Wisteria heard a twig snap behind a house. In the shadows she glimpsed the mayor’s Dryad stealing clothes from a line, her hair and skin silvered in the moonlight. The Dryad wore a long knife on her hip. When she saw Wisteria, the Dryad crept off without a word, heading into the woods outside town. Wisteria wished that she, too, could run from this place.
Wisteria took a step, and something crunched under foot. She reached down and picked it up: a panpipe dropped by a Pwi.
It was all that was left of the blue holiday.
Chapter 9: Under the Cover of Darkness
Phylomon flitted from the shadow of one tree after another as he crept to Moon Dance. He’d killed a few slavers in town, but there were others that he had missed, he felt sure. And then there were the kinsmen and friends of those who had died. More than once, he'd faced reprisals by would-be assassins.
He felt bone weary after treating the farmer’s daughter for a parasitic worm infection, but his very soul felt worn after killing the slavers. For a thousand years he’d been trying to save his people. Sometimes they seemed like ignorant children, too unwise and too willful for their own good.
By the time he reached the inn, it was well past midnight. He sneaked up the hallway to the guestrooms. The floors were carpeted with worn animal furs. After a thousand years of living furtively in the wild, he could move as silently as any man alive. There was no swishing of clothes, no thump of a footfall as he passed. The only sound came when a floorboard creaked beneath his weight. He halted, silent for long minutes so that anyone who might be listening for his return would think that it was only the old inn settling on its foundations.
He warily unlocked the door to his room, keeping as silent as possible. He cracked the door open.
Sure enough, he could smell an intruder, a big man, rank from sweat. He also smelled a tallow candle burning, with a hint of lavender scent—the kind that a whore might use to freshen her parlor. No one rushed the door, so he imagined that the man was hiding. He heard a soft snore, breath catching. He smiled.
More than once, a would-be assassin had fallen asleep while waiting for him. By slow degrees, Phylomon swung the door wide.
On a stool beside the bed, a single yellow candle guttered, burned down to a stump. That seemed odd. Assassins usually didn’t announce themselves that way.
Beneath a tangled pile of blankets, a single bear of a man slept. Otherwise the room was empty. The occupant of the bed was none other than Theron Scandal, the innkeeper.
Phylomon woke the innkeeper with a kick.
“Oh, oh,” Scandal said groggily. “It’s late.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“I agree,” Phylomon said. “I’d heard that this room didn’t have vermin. I fancied that meant that for once I would sleep alone in a bed.”
“My apologies,” Scandal said. He stretched. “I was going to get you some dinner, but you weren’t in your room.”
“You want something more,” Phylomon said. “I can see it in the way your shoulders bunch, and you lean forward. Out with it. I like bluntness in a man.”
Scandal bunched his dark brows in thought, as if he were unused to such straightforward talk. “I’m worried about this trip I’m taking,” Scandal said. “I told you that we had three humans coming with us, but I’m afraid that after tonight they won’t be coming anymore.”
“They backed out?” Phylomon asked.
“You killed them,” Scandal corrected. “Denneli and Coormon Goodman, along with Anduil Smith.”
“Three slavers were going with you? Makes you wonder how much a human innkeeper is worth on the slave blocks in Craal, doesn’t it? I’m sure you would fetch a great price as a chamberlain.”
Scandal’s eyes widened. “They wouldn’t!”
“They planned to, I suspect,” Phylomon said, “yet they were going to too much trouble just to get at you. I suspect that they planned something more.” The blue man bent his head in thought. “With the fishery down, I suppose that some in the town have moved elsewhere. You will have lost some fighting men.”
“Ayaah,” Scandal said. “They’ve been leaving all summer, looking for work down south. I’ve been worried: we’ve got three cannons pointed at the bay, but they won’t do much good if pirates came over land. They could sail a ship up Muskrat Creek during high tide and walk over the hills in an hour. Sixty men of war, at night, could take this town.”
“The slavers wanted your quest to fail,” Phylomon suggested.
“Perhaps,” Scandal said. “I’ve never liked Denneli Goodman. If you told me that he rapes babies, I’d likely believe it. But not the others. Coormon—not him. He was a wild kid, but I thought that he’d changed. And Anduil—always seemed a stout man, trustworthy, honorable….”
Phylomon looked out the window, Freya had joined Woden in the night sky, and it was getting lighter. “I killed three men named Goodman tonight. They were your mayor’s brothers?”
“Ayaah,” Scandal said.
“I believe they were in it together,” Phylomon said. “Jassic wanted his ‘boys’ to kill me. He may have been the ringleader.”
“You think that there are more slavers?” Scandal said in disbelief.
Perhaps Scandal couldn’t imagine such a thing, but Phylomon had lived too long. Too often a fair face had hidden a foul heart. Men who seemed saintly were little more than cunning monsters.
“There may be more,” Phylomon said. “And if there are, we should be able to lure them out. Leave an open invitation for other townsmen to join us on the trip to Seven Ogre River. Perhaps our enemies will introduce themselves. I’m tempted to kill the first human who tries to join the quest. But what of the Pwi who are coming? Can they be trusted?”
“The Pwi didn’t choose to come,” Scandal said. “We’ve got a Spirit Walker in town. He ordered them to go.”
“I’ve known many a Spirit Walker who couldn’t look five days into the future. Is this one any good?” Phylomon asked, then realized that he could find that out himself. He could test the man’s skills. If the Spirit Walker had seen the future, then he would know that Phylomon would test him.
Phylomon excused himself from the room, crept outside. He stepped into the street, looked around. With the moons up, there was hardly a shadow in town.
If the Spirit Walker had seen the future, it didn’t make any difference which way Phylomon went, the shaman should be waiting ahead. Phylomon walked up the hill above the inn, through the brush, where the pines hid everything in shadows. A single large redwood stood atop the hill.
When Phylomon reached the redwood, the voice of the Neanderthal came to him from the shadows. “I am here,” Chaa said softly. “I have been waiting.”
Phylomon saw the Neanderthal then, sitting in the shadow of a rock. He bowed to the shaman in respect.
“Sit,” Chaa said. “The night is lovely. It is good to enjoy the darkness while we still can. Soon, a greater darkness comes.”
Phylomon sat at Chaa’s feet and waited for the Spirit Walker to speak.
He knew that Chaa would say only what he desired to say, and Phylomon had seen the vast psychic powers of the pure-blooded Pwi too often to doubt the shaman’s powers.
“You fear to take the serpent journey,” Chaa said, “for you fear that your enemies will destroy you.”
The shaman was perceptive. “I tell you this: Your enemies will have power over you. Time, death—these things you fear. You cannot live forever. You sense that you are growing old, and that your life will fail.”
Phylomon had never told anyone this. His symbiote had kept him alive for a thousand years, and many people thought him immortal, but it could not keep him alive much longer. The Starfarers had had rejuvenation treatments that extended their lives for millennia, but that technology was lost here on Anee.
“The thing that you want most,” Chaa said, “is to save your people, to save them even if they do not care enough to save themselves. This … this can be accomplished. You must walk the path of t
he crushed heart. If you go on this journey with Theron Scandal, perhaps it can succeed.
“Yet succeed or not, within three years, Phylomon, you will die for your efforts. Your death will be gruesome.
“So, this I must ask you. Will you go in the hopes of saving your people, knowing that it will hasten your end?”
Phylomon hesitated. He’d hoped for another decade or two, maybe even ten. He answered, “I suspect that if we took a poll of the dead, none of them would say that their deaths came easily.”
Chaa nodded. “You have long been a protector of the Pwi.”
“Not just of the Pwi,” Phylomon said. “My people are a danger to themselves. Always they have tried to find an easy path back to the stars, but their road leads them only down. Long ago, when some of our Starfarers proposed taking the Pwi as slaves to build their war machines, I warned them against this. Now, the slavers in Craal have fallen so far …”
“The time has come when you can protect us no longer,” Chaa said. “The armies of Craal swell to six million. All your efforts to stop them will be vain. But Tull Genet can destroy the armies of Craal. I have asked him to go on this journey.”
Phylomon drew a deep breath in surprise. He hadn’t met Tull, did not know the man at all, yet hope suddenly flared in him. “I’ve battled the Slave Lords for eight hundred years, and in all those centuries I have lost that war one slow battle at a time! Their warriors outnumber us a hundred to one. Tell me that you do not speak in half truths! Tell me plainly that my death will mean something!”
Chaa considered. “The paths of the future branch a thousand, thousand directions in a man’s lifetime. Because of this, it is impossible to walk all of a man’s future. Even the best Spirit Walker can only see a few years down the road, and even then he may be mistaken. But I did not have to walk far into Tull’s future. I tell you that within two years, Tull can crush their necks. The armies of Craal can fall. But only if Tull first makes the serpent catch.”
“Then I will go with him, no matter what the price!” Phylomon said.
Chaa said, “I tell you now, the day will come when you regret this decision. Do not be afraid to teach him your secrets.”
Well past midnight, dazed and hungry and not sure what to do, Wisteria found herself beside the Smilodon River. It flowed softly in the late summer, with barely a gurgle, and no sound of waves lapping the shore. The scent of night air and redwoods had crept down from the hills.
Her stomach cramped from hunger, and a chill had taken her. She’d never felt so desolate, so alone.
She was trying to make plans. She was completely destitute. She had an education, knew how to invest and make money, but she’d never had her father’s keen mind for numbers, and now she didn’t have so much as one silver penny.
That left manual labor. She’d never done a day’s work in her life. The family’s cook had bought their food and prepared it. A butler had attended the house. Pwi laborers did everything else.
Wisteria hardly knew how to sew a button.
Who would hire her?
She cast her mind about. There were logging and mining camps nearby. There were fishing boats. A few of the locals produced things—clay mugs, glasswares.
But most of the hard work was done by the Pwi, with their stout backs and strong arms.
She kept thinking of Scandal’s inn. He might want a human serving girl to take care of his human customers. With some diligent work, she might even learn how to cook.
But she didn’t dare kid herself. She had no talent for cooking, at least none that she knew of. And most of Scandal’s women worked upstairs, in the “bridal chambers.”
I wouldn’t be the first woman to make her living on her back, Wisteria thought. But she doubted that she had a talent even for that. Certainly she had no experience.
Still, there were wealthy people in town who might hire a human girl as a house servant. She glanced uphill, where the big stone houses sat, brooding and monolithic.
At the door of Mayor Garamon Goodman, she was startled to see movement. A candle sputtered in the window to the front room, and a shadowy figure knocked at the door. It cracked, a man entered halfway, spoke quickly, and then crept out.
The mayor himself stepped out afterward, breathed the fresh air, and gazed up at the moons thoughtfully. Thor had risen. She could see the mayor well, the gold chain to his watch gleaming. Then he stepped back into the house.
It was far too late to be keeping company. There had been protectiveness in the mayor’s voice when he’d stopped her from trying to save her father, a hint that they were allies fighting a common foe.
Garamon had helped her father arrange Javan’s sale. He was in this slavery business as deep as anyone.
Suddenly, Wisteria realized that there was another way to make a living—a darker way, one that she had never considered.
She felt angry, hurt, alone. More than anything, she felt helpless right now. She wanted to strike back at the world, hurt someone.
Almost without thinking, Wisteria ran to Garamon’s door and rapped softly.
The mayor jerked the door open. “Again? What—?” he whispered savagely. His beard and breath smelled wet with beer, and he wore a dark cotton robe.
He stood a moment, studying her, and his eyes slowly focused. His sudden silence made it obvious he had not expected her. “What do you want?” Garamon asked softly, as if unwilling to wake his wife and children.
Wisteria did not know how to answer, and then she did, “Vengeance.”
The mayor watched her for a long moment, gauging her. Then he licked his lips. “Vengeance,” he breathed, “can be had in many ways.”
“I want the blue man dead,” Wisteria said evenly “I want to watch the Tech family—all of them—stuffed in the hold of a Craal slave ship, and I want to laugh as I watch.”
The mayor chuckled. “Ayaah, you’ve more spunk than your father ever had, but I’m afraid you’ve lost the family coins. Aren’t you afraid of me? You with nothing to offer, no one to care for you? If I were a slaver, I’d say, ‘She's worth piss in this town. If she got knocked in the head and took a piggyback ride in a sack tonight, who’d miss her?’”
Wisteria studied him. She had nothing to give. She was a beggar. Yet … a week before she’d noticed that Garamon could not conceal the lust in his eyes as he watched the young Pwi women down by the river, as they bent to do their washing. He’s like a dog that way, she thought, always sniffing at the source of joy. So little self control.
Hadn’t her father told her that her body could be a great asset? She opened a button on her blouse, revealing the curve of her breasts, and asked, “A little vengeance. What could it cost?”
The mayor’s jaw dropped, and he wetted his lips with his tongue. She met his eyes, challenging him. He stepped out the door, and closed it quietly behind him.
“This way,” he hissed, taking her by the hand and leading her behind the house to a narrow path. There were rosebushes and trees here, dark vines.
The path was filled with shadows, and here they would be invisible to prying eyes.
Wisteria did not care if they were caught. The path wended its way several hundred yards among grape arbors and trees, always only a few feet behind the nearest house, until Garamon stopped at his family’s cloth shop, then fumbled in a bush by the back door as he looked for a key.
When they were in, he tossed a bolt of cotton on the floor and stood panting a moment, just watching Wisteria.
“Well?” he said, waiting for her to move.
“Then you will do it?” she asked. “You will kill Phylomon? You will sell the Techs into slavery?”
“Ayaah,” Garamon said, “I’ve been thinking on it all night.”
“And what guarantee do I have?”
“My word of honor,” Garamon answered.
“And what is the price?” she asked.
“You’ll be mine,” Garamon answered, his voice husky with lust. “Whenever I want you.”
“I’ll be yours, for one year after the deed,” Wisteria offered. “After that, my life is mine.”
Garamon watched her. “Agreed,” he said. “But I’ll have you now, to see what I’m getting.”
Wisteria pulled off her sandals, wiggled out of her skirt. Garamon watched her. When she stood naked, he reached for her, and his breathing came deep and slow.
Chapter 10: A Pwi Wedding
The sun rode high in the sky and the morning dew had left the grass when Tull returned to his house from Chaa’s. After the executions the night before, the mood in town had been quiet, and the Pwi hesitated to disturb any mourners by walking outside their homes.
As a son of Chaa, Tull would be expected to move his belongings into the family house, but he thought he would let that wait for a few days. He would want his valuables kept at Chaa’s while he was gone, that was certain. The newness of the situation unsettled him.
So he’d decided to spend the day making a new war spear for the journey. So he took a bone from a dimetrodon’s dorsal fin and began sharpening its sides, forming a three-foot-long spearhead. It was the only kind of spearhead one wanted while traveling through territory infested by Mastodon Men and wild mammoths.
Tull felt profoundly aware of the silence in the woods outside of town. When he neared his door, the only sound he could hear was the surf beating against the rocks and sparrows hopping among the laurels by his doorstep.
So when he reached the doorstep, he was surprised to see a figure eight painted with flour upon the grass—a small figure eight, no more than four feet across. Normally when a woman painted the figure eight upon a man’s doorstep, she set all her possessions in one half of the circle—her food, her cooking utensils, her weapons—then she stood with them and waited to see if the man would join her. But there was only a handful of wild daisies in the circle, and no woman.
Tull crouched to look at the daisies, wondering what it could mean. Only a poor woman would have left them, a woman who had nothing but herself to give. Even the poorest Pwi would have brought an object that contained kwea, something to which she had a strong emotional attachment. Perhaps this one loved daisies?
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