The Ancient Enemy (22 page)

As she worked her muscles, she tried to ignore a screaming match going on across the passage in Kima Rezzigu's quarters. Kima was yelling abuse at her daughter, something that occurred several times a day.

Screaming, weeping, occasional bouts of laughter, these were the sounds she had lived with for almost a year in this hell on the waves. She turned her mind away from it all and went with the thud and slow quiver of the ship as they broke the waves. Where were they going in such a hurry? To the New Land with its virgin shores, its wealth of game and wood? Such wonderful tales she had heard about the New Land. There were endless verdant forests, uncut by man. There were fertile valley bottoms, already cultivated by the autochtonous animals. All that had to be done was to clear away the animals, remove their wretched huts, and build anew.

Of course there was no way to find out directly what was happening. She could not openly speak to the men of the crew. She would have to use the women's hierarchy.

She knew perfectly well that within a minute of the order being given the old crones that ruled the women's deck would have known of the decision and their destination. The crones ruled with a hard hand. The captain's wife was the worst; Vli Shuzt had ruled her family from within the confines of purdah since she was first wed.

So, Vli would know. And Vli would tell her cronies, one by one, parceling out the information to make sure they all felt the thrill of learning it. Eventually someone would tell Simona, too. If she asked the right person, the right way.

Her own mother, by her stupidity, had alienated Vli and caused tensions within the Gsekk clan itself. And so their family had been wrenched from their comfortable life in Shasht and placed in this hell on water, with Chiknulba completely out of things with the rulership of the women's deck. She was not even part of the hierarchy that disseminated information.

Simona sighed unhappily. Alas, her mother was living in a sort of mental fog these days. It was not from opium or rum, either. It was self-generated, a way for Chiknulba to slip away from the awful reality here, a filter that shut out the noise and smell. Her response to the outer world had grown erratic, halfhearted, and a bit chaotic.

Simona made up her mind. She would have to beg.

She finished wiping herself down and then went forward. Aunt Jemelm was her best chance of finding out.

"You got something for me?" said the mountainous woman from her softly cushioned cell. Aunt Jemelm was very well connected.

"I have nothing, Aunt. I'm skint. You know how it is. None of the officers have been paid for months. Chiknulba will not exert herself, and Filek is afraid. He is assistant surgeon, but he could be replaced."

"He would be surplus then."

"And without political friends on this ship. My poor father is lost in this world of deception and treachery. You know my position, Aunt Jemelm. I have nothing, but I just want to know where we're going."

"Filek in bad position. He lose his position, he risk losing his balls. Your mother is a Gsekk, they will be very unhappy. There will be blood rites. Djinns and demons will be summoned up. Sickness will spread. Oh, old auntie, she knows. And you, red-mark girl, what do you know? Why you want to know where we going?"

"I'd just like to know, that's all."

Aunt Jemelm chuckled, her several chins wobbling. "Oh, you need to know!" She laughed some more. "You will owe me many sheep when we reach land."

"Their meat is yours. I have no sheep."

"We are going to meet the other ships. The
Anvil
has signaled after returning from the coast. There is fresh meat."

Meat? Simona salivated at the thought.

"Thank you, Aunt Jemelm."

"You owe me your sheep."

"Yes, Aunt Jemelm." Simona kissed Jemelm's ring and bowed out of her presence.

The light was brightening steadily as the day advanced. Belowdecks it never got brighter than gloom, but at least it was bright gloom in the middle of the day. She had groveled to her aunt and been rewarded, but her tally with Aunt Jemelm was already long. Someday she would have to pay.

Thus it was to live in purdah, belowdecks. Ever wondering what was happening beyond the door, past the guards and eunuchs. Always thinking about the outside, the free world, where men went to and fro, unconstrained, unshielded, in the sun and the wind.

In Shasht society, the shadow fell over women after their menses first broke. The doors closed around them, and they were locked away. Many women never again felt the sun or the wind on their bodies.

Simona positioned herself near the pump house. She saw Bera Fenida taking up her accustomed place as first in line. Bera would be getting breakfast for Vli herself.

There was a huge clatter above their heads then a gruff bellow from the guard, "Breakfast!" Simona hurried toward the door when it opened, but as always she was jostled and shoved out of the way as hundreds of hungry women scrambled for the trays.

The eldest did not stand in line. They allowed their most favored daughters to press to the front and fetch them a meal. Then the most favored daughters were allowed to go to the back of the line for their own meals. Nevertheless, there was intense competition to be among the most favored daughters.

Simona was not one of them, of course, and she waited patiently about two-thirds of the way down the line, as she usually did. It snaked forward, at less than a walking pace, but more than a crawl, and for some reason it was always unbearable. There was nothing to do but to pray to the Great God.
If He Who Eats can hear my message, let me eat, too.

At last she reached the doors. Slaves were bringing in the trays, stacked six deep. That meant biscuit and cheese, not porridge. Porridge came in deep bowls and could only be stacked three deep. Good, the porridge had been getting thin lately as they came to the end of their supplies.

She took her tray and carried it back to her place between Puty and Panala. Puty was the pretty little seventeen-year-old daughter of an upstart family with a questionable relationship to the Gsekk. Puty had grown up in the country, she had virtually no education, and she was crude and knowledgeable about sex.

Panala was just a dolt. She was aboard because her father Beshup had been given the post of Keeper of the Small Purse. There was little patronage in it and much responsibility, which was why incompetents were always rewarded with such jobs.

It was humiliating, really, for Simona to be stuck down here with these two, but her mother had no standing with the elders and no leverage on place assignments. They weren't even able to sleep next to each other. Chiknulba was stuck down at the bilge end with two countrywomen who looked like they ate their own children. They spoke that way, too, and openly lusted for the men at the time of the rut every night.

"So what are you daydreaming about now, lady high-and-mighty?" Puty had a way of getting under your skin whenever she wanted to. Simona feared her sometimes. Puty could dig out your secrets, and then you were in her hands.

"Nothing at all," said Simona, hoping to glide by.

She started eating her biscuit and the hunk of ill-smelling salted cheese. There was a dab of lime paste, four biscuits, and the cheese on her tray. Washed down with tea, that would be all she would receive until midday. It wasn't much to keep hunger at bay. All the women were thin and gaunt in the face.

"You know where we're going, then?" Simona just sniffed. Let Puty beg for information like everyone else.

Panala had just realized that the ship was slapping along at a much faster pace. Somehow this basic fact had eluded her since sunrise. She dropped her cheese and had to scrape it with a nail to get the dust off.

"We're going somewhere?" she said in her usual tone of perpetual amazement.

"Yes, Panala, we are," said Puty with sarcasm dripping.

"Where are we going then?"

"You have to ask Miss high-and-mighty Simona Gsekk here about that. She knows, you can bet your virginity on it."

"Do you really know?" said Panala.

"Yes, of course," said Simona.

"Where are we going, then?"

"What do you have for me?"

Panala was as poor as Simona, that was the problem. And too stupid to think of anything beyond the obvious. She spread her hands helplessly.

Puty's patience was running out. She hated to have to beg from Simona.

"Come on, red-mark girl, tell us. Who do you think you are? You don't have any rank around here."

"Then find out from someone else," said Simona.

"Oh, come on."

"Give me half your biscuit, or ask someone else."

Puty shot her a venomous look, then broke off half of her last biscuit and gave it to her.

Simona nibbled it in front of her. She hated doing this, but it was the only way. It was what they were all reduced to in this hellhole.

"The
Anvil
has returned from the coast. We are going eastward to meet it. There is more."

"More?"

"The most important information."

"Then tell me. I gave you biscuit."

"You must give more if you want to know."

"I will give nothing."

"Then you will learn nothing."

Puty stared at her with bulging eyes.

Then she handed her the other half.

"There is fresh meat on the ship."

Puty started to cry. "Fresh meat! Oh by the Pure Skin of God what I would give for fresh meat now."

Panala was staring at her. "When will we get the meat?" was all she could think to ask.

Simona ignored her.

"Fucking red-mark, fucking strawberry girl," snarled Puty, hungry now, and angry. "How many times they show you? And you have no husband."

Simona stared back at Puty while a familiar dull sense of humiliation washed over her.

Eleven men had examined her naked body, but none had finally wed her, all because of the strawberry red mark on her left breast and on the side of her neck. A sure sign of witchery and poison in your own house. So it was believed in Shasht.

Eleven men with whom she had exchanged the brief glances allowed the woman when the man has finished examining her naked body during the setting of the bride price. Eleven men's faces, briefly glimpsed, and she kept the memories alive of each. Now she was almost twenty and past her prime. Now she was something to be married off to a lower caste man like Master Pilpio to solidify Filek Biswas's support in his home village.

Those eleven men had all wanted her, she had seen their lust clearly on their faces, but they had not bid for her. Too afraid of their own families to dare bring a strawberry-marked girl into the bloodline. One, tall Riban of the Knekt, had tried to buck the system, but he was overruled in the end by his grandmother, a particularly tyrannical crone.

All through her early years of life Simona had prayed daily for deliverance from the strawberry mark. She had prostrated herself on the steps before the altar to the Great God and begged for it to fade. They said that sometimes this did indeed happen, and the woman thus affected was often married thereafter.

The Great God had ignored her pleas. And here was Puty throwing it in her face again.

She sighed. There was nothing to do but endure it for now. Of course, she could hit Puty, but Puty would hit her back, and they would end up on the rack taking a whipping from Bera Fenida, who had a very strong arm. One reason she had found such favor with mighty Vli. Bera was justly feared on the women's deck.

Simona suppressed the anger, but told herself that someday she would give Puty a hiding. By the breath and balls of the Great God himself, she swore it.

The roasting meat smelled heavenly. It had been so long since they'd had fresh meat that it was barely a memory. Chief Surgeon Zuik and his acolytes were grinning and elbowing each other as they waited in the line.

Filek Biswas, second surgeon on the
Growler
, stood there feeling only his usual dismal anxiety. Having to line up like children and then to formally beg the captain for meat made his soul cringe. But there was no way around it, not if he wanted to stay a man and free.

And so he stood in line behind the other officers of the ship, led by Jugdt the purser. The line snaked into the door of the galley and then out again to the high table, where Captain Shutz stood with knife and huge fork, ready to dish out the meat for the officers of the ship. Then, when they had been satisfied, meat would be given to the warriors, who were already coming up on deck, their eyes alight at the thought of a decent meal, the first in many months.

"Bushmeat, they're calling it. Fancy some monkey, do you?" sniggered Zuik to Third Surgeon Pesh and Assistant Surgeon Immok.

"I'll have anything, long as it's well roasted," said Immok.

"We had monkey before, at the islands."

"Tough, but good once you got used to it."

"Better be careful, Assistant Surgeon Immok, I think the chief's looking at you funny," commented a voice from further up the line, Assistant Purser Kudj.

"Old Zuik gets hungry, he gets to fingering that knife," said Trupp, the second purser.

"It's called the Surgeon's privilege," said Kudj.

Zuik and Pesh laughed heartily at this. Immok laughed, too, but less heartily. Filek merely stared in front of himself, appalled by their crudity.

There was a sudden hard nudge to his ribs. Zuik was glaring at him.

"Look lively, Biswas, don't let our surgery down. Stop looking at the deck like you're in some kind of pain. Relish and delight in the faces of the officers, that is what we want to show the captain! Relish and delight! We are taking meat from the captain. This is our most ancient rite."

Zuik exchanged a look with Pesh and Immok. Soon, soon, the look said, they would be rid of Biswas, the weak link in the chain, the weak-kneed fool who would soon be a eunuch, if Zuik had his way.

Filek groaned inwardly, but straightened himself and squared his shoulders.

"Certainly, Chief, relish and delight." Filek put a smile on his face and tried not to hear the jokes about men losing their balls from Immok and Pesh. Filek sometimes thought about suicide. He would have jumped overboard, he thought, but for his responsibility for Chiknulba and Simona. Their lives were hard enough, but without him they would face very bleak possibilities.