Awakeners 01: Northshore by Tepper Sheri S

Author:Tepper, Sheri S. [Tepper, Sheri S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Novel
ISBN: 9780575116160
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 1987-01-29T02:00:00+00:00

12

Apprentice Melancholic Medoor Babji accepted a fat copper coin from her weeping victim, gave the paunchy shopkeeper a dozen halfhearted strokes of her fishskin whip, then put a glass Sorter coin into the sweating merchant’s palm.

‘May the Sorters accept the pain you have already borne as payment for your sins,’ she singsonged in formula, slipping the merchant’s warm metal into her own jingling purse. Medoor’s purse was almost as stout as the merchant, full of the coin paid for whipping Northshoremen across a hundred towns this season before ending here in Chantry.

‘Amen,’ said the merchant, wiping his eyes. Though why he should weep, Medoor could not say. Medoor had not struck him hard enough to get through the lard to anything essential, a fact brought forcibly to Medoor’s attention by her Leader, Taj Noteen, who came up behind her and cuffed her across the back of her head.

‘The man paid you, Babji! Put some muscle into it! What’s all this patty-pat, as if you were playing with a babby.’

‘He was such an old fart,’ Medoor responded, knowing it was the wrong thing to say.

‘So much more in need of Sorter compassion!’ The leader leered at her, daring her to say anything more, an invitation Medoor sensibly refused. She knew as well as Noteen did that Sorters, Sorter compassion, and Sorter coin were all equally mythological, but it was Melancholic policy to appear to believe in the myth, at least when moving among the shore-fish – so-called because the townees schooled at the edge of the River, waiting to be caught, just as song-fish did in the waters along the shore.

‘The shore-fish believe, they pay because they believe,’ Noteen was fond of saying. ‘Who are you to question their belief?’

Which was another way of telling Medoor not to bite the hand that offered her hard metal coin. Coin that would buy food, wine, woven pamet cloth. Coin to send to the Noor kindred on the steppes – some for the near-kin of each Melancholic; some for the coffers of the Queen. Thinking of Queen Fibji, Medoor made a reverent gesture and saw the leader’s glance change to one of understanding approval. He thought he understood how she felt, but he did not, not at all. Medoor Babji had more reason than most to care about Queen Fibji. It was Queen Fibji’s need for coin that made any of them willing to serve a term as Melancholics, despite the precarious life of the Noor steppe dwellers and the relative luxury the Melancholics knew. But Medoor’s feelings for the Queen were of different kind and intensity. And private, she reminded herself. Very private.

‘I don’t know why the Queen needs all that coin,’ Riv Lymeen had said once during a fireside argument with Medoor. ‘I’ve been at Queen Fibji’s encampment, and even her big audience tent isn’t that wonderful. My uncle Jiraz has one almost that big.’

The leader had intervened in that argument, too, saving Lymeen from a pounding. ‘None of your business why she needs it, Lymeen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.