“You are a child again,” Lystra said grimly. “You have been for two years and more. When will it end?”
Rilwen seemed not to hear.
“Then tell Spinel why you stay here, Unspoken. Spinel is a shaper of stone.”
Her eyes widened at him. Uneasily Spinel stepped back a pace, thinking that the Gathering could Unspeak him, too. But Rilwen lunged at the mound of pebbles and scooped up a palmful, which she held in his face. “Then you…explain…which cups nothingness into a shape one can touch and feel.”
Spinel flinched at this demand, of which he had missed half the words. “Well,” he muttered, “it’s just, you know, the stuff a planet’s made of.”
“Not lifestuff. No living thing made these.”
“Well, people can make some kinds, out of fire and—” He lacked the Sharer words. “Anyhow, people cut stones, polish them, and even add colors.”
“But do you shape stone from your own flesh, as you grow bone, as the snail grows its shell?”
“A lot of sweat goes into it, I’ll say that.”
Rilwen considered this. “If I could just see that…it might make a difference. Traders never shape stone. They call it…that prisons nothingness.”
Spinel knew he had missed something.
“Magic,” Lystra translated. “Magic shells of emptiness. That is what Kyril calls stone.”
Blood rushed to his face. “It is not magic. It’s hard work—our hard work. Where do you think traders get their gemstones? I should know.” Crystal structures, cleavage planes, and all his father’s teachings whirled in his mind, trapped in words he could not translate.
Rilwen held up a starstone. “A star from the sky, trapped inside. That is what they say.”
“Some of us know better,” said Lystra.
“You don’t.”
Lystra shuddered all over. “I should not be here. Eat something, will you? I’ll wait for you, always.”
“Always I go back to the Valan raft,” Rilwen went on, “always hoping that the next stone I find will reveal the mystery. And when I do find out, Lystra, I will share it with you.”
Lystra tore herself away, and Spinel hurried after her.
As they rowed back to the raft core, Spinel’s eyebrows knotted and he jabbed angrily at the raft seedlings that lay ahead. What right did any merchant have to deny Spinel’s craft, that which earned his father bread? Nisi was a trader; he would get the truth from her. How in Torr’s name had she dared return to Shora, knowing what her own House had done?
“By all the Nine Legions,” he exclaimed in Valan, “you should call on the Patriarch for justice.”
“Whose fault is obsession?” Lystra asked. “What would your ‘Patriarch’ say? Should we not share our own cure, first?”
“Sickness is bad,” he agreed, “but to feed on someone else’s sickness is worse.”
“That’s why we stopped sharing with traders. We must not feed on their sickness.”
Spinel thought this over. The boat swayed as a broad raft seedling bumped up against it, unheeded. “Do you still sit on the traders’ steps?”
“Always. At each shop, a few of us witness. My shift is this afternoon.
“Then I’ll go with you.” Immediately he felt better, knowing he could do something, however small. What would old Uriel the Spirit Caller say, if he knew the use of starstones on Shora?
When Spinel and Lystra arrived at the traders’ raft, there were five sisters sitting on the doorstep of Kyril’s shop. Trurl and Yinevra he knew, and Elonwy the Fearful, a wormrunner whose belly was full and stretchmarked with child. The others Lystra named from Kiri-el and from another neighboring raft. Yinevra got up to let Lystra take her place. Yinevra’s needle eyes stared at Spinel, but she left without a word.
Trurl moved aside, pressing into her neighbor to make room for two of them on the step. Spinel and Lystra inserted themselves in the lineup, a solid wall of amethyst at the trader’s door. Their scent mingled headily with the spices and oil smells at his back, from the shop.
Behind in the shop, hidden voices were muttering. Spinel’s pulse quickened. “Will they dump us in the sea?”
“Sh,” said Trurl. “They gave up on that last week. But they still refuse to share speech.”
He sat on in silence. In the harbor, tugboats churned to keep pace with the Sharer raft system. The sea rumbled and groaned, a counterpoint to the muffled voices and footfalls from behind. How many names could come from the sea? Merwen, Usha, Lystra…Spinel? Perhaps the sea would call every name, sometime, if only you waited long enough.
The sun was high, and sweat beaded on their foreheads though the air was still cool. Spinel felt comfortably warm, even sleepy, propped up by Trurl on one side and Lystra on the other. Aside from tugboats, the harbor was deserted, until a small Sharer rowboat appeared. The boat docked, and its occupant walked toward the shop. She was Rilwen.
Lystra’s leg tautened beneath his arm. Spinel breathed faster. He wondered whether Rilwen meant to join them or climb over them. Instead, she came to a halt several paces away and gravely regarded her sisters. Then she seated herself crosslegged, facing them, a hunched sphinx. For a long while they sat thus, stare into stare.
Something yanked Spinel’s shoulder and dragged him up the step. He cried out and twisted in the doorway, to face a hulk of a man in billowing shirt and trousers who thrust his lips out in amazement. “By the Nine,” the man growled down at Spinel, “just what’re the likes of you doing here? If you’re a catfish, I’m a cut chalcedony.”
“What do you mean, ‘catfish’? I’m—” Spinel grimaced and stumbled as the man pulled him into the shop.
“Easy now,” called a voice from the darkness. As Spinel’s eyes adjusted to the absence of sunlight, he recognized Kyril behind the counter. The face of the genial proprietor was now drawn and tight-lipped. “Son,” Kyril said, “you look like you need to raise your dose of Apurpure.”
“What dose? Let me go.”
“Catfish-lover.” His captor’s grip drove pins into his flesh. “That Hyalite degenerate is bad enough—at least she comes here dressed decent. You know you’ll sprout gills and a tail before long?”
“That’s a damned—” Spinel swallowed the rest of his retort, fearing the fellow would smash his face in.
“Release him, Rutile,” said Kyril in a tired voice.
Rutile did so, with a shove.
“Son, you’re in bad trouble,” said Kyril. “We could ship you back to prison.”
“Prison? What for?”
“Disorderly conduct. Indecent exposure.”
Spinel flushed. “I’ll ship you back. For lies and indecent pricing. And selling starstones, to boot.”
Rutile grumbled, “That’s a lie. No law against it, anyhow.” But he sketched a starsign in the air.
“False advertising?” Kyril suggested with a quirk in his lip. “You might have a case—against the Hyalite House, not us. Son, do you think I see any of those profits? I earn a wage; I got a wife and kids back home. And we’re all scared out of our socks, now that the moon trade’s dropped to zero. The Council is ready to fire the lot of us.”
“Well,” said Spinel, “I used to go hungry sometimes, when the stoneshop got no customers. But at least we did honest work.”
“Let me at him,” said Rutile. “I’ll teach the kid a lesson.”
“Look, son,” said Kyril, “I’ll drop charges, if you cooperate. I must send you back to Valedon, for your own good.”
“No.” Whatever would Cyan say, to have him back in disgrace? Spinel raised his voice. “No, you can’t send me back!”
The men looked up. Sharers from the step were entering the store, Lystra, Trurl, and the Kiri-el sister. “Share the day, sisters,” came Trurl’s nasal voice. “We are deeply honored that at last you share words with us. Has Spinel explained the case to your satisfaction?”
“Cursed catfish! Get out, or I’ll—”
“Shut up, Rutile,” Kyril barked at him. In a cordial
tone he said, “Share the day, Trurl Slowthinker. Did Sharers not agree to remain outside the shop, if left alone?”
“But sister Rutile herself invited one of us inside.”
“The boy is a Valan, subject to Valan law.”
“Indeed,” said Trurl. “Spinel is even a ‘shaper of stone.’ Did he share with you our problem with stonetrading?”
“He accused us of ‘liesharing.’ It takes two to share a lie,” Kyril said smoothly.
“And two to cure it,” Trurl agreed.
“Get out!” Rutile was hoarse. “They broke the truce; dump them, I say.”
“Leave us,” Kyril pleaded. “Leave now, and we’ll keep the peace.”
“You are angry. You are unable to share reason now. We’ll leave.” Trurl headed for the door, and the others followed.
Spinel started out, but Rutile’s arm snagged him. “Ow! Let me go.”
Lystra swung her hip back through the doorway. “Spinel comes too.”
“We’re just sending him home,” said Kyril.
“No, you won’t, you’ll send me to—”
Rutile clapped a hand over Spinel’s mouth. Spinel writhed and tried to scream.
“Spinel comes too,” Lystra repeated.
The other sisters entered the shop, all five of them.
“I can’t take any more!” Rutile yelled over Spinel’s ear. “If I don’t dump them out, I’ll knock them all senseless.”
Kyril threw up his hands. “What can I tell you? Go on, dump them in the sea.”
Rutile bellowed some names, and other men appeared. Over the din, Lystra called out, “If Spinel doesn’t come too, every mother and child of Per-elion will show up tomorrow, enough of us to sink your raft.”
“We’ll dump him too, the catfish-lover. Haul them out, men,” ordered Rutile.
The Sharers went limp. Their flesh squeaked on the linoleum as they were dragged out by their feet, including pregnant Elonwy, with some difficulty since a fully relaxed body is slippery to maneuver. Spinel kicked and bit at the three Valans who hustled him out, until one cuffed his head and stunned him. All seven witnessers were crowded into a small craft similar to the one in which Merwen and Usha had lived on Valedon. When the traders’ raft dipped out of sight, all were shoved overboard.
Spinel gasped for breath among the rolling waves. Lystra and Trurl made sure he kept up with them for the long pull back to Raia-el.
After dinner, Berenice was looking forward to schooltime, when Spinel turned to her. “I know where your ‘wealth’ comes from, Nisi the Deceiver.” He spoke Sharer, except for the one word.
Berenice realized, with alarm and a touch of envy, that Spinel was absorbing Shora far more rapidly than she had, for all her childhood years on the Ocean Moon. Merwen’s success had astounded her; she had been convinced the sudden “purple” would drive Spinel mad. Perhaps the way of Sharers came easier to a signless youth with so little to lose.
“I know my own name, at least,” she replied to him.
“So you’re frank about liesharing. What good is it?”
“Beware to share quick judgment, shaper of stone. Whose stones have we traded, all these years?”
Spinel looked startled. “Well, I didn’t know,” he said, switching to Valan. “We sold you no starstones, that’s for sure.”
“No wonder you stayed poor.” His self-righteousness nettled her. “Would your father have stopped selling to us, had he known?”
“We needed the business, to eat. Just like Kyril.” Spinel bit his lip. “But you’re a lady; you have power. Why can’t you use it for justice?”
Berenice sighed. “Power is a ‘sharing’ thing even on Valedon. The more power you hold, the more power holds you. What gives me power: my family? My own mother once sent a police squad here to kidnap me.”
“Kidnap you? Whatever for?”
“To turn my head away from Sharer nonsense. In those days my behavior was an acute embarrassment to the House,” she added dryly.
“Well? Did you escape?”
“I hid beneath the raft, where the shockwraith dwells. The ships and sirens and sniffer servos did not think to look there. Later, my mother came to her senses—and I came to mine. I stopped making trouble, came home a few weeks each year, and accepted the fiancé they chose.” They knew her taste, she thought ruefully. “And I agreed to—” She stopped. Though Sharers knew of Berenice’s ongoing dialogue with Talion, they could not guess what a slippery game it was.
“Well, we’ll show them,” Spinel announced. “We’ll send all the traders back where they came from, for good.”
“A regular Doorcloser you’ve become.” Berenice sighed and shook her head. “Soon they won’t need trade anymore. They’ll gather their own herbs and seasilk. It’s started already; the boycott will only hasten it.”
“But—we won’t let them, that’s all,” Spinel insisted. “We’ll fight them off.”
“How? You’re here, and I’m here, to prove Valans human. Even Yinevra will not strike another human.”
“That’s crazy. You can’t just sit back and die.”
“At best, you could hope for accommodation.”
Spinel looked away, his eyes anxious and his mouth small. “Is that what Merwen thinks?” he asked in a low voice.
Berenice smiled wryly. “I wish I knew what Merwen thinks. One hope remains: when Malachite comes—”
Spinel gasped and clapped his hands. “The Patriarch’s Envoy—here? He’ll set everything right.”
“So long as both sides stay cool until then.”
8
THERE WAS NO end in sight to the boycott, so the shockwraith hunt could be put off no longer. Yinevra had been an expert hunter, ten years ago, before steel cables came and the hunts were abandoned. So Yinevra planned the hunt, and Lystra was determined to go.
Merwen shared fear for her daughter. On the night before the hunt, she visited Yinevra. “Lystra is on starworm duty tonight,” Merwen reminded her. “She will be tired tomorrow.”
“We all are.” Yinevra’s chin jutted at Merwen. “We all wear our webbing to the bone. Such is the price of independence.”
Merwen stilled her body, letting tension ebb through her fingers. “Lystra is not as independent as she seems. She has yet to name herself.”
“She is strict with herself, that girl.”
“And subconsciously, perhaps, she still wants me to be strict with her.”
“Well, then,” said Yinevra. “See to it that she shares your will on this matter.”
Merwen was thinking that she could sleep outside the silkhouse that night, if Lystra insisted on joining the hunt. Then Lystra would shout and stamp her feet and be secretly glad to give in.
A smile fluttered at Yinevra’s lips. As so often, she must have read Merwen’s thoughts. “Am I to believe that the subtlest wordweaver Shora ever named, who opened hearts between Gatherings Unspoken for a decade, and has flung herself undaunted at the Stone Moon—can’t share the will of her own daughter? What a mystery is life.”
“A wordweaver’s tongue is tied fast in her own home.” A rush of anger followed her calm reply, and she nearly let out the one word that would have crushed in return. Merwen held back, partly because she recognized the old anger welling up with it, for the wrong she should long ago have forgiven.
At any rate, Yinevra the Unforgiven lapsed into pensiveness. “Lystra knows her selfname. She is waiting for Rilwen,” Yinevra said, supplying the word herself. The two girls were lovesharers, and Lystra still hoped the other would heal. Their love would have brought peace to their mothers, as well; instead, Rilwen’s fate had driven them apart.
Merwen pressed Yinevra’s hand. “I share your sorrow. And you see why it is you who must tell Lystra to stop putting off her life.”
A series of fleeting expressions played over her face. “I’m trying, Merwen, though not with words. Words will help your daughter no more than mine.”
As it turned out, everyone had some role to
fill in the hunt, even the younger ones, who would wait at the airhole to assist the hunters beneath the raft’s underside. Spinel said he wanted to go down with the hunters, just to get a glimpse of the dreadful beast.
“Will he be safe, Usha?” Merwen asked. “He swims better now, but still—”
“He swims,” Lystra interrupted, “well enough to watch by the airhole. Someone must be posted there. Why do you fuss over him so? You’d think he was prize breeding stock.”
Usha was scandalized. “I’ve had it with you, daughter,” Usha declared. “If my ears have to share another shred of such nonsense I’ll hold my breath until—”
“All right, I’m sorry. Let me go. We’ve got to set the bait, and the knives and the…” Lystra left, with the usual spring in her step, although dark rings surrounded her eyes.
Merwen turned to Spinel. She lifted his hand and circled the palm with her finger. “Are you sure? I promised,” she reminded him.
“I’ll be all right. I want to share my part,” he said.
Lystra watched Yinevra descend the airhole, gripping niches carved into the raftwood as she went. A rope at her waist would hold her, in the unlikely event that she slipped. It was perhaps a dozen sister-lengths to the underside, about halfway out from the center of the raft core, which was as far as a shockwraith normally wandered. Shockwraiths avoided ocean turbulence, which could disrupt their delicate stomach bulbs.
The rope tugged, so Yinevra was clear. Lalor went down next, then Kithril, Yinevra’s lovesharer. Lalor’s lovesharer, Shaalrim, would have gone, an excellent swimmer with a very cool head, but now that a child swam inside her it was out of the question. Shaalrim had shared her sisters’ judgment philosophically and now was here to hoist the net full of bait down the airhole. Wellen stood by proudly, having caught the bait fish and tied them into the net. Mirri the apprentice lifeshaper was prepared for emergencies. Merwen and others stood by, and even Weia was there, ready to scream for help in case of trouble.
And at the edge of the airbell stood Flossa and Spinel, ready to descend as watchers. They were adjusting beacons on their heads. Lystra tapped her own for surety, snug against her forehead. She pulled on her long gloves shaped from the hide of a trailfin, the one denizen of the dark side who was safe from the shockwraith. Trailfin hide was impervious to the formic acid that filled the shockwraith’s delicate stomach bulbs. “Name your duties, sisters,” Lystra said.
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