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Master Of Pamor
Master Of Pamor
Master Of Pamor
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Master Of Pamor

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A martial arts fantasy novel set in old Java. Murder, mayhem, ghosts, and black steel ...

LanguageEnglish
PublisherSteve Perry
Release dateSep 29, 2010
ISBN9781452328126
Master Of Pamor

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    Master Of Pamor - Steve Perry

    Master of Pamor

    A Novel

    Smashwords Edition

    Copyright 2010 - Steve Perry

    Dedication

    For Dianne, as before and forever;

    And for Maha Guru Stevan Plinck

    and the students who gather to explore

    the art of

    Pukulan Pentjak Silat Sera Plinck–

    Banyak terima kasih—

    Thank you very much—

    Please shake each other’s hands.

    Acknowledgments

    Many people helped in the writing of this novel, by word or deed, or simply by being, and I’d like to take this space to thank a few of them. My gratitude goes out to:

    Steve Barnes, for introducing me to the martial art for which I’d been searching for most of my life, and to Maha Guru Stevan Plinck, for starting me down the road to that art. I hope I live long enough to learn it properly.

    Blessings on my manuscript readers, for their input and expertise for all manner of things: Dianne Perry, Michael Reaves, Vince Kohler, Mary Joan O’Connell, Dal Perry, Rachel Perry, Danelle Perry, Mÿk Olsen, Diana Hengerer, John DeCamp, Ray Auel, Jean Auel, and Denny Bershaw.

    For his expertise on the Indonesian keris, thanks to Alan Maisey, of Oz.

    Thank to my incredibly talented literary agents, Jean Naggar and Jennifer Weltz, and to the rest of the wondrous staff at their office.

    If you enjoy reading this book, then much of the credit is due these folks. If you don’t, it was all my idea and I made them help me.

    SP

    Author’s Notes

    There are hundreds of dialects spoken in Indonesia, and the spellings of those that have been written down have been, and continue to be, somewhat idiosyncratic. Readers familiar with the native languages I have used, mostly Malay, Bahasa Indonesian, and Javanese, will note that I have taken further liberties with them.

    For instance, during their colonial rule, the Dutch often used the tj diphthong to represent either ch or a slurred g. Thus the fighting art pronounced chee-mon-day, was spelled "Tjimande. When Indonesia gained independence in the late 1940s, efforts were made to eliminate many of the Dutch influences, and the letter c was substituted for the tj, so that the current spelling of tjimande is now cimande," though both are pronounced the same way. I have generally used the Dutch spellings because they seem less ambiguous to an English speaker’s reading gaze—but sometimes, I liked other spellings, and went with them.

    I have appended a short glossary at the end, with definitions and pronunciations of some of the foreign terms.

    Readers familiar with the geography and history of Java will recognize some of the dates, places and historical personages herein; other locales, times, terms, and characters are partially or entirely fictional. There was, for example, a rainy city called Buitenzorg (now Bogor,) south of Batavia (Jakarta,) but there was no sultan in residence there in the mid-nineteenth century. The term pentjak silat did not come into general usage until the middle of the Twentieth Century. This is a novel, and not in any way, shape, or form, a scholarly effort to attain historical or geographical rigor.

    SP

    "Wisma, wanita, kukila, turongga, curiga."

    (A house, a wife, a singing bird, a horse, a keris.)

    Old Javanese Recipe for Happiness

    ONE

    Tjindak Village

    South of Batavia, Java, Indonesia

    June, 1853

    For a moment, Sera was one with the hammer.

    The medium-weight pemukul moved in a short arc, an extension of his hand, and met the yellow-white sandwich of iron and nickel at just the right angle, with just enough force to begin welding the metals together. Normally, cousin Djavo would be wielding the heavy hammer while Sera, his senior, held the tongs and turned the bar, but Djavo was sick with the green fever, and all of the signs said this was the night to begin the work. Everyone knew that a smith who disregarded the portents was a fool, and his kerises would suffer for his disregard, even if his hammer man was sick.

    He also knew what his father would say if he had offered Djavo as an excuse to avoid work: There is nothing wrong with your arm, is there?

    Sera smiled as he hammered the metal again. Red-gold sparks spewed from the impact, showering up and around him, adding their brief, bright lives to the cloying dimness in the near-dark room. The forge was hot, the anvil still sweet-smelling from his offering of flowers, and the spirits surely ready to enter between the cadenced blows of the hammer, to meld with the steel and iron and nickel into what would become a dagger of tosan aji—magic metal. He would hammer and fold, hammer and fold, adding steel, until the blended layers grew too many to count, but this was just the beginning. And it was what he best loved to do—to be joined with the hammer, the metal, the craft.

    He had made the ceremonial offerings, incense, prayers, flowers, invocations. He had eleven sacks of teak charcoal consecrated for this blade. He had a bar of old iron, rings of carbon-steel sawn from a musket barrel for the blade’s core, and most important, the precious slivers of nickelized-iron from the sacred meteorite that had fallen on to the Earth in two pieces more than a hundred years earlier. From that stone would come the patterns in the steel, the pamor.

    Without pamor there could be no magic.

    In this, he was most fortunate. Most pamor iron came from Sulawesi, where the people of Bone mined and smelted it for sale. The only large chunk of the sky-iron left now rested in the sultan’s palace at Surakarta, in the kraton garden, where it was a holy relic and immune to the calls of keris makers. His father had seen it once, and he said the size and density of it had brought tears to his eyes. The smaller Prambanan Stone had given up enough of itself to make a double-dozen keris blades, no more, the chipped-off pieces carried away in tightly-woven baskets at the ends of long bamboo poles, to keep their magic from affecting the carriers. There was enough metal there for four or five score more, his father had said. A smith with that stone and a hot forge would be set for life—men would come from East Java, from Bali, from Lombak—to buy a keris made from such a magic rock, and a smith could name his price!

    Might as well wish for the moon to hang in the rafters to light your house, Sera knew. More than once the sultan’s guards had painted the cobblestones outside the temple with the blood of fools who’d attempted to steal the magic stone. Allah loveth not stupid thieves, to judge from what happened to them.

    Again, Sera swung the hammer. Again, tiny orange stars flew in the darkened room. It was, of course, night. It was the belief and tradition of his family that the color of the metal during its first three folds could not be properly seen with the sun’s light leaking into the room, so this initial part of the forging was always done at night—even if the spirits were more active after dark and more care must be taken. There were empu who thought to cheat the night by having their forges in windowless rooms, with cracks in the walls and door sealed with pitch, so that they could work in darkness during the light of day. Many of these smiths died young—for such tightly-sealed rooms kept in as many evil hantu as they kept out, so it was said, and in their anger at being trapped, the ghosts attacked their captors. Many of these smiths who died did so coughing up these stale, and long-dead ghosts. Sera himself thought this coughing was more likely due to the noxious vapors that came from the forge and metal than to evil spirits, but he was wont to explore such thoughts, which is why he was nicknamed Sera—Owl. Always flying off after something unseen in the forest, his father would say. Too bad you are not so wise as the night bird, little Sera.

    At any rate, Sera was more willing to trust his own inner spirit, his tenaga dalam, to protect him from the night djinn than to stopper himself into the room like a fly trapped in a corked bottle. His father was nearly fifty and his father’s-father had achieved more than seventy years before passing on, and they had both spent many years working at night under an open window without suffering unduly. What had not hurt them would probably not hurt him. He hoped.

    A third time he felt the hammer kiss the metal that would, with Allah and the smaller spirits willing—not to mention a fair amount of work on his part—become a fine keris, a dagger that would ride proudly in the sheath of its new owner, protecting him and his family against bandits, tigers, or whatever other dangers Java could place in his path. And Allah knew there were plenty of dangers, from the lightning bolts in the summer storms, to sudden fires, to the brutal Dutch with their rifles that could kill you from so far away you could barely see the shooter. The Dutch still ruled with an iron hand every bit as heavy as the gauntlet of the old spice traders. There was famine, and there was pestilence, always lurking to catch the unguarded. A man had to be alert even when he slept if he wanted to live long enough to have gray hair and grandchildren.

    The heat from the forge blended with the hot and sticky night. Sweat flowed down Sera’s bare chest in rivulets, down to soak into the stained, heavy cotton apron that protected his work sarong. Now, the smell of scorched iron and teak charcoal overpowered the flower offering. Arin, twelve, the son of his father’s second brother, pumped the bellows, exciting the fire to greater heat, knowing that Sera would be returning the quickly-dimming blade to it in another blow or two. A strike too hot, a strike too cold, either was bad for the metal, anyone who had spent more than two minutes in a foundry knew this, and Arin was young, but quick to realize these things.

    Sera had no living brothers, only sisters, and cousins were the next best thing. There was a saying: My brother and I against my cousins; my cousins and I against the village; my village and I against the world. Family was most important, and no smith with any honor would go outside his own family to teach precious techniques of the forge unless his entire family had been wiped out by war or a disaster.

    A stray spark hit Sera’s flesh, but his sweat quickly extinguished it. One did not become a smith, without learning how to ignore the little stings the forge bequeathed to those who attended it. At twenty-two, Arjuna—his given name—was skilled at his family trade, but not yet worthy of the designation empu—it would be another three or four years, at least, before he was a master of the forge, able to make blades worthy of a sultan’s eye. But, he had to admit to himself as he thrust the cooling steel back into the forge to re-heat, he wasn’t all that bad now. That blade he had made for Bapak Mansur, the doctor in Batavia? Had not the seven-waves undulated in a smooth and graceful dapur, the drifting water weed ganggeng kanyut pamor clean and in high contrast to the blackened iron? Ah, that had been a good blade, even his father had said so. Perhaps, Allah willing, he was not so far away from being thought an empu as all that.

    He smiled. He might make it if he did not allow pride to block his path, as Uncle Kilah was ever telling him. Pride could kill a man faster than a tiger, Uncle was quick to point out. A man who stood too proud and tall in the crowd was the first target for the thrown spears, Uncle would say. The nail that stands up gets hammered down. At times, it seemed as if Uncle had more sayings than the trees had birds, but he was a humble man, all agreed. And if Uncle Kilah, who was a master fighter and teacher, a pendekar, could be humble, who else around here had claim to pride? Uncle—who was sixty if he was a day— could take on any five men in the village half his age in gelanggang play and put them all on the ground in a few heartbeats. His fighting dances—djuru-djuru—were as smooth as whipped butter. He was master of three styles and creator of his own. If he was humble, then Sera had no reason to think too highly of himself, whatever small skills he had with the hammer and files.

    He still could not smell it over the teak and iron, but the rain drew closer. A late thunderstorm, separated from her sisters, lost in the dark, hunting a place to cry her tears. Lightning flashed again in the muggy night, another pale splash of light on the trees outside the forge room’s window. Moments later, the thunder grumbled again, louder than before.

    Allah beats his disobedient wife, Sera thought, amused by the profane thought. He laughed aloud.

    What is funny, elder cousin?

    Nothing, Arin, Sera said. And everything.

    The first drops of rain slapped noisily at the thatched roof, and a cooling breeze brought by the storm flowed into the foundry, a welcome visitor. The ilmu spirits who loved water would also rejoice.

    Sera smiled, and again, became one with the hammer.

    DeBeers Plantation #1

    Southwest of Batavia

    Mary DeBeers sat on the small bench in the drawing room, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the piano-forte. The smell of fresh-cut flowers hung heavy in the air, undisturbed by any breeze. In the distance, thunder rumbled. Now and then, a flash of heat lightning blinked in the night. She did not feel like playing. As wonderful as Herr Mozart’s music was, as delightful to the ear when it was observed well—and she could play well, as well as anybody in or out of the walled city her age—the thought of it made her ill.

    The music would disturb no one. Her father was his office, reading accounts of the week’s business. The plantations started by her great-grandfather on her father’s side eighty years ago consisted of three different locations, more than twenty thousand sprawling acres among them, most of these cultivated in rice, indigo, sugar, pepper, tea, and especially, coffee. Bananas and coconuts flourished wild everywhere, of course, and bamboo that grew like weeds shot up so fast in the summer you could almost see it move. Her mother had gone to the bath house for a cool wash against the night’s sticky heat. Her younger sister and brother were under the watchful eyes of Nurse, in the playroom. She could pound on the piano as loudly as she wished and no one would care.

    She sighed. Again the ugly memory lurked at the edges of her mind, lying in wait like a tiger watching prey. The laughing face with the missing teeth, saying horrible things to her, leering. The dirty brown hand that tore her dress ...

    She leaped up from the bench. Her clothes, from dinner, felt oppressively stifling. She walked toward her room, to change into her nightgown and robe, the silk would be so much cooler than the layers of crinoline petticoats. She would pin up her long black hair, get it off her neck and shoulders, pull off the ugly shoes and stockings and leave her feet bare. She could not understand how the old Dutch women could dress so in the heat, each shrouded in enough material to clothe half a village. She had never understood it. Perhaps that was what came from being Dutch-Indo, a half-breed whose father was European, and whose mother Javanese. Perhaps full-blooded Dutch in their Flemishness had fewer pores or lacked the ability to perspire. Certainly she did not lack either—she sweated like a horse, and were it up to her, she’d wear a sarong all the time.

    Well. Until that incident on the road last month she would have. Now, she sometimes wished she could wear armor, like a knight of old.

    She had been so afraid. So ...helpless.

    She had a gun. A small, ivory-stocked percussion pistol, a caplock made in Britain by one of the Manton brothers, a fine weapon with a twisted Damascus barrel. Her father had given it to her last year, on her eighteenth birthday. She had been taught how to shoot it, and while she was not as good a shot as her father, she could hit a man-sized target at ten paces easily enough. But her pistol had been at home in its carved sandalwood box when the incident happened, and even if she’d had it with her, it would fire but once before it had to be reloaded. And there had been three of them ...

    She shook her head, as if that would rid her of the foul thought, but of course it did not.

    She would follow her mother’s example and go to the tempat mandi—the bathhouse—and wash, she decided, before going to bed. There was no danger here, the plantation was guarded against thieves, and no one would bother her on the short walk.

    But she took her pistol with her, hidden under the thick towel. For the last month, she had not left the house without the pistol—nor without her fear.

    In the bathhouse, in the dim light of the oil lamp, Mary stripped off her clothes, and used the dipper to take water from the bak mandi, the water cask, being careful to avoid scooping up any of the small fish in the water. The fish were traditionally kept to eat the mosquito eggs, and even with netting over the windows and long-burning incense in the tempat mandi, the biting insects were always a problem. More so when you were wet and naked, of course.

    She scrubbed at her skin with the pumice stone, used the harsh tallow soap on her body and hair, then scooped more water from the cask to wash herself clean. The newly-arrived Dutch would sometimes climb into a bak mandi, foolishly thinking it was some kind of tub, which is how they bathed in Holland—when they bothered to bathe at all. How wasteful that was, to dirty all the water when one needed but four or five dippers to become clean. And why did they not think others could smell their body odors after days or even weeks without washing? People bathed every day in her world, sometimes twice a day.

    Finished with her bath, Mary poured a final dipperful onto the wooden floor to wash the soap into the drain, dried herself, and prepared to leave. Some of the braver mosquitoes would be waiting outside, despite the fragrance from the serangga-torches burning every twenty feet along the wooden walkway, so she would hurry into the house. She would oil and brush her hair in her bedroom.

    She dried herself, dressed again, collected her pistol and the damp towel and headed quickly for the house. Maybe she would not have the dream tonight. She prayed not.

    The Sultan’s Palace

    Buitenzorg, (Bogor) Java

    Bima listened to the thunderstorm rage against the palace. The netting over the window kept most of the rain out, but enough of the fine, misty air came through to lay yet more dampness over the room like a clammy glove. Lightning and thunder flashed and boomed almost as one. The center of the storm was over them, and the ghosts would be very agitated. It was well-known that ghosts did not like thunder.

    Bima stood naked in front of the window and grinned into the stormy night. The White Devil Dutch who had given their name Buitenzorg, or place without a care, must have done so during one of the infrequent dry and sunny days. A better name would have been Hujan,Always raining ...

    He flexed his legs, tightened the big sleek muscles in his thighs, just to see the ridges dance when the lightning blinked at him again.

    From his room next to the sultan’s sleeping quarters on the third level, Bima could see the courtyard below. Automatically, he scanned the grounds when the storm gave him vision, looking for intruders.

    There were none, of course. His guards would be awake in this downpour, watching for anybody who might approach the compound. Shards of sharp, pointed, rusting iron and shattered glass were set into the mortar atop the walls, higher than a man standing on another’s shoulders. It would be difficult for somebody to climb the smooth walls at noon on a dry day, much less past midnight, well into the part of the cycle called Pagi, in the driving rain. And who would feel the need anyway? Pencuri, the Sultan of Bogor, Ruler of the Gardens, was beloved by all—no man would raise a hand to harm a white hair on his head. Of course, his title was more honorary than real, courtesy of the White Devil Dutch, and his functions more ceremonial than anything else. Once, there had been true kings in Java. Now, all fed from the White Devils’ leavings. As much as half of everything grown went to feed Europeans on the other side of the world, pale, soft creatures who worshipped false gods and practiced assorted abominations.

    No, Pencuri was harmless, and none would lay hands on him.

    Well. At least no Javanese who lived outside of the palace would ...

    From here, Bima could also see the edge of the huge garden created by the Dutch, a vast space of greenery and flowers and crops in which a wanderer could easily get lost. The White Devil Dutch, to whom even the highest sultans must bend the knee. Bima hated them—the cowardly sultans and the lordly Dutch, and one no more than the other.

    He started to turn away from the window, and as he did, he saw across the courtyard in the women’s quarters a saronged figure standing in front of a window there, watching him. He smiled. That would be Jalanga, most skilled among courtesans, she of the liquid tongue and insatiable yoni. She was at the palace to serve Prince Duryudana, the eldest son of Pencuri, and heir to what was left of the throne, but Duryudana’s cannon fired but one shot and then grew limp—he would be fast asleep by now in his own quarters, and Jalanga’s needs would not have been nearly satisfied.

    The thought of her hair spread upon a pillow, her thighs wide splayed to welcome him brought an instant response. And even across the courtyard, his desire would be apparent, for Bima was ... large among men, and not just in the width of his shoulders or the thickness of his arm.

    When he looked again as the lighting flashed, Bima saw that Jalanga was now also naked in her window, hands held out to beckon him.

    He needed no more invitation. He hurried to find his sarong.

    As he wrapped the garment about his hips and rolled the fan-folded top to hold it in place, he considered the risk. To have a butterfly-of-the-evening in the palace was, technically-speaking, a crime. Allah did not approve of using whores, and whatever else he was, the sultan was more-or-less a good Muslim. But the sultan had seven sons old enough to be men, another about to be, and men had needs. Even if a man was married, he simply did not take certain of these needs to a proper wife, and it was fortunate that there were women who would be happy to accommodate him. There were times when even a good Muslim should look the other way, for men were men, and there was nothing to be done about that. Besides, if a thing happened, then surely it was because Allah allowed it to happen, ya?

    The greater problem might be if Duryudana found out that his trull was dispensing her favors to others while at the palace, especially the head of the guard and chief executioner, Bima. Duryudana’s cannon not only fired but once before it had to reload, it was also a ... small bore cannon. He would not appreciate that a repeating weapon of considerably larger girth would be filling in for him, so to speak.

    Bima chuckled at that thought. A man could be a prince and still not be much of a man. Allah had his little jokes

    He slipped into his sandals, pulled a shirt over his big chest, stuck his keris into his sarong in the middle of his back, and headed for the door. The djinn could eventually carry Duryudana kicking and screaming to Satan, for all Bima cared. He might not appreciate Bima’s attentions to Jalanga, but even if he did find out and was willing to acknowledge it, the sultan’s oldest son could hardly squawk too much just yet, no, not given their ... partnership. Bima held the upper hand, at least for now, and Duryudana, even as dull he was, had to know that. Later, if things went the way the prince wished, ah, well, later it might be different, but for now, Bima was in no real danger.

    Well, save possibly the danger of having his lingam worn to a nub ...

    He laughed softly, and stepped into the hallway.

    The Bogor Road

    South of Batavia

    Edward Partridge cursed the rain. Then he cursed his own foolishness for coming to this God-forsaken sodden land. Then for good measure, he cursed his father for siring him a bastard. There was much to curse in Partridge’s life, and he had become fluent and adept at trying to relegate all these things to Hell—not that it ever seem to do any good.

    His mother’s dying wish, yes, and it had taken more than ten years to get around to it, but for what it entailed, he could have gladly waited ten more years, God rot it!

    The lightning struck, farther away now than before. The storm was moving off, though the rain continued to pour. His five local boys had led the buffalo and cart to refuge under a nearby grove of palm trees, cutting big elephant ear plants to hold over themselves, and while the water beaded up nicely on the giant leaves, everybody was completely soaked seconds. The rain did not merely fall straight down, it was blown sideways, it spattered from every surface it touched, it grew ankle deep in puddles, and there was no escaping it.

    The water buffalo didn’t seem to mind, he just chewed his cud and stood there. A pox on him, as well!

    Rain. Regan, the Dutch called it. Hujan, the Javanese and Malay said. He could also curse it in French, German, or Spanish, if need be, being relatively fluent in those and several other tongues. He had a gift for languages, and it had served him well over his thirty-six years, but right now, he would give up half of his languages for a thick roof and dry straw to lie upon, instead of crouching under a cart, soaked to the skin from head to toe.

    Bad enough he was an Englishman pretending to be a Dutch colonist, to visit some stinking village he had heard much about but never seen. Bad enough that if the Dutch figured out who he really was they would wrongly assume him to be a spy. English and Dutch relations were on and off quickly, like a sailor in a whorehouse, and trust on either side was at best thin. When his father had first arrived here, more than fifty years ago, the King of the Netherlands had been hiding from the French in Kew, and old William had practically begged the English to take over all of Indonesia to keep it from Napoleon. They had been best of friends then, the stolid Dutch. Now? If they caught him out, he would probably dance in the air, with his resulting corpse dumped into an unconsecrated hole in the local mud to feed the worms; not even a Dutchman would believe a story such as his, true though it was. No, the worst of it was, he was out here in the middle of nowhere drowning in a tropical downpour, and there was no profit in sight, none remotely connected with this entire venture, aye, there was the real rub!

    Ah, Mother, would that you’d had some other desire for your only son!

    None of his curses or dark mutterings had any effect on the weather. The rain continued to fall unabated, and there was no help for it. He leaned against the cart’s wheel, mindful of his sword, and resigned himself to it. Fine. They would arrive at the village on the morrow. He would exchange greetings with the local mud farmers, deliver his message, and be on his way. With any luck at all, he could be back in Batavia in another two or three days, book work on a ship, and be on his way to Australia, where there were still fortunes to be made. And the Devil take this sodden land and all its snakes, rain, and smirking Dutch!

    Especially the Devil should take the fornicating rain ...

    TWO

    Near the DeBeers Plantation

    The man was short, no taller than Mary, but he was stocky, with a cane cutter’s muscles, thick shoulders, powerful arms, hard and stained hands. When he smiled, she saw that his top two middle teeth were missing, and his remaining teeth were dark with decay. He wore only a cheap sarong, no sandals or shirt, and the smell of his sweat was sour and sharp.

    Ho, sister, he said, the sneer heavy in his voice, too good to speak to us?

    Mary did not recognize the man. He had a funny accent. Sundanese, perhaps? Her father had a number of workers on the plantation who had come from other islands. And there were hundreds of laborers, they came and went, she couldn’t know them all.

    The two men with the rotten-toothed man were cut from the same rough bolt. Short, stocky, brown men, greasy black hair tucked under workers’ hats. One of them wore a once-white cotton shirt open to his sarong, the buttons long gone, the tails knotted together. The third man could been the first one’s brother, or a cousin, and his teeth were also stained.

    I spoke to you, she said. The little cart upon which she rode was stopped in the muddy road, and the pony was probably glad for the rest, the mud was slow going. They were still more than a mile away from the church, where the afternoon study would be starting soon.

    The cutter flashed his wounded smile again. You told us to move out of your way.

    "No, I asked you to move."

    "Because you live in the big house with your white father does not make you a man to speak so to men, sus adik."

    Mary flushed at the tone and form of his address, that of a older, superior person, to one younger and of inferior status. I am not your younger sister!

    Rotten-teeth nodded to his two companions. The one in the shirt moved to catch the pony’s bridle. The other one circled around to the other side of the cart.

    What are you doing?

    "If you are not our sister, then perhaps you can be our wanita tuna susila, eh?"

    Mary felt her face go red at the shock—he had called her a woman without morals. A whore!

    She slapped the reins against the pony’s rump, but the one in the shirt had a good grip on the animal’s head, and it did not move.

    Rotten-teeth moved closer, and Mary felt a sudden jolt of cold fear in her belly. She was stunned by these men, frozen, unable to move, to think of what to do. How could this be happening? It was unreal. Like a dream.

    She could smell him, the sour sweat, the stench of decay from his teeth. He reached for her, caught the front of her dress, laughed as he jerked his hand down. The fabric tore, the top three buttons popped off—

    Mary screamed—

    #

    She awoke, the scream only in her mind.

    She sat up. Even with the covers thrown back and dressed only in her thinnest silk nightgown, she was drenched in her own sweat. The mosquito netting that hung from the ceiling in a gray-green cone around her bed seemed to hold the heat in, and at once she felt as if she was suffocating. She shoved the netting aside and stepped onto the wooden floor. Even the floor was warm. She padded to the window, hoping for a breeze.

    There was no breeze, but sunrise wasn’t far off, she could see the first glimmerings of false dawn in the distance, beyond the tall trees at the edge of the clearing.

    Insects flitted and tapped against the window screen, buzzing, trying to get inside. She shook her head, breathed slowly, trying to calm her pounding heart. The dream was not always the same, but it was always near enough to bring up the terror. She had been helpless. Those three could have done anything they wanted to her, and her belly still twisted whenever she thought of what they wanted to do, would have done, had not the wagon with the Chinese toll-takers come along just then.

    They would have violated her.

    The three men had fled into the forest, chased by the toll-takers. When she had gotten home and told her father about the incident, he had become enraged. Three days later the three men were found, hiding, her father had said, in an opium house in Batavia. Based on her description, the three had been arrested, horsewhipped, and, according to her father ... deported. But his voice had been very strange when he had said this, very strange.

    So now, when Mary left the house, she carried her pistol with her. A bird cry in the woods was enough to make her reach for it in fear. She was often on the edge of tears, and it took almost nothing to push her over that edge. She had taken to biting her fingernails. She had grown up here, had seen tigers in the forest, cobras in the yard, and she had never been afraid before, not like she was now. It colored every part of her life. She could not continue to live like this.

    So far, she had kept it to herself, as least as much as she could. There was nobody on the plantation she could even begin to speak to about it, anyway. Father was not one to talk of his feelings, or anybody else’s. Mother? She was always there to tend a cut or a soothe a fever, but how could she understand something like this? For under the fear Mary had felt on that muddy road, there had been ...something else stirring inside Mary’s breast. Some sick, dark, fascination with the men and what they wanted from her. She was a grown woman, nineteen, and she had seen animals in the field, dogs in the yard, she knew where babies came from, how the seeds for them were planted, and what tool men used to plant them. But such stirrings were supposed to be reserved for one’s husband, and no likely candidate for that role had come along—at least not one for whom she had felt anything of which to speak. Her father spoke of sending her to Batavia, to stay with her Aunt, to be courted by the young and adventurous young men come from the Netherlands to seek their fortunes in spices and coffee. But nothing had come of that.

    Why had she felt, under her terror, some other kind of emotion, kin to it, but not the same? What was wrong with her? She was ashamed, and there was nobody she could tell of her dark yearnings. Not her minister—especially not Reverend Van Dyck, whose old white head would probably fall off if he were to hear such things from the lips of a young woman. No, it was all too awful. How could she go back to what she had been, before that ugliness on the church road? Was it even possible?

    Something had to be done. Something.

    What might that be? She did not have the slightest idea.

    Tjindak Village

    The rising sun found Sera seeking breakfast. He had, of course, already made his morning prayers—the sun rose early this time of year and stayed up hot and late. While the two threads were still gray when he offered greetings and respect to Allah, if the truth be known, one of the threads had seemed perhaps a tiny bit lighter than the other. Perhaps that was only because he knew the white thread was on the left and the black thread on the right and it was his mind and not his eyes telling him so. When you could tell the white from the black with certainty, you were late, dawn had come, no question, but he had not been sure.

    He smiled to himself. He had shaved the moment close. He was not, he knew, the best of Muslims. Unlike some, who were trying hard to be as upstanding as Muhammad Himself, Sera knew he was never going to worry anybody about overshadowing the Prophet.

    He smelled frying oil as he rounded the back of his father’s house, and saw his sister Merah shaking the big cast iron skillet over the coals of the outdoor fire. It was too hot to cook indoors this time of year, unless it was raining so hard as to extinguish an outside flame, which happened plenty of times.

    "Ho, Kecil-kecil! Have you any rice for your starving older brother?"

    At fourteen, Merah was short and more than a bit stout, which is why he deviled her with the nickname Tiny. She would have been married by now, save that her prospective husband and chief suitor Tenunan, the weaver’s son, had been carried off by Breakbone Fever four months ago, and other suitors had been slow and respectful in coming. They would start applying soon, Merah was too comely a woman to stay unmarried long.

    Why should I waste my rice on a man who almost misses his morning prayer, hmm? I saw you hurrying from the forge room only moments before dawn!

    He laughed. It was good to have such a relaxed way of speaking with his sister. Outside of the village, one had to be ever-so-polite, mindful of one’s status, to whom one was talking at all times, and to avoid offering anything that might be taken as criticism. Sera was comfortable in the village, especially when he was working alone, or with family. Outside that, he had to be ever-careful. There was a good reason for the old saying, There are ninety ways to say ‘No!’ A harsh word could create instant malu, and you did not want to cause somebody to lose face. That was a bad business.

    I suppose I can feed you, Merah said.

    About then, their father came out of the house, scratching his chest, and headed for the latrine down the hill. After a moment, their younger sisters, Lensa and Kelebut straggled from the house. Lensa was nine, Kelebut just six, and the youngest of the girls. Sera’s father had but one living son, two more who had died, both before Sera had been born. Now, there were only the four children left. When their mother died five years ago, their father’s grief was such that he swore he would never marry again. It was hard for Sera to imagine feeling so much emotion for a woman, but he also had not married, and would not do so until the youngest of his sisters was married—he was the oldest, and thus responsible. No point in worrying over that.

    His father came back from his ablutions, and

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