131 - You Best Take it Up

Dukir didn’t even have time to do more than set his boots on the ground and defer to his superior officer before an enormous uproar began on the other side of the caverns that held the raw new village of Quanat. Air blew his hair back as the pressure shifted, the wind moaning around the corners of the buildings and eerily wailing through gates and under doors.   

“What in the owner’s lice-ridden pubic hair is going on?” It was the most casually foul thing that Dukir had ever heard Raghnall say.

“Don’t know, Naser.”

“Go,” the Emir-al waved toward the thunderous noise.  “If that racket doesn’t somehow belong to us I’m a gimpy war-bird.  Go!”

“Naser!” Dukir slapped a fist up in salute and ran.  Shinyglassownershit shit endarkened vacuum sucking sideways glass spikes up my anus sideways if that’s not our boys.  

The rough and ready bivouac, that had been the great secret of the Milar war, had been transformed into a complete stone village, raw and new, with bright stone and sharp edges with no built up sand in any of the corners.  The openings to the underground had been widened and filter baffles cut even the flensing wind.  The light came from mandered glass globes hanging from the desert glass set in the roof, dark with the sand storm. He caught some of the differences orienting himself and realized that the noise was coming from the Halfi basin, the last of the five basins to be hollowed out and dove down that tunnel, hearing someone shouting up ahead, the echoes making everything completely unintelligible.

He skidded to a stop at the basin opening as he took in the tableau.  The Kraghanz and his son facing each other, the boy with fists clenched, hunched, with the horrified, half-rebellious, eyes widening, dawning realization look of a young man who has shouted unwelcome truths at the top of his lungs.  Kyrus, right hand raised as if to slap open handed, but stopped.  The Milari strung out along the cranked-out ramp leading to a hole in the ceiling... the horrific mess floating and sinking in the water. Owner it, I don’t know what just happened.

Kyrus senior dropped his raised hand very slowly while his son never took his stare off his da. Diryish has a devastating ‘I’m disappointed in you’ look. Perhaps his grandson has it too?  It certainly looks that way.  Whatever the boy said, it must have been very bad. How will you react, Kraghanz?  

“That.” His voice was a whisper that cut through the higher sound of the water still trickling out of the hole in the ceiling.  His words were controlled. Cast in iron. Wrapped in carbon fibre. Precise as engraver’s acid. “Is...a... valid... point.  It... is... a... side point to my chastising you.  I... am still... upset that you disobeyed me in a dangerous situation.  My supposed moral failings will be discussed.  Later. When I’m not ragingly furious at you. In. Private.”

The younger Kyrus sagged as though someone had cut his strings. “Yes, Naser... I mean... yes da.”

“I have first call on t’is basin pisser,” the basin man said. “He’s fouled teh whole thing... alkalies and acid neutralized but full of this organic shit!  He’s gonna be workin’ here a long time, workin’ this ‘un off.”

“It was hardly his fault,” Ilax put in from the ramp as he came the rest of the way down it.  The three younger people gathered with each other, while the older folk came to rest by the basin man. “He fell in the hole while we were trapped by the storm and couldn’t know the weak spot in the wall would lead to such disaster.”

Dukir stepped into the group around the filter man, saw his eyes skip across the hive bird insignia, come back and lock on it, then up to his face and around at all the others of the strange party that had fallen into his basin. The LIN will be here, I’m sure.  The bakon is out of the bag already so we may as well take full advantage of it.  “Brilliance,” he said, offering the great salaam to Kyrus in front of the basin man. “The Emir-al and this lowly one escaped the storm as well and we stand ready at your service.” You’re the highest ranked Lainz in this room, boy.  You did perfect controlling your temper with your sprat, but there's more going on here now than family and private talks. If you are the old man’s heir you best take it up.  Now.