Shadowplay sq-1

by Jo Clayton

  "I don't have Kisca's talent, Lihto. I have enough trouble driving myself, I can't..

  "You don't have Kisca's flash, my friend, but we can do without flash now, be better off for the loss of it. We, know whose mind devised the strategies that kept your brother afloat, we know who helped him polish away his excesses. We need you."

  "Well then, I'll come, do what I can. Are things on the Main as bad as we've been hearing?" He held out his hand, let

  Lihtaksos pull him onto his feet. "The scenes we get over the corn are enough to make a slither cringe."

  CELL 4

  The flatwagon was assembled outside the city on the Road itself, guarded by the Nistam's troops who were nervous enough to shoot without warning anyone who came too close, and their idea of close was a measure that changed with the changing tensions.

  The wagon was fifteen meters wide and thirty long with six sets of double wheels individually mounted along each side and an additional four in front with twin tongues for the two teams of twenty kekelipis that pulled it.

  Once the basic assemblage was finished, with the shell stage for the Three made ready, the throne of the Nistam installed above the warded cabins where the passengers would retreat for meals and sleep, teams of Kisar and Plicik women decorated everything with silk flowers, bright ribbons and gilded lace.

  Royal Guards in gilded armor, Plicik men and women in beaded silks with quIckfirers In silver studded straps, Kisar Judges and Scholars in their blowing beaded crimson robes, kanaweh in flits and prowling about on the edges of the throng, in the midst of all these (sweeping along with him the angry, reluctant Avatars, Miowee and her daughter) the Nistam and his Court PROGRESSED to the wagon. ("So that's your Nistam," Shirai' whispered to Miowee. "What a weed."

  "Of course It isn't," Mlowee whispered back. "The real one's even worse, he wouldn't dare stick his nose out where it could get shot off. Everyone knows that. That's his fifth double, the others were poisoned or stabbed or something. Look at the bastard sweat."

  "If everyone knows, why should he be sweating, who'd waste his life on a double?"

  "You're thinking rationally, Shadow. That's a mistake. Someone might lust decide to send a message to the Nistam, keep him nervous."

  "Hunh! Sweet folk, yours.")

  When the Procession reached the wagon, the PseudoNistam was Installed on his throne, his court settled around him behind screens of pelletproof glass. The Avatars were taken to the shell, Rohant told to sit on a massive bench at the back, the cats flanking him on their own benches as Sassa came circling down and perched on the rod at the apex of the shell. The Ciocan was a magnificent figure with his springing mane and golden eyes, his huge size and powerful musculature, the brilliant, barbaric clothing he was given to wear-black leather beaded all over In crimson and gold, azure and emerald. Against the matte white of the shell, he sprang to the eye; there was a hissing of approval from the watchers out beyond the ring of guards.

  Kikun was led to a round dance platform and told to squat there. He wore a fringed harness hung with copper chains and totem dangles, and was painted head to toe in horizontal black and white stripes. There was a shudder of pleasurable fear among the watchers as he took his place.

  Three Plicik honormaids took Shadith to a white bench halfway between Kikun and Rohant; she wore a long white leather robe beaded in lapis lazuli and gold with crimson beads in a diamond between her breasts, she supposed it was meant to represent her heart. Her hair was an explosion of tiny curls, the tips bleached to gold; they shimmered in the sunlight, making a gilded halo about her face. Her Plicik attendants spread out her skirt panels, arranged her limbs in the proper position, slapped her spine straight, fluffed out her hair, smoothed pearl powder over her face and arms, clucking as they always did at the darkness of her skin. She sat glowering through all this, only smiled when they brought Miowee and Kayataki to her and settled them at her feet. When the Plicik maids moved to take their own seats; she bent down. "Is this thing really supposed to move? And what happens to this foofaraw if it rains?"

  Miowee snorted. "It gets wet, what'd you think?"

  "You mean we get wet."

  "That, too." Miowee winced as the drum corps started banging away. "Get ready, Shadow, another minute and you're on."

  "Give me half a chance, I'd…"

  The only way you could get out of this now is invisible or dead. Your choice."

  "Fool." She laughed, tapped Miowee lightly on her head. "So… where'd they get that lot of tin-eared dead arses? They're not the ones, we practiced with." She wrinkled her nose. "I've heard more rhythm from a seaslug."

  "They're Pliciks, what did you expect? They've never had to please or starve. They bought the right to make fools of themselves."

  CELL 19

  The wagon creaked out of the city and plunged into the throng of Pilgrims. Following the pattern drilled into her during practice sessions in the Kisa Misthakan, Shadith played the sacred Paleka Kitskew and sang the traditional Pakoseo songs, Miowee and Kayataki blending with her, their voices picked up and amplified by concealed lug-ikes.

  As they plunged deeper and deeper into the Pilgrim throng, the people took hold of the song and began singing with them, the sound spreading and spreading until it filled the space under the bowl of the sky.

  Sometime around mid-afternoon there was a disturbance by the right front corner of the wagon. A man as elaborately dressed as Rohant was screaming something that was partly drowned by the shouts of the guards and partly carried off by the wind. He tried to climb onto the bed of the wagon, laying about him in a frenzy of desire and determination with a seasoned quarterstaff, his strength multiplied by his insanity. In a lull when the wind dropped, Shadith heard what he was screaming: I am Nataminaho, I AM, not HIM, not that IMPOSTER. I AM NATAMINAHO, I AM ANOINTED BY OPPALATIN, I AM…

  He was driven back, knocked down. A moment later she heard him scream as the broad wheels began to roll over him.

  Ginbiryol scowled at 18 as he recognized the shouter, one of Puk's protйgйs, the country Plicik with the taste for torturing children; he had some effective scenes from that one, this would finish the tale, but there was a problem with the style of the end. He considered a moment, then isolated the sequence; a good many of his clients shared the tastes of that local and would be insulted by his ignoble death, seeing it as a judgment on them; however, there were two or three who had a sentimental gloss on their attitudes toward children, they'd enjoy the pain, the writhing, the blood, and feel a special glow of virtue as they also enjoyed the wretched end of the torturer. He dumped the sequence into a special file for a Limited Version of this Limited Edition. Though finishing the story off satisfied his aesthetic sense, it was a dangerous ploy. If he misjudged his audience, it wasn't merely a matter of refunding the purchase price; he would have some very unpleasant people angry with him, people who had a propensity for direct and bloody retaliation for anything they considered an insult.

  He continued monitoring the Cells, brooding over timing as he watched. The emotional content of the scenes was intensifying to the point of exaltation and the autumnal odor of endphase was strong as burning leaves. Time is now, he thought, I had better set the Banger in place. He tapped his forefinger on the armrest. Ajeri wasn't here. She'd taken to avoiding the Bridge.

  The kephalos tracked her and found her in the gym where she was exercising with grim determination, sweat rolling off her body, her face a grotesquerie of strain.

  Ginbiryol watched a moment, decided to leave her where she was. He called up the record of what she'd already done with the Planet-Killer, nodded with satisfaction when he read its current status; he finished activating it and used servos to ease it into the drone' which Ajeri had already programmed. All he had to do was pop it out and send it down.

  3

  The drone dropped in a slow lazy spiral, taking most of the day to reach the surface. It slid into the ocean and drifted down and down for another half a day until it nosed into the muc
k at the bottom of a vast chasm in the seabed, near hotvents that went even deeper into the worldheart. When the slavecircuit beeped to notify

  Ginbiryol the Banger was in place, he set his sandwich and kaff aside to contemplate the dark bulk in the darker rift and savor in anticipation Shadith's consternation as the world blew up around her.

  4

  Almost as an afterthought, he started a quartet of quiverworts droning out to Teegah's Limit. These quasi-plants, which had been developed by the Sikkul Paems from their own root stock were ordinarily not available outside the Paem system though there was a good deal of interest in them because they were sensitive to disturbances created by surfacing starships, were the most reliable alarms around. Ginbiryol had acquired his worts by means devious and expensive and was careful to keep their presence on his ship from the Paems who cared for his drives.

  He wasn't worried about help arriving for the Avatars. Kiskai was so far off the usual ship runs there was very little chance either Hunters Inc or Voallts Korlatch had ships closer to it than Spotchals; by his calculations no ship was likely to make it here for at least another three weeks. However, he was a cautious man and even a minute chance was worth guarding against, especially when it was something he planned to do anyway.

  He finished his meal to the sound of the com bell; emergency calls from downside agents were coming in faster and thicker as the hours passed. He ignored them. Events had their own momentum now. He didn't need to prod them any longer. The on-planet agents were expendable and it was as good a time as any to cut them loose.

  After the serviteur went off with his lunch tray, he sat back and contemplated the busy Cells, satisfied finally with the way things were going. Let the girl plot and twist and subvert all she wanted; in the end she was just another tool. In the end she was ash.

  Chapter 22. Riding to a fiery finish?

  Knowing that Ginny was watching and savoring her growing terror, recording it for his loathesome clients, Shadith fought it and with it, a sickening sense of helplessness and a rage that nearly strangled her. She could put on a face to fool Miowee and Kikun and Rohant and their captors, but HE could read behind that face and gloat over what he saw. And sell her fear, her frustration, her fury. In all her long hard life she had not hated anyone so much, not even the slavers that took her and murdered her family.

  Late on the third night in the Kisa Misthakan, Shadith lay on the cot with her eyes closed. The bare lightbulb that hung from the center of the ceiling was swinging slightly at the end of its wire; it was never turned off and she was not allowed to cover her face. A priest with a shaved head and a brown leather half-mask sat on a chair by the door, arms folded, eyes following her every move. At regular intervals he got to his feet and came over to her, stood looking down at her. She ignored him; he was just one more irritation.

  There were no rats or mice, not even any spiders in this prison wing, so no ears and eyes were available to her; it was like living with a sack over her head and boxing gloves on her hands. Her cell, every cell in this section had all been scrubbed until they stank of disinfectant; even the microbes were annihilated. Either Ginny had warned the Gospah about her talent, or he was by nature obsessively neat. Perhaps both, the one reinforcing the other.

  Outside the walls of the Misthakan the city teemed with small lives, this was a time of feasting for them, the streets were full of dead meat, much of it fried. The kanaweh were deeper than ever into their killing frenzy, preparing their own doom though they semed incapable of realizing that as they went from looting shrines to raiding the Plicik Ispisacos. She shuddered away from the bloody chaos and brought the small black furwing she was riding into the Misthakan Courts and sent it sniffing around for the others.

  Kikun, Miowee, Kayataki and Rohant were one, two, three, four down from her, in cells that stank of disinfectant with watchpriests sitting by the door. She hadn't seen them since they were dumped here. In her training sessions young Aspirants took their parts in the choreography the Gospah was drilling into her. No doubt the same was happening with them.

  They all had small barred windows high in one wall. Unglazed. Coneshaped. Cut through several feet of stone. She tried flying the furwing through the bars into Rohant's cell, but the watchpriest saw it and killed it. She wrenched her mind loose, but not before the creature died and its small agony seared into her. She moaned and curled into a fetal knot, crying with a grief that, reached to her toes, that filled every milliliter of her body.

  In the morning, heavy-eyed and so angry still that she couldn't eat, she went to the training court and worked on the songs, the stylized stiff movements of the sacred choreography. After. a while she was almost happy; the work absorbed her and kept her from replaying the death of the furwing and remembering the Fire that was beginning to haunt her dreams.

  And so it went, day after day. No threats were made overtly, but now and again, whenever Ayawit felt she wasn't cooperating as enthusiastically as he thought proper, Kayataki was brought in and whipped gently, her skin reddened but not broken. It was enough.

  Shadith bled again, was isolated and purified, and put back to work.

  The priests who watched her would not talk to her, would not respond to anything she did; even when she hit at them, they only moved away. She was not alone, never alone. Despite that, her days in the Misthakan were very like those in the cell on Ginny's ship. This time, though, she couldn't let herself give up. The Fire was waiting for her.

  She kept trying to find a crack to wiggle through, but there was nothing. By the time the wagon was finished and the trek to the Otcha Mistiko Cicip was about to begin, the futility of everything she did was beginning to wear her down. When they came for her, she stared at them, then went without comment. She was taken with the others and incorporated in the PROGRESSION, riding in a palanquin with Miowee and Kayataki, Kikun and Rohant walking beside it, the cats at Rohant's heels and Sassa flying overhead.

  Ignoring the warning hiss of their priestguards, Shadith leaned out, bringing her head close to Rohant's. "Any ideas? My mind's blank."

  "Nada. Can't breath without a damn priest up my nose."

  "You too, huh."

  "Ten days on the road, maybe there's something there."

  "We wait and see, I suppose."

  "Yeah. You better pull your head in, our guards are getting nervous. We want to keep them sweet."

  "Sweet, hunh." She straightened and looked around with considerable interest as the parade formed up, the court like painted paper butterflies fluttering around a slight figure she took to be the Nistam until Miowee told her otherwise.

  Day drifted into day as the wagon moved along the Pilgrim Road; Shadith sang when she was ordered to, Kikun danced, Rohant preened and posed (and muttered angry sarcasms that almost made her laugh.) Each day the response was more intense, so intense she was battered to a nub by day's end and Kikun was reduced to a lump of skin and bone. Day after day after day, the wagon crept among the crowd that spread from horizon to horizon, funneling onto the long twisty grade that led to landing place, the dead volcano. The place where they were going to die.

  They could talk, they were freer than they had been, but there was even less chance of escape; they'd have to push through the throng of pilgrims and it was obvious at half a glance that they'd get two steps, three, before they were herded back.

  Night… ghost dancers like painted shadows pale against the dark watchers… Tapwit priests ladling soup in pilgrim bowls and passing out hard biscuits… pilgrims sitting motionless and hushed around the wagon, focusing on the Three, praying at them, worshiping them, like a blanket smothering… Shadith couldn't think, could barely breathe… Kikun huddled close to her, used her as a buffer, a far too inefficient barrier between him and the silent demands of the watchers… Rohant, more and more the predator… restless, irritable, pacing, pacing, sniffing at every crack for a way to escape.

  Death by Fire… it hung over them all… burned alive… and no way of escaping it
… burned alive… they weren't thinking about helping the others, not any more, it was how can I escape. I… I… but there was no escape… unless… Unless Aleytys came faster than Shadith had a right to expect… vengeance was ashes in the mouth, what good would it do them when they were dead… eighty-three days… eighteen now, fifteen when they reached the Mistiko Otcha Cicip, twelve when the Fire was lit… Lee would get here too late, at least a week too late, maybe more. Unless… unless Shadith could finesse a way out… contrive a holding action… something, something…

  Mid-afternoon on the tenth day, the wagon labored across the floor of the crater and pulled up before an immense broken Bubble of black volcanic glass.

  The PseudoNistam climbed down and vanished into the housing cavern while the VraiNistam took his seat in the crystalpalace (pellet proofed glass on an armorsteel cage), on the crystal throne with his court around him.

  The Kam priests got the wagon into the store cavern and unhitched the kekelipis.

  The Gospah and his Na-priests herded the rest of the sacerdotes and the Three up one of the twin ramps into the black-glass Bubble and began laboring to bring order out of Chaos.

  By sundown they all were settled in, pilgrims and Pliciks, prisoners and priests.

  Small fires bloomed across the crater floor and climbed the walls as high as people could perch. The Otcha Cicip hummed with sound, laughter, music as people ate their dinners and exchanged the gossip they'd packed in with them. The noise rose to a peak as Sisipin Full reached zenith, then faded as families and clans and single travelers settled to sleep.