Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set Read online

  “What are you going to do?” he finally asked, removing our bowls and bringing us each a second mug of tea.

  “I’m going to find a way to have my babies,” I said. I felt a small movement in my womb and smiled grimly. I would have touched my belly, cradled the tiny lives inside, but my pre-mating rash had come up and it hurt even to move, now that the pain was no longer blocked by anger. “First I’ll visit Vixannis.”

  Maaris touched his breath in agreement. “All things conspire for good on the Creator’s Wind.”

  I forgave him that because he hadn’t once uttered a platitude during my despair.

  ***

  It was terrible walking through the nearly airless streets alone. I had to force myself to take each step. Vixannis was surprised to see me at his door, so near to stillseason.“Rennis,” he said, pausing awkwardly. “...I’m sorry about...”

  “Thank you,” I said. When he didn’t stand aside, I had to ask: “May I come in?”

  He could see my breasts were weeping, even though my fur hid the dark rash on my belly. Didn’t he want relief as much as I?

  “Of course,” he said, opening the door wider and stepping back. “I didn’t expect you.”

  Now I was the one who didn’t know what to say. Vixannis and Ragn’ar were our co-joining pair, after all. Ragn’ar had been my ritual second mate, at my and Saft’ir’s first mating last stillseason. We wouldn’t have co-mated again this year, but Vixannis and I should still be soothing each others’ rashes.

  As soon as I stepped inside I saw the reason for his awkwardness. I didn’t know the name of the Bria sitting beside the shuttered window, but it was obvious that he and Vixannis had been in the process of administering to each others’ rash.

  “I didn’t think you’d be coming,” Vixannis repeated, sounding a little defensive.

  “No, I’m late... I understand, but...” I gestured helplessly at my seeping breasts.

  “Of course. I should have known, I should have come to you. I’m sorry.”

  He was right. He should have known, and he could have made it easier by coming to me. Then I remembered how unapproachable I’d been.

  “It’s my fault for waiting so long,” I said. “Of course you didn’t want to come and ask.”

  “Looks like I’m not needed here,” the other Bria said, interrupting our insincere apologies. He stood up, revealing himself to be a year younger than I, about to have first mating, and motioned to his Ghen mate, who’d accompanied him.

  “We could... we could all help each other,” I suggested, embarrassed.

  The strange Bria laughed. “That’s not necessary. We,” he gestured to include the Ghen, “already have a co-joined pair. I was just helping Vixannis.” He glanced at my abdomen. “I hope you find a solution.”

  “I hope so, too,” I murmured.

  By the time Vixannis and I finished soothing our rashes with each others’ breast fluid, our earlier awkwardness was forgotten. He offered me some ruberry tea before I left.

  I accepted, adding that I wanted to talk to him and Ragn’ar.

  When we sat down with our tea, Vixannis’s expression was guarded.

  “I think you can guess what I want to talk about,” I began. “I need a Ghen to mate me...” I looked sideways at Ragn’ar.

  “You need to join with another Ghen,” Vixannis nodded. “Ragn’ar told me a Ghen named Gant’i has offered. I’m glad for you, Rennis. When you didn’t come, I assumed you’d chosen a new co-joining pair.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Yes, I do, really. I know it’s hard. Seeing me must remind you... well, I’m glad you’re staying with us. I’m sure Ragn’ar won’t mind co-mating again, for Gant’i’s child. I’ll ask him.”

  “Vixannis! That’s not what I want you to ask him. Let me talk.”

  Vixannis looked down at the table. He took a quick gulp of tea, not meeting my eye. His discomfort worried me, but I made my request anyway. I had to try.

  “No,” he said, when I was done.

  “No? You won’t even ask Ragn’ar?”

  “You need a joined mate, Rennis. Gant’i has offered.”

  “I don’t need a joined mate, I only need third mating. I told you, Saft’ir and I mated early, just before he died. Even though it wasn’t in stillseason, I’m sure it’ll do for a second mating. I only need Ragn’ar to mate me once, next stillseason.”

  “Who will deliver your babies?”

  “Naft’ur can. He was joined to Maaris when I was born.”

  “You can’t speak with him, you have no joined sign language. What if something goes wrong? Besides, hasn’t he joined again to have his second child?”

  “It’s only their first year. It won’t matter if he comes to stay with me for a week or so, until I give birth. Or any Ghen could do it, I don’t care.”

  “You’re not being rational, Rennis,” Vixannis said quietly. “Someone will have to live with you for two years to raise Saft’ir’s child while he breastfeeds. To teach him to speak Ghen, to be Ghen. You need a mate, not a mating. If you don’t like Gant’i, maybe another unjoined Ghen...?”

  “I don’t want an unjoined Ghen! I don’t want to carry an infant to be born prematurely. I don’t want to risk another child’s life! I can’t accept such a sacrifice, don’t you understand that? It isn’t right!”

  Vixannis completely stopped moving, an expression of shock on his face. Finally he turned and signed to Ragn’ar while I looked aside. I hoped he was putting forth my request, but I was disappointed when he spoke again.

  “Ragn’ar says Gant’i’s child has a good chance of surviving. He says both Mick’al and Chair Ghen believe it’s the best solution. And Gant’i wasn’t asked to do this, he offered.”

  “He’s wrong to put his child-to-be at risk.”

  “How do you know? You can’t see how things will turn out.”

  “Won’t you even ask Ragn’ar?”

  “It wouldn’t be any use, Rennis. I told you, Chair Ghen and Mick’al agree with Gant’i’s suggestion. Ragn’ar won’t go against them. No Ghen will.”

  I rose and left without another word.

  ***

  It wasn’t easy going to Savannis, but he was the only one who could help me convince the Ghen that my choice was better than Gant’i’s.

  “Rennis, I can’t tell Mick’al he’s wrong,” he said when I was done. “How could I know that?”

  “How can you not know that sacrificing a child is wrong?”

  “Because I don’t know that he’s being sacrificed. Perhaps it’s part of Wind’s plan.”

  “What’s happened to me is a violation, not a plan!”

  “I know it seems that way now.” His very mildness infuriated me. I glared at him.

  “Rennis,” he said sharply, “It is not your place to direct the Wind.”

  I turned to leave, but he touched my arm, stopping me. I pulled away from his frail touch.

  “Rennis, listen. Imagine... imagine a fabric art. Here at this end,” he fluttered the fingers of his left hand in a downward motion, to suggest a row of wind-blown streamers. “You have the green of ugappas and cappa bushes, and a single strip of red in their midst, to suggest the ripe cappa fruit. On this end,” he made the same motion with his right hand, “you have the blue of the sea bordering our peninsula, and beyond it the lighter blue of the horizon.

  “If the wind takes this red,” he raised his left hand and closed his fingers around the middle of an imaginary fabric strip, “and blows it here,” he moved his left hand to flutter beside his right, which was still raised, fingers extended and moving like strips of fabric in the wind, “it looks all wrong. Cappafruit red in the midst of sea blue and sky blue? Ridiculous, they can’t both be right. They contradict each other.”

  He dropped both hands and looked straight at me. “But they both belong on Wind. The problem isn’t in the pattern, Rennis; it’s in us. We haven’t got the perspective to see the whole picture. We’re too small
.”

  I was silent, thinking about his metaphor. Then the anguish of my situation reclaimed me. “You don’t have babies dying in your womb,” I told him bitterly.

  When I got home I ripped out of my lifedance the gray strip of fabric I’d added when I joined with Saft’ir. I stood a moment, staring at it in my hands. Then I burned it in my cookwall and threw the ashes into the dung-pit.

  ***

  I accepted Gant’i. What choice did I have? The Ghen had taken all choice from me. Why should I resist, if they valued their offspring so little? Perhaps two Bria infants were worth the risk of a Ghen. Weren’t we the heart of Wind? Didn’t we follow the true religion, however Savannis clouded it with his “larger perspective”? My faith should have been sustained by this proof, not shaken. Yet it was, and still Wind remained silent.

  Gant’i came to my house and we mated that very night, although stillseason had barely begun. Ragn’ar came to co-join as it was Gant’i’s first mating. I drank the potions Gant’i offered me, no matter how vile, swearing to myself that I would do everything within my power to bring all four infants safely into life. Despite my bitter choice I didn’t want to be a Ghen, sacrificing children.

  Daily I rose at dawn and prayed to Wind to spare Gant’i’s child, but my prayers brought me no comfort. Who was I to pray for that infant, I who had knowingly put his life in danger? Nevertheless I prayed, I pleaded, I prostrated myself on Temple Hill and begged in tears, not for my sake but for his. I offered my life, and Gant’i’s, if only the infants in my womb would all be spared.

  I only asked for justice, nothing more; that the guilty be punished and the innocent go free.

  “You are still angry.”

  I stopped in the middle of my desperate bargaining. Who would dare speak to another on Temple Hill? I raised my head and opened my eye. As I’d suspected, Savannis stood above me. Pointedly, I closed my eye again.

  “I’ll wait for you at the base of the hill.” His voice shook a little and for the first time I noticed how old he was becoming.

  I heard him leave, not waiting for the acknowledgment I wouldn’t have given. I thought of taking another route down, but that would be childish. After a while I abandoned my fruitless prayers and descended. Savannis met me.

  “My anger doesn’t matter,” I said, to forestall another of his pointed stories.

  “Of course it does. It’s keeping you from seeing Wind.”

  “The wind blows on without my seeing it.”

  “The Wind blows to give you sight.”

  I made no response.

  “Faith is like everything else,” he persisted. “If you truly want it, you already have it. The hard part lies in not denying it.”

  “You make it sound easy.” I turned and began walking away from him.

  “Oh, no.” He labored to keep in step with me, as though we had agreed to walk together. “Denial is much easier.”

  This angered me further and I ignored him. He was old and childless. How could he understand my anguish? He walked beside me until we reached my house. Before I left him, I asked, “Do you still think Saft’ir was right to kill himself?”

  “That’s not for me to say.”

  “I say it then! I say all Ghen are false. They don’t even worship the Creator Wind. They think He’s a hunter, a flesh-eater, like them. Their two eyes are so focused on this life they can’t see Wind. We see more clearly with our one!”

  “Wind made the forest as well as the hills. Perhaps we see distance, while they see detail. But we’re both seeing the Wind’s handiwork.”

  He had an answer for everything. The same answers he’d been giving for too many years.

  “Why don’t you ever say things outright? You hint at things, suggest! I want clear answers!”

  “My task is to teach you Bria history and culture, to introduce you to Wind, as Dayannis taught us. Not to tell you what He is, or what He wants of you, even if I knew. That’s between you and Him.”

  “Well, He isn’t talking.”

  I entered my house without a backward glance and shut the door.

  ***

  Gant’i insisted that we learn to communicate as quickly as possible. At first I resisted. That hadn’t been part of the bargain and I already knew as much about Ghen as I cared to. But Gant’i, patient and gentle in everything else, displayed such an urgency about this that it frightened me.

  We began to develop a mixture of movements and gestures. Saft’ir and I had restricted ourselves to hand signs, but that was when I had had my eye on being Council Chair, and he saw himself as Chair Ghen. We were well-matched in that way; our goal was the same although our politics differed. Since Saft’ir’s death, however, I’d come to view politics less as a skillful building than as a willful battle, in which our words were weapons, not tools.

  I no longer wanted a method of communication that suited seated Council meetings. And Gant’i, although he was willing to sit with me on Council when his second year of guarding the wall was over, was now focused, like me, on the greater issue of our children’s lives.

  We used our whole bodies to communicate. Our language became a dance of nuances, the raising of an arm, slight lift of a knee, the tilting of a chin, nod of a head, blink of an eye, the sweep of hand over abdomen or touching of chest, all conveyed our thoughts and needs and understandings.

  We used even stillness, as though by controlling our starts and stops, turning them into meaning, we could overcome the intrusion of Saft’ir’s death that threatened the lives of our infants. The movements of our fingers defined more subtle words, the language of thoughts, not paramount as they had once been to me, but secondary. Gant’i used the extension and retraction of his long claws to mimic the supple flexing of my slender fingers, and I overlooked the discourtesy of his fighting claws being made visible to me. But they served as a reminder. Gant’i was Ghen. Ghen hands were weapons. Weapons demanded sacrifices.

  I needed the reminder. There was a gentleness about Gant’i that I’d never seen in Saft’ir, nor thought to see in any Ghen. When I returned from my morning prayers on Temple Hill, he waited on me in his awkward way, seating me in the chair that got the most wind and bringing me tea and fresh bread that had baked overnight on the coals in my cookwall. He was equally solicitous when I came home tired after a Council meeting.

  “Don’t you care how I vote in Council?” I asked once, when we could finally communicate.

  “Of course I’m interested,” he signed back. “But what is that to this?” And he reached forward, lightly touching my swollen abdomen with his fingers. “This and your heart, which is strong enough to hold two Ghen.” Then he said something I’d never heard any Ghen say to a Bria: “I want my youngling to have your courage.”

  I was ashamed and turned my head aside, for I knew how little I deserved such a tribute.

  ***

  In the height of midseason, Gant’i closed all the windows of our house. I lit the fire in my cookwall and let it burn until the room was as hot as stillseason and I gasped for air. My fingers ached to open the shutters and let in the wind that battered against them, but I did not. I lay on my sleeping ledge, with my back to the window. It was worse even than stillseason, for we left the fans off. At last Gant’i began to scent, and soon my breasts were weeping and my belly chaffed.

  There was no relief for me—I was the only Bria on all of Wind suffering a pre-mating rash in midseason. Between the soreness, the itch, and the lack of air, I thought I might go insane, but I remembered Gant’i’s praise and was determined not to fail our children.

  Gant’i rubbed oil over my belly, but it offered only a brief balm, not healing. On the second night of my rash, I dreamed I was comforted and woke in horror to find myself twisted almost double on my shelf, rubbing my weeping breasts against my own belly. I’d pulled off the cloth with which I’d bound my breasts and was self-soothing!

  At once I ran to wash away the balm, berating my sleep-induced weakness and praying my youngling
s wouldn’t suffer the ill-effects of such behavior.

  The rash remained for two more days. I made Gant’i tie my hands at night, embarrassed when he didn’t ask me why.

  As soon as it cleared, we mated. Then I rose from Gant’i’s sleeping mat and threw open the windows. Oh, the joy of that first rush of wind over my face! It was only the cold wind of midseason, but I hoped Wind had seen my suffering and would turn His breath on me again.

  In the following months I grew huge and awkward. I could feel the infants kicking more vigorously each day. Their movements brought me joy, to know they lived, they would be born. But sometimes in the night their struggles were so turbulent I wakened and was afraid. Were they maturing too quickly because of Gant’i’s potions? I stroked my aching belly and tried not to worry. What was there to fear, now that they would live?

  Stillseason came and went. My womb stretched taut beyond that of any pregnant Bria I’d ever seen, and still we waited. I cradled myself when I moved, immersed in the searing pains that convulsed my overburdened womb and reached into every part of my body. I prayed for strength, but it was my shame that sustained me. The day before I would have given in, as though Gant’i knew my limits, he came to me and we mated for the third time.

  The next day the agony that lashed my body steadied into a rhythm; not lessened but directed, so that even though the pitch increased relentlessly, I felt a rightness to it, a driving need behind it that pointed to relief. I lay on my shelf while the contractions grew. Maaris bathed my face and body with sponges of cool water while Gant’i hovered nearby. When Maaris left me to start a fire in my cookwall, Gant’i bent and blew a single, soft breath into my face.

  I was momentarily taken aback. I’d never expected such intimacy from a Ghen. I wasn’t angry, as I once might have been; rather, it pleased me that Gant’i should wish to share his breath with me.

  When had I stopped seeing him as a hunter? When had his hands, even with claws extended, begun to look like words instead of weapons?