04
This expedition proved to be the pattern for the next dozen rounds. We'd slip down to the ship-city to wander about, taking in the sights, the talk, the stories, the music and the foods of the Temtre assembly - well over 200 ships and a dozen sub-clans - that went on without a break. As long as we were careful to remain subservient and unremarkable, we could roam the ship-city confident in our anonymity and our growing ability to understand and communicate with our unwitting hosts. And with our growing understanding of the language, we found ever more attractions to keep us returning. Siss seemed to have made so many new friends that we rarely saw her, except when she'd drift home to sleep. Every once in a while, when we were down in the assembly, she'd happen by with some friends, swirl around us, barking her laugh and continue on her way. Luckily, the Simla dragons of the Temtres didn't seem to mind our presence - they must've known. Either they saw us as no threat or Siss vouched for us. And indeed, by the time the assembly was winding down after more than two weeks of rounds, I was half Temtre myself.
That said, I should perhaps take a minute or two to give the briefest outline of what we learned and experienced in our two weeks in the company of the Temtre Clan.
The Temtres are itinerant traders and occasional pirates. Some clans have home islands as a base for farming, shipbuilding and such, though much of that work is done by non-clan peoples. The truest Temtre clans live entirely aboard their ships. All of them trade and raid throughout a large group of islands known as the Dontas, where they are only one of dozens of similar ship-clans who ply the tens of thousands of islands that make up the Saraime Principalities. All are fierce trade rivals, occasional allies, and when the odds look good, prey.
Each ship is a family affair, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. These family ties can spread over a dozen or two sister ships to make up sort of a sub-clan within the larger Temtre Clan. The Great Assembly brings all these ships and sub-clans together celebrating and retying the clans together. Indeed, the marriageable youth of the Temtres wasted no time seeking out mates, often semi-arranged between ships and clans. Still, there was a degree of freedom as well, at least for the boldest of suitors. The final few rounds of the Assembly were devoted to formalizing the bonds formed during the Assembly - in discrete jungle and cliff side leafy bowers.
The Temtres trade primarily within the Donta Islands, the outward most group of islands that make up the Saraime Principalities. The Saraime Principalities, from which we could gather, includes several large groups of islands, some of which are technologically advanced moon-sized islands, with Saraime the most noted. This technology however, fades quickly once the large islands were left behind. The Temtres, for example used steam engines, rockets as weapons, and compressed air small arms, but we heard of large steel ships, and found their trading tables had samples of intricate clocks, and even simple electrical lights and light-charged batteries.
Dagger Island, so called because of its thin savanna half and the thicker mountainous section looked from a distance like a blade and a handle, lays nearly two weeks sailing beyond the Donta's Outer Islands, in an empty stretch of sky known as the Outward Endless Sea. It was not endless, of course, since I believe we arrived from its far edge, but for ships like the Temtre traders, it was far too vast to explore or trade across. Its empty vastness is what hid this secret island of the Temtres.
As I've mentioned, the true Temtres are of the broad-feathered race of Pela humans. Fine-feathered people are sometimes referred to as "large islanders."make up only a small minority of the Temtre society. The fine-feathered population falls into three loose categories - skilled craftsmen like shipwrights, metal workers, jewelers and scribes employed by the Temtre to fill positions the ship's family could not fill themselves. The second, similar category, is that of family retainers, which is to say, purchased servants or slaves. The hundred or more of fine-feathered concubines of the wealthiest Clan Chiefs rather spanned both categories, skilled and servants. Because relations between the two human branches of the Pela were infertile, fine-feathered concubines are preferred by the broad-feathered Temtres for dynastic reasons, and presumably, the reverse was true as well. The third and smallest category of fine-feathered people (and broad-feathered as well,) was the prisoners being held hostage pending the payment of their ransom, the role we adopted. This appears to be a commonly accepted practice, and the prisoners seemed to accept their fate, confident that they'd be ransomed in time. If not, they'd eventually find themselves servants of the Temtres, a fate not worse than death, I suppose.
The date of the Temtre Assembly is determined by the flowering of a tree common throughout the Saraime - the Nileana tree. Apparently all the Nileana trees blossom together, at the same time, wherever they are in the Saraime. The Nileana tree blossoms only every three thousand and some odd (official) Saraime rounds, which makes its rare blossoms special. While the technologically advanced islands may officially keep time mechanically, time is often kept in the smaller, and less advanced, islands by the known flowering of certain trees and plants that, like the Nileana tree, blossom regularly and at the same time throughout the Saraime. The Nileana tree is the most famous of these, and its long flowering period is an extended holiday for everyone in the Principalities. It sets its buds 63 rounds before it flowers and then the flowers last 31 rounds, during which very little work is done and trade comes to a standstill. The Temtres use the Nileana Festival holiday time to sail to Dagger Island and have a 15 to 17 round party of their own, returning in time to catch the great flood of trade built up during the long Principality wide festival.
And that, briefly is who we found ourselves sharing the island with and why. Because it never occurred to the Temtres that anyone other than they might be on the island, it quickly became obvious, even to me, that once we were able to speak the language, we could go about the Assembly without having to worry a great deal about discovery - as long as we kept to our place in Temtre society. And given the life, the food, the color and the information we could gather about our likely new home in the Saraime Principalities, there was no reason why we shouldn't spend our waking hours in the ship city. What little work remained undone on the gig, could wait until the Temtres departed, so even I could find no reason not to enjoy the party on the savanna.
It was made all the more enjoyable because I could enjoy the pirate's party with a Cin who was not hinting that she was going to kill me at every turn. Makes a difference. There was, however, a certain gap between us, yet to be crossed. I was pretty certain it involved Cin slowly coming to terms with her new life with me, rather than anything fundamental between us, so I left it to her to cross it at her own pace.
The rounds, save the last ones, have run together. I know that following the all-hands meeting, the amphitheater was taken over for the rest of the assembly by entertainment. We'd spend part of our time watching and trying to decipher Temtre dramas, some clearly very old and traditional, some clearly new and topical for this assembly. In addition, there were concerts, the storytelling, and sporting events, many of which consisted of martial arts bouts, all of which added to our knowledge of our new home.
Within half a dozen rounds, we'd become comfortable enough with the language and customs that we could laugh and enjoy the street theaters with pirates relating outlandish "old spaceers type" stories of their encounters with fierce dragons, the mysterious and powerful Dragon Lords, and all sorts of unlikely peoples and creatures. We could haggle with venders of treasures and food, and carry on conversations, though mostly with fellow fine-feathered folk, since the broad-feathered Temtres didn't pay any attention to us, beyond leering wishfully at Cin. We were careful to stick to the bare outlines of our cover story, with as few details as possible whenever our presence needed to be explained.
There were two big sporting events. A ship's boat race around the island, and an assembly-long field event that took place on a wide field set aside for a version of that universal game of many names - g
etting a ball through some sort of goal. The Temtre version was played spaceer-style, which is to say, with the rules that could be boiled down to "Cheerfully Not (Actually) Murder Your Opponents." There was some sort of organization, some sort of officiating, and a collection of ship's boats overhead to capture the ball or players, when it, or they, were batted too high for the players to reach. Otherwise the game flowed pretty free and loose. There were two versions of the game. A small version between individual ships, with nine or ten crew members on a side, and clan matches with several dozen on a side. Being the broad-feathered people of the smaller, low or no gravity islands, they could both run, and keep more or less to the ground - though players often jumped on teammates' shoulders to pass the ball forward, and the frequent melees would often send players flying into the air and out of bounds, hence the boats overhead. Ending up out of bounds overhead was some sort of penalty, so players were often sent flying, and needed to be snagged by their teammates, sometimes in a wavering tower before they reached the boundary.
By pure chance, we happened to catch a ship to ship game involving Captain SherKe's Darter Dragon crew, our nominal captors. We stood on the edge of a sparse band of Dragon Darter supporters and lustily - and no doubt foolishly - cheered them on. It was tough going, though, since they played a reluctant, dreary, game of dogged defense, which was, no doubt, a reflection of Captain SherKe's legendary sour disposition. They lost, though we did get a brief, secretive smile from one of the crew as he left the field for our efforts to cheer them on.
Except for "The Heritage Procession," street life continued unabated throughout the assembly, one large, never-ending party. In addition to the great variety of foods sold at the ship-stands, a great variety of alcoholic beverages were sold and consumed as well. Compared with a spaceer on a binge, the two week Temtre party was a Unity cha social. Things could get rather loud and boisterous but we witnessed only one or two ugly scenes, when more than mere words were exchanged. Though things got wilder in the last days. Family pride had a lot to do with it, the elders making sure younger members did not make a fool of themselves and their ship in front of the rest of the clan. I suspect that inter-clan rivals also steered clear of each other. There were plenty of places to party for all. And then too, the nonstop partying likely took its toll as well after a few rounds. Even pirates have to pace themselves if they want to remain standing at the end of two plus weeks of parties.