Jo Clayton - Changer’s Moon

RANE: We came through Sadnaji a few days ago. Looked dead.

HAL: Might as well be. None of the fкte-days being kept, no one laughing. We’ve all forgotten how to laugh.

RANE: Braddon’s Inn was shut down, torch out. I never thought they’d go that far. What happened? Where were all his friends? Is he all right?

HAL: Friends. (He shakes his head.) Those of us nearby keep our mouths shut and don’t look him in the eye. He’s alive, doing well as could be expected. (He goes silent a moment, the lines suddenly deeper in his long ugly face, a gentle face, mournful as a droop-eared chinihound.) His son’s in the mountains somewhere, I expect you’ve got a better idea about that than I do. Somewhere’s close as I can get (a sigh). Shut Braddon down, put him in the House of Repentance. For a while it looked like the Agli was going to burn him out, but he backed off, Sadnaji was tinder dry. The little meie, she managed to burn a good bit of hedge (sigh). Had to spend a tenday setting posts and planting hedge sets. Which will probably freeze if this keeps up.

RANE: Little meie? What happened?

HAL: It was just after the sky went bad. The little meie showed up at Braddon’s, you know who I mean, Serroi, a man with her. Braddon says he tried to hold her there but she got suspicious and tunked him on the head. He won’t say else to anyone. He says he didn’t know the man with her, never saw him before. Whispers say it was Hern (shrug). She tangled with a norit staying there, turned the attack back on him somehow, she and the man both got away, traded their worked-out macain for a fresh pair, took the norit’s mounts which steamed him some to hear tell. He went after them, wouldn’t wait for anyone, anything. Agli rounded him up a mob, took three guards from the Decsel in the Center, sent them all after her. What happened to the norit, Maiden knows, but there’s a man-sized charred spot in my pasture grass. Guards came chasing her through the gap in my poor abused hedge. First one through was an air-head carrying a torch. Soon’s he was on the grass his macai went crazy, threw him and tromped on him. He let go the damn torch and it landed in my hedge. Agli’s mob, they had to stop being a mob and fight the fire or Sadnaji could have gone up too. The two guards left followed the meie and her friend, got back a couple days later, hungry and tired, scratched up and scratching-idiots didn’t know enough to stay away from ripe puffballs-feeling mad and mean. Lost the meie in the foothills past the ford.

RANE: Yael-mri thinks she’s the one turned the weather for us (laugh). For such a little thing, her efforts they do multiply. I’d like to be around when she tells the tale of the past few months. Well, enough of that. To business. Guards. How many here now?

HAL: Three decsettin. One in town, the others quartered on the tars. I’ve got one here, Decsel sleeping in the house, his men in the tie-village. And a resident norit (he holds up a hand). No worry. He’s a smoke eater who hates the cold. I looked in on him an hour ago. Room stinks of the weed and he’s lost in his private heaven.

RANE: Sleykynin?

HAL: They’ve been trickling into the mijloc by twos and threes, see some of them almost every day. A few large bands of young ones, just hatched from their houses (smile). Was a break in the trickle shortly after the little meie went through here. Coincidence?

RANE: (laughing) I wouldn’t bet on it. Do they stay around Sadnaji or move on?

HAL: Three or four are quartered on the Agli, been there for a while. Those coming through lately keep on without stopping. Going north.

RANE: Anything else?

HAL: Got a vague report of Kapperim busy in the hills east of Sankoy. Before the snow started. I went on a ride to check my hedges, make the circuit like a good tarom.

RANE: Hal! You?

HAL: Uh-huh, Anders was trying to convert me, following me around preaching at me. Eh-Rane, he’s such a block. You suppose Marilli played me false? (he grins) No, probably not. She was too proud a woman to tarnish her perfection that way. I suppose he’s a throwback to Grandfather Lammah who had just two ideas in his head. If it was game, chase and kill it, if it was female… (he catches Tuli watching and does not finish the sentence). Where was I? Ah. Anders. Had to get away from him before I strangled him. Not a thing you want to do to your son and heir. So I rode the hedges. Smuggled a book out with me, Dancer’s Rise writ by Mad Shar the poet, you should know it, Biserica’s got a copy, that and a skin of a nice little wine. Point of all this-I was sitting in the shade near the east end of the tar. Half-asleep. Maybe a little drunk. A pair of shurin came out of the shadows and squatted beside me. Said to pass this on: Army massing in Sankoy, waiting to join the one Floarin’s bringing down from Oras. And the Kapperim tribes are getting thick in the hills, might be going to start raiding the outcast Havens, might be joining up with Floarin too, when the time comes. That was a tenday ago. I was thinking maybe I’d have to carry the news myself if somebody didn’t come by. Not a good idea sending message fliers, too many traxim about.

RANE: So Yael-mri said. Tuli and I, we’re going looking the long way round Cimpia Plain, see what’s happening firsthand.

HAL: You’re taking the child?

RANE: Peace, Hal. Tuli stopped being a child awhile ago. (she stares at the fire, runs her hands through hair like short sun-bleached straw). There are no noncombatants in this war, my philosopher friend.

HAL: Why is this happening? (He looks from Rane to Tuli, back at Rane, then stares into the fire as she does). What have we done to bring this death and desolation of the spirit?

RANE: (Smiling at him, reaching over to put her hand on his.) Ah, my friend, I have missed this, sitting with you in front of a fire and solving the problems of the world. Seriously, why does it have anything to do with us? Perhaps it’s five hundred years of stagnation. All things die sometime, now it’s our time. From our death something new will be born.

HAL: The Maiden? Rane. (Shakes his head.)

RANE. We dance at the Maidenfкtes, but when they’re done the Keeper dowses the festfire. We’re tired, happy, flown on wine and hard cider, ready to find our beds, so we forget what the dowsing means. Eh-Hal, all that makes lovely symbols for scholars to play with while the rest of us mundane souls go our ways looking for what comfort we can find in life. I’ve been thinking for several years now that the mijloc was ripe for trouble. Forget about symbols. Think about this. Too many ties for the land to support. Too many tar-sons and tar-daughters. Oldest son gets the tar, but what do his brothers do? Hang around, get drunk, make trouble with the ties, the other taroms, do some hunting. If he’s got any intelligence and ambition, then he’s got a chance. Go into the Guards, get an appointment as a court scholar, get himself apprenticed to a merchant if he’s got that kind of interest and ability. Some just drift away, losing themselves in the world outside the mijloc. You didn’t have to worry about that, Hal, only one living son and two daughters, one married, one with us at the Biserica. But what about your grandsons and granddaughters? How many children does Anders already have? His wife is young and healthy. How many more children will she have? How will he provide for them? If he’s lucky his extra sons will find their own ways, Guards, merchants, scholars, artisans, even maybe a player in the bunch. What about his daughters? Some will marry. The others? Let me tell you, the valley is bursting with girls. We’ve been taking care of excess daughters for generations but there’s a limit to the numbers we can support. There are other limits. Some girls just aren’t happy with us. Many of the girls that come to us don’t stay more than a few years. Some go home, find husbands, or work for their keep in the homes of their married sisters. Some drift into the cities; the best of them find work, the others walk the streets. Think about it, Hal. All the discarded children. Thieves, vagabonds, drunks, bullies, prostitutes, landless laborers, drifters of all kinds, a drain on the resources of the mijloc, a constant source of discontent. Think about the bad harvests this year and last, the Gather and Scatter storms. People getting hungrier and hungrier, watching the taroms and the rich merchants and resenting them, the taroms and merchants growing frightened, hiring bravos to protect them. The Heslin peace falling apart. Well, all that’s irrelevant now, Hal. The mijloc is going to be chewed up so thoroughly there’ll be no going back to the old ways. Change. There’s no stopping it and no knowing what direction it will take.