Swords of Waar (21 page)

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you being an asshole. This is important. Come here!”

He gave me a flat look, then dropped my stuff and crossed to me. I stepped aside to show off the machine. His eyes went wide.

“The water tokens! Well spotted!”

“Not that, doofus! That! Look at it!”

He tore his eyes away from the satchel and looked at the machine.

“This… this is the work of the Seven. What is it?”

I gave him a grin. “It’s a—a moisture gatherer! A dehumidifier! And so is the motherfucking Temple of Ormolu!”

Well, it didn’t go over as big as I’d hoped. Lhan just blinked at me.

“The temple is a… a what?”

“Never mind, never mind.” I slung the satchel of water tokens over my shoulder, then squatted down and tried to get my arms around the thing. It was a little too big to get a good grip on. “Just help me get it through the gap. We gotta show this to the Aldhanan.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

SECRETS!

“F
ather, we cannot let it go! They have hurt Sai and assaulted my person! By the Seven, they have attempted your assassination!”

The damn moisture gatherer had been too big to get through the little passageways on the Aldhanan’s warship, so Lhan and I had left it on the deck and gone through to his cabin without it, and that’s the scene we came in on—Wen-Jhai in the middle of the cabin, shouting at her dad with her hands on her hips while he sat, naked to the waist, at the head of a fancy dining table with Sai on one side and Captain Anan on the other, and a couple of surgeons pulling the crossbow bolt out of his shoulder. Even with blood dribbling down his chest, the old boy was trying to calm her down. She wasn’t having it, though, and I was right there with her. Let it go? What the fuck? They’d just tried to cap his ass.

“Daughter. I promise you. I have no intention of letting it go, only…” He sighed. “Only it must be done with care. I cannot return to Ormolu shouting to the sky that the church has tried to murder me. That would be suicide. Indeed, as yet, I know not if it is true.”

Wen-Jhai flailed her arms. “Of course it is true! You have a bolt in your shoulder to prove it! Ru-Manan admitted it.”

Captain Anan held up a hand. “True, but he also spoke of some ‘master.’ This suggests the possibility that the plan was not the will of the church as a whole, but of some man within it.”

“That is my most fervent hope.” The Aldhanan gritted his teeth as the surgeons got busy with a pair of pliers. “For if it is one man, then my course is simple. I will have my spies discover his identity and destroy him. If, however, it is the church as a whole, that would mean war, and… and….”

He hung his head. I stared at him. The guy with the brass balls who’d marched into that abandoned temple to rescue his daughter was gone. He’d been replaced by a wet cardboard cutout of himself. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Beside me, Lhan folded his arms and gave him the kind of look he’d been giving me lately.

“My Aldhanan, you deceive yourself if you do not believe that it is the church as a whole who stands against you. A scheme as elaborate as this could not have been perpetrated without the blessings of the Temple’s highest ranks. It is no longer a question of deciding to go to war. This was the opening salvo. The war has already begun.”

The Aldhanan looked up at him, then grimaced as the bolt finally popped out and the surgeons started to clean the wound. “And if it has? What strategy do you suggest that might win it? The church has weapons against which mortal armies cannot hope to stand. And even without them, they would win. They control the water that supplies the palace and the barracks of my army and navy just as surely as they control the water in the farmers’ fields. Were I to declare this war, they would shut their taps, then tell the people I am the reason they die of thirst. I would be overthrown in a matter of days.”

Wen-Jhai gaped. “So… so, you will do nothing? Father!”

Even Sai was shocked. “Forgive me, my Aldhanan, but they sought your life. You must do
something
!”

The Aldhanan eased back in his chair and let the surgeons start piling on the gauze. “It is easy for those who do not wear the crown to speak. They have not the welfare of an entire nation to think of. Aye, I have been attacked, and my daughter and son-in-law kidnapped and misused. And my honor demands that I let not these insults go unpunished. But if I anger the church, my people go thirsty. Their crops wither. Their animals die. The whole nation may die!”

Wen-Jhai looked at him, almost crying. “Are you saying then that you will do nothing? After all this?”

“War will be waged, I promise you, but not publicly.” The Aldhanan’s hands clenched. “Did we live in the golden age, when water was plentiful, I would not hesitate to declare open war, but we live in a dry time, daughter, and have no one to turn to but the priests, whose prayers to the Seven fill their temples with water when none falls from the sky. With that power they hold the rest of us, even your father, by the throat.”

I raised my hand. “But—”

He kept talking. “Sometimes, however, their grip is less tight than others. There have been good high priests, benevolent and open-handed. High Priest Duru-Vau is not one of those, and he knows I have fought against him as he has tightened his fist. This, I believe, is why I was led here. So that he may be rid of me, and some more malleable man placed on the throne. Well, two can play at that game. He too can be removed, and another, more tractable priest put in his place.”

I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “But, bro—sorry—Aldhanan, that’s where you’re wrong. It doesn’t matter who runs that place. The temple isn’t in the business of giving out water. It’s in the business of taking it.”

The Aldhanan frowned. “I do not understand you. What do you mean?”

“I mean the priests don’t
make
water. They steal it. From you!”

Everybody turned toward me now.

Anan snorted. “The woman is mad.”

Sai wrinkled his beautiful brow. “How can they steal water from us when we have none to steal?”

“But you do!” I held my hand out toward the door. “Come on, I’ll show you. I found something.”

The Aldhanan stared at me. “You certainly have! Where did you find it?”

At first I thought he was looking at my boobs and I checked to see if I’d had a nip slip, but then I realized he was staring at the satchel full of water tokens, which musta opened up while I was heaving around the moisture gatherer. Dammit! I shoulda stashed it before I came into the room.

“Oh, uh, this? Well, that wasn’t what I…”

“The priests who came to kill us at Toaga carried it upon their ship.” Lhan bowed. “We took it as spoils, but if you were to use it against the church, we would be honored to give it to you.”

“W-we would?” So much for our all-expenses-paid trip around Waar.

The Aldhanan’s eyes glittered. “A tempting offer, Dhan. Almost tempting enough to go to war with no reason, but keep it for now. You have certainly earned it this day.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, then pointed to the door again. “That wasn’t what I wanted to show you. It’s out on the deck. I can prove to you that the priests are stealing water.”

The Aldhanan looked skeptical. “Mistress Jae-En, as much as I value your generosity and your prowess in battle, you are new to this land, and know little of the church or our—”

“Yeah yeah, but who else here has been inside the Temple of Ormolu? Anybody? Right, well, I saw something in there that—”

“You have not been in the temple.” Aldhanan stood up, which made his surgeons babble and ease him back down again. “Beside the priests, only the Aldhanan is permitted to enter, and only for the blessing of the high priest. The way is barred for all others.”

“So you’ve been there! You know! Well, I got there by popping in on one of their ‘living stone’ thingies. And that’s when I saw—”

“Describe it.”

Geez. What was he getting his panties in a bunch for? He was keeping me from getting to the good part. “Uh, okay. Um, white walls, everything all smooth and round, automatic doors that slide open when you get near ’em, and a big tank with glass walls in the middle of it all, as big as your palace, filled with
water they stole from you
!”

“You… you
have
been inside.” The Aldhanan blinked, then looked to the surgeons. They were just tying off his bandage. He nodded to them, then rose and stepped around the table. “Lead on. I will see what you have found.”

“Finally! Come on.”

We went out on deck with Lhan, Sai, Wen-Jhai and Captain Anan following, and I squatted down next to the moisture gatherer as they gathered around it. “Okay, lookit.” I pressed the spigot and water spilled out on the deck. “If I let all the water out of this thing, a while later it would be full again ’cause it pulls water out of the air.”

Wen-Jhai scowled. “There is no water in air!”

I gave her a look. “Sure there is. You know when you have a cold glass? And water beads on it? Where do you think that comes from?”

“Oh.”

“So this machine does the same thing, only faster. Those fans blow air on those curly-cue things and water forms on ’em, then drips down and fills up the tank. Simple, right?”

The Aldhanan squinted through the glass. “Ingenious, but what has it to do with the priests?”

I groaned. “Don’t you get it? The Temple of Ormolu isn’t a temple. It’s one of these things, only as big as a skyscraper! Uh, okay. Not a skyscraper. A mountain! Anyway, the only thing it does is steal water out of the air and store it in that huge tank in the middle. Why do you think it never rains around here?”

The Aldhanan didn’t look convinced. “I saw no such fans.”

“Then maybe you heard ’em then. They make the whole place hum like a bee hive.”

“I know not what a bee hive is, but… but….” The Aldhanan frowned. “There was a tale my father told, of when
he
was Aldhanan. Once, on his yearly visit to the Temple, there was an accident, or an attack of some kind, a maddened slave, perhaps. In any event, his escort left him for a moment, and he opened a door into a….” He closed his eyes like he was trying to remember. “‘A dark void of frigid air and howling winds,’ he called it.”

“That’s it! That’s where the fans are!” I pointed through the moisture gatherer’s glass panels again. “See!”

The Aldhanan stared. “Can it be true? It cannot be true.”

Wen-Jhai looked like she was going to cry. “But the priests say our land was a desert until the Seven brought to us the water of life, and the Seven withhold it when we sin. Do you say that is all a lie?”

Lhan stroked his chin beard. “Less a lie than an admission of blackmail and bribery I would say.”

Captain Anan glared at him. “That is blasphemy.”

“Perhaps, but I have read old texts which tell of a time before the war between the Seven and the One when Ora was a paradise, a lush land of plenty. Not until the towers were built did the droughts begin to come.”

The Aldhanan was as grim as a prison door. “I still cannot believe it. Surely the church has not always been so self-serving. Surely they have not always been thieves.”

I shrugged. “Hey, maybe there was a good reason for collecting the water back in the day. Holding some back for the lean times or whatever. But, Christ, how much leaner does it gotta get?”

The Aldhanan kept staring at the moisture gatherer like he still wasn’t sure. I stood up and looked down at him.

“Bro, come on. You wanna help your people? There’s a real simple way to make Ora a land of plenty again. Stand up to these assholes and shut their shit down. You turn off those fans, the rains will come. I guarantee it.”

He still didn’t look up, but Sai did.

“Mistress Jae-En, do you truly suggest open war? If you think the people suffer now, imagine the suffering when the armies march. There will be death on a grand scale.”

Anan nodded. “Aye. We might never recover.”

“So you’d rather just lie there and take it?” I thought back to all the dead fields and abandoned farms I’d seen between here and Ormolu. All the lives ruined by lack of water. “Fighting the church might suck in the short term, but it’s gotta be better than taking it up the ass for eternity. These clowns gotta be stopped.”

“And if the war cannot be won?” The Aldhanan lifted his head at last. “The palace has risen against the church before. Even the Wargod fought them, but the church still remains, while he is gone. Even were I certain you speak the truth, I know not if I would venture the fight. Blood and death in the short term may lead to nothing but defeat.”

I blinked at him. Politicians didn’t usually admit stuff like that. The rest were looking at him too.

He sighed, then smiled. “A father may choose to rescue his daughter on the spur of the moment, but an Aldhanan cannot decide to rescue his country in the same manner. I must think on this. Please, take your ease.”

And with that, he headed back to his cabin with Captain Anan following, and left the rest of us staring after him. At least I was. Lhan was looking at me with a funny little smile on his face.

I met his eye. “What?”

“You are a wonder, mistress. A thousand years of theology, gone with a snap of your fingers.”

I squirmed, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to rock any boats. I just—”

“Do not apologize. We of Ora have too long breathed the stultifying staleness of myth. The cold wind of truth is bracing, and welcome. Even if it makes us shiver.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were all about tradition. Or have you changed your mind again about…?” I glanced at Sai and Wen-Jhai, and changed what I was gonna say. “Uh, about, you know?”

“That is an entirely different matter.” He sniffed, cold again, then motioned toward the front of the ship, where the cook house was. “Come, there is food.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

HEARTACHE!

T
he Aldhanan put us up in his officers’ quarters—Sai and Wen-Jhai in one cabin, and me and Lhan in another, which was nice and open-minded of him, but kinda awkward too, since we didn’t actually want to share a cabin, but also didn’t wanna go into details about how we were broken up and all. So once again the two of us were crammed into a cramped closet without enough room to turn around in without elbowing each other in the face. At least this one had two cots, one over the other, bunk bed style.