The Kindly Ones

by Melissa Scott

  "The other sideboy?" I asked, in the same instant that Rohin said, "lossea?"

  Anath shook his head. "Alive now. I don't know. . . ." His voice trailed off, but then his face sharpened, eyes fixing on something over my right shoulder. "Well, cousin?"

  I glanced awkwardly back, not wanting to relax my hold on Ixora. A young man in racing clothes was struggling across the track toward us, the tattered remains of a Brandr scarf fluttering from his shoulder. He didn't seem to be much hurt, and I saw Anath scowl.

  "The draglines broke," the young man said, and I realized he must be Fen Erling, driver of the third team. "I couldn't do anything."

  Anath's scowl deepened, but then Ixora exploded in my arms, fighting to get at the other driver. Off-worlder or not, it took all my strength to hold her.

  "Liar!" she shrieked, sounding more than ever like a hunting bird. "Fucking liar! You did it on purpose, you did it on purpose, you killed my people!" Her voice broke in a sob as she drew breath. "Liar!"

  "We'll talk later," Anath snapped, eyes on his kinsman. "Get out of my sight."

  Fen drew breath as though he'd protest further, but another scream from Ixora, this time of pure rage, convinced him. He backed off, and I swung Ixora bodily around away from him. Her fury was ebbing, her taut muscles weakening perceptibly, frighteningly, in my grip.

  She sagged suddenly, murmured something about feeling ill, and closed her eyes.

  And then the ambulances were down, settling onto the cleared snow of the track. Teams of orange-suited men burst from the doors even before the machines had touched the ice, came running toward us, med-sleds floating behind them. One of them took Ixora from me—I kept an arm around her until I was sure he had taken her weight and eased her limp form onto the sled. One of the others triggered the protective fields, and they swung away again, heading at a run for the nearer ambulance. More followed—I counted five more, the rest of Ixora's team, then a sixth, walking and towing an unlighted sled. That would be Tabat. I looked away.

  Then all the injured were aboard—the operation could not have taken more than three or four minutes—and the two ambulances lifted just as the Blue Team's vehicle touched down ahead of us. "What will happen to the hoobeys?" I asked.

  Rohin shrugged, holding his face. A livid bruise was beginning to show already, where Ixora had struck him with the whip butt, and he spoke with difficulty. "Some will have to be put down. The rest they'll bring back to the Tower, treat them there."

  I shook my head, exhausted and chilled through despite the heated suit. "We'd better get back. Jesma will want us."

  Anath cleared his throat, sounding almost embarrassed. "You're in no shape to ride a skycycle, Medium, not after all this." He gestured to his grounded carpet. "Come back with us."

  There was nothing I would have liked better—it had a closed, heated passenger compartment, and I wouldn't have to do a thing—but I made myself shake my head. "I promised—" I began, and bit off the rest of the sentence. I had promised Shemer Axtell to return his skycycle in one piece, but that was unimportant. Anath nodded as if he'd read my mind, and I said, "No, but thank you, sor Anath. But Rohin—"

  "No," the Demi-heir said, flatly.

  Anath shrugged. "As you wish." He hesitated a moment longer, expression unhappy and uncertain, and said at last, "The ama Ixora. She was upset."

  I bristled and heard Rohin's whispered malediction before I realized what the Brandr was trying to say. Ixora had called his kinsman a liar and murderer, to his face and before witnesses. Anath was telling me he, at least, would overlook it, and he was of high standing in the mainline kin. "She is hurt," I agreed, and Anath nodded.

  "Good flight," he said, and turned back to his carpet.

  "Of course he tries to cover up," Rohin said fiercely, but he had the sense to keep his voice down. "It was their fault it happened."

  "Then let it be decided in the Council, not by feud," I said, as fiercely. "Give Herself the chance to settle it peacefully. Now come on."

  The flight back to the Axtell Tower was probably the worst of my life. The rest of the meeting was not affected by the accident, of course, so we had to take the long route, skirting the track. My nerves were stretched to the breaking point by the time I brought the cycle into the garages at the base of the Tower. What Rohin was feeling, I could only imagine: he had not spoken a word since we left the wreck site.

  Shemer himself was waiting for us, but he had no news. He waited while we changed out of the dirty sportsuits, then led us through the Tower's maze of corridors to a windowless, well-heated room. Jesma was there before us, along with several others of the Halex party. They all looked up sharply when we entered, half hopeful and half afraid.

  "What in hell's name happened?" Jesma demanded—she was the senior Halex present—and in the same moment, Shemer said, "If there's anything you need, Jesma."

  The Halex bit back her questions, visibly remembering courtesy and the code. "I thank you, no, sor. You've been most kind."

  Shemer said, "If you think of anything, please ask." He seemed for the first time to become aware of the way the assembled Halex were looking at him, willing him to leave, and backed awkwardly away, letting the door slide closed behind him.

  Jesma said again, "What the hell happened?"

  Rohin said, "Fen Erling says the drag cables broke." His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

  "Not likely," one of the others protested.

  "It's hard to tell at this point," I said. I hesitated then, but the bad news had to be told sometime, and Jesma, at least, would know how to deal with it. "Ixora claimed it was done deliberately—that Fen caused the accident on purpose."

  "I'd believe it," someone else said, and a child's voice—a girl's voice—rose above the general rumble of agreement.

  "Not even a Brandr'd deliberately kill hoobeys."

  Jesma was silent, her eyes fixed on my face. "Who'd she say it to?"

  She had seen the implications, as I'd hoped she would. "Fen, and Anath Brandr. But—" I raised my voice a little, cutting off Jesma's angry response. "—Anath is aware that Ixora was hurt. He said as much."

  I didn't dare say more, for fear that the other Halex, including Rohin, would choose to take Anath's words as insult rather than the escape clause he had intended them to be. Jesma chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. At last she said, quite without anger, "That's good of him. Herself may be able to do something, then." She sighed, and shook her head. "We'll know more when we hear from the doctors."

  The doctors' report, when it finally arrived around Sunrise, clock-midnight, was mostly good. Tabat was dead, of course. The sideboy, Iossea, was badly hurt, and would be months in healing, but there was a good chance she'd make a full recovery. The others, including Ixora, were bruised and battered—Zimri had a broken leg, the other brakesman broken ribs, the sideboy a cracked jaw—but could be taken back to the Halex Tower and the Kinship's own doctors. As for the others, the Erling team seemed to have suffered the least, a few broken bones among the lot, but Tasma Fyfe herself had died. It had been a freak thing, the doctors said. She had seemed unhurt, just bruised, had even been helping tend the other injured, when she had complained of feeling unwell. She had sat down on the sledge's splintered runner, closed her eyes, and simply died. The doctors blamed internal bleeding.

  Jesma thanked the doctors as the code demanded, but as soon as the screen went blank, she drew me aside. "This changes things," she said, so softly the others couldn't hear.

  "I don't understand," I said. I was bitter tired, and too upset still to think of sleep.

  "Tasma Fyfe dead. . . ." Jesma's voice was a sleepwalker's, or the voice of someone talking to herself. "Now Fyfe has a grievance."

  "Tabat was killed, too," I said, more harshly than I'd meant.

  Jesma gave me a bitter look. "I care about him, don't worry. But Ixora's made an accusation, and none of the Fyfes did, which gives their claim precedence—even if Anath persuades Fen to keep his mouth shut," she s
aid, overriding my next protest, "which I doubt he can. Tasma was mainline Family, and in line for the genarchy."

  I bit back my first answer. It would do no good. I had known what Orestes was like when I took this job, and I was pledged to work within the system. "What do we do?" I asked.

  Jesma rubbed her reddened eyes. "We inform Herself at once, I think. And then we take everyone who can be moved, and fly home." She looked up at me, and shook her head. "No matter what we do, Trey, there's going to be hell to pay."

  All holds. For we are strong and skilled;

  we have authority; we hold

  memory of evil; we are stern

  nor can man's pleadings bend us.

  —Aeschylus, The Eumenides, 381-384

  Chapter 5

  Rehur

  Accounts of the sledge accident filled the Necropolis's newssheets for two calendar-days after it happened: that sort of scandal-in-the-making was meat and drink to them. There had been a dozen different 'sheets at rehearsal—plain-paper dailies, pink-paper evenings—and he had found time to read them all between his scenes. The news wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, either, and he knew his performance had suffered. It was annoying still to care so much, even for Nora, which was why he was here, in the bar of the Cockaigne Theater, instead of home in bed.

  He sighed, glancing across to the time display flashing above the serving hatch. Almost two in the morning, by the clock: the Eclipse would be starting soon. That was traditionally a time of license, and he wondered briefly if he should try to make it home before full Dark. Feelings were running high after the accident, and ghost or not, he had the Halex face. He shook himself then, more annoyed than ever at his own inability to break free of the Family. You came here, he told himself firmly, to read kata, and you will read this kata-book. Boldisar's waiting for your decision.

  He looked down at the book, frayed pages spread open in the strip of sunlight that came in through the crack in the imperfectly closed shutters. The three columns of print—action summary, dialogue, and the kata, the written description of the carefully integrated movement of live actors and holopuppets—swam in the harsh light, and he looked away again, sighing. It was a good play, The Three Warlords, and the part—the Third Warlord, the lead-villain—was one of the biggest he'd been offered. The problem was that Boldisar wanted a commitment to his puppet theater as well, and Rehur did not want to give it.

  "Reading for a part, Rehur?"

  Rehur glanced up, not sorry for the interruption. A tall, olive-skinned man, his dark hair cut very short, slid into the seat opposite, a sardonic smile on his mobile face. Rehur smiled back, but warily. Ume-Kai was an old acquaintance, if not a friend—they had flats in the same building—but Rehur found it hard to trust the other man. Ume-Kai was a minne, a male player of female roles—with one of the satirical cross-talk companies. Anything and everything was fair game to them, and Rehur had no desire to feature in any of their performances.

  "Thinking about it," Rehur answered.

  "Who with?" Without waiting for an answer, Ume-Kai slid the book out of the other actor's grasp and turned it so that he could read the printed symbols. "The Three Warlords. Boidlisar's people are doing that, aren't they?"

  Rehur nodded—Ume-Kai knew it already, of course; the minnen and mannen couldn't afford to miss anything that happened inside or outside the Necropolis—and waited. Ume-Kai's long mouth curved into a knowing smile.

  "The Third Warlord, right, but a company contract?"

  "Yes," Rehur said again, and to his horror felt himself blushing. He leaned back as casually as he could, away from the band of sunlight.

  Ume-Kai's smile widened. "And we all know Boldisar's real specialty," he said. "How good are you at nureba, Rehur?"

  Rehur bit back his first answer—like most ghosts starting out in the puppet theaters, he'd done his share of nureba, wet work—and then had to suppress the temptation to boast. He shrugged. "I've done it," he said, with what he hoped was convincing unconcern.

  Ume-Kai nodded, the mockery draining from face and voice. "Who hasn't? It's a living. The Third Warlord's a good part, but—"

  "Witchwood's a good company," Rehur finished for him. "I know. But. . . ." He let the sentence trail off unfinished. Witchwood was poor, they couldn't always afford to stage full plays, the plays that gave him the best lead-villain roles. Both he and Ume-Kai knew the situation, but he wasn't about to discuss it with the minne.

  "I was sorry to hear about your Family's troubles," Ume-Kai went on. He glanced at the other man's empty glass. "Get you another?" Rehur shook his head. "I'm stone-broke, Ume."

  "I'll put it on my tab," the minne answered, and was gone before Rehur could refuse again.

  The younger actor sighed, wondering what he'd gotten himself into this time. Technically, of course, the Cockaigne's bar was a private club—only private clubs could stay open during the Day—but only the members of the cross-talk companies attached to the theater had anything approaching members' privileges. Everyone else paid cash, and at the moment, Rehur had precious little of that, and none to spare for drinks. Of course, there'd be some payment for the drink—Ume-Kai wasn't noted for his altruism—but with luck, it would be a price he could afford to pay.

  He watched Ume-Kai turn back from the serving hatch, a drink in each hand, and make his way back through the maze of empty tables. He half hoped the minne would ask him to sleep with him, but that would be too easy. Ume-Kai was bound to want more.

  The minne set both drinks on the scarred table and slid easily into his seat. Rehur sniffed cautiously at the steaming mug, then took a careful sip. It was hot spiced wine, liberally laced with one of the fruited brandies, and he made a mental note not to drink more than one glass.

  Ume-Kai said again, "I was sorry to hear about the accident—assuming it was an accident."

  Rehur made a face. That was Ixora for you, always ready to jump to the attack, without thinking about the consequences. Several different versions of her accusation had made the newssheets, but all agreed that she had insulted Fen Erling to his face. "I wouldn't put it past any of the Brandr," he said carefully, "but Ixora was hardly in any shape to be talking, if the 'sheets have it right."

  Ume-Kai shrugged. "I hear she spent a night in the hospital, but she's out now, and in the Necropolis."

  "Here?" Rehur interrupted. "Why?"

  "Who knows?" the minne said, shrugging again. "I thought you might tell me."

  Rehur shook his head automatically, but his thoughts were suddenly elsewhere. Ixora, in the Necropolis just before Eclipse, with a grudge to settle. . . . Duelling was a very new fashion on Orestes, but it was just the sort of thing she'd do. And Fen Erling was no better. He looked up, and saw Ume-Kai watching him. The minne nodded slowly.

  "I was thinking along those lines myself, but you know her better. I tell you, if she does it, I'll make her—both of them—the laughing-stocks of this planet."

  "What the hell business is it of yours?" Rehur snapped.

  "If they keep bringing their fights here, into the Necropolis, how much longer do you think they'll let us go on?" Ume-Kai's face and voice were for once completely honest in their anger. "I don't care if she is kin of yours, I—we—won't see her destroy the one safe place we have left." Then his face relaxed a little. "Well, obviously I do care, or I wouldn't've come to you "

  "You want me to warn her off? Rehur shook his head. I wonder what Ume has against the Kinships, he thought. There must be something; otherwise, he'd never've gone into a cross-talk company. He touched the ghostmark on his own forehead. "I can't, Ume. Be serious."

  "What about this medium of yours, the off-worlder?"

  "Maturin." The name brought with it the memory of the night after the khy sonon-na, and Rehur smiled in spite of himself. He still had one of the medium's cards someplace, filched from a pocket. He said the name again for the sheer pleasure of it, recognizing his own foolishness. "Trey's probably still at the Tower. That won't help if Ixora's in Dest
iny."

  "So hire a medium," Ume-Kai said impatiently. "There are enough of them around. Hell, I thought you'd appreciate the chance to warn the woman."

  "I do," Rehur said, startled out of his momentary daydream. "Really, I do, and I will warn her, honest. Thank you."

  Ume-Kai nodded, mollified.

  Rehur looked down again at the kata-book, not really seeing the printed columns. The bar of light had changed, its color curdling toward the Eclipse. If Ixora were really in Destiny to fight a duel, he would have to find her soon, before the five hours of darkness gave her the opportunity she'd need. Normally, Ixora stayed at Hills', he thought, but would she stay there, risk her member's rights, if she were setting up an illegal fight? "Since you know so much, Ume, where's Ixora staying?" Anger at the entire situation sharpened his voice. He had thought he would finally be free of the Kinship when he had been declared dead six years before, but now comparative strangers were making demands on him in the Family's name.

  The minne looked down his long nose at the younger man. "I don't know. If you don't care—"

  Rehur winced—he had not really meant to anger the other—and said, with as much sincerity as he could muster, "I'm sorry, Ume, I didn't mean that. I'm worried, that's all."

  Ume-Kai's face relaxed a little, but before he could say anything, the main door slammed back against its stops, throwing a wedge of the fading light across the bar. "What the hell?" Ume-Kai began, and an unfamiliar voice cut him off.

  "Bartender! Put two liters of tsaak in a hot flask, and be quick about it!"

  Rehur turned, frightened by the sudden frown on Ume-Kai's face. The man in the doorway stood with his back to the light, his face in shadow, but there was no mistaking the knots of blue and gold ribbon tied to his sleeve.