Chapter 31

Evanis woke up and realized it wasn’t going to be a good day to be awake. The noise of busy people - and especially their screaming at each other - made it impossible to fall asleep again, though. On the other hand, the size and weight of her head made it also impossible to rise - even to open her eyes demanded an inhuman effort.

“Shu?” She asked the world.

“Shu,” the world answered.

She hesitantly opened one eye to find out who the world was.

“Wipe that grin off your face, Kuwasi.”

“I’ve something for you; mango juice with a bit of goji berry. Drink it and soon you’ll feel like your grouchy old self.”

Both eyes closed again, she held out a hand and received a mug.

“I had a weird dream,” she said, took a sip of the juice in her mug and grimaced. “And this stuff tastes weird as well.”

“Weird dream?” Kuwasi asked. “You’re wrong if you think our night of passion was just a dream. It was inevitable that it would happen one day.”

“If it was inevitable, at least I’m happy I can’t remember anything. That wasn’t what I dreamed about. I dreamed a tall black woman threatened Jabbit with a scimitar and I was too drunk to do anything about it.”

“Shinta?”

“Yes, Shinta. I’ve to kill her just in case it wasn’t a dream; you know that, right?”

“I know,” Kuwasi sighed. “You’re the only one allowed to kill your boy.”

“That’s right.” Evanis set up and looked around. “I see our Princess is still sleeping, of course. Where is everyone else?”

“Sybil appeared in the morning and took your sister out on some sort of emergency mission. It’s about Anjatta but can’t be solved with a sword so they didn’t rouse you. Jabbit vanished in the night and no one knows where he is. I’m not sure but got the feeling the Anjatta emergency and his vanishing are somehow related.”

“And Shinta?”

“I don’t know where she is.”

“She is your friend and that’s the only reason I’ll let her live this time but your friendship won’t save her a second time. You better make that clear to her, Kuwasi.”

The big Ibanee nodded. “I also looked for your patch-men. I found them drunkenly staggering down the streets.”

“Very funny,” Evanis grumbled.

“How was your visit to the beach with the boss?” Sybelien asked Anseyla as they walked through Sanjaba. They were on their way to a little-known shrine, hidden in an acacia grove at a little pond, half a league south-west of the town.

Anseyla smiled. “That was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time ... and also a bit scary.”

“Scary?”

“I told him I’d seduce him to fall in love with me.”

Sybelien cast a sideways glance at her girlfriend. “Are you worried your method of jumping his bones is too subtle?”

“My poor, clueless baby bunny; you can’t seduce a god by jumping his bones. Even I can’t do that and I’m very good at it.”

“I see. So how do you seduce a god?”

“That is the scary part; I have no idea.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t try to seduce him.”

Anseyla answered with a theatrical sigh. “You know me; I cannot-not try to seduce someone like him. The problem is, there is no one else like him I could have practiced on.”

“I think if you succeed in seducing him it will become scary. What will he do when he’s in love with you but realizes you ain’t in love with him as well?”

“No. He learns very fast, that’s the scariest. It’s more likely I’ll fall hopelessly in love with him than he will be in love with me.”

“Do I have reason to be jealous?”

Anseyla glared at Sybelien. “Of course you should be jealous but you’re as bad as Jabbit. I may succeed in seducing you into jumping my bones but I have no idea how to make you fall hopelessly in love with me.”

“Why do you want me to be hopelessly in love with you? Why not happily in love?”

“That’s simple; when you’re hopelessly in love with me, I won’t have to worry you will stop loving me one day.”

Sybelien smirked. “If the boss is such a fast learner, maybe soon you can ask him for tips.”

“It’s extremely infuriating but I probably should ask Eva for pointers. As long as he regularly humps her rump it seems she doesn’t care one whit whether he’s in love with her or not.”

“We’re almost there; not enough time to unravel the mystery of Evanis Danjala’s emotional being,” Sybelien pointed out. “I hope you can help Anja. She worries me. I said I’d help to save her mother but now it seems she’s as much in need of rescue as her mom.”

“You might be right - and maybe they are in danger for the same reason.”

“Which reason?”

“For trying to manipulate a god.”

When they reached the door to the shrine, Anseyla stopped to face Sybelien.

“Let me talk alone to Anjatta,” she said.

Sybelien’s lips curled into an askew smile. “You don’t want another chaste virgin to hear what you have to say?”

Anseyla radiantly returned the blonde’s crooked smile. “You are incredibly perceptive, my snuggle bunny!”

Sybelien blew a raspberry. “Fine, I’ll go back into town. Maybe I’ll find something fitting for your black pearl. I’m sure you can make it into a nice set of ball and chains.”

“Very perceptive indeed but you better don’t get too smart for your own britches, spooky,” Anseyla replied and then kissed Sybelien goodbye. “Find something fitting for both of us.”

Anseyla watched Sybelien leaving before she opened the door.

Jabbit sat on a fallen tree close to the edge of a canyon. He looked down into an old, exhausted sandstone quarry.

The trunk Jabbit sat on had once been a fertile olive tree but the removal of the sandstone by the quarrymen caused a minor landslide and its roots had lost their hold in the soil. That happened more than a century ago. The once fertile tree was long dead. No one had taken him away, nor did he rot. Over a hundred years later he wasn’t even brittle; he was just lying around, doing nothing. Until this day. On this day, the long since fallen olive tree had been chosen by Jabbit to sit on. Nothing that mattered to anyone or anything, other than the dead tree, of course.

During the last day and night, many tents had been pitched down in the quarry. Jabbit watched as more tents were erected and suspected many more tents would be needed. Not that the residents of the tents required much room; they didn’t move around a lot. It was their rapidly growing number which would cause the need for more tents to be erected.

Although the residents of the tents weren’t the bustling sort of people, others in the old quarry had a lot more to do than they could handle. The healers for one - mostly shamans and priests and a few men and women with herbal lore knowledge. All in all, no more than thirty people. So far, they were tasked with aiding about a thousand victims of a plague outbreak ... so far. The number of the diseased was rapidly increasing - the number of the healers was not. Jabbit watched them providing the sick with water and medicines but mainly with comforting words and sympathy, which was more useful than their medicine.

Another busy group were the soldiers guarding the gate to the quarry, Jabbit noticed. Many of the people arriving at the gate to become residents didn’t want to enter the camp once they realized that no one expected them to leave again. The soldiers guarding the gate were tasked with forcing new arrivals to enter the camp. Once the arrivals became residents, the soldiers’ job was to prevent them from leaving the camp. A dual occupation, keeping them busy.

Jabbit watched until a new group appeared on the scene. It was the group he had been waiting for. The Gravediggers. He followed the edge of the quarry and intercepted the ten gaunt men, carrying shovels and pickaxes, before they reached the gate.

“A good day to you,” he approached them, smiling brightly.

They halted and regarded Jabbit with rather surprised expressions.

“Ye’re the first I meet who greets and smiles at me,” a man in the second row of the troop remarked.

Jabbit’s smile didn’t falter. “I like to meet new people and I smile when I do something I like.”

“I was already convinced ye’re strange even before ye explained it to me,” the man replied with a grin.

Jabbit nodded. “You’re right, I’m a stranger. I want to ask you a question you might think to be strange, too. Will you bury the dead of the camp?”

“A servant of the Mantesh of Rhossanjo ordered us to come here. I heard of a plague and people killed by a plague usually get burned, not buried.”

“I understand,” Jabbit said. “Does the Mantesh of Rhossanjo pay you for this task?”

The man rolled his eyes. “Do we look like we get paid a lot of gold? We’re slaves, we don’t get paid at all.”

“I’d pay you if you allow me to go with you to the camp but I have no gold.”

The man was grinning again. “Not that gold would be very useful to me. A slave isn’t allowed to own anything; I and all I have belongs to me master. Yet am curious how ye would pay us if ye don’t have no gold.”

Jabbit shrugged. “When you go inside the camp without me, you’ll contract the plague and die. If you let me accompany you, you won’t become sick and die.”

His offer caused several men among his slave audience to raise their eyebrows. “Who are ye?” One of them asked.

“I’m called Jabbit,” he answered brightly.

The expression on the faces of a few of the men changed. Frenziedly fast one of the gravediggers whispered “That’s the Nameless Son.” The words made the rounds and as they were passed on, the newly informed listener’s facial features changed to express their horror.

Jabbit didn’t look happy either when he heard their whispers. “I prefer Jabbit; I like that name far better,” he let them know, which abruptly stopped all whispering. “Will you allow me to accompany you?” He addressed the man he had talked to before.

“Of course, my Lord,” the man answered and bowed deeply, with all of his companions following his example. “But dressed as you are, the guards will notice you don’t belong to us,” he warned.

Jabbit undressed and folded his grenade-red cape, then laid it on a nearby rock. Next, he took a handful of soil and smeared the dirt on his eggshell-white tunic.

“If one of you loans me a shovel, I’ll look the same as you,” he claimed when he was done dirtying his clothes.

None of the gravediggers verbally reacted to his announcement. Most of them just bowed again, a few nodded, and one of them was even bold enough to hand Jabbit a shovel. Jabbit joined the column of gravediggers and they proceeded toward the gate of the quarry. A dozen soldiers guarded the gate. One of them was occupied talking to a woman. The woman held the hand of a little girl, standing by her side.

“Look at me,” she pleaded. “I’m not as sick as the others in this camp and my little Hasha isn’t sick at all. Please, I’m begging you, please let us go.”

The guard shook his head.

“Please, at least let Hasha go. She’ll die here!” The woman cried.