The Call of Earth: 2 (Homecoming) Read Free Page B

head.
    “Aunt Rasa wants us,” Hushidh urged. “Come quickly.” She glided out of the room, moving in a kind of dance, her gown floating behind her. In shoes or sandals Hushidh always clumped along, but barefoot shemoved like a woman in a dream, like a bit of cottonwood fluff in a breeze.
    Luet followed her sister out into the hall, still buttoning the front of her housedress. What could it be, that Rasa would want to speak to her and Hushidh? With all the troubles that had come lately, Luet feared the worst. Was it possible that Rasa’s son Nafai had not escaped from the city after all? Only yesterday, Luet had led him along forbidden paths, down into the lake that only women could see. For the Oversoul had told her that Nafai must see it, must float on it like a woman, like a waterseer—like Luet herself. So she took him there, and he was not slain for his blasphemy. She led him out the Private Gate then, and through the Trackless Wood. She had thought he was safe. But of course he was not safe. Because Nafai wouldn’t simply have gone back out into the desert, back to his father’s tent—not without the thing that his father had sent him to get.
    Aunt Rasa was waiting in her room, but she was not alone. There was a soldier with her. Not one of Gaballufix’s men—his mercenaries, his thugs, pretending to be Palwashantu militia. No, this soldier was one of the city guards, a gatekeeper.
    She could hardly notice him, though, beyond recognizing his insignia, because Rasa herself looked so . . . no, not frightened, really. It was no emotion Luet had ever seen in her before. Her eyes wide and glazed with tears, her face not firmly set, but slack, exhausted, as if things were happening in her heart that her face could not express.
    “Gaballufix is dead,” said Rasa.
    That explained much. Gaballufix was the enemy in recent months, his paid tolchoks terrorizing people on the streets, and then his soldiers, masked and anonymous, terrifying people even more as they ostensiblymade the streets of Basilica “safe” for its citizens. Yet, enemy though he was, Gaballufix had also been Rasa’s husband, the father of her two daughters, Sevet and Kokor. There had been love there once, and the bonds of family are not easily broken, not for a serious woman like Rasa. Luet was no raveler like her sister Hushidh, but she knew that Rasa was still bound to Gaballufix, even though she detested all his recent actions.
    “I grieve for his widow,” said Luet, “but I rejoice for the city.”
    Hushidh, though, gazed with a calculating eye on the soldier. “This man didn’t bring you
that
news, I think.”
    “No,” said Rasa. “No, I learned of Gaballufix’s death from Rashgallivak. It seems Rashgallivak was appointed . . . the new Wetchik.”
    Luet knew that this was a devastating blow. It meant that Rasa’s husband, Volemak, who
had
been the Wetchik, now had no property, no rights, no standing in the Palwashantu clan at all. And Rashgallivak, who had been his trusted steward, now stood in his place. Was there no honor in the world? “When did Rashgallivak ascend to this honor?”
    “Before Gaballufix died—Gab appointed him, of course, and I’m sure he loved doing it. So there’s a kind of justice in the fact that Rash has now taken leadership of the Palwashantu clan, taking Gab’s place as well. So yes, you’re right, Rash is rising rather quickly in the world. While others fall. Roptat is also dead tonight.”
    “No,” whispered Hushidh.
    Roptat had been the leader of the pro-Gorayni party, the group trying to keep the city of Basilica out of the coming war between the Gorayni and Potokgavan. With him gone, what chance was there of peace?
    “Yes, both dead tonight,” said Rasa. “The leaders of both the parties that have torn our city apart. But hereis the worst of it. The rumor is that my son Nafai is the slayer of them both.”
    “Not true,” said Luet. “Not possible.”
    “So I thought,” said Rasa. “I