Twenty or more women looked up from their cutting boards and massive pots as John and Saimura came through the doors. Most of the women wore their sleeves tied up at the shoulders and their skirts belted up. Huge oven doors loomed open and withering heat poured out. The bare skin of the women’s arms and faces gleamed with sweat.
Ovens and fire pits lined the far wall. The golden glow of the flames easily overpowered the cool cast of the moon water lamps. Between the fires and the doors were dozens of tables. Heaps of dried meats spilled over cutting boards. Cooling racks, spice chests, nested towers of mixing bowls and racks of pans and pots cluttered every surface. Even the walls had been put to use. Countless sacks of grain and other dried goods lined the carved stone shelves of the walls. Rolling ladders led up to the shelves. Two girls hauled a basket of onions down from the shelves high above John’s head.
Saimura waved to a plump older woman. She stared past Saimura to John.
"It’s your shirt," Saimura whispered and he grinned.
Saimura and the plump older woman exchanged hand signs. This time John had the presence of mind to watch their hands closely. Several of the gestures resembled Payshmura signs.
John recognized the signs for food, daru’sira, honey, thanks, and his own name. The rest of the silent exchange was lost to him.
"Pel’dir says we can have something to eat," Saimura whispered to John. "Oh, and she asked if you were married."
"I – " John began but Saimura cut him off.
"I told her that I thought you were already spoken for." Saimura grinned broadly. Suddenly John remembered something else about the previous night. He’d told them about him and Ravishan. Dread welled up in his chest.
John wondered if Saimura was teasing him. His sly smile seemed to imply that he was and he seemed to be without malice.
The plump woman brought a warm roll stuffed with sausage to John, as well as a clay mug full of steaming daru’sira. John signed his thanks to her.
"You picked that up quick enough," Saimura commented. He led John from the kitchen through a series of narrow tunnels. John guessed that they were traveling east.
"The Payshmura use some of the same hand signs," John said.
Saimura nodded. "Ours were adapted from theirs. We expanded on them, of course. Most of the Payshmura signs only deal with holy matters. Blessings, things like that. You can’t run an entire city with just blessings and curses."
"Why doesn’t anyone down here speak?" John asked.
"Some do," Saimura replied. "People like you and Tanash who haven’t learned the signs yet are allowed to talk. You just have to keep your voices down. Sounds echo in these big caverns. Anything too loud will boom through the tunnels and then roll up the ventilation shafts where anyone could hear."
"So everyone down here has to be quiet?" John asked.
"As quiet as they can be." Saimura opened a blue door with the number 12 painted on it. Behind it was a steep staircase. The air was frigid and smelled strongly of straw. John followed Saimura up the stairs into a large stable. The stalls were empty. John guessed that the animals had been taken down into the warmth of the Warren below. Bales of straw filled the vast space. Several had been stacked together so that they resembled benches and a table.
"You can finish your meal here." Saimura gestured to one of the bales of straw. "Ji should arrive in a few minutes."
Saimura turned back to the stairs.
"Where are you going?" John asked.
"I have to report to Lafi’shir for my duties. I’ll see you tonight at your initiation. I’m the one who will be sponsoring you in."
John nodded. He recalled that some agreement like that been reached the previous night.
"Is there anything I should bring or do?" John asked.
"For the initiation? No. It will be very simple. You swear loyalty to the Fai’daum and receive your tattoo."
"Tattoo?" John asked.
"Everyone gets one. You’ll be fine." Saimura started down the steps.
"Saimura?"
The other man paused to look back up at him expectantly. John didn’t know how to phrase his question but knew it had to be asked.
"What I said last night, about Ravishan…"
"That he’s your lover?" Saimura clarified.
"Yes." Words failed John. Years of silence had made even the vocabulary necessary for this conversation inaccessible to him. He didn’t even know the word for ‘gay’ in Basawar. Maybe there wasn’t one. Or if there was, it might not be a term he would care to use to describe himself or anyone he loved.
Saimura seemed to perceive both the reason for his reticence and his unasked question.
"Fai’daum law doesn’t forbid such things."
"It doesn’t?" John said. "From Giryyn’s reaction I wasn’t sure."
"Fai’daum or not, Giryyn is still a priest. In the Witches District, we’re not too religious." As he left, Saimura pulled the door in the stable floor shut. The dark-stained planks lined up seamlessly with the rest of the floor.
John sat on a straw bale and ate the last of his stuffed roll. He drank the honey-sweetened daru’sira slowly. Heat radiated through the clay mug and warmed John’s fingers.
Outside snow fell in a steady stream. Cold wind poured through fine cracks in the stable walls. John buttoned his coat closed and pulled the hood up over his head.
He gazed into the open, empty stalls where tahldi, sheep, and goats would normally have been kept. He noticed the gleam of ice in the water troughs. He wondered what shepherds were doing in other villages where there were no underground caverns to shelter the livestock. The animals were probably dying. People too, John supposed.
He had to stop this storm.
He closed his eyes and let his senses reach up into the turbulent winds. The winds churned and howled. The air crackled as electric fury split through it. Cold force surged through him and he felt his anger and sorrow awaken. The storm embraced him and enveloped him like a dark memory. It grew around him, feeding from his feeling and pouring more pain back into him.
Directly above him, John heard a deafening crash of thunder. Snow and sleet pelted down from the sky. Lightning burst through the air so bright and close that it shone radiant white through every crack and seam of the stable.
John pulled himself back from the growing storm. He focused his attention on the confines of his body. He gripped the mug in his hands tightly, feeling the thin clay lip bite into his palm. Another crash of thunder pounded the sky. Lightning flashed, but it was farther up.
John sagged back against the bale of straw. He stared up at the dark shadows of the hayloft. Frost colored the wooden beams. Thin icicles studded the timbers directly above John.
"What were you doing?"
John turned to see Ji coming through a low door in one of the stalls. After Ji stepped through, the wooden door swung back down into place the way a dog door would have. As the thought occurred to him, John realized that it was, in fact, a dog door.
"It’s coming down like a cold hell out there." Ji shook the heavy flakes of snow from her coat. She leaped nimbly up onto the bale of straw and seated herself next to John.
"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make things worse," John said.
"So what were you trying to do?"
"I was trying to stop the storm," John admitted.
"How?" Ji asked.
"I don’t know."
"That’s not much of an answer," Ji said. "What actions did you take?"
"I just thought about the storm. I sort of imagined that I was reaching up into it."
"And what was it that you felt?"
"Wind, ice crystals," John replied. He tried to think of a way to describe the swirling, searing trails of agitated electrons. There were no words for atomic structures in Basawar.
"Lightning," John said at last.
"Really?" Ji cocked her head slightly. "When I attempted to touch the storm I felt fury. It radiated killing rage. The very air seemed to scream with hatred. You didn’t notice anything like that?"
John frowned at the mug in his hands. It had grown ice cold.