Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (9 page)

“The other acolytes are calling you the surgeon priestess.”

“Beg pardon?”

“They say you’re the only one left.”

“The only one of what?” Bastille asked, knowing full well
what he meant.

“The only one who can make Cypriests. Until you teach us to.”

“I have little tolerance for insubordination in my classroom,
Brother Travers. I’ve told you several times now that our class period today is
to be spent in study. There will be opportunity for hands-on learning in the
future.”

“Do you do it for the Order?”

Bastille was growing angry now. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Do you perform the Enhancements as a show of your devotion
to the Order?”

“Everything I do is for the Order—and none of it for show.
Why else would I do it?”

“So people will like you.”

“That’s an impertinent thing to say. Being liked is an
unfortunate byproduct of being needed. Though I do sometimes wonder if anyone
appreciates all the other things I do around here.”

“I do,” he said with a grin.

“You don’t even know what I do.”

“I appreciate it, though.”

Aren’t we droll
. “Read, Brother Travers. Or I’ll
report your disobedience to the high priests and let them deal with you.”

Bastille resumed her work, shaking her head in annoyance.
This
young man is too inquisitive by far. He’ll soon learn where asking too many
questions gets him
. She could already tell she was going to have trouble
stalling one so eager to learn.
What an ironic turn of events
, she
thought.
I’ve been hoping for a talented student for so long. Yet now that
I’ve found one with potential, I suspect the high priests are plotting to get
rid of me. What I wouldn’t give to have my previous class of acolytes back
again. Those three were as promising as a thief’s honesty
.

It wasn’t until a few days later that Brother Travers finally
called Sister Bastille’s bluff. “We’re wasting our time with all this reading,”
he said, tossing his book on the floor, where it hit the stone with a loud
smack. “Why should we have to wade through thousands of pages of useless drivel
when you already know everything you need to teach us?”

“What’s your hurry, Brother Travers? Do you fear you have
anything less than a lifetime with the Order in which to become proficient?”

That seemed to hit a nerve. “Bring me to the high priests if
you think I’m out of line, but I’ve seen women in charge before, and it never
ended well. I say the longer you’re the only one with the experience here, the
worse off we’ll all be.”

Bastille inhaled through her nose. Without a word, she rose
and went into the back room. The gurney’s wheels squeaked as she pushed it into
place beside her cold lockers and unloaded the corpse of one of the two
initiates who had died during the most recent recruitment period. A bony man of
about thirty, he had a small nose, thinning brown hair, and one arm that was
noticeably shorter than the other.

This was the initiate who had fallen victim to the
contamination in his gut. Bastille had seen Brother Travers sitting with him at
meals a few times during their initiation. She could smell the rot when she opened
the locker door, and she knew that what festered within his swollen belly was
likely worse than any novice could overcome.

Wheeling the body into the front room, Bastille slid him onto
the slab and pushed the gurney away. Then she removed her robes and instructed
the two acolytes to do the same.
Now we shall see how bad off we are
,
she promised. “Sister Severin, if you’d be so kind as to stand to my right.
Brother Travers—behind the slab, if you please.”

Both acolytes did as they were told. Brother Travers blinked
when he saw who the corpse belonged to. Bastille handed him a scalpel and
stepped aside. “The sternum is the long frontal bone of the chest to which the
ribs are attached by the costal cartilages. The small extension of cartilage at
the lower end of the sternum is called the xiphoid process. Brother Travers,
are you left-handed or right-handed?”

“Left-handed,” he replied, licking his lips.

“With your right hand, please locate the xiphoid process.”

With some reluctance, Brother Travers placed two fingers at
the base of the corpse’s sternum, shivering in the cold of the room. “Okay.”

“The scalpel in your left hand has a number-ten blade with a
number-three graduated handle. Assume the palmar grip by holding the handle
between your thumb and middle finger. Place your pointer finger above and
behind the blade to provide downward pressure, and extend your index finger to
serve as a guide. Make a midline incision starting at the base of the xiphoid
process, following the linea alba, curving around the umbilicus, and ending
just above the pubic symphysis.”

Brother Travers gave her a sidelong glance, his face white as
milk.

“Something wrong, kind Brother? You’ve had several class
periods to review the provided texts. I’m sure by now you’ve familiarized yourself
with the requisite terminology.”

The acolyte’s brow deepened. His mouth took on a determined
wrinkle. He set the blade below the two fingers of his left hand. After a deep
breath, he began his incision. The cut was clumsy, and not at all straight. When
he was done, Travers lifted the scalpel and looked to Sister Bastille for
guidance.

She stepped over to inspect his work. “You’ve barely broken
the skin. There’s a layer of muscle and collagen which must be penetrated
before we can gain access to the viscera. Try again, Brother Travers. Add more
pressure this time—but not too much.”

Travers began again. This time, when the blade sliced through
the muscle, the corpse’s bulging abdomen deflated with a hollow belching sound.
There was a wet, rancid smell that made Brother Travers stop where he was. He
swayed on his feet, eyes rolling back. Then he leaned over to conceal his face
behind the slab and grunted. Something splashed on the flagstones.

Sister Bastille had to smile. “Are we ready to continue?”

Travers let the scalpel clatter to the slab and fell to his
hands and knees, where he gave the flagstones a second washing. His dreadlocks
hung heavy and limp, soaking in the puddle.

No? Alright, then
. “Sister Severin, kindly help
Brother Travers to the privy.”

When the acolytes returned twenty minutes later, they found
the corpse removed from the stone slab and Sister Bastille back at her desk.
“There are two mops in the back room,” she told them. “Brother Travers, I trust
you’re feeling well enough to spend the rest of today’s class helping Sister
Severin tidy my floor, which you’ve so deftly defiled.”

Sister Severin rolled her eyes and groaned.

Travers gave a pained nod and shuffled off to get the mops.

CHAPTER 9

Conscription

Lizneth had finally made it back to Tanley, but life in
her small village was hardly back to normal. She had told her family the whole
story of her travels, starting with her recreational trip to Bolck-Azock and
ending with her journey through the blind-world with Neacal Griogan and his
calaihn
.
She reserved the more accurate version for when the nestlings weren’t around,
which happened so seldom it took her quite a while to relate the whole of her
journey’s events to her parents. She told them everything, except that she had
taken a mate while she was abroad.

Not a day passed in those early days of her return to Tanley
that Lizneth did not fear Sniverlik’s wrath. News of the war with the
calaihn
came often and was frequently accompanied by some dire prediction about the
conflict’s outcome. ‘
The
calaihn
will win and drive us all into
slavery
,’ some said. ‘
Sniverlik will win, and we’ll all be back where we
started
,’ others claimed.

The news came from all over, but the truth was never easy to
discern. One day someone would claim Sniverlik had all but driven the
calaihn
back to their homes; the next, Neacal Griogan’s
calaihn
had somehow
gained the upper hand and were pushing deeper into
ikzhe
territory. The
morale of the villagers seemed to sway from one extreme to the other on a
near-daily basis. But for that first nerve-wracking stretch of time, war never
reached Tanley.

It was on a particularly trying evening, after a day in which
Lizneth’s brothers and sisters had been as boisterous a bunch as they were
capable of, that war did come to Tanley. Not by means of a battle, but in the
arrival of an army.

Lizneth had just begun telling the tale of the Lake and the
Cotterphage—a yarn she had spun at least half a dozen times since her
homecoming, to a crowd that had grown with each retelling—when the outer
tunnels came alive with an ear-splitting racket, the likes of which she had
never heard before. The goatbrothers Nurnik and Skee lost interest in Lizneth’s
story and hurried off on their staves, returning to their herds to guide them
up the high road to the moonwell for the night’s grazing. Several frightened
nestlings scampered off for the safety of their homes while Lizneth’s siblings
crowded around her.

“To the mulligraws. Quickly now,” she instructed, though she
wasn’t sure who or what was coming.

Together they ran for the family fields, diving through the
underbrush and tucking themselves between the leafy folds. When they were all
safe inside, Lizneth crept to the edge nearest the path and poked her snout
through for a scent. The mulligraws hung fat and crisp from tall green vines
wet with dew. Above their earthy aromas Lizneth scented something familiar: a
salt-damp
haick
, slick and clear blue.

When the first of the troops marched around the tunnel bend,
Lizneth saw her nose hadn’t failed her. It was a sizeable force, loud with the
rumbling of gruff voices and the clinking of rough-hewn armor, like an
avalanche of pots and kettles. There was no stealth or espionage in their
manner; no strategy in their movement. Such things were left to the burrow-kin
and the
bolck-zhehn
, who survived their close proximity to the hu-mans
only by going unnoticed.

It was the first time Lizneth had seen the Marauders since
the battle in the above-world. They stamped down the road and crossed the river
bridge, where the deserted banks showed muddy signs of their recent occupants.
These were not the same Marauders who had faced Neacal’s
calaihn
on the
mountain ridge, Lizneth realized. The column was loose and disorganized. The
soldiers’ garb and weaponry was newly-forged; their armor gleamed in the dark,
absent of the markings and ablation of battle.
Reinforcements, then… or
fresh recruits
, she surmised.

In the village square—or what might’ve passed for one, if
Tanley had possessed a proper square—the Marauders dispersed into an amorphous
cluster and carried on with their noisy banter. All across the frontage of
nearby shops and cottages, Lizneth saw windows shuttered and curtains drawn.
These defenses were soon rendered ineffectual, for out of the mob emerged a
brown-and-white banded buck Lizneth knew all too well. Rotabak, once
Sniverlik’s lowly foot soldier, was now
kradacht
over this entire
contingent of Marauders. She knew it by the zithstone amulet which hung about
his neck—a far smaller stone than the one Sniverlik carried in his scepter, but
a symbol of power among the Marauders nonetheless.

A ripple formed in the crowd as Rotabak shoved his way
through and lumbered up the rise toward the mulligraw fields. Lizneth shrank
back from the edge, though the massive buck didn’t seem to have noticed her.
She felt movement at her feet and looked down to see little Raial cowering
between her legs, his arms wrapped around her shins and his tiny claws digging
into the flesh of her calves. She dared not say a word, so instead she lowered
a hand to stroke him behind the ears. Further back through the foliage, she
could see two more dark balls of fur, Hasquol and her little sister Thrin,
their eyes bright with curiosity and fear.
Where are the others?
Lizneth
wondered with sudden panic. But there was no time to look for them, and no way
to do so without rustling the vines.

Reaching the top of the rise, Rotabak turned to face his
guzpikhehn
;
they in turn quieted and gave him their attention. “
Vilck-zhehn
,” he
began, and his voice boomed through the depths and echoed from house to house
along the village road. “
Se chevehr. Se chevehr ungh furgesch dyur twozhehn
ungh dyur cuzhehn. Tanagh shekh chevehr, nugh azhbol
Sniverlik-
eh
.”

A silence fell over Tanley. The Marauders glanced around, searching
for the brave soul who would be the first to respond to the order. For some
time, no one did.

Then a door opened, and two elderly
ikzhehn
stepped
into the street. Lizneth recognized them at once: Rhi and Taznik, one of the
poorest old couples in Tanley. They were potters, and like Lizneth’s own
parents, their age had begun to hinder their work. Perhaps the couple’s most
notable trait, however, was that they were Sniverlik’s adoptive parents.

Rhi offered a hand to help his mate step down onto the hard-packed
road that ran past their modest cottage. His chin-fur was snowy white, as were
the thick patches covering his chest and back. Taznik was a petite dam of meek
carriage, but Mama said she had never lacked for conviction. One would’ve
needed a firm temperament in order to raise a buck like Sniverlik.
It was
probably Taznik’s idea that they be first to stand and be counted
, Lizneth
reflected.

Slowly, other doors began to open. Villagers came reluctantly
forth, bringing their young and their old alike, just as Rotabak had commanded.
By Sniverlik’s order
, he had said. Lizneth had watched the Marauders
take tithes of food and supplies and nestlings many times before, but this was
different. There was an urgency to this visit that belied the Marauders’ usual
reckless bullying, as if the
calai
invasion had suddenly made them the
local heroes by default.

When Rotabak spoke again, his tone was informal. He used the
Aion-speech and picked up where Sniverlik’s command had left off. “Step
forward, all of you. Each and every resident of Tanley is required to present
himself for inspection and delegation.”

Delegation?
thought Lizneth.
Delegation to what?
A
new movement in the foliage to her right caught her attention. Malak, ever the
bravest of her young siblings, was making his way through the mulligraws,
following Rotabak’s decree. Lizneth considered making a grab for him before he
could emerge, but her little brother was too far out of reach.

“I can fight,” said Malak as he marched out into the open,
bold as a billy goat.

Rotabak turned to squint at the nestling, whose head came
just shy of the Marauder’s waist when he stood on his hind legs. “Can you,
now?” he said with a laugh. “Why don’t you go down and stand with the others?”

“I’ll stay up here with you,” Malak insisted.

“You’ll go where I tell you, or I’ll make sure you…” Rotabak
broke off, as if unable to find the words to scold the youngling. “Alright. You
stay with me. But you stand still, and you pay attention. Say, where’d you come
from?”

Malak shrugged, then pointed sheepishly at the mulligraws.

Rotabak whirled. His whiskers twitched, flexed like steel
wires. He began to pace along the first row of vines, sniffing the air and
peering through the leaves. Lizneth shuddered when his gaze slid past her,
certain she’d been spotted. He stopped for a moment, so close she could see the
twitching lid of his lazy eye, thin and pink and hairless. Lizneth held her
breath. Then Rotabak continued on down the row, speaking as though he weren’t
quite sure who he was talking to, or who to scent for.

“Out of there, you. Out, now… if you’re in there. This is the
only warning I’m going to give you. Come out, or I’ll come in and get you.”

Lizneth didn’t move. She was gripping the scruff of little
Raial’s neck with one hand and the hilt of her dagger with the other, ready to
run or fight. She’d taken to wearing the dagger around town since she’d been
home, though all she got for it was flak from the villagers, who said she was
better off leaving such things outside of town where they belonged.

There was no way she could get out of town now. The mulligraw
fields dead-ended at a sheer rock wall on the far side.
Rotabak doesn’t know
I’m in here
, she told herself.
He doesn’t know if anyone’s in here.
He’ll give up and go away
.

One of the Marauders, a burly blazed mink, trudged up the
rise to speak with Rotabak. For a moment his attentions shifted, and Lizneth
relaxed a little.

“They’re all lined up and ready for inspection,” said the
mink. “Looks to be too few of them, if you ask me. Should we search the
buildings for objectors?”

“Do a full sweep,” said Rotabak. “I want every closet and
crawlspace cleared out. We need every able-bodied buck we can find. Don’t worry
about the border farms, we’ll cover them on our way out.” The mink nodded and
started down the hill, but Rotabak halted him. “Send Odja and Flikz up here.
Tell them to pick three others and bring them along.”

Less than a minute later, five of Rotabak’s brutes were
standing around him at the top of the rise. Lizneth’s feet were getting sore
and her tail was heated, but she put a finger to her lips to signal the little
ones to stay quiet. She saw Rotabak point toward Malak as he spoke.

“This little one came out of the fields just now. I scent at
least two others in the stalks. Get in there and clear them out.”

The Marauders fanned wide and began to stumble through the
foliage. Vines closed in around them, grasping at their armor until they were
tangled up like moss-covered stones.

“Cut your way through if you have to,” Rotabak yelled.

The Marauders drew their rusty iron longblades and began to
slash at the undergrowth, felling half a dozen mulligraw vines with every
swing. Lizneth nearly cried out when she saw the first stalks topple over, but
she held her tongue. Before long they were hacking their way through the field
like the reapers of death-tiding. That was exactly what they would become if
Lizneth’s family didn’t bring in a crop at the end of the long year.
The
harvest!
she thought, her insides screaming out. There was no way to put a
stop to it, though; not without revealing herself.

Mulligraws bore continual fruit for months after they
matured; getting them to maturity was the painstaking part. Since her return,
Lizneth had managed to revive the dying crop her parents had been unable to
care for properly in her absence. Now the Marauders were amputating the densest
growth and trampling the hollowood shafts she’d staked in the ground to hold
them up. Damage this severe might take longer to repair than she had left in
the season. Giving a last warning look to her brothers and sisters, she pried
Raial’s hands from her legs and told him to stay put. If this went on any
longer, the Marauders would find everyone.

“Stop! Stop it!” she called, wringing her hands to be seen as
she moved from her hiding place. “I’m here. Stop cutting my vines. There’s no
need. Here I am.” She emerged from the greenery and signaled her surrender,
making clear to the destroyers of her livelihood that they had won.

A gnarled grin spread over Rotabak’s face. His eye lagged
sideways as he tilted his head to study her. “Ah… who’s this? Lizneth, isn’t
it? Halak and Kyriah’s girl. The bean farmers.”

You know very well who I am
, she wanted to say, but
didn’t.

“Sniverlik warned me about you. Why were you hiding? You resisted
a direct order.”

Sniverlik mentioned me?
she nearly asked.
Am I that
prevalent on his mind with all that’s going on?
“No, I… I wasn’t
resisting,” she said. “I was deep in the rows, picking, and I… didn’t hear. I
didn’t know you’d come.”

“Picking, eh?” He eyed her, another tremor fluttering through
the pink lid and withered lashes. “Where’s your basket? Where’s the fruit of
your harvest?”

“I left it and came running when I heard you,” she said
quickly.

“Ah, yes. Yes, yes, of course.” He nodded in mock
understanding. “You must be tired from all that picking, I imagine. Exhausted,
even.”

“No,” she started to say.

“Well, no matter. My
keguzpikhehn
are starving, you
know. These caves are cold and damp, and we’ve a long march ahead of us. They’d
love a bowl of mulligraw stew to ward their bones against the chill. I’m sure
they’d be happy to help you find your basket.”