Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

All that travel for nothing, Kerf thought. Not even any good food in Thou-ne. And certainly none in the lands of the steppe people, going back. Noor bread always tasted of ashes, and no one but a steppey could pretend to enjoy roasted roots. Besides, Noor hated Chancery men. Only his escort of heavily armed Jondarites guaranteed passage and food at all. Though they hadn’t seen many steppeys, come to that. Fewer than he’d thought they would. Perhaps they were traveling, east or west of the route Kerf had taken.

He shrugged, setting those thoughts aside as he bullied Haranjus a bit more before leaving. It had taken him a year and a half to get to Thou-ne. It would take that long at least going back. In his eagerness to leave, he did not ask the local man if devotion to the image had increased or decreased since shortly after it was found. Haranjus had very carefully not mentioned that subject. Bostle Kerf was able, therefore, to leave Thou-ne in good conscience.

Three days after Bostle Kerf left Thou-ne, the Gift of Potipur arrived there with a boatload of Melancholies who intended to disembark in Thou-ne and begin the trek north to their home country. Pamra was also on the ship. She came ashore in Thou-ne. By that time, however, it was too late to summon the Chancery man back again.

20

The Queen of the Noor sat upon her carved throne, legs neatly aligned in their tall fish skin boots, eyes forward, feathered scepter in hand, dying a little more as each delegation from an outlying tribe made its appeals, thankful for the protocol that insisted upon an expressionless face. As a young Queen she had rebelled against the requirement; as an old one she realized its necessity. Had it not been for protocol she would have wept, screamed, howled in frustration, anger, and pity.

Now the last of the delegations was on his knees before her. One lonely man.

“They came on us before dawn, Highness,” said the lonely man in an emotionless voice. “Most of the camp was still asleep when I left. When I heard the cries, I came back. They rounded up the women and children, even the babies, and killed them while the men were forced to watch. After the killing, they let the men see the bodies just to be sure all the women and children were dead.” He went on in that same dead voice, describing the scene, the cries. “The Jondarite captain told them they had no families to return to,” the man said at last, falling silent. He knelt before her, eyes on the floor, as though he expected nothing from her at all, as though he expected nothing from anyone.

Fibji had bitten her tongue in the need not to speak. Strenge had spoken for her, as he usually did, knowing what was in her heart.

“How did you escape?”

“I had gone out before dawn to visit the mud grave of my father, to leave offerings to his spirit. I was returning when the Jondarites came. I hid, watching from the hill. I should have been taken with the others, but I could have changed nothing, and someone needed to tell you, Highness.”

Fibji had recently spent some time at the Chancery, going there under a banner of truce, appealing to the Protector of Man, attempting to get something from the Council of Seven, a treaty, an understanding, anything that would stop the taking of slaves and the mindless killing. She had not even seen the Protector. The council had refused to consider her request. She had failed in every effort, all the time afire to get home. Now she regretted being here. At the Chancery there might be something more she could do; there was nothing here. She could do nothing here except listen to the endless tales of slaughter and rapine, endless pleas for action against the Jondarite tax collectors and slavers and murderers, pleas that received a sympathetic hearing and no action at all. “Because they have me,” she told herself. “That damned general has us all, like birds caught in a net.” General Jondrigar would not mind if all the Noor were dead. He welcomed those times when the young men of the Noor rebelled against her to wage war against him, for then he could kill them more quickly. He welcomed uprisings, for then he could mount a major assault. Their only hope lay in not provoking him to a major effort, not until the plan could be put into effect. Then … well, then they would either live or die, but they would not go on as victims.