The woman must have pushed a piece of cloth into the peep­hole.

Kiddu
Hey! Take that out! I need to talk to Gil!
Young Woman
What is pre­vent­ing you from talk­ing to him?
Kiddu
I want to SEE him too!
Young Woman
He must not be allowed to see us. That leads to sin. Asham will not for­give it.
Kiddu
Won­der­ful. I should have guessed from your cos­tume. You’re as crazy as the other natives. Maybe you haven’t fig­ured this out yet, but me and Gil don’t fol­low your stu­pid reli­gion.
Gil
Kiddu, come on…

Gil won­ders who would win in the increas­ingly likely sce­nario of a fight break­ing out in the other cell. The native woman had looked taller and older, but Kiddu is stock­ier and has a lot of expe­ri­ence.

Young Woman
It is your reli­gion as well, Kiddu. We wor­ship the same Gods and revere the same Law. The only dif­fer­ence is that I choose to obey that Law, while you do not.
Kiddu
I’m sorry, but I don’t remem­ber any­thing about boys and girls hav­ing to hide from each other in my reli­gion—
Young Woman
Does the Code of Eye­nki not com­mand it? Let no woman reveal her­self before a man to whom she is not betrothed or has no rela­tion. The Sun God sees all; it is an abom­i­na­tion and leads to sin. You believe that Lord Eye­nki handed down these laws to us so that we may avoid the wrath and judg­ment of all-seeing Asham, do you not? Is this not what your reli­gion teaches?

Gil lays down on his dusty mat­tress and sighs. For some rea­son, he thinks Kiddu would have fared much bet­ter in a phys­i­cal fight than in a the­o­log­i­cal dis­cus­sion.

 

Kiddu
Well, nobody fol­lows every sin­gle one of the old laws, obvi­ously.
Young Woman
Per­haps nobody in the Akka­dian Empire. My peo­ple are more obser­vant. But please tell me, why do you believe you are no longer oblig­ated to fol­low noble Eyenki’s laws? Is it because you imag­ine your so-called immor­tal Emperor has the power to repeal the laws of heaven?
Kiddu
No! I could give a rat’s ass about Zargon. It’s because—well, haven’t you heard the teach­ings? If we sin, we can pray to Eye­nki directly now, so he inter­cedes for us and stops the Sun God from pun­ish­ing us.
Young Woman
As a mat­ter of fact, girl, I have heard this par­tic­u­lar blas­phemy. So please tell me—are you sug­gest­ing that noble Eye­nki would actively work to impede the holy judg­ment of his Lord God Asham, sim­ply because a human prays to him? Because that is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Asham sees and knows all, and his judg­ment is ever­last­ing.
Kiddu
Absurd? Last I checked, that’s what every­one believed—aside from a few sav­ages who live out in the desert.
Young Woman
Per­haps every­one in the Akka­dian Empire believes this blas­phe­mous cor­rup­tion of the True Path. That hardly makes it cor­rect, and it hardly makes you any less of a sin­ner or a fool for believ­ing it too.

Gil inter­rupts them before it gets too ugly.

Gil
Hey! Can’t we at least try to get along? Who knows how long we’re trapped in these cells together. What’s the point of argu­ing? I’m sure we dis­agree about a lot of things, but I bet we agree on a lot of impor­tant things too.
Young Woman
Noth­ing is more impor­tant than obe­di­ence to Asham.
Gil
Okay, fine, so we dis­agree about that. But—okay, for exam­ple, what do you think about the way beasts are treated? You’re a veg­e­tar­ian, right?
Young Woman
Yes.
Gil
See, that’s some­thing we have in com­mon! Me and Kiddu are card-carrying mem­bers of Bes­tial Lib­er­a­tion. That’s actu­ally why we’re here. We were fight­ing to stop the oppres­sion of beasts.
Young Woman
Oppres­sion of beasts? What about the oppres­sion of our tribes? The defile­ment of our sacred shrines? The rape of our women? Every day you Akka­di­ans draw the blood of the Gods with your sin and your black magic. You claim to be spread­ing free­dom and enlight­en­ment, but all you do is spread the con­ta­gion of sin on our lands. And you expect us to do noth­ing while your peo­ple call down the wrath of Asham with your blas­phemy? There can be no peace between us until all of the sin­ners go back to their own lands!

Gil sighs.

Gil
Unfor­tu­nately, these two sin­ners aren’t going any­where. So … can we at least make a truce?
Young Woman
If this is what you two desire, then per­haps it is best if we stopped talk­ing to each other entirely.

Gil can hardly believe how unpleas­ant the woman is. He had always thought of him­self as sym­pa­thetic to the natives. But she is strain­ing the lim­its of his sym­pa­thy.

Gil
What­ever.

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