Producers of Society

“So it appears your underlings know all about me?” Caramine huffed. I was taken aback. I had never seen her brimming with quite so much rage, not even in Ardesburg.

Azzerium ignored the question. “Let me get straight to the point. I built this oasis off the ideal of trust, and so I will trust that you told my guards the truth. And that truth includes requesting an audience with me to discuss some recent events. I’m willing to give you that, alongside rooms for the night at our standard rate, but only on the condition that all of your present bandmates are also present for our discussion. Now, is that fine?”

“That is fine with me. I, too, have nothing to hide when it is wise to do so,” Caramine replied.

“Well then, let’s board your horses here in section A, and let’s continue chatting in the meeting room.”

We boarded up the horses and then immediately walked towards the center of the oasis, where a small building made of sandstone looked to be where all the officials worked. The typhin who popped out of the sentry box earlier led us to the back, where there was a meeting room with just enough space for all of us if we squeezed.

The room was sober. Plain walls were dressed with not much more than thin red draperies, and a long rectangular patterned rug covered most of the floor. In the center of the rug stood one small metal table bearing a torch, and on its bottom shelf sat a rusty box with a slit at the top. There was no other furniture, save for cushions and several boxes in the corners. We started filling in along the perimeter of the rug. Lotus and I found spots close to the door on the right edge, giving us a diagonal view towards Azzerium, who sat across from Caramine at the opposite end.

“So Caramine, what did you want to discuss?” Azzerium asked.

“I would like to get straight to the point,” Caramine said. With that, she plucked a rock out of her tunic and placed it on the rug, halfway between her and Azzerium. How long had she been holding on to that? “This piece of rock is a sample of the rock face underneath one of our rest stops. You will certainly remember its name: Outpost 66. As you can see, this side of the rock is sliced with a geometric, serrated pattern. Only one tool can produce a cut like this while slicing so cleanly through stone. That would be the Roaches’ ruby sickles, from their exclusive deal with the scarabs.

“And of course, you must be fully aware of what you have done,” Caramine continued. “There is no use in denying this. The Dune band, who own territories to our east in the north, have also reported an unexpected raid on one of their outposts, forcing them to cede control over a mine. We know that they, too, have passed through this territory at some point, and taken advantage of your accommodations. If you would like more evidence, I believe a visit to Outpost 66 will confirm everything I’ve said. What have you to say for this?”

Azzerium’s follow up was immediate. “Did you look at any of the supplies?”

Caramine recoiled. “What sort of larvae-headed question is that?”

Azzerium shook her head. The lanky typhin beside her leaned over to whisper something in her ear, and she hummed in affirmation. She turned back around. “Let’s back up a little. You’re right. I’m guilty as charged of having divulged territorial information with not just Riarvis, but other bands too, in the past. But hold on—hold on, I have since discovered Riarvis’s true motives. And in order to make up the suffering we have indubitably caused, we have resupplied your outpost. In fact, I’d like to make the opposite claim as what you said just now. A visit to Outpost 66 will merely confirm that all the supplies there are the exact ones that my people put into place no more than two months ago.”

“She’s right,” the typhin next to Azzerium added. “Here I have bought all the logs of this mission, signed and dated at the time of creation.”

He unfurled the scroll in his hands and laid it out beside the rock, facing Caramine.

“You tell ‘em, Asseli,” Azzerium said, prompting a flustered expression.

“Our policy in the oasis has always been to trust first,” Asseli continued. “We believe that initiating with trust is a crucial step in allowing others to trust us, in turn. This, of course, meant that we may overlook certain red flags, such as the relatively drastic rise of the Roaches over the last year or two. However, because the Roaches have breached our trust, we have since stopped serving any of their members and are still actively trying to identify and pay back damages to all victims. Our delivery of forty barrels and twenty crates of supplies is merely the beginning of our reparations policy.”

Caramine leaned over the scroll before her, then pulled it towards her and unfurled more of it, evaluating its contents.

Razzel, sitting beside Caramine, broke the silence. “Are you asking us to be thankful for unlabeled crates, that for all we knew could have been poison, or a trap?”

“We left a scroll explaining not only the situation but also the full inventory we left at the outpost,” Asseli held.

“And you numbskulls thought the average typhin would trust anything left at a scene of a sabotage? And assumed the Roaches wouldn’t return to the scene?”

“We thought that the average typhin would check,” Asseli emphasized. “I’m sure that Moonlight has more than enough experience to verify that scroll for themselves. As for the Roaches, we cannot control them, but due to our only recently having introduced this reparations policy, we don’t believe the Roaches have caught on. If they rendered a rest and refuel stop unusable, they also could not use it, and so would have little to no reason to return in the short term. That gives us a critical interval in which to act.”

“Don’t get carried away, Asseli,” Azzerium butted in. “We assumed that most would check, and perhaps that is true, but that doesn’t change the fact these folk didn’t.”

“There is nothing we could’ve done about that,” Asseli insisted. “And therefore it is not our fault.”

“We could have done more thorough field research to better predict what they’d have done. I agree that we must help, but we must also continue to strive for improvement,” Azzerium continued.

Asseli sighed. Razzel opened her mouth again, but stopped when Caramine pulled away from the scroll. She looked Azzerium in the eye. I could almost see arrows, silent and deadly, pass through the space between their snouts. “Why should we trust you to stick to your word?”

Asseli looked to his leader, who nodded in understanding. “You’re talking about us no longer serving the Roaches, right?”

“Of course,” Caramine snorted.

“I’ll admit that the exact duration and type of punishment is still in the works,” Azzerium admitted. “We won’t serve them for at least a decade, and likely more, but I’m sure you can see that banning them permanently no matter their actions is neither just nor consistent with what we believe.

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Azzerium said firmly. “I know I can’t make you, or anyone else, trust me. I can only embody my honesty and values to the utmost with my actions. And to do that, I’d like to tell a story.”

No response from Caramine or anyone else from Moonlight.

Azzerium smiled and began. “Most of you sitting in this room already know that my family was excommunicated from our old band. You also know that my parents died when I was young. What most of you don’t know is that they both died picking a fight with some robbers, the remnants of Fissure. I had brothers, too, you know. First one died of starvation not long after. Next one was killed after he tried to kidnap some passing members of a small band to try to force them to take us in. Larri lasted the longest. He only died a month before you found us. But he was locked in a power struggle with another typhin in our group of homeless wanderers, and it ended in the worst way possible.”

I could hear her covering up the shudders in her voice by raising her volume. “To me, peace isn’t just some philosophical curiosity. It isn’t some concept that could be put aside to defend lines on a map. It’s a necessity. I spent years, from the moment my face hit the sand after getting kicked off my uncle’s carriages, praying for and clawing at a chance for stability. My family did too. But they, as did I at first, tried to get it via violence. That’s all we understood. I can’t blame them.”

Azzerium took a deep breath before continuing. “Being homeless, you hear a lot. I heard Dune say that they would love to achieve a deal with Tundra in order to use their roads, giving them a more efficient path from north to south. I heard Tundra say that they would love to have Dune’s expertise on gold alloys, in exchange for part of their own output. But when it comes to getting these things, everyone’s first thought is always suspicion. Dune would destroy us with their sheer numbers, Tundra said. We can’t risk a talk. On the other side, Dune said Tundra’s guerilla traps could destroy them if negotiations go south.

“I wanted to scream at them. What was the point of all this internecine defeatism? But there’s one more thing about being homeless. In return hearing everything the world has to say, you could never say anything back.

“Every reason to distrust is treated as legitimate. And I know that many of them are. But there are some that aren’t, and without some oracle to point out what is or isn’t real, I just have to use what little I know to make the call. And with that comes mistakes. I had faith that due to our blood, my extended family would honor my word if I extended my hand first in trust, not spite. And I had faith in you, Caramine, that you would have seen this coming. When I made this choice, I believed that you, you of all people, would at least try to understand even if you disagreed, even if I made a mistake. But we all know what happened next.”

Merlum shifted uncomfortably as a disgruntled murmur passed through Moonlight. Azzerium pressed on. “Truthfully, I’m thankful for my excommunication. Without it, I would not have started the oasis. I would not have fully realized my existence, not just as a product of my upbringing,as you so love to say, but as a producer of society. A founder. You know, I’ve made many miscalculations here, too. Many settlers have left. I don’t blame them. People have died from my carelessness. But despite all that, many more have stayed. We have grown every year but two since our founding. I’ve surpassed my wildest dreams, and found my purpose. I will see through my vision of peace, for the sake of making our lives in the desert just a little more bearable.

“It’s now up to you to decide if, based on all that, you can trust me to keep my word.”

I stared at Caramine, as did every single other pair of eyes in the meeting room. A nearly imperceptible shudder shook her otherwise still body. Was it regret? Some deep-seated melancholy or anger, churning underneath her meticulously crafted layer-upon-layer of professionalism and jadedness? But she said nothing.

“Should we leave it at that for tonight?” Asseli offered.

“Yes,” Caramine said, standing up with the scroll. The rest of the Moonlight wasted no time in joining her.

“We will let you know of any additional requests by the crack of dawn,” Caramine whispered.