A Gathering Of Stones dost-3

by Jo Clayton

  Jaril nodded. His limbs glowing red-gold like the flames, he cooled one hand enough to pour water from the skin into a pot, then went back to the fire and sat holding the pot on his thighs until the water boiled. He scolded Brann back to her blankets when she started to get up, made the tea and took a mugful to her. He retreated to the fire and watched as she sipped. “If we talked, it meant we had to remember. It’s not easy, Bramble. Not even with you.”

  Brann sipped at the tea and waited; she said nothing, it was up to Jaril now, he had to decide what he was going to tell her.

  “It wasn’t so bad when we were aetas, that’s uh children who aren’t babies any more. Aetas are supposed to wander around, usually two or three or maybe four together. When they’re twins like Yaro and me, they generally go in twos. That’s how Slya caught us, we were off by ourselves, poking into a stuvtiggor nest. Stuvtiggors eat Surrahts, they pick on afas, that’s babies, and agaxes, that’s adults. Aetas are too fast and too tough for them. It’s one of the things we do when we’re aetas. Eat stuvtiggors. They’re uh like ants, sort of, their uh essence is like ours, not yours, Bramble; they taste good, like urn those fried oysters you pig on sometimes. Not really, I don’t know, it’s the same idea. Close enough. They can do what we did when we made that horse for you, remember? They can merge to make one curst big stuv clot. If they catch one alone, it’s good-bye Surraht. That’s why, when you said Yaro might end up food…” He started to shudder again, stopped himself. “We lost a… I suppose you’d call her a sire-side cousin… we got to her late, we saw the stuv clot eating her… agh! We scragged it, ate…”

  He stopped talking, flowed briefly into his globe form, sucking in great gulps of heat energy, almost killing the fire before he changed back. “We were aetas when Slya snatched us. She changed us back to afas, sort of, so we had to have you feed us, Bramble, so we had to change you, so she could use you and us. You know all that. Anyway, the thing is, we’re not aetas any more, Yaril and me. We’re aulis. All that godfire, it kicked us all the way past… uh… it’s a kind of part-puberty. We aren’t fertile yet, that happens later, but we uh make out like minks. Or we would if there were other aulis around, Not a sister… or a brother.. we can’t… uh… it doesn’t work… Ahh! gods, Bramble, sometimes in the past year or so, Yaro and me both, we felt like we were going to go nova if we didn’t get somewhere there were more aulis than just us. We were working up to ask you if you’d please please figure a way to… it’s more than uh sex, Bramble. Aulis make bonds. Communities. Like families here. Sort of. It’s more complicated. We NEED to do that or we go uh rogue. Round the bend. Insane. We get worse than stuvtiggors. We eat… uh… it’s bad. Well, you get the idea.” He cupped his hand about a wisp of flame, let his flesh go translucent, showing shadows of bones that weren’t really there. “This might be more important, Bramble. When we were aetas, we were uh simpler and uh tougher. You know how fast we came back after that webfoot shaman stoned us. We can’t do that now, it takes time for us to uh unfold, it takes more uh force to bring us back and the longer we’re down, the harder it is to come back. You don’t want to count on Yaro being able to help us, well, fight or run, even if we can bring her all the way back from stone.”

  “And I was complaining about being bored.” Brann rubbed her fingers across the hollow at her temple. “I do want you to look around more carefully down there, Jay; keep in mind what we decided about Jorpashil, see if you can find anything to support or cancel that.”

  Jaril deformed, his version of a yawn. He blinked sleepily at her over the tongues of fire curling about his legs. “You brought some wine, didn’t you, Bramble?”

  “I brought some wine. I’ll have some hot for you when you get back.”

  “Holding my nose to it, huh?” He smiled, that sudden flash-grin that could twist her heart and remind her that he and Yaril were the only children she’d ever have. Then he shifted to the firesphere and went darting off.

  She looked after him until even the faint glow on the walls went dark. First Maksim splits, now the children. No, that’s the trouble, they aren’t children any more. She thought about the Arth Slya that existed when she was a child and mourned for what had been, a long flow through the centuries since the first artisans moved there, teacher/parent passing skills to studentkhild who taught in his turn, her turn. My children will be gone beyond my reach after this is over. If they were dead, at least I’d have their ghosts to comfort me a while. If they stay here, they’re dead or mad. Dead or mad. I never have a choice, do I? She grimaced. “Tchah! Brann, oh Brann, you know it’s not so bad a world. Stop Blooming. A month ago you were bored out of your skull. Hmp, Maksim was right, watch out what you ask for, you might get it.”

  “Tallmg to yourself, Bramble?” Jaril dropped into the fire, wriggled around until he was comfortable. He tossed her a copper coin. “Tell me what you think.”

  She rubbed her thumb across the obverse. “I don’t know this writing.”

  “Sarosj. It says Blessings to Sarimbara the Holy Serpent.”

  “Ah. A coin from Dil Jorpashil?”

  “What they call a dugna. Fifty to a silver takk.”

  “You’re feeling better.”

  “It was not knowing, Bramble.”

  “I know. How far is Jorpashil from here?”

  “Yaro and me, we flew it, took us five days and part of the sixth. ‘Less we can get you mounted, you’ll be walking. Probably triple that and then some, say twenty days for you.”

  She pulled the blankets tighter about her, shivering a little as stray currents of icy air sneaked through crevices in her clothing. “I could use one of Maksi’s call-rne’s. If he was here, he could pop us over in a wink.”

  “How many he give you?”

  “Six.”

  “I have a feeling you ought to save them for something more important.”

  “More important than my poor little feet?”

  “Brammmmble!”

  “Mmh. You’ve been there, I haven’t. What face should I put on?”

  “Old and ugly. The base culture is nomad Temueng; an offshoot of one of the grassclans gone to seed. Settled by Lake Pikma a couple thousand years ago. Since then they’ve mixed with Phrase, Rukka Nagh, Lewinkob, Gallinasi, and whatever else trickled up the river, but that didn’t change how they look at women. You know Temuengs.”

  “That I do. You going to spend the night in that fire?”

  “Oh yes. Any reason why I shouldn’t?”

  “No, just pop a billet on now and then, hmm?”

  “That’s me, is it? Automatic fire feeder.”

  “Where could I find a better?” She grinned and got to her feet, taking the blanket she’d been sitting on with her. She snapped it open, folded it in half and spread it close to the fire. “Wake me sometime round dawn. Might as well get an early start.” She wrapped the second blanket around her and stretched out. “Slya bless, this rock is hard.” She yawned, rolled onto her side so she was facing the fire and in minutes was deep asleep.

  2

  Twenty days later a tall gaunt holywoman came striding along the Silk Road, a gnarled staff in one hand, the other swinging loosely at her side. She wore an ancient tattered overrobe and gathered trousers of coarse homespun; her sandals were worn, mended with cord. Her lank gray hair was loosely braided into a single plait that hung down her back, its ragged end bobbing against her buttocks in time with each step. Straggles of gray hair fluttered about a weatherbeaten face. Her mouth was a flat line bracketed by deep furrows curving down from the nostrils of a long bony nose. A big black dog with a blanket-wrapped bundle strapped to his back paced beside her.

  She stopped at the edge of the rivermoat, sniffed at the thick green mat of jeppu plants and the hoard of leaf hoppers that started a frantic piping when she climbed up the levee and stood looking down at them. “So how do we get in?”

  The dog looked up at her, then he turned south and trotted away along the levee path. The woman stumped after him.
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  There was a ferrylanding near the place where the moat branched away from the river, a gong on a gallows at one side. A rag-padded stave hung beside it; the leather loop tied through a hole in one end was hooked over a corroded nail on the gallowpost. A narrow lane was cut through the mat of jeppu, baring a strip of water wide enough to let the flatboat pass. The ferry was across the river, the ferryman nowhere in sight. Brann shaded her eyes with one hand, peered along the river. She could see other landings opposite other gates. At every crossing the ferries were snugged up on the city side. She shrugged, lifted the stave off its nail and beat a tattoo on the gong.

  Nothing happened.

  She looked at the stave, shrugged again and hung it where she’d found it. “I suppose he’ll come when he feels like it.” The black dog yawned, sank-onto his stomach. Tongue lolling, head on his forelegs he was a picture of patience.

  Brann laughed and dropped beside him. She arranged her legs in the lotus cross and prepared to wait.

  Across the river a stumpy figure came from a shed and stood on the bank, hands on hips, staring at her. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, spat into the mat of jeppu; his lack of enthusiasm was louder than a shout. He glanced up at the barbican behind him when a guard leaned from an arrowslit and bawled a garbled comment in the sarosj that Brann was only beginning to understand. He spat again, slapped his right hand on his left forearm, then turned his back on the guard. Impatiently he thrust his hands through his thick curly hair, shouted something incomprehensible at the but and stalked onto the ferry; he stood at he shoreside end, his hands back on his blocky hips, watching as two boys ran from the hut, cast off the mooring lines of a longboat and rowed across the moat.

  The boy at the forward oars inspected her with a lively curiosity in his black eyes, but he asked no questions. “To cross, a takk,” he said.

  “Don’t be absurd. Three dugnas is more than enough for that leaky tub.”

  He smiled, a smile sweet as honey and as guileless. “Our father will beat us, baiar. Forty dugnas.”

  “He should beat you for your impudence, pisra. Five dugnas and only because you have the smile of an angel, though doubtless the soul of an imp.”

  “See my sweat, baiar. Consider how far it is. And you have that no doubt dangerous beast with you. Thirty dugnas for the two of you.”

  “There’s not enough sweat on you and your brother both to tempt a gnat. Seven.”

  “Twenty for you, five for the dog.”

  “Ten for me, two for the dog.”

  “Done. Pay me now, baiar.” He held up his hand, the palm horny with long labor at the oars.

  “Why not. Make room for the dog, hmm?” After Jarilhound jumped into the boat and was standing with legs braced, Brann got to her feet, thrust two fingers in her belt pouch and fetched out twelve dugnas, counted them coin by coin into the boy’s hand. When the count was done, she eased herself stiffly into the longboat and settled on a thwart with Jaril-hound sitting up between her knees. The boys started rowing.

  On the other side, she followed Jaril onto the landing and stalked off, paying no attention to the ferryman or his sons, ignoring the guard who yelled at her but was too late to catch her as she passed through the gate and into Dil Jorpashil.

  3

  The first week Brann spent her nights in doorways with Jaril standing guard over her; she spent her days looking for someplace to go to ground.

  She found an empty hovel on the edge of the Kuna Coru, the quarter where the sublegals lived when they weren’t in prison or on the street due to a stretch of Tungjii’s Buttocks in the Face. The hovel had three small rooms, one of them a kitchen of sorts; the roof leaked and the front door wouldn’t close because the leather hinges were cracked, the scraped sheepskin on the windows was cracked or mostly missing, but the walls were thick and solid, the floor was intact and there was a jakes around the corner that she shared with five other households and a branch of the aqueduct brought city water dose by; the tap on it was illicit, but no one paid much attention to that. All the discomforts of home and a bouquet of wonderfully varied and powerful stinks besides.

  She paid the latch bribe to the local caudhar, hustled some furniture and had the roof and the floor fixed, then moved in. Her neighbors weren’t the sort to ask questions and she wasn’t talking anyway. Not then.

  Once she was settled, she went to one of Sarimbara’s shrines and sat there all day, neither eating nor drinking, her legs in a lotus knot, her gaze blank as the stone eyes in Sarimbara’s icon. It was the most boring thing she’d done in all her long life, but she kept it up for a week, her presence there as a certified holywoman was cover for Jaril as he flew over the city in his hawkfonn, probing for any whiff of Yaril or her captor.

  On the fifth day of this boredom, when Jaril came in from another sweep, this one as fruitless as the others, Braun was staring gloomily at a pot, waiting for the water to boil so she could drop in a handful of rice and some chopped vegetables. She was almost as bored with her own cooking as she was with the shrine-sitting; it’d been years since she’d bothered about meals, the ten years on Jal Virri, thanks to the cosseting by Housewraith. She looked up as Jaril flung himself into a tottery old chair by an equally dilapidated kitchen table. “You look like I feel.”

  He drew hardened nails across the table top, scoring grooves in the soft gray wood, making an ugly rasping sound. “This isn’t working.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Tell me what I should be looking for. Besides Yaro.” He slapped his hand on the table. “Bramble, we have to DO something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know!” He kicked at the table leg, watched the table shudder. “I don’t know…”

  “So what have you done, Jay? I see you about three minutes every third day.”

  Ignoring its creaking protests, he leaned back in the chair, crossed his arms and scowled at the fire in the stovehole. “I figured anyone who could build a trap like that would likely be up around the top, so I started with the hills and the Isun sars. I found a couple sorcerors living in the sars, neither of them anywhere near Maks’ class. And a couple dozen mages, but mages don’t deal with other realities so it isn’t likely they’d know how to make that trap. I marked them anyway; if it comes to that, I can go into them and read as many of them as I can before they start yelling for help.” He leaned back farther and put his feet on the table. “I spent a while sniffing about the Dhaniks since they’re the ones that really run the city, I snooped on judges, tax farmers, priests in their shrines, caudhars of the districts. Nothing there either. Some Dhaniks hire Talents, but they sure take care not to associate with them. These Talents live in the Kuna Kirar with the lesser merchants. I checked out their hirelists, some witches for farseeing and truthreading, some shamans, mainly as healers, and low-grade mages to set wards about their offices and their sars. I looked at the lot of them; if you added their talents together, they wouldn’t have enough gnom to light a fire in a jug of oil. I checked out the doulahars of the High Merchants. Pretty much like the Dhaniks, they hire Talents but don’t want them around day to day. Yesterday and today, I did the Great Market. The same mix, mostly. Some street magicians whose hands are quicker than their Talents, especially when they’re in your purse, fortunetellers, card and palm readers, dealers in potions and amulets, curse setters and layers, and none of them worth the spit to drown them. I looked at every Slya-cursed one of them. I thought maybe the trapper might be hiding behind a charlatan’s mask. Be a good front, if you think of it much. If he is, he’s too good for me. I’m whipped, Bramble, down to a frazzle. I don’t know what to do now. Maybe I ought to dangle myself for bait.”

  “Hmm.” Brann glanced at the pot, snorted as she saw the water busily boiling; she scooped up the vegetables and the rice, dumped them in, stirred them briskly and put the lid on. “Let’s save that for desperation time. I don’t think we’ve got that desperate, not yet. What about around us? The Kuna Cora.”

>   “In this collection of losers?”

  “It marches with your idea about the streetsers. If there’s ever a place where people don’t ask questions…” She lifted the lid, stirred the mix inside some more, then moved the pan off the fire to the sandbed where it would continue cooking at a much tower heat.

  “I’m tired, Bramble.”

  “I know. You ought to try spending your days looking that damn snake in the face. I think I’m going to set up as a wisewoman, Jay; this holy bit is getting us nowhere. Why don’t you stay home a day or so, rest.”

  “You mean be your familiar and friendly sneak and read those women on the sly. That’s a rest?”

  “They say a change is as good as a rest.” She lifted the lid on her supper, replaced it, and walked briskly to the box where she kept her bowls and flatware. She laid a place for herself, hunted out a napkin and dropped it beside the spoon. “Get your feet off the table, huh?”

  “They say. Who they? I doubt that they ever did a day’s labor.”

  “Quibble. Feet, Jay. I don’t care to stare at your dirty boots while I’m trying to eat. You going to stay?”

  “Oh yes.”

  4

  On the first day, one woman came timidly into the warm steamy kitchen and sat at the table. She had a badly infected hand that was turning gangrenous. Brann poured up a cup of bitter herb tea, made her drink it and sat holding her hand, eyes closed; Jaril came padding around the table and sank to his stomach beside the woman, his body pressing against her leg. A few minutes later the woman was looking at a hand with all the swelling gone, the redness gone. The splinter that had caused the trouble was out, the wound was closed over, not fully healed but well on its way. Ignoring the woman’s excited incoherent thanks, Brann took a dugna for her efforts and sent her off. Come the next morning, she had scarcely a minute to herself. Established healers made some trouble for her, but she was formidable in herself and handy with that hardwood staff and when a pushy Minder or one of the caudhar’s bullyboys got a good look at Jarilhound’s teeth, they turned polite very quickly. The caudhar tried to up his bribe, but she persuaded him that would be uncourteous and unwise.