by Clayton, Jo;
“I need you.” On the mirror surface of the black water pool the words drifted momentarily then dissipated. The amber light came back. With it, on the edge of her consciousness, came the dim perception of a feeling of curiosity. “Stavver goes into danger tonight. I feel that if it weren’t for me he’d have got himself out of this mess long ago.” She rested again, lying on the swelling breast of the world. “I want to go in with him, but only if I can be of help. That thing you do when you stop the world … if we get into a mess could you do that for us? Both of us?”
She waited. After a time while she listened with all her being, the amber light flared briefly and she felt a distant sense of acquiescence, like a yes whispered into the face of a storm. “Madar bless, Rider. There’s another thought I had.” Again she gave the words time to sink. A ripple of curiosity flittered around the corners of her mind. “Yes. I know so little about you. Could you warn us if one of the Karkiskya is coming? Or if we were heading into some kind of trouble?” She hesitated, coming up a little out of the trance state as she struggled to phrase the query so that she could wring some kind of meaningful answer out of the fragmentary impressions that constituted the only means of contact she had with the diadem. “Could you warn me—somehow—if someone was coming?”
As she lay holding her senses open to the faintest of twinges, feeling the slow thud of the muscle clenching and unclenching in her chest grow even slower … she felt the pulses, counted them, one hundred … two hundred … a shock of fear jolted her body upright until she was standing beside the bed trembling and disoriented. “Ahai Madar!” she gasped.
Sharl lay on his back playing happily with his toes totally entertained by the feel of his own fascinating self. She looked across at Stavver. He was flaccid with sleep, the discipline of his craft strong enough to overcome all the disturbances around him. He slept each time before he worked the night. He slept, allowing nothing without or within to interrupt this time of blankness that honed body and mind for the intense effort ahead when his senses would be stretched to their widest outreach. She sighed and lay back on the mattress. When her body had slowed to trance she murmured into the silence of her head, “You really pulled strings that time, Rider. I take it you can warn me if some inconvenient insomniac wandering around is liable to stumble over us.”
Feeling of amusement and agreement.
“Good. And … um … a small twinge, please. The halls in that place don’t have room for more. I’d bust my head.”
A brief flash of humor pricked like insect feet across her brain.
“I suppose I’d better leave it at that. If you’ll stay ready to pull us out of swampy spots.”
Feeling of acquiescence.
“And warn me if guards or other night ramblers are coming up on us.”
Flash of amber. Acquiescence.
“Funny. It’s easier to talk with you this time, Rider. Maybe, given a little more time and practice.…” She sighed. “Never mind. Leave that till later. Ah.…” She sucked in a deep breath, then pushed herself up until she was leaning against the wall. Her head ached until she sent the pain away. She closed her eyes and built a mandala in her mind.
For the next hour she sat in meditation, passing slowly through the mandalas Vajd had given her. Slowly, slowly, the great circles revolved before her, bringing comfort and tranquility into her uncertainty.
A hand touched her shoulder. She looked up, moving her head with slow reluctance, to see Stavver’s anxious face swimming over her. Her mouth stretched into a smile, then drooped as she forgot to hold the corners up. His voice sounded harsh against her ears. Distant. As if he spoke through wads of cotton. “Wake up, Leyta. Time to eat.”
Aleytys rocked gently from side to side, breaking herself out of the stillness. “I think I went too deep.”
Stavver shook his head. “It’s beyond me.” He stretched and yawned. “Fix me some tea, will you? I need to wash the fog out.”
“Yes, master, certainly, master, anything at all, master.” Her grin faded. “Miks.” He was at the door, his hand on the curtain. “Wait a minute before you go out.”
He leaned against the back wall, smiling sleepily at her. “What is it?”
“Sit down. Please.” She waited until he dropped onto the bunk, his face twisting into an amused somewhat impatient scowl. “I’m going with you tonight.”
“No.”
“Miks, I’d keep out if I didn’t think I could help. No. Hear me out. I’ve got in touch—in a way—with the diadem. Look. You say you’re the best. Maissa says you’re the best and she doesn’t like you. But any thief can find himself in a tight place even if he is the best. You’ve seen what the diadem can do. There’s more. It warns. You’re going in late when all sensible beings are asleep, but how can you control the actions of the Karkiskya. Or there might be guards in the halls. I don’t know, you may have instruments that could do the same for you, Miks, but should you reject this extra edge? You told me always learn as much as you can even if you don’t need the knowledge. Isn’t this the same thing?” She dropped her hands in her lap and waited for his response.
Stavver sat frowning, eyes focused somewhere beyond her. After a minute he blinked. “You feel a strong need to go?”
“Yes.”
He straightened the curve in his spine, rubbed the tip of his long nose. “You haven’t shown any sign of clairvoyance before.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.” He pushed off the bunk and stood looming over her, staring intently into her face. “Do you ever find yourself developing new talents?”
“I don’t know.” She ran her hands through her hair, then reached out and took hold of his arms. “What’s it matter now? I haven’t thought about it. Do I go with you, Miks?”
“You come. Keep your mouth shut and don’t do anything unless I tell you to.”
“I won’t mess things up, Miks.”
He ruffled her hair, grinning affectionately at her. “Good. Now, woman, remember your promise. Fix your master some tea.”
She bowed until her hair tickled her knees. “Yes, wise and honored master, full of … um … extraordinariness beyond description.”
Chapter VI
A fugitive breeze fluttered the worm-eaten leaves sending a rain of powdery dust over Aleytys. She sneezed and wrinkled her nose then followed sounds of laughter down slope to the stream.
Loahn and Puki stood talking animatedly beside two strings of horses obviously having timed their arrivals so they would meet. While the horses sucked greedily at the sluggishly flowing water the two young Lamarchans stood very close but not touching. Aleytys scratched Olelo’s stomach. Looks like he’s serious about this one. She smiled, feeling a gentle surge of affection for the boy. Then he turned and saw her.
“Si’a gikena?”
“Good evening, Loahn, Puki.” She glanced up at the darkening sky and shivered, nerves tightening as she remembered what was to come. “Loahn, leave the horses with Puki. I have to talk with you.” She set Olelo on the ground and pushed him toward the girl. “Keep watch for us, little one.”
The speaker sat up on his haunches and regarded her with a suspicious gleam in his black eyes. Then he flipped onto all fours and trotted briskly to Puki.
With a quick nod, Loahn tossed the lead rope to the girl. “They’ve had about all they need. Take the team to Kale when they’re done.”
She ducked her head and watched unhappily, radiating a confusing queasy blend of fear and jealousy, as Loahn walked apart with Aleytys.
Breaking through the flimsy line of spindly low-growing brush, Aleytys came to a backless wooden bench. She turned and waited for Loahn.
“What is it, Lahela?” She could hear the concern in his voice. He wasn’t worried yet, simply disturbed that she should call him apart this way. She brushed at the dust and leafy debris on the heavy plank seat, then dropped down facing him.
Rubbing at her forehead, she stared past him at the muddy water. “Poor Pu
ki, she didn’t like your going off with me.”
“You didn’t call me to talk about the demoiselle.” The archaic term of respect for an unmarried girl was a deliberately unemphatic refusal to discuss his relationship with Puki. “What do you want?”
“Sit down.” When he was sitting stiffly beside her, she went on. “You know why we’re here. We hit tonight. I want you to stay with the baby. I don’t trust Maissa with him and I can’t leave him alone that long. Kale …” She shrugged. “He’ll be at watch.”
His head jerked up. “You?”
She laughed, the brief low sound almost lost in the increasing rustle of the leaves overhead. “I’m a thief as much as any of the others, Loahn. I can’t let him go in alone.” The silence between them thickened. Aleytys rubbed her thumbs over the folds of the cloth where it bent with her body, feeling through her preoccupation the smooth movement of the coarse weave over the skin of her thighs. Abruptly she broke the silence. “I saw: your face when Firstman gave you back that knife.” She bent forward and flicked the hilt with her forefinger, feeling him shudder with a kind of dread.
“Without it I’m not a man,” he said simply.
“That I can’t believe. You were very much man with me the night after we found you on trail.”
“The blade was mine again as soon as you lifted curse; there only remained the actual body return.” He shrugged, stroked the smooth worn hilt with loving fingers, touching it with the familiar affection and ease of a long accustomed lover. “The Karkesh blade cut my foreskin at my blooding, drank the dark blood that ran warm from the center of my being.”
“Ummmm. What if a man has sons but nothing to buy the steel?”
Loahn shuddered again. “Never. Don’t say such a thing.” He stared at his toes as they dug into the dampish earth and flung tiny clods into brief flight. “Why do you ask such things?”
“What if Karkys vanished?”
“You?”
“I don’t know?”
“Why?” His thumb caressed the colored stones set into the hilt moving up and down over the smooth surfaces.
“Lakoe-heai set me four things to do. The second was to curse Karkys and drive the off-worlders away.” She pinched her lips together and clasped her arms over her breasts, running shaking hands over her biceps, fumbling toward the only certainty she knew, the solid reassuring feel of her own flesh. “Ahai, Loahn, I don’t pretend to know the rights and wrongs of this. It seems to me the Karkiskya do no real harm here. You’ve made them part of your lives, an important part. This is your world. Tell me what to do.”
“Me!” The boy looked shattered.
Overhead the sky darkened, the ever-present sworls of color tightening against the approach of night into amorphous lumps that drifted above the earth like thunder-heads. Hidden by the thin screen of brush they heard Puki urge the two teams out of the water and lead them away. Loahn rubbed a hand over his inch long stubble. “No Karkys.…” He muttered. “Why?”
Aleytys wrapped her fingers about his leg just above the knee, feeling the tension that hardened his muscles. “Could be the Lakoe-heai are jealous. The Karkiskya don’t recognize them. It sounds foolish … to destroy so much for an itch in the vanity. I don’t know. The Karkiskya are cheating you, do you know that?”
“Cheating us?” He swung around to face her. “How?”
“Keon says the poaku you trade for your blades bring many many times the worth of a knife off-world.”
His mouth twisted into a one-sided smile. “And how would we get the poaku off-world? Why should we try? A bargain is a good one if both parties are satisfied. If you drive the Karkiskya off, how will boys know they’re men?” His head moved slowly away from her toward the ugly towers that rose above the tree tops. “They’ve been here a long time … a long time. No one remembers when there was no Karkys.” The lines deepened in his thin face, aging him suddenly beyond his twenty years. “If the Lakoe-heai demand it.…”
“I don’t have to do it.”
“They’ll make you.” He licked his lips. “They’re a nasty lot to tangle with.”
“I could talk with them. If they realized they were wrecking their own people.…”
“Their own people! You don’t think they really give a damn about us, do you?” He spread out his hands. “I know it sounds funny for me to say that after what they did for me. It’s caprice, Lahela. Why they do things is beyond …” He tapped his forehead with his forefinger. “Beyond the working of our minds.” He jumped up and prowled back and forth in front of her. “That’s how we live, Lahela, waiting for the dice to roll. Most of the time, though they leave us alone. For which we give thanks.”
Aleytys stood. “I can’t do it, Loahn.” She walked around the bench and stopped with her hand on the dusty bark of the tree’s trunk. “The Karkiskya, this city. They’re both important to people. If I curse the city who would come here?”
“No one.” He glanced up again at the towers. “Gikena says, we do.”
“Dammit, I won’t be driven. No.” She kicked at the dirt and flung her head back defiantly. “I won’t do it.”
He caught her hand and held it against his face, saying nothing.
“Loahn. Tonight. Come in the caravan with us; it’ll be well into the night before we leave and I don’t want to have to hunt you in the dark.”
He nodded. “Lahela?”
“What is it?” She rested the fingers of her free hand against the trunk, once again reaching out for security to solid physical things.
“You’re totally committed to that man?”
She felt a lurch in the beat of her heart, a knotting around her stomach. “Totally? Why?”
“Puki.”
She freed herself and moved away from him. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m committed to him.” Then she smiled and shook her head. “I’d never make it as a woman on this world, Loahn. You’d be wanting to strangle me before the leaves turned.”
His cool skeptical eyes went flickering over her slender body. Then he shrugged. “Maybe so.”
Chapter VII
Stavver thumbed a stud on his belt, waking a circle of light that spread out under his feet. In the chameleon web he was a faint flicker in the deep shadow under the wall, hands and face floating in mid-air, the mooncream absorbing light until even these were reduced to vague blurs. A hand blur gestured impatiently.
With considerable trepidation Aleytys stepped onto the light circle: It shuddered under her bare feet like something alive, sending tremors of distaste shivering up her legs. She clasped her arms around him and pressed herself against him. Under her entwined fingers she felt silent laughter vibrating in his chest.
Riding the pale circle they drifted up over the wall then skimmed along the facade of the building. Stavver stopped the ascent beside a narrow window sealed with a thick block of clear material that somehow didn’t look like glass to Aleytys. Didn’t feel like glass either when she reached out an exploratory finger. She withdrew her hand and clung to him as he ran the softly buzzing tool in quick swooping sweeps back and forth across the plug. The clear material glowed sickly yellow then began to flow sluggishly in a messy dribble down the stone.
When the embrasure was clear Stavver moved the circle of light up until his feet were on a level with the sill. Then he maneuvered them inside. They floated near the floor with a tidy economy of motion. A hand’s breadth above the dull rubber matting he tapped the stud on his belt. They fell the short distance to the floor, Stavver sagging slightly, Aleytys stumbling, failing to her knees.
The corridor outside the room was barely wide enough to accommodate Stavver’s body, waking a claustrophobic shudder in Aleytys. The thief turned to the left and moved swiftly, intently along, ignoring her.
.… Tread the obscenely warm … obscenely soft … rubberoid flooring … like walking the intestines of a worm … coil round and round in a downward spiraling helix … terror … growing slowly, slowly more intense … her breathing quickened,
sweat blurred her eyes, there was a tight constricted feeling around her chest.…
At each branching of the worm hole, Stavver hesitated, glanced at the dial face nestled in his palm, then moved forward, following the pointer.
.… Down and down … an eternity … boring … boring … boring … nausea surged sourly into her mouth as fear churned the juices of her stomach … better, a thousand times better, to walk the fields in the sunlight doing the hard unending labor of a farmer … what am I doing this for? Why am I here? Mother … phah … Shareem of Vrithian.… Madar, what made me think that stupid capricious female would find a place for me … Loahn wants me … no.…
No, another voice whispered to her, he wants your power. He’s greedy for the respect of his own, having suffered their spite so many years. Do you really think you could spend the rest of your life … the rest of my life … how long will that be … how long.… The Vrya live long long … how long could Loahn tolerate an unaging wife … what would he do when he doddered about a white bearded elder with a wife who looked like his grandchild … could any man endure that … maybe that’s why she said we never have complete relationships … maybe … grandchild.… do I want more children.… I love Sharl … god, he’s the one thing I can love … I don’t want another baby … how many years until he’s old enough to be on his own.…
Amber light flared behind her eyes triggering a spurt of fear. She jerked to a halt. Ahead the corridor split into three branches … a brief image like a figure illumined by lightning … a hooded Karsk coming swiftly down the righthand passage. She blinked, startled, then touched Stavver’s arm, feeling him flinch from her touch. He’s forgotten I’m here, she thought.
His eyes were hard and impatient.
“One comes. There.” She flicked a finger at the passage.
Moving tautly, Stavver slid into the side passage. He pushed her behind him then crouched against the wall, facing the main corridor and nearly invisible in the web suiting. The hooded Karsk glided bonelessly past, radiating a calm heedless security, totally unaware of the intruders in his territory. When the sliding slap slap of the narrow feet died away, Stavver twisted his torso around to face her, eyebrow raised in interrogation.