The Burning Ground tst-2

by Jo Clayton

  “… but the rest of the ixis, even the old ’un, the Heka, they land on those fugheads so hard they crying for Main and Baba.” An unpaved path led from the arch toward a clutch of small dark structures built on stilts just beyond the dune line of the bay shore. There were a number of fishboats in various states of repair drawn up on the sand and clutches of old Trials seated near them repairing nets. Other mals and ferns and some children walked slowly along the shore, digging out shellfish and picking up drift the tide had left behind. The path itself was empty for the moment and tot plunged ahead, still riding the high of an excitement that was beginning to bother Yseyl. If the child had set her hopes on coming along…

  “Anyway, I figure, first, these ferns and anyas they’re tough and they fight good, second, they jezin sure know they better be somewhere else for a while, third, from what Kumba tells me they really really hate the Fence, he says Luca, she’s the fern stomped that mal, she goes out and stares at the Fence like she wants to stomp it worse’n that mal. They got a tent on the far side of that lot there.” Zot’ pointed.

  The Pixa hohekils lived in a series of ragged tents pitched in the woods that grew outside Linojin’s southern wall, a stretch of brushy wasteland separating them from the village.

  Yseyl dropped her hand on Zot’s shoulder. “You did good, sounds exactly what I want. Did you set up a meeting?”

  “No. I figured you’d want to take a look at them first.”

  Yseyl smiled at her. “How did you get to be so smart? Just born that way, I suppose. Never mind.” She dropped to a squat beside the path, patted a tuft of grass beside her. “Sit yourself and tell me the rest of what you found out about them. The more I know, the better the bargain I can make.”

  Zot settled on the grass, legs crossed, hands slapping on her knees to emphasize the points she thought were important. “Ah-huh, so. They call themselves the Remnant of Shishim, all their mals are dead, even the little ones. There’s the Heka, her name is Wintshikan, her anya’s called Zell. Zell’s the one in the Mercy hospital with the femlit, she’s called Zaro. They aren’t real sick, but traveling here was hard on ’em. Then there’s a fern called Xaca who mostly takes care of them and the other femlit, her name’s Kanilli. Then there’s two sets of fernanya bonds, they’re kinda wild. There’s Luca and Wann, Wann’s the one the mal tried to go off with, and there’s Nyen and Hidan. The others were settling down well enough, but those four, they don’t really fit in the villages and there’s for sure no place for them inside Linojin.” She took a deep breath. “Kumba picked up a lot of gossip about them, thing is they got here with a good store of coin and a bunch of jomayls, got more coin selling all but a couple of the jomayls, made people curious, you know, ’cause Pixas mostly don’t get here, with much but the clothes on their backs and maybe a gun or two Well, you know, femlits talk, even Pixa femlits, so word gets out. Seems there was this band of robbers on the Peddler’s Trace, they’d done a lot of Pilgrims and peddlers and hohekil coming over Kakotin Pass, but the Remnant did them this time and got all their stuff. Vumah vumay, Luca and the rest of the younger ones, they kinda make folk nervous and when you put the gossip with what happened to the mal, well, like I said, better they find somewhere else to be for a while.” Zot twitched her mouth and wrinkled her nose. “That’s about it.”

  “Hm.” Yseyl got to her feet. The child seemed calmer now; time to try easing her away. “Zot, I want you to point out their tent, then stay out of sight. Hush! I’ve got a reason. I don’t want them connecting you with me: Depending on what happens when we talk, I might want you watching them. Understand?”

  Zot’s face lost the last of its glow and settled into its usual tough, alleyrat cynicism. “I hear you,” she said and jumped up. “You want me to go ahead now so the others don’t see us together.”

  To Yseyl those words read I know what you’re doing, it’s what everybody does, use me, then shove me away like a dirty snotrag. A fist closed round her heart and she knew, whatever it cost, she couldn’t do that to the child. Zot was in this till the Fence came down. If she was hurt or killed, well, better that than another shove down the road Yseyl herself had taken. fish! What’s happening to me? Can’t even make a plan and stick to it. I don’t want this… I can’t deal with… that femlit… under my skin… why did I take her out of that pack… I know well enough… something about her reminded me of me… I just wish she’d let it go… let me go… I’m the worst choice she could have made. Until the Fence is down… what about after? No, I can’t… there’s no… I’ll have to get away from here. Cerex? I could give him that call.

  Or Digby? There’s no time to think about it now I don’t want to think about it. God!

  She turned her shoulder to Zot and scowled at the scrubby trees, hacked about till they were half dead because of the campers’ need for firewood. The tents were mostly old, patched sails passed on by coasters as part of their inkohel duty to the Yeson, turned a yellowish-gray by salt, sun, and age. Children played in the dirt outside a number of these tents, chals fought or slept by them, old ferns and a very few old mals dozed or worked on this and that, leather crafts or repairing shirts and trousers that had already been repaired so often they had more darns than cloth. The breeze that wandered past was bitter with the stench of urine and hopelessness.

  “Don’t be silly,” Yseyl said, an edge of irritation on the words. “Looking from their direction, guiding me is one thing, sitting in on the conversations is another. You take me to the camp, then you find Kumba and see if he’s come up with some more possibles. I need one, preferably two more for this phela. And don’t go getting ideas that I’m leaving you out. You’re not a fighter, femlit, but you’re small, which could be useful, and clever and God knows we do need brains somewhere.”

  Zot stared at her a moment longer, then she grinned and with an absurd little skipping hop, she started off along the dim footpath that went around the outside of the tent city.

  The tent was set apart from the others, two jomayls beside it in a corral improvised from braided leather ropes; a femlit was in the corral with them, going over the smallest jomayl with a stiff-bristled brush. A radio sat in the dust near a fern braiding leather thongs into what looked to be a short whip. An anya was curled on a blanket beside her, reading a small, battered book. Another anya sat at xe’s-feet, carving, a piece of wood; what xe was making Yseyl couldn’t say.

  She stood watching the scene, suddenly back sitting at the feet of Crazy Delelan, smelling the sweet bite of sida wood as the anya carved wheels for her toy wagon. They weren’t all bad, those days; it was just that she found it too painful before this to remember the good times.

  Zot’s whisper broke through her rememberings, brought her back to the needs of the moment. “That one with the thongs, that’s Luca. The anya with the book is Wann and the one carving is Hidan. Go get ’em.” A soft giggle and a scrape of leaves, then Zot was gone, following instructions.

  Yseyl swallowed, no matter how successful a thief she was, no matter how many arms dealers she’d stalked and killed, trying to persuade people to do things made her feel inadequate. She straightened her shoulders and strolled over to stand in front of Luca. “My name is Yseyl. I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  4. The final dissolution of the Remnant

  Wintshikan looked up as the door opened. Luca came in, then Nyen, Wann, and Hidan.

  Luca nodded to Zell, then to Zaro in the other bed. She brought her hand around and held out the case of Tale Cards. “We need you to read for us, Heka.”

  Wann brought Wintshikan the Heka’s Shawl, setting it about her shoulders. +It’s important.+

  Wintshikan took the case, looked at it, looked up at Luca. “What is it?”

  Luca clasped her hands behind her. “It’s because you’ve got the sight, Heka, you always had it even when you wouldn’t believe what you saw.” She turned her head so she could see the others. “Well?”

  Hidan and Nyen were standing with their backs agains
t the panels. Hidan signed. +All clear. Go ahead.+

  Luca nodded, fixed her eyes on Wintshikan. “Remember what I said when we saw… um… the ocean for the first time?” Her mouth twitched into a brief, taut smile. “A fern offered us a chance to redeem that pledge. I want to know is the chance real or is she pulling something for reasons I can’t see.”

  “She?” Wintshikan slipped the cards from the case, unwrapping the silk scarf folded around them. She set the case on the bed beside Zell, spread out the scarf, sat holding the cards.

  “A Pixa fem. She said she was the one in the song, the little gray ghost. I think maybe she is. You look in her eyes, and it’s cold as winter and you see a hungry boyal thinking you’re food.” She shivered.

  “You and Wann, Nyen and Hidan, you’re thinking of going with her. Is Xaca?”

  “No. We’ve talked it over, she wants to stay with Kanilli; us, we don’t have daughters to worry about. I want this, Heka. You know how much.”

  “I know.” Wintshikan murmured the blessing over the cards and shuffled them. She lifted her head. “Let it be my touch alone. I am Shishim. The last of Shishim.”

  With a jagged gesture, Luca called the others around her. They stood together, shoulders touching shoulders, watching as Wintshikan cut the cards and laid them out on the bed beside Zell.

  Wintshikan’s breath quickened as she saw the base card was no longer the black oval of formal Death, but a sign of approval. She touched the card with the tip of her forefinger. “This defines us. As you can see, it is the Fire on the Altar. This that you do, Luca, Wann, Nyen, Hidan, you do in the service of God.” She moved her finger to the first of the three cards in the middle row. “These are the determinants that mark the days to come. The first card is a warning. The SkyFire. Danger, quickness, the unexpected coming at you. Be fast on your feet and never forget to look behind you. The second describes that which surrounds you. It is the Cauldron which brews both poison and health. Think well what you do. The third is the Gateway that looks forward and back. Again a choice. A turning point. I can’t tell you what to do because I don’t know what that choice will be. Whatever you decide, you will have my blessing and Zell’s.”

  She touched the first card in the top row. “These are the guides to direct us to the Right, Path. The Egg. Out of your actions in the days to come a new world will be born. The Balance. If I read this true, the War will end, and life will right itself at long last. It may be what I want to see, but my heart says this will happen.”

  She moved the remaining “cards from her lap, set them on the white sheet beside Zell, and got to her feet with some difficulty, her joints protesting. Eyes blurring with tears, she hugged each of them hard, held each for a long moment before she let her or xe go. Then she stepped back. “Go with God and the blessing of Shishim.”

  9

  Lightning welds and sunders, casts light and dark. A call to quickness of mind, eyes, and hand.

  Chapter 12

  1. Wailing

  Shadith inspected what she’d drawn, closed her eyes, and dug into memory for more details about the Ptak-km base. She added another group of small houses to the complex beyond the Control Center, wiped at the sweat trickling from her hairline, and glanced at the sky.

  The day was hot, and the air in this mountain pocket hardly moved. The sun had sunk behind the pointed tops of the conifers surrounding the meadow, and a few clouds were drifting into the ragged circle of blue overhead. No sign of Yseyl. She glanced at the locals squatting by a small fire, passing around a pan of stewed tea and talking quietly, all but young Zot who was moving restlessly about, jumping the stones in the creek on the far side of the meadow, squatting to toss pebbles at the fish that made thin wavery shadows in the clear water.

  She watched Zot a moment, frowning. When she’d objected to having her involved in this business, Yseyl’s face had gone dark with anger and her eyes had a glitter that said I won’t listen to this. So she let it drop.

  Zot aside, it was an odd team Yseyl had brought, two Imps and four Pixas, and it should have been too explosive to work. The only thing they shared was being hohekil.

  The mals were Impix brothers from a farm outside Gajul. Khimil and Syon. After the farm was burned to the dirt and the rest of the family killed by Pixa phelas, Khimil and Syon lived in Gajul a while, then began working their way along the coast as sailors, cutpurses, laborers, whatever it took to survive. Yseyl said they hated the war, hated the Fence so much they’d work with anyone to drop it, even Pixas, though it did help that these Pixas were ferns and anyas. They were short and wiry, hunger and rage lines aging their angular, bony faces, and they were seldom still, hands busy, eyes moving continually.

  Luca and Wann, Nyen and Hidan looked calmer, though that was all surface; beneath the skin there was the same anger and determination. They were more uneasy about this collaboration than the brothers, but they were also intensely focused on the goal.

  Shadith began making star crosses to indicate the trees growing on the slopes leading up to the rim of the caldera, trying to get the patches in proper orientation with the settlement. It passed the time and until Yseyl got back, she had nothing to say to the team. If Yseyl bothered to return. She couldn’t be sure about that; the thread of trust between the little gray ghost and her was very fragile indeed.

  “What’s that?”

  Shadith looked up. Zot was standing beside her, hands clasped behind her back as she scowled at the drawing.

  “A map. I’m trying to remember everything and set it down.”

  “That’s where we’re going?”

  “Mm.”

  “Is that a wall, that outside line?”

  “Of a kind. Do you know about volcanoes?”

  Zot snorted. “I may be an orphan, but I’m not ignorant.”

  “Well, this is supposed to be the rim around one of them. These squiggles here, they’re supposed to be trees growing on the slopes that lead up to the rim. We’ll go to ground in them once we get there and wait for things to get quiet.”

  “Hunh.” Syon had drifted over from the fire while she was talking. “What’s that got to do with taking the Fence down?”

  “When Yseyl gets back, I’ll explain. No point in repeating myself. But if you want, I’ll tell you about the map now.”

  His grin wiped the hardness from his face, and she realized quite suddenly how young he was. “Hoy!” he yelled, “Khimil, rest of you, come over, take a look at this.”

  Shadith drew her finger along the outer line. “The Ptak base sits at the bottom of this caldera like soup in the bottom of a bowl. It’s near the end of the mountain range we’re sitting in right now. About as far north as you can go.”

  Luca frowned. “How many days’ travel?”

  “Riding? Probably more than a month. We won’t be riding, we’ll be flying.” She flickered her fingers in anya laughter. “Offworld machines. One-way trip is around three hours. But it’ll take at least two trips to ferry you all there, so getting everyone into place ready to go will use up the afternoon and most of the night. We won’t be moving on the base until…” She raised her head as she heard the hum of lifters, reached out, relaxed as she touched Yseyl. The ghost was flying low, beneath the treetops, so Ptak cameras wouldn’t catch her.

  She brushed by one of the trees and brought the miniskip down on its struts. After a shake to convince herself it was steady, she shut off the lifters, dismounted, and reached for the black case strapped to the carryhopper.

  Zot squealed and ran across to her. She almost but didn’t quite touch Yseyl, instead she slid her hand along the bar, touched the roomy saddle, then giggled. “Looks like a broom with feet. How come it flies?”

  Shadith stood. “Might as well leave the disruptor where it is, Ghost. Come join us.”

  2. Setting up the raid

  “… do that, I’ll need time and quiet to shut down the Fence generators and infect the programs. So…” She tapped the maze of small, interlocking squares. �
��These are the living quarters. When I was watching them a few weeks ago, the Ptaks were all inside after sundown, but you can see the houses are linked together-um, these are glass arcades and they’ll be lit up like Gajul on a Feast night. A good number of the Ptaks on duty there spent half the night going from house to house, talking and partying; when they sleep, it’s in bursts of two to three hours so there’s usually someone awake. Which could be a problem because they don’t like feeling closed in, so most of those houses are more window than wall. You’ll need to remember that there are lots of eyes around. Once we reach the lake, there’ll be less danger of discovery. We’ll have trees and bushes for cover.” She jerked her thumb at the clouds. “Radio says there’s a storm front moving in. With a little luck we might have some rain up north. That’ll keep the restless inside.”

  She touched the largest of the squares. “This is the building we have to get into. The Control Center. It’s shielded and there’s only one door. To get through that door, the Center’s kephalos has to recognize you and you have to have a card key. T’k. Never mind all that, my tongue got behind my teeth and I couldn’t see what I was saying. Shield means there’s something like a cousin to the Fence around the outside and across the roof of that building. The shield can recognize who’s supposed to pass through it, stop everyone else even if they have the proper ley. If you,touched it, it wouldn’t kill you, it’d be more like someone slammed you hard with a staff and you’d be unconscious for a good while. Urn, this doesn’t mean they’re expecting you people to attack, it’s more to keep out offworld agents and spies. Ptaks are like that. Overlooking them makes them nervous.”