“Kúðe wandered through the hunting grounds for seven days, with no destination ahead.”
-zɨ́Wád̈ɨ Masúwo 1
Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop.
The noise was almost insufferable, that of Núl̈a boots hitting the cobblestone bricks, sending out vibrations and echoing through his armor, never ceasing. If it weren’t for the reason why Rek wore those boots, he wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But the Book of Tíd specifically required it, all zə́Qrəsú must wear their armor when out and about, lest they be ambushed. And Rek was proud to be appointed to this holiest of jobs, and proud to uphold all things required by God of him. So he did not mind the noise, no matter how much it distressed him.
“So, tell me about this restaurant, Rek,” L̈onxá said to him. His speech was quiet, of course. The people must not hear the idle chitchat of two saQrəsú.
“You know. Proper, qaSúgúð food. Rice, crabs, eggplant, that sort of thing.”
“Good?”
“Excellent. Although I haven’t been there since I enlisted, so it’s been a few years.”
They soon arrived to the restaurant, positioned just a block off of main street. Rek opened the door to the eatery, triggering a bell atop it. The restaurant was full, every table in use, but that was no trouble for saQrəsú. Indeed, as soon as the waitress noticed the soldiers of God, she quickly motioned for a young couple to leave, them being almost done with their food. They hastened to oblige, standing up, grabbing their bags, and giving a small bow to the saQrəsú as they left the building. The waitress cleared their dishes and wiped down the table in a matter of seconds before she motioned for the two of them to sit.
“Eggplant qaþəɣǽ,” Rek said confidently. It wouldn’t be good for a Qresú to be seen deliberating. No, he must appear confident to them, to give the people trust in the xiQrəsú. Besides, he was hungry, he wanted his food as soon as possible.
“Me as well,” L̈onxá added.
The waitress nodded, then walked through a doorless doorway into the kitchen. Rek watched her convey their order to the cook, so he could start working on their food immediately, disregarding other people’s orders. Or so Rek hoped. To do otherwise was to disrespect the xiQrəsú, the penalty for which was at least a year in prison, going up to an execution depending on the severity of the offense and if the offended decided to seek further penalty.
Rek likely would not if it came to it, and would be happy to let the cook spend only a year or two in jail if it was called for. He liked this restaurant, afterall.
But the cook would probably not cause an offense. No, Rek had no reason to believe that this restaurant harbored pagan zə́Qrəsú hatred. Except he hadn’t started on their food yet. Instead he was still talking to the waitress. Clarification about the food? She shook her head and he said something else. She rejected it again, shaking her head more forcefully. They turned their eyes to Rek and L̈onxá. Rek did not avert his gaze. He had every right to stare at these people, to do as he wished, as long as he continued to serve Tíd and, most importantly, God.
Soon, the cook moved to the stove and started to cook. Rek and L̈onxá sat in silence. It would not be good for the others to see them speak, to betray their personability.
Their food came after about ten minutes, and the two soldiers removed their Núl̈a helmets, crafted from Kaɣl̈a shells. Rek did not like doing so: what if they were ambushed? No helm would make it easier for him to be wounded, even killed, and weaken his ability to make a quick escape if called for. Perhaps more importantly, this would reveal his face to the others in the establishment. But he couldn’t very well eat with Kaɣl̈a shells blocking his mouth.
The food was excellent. A bed of rice with small hunks of crab, topped with sweet, sliced eggplant and a sticky fish sauce in a spiral pattern over the food. A few pieces of cilantro added bright green to the white, black, and purple.
It tasted delicious too, of course, sticky and salty and sweet. Rek looked at L̈onxá as they ate without speaking, at his long dark blue hair, at his cyan skin, his brown eyes. The cyan skin represented his qaŊ̇ámub heritage. Ŋ̇ámub had been an independent country until 60 years ago, when it became the first nation that Súgúð invaded successfully. There weren’t many zɨqaŊ̇ámub left, most of them who couldn’t demonstrate their loyalty to Súgúð and the ziQrəsú were killed.
Still, they were allowed to join the ziQrəsú, a great honor that Tíd had bestowed onto their people. Not all nations were lucky enough to have that privelege.
Rek’s skin was proper qaSúgúð purple, his hair qaSúgúð black.
Rek made an error in the restaurant that day. He hadn’t eaten good food in some time, just having got back from a campaign in the ongoing invasion of Séɣup and surviving there off of army rations. So here he concentrated on the delicious food and wasn’t alerted to anything odd about the man walking behind him until he felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck.
He spun around quickly, him and L̈onxá drawing their blades. With one hand he took the knife out of his neck, the wound squirting out magenta blood. With his right hand, his sword hand, he struck his attacker–the very cook who had made their food–with his blade. It was a long, wide blade, made out of the same beige Kaɣl̈a shells as his armor. He struck the cook, killing him.
Everybody in the restaurant was screaming now, not knowing what to do. Rek looked around, and saw the waitress run out the door and down the street with the ringing of a bell. He couldn’t catch her normally. He knew what he had to do.
Rek quickly donned his helmet and ran out the door too. Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop went his boots. She was a fast runner, already a few blocks away.
But Rek could throw.
He unbuckled the leather pouch at his waist, going down his thigh under the armor, and took out one Kaɣl̈a pearl. The spherical edge of the pearl was a translucent dark blue, with the inner core of it barely visible floating in the dark fluid inside. Rek retracted his hand and threw the pearl.
The best comparison that Rek could think of to pearl travel was falling asleep. It was like waking up to suddenly be next to the waitress and stab her quickly, her blood flowing onto the cobblestones. He knew where he was, but he got the sensation that a great time had past, even though it hadn’t. The last thing he remembered was throwing the pearl and watching it hit the ground, then there was what felt to him a pause, a break, a dreamless sleep. Then he was here, standing atop a shattered pearl, killing a conspirator in the attempted murder of a Qrəsú.
He collected the core of the pearl–religious law said that that had to be destroyed by the thrower–and walked back to the restaurant. It wouldn’t do to waste a pearl on a needless faster return. Pearls were sacred, after all.
L̈onxá was waiting for him outside of the restaurant. They walked back to the Qrəsú headquarters in silence. Somebody else would clean up the bodies.
“I, Ligulyu, hereby declare that now, in the year forty-nine thousand and seventy-three after the first coming of our Lord on Earth, the evil, totalitarian kingdom of Ligulya is dead, replaced by a new government.”
–Constitution of Ligulya, preamble
Yalu stared down, down, down, as far as he could possibly see. The well went down farther than any well that they had in his hometown–then again, he had grown up next to the Lyöla, where a river of Lyöli burst out of a mountain into a stream of yellow liquid, very hot. Yalu saw that very substance down at the bottom of the well as he gazed down it. Lyöli wasn’t that hot, really. What was that hot was the air drifting up from it, hot enough to heat earth itself and leave pockets of warmth on the land above a river. Most of the planet was far too cold for human life, only above a river could civilization thrive.
Fyegyitya, the capital of Ligulya, was positioned high up the same mountain range where Yalu had grown up, where his father had worked his whole life harvesting Lyöli, putting it in little clay pots to warm the homes of the rich here in the capital, before he had finally died of the Lyöla-sickness. Now Yalu was the rich in the capital, greedily using Lyöli that innocent workers died for every day, barely thinking of where it came from.
Yet another reason he should die.
His face grew warm above the well, reminding him of his childhood. That town had been warmed by the Lyöli never more than a few dozen yards under his feet. Here in Fyegyitya it was over a mile down. Yalu didn’t envy whoever made this well, striking through so, so much rock just to drown and burn up at the same time.
Yalu stepped onto the brick wall surrounding the well and raised one foot above it. The well was fairly large, a good several feet in diameter. Even though Yalu was a little wide, the well could still more than accommodate him.
He looked as his shoe, resting in the air above the warmth far below. The shoe was fine, made from green Keɲecë leather. The shoe cemented in him the need to die. After what he’d done, what he would have to do if he stayed alive, he did not, under no circumstances, deserve such nice shoes.
He was bending his knees when someone cried out “Stop!” Yalu spun around and stared at her.
She wasn’t Ligulyan, that was for sure. Her skin was a dark tan not commonly found on their planet, Zöya. Only in the equatorial regions was it hot enough to darken the skin of the people who lived there, and her skin was dark even for an equatorial. Ligulya was far in the Southern Hemisphere, causing all people there to be very pale, and contributing to the poorness of such a cold region.
Apparently on other planets to have darker skin, even a dark brown or black, was common. Perhaps she was one of those, an alien. An ambassador? There had never been many interstellar diplomats in Ligulya in the monarchic days, and the few that there were fled to there homelands upon the revolution. One had stayed, but forces of the new regime had killed him for his connections to the former royal family.
So if she wasn’t an ambassador, what would an alien be doing in Ligulya? Perhaps she was just an equatorial after all.
“Who are you?” he decided to ask.
“I’m here to help you,” she replied, not giving him the information he wanted. “Step down from the ledge.”
“No,” Yalu replied simply. No, he was going to kill himself. He’d been planning this for some time. Who was she to stop him?
“Please. At least talk to me. What reason do you have to end your own sacred life?”
Yalu shrugged though the answer was obvious and serious. “The revolution.”
“So? That coup d'etats happened over a year ago. Why are you committing suicide now?”
“I just… I just can’t live with it anymore.”
She walked up to him. “Neither could I.” She turned away for a second. “There is a… resistance movement against him. I could put you in contact with them.”
“No. You don’t understand.” Yalu looked down the well again. “Zyakolpu–or Ligulyu, he’s called now–is my brother. My little brother is the dictator of this whole nation. And I’m secretary of state.”
He looked up at her again, feeling sadness well up in his eyes and expel a single, measly tear as a sign. “And I hate every minute of it. I hate him, I hate what he’s done, I hate what he will do, and I can’t do it anymore.”
She walked right up to Yalu and took his hand. “What’s your name?” she asked him.
“Yalu,” he replied. “Yalu pyeƩofyu suPyemel.”
She smiled, gazing into his eyes. For a second Yalu entertained the thought that she might be interested in him. He didn’t know how to feel about that. Yalu wasn’t… into girls, at least he didn’t think so, and all of his sexual encounters had been with men. Most people who knew him said that he was clearly an ilpu, though, but perhaps she was just bad at figuring these things out. But she probably didn’t want him at all, her words didn’t seem romantic.
“Well, Yalu pyuƩofyu dolsuPyemelu, you are a very lucky man. You find yourself to be in a very fortunate position that many of my contacts would kill to be in. You had better not do their work for them.” She swallowed and turned her gaze to the palace, across town from where they were now but the tallest building in Fyegyitya. Yalu remembered standing outside of it with Zyakolpu and army they had amassed, after seizing the rest of the city but holding a siege around the castle, waiting for the king to prefer execution over starvation. It had been winter, then, and on the last of the three days of waiting snow was falling. Snow fell all year, but only in the winter months was it cold enough to stick to the ground without the underground Lyöli melting it away, and that only for a few hours, a striking difference to both Yalu’s hometown, where it never stuck at all, and the snow flats that covered most of the planet, where it never melted. On the third day of the siege the king had finally come out in a procession. Zyakolpu didn’t waste time listening to a speech that the king prepared, instead he shot his loaded gun–we had only a few guns, they weren’t common in the backlands, but the best we had went to Zyakolpu. Then he finished off the kings entourage and we ran into the palace, killing everyone we saw, poor servant or corrupt noble or infant princess. Me and Zyakolpu–Ligulyu now–lived in that palace today, our lives almost exactly the same as the kings who preceded us. “You see, Yalu,” she continued, “you are perhaps the only person in all Ligulya who can influence Ligulyu, reign him in when needed.”
“Do you think I haven’t tried? He doesn’t listen to a word I say.”
She frowned. “No. No, it is not the way of a dictator to listen.” She brushed a wavy brown hair out of her face. “Still, your familial connections grant you wonderful opportunities beyond a simple suicide.” She stared into his eyes until he glanced down, not wanting to be brought into a staring contest. “What are you trying to accomplish, by being burned into a crisp by the very thing that gives you life?”
Yalu hesitated before answering. What was he trying to do here? “I want to stop. To not have to condone him taking taxes from everyone across the backlands, him murdering everyone in villages that rebel, him stationing his army across vast stretches of the snow flats, freezing to death, just so that no one can escape him. I want to not have to help him with any of that. I want to be reborn someone who didn’t destroy his nation. I want to get away from all of this.”
“You want to get away…” she turned again to the palace. “There are a great number of countries out there. This planet alone has a good dozen, thirteen if you count Szabad as its own thing separate from Lekiisme.” Yalu happened to remember from his studies that Szabad and Lekiisme were native names for Kyilzyölya and Lëkilma, an two equatorial countries at war, one who claimed the other. “And that’s low for a planet. Most planets have around 40 nations, and one has 500. And in our Stellar Neighborhood, there are over a hundred planets. Making about 5000 nations. Surely Ligulya wishes to pursue diplomatic relations with at least one of those countries. Surely Ligulyu can send his own brother as a permanent ambassador.”
“It’s no use.” I replied. “Kenaya placed sanctions and severed diplomatic ties with us when the revolution happened, and all the other countries follow their lead.” Kenaya was the most powerful nation on the most powerful planet and served as the president of the Interstellar Congress.
“You’re not the only nation Kenaya put sanctions on. Try making contact with them. If they don’t want to ally, bring Lyöli into the deal. That could become more valuable than you expect on other planets, it makes a very good fuel source.”
Lyöli was how the only spaceship that Ligulya had was powered. The monarchy had bought the craft about fifty years ago from a group of sa Wöca, interstellar nomads and merchants. In the days of monarchy they would occasionally send a mission to one of the four moons that orbited Zöya or send an ambassador to another planet, but since the revolution it had sat, unused, in a garage. It took a lot of Lyöli to travel such immense distances between planets, and the trip itself took about half a year, but it did work.
She took a slip of paper out of her pocket. On it was a phone number–notably the planetary area code for Zöya and the national area code of Ligulya were both written. That was surprising, interstellar and even international calls had always been rare–speed of light delay led to a lot of lag and the tolls were incredibly high–and they had been outright banned since the revolution, though it was not hard to circumvent that ban with the right technology. There was also an address written in full galactic coordinates. “Come on. Go tell him that you want to leave. Get off this planet.”
Yalu stepped off of the wall around the well. It was a foolish dream, anyway, that he would be able to escape his brother that easily.
“If you need anything, anything at all,” she said to me. “Call me, or go to the address.” With that she simply walked away. Huh. So maybe she was just trying to fuck him after all.
Or, more likely, she wanted Yalu in the rebellion against Zyakolpu. He didn’t think he could do that. He was too cowardly to fight his own little brother, even when he was destroying his country. Hence why Yalu chose this path.
He put the card in my pocket and walked back towards the palace. Yalu could give diplomacy a try.