by Jo Clayton
Lylunda shivered. “When I was little. My mother was scourged. How likely are Duk and Dukerri to allow that?”
“The Ezkop Garap has the ear of the Dukina and the Mazkum ladies. They don’t like it when the Jazkum go slipping round to Izar to sample the housewares, but they can’t say it. Now they got a chance to use their claws. If I had kin in the Izar, I’d slip them away somewhere till the rain sends the Maz and Jaz out to the hills?’
“I’ll think about it. Thanks.” She wiped her face again, then sat forward tensely as he took the last bend around the huge clump of ancient rynzues that marked the end of the bridge over the Jostun. After fifteen years away, this would be her first sight of Haundi Zurgile.
The city was on the far side of the gorge where the Jostun ran, rising up the slopes of a dead volcano whose dark gray summit she could see beyond the rynzues; the higher you lived in Zurg, the classier you were, the more money and power you controlled. The Izar was on the flat land around the base of the mountain, the folk there breathing in the air of the feedlots and slaughterhouses as well as the factories and the hot air wafted over from the landing field a few kilometers off. As, the float hummed and choked up the approach to the wide bridge, she could see the red tile roofs of the tenements poking over the whitewashed walls that shut the Izar away from the rest of the city, beyond them the painted ’crete of the Low City like the colored filling between the layers of a torte, and above all these the black and gold citadels of the Jazkum who ruled the place.
Her father lived up there still, a Jaz of the Jazkum with a Maz wife and a High Family, all of whom re-fused to know about her and her mother the whore. Her mother died before she reached her fortieth year, brought down by a fever that a gray-market antibiotic couldn’t cope with. The old anger came back as the float hummed and coughed across the bridge, a fury not diminished by the fifteen years that had passed since the day she found her mother cold and still, her bed stained by her body fluids. To get access to good medicine and good care you.had to be sealed to one of the Seven Clans; brought in by birth, adoption, or purchase; your name writ in the Temple register; your body marked as Jaink’s own by the clan sign tattooed in the center of your brow. Most of the people in the Izar hadn’t a hope of any of these things.
Lekat-that was what the Behilarr called them. Mongrels. A collective name for a heterogeneous swarm of entertainers, exiles, and half-breeds, a mix of Cousins from a hundred worlds: thieves; fugitives from contract labor gangs; smugglers and arms dealers who’d made elsewhere too hot for them; crewmen and women so drunk or drugged their ships went on without them; embezzlers; dethroned dictators fleeing war crime tribunals; lost souls yearning for something they couldn’t name who ran out of money before they found whatever it was and others who had reason to cut loose from their former lives; misfits of every kind there was. They were free to come and squat in the Izar, they were free to do those jobs the Behilarr considered beneath them, they were also free to starve, to harbor such diseases as they brought with them, free to pass them around as far as they would go among the others in the Izar, free to steal from each other, rape, plunder and kill each other. Free as long as they didn’t discommode the Marked Pure among the Behilarr.
Except when the Ezkop, the High Priest of the Temple, or the Sorginz, the Priestess of Groves and Peaks, except when that holy pair fell into one of their frenzies of purification, except for those harrowing times, the Behilarr tolerated the Lekat and by their very contempt protected them. As they’d protect her now, once she was lost in the Izar.
The old man stopped before an open arch in the high white wall; black Behilarr glyphs painted above it spelled out TZAR. “I’m not asking questions,” he said. “But don’t forget what I told you.”
She summoned a grin, leaned over, and kissed his leathery cheek. “And best you disremember me, my friend. Jaink smile on your and yours.”
3
As she limped along a narrow cobbled street, the weight of the sack disturbing her balance, making it difficult to keep weight off her ankle, she looked around with a sense that she’d stepped back in time. She’d been gone fifteen years, but the graffiti on the walls looked much the same; the names might be different, but she couldn’t remember the old ones anyway.
There was a new cook shop on the second corner-new to her at least-used to be a dressmaker there. Eskoziaka, that was her name. She made costumes for dancers and working lingerie for the housegirls.
She hobbled on, noting other changes. Halak the Spice Man was gone; the windows were whitewashed so she couldn’t see in and some stars and crescent moons were painted on them. Lester the Knife Man was still there, with Halfman Ike in his wheelbox by the door, looking older than time and stony as the Mountain, his sharp black eyes missing nothing that went on in the street.
He was the first to recognize her. “Bo da, if isn’t Meerya’s girl. What you doing back, ’ska? Should we expect a plague of space marines any day now?”
“And a good morning to you, Ike. Auntee Zaintze still with the living?”
He blinked at her a moment, considering the bulging gunny sack and the shabby skirt and blouse. If she hadn’t been who she was he’d have lied flat out. “In the flesh? Yawp. You wanting something outta her?”
“I owe her a greeting. Old times, you know. And I want to catch up on what’s what.” She tapped her nose, offering a snippet of her own news. “Met a peddler outside the city, give me a ride, he said the Ezkop and the Sorginz, they’re working up to a harrowing.”
“Peddler, eh? Just yammer or did he look like he knew what he was talking about?”
“Old git. You know what It takes to last that long fiddling the arranxes. Mid city. Canto clan.”
“You know Zitz Alley? Back end by wall, go up stairs to first landing, bang loud, she don’t hear so good sometimes.”
“Owe you one, Ike.” With a flip of her hand she moved on. After a few paces, she looked back, saw him talking earnestly to a skinny dirtyface boy. What a hoot! Me bringing news to Halfman Ike. After all these years, me!
4
Zitz Alley was the noisome dead-end offshoot she remembered all too well, rats feeding on garbage, not bothering to run when they saw her, stench of urine strong enough to rival poison gas, scraps of this and that rotting into slime after sitting there through four, five, six rainy seasons. A narrow path swept relatively clean led back to a framework of rusting metal that was only a sketch of a stairway.
Lylunda climbed the ladder, trying not to touch the worn oily rail. Going up wasn’t that bad, but she did her best not to think of coming down again.
The door had a coat of shiny black enamel that had been washed or repainted recently. An iron knocker was bolted beneath a shuttered slit too narrow for even a child’s hand to pass through. When she banged the knocker hard against the door, the resulting boom sent her brows up toward her hairline. Steel? Looks like dear auntee has prospered since I left. She knocked again.
The shutter slid open. “Who’s that?”
“Lylunda-Elang. Auntee Zaintze, want to talk to you.” -
“Luna?” Quick glitter of an eye at the slit. “Ahh, it is you. Just a minute. This takes some doing, you know.”
The slide snapped shut. Lylunda heard scribble-scrabble noises muffled through the steel and stepped back when the heavy slab began swinging open.
“Hurry, child. Jaink knows who’s watching out there.”
* * *
The hallway inside the door was short, narrow, and lined with metal plates. There were a pair of dim presslamps stuck up on the plates, casting just enough light to let her see the tiny bent figure scuttling along ahead of her.
She turned a corner, went through another door into a small, bright jewel of a room, clean and filled with light from a line of small windows up near the ceiling and mirrors everywhere that caught the light and passed it about.
“I was just about to make some tea. You used to like Auntee Zizi’s tea. I’ve got some of those macaroon
s baked fresh today, from Olcin the Baker, you remember him? He’s been doing well enough, he’s thinking of sponsoring his youngest daughter, the pretty one, into Canto clan, she’s classic Behilarr, even more than you, luv. Got white wings in her hair and a profile pure as a coin. He’s got some families interested and there’re those in the Izar who’d be willing to add to the dower. Just put that… urn… sack down anywhere, I’ve got a tiny little fresher if you’d like to wash off the dust.”
Lylunda bit into the crispy macaroon and sighed with pleasure. When her mouth was clear, she said, “No one in twenty star systems bakes like Okin.”
Zaintze smiled and refilled the two delicate china cups. “Which brings up a point, Luna. You got out. Why’d you come back? You in trouble?”
“Let’s just say I annoyed some folk and I need some time to cool off.”
“Law trouble?”
“No warrants out, Auntee Zi. Hired noses doing the looking. Private thing.”
“Going to follow you here?”
“Depends. I don’t do a lot of talking about where I
come from, but there are sniffers who might figure it out.”
“Was what you did worth it?”
“Oh, yes. I’m not hurting for the coin, Auntee Zi. I just needed a place where I could watch my back.”
“Good. I’d hate to see Meerya’s daughter hopping from fire to fire for nothing. Talking about watch your back…” She broke off, frowned at Lylunda.
“Yah, I figured ways haven’t changed all that much since I left. Who do I see for protection and how much will it cost?”
“You remember Grinder Jiraba?”
“Big kid, a year older than me. Had girls for every day of the month and two for JainkEve.” She didn’t say that she’d been one of those girls, using sex with Grinder to keep the others off her, though she suspected Zaintze knew it well enough. “And he was a lot smarter than most rip-and-runners.”
“That’s him. Hasn’t changed his ways either when it comes to women, so if you don’t want to play, let him know up front. What it is, about five years ago, he Went head-to-head with Pouska, I know you remember him. They say Pouska’s poisoning Haundi Zetin’s fish these days. No one knows anything for sure except he’s not around any more and Grinder’s running the Tzar.” She slipped a slice of ranja fruit onto Lylunda’s plate and set another macaroon beside it. “Protection won’t be cheap, but it’s good. And it’ll cover Star Street. Fifty zilars a week.” She made a deprecating gesture with one thin, bony hand. “You count as an outsider, Luna, can’t do anything about that. “Hundred zilars bonus pay if he has to off a nose that gets too pushy and won’t take no. Fifty zilars bonus for a discourager.”
“You’re right it’s expensive. Could be worse, I suppose. He have a credit comm?”
“What do you think?”
“I think he does.”
“Good to see you haven’t lost your edge. Account on Helvetia, eh? Not just brag, then.”
“Trapped account with a dead drop, Auntee Zi. You and Mum taught me to keep my cash away from sticky fingers.”
“Gratifying to see something we skid finally sank in.” Zaintze grinned and tapped the back of Lylunda’s hand. “Another lesson. We’d best find you some work. Don’t want the blood lice thinking you’re a lady of leisure.”
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”
“More than a month?”
“Yah. Maybe as much as a year. Depends on if things start hotting up.”
“A year? Oo-ee, child. That is some mad you conjured.”
Lylunda shrugged.
“Hm. You went for to be a pilot. Make it?”
“Yah. Why?”
“Was thinking. Grinder might eat the-protection fee for a favor or two.”
“I won’t work on my back, not now, not ever.”
“Not that kind of favor. Grinder’s been bringing in stuff, tapping into the Star Street kephalos to slide the goods past Behilarr eyes, but the keyboarder was a graghead and ODed last month.”
“Weapons?”
“We’re not that stupid, Luna. ’Tronics and medicas.”
We, Lylunda thought. I begin to see the back-behind of all these pretties. “I’ve done this before and no brag, just truth, I’m rather good at it. Set up the meet and we’ll see how it goes. But he’d better find someone for me to train. Make it real clear, Auntee Zi, this isn’t a permanent thing. I’m outta here soon as I think it’s safe.”
“Grinder’s second son, his name’s Herred, they call him Bug, he’s near as much a whiz as you were, Luna. But he won’t be going anywhere. Some sickness that come off a tradeship when he was just four killed his Mam and a lot of others and gave him brittle bones. Has to wear an exo all the time which is why he got the name Bug. But bright, yah, he’s bright. Plays with numbers like some boys play with knives. He’s holding shop, working the lines Lerdo the Graghead set up, but he’s not ready to make new, though he thinks he is. Better if you handle the tap a while and teach him enough to make sure he doesn’t slip and blow the whole operation.”
Fun, Lylunda thought. Bug, huh! Like me? If I’d had to deal with me that age, I’d have strangled me. Ba da, what I have to, 1 can do. It’ll save a lot of potheration, having Grinder’s shadow on me. “I need a room. Somewhere I won’t be hassled.”
“I know just the place.”
5
The room was small, but solid-grills on the windows, a door with a bar-lock ’and a sheet of plasteel laminated to the inside, up on the third floor of a five-key building. It had a tiny alcove with a hotplate and a miniature oven set into the wall, and the bed was a narrow cot, hard enough to pound yarns on. There was a coinbath down the hall and a small greengrocers on the ground floor where vegetables and eggs were expensive but available without having to face the dangers of the street, especially after dark.
On her first day in the new place, Lylunda soaked the ankle and wrapped it’in a pneumabrace, shot it with pain suppressant, and gave herself a full spectrum kataph to flush out the parasites she’d picked up on her way into the city.
She dozed for a long-time to let the drugs work, then spent the evening planning and revising plans until she was tired of tramping along the same ruts: It was full dark out when she woke to a chime that left her confused until she remembered what the concierge had said about the mail warn.
It was a note from Zaintze giving the details of her appointment tomorrow with Grinder Jiraba-and along with the note, a parcel with clothing the old woman had bought for her. Plus a hefty bill for that clothing.
She looked it over and grinned. “Cunning old lukie. Wonder how much she padded this.”
There were two plain black skirts with narrow bands of embroidery about hems that would hit her around the ankles, two plain white blouses with high necks and long sleeves and two hemmed lengths of black silk for folding about her head. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of wearing long sleeves and a demi-turban in the steamy heat that belonged with this time of the year, but Auntee Zi was right. This was righteous garb, announcing don’t mess with me. There were also half a dozen pairs of silk underpants and three sleeveless undershirts. And Zaintze’d got the size right. Cunning old lukie indeed.
She fixed an omelet and sat on the bed to eat it, her injured ankle propped on one of the straightback chairs. When she finished, she set the plate on the bed beside her, propped the second foot beside the first, and watched the sky turn improbable colors through the bars of the window.
How very strange… she hadn’t thought about it until now… until she saw the calendar in the greengrocers…
You don’t think about planetary dates much when you’re ’splitting here and ’splitting there. It doesn’t seem worth the bother, all those different ways of reckoning. Ship’s kephalos stayed on universal time, that’s all you needed.
She’d looked at the calendar because of the picture, a phot of Hutsarte from the transfer station with the interesting pale fan of t
he River Jostun’s outflow. Then she read the month. Begiberru, the Month of Buds. The days were numbered in their forty small squares and twenty-five had been crossed off with a red crayon. Twenty-sixth of Begiberru.
Fifteen years ago to the day, her mother died.
Three months later she had her place as trainee and she’d left, so filled with anger it was not possible to grieve.
The layered colors of the sunset blurred as she finally wept for Meerya and her useless death.
6
On her second day in the Izar, Lylunda dressed in the new clothing, tucked Zaintze’s note with its instructions into a wristpouch next to a small stunrod, and left the rooming house with her keys on a chain round her waist, dropped inside her skirt where they’d be less vulnerable to a snatch-and-grab.
Grinder’s Place was on the far side of the Izar, a huge old warehouse tucked between a slaughterhouse and a flash freeze plant, its back butted against the Wall. From its flat roof you could look down into Star Street or watch the shuttles from the transfer station and the Freeships landing most hours of the day and night.
The sour stench from Star Street mixed with the sweetish aroma of old blood to thicken the air until you almost had to chew it before you could breathe it. She’d forgotten that stench and had trouble keeping her lunch down as she turned a corner and the full glory of it hit her in the face. She thought about it and decided that she appreciated Grinder’s subtlety. Those who lived here got used to the smell; intruders tended to betray themselves as they leaned against the nearest wall and vomited.
The warehouse was a busy place, sleds moving in and out, crates and barrels crowded into every inch of space. Drunks and other sentient debris of various shapes and species sprawled beside the walls in the meager shade provided by shallow niches. In the alley between the warehouse and the flash freeze plant, a standup whore with dead eyes endured the grunting efforts of one of the derelicts who’d panhandled some coin and spent it on her instead of his usual brand of self-destruction.