Desert World Allegiances by Lyn Gala Page A

Cardan didn’t seem to notice as he pulled Temar into a small room with a couch and several chairs made of windwood branches. A rock arch led into a second room with the mechanics. Temar strained forward. The incinerator and recyclers would be in here. He couldn’t let his work end up being recycled into fertilizer.
    “Boy’s about white eyed with fear,” Cardan said, his hand tightening around Temar’s arm. Temar felt another tear escape, leaving a cold trail over his cheek.
    “Slavery would leave even me white eyed with fear. Give him a little time to come to terms with this.” Ben set the box down on a long sorting table. A cooling unit, a recycler and an incinerator all stood side by side, thick insulation between them, and Temar tightened his jaw. A small trail of spit escaped from his gag, and Ben leaned over with a rag in his hand, gently wiping Temar’s face, from his chin up to the corner of his mouth.
    The touch made Temar’s body stiffen in terror. “He’s handling this about as well as such a young man could,” Ben said kindly. That kindness was a slap in the face that made Temar hold his breath, as he waited for the choking grip around his neck or the affectionate pat on the face. The fact that he didn’t know which he would get was actually far worse than the casual cruelty he would have received from the hand of Landholder Young.
    “You’re having remarkable patience with him,” Cardan said. Ben lifted the supplies off the top of the box with the notebooks, and Temar stared in desperate hope at those piles of notes that he had collected and maintained so carefully. Ben lifted the first out of the box and smiled at Temar.
    “I think young fools deserve a little patience. After all, the whole point of the slavery system is to help those who have been handicapped by poor parenting. Isn’t that what Naite Polli is always saying?”
    Ben pulled the heavy door of the incinerator open and put the first notebook in. Temar made an inarticulate cry behind his gag, but Cardan merely patted him on the arm, the way someone might soothe an anxious goat about to be castrated. And the image wasn’t far off. His power was in those notebooks, in his carefully kept records, and Ben piled them inside the heavy machine.
    Ben changed the subject. “So, any word on that south field?”
    “Still under watered. I was hoping that, with the Gazer farm shut down, we could start watering our seedlings their full allotment.”
    “If there’s a broken pipe, the pipe traps are still getting half our share,” Ben said with a weary sigh. Temar frowned in confusion. Ben should have all the water he needed if he was stealing, so why did he feel a need to play these games?
    “We should get out there and find that broken irrigation pipe. You should have gone to the council and complained about the Gazer farm years ago.  So, whose land is that now?”
    “No doubt George Young will get the land to repay him for the Gazers’ tricks, because the slave prices weren’t enough to replace the water and the damaged crops.” Ben paused with Temar’s last notebook in his hand. If Temar had evidence that implicated him in his hand, he would be panicked and sweating, but Ben only looked thoughtful. “Honestly, I don’t know that George is going to care about a leak any more than old Erqu Gazer did. Maybe we should petition the council to cut the Gazer farm off the irrigation system altogether.”
    Cardan rubbed his bald head. “George’ll protest that.”
    “George protests everything. The council is going to engrave a chair for his butt.” Ben shook his head and leaned against the incinerator, the notebook still in hand. “He can get the land back on the system after he’s done a few burns and gotten those pipe traps ripped out… and after he’s found that damn leak. But it’s a waste of water, and it’s keeping us from getting our full share. Erqu was… lost… after his wife’s death. I wouldn’t have taken that