Shadowplay sq-1

by Jo Clayton

  She clamped her teeth on her tongue and wrenched her mind once more from her erogenous zones, furious at herself, raging to get after Kikun, to find him and bring him out of whatever he'd fallen into. Even as she struggled, though, there was a small voice down under that turmoil saying: why all this passion, Shadow? You've known this pair three days, to speak to. They're not friends, they're barely acquaintances. That's not to say don't go after the little man, he's an odd and charming little man and doesn't deserve to be abandoned, but cool it, hmm? She ignored the voice, got Sassa under control and sent him winging north and east, hastening to the place where the hopper was, the place where Kikun had come out of the boat to walk on land.

  Shadithmind rubbing uncomfortably against Rohantmind, she sent the hawk swooping low over the treetops, discovering then following a ridge of dry ground that wound through the water and the muck, the reeds and gnarled trees standing knee-deep in the wet, a ridge frequently interrupted by sections where water had eaten away stone and earth.

  A faint glow seeped through the heavy canopy off to the left of the ridge, a subtle graying scarcely perceptible in the light of the largest of the three moons. She took Sassa down into the tops of trees growing thickly on an islet like theirs, let him find a perch among the fronds, then looked through his eyes at the scene below.

  Kikun was tied into an inert package and thrown on the ground beside one of the several small fires, tethered neck and ankles to two trees. At the moment he was being ignored, but Sassa's eyes showed Shadith the tears, abrasions, and assorted bruises developing on the areas of flesh visible; he'd been beaten savagely. She shivered with rage, but clamped down on the reaction before she lost control of the hawk. She began scanning the rest of the camp. Four… six… seven men… What a bunch of scrags. At least three rungs down from Silvercreep's lot. Which I didn't think possible. Gods.

  One of the men was kneeling beside what looked like a pile of junk. He cursed, slapped at a part of the pile, getting a wobbling shriek that went through to the bone but cut off before it did major damage. Sassa.shook his feathers, then settled to sulk as Shadith blocked all his attempts to get out of there.

  "Pey, nish, nisto, Shaker. Come, come, come. Swamp-man here."

  The com sputtered, broke into a low whistle; riding the whistle, a tiny, tinny voice: "Mita, sanki, niya, Swampman. Make it fast, kana swarmin all over us."

  "Pass word, Shaker, we got part a what the' wan', gonna go lookin fer th' rest come mornin. Set a meet. T'morra night. Tell 'm don' push, no way the' gonna find 'em 'thout us. Nish, pay, niya, out." Swampman slapped the corn off, got to his feet. He was a tall man, bone thin with a head like a skull. He wore a profusely fringed leather shirt and leggings, a bright red loincloth, bones threaded on string, along with nuts, seeds, and bits of mirror. He strolled over to Kikun, kicked him in the ribs, not a gentle tap, but no hostility behind it or malice, Kikun was just meat, Shadith fought down another spurt of fury, then loosed Sassa and let him climb into the sky; the hawk was eager to get back, he needed to be closer to Rohant and he wanted more, sleep.

  Shadith sat up, leaned against Rohant's knee and drank another cup of Asteplikota's soup. "Trouble," she said. "A band of swamprats have him, seven of them. Seems they have connections outside, the leader made a corneal! while I was watching, probably to Aina'iril. How close are we?" She set the cup beside her, drew her hand across her mouth.

  Asteplikota sat on his heels, stared past her into the dark beyond the islet. "Say, forty iskals. We're in the outer edge of the Wetlands. The Fringes. You saw a comset?"

  "What's so surprising about that? This world seems littered with them. He had a comset and he was talking to someone about selling Kikun. Us too, by the way. The rats are coming for us in the morning."

  "Yes, yes. Of course. You heard what you heard. What's odd is comsets are bad Oteh, urn, luck, fate, something like that, to the shikwakola, the people who live in these Wetlands. They're skittish folk, they don't like drylanders and they won't have dryland Wiha, tech, in their makees, those are the clan houses in, their temporary villages, they're nomadic, pick up and move every few months, take their houses with them. Dryland Wiha puts bad Oteh on a makee. Probably some instrument shorted out in the wet and burned a house down, killed people. Even the Pariahs don't..:" His mouth twitched into a brief smile. "Sorry, Shadow, seems one is a crea ture of habit, ancient habit." He rubbed his hand along the gray/blond stubble blurring his jawline. "One supposes what you saw was a band of Pariahs."

  "Pariahs?"

  He looked away again, a mix of regret and amusement on his square face. He wasn't a handsome man and he wasn't young; as he himself said, he wasn't the sort you looked at twice, but the more she knew him, the more she found herself liking him. "We do seem to have a propensity for exiling our misfits. What did they look like?" When she finished, he nodded. "Yes, one could even put a name to him. Bonetalker. Not one of our finer citizens. Pariahs. Drylanders started calling them that and they adopted the name. Take a kind of perverse pride in it. They live out here on the Fringes and control the trade, what there is of it, between swamp and dryland. Raid both sides for women." He glanced at Shadith, looked quickly away. "Don't underestimate them. They're dangerous. This is their Homeplace and they know it like you know your music, child. Every third plant in here is poisonous. They know which and how to use them. There are bottomless sinkholes scattered through the Fringes, stories say they herd trespassers and raiders into them, then stand round, drink, and watch the men struggle and go down, wager on, how long before the sink eats them. There's a species of carnivorous muddaubers with stings that could drop an ox; rumors say the Pariahs have tamed the things, can set them on anyone they take a notion to kill. And they share other, even less appetizing habits." He laughed, a few harsh barks. "Which is a pun one would rather not explain."

  "Oh, lovely. And you brought us in here."

  "Yes, Shadow. Bad as they are, the Question is worse."

  "I see."

  "No. I don't think you do. I hope you never learn, I had a wife once, I had to watch them… listen while they…" He looked down at his hands; they were shaking. He pressed them against his thighs, stared at them until the shaking stopped. "That doesn't matter now. I thought the shikwakola, the tribes, or the Pariahs, they wouldn't bother me or anyone I brought with me, we have a common enemy, the kanaweh and all such. And we have a bargain, my associates and the swamp folk, unstated but generally honored. We bring the Pariahs medical care and… urn… things they couldn't otherwise get and they give us free passage and shelter when we're pressed. One hadn't quite realized how high a price the Nistam and Ayawit would set on your heads or how soon they'd get the word out. It looks like all bargains are off, for the moment anyway."

  "We've got some time. From what I heard, even if his lot don't get us, he's not going to give Kikun up or hurt him until he gets his price."

  "We have NO time, Shadow. As soon as that go-between opens his mouth, the Na-priests will have him and there'll be an army of kanaweh heading for the Fringes. And the Pariahs will vanish into the swamp beyond anyone's reach. Which means we get the Dancer back now or not at all."

  Shadith stirred. The Ciocan's hand closed on her shoulder, the pressure comforting. "And save our own necks," she said.

  "Yes. Along with heart, brain, and liver. The habit one mentioned, remember? Part of their belief system involves eating their enemies, those they can capture intact and unpoisoned. Absorbing their Hitsa, they call it. Hitsa is self-power, soul, and lifeforce combined. If they can't sell us, they'll eat us. They might even prefer that, you three have awesome Hitsa."

  "Sari"

  "Yes."

  Rohant ran a thumbclaw along a mustache tail. "A couple of problems I can see. How do we get to them and how do we avoid spooking them?"

  "We take the poleboats I told you about. You said you could use a pole."

  "Can." He used a corner of the blanket to blot the-drip from his nose, sneezed suddenly into t
he wool, wiped his face again. "Dio! I hate this cold. Not without some noise. Especially when I don't know the layout or where the hell I'm going."

  "I see. Shadow, that Talent of yours, can you provide a distraction so we can reach them without being spotted?"

  "Oh, yes. But you'd better give me some idea what they'd do if the local life came swarming at them. I don't want to scare them into killing Kikun and running."

  "They won't, as long as they don't see the Hand-behind. Which means we don't give them time to think about it." Asteplikota got to his feet. "We should wait till near dawn before we move, let them get settled to sleep. Anything to add, Ciocan? No? Good. Shadow, you took a little over an hour to find them and get back; did you run a straight line or turn a lot of bends? Will it take us longer poling?"

  "Pretty convoluted. I don't know. Depends on how fast you pole and where the channels are. At a guess, half an hour, not much longer."

  "I see. Get some sleep, both of you, one will wake you when it's time." Chapter 12. Running to the rescue, then just running

  The poleboats slid across the thick black water with the soft sound of silk clad thighs rubbing together. Standing in the assymetric rear and working the pole with a minimum of drip and sweat, resolutely ignoring the ache in his head and the red misery of his nose, Rohant went first (cats riding before him), using his tie with Sassa to guide him through the labyrinthine web of channels. Shadith couldn't do both at the same time-take the expedition to the camp and organize the distraction-so she had to send Sassa ahead to mark the Pariah Camp for Rohant and give him the direction. She was in the second boat, the one Asteplikota was poling, curled by his feet as she mindrode a monster slither. No mere hitching this, she had a full lock on the brain. It had taken her a while to learn how to manage the tentacles and the rest of the swimming behavior, but now that she had these mechanics snapped in place, she forced the beast to expend energy at a punishing rate, raced him through the twisting channels, through tangles of weed and tree roots, drove him across sandy shoals, until he finally reached the deeper water about the islet.

  She let him cruise around it, snatching at fish and other swimmers, crunching them and swallowing them, while she used him as a base to seek out and draw toward the islet the distraction she was constructing. She found a nest of watervipers, about twenty poisonous wrigglers long as a man's arm with stubby vestigal legs at intervals along the flat bodies; she brought them writhing across a shallow stream of clear water at the small end of the teardrop islet and into the tangle of trees and brush around the sandy glade at the big end where the Pariahs had their camp; she held them in a knot while she kept hunting. She found a pod of juvenile slithers in their amphibian phase, prodded them from their mud nests and brought them into the grass outside the circle of firelight. She collected small rodents, furwings, flying lizards,, and a swarm of muddaubers, brought them all into the dark around the sleeping Pariah shikwakola. She withdrew a portion of her attention, opened her eyes. "Ready when you are."

  "Rohant, stop a minute." Asteplikota held back until the Ciocan planted his pole, then eased up beside the first boat. He brushed a hand over his long blond hair; the fogheavy nightwind was teasing at it, blowing the strands into his eyes. "How close are we? Do you know?"

  The Ciocan blotted his nose on the blanket he'd thrown over one shoulder, thought about the question. "Given the channel doesn't change, maybe five minutes off. Far as I can judge." He slapped at questing biters. "Shadow?"

  "Mmh?"

  "What's happening?"

  She struggled to pull enough of herself back so she could think and speak coherently without loosing her hold on the horde; when she answered him, she brought out the words in small units, sorting through the confusing clutter in her head from the dozens of sensory systems she was tied into "Sleepin. Two watch. Itchy.

  They know some thing wrong. Noises wrong. Small lives acting funny, I think. Want to take a chance?"

  Rohant smothered a sneeze in the blanket. "Where's Kikun?"

  "In middle. Stretched flat. Legs neck tied to two trees."

  "Can you get a ring round him to keep them off?"

  "Instead of attack?"

  "Along with it. No use taking them and losing him."

  She frowned. Could she do it? She'd been using Sassa as a prime viewpoint so she could see the whole camp and lay out her attack; at the same time she was trying to keep track of the other viewpoints, ruffling through them like cards she was shuffling, clamping down on all those furious and rebellious brains, holding the horde in stasis until it was time to loose it on the Pariahs; she was rapidly finding out what her limits were and beginning to be frightened of what was happening inside her head. Once the attack started, though, she'd probably have more capacity available; the way her captives were churning about, even the mildest of them raging to bite something, she wouldn't have to do much prodding to turn them on the sleepers, especially when the Pariahs started hitting back. Trouble was, Rohant was all too right, there was no point in any of this if Kikun got skewered or poisoned. Her surrogates weren't going to worry about who they chewed on once they started to swarm; she had to set some kind of barrier around him that would keep them off. She reviewed her forces, made up her mind. "E-heh." she said finally. "Can do."

  "Good. Pariahs could go for the hostage when the attack starts." He closed his eyes, leaned heavily on the pole. "Ante, you'd better stay with Shadow, she's going to be too busy to watch out for trouble. Shadow, fix on those sentries, the minute you see them getting really nervous or if they start moving toward Kikun, hit them with everything you've got."

  She managed a few gasps of laughter, made a face at him. "Yeh papa."

  The Pariah stiffened, turned to face toward the boats he still couldn't see. Before he had a chance to move or shout, Shadith sent the swarm of muddaubers bulleting toward him, turning their rage at her for slaving them into a fury at the first target available; at the same time she sent the flying lizards diving at the second watcher. She brought the vipers crawling into the camp and wound them in a deadly ring about Kikun who lay bright-eyed and smiling, who mouthed the words, Heyah, Shadow into the face of the Queen viper rearing over him. She drove the juvenile slithers out of the grass and aimed them at the sleepers and they came squealing their fury, their stubby legs whirring, their claws tearing up gouts of sand, their rows of teeth clamping on, then sawing at head, limb, torso, whatever they first closed on; she brought the horde of rodents into the ring of firelight, sent them leaping at the Pariahs, biting everything they could get their teeth into. The rest of the beasts she'd collected she let fly or crawl as they would, she had enough to do without them.

  Rohant drove the blunt bow into the islet, went leaping into the chaos; using Shadith's stunner, tapping it on/off in micro-bursts and careful to keep the stunbeam off the sublife (he didn't want to flatten Shadith through her surrogates), he dropped Pariah after Pariah as the men came out of sleep into confusion and terror. Less than a minute after he hit dry ground he stood in the middle of bodies, counting them. "Seven down, Shadow. Get this zoo out of here, will you?"

  ***

  Rohant kicked the comset apart and dumped it in the mud with a grunt of satisfaction.

  Asteplikota rested his knife on the rope he'd been sawing at. "That won't stop them." He started cutting again; Kikun was nearly extinguished by a cocoon of ropes, all of them knotted and reknotted so he couldn't be simply unwound; it was going to take work and time to free him. "The moment the go-between opens his mouth, the Na-priests will start peeling his skin; they might not pin this islet, but they'll get the general area out of him and blanket it with sleds and searchers."

  Shadith came back from poking about the unconscious Pariahs. "It's not a guess anymore, hmm? They know we weren't in the sled when it blew."

  Asteplikota nodded. "If they didn't before, they do now." He pulled the last of the ropes off Kikun's torso, ' waited.

  Kikun smiled amiably at him and lay without moving.


  Sighing, Asteplikota started freeing the lacertine's legs. "We should get to the coast as fast as we can. The closer we are to the edge when the kanaweh swarm, the likelier we are to break loose. No one fools with the Kihcikistiliks."

  Shadith laughed. "I couldn't even say it."

  "The Islands in the East, if that's better."

  "If we murder your langue, forgive us. We had it thrust upon us rather abruptly with no say in how it was done."

  "One had wondered how you knew it." He started peeling the ropes off Kikun's legs. "If you were dumped here as you said."

  "There was a bit more to it than I told you."

  "I see." He got to his feet, pulling Kikun up with him. "There's no time for histories now, we've got to get moving. I'll lead since I'm the only one with an idea where to go. One had hoped to get a guide from the Pariahs. Things being as they are, that's out. Shadow, I want you in the boat with me with your harp ready to play." why.

  "You three have to be The Three. Flaunt it! Loud and filled with color. We can't try sneaking along, we'd simply invite attack. We can't fight the Pariahs, even with your weapons and your talents, my friends. We have to keep them away from us. We have to confuse them, set them arguing among themselves. It's the only way we'll get out of here alive."

  Rohant snorted, picked up the blanket he'd dropped in the attack, sneezed twice and wiped his streaming eyes. "Some demigod," he said, "dripping with a cold."

  Kikun watched with half-closed eyes, projecting enigma and amusement.

  Shadith frowned at him, irritated by that inappropriate insouciance. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it into peaks, turned to Asteplikota. "Do all of you eat your enemies? Or should I say your victims?"