by Sharon Shinn
Now and then he passed what appeared to be an open bar, an oasis of color and light and sound in these dreary streets. There the music was suddenly blaring; voices called to each other; the action spilled out onto the street in fights or dances or plotting. His white car drew all eyes while it passed. The fighters and the dancers and the plotters grew still while he approached and faded away. Perhaps only hombuenos drove through these streets at night; perhaps not even hombuenos.
He drove on, revisiting as well as he could remember the neighborhoods where the six women had been killed. He had no trouble finding the abandoned house where Lynn had been murdered, for he had been there twice, but he was less certain that he had found the other locations. Here, all streets looked the same to him. All houses looked unkempt and miserable, and everyone walking along the street looked vulnerable and at risk.
Ahead of him he caught a brief flash of white, and he slowed, waiting to see which way this particular vagrant would jump from the assault of his headlights. But the figure kept walking as he approached, and the dim outline grew clearer: a woman, dressed in a white robe, and stepping with utter confidence down these desolate alleys. An ermana, he realized at once. As he drew abreast of the priestess and stopped the car, he realized just which ermana this was.
“Sister Laura,” he called out, leaning across the seat to address her from the passenger window. “It’s Drake.”
She had showed no surprise or fear when the car stopped; but then, she was used to being accosted by strangers. “Lieutenant,” she said, coming over to look in the window. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” he said grimly. “Where are you going?”
“I have received a call from a woman whose father is sick. She wanted someone to come and pray over him.”
Drake glanced at the clock inset into his dashboard. Not quite midnight. “And you came?”
“Death does not wait for convenient hours of the day, Lieutenant,” she said.
“Or strike only the sick,” he said pointedly. “Get in. I’ll take you there.”
“I don’t want to keep you,” she said.
“I’m slumming,” he replied. “Get in.”
She slid in beside him and glanced around at the expensive interior. “Very nice,” she said, with the closest tone to sarcasm he had yet heard in her voice. “Straight here and then left up there by the big white building.”
He had grinned at her first brief comment. “A present from senya Jovieve,” he said.
“She gave you a car?”
“A loan.”
“The lady is generous.”
“Do you know her?” he asked.
“We all know of her,” she said. “She’s pretty visible in Madrid.”
“Do you ever meet her—formal occasions or religious holidays or anything?”
“Our abada—”
“Abada?” he interrupted.
“Our—abbess, I suppose you would call her. The head of our order. She has met la senya grande many times. She says the woman is very likable.”
Laura was answering the questions, but somehow Drake felt she was avoiding saying something. Professional courtesy, he decided; she would not speak out against her sister in Ava, however much she might disapprove. “Where now?” he asked, turning.
“Left up there at the next street. Here. Yes. The second house on this side.”
Drake pulled over to the curb and she laid her fingers on the handle. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
He had cut the motor and turned off the lights. “I’m coming in with you,” he said.
She turned to him in surprise. “What? Don’t be silly.”
“It’s not silly. I’m coming in with you, and I’m waiting to take you back to the temple.”
“That’s really not necessary. And I would prefer not to impose on you in such a way.”
“I won’t come in if you’d rather I didn’t. But I’ll wait here outside, anyway.”
She studied him in the dark. “You’re serious.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Then you may as well come in with me.”
Together they walked up the cracked sidewalk, and Laura knocked softly on the unpainted door. A fugitive light filtered out from the heavily shuttered window. Someone spoke from behind the door.
“Quien es?”
Laura leaned close to speak her name through the heavy wood. “Ermana Laura. Soy Fidele.”
The door opened wide at that, but the small brown girl who had answered the door froze when she saw Drake behind the priestess. She half-closed the door again. “Ermana,” she said urgently, “Quien es? Eso hombre—no, no—”
“Esta bien, Clarita,” Laura said firmly, pushing at the door till the girl gave way. “Es un hombre bueno, no tiene miedo—”
Drake followed them inside, mentally translating the urgent conversation. Sister, who is this man? All is well, he is a good man, have no fear . . . That was something, at least. He had not, in fact, been sure sister Laura considered him a good man.
The house was painfully ugly inside, bare white walls lined with cracks and occasional holes; ratty, worn-down furniture; a plywood floor that in places had given way to the sandy ground beneath it. The lighting was harsh in some places, nonexistent in others, imparting a stark black-and-white effect. Three small children skulked in one corner of the main room. A very old woman sat motionless in a rocker and watched them without speaking.
“Su padre?” Laura asked Clarita. The girl looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, poorly nourished, and frightened.
“Muy mal,” Clarita answered, taking Laura’s arm and pulling her through a thin door to a small room. “Esta moribundo—”
It took Drake a moment to decide if moribundo meant dead or dying, but upon entering the sick man’s room, he realized the girl’s father was still alive. He was a large, dark, fierce-looking man, hardly older than Drake himself, and he was staring in fury at someone else sitting in the room. Drake’s eyes automatically went that way. Facing the patient was a younger man, just as dark and just as fierce. Clarita’s husband? Drake wondered, or Clarita’s brother?
“Papa,” Clarita announced in a voice which sounded nervous; there was enough tension in the small, poorly lit room to make anyone nervous. “Aqui esta la ermana. Por-vore, reciba las gracias de la diosa.”
She spoke slowly, as if to catch a wandering attention, and Drake was able to translate every word. Here is the sister. Please, receive the blessings of the goddess. Repent, for you are about to die . . .
The sick man turned his attention abruptly from the other occupant of the room, and held his hand out to Laura. “Ah, ermana,” he said weakly, “gratze, gratze.”
Laura hurried forward and carried his hand to her lips. “Ava te ama,” she said softly.
“Tu tambien,” he croaked.
Drake backed himself to the wall nearest the door, trying to keep out of the way, and contented himself with watching. Laura sat in a chair pulled up beside the sick man and began speaking to him in low, comforting tones. By the melodic singsong of her voice, he guessed it to be some ritual of prayer or forgiveness. The man made infrequent simple responses, no doubt accepting the will and comfort of his goddess.
Clarita had crossed to the other man in the room—her brother, Drake decided; they looked enough alike to be twins—and began to question him in a voice just as soft but somewhat more edged. He gave her impatient, monosyllabic answers, jerking his head away from her scrutiny, but she continued to question him, her voice rising. Unexpectedly, he shouted something at her, bringing sudden quiet to the room. Laura looked over and the sick man tried to sit up in bed, displacing his covers. The young man looked at his feet.
“Siento,” he muttered. Sorry. Laura asked him something that Drake couldn’t catch, and the young man shook his head. Laura returned to her p
atient, and Clarita resumed her determined interrogation of her brother, but this time kept her voice quiet.
Drake’s eyes went back to Laura and then to the sick man. But perhaps not sick after all. The motion of sitting up and lying down had caused the sheets to fall to his waist. Across his chest was a sloppy, inexpert bandage, stained with fresh blood.
“Sister,” Drake said in a low voice, interrupting her prayers. “That man’s been stabbed.”
“I know,” she said over her shoulder.
“He needs a doctor. He needs an hombueno.”
“His family doesn’t want either.”
That was enough to tell him the basic story, though he could only guess at the details. A mortally injured man who would seek no help had received his wounds in some illegal pursuit. From Clarita’s sharp conversation with her brother, Drake judged that the young man was somehow responsible for, or at least involved in, the activity. Drug-running seemed the likeliest crime; the hot desert sands which fostered those delectable spices yielded also a crop of highly prized and dangerous hallucinogens. And small though Semay’s spaceport was, no doubt it was big enough to draw a few outlaws who would ferry those hallucinogens to markets throughout Interfed.
“I could look at the wound,” he added. “I know a little about doctoring.”
“I think it’s too late,” she said softly. “I don’t think he wants to live, anyway.”
She turned back to the dying man, who really was dying now, and invited him to pray with her. Drake felt a tickle down his spine as they began to pray together, the hurt man’s raspy voice a low counterpoint to Laura’s sweet, sure tones. “Noche cristal, dia del oro, nos tiene in sus manos—”
She had not spoken half a dozen lines of the prayer when there was a sudden high-pitched scream from the outer room and the whole house rocked with the force of blows upon the walls. Drake whirled toward the bedroom door, a knife drawn in each hand. Three youths had burst in through the front door, literally tearing it from its hinges. They brandished clubs and knives and looked every bit as ferocious as Drake himself felt. One of the children screamed again, but the street warriors ignored the little ones. Outside, the pounding continued unabated; the house must be ringed with gang members. The grandmother in the rocking chair stayed where she was, unmoving. Her eyes flickered from face to face, but otherwise she showed no reaction.
The three intruders advanced on the sickroom, and Drake stayed poised in the doorway, coldly debating his options. He could take on three of them, but not twenty or twenty-five; and he did not, in this instance, know who was in the right and who in the wrong.
“Reyo!” came Clarita’s shrill cry from behind him, and the young man darted out past Drake, armed with his own weapons. Drake let him go, although he knew what would happen. There was a short, brutal fight which Reyo had no hope of winning. The watching children screamed over and over again. The wild beating on the walls went on and on.
Clarita had tried to follow her brother out into the main room, but Drake caught her arm and held her with one hand, blocking her view with his own body. She screamed at him in sobbing Semayse, writhing against his hold. He had dropped one dagger to keep his grip on her arm. From inside he could hear Laura’s quiet voice continue in the prayer for the dying. Clarita’s father no longer added his voice to hers. Drake guessed he was already dead.
Reyo made a good accounting of himself, for he killed one of the intruders and gashed a second one, but he had no chance. He was dead inside of five minutes, bleeding profusely on the wrecked floor beside the youth he had killed. One of the fighters still standing kicked the dead boy viciously. The other one turned to the doorway of the bedroom.
Drake released Clarita and shoved her violently back into the room, bending quickly to retrieve his fallen knife. Behind him, he heard Laura’s words stop abruptly. He crouched, ready to fight. The only thing he was interested in protecting was beyond this doorway.
The warrior approached slowly, his own weapons ready. He had the small build and dark features of so many of the Semayans; he was wiry and well-muscled and could probably give Drake a hard time. But he read death in the Moonchild’s face, and it slowed him down.
“Vaya,” Drake said, his voice as hard as he could make it. Go. Get the hell out of here. “Te mato. Puedo hacerlo.” I will kill you. I can do it.
The youth issued a challenge in a tough, contemptuous voice. “He said he’s not afraid of you” came Laura’s cool voice from behind him.
“Get back.” He whipped his words at her. “Out of my way.”
“You can’t kill that boy,” she said.
“I will, if he tries to touch you.”
For an answer, she raised her voice and addressed the youth directly. Drake could not follow every word, but he thought she was telling him that the man inside was dead.
“Mentira,” the boy snapped. A lie.
“No,” Laura said, “es verdad. En la nombre de Ava.” It’s the truth. In the name of the goddess.
The boy looked unconvinced. He stepped closer, gesturing wildly with his dagger. He said something else; Drake only caught the word “ermana.” For a second he thought it was a threat against Laura, but then he realized the youth had asked about Reyo’s sister.
“She stays here,” Drake said, without giving Laura a chance to answer.
Behind him, he heard Clarita’s shuffling footsteps. She was sobbing and trying not to. “Esta muerto,” she wailed, her voice sounding like it came from behind her hands. “Esta muerto, muerto, muerto—”
“Bien,” the youth said, and turned his back on them. He rejoined his friend, who had taken hold of his dead comrade by the armpits, preparing to drag him from the house. “El otro esta muerto,” he said.
“Bueno,” the second gang member said. “Ayudame.” Help me. Together they picked up their friend and carried him from the house. In a few moments, the pounding on the walls stopped. The house grew so quiet that those inside could hear the retreating footfalls of those outside.
Drake moved from the doorway and Clarita pushed past him. The three children ran to her, shrieking and sobbing. She sank to the floor and took them all into her lap, weeping into their hair and their dirty clothes. The old woman in the chair rocked slowly back and forth, saying nothing.
Drake turned to Laura, but she too brushed past him, and knelt on the floor next to Reyo. She began again murmuring the prayer for the dead and dying, rolling Reyo onto his back and straightening his arms and legs. With a scrap of cloth brought from the sickroom, she wiped the blood from his face and chest as best she could. While Drake watched, repelled and fascinated, she lifted the dead man’s hand to her mouth, and kissed it briefly.
“Ava te ama,” she whispered.
When she glanced his way, Drake came over to help her to her feet. She looked very tired. “Now what?” he asked, releasing her hand. “Do we call the hombuenos?”
“I don’t think it matters anymore to Clarita,” she said. “I suppose we must.”
But they didn’t have to. The screaming and pounding had alerted a neighbor, and even as they spoke, two cars roared up with sirens blaring through the silent air. Four officers burst through the door almost as rudely as the street warriors, their own weapons ready. A few seconds’ study was enough to tell them the story.
Drake hung back and allowed Clarita and Laura to tell the hombuenos what had happened. Two neighbor women showed up while the interrogation was under way, and they ran inside, crying out wonder and dismay in that voluble language. These two began cleaning away the blood, taking care of the children and inducing Clarita to weep in their arms. Clearly, they had seen this particular scene before. When the hombuenos closed their notebooks and prepared to leave, Drake touched Laura on the arm.
“I think we can go, too,” he said.
She nodded, but crossed first to Clarita’s side. The priestess hugged the young woman and gave her Ava’
s blessing—and, because they came forward, gave the besa de paz to the neighbor women as well. When she was finally through, Drake shepherded her out of the house and back to the car, opening the door for her and settling her inside. He felt somehow that she was more fragile, more vulnerable than she had been before, that she needed care and solicitude; but, except for exhaustion, her face showed no special despair.
“That was bad,” he said, starting the car and swinging it around in the direction from which they had come.
She had leaned her head back on the luxurious Triumphante seat. “Yes,” she said.
“You’ve seen things like this before,” he guessed. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so calm.”
“I’ve seen things like this over and over,” she said. “Am I calm? I’m so sad, I can’t put it into words.”
He glanced over at her in the dark. As usual, her face showed him nothing except a sculpted purity of line. “Were you afraid?”
“For myself? No, not really. I don’t think they would have hurt an ermana.”
“You can’t be sure,” he said.
“No, I realize that. But—except for recently, of course—even the most hardened criminals have left the priestesses in peace. We have been at some shocking scenes and been left unmolested. I was not afraid for myself.”
But something in her voice troubled him. Maybe it was the exhaustion, but she spoke with utter indifference about her own safety. “You wouldn’t have cared if they did kill you,” he said slowly.
“Ava’s children do not have much fear of death,” she said quietly.
He had stopped at an intersection, and now he looked at her again, narrowing his eyes in an effort to see behind the smooth face. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “In the general run of things, even the most devout are not too eager to be united with their gods. But you really aren’t afraid of dying, are you? Or maybe you just don’t care about living that much.”