja’s muffled sobs had faded after he lapsed into an exhausted sleep in the back, tossing fitfully and occasionally waking in brief moments of panic as the truck hit bumps. Arjun sat beside him in the back with Gusje and Jesse as they reviewed the maps Tasja had brought along, humming a quiet song whenever the boy grew agitated.
“So,” Jackie said. “We going to talk about what happened back there?” She looked over at Mark, who sighed and gestured helplessly back at her.
“I guess that’s what we’re doing,” he replied, annoyance evident in his voice. Jackie didn’t respond, and he looked over at her expectantly. “Well? You’re the one who brought it up.”
Jackie gestured frustratedly, glaring back at him. “What do you want me to say, Mark? You shot a man in the face while he was unconscious! You don’t understand why that’s a problem?”
“More of a problem than him waking up?”, Mark retorted. “Jack, the guy was already setting his own shit on fire to get after us. He wasn’t going to calm down and leave us alone when he woke up. We’d have men from Sjan Saal after us, or he’d report ahead on one of those plate-pairs and have us arrested on trumped-up charges in the next town.”
“He was already done!”, Jackie said, scowling. “Did you forget our plan was to use his local rivals against him? The ones that were going to pounce on him over some broken agreements? Do you really think he would still be in a position to threaten us after stealing the city’s sacred boom mitten and setting the palace grounds on fire? His own guards were a few minutes away from stopping him!”, she fumed. “No matter what we did, he was done!”
Mark let out a frustrated sigh, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. “We didn’t know any of that for sure at the time. I didn’t know how much time we had, the fucking building was on fire! It’s all fine to talk about rivals on the council and friendly guards now that we’re safely away. But right then?”, he asked, giving her an exasperated look. “I didn’t know if the guards were about to rush us or if there were reinforcements coming. I took the option that removed the danger, one hundred percent certain.”
Jackie gave him a nettled look. “And you don’t think that killing a governor might have some repercussions later down the road?”, she said icily.
“Fuck’s sake,” Mark groaned. “I don’t know! Maybe? For all I know I’m governor now, I don’t know how things work here. The council might send us a fucking fruit basket, though, and it doesn’t sound like the scriptorium guys will be sad to see him gone after he stole their shit. I’ve met more popular people.” He shot a glare at her, cutting off her retort before she could speak. “It’s not an excuse,” he said. “Just a fact. A lot of people are better off with him gone, including us.”
There was a long moment of silence in the cab as the truck trundled along the road. The gentle whisper of roadside trees scraping against the sides accompanied Arjun’s soft crooning from the back. The sun was growing low in the sky and hung squarely in their path, forcing Mark to shift awkwardly to keep his face shaded.
Jackie cleared her throat, looking into the impending sunset with a distracted expression. “I learned something from Gusje the other day, about their names,” she said quietly. “They each start off with just one syllable glyph, like Tesvaji’s daughter Zha. Their parents give them their name when they grow their first tooth. When they come of age their parents name them again, and their name has two glyphs like Gusje or Mevi.”
Mark grunted with halfhearted interest, and Jackie paused for a moment. “They get their third glyph when they marry,” she said quietly, “and the couple shares it - like Tesvaji and Saneji. The shared glyph completes their given name. Some also get a title, like ‘Ma’, but only one of those at a time. The surname, though, that gets as many glyphs as they have children. One for each of the children’s first glyphs. So from Mevi, Gusje and Zha you get Tesvaji Ma Meguzha.”
“Huh,” Mark muttered. “Neat.”
“It tells you a lot about a person just from knowing their name,” she said. “And that’s how I know not everyone will be glad to hear that Vimodi Ma Nasa is dead.”
Mark’s face paled, and he didn’t say anything for a long minute. Finally, he looked over at her with a pained expression, his eyes glistening slightly in the waning golden sunlight. “Fuck, Jack, what do you want me to say?”, he asked hoarsely. “It’s not like I wanted to kill him. I just-”
He broke off, shaking his head. “I told you I was in Syria, before,” he said quietly. “Things got pretty intense there for a while, we saw a lot of action. Lot of deaths. Sometimes ours, mostly theirs. I have to figure some of them had kids, wives, just like some of ours did.” He pursed his lips and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “But it’s not a factor, Jack. Doesn’t matter why he’s fighting or who he’s got at home or what his favorite color is. He’s got a gun. He’ll kill you, or you’ll kill him.”
Mark held a hand up, forestalling Jackie’s response again. “I know,” he said. “Today wasn’t the same. Vimodi was still dangerous. There was a chance, a good chance, that letting him live would end with all of us dying. We can’t take risks like that out here. All it takes is one miss and we’re done.”
Jackie gave him an evaluating glance before turning back forward, slumped in her seat. “Where does that end?”, she asked quietly. “How many lives are we worth?”
Mark snorted. “What’s our other option?”, he asked. “Getting robbed? Dying? I’m not setting out to hurt anyone, Jack, but if they come at us I’m punching right back.”
“Ah, shit,” Jackie sighed, exasperated. “This isn’t really my territory. I can at least see where you’re coming from even if I really don’t like it.” She sat forward and gave him a serious look. “I think that’s more than you’re going to get from Arjun, though,” she said quietly.
“What?”, Mark said, surprised. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.”
Jackie shrugged. “He probably won’t,” she replied. “But if you see him as a friend then you should talk with him about what happened today. Even if he doesn’t bring it up, he was deeply troubled by it. I haven’t known him for that long but even I could see it.”
“If he’s that torn up about it I doubt I could get him to see things my way,” Mark grumbled.
“You still haven’t gotten me to see things your way, asshole,” Jackie retorted, socking him on the shoulder and immediately wincing. “Oh, shit, that’s where you got burned,” she said apologetically, blinking at his non-reaction to the blow. “You okay? I thought you’d be pretty sore.”
Mark pulled a layer of the cloth wrap on his arm aside to reveal Gusje’s bracelet tucked into the bandages. “Our princess lent me her bracelet,” Mark said. “She told me it was a healing charm, I figured what the hell.” He grinned, patting his arm. “Turns out not only does it work, it works great. I bet when I take these off you won’t even be able to tell I got hurt.”
“Wow,” Jackie observed, shocked. “That’s… I don’t know. Water and light and force, I get. Even the fireball glove makes a certain sort of sense. But ‘healing’ is so… abstract?” She shook her head, frowning. “Are you even sure it’s safe to use like that?”
“Hey, she wears it literally all the time,” Mark retorted. “Only thing wrong with her is that she’s short, and I don’t think that was the bracelet’s fault.”
Jackie snorted a quiet laugh, stealing a glance towards the back where Gusje sat in deep study of Tasja’s documents. “Still,” she said contemplatively, “that’s a powerful thing to have on you all the time. I wonder if there are any long-term effects.”
“You should ask her when you get around to learning Ceiqa,” Mark said dryly, ignoring Jackie’s annoyed look from beside him. Ahead of them the sun slipped behind the slope ahead of them at last, and he rubbed a tired hand over his face. “Finally, my goddamn eyes were starting to hurt. I think we should find a spot to chill for a while before too long, though. These roads aren’t great and we’re not topped up on charge. I don’t want to get stuck burning our fuel if I can help it.”
They sat without speaking for a while as Mark carefully guided the truck off the path and into a clearing with a copse of trees at its center, the brush thick enough to hide the truck from casual view if they parked on the other side. The terrain here had grown more mountainous, and in the twilight Jackie could make out the bright dots of flowers in the alpine meadow as they drove.
The others made their way forward when they felt the shift in terrain, leaving Tasja alone in the rear compartment. “Stopping for the night?”, Arjun said coolly.
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Mark glanced at Jackie, who quirked her eyebrow in an I-told-you-so manner. “Ah, yeah,” he said. “I figure we can post up here until midday tomorrow, let the truck get some juice before we keep going.”
There was a general acknowledgement from the group, which split back into the familiar routine of preparing the truck for a bivouac - except the cool morning air from the desert had been replaced with crisp evening winds that carried the scent of tree resin and flowers, and the night was alive with the sound of insects, birds and the wind rushing in the trees.
Jesse paused, noticing that Jackie had yet to move from the truck’s front passenger seat. “Something wrong?”, he asked softly.
She gave him a wan smile and shook her head. “Nah,” she said cheerfully. “It’s nothing.” She stood and clapped him on the shoulder before making her way to the back hatch. Jesse watched her go for a moment, then shrugged and went to help unload.
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“I’m not sure I understand,” Gusje said, annoyance beginning to creep into her voice. Firelight flickered, showing her face dimly against the dark backdrop of the forest. They had judged a small fire worth the risk in the cool mountain air, and even Tasja had been roused to come sit around the tentatively burning flame.
“It’s…”, Jesse began, trailing off. “All right,” he said. “When clouds send a, ah, powerful light to the ground during a storm, what’s the word for that?” He mimed the jagged path of a lightning bolt with one finger.
“Zhecima,” Tasja supplied dully.
Gusje blinked. “Clouds do that?”, she said incredulously. The others in the circle nodded in amused confirmation while Jesse pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Hrm. All right. How about...”, he muttered, trailing off before perking up and snapping his fingers. “Sometimes a spark will happen when you touch something. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Like in a sandstorm,” Gusje said, nodding. “I’ve seen it happen.”
“That’s electricity,” Jesse said, smiling faintly at the frowns the word’s jumble of consonants elicited from the two locals. “That’s the force we use to power the chariot.”
Gusje gave the chariot a sidelong look, taking in its bulk, then cast a nervous glance upwards at the veiled sky. “Do we need to worry about the clouds?”, she asked hesitantly.
Mark burst out laughing, drawing a scowl from Gusje and smiles from the others. Her flushed cheeks were notable even in the dim firelight as she glared at the grinning faces around her. “I assume the answer is no, since you all find this so amusing,” she said hotly, standing and walking away from the fire.
“Hey, wait!”, Mark called out. “Where are you going?”
“For a walk,” she shouted, not bothering to turn her head.
Mark made to stand, but Jackie grabbed his arm and shook her head. “Let her go,” she said, still grinning faintly. “You never help anything by talking.”
Mark grumbled and shook his head, settling back down by the fire. There was a span of silence where the crackle of the fire seemed to be the only noise in the world, its dim glow the only light visible under the hazy black sky.
Jesse frowned. “Quiet,” he noted. “The forest wasn’t this quiet earlier.”
The group slowly straightened up as his implication settled in, casting glances out at the darkness. “It could be normal, for all we know,” Arjun said lightly, although he kept his voice pitched low. “There’s no guarantee the wildlife here-”
A startled yelp came from the forest, followed by a great racket of cracking branches and brush. Mark and Jesse were on their feet instantly, raising their weapons and moving away from the fire to clear their eyesight. The noise became louder, closer, rising to a crescendo when Gusje burst into the clearing at a dead sprint.
“Men in the forest!”, she called out breathlessly. Her face and arms were badly scratched from her run, and one of her knees glistened with blood in the dim light.
“How many?”, Mark asked, his eyes flicking from the treeline to watch her as she arrived at the fire. “They hurt you?”
She shook her head, breathing heavily. “No,” she said frustratedly. “Hit my knee on a rock. I ran before they could get close. I think they followed me, but they may have stopped…” She trailed off, rubbing a hand over the bleeding scratches on her forearms. “I only saw two but it sounded like there were many more of them,” she added worriedly.
“Let’s get everything loaded up,” Mark said, jerking his head toward the small pile of gear by the fire and the half-assembled solar array. “That goddamn guard captain. Should have known he’d never let us leave with the Hand so easily.”
The gear went in easily enough, but the solar array was tricky to work with even in daylight. Their meagre fire made for slow going and pinched fingers, its dancing shadows casting the clearing’s grass in the barest of light and leaving every shadow a looming, darting phantasm against the dense treeline.
A snapping twig seemed to echo like thunder through the copse, and both of their rifles swiveled like compass needles towards the sound.
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Jesse’s breath came fast in his ears as he strained to see anything in the darkness enveloping them. No movement followed the noise, and after a few seconds he forced himself to relax, to take measured breaths. Sweat beaded his brow despite the cool evening air, and his hands were slick on the grip of his rifle.
He saw a flicker of motion in the trees. His rifle came up to tuck into his shoulder once more with reassuring solidity. His breathing slowed, and he felt the cool air wash over him.
“Mark,” he said quietly, tonelessly.
Beside him, Mark swiveled to aim at the disturbance. Jesse barely had to look at him to know where he was, the faint noise of his motion enough for his mind to supply the rest from experience, training, drills. The two men stood motionless in the clearing for several steady heartbeats before a figure emerged from the woods.
Jesse’s finger tightened imperceptibly on the trigger. The man was alone, carrying a spear. No, not alone. Figures flitted dark-on-dark between the trunks of the trees behind the man. He could feel Mark sighting down his own rifle beside him, hear the tightening of his hands on the rifle grip. Another figure emerged behind the man, and another. He could see a milling flow of motion in the dark of the wood, at least a dozen more people.
Mark saw it too. “Get in the truck!”, he hissed, taking a step back. His foot settled into the damp loam, legs shifting as he prepared to absorb the recoil from his shot. Jesse did not move; he had been ready since the second man emerged. There were five, six of them now. Amid the indistinct motion a pale female shape stood out, her white dress reflecting the firelight like a wan imitation of the piercingly bright eyes just above-
Jesse heard Mark take a short breath and hold it. His arm darted out to catch the underside of Mark’s gun, jolting it upward just as the shot rang out into the night. For several seconds the rolling echo of its report thundered back from the mountainside, and in the clearing nobody moved.
“The fuck?”, Mark spat, glaring at Jesse and taking a step away from him. “What was that?”
The calm shattered and Jesse could feel his heart thudding wildly again, hear his breath rushing in time with the rapid beats. He took a long, slow breath and forced it back, slowly taking his hand off of Mark’s gun. “Don’t shoot,” he said quietly, looking to the side where the advancing figures stood frozen with uncertainty.
He moved quickly to the truck and clambered to the top turret, swinging the mount around to point at the advancing group - and flicked on the spotlight. Instant brilliance flooded the clearing, causing the ragtag group caught in its beam to recoil and shout in dismay. There were at least fifteen or so, either out in the field or crouched within the cover of the forest. Most wore ragged, patched clothing that did little to cover their emaciated physiques. The one in front was a dour-looking man clutching a walking stick, what Jesse had taken for a spear in the darkness.
Of the bright-eyed girl, he saw no sign.
“The fuck?”, Mark repeated, his face losing a bit of its color. These were obviously no soldiers. He kept his weapon high and took a step forward. “What do you want?”, he shouted in Ceiqa.
Most of the newcomers flinched away from his voice, save for the man in front and a few standing close to him. They conferred quietly among each other for a moment, their whispers not carrying far enough to hear.
“Mark,” Jesse said quietly. “I don’t think they’re here to hurt us. I saw…” He hesitated, looking at the others. It hadn’t been a half-imagined trick of the light, he knew what he had seen - but standing there with the others looking curiously up at him, the absurdity of what he meant to say hammered into him like a physical thing.
Inhale, exhale. He clawed back the scraps of calm from the moment before, concentrating on anything but his pounding heart. Everyone in the clearing was looking at him, their eyes seeming to put him in the glare of half a hundred smaller spotlights. Sweat broke out on his brow again.
He was in the interior of the truck, breathing hard. Jesse didn’t remember descending from the turret.
“Hey!”, Mark shouted from outside, swiveling his attention back to the group. “Don’t move!” The newcomers clustered close to the man with the walking stick, looking back at Mark with hard stares.
Jackie stepped close to Mark, talking insistently in a low voice until he gave her an irritated shake of his head. Arjun was looking worriedly around, Gusje and Tasja were deep in urgent, hushed conversation. They hadn’t moved to enter the truck since the light came on, perhaps unwilling to make sudden movements. He could feel the tension building outside, read it in Mark’s tense posture and the cautious shifting of the newcomers.
Through the glass windows of the truck Jesse could see everything spiraling out of control. The group from the forest was losing their fear of the light and of Mark, and Mark could read it as well as he. It’d be different if they could just flee, but the solar array-
He had to go out.
Inhale, exhale. The thought of opening the door and stepping back out nearly made him vomit, and he spent a long second teetering on the edge of nausea before he clamped it down. His eyes wandered over the interior of the truck, seeking purchase anywhere but the side door. A discarded coil of rope, a bag, a crate-
He stood and raced to the crate, feeling a rush of the cool night air on his face as he swept the lid open. The sick anxiety faded as a course of action clicked into place. He reached his hand into the crate.
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“Sajeh!”, Jesse shouted, pushing open the door and holding a tan packet high above his head. He waved it back and forth, then lobbed it in a slow arc towards the man with the walking stick. There was a flurry of motion from the newcomers as they crowded around their leader. As their focus slid off Mark, he turned to give Jesse a quizzical expression.
“Any particular reason you just screamed ‘bread’ and threw an MRE at them?”, he asked. His voice was casual, but the tension beneath it was obvious. A low murmur rippled through the ragged-looking crowd as their leader opened the plastic and peered inside.
“They’re not bandits,” Jesse said quietly. “They’re starving.” The man with the walking stick opened one of the interior packets and a thrill of excitement rippled through the crowd, hands reaching desperately towards the man as he took an exploratory nibble from a beef stick. His face slackened with profound relief as he chewed slowly, then began to tear off small chunks for each of the grasping hands stretched in his direction.
Jesse held out another MRE, walking forward slowly with a few more held tightly tucked under one arm. Those at the periphery of the group surrounding the old man rushed to meet him but were brought up short by a woman with a pinched, serious face who moved to stand in front of them. She looked up at Jesse with a cool expression.
“What does this cost?”, she asked, her voice rasping and weak.
He shook his head and held the packet out to her. “We want to rest and be on our way,” Jesse said. “That’s all.” He held eye contact with her for a few moments before shifting uncomfortably and pressing the packet into her arms. She was immediately pulled away by others of her party reaching out to her while others turned to Jesse with pleading looks.
Two more from the crowd received Jesse’s remaining meals along with admonitions to eat slowly and chew their food, and Arjun stepped up beside him with another armful to distribute. He gave Jesse a quick smile and a nod as he moved around the clearing, returning to the fire when all of the visitors were occupied with a meal.
“We only have so many of those,” Mark pointed out when they returned to the fire.
“We only have so many bullets,” Jesse replied mildly. “We can get more food.”
Mark looked a bit taken aback at the implied rebuke, but after a moment he shrugged and sat down by the fire with his back to the truck and his rifle across his knees. “How’d you know they weren’t soldiers?”, he asked. “I couldn’t see for shit and Gusje came back all banged up, I just figured…”
“I saw, ah,” Jesse said hesitantly. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Bunch of little things, probably.” He was saved from further explanation by Arjun, who nodded his head toward the feasting visitors. The man with the walking stick and the serious-faced woman were making their way towards the fire.