Lamarchos

by Clayton, Jo;

  Quietly happy, almost tranced, she clambered heavily up the ladder, hampered by the speaker until he moved up onto her shoulder and clung to her hair so that her hands were free. As she stepped into the lock the rain came down again in impenetrable sheets that played on the nerves like clumsy, hurtful hands.

  Stavver thumbed the plate, starting the ladder sliding home. “Well?”

  “Yes.” She drifted past him, tapped open the inner lock, and ducked into the interior of the ship.

  Stavver picked up her abandoned batik and shut the outer iris. He caught up with her in the cabin as she bent over her son’s improvised crib, letting the small furry beast settle himself beside the sleeping baby.

  “Are you crazy?” He stepped past her and reached for the speaker. “That’s a wild animal. No telling what diseases it carries.”

  She stopped him. “Don’t be silly, Miks. I wouldn’t harm my little one.” She yawned and moved toward the shower. “Madar, I’m tired. And filthy.”

  Smiling at the bemused expression on his face, she added quietly, “I know some things very well, Miks. I might not have your experience in the murky places of the universe, but wild things belong to me.” She yawned suddenly, startling herself. “I’ll explain, Miks, as soon as I wash this mud off.”

  Stavver shrugged. “It’s your baby.” He sat on the bed to wait for her.

  Aleytys stepped into the shower alcove and let the hard driven needle spray wash the caked mud off her body, washing her fatigue away with it. When she stepped out, Stavver held the batik for her while she wheeled around wrapping herself firmly in it. She pinned the brooch at her waist, driving the pin through the triple layer of cloth. Then she dropped onto the bed, patting the hard mattress beside her. “Come sit down, Miks. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Is it so damn obvious then?” He collapsed beside her, leaning back against the wall, hands clasped behind his head.

  “To me. You relax with me, Miks. You let your guard down.”

  He moved his shoulders restlessly. “I work alone, Leyta. I always work alone.”

  “You don’t trust Maissa.”

  “She comes through on contracts.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You don’t trust her to manage this thing.”

  “I trust my own skills, Leyta. I know them.” He shrugged. “You compound trouble when you take a partner. And these.…” He jerked abruptly, impatiently, to his feet and began pacing back and forth across the narrow width of the cabin. “I know Maissa too well to depend on her. Her mind is good. But her obsessions ride her too hard. The whole business can fall apart in a minute if she blows. Then there’s Kale. He’s some kind of outcast on this world. What a recommendation! The whole thing’s a disaster already. I don’t think it’s going to work, Leyta. There’s too much about it I can’t control.” His long, thin hands closed into tight fists, then opened helplessly. “But we owe passage. We’ll have to make it work.”

  “Miks.” Her quiet voice pulled him around to face her. “Come sit down and relax. The Lakoe-heai are on our side. At least, they’re friendly.”

  He frowned at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Come.” She waited until he slumped beside her. “Put your head on my lap and let me work the tension out of you.”

  Stavver sighed and stretched his long, thin body out along the mattress. “Magic fingers.”

  “Mm. Come now, relax, best of all thieves.…” She smoothed her fingers gently over his forehead a while then slid her hands down and kneaded the tense, hard muscles in his neck and shoulders. He sighed, this time with deep pleasure, eyes closing, hands falling limp and relaxed.

  Aleytys chuckled, a warm, slow sound that slid like honey over his nerves. “Poor thief … let your planning go … don’t worry your head about Maissa. We’re all caught in the web of another’s weaving, we’re on this world to their purpose, puppets with strings in strange hands.… But that’s not so bad, that means they’ll help us, help things go smoothly.…”

  He opened his eyes, still calm under the soothing effect of her smoothing hands. “You’re talking riddles again, Lee.”

  “I mean the Lakoe-heai of this world have taken us into their own plotting, my love. We don’t have to give up what we came for, but they’ve got us marked for their own purposes, so relax.”

  “‘Walk into my parlor’ said the spider to the fly—relax?”

  “Speaking of spiders, I haven’t dreamed the Hounds since we left Jaydugar.”

  He pulled away from her hands and sat up. “Thanks, Lee.” He stretched and yawned then leaned against the wall, eyes searching her face. “We’re still broken loose of them?”

  “Mmmmh.” She tapped a forefinger against her temple evoking the ghost chimes. “I think as long as I wear the diadem they’ll sniff me out.”

  “Pleasant thought.”

  “I’ll just have to keep running fast.”

  “One comes.” The reedy, small voice cut into the conversation, pulling both pairs of eyes to the crib. “And one other.” The speaker’s small head, alert ears wiggling erratically, dark eyes glittering, nestled between tiny, black paws clutching at the foot of the crib.

  Aleytys ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “Maissa …” She yawned and rubbed her face. “So it begins.”

  Stavver stood up, his face drawn in an intent inward look, radiating a feeling of unease and diffused anger. Anger at himself, at Maissa, at the whole situation which forced him to submit himself to the caprice of others, and anger at Aleytys for arousing feelings in him that imposed a responsibility for her safety on his reluctant shoulders.

  The strip of batik around his hips began to unwind as it slid down beneath the wide leather belt. Muttering a complex curse in a language Aleytys had never heard, he jerked it taut, resettling the belt to keep it in place. “Maissa will expect us in the lock waiting for her,” he growled. “Lee, you remember what I said? Don’t contradict her in any way. Just do what she says, all right?”

  Aleytys shrugged. The elaborate, blue markings on her breasts drifted and jiggled with the movement. “I hear,” she said shortly. “You don’t have to keep reminding me.”

  He eyed her unhappily. “You’ve got a temper, Lee. I—oh hell.” He stalked out of the room without looking to see if she followed.

  Aleytys sighed and smoothed the cloth over her hips.

  “Take me with you.” At the sound of the speaker’s voice, Aleytys started and turned around. The three-fingered, black paws were waving excitedly in the air. She picked him up, then checked to see if Sharl were still asleep. She touched her son’s soft cheek with love flooding through her body, forgetting briefly the complicated and dangerous situation waiting for her.

  Sighing, she shifted the speaker to her shoulder and reluctantly left the cabin. Out in the corridor she rubbed her fingers up and down his spine, laughing as his contented humming rumbled in her ears. “Do you have a name, little one?”

  “Name?” His breath was warm against her ear.

  “No name? Then I’ll call you Olelo. You’re Olelo. Do you understand?”

  “Olelo.” The speaker tried the sound out, pleased with it. “Olelo. Me, Olelo. Olelo.” The syllables turned over in his mouth as if he found them tasty. “Speaker say thank you for the naming, Sister.”

  Aleytys jumped slightly, almost dislodging the beast, startled by the sudden change of timbre in the small voice.

  “Ahai! I suppose I’ll get used to this. No thanks necessary, Lakoe-heai. It’s only a matter of convenience. A very little thing.”

  “Naming is no small thing, Sister. A name given sends ripples through time like a stone thrown into water. Never name lightly.” She heard a tiny chuckle from the speaker, echoed by the boom of thunder outside the ship. “But you have named well, nonetheless, and we thank you for the gift.”

  The sense of presence receded until, once again, Aleytys heard the beast purring in her ear. She pulled her mind from this new puzzlement and m
arched resolutely down the corridor toward the lock.

  Hand on the cold metal above the fingerplate, she paused. “Olelo?”

  “One hears.”

  “The rain. Can one do something about that? I ask because she who comes will be difficult enough without the added burden.”

  A tiny chuckle rustled in her ear. “One can.”

  Smiling in her amusement with the buoyant elementals inhabiting this world, Aleytys tapped the plate and stepped into the lock.

  Chapter II

  The horses stood head down, tails twitching desultorily over their wet sides. They had a hard-driven look that kindled anger deep inside her. She walked to Maissa’s team and touched the long, rain-sleeked hair that steamed faintly in the humid heat of the sun which was sinking like a squashed orange behind the vermilion-touched haze at the western edge of the world. The animal jerked nervously away, then quieted under her hands.

  Aleytys gentled the horses, crooned to them, anger bubbling hotter as her fingers moved over welts and ragged cuts, healing them, taking the hurt away. Lips pressed together, she watched the empty mouth of the lock with its pendant ladder waiting for Maissa to appear; thinking of what Stavver had told her. Sensing her disturbance, the horses pawed at the coarse soil and nickered uneasily. She turned abruptly to face Kale. “Why?”

  He shrugged and stepped down from the driving bench on the other caravan, his blocky body moving with the taut control of a hunting cat. “The captain doesn’t like the wet.”

  “And you?”

  He rested a broad, strong hand on the flank of the left-hand horse of his own team. “Would I lash my own feet?” Then he jerked rigidly upright, his eyes on a level with hers, flat, dark, suddenly angry. Everything about him looked time-polished, compacted by will and use into a gloss that shed punishment almost casually. The stylized pattern of hunting cats that climbed up arms and chest, the blue cat faces snarling on his broad, high cheek bones suited his feral aura even though they weren’t his clan signs but skillful fakes like those she and the rest of the party wore. He stared at the side of her face, a rising anger struggling out from behind the mask. “Let it go,” he said.

  Aleytys frowned. “What?”

  A hiss exploded into a spitting sound. He took a step toward her, his body poised forward on his toes while his arm came up, a tautly trembling finger jabbing at the animal sitting on her shoulder. “The speaker. That.” The finger jabbed again. “I don’t know how you caught it, woman, but only a gikena—a real gikena, woman—can keep it. Fool!” His hand jerked in a crooked circle compassing the ship, wagons, and the distant rim of the horizon. “Do you want to wreck everything?” His eyelids came down, hooding his eyes. “Let it go.”

  “You call me fool?” Aleytys snorted. “Use your eyes, Kale. Why didn’t you tell us about these animals and their connection with the gikena?”

  He dropped his arm. “Why say anything when there’s nothing we can do about it?” Thrusting his thumbs aggressively behind the wide belt resting on his hips, he watched her through slitted eyes.

  The silence grew taut between them, a wordless confrontation that was a clash for dominance between the two. Like a stench in her nostrils, Aleytys sensed treachery in him. A closely guarded set of ends that he was using the rest of them as ladder rungs to reach. She felt distrust bloom cold in her and held her icy, blue-green eyes hard on him, thrusting at him her certainty and power. After a minute he cursed and looked away.

  “No,” she said softly. “You didn’t tell us. That was stupid, Kale. Maissa would have done something. What were you trying? Who would believe I was gikena without the speaker? Stupid!”

  The long muscles in his neck swelled but he kept his eyes sullenly on the ground.

  “Look at me!” she commanded. “You’ve got eyes in your head.” She nudged Olelo out away from her ear until he was clinging to the point of her shoulder, obviously unfettered.

  Kale stared at the ground.

  “Look!” she repeated, throwing her anger at him.

  Reluctantly he lifted his eyes and fixed her with a bitter, hating stare. “I’m looking, woman.” He sneered the word, the scorn for females inherent in his culture boiling up through the crust of sophistication he had acquired rambling around a dozen worlds.

  “But you don’t see. Hunh! Look at the speaker, man. What holds the little one where he is?”

  Kale shifted his gaze, saw the speaker sitting free on her shoulder. He gasped, his dark skin turning dull ash.

  “Lakoe-heai,” she said softly.

  He twitched like a nervous horse, flinching repeatedly as she went on. “Lakoe-heai sent the speaker to me. Olelo, tell him.”

  The animal edged back to her head and straightened, keeping his balance by wrapping small hands in her hair. He focused brilliant black eyes on Kale. “The woman is gikena and more. Sister to us and under our protection. We lay this command on you, man. Until you have what you seek, you will aid, protect, and obey the woman.” Olelo broke off and cuddled against Aleytys.

  Still grey in the face, Kale stumbled a few steps backward. “I hear,” he said hoarsely. “Aid. Protect. Obey.”

  “Aleytys!”

  She swung around to face the lock. Maissa leaned impatiently out. “Get your kid,” she snapped. “We’re leaving.”

  “Now?” Aleytys glanced at the vanishing sun.

  “Now. Soon as Stavver has the Vryhh-box installed. The rain’s quit so we need to put distance between us and the ship.” She looked nervously around. “Don’t just stand there.”

  Aleytys took a step toward the ship then glanced over her shoulder at a silent and thoughtful Kale. “If you can help it,” she said quietly, “don’t let Maissa drive.”

  He jerked his head up as if waking from a not too pleasant dream, stared blankly at her, then nodded his understanding, a fugitive flicker of awe struggling through the black chill of his eyes.

  Chapter III

  “What lies ahead?” Aleytys flipped her free hand at the rutted road unreeling beneath the horses’ plodding hooves. Abruptly she yawned, eyes widening in surprise at the effect of the clear, cold morning air.

  “This road goes along the edge of the lakelands,” Kale said gravely. After their confrontation the night before, he had thawed considerably, treating her now with a dignified courtesy that she found rather charming. He leaned against the slatted back of the driver’s bench, relaxed and enjoying the fresh feel of the new day.

  “The lakelands. Tell me about them. Did you live there?”

  “No. My clan …” His mouth tightened. “We live close to the sea. On the far side of the mountains.”

  “Oh.”

  “The lakelands … mmmm … They raise our finest horses there.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Pihayo. A meat animal with long hair and a strong tink. Vegetables near the towns. On the lake islands, fruit trees. A rich land. Seas of grass. Much water. Streams. Hundreds of lakes. They have a good life, the lakelanders.”

  Aleytys nodded. “I can imagine. My people lived in much the same style, though we have a harsher range, valleys high in the mountains with winters longer than your whole year. A good life, though.”

  He slanted a glance at her, his unspoken questions loud in the silence. Why had she left? Why had she abandoned her people to chance her luck in this ill-matched crew? After a minute he turned his head so that his eyes followed the road as kilometer after identical kilometer slid toward them through the gently undulating hills. “Was it the thief?” he asked, a hint of sneer back in his voice.

  Aleytys sighed in exasperation but knew enough to let it go. “They called me a witch. An aunt of mine was arranging to have me burned at the stake. So I left. Stavver came later.”

  “Then we’re both exiles.” His hand settled on her arm. She felt the heat in him.

  Shaking the hand off, she said coolly, “It doesn’t make us kin.”

  “Woman, you have no courtesy.”

  “Man, I w
alk my own road and you’d better learn that now.” Though the words were a challenge in their content, her voice was slow and thoughtful as if she were exploring something in herself rather than answering him.

  “I don’t understand you. You have the form of a woman, but …”

  “Different people, different ways. You should know that by now.” She shook the hair out of her eyes. “After the Lakelands, what then?”

  “The stonelands and the wind gods. Then the killing posts.”

  “Killing posts?”

  “Aye. Boundary posts of the Karkiskya holding. I saw a man burned to ash when he tried to cross between them outside truce time.”

  “Truce time?” She shivered. “Is this truce time?”

  “Yes. The time of fall fairing.” He grunted and hooked his thumbs behind his belt. “Karkiskya don’t like prying eyes. They keep the road closed except at spring and fall fairing. Then the posts flanking the road have their kill-force turned aside.” He took the knife from the sheath slotted on the leather belt, pulling it free with quiet pride. “This is a Karkesh blade.” He turned the blued steel so it caught the golden light of the morning sun coming up behind them. “Not mine. I had mine at my blooding. It cost my father the poaku ikawakiho my mother brought as part of her dowry. And, in a way, it cost me an uncle” His voice slowed until the last words dragged out like stones.

  Aleytys flicked a glance at his brooding face. “Poaku? That’s another word for rock. You mean someone took a rock as payment for a knife?”

  He shifted restlessly on the hard, wooden seat, fingers absently stroking the smooth metal of the knife blade. “Poaku ikawakiho. An Old Stone. Not one of the Very Old. Still, it had its power. Blue, this one, with cream-white veining. Carved with summer bloom.”

  “Ah.” She sucked in a deep breath delighting in the silken feel of the air, refusing to let his absorption in some nameless tragedy from his past spoil her pleasure in the beautiful morning. “How many days to the city? Will we be meeting other travellers? Or stopping any place before then?”