First Chapter: Home Rule: Book III of The Tribal Wars by Stella Atrium #FirstChapter @SAtriumwrites

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Title: Home Rule: Book 3 of The Tribal Wars
Author: Stella Atrium
Publisher: Stella Atrium Writes LLC
Pages: 458
Genre: Science Fiction

In Book 3 of the award-winning series, photojournalist Hershel Henry witnesses the loss by self-torching of tribal women. The Madquii and Gora tribes have laid siege to the city of Urbyd, and Brianna Miller must seek a peace treaty.

Kelly Osborn travels to Stargate Junction to set the wedding of ambassador Otieno. Hershel Henry opens a gazette to report on pending elections for home rule, but then shocking events upset their plans.

Get your copy at Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/BoC44QT91N.

Chapter One – from Herschel Henry

Dkar was my landlord in Cylay. A Putuki man with bulging eyes that judged everything, he owned a converted warehouse eight blocks from the governor’s house, if you can call them blocks. I paid for two rooms above the waterfront where Cylahi-constructed furniture was sold to the newly rich residents of the Putuki city section. People on the street did not bother me much, sometimes to beg alms. My rooms were tossed and robbed, however, whenever I left to pursue a news story.

Aging and maimed warriors lingered in Cylay; desperate women with toddlers, free-roaming fowl and pigs. Electricity came on for two hours a day and the faucets never worked. Rabbenu Ely and Putuki Bazaari still held authority in Cylay, but Rabbenu provided few services to the people. Unblessed ones, as poor residents were called, understood little of where the city funds originated and why foreign aid arrived at the governor’s mansion.

I was in Dkar’s office to lodge a complaint about being robbed again. Dkar sat in a squeaky chair behind a desk scrounged from an abandoned hotel. “The thefts are friendliness, Hershel Henry,” he said. “Their way of saying that you are useful to them.”

“Look, if you refuse to take my complaints seriously–”

I like you Softcheeks,” he interrupted. “You can feel safe here. Safe as long as you allow the activity. If you should bother Potuki police about the theft, well…that’s different, huh?”

“Is that a threat? Are you making a threat?”

“I want to help you, Henry. I’m helping here. Tomorrow we go to the bazaar, and there we find your solution.” Dkar leaned forward with a grin, showing the absence of two teeth on the left side. “Trust me.”

I had washed the insect repellent from my hair and beard, now a silvery blond against the tan skin. I wore the dungarees and shirt of the clutch of Kenru, provided to me when I first visited Uburu land. I had a field vest with notepad and light meter. And I constantly wore the sheathed beltknife that was a gift, more for show against the hungry eyes of local beggars than for soldiering.

I was forced to keep my cameras and everything but a change of clothes at the hotel Press Club. John Milan and other journalists jeered at me for preferring to live among the people, and I was beginning to get the message.

“You got a woman, Henry?” Doug Endicott guessed when I was sharing drinks with John Milan and Regan Villines at the Press Club. Endicott was the network dog who parceled out paychecks.

I squinted at his smirk. “Just closer to events.”

“You stink of that slum,” Endicott complained. “You bring their diseases in here.”

“I’ll try not to infect the tribes with your attitude.”

“Why did you even come to Westend?” Endicott demanded. “What was it, Henry? The lure of exotic locales, or running away from a broken heart?”

“Where I come from, everything is broken. The savannah tribes have a purpose.”

Endicott shook his head slightly. “So…it’s the romance thing. Your tour will end six months early. Mark my words. You’ll shake with malaria chills for a decade.”

“Maybe not. Australian pioneer stock.”

“An urban pioneer?” Endicott realized his drink was empty and stepped to the bar for a refill.

The comtech over the bar had the volume turned down, but the news clip replayed Rabbenu Ely announcing a new business in Cylay for an upstart stock exchange. The rotund rabbenu wore a dark suit and blue silk sash to designate his office. Ely made a stately stroll down a gilded hallway to step up to the podium and face reporters. Three suited Putuki men and General Sector in a starched uniform, head of Consortium peace-keeping troops in Cylay, crowded behind Ely.

“Ely has gained weight,” Regan said derisively. “And he chose blue for that sash.”

“Why blue?” I asked.

“Blue is forbidden on the savannah,” Regan said, seated shoulder-to-shoulder with me. “In honor of the blue macaw, the god-agent of Rularim.”

“What’s a god-agent?” I asked.

“You have much to learn about the tribes, Henry.” John Milan said. “It’s like a witch has a black cat, but some animals can share dream images with favorites.”

“With you?” I asked him. John made a snorting noise and looked around for the waiter. He sighed and went to the bar to order, lingering with Endicott.

“Why does General Sector lend himself to this charade?” Regan asked as she watched the comtech news. “That’s the real question.”

We saw Ely encourage a shorter man in a blue suit to step up to the podium, further crowding the ministers.

“Manenowski! Can you believe it?” Regan said. Her weathered face and khaki clothes tagged her as a veteran reporter. “He was promoted to captain under General Sector,” she added. “He resigned his commission for this new position as a stock trader. And Sector just stands there like that turncoat act was nothing at all. Man, this job will make you cynical.”

John returned with drinks for him and Regan but not for me. I took the hint. I headed out from the Press Club, just catching Regan’s comment as she speculated to John Milan, “How much different from Henry’s station in Australia is that slum alleyway?”

# # #

It was four days and two thefts later when Dkar knocked on my door. I laughed and shook my head. The doorjamb was splintered where the most recent thief had gained entry after I had bars installed on the windows.

“Come along then,” he said without preamble.

The Cylay local bazaar was long established – a narrow walkway where vehicles found no purchase. We walked past six-by-six kiosks with stacked shelves. Unlicensed, I was thinking, and each with a souk who mostly lived there. I saw second-hand goods near the walkway, also some aging and bruised vegetables. We had to step across a couple of vendors to get to another kiosk with better goods. We struggled through a narrow section where herbalists sold amulets, talismans, and magic poteens. Finally, Dkar stopped at one counter that I could never find again from trying. I was instructed to buy blue macaw tail feathers.

I squinted. “Bird feathers?”

“Trust me,” Dkar said with that slimy grim.

The feathers were expensive.

We returned to my rooms where Dkar tied the feathers over my doorjamb with string.

“A new temptation for theft,” I complained. “They’ll be gone in an hour.”

“A good message you send with these,” Dkar said. “Your power is greater than theirs.”

“My power to be robbed again?”

“For you, the mark of Rularim is not needed,” Dkar said. “You wear Brian Miller’s beltknife.” Brian Miller had fallen in the tribal wars long before I came to Dolvia. “But your house is not covered,” Dkar added, “only your person. And Rularim’s mark over the doorjamb? Well, everybody tries that. Her mantel does not extend to Cylay.”

“Blue feathers are a deterrent?” I asked.

“A taboo color. The blue macaw lives at the fortress, maybe longer than Rularim lives there. These unblessed ones see a spiritual risk, frightful dreams or a sour stomach later. Only a discarded gualarep toenail is better. Do you have one?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Ah, too bad.”

And I was not robbed again after that. I brought clothes and equipment to my small space. Later I set up an EAM connection complete with a coolant unit and battery pack.

Kids brought water in buckets in exchange for kam, the Arrivi penny that was a circular plug of copper. Cylahi warriors traded tool-and-dye services for twists made from precious metals. The oblu was their twist equivalent to the silver quarter. Rabbenu Ely had paper money printed with his face on the front, but the denominations were too high for most street commerce.

Dressed only in cotton shorts, many with rust-colored hair and stunted by malnutrition, the kids gambled on the kam lottery. On any street corner, a kam-man loitered continuously. Nothing was written down so he needed to know customers for collection and payoffs. Our local kam-man was a Cylahi warrior who spoke Arrivi. White splotches showed on his arms and shoulders, the result of old burns where the pigment was gone. He was known as Blanc. Over time I had won Blanc’s trust, and he agreed to bring any news. If a broadcast segment or article developed where I was the first reporter on the scene, he received a small gratuity; that was our deal. I learned about recent deaths at the hands of the brutal Putuki police and where the abortion clinic operated. Later I learned that Blanc knew some English, but why show his cards, huh? I told Blanc that I sought political news – what Rabbenu Ely was doing for the people.

“Not anything,” Blanc said with a shrug. “Ely does nothing for these unblessed ones.”

The rainy season was getting underway. The unmanaged sewage that was so offensive in the unrelenting heat, during the rains became a disease-carrying soup in the alleyway outside my window. I had a rubdown at the Press Club to relieve aching muscles and considered getting the flu shot distributed in Cylay by Consortium officers. Tribespeople stood in line at police stations and academies, at long tables under the Consortium flag – a backward C tangent to a P, powder blue, on a sky-blue background. Children cried after an injection in the arm and took sugary treats from officers who wore powder-blue tams that designated them as peacekeeping.

At the Press Club, I booted the EAM to catch up with correspondence. “Herschel Henry, hiki,” the screen blinked, using the Arrivi greeting.

On the news channel, an announcer with china-doll makeup and a crisp English accent introduced an event showing Rabbenu Ely at the podium, facing reporters again. John Milan sat in the front row and was asking a long-winded question of the embattled leader. Did Ely support the order of impunity that protected Consortium officers from local laws, or did Ely support Karlyhi’s famous tribal logic? Was Ely content with the presence of peacekeepers who weren’t subject to tribal law? Was Ely content with the continued presence of a circle of elites like Carl Hartley who disregarded tribal law?

The stormy look on Ely’s active face was all the answer I needed.

I called up old news footage of the immolation of Kyle Rula in the Cylay plaza. I had watched the clip a thousand times. I remembered when I had first viewed the orange conflagration that had devoured her. I was sitting in an over-lit lobby of a lawyer’s office in Perth, waiting to settle my stepmother’s estate. My half-brother Trevor Scott sat across from me in a row of chairs against the wall. He was twelve years younger and two inches shorter. His mouth was screwed into an ugly smirk.

“It all comes to me, you know,” Trevor said. “Mine by right.

“The two properties and the stock certificates are yours. We are agreed.”

“What do you care?” he asked hotly. “You’re headed to the other side of the galaxy.”

I had looked away from his smirk and watched the Perth news on the overhead comtech with the volume turned down. A segment was showing a woman sitting cross-legged in the middle of Cylay’s plaza. She struck a match and dropped it onto her broad skirt. The fire was instant and harsh, maybe fueled by gasoline. Bystanders screamed or backed away, not understanding the purpose. I remembered I was unable to breathe that day in Perth, and coughed slightly to draw in the harsh air. It was the surprise that impacted me, especially from a muted comtech. Why would a person do that? What drove her to such a dreadful act?

Trevor had only squinted at the images on the news. “And you’re so eager to report their troubles? People in Westend are just like us. No better than us.”

I had signed the estate documents, barely listening as the lawyer explained that my father’s assets had been placed in trust for my return from Westend, and Trevor Scott received what his mother’s will had stipulated. I had walked out with Trevor still loudly complaining.

“Go ahead, run away!” he shouted from behind me. “That’s what you always do.”

About Stella Atrium

Stella Atrium is writing The Tribal Wars series. The first trilogy is available as ebooks and in print. BookLife has awarded the Editor’s Pick designation for each book upon its release.

Home Rule rounds out the first trilogy and received first place in the 2023 Artisan Book Review Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Book 4 titled Tribal Logic is scheduled for release in early 2024. Also be certain to pick up Atrium’s standalone novel Seven Beyond that won a 2014 Reader’s Favorites award in science fiction.

Let’s Connect!

Website: https://stellaatrium.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/SAtriumWrites

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SAtriumWrites

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