Slumrat Rising

Chapter 122: Getting To Know You

Etenesh was pushing Truth’s wheelchair around a little park near Nag Hamadi. Truth had tried to decline, saying that he was getting around ok on crutches, but she was having none of it. As promised, the guilt trip came quickly and ruthlessly. Truth hobbled to the chair and obediently let himself be pushed around. It was more than irritating, it freaked him out. Letting someone control his movements like that. Not good. Not good at all. He focused on breathing through it. Just a few more days of this, and he would be able to walk freely. It was penance of a sort. And connection.

“You did fine for a first try. I guess the talisman repair experience gives you a steady hand.” Etenesh smiled though her nails were free of polish. Supportive she may be, but she would be dead five times over before she went out with scuffed nails.

“It really helped that you were coaching me through it. It’s a lot more involved than I thought. I genuinely just thought… get nail polish, paint on, job done.”

“Hah! No way! There is a reason getting your nails done is a whole thing. Plus the hand massage.” She gave a little shiver. “Which you are good at, by the way. Feel like trying a pedicure?”

“Sure.” Truth shrugged. Same deal but with feet, right? He had a feeling he would learn otherwise. Then another thought occurred to him. “Does this mean giving you a foot massage too?”

“Mmm hmmm.” Etenesh looked beatific. Which made sense to Truth. In another era, he suspected Etenesh might be a saint. Jember would certainly be a prophet. Jember had suddenly recalled a lot of studying he urgently needed to do in the Temple library, so he couldn’t accompany them. Good man, that.

“I guess you can teach me that too.”

“Gladly.”

The park was nice. A little bland, as parks in Xandre went. The trees were a normal beige and green, the grass mowed short, the statues rather dull and silent. Still, it was nice enough, it was close enough, and you didn’t need to prove your citizenship status to use them. You could just stroll right on in. No guards or anything.

He could feel Etenesh shift behind him. Her voice turned a little shy, a little pleading. “Actually, I really like massage. Really like it.”

“Oh?”

“Would you… be willing to massage more of me than just my hands and feet?”

Truth thought about it for a moment. On the one hand, was this rushing too fast? By the standards of both Harban and Siphios, it was glacially slow. Ok, so was it too fast for him? He would be the one doing the massaging, so… no. He was ok with it. Maybe it would mean seeing more of Etenesh. He smiled a little. He liked that thought.

“Ok.”

She snorted, then started laughing. “Tommy Wells, did you just put covering your girlfriend in warm, glistening oil and running your strong hands all over her taut, bare skin on the same level as charging into a demonic hoard?”

Truth thought fast, figured there was no right answer, and reflexively said, “I fell into the cerulean ponds of your eyes.” Etenesh collapsed onto the handlebars of the wheelchair, shaking with laughter.

“How? How could you think that was relevant? You aren’t even looking at me.”

“It… might have been. It could be a saying.” He said with wounded dignity.

“We have to get you some better romance novels. I don’t read ‘em myself, but we can ask around.”

“Find a librarian. Guaranteed they have the good stuff.”

“You think?”

“Librarian at Boule was a stone freak. You would not believe what was in her secret stash.”

“No! Tell all.”

Whew. Bomb defused.

“It might distract me from the demon horde comparison.”

Damnit.

__________________________________________

Etenesh doesn't read romance novels. She’s happy enough reading the prophetic writings of some ancient patriarch, but she doesn’t read romances, or thrillers, or murder mysteries. She loves Pitz, enjoys changing up her hair from time to time, and is a very tactile person. Loves to touch and be touched. She was a child of the Heaven-Beseeching Family, though he had never once heard her use a surname. Or Jember, actually. Is there something there? She seemed to be on good terms with her uncle, so it wasn’t likely a rift.

They were rattling down an alley. Etenesh claimed that she still owed Truth a “real” dorowot and knew a good place. The city was a swirling mass of mysteries, where everything was significant and possessed of it’s own divinity. It was hard to believe that this was the city half-muted. The city was falling silent.

“Heaven-Beseeching Family?” Truth asked.

Etenesh took a moment to process that. “Yes?”

“You never mentioned it. I don’t know anything about your family, beyond that your ancestral lands are adequate for your needs, and you used to be very close to the angels.”

“You want to know more about my family?”

“I want to know more about you.”

There was a long pause. “I may have underestimated romance novels.” She slowed down a little. “So… you may have noticed some people use surnames, or family names or whatever, and some don't. The oldest families, or those trying to look like an old family, don’t. The idea was that you didn’t need a last name, because everyone knew who you were. Or if they didn’t, they were nobody of significance. A surname was a sign of low status.”

Truth thought that was a solid flex.

“Later immigrant groups had their own naming conventions. Nobody here discouraged it, because we are born snobs, and the foreigners tagging themselves as low class was handy. This was thousands of years ago, you understand. These days, most people have a last name.”

“And the Heaven-Beseeching Family?”

“We came to this world when it was first settled. Our ancestors walked the hills and mountains near Achi’ni. It was there they fell to their knees in worship. They saw messenger angels breaking the soil and making the land ready for farming.” He could hear the smile in her voice, the warmth of her reaching him even at arm's length.

“They were the first angels we made pacts with. Our family has been beseeching the heavens ever since.”

“And… do you all live together? Is there a big family mansion or something?”

“Hah. How could that be? There are thousands of us.” Truth choked on that one. “Of course, some are so far removed from the direct line of descent, they are functionally unrelated. Still, the heritage is there, and the identity. Scattered all over Siphios. We never really emigrate out of the country. According to family lore, the longest a member of the Heaven Beseeching Family spent outside of Siphios was one year, when we were at war with… well… the country that would become the country that would become the country that would eventually turn into the Ressilaud Free State. He hated it. Came home and never left his farm for the rest of his life.”

Truth chuckled. He could imagine it, a sort of grumpy-looking Jember ditching his pack by a farmhouse gate and swearing to never step through it again.

“My part of the family is pretty close to the main line, for what little that’s worth the last few centuries. Big on education, of course, and we are a famously devout family. Loads of us in the Temple. Loads. We had six High Priests in the last thousand years. No one else comes close to that record.”

“Priests!” Truth almost exploded. “THANK YOU. I wondered what to call the clergy in the Temples, but nobody ever said. Priests. Good to know. Thank you.”

Etenesh chuckled darkly. “You are welcome. Unfortunately, you have never met a Siphios Orthodox priest. They are all Teachers or Celebrants or Versifiers or some other job, but you have never actually met a priest.”

Truth felt his brain lurch for a second. “I don’t get it.”

“There are currently twenty priests in Siphios. An all-time low, but the high was a hundred, so there has never been many of them.”

“Priest is a high-up job in the Temple?”

“Very, but more than that, it’s political. The position is a Crown appointment on the advice of the Congregation on the Regulation of the Faith. Which is a sixty-person committee made up of the most senior Teachers the Orthodoxy has. Basically, they send over a list of a hundred names, and the Crown can pick as many as they like.”

“So there was a king who picked them all?”

“Ugly story. He was twelve, his uncles were corrupt bastards, and his aunt was worse. Basically, they colluded with the Congregation to give very prestigious lifetime jobs to various family members. This was… eight hundred years ago? Still, we have a lot of regulations and rituals in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.”

Her family could trace their line back to the founding of this world. More than that, there was a connection to those first people. She spoke of things centuries and millennia ago as though it was last Tuesday. The private business of kings and priests was casual gossip. He suddenly imagined Etenesh as a particular spot on a long rope, stretching from past to future. Truth? A bit of frayed string. Perhaps the twist tie from a bag of cheap bread bought from a convenience store in the slums and left on the sidewalk when the trashcan it was in was knocked over, and nobody picked it up. Ever.

“I can feel you when you do that, you know. When you go off somewhere in your memories.” Her voice was calm, not judging. “Would you like to tell me about your family?”

“No.”

They went on in silence for a bit.

“It’s not me being paranoid this time. I mean, that too, but it's just…” He groped around for a way to explain it, not finding much.

“Look, imagine a canal, ok? Nice, big, long canal. Now, everyone dumps their shit in the canal, and it drifts along on the surface for a while before sinking and drifting along the bottom. Eventually, things just pile up on the bottom and stay there. Not moving anymore. Sludge stuff, with bigger, heavier things hidden in the gunk. The water over the bottom is kinda clear. Not clean, exactly, but clearer. Unless someone stirs up the sludge, trying to haul out those big pieces. Then it’s a mess and stays a mess for a long while until the crud falls back to the bottom. This is a smelly, nasty time for everyone.”

They rolled on a little further. “Tommy… you can’t leave them down there forever.”

Truth half choked, and half laughed. “I can try! I emancipated myself when I was seventeen and took the sibs with me.” He frowned. He didn’t know the word for emancipated. “Emancipated means set free. My parents are legally dead to me and my siblings.”

Etenesh came to a dead stop. “You… can do that? Just… cut away family like that?”

“Took half an hour wait time and a single page form. Magistrate couldn’t stamp it fast enough, apparently.”

“You cut the line of your family. With a single page.”

“Yes. Weeping with joy as I did it.”

“Tommy, you cut the line of your family! That not-”

He twisted around and looked at her. She must have seen something in his expression, though he was trying to smile. “It’s not only OK, it was necessary. Completely necessary. You have a wonderful family of wonderful people stretching back and forward through time. I have a bit of rotten string, with a tiny bit of good. I cut away the rot and protected the good. And that’s that.”

They kept walking silently for a while.

“My favorite after-dinner treat is Tej, but for some reason, I haven’t wanted any for a while. I also really like Mandazi, when they aren’t too sweet and have a nice bit of coconut chew to them. Coffee spiced with cardamom isn’t an all-the-time favorite, but it is very comforting to me.” Etensh walked on a little bit longer.

“My favorite band is Nishaiar, but anything with that big, atmospheric energy is good for me. I love to dance, and as soon as you are feeling better, I’m hauling you out to a club and showing you off. I enjoy massage and am really looking forward to getting a massage from you.”

She leaned over and whispered in his ear. “And the boy I like, my pretty man, is named Truth Medici.”