A Simple Thing Read online

  Haro and his friends likely assumed him dead. Part of Luc longed to pay retribution, but it gave way to another, darker revelation. Notker had known about the water nymph mark and the danger it would create for him in Macula. It had been the old man’s means to be rid of him—the worthless conscript that did not belong with his elite pack of pure-bred killers.

  Luc’s pain-soaked brain found that an easy idea to slip into. It would have been simple enough to have him disappear into some murky fate, the casualty of a lawless colony. His death would prove some point on Notker’s behalf, work as some political tool or anecdote.

  He was cut off from the Seekers and the Regime, the only life he’d known since childhood. Gia, for all her feral hatred, was his only means to returning. He had to find a way to signal her. It itched at him like the healing under his bandages. It stung his pride to admit he needed her help. Could he trust her to actually come to collect him? Perhaps she was in collusion with Notker to rid themselves of him.

  Lucky number three, indeed.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed away from the sill as if he could reject the mire of thoughts. Pain licked up his leg and stole his strength. Luc toppled sideways into a pair of elderly arms.

  “Here, my friend. Let me help you,” Mahir said with a grunt. Well into his second century, the man had begun the inglorious descent into old age, yet he showed impressive strength as he guided Luc back to the cot. He insisted on calling Luc “brother” or “friend.” The titles made something squirm guiltily inside Luc in a way he could not name.

  “The Fates return your strength by the day. Good to see you moving around,” Mahir all but shouted. His hearing was deficient.

  Luc presented him with a smile. “Perhaps it’s more likely your care.”

  Mahir waved a dismissive hand and turned his attention to a basket set on a rickety table near the door. Glass bottles clinked as he rummaged. “I patched you up, like an old tinkerer. The Fates set you upon my Path and provided everything else.”

  With a small gasp of victory, Mahir found the bottle of medicine and scuffed back to the bedside.

  Luc drank from it. By now he’d become accustomed to the bitter taste of the herbal pain remedy. As an augmented conscript, his body required far more than an average Eugenes for a full effect, but he took only what Mahir presented. It was enough to dull the edges.

  He thought longingly of the med kit and its bone knitter hidden in the dusty shadows beneath the floorboards of his rented room.

  “As you are feeling well enough to move around, I will return with crutches.” Mahir paused, seeming to consider his next words. “Perhaps tomorrow or the next day you can join me outside. There is something of a favor I may ask. Forgive me, but we need a water broker’s talent.”

  The tattoo. The Fates-damned tattoo. The old priest had to have seen it. At least he’d not taken him for some organized crime lackey. Yet.

  “Talent?” Luc asked.

  “This old man is almost too ashamed to ask one so injured.” Mahir shrugged, ducking his head. “I will understand, of course, if you do not feel well enough for the challenge.”

  “What is it?” Luc asked. He suspected Mahir’s embarrassed pauses and wording were meant to manipulate him. But he did not care. It offered an escape from the sameness of this room. After all, what task could an elderly priest give that would offer a true task to a soldier of the Regime?

  Mahir grinned happily. “It is a simple thing really.”

  “Simple, my ass.”

  Luc scowled at the corroded interior of the pump exchange. The thing was three decades old. Its AI had grown senile during that time. And, Luc suspected, mildly passive-aggressive, although he knew that lower level interfaces did not possess personality subroutines.

  “Please restate command,” said the pump’s AI (a Hydrolux Prime, announced a peeling decal on its side) with an uncertain orange glimmer. Glaring, Luc smacked the center processor hub and the AI powered down again.

  In preparation for his assignment, Luc had given cursory attention to a file on pump design in case he actually needed to perform the occupation that he claimed. But of the few models he’d reviewed all were simulations, and most of those had reliable AIs to help troubleshoot issues.

  Lip curling in disgust, Luc scraped away the heavy coating of yellow slime algae that coated the piping and flung it to the sandy floor of the shed. Despite the shade, the heat of the day made the metal-clad room into an oven. He could imagine the hot air slowly cooking his lungs.

  They live in a swutting desert. You’d think they’d take better care of their well system. Did they think their Fates would send them drinkable water if they prayed hard enough?

  Luc straightened, wincing at the twinge it created in his knee. After the first hour of battle with the thing, he had sought out Mahir to explain that the problem was hopeless. Yet the old priest had been so persuasive, suggesting that Luc was only being modest and encouraging him to take another look.

  He finished tightening the seal and snapped the casing into place. With a final glare at the device, daring it to misbehave, he powered it on. The pump gave an uncertain sputter, threatened to stall and then smoothed out into an even stroke. Luc released a victory cry that the machine drowned out.

  After an awkward battle with the crutches, Luc backed out of the shed, pausing long enough to throw an obscene gesture at the pump. It chugged along, impassively.

  “I am a warrior of the Regime. I will never falter,” he hissed at it in Regimental.

  Incredible. I’m quoting Decca at machines now. He shook his head and allowed the door to slam closed.

  A boy stood beside the shed. He was dressed in a dun-colored tunic like the other orphaned children that Mahir’s people had taken in. Luc got the sense he’d been watching him for some time, the noise of the pump masking his presence. One of the boy’s arms was a withered thing, curled in upon itself, skeletal and useless. He turned a blue-eyed gaze—another impure trait—up at Luc.

  A genetic skew. Inwardly he cringed. If he’d been born in a breeding kennel, a child like this would not have been permitted to live a day after his birth. The cullers would have seen to that. He ignored the revulsion that twitched in his stomach. It was the reaction of a soldier of the Regime.

  You’re just a water broker, he reminded himself.

  “What do you want?”

  “Mahir told me to come help you,” the boy said in halting Commonspeak, staring down at the ground between them.

  “You? Help me?” Luc did not hide his astonishment.

  “I can get around better than you.” The boy puffed out his chest, eyes flitting over Luc’s crutches.

  “Maybe so.” Luc maneuvered his weight onto the crutches. “Too late. Work’s done.”

  “Whatever,” the boy muttered, moving away.

  “You were at the riverbank when they found me. Weren’t you?” Luc called. He could recall children’s excited voices and small feet racing away.

  The boy stopped, blinking at Luc under the brilliant sunlight. “Thought you were dead. Never seen so much blood.”

  “And yet I live.”

  “Tika says that someone tried to kill you.” The boy fixed him with a sly look. “You in some kind of gang?”

  A question that Mahir had been too polite to ask.

  “A misunderstanding.” As truthful an answer as ever. “They thought I was someone else.”

  “Misunderstanding?” the boy said expertly. “That was bad people straight out tryin’ to kill you, mister. Weren’t no misunderstanding.”

  “And you have experience with such things?” Luc raised an eyebrow.

  The boy’s face went stony. His eyes slid down to the left. “Bad people everywhere, I reckon. Don’t know where they’ll turn up sometimes. Don’t matter to them if you’re a kid, neither.”

  A fair assessment.

  “What’s your name?” Luc swiveled after him.

  The boy’s frown deepened. “Why?”
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  “So I know what to call you.”

  “No,” the boy replied, rolling his eyes. “I mean why would the men think you were someone else?”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” Luc said.

  The boy canted his head, studying him. “What were you saying just now? What language was that? Sounded weird.”

  “You’re weird.” It felt juvenile and stupid the moment he said it. Trading barbs with a child. Luc felt his ears burn.

  “I weren’t the one talking to myself.”

  They regarded each other in silence. Then, like a peace offering, the boy spoke. “Balish. My name’s Balish.”

  Before he knew he was doing it, he answered: “Luc.”

  He winced but covered for it by shifting his weight against the crutches. He’d given his real name. Then again, maybe it was the smarter move. If the boy or the priest told of an injured stranger found half-drowned, Haro might hear of it. It made better sense to abandon the false name of Tarsk Cleo.

  “That don’t sound Tasmarin.” Balish’s eyes narrowed shrewdly.

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Luc pivoted back onto the breezeway that lead back to the common hall of the monastery. The room reeked of incense, but at least it was out of the sun.

  “Sounds like an off-world name.” Balish maneuvered past him.

  “And you know a lot of off-worlders?” He kept his eyes ahead, feigning concentration on using the crutches.

  “Not anymore,” Balish replied, leaving Luc to stare at his receding back.

  It took two long weeks for the swelling in Luc’s knee to subside. Simple movements evoked an unsettling painless click deep in the joint, more felt than heard. He worried something was growing back wrong, and still could not manage more than a shambling lurch without the aid of the crutches.

  When the pain in his leg drove him from sleep at night, he stared up at the ceiling. He fantasized about returning to his room, finding the med kit undisturbed, fixing his leg. For embellishment, the A4 would be there too, miraculously. He’d locate Haro and exact revenge.

  The voice of reality soon intervened. His best bet was a long hobble down the hill and presenting himself in all his grubby glory to the first Regimental officer he could find willing to hear him out.

  From there… what? He stumbled over the thought. How would Notker greet this?

  Certainly, it would be deeply satisfying to see the disappointment on old man’s face when he returned to the Monican. But it failed to bolster him. It felt hollow, strange. Like his knee, something else was growing back wrong, but in a deeper place that even a med scan could not detect.

  In the cool mornings before the early meal in the common hall, Mahir insisted that Luc accompany him on his walks around the compound. He complied since the alternative meant throwing himself awkwardly around the small room and staring out at the town far below.

  They were well-matched in their speed as they navigated the labyrinth of pathways: the priest’s rickety shuffle and Luc’s lurching stride. The Temple of Miseries and all its outbuildings had no real plan, covering the crest of the hilltop like a growth. Mahir often fell into wandering narratives that drifted into a searching silence as if he had lost his next words.

  For a man whose order frowned on pride, Mahir’s shoulders broadened as he pointed out the frescos, the dusty history of fallen martyrs. He explained that the temple was the site of no fewer than two miracles, and that of all the shrines to Brilta, theirs was the oldest. Luc nodded in the right spots and made noises of feigned interest.

  This morning’s excursion found them in a small garden plot. Fluttering mesh tarps strung from the sloped roof of the priests’ dormitory provided sparse shade. A low wall of mud and rock cordoned off the garden from a courtyard filled with a gaggle of children. There was no real purpose to their play, with its mindless calls and laughter.

  Luc had only a vague recollection of moving with such abandon, such complete lack of self-consciousness.

  “They live here?” Luc asked.

  “Orphaned, all. The Fates have sent them to us to watch over. We are pleased to give them a home.” Mahir gestured at a hunched outbuilding in the opposite corner of the yard. “War has shown them much cruelty. We try to give them comfort.”

  A mural of bright paint, applied by inexpert hands, decorated the outbuilding’s exterior. Flowers. Faces. Birds. And a rather ambitious attempt at a velo-class star freighter. “We created a school where they learn the parables of the Fates and basic maths. How to read and speak the Common tongue. For some, like poor Balish, it is hard to forget their native languages and ways of life. But we are giving them tools to rebuild their lives.”

  The children, despite their disheveled appearance, seemed physically acceptable for conscription.

  “Certainly, the Regime would have conscripted many of them. Why not?”

  Mahir shook his head. “Many of these children, the Regime would deem…unsuitable. As wards of my order, they are immune to their barbaric genetic culling.”

  Barbaric? Luc fought the urge to scowl at the shabby building with its sagging roof. And living in such grimy poverty and existing at the whim of disease was not?

  He looked at Mahir, waiting for him to say more. But the priest fell silent, seemingly lost in grim thought. Even a life of conscription was better than a life of want and disease. In his order’s mission to dispense mercy, Mahir sentenced these children to the dismal. Could he not see that?

  “Come.” Mahir shuffled away from the wall. “Perhaps you can offer your expert opinion on the misting systems for the vines. A simple thing for a man of your talents.”

  Luc sighed and fell in behind him, realizing this was yet another chore disguised as a favor. Mahir pointed out the irrigation network and its corroded housing. Would he at least look at the condensation sensors? Perhaps he could see a way to mend them? The misters were leaking as well, he explained.

  Soon the morning had burned away, and Luc found himself sweating despite the shade of the tarp. Nearby, two silent monks armed with hand tools worked the earth into deep furrows. A third followed behind to plant small sprigs—a chore that an agri-bot would have completed in half the time.

  The irrigation system lay dissected on the ground before him, a hopeless mess. Luc settled onto a creaking wooden bench and drank tepid water from a large earthen pitcher. The gritty water was miraculously delicious. Luc found a stillness in the work. Oddly, he liked it.

  A jangled laughter brought him out of it. He sidled over to the wall. The children had returned to the yard. A beleaguered looking matron, most likely their minder, dozed in the shade of the schoolhouse’s open doorway. Luc suspected that this time in the yard was meant to give the woman a break from the constant, directionless energy of the children as much as to provide them with a means to disperse it.

  He found himself watching in frank curiosity, amazed by their lack of coordination. By the age of ten, he and his kennel mates were being led in hand-to-hand drills and basic weapon training. These children appeared to play at a barely organized game that involved throwing toy rockets at each other.

  Luc spotted Balish slouching in the shade of a sparse sand-willow, watching his classmates. His eyes met the boy’s.

  Balish looked away, stiffened.

  Luc saw why. A compact, dark-haired boy approached Balish with two other children in his wake—a red haired girl with scabby knees and a slender, pale boy. They moved in unspoken concert, tactically blocking off a means of escape and obscuring the matron’s line of sight.

  These were the moves of a pack like Gia and her brothers. He was too far away to hear their words, but it wasn’t necessary. It was plain in the primitive body language that existed between predator and target.

  You are different. You do not belong.

  Before he realized it, Luc lurched up with the aid of his crutch. He maneuvered over the hummocks of turned earth to the waist-high wall that separated the garden from the courtyard.

  Ther
e was a shove directed at Balish. Some floundering. A fist, inexpertly thrown. All of it noiseless and unwitnessed by the matron. The trio of children left. Balish was folded under the limbs of the sorry-looking tree, his shoulders hitching.

  Mid-act in pulling himself across the wall, Luc lost grip on the crutch. It slid down to the dust of the play yard. Committed now, he pulled himself the rest of the way, winded by the simple act. Steeling himself against the pain in his knee, he shambled toward the boy.

  Balish noted his approach, eyes wet. It evoked a spur of hot scorn in Luc, but its subject was not clear… the boy, or the trio of children that had left him this way.

  “Why do you let them do that?” Luc asked without preamble.

  Balish shrugged. It was surly, defiant. Anger baked the air around him. “Don’t matter. Why should you care?”

  True enough. Who is this boy to me? I am a soldier of the Regime.

  Instead, he said, “I can show you how to defend yourself. Fight back. Stand up to them, and they’ll never do that to you again.”

  Balish looked down at his own shriveled arm, then jerked his chin at Luc’s damaged leg. It was a gesture that said: who are you to make this offer? You’re only a water broker, a lame one at that.

  The matron reappeared in the doorway of the schoolroom, calling out for the children to return indoors. The activity in the yard fragmented.

  Balish rose, swiping at his face with a sleeve. “Besides. Fighting back didn’t work for my father. Regime got him all the same.”

  The boy stalked to the schoolroom, the last to head inside.

  “You’re welcome,” Luc muttered. He reclaimed his fallen crutch from the dirt, suddenly sore from his activity, and flung his body back over the wall. The prayer call for early afternoon services was a stir of echoes on the warm air. Mahir and his brothers would be preoccupied with prayer for now. Luc trundled back through the garden, headed for the sleeping quarters. He refused to think of the bedroom as his. It claimed ownership that made his bones itch.