Shadowplay sq-1

by Jo Clayton

  She rocked her body. The rope unwound faster and faster.

  Fire. She was fire.

  The Gospah was coming toward her, his eyes glazed with the intensity of his concentration.

  He didn't see the loosened rope.

  She had the feeling he saw nothing but whatever it was inside his head.

  His arms were outstretched and empty, but three Kam priests behind him held torches.

  He stopped in front of her. He chanted something. A Kam priest gave him a torch. His voice rising to a shriek, Ayawit looped it onto her Pyre.

  It landed by her feet; the sticks caught, exploded into a sheet of flame.

  Shadith closed her eyes, stopped breathing. She shut down everything but that rough pressure against her body and the slow, agonizing dance that kept the rope uncoiling until she tore the last loops off her neck and shoulders.

  She dropped to her knees, reached through fire and grabbed the knife, ignoring the pain as the hot hilt burned into her palm, then she flung herself off the back of the Pyre, her bleeding leg giving way as she landed on the planks beside Miowee.

  "Your wrists, push them away from you."

  Not daring to cut all the way through (she didn't have time to take care not to slice into Miowee's arms), she nicked the rope round her wrists deeply enough (she hoped) to let the singer break free, then started crawling toward Kikun's Pyre which was burning now as the Gospah marched away with the last torch, crossing to Rohant.

  She heard shouts, shooting, ignored them as she stabbed the knife into a stick near the top, then concentrated on pulling herself up the back of the Pyre.

  The choir's chant faltered, stopped, the Kam priests shouted and began pushing and jumping, trying to get away from something that was more terrifying than the Gospah's anger.

  The Longhorns went silent, the Drums stopped sounding. There was a rattle of high-pitched pings so close together they produced an almost continuous whine that improbably filled the whole of the broken Bubble.

  Shadith levered herself over the edge of the pile, retrieved the knife and cut cautiously at the coil of rope binding Kikun to the center pole.

  He woke from his trance and began helping her peel the rope away. His face was blistered from the heat of the flames, he was coughing as a few tendrils of oily smoke blew into his nostrils.

  The Fire quit.

  One minute it was there, the next gone, leaving behind a foul stench and a sudden chill as if whatever had snuffed it had not only killed the flames but sucked the heat out of the fuel that fed them, out of the air itself.

  Steadying herself as her leg threatened to give way again, Shadith grabbed at the center post and gaped at the devastation in the Bubble, bodies sprawled everywhere, piled on top of each other, stunned not dead (they were still breathing), the new arrival sitting calmly in the middle of all this on a huge warbot of worldclass ugliness, three smaller clones of the thing standing guard behind it.

  Aleytys grinned at her. "Eh, Shadow, Dea ex Machina reporting for duty."

  "Eh, Lee." Shadith closed her eyes, popped them open again as she remembered… "You better machinate some more or all we'll be is smears on rubble." She eased the blade into the center post, above Kikun's head. She didn't trust herself with it, not any more. "I suppose you didn't see any ship in orbit?"

  "Someone was skittering for the Limit. Thought I'd better collect you first. Machinate how-and why?"

  "That someone probably left us a little present. Planetkiller. Think you can locate it, say it's there?"

  "Lovely friends you have. Here, before you bleed to death and waste my worry." Aleytys tossed a medpac to Shadith, then snapped a command to the warbot she was riding. It twisted its long jointed neck up and around, bringing its head close to hers; she began talking rapidly and inaudibly into its shielded sensors.

  Leaving Kikun to finish freeing himself, Shadith eased down onto the quenched and blackened sticks, maneuvering her wounded leg around so she could see the cut. Not much point in cleaning it up now, leave that to Lee's Autodoc. Better stop the bleeding though. Sar! I've lost enough blood on this jauza world to feed a vampire for a year. Come on, come on, Lee, move it! We die now, I swear I'll haunt you… hey, I wonder if one ghost can haunt another? Sheehl Pm getting giddy…

  She broke the seal, brought out the canned bandage and sprayed a thick layer of foam over the cut. The foam solidified into resilient fauxskin-that hurt! Pressure on the damaged nerve ends. Knowing what was doing it didn't help at all. Hands shaking, she dug out a painpopper, checked the dials, her eyes blurring unreliably, then managed to get a pop into her leg and shut off the agony.

  Cool dry fingertips touched her face. "All right?"

  "Right enough."

  Kikun straightened, looked around. "Useful friend."

  "Yeh."

  "I had better cut the Ciocan loose, don't you think?"

  "Cool him down first. Um. You know about the knife?"

  "I know. Cuts anything."

  "Not a great exaggeration, my friend."

  "Wa." He gazed across the backs of the warbots, shook his head at the bloody screaming war going on out in the crater. "Wa weh."

  Shadith grimaced as he jumped down, the knife held loosely in his left hand; he was surefooted but given the properties of the crystal, prancing about with it like that came absurdly close to suicide. She'd done the same thing a minute ago, but she hadn't been tracking very well just then.

  Aleytys was still talking to that bot. Shadith's stomach knotted and she swallowed hastily to keep her dinner down. That ship of hers… Tigatri, she calls it… Daughter. I don't know. Maybe it… she… can handle the Banger. Be the baddest joke in the universe if Lee rescued us just in time we all get blown to nada… got here faster than I expected. Maybe… depends on Ginny. Double-knotter. If I read him right, he'll want to be insplitting before the Banger goes. If… Gives us some hours working time… maybe… I don't know, I don't know…

  She hitched painfully over to the center pole, leaned against it and shut her eyes.

  Its chelae absurdly gentle, the warbot plucked Shadith off the Pyre and deposited her beside Aleytys who was leaning back but keeping a wary eye on the readouts spread across the front of the howda.

  Shadith forced herself erect. "Lee…"

  "Relax. Tigatri's got the Banger located, she's slapped a stasis field around it. That's the good news. Bad news is there's no way of shutting it down and the field eats power like it's cotton candy on a stick. She's in the process of hauling the thing up and carting it to the next world out, that's an iceworld, barren, better it goes than this one. That'll shake up the system some, but Kiskai and these people, they'll survive." She glanced over her shoulder at the war outside the Bubble. "If they don't kill each other off first."

  "How long before we can get out of here?"

  "About an hour."

  "Oh." Shadith hauled her leg up, rested her ankle on the front of the howda. "Well, I lasted this long…" She inspected Aleytys. "Had the baby, hmm?"

  "Two months ago. Daughter." Aleytys' eyes went fond and sappy (Shadith's assessment), she smiled down at her hands. "Her name's Lilai. You'll meet her when we go onboard Tigatri. She's beautiful, Shadow, she's a little firehair, got angelcurls redder than mine. Grey's gaga over her. He didn't want me to bring her, but I'm not leaving her like I did my son. No. Never. Where I go, she goes."

  Rohant was squatting on his Pyre, scowling. Abruptly his face relaxed. He got to his feet. "Shadow! I'm calling Sassa in, tell your friend to let him through, right?"

  Aleytys raised a brow. "Sassa?"

  "Hawk."

  "Ah." She lay back, closed her eyes. "Bird. Raptor. Admit."

  Shadith-eased back, the tension dropping out of her; for the first time in months she was safe, she didn't have to fight any more, she didn't have to scramble or run; she could lie there and let the minutes drift past.

  She enjoyed it for about a minute and a half, then her eyes popped open and she sat up ag
ain. "Miowee," she said "Kikun…" She broke off, then burst out laughing as the little lacertine came stumping between the pyres, Miowee on his back and Kayataki following behind. "Kikun, if you can't read minds, you do a good imitation."

  Kikun wiggled his pointed ears. He deposited Miowee on Rohant's bench and went trotting into the darkness behind the pyres. A minute later he was back with the Paleka Kitskew and her harp. He set them by the bench and dropped into a squat beside them.

  Shadith took hold of her leg and shifted it down, caught hold of the; top of the console and pressed herself forward until she could see the singer better. "Looks like your revolution's kicked off to a good start, Mee. What about you? What are you going to do?"

  Miowee passed her hand over her tumbled tangled hair. "Wait," she said after a while. "I've got people out there. When the fighting's over… it will be over soon, it can't last… Kaya and I, we'll go back to Aina'iril and see what we can do to help pull things together."

  "Asteplikota's going to be looking for who killed his brother."

  "I'll face that when… if… I have to."

  "Come with us. I'll get you into a place where you can regrow your legs, fix your eye. Starfolk klem, you know."

  Miowee covered her face with both hands, hunched her shoulders. For a long time she said nothing, then she shook her head. "No," she said. "No."

  "Be reasonable, Mee. The next months are going to be hell and a half, by the time you get back things will've settled down some."

  "Reasonable!" The word exploded out of her; she glared up at Shadith. "If I'd been reasonable, I'd be dead. Reasonable snuffs out the light. I never have been reasonable and I'm not going to change now. Look at me. I can make you look at me. I can make you SEE me. I can make you listen. You listen out of pity and horror, but you do listen. And you HEAR!" She sighed. "You're a nice child, Shadow, and you mean to be kind, but you don't understand."

  "Maybe not, but…"

  "I am who I am, Shadow; I am what I've made myself, and it's something to take pride in. I won't take gifts, I won't unmake ME."

  There was a soft, almost subliminal chime. Aleytys sat up, frowned at the console. "There's a swarm of flits coming this way."

  Miowee heard her, laughed, not a nice sound. "One gift," she cried. "I'll take one gift. Will your friend open the glass for us, crack the oyset so we can get at the putrid pearl inside? Nistam, the Nistam! Let us have him if we die for it."

  Shadith nodded. "Yes. I owe that lot something, too. Lee?"

  "If you mean that hill out there, look at the thing, Shadow. It's five deep with stomping locals. I doubt you want me to punch holes through them."

  "Kaya, bring the kitskew." Miowee pushed off the bench, crawled rapidly toward the front of the Bubble, humping over the stunned sacerdOtes scattered about the planks, ignoring them, wriggling through the jointed warbot legs, ignoring them. At the outer edge of the stage, she settled herself on the back of a recumbent Na-priest, took the Paleka Kitskew from her daughter, tuned it, and began playing. Improbably, the sound cut through the noise. She'd collected a lug-ike sometime during her crawl; Shadith hadn't seen her do it but was amused, it was so like the woman, practical and outrageous at once.

  "Harrowee darrowee yarrowee HOO!" she sang. "Hear ye oh heed ye oh dearie my LOO! I am Miowee, you know me, you DO!"

  At first it seemed absurd, singing a song (and a nonsense-song at that) to a war-in-progress, but one, then another, another, and another called out: Miowee. Miowee. Miowee. It's Miowee. Listen. The name went, skittering across and across the crater and those who could did stop to listen.

  "The landlords are coming, be ready, my dears. The landlords are swarming in flits to this place." She stopped her chant and played the kitskew for a moment to give them a chance to absorb her warning. "You on the glass, get down for a while, we'll break open the oyset and you pluck the pearl."

  Almost before she was finished the men on the portable Palace were jumping down, clearing a space around it. There were no Royal Guards left alive outside the glass, only bodies kicked to jelly. The glass was still intact though opaque from cracks and smears of blood and other body fluids, the people inside invisible.

  Aleytys hesitated. "This is what you want, Shadow?"

  "It's what I want. You don't know, Lee, you just don't know."

  "All right." She tapped a sensor, spoke quietly into the warbot's 'ear'. A second later one of the clones was spitting a cutter at the dome, slicing neatly through the glass, opening an oval hole near the bottom of the dome.

  There was a roar from the spectators as the remnant of the Guard came charging through the hole, laying down a hail of pellets as they tried to get the Nistam and the court out and into the housecavern behind.

  The Maka and the Tanak died and fell, fell and died, but the mantide rolled irresistibly over the Pliciks and the Guards.

  Aleytys moved her shoulders and looked grim. Shadith felt sick, but she wasn't sorry she'd asked. Miowee was lying flat behind a pile of Na-priests, Kayataki hugged against her.

  Rohant sat on his bench, Sassa perched uneasily beside him.

  Kikun was leaning against a warbot leg, sunk in one of his enigmatic reveries, mostly not-there.

  "Lee, how close are the flits?"

  "Ten minutes at most."

  "Don't you think we better get out of here?"

  "No. There are enough people dying. I don't want to have to kill more."

  "Yeh, well, nice. But tell you true, I'd rather them than me."

  "Tigatri's on her way back. In a hurry. She'll lay down a stunfield, flatten everyone, we walk out taking our time."

  "I thought you said an hour."

  "It's almost that now, Shadow."

  "Already?"

  "Already. You were too tied up to notice." Aleytys patted her arm, chuckled. "Tell you something, my girl, this time I'm delivering you myself to University, make sure you get there."

  "No, Lee. I don't think so. I think we've got unfinished business. The three of us." She straightened. "Rohant. Kikun. Come over here."

  "It's a practical matter," she said. She eased her throbbing leg. Her foot moved in the blood in her boot; it was a sticky gel now, disgusting but she ignored that. Wouldn't be long before she could take the boot off. "Get him before he gets us."

  Rohant bared his teeth. "It's personal. Very personal."

  "Personal, practical, a difference with no difference. We go after him."

  "Yes." Rohant held his hands out, palms up, claws showing. "What I have, I give. Blood, body, and gold."

  "Yes." Kikun straightened. "His dead want him. So be it."

  "So be it."

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: fbd-727d8c-a2ca-3e48-88ad-ef44-5f8e-faf65b

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 23.09.2010

  Created using: Fiction Book Designer software

  Document authors :

  Source URLs :

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/

 

 

 
(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share