Commitment Hour lop-2 Page 16

  "What does it mean to act female?" Steck demanded. "Both sexes eat. Both sexes sleep. Both sexes sweat on a hot summer's day. I shouldn't have to tell you how similar they are, Fullin — you've been both. You've felt both. Were they really that different? No. No difference, except the way people treated you and the jobs they told you to do."

  "You obviously don't understand anything," I said, "which is why you're a Neut. There's no point discussing it further."

  "This was a discussion, was it?" She gave me a look. "Here I thought we were having a fight… and I was blessing the gods for my luck, not to have missed your adolescent rebellion phase."

  "Is that what you came here for?" I asked. "To make up for twenty years when you couldn't nag your kid?"

  Steck didn't answer right away. It seemed as if she thought deeply before words came out. "I came here for a lot of things," she said at last, "like the off chance that I'd look at you, you'd look at me, and something would happen. Something besides disappointing each other for being the wrong kind of people." She stood up; she was as tall as me. "What's your son's name?"

  I hesitated, then decided to show I was well brought up. "Waggett."

  "Amazing — that's what Zephram called him too. I wondered if you'd lie to me. About my own grandson."

  "Rashid wants you," I said. "On the trail back to town."

  "He's probably found some kind of beetle he's never seen before."

  "Not quite," I told her.

  She turned away, then abruptly turned back. "I'll make you a deal, Fullin. Spend the morning with Rashid and me, until you have to go to Birds Home. Do that and I'll stay away from Zephram and Waggett."

  "I won't be your son," I said.

  "You are," she replied, "and for twenty years, I've told myself that means something. I won't talk you into Committing Neut, if that's what you're afraid of. You're my child, and I want you to have every freedom to choose who you want to be. But this is our only time together, Fullin. A single morning for the rest of our lifetimes. Years down the road, this day will be as important to you as it is to me. Even if you decide you hate my guts, at least you'll know. Trust me, not knowing hurts to the bone."

  I hate it when adults say, "Trust me." It's not that I think they're lying — it's that they're telling me I'm too green to appreciate some great truth they've learned from experience. The more painful the experience, the more mysteriously profound they believe the truth must be… when most of the time, it's as plain as dung in the street and they've just been too thickheaded to notice. "You only want to spend time with me?" I asked.

  "That's all," Steck replied.

  "And you'll leave Waggett and Zephram alone?"

  "I'll leave Waggett alone," she said, "and I won't seek out Zephram. If he comes to me, that's his choice."

  I thought about it. I didn't like the picture of my father deliberately approaching a Neut (my foster father seeking out my mother), but if he had ghosts he needed to lay to rest, I could hold my nose and suffer through. After all, Steck wanted me close by her side, didn't she? So I'd be there to keep things platonic if Zephram came calling.

  "All right," I told Steck, "you've got a deal. Give me a minute to talk to my father."

  "He's in the back."

  For some reason, I bowed to her slightly before leaving the room… but I took Waggett with me.

  Zephram was in his bedroom with the door open. He wasn't doing anything — he was sitting fully dressed on the bed, staring bleakly into space.

  "Maybe," I said, "I should have warned you she was here."

  After a silence, he answered, "That would have been nice."

  "I swore an oath to keep it secret. On the Patriarch's hand."

  "Oh, well then." He didn't finish his sentence.

  Eventually, I said, "It must have been a shock."

  "Yes."

  "Did you recognize her yourself, or did she approach you after?"

  "I recognized her, Fullin. Even though I'd only seen that face once, twenty years ago… I recognized her. No one else did — I looked around the crowd and they didn't seem to see her at all. They had worked so hard to put her out of their minds. I never understood why anyone would want to forget something…" He shook his head. "No, I guess I understand."

  "Are you going to be all right? I need you to look after Waggett."

  "Can't you do it, Fullin? Today of all days… I'm not so good all of a sudden."

  "Look," I said briskly, "you need something to take your mind off Steck. And she's promised to leave you and Waggett alone if I go with her." I plunked Waggett down in Zephram's lap. Dully, as if it was a great effort, my father put his hands on either side of the boy's small ribcage to hold him in place.

  "There you go," I told him. "You'll have fun together. And you know what to do — you saw me through all my Commitment Days."

  "I'm feeling old today, Fullin."

  "Children make people feel young," I answered. "Everyone says that. You be a good boy, Waggett." I gave him a quick kiss on the forehead, then left before Zephram could argue more. Frankly, I couldn't see why the old man was making such a fuss. He only had to babysit a well-behaved toddler. I was stuck with the Neut.

  "How's Zephram?" Steck asked when I came back into the front room.

  "You rattled him," I said. "If you cared about him, you shouldn't have given him such a shock."

  "Things are simple for you, aren't they, Fullin?"

  "No. Things are just complicated for everyone else."

  Steck sighed. "I hoped you'd grow up like Zephram. Instead, you grew up like me. I've never believed in heredity before, and I don't like it."

  She stood up, smoothing her dress and overshirt selfconsciously; it must have been a long time since she'd worn such aggressively feminine clothing. I found myself peering at that V neckline again, and forced my gaze away. Next thing I knew, I might be staring at her crotch.

  "Are you ready?" she asked.

  "Sure, Steck."

  "Call me Maria — Rashid thinks it would be better if I use a Southern name today. Heaven forbid that my presence ever remind the town of ugly deeds twenty years ago."

  "So you don't want me to call you Mother?"

  She looked at me pensively. "If you ever call me Mother," she said at last, "I'll know you truly hate me."

  "Then let's go, M—" But I couldn't finish the word. "Maria," I substituted.

  Steck gave a tiny smile. "Show me where Rashid is. We have a full morning ahead."

  TWELVE

  A Kiss for Dorr

  I had no chance to watch the look on Steck's face when she saw Bonnakkut's body — the path through the trees was too narrow for us to walk side by side, so I was obliged to take the lead, with my back to the Neut.

  Approaching from this direction, we could see the murder scene from twenty paces off. Not that we could see the corpse itself: Rashid knelt on the ground in front of it, conducting an examination of the wounds. As we drew closer, I saw he had snipped off Bonnakkut's bloody shirt to provide a clear view of the belly injuries. Rashid's nose was only a finger away from the body as he peered through a magnifying glass at the slashes.

  "Not a beetle after all," Steck said behind me.

  I turned. She wore a guarded expression, very contained. It could be the look of a person who was clamping down on real shock; it could also be the look of someone who'd been preparing for this since committing the murder.

  "Do we know who did this?" she asked.

  "No."

  "Definitely a surprise attack," Rashid said without looking up. "No defense wounds."

  "What's a defense wound?" I asked.

  Steck answered. "Cuts on the hands or arms from trying to block the blade. You see them in almost every knife attack… unless the victim was dead before he knew what was happening."

  "You two have seen a lot of murders?"

  "Enough. When someone important like a Governor or Elemarch gets killed, it's best if a Spark conducts the investigation. More imp
artial."

  "And that's what they do down south — kill Governors and Elemarchs?"

  "If 'down south' means Feliss," Steck said, "the answer is no. Feliss is a bourgeois little province that's too self-satisfied to indulge in assassination. But there's more to the world than Feliss."

  "I know that." Theoretically, I was supposed to have memorized all the provinces and their capitals — Tober Cove had a good Elemarchy School that taught such things. But even if I'd never gone to the trouble of learning the list myself, I'd heard Cappie recite it enough times when her father demanded. Two hundred and fifty-six provinces; Earth was a big planet.

  "The stabs in the belly were likely made after death," Rashid announced suddenly. He straightened up and brushed hair out of his eyes. "The throat slash came first: one slice, that was it. Hard to be a hundredpercent sure without any real equipment, but that's my guess."

  "Sounds like a crime of passion," Steck said. "The victim's dead on the ground, but the killer still wants to stick him a few more times."

  "Either that," Rashid agreed, "or someone wants us to jump to that conclusion." He turned to me. "Do people read OldTech mysteries in this town?"

  "People read all kinds of things," I answered. "We have a library."

  "With almost fifty books," Steck added disdainfully.

  "Hundreds of books," I retorted. "The cove has come a long way since you lived here."

  "So much outside information," she marveled. "It must drive Hakoore wild."

  I didn't answer… but I couldn't help remembering what the old snake said about prosperity corrupting our people.

  And now we had a murder.

  Voices sounded a short distance in front of us. Moments later Cappie appeared, leading our Doctor Gorallin. Gorallin was a steely woman: steel gray hair and steel gray eyes, with a spine as rigid as metal and fingers of unforgiving iron when she was probing your body for hernias, lumps, and other offenses to propriety. She had been brought up in Tober Cove, but educated at a real medical college down south, one that had worked hard for four centuries to preserve everything the OldTechs knew about the human body. The cost of Gorallin's training had come out of town taxes, as she never ceased to remind us. "Your grandparents sacrificed their hard-earned silver so I could tell if your cervix is healthy, and by damn if I'll let them down because you play shy!"

  Yes, there were some things I did remember clearly from my female years.

  The instant Gorallin saw the corpse, she roared, "Which one of you did this?"

  "Person or persons unknown," Rashid answered.

  "I found him," I volunteered. "Then Cappie came along and I went to get the Knowledge-Lord."

  "Hmph." She tromped up to Bonnakkut and gave him a healthy nudge with her moccasin. When he didn't respond, she announced, "He's meat. That's my official medical opinion."

  Lord Rashid cleared his throat. "We were hoping for more in the way of forensic analysis."

  "You think I wasted time with forensics when I was in school?" Gorallin snorted and gave the rest of us a "Who is this fool?" look. "Tober Cove didn't pay me to waste time learning things I'd never need. I took pediatrics! Obstetrics! Those were my electives. Around here, we care about kids, not carcasses."

  "So you can't say anything about the cuts…"

  "Cuts are made by sharp things," the doctor snapped. "Like the girl's spear. Your Bozzle's machete." She gave me a half-second lookover. "The boy's not carrying anything, but he could grab a kitchen knife at his father's place, not thirty seconds away."

  Rashid raised his eyes briefly to heaven. "I really think we should move on from the idea that any of us is the killer."

  "Why?" Gorallin replied. "You're the only ones here."

  "In our experience," Steck said tightly, "murderers often run away from the scene of the crime."

  "In my experience, they don't," Gorallin growled. "I've lived here fifty-five years, less the time I spent south learning my trade. Seen three murders, and every one, the killer was right with the body. Wife who hit her husband too hard and was crying with him in her arms, pleading for him to take her in death-marriage. Husband who caught his wife in bed with her best friend, chop-chop-chop, murder-murder-suicide. And a drunk who knifed his brother… hell, I found him trying to sew up the chest wound to make it all better. Had a spool of the cord he used to mend fishnets. Not bad stitching, given how soused he was — the man could have been a surgeon. Or a devil-be-damned forensic pathologist."

  With that she wheeled about and strode down the trail toward the center of town. Rashid took a step after her then restrained himself. "It must be an experience," he said, "when she tells you to turn your head and cough."

  "Oh, yeah," answered Cappie, Steck, and I in unison.

  Ten useless minutes later, Rashid said, "There's nothing more I can learn from the body. What's the custom now? Notify the next of kin?"

  "He's male," Cappie answered. "The Patriarch's Man takes custody of the corpse. But someone should tell Bonnakkut's mother and…"

  She didn't finish her sentence. Bonnakkut had a six-year-old daughter named Ivis. Till the end of her life, maybe the feasting and celebration of Commitment ceremonies would remind Ivis of the day her daddy died.

  "Speaking to next of kin is priestess work," Steck said. Her voice had suddenly fallen soft. "If a mother has to hear bad news, it should come from someone who can comfort her."

  "You're right." Cappie gave Steck a keen look, and I could understand why. It was easy to forget that Steck had been a hair away from becoming priestess herself — that Leeta had chosen Steck as someone with the brain and heart to prop up the women of the cove. Things may have soured inside my mother, but bits were still intact. I caught a glimpse of Rashid, and he was looking at Steck too: smiling fondly, the way men do.

  It occurred to me, he might have been glad for an excuse to dress Steck as pure woman.

  "Do you want to take care of that, Steck?" Rashid asked. "You and Cappie?"

  For a moment Steck paused; then she shook her head. "The mother will want to see faces she knows. Not strangers."

  "I'll get Leeta," Cappie said. She gave Steck a little smile, but the Neut only responded with a nod. I realized it was hard for Steck, turning down a chance to do priestess work after so many years.

  My mother is sad, I thought; my mother is a sad woman. I couldn't help remembering how Zephram had visited her during the Silence of Mistress Snow. Out of all the doors in the village, Steck's was the last one for someone to enter.

  Cappie went to pick up Leeta. Together they would break the news to Bonnakkut's mother, Kenna.

  As for me, I got conscripted to escort Rashid to Hakoore's, while Steck stayed with the body. I expected Steck to protest, but she didn't. She seemed subdued, possibly thinking how she had lost the chance to become comforter to the women of our village… possibly thinking something completely different. I couldn't read my mother's mind.

  It was only a minute later, as I was leading Rashid up the trail, that it occurred to me Steck might be happy for a chance alone with the body… if she'd had anything to do with the murder. She could check to make sure she hadn't left behind any clues.

  "You know she's my mother," I said to Rashid.

  "Who?"

  "Steck. Maria. Whatever you want to call her. She's my mother."

  "You're joking."

  "She's from Tober Cove. She has to be someone's mother."

  Rashid stopped walking. "I never thought of that. You all have children, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "No exceptions?"

  "Some girls turn out to have medical problems. But Steck wasn't one of them."

  "And you're her…" He didn't say the word. "Is that why she wanted to kill you last night?"

  "It was why she went to the marsh to find me — she knew it was my year to be there. The knife fight was just an impromptu thing."

  "Because you tried to kill her first."

  I shrugged. "Cappie overreacted."
/>   "For a quiet little village," Rashid said, "Tober Cove has a wicked taste for blood."

  "We're fine when Steck's not around."

  "Don't speak ill of your mother." He paused. "She's really your mother?"

  "Steck didn't tell you?"

  He didn't answer. He didn't have to.

  I'd never met anyone as important as Rashid, but I'd heard plenty of stories: official ones taught in school, as well as campfire talk at sunset. Bozzles weren't supposed to keep secrets from their masters. There should be a lake full of trust between Bozzle and master, with no one quietly peeing when the water's over your waist. Too much of that starts killing the fish.

  Cappie once told me I should stay away from metaphors.

  "I just wanted you to know," I told Rashid, "Steck had an ulterior motive getting you to come here."

  "To watch her child Commit," Rashid answered after a pause. "That's no crime, Fullin. It's an important day in your life, isn't it?"

  "The most important."

  "What kind of mother would she be if she didn't want to see you? Perfectly understandable… perfectly natural." His voice was getting stronger, more definite. "This shows quite a positive side to Steck's character."

  "You're making excuses for her," I said. "Is she your lover?"

  Rashid coughed. "Where I come from, boys don't ask that about their mothers."

  "Where I come from, they do. Do you love her?"

  "You tell me," he answered. "How do you feel about her? One minute you're screaming, 'Kill the Neut,' and the next I can see you thinking she's not so bad."

  "One minute she acts hateful, and the next she lets on she might be a human being."

  "That's Steck," Rashid admitted. He started walking again, the plastic soles of his boots clicking when they touched any pimples of limestone poking up through the soil.

  I fell in behind him. "My father still loves her," I said. "At least I think he does. Or maybe it just pains him she's lonely."

  Rashid murmured, "Sometimes that kind of pain passes for love."