Angel's Creed, five
Chapter five, holy shit this is long. Okay, this one introduces and talks about an awful lot of setting and/or culturally specific things. The Nagan, some of the core beliefs of the Almic faith, a brief bit of history. I want to know if these are introduced naturally and if you understand them without being confused by the explanations.
12,393 words.
Also I need to post it in two parts because of LJ's max character limit. Also it got split into two chapters nm!
FEEDBACK IS AWESOME. I would like to know:
- What you like
- What you dislike
- Whether anything pulls you out of the reading (poor phrasing, something happens that you have to stop to puzzle out, a world-specific thing is ill-defined enough to stop your reading inertia, can't tell who's speaking for a certain line or set of lines, etc)
- How the setting specific information comes across, as mentioned above.
- Especially considering the religious conversation between Matt and Joel, does it feel in character? Does it give you an idea of the Almic faith?
- Do you think the chapter should end earlier than it does?
- Other thoughts, comments, or concerns
Chapter 5
Oriole had never traveled in a caravan before, or much at all for that matter, and he had to say that it was surprisingly boring. When he and Zahn and Qiver were walking by themselves, at least there were interesting distractions (mostly caused by Qiver), but there wasn't really anything to do while riding in a wagon besides stare out the back at the passing scenery.
He'd watched Joel convince the caravan leader, that big grey Gura whose name apparently was Maddie, that she should pay Joel and Matt as guards and that she shouldn't charge Amelia for passage even if she couldn't help defend.
Zahn, on the other hand, bought them passage without even trying to haggle. That was because the person they were working for had paid them an awful lot of money in advance to make up for travel expenses, and Zahn had no problems with spending it.
Oriole ended up riding in a wagon with Joel and Victoria, but he wasn't sure whether to be grateful or disappointed to be separated from Zahn and Qiver. They made things interesting, sure, but he could only handle so much Zahn at a time.
He didn't really want to listen to Joel and Victoria discuss the finer points of romance fiction again, so he didn't try to start any more literature discussions.
Eventually, Victoria sat down beside him and asked, "Your name's Oriole, right?"
"Yup," he replied, idly kicking his legs over the back of the wagon. "Actually it's not my name, but close enough."
"Oh, did I get it wrong? I'm sorry, I'm a bit bad with names sometimes."
Joel, sitting further back in the wagon and leaning against one of the sides, coughed conspicuously.
Oriole gave her a flat look. "Yeah, I noticed." But he explained, even if he didn't think she'd get it. "Oriole's right, it's just what I'm called and not my real name."
"Oh." She considered this for a moment. "...What's the difference?"
"Ugh." The flat look returned. Having grown up at an institution of higher learning, he was not very experienced with people of lesser intellect. Victoria's ditziness was getting old fast.
Joel's uncommon amounts of patience made an appearance again as he came over to sit beside them and gave the explanation Oriole didn't want to. "A name is the identifier conferred upon a child by its parents. My name is Rafsjalel Ahmnratasa. What a person is called is sometimes very different from its name, and often chosen by the person itself. I am called Joel."
"Ohh," she said. "Right, then. Doesn't seem like it's a real important difference."
"It is if you're a mage," Oriole replied, matter-of-fact. He turned curious, leaning forward so he could see Joel across Victoria. "What's conferred mean?"
"Ah? To give, essentially," Joel explained.
Victoria interrupted. "But why's it important if you're a mage, then?"
"Um, because mage's names are too important to just give away?" said Oriole, as if it were obvious. "So we all have pseudonyms for other people to call us." (He was pretty proud of himself for getting to use that word in a conversation.)
"But..." She turned to Joel, puzzled. "You just told me your name. Is that bad? Should I forget I heard it?"
For a few seconds, Joel just stared at her with a humourless smile. "No. I go by another name for a different reason. Elven names can be very difficult for non-elves to pronounce - and remember." Those last two words were said in complete deadpan.
"You're right, Joe is a lot easier to remember than Raf...um. That other thing you said."
For a split second, his smile widened to show teeth and stopped looking much like a smile. Oriole edged away.
Victoria didn't notice how much he looked like he wanted to strangle her. She just turned back to Oriole with a cheerful smile. "So you're Oriole but it isn't your real name, right?"
"Right," he answered.
Her head tilted to one side. "And you're a Laun, right?"
"Half." He hoped she didn't try to ask him about anything weirdly beastman-specific. Most of what he knew about beastmen was from books. They weren't very common at the Nenakret, and the ones who were there weren't exactly normal.
Thankfully that wasn't the case. She turned toward the road again, smiling off into the distance. "My da was a Laun." Then she turned to him again, her smile replaced with curiosity. "You ever get guff about it?"
"Uh...not...really?" That was a confusing question. He knew a little bit about the kinds of reputations beastmen had. Gura were dumb, Wyule were smug, Ramur were violent, and Laun were thieves. But he'd never met enough of any type to say if that was true, and people had never "given him guff" about his own beastman heritage.
She brightened. "Really? Where are you from?"
"The Nenakret."
"Oh, that's...um...what is that, again?"
"The mage guild," Joel said helpfully.
Oriole folded his arms, looking at them both like they were idiots. "It's not a guild. The Nenakret is a research center and a learning institution and a governing body. It's where people go to learn magic and it's where mages do experiments to learn more about magic. And if you're part of the Nenakret, you're part of it for the rest of your life."
Joel held up his hands in surrender. "I stand corrected."
Victoria stared at him in awe. "Gosh, you're real bright."
Oriole beamed. Being well-spoken had its advantages. So did memorizing the way his grandfather described the Nenakret.
"That's great though." She smiled distantly again. "I wish we could be like that here. You know, not sayin' mean things about Laun just 'cause they're Laun. I'm glad you haven't got to put up with any of that."
"Nope!" He grinned. "Everyone likes me because I'm awesome."
"Be mindful of your pride," Joel said.
Oriole rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay, whatever. Don't confer me advice when I didn't ask for it."
Joel covered his mouth with a couple of forced sounding coughs.
Victoria asked, "Um, I know you're an half, but have you got a shramni?"
Oriole blinked. "A what?"
"A shramni." She turned her body toward him and pointed with both hands to the symbol tattooed on the lower left of her stomach. "It shows what clan you're in."
"Oh...um..." He glanced away, his fingers straying toward his heart. "You mean it shows, uh, who your family is?"
"No. Well, a bit. But a family's smaller than a clan, so you could be in a clan with someone who's only related through your great great somethin' grandparents."
Her last word was interrupted when the wagon gave a sudden jolt and stopped cold. She put out an arm to catch him, which he would never admit he needed to keep from falling off.
One of the Gura riding with them stirred, shouting something Oriole would never have been allowed to say in front of his grandfather, and rushed past them to jump off the wagon. The other two followed, just as angry if not quite as fast.
It wasn't long before people started shouting. Joel hopped down to see what was going on, and Victoria quickly followed. Oriole went after them.
The rain from that morning had turned the dirt roads to mud, and it looked like the wagon had gotten stuck in it. Sometimes when Oriole went into town with his grandfather, the cart would get stuck in the mud, but Grandpa Owl just pushed it out and kept going. He never got as angry about it as the caravan runners were getting.
Matt was already there, climbing down from his thurgia and shouldering his rifle. "What's the problem?" he called out, walking up to the beastmen. "Did we break down?"
Some of the Gura snarled at him, but he got an answer from one of the two Wyule who were traveling with the caravan. "Broke an axle, major."
Matt sighed, muttering something under his breath that was probably another one of those things Oriole could never say in front of his grandfather. "Do we have a spare?"
One of the Gura stepped up to him and pulled himself up to his full height. Gura always walked hunched over, almost on all fours, and Oriole had never seen one stand up straight like that before. It was terrifying.
Matt stared back, completely unafraid of the monster towering over him.
"You ain't in charge o' us, redcoat," the Gura growled.
"If you want to get this wagon back on the road, I suggest we work together," he replied, stone cold. "Do you have a spare axle or not?"
They stared each other down for a few seconds, neither so much as blinking. Finally, the Gura grumbled something and returned to its previous posture, stepping back and standing down.
One of the other Gura spoke. "Yeah, we got a spare."
Oriole looked up to see that most of the rest of the caravan crew had shown up to gather around the stuck wagon. Matt started shouting orders. Even though the woman in charge of the caravan was there too, she didn't try to take command from him. "Unhitch the horses and get that cargo unloaded. If you can't help, get out of the way. Set somebody to watch the horses, and for Alm's sake watch them. They'll spook easy because of the thurgia and the last thing we need is to lose the horses, too."
Victoria went into action immediately, climbing back into the wagon to start handing things down.
Joel directed Oriole to the side of the road and told him, "You should wait with the others."
On the one hand, he wanted to refuse and insist that he could help, because he wasn't a kid and could definitely do adult things like help unload a wagon. On the other hand, manual labour was not exactly his "thing," and he didn't really want to help. So, somewhat reluctantly, he got out of the way.
Amelia and Qiver had gotten out of the way too, along with a few of the less able-bodied Gura (and one Ramur) from the caravan.
"Huhhh," Amelia sighed. "What a pain."
One of the Gura behind them muttered, "This wouldn't o' happened if we hadn't taken on them bloody elves."
That was a strange thing to say. Oriole turned to him. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Bad luck, lad," said the elderly Ramur, setting a hand on Oriole's head and smashing his hat down over his eyes. He tolerated it silently, but didn't try to hide the annoyance on his face. "Elves got Daruma in 'em."
"That's dumb," he replied.
Some shouts went up from the wagon. Oriole wriggled out from under the Ramur's hand and pushed his hat back up so he could see what was going on.
Several beastmen stood against Zahn and Joel. Joel backed away, holding his hands up in surrender. Zahn's posture was sort of sheepishly put-out, one hand buried in thick blond hair and mask's eyes directed at the ground.
Matt came over to ask what the commotion was, and whatever answer he got just made him point the beastmen back toward the wagon. They left, and he said something to Joel and Zahn. The elves both walked away from the wagon to join the group at the side of the road, and Matt went back to helping the beastmen.
"They wouldn't let you help?" Amelia asked, as Joel walked up.
His smile was thin. "No. They wouldn't."
"That's stupid. What, because you 'got Daruma in you'?" She threw a glare back at the Ramur who'd said it. "You're a priest of Alm."
"It's alright, Amelia," he said, resigned. "Don't start any fights about it, please."
Oriole's eyes followed Amelia's when she threw that glare, but he did a double-take. The group of beastmen had moved away, leaving him, Amelia, Qiver, and especially Joel and Zahn, in their own separate group.
Zahn noticed it too, and exchanged a glance with Oriole. Setting a hand beside the mask's mouth, Zahn mimed a haughty laugh.
It stopped with a gasp of pain when Qiver flung an arm out to whack Zahn in the stomach. "Don't encourage them!"
Oriole folded his arms. "You are so immature."
"Hah! From you! That's funny." Zahn straightened, arms falling away from the site of Qiver's impact. Looking back up toward the broken wagon, resting one hand idly on the sword's hilt, Zahn said, "You'd think six thousand years would be long enough for people to realize elves aren't on the opposite side of the war, anymore."
"History is unforgiving," said Joel, without looking toward Zahn.
This time Zahn's laughter was not silent. "You're not old enough to know the weight of those words, kid."
Joel turned to them, his smile hardened. "Age and maturity are not the same, Nagan."
Zahn suddenly turned very serious, facing Joel with a military stiffness. "I have a name, child."
"As do I."
Amelia stepped between them. "Hey, knock it off!"
Zahn's arms folded, but there was no backing down.
Joel, surprisingly, gently pushed Amelia aside and stepped past her. "My name is Rafsjalel Ahmnratasa. My title is not 'kid' or 'child.' It is 'Father,' and I've earned it."
"Zahn," came the curt reply. "Not 'Nagan.' I'm three times your age, boy, and I will call you what I like."
Oriole, Qiver, and Amelia backed away as the argument unfolded. Amelia looked like she really wanted to step in, but she didn't. Probably because Joel had already pushed her away. She looked angry, though.
On the other side of the two elves, the beastmen were watching with interest.
Joel's smile turned up into a sneer for a brief second before he forced his face to a false calm. "Tell me, Zahn. Why are you, an elf, at the Nenakret to learn human magic? Why do you carry the manner of a goblin, and wear one of their masks?" A pause, and a meaningful look. "Did your parents react so poorly?"
Zahn went off balance as if physically struck. "That isn't any of your concern, Rafsjalel."
"Is it, perhaps, that you left home because you were unwilling to be forced into work as a census agent?"
"I was a teacher," Zahn snarled.
"Then I wonder why you're not still teaching in Sureloum, Nagan."
"Why?" Zahn flung an arm out to the side, the other hand wrapped around the sword's hilt. "How about you tell me why you're an Almic priest when you can't be much older than a hundred. Do you even know what they did to us? Do you even realize that after the war, Alm's church tried to use their Molge allies in Takkarav to cause an elven genocide?"
Joel stared back calmly.
"You do know that, right? Or did you not reach that point in your history classes before you abandoned the homeland, race-traitor?"
"Race-traitor?" Joel didn't sound angry. He met Zahn's rant with a calm smile. "You're the one in the goblin mask."
"I still know where I came from!"
"Then I suppose the beastmen were correct to turn you away, weren't they?"
Silence fell, as thick as the fog from that morning.
Zahn, after a moment of staring back at Joel's fake smile, turned and stalked off.
That broke the hush over the crowd. Qiver ran after Zahn, Amelia rushed to Joel's side, and the beastmen went back to conversing amongst themselves.
"Wow, Joel," Amelia said. "That was really uncalled-for."
"It called me a race-traitor," he replied.
"Yeah but - Joel, you accused her of Daruma-worship!"
"It. I accused it."
Oriole chewed at his lip, glancing from Joel and Amelia to Zahn and Qiver. He...was starting to consider Joel a friend, sure, but he'd definitely known Zahn longer. And...well, Zahn looked like the more upset one, because Zahn was the one standing hunched over, back to the group, looking very small.
Oriole threw one more glance at Joel, then ran to Zahn's side.
"Are you okay?" was the first thing he asked.
"Fine. Oh, yeah. I'm fine. So fine." But there was a muffled sniffle from behind the mask and Zahn decided to give up on standing, falling to a crouch.
Qiver leaned down and reached for Zahn's hand, pulling it up to brace their forearms together. Oriole had seen them do that before. Zahn had told him it was the way goblins hugged.
"Um. We're your friends, so if you wanna talk...or something..." Truthfully, Oriole wasn't quite sure why what Joel had said would upset Zahn so much. There was that part at the end where he'd implied (apparently) that Zahn was a Daruma-worshiper, but the rest of it had just gone completely over Oriole's head.
A shake of the head, and then a pause. Zahn's hand slipped out of Qiver's to bury in that thick blond hair instead. "By the gears, that stupid kid... It was the comment about my parents."
"Why?" Joel had asked something about Zahn's parents reacting poorly, but Oriole hadn't been able to figure out what that was supposed to mean.
"Nagan are...it's something you become, when you don't fit in."
"Like how?"
"Heh. You're ten. You won't understand."
Oriole frowned. "I will too."
"Alright. You know how you can like somebody, and you can like like somebody?"
"Yeah."
"Well, sometimes, boys like like other boys, and girls like like other girls."
He made a face. "That's gross."
"Yeah, see, I told you you wouldn't understand. Gross or not, it happens. And sometimes, elves like goblins. It's not normal. Elves like elves and boys like girls, so if you're different, you have to become a Nagan." Zahn gave a shaky sigh. "My parents did react poorly. And then some cocky kid who barely even knows what he's talking about comes and throws it in my face. That hurts." Another sniffle. "Ugh. Damn it. He was just fishing for something that would sting and got lucky."
Oriole eyed Zahn for a minute. "...So, you had to stop being a boy or a girl because you want to marry a goblin?"
"Close enough."
"That's gross, too."
Zahn sighed and stood, walking away. "Never mind, Oriole."
* * *
"Khim's wings, they made you walk?" Matt pulled Yvonne up alongside Joel, and she fell into pace with him.
It had taken them hours to unload the wagon, replace the axle, load it back up, and then get moving again. Now Maddie was trying to make up lost time and they were still moving even despite the darkening sky. She'd told Matt that she had no intention of stopping until well after nightfall.
Joel and Zahn were walking behind the wagon train - Zahn much farther back than Joel, and accompanied by Qiver.
"It's fine," Joel replied.
Matt's eyebrows rose. "You can't honestly think that."
Bernard, from his perch on Matt's epaulet, said, "He's a priest, princess. Don't get him started."
"Elves must spend their lives atoning for the actions of their ancestors."
"The elven racial debt?" Matt suspected it was the reason Joel had become a priest in the first place, but he hadn't realized how deeply Joel bought into it.
"If you must call it that."
Bernard let out a low whistle. "Kid's brainwashed."
Because Joel couldn't hear Bernard, Matt didn't acknowledge his comments. But he agreed. "You honestly believe that bad things happen to you because your ancestors fought on the wrong side of a war six thousand years ago."
"It's more complicated than that. Karmic-"
"Yeah, Karmic Law, I know."
"Mm. If you knew then you wouldn't question it."
"It's never made much sense to me, Father."
"High-Father Vladimir gives a very good sermon on the subject-"
"He's not here right now." He didn't mean to sound snappy about it, but that was how it came out. Matt wasn't terribly fond of the High Father in general, and being referred to him for religious matters that he was also not terribly fond of didn't sit right with him.
Joel fell silent for a moment, his eyes turning up to the sky. Finally, he looked to Matt and began to explain. "When people do bad things, bad things happen to them in return. Alm does not punish without reason. If misfortune strikes, it is because it is deserved."
That wasn't anything he hadn't heard already. "Yeah? And what did you do to deserve this?"
"I can think of several things. My loss of temper at the docks earlier today, or my harsh actions toward Zahn, to name examples. But it needn't be anything I've done in this lifetime."
He raised an eyebrow. "What'd you do to Zahn?"
"I'd rather not speak of it. I will suffer for my mistakes, and that is enough."
"Oh...kay." He didn't know Joel well enough to pry into that, curious as he was. (He didn't know Zahn well enough either. Curse the social standards on curiosity.) He leaned forward, folding his arms over Yvonne's feathery neck. "So here's what I don't like about Karmic Law. I think, if I were in charge of a highly influential religion that spanned the entire continent, I'd want to keep people from questioning the way I ran things. So if I wanted their money, and they ended up too poor to afford to eat, I'd convince them they deserved it."
Joel's eyes narrowed and turned away. "That's absurd."
Matt leaned back, straightening, and made a noise that encompassed the vague feeling of wishing religious folk would stop brushing him off. "So you're never going to question anything bad that happens to you, because you believe that the shared karma of all elf-kind is working against you."
"If you must condense my entire character into a single sentence."
"In Almsland, we call that summarizing."
"Most people cannot be captured in summary, Major Richards." He looked up at Matt, his smile faint but unwavering. It seemed there only as a token. "With as little faith as you seem to have, why are you an ANGEL?"
"Because you don't need faith in an absent god to protect people."
"He isn't absent. Alm is-"
"Is dreaming, I know. Is that really something you want to believe in?"
"Oh, yes," Bernard commented, "try to convince the brainwashed priest that his religion's not worth it. I gotta see this."
"Why should I not want to believe in it?" Joel asked
Admittedly, Matt wasn't exactly an expert on Almism. He'd read the Book of Alm, because anybody born and raised in Alrael had read the Book of Alm, and he'd spent some Almsdays in churches, but in general he avoided the subject because it always boiled down to people wanting to know where his lack of faith came from. But he knew enough about the faith to be able to answer that question, and this was it:
"Alm's asleep, so he dreams, and his dream becomes the world, and we are nothing but what Alm has dreamed us to be. That means we're all just parts of Alm's dream. Do we even have free will? Is everything predestined by Alm's mind? What happens if he ever wakes up? I don't want to believe that I'll stop existing if my god decides he's done sleeping. I'm me, objectively. I'm real. I'm not an extension of Alm's dream."
Joel was silent long enough to give Matt's words serious consideration. "You are real. The world is real. Alm did not create the world, and he created humankind while awake. Alm's dream gives him influence over the world and us, but we and the world exist. Objectively. Outside the dream, but within his influence."
This was one of those subjects that religious scholars could never quite agree on, though, and Matt knew that. He'd read essays about it, back and forth discussions written by priests over the centuries, and all they could really agree on was that they could never know for certain without waking Alm and asking him themselves.
"How do you know?" he asked.
Joel surprised him with an immediate answer. "I don't know. That's what faith is: being able to believe in something when you don't know. I believe that Alm's dream influences us and not that we are Alm's dream, because I don't want to believe that Alm would manufacture a world like this. I don't want to believe that he would dream up people who hurt others for their own pleasure, or natural disasters which destroy entire populations, or a social structure where people spend their entire lives wondering how they will put food on the table from day to day. If Alm could dream up a world, one where people were not free to make their own decisions, why would it be this one?
"Karma is Alm's influence bringing about a balance. It is how he attempts to solve the problems inherent in our world. And if we must suffer deservedly so that the world may eventually become a better place, in line with Alm's vision, then I will not question it."
Matt was silent. Joel's youthful face belied an intelligence and wisdom that Matt was not sure how to respond to. He looked at Joel's vestments, and at the purple and gold embroidered cape that he couldn't remember the proper name for. "You really earned that senior priest rank, didn't you?"
"Karma," Joel said, "works both ways."
* * *
Thankfully, their second day on the road was uneventful, and there were even patches of sun shining through the clouds. Despite the weather looking up, morale was looking down. Joel and Zahn were still forced to walk, on account of the shared karma of elvenkind making them bad luck, and no amount of convincing could get Maddie to relent on that.
Amelia showed a surprising amount of solidarity by walking with Joel, and Joel was apparently very good at making friends because Victoria and Oriole joined him as well. Matt dropped back to talk to them when he could, careful to keep at least one person between Amelia and Yvonne whenever he did. Oriole switched between walking with Joel and walking with Zahn, and sometimes abandoned walking entirely to ride on one of the wagons and read a book.
That evening also saw them continuing long after nightfall, and they set out on their third day of travel as soon as the sun was up.
Solidarity faded fast. Matt still dropped back to talk when he could, but the others had a plethora of excuses that kept them from admitting they'd just rather ride than march. Out of everyone, Victoria, interestingly enough, was the one who spent the most time on the ground with Joel.
At one point, Oriole, riding on the back of the last wagon beside Amelia, asked what riding a thurgia was like, because he'd never had the chance to before.
Amelia, of course, responded by saying, "You should give him a ride so he can see!"
Matt shot her a look. "I thought you hated thurgia."
"I'm not the one asking to ride it."
Once the idea was out there, Oriole latched on to it with fervor. "Can I?" he asked, practically bouncing with excitement.
Matt sighed and pulled Yvonne to a stop so he could let Oriole climb on behind him. She didn't mind - it wasn't the first time she'd had some kid accompany Matt in the saddle - and Oriole was certainly happy about it.
Victoria, who happened to be walking with Joel at the time, said, "I got to ride like that on a thurgia, once."
"Really?" was Oriole's fascinated response.
"Yeah, when I was...um...about twelve, I think. With this real 'andsome ANGEL."
Matt didn't think anything of it; ANGELs on thurgia weren't exactly uncommon. A particularly generous one had probably picked up a lost girl and delivered her home.
"How'd you meet an ANGEL in Ligaram?" Oriole asked.
"Oh, it wasn't in Ligaram. I was livin' in Orean then."
That was when it hit Matt with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Victoria looked to be in her late teens, which meant she'd been twelve anywhere from six to eight years ago, and there was one very specific event that had occurred in Orean during that time period. Matt straightened, turning an incredulous stare on her. "During the revolt?"
She cocked her head to the side, finger thoughtfully against her lips. "Yeah, I guess? There was a lot o' fightin' and my folks got ashed but this ANGEL saved me."
Seven years ago, there was an uprising in Orean and the Viscount Orean had been forcibly deposed. It had the unfortunate timing of occurring right in the middle of a Formicidae Year, so ANGEL had been spread thin enough that the reserve forces typically left in Alrael to guard the capital had to be sent to Orean to quell the riots.
Matt, then a lowly private first class, had been sent along with fellow then-PFC Aristophanes Lebeaux. And he remembered having to shoot a rioter in the face to save a young Ramur girl, pulling her onto his thurgia, and taking her to the guarded part of town where she'd be safe.
Bernard let out a surprised laugh. "Khim's wings. That's a hell of a coincidence."
Matt tried to express a similar disbelief, but all he could manage were some inarticulate noises.
"Are you alright, Major?" Joel asked.
"That was me," Matt finally managed.
Victoria's face lit up. "What? Really?"
"How the hell does that even happen!"
"No way!" Amelia exclaimed. "I remember hearing about that revolt! Were you really out there? How old were you?"
"Eighteen! I was six months out of ANGEL Basic Course. They had to send us because the rest of ANGEL was off fighting Formicidae in D'Naba."
"Oi!" Victoria was suddenly at his side, her expression dire. "If it was really you - I lost my little brother then. He was only three. I been lookin' for him ever since. Did you ever find him? Someone what could be him?"
A three year old Ramur? If she'd never found him, chances were he'd never made it out alive, but Matt didn't want to tell her that. He tried to remember if they'd ever found anyone who matched the description.
Oriole's hands tightened on Matt's waist and he laid his head against Matt's back, like he was trying to hide behind him. "You have a little brother?" he asked.
"Yeah." She nodded. She moved her hand up to her right ear and snapped her fingers over it halfway up, like a scissor. "He's missing half his ear, like this, and his name's Valemerosa Nattano."
That got some kind of reaction out of Oriole, because he huddled closer against Matt when she said it.
"Valemerosa is an elven name," said Joel.
"Yeah, his mum had an odd taste in names."
Matt wanted to ask Oriole if he was alright, but had the feeling that if he wasn't saying anything now, he wouldn't appreciate being asked. So he just shook his head and said, "I never found anybody like that. I'm sorry."
She shrugged it off. "It was worth askin'. I'll find him someday."
He didn't think she would, but even Matt felt guilty at the thought of crushing Victoria's hopes.
* * *
"Zaaaaaaaaaahn!" Oriole cried, running around the circle of wagons to try to find Zahn and Qiver. They always disappeared whenever the caravan stopped to set up camp and eat dinner, so Oriole had been eating with Joel's friends instead, but tonight there were very important things that Oriole needed to talk to Zahn about. So he was running around outside the wagon circle, looking for them.
He found them eventually, sitting where the firelight didn't reach. He called out Zahn's name again as he ran up.
They both jumped and scrambled for something. Oriole didn't realize until he stopped in front of them and saw Qiver adjusting his mask that they'd been hurrying to put their masks back on. He'd always wondered how goblins ate. In the dark, apparently.
"What is it, Oriole?" Zahn asked, running a hand through blond bangs to pull them out from under the mask.
Oriole threw his hands up and spoke so fast it came out as one word. "Zahn I think I have a sister!"
They both stared at him - or he thought they did anyway, because he couldn't see their eyes.
"I have lots of sisters," Qiver said finally.
"I have one myself. She's, what, two-hundred by now? She's kind of annoying, really. Thinks she knows everything."
Oriole stomped his foot. "I don't care about your sisters! I didn't even know I had one!"
"Well..." Zahn's head tilted to one side. "How do you know you have one, then?"
"She said she has a little brother and she said his name and it's my name and it's not a very common name, Zahn!"
"How uncommon are we talking?"
"She said he's missing half his right ear!"
A short pause; Zahn's head straightened. "Huh. You are-"
Oriole whipped off his hat and pointed to his right ear. Being a half-Laun, he had typical Laun ears that looked almost like a cat's, and his right one looked like somebody had taken a knife and sliced off the top half.
"Yeah," Zahn said. "That."
"And-"
"There's more?"
"We have the same tattoo!" He yanked up his shirt to show the faded black symbol on the left side of his chest.
"Victoria?" Zahn laughed. "She's your sister? Wow, Oriole. Wow."
"I can't see any of this," Qiver commented.
Oriole shoved his shirt back down and put his hat back on and turned to Qiver. "Well it's there, okay? And it means I'm related to some big dumb girl who can barely even read."
"Victoria's the Ramur girl, right? But you're half human, half Laun."
"She said her dad is a Laun!"
Zahn laughed harder. "Aw, Oriole, don't be too upset about it! That means you're only half related to some big dumb girl who can barely even read!"
"Augh!" He grabbed Zahn by the shoulders and shook. "What am I supposed to do, Zahn?!"
"Tell her?" the elf suggested.
"I can't just tell her!"
"Why not?"
He stared silently at Zahn.
"I could tell her for you?"
"Ah! No! Don't!"
"Oriole." Zahn lifted Oriole's hands away. "Calm down. Weren't you always curious about your real family? Now you have a chance to find out."
"But..."
Qiver reached out and found the edge of Oriole's coat and gave it a tug. Oriole sat down.
"You have a sister," Zahn said. "You have parents. That doesn't mean Owl's not still your family. The guy raised you. He loves you like you were his blood grandson, and he knows you're not. Finding your real family isn't going to make him stop being your grandfather."
Oriole frowned, looking down at the ground. Zahn had put his fears into words when Oriole didn't even know what they were. Usually Zahn was just annoying, so whenever the elf said really smart things like this, Oriole didn't know how to respond.
Zahn reached out for Oriole's hand, bringing their forearms together like Qiver had for Zahn two days ago. "We're your friends, Oriole. And friends listen to their friends when they complain about their annoying siblings. So go tell her."
"Yeah," he muttered. "Maybe later."
Zahn's hand slipped away. "Whenever you're ready, kid. Just don't take forever. You don't have that long."
"Yeah, sure." He pushed himself to his feet and walked off to rejoin Joel's group. He was going to stay quiet about it for now, maybe forever.
* * *
By their fourth day on the road, Ligaram's rolling plains began to give way to scattered foothills. The beastmen finally relented and allowed the elves a respite from walking, most likely out of pity because walking uphill for days was not a pleasant experience. Their friends seemed more relieved about it than they did - now they didn't have to feel guilty about making up excuses not to walk with them anymore.
The caravaners grumbled, but since no other incidents had occurred by nightfall, they at least kept the grumbling to themselves.
It took some doing, but eventually Matt managed to convince Maddie to let Joel share his guard shift. "I claim full responsibility if anything goes wrong," he told her. (Bernard warned him that this was one of those things reasonable people should never, ever say, but Matt ignored him.)
Matt's shift, and thus Joel's, was in the middle of the damn night, which was just his luck. He never got a shift that gave him more than three hours of sleep in row. He was up for it before Joel was, waiting by the fire in his full regalia of cold-weather gear, scarf and leather coat included. Bernard was still asleep back in one of the wagons, which was just as well. Matt would rather not deal with his commentary while trying to talk to Joel tonight.
The two Wyule had the previous shift; one of them left when Matt appeared, and the other vanished without a word when Joel came out to replace him.
Joel was not dressed in his uniform. Instead, he wore normal clothes and a heavy coat (the one he'd let Amelia borrow days ago) which made him look like a perfectly average member of society instead of a priest.
"Hey," Matt said in greeting. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine," Joel mumbled, coming to a stop beside the fire and rubbing at his eyes.
"Yeah, you spend decades becoming a senior priest of Alm and then a bunch of beastmen decide you're in with Daruma and persecute you for it, and you're just fine."
"Their opinions mean little to me." Joel looked up, giving him a smile that was meant to be reassuring but didn't come off quite right. "Alm knows what is true."
"Right." He made no effort to hide his sarcasm. "And you deserve it, because your ancestors deserved it."
"Please stop. These are pillars of my faith, and it is upsetting for you to make light of them."
He sighed. Matt could be a real bastard when he wanted to be, but when a guy tells you straight to knock it off, the right answer is to knock it off. "Look, actually I wanted to talk to you about the ferry. I wasn't going to say anything, but it's been bothering me."
Joel blinked, cocking his head to the side with a bemused smile. "Oh? What of the ferry?"
"Who was that guy you were with?"
That didn't help the bemusement. "What guy?"
"Uh, the one in the cloak? Called himself Bas?" If Matt sounded like he was calling Joel stupid without actually saying it, that was because he was.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're..." His eyes widened and the edges of his smile fell as realization dawned on his face. "Bas, you said? What did he look like?"
"You can't tell me you know more than one guy named Bas."
"Could you see his face? What did he look like?"
Joel's sudden intensity made Matt pause. He dropped the sarcasm and turned serious himself, shaking his head and answering, "No, the cloak hid it."
"And he said his name was Bas, you're sure of it?"
"Yes?"
"You don't sound certain."
"You were right there. I don't know why you're asking me about this."
Joel shook his head and turned away, staring into the fire. The atmosphere was so heavy that Matt felt wrong interrupting it; he waited for Joel to speak again. "Do you know, Major...it's said that the only reason nobody's attempted to unseal Daruma yet is because nobody's figured out the correct order in which to unseal her parts?"
Matt's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
Joel looked up at him, his smile gone. "But there is a man who has figured it out, and he knows that the first three parts happen to be in Alrael, Vonariel...and Wey."
It was the mention of Vonariel that caught Matt's attention first, but it was the rest of it that made him stop cold and stare dumbly. "...How-"
A furred hand threw itself over his mouth as he was grabbed roughly from behind. This time he did not drop his weapon, and he reacted instinctively by shoving the butt of his rifle as hard as he could into whatever had been unwise enough to assail him. There was a grunt of pain and the hand fell away, and Matt turned around to shove the muzzle of his rifle into the face of a black-furred Laun.
He didn't get to see Joel's valiant struggle, but he did hear a body hit the ground with a decidedly unmasculine squeak. Something hit his shoulders and he realized it was Joel, going back-to-back with him so nobody could sneak up on them.
That was when he realized he couldn't move, not even to squeeze the trigger. Just his luck.
A figure stepped forward out of the darkness. He was a Wyule, apparently unarmed but who knew what he had hiding under that coat, with long waves of white hair tied back into a ponytail and his pale fur broken up by swatches of black painted under either eye and down the bridge of his snout. "Lovely," he said, in that posh Weyan accent, as a smile spread across his face. "Tie 'em up, boys."
At the order, several more Laun emerged from the shadows.
If he survived this, Matt was never standing watch alone with Joel ever again.
12,393 words.
Also I need to post it in two parts because of LJ's max character limit. Also it got split into two chapters nm!
FEEDBACK IS AWESOME. I would like to know:
- What you like
- What you dislike
- Whether anything pulls you out of the reading (poor phrasing, something happens that you have to stop to puzzle out, a world-specific thing is ill-defined enough to stop your reading inertia, can't tell who's speaking for a certain line or set of lines, etc)
- How the setting specific information comes across, as mentioned above.
- Especially considering the religious conversation between Matt and Joel, does it feel in character? Does it give you an idea of the Almic faith?
- Do you think the chapter should end earlier than it does?
- Other thoughts, comments, or concerns
Chapter 5
Oriole had never traveled in a caravan before, or much at all for that matter, and he had to say that it was surprisingly boring. When he and Zahn and Qiver were walking by themselves, at least there were interesting distractions (mostly caused by Qiver), but there wasn't really anything to do while riding in a wagon besides stare out the back at the passing scenery.
He'd watched Joel convince the caravan leader, that big grey Gura whose name apparently was Maddie, that she should pay Joel and Matt as guards and that she shouldn't charge Amelia for passage even if she couldn't help defend.
Zahn, on the other hand, bought them passage without even trying to haggle. That was because the person they were working for had paid them an awful lot of money in advance to make up for travel expenses, and Zahn had no problems with spending it.
Oriole ended up riding in a wagon with Joel and Victoria, but he wasn't sure whether to be grateful or disappointed to be separated from Zahn and Qiver. They made things interesting, sure, but he could only handle so much Zahn at a time.
He didn't really want to listen to Joel and Victoria discuss the finer points of romance fiction again, so he didn't try to start any more literature discussions.
Eventually, Victoria sat down beside him and asked, "Your name's Oriole, right?"
"Yup," he replied, idly kicking his legs over the back of the wagon. "Actually it's not my name, but close enough."
"Oh, did I get it wrong? I'm sorry, I'm a bit bad with names sometimes."
Joel, sitting further back in the wagon and leaning against one of the sides, coughed conspicuously.
Oriole gave her a flat look. "Yeah, I noticed." But he explained, even if he didn't think she'd get it. "Oriole's right, it's just what I'm called and not my real name."
"Oh." She considered this for a moment. "...What's the difference?"
"Ugh." The flat look returned. Having grown up at an institution of higher learning, he was not very experienced with people of lesser intellect. Victoria's ditziness was getting old fast.
Joel's uncommon amounts of patience made an appearance again as he came over to sit beside them and gave the explanation Oriole didn't want to. "A name is the identifier conferred upon a child by its parents. My name is Rafsjalel Ahmnratasa. What a person is called is sometimes very different from its name, and often chosen by the person itself. I am called Joel."
"Ohh," she said. "Right, then. Doesn't seem like it's a real important difference."
"It is if you're a mage," Oriole replied, matter-of-fact. He turned curious, leaning forward so he could see Joel across Victoria. "What's conferred mean?"
"Ah? To give, essentially," Joel explained.
Victoria interrupted. "But why's it important if you're a mage, then?"
"Um, because mage's names are too important to just give away?" said Oriole, as if it were obvious. "So we all have pseudonyms for other people to call us." (He was pretty proud of himself for getting to use that word in a conversation.)
"But..." She turned to Joel, puzzled. "You just told me your name. Is that bad? Should I forget I heard it?"
For a few seconds, Joel just stared at her with a humourless smile. "No. I go by another name for a different reason. Elven names can be very difficult for non-elves to pronounce - and remember." Those last two words were said in complete deadpan.
"You're right, Joe is a lot easier to remember than Raf...um. That other thing you said."
For a split second, his smile widened to show teeth and stopped looking much like a smile. Oriole edged away.
Victoria didn't notice how much he looked like he wanted to strangle her. She just turned back to Oriole with a cheerful smile. "So you're Oriole but it isn't your real name, right?"
"Right," he answered.
Her head tilted to one side. "And you're a Laun, right?"
"Half." He hoped she didn't try to ask him about anything weirdly beastman-specific. Most of what he knew about beastmen was from books. They weren't very common at the Nenakret, and the ones who were there weren't exactly normal.
Thankfully that wasn't the case. She turned toward the road again, smiling off into the distance. "My da was a Laun." Then she turned to him again, her smile replaced with curiosity. "You ever get guff about it?"
"Uh...not...really?" That was a confusing question. He knew a little bit about the kinds of reputations beastmen had. Gura were dumb, Wyule were smug, Ramur were violent, and Laun were thieves. But he'd never met enough of any type to say if that was true, and people had never "given him guff" about his own beastman heritage.
She brightened. "Really? Where are you from?"
"The Nenakret."
"Oh, that's...um...what is that, again?"
"The mage guild," Joel said helpfully.
Oriole folded his arms, looking at them both like they were idiots. "It's not a guild. The Nenakret is a research center and a learning institution and a governing body. It's where people go to learn magic and it's where mages do experiments to learn more about magic. And if you're part of the Nenakret, you're part of it for the rest of your life."
Joel held up his hands in surrender. "I stand corrected."
Victoria stared at him in awe. "Gosh, you're real bright."
Oriole beamed. Being well-spoken had its advantages. So did memorizing the way his grandfather described the Nenakret.
"That's great though." She smiled distantly again. "I wish we could be like that here. You know, not sayin' mean things about Laun just 'cause they're Laun. I'm glad you haven't got to put up with any of that."
"Nope!" He grinned. "Everyone likes me because I'm awesome."
"Be mindful of your pride," Joel said.
Oriole rolled his eyes. "Yeah, okay, whatever. Don't confer me advice when I didn't ask for it."
Joel covered his mouth with a couple of forced sounding coughs.
Victoria asked, "Um, I know you're an half, but have you got a shramni?"
Oriole blinked. "A what?"
"A shramni." She turned her body toward him and pointed with both hands to the symbol tattooed on the lower left of her stomach. "It shows what clan you're in."
"Oh...um..." He glanced away, his fingers straying toward his heart. "You mean it shows, uh, who your family is?"
"No. Well, a bit. But a family's smaller than a clan, so you could be in a clan with someone who's only related through your great great somethin' grandparents."
Her last word was interrupted when the wagon gave a sudden jolt and stopped cold. She put out an arm to catch him, which he would never admit he needed to keep from falling off.
One of the Gura riding with them stirred, shouting something Oriole would never have been allowed to say in front of his grandfather, and rushed past them to jump off the wagon. The other two followed, just as angry if not quite as fast.
It wasn't long before people started shouting. Joel hopped down to see what was going on, and Victoria quickly followed. Oriole went after them.
The rain from that morning had turned the dirt roads to mud, and it looked like the wagon had gotten stuck in it. Sometimes when Oriole went into town with his grandfather, the cart would get stuck in the mud, but Grandpa Owl just pushed it out and kept going. He never got as angry about it as the caravan runners were getting.
Matt was already there, climbing down from his thurgia and shouldering his rifle. "What's the problem?" he called out, walking up to the beastmen. "Did we break down?"
Some of the Gura snarled at him, but he got an answer from one of the two Wyule who were traveling with the caravan. "Broke an axle, major."
Matt sighed, muttering something under his breath that was probably another one of those things Oriole could never say in front of his grandfather. "Do we have a spare?"
One of the Gura stepped up to him and pulled himself up to his full height. Gura always walked hunched over, almost on all fours, and Oriole had never seen one stand up straight like that before. It was terrifying.
Matt stared back, completely unafraid of the monster towering over him.
"You ain't in charge o' us, redcoat," the Gura growled.
"If you want to get this wagon back on the road, I suggest we work together," he replied, stone cold. "Do you have a spare axle or not?"
They stared each other down for a few seconds, neither so much as blinking. Finally, the Gura grumbled something and returned to its previous posture, stepping back and standing down.
One of the other Gura spoke. "Yeah, we got a spare."
Oriole looked up to see that most of the rest of the caravan crew had shown up to gather around the stuck wagon. Matt started shouting orders. Even though the woman in charge of the caravan was there too, she didn't try to take command from him. "Unhitch the horses and get that cargo unloaded. If you can't help, get out of the way. Set somebody to watch the horses, and for Alm's sake watch them. They'll spook easy because of the thurgia and the last thing we need is to lose the horses, too."
Victoria went into action immediately, climbing back into the wagon to start handing things down.
Joel directed Oriole to the side of the road and told him, "You should wait with the others."
On the one hand, he wanted to refuse and insist that he could help, because he wasn't a kid and could definitely do adult things like help unload a wagon. On the other hand, manual labour was not exactly his "thing," and he didn't really want to help. So, somewhat reluctantly, he got out of the way.
Amelia and Qiver had gotten out of the way too, along with a few of the less able-bodied Gura (and one Ramur) from the caravan.
"Huhhh," Amelia sighed. "What a pain."
One of the Gura behind them muttered, "This wouldn't o' happened if we hadn't taken on them bloody elves."
That was a strange thing to say. Oriole turned to him. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Bad luck, lad," said the elderly Ramur, setting a hand on Oriole's head and smashing his hat down over his eyes. He tolerated it silently, but didn't try to hide the annoyance on his face. "Elves got Daruma in 'em."
"That's dumb," he replied.
Some shouts went up from the wagon. Oriole wriggled out from under the Ramur's hand and pushed his hat back up so he could see what was going on.
Several beastmen stood against Zahn and Joel. Joel backed away, holding his hands up in surrender. Zahn's posture was sort of sheepishly put-out, one hand buried in thick blond hair and mask's eyes directed at the ground.
Matt came over to ask what the commotion was, and whatever answer he got just made him point the beastmen back toward the wagon. They left, and he said something to Joel and Zahn. The elves both walked away from the wagon to join the group at the side of the road, and Matt went back to helping the beastmen.
"They wouldn't let you help?" Amelia asked, as Joel walked up.
His smile was thin. "No. They wouldn't."
"That's stupid. What, because you 'got Daruma in you'?" She threw a glare back at the Ramur who'd said it. "You're a priest of Alm."
"It's alright, Amelia," he said, resigned. "Don't start any fights about it, please."
Oriole's eyes followed Amelia's when she threw that glare, but he did a double-take. The group of beastmen had moved away, leaving him, Amelia, Qiver, and especially Joel and Zahn, in their own separate group.
Zahn noticed it too, and exchanged a glance with Oriole. Setting a hand beside the mask's mouth, Zahn mimed a haughty laugh.
It stopped with a gasp of pain when Qiver flung an arm out to whack Zahn in the stomach. "Don't encourage them!"
Oriole folded his arms. "You are so immature."
"Hah! From you! That's funny." Zahn straightened, arms falling away from the site of Qiver's impact. Looking back up toward the broken wagon, resting one hand idly on the sword's hilt, Zahn said, "You'd think six thousand years would be long enough for people to realize elves aren't on the opposite side of the war, anymore."
"History is unforgiving," said Joel, without looking toward Zahn.
This time Zahn's laughter was not silent. "You're not old enough to know the weight of those words, kid."
Joel turned to them, his smile hardened. "Age and maturity are not the same, Nagan."
Zahn suddenly turned very serious, facing Joel with a military stiffness. "I have a name, child."
"As do I."
Amelia stepped between them. "Hey, knock it off!"
Zahn's arms folded, but there was no backing down.
Joel, surprisingly, gently pushed Amelia aside and stepped past her. "My name is Rafsjalel Ahmnratasa. My title is not 'kid' or 'child.' It is 'Father,' and I've earned it."
"Zahn," came the curt reply. "Not 'Nagan.' I'm three times your age, boy, and I will call you what I like."
Oriole, Qiver, and Amelia backed away as the argument unfolded. Amelia looked like she really wanted to step in, but she didn't. Probably because Joel had already pushed her away. She looked angry, though.
On the other side of the two elves, the beastmen were watching with interest.
Joel's smile turned up into a sneer for a brief second before he forced his face to a false calm. "Tell me, Zahn. Why are you, an elf, at the Nenakret to learn human magic? Why do you carry the manner of a goblin, and wear one of their masks?" A pause, and a meaningful look. "Did your parents react so poorly?"
Zahn went off balance as if physically struck. "That isn't any of your concern, Rafsjalel."
"Is it, perhaps, that you left home because you were unwilling to be forced into work as a census agent?"
"I was a teacher," Zahn snarled.
"Then I wonder why you're not still teaching in Sureloum, Nagan."
"Why?" Zahn flung an arm out to the side, the other hand wrapped around the sword's hilt. "How about you tell me why you're an Almic priest when you can't be much older than a hundred. Do you even know what they did to us? Do you even realize that after the war, Alm's church tried to use their Molge allies in Takkarav to cause an elven genocide?"
Joel stared back calmly.
"You do know that, right? Or did you not reach that point in your history classes before you abandoned the homeland, race-traitor?"
"Race-traitor?" Joel didn't sound angry. He met Zahn's rant with a calm smile. "You're the one in the goblin mask."
"I still know where I came from!"
"Then I suppose the beastmen were correct to turn you away, weren't they?"
Silence fell, as thick as the fog from that morning.
Zahn, after a moment of staring back at Joel's fake smile, turned and stalked off.
That broke the hush over the crowd. Qiver ran after Zahn, Amelia rushed to Joel's side, and the beastmen went back to conversing amongst themselves.
"Wow, Joel," Amelia said. "That was really uncalled-for."
"It called me a race-traitor," he replied.
"Yeah but - Joel, you accused her of Daruma-worship!"
"It. I accused it."
Oriole chewed at his lip, glancing from Joel and Amelia to Zahn and Qiver. He...was starting to consider Joel a friend, sure, but he'd definitely known Zahn longer. And...well, Zahn looked like the more upset one, because Zahn was the one standing hunched over, back to the group, looking very small.
Oriole threw one more glance at Joel, then ran to Zahn's side.
"Are you okay?" was the first thing he asked.
"Fine. Oh, yeah. I'm fine. So fine." But there was a muffled sniffle from behind the mask and Zahn decided to give up on standing, falling to a crouch.
Qiver leaned down and reached for Zahn's hand, pulling it up to brace their forearms together. Oriole had seen them do that before. Zahn had told him it was the way goblins hugged.
"Um. We're your friends, so if you wanna talk...or something..." Truthfully, Oriole wasn't quite sure why what Joel had said would upset Zahn so much. There was that part at the end where he'd implied (apparently) that Zahn was a Daruma-worshiper, but the rest of it had just gone completely over Oriole's head.
A shake of the head, and then a pause. Zahn's hand slipped out of Qiver's to bury in that thick blond hair instead. "By the gears, that stupid kid... It was the comment about my parents."
"Why?" Joel had asked something about Zahn's parents reacting poorly, but Oriole hadn't been able to figure out what that was supposed to mean.
"Nagan are...it's something you become, when you don't fit in."
"Like how?"
"Heh. You're ten. You won't understand."
Oriole frowned. "I will too."
"Alright. You know how you can like somebody, and you can like like somebody?"
"Yeah."
"Well, sometimes, boys like like other boys, and girls like like other girls."
He made a face. "That's gross."
"Yeah, see, I told you you wouldn't understand. Gross or not, it happens. And sometimes, elves like goblins. It's not normal. Elves like elves and boys like girls, so if you're different, you have to become a Nagan." Zahn gave a shaky sigh. "My parents did react poorly. And then some cocky kid who barely even knows what he's talking about comes and throws it in my face. That hurts." Another sniffle. "Ugh. Damn it. He was just fishing for something that would sting and got lucky."
Oriole eyed Zahn for a minute. "...So, you had to stop being a boy or a girl because you want to marry a goblin?"
"Close enough."
"That's gross, too."
Zahn sighed and stood, walking away. "Never mind, Oriole."
* * *
"Khim's wings, they made you walk?" Matt pulled Yvonne up alongside Joel, and she fell into pace with him.
It had taken them hours to unload the wagon, replace the axle, load it back up, and then get moving again. Now Maddie was trying to make up lost time and they were still moving even despite the darkening sky. She'd told Matt that she had no intention of stopping until well after nightfall.
Joel and Zahn were walking behind the wagon train - Zahn much farther back than Joel, and accompanied by Qiver.
"It's fine," Joel replied.
Matt's eyebrows rose. "You can't honestly think that."
Bernard, from his perch on Matt's epaulet, said, "He's a priest, princess. Don't get him started."
"Elves must spend their lives atoning for the actions of their ancestors."
"The elven racial debt?" Matt suspected it was the reason Joel had become a priest in the first place, but he hadn't realized how deeply Joel bought into it.
"If you must call it that."
Bernard let out a low whistle. "Kid's brainwashed."
Because Joel couldn't hear Bernard, Matt didn't acknowledge his comments. But he agreed. "You honestly believe that bad things happen to you because your ancestors fought on the wrong side of a war six thousand years ago."
"It's more complicated than that. Karmic-"
"Yeah, Karmic Law, I know."
"Mm. If you knew then you wouldn't question it."
"It's never made much sense to me, Father."
"High-Father Vladimir gives a very good sermon on the subject-"
"He's not here right now." He didn't mean to sound snappy about it, but that was how it came out. Matt wasn't terribly fond of the High Father in general, and being referred to him for religious matters that he was also not terribly fond of didn't sit right with him.
Joel fell silent for a moment, his eyes turning up to the sky. Finally, he looked to Matt and began to explain. "When people do bad things, bad things happen to them in return. Alm does not punish without reason. If misfortune strikes, it is because it is deserved."
That wasn't anything he hadn't heard already. "Yeah? And what did you do to deserve this?"
"I can think of several things. My loss of temper at the docks earlier today, or my harsh actions toward Zahn, to name examples. But it needn't be anything I've done in this lifetime."
He raised an eyebrow. "What'd you do to Zahn?"
"I'd rather not speak of it. I will suffer for my mistakes, and that is enough."
"Oh...kay." He didn't know Joel well enough to pry into that, curious as he was. (He didn't know Zahn well enough either. Curse the social standards on curiosity.) He leaned forward, folding his arms over Yvonne's feathery neck. "So here's what I don't like about Karmic Law. I think, if I were in charge of a highly influential religion that spanned the entire continent, I'd want to keep people from questioning the way I ran things. So if I wanted their money, and they ended up too poor to afford to eat, I'd convince them they deserved it."
Joel's eyes narrowed and turned away. "That's absurd."
Matt leaned back, straightening, and made a noise that encompassed the vague feeling of wishing religious folk would stop brushing him off. "So you're never going to question anything bad that happens to you, because you believe that the shared karma of all elf-kind is working against you."
"If you must condense my entire character into a single sentence."
"In Almsland, we call that summarizing."
"Most people cannot be captured in summary, Major Richards." He looked up at Matt, his smile faint but unwavering. It seemed there only as a token. "With as little faith as you seem to have, why are you an ANGEL?"
"Because you don't need faith in an absent god to protect people."
"He isn't absent. Alm is-"
"Is dreaming, I know. Is that really something you want to believe in?"
"Oh, yes," Bernard commented, "try to convince the brainwashed priest that his religion's not worth it. I gotta see this."
"Why should I not want to believe in it?" Joel asked
Admittedly, Matt wasn't exactly an expert on Almism. He'd read the Book of Alm, because anybody born and raised in Alrael had read the Book of Alm, and he'd spent some Almsdays in churches, but in general he avoided the subject because it always boiled down to people wanting to know where his lack of faith came from. But he knew enough about the faith to be able to answer that question, and this was it:
"Alm's asleep, so he dreams, and his dream becomes the world, and we are nothing but what Alm has dreamed us to be. That means we're all just parts of Alm's dream. Do we even have free will? Is everything predestined by Alm's mind? What happens if he ever wakes up? I don't want to believe that I'll stop existing if my god decides he's done sleeping. I'm me, objectively. I'm real. I'm not an extension of Alm's dream."
Joel was silent long enough to give Matt's words serious consideration. "You are real. The world is real. Alm did not create the world, and he created humankind while awake. Alm's dream gives him influence over the world and us, but we and the world exist. Objectively. Outside the dream, but within his influence."
This was one of those subjects that religious scholars could never quite agree on, though, and Matt knew that. He'd read essays about it, back and forth discussions written by priests over the centuries, and all they could really agree on was that they could never know for certain without waking Alm and asking him themselves.
"How do you know?" he asked.
Joel surprised him with an immediate answer. "I don't know. That's what faith is: being able to believe in something when you don't know. I believe that Alm's dream influences us and not that we are Alm's dream, because I don't want to believe that Alm would manufacture a world like this. I don't want to believe that he would dream up people who hurt others for their own pleasure, or natural disasters which destroy entire populations, or a social structure where people spend their entire lives wondering how they will put food on the table from day to day. If Alm could dream up a world, one where people were not free to make their own decisions, why would it be this one?
"Karma is Alm's influence bringing about a balance. It is how he attempts to solve the problems inherent in our world. And if we must suffer deservedly so that the world may eventually become a better place, in line with Alm's vision, then I will not question it."
Matt was silent. Joel's youthful face belied an intelligence and wisdom that Matt was not sure how to respond to. He looked at Joel's vestments, and at the purple and gold embroidered cape that he couldn't remember the proper name for. "You really earned that senior priest rank, didn't you?"
"Karma," Joel said, "works both ways."
* * *
Thankfully, their second day on the road was uneventful, and there were even patches of sun shining through the clouds. Despite the weather looking up, morale was looking down. Joel and Zahn were still forced to walk, on account of the shared karma of elvenkind making them bad luck, and no amount of convincing could get Maddie to relent on that.
Amelia showed a surprising amount of solidarity by walking with Joel, and Joel was apparently very good at making friends because Victoria and Oriole joined him as well. Matt dropped back to talk to them when he could, careful to keep at least one person between Amelia and Yvonne whenever he did. Oriole switched between walking with Joel and walking with Zahn, and sometimes abandoned walking entirely to ride on one of the wagons and read a book.
That evening also saw them continuing long after nightfall, and they set out on their third day of travel as soon as the sun was up.
Solidarity faded fast. Matt still dropped back to talk when he could, but the others had a plethora of excuses that kept them from admitting they'd just rather ride than march. Out of everyone, Victoria, interestingly enough, was the one who spent the most time on the ground with Joel.
At one point, Oriole, riding on the back of the last wagon beside Amelia, asked what riding a thurgia was like, because he'd never had the chance to before.
Amelia, of course, responded by saying, "You should give him a ride so he can see!"
Matt shot her a look. "I thought you hated thurgia."
"I'm not the one asking to ride it."
Once the idea was out there, Oriole latched on to it with fervor. "Can I?" he asked, practically bouncing with excitement.
Matt sighed and pulled Yvonne to a stop so he could let Oriole climb on behind him. She didn't mind - it wasn't the first time she'd had some kid accompany Matt in the saddle - and Oriole was certainly happy about it.
Victoria, who happened to be walking with Joel at the time, said, "I got to ride like that on a thurgia, once."
"Really?" was Oriole's fascinated response.
"Yeah, when I was...um...about twelve, I think. With this real 'andsome ANGEL."
Matt didn't think anything of it; ANGELs on thurgia weren't exactly uncommon. A particularly generous one had probably picked up a lost girl and delivered her home.
"How'd you meet an ANGEL in Ligaram?" Oriole asked.
"Oh, it wasn't in Ligaram. I was livin' in Orean then."
That was when it hit Matt with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Victoria looked to be in her late teens, which meant she'd been twelve anywhere from six to eight years ago, and there was one very specific event that had occurred in Orean during that time period. Matt straightened, turning an incredulous stare on her. "During the revolt?"
She cocked her head to the side, finger thoughtfully against her lips. "Yeah, I guess? There was a lot o' fightin' and my folks got ashed but this ANGEL saved me."
Seven years ago, there was an uprising in Orean and the Viscount Orean had been forcibly deposed. It had the unfortunate timing of occurring right in the middle of a Formicidae Year, so ANGEL had been spread thin enough that the reserve forces typically left in Alrael to guard the capital had to be sent to Orean to quell the riots.
Matt, then a lowly private first class, had been sent along with fellow then-PFC Aristophanes Lebeaux. And he remembered having to shoot a rioter in the face to save a young Ramur girl, pulling her onto his thurgia, and taking her to the guarded part of town where she'd be safe.
Bernard let out a surprised laugh. "Khim's wings. That's a hell of a coincidence."
Matt tried to express a similar disbelief, but all he could manage were some inarticulate noises.
"Are you alright, Major?" Joel asked.
"That was me," Matt finally managed.
Victoria's face lit up. "What? Really?"
"How the hell does that even happen!"
"No way!" Amelia exclaimed. "I remember hearing about that revolt! Were you really out there? How old were you?"
"Eighteen! I was six months out of ANGEL Basic Course. They had to send us because the rest of ANGEL was off fighting Formicidae in D'Naba."
"Oi!" Victoria was suddenly at his side, her expression dire. "If it was really you - I lost my little brother then. He was only three. I been lookin' for him ever since. Did you ever find him? Someone what could be him?"
A three year old Ramur? If she'd never found him, chances were he'd never made it out alive, but Matt didn't want to tell her that. He tried to remember if they'd ever found anyone who matched the description.
Oriole's hands tightened on Matt's waist and he laid his head against Matt's back, like he was trying to hide behind him. "You have a little brother?" he asked.
"Yeah." She nodded. She moved her hand up to her right ear and snapped her fingers over it halfway up, like a scissor. "He's missing half his ear, like this, and his name's Valemerosa Nattano."
That got some kind of reaction out of Oriole, because he huddled closer against Matt when she said it.
"Valemerosa is an elven name," said Joel.
"Yeah, his mum had an odd taste in names."
Matt wanted to ask Oriole if he was alright, but had the feeling that if he wasn't saying anything now, he wouldn't appreciate being asked. So he just shook his head and said, "I never found anybody like that. I'm sorry."
She shrugged it off. "It was worth askin'. I'll find him someday."
He didn't think she would, but even Matt felt guilty at the thought of crushing Victoria's hopes.
* * *
"Zaaaaaaaaaahn!" Oriole cried, running around the circle of wagons to try to find Zahn and Qiver. They always disappeared whenever the caravan stopped to set up camp and eat dinner, so Oriole had been eating with Joel's friends instead, but tonight there were very important things that Oriole needed to talk to Zahn about. So he was running around outside the wagon circle, looking for them.
He found them eventually, sitting where the firelight didn't reach. He called out Zahn's name again as he ran up.
They both jumped and scrambled for something. Oriole didn't realize until he stopped in front of them and saw Qiver adjusting his mask that they'd been hurrying to put their masks back on. He'd always wondered how goblins ate. In the dark, apparently.
"What is it, Oriole?" Zahn asked, running a hand through blond bangs to pull them out from under the mask.
Oriole threw his hands up and spoke so fast it came out as one word. "Zahn I think I have a sister!"
They both stared at him - or he thought they did anyway, because he couldn't see their eyes.
"I have lots of sisters," Qiver said finally.
"I have one myself. She's, what, two-hundred by now? She's kind of annoying, really. Thinks she knows everything."
Oriole stomped his foot. "I don't care about your sisters! I didn't even know I had one!"
"Well..." Zahn's head tilted to one side. "How do you know you have one, then?"
"She said she has a little brother and she said his name and it's my name and it's not a very common name, Zahn!"
"How uncommon are we talking?"
"She said he's missing half his right ear!"
A short pause; Zahn's head straightened. "Huh. You are-"
Oriole whipped off his hat and pointed to his right ear. Being a half-Laun, he had typical Laun ears that looked almost like a cat's, and his right one looked like somebody had taken a knife and sliced off the top half.
"Yeah," Zahn said. "That."
"And-"
"There's more?"
"We have the same tattoo!" He yanked up his shirt to show the faded black symbol on the left side of his chest.
"Victoria?" Zahn laughed. "She's your sister? Wow, Oriole. Wow."
"I can't see any of this," Qiver commented.
Oriole shoved his shirt back down and put his hat back on and turned to Qiver. "Well it's there, okay? And it means I'm related to some big dumb girl who can barely even read."
"Victoria's the Ramur girl, right? But you're half human, half Laun."
"She said her dad is a Laun!"
Zahn laughed harder. "Aw, Oriole, don't be too upset about it! That means you're only half related to some big dumb girl who can barely even read!"
"Augh!" He grabbed Zahn by the shoulders and shook. "What am I supposed to do, Zahn?!"
"Tell her?" the elf suggested.
"I can't just tell her!"
"Why not?"
He stared silently at Zahn.
"I could tell her for you?"
"Ah! No! Don't!"
"Oriole." Zahn lifted Oriole's hands away. "Calm down. Weren't you always curious about your real family? Now you have a chance to find out."
"But..."
Qiver reached out and found the edge of Oriole's coat and gave it a tug. Oriole sat down.
"You have a sister," Zahn said. "You have parents. That doesn't mean Owl's not still your family. The guy raised you. He loves you like you were his blood grandson, and he knows you're not. Finding your real family isn't going to make him stop being your grandfather."
Oriole frowned, looking down at the ground. Zahn had put his fears into words when Oriole didn't even know what they were. Usually Zahn was just annoying, so whenever the elf said really smart things like this, Oriole didn't know how to respond.
Zahn reached out for Oriole's hand, bringing their forearms together like Qiver had for Zahn two days ago. "We're your friends, Oriole. And friends listen to their friends when they complain about their annoying siblings. So go tell her."
"Yeah," he muttered. "Maybe later."
Zahn's hand slipped away. "Whenever you're ready, kid. Just don't take forever. You don't have that long."
"Yeah, sure." He pushed himself to his feet and walked off to rejoin Joel's group. He was going to stay quiet about it for now, maybe forever.
* * *
By their fourth day on the road, Ligaram's rolling plains began to give way to scattered foothills. The beastmen finally relented and allowed the elves a respite from walking, most likely out of pity because walking uphill for days was not a pleasant experience. Their friends seemed more relieved about it than they did - now they didn't have to feel guilty about making up excuses not to walk with them anymore.
The caravaners grumbled, but since no other incidents had occurred by nightfall, they at least kept the grumbling to themselves.
It took some doing, but eventually Matt managed to convince Maddie to let Joel share his guard shift. "I claim full responsibility if anything goes wrong," he told her. (Bernard warned him that this was one of those things reasonable people should never, ever say, but Matt ignored him.)
Matt's shift, and thus Joel's, was in the middle of the damn night, which was just his luck. He never got a shift that gave him more than three hours of sleep in row. He was up for it before Joel was, waiting by the fire in his full regalia of cold-weather gear, scarf and leather coat included. Bernard was still asleep back in one of the wagons, which was just as well. Matt would rather not deal with his commentary while trying to talk to Joel tonight.
The two Wyule had the previous shift; one of them left when Matt appeared, and the other vanished without a word when Joel came out to replace him.
Joel was not dressed in his uniform. Instead, he wore normal clothes and a heavy coat (the one he'd let Amelia borrow days ago) which made him look like a perfectly average member of society instead of a priest.
"Hey," Matt said in greeting. "How are you holding up?"
"I'm fine," Joel mumbled, coming to a stop beside the fire and rubbing at his eyes.
"Yeah, you spend decades becoming a senior priest of Alm and then a bunch of beastmen decide you're in with Daruma and persecute you for it, and you're just fine."
"Their opinions mean little to me." Joel looked up, giving him a smile that was meant to be reassuring but didn't come off quite right. "Alm knows what is true."
"Right." He made no effort to hide his sarcasm. "And you deserve it, because your ancestors deserved it."
"Please stop. These are pillars of my faith, and it is upsetting for you to make light of them."
He sighed. Matt could be a real bastard when he wanted to be, but when a guy tells you straight to knock it off, the right answer is to knock it off. "Look, actually I wanted to talk to you about the ferry. I wasn't going to say anything, but it's been bothering me."
Joel blinked, cocking his head to the side with a bemused smile. "Oh? What of the ferry?"
"Who was that guy you were with?"
That didn't help the bemusement. "What guy?"
"Uh, the one in the cloak? Called himself Bas?" If Matt sounded like he was calling Joel stupid without actually saying it, that was because he was.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're..." His eyes widened and the edges of his smile fell as realization dawned on his face. "Bas, you said? What did he look like?"
"You can't tell me you know more than one guy named Bas."
"Could you see his face? What did he look like?"
Joel's sudden intensity made Matt pause. He dropped the sarcasm and turned serious himself, shaking his head and answering, "No, the cloak hid it."
"And he said his name was Bas, you're sure of it?"
"Yes?"
"You don't sound certain."
"You were right there. I don't know why you're asking me about this."
Joel shook his head and turned away, staring into the fire. The atmosphere was so heavy that Matt felt wrong interrupting it; he waited for Joel to speak again. "Do you know, Major...it's said that the only reason nobody's attempted to unseal Daruma yet is because nobody's figured out the correct order in which to unseal her parts?"
Matt's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
Joel looked up at him, his smile gone. "But there is a man who has figured it out, and he knows that the first three parts happen to be in Alrael, Vonariel...and Wey."
It was the mention of Vonariel that caught Matt's attention first, but it was the rest of it that made him stop cold and stare dumbly. "...How-"
A furred hand threw itself over his mouth as he was grabbed roughly from behind. This time he did not drop his weapon, and he reacted instinctively by shoving the butt of his rifle as hard as he could into whatever had been unwise enough to assail him. There was a grunt of pain and the hand fell away, and Matt turned around to shove the muzzle of his rifle into the face of a black-furred Laun.
He didn't get to see Joel's valiant struggle, but he did hear a body hit the ground with a decidedly unmasculine squeak. Something hit his shoulders and he realized it was Joel, going back-to-back with him so nobody could sneak up on them.
That was when he realized he couldn't move, not even to squeeze the trigger. Just his luck.
A figure stepped forward out of the darkness. He was a Wyule, apparently unarmed but who knew what he had hiding under that coat, with long waves of white hair tied back into a ponytail and his pale fur broken up by swatches of black painted under either eye and down the bridge of his snout. "Lovely," he said, in that posh Weyan accent, as a smile spread across his face. "Tie 'em up, boys."
At the order, several more Laun emerged from the shadows.
If he survived this, Matt was never standing watch alone with Joel ever again.