The Burning Ground tst-2

by Jo Clayton

  The smell wasn’t as bad as it had been in some of the coast cities Yseyl had visited in her first career as thief and her second as assassin, but there was a sour hopelessness that hung in the air which made a nonsense of the bright whiteness only a few streets away. Yseyl savored the sense this gave her of the rightness of things. It was, in its way, a recapitulation of her whole life.

  She looked thoughtfully at the back of Zot’s head, then took a few quick steps to catch up to the femlit. “Changed my mind,” she said.

  Zot’s eyes laughed at her, then went blank. “Thought you might. What you really wanting?”

  “At the moment, some talk. Where?”

  “Maybe I take you somewhere and me and my friends rob you?”

  “Been tried another place. Didn’t work. Besides, you’ll get more if you keep your friends out of it.”

  “You’re no Pilgrim.”

  “Not since I was younger’n you.”

  “I hear y’. Teashop round a couple corners.”

  “Teashop?”

  “‘What they call it. Backrooms ‘re something they don’t talk about with the Godmen. And what comes in y’ cup’s not tea if you know the right words.”

  “Just so you know, I’m no spy either.”

  “Hunh. I know that.”

  “How?”

  “I just know. Come on.”

  Compared to some of the rat holes Yseyl had passed through in Icisel, Yaqshowal and Gajul, the Spiral Knot was painfully clean and well lit. “They polish the surfaces well, don’t they.”

  Zot grinned. “Us maggots we know how to duck the broom.” She led Yseyl to a booth at the back of the room where the light wasn’t so intense and customers were thin on the ground.

  Yseyl slid in and sat with her hands resting lightly on the table, her head on the incurve of the high wall separating this booth from the next one. She smiled at Zot. “I was hohekil before it had a name. Lot of them in here?”

  Zot knocked on the table. “You want to know who runs them?”

  “That, too.”

  “Humble Haf-um, that’s the Brother of God who runs us all, Hafumbua’s his long name-Humble Haf digs up excuses to shove most of the hohekil out of Linojin. Doesn’t like ’em. Thinks they mean trouble. He’s Imp born, but he don’t even like Imp hohekil. Anyway both sorts end up in coast villages trying to feed themselves off the sea. If you lookin’ for someone, you likely find ’em there.” She stopped talking as an old mal shuffled over. She ordered tea and sandwiches and waved a hand at Yseyl. “She payin’.”

  Yseyl nodded, counted out the coppers. When the mal shuffled off again, she raised her brows. “Pushing your luck, young Zot. So sing a bit more for your supper. Tell me about the big one, the one who keeps Impix and Pixa hohekil from killing each other.”

  “Him? It’s a mal named Noxabo. The knot of hohekil who stay, they live near the Sea Gate round the Broken Twig, that’s the inn old Fashile owns, xe was anya to a coast trader from Sithekil just south of here. Storm shoved him into the Fence which ashed him and fed the ashes to the fish.” Zot shrugged. “Happens all the time. If kishin’ Ptak let us have weather reports, well… Anyway, Fashile and xe’s fern Jawele had kin here, so they brought their coin and set up a place for hohekil. Jawele, she died a couple years ago. You want someone who don’t like Ptak a lot or Humble Haf or much else, Fashile fits fine. And like I said, Noxabo lives there.”

  She kept talking as the old mal shuffled toward them carrying a loaded tray, but switched to describing the city in more neutral terms. “To find your way around, all you have to remember is that the Grand Yeson and the Radio Tower mark the exact center of Linojin and the Progress Way cuts the city in half. North of the Way, in the west quarter you have the Chapter Houses of the Brothers of God, the Anyas of Mercy, the Sisters in Godbond. In the east quarter you have the Grave of the Prophet, the Speakers’ House, the Seminary and the Speakers’ Park.” She took the plate of sandwiches from the mal and set it between the two of them, pulled her drinking bowl in front of her, nodded as Yseyl did the same.

  “South of the way, in the west quarter you have the Orphan Halls, that’s where I live, and boarding houses for workers and lots of small family houses and some bigger ones for merchant families who made their stash and got away from the coast while they still had it.” Zot inspected the sandwiches, took one. “You want to pour the tea? I take two spoons sugar, but that’s all. In the east quarter you have the hostels for the Pilgrims and a few places for the folk who take care of them. And on the boundary between, out near the wall where Humble Haf won’t be offended by the stench of commerce, there’s the Market. And you want to be sorta careful who you tell your business to, hm?”

  “I noticed. Your hint was strong enough to flatten a skazz. How do you go about getting to be a guide?”

  “You have to be older’n seven and younger’n thirteen and you or your folks have to get one of the Godfolk to speak for you.” Zot scowled at her. “You askin’ about me, this Bond Sister at the Hall, she got me the place. Nothin’ special, she does it for all the kids, she gets money to run the Hall that way.”

  “And expects you to be grateful, hm? Don’t need to say. I know the feeling.” Yseyl nodded at the rest of the sandwiches. “I’m not hungry. You want those?”

  The sandwiches vanished inside Zot’s shirt. “So what’s this leading up to?”

  “You’re twelve pushing thirteen, aren’t you? What happens after that?”

  “Look, I’m a guide. You get off on sob stories, find yourself a whore. You want, I’ll show you where and that’s it.”

  Yseyl grinned at the femlit. “Vumah vumay, no one ever said I had any manners. What this is leading up to, I’ve got some things to sell and I need to know a buyer who’s reasonably honest and no gossip.”

  Zot stared at her a moment. “You come to Linojin the Holy City looking for a fence?” She refilled her drinking bowl, added the sugar and bent over the bowl, stirring the lukewarm tea with a vigor that sent the spoon clinking loudly against the porcelain.

  Yseyl looked at the straggly black hair falling past the closed face and wondered if she was going to get any answer at all, then Zot lifted her head, her mouth stretched into a broad white grin. “Today?”

  Mehll looked like one of those round dolls Pixa mals carved for their children from sija wood, the base sphere filled with lead shot so that when you tapped it, the doll rocked back and forth but didn’t tip over. Xe’s face was round with a cascade of chins and a web of smileywrinkles digging into the soft pale flesh. Eyes like plum bits in a hana bun flicked from Yseyl’s face to her hands as Yesyl laid out on a black display cloth some of the pieces from her stash.

  “This and this…” Yseyl’s forefinger nudged a brooch, then a necklace. “I acquired in Icisel. The rings come from Gajul. I’ve had them for several years now.”

  +You get around some.+ Mehll pulled an embroidered length of cloth hanging from the ceiling. A beam of yellow sunlight touched the display cloth, making the gems shimmer and glitter like the sea on a summer day. Xe fixed a glass in xe’s eye, lifted the necklace, and began inspecting it.

  “So I do.”

  Zot sat on a stool in a corner, reading one of the books Mehll kept on a shelf there; she was very much at home in this place-which Yseyl found interesting.

  It was a comfortable room, shadowy except for that one bright ray, filled with armies of small carvings and decorated boxes and other intricate ornaments of a size to fit in the palm of the hands. As the shadows shifted in the room, they leaped to the eye and sank back into obscurity a moment later.

  Mehll set down the last of the rings. +Nice pieces,+ xe signed.

  Yseyl raised her brows.

  +I don’t haggle, dear. I know what I can sell these things for, and I subtract my profit. What’s left I pay you, if you choose to take it. Which is four hundred grams silver. What do you say?+

  “I’ll say it’s fair, and I’ll take it.” She reached for her backpac
k and lifted it into her lap as Mehll opened a cashbox and began counting coins into a balance scale. She leaned back in the chair, turning her head so she could see Zot who was bent over the book, her body shouting her immersion in what she was reading. That was as good an endorsement as any words would have been. “I’ve a feeling you know people better than most, Anya Mehll.”

  +So?+

  “I’ve got a problem. No. Better to call it a puzzle. I think I want to talk to you about it.”

  For several minutes Mehll signed no response, just kept adding coins to the pan. When the weights balanced, she tipped the coins into a leather pouch, pulled the drawstrings tight and pushed it across the table toward Yseyl. +My question is do I want to listen? I don’t think so. There’s a darkness in you that worries me. I feel myself being sucked into it and I won’t allow that. Do what you have to do, but let me be. Let Zot be.+

  Yseyl didn’t touch the pouch. She folded her arms on top of the backpack and gazed coldly at the old anya. “I earned that darkness the hard way, Anya. I’ve stalked and killed nine men in the past three years. Offworld arms dealers. Vumah vumay, more than that, but I don’t count the others.”

  +You’d better go. Now.+

  “The tenth dealer I stalked convinced me to let him live by giving me something. I can open a hole in the Fence, Mehll. Anywhere, anytime, with no alarm. A hole big enough to let a ship sail through. I want to lead people away from this stinking war. But I’m a thief and a killer. My ixis counts me dead and anyway, they always thought I was crazy. Probably right, too. You see my puzzle? I’ve got this wonderthing, but how do I use it?”

  +Why me?+

  “Anya. And what you do. You can read I’m speaking my truth, and you might be able to look beyond that to what’s really there. And that.” She nodded toward Zot. “How many children read those books?”

  +They say Humble Haf loves his cat.+

  Yseyl nodded wearily. “If you won’t hear, then you won’t. Think about it. Think about sailing to Sigoxol, walking free on land where there’s no war.” She lifted the money pouch and stowedit in her pack. “Eh, Zot, let’s go find me a place to stay.”

  14

  By the Spindle Plots are spun for good or ill.

  Chapter 8

  1. Operating on Impixol

  Shadith woke to the sound of voices, laughter, and the hum of lifters. Her head throbbed from the stale air and her muscles were cramped; she started to stretch, froze as she remembered where she was.

  She listened a moment. She couldn’t make out words, but she relaxed anyway because the voices were easy and unworried, a good match for the emotional tone she was picking up from the passenger cabin above her. Her ringchron told her she’d been asleep for more than three hours which probably meant the flier was over the Wandel Sea at the moment.

  She rearranged herself cautiously, did a few tense-relax exercises, closed her eyes, and sent the mindride searching. She brushed against a bird mind, slid into it, and found herself looking at the long blue heave of the sea and a distant glitter that she knew had to be the Fence.

  She let the bird slide away and tried to work out what she’d do once the flier touched down, but the steady droning, the stuffy air, the futility of planning without data was a soporific mix, and she was soon mindsurfing through nightmare.

  She woke again with the sudden glare of light, cursed herself for sleeping too long and sent stiff fingers after the stunner in her sleeve.

  “What?” Orm’s voice, sounding irritated.

  “What I said. Let that wait unless you feel like hoisting those bales about yourself. The ‘bot developed some kind of epilepsy and either won’t lift at all or hurls stuff over its shoulder. Bijjer’s working on it, but he won’t have it back together before tomorrow.”

  Spitting out a curse, Onn slammed the hatch shut and went stomping off.

  Shadith started breathing again.

  When the outside sounds had faded, she got her supplies together, crawled over the padded bales, and eased the hatch open a few inches.

  She listened for several minutes, but the only sounds she heard were the distant twitters of several birds, the whisper of the wind, and an abrasive hiss that she didn’t recognize until she looked down and saw the grit wind-driven across the stone floor of the place where the Cobben had parked the flier. A brief mindsweep confirmed what her eyes and ears had told her. She finished opening the hatch and jumped down.

  The flier was sitting near the edge of an immense hollow wind-carved into the stone of the cliff face. A few meters to her left there were boxes and bundles piled in ragged dusty heaps on a floor of loading pallets. Some of them were covered by tarps, but most were abandoned to the wind, their padding tattered by the abrading grit. At the back of the hollow, protected by a sheet of transparent plas, a row of two-seater miniskips hung from clamps set into the stone, looking like a dozen witch’s brooms waiting for a Sabat.

  She brushed away dust-clogged webs and chased off the minute arachnids that had spun them, then went after an assortment of fur-covered slugs with dozens of tiny legs, sending them scurrying into cracks and beneath the pallets.

  After she’d got herself and her supplies cached in a nook behind the dustiest of the bales, she’ forced down some hipro paste and washed the aftertaste from her mouth with gulps of water. You’d think they’d have fixed this stuff by now so that eating it was a little better than starving. Gahhh. She pulled padding around her head and shoulders, leaned against the cavern wall, and began feeling about for eyes she could use to explore the area.

  The light outside was fading, the day almost over in this part of the world. The bird was sleepy, wanting to find a perch for the night, but not fratcheted enough to fight Shadith’s hold. It wound upward in a rising spiral and rode the wind in circles over the Ptakkan camp.

  This was the caldera of a large and long-dead’ volcano; dark green conifers grew on the slopes around the periphery, rising to an uneven rim that bit like black teeth into the darkening sky.

  There was a round lake in the center, a clump of small wooden houses built in the Ptakkan style with much bright paint, dozeris of lacy balconies, huge windows, and cascades of arches, all of them connected by glass arcades. Beyond the houses there was a flat field paved with a dull red rubbery substance. Playing field? Drill field? Makes one wonder about Ptak military. Shadith grinned at the thought of polychromatic spectacle of a collection of marching Ptaks. The word uniform didn’t exist in Ptakkip.

  Two buildings were more utilitarian. The one nearest the playing field was a pitched roof chalet profusely balconied with shutters on the windows. Not a place where Ptaks would be comfortable. Cobben, she thought. Assassins’ Hall. The second was built close to the lake, almost touching the thick line of slim lacy trees that grew at the edge of the sand. It was a long wooden building shaped like a brick, painted white and set inside a tall hedge of thornbush. Part of it was storerooms. That was the section with the small square windows. Where the Ptaks. worked, the windows were fifteen meters by five, acid etched over the bottom third so outsiders couldn’t see in, but the light could come through. The roof above the storerooms was flat and held a bouquet of assorted antennas-and what looked like a Rummal shield generator. Last time I saw one of those was in the tech museum on University. She brought the bird spiraling lower until she could hear the warning hum and feel the faint tightness in the skin that she got when she or her surrogate passed close to heavy power. Control center, she thought. Where they manage the Fence and keep contact with their spies. I’ve got to get in there… The bird started fighting her, and she let it climb again.

  There were a few Ptak children playing at the edge of the lake, an old male past his last molt sitting in the shade of the trees and watching over them. More Ptaks wandered through the arches and rockeries, the rapid patter of their high voices carried in broken bits by the wind currents to the bird gliding above them.

  The contrast between the tranquillity of that scene and the
images of the war reheated her anger at the Ptaks. They managed to ignore just what it was that gave them their comfortable life.

  Distracted, she let the bird slip away, and the view vanished abruptly. She swore and began feeling about for land-bound eyes and ears, something that would get her into the Center.

  The building was old, maybe even.as old as the Fence, and it had a colony of furslugs that might have been in there since it was built. Shadith slipped into a juvenile slug who was scuttling along through the thick gray dust, the humping wriggling gait considerably faster than it looked; he pounced on a bug like a plate with legs, crunched it down with a degree of smug satisfaction that nearly started her giggling.: He darted into.a hole in the wall, curled his legs under him and slid headfirst, chittering to display his enjoyment, into a maze of tunnels in the dirt. Round pink ears swiveling, nose twitching, he wriggled and humped along the tunnels until he emerged through the tangled roots of a thornbush. He found a patch of sun, flattened himself on the warm dirt, and went to sleep.

  Shadith chuckled, shook her head, and went hunting for another mount.

  “… katalcreen anomaly. Avo! Where’d you put the list, it’s ignoring the new string.” The tech was a female Ptak, a sleek brown hen with corrective lenses in gold frames perched on an arrogant nose. Shadith was so startled by those, she nearly lost control of her mount.

  A small and very young male came from a glassed-in cubicle at one end of the workroom. “O Great Vourts, O Four-eyes of Immeasurable Power, if it was a fidd, it’d bite you. By your elbow.” He leaned against the doorjamb. “Anybody hear if the assessment passed?”

  Another tech looked around from her station. “Don’t hold your breath. The Kasif snuffed the last seven tries, this’ll go the same way. Upgrades cost some, satellites more. This stuff still works, so why bother throwing away good coin for things you don’t need.”