by Jo Clayton
She opened the satchel, took out the needier, clipped it inside her shirt. Swardheld had pulled a Pa'ao Teely weaponsmith out of a bad hole last year and got the needier as a thank gift; he passed it on to her along with the harp. He was a good friend, generous, and she seriously adored him, but she was getting deathly sick of saying thank you, thank you for everything she owned. She twitched her shoulders and bent over the satchel, running her finger along the knife hilts. She chose her hideaway knife, its hilt and blade molded from the same piece of Jaje braincrystal. It was flexible as an armsdealer's morals and a bitch to use with any skill, but it was as close to indetectable as a weapon could get. She slipped it into the crystal-lined sheath in her left boot and stood.
As in the other room, there was a band of carving in low relief about three hands wide around the top of the wall, blocky, simplified, animal forms which incorporated side, front, and top views in each image, along with inside and out. A berry vine (click on the langue imprint: amtapishk) twined about them and spread its leaves between them, punctuating the spaces with its bumpy fruit. There were ventilation slots above the frieze and holes pierced through it among the twists and turns of the amtapishka vine; the light coming through those holes was diffuse and unsteady; a rustling whisper came with it along with an assortment of muted creaks and groans; if she had to guess she'd say whoever built the place had mirrors bringing in sunlight from outside.
She slung the strap of the harpcase over her shoulder and went out.
The hallway beyond the door ended in a wall on her left; to her right she could see several other doors, each with a spiral of running felinoids (click, mioweh) in a central cartouche with a white card in the paws of the ursinoid (click, maskin) at the heart of each spiral.
She turned round. There was a card on the door she'd just closed behind her with an arrow scrawled across it, pointing away down the hall. The spoor of the Ciocan. Or is it Kikun? Hmh.
She took the card, put it back blank side out. Better not leave obvious traces.
The wind noises got louder, the floor moved under her feet. All right, all right, don't have to get snarky about it. I'm going.
She went round one corner, then another, following the track of the arrows, flipping the cards as she came on them, passing several crossways as she had when she was running on a leash inside the Station, an uncomfortable comparison she put out of her head as soon as it occurred to her. She moved faster and faster in her impatience to get out of there.
The card trail ended at a wide, heavy door, every inch of it deeply carved into a single beastform, maskin male in a threat posture; it was less complex than the frieze designs, more realistic. The maskin's massive back was turned to the hallway, his snarling muzzle in side view so his teeth and tongue were visible, one little squinty eye.
She closed her hand into a fist, banged it against the stud in the center of the iron wrist-ring on the maskin's left forepaw. There was a low thunk and the door opened a crack. She gave it a shove, stepped onto a small platform and looked around. Tree. We're up a damn tree.
The house was built over the massive central trunk (to her eye it was at least fifty meters wide) with wings connected by crosshalls spreading another fifty meters along side branches supported by hundreds of secondary trunks. Slender leaf-bearing limbs rose vertically around the perimeter of the building, curved inward above the house to form a thick green dome. It was pleasantly cool with enough sun filtering through to send leaf shadows dancing. She could see motorized mirrors fixed to the rib branches, catching that light and shooting it at the roof of the house, confirming her earlier guess. Riiight, I am one smart little bint. Hah! If you so smart, Shadow, what you doing here?
The leaves brushed against each other with a finely nuanced sound that was very much like a room full of whisperers. The name drifted into her mind, click-click. "Whisper Tree," she said aloud. "Yeh." She leaned against the rail and looked around. "Where now? How does one get to the ground?"
At the left end of this front porch there was a square of a different sort of wood, dark blue almost purple with brown streaks in it, big enough to hold two of her but a squeeze for the Ciocan. There was a pillared railing around three sides, carved from more of the purplewood. A gate of purplewood was swung back against the wall, pinned there by a bar-and-magnet latch. About two meters above the square, there was a domeshaped canopy carved from the purplewood, with two long reels tucked up under it and cables running from each end of each reel to the corners of the railing. There was a green leaf caught between the end of the square base and the house platform, the sap oozing from it still wet. She scowled down through the heavy shadow around the secondary trunks, but didn't see any broken bodies on the dirt below. That's reassuring, I think. Well, if it worked for the Ciocan.
She stepped on the base, tugged the gate from the magnet and slammed it shut. Above her, something whirred; after a slight hesitation the cables began to unwind and the base went down smoothly, swaying a little as the cables lengthened, scraping against the secondary trunks that were clustered close about it, descending into the stifling green twilight around them.
It stopped a handspan from the ground.
She opened the gate and stepped down, edged past air roots like straggly white hair that wobbled around her, scraped along the harpcase she had slung over her shoulder; they brushed against her body, her face, they tickled her, seemed to reach for her eyes. Yukh. Why don't they shave the damn things off?
Behind her she heard the soft sounds of the lift retreating upward, the brush-thunk as the open gate banged against the trunks. Paranoid little minkhas, or maybe it's Ginny doing his thing. I suppose we have to climb the tree to get back in the house. I knew I should've brought everything with me.
She worked outward toward the light. The supports were wider apart and got smaller as she moved away from the main trunk, the air roots were wilder and wispier.
She emerged into the slanted sunlight of late afternoon and found herself wading through the short curly grass of a mountain meadow half a kilometer across, ringed by huge ancient conifers like a scraggly, green-black hedge.
WATCHER 1
The immense screen that stretched across the entire front of the Bridge was lit from end to end, divided into dozens of cells, most of them still empty.
One by one, slowly, two or three an hour, the cells were filling with scenes from the world below them as Ajeri Kilavez and Pukanuk Pousli spoke with onpianet agents and deployed Ginbiryol Seyirshi's pathe-EYEs.
CELL 10
At the edge of nighe a raiding party was attacking the bighouse of an estate, mostly pellet weapons, though some cutterbeams were visible, along with a number of sliced-and-diced bodies.
CELL 11
In the hot morning sunshine of a market square of a small farm village not far from the ocean, three men were tied to whipping posts while a fourth man with his sleeves rolled up to show his massive forearms was laying into the back of one of the prisoners with a two-meter long stockwhip; he'd already drawn blood and was concentrating on the precision of this crisscross cuts. The POV lingered on his face, then moved to the face of the man being whipped, then to the faces of the men waiting their turn for punishment, lingering lovingly on them, tracking every nuance of expression. The villagers watched silently, sullenly. The local VIPs sat in shaded comfort in a permanent bleacher affair, the older males stem, the younger ones wagering on how long each victim would last or anything else that struck their fancy.
CELL 12
A house was burning, small, thatched roof; someone, it sounded like a small girl, was trapped inside screaming as she died very very slowly. A woman was shrieking and struggling In the arms of several men who were themselves cursing and weeping as they kept her from running back into the house.
CELL 13
A young woman pulled herself with furious agility onto the back of the stony riding beast of an equestrian statue, stood there declaiming verses in a powerful contralto, angry, satiri
c verses that brought cheers from the crowd of listeners drawn by her voice, shouts of go go go! until black-clad, half-armored guards came raging through the crowd, slamming their clubs into any part of anybody within reach. The poet jumped from the statue and vanished into the throng before the guards reached her.
CELL 14
Singing in a basso drone OP PAL LAN OP PAL LAH TIN OP PAL OP PAL LA TIN OP PAL OP PAL LAH TIN adouble line of long haired men In beaded robes hauled sacks of grain, beans and other dried foods into a stone pyramid with a massive plank door. The pyramid was one of a long line of caches built along a broad unpaved road that stretched from horizon to horizon across a sea of silver-green grass, an endless, dramatic sky arching overhead. The POV moved on along that broad, unchanging track bisecting the Plains of Kwamitaskwen, showing more lines of the tapwit priests provisioning more pyramids as they got ready for the mass march of the people in the Pakoseo.
CELL 8
The room was antiseptically clean, white tiles on the floor and wall, stainless steel appointments, smoothy shiny black wires for the electrical equipment; the men working there, all but one, wore surgical garb with gauze masks and black goggles that hid all expression and turned them into vaguely insectile figures. The odd man was tall and lean with a handsome lined face and a thick flowing mane of white hair. He wore a starched, wrinkle-free white cassock that brushed against black sandals and a robe beaded with totems and symbols in icon panels down the front, around the hem and sleeves in bright jewel colors that might have been garish but weren't.
A naked woman was stretched out on the steel table, glaring at them, terrified but defiant; she looked very much like the rebel poet of Cell 13, but was perhaps a few years older, she might have been a sister or cousin.
One of the masked figures bent over her, drew a scalpel in a slanting line from the hollow of her throat to the nipple of her right breast. She screamed and tried to struggle, but she had little leeway for movement; she gathered herself and spat in the face of the man bending over her. He ignored it and continued with his delicate work. The blade barely broke the skin, the cut burned a little but that was all.
"Give one the names of your cell," the robed man said; it was a beautiful voice, a warm creamy baritone, a voice made for caressing the ear. "Just the names. All one wishes is to persuade them for good of their souls and their brothers to abandon this foolish rebellion against the order Oppalatin decreed for us all. You and I, child, we have our place and function in life. It Is not good to deny this. There are enough terrors and and evils that one has to face from sun to sun, why create more? Give one the names. You will, you know. Don't make one hurt you, child; one doesn't want to hurt you. The Na-priest will remove your skin bit by bit and his assistants will paint pimikot tincture on the wound. Yes. I see you understand. Tell one, child, name the names…
CELL 7
Each circle was closed about a small bonfire sprinlded with aromatic resins, a fire streaked blue and green. The matrons sang their caste hymns, preparing to receive the blessing of the Pasepawateo Mitewastewapal, each set of hymns counterpointing the other, the women were apart yet one, parts of a greater whole, celebrating Oppalatin's creative force in ways profoundly traditional and profoundly subversive. Ignoring the former and incensed by the latter, the Gospah (High Priest) Ayawlt sent his enforcers out and whipped the women from their circles. Na-priests in masks and black leather beat them while their families watched, took the Malta leader from her circle and the Tanak leader from hers, and led them to the Ma Misthakan and the Question.
And so it went, violence and destruction present in every scene except those with the tapwits and their provisioning, Ginbiryol Seyirshi examining and testing each of them, rejecting some, marking others for further exploration, selecting the rest for storage. There was a film of sweat on his face, but no other sign he was affected in any way by what he was seeing in the cells and feeling through the instrument on the ledge before him, the one he called a pathecorder.
He saved the central cell for last, the one that was larger than the others, the one with his prime actors in this bloody drama. He watched with satisfaction, then apprehension and anger as they struggled to understand what had happened to them.
CELL 1
A bright green meadow cuddled by pointed peaks and a ring of ragged conifers. An immense tree grew In the center of that meadow, spreading out over half the open space. A larger wicker basket lay on its side and a wicker trunk, its top thrown back, sat beside the basket. Shadith stepped from the shadow under the tree and walked toward Kikun who stood beside the trunk, delicate reptilian hands on his nonexistent hips, watching Rohant the Ciocan wrestling with a pair of large black cats, roaring his pleasure at being reunited with them.
Ginbiryol Seyirshi made a slight adjustment to the pathecorder, then he touched the transfer:test sensors and shivered with pleasure as Rohant's currently uncomplicated joy rolled through him, and Shadith's anger and Kikun's less classifiable emotions. He touched his tongue to his lips, closed his eyes until he'd composed his face into its usual calm, then he looked up. "Puk."
Pukanuk Pousli put an agent on hold, turned his head. "Ginny?"
"Where is the ambush? I do not see the locals and they are not registering on the pathecorder."
"They're flyin in, Ginny. Havin to scramble a bit, remember, we're three months early."
"Get them in position as soon as possible. I will not tolerate sloppy work." He watched the action in the center cell for a moment, scowling at Shadith who'd walked over to join Kikun; that was a nuisance, the girl knowing so much she shouldn't know. He snatched a quick look at Ajeri and Puk, they'd both argued against bringing her. If they thought Luck was leaving him, they'd come at him like sharks, ready to tear into him the moment he let his guard down. That was not comfortable, he'd have to get rid of them and he didn't want to, they were satisfactory subordinates. Say it and see how they jump. Yes. "The girl knows my name, Puk. How does she know my name? I do not like that. She is too closely connected with the Hunter. I think we must do something about her."
Pukanuk Pousli grinned, insensibly reacting to the implication of control, reassured for the moment that Boss knew best. "If the final scene works out like you've planned it, Ginny, none of them down there's goin to be a problem. Not 'less there's such a thing as a real spirit-talker. Dead is dead and there's nothin quieter'n that." Chapter 7. So that's what it's all about-maybe
Kikun looked at Shadith from some unfathomable distance, his narrow, lined face blank, no recognition in his copper gaze. As if her appearance triggered something in him, he dropped to a squat, moved his arm in wide sweeps over the grass. With a frogtongue snap of his hand, he trapped something small down among the roots, held it between his two cupped palms as if he were tasting it with his handskin.
He shook his hands. She could hear small eeping sounds from inside them, smell a sudden stench wafted toward her by the crisp breeze.
He matched his voice to his tiny captive and sang it from terror to a burring calm. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his top hand, slid it away. A small gray-green lizard lay curled on his palm, its color his color so it was almost like a blemish on his skin rather than a separate entity.
It opened white-ringed yellowbrass eyes and stared into Kikun's copper irids. It yawned. He yawned. It stared. He stared.
Shadith looked round as Rohant the Ciocan came ambling over to her, his cats walking beside him, wreathing round his legs, rubbing themselves against him. "Your friend there, he's weird."
Kikun tossed the lizard to the wind, flung himself flat, and began rubbing his face against the grass, snuffling and biting at it and the earth it grew from.
Rohant yawned, brushed at the shreds of dried grass clinging to his dreadlocks. "What do you expect from a god incarnate?"
"Huh?"
"What m' son says. Lissorn ran across him on a capture run, hired him as a guide, and brought him back with the load. Had his reasons, no doubt. We haven't talked about
it."
Kikun seemed to explode off the grass; he went running about the meadow with the wild abandon of a cat kept shut up too long. If there'd been walls, he'd have been bouncing off them.
"Opalekis-Mimo," she said. "Holy Dancer."
"Nanilody," he said. "In his home langue. Clown-dancer god. What are you talking about?"
"What I heard Ginny say." She dropped onto the grass, settled the harpcase beside her and folded her legs', in a lotus knot.
He lowered himself with the smoothness of movement that kept surprising her in a man as big and bulky as he was; the cats curled beside him. "You ready to talk now?"
She squinted at the sky. A large hawk was swinging in slow circles over the meadow. "Yours?"
"Mine."
"Ginny went to a lot of trouble, didn't he. Cats, hawk, he must have carried them in stasis pods, I didn't… um… and snatching you two, keeping you drugged so you wouldn't know who had you. Why?"