James Enge - This Crooked Way

"Then you shouldn't have struck the bargain in the first place."

Charis sighed. "That's true, of course. But I wanted what Morlock had to offer me. Now I've lost that, and nearly everything else as well, and I've contracted a new debt to you. You see my problem."

"Well, I didn't do it for you, if that helps any."

"It does, a little," he said, stepping into the room. "But-"

"That's close enough," I said. I wanted to have time to call out if he tried anything.

He stopped short, apparently not resenting my suspicion. "But I can't be sure," he said, "that you wouldn't have saved my life, even if others you cared about hadn't been in danger. I've learned a little bit about you, I think. And then there is the undoubted fact that you did save my life, at terrible risk to your own."

"I was saving my own life, too. I was in there in that room with the rest of you."

"Oh, no!" Charis said, shaking his head wisely. "Tell that to the others, if you like; I think it's safer for you that way, blunting the sharp edge of their gratitude. Gratitude can be a terrible burden to live with, day after day, and you're wise to give them the illusion that their debt is less than it really is. But I sau' you. You looked at the window and knew you could escape with your life. Then you did the other thing."

For the first time I was sort of impressed by Charis. He did understand people a little bit. I thought about how I felt about Naeli and all that she'd done for me, and I knew he was right about gratitude, too, although I hoped there was more to it than Charis understood.

What had Morlock said? It's not a business relationship. Was there a way to live your life like that, not totalling up a balance sheet of benefits and obligations but instead …What? Morlock hadn't said what it was; he'd just said what it wasn't. Maybe Charis was right after all.

My head hurt, and not only my head. My stomach hurt, deep inside. I bent over myself gasping. My legs and the bedroll were all wet with blood. Glancing up I saw Charis was closer to me now.

"Get away from me!" I shrieked. I didn't want him cancelling his debts by getting rid of me.

Charis leaped back to the door. Stador and Thend rushed in, with Naeli and Bann only a few steps behind them.

My brothers pinned Charis to the wall while Naeli came over to me.

"I did nothing to her, Madam Naeli," Charis was babbling. "We were talking and she expressed pain. I'm afraid she is hurt from-"

"Don't call me `madam,"' Naeli snapped. "I'm not some Coranian bimboherder." She bent over me and investigated briefly. "It's nothing to worry about, baby," she told me after a moment. "Just Aunt Ruby paying a visit."

"What?" asked Bann stupidly.

"Fasra will be flying the red flag for a few days, that's all."

"Huh?" said Thend.

"It's her time."

"Time for what?" Stador asked.

"Time for her period, you clowns. Will you get the hell out of here so I can take care of her?"

The boys herded Charis out of the room, and I started to sob.

"Look," Naeli said after we dealt with some of the practical issues, "it's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"I'm not embarrassed," I said, lying a little. I hadn't liked that horrified look all the males had given me before dragging their nonbleeding carcasses out of the room. "But it hurts. Is it always like this?"

"Um. Yes and no."

"Death and Justice, I hate it when people say that!"

"Calm down, honey. It won't usually be this bad, and your first one is hardly ever this bad. It's just that ..

"Mama, are you going to tell me about this or what?"

I hardly ever called Naeli "Mama," and it seemed to steady her a little.

"All right," she said. "Back in the Bargainer village, girls were always sealed to the service of the God in the Ground when they reached their menarche."

"Sure. But-Oh. You did something."

"Yes. There's a spell you can use to delay a girl's menarche."

"I didn't know you knew any magic."

"I don't know much. But every woman in that village knew this one. We all wanted our daughters free as long as possible. I always hoped I'd find a way to get you out before you were sealed to the Boneless One-and that's how it worked out, thanks to your uncle Roble."

"And Morlock."

"Yes. Him." I got the feeling Naeli wasn't so pleased with Morlock tonight. "Anyway, after we were freed, I stopped renewing the spell. I didn't realize that it would make your first period so severe, but that must be what's happening. I'm sorry, baby: I'm not much of a witch."

"Oh, you're all right, I guess." This was the point to say something mushy, and I was grateful to her. In a way, that was the problem. Did my pain at the moment pay for what she had done? Or had she paid some price I knew nothing of? Probably the latter. So my debt to her was increased by whoknows how much. That depressed me even further.

At some point, in spite of the depression and the pain, I slept. But not nearly long enough.

"Fasra, get up," Stador was saying.

I replied in the negative. That was the gist of it, anyway.

"This isn't a joke. The house is surrounded."

You know all those times you wonder whether you want to go on living? If something actually threatens you during one of those moments, you make your mind up in a hurry.

I sat up, told him to get out so I could change my rags, and got up before he was out of the door.

All the others were down on the first floor. I didn't get there much after Stador, with my pack on my back.

"Who's outside?" I asked Naeli.

"Imperial troops," she said. "They seem to be waiting for something, but they're all around the house."

"They're waiting for reinforcements," Charis guessed. "They're expecting Morlock to be in here. And they have glass lizards. Glass lizards from Kaen. They're the best tracking animals in the world. We can never get away."

"So where do we go?" I asked.

"Exactly where they'll expect," Naeli said. "Down through the sewers."

"Why go where they expect us to go?"

"What's the alternative?" Naeli replied, and I had to admit she had a point.

We went down into the basement. I'd never been down there before; it was sort of creepy. But not so creepy as the big black hole Naeli uncovered, gesturing that we should go down in.

Thend obviously felt the same way as I did. "How far can we get in the sewer?" he grumbled. "If it's Charis they're after, I say we give him to them."

Charis jumped like a rabbit at that, and he didn't look very reassured when Naeli said, "We'll hold that in reserve. If we can get away clean, that's our first choice."

"Clean!" said Bann and gulped.

I growled and shouldered past all three of my big brothers. There were grips for hands and feet leading down into the dark pit. I jumped onto them and began climbing downward.

"Well?" said Naeli coldly, and the guys started to follow me, grumbling a little.

It wasn't really so bad. I mean, don't kid yourself, it wasn't like taking a walk in the hills after a spring rain. But I'd kind of expected it to niff like an outhouse that's been used by a hundred thousand people, and it wasn't anything like that.

When I got down to the bottom of the climbing grips, I was standing in a tunnel on a pretty wide ledge-wider than any sidewalk I remember in Four Castles. In the middle of the tunnel ran a stream of dark water several times as wide as the ledge, and on the far side of the tunnel there was another ledge. I could see all this because of a luminous green mold that grew in patches on the walls.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever in both directions. Other tunnels joined up with it at intervals, and the whole thing seemed to tilt slightlyso that everything could roll downhill, I realized, just like the proverb said.