by J. D. Lakey
Bohea pinned Sam with those deadly black eyes. The ambient became brittle and cold. Cheobawn shivered. She wanted to build a wall between her and the ugliness in Bohea’s mind, but she dare not for fear of missing a cue that just might save her life.
“What kind might that might be, Mr. Wheelwright? I have walked about in your cities, remember. I have seen with my own eyes what passes for civilization on this rock. Criminals run your government, thugs and murderers enforce your laws, and black marketeers and thieves pass themselves off as gentry. Trust me, no matter how many silk shirts and fur collars you put on a pig, it is still a pig. Perhaps it is not my kind you find so objectionable. You have no intention of selling her, do you? You want to keep her all to yourself.”
“Better me than with a Spacer,” Sam spat, his anger overcoming good sense. “Your kind are a plague upon every place you light. You bring nothing but death and betrayal. You do no honest work yet you look down on ordinary folk who must work hard for every credit.”
“Ironic, coming from the spoiled little rich boy living an idle life supported by a CPC war pension and his father’s sufferance.”
“Leave my father out of this,” the boy seethed, his hand gone into fist. Bohea grew still, his gaze pinning the boy in place. Sam flinched, looking away. He shook his head angrily, “I should have never brought you up the cliffs.”
“Truer words, boy, truer words. As unpleasant as this moment of clarity is, it has come too late,” Bohea said, amused. “What can you do? Go back and admit your guilt? The Ruling Council would have you executed for breaking the treaty that protects this place. Even your father’s wealth would not save you. No. I think not. You will finish what you started and take your cut when we are through. Be content, knowing I will make you very wealthy and learn to keep your mouth shut.”
Bohea turned his back on Sam, a very brave thing to do after making him so angry. The elder man returned to his seat near the hollow weapon and picked up the box he had been playing with before the duff pig had interrupted him. He held it up in front of his chest, tipped it a bit, and studied its blank surface.
Cheobawn looked from Bohea to Sam and back again, wondering if the debate was over. Most of what they had argued about escaped her understanding but what she did know was that the things Bohea said hurt Sam.
She had a new word. Spacer.
She watched Sam’s shoulders sink and his face turn pale. He turned and tottered over to the log, collapsing onto it to sit and stare at his feet. She sat down beside him.
“It will be OK,” she said, “I will ask Bear Under the Mountain to keep you safe. He owes me a favor,” she said, patting his hand.
Sam jerked his hand away and looked at her, his scorn obvious.
“I do not believe in your gods,” he hissed. Cheobawn shrugged.
“That’s alright. Nobody else does either. Except Herd Mother. But she is a bennelk and cannot talk to tell you so.”
Bohea threw back his head and howled with laughter, whether from her words or the odd look on Sam’s face, she could not tell.
Sam leapt to his feet and stalked away, the skin on the back of his neck scarlet.
“You should not mess around with his head like that. It only confuses him,” Bohea said, his gloved fingers twiddling with a knob on his box, an act made all the more remarkable when you considered that the box was as smooth as glass and had no knobs. She watched his fingers, wondering at the strange insanity that infected Lowlanders and Spacers alike.
“How else can I get him to learn anything,” she said, with a shrug. She turned her head to watch Sam, unconsciously kicking her bare heels against the side of the log. The boy threw himself down on the stream bank and plunged his head under the water.
“Are you trying to teach me things as well, here inside my head?”
Something in his tone made her turn and give him her full attention. The words had failed her again. She met his level gaze, listening hard to what he was asking. Cheobawn shook her head, denying whatever it was that he accused her of.
“You are my teacher, Father. He is a boy. There is still room in his head for new things.” she said, trying not to offend him.
Bohea snorted, having none of her flattery nor her obfuscation. He went back to playing with his box.
Garro came back into the circle of light, his arms full of green branches. Throwing them down by the fire, he pulled out his knife and begin lopping off the small branches from the main canes.
Sam returned to the fire pit, his hair dripping. He handed her a cup full to the top with water from the creek. Grateful, she took it and drank it down to the last drop before handing the cup back. He twisted the cup and it collapsed flat which she thought immensely clever. She watched the flat cup disappear into a pocket. She wanted to ask Sam to let her play with it but did not. It was probably too soon to be asking favors.
“Are you hungry?” Sam asked.
She turned her head. He held out a lump of shiny metal.
“It occurred to me that you probably haven’t eaten since you left home. Were you watching us because you were hungry? Go on, take it. It will tide you over until the meat is cooked.”
“We don’t have enough supplies to feed every starving puppy you happen across,” yelled Garro as he set a bark platter down on the damp sand near the fire. A small mountain of raw bhotta flesh was piled in the center of the shallow depression. He started skewering the meat on his green canes. Sam ignored him.
“Do not eat Old Father Bhotta. It will kill you,” she cautioned them, as she took what Sam offered. She turned it over in her hands, curious. It was not metal as she had first thought. The shininess turned out to be a strange material that was somehow not paper or plastic or metal but carried the qualities of all of them. The paper was covered with words that did not make a lot of sense. She squeezed it gently. The metal paper was a wrapping. It contained a soft lump of something else inside. The noisy paper crinkled merrily under her fingers. What ever it was, the wrapping said it was New and Improved, Now with more Vitamins! She wondered what a vitamin was and why it was so exciting.
“Who is Old Father Bhotta?” Sam asked, his question pulling her out of her revery. Cheobawn looked up from the strange thing in her hand and pointed at the body of the bhotta.
“You have taken part of Bear’s mind. He is not pleased with you. Old Father held the memories of the world in his heart and now they are gone, drained into the ground with his blood. You will die if you eat him.”
Sam looked confused. He glanced up at Bohea for help.
“Don’t look at me. You’re the anthropology student,” Bohea said, laughing.
“It is not unusual for primitive peoples to have animistic religions. The lizard must represent a deity,” Sam ventured. “One does not eat one’s god for fear of offending it.”
Cheobawn scowled at both of them. How much clearer did she have to be? She waited, looking from Bohea to Sam and then over to Garro, expecting at least one of them to react to her news. Garro, who was busy jamming the green canes into the soft ground at the edge of the bonfire, being careful to get just the right angle for slow roasting, did not look up.
Honestly, did she have to push things into their minds every time she needed them to hear what she was saying?
“Here, let me help you with that,” Sam said, taking the metal coated object out of her hands to tear at the wrapping with his teeth. He peeled it back a little more and then presented it to her. She stared at it. It looked like something that came out of the back end of a treebear. Being careful to touch only the wrapper, she put out her hand and took it gingerly. Cheobawn looked up uncertainly. Sam nodded, his expression expectant. He even made eating motions.
“It’s food. You eat it,” he said with a smile. She put her nose near it and sniffed tentatively. Whatever vitamins were, they smelled awful. To please Sam, she took a small nibble and then swallowed quickly without chewing. Even with that precaution, an unpleasant aftertaste lingered on her tong
ue. She looked around for anything that resembled a waterskin but found nothing. Would it be terribly rude to run over to the stream and drink until the taste left her mouth? Probably. Worse still, she was sitting there with the noxious lump in her hand without a clue as how to politely dispose of it.
Sam took pity on her.
“Not your cup of tea, eh?” he asked, taking it back and tossing it over his shoulder into the fire. Cheobawn watched it curl and smoke and then burst into flame. She sighed. She would have liked to keep the wrapper.
Cheobawn remembered that she had a tin of dried fruit in one of her pockets. She reached for it, thinking that if she offered Sam something of her own he would not be offended by her rudeness.
Without a hint of warning, Bohea reacted. One moment he was sitting on the log, the next, he was standing over her, having crossed the distance between them so fast it seemed as if his body flowed like water. She squeaked in surprise and tried to jerk away but it was already too late. He had her wrists locked so tightly in his gloved fists they instantly turned numb.
“This may be a stupid question but did either one of you think to pat her down?” he drawled casually. Sam cast a guilty look her way. Garro looked up from his cooking and just snorted in disgust. “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” Bohea said with a tired sigh. “Sam, if you would be so kind, hold her still for me.”
Sam took Cheobawn’s forearms in his hands and pulled her arms back away from her body. She allowed this, not attempting to break out of the hold, knowing they were concerned but about what she did not quite know. The older man thought she posed a threat of some sort. She could feel it in the ambient. Cheobawn decided she would submit if it made their minds rest easier. Bohea, his hard eyes looking everywhere but directly into her eyes, ran his fingers through her curls and behind her ears.
She tensed, suspecting she was not going to enjoy this game.
“Relax,” the boy said, tightening his grip. “We just want to see what you have in your pockets.”
The hard fingers ran down her neck and almost immediately found her omeh hidden below the edge of her collar. Bohea’s fingers followed the path of the omeh as it curved around her neck and then stopped over the large lump made by the black bead. She jerked under this unwanted familiarity. Only Amabel touched her omeh and not even Amabel touched the black bead.
Bohea gave her a hard look before he unbuttoned the top button of her tunic. It suddenly became imperative that he not make physical contact with her omeh. She snarled at him, baring her teeth, trying to twist free. Sam’s grip became painful.
Bohea ignored her as he pulled the collar aside to study what lay underneath. She watched his face. The slight shift in emotion was barely visible there; a narrowing of the eyes, an imperceptible hitch in his breath, a tremor in the muscles of his jaw. She felt the skin on her face grow hot, unable to hide her embarrassment. Now he knew the true depths of her shame. She glared at him, daring him to insult her as he had insulted Sam.
Bohea said nothing, nor did he meet her eyes. He merely re-buttoned her button and moved on. His hands ran down her clothing, his fingers quick and sure, as if he had done this a thousand times before. His fingers intruded in places that had not been touched by any but herself since she had learned to bath herself. She froze, shocked to her core. The touching was not the worst of it. The worst part was what was going on in his mind. She might have been a piece of meat for all the emotional involvement Bohea felt towards her. For the first time in her life, she felt less than human. Her distress flashed scarlet across the ambient but there was no one near who could hear her.
Chapter Twenty
Bohea emptied her pockets with smooth efficiency, examining each object before tossing it aside. He opened the small tin of dried fruit, dumping most of the contents on the ground at her feet. He did the same with a tin of dried meat. The casual waste was nothing compared to the indignities she was suffering but it outraged her more than her own distress and she clung to that anger in a world that was rapidly descending into chaos.
Forgotten detritus from the deep corners of her pockets found the light of day; her pocket knife, a stub of a stylus, a miniature mapper’s ruler, a handful of bits of stone and shell and an odd feather or two. All but the pocket knife were added to the scattered objects at her feet. The pocket knife went into a pouch on Bohea’s belt. She noted its location for future reference. Hayrald had made that for her with his own hands and she was going to have it back, no matter what.
He pulled a foray form from one of her lower pockets. Cheobawn looked at it in surprise. She had forgotten it was in there. She needed to clean out her pockets more often, it seemed. Bohea pause, unfolded it, and then grunted with surprise.
“What is that?” Sam asked, trying to hold her still against his body so he could get a better view of what the older man held in his hands.
“Looks like a recon map covered in mission notes. Military grade mapping. I thought you said the Highlands had no standing army, boy. This makes me think otherwise.” He looked up with a smile that had not even a trace of humor in it. “Tell me one thing. Has anything you ever said to me been true or should I gut you now and call it even?”
“No, no, you have it all wrong,” Sam stammered. “They are primitives. They have no weaponry more sophisticated than handmade knives and spears.” Sam let go of one of her arms and spun her around. “Tell him. Where did you get the map, Ch’che?” The intensity of the emotion around her surprised her, matched only by her confusion as to its source.
“It is just a blank form to practice on. It is nothing,” Cheobawn said, trying to defuse the tension she felt flying around her. Bohea grabbed her by her collar to pull her out of Sam’s hands, shaking her hard as he waved the foray form in front of her nose. “Who did you steal this from, little thief? Can you read this? Tell me what it means.”
Once more the ambient flashed red with her rising anger. She was starting to tire of the constant physical abuse.
“It is mine,” she hissed, grabbing for it. Bohea jerked it just out of her reach, his reflexes inhumanly fast. Garro drew near, his nose for strife unerring.
“Give her to me, sir. I can make her talk,” he wheezed.
“Do you want that, little thief? Do you? I will let him eat you, starting with your toes,” Bohea said, his own ambient marking him as a liar. Was this a strangely twisted game to him?
“Stop it!” Sam shouted, upset. He did not like the game, either.
“Mmmm, little girl toes,” growled Garro, pulling out his hunting knife. “Smoke them and wear them as a necklace, I will.”
“Shut up,” roared Sam. Understanding dawned in her mind as she looked between them. It was a game but only Bohea knew all the rules. He used that advantage, pitting those around him at each other so that he could watch the play. She hated this. She needed them to be quiet. She needed them to be calm. She needed them to listen.
Cheobawn did to them what she did to the bat eared fox, only this time so much energy came surging up out of the ambient it almost hurt as it arced through her body and burst out of her.
Sam blinked and fell silent, looking down at her as if she had just screamed at the top of her lungs. Bohea’s pristine box chirped in alarm. The Colonel raised an elegant eyebrow and gave her all his attention.
Cheobawn flinched from that look and turned to see if the scar-faced man had been affected. Garro looked dizzy. He sat down hard on a large boulder. It might have been because of something she had done or it might have been because a gray shadow now stained the edges of his mouth, clear to see in the gathering light. She glanced up at the sky. Dawn. She had run out of time. The mountain whispered things as it moved against them, out there in the shadows. Bear Under the Mountain had been very busy while her attention had been elsewhere.
She turned to meet Bohea’s eyes. He had a smile on his face that bordered dangerously near to being a full blown gloat.
“The Highlands don’t need a standing army, do they
, little witch? They have you.” he said, the words purring over all her senses. Cheobawn cocked her head, listening hard as she considered him, in no hurry to set him straight.
“What must I do to make you listen?” she asked.
“You have my undivided attention, Lady,” Bohea said with a graceful bow. She scowled at him. He was playing with her again. Was everything to be a game, then?
“Why have you come here?” she asked him. “You honor nothing, not even death. What did you gain by killing Old Father Bhotta?”
“I came looking for you. The lizard was the bait. Fortuitously, it became the means to and end, as well. One must fulfill all legal contracts or leave oneself open to legal claims, after all.”
“Riddles. They exhaust my patience. Say it clearly or say nothing,” she snapped, only half listening.
Megan had somehow persuaded Herd Mother to let the Pack mount. Herd Mother, having listened most of the night to Cheobawn’s distress, knew exactly where to find her.
“You guessed who I was almost from the start, didn’t you? I have traveled between the stars to find you. I am an emissary. I represent the CPC. I am here at the behest of the ruling family. It is their deepest desire to make themselves known to your people that we might establish diplomatic channels. I believe, now that I have met you, that my mission can be counted as 100% successful. Wouldn’t you agree, Lady?”
“You double crossing son of a whore!” wheezed Garro. “You promised to make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. All we got so far is a handful of nearly worthless stones.”
Bohea smiled. With an elaborate flourish, he waved his hand at the dead Old Father. “There are your bloodstones. The readings go beyond the ability of my sensors to quantify. If you keep hacking away, I am fairly certain you will find your prize.”
“Huh?” Sam grunted in surprise, turning to stare at the dead animal. Garro roared to his feet, his knife in his hand. He staggered around the corpse and disappeared into the gaping wound in Old Father’s belly, the sound of his knife ripping through flesh loud in the still air. Sam took a couple of steps after Garro and then turned to look at her, a question on his face.