Trochiabite Boy Chapter 2

Hurga really wasn't Jallin's aunt, or any relation that he knew.

"She's as much sister as I'll have.  We wouldn't be surviving if it weren't for her.  I haven't been able to do my work, and she's helped me.  She's helped me carry my loads back to their owners and she never complains and she never asks for any of our money," his mother explained.  "It's been chanky this last couple months, and I couldn't've made it without her.  She's helped me and never asked for no money."

"We don't have money," Jallin pointed out to her, watching Hurga take a pinch of stone bread, leaving the crust.  "What's there to ask for?"  This was before he knew his mother was dying, before he knew what her cough was.  Summer still hung around like a stray keyow, a domesticated raig, that eventually disappeared without explanation.  They took to eating their scrounged together meals outside, where the kitchen used to be, heating themselves and boiling vegetable stew by the stove.

Hurga, who was probably only five or six years older than Jallin and more his sister than his mother's, had followed his mother home that night.  "That's my bread, Hurga" Jallin pointed out as she popped a second piece of it into her mouth.

"She's earned it, Jallin.  Let her have it.  Without her, we'd be lost.  I don't know what's the matter with me these days.  And Jallin, you call her Aunty Hurga."  She stopped and wiped her brow with the back of her hand.  She put her hands on her hips and hung her head.  "You treat her with respect or I'll make your rear end look like a darch fruit by the time I'm done."

It was an empty threat.  Even then, maybe half a year ago, Jallin's mother had been coughing.  Back then, when she'd met Aunty Hurga, she could still talk, and sing a little, and threaten a little still, but she was already growing weaker.  She panted a lot, even in the middle of scolding and shaking a finger at one of her two children, but said she was thinking.

Aunty Hurga had never insisted he call her anything.  She responded to 'you' just like any girl her age would, and she rarely talked to the other children...until now.

Eja and Jallin stood in what must have been a hand-carved and built pavilion, surrounded on all sides by a spring garden.  They wore the clothes on their back and the straps of leather they'd tied on their feet for shoes and as far as Jallin knew, they had nothing else to claim as theirs.

Jallin had not seen so much color gathered in one place, except occasionally in the markets.  In the right time in the summer, the Sarkoshian markets bloomed, the fruits and flowers, cloths and everything, all looked like a big, beautiful garden, like this garden.  But where the market did it with colored glass and silk and fruits, this garden did it with only plants.  Rows and rows of little shoots stuck up like spikes; herb plants crouched, their leaves dark and potent; fruit trees blossomed everywhere.  Unfortunately, Aunty Hurga would not tolerate his looking around; she treated the two children like they were soldiers about to be put into a suicidal battle.

"Don't slouch.  Stand up child."  She tugged on Eja's upper body, trying to position her into place, but Eja slouched.  "Saint Stermin's stink, child, quit that coughing.  Jallin, I said stand up.  Quit looking around like that.  Use your neck and hold up your head."  She emphasized her commands with a small pop to Jallin's thigh with a bit of reed.  "Eja, quit whining.  The sooner you can cooperate, the sooner we'll get this over with, and then we can get you two fed."

She looked around, balling up her fists.  She saw someone, and Jallin turned his head to look, earning himself another pop on the leg.  All he saw was some kinto-shah walking along the fence line.

The garden was in the middle of a large, fenced in area.  Jallin had been led into the compound through a front gate, which opened onto Slaver Street, as it was called by the other children Jallin knew.  It wasn't really called Slaver Street; the name was some weird kinto-shah word, but the name Jallin and his friends gave it was just as good.  The street wound past the compound and turned north.  It came to a bay where slaves were sold.  When slaves were bought, they often were brought up Slaver Street and to wherever it was they were to live and work.

Just beside the gate was a big glass house, a greenhouse, and the kinto-shah walking along the fence line must have gone within, because Jallin didn't see him on a second look.  The pavilion was in the middle of the garden and then on the other side of the garden, directly in front of Jallin, was a house with paper windows.  A road led from the gate, past the pavilion, past the house and up to a large warehouse-looking building in the back of the compound.  Jallin figured it was a store house.  Set against the eastern wall of the compound were two little buildings up on stilts with stairs descending from the front.  Jallin stopped taking all this in when Hurga started popping him again.

"Now listen, you two," she said, like a thieve's accomplice, "the master's name is Tho-Nosho.  He is my master.  He is now your master, but through me.  You don't talk to him.  You don't ask him questions.  You don't go to him when I'm not around.  If you need something, you talk to me.  Got that?"

Jallin looked over at Eja, who seemed to be trying to decide whether or not to let herself cough again.

"Got that?  Answer me, you little birds," she hissed.  She was not talking to them very loudly, and now, she came up close to them.

"Yeah," Jallin said.  "I heard you."

"If he asks you questions, don't tell him about your whole lives.  Only tell him the answer to the questions he asks you."

Eja coughed and Aunty Hurga patiently watched and waited for her to finish.  Then, she put her hand on Eja's shoulder, drawing her ear closer to her.  Eja started coughing again.

"Damnit, I said stop that coughing.  Why's she coughing like that?"

"She may be sick.  I think we should take her to the Mercellians.  We should have taken Mama to the...."

"Shut it," hissed Aunty Hurga.  "We don't go to the Mercellians.  We don't buy miracles from stupid knights who worship the sun.  We'll take her to temple, to see the counselors."

"The mercellians might have a cure for her," Jallin whined.  He had said it over and over.  He had tried to get his mother to go to the Mercellian order of knights, who had a chapter somewhere near the center of the city. He had even seen one of them come down this way and wanted to ask him to help.  But he had stolen that day, and he heard they could tell when people stole, and they would not help someone who was a thief.

"No, and that's that.  Now shut up, or I'll put some good marks on you with this."  She swished the irritating stick around in front of Jallin's face.

"I have to tell you this.  The master may come here at any moment.  Right now, he is checking over his accounts, but that might not take him long.  So shut your mouths and listen to me."

The urgency in her voice was strange.  Jallin stopped talking back.  Eja actually managed to keep from coughing.

"You cannot tell him anything about Trochaya."

"Trochaya?"

Aunty Hurga put her hand over Jallin's mouth and hushed him.

"We're in the house of a kinto-shah."  She grabbed Eja's face between her thumb and forefinger and turned her head.  "You can't talk loud or they'll hear you.  There are three kinto-shah who live here, and they are not deaf.  Do not speak above a whisper, and do not speak of Trochaya...ever."

"Why not?  Don't they want to know about him?" Eja asked, her words somewhat distorted by the painful-looking grip Hurga had on her face.

"No, they don't.  They worship all kinds of...of...nature gods or whatever.  They don't believe in him, and...and...Trochaya's a...secret.  Yes, he's a secret god, and he doesn't want to share attention with...others. So don't speak of him.  Don't pray to him out loud here.  Don't say his name.  Do you understand me?"

"I don't pray to him," Jallin said matter-of-factly.

He'd always though the Trochayabites were idiots, but once a week, his mother dragged the two of them to 'the temple' with her to sit and eat supper on the floor of some old half-rotten house and have one of the counselors yammer at them for what felt like hours about divine providence and the waiting world and all things for the good, or whatever.  It was hard to hear what was said most of the time, because the temple also functioned as a sort of hospital.  People sat around and moaned, picked at scabs or buboes, or coughed or cried or sneezed.  The worst of them, after sitting and eating with the rest, were helped back down into the wine cellar of the house where they slept.  When Jallin's mother took a turn for the worst in the last week or so, they had threatened to take her down into the wine cellar.

"You don't pray?" Eja asked him, horrified.

"Not to...."  Aunty Hurga again put her hand over his mouth.

"I told you.  Shut it.  Now, if you want to talk about him, call him...uh...call him...the Protector.  He's not the Protector, but we're going to do a little fibbing.  The kinto-shah know about the Protector and don't care about him, but they don't understand about...our god."

"It's cause our god is illegal," Jallin said.

"Illegal?" Eja said.  Jallin didn't get a chance to explain.  Now, one of the doors of the big house opened and out stepped what must have been the master.  Tho-Nosho.

"He's almost naked," Eja giggled.  Like the child she was, she pointed at him.  Aunty Hurga hissed at her and grabbed her hand.  Eja's giggle turned into a cough again.

She was right.  The kinto-sha wore only two articles of clothing: a loin cloth and a vest.  His body was completely covered in slick brown and gray fur.  Another kinto-shah, this one a female, stepped out behind him from the room onto the porch.  She was much more gray than he, and she also wore a loin cloth and vest.  Were it not for her being smaller than him and having rounder ears and a few trinkets of jewelry, it would have been difficult for Jallin to tell which was which.

"Here he comes.  He's going to inspect you, like I'm doing.  Stand up straight, but don't look him in the eyes.  When you answer him, you always say Tho-Shiko.  That means 'Master Tho,' Aunty Hurga explained in whispers.  Jallin doubted Eja would understand any of this.

"We're not his slaves, Aunty," Jallin said, a little too loud.

"You better think yourselves like slaves.  It was hard to convince him to let you stay here with me.  He doesn't have time for children, so I have to raise you myself, and I'm no parent, so you better listen and...."

He was walking through the garden towards them now.