Children of God

There was no reasoning with her; there never had been. He turned to look at the VaN’Jarri-their faces tight with anxiety, pinched with hunger—and listened to the uncompromising words of a woman he had known long ago.

"Sofia, you leave me no choice," he said finally, hating himself. "I believe I can locate Isaac and bring him back to you, but only on the condition that we are not followed. That’s the deal, Mendes. Back off, and I’ll do what I can to bring your son home to you."

He closed his eyes as he listened to her tell him what she believed he had become. He didn’t argue. Mostly, she was right.

AT MIDDAY THEY CRESTED A LOW RISE THAT GAVE OUT ONTO A FIELD rank with weed, and from that vantage the ruins of Inbrokar could be seen in the milky haze of prairie heat. For a time, Emilio gazed silently at the blackened rubble. It was not the city of his dreams, but the charred gates seemed familiar, and if he closed his eyes, he could almost picture the chiseled stone walls that had once given an illusion of safety.

"Can you smell it?" Rukuei asked him.

"No," Emilio said. "Not yet." Then—a faint sweetness: corruption’s ghost. "Yes. I smell it now," he said, and turned to meet Kitheri’s eyes: beautiful, haunted, and as weary as his own. "Wait here," Sandoz told the others, and walked with Rukuei down the sloping hill onto the battlefield.

"I was twelve," Rukuei said, measuring his stride to the pace of the small person beside him. "The war was as old as I was. Thirty thousand men died here in a single day, and then a city full of refugees. Within another year or two—a civilization."

Weather and the work of scavengers had made dust or dung of all but the densest elements of bone, but of these, there were many. ’Their blood has been shed like water, round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them,’ "Sandoz murmured. Here and there, the glint of fragile rusted metal caught the eye as they walked. Bending to examine a helmet, Sandoz saw a single tooth, flat-crowned and broad. "Runa," he remarked, with some surprise. "When did they start wearing armor?"

"Toward the end of the war," Rukuei said.

"I’ve heard it said: Choose your enemies wisely, for you will become them," Sandoz told him, and was moved to apologize for frightening the young man so badly at their first meeting, but fell silent when he saw Rukuei stiffen.

"My father wore silver and gold," the Jana’ata said quietly, walking toward a gleaming scrap of metal. A finely wrought fastener, ripped loose, trampled into the mud, concealed from gleaners for years, weathering out again sometime during the last rainy season. Rukuei bent to pick it up, but stayed his hand when he noticed something white nearby. The tough, compact bone of an opposable toe, perhaps. And there, a fragment of the heavy nuchal crest from the base of a skull. "We—we cremate our dead," Rukuei said, straightening, looking at the ruins now to escape the sight of scrappy remnants lying on the ground. "So, in some ways, it seemed acceptable that so many died in the fires, after the battle."

But this, he thought. This…

The mechanical whirr of the foreigner’s hands brought him back to the present, and Rukuei saw in flesh what had once been merely dream— Emilio Sandoz, on the battlefield of Inbrokar. Stooped over, reaching for the bits of bone and teeth. Carefully picking each small piece up, gathering the remains methodically: Runa and Jana’ata, mingled in death.

Without speaking, Rukuei joined him in this task, and then the others came to help—Kajpin and Tiyat, Sean Fein and Joseba Urizarbarrena, and Shetri Laaks, silently bringing the anonymous dead together. Nico removed his shirt, spreading it out to collect the relics, and soon the quiet was broken by the plaintive melody of "Una furtiva lagrima." As fragmentary as the remains were, there was too much scattered across too broad a field to do right by it all, so when the makeshift shroud was filled, they counted themselves done, and carried what they had gathered to a place inside the ruins, where the smell of weathered char was stronger. They added to it with a smoky pyre built of half-burnt wood pried from what had once been a storage building near the Embassy of Mala Njer.

"What I remember most clearly is my small sister’s voice," Rukuei told them as the fire crackled. "All the Paramount’s freeborn children were in the embassy—he must have known how it would end, but hoped that there would be perhaps some respect for diplomats." Rukuei laughed—a short, hard sound—at his father’s naïveté. "My sister was somewhere in the fire. As we ran from the city, I could hear her call my name. A silver wire of sound: Ru-ku-eiiiii…"

That evening, as the light died, he sang for them a poetry of wounds, of loss and of regret and of yearning; of the concentration and intensification of such hurts with each new injury to the soul; of the slackening and rarefaction of pain and sorrow in the dance of life and in the presence of children. In the midst of this, Shetri Laaks stood and stumbled blindly away, hoping to escape the songs’ pain, but when he came to rest a good distance from the pyre, he heard a foreigner’s footsteps behind him, and knew from the scent that it was Sandoz.

"Tell me," Sandoz said, and his silence was a void that Shetri felt compelled to fill.

"He doesn’t mean to hurt me," Shetri whispered. "How can he know? Rukuei thinks children are hope, but they’re not! They’re terror. A child is a limb that can be torn from you—" Shetri stopped, and tried to slow his breathing, to force it into an even rhythm.

"Tell me," Sandoz said again.

Shetri turned toward the foreigner’s voice. "My wife is pregnant, and I fear for her. The Kitheris are small, and Ha’anala nearly died during the last birth—the baby was large in the hindquarters, like a Laaks. Ha’anala hides a great deal. This pregnancy has been very hard. I fear for her, and for the baby. And for myself," he admitted. "Sandoz, shall I tell you what my daughter Sofi’ala asked me when she learned her mother was pregnant again? She asked, Will this baby die, too? She has lost two younger brothers. She expects babies to die. So do I."

He sat down where he stood, heedless of the mud and ash. "I was once an adept of Sti," said Shetri. "I was third-born, and content. Sometimes I long for the time when there was nothing in my life but still water, and the chants. But six must sing together, and I think the others are all dead now, and there is no one who can be spared to learn the ritual. I once believed myself fortunate to become a father but now—. It is an awful thing to love so much. When my first son died…"

"I am sorry for your losses," Sandoz said, sitting down next to him. "When is the new baby due?"

"In a few days, perhaps. Who can tell with women? Maybe it’s come already. Maybe it’s over." He hesitated. "My first son died of a disease of the lungs." He tapped his chest, so the foreigner understood. "But the second—" He fell silent.

"Tell me," said the foreigner softly.

"The priests of Sti are known—were known for our medicines, our knowledge of how to heal wounds and help the body overcome illness when it was fitting to do so. I could not stand to watch Ha’anala die, so I tried to help her. There are drugs to ease pain…" It was a long while before he could finish. "It was my fault that the child was stillborn," he said at last. "I only wanted to help Ha’anala."

"I, too, watched a child dear to me die. I killed her," Sandoz told him plainly. "It was, I suppose, an accident, but I was responsible."

There was lightning to the east; for a moment Shetri could see the foreigner’s face. "So," Shetri said with a soft grunt of commiseration. "I grant parity."

They listened for a time, waiting for the low rumble of thunder to reach them. When the foreigner spoke again, his voice was soft but clear in the darkness. "Shetri, you risked a great deal to come south. What did you expect us to do? We are but four men, and foreigners! What do you want from us?"