Timothy Zahn - Cobra Bargain

Worship? she wondered. They never did that in Milika. Do the proper places only exist in the cities? She opened her mouth to ask... but it didn't seem like a good idea to prolong the conversation. "I understand," she said instead.

"Goodnight, Daulo."

He grunted in return. Pursing her lips, Jin turned and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

For a long minute she sat on the bed, wondering if perhaps she'd played the whole thing wrong. Would it really have been so bad to go ahead and accept his advances?

Yes, of course it would have... because she'd have been doing it for the wrong reasons. Perhaps to avoid having to argue the point with him, or to pay back his family for their hospitality, or even to cynically ensure his continued cooperation by bonding him emotionally to her.

Her Cobra gear provided her an arsenal of awesome weapons. She had no intention of adding her body to that list.

Daulo would understand someday, too. She hoped.

Daulo woke her shortly after sunrise, and after taking turns to clean up in the cramped bathroom they left the apartment and set off on foot down the street.

Azras by day was a strikingly different place than it had seemed the night before. Like the cities Jin's Uncle Joshua had seen on his visit to Qasama, the lower parts of Azras's buildings were painted with wild forest-pattern colors that seemed sometimes to throb with movement. Above the colors, the buildings were glistening white, demonstrating the kind of careful maintenance that bespoke either a healthy city budget, a strong civic pride, or both.

It was the people, though, that attracted most of her attention.

They were out in force-perhaps three hundred within sight-all walking the same direction she and Daulo were going. All of them going to worship? she wondered.

"Where exactly are we going?" she asked Daulo quietly.

"One of the sajadas in the city," he told her. "Everyone-even visitors-are expected to go to worship on Friday."

Sajada. The word was familiar; and after a moment it clicked. Daulo had pointed out Milika's sajada to her on that first tour of the village, but at the time she'd still been posing as a Qasaman and had been afraid to ask what the place was. But then why had they never gone there...? Ah-of course. Presumably this type of worship was a weekly event, and her only other Friday on Qasama had been spent flat on her back recovering from her crash injuries.

Which immediately brought up another problem: she hadn't the foggiest idea of what she was heading into, or how she'd be expected to behave once they got there. "Daulo, I don't know anything about how you worship here," she muttered.

He frowned at her. "What do you mean? Worship is worship."

There were several possible responses to that; she chose what she hoped was the safest one. "True, but form varies widely from place to place."

"I thought you learned everything about us from your father's trip here."

Jin felt sweat breaking out on her forehead. Walking through a crowd of Qasamans was hardly the time to be making even veiled references of this sort. "His hosts didn't show him everything," she murmured tightly. "Would you mind keeping your voice down?"

He threw her a brief glare and fell silent. No, she thought morosely, he hasn't forgiven me yet for last night. She just hoped his bruised ego would heal before he did something dangerous.

They reached the sajada a few minutes later, an impressive white-and-gold building that looked to be a scaled-up version of the one she'd seen in

Milika-and now that she thought about it, almost identical with similar structures she'd sported in the tapes from the previous mission. A conformity which, taken with Daulo's comment about worship being worship, implied a strong religious uniformity all across Qasama. A state-controlled religion, then? Or merely one that was independently pervasive? She made a mental note to bring up the subject if and when Daulo ever calmed down.

Joining the flow of people, they climbed the steps and headed Inside.

"Well?" Daulo asked an hour later as they left the sajada. "What did you think?"

"It was like nothing I've ever experienced before," Jin told him honestly. "It was... very moving."

"Or primitive, in other words?"

His voice was heavy with challenge. "Not at all," she assured him. "Perhaps more emotional than I'm used to, but a worship service that doesn't touch the emotions is pretty much a waste of time."

A little of the stiffness seemed to go out of his back. "Agreed," he nodded.

The crowds heading home seemed to be thinner than they had been on the way into the sajada, Jin noticed, and she asked Daulo about it. "Most of them will have stayed at the sajada with their heyats," he told her.

"Heyats?"

"Groups of friends and neighbors who meet for further worship," he explained, throwing her an odd look. "Don't you have anything like that on-at home?" he amended, glancing around at the scattering of other pedestrians within earshot.

"Well... they're not called heyats, anyway," she said, thinking hard. It was evident the Qasamans took their religious expression very seriously. If she was going to win Daulo back as a more or less willing ally again, she had better find an answer that emphasized the similarities between Qasaman and Aventinian worship and minimized the differences. "But as you said earlier, worship is worship," she continued. "Only our style is different. The intent is certainly the same."

"I understand that. It's the style I'm trying to find out about."

"But style isn't really what counts..." She trailed off as something ahead caught her attention. "Daulo... how obvious is it that we're not city people?"

They took another three steps before he answered, "Those ghaalas up there, are they what you're worried about?"

"I don't know that word," she murmured, "but if you mean those teens leaning against the building, yes, that's who I mean. Can they tell from our clothing that we're from a village?"

"Probably," Daulo said calmly. "But don't let it worry you. They won't bother us." He paused. "And if they do, let me handle it. Understand?"

"Sure," Jin said. Her heart, already pounding in her ears, picked up its pace a bit. The scruffy-looking youths-seven of them, she counted-definitely had their eyes on her and Daulo.

And were definitely drifting away from the wall onto the walkway. Moving to block their path.

A drop of sweat ran down between Jin's shoulderblades. Cross the street, she wanted to urge... but she knew full well what Daulo's reaction would be. She might as well suggest they turn and run back to the sajada for sanctuary.

At least none of the youths blocking the walkway appeared to be armed. That was something, anyway.

"But if you have to fight," she murmured suddenly, "stay as far back from them as you can. Understand?"

He glanced at her; but before he could comment one of the youths swaggered a step forward.

"Hello there, baelcra-keeper," he said conversationally as she and Daulo stopped. "Your own sajada burn down last night or something?"

"No," Daulo replied with a touch of ice in his voice. "Though if we're going to mention the sajada, you don't seem to be dressed for a visit there."

"Maybe we went earlier," another youth said with a sly grin. "Maybe you and your woman were too busy pharpesing to go then, huh?"

Another word the Troft translation tapes hadn't covered; but Daulo jerked as if he'd been stung. "And who'd know all about pharpesing better than ghaalas like you?" he snapped.

Insult traded for insult, clearly; but none of the toughs seemed especially disturbed. In fact, to Jin's eye they almost looked pleased by Daulo's reaction.

As if they'd been deliberately trying to get him mad.