Episode Fourteen

Stonnie Heppac was growing up. His mother noticed the true extent when the Tansons came round for dinner. He was simply mesmerised by Yaxi. By her black skin, by her muscular body, by what Morran had come to recognised as her powerful air of sexuality. The poor fourteen year old boy had never seen anything like her before. Certainly not in close quarters, not sat in his very own apartment. Certainly not giving hi the occasional wink. He looked close to fainting the first time she did, through either terror or lust or possibly both. The rest of the time he managed the composure of a slowly boiling haddock.
The only element which broke his obsession with Yaxi was Zokou. She was older than him, Morran estimated, but not by much. And despite her foreign appearance, she was his type. Another scrawny street kid. Morran had seen him hanging around with girls like her. He had possibly gone further with them; his mother, at present, didn't want to know. If Stonnie fixed Yaxi with an awestruck gaze, the looks which he spared Zokou were calculating. And Morran had placed the girl next to him at the table and the woman directly opposite. Happy early birthday son, she thought. Normally it was a struggle keeping Stonnie in place for ten minutes before he wanted to be out with his mates again. Tonight she foresaw a fight to get rid of him after the meal.
Zokou had affected Morran strongly for different reasons. Yaxi had asked her beforehand if they could bring another person. No details were supplied. Morran's sense of hospitality made her agree but she had reservations. She was expecting another Tanson. Or rather, another Radav, just without the good manners or restraint. Some foul-mouthed traveller wanting a free meal. Instead they had presented this strange girl. Announcing, for good measure, that she was living with them as their ward. A peculiar word which belonged to the aristocracy, not nouveau riche barbarians.
And the declaration shocked Morran. It showed her how far she still stood from being friends with Yaxi. Her notion of friendship, that is, where affection is built slowly and in conjunction with candour. At first she expected to be taken aside and given at least a truncated explanation about Zokou. Again, though, Yaxi gave no more details. She was amiable immediately with people she met and then used this as a wall. Any truths had to be tricked and teased out of her. Morran realised she was being treated as an absolute stranger would be and this hurt her a little.
Zokou didn't have the self-assurance of her guardians, if guardians they really were. She seemed to have inherited their ways, however. Treat an interrogation as a game. Never refuse to answer outright but always say something even more intriguing, which creates five more questions. Morran decided to play, at least for now. While serving out the substantial meal she asked the girl,
"You're their ward, then, love? So what does that involve?"
Zokou smiled and nodded across the table at the Tansons. "Doing what they say, mostly." Yaxi stuck her tongue out at her.
"So they've kind of taken over from your mum an' dad?" Morran persisted.
"Kind of, yeah."
"An' your real mum an' dad? Are they..?"
Zokou caught the implication after a moment. "Oh, no. Not as far as I know. They were still living back in Blacksheln."
"Where?"
"Port Blacksheln. Place I was born. You know, that big port in Ellniss."
"You're from across the water?" Stonnie squawked. He was not doing well. This was virtually the first thing he had said and really not uttered in an alluring tone. Zokou gave him a suitably haughty look.
"Yeah? What about it?"
"But Yaxi an' Radav here just came in an' took you over?" Morran asked. "Got made your, whatsit, legal guardians?"
"Yeah, I don't think we should look too closely into the legal aspects of it," Yaxi warned. "It's a bit, you know…"
Morran was still looking at Zokou. "Di'n't kidnap you, did they?"
For some reason the girl erupted into giggles. "Well…" she eventually managed.
"Hey, consent was asked and consent was granted, thank you," Yaxi said.
"Eventually," Radav observed.
"They got me out of Blacksheln," Zokou told Morran. Yaxi breathed,
"And let's all say a prayer of thanks to that."
"I like Blacksheln," Radav protested..
"So you keep saying, hon. And every time we visit this place you like so much, boy, do you whip us out of it again fast enough."
Finally everyone's plates were stacked high with food. Morran took her place at one end of the table, looked around slightly nervously and told her guests, "We normally say a prayer before dinner… Are you Church of Ella yoursens?"
"Narlat," Yaxi said.
"The Great God Garrath," Radav said. And Zokou replied,
"It's pretty complicated explaining what I am."
"Then we'll skip the prayer. The Goddess don't want us ramming our faith down other folks' throats. That's what the food's for."
They began to eat it. Morran was a very good hostess by Jakks Way standards. She stuck to the basics, the foods she knew well. Lamb, potatoes, peas, dumplings. When entertaining, the temptation is always to wander into strange lands looking for the items which aristocrats consume Food which you cannot afford and which the guests are uneasy eating because they know you cannot afford it. They are also unhappy because they can taste that you don't know how to cook it either. Morran was faithful to the wares she had prepared for years. Which she could blend with a sprinkling of salt, a pinch of parsley and rosemary to make into something subtly delicious.
She made too much of it, however. That tended to be her failing. Each portion was a huge, unstable tower on the plate. The Heppacs could afford this meal but Morran had wasted a whole week's food allowance on it. She tried to stop herself but anxiety had bit her at strategic times, pouncing when she was buying the lamb and putting the potatoes in the pot. More, it always cried, or they won't like you, they'll think you a miser. The result was a meal bluff and normal on the surface but whispering of inner insecurity. Which rather summed up Morran's attitude towards both the Tansons and entertaining in general.
Still, she told herself, she was trying. She had approached newcomers whom everyone else merely peered at from a distance and whispered about, and she was making a gesture. She was displaying acceptance and tolerance towards strangers, those qualities which are supposed to be a feature of the Triple Cities and so very rarely are. She was ensuring this very disparate gathering was only slightly awkward. And she was doing it alone – or at least, without the help of her own family. Stonnie was still in his lust-induced trance. Dryden was a mute, as he had been for the past few days; Morran vowed that soon she would find the energy to beat his latest woe out of him. Saska and Temes were talking but only to each other, in low murmurs and accompanied by much giggling. It was the only real bad habit which the girls possessed but was a trying one; especially now, as Morran suspected they were mainly laughing at Yaxi. Ignoring her daughters for the time being, she asked her guests,
"You travelled in Ellniss a lot then?"
"Yeah, a reasonable amount," Yaxi said airily. "'From mighty mountain to dusty desert' as they say, even when I ask them not to."
"Were that on work then?"
"A pinch of work, a pinch of sightseeing. You know, the usual."
"You see any dragons?" Stonnie blurted out. His eyes may be maturing, his mother noted, but his mouth was regressing. She remembered fondly the little boy who loved hearing tales about the dragons and centaurs of Ellniss, the magical continent.
"Well, just once. We saw one kind of gliding overhead, didn't we, hon?"
"Ha," Radav replied scornfully. "All they ever do."
"What do you mean?" Stonnie demanded.
Yaxi rolled her eyes. "And now you've gone and set him off. Part 157 of What Radav Tanson Hates About The World."
"Forget about dragons, lad," Radav told Stonnie. "Hopeless things. Can barely even fly, for one. Body's too heavy, wings too weak. Just have to glide the whole time. Can barely even turn themselves. All that stuff about them sleeping on a heap of gold's rubbish too. We know 'cause we've looked. Cave's just full of-"
"As there's tots and parents in the room, shall we just kind of call it dragon guano," Yaxi interrupted quickly.
"An' they don't attack folks. Things are scavengers mostly. No better than coyotes. An you know what they like to eat most? Cows. Wilderbeast. Damn gnus, for Garrath's sake. Don't talk to me about dragons."
"Don't they even breath fire then?" Stonnie quavered.
"Oh aye. That's a decent trick. Don't use it much though. Don't seem to have much control over it. Just rushes out at random. That's what kills the most folk actually. Dragon accidentally breaths on them. Folks get killed 'cause a dragon burps. Says it all. Wyverns, now, they're the real business."
"What are they?"
"A kind of cousin of the dragon," Yaxi said. "They can't breath fire and they're about a tenth of the size but, oh boy, you'd better believe they've got ten times the attitude. They mostly live in the mountains of northern Ellniss. And they make travelling through those parts, well, something of an experience."
"Come at you with everything," Radav nodded approvingly. "Teeth, talons, the works. Hide up high on a ledge, leap down on you as you're going past. Lost count of the number of times we've been riding down a quiet valley, suddenly, bam, one of them little sods is on me trying to take me skull off."
"Yes, hon. Though since that one caught you right on the top of the head you've not been able to count too high, have you?"
"Do you always travel together?" Morran asked after laughing uncertainly.
"She's kind of a recent addition," Yaxi replied, indicating Zokou. "Me and apeface here have been meandering the world together for over a decade."
"Seems like longer," Radav muttered.
"And when you've got to fight stuff," Morran probed carefully, "Wyverns an'… an' suchlike. Do you both…"
"When we've got to fight, which is so more often than we want to, we both, you know, do our share."
A short, stunned silence was broken by another sotto comment from Saska and another wave of laughter from her and her sister. Morran's more restrained reaction was, "That's pretty uncommon, a woman…"
"She still does all the pansy stuff," Radav said deadpan.
"What the loving husband means," Yaxi snapped, "Is that I pick off our attackers with my bow with truly chilling accuracy. And he mops up the remains with his you-know-what substitute sword and, believe me, that really isn't much work."
"Still a man's job. More risky. Having to get up close."
"Well, I'll have to agree. Otherwise you're going to start another count-the-scars contest, aren't you, and we so don't want to do that in mixed company. 'Cause I've managed to unleash a typhoon of giggles," she added, suddenly rounding on Saska and Temes, "Just by mentioning my bow and arrows. Kind of wondering what's so funny about that. And boy, I hope it's not what I'm thinking."
The girls froze for a second, then turned to their mother for help. Her blank expression said: serves you right. Unless she turns nasty, you're on your own. "I were just…" Saska managed eventually. "I just heard… You know what you hear… About, you know… The Charlen women-" She smacked her hand over her moth. More hysterical giggles, given additional power by fear, were almost overwhelming the girls again.
"Uh-huh." Yaxi said with a straight face. "I've heard a lot about the Charlen women and, you know, haven't found much to laugh at yet. Except Radav's expression, when he hears what they do to their men."
"Just…" Saska spluttered. "Their archers… How they cut off one of their tits to-" She surrendered to the tidal wave of laughter. Yaxi waited until it had abated a little before remarking,
"You know, I guess that's a bit better than the obvious one about bows and arrows. But it must be said, a room containing a teenage boy and two men, one of who I know is a bit of a perv." She glared at Radav to make herself clear. Morran, though, noticed that Dryden suddenly jumped. "And who makes the leap straight to the boobies?" Yaxi continued. "The gals. Five generations of women's freedom fighters are screaming from their funeral urns, that's all I'm saying." She took another mouthful of potatoes and smirked at Saska and Temes.
"You ain't answered the question," Radav pointed out.
"No, that's true. Well, you remember what that Charlen gal said don't you, hon? Most of the things you hear about Charlae is just stuff other people invented. The rest is just, you know, stuff they made up themselves. Lady archers cutting off a breast… Well, we'll ignore the implied correlation between military effectiveness and defeminisation, though that so, so speaks volumes. I guess there might be a practical point. When you're firing an arrow you don't want anything, you know, bulging out and getting in the way of the bowstring. But take a look at my chest and tell me honestly if there's anything there big enough to get in the way of anything. And when I said stare at my chest, I was kind of only talking to the women present. Guys, avert your eyes."
Radav, the only one not staring dumbstruck at at least one part of Yaxi, asked mildly, "What, even me?"
"Well, take an ogle if you really want, hon. Though if you still need to look after all these years, there's something seriously wrong with either your vision or your memory."
"Wouldn't be surprised. Blow to the head from a wyvern, remember?"
Saska and Temes vanished as soon as the meal was over. Their interest in the guests was clearly confined to mocking them. Now Yaxi had made this impossible to their faces, the girls preferred to retire to their room to continue. Morran supposed it possible they might actually do their homework too at some point. She tried encouraging Stonnie to do likewise. When finally prised from the table, though, he announced that he had to go out.
"My warehouse needs me," he claimed. "They need someone to do a few hours on the evening shift."
"Oh ay," Morran said as she noisily cleared the table. "Then bake me a cake while you're there 'cause I were only born yesterday."
"It's true!"
"Any chance of you doing your school work any time?"
"I done it all."
"Yeah, right."
Stonnie jumped up somewhat melodramatically. "Don't believe me then. You never do. Anyway," he added, pointing at the Tansons, "I bet they never bothered with schoolwork."
"Yeah, not to sort of take sides in a domestic," Yaxi said, "But if you start modelling yourself on us, boy, you've got problems."
"But you've had great lives."
"What were we talking about earlier, hon?" Yaxi asked her husband. "Sleeping in ditches, being attacked by wyverns and getting lost in the Great Ellniss Desert. They weren't a whole load of laughs at the time, were they?"
"I weren't chuckling much," Radav confirmed.
"Hey!" Zokou exclaimed. "You kept telling me we weren't lost in that desert."
"Not with you, Zok," Yaxi said. "But the first time, on our own… Boy, we were going round and round like a spinning top. And as we were we kept saying, oh how I wish I paid attention to geography at school."
"Aye," Radav nodded. "That an' 'water, water!'"
Morran retreated to do the washing up. She tended to store a water tub in a corner niche so that she could retreat. It was a useful trick when she felt the need for a temporary withdrawal. Extract herself from the room under the cover of a necessary task until her strength could be mustered again. When she turned back ground, the guests were huddled on the flimsy, uncomfortable sofa. Dryden was sat in his favourite armchair, still silent, still contributing nothing. Stonnie had vanished, almost certainly to loiter on street corners with his friends once more. If his father had extracted any promises of return times before he left, Morran hadn't heard him. She eyed Dryden sourly as she lowered herself into her own favourite chair, drying her hands on her apron. He didn't need any excuses to retreat, she though. He just goes, and you can't reach him again until it pleases him.
"Sorry about Stonnie," she told the Tansons, having rehearsed this opener in her head for the past few minutes. "He shouldn't have just assumed you dropped out of school early. Most folks around here do, that's all."
"Well, he was kind of part true," Yaxi smiled. "Zokou here's still doing her studies."
"Whether I want to or not," the girl murmured.
"And Radav's school put up with him till he was seventeen, didn't they?"
"They were desperate."
"And how. But for me, puberty and schooling didn't, you know, coincide."
"Right." Morran paused, then asked, "That because of you getting taken from your home?"
"No, that came a bit of a while later. It was 'cause of the much cheerier factor of horrible, horrible poverty. As in, nobody in my family could kind of afford to eat. So I dropped out and got a job as soon as the law let me or, frankly, somewhat earlier. Then there were a few years spent in, 'cause this was East Zabrial and 'cause clichés kind of are true sometimes, a fish gutting factory. Believe me, getting kidnapped was almost a relief at first."
Morran blinked. Yaxi had already hinted at that, of course. But hearing the word first spoken was still a shock. Trying to make light of it, she asked Radav, "Weren't by you, were it?"
Yaxi laughed. "See, hon, you've clearly built a reputation as a guy who prowls the ports nabbing young girls. I hope you can live with that."
"Better than her thinking me a pansy," Radav said.
"There's probably a way to combine the two. Radav didn't grab me," she told Morran. "He was sort of the guy who saved me, actually."
"From who?"
Yaxi was silent for a moment. Morran was about to apologise for the question when she began, "Well, you know how the guys in government sometimes promise how they're gonna kick the asses of the pirates who prey on the ports? The ones who launch the lightning raids to burn down houses or grab helpless people. No? You hear the speeches more on the coast, I guess, and less than you used to. Could be that the government finally stopped talking and finally, you know, kicked some ass. Anyway, the guys who got me were part of the reason why those speeches were made."
It took Morran a minute to interpret this and another to truly believe it. "You were kidnapped by pirates?" she whispered. "In East Zabrial?"
"Yeah, it never happened too often there," Yaxi said easily. "They mainly stuck to the towns in Ellniss where the protection's often, you know, non-existent. Probably still do, actually. When they hit the Christotan coast it was usually the teensy-weensy isolated fishing villages. But sometimes they got cocky and had a go at East Zab. And I've got to say, my mom knew they did and that's why she told me to never go to the docks at night and sure never go alone. And did I listen? Did I, as they say round here, heckers like."
Morran hesitated again. But she felt the other side of Yaxi turning disclosure into a game. Anything could be asked. If the Zabric woman didn't want to answer she would simply joke it aside. She wouldn't, Morran believed, ever get offended or upset. "So they just… grabbed you? An' took you away?"
"Yup."
"You were a slave?"
"Well, I was never actually sold on the slave markets. Which do, by the way, so still exist, whatever we've been told. Not sure why. I guess my guys just wanted to keep me."
"What did they do with you?" Morran asked, unable to stop herself.
"Well, now, picture the situation," Yaxi replied in a quieter voice. "We've got a bunch of guys out at sea for months on end. Guys who, shall we say, are kind of not over-burdened in the morals ledger. And one of their possessions is a helpless fifteen year old girl. What do you think they, you know, used her for?"
Zokou stood up abruptly. They had forgotten she was there; a girl only a teenager herself and still learning the Tansons' style. "I'm off home," she said awkwardly. "I mean, I'm really beat. Thanks for the meal it was-"
"Hey, it's OK, Zok," Yaxi said, turning instantly. "Sorry. We're done talking about this now. We're done, right?" she asked Morran.
"Sure. Definite. Sorry," Morran also told Zokou. "Nosy cow here. You'll get used to it."
Zokou managed a shy smile and sat down again slowly. "No, it's… I've heard this before, that's all, and it's… At least hear the happy ending."
"Happy ending?"
"That'll be me," Radav said.
"Oh yeah," Yaxi smiled. "Him. Well, these pirates, yeah? Raiding and pillaging with impunity, if that's the word I mean. So they're the biggest psychos on the seas, right? Nope. There were headbangers even more whacked out who actually preyed on the pirates. And I don't mean government ships, I mean sort of freelancers. They figured, these pirates may be tooled up to the eyeballs but at least no-one'll miss them. Which I guess makes sense if your mom, you know, dropped you on your head when you were a baby. That's what the Eastern Ocean's like and when guys call it the Civilised Sea, I laugh so, so hard. Anyway, when my hero here was about twenty he couldn't find anything better to do then join a boat of these headbangers. And one day they hit my pirates. I guess they knew what they were doing 'cause they took them apart pretty quickly though, it should be said, not into as many parts as I'd have liked. Anyway, that's how I got released."
"Bloody hell," Morran whispered, and asked Radav, "You find many captives on these pirate ships?"
"Aye, a fair few. We'd take 'em home if we could, otherwise to the nearest port. We kept all the treasure, mind."
"Well, duh," Yaxi rolled her eyes. "That was kind of the point of the whole exercise, wasn't it?"
"But were you looking for Yaxi this time?"
"We were strangers till he, you know, dragged me out of the hold. That's how we met." They exchanged a rare look of genuine love and Radav said,
"That's how we saved each other."
Morran frowned at him. "She saved you an' all."
"Aye. Course. Till I met her I were nowt but a headbanger who hit bloody pirate ships for fun. She gave me purpose."
True or not? Morran wondered. If they were fantasists, though, they were the most skilful ones she had ever met. They told their tales in precisely the same way most people relate accounts of their lives. In a self-mocking, self-depreciating way which always downplayed the heroic. They hadn't fought dragons. They had seen a dragon, that was all, and didn't think much of it. They had only fought the stunted cousin of a dragon. And Morran noted that they hadn't even claimed to have actually killed a wyvern. They had just been attacked by them. As the evening progressed they continued to offer scraps of stories in the same manner. Only after prompting and always in accounts laced by pragmatism and in-jokes.
Morran wanted to believe them. And not simply because the alternative was that she was sharing a building with three advanced schizophrenics. It would be nice if all fairy tales, which tended to depict heroes as either braggarts or saints, could be wrong. Heroes should be ordinary people who just had a little more courage and a lot more sense than most. Who, moreover, didn't believe in their own surfeit of bravery but were certain about their lack of sense. Who could be charming and modest and were secretive simply because this was more fun than boasting. Ordinary people with the inner strength to survive ordeals as horrific as Yaxi's experience with the pirates – the one part which Morran hoped wasn't true.
Really, though, she would have wanted to believe them however they behaved. Even if they were breathing clichés, she would wish them to be true heroes. For the same reason why Stonnie couldn't quite relinquish his childhood fascination with dragons. Probably why, too, Morran was adopting Zesheyek's predicament with such enthusiasm. There had to be more to life. More to the world than the grey, claustrophobic confines of Jakks Way. She knew that there was and yet couldn't find the courage herself to seek it out. So she wanted to trust these emissaries who had come to her and spoke of lands where everything was both brighter and darker.
Dryden barely said anything for the rest of the evening. Morran wasn't sure if he slept either, after their guests had left and they went to bed. As she drifted into slumber herself she sensed him lying rigid beside her, still staring into space. She knew she ought to at least try and find out what was wrong. That too would belong to the greyness, however. Some imagined slight or rumour of redundancies. At worst, the onset of one of his trivial little bursts of depression. Nothing concerning her husband ever seemed important. So she fell to sleep thinking of the Tansons and dreamed about fighting dragons.