by Jo Clayton
Brann rose with the dawn and went to eat at the Sid-day Lir, escaping before Ahzurdan crawled out of bed and came to bend her ear again. After living, so long as a solitary, she found it difficult to control her growing irritation with the man; she was getting useful information about the training a sorceror required, his powers and their limitations, but she had to seine those items out of a flood of rambling discourse. A sleepy waiter brought her a pot of tea and a plate of mooncakes, went off to find some berries and cream.
Yaril came drifting along and settled beside her at the table. “He went out last night. Late. Bought two ounces dreamdust.”
“Smoke any?”
“No.”
Brann waited until the waiter set the bowl of berries and the cream pot before her and went away. “Hmp. Idiot man. Why now?” She poured a dollop of cream over the dark purple mound, lifted her spoon. “What do you think?”
“He’ll crumble at a look. Drop him, Bramble.”
“Hmm.” For several minutes she spooned up berries, savoring the dark sweet-tart taste and the cool fresh breeze blowing in off the water, then she wiped her mouth and frowned at Yaril. “I don’t think so. Not yet. Wait till we get to Bandrabahr, then we’ll see.”
Yaril shrugged. “You asked.”
“So I did. Yaro, ever think about Jal Virri?”
“Not much. Boring place.”
“But it was beautiful, Yaro.”
“So? Lots of places are pretty enough. I like places where things happen.”
Brann broke a mooncake in half. “Was your home like that, a place where things happen?”
“We’ve been away a long time, Bramble. Think about Arth Slya. What do you remember? The good times, eh? Same with us.”
“I see.” Like always, she thought, they won’t talk about their home world, slip slide away. Did they love it, did they hate it, what did they think? Though she thought she knew them almost as well as she knew herself, at times like this she was jarred into a feeling that they were essentially unknowable. Too many referents that just weren’t there. “Yaro…” she looked down over the warehouses and the wharves, out to the ships moored in the bay, “I’d like you and Jay to fly a sweep to the north and see if you can sight Zatikay’s ship. Ahzurdan swears he’ll be here any day now, but time’s getting short on us. Theriste first is day after tomorrow, I want to be out of here by then, we have to be in Silagamatys by the seventeenth, I want some room for maneuvering in case of snags. You know nothing ever goes exactly as it’s planned.”
“Ahzurdan’s a…”
“Don’t say it, Yaro, I’m tired of that onenote song.” She finished the berries, emptied the teabowl and tapped against it with her spoon. When the waiter came, she paid him, then began strolling up the still deserted Ihman Katt, passing the ancient streetsweepers as they brushed away the debris from last night’s business, stopping a moment to exchange a word with a M’darjin woman so old her skin had turned ashy and her hair white as crimped snow. “Ma amm, Zazi Koko, how many diamonds today?”
Zazi Koko leaned on her broom and grinned at Brann, showing teeth as strong as they’d been when she was running the grassy hills of her homeland, though a lot yellower. “More than you, Embamba zimb, more than you.”
“True, oh true.” Brann laughed and ambled on. The brightening day was clear and cool; behind the facades she passed she could feel a slow torpid struggle against weariness left over from last night, lepidopter stirring in her chrysalis. She turned into the flowery winding lane that led uphill to the Pearly Dawn, walking slower still, reluctance to return to the Inn and Ahzurdan gathering like a lump under her ribs. She broke a green orchid from a spray that brushed her head, showering her with delicate perfume, tucked it into an empty buttonhole, then broke off another and eased it into the fine blond hair over Yaril’s ear. Smiling affectionately at the startled girl, she patted her shoulder and ambled on.
Heavy-eyed and morose, Ahzurdan met her on the stairs and followed her into her room. As soon as the door shut behind him and before he could start talking, Brann said, “If Zatikay isn’t here by tonight, I’m going to hire transport to Haven on Cheonea. Yes, yes, I know none of the Captains in the harbor would shift his schedule for any price, but there are ships not too deep in the Myk’tat Tukery with more flexible masters.”
“Bloody cannibals, more likely to carve us up and eat us than waste time on open water.”
“Unless they’ve changed since I ran into them, they won’t bother me or the children. And I suspect you’d find it easy enough to convince them that you’re no tasty morsel. I didn’t say I liked the idea. But time’s…” she broke off, frowned. There was suddenly a faint odd smell in the room, a creaky droning, like a doorhinge down a deep well. “What the…”
Tall, thin, brown and ivory, like a lightning-blasted tree, an eerie ugly creature solidified in front of Brann and reached for her.
Alerted by the sound and the smell, Brann dropped to a squat, then sprang to one side, slapping against the floor and rolling onto her feet. The treeish thing looked stiff and clumsy, but it wasn’t; it was fast and flexible and frighteningly strong. One of its hands raised a wind over her head, but her hair was too short for any kind of grip and she dropped too quickly. When she kicked out of the squat, rough knotty fingers got half a grip on her leg but slipped off as she twisted away. She bounced onto her feet, gasped with sudden fear as a second set of hard woody arms closed about her and started to squeeze.
Yaril shifted to a fireball and flung herself at the treeish demon, meaning to burn it, but it wasn’t what it seemed and all she did was char it a little, releasing an appalling stench into the room. It loosened its grip on Brann, held her with one hard ropy arm and swung at Yaril with the other.
Jaril came whipping through the wall and slammed into the first Treeish, charring it and stinging it enough to drive it back.
Another Treeish solidified from air and stench. And another.
Brann slapped her hands against her captor and began drawing its life into her; she screamed (voice hoarse with agony) as that corrosive firestuff poured into a body not meant to contain demon energies, but she didn’t stop the draw.
Yaril flew to her, sucked away as much of the energy as she could and redirected it into a blast of liquid fire at the other three Treeish.
Jaril was a thick worm of fire, winding about the short stubby legs of the Treeish, toppling them one by one as they tried to move at Brann.
The Treeish holding Brann screamed, a deep hooming sound that cut off abruptly as the demon shivered suddenly to flakes of something like dried mushroom. Brann leaped at a second Treeish, one rocking onto its feet after Jaril tripped it; avoiding the arms that whipped snake quick at her, she got it from behind and flattened her hands against its sides, holding onto it through all its gyrations as she drained the life out of it, screaming and screaming at the agony of what she was doing, but going on and on.
While Brann scrambled desperately to survive and the children fought with her, Ahzurdan stood by the door, frozen, all his ambivalences aroused. He watched Brann struggle, he listened to her scream, he wanted to see her humiliated, hurt; he loathed this in himself, despaired when he had to acknowledge it. But he couldn’t make himself act.
Minutes passed. The second Treeish died. For a breath or two, Brann stood trembling, unable to make herself endure that agony again, then she sank her teeth into her lip until she drew blood and threw herself at the third.
Yaril deflected a snatch of fire from the fight and spat it at Ahzurdan; it missed, being meant to miss, but it singed his ear and burnt away the ends of a wide swatch of his hair.
Startled out of his self-absorption, he roused will and memory, took a quick guess at the essence of the demons, assembled his shout, his hand gestures, and in a burst like a storm striking drove the demons from this reality.
Brann dropped panting to her knees, tears squeezing from her eyes. The changechildren dropped beside her, emerged from their fireb
all forms and spread their hands on her, drawing the poison fire out of her.
Ahzurdan stirred, went to the room’s windows, threw them wide to let the sea breeze blow the stench away. He stood in the window that looked out over the bay, his back to the room, wanting to run before Brann recovered enough to ask the questions he refused to ask himself. It was so much simpler to be somewhere else when the result of his actions or lack of action began to come clear. His mind told him it was wiser to stay (this time) and talk his way round her. His flesh wasn’t so sure.
“You took your time.” Ordinarily she had a rather pleasant voice, low for a woman, but musical; those words came at him like missiles.
“You don’t understand.” He turned his head, a gesture toward courtesy, but didn’t look at her.
“I told you. We work by will. Will driven by knowing. Knowing comes first, it has to. I had to know them to force them home. It takes… time.- Resisting an urge to see if she accepted that explanation, he stared out the window at nothing until a bit of color caught his eyes, a name flag on a masthead. His face loosened as he recognized it, though he tried to keep his relief from showing in his back. “Zatikay’s in.”
“Tk. “ An exasperated sigh. “Get yourself out there and find when he’s leaving and if it’s tomorrow or the next day, get us passage if you have to take deck space. Umf! And have a look at those wards of yours, seems to me they’re leaking.”
He drew his fingers along the sill, making lines in the faint dusting of yellow-gray pollen. “The oriels,” he said. “They told him I’m traveling with you. He knows me, he knows my tricks.” He felt an odd mix of fear and freedom, fear that she’d force him away from her, hope that she’d cut him loose so he didn’t have to fight himself any longer, that she’d free him to destroy himself as quickly and as easily as seemed right. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think of that when I asked to come with you. ‘
“I did, so stop squirming.” She was moving briskly about behind him; he turned, saw her using a pillowcase to clean up the leavings of the dead demons. The children were watching him, more hostile than ever. He had to make her say it.
“Tell me to go.”
She looked up from the unpleasant task, raised her brows. “Why?”
“He can’t find you if I’m not around.”
“You were lazy, Dan, leaning on me too much. You won’t again.”
“I’ll let you down, you know I will.”
“If you want out, go. But it’s your decision. You won’t put that on me.”
He looked at his hands, rubbed his thumbs across the smears of pollen clinging to his fingertips. “I can’t go.”
She nodded, got to her feet. “I see. If I understand what you’ve told me, Maksim is tired. He won’t come at us again for a while. So, go talk to Zatilcay. Jay, go with him. I want to know soonest if we’re leaving on the morrow; you and Yaro will have to raid the treasury, our gelt is getting low. Go. Go.” She laughed, waving the case at them. “Get out of here.”
7. Daniel Akamarino Strolls Down A Dusty Back Road And Steps From One World To Another.
WORK RECORD
DANIEL AKAMARINO aka Blue Dan, Danny Blue
BORN:
YS 745
Rainbow’s End
Line Family Azure
Family Azure has five living generations. 50 males (adults) aged 24-173. 124 females (adults) aged 17175. 49 children. Names available to adults: Teal, Ciello, Royal, Akamarino, Turkoysa, Sapphiro, Ceruli, Lazula, Cyanica.
RATED:
1. Communications Officer, Master Rating, first degree
2. Propulsion Engineer, Master Rating, first degree
3. Cargo Superintendent/Buyer, Master Rating, first degree
COMMENTS:
If you can get him, grab him. He won’t stay long, a year maybe two, but he’s worth taking a chance on. Let him tinker. He’ll leave you with a com system you couldn’t buy for any money.
Got eyes in his fingertips and can hear a flea grunt a light-year off. Have your engines singing if you let him. Good at turning up and stowing cargo. Lucky. Will make a profit for you more often than not.
A pleasant type, never causes trouble in the crew, but undependable.
Drifter. Follows his whims and nothing you say will hold him to a contract he wants to walk out on.
EMPLOYMENT:
1. Aurora’s Dream
Sun Gold Lines, home port: Rainbow’s End.
Captain: Martin Chrome
YS 765-769 apprentice prop eng
2. Herring Finn
free trader
owner/master: Kally Kuninga
YS 772-775 appr prop eng
Master Rating YS 775
3. Dying Duck
free trader
owner/master: Berbalayasant
YS 779-786 appr coms off
Master Rating YS 786
4. Andra’s Harp worldship
Instell Cominc lines, registered the Sygyn Worlds
Captain: Bynnyno Wadelinc
YS 788-791 comms off sec (788)
comms off frst (789)
comms off Comdr (790-1)
5. The Hairy Mule free trader owner/master: Dagget O’dang
YS 795-797 appr carg sup/ byr
6. Astrea Themis free trader owner/master: Luccan della Farangan
YS 799-803 Mst Eng
7. Prism Dancer
Sun Gold Lines, home port: Rainbow’s End
Captain: Stella Fulvina
YS 805-810 comms off Comdr
8. Astrea Themis
free trader
owner/master: Luccan della Farangan
YS 813-821 appr carg sup/byr
Mstr carg sup/byr YS 819
9. Herring Finn
free trader owner/master: Kally Kuninga
YS 825- Mstr carg sup/byr
SCENE: Daniel Akamarino walking along the grassy verge of a paved road, letting his arms swing, now and then whistling a snatch of tune when he thought about it. A bright sunny day, local grass is lush with a tart dusty smell, pleasant enough, a breeze blowing in his face heavy with the scent of fresh water.
A man past his first youth (his age uncertain in this era of ananile drugs that put off aging and death to somewhere around three hundred among those species where three score and ten had once been optimum), bald except for a fringe of wild hair over.his ears like a half-crown of black thorns, blue eyes, brilliant blue, they burn in a face tanned dark. He is tall and lanky, looks loosely put together, but moves faster than most and where his strength won’t prevail, his slippy mind will. A man not bothered by much, he seldom feels the need to prove anything about his person or proclivities; he mostly likes dealing with things but is occasionally interested in people, has quit several jobs because he touched down in a culture that he found interesting and he wanted to know all its quirks and fabulas. Impatient with routine, he drifts from job to job, quitting when he feels like it or because some nit tries to make him do things that bore him like shaving every day or wearing boots instead of sandals and a uniform instead of the ancient shirts and trousers he gets secondhand whenever the ones he has are reduced to patches and threads. He stays longest in jobs where his nominal superiors tell him what they want and leave him to produce results however it suits him. He has no plans for settling down; there’s always something to see another hop away and he never has trouble finding a place on a ship when he’s done with groundside living.
Daniel Akamarino is down on a Skinker world, nosing about for items more interesting than those the local merchants are bringing to the backwater subport where the Herring Finn put down (the major ports were closed to freetraders; technically the world was closed, but its officials looked the other way as long as the profits were there and the traders were discreet). He is getting bored with the ship; the Captain is an oldtime friend, but she is a silent woman settled in a longterm and nonstraying relationship with her comms Com; the engineer is a Yflan with a vishefer as a symbiote; two words a month-stand
ard is verbosity for him.
Daniel Akamarino is mooching along beside a dusty two-lane asphalt road, enjoying a bright spring morning. Yesterday, when he was chatting over a drink with a local merchant, he took a close look at the armlet the Skinker was wearing on one of his right arms, flowing liquid forms carved into a round of heavy reddish brown wood. Tbday he is on his way to find the Skinker who carved it, said to live in an outshed of a warren a kilometer outside the porttown. Now and then a jit or a two-wheeler poots past him, or a skip hums by overhead. He could have hired a jit or caught the local version of a bus, but prefers to walk; he doesn’t expect much from this world or from the woodcarver, but it’s an excuse to get away from town clutter and merchants with gold in their eyes; he wants to look at the world, sniff its odors, pick up its textures and sound patterns, especially the birdsong. The local flying forms have elaborate whistles and a capacity for blending individual efforts into an astonishing whole.
Daniel Akamarino strolls along a two-lane asphalt road in a humming empty countryside listening to extravagant flights of birdsong; the grass verge having turned to weeds and nettles, he is on the road itself now, his sandals squeak on the gritty asphalt. A foot lifts, swings, starts down…
Daniel Akamarino dropped onto a rutted dirt road, stumbled and nearly fell. When he straightened, he stood blinking at an utterly different landscape.
The road he’d landed in curved sharply before and behind him; since it also ran between tall hedges he couldn’t see much, only the tops of some low twisty trees whose foliage had thinned with the onrush of the year; withered remnants of small fruits clung to the topmost branches. Real trees, like those in-his homeplace, not the feathery blue analogs on the road he’d been following an instant before. A raptor circled high overhead, songbirds twittered nearby, distractingly familiar; he listened and thought he could put a name to most of them. Insects hummed in the hedges and crawled through dusty gray-green grass. A black leaper as long as his thumb sprang out of the dust, landed briefly on his toe, sprang off again. He sucked on his teeth, kicked at the nearest rut, sent pale alkali dust spraying before him. If the sun were a bit ruddier and had a marble-sized blue companion, this could have been Rainbow’s End. But it was egg-yellow and solitary, and it was low in what he thought was the west and its light had a weary feel, so he shouldn’t waste what was left on the day boggling at what had happened to him. He took one step backward, then another, but the fold in spacetime that brought him here seemed a oneway gate. He shrugged. Not much he could do about that. He knelt in the dust and inspected the ruts. Inexpert as he was at this sort of tracking, it seemed to him that the heaviest traffic went the way he was facing. Which was vaguely northeast (if he was right about the sun). He straightened, brushed himself off, and started walking, accepting this jarring change in his circumstances as calmly as he accepted most events in his life.