Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

Gendra, who wanted no interference from Tharius Don, returned her agreement in like form. “No. Our people shall receive no more harm than is necessary, Lord Propagator. No more than is necessary.”

Later that day, Tharius Don leaned in a window of his rooms. The Library Tower overlooked the Accusers’ House. Somewhere behind one of those windows in that cold pile was the Superior of Bans Tower.

Tharius Don put his head in his hands, for the moment unconscious of those on distant Towers or roofs who might be watching.

“Kessie,” he moaned in an agony of empathetic pain. “Oh, by the gods, Kessie. Kessie.”

8

Thrasne had not wanted to think of Pamra again. He had put her out of his mind; he had refused to speak of her to Suspirra; he believed he could forget her in the years that followed his last departure from Baristown. But during those six years, the drowned woman had moved her lips once more to say, “My baby!” This time Thrasne had not needed to draw the sequence of facial expressions. He knew them as well as he knew his own. What should he have done? He asked himself in irritation. Should he have abducted Pamra there on the steps of the Tower? Should he have, dragged her away like some impetuous lover? What could he have done? After a time he stopped thinking about what he might have done and began thinking what he would have to do next time.

When he came to Bans for the fourth time, Thrasne was thirty-six, a stocky, thatch-haired man with a boatman’s crinkles around his eyes from looking into the sun half of every day. He had stopped to give Blint-wife her first promised moneys, surprised to find her stout and healthy, happier looking than she had ever been aboard the Gift, eager to come aboard and hear all the news, bearing gifts of cakes and a keg of ale. She asked Thrasne, somewhat shyly, and with careful attention to who might be by to overhear what she said, if he had time to carve some gifts for her. “I’m being married again,” she said. “To an old Riverman [this in a whisper] who lost his wife long ago. He has grandchildren. His daughter has gone to the River [whisper], and the children spend much time with me.”

So he carved a jump-up-jakes and a dancing doll and a set of fancy building blocks, knowing as he did so that Blint would be glad of this marriage. Blint had loved her once, likely more as she was now than as she had become aboard me Gift.

And he left her to come to Baris at the beginning of the cold season, well before festival, with the tides pulsing ever higher. By this time there were many cross piers to tie to in Baris. There was a procession of Melancholies, dark faces fierce and demanding, waving their fish skin lashes in invitation to the watchers. Thrasne saw more than a few citizens taking a lash or ten in return for Sorter coin. When he found Ihe barber’s place he remembered from before, Thrasne sat in the chair, commenting on the scene.

“I don’t know why they do it, barber. Let themselves be whipped in return for a worthless bit of glass!”

“Ah, well,” the barber remarked, snipping around Thrasne’s ear with close attention, the obsidian shears making a repeated snick, like the teeth of a stilt lizard, unpleasantly voracious. “It’s harmless, I suppose. Who knows, maybe the Holy Sorters would Sort you Out if there were enough Sorter coins in your purse.”

“Superstition,” muttered Thrasne. “Even the Awakeners don’t allow as how that’s true.” Then, seeing argument about to fall from the barber’s lips, he changed the subject. “I wanted to ask you about the family of Fulder Don. Would you remember them?”

“All that family’s gone, boatman. Pulder Don died a year or so after his mama. One of the older daughters died, too. The youngest girl, she that became an Awakener, she up and vanished not long ago. Quite a scandal!”

Thrasne was silent, shocked. Vanished? Pamra? “The old woman who cared for them? Oh, sure now, I heard something about that. Went east, I mink. Bad business, that was.”