"Nan’s parent," continued the woman, "it didn’t even have time to tell me its own name before it died. The Talman it carried was gone." She moves her shoulders and lets her gaze fall. "Stolen, probably," she continues. "You can get over a hundred tags for a Talman and chain back on the Dorado."
A hundred tags. Tags are script money issued by the Front. According to captured humans, a hundred tags is enough to buy a melon. So much for eleven thousand years of wisdom. I look at the Talman and chain I had taken from the girl I beheaded. They are still in my hand, a bit of human blood on it. Perhaps this was the one taken from Nan’s parent. Probably not. I look again at the woman’s face.
Why should a human be so concerned about the heritage of a Drac infant? Perhaps her show is for my benefit. She thinks I might let her go. Her and her Drac child. After all, I let her live. So far. Perhaps she will do whatever she thinks will induce my compassion. Humans lie, and sneak, and trick: all skills we have learned from them along with butchery, cruelty, and horror.
I notice the power switch on my knife is still energized. The weapon’s charge is down to fourteen percent. Stupid. Suddenly I am very tired. I want to find a safe, dark place, curl into a ball, wipe my memory, and sleep for a thousand years. I turn off the switch.
"What are you going to do with us?"
A decision seems to make itself. I stand, take a step, and stop next to the pair. Extending my hand, I hold out the Talman and chain to her.
"It probably belongs to another line, but the words are the same." Tears, another thing we have in common with the humans, blur my vision. "The line died with the soldier who carried this."
She takes it, nods her thanks, and places the chain around the child’s neck. I do not ask her if she can read Drac.
I stay behind at the crossroads and watch the woman’s back as she walks toward the north stepping over the rubble and around the holes, the baby still in her arms. The sun is almost gone, the sky red as the desert dust. I face the west and wonder what I should do.
I should make my way back to the Sikov commander and report. They are all dead, Ghah Jov: Anta split from its crotch to its right shoulder by an energy knife; Ki, its pieces splattered across the ground where a rocket’s blast carried them; Pina riddled with bullets, the tracks in the sand showing how it dragged itself across the ground before it died; and Adoveyna stretched out on the ground without a mark on its body as though it were sleeping. When I lift Adoveyna I feel the blood on my fingers.
Ah, yes.
I must report the village of Riehm Vo liberated. I should report as well the woman whom I let return to her own people, in addition to the baby Drac I allowed her to take with her.
I can imagine Joy’s brow rising as it waits for the soldier before it to explain several counts of treason. Should I tell it the woman herself killed two humans who were determined to kill the Drac child? That was the firing Anta had heard when it scouted the position. Should I tell Joy that if I had, instead, brought her with me back to the Sikov, the woman would be executed and the baby thrown into a holding center for children with no lines to await training as future killers for the Mavedah? Joy could not see what was wrong with that. A few days ago I would not be able to see it either. But now I see Nan sleeping in love’s arms, a rest so complete all I can do is quench my envy by letting them stay together.
I cannot go back to the Sikov or the Mavedah. Let them believe all of us died. I turn and look at the woman in the distance. I believe she can protect the baby from her commanders in the Front, but she could not protect me. I would be killed, or forced to commit treason and then killed.
She stops, turns, and faces me. Lifting a hand, she waves it. A human gesture. I raise a hand and hold it as she faces north again and continues walking, the baby still in her arms. I should take my knife and cut her down this instant. It would redeem me, place my footsteps back on the known path. The road turns behind some ruins and she is gone. I lower my hand and look down at the energy knife in my other hand. I should have gotten the name of the woman. Those who change the entire course of a life need to be named.
I glance up at the sky and see the sun reflected from one of the several orbiting quarantine stations that ring Amadeen. It hangs in the sky like an evening star. In it sit the humans and Dracs who monitor the instruments that detect and destroy ships that attempt to rise from the surface or attempt to land on the surface from space. Far beyond that belt of death is where I must find my answers. There are none left on Amadeen.
I will not see Joy to report the liberation of all this rubble. I must avoid the Mavedah. Instead, there is a traitor I must see.
I pull the control block from the knife, crush it beneath my boot, and throw the knife far from the edge of the road. I turn to the west and walk, leaving my helmet and armor in the dust.
THREE
Zenak Abi’s name is a curse leveled at those who would betray species and line to follow a fantasy. Yet I betray all to which I have sworn to find something my pain tells me must be there.
I cross the Mavedah lines in the dark, the sounds of battle coming from the north. There is no challenge. The humans are far away from these posts and moments to sleep too precious. Later, at an unfamiliar settlement where no one recognizes me, I offer a Madah outcast some rations in exchange for information. The vemadah gives me the information I need and fades into the shadows. I gave it the Talmans of my dead comrades and the vemadah will see that their deaths are recorded for the benefit of anyone who might care. Anta’s sibling, Trahn, may be still alive. The rest of them, though, came from the holding center for the lineless. The Twelve was their line.
In the village of Namdas, nestled in the foothills of the Silver Mountains, I see the market where farmers and merchants buy and sell things as though there is no fire in the sky. Namdas has only been hit twice during the past few years, both times by accident; shortfalls of missiles intended for the Mavedah headquarters farther to the east. I think to buy some of the sweet grain cakes there on sale, but I have no money and only my boot knife to trade. I keep my knife, drink at a well, and take the road into the mountains.
As the hot dawn fills the sky, I see the house. It is in the woods above Namdas, high on the slope of Mt.Atahdd. The smell of trees fills the air. The house is little more than a rouga, what the humans call a hutch or shack. In the dust outside the shack two Drac children play at killing.
"Nu geph, Irkmaan!" growls the older child as it brandishes a wooden energy knife made from a drying board. The other child, holding a stick as though it is a rifle, sullenly falls down feigning a welcome death, its release from having to take the role of the human. When it resurrects and demands the exchange of weapons and roles, the older child refuses. A protest, another demand, the name kizlode is hurled followed shortly by a swift kick and the pair grappling in the dust.
I am rooted to the spot by a memory of two years past. There was one of many truces in effect. Standing guard on eleven humans, holding them in case the negotiations for the proposed prisoner exchange actually succeed. The humans talk among themselves, one saying that he cannot see how the war can ever end. He tells his companion the wounds are too many, too old, and too deep. He describes how his children and the children of his friends play. For fun they play at killing Dracs the way these children before Neleh Ve’s shack play at killing humans.