Shadowkill sq 3, p.32
Shadowkill sq-3, page 32
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
“Whatever he wants. Oh, not legally, but who’s to see out here? And he has his guards with him, like the pair he brought with him to the Nameday.”
“Thugs.”
“Yes.”
“What about Yla?”
“As soon as I can, I’ll send her to fostering. He can’t stop that. She’s too young for marrying. While they’re still children, girls are the mother’s responsibility.”
“Will he marry you?”
“Not during my year of mourning. Not marriage.”
Shadith stirred. “Look, Matja, you don’t have to take this. You should get out of here. With Yla and Paji. You could come with me, or go to the Brush.”
Allina tapped her fingers on the table top, a curiously restrained expression of the passion Shadith felt seething in her. She shook her head. “No. This House, the land, they’re Paji’s birthright. I will not let that viper steal them from him.”
“A pillow over Paji’s face, that’s all it would take to clear title, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, yes.”
“You want us to guard him? If you can’t stop Mingas, how could we?”
“You couldn’t, Kizra Shaman.” She twisted her fingers together, stared past Shadith at the wall. “I will. I will do anything I have to.”
“Oh.”
Allina shivered, flattened her hands again. “I’m still the Matja here. Until tomorrow night. I can give the two of you what I choose to give. Kizra Shaman has chosen her way, what is yours, chapa Tinoopa?”
“I’ll wait here, thank you. I’m too old and fat. And citybred besides. I know from jits, not horses. Fall off and kill myself two kays out.” She looked thoughtfully at Matja Allina. “You want to be very careful or you’ll bring down the roof on you and the children.”
“What?”
“Something happens to Mingas, hmm, the Artwa doesn’t like you, thinks you’re uppity. I’ve run into that myself. Way things are here… how old’s Utilas’ son, or is he the next heir?”
“You have it. The oldest inherits unless he’s totally unfit and Rulas isn’t. He’s… a lot like Pirs. Reelyn is the second son; he’s a little younger than Rintirry was. I don’t know much about him… which is… good.”
“Right. Then Utilas won’t be wholly hostile to… um… say Fate for giving young… what was it?… Reelyn a break. That’s a plus. What’s he think of Mingas?”
“Detests him.”
“Another plus.” Tinoopa frowned at the roll of papers. She made a circle of thumb and forefinger, began sliding the roll back and forth through the round. She looked up. “Mind some blunt speaking?”
Matja Allina smiled wearily. “I haven’t so far, have I?”
“Do you want more children?”
Allina touched her fingers to her lips. A sudden wave of grief and pain and loss rolled out of her, filling the room like fog. Tinoopa didn’t see it, but Shadith was almost drowning in it. “No,” Allina whispered. “Pirs is dead. I’m an old, old woman. No.”
“Right. I got to talking with a circle of Brushie heal-women. During the Shearing, it was. You’ve some interesting herbs on this world, hmm, when you’re feeling more like talking business, I know a drug prospector who’d be interested, we could work out connections with the Pharmaceuticals, improve your credit line. We started out, the healwomen and me, talking about contraceptives and abortifacients. Subject of rape came up. Told me sometimes tumaks come looking for Brushie girls, drunk enough they’ll jump anything with a hole in it and it’s safer to meddle with Brushies, no blood feuds or private wars brewed up that way. If the Brushie girl’s family catches him, well, they find themselves a s’met colony, bury him up to his neck next to a mound, and smear his face with sugar syrup.” She smiled. Not a nice smile. “My youngest daughter, I lost her to a diaper salesman. That’s not what you think, he sells children to pedophiles. I never found him. I ever do, I’ll bring him back here. Well, that’s beside the point. Sometimes, the tumak gets away. Keeps getting away. Comes back time after time. The healwomen go round the Mirps and choose someone, a woman, maybe even a girl, someone who doesn’t want children and is willing to take a chance on being killed. They prepare her, stake her out for the Sekerak, that’s what they call him, though I suppose you know that. Sooner or later he takes the bait, does the deed. Before the month is out, he’s dead. The girl’s sick for a while, the ointment dries her up inside and the antidote turns her eyes yellow, but they say she doesn’t mind and afterward she’s fine. Sterile, but fine.”
Matja Allina contemplated the older woman for several moments. “If I were wise, I would say interesting but nothing to do with me. I’m sorry about your daughter, that’s true.”
Tinoopa shrugged, “It was a long time ago.”
“In some things, time has no meaning.”
“No.” Tinoopa drew her thumb along her jawline. “You’re wrong there, Matja. It does have meaning, what I’m saying is this: grief heals and rage cools.” She dropped her hands onto her thigh. “But you’re also right, hate doesn’t die, it just gets old and cold and harder than stones.”
“Yes.” Matja Allina got to her feet. “Kizra, you’ll have to leave by dawn tomorrow so you’ll be far enough away by the time Mingas arrives that it won’t be worth the danger going after you. I can supply you tonight. Afterward…” She shrugged. “It’s short notice, I’m afraid, but you were going anyway. So. Make a list, let me know what you’ll need.” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned to Tinoopa immediately. “I will take supper in my room. When Kizra’s list is ready, bring it to me. I’ll mark what I approve and authorize you to dispense the materials. Be careful around P’murr. He isn’t liking me much these days so he’ll do what he can to make problems for anything I try.”
8
A knocking. “Kizra?”
Shadith rolled out of bed, pulled the robe around her and crossed to the door. Yawning, she let Tinoopa in. “That time already?”
“Not quite. Cook’s got breakfast ready for you, some sandwiches for later, she’s waiting to give you a sendoff.”
Shadith ran her hands through her hair, scrubbed at her eyes. “Gods, does everybody know? Some sneak.”
“Sit down a minute. Want to ask you something.”
Shadith dropped on the end of the bed. “Huh?”
“The Mindwipe didn’t take, did it?”
“There were um complications the operator didn’t know about. Things came back to me.”
“And you know where you’re going, what you’re going to do, who you’re going to call?”
“Yeh.”
“I thought so. Catch.”
The sac landed in Shadith’s lap with a series of dull clunks. It was heavy. She loosened the drawstrings, pulled the neck open. Coins inside. She raised her brows.
“Incentive,” Tinoopa said. “I’m a thief, remember? What I’d like you to do, get word to my son where I am. Jao juhFeyn. He runs a tavern called Kipuny Shimmery on a world called Arumda’m. Iskalgun 9. Let him know where I am. All right?”
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks. The Matja authorized hot water. At least you can ride out feeling clean.”
“Tinoopa, this Mingas… he’s mean, maybe a bit crazy.”
Tinoopa waggled a hand. “He’s not going to live long enough to be much trouble. If the Matja doesn’t get him, I will.”
“All I can say is, I’m glad I’m going to be somewhere else.”
“Interesting times.” Tinoopa straightened. “The Lady bless, young Kiz.” She left.
Shadith cupped her hand under the sac, hefted it. “Well.”
The weight of it makes all this real. No more dreams, no more dithering. In a few hours I’m going. I’m really going.
She felt like throwing up.
Terror, that’s what it is. Sheer sick-making terror.
Swearing under her breath, her legs shaking, she stood, tossed the money sac into the knot of quilts, and went out.
9
Shadith rode out from Ghanar Rinta an hour before dawn.
She had a packer on a lead rope, one of the rough-coated ponies that the shepherds used; she rode a small sturdy bay pony with a black mane. The Matja had offered horses, but the Jinasu Jhapuki insisted on the ponies. It’s a long way, she said, horses will die on you, get a notion in their silly heads and go down and they won’t get up. The ponies won’t go fast, but they’ll get you there. Walk as much as you ride and give them plenty of time to browse.
The Matja had provided a map, with roads and ayntis marked on it, notes Pirs made about water and campsites, estimates of time between trailmarks, notes about ambushes, the map he usually carried around in his gear. He’d left it behind when he took the chal and the supplies to Caghar Rinta.
The pony’s head bobbed rhythmically before her, his hooves beat out a slow syncopation on the hardpan underfoot, his tail switched, now and then stinging against one leg or the other. Mesmerizing. Put her into slowmotion, into a drifting inconsequent reverie. She thought about memory.
Memory was everything.
Its fragile, dead-leaf lace was threaded through her present and in a way controlled her future.
When her memories were temporarily displaced, she turned passive, fearful, every step she took threatened to drop her off the brink of the known; in a way her brain and body began reverting to the dead meat she’d revivified such a short while ago. Only her underlying toughness and the prodding of those nightmares she’d resented so much had kept her alive in those pre-lizard days. The nightmares and Tinoopa providing a stable pole she could revolve about.
After this business was over, if she survived it, she’d move with measurably less assurance through her days. That was one thing she’d learned. Another thing-maybe more important-was how desperately she needed other people in her life. She’d known people quietly content with living alone, preferring a filled solitude to empty company, but these were always settled into stable societies where tradition and the ambient culture were sufficient surrogates for family and friends.
It’s what Aleytys was hunting for all those years. A context. That and a family to replace the one that drove her out. She’s got it now, family and friends and work. I want that. Not the details. Gods, I’d be petrified on Wolff, I don’t even like Grey that much. Family and friends and work…
She thought about Mingas, the Artwa, Matja Allina in the prison of her culture, wasted and unwanted, distorted by what was demanded of her and by what was forbidden.
You’d better be careful what kind of context you pick, Shadow. Very careful. There’re downsides to everything, you want to be sure what they are before you commit. Ay-yah. That’s the third thing you’ve learned here and likely the most important.
##
She pushed hard at first, letting the ponies alternate between a fast walk and a canter; riding the little bay was like sitting a jit on a corduroy road, but she spared neither herself nor her mounts.
The day heated up as the morning winds dropped and finally she knew she couldn’t go much longer. She let the pony slow to a tired shuffle and fished out the map. The brush on both sides of the rutted dirt road was a meter higher than her head. There was nothing else to see but the tan road and a sky yellow with a punishing heat. She checked the angle of the sun. Almost directly overhead, around a half-hour past sunhigh. She pulled the map into the shade of her hat brim to cut the dazzle of the parchment, squinted at the tiny black writing. There was a bridge some way ahead, built over a wide swooping bend of the river that ran past the Rinta. Water and browse. A good place to stop and wait out the worst of the heat.
She folded the map again, tucked it into the saddlebag, and slumped into the sway of the pony’s walk.
10
She reached the bridge at the beginning of the fourth hour past sunhigh.
The river was silt-laden and sluggish, but under the pohn trees there was a tentative small breeze that hugged the water and barely stirred the stiff leaf lozenges and the shade was balm for her burning eyes.
She watered the ponies, stripped their gear off, gave them some grain on a square of canvas, and left them to eat and browse as they wished. She hung the saddleblankets over a low limb to dry out, laid down her groundsheet and stretched out on it, using the saddle as a pillow. She was asleep in seconds.
11
It was two hours later when she woke, she was sticky and sore, she had a crick in her neck and a hollow feeling in her stomach. The shadows were longer, thicker, the sun low in the east. She sat up, rubbed at her neck and felt around for the ponies.
They’d stayed close by; they were nosing among the dried grasses under the trees, nipping at choice bits and chewing patiently once they had a mouthful.
She dug her fingers into her hair, scratched extravagantly. “Half a day… Sar!”
She dug the map out of the saddlebag and sat studying it. “Well, Shadow, I might as well spend the night here, can’t reach the next water before dark. Hmm. Looks like I’d better do some planning, isn’t going to work riding straight through, that sun’s a killer.” She scowled at the map, dismayed by the tiny distance she’d covered in those hours of riding. At this rate, it’d take forever to reach Nirtajai.
A high whining broke through the whisper of the leaves, the mutter of the river.
Off to her left a black dot arced by, cutting in and out of sulfur-colored clouds, gone before she could get to her feet.
“Mingas. Ahead of schedule. Hunh.” She yawned,
12
She sat watching the fire die. The wind was rising; the clouds had blown away, taking the heat with them; the blanket round her shoulders actually felt good.
Alone. She was starting to feel comfortable with that. As long as there was an end to it. Comfortable. Even happy.
I know what it is. I’m not drifting any more. I’m doing something.
She wrapped the blanket around her, stretched out on the groundsheet, her head on the saddle.
Even if I had to get booted into it.
She sighed with pleasure and gazed up at the sky; the moon hadn’t risen yet, the stars were thick and brilliant. It was like the sky she’d seen as a child when she was so young she still had the skin on her eggsac slinging.
13
A spark popped from the circle of stones, landed on her hand, startling her awake.
The Raska Tsipor pa Prool was sitting across the fire from her, watching her.
“You built it up,” Shadith said.
“Yesss.”
“Why?”
Tsipor shrugged her narrow shoulders.
“You want something?”
“Omphalos.”
“What?”
“You going to make them hurt.”
Shadith wriggled free of the blankets and sat up. “That good or bad?”
“I felt your purpose. I came.”
“Huh?”
“To ss-see them hurt.”
“At the moment, I’m not too capable of hurting anyone.”
“You will. I feel it.” Her black eyes reflected the flames; she undulated her torso; her mouth was open a little and her thin black tongue flickered in and out of the gap. There was a force in the woman, something unleashed, in her that she’d kept hidden all the time she was in the truck and at the Rinta.
“How? I mean, what’re you talking about?”
Tsipor did an odd, twisting movement of her hands. Talking seemed difficult for her. “I know. I come with you.”
Shadith frowned. Oh, hell with it, she thought. “Why not.”
Tsipor nodded. She came round the fire, reached out, held her hand above Shadith’s arm, not quite touching the skin. She waited.
“All right,” Shadith said.
The hand touched her, soft, warm, dry. Power flowed into her, jolting her, as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. After her first startle-reflex, she reached.
There was a horse a short distance off, tied to a tree with a tether long enough to let him graze on a patch of grass.
There were l’bourghhas sniffing round the ponies. She twitched a nerve in the predators and sent them running off. The ponies kept on grazing and didn’t know what had just passed by them.
Her reach leaped beyond the horizon, all the way back to the Kuysstead. She felt Allina’s anguish, Mingas-she wrenched herself away from him, sickened.
She touched the back of Tsipor’s hand.
The Raska moved away, the powerflow was gone and Shadith felt deeply diminished, as if she’d suddenly gone deaf or blind. It took minutes for her sense of herself to settle.
She contemplated Tsipor. “I look through beast eyes, do you look through mine?”
Tsipor nodded.
“Telepath?”
Tsipor shook her head. “Not thinking, feeling.” She held up her narrow hand. “Only touching.”
Shadith relaxed. “Why don’t you go untie your horse, let him graze. I’ll bring him in when it’s time to start on. Unless you…”
“No. Is feeling, is not riding. Is not like yours. Is other things, but…” Once again she did that painful twist of her hands, it seemed to be her equivalent of a shrug.
“You had something to eat?”
“Yess. You sleep. I watch.”
14
On the second night, Shadith gazed across the fire at Tsipor. “Tell me,” she said.
The Raska nodded. Her story was a performance, part body (a dance of torso and arms and face), part words (single words, short phrases), part ghost images that appeared and dissolved between them.
Despite her resemblance to the Cousin baseform, Tsipor pa Prool was not a Cousin; her way of seeing and saying was skewed at an odd angle to Shadith’s so Shadith was never quite sure she understood what Tsipoor was saying to her in her multilevel langue.
IMAGE: Sipayor siRasaka, Tsipor’s homeworld. Sense of dryness, of complexity-crystalline? Scoutship finds it, the sigil on the ship is the circled spiral of Omphalos. Something happens. Omphalos controls the world now. Omphalos is doing things to the Raskas, making them different? Surgery? Forced breeding? Terror, anger, grief
