Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction)

by Scott, Melissa

  "Sorry to hear it."

  "Wiidfare offered me an extra permit, with the usual string attached," Tatian said. "I hope he didn't get any ideas about that from you."

  Carlon shook his head. "If there are any extra permits, Tatian, I want them for me."

  "One other thing," Tatian said. "I will take it very badly if Norssco reps show up in the peninsular mesnies. Clear?"

  "I--" Carlon stopped, closing his lips tight over whatever else he would have said. "Clear enough. I don't appreciate threats, Tatian."

  "It's not a threat," Tatian said, and smiled. "It's a promise."

  "Clear," Carlon said, face grim, and Tatian broke the connection. He leaned back in his chair, watching the panel slide closed again over the flat screen. Norssco would bear watching now, at least until after the harvests that were due at Midsummer had all been delivered, but it had been important to state NAPD's position as explicitly as possible.

  He reached for the shadowscreen again, trailed his fingers through the varying sensations, cold and hot, rough and smooth, adjusting the desktop to a more comfortable working configuration. Lanhoss Mats, the shipping wrangler, as well as Derebought's partner, had left a long, thickly annotated file updating his projections for the weeks following the harvest--storage space available, accessible, and already rented, and the ships scheduled to land and the backup craft available. Tatian sighed, looking at it, but dragged it to the top of the file. The sooner he looked through it, the sooner he could turn it back over to Mats, and he tapped the icon to open it.

  The soft sound was echoed, more loudly, from the doorway, and a familiar voice said, "Derry said you wanted to see me?" Tatian pushed the file away with some relief. "Yeah. Come on in."

  Shan Reiss seated himself warily in the visitor's chair. He was young to be NAPD's chief driver, and looked younger, so that Tatian frequently had to remind himself that Reiss had been born on Hara, and knew the backcountry as well as any indigene. He was a thin, tall man, all whipcord muscle, brown skin burned darker by the planet's fierce sun--could have passed for an indigene, Tatian thought, not for the first time, if it weren't for the vivid blue eyes. At the moment, those eyes were very worried, and Tatian wondered just what he'd been up to. As Wiidfare had implied, Reiss hung out in the trade bars and dance houses; if he was in trouble, it would involve sex. But if he wasn't selling permits, it was no one's business but his own.

  "Do you know anything about a tech named Starli?" he asked, and saw Reiss's shoulders slump fractionally. "She's a Massingberd, I'm told."

  "Yeah, I know her." In spite of himself, Reiss sounded surprised, and Tatian hoped whatever trouble he was in wouldn't come home to the company.

  "Is she any good? Good enough to work on my implants, I mean." Tatian touched his wrist. He had been complaining about the bad connection for a month now.

  Reiss tilted his head to one side, an indigene's gesture. "Starli's very good, but she is local. She's not licensed to work on the full suite, just on the stuff the kittereen drivers carry."

  "Would she work on mine?" Tatian asked. They all knew, and Reiss better than most, as involved as he was in the jet-car races, how expensive it could be to get the necessary certifications. A lot of indigene techs just didn't bother to get the higher-level, more costly papers, but still had the necessary skills to handle the implants. The trick was finding the ones who were genuinely competent.

  "She might," Reiss said. "She doesn't have a lot of use for off-worlders. But if she agreed, she'd do a good job. Where'd you hear about her, anyway?"

  "I ran into someone at the courthouse," Tatian answered. "Literally. We ended up talking, and I mentioned I needed some work done. And 3e mentioned Starli."

  "Did you get a name? It might be somebody I know."

  "Warreven. Ȝe's a Stiller."

  Reiss grinned. "I know Raven. He's a big kittereen fan--I was surprised I didn't see him up at Irenfot, but I guess if he was in court, that explains it."

  "What's 3e do?" Tatian asked. He still hadn't gotten used to Reiss's habit of translating the indigenes' two genders into normal speech.

  "He--sorry, 3e's an Important Man." Reiss used the franca words, switched back to creole. "Ȝe and a couple of 3er cousins, they're advocates. They specialize in trade cases, defending prostitutes, marijaks, you know. Lately, I heard they were taking on a couple of labor brokers for fraudulent hiring."

  "That's going to win 3im friends," Tatian said. The labor brokers were under Temelathe's direct protection--were licensed by him personally--and were one of the more lucrative parts of the Most Important Man's private empire. Temelathe's power might technically be based on his position as Speaker of the Watch Council, and indirectly on his status as the direct heir of Captain Stane, but the money that supported all that came from off-world sources.

  "Oh, yeah," Reiss said, "and that's not the best of it, either. You know who one of 3er partners is?"

  Tatian shook his head.

  "Haliday Stiller."

  Tatian shook his head again. The name was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it.

  "You remember," Reiss said, with a hint of impatience. "Ȝe took the clan to court, all the way to the Watch Council, over whether 3e could register as a herm."

  "That was before my time," Tatian said. But he did remember the talk; the case had been only a few years old when he first came to Hara. Haliday Stiller had demanded the right to call 3imself a herm on legal documents, and the Watch Council, officially the highest indigenous authority, and Temelathe's puppet, had not only refused to allow it, but, for good measure, had reassigned Haliday's legal gender, decreeing that, since 3e wouldn't choose, the proverbial "reasonable man" would see 3im as a woman. But the person he had seen with Warreven had definitely been male--and the name was Malemayn, he remembered suddenly. "Would Starli do the work if you introduced me? I need to get it done soon."

  "I can ask," Reiss said, accepting the change of subject, and looked down at his hands. He was wired, too, had gotten his suit as part of a corporate scholarship deal. "I have to go over to Kittree Row tomorrow morning anyway, I'll ask then. You free in the afternoon?"

  "I can make time," Tatian said. "Thanks, Reiss." "No problem," the younger man said, and rose easily. Tatian watched him go, and turned his attention back to the files on his desktop, trying to ignore the faint static buzz in the bones of his hand. Tomorrow, he told himself, tomorrow, he would find out whether or not he'd have to go to the port for the repairs.

  Seraaliste, seraalistes: (Hara) the man or woman within each clan who is primarily responsible for negotiating with the off-world buyers; he or she is also responsible for mediating among his or her clan's mesnies. This is an elective office.

  3

  Warreven

  They took their time walking back from lunch, savoring the heat and the fitful land breeze. The streets had been dry when they left the bar; by the time they reached the Harbor Market, the last shreds of cloud had vanished inland, and thin white parasols blossomed like flowers in the spaces between the semi-permanent stalls. Warreven paused at the edge of the embankment, leaned on the hot stones of the wall to look along the length of the massive quay that divided the main harbor from the smaller Sail Harbor. This close to Midsummer, all the berths were filled with slab-sided, broad-beamed coasters, and the quay swarmed with dockers and their machines, unloading the first of the summer's harvest. From the embankment, it was impossible to see even the nearest ship's cargo, but Warreven could fill in the details from almost thirty summers' experience: there would be crates of broadleaf kelp, the fronds packed damp, and bales of cut grass gathered from the shallows along the Stiller Peninsula. There would be smaller boxes of wide-web nodes, crumb-coral, and false-kelp fronds and bladders and even, if someone was very lucky, a few of the deep-growing false-kelp's knotty holdfasts. From the Stanelands to the north, there would be ships loaded down with raw sweetsap and thornberry, branch and fruit alike, and baskets of creeping star. And it was all going to fe
ed the off-world economy. He smiled without humor and shaded his eyes to pick out the off-worlders' runabouts drawn up in the reserved slots behind the factors' sheds, company marks bright on doors and engine cowlings. The off-worlders were easy to pick out in the crowd of dockers and sailors, too: pale figures, draped in white or tan against the heat and sun, ghostly against the bright colors around them.

  A horn sounded, and the day-ferry appeared beyond the tip of the quay, shouldering its way through the crowd of smaller boats to its anchorage below the Ferryhead. A wedding band was playing on the top deck, the pulse of the drums carrying across the water, and Warreven could just pick out the bride and her attendants, a knot of stark white silk and silver among the holiday colors.

  "Anyone we know?" Malemayn asked, and Warreven turned back to face him.

  "Not as far as I know."

  Malemayn nodded, shading his eyes to look out over the harbor. "I'd hate to miss an obligation."

  "Don't worry about that," Warreven said. "Anyone you owe a present will be sure to let you know."

  Malemayn grinned, acknowledging the truth of the comment. Warreven looked past him, up the hill to the bars of Dock Row and Harborside. Most of the wrangwys houses, the bar and dance houses that catered to trade, off-world players, and Hara's odd-bodied were closed now; most wouldn't open until sundown, but a few were already doing business. He picked out the doors, the sun-faded bars of neon light surrounding them, wondering if any of his friends or clients were there already. Shinbone on the Embankment was open, its double doors wide to the afternoon sun, the bouncer Brisban stretching luxuriously in the warmth; a little farther along the street, a couple of off-worlders were standing outside Hogeye's, nudging each other as they scanned the show-cards and dared each other to go in. Warreven made a face at that and turned away.

  "We should be getting back."

  Malemayn looked at him, startled, then looked up the hill toward the bars. "There's nothing we can do, Raven. Not about them."

  "I know. And we should still get back to work." Warreven pushed himself away from the Embankment wall, headed down the first set of stairs to cut through the Market, drowning his anger in the familiar noise and smells. The Harbor Market was the largest of Bonemarche's three market squares--the others were the Glass Market, on the north side of town by the railroad terminus, and the off-worlders' Souk on the edge of the Startown district--and it was always crowded, even on the edges, the stalls and stone-marked pitches gaudy with goods. Most were local products, foodstuffs, and glass, and silk in skeins and tufts of floss and bolts of dyed and painted cloth; there were a few machine-dealers as well, offering cheap off-world disk-readers and music boxes and card-comps, all at ridiculous prices. The noise of drums cut through the noise of bargaining, and he looked toward the sound to see a woman dancing on the platform where the land-spiders were auctioned at the Quarter-days. It was a good omen, a change of mood, and he started toward it, following the heavy heartbeat of the tonnere-bas and the intricate higher double beat of the counterpoint. He stopped at the edge of the crowd surrounding the platform, looking up at the dancer. Malemayn trailed cheerfully enough in his wake, and said, sounding almost surprised, "She's good."

  Warreven nodded. The woman--she was definitely a woman--spun and stooped on the raised stage, sunlight flashing from the glass bangles that covered her arms from wrist to elbow. There were glass beads braided into her hair, seemingly thousands of them, in every color; they sparked in the sunlight, and clashed like cymbals as she bent nearly double, hair flying. Her tiered skirts, their hems sewn with still more beads and the occasional bright disk of a metal coin, stood out from her waist as she spun, then collapsed to a twisted cylinder that briefly outlined the long shape of her legs and drew cheers from some of the watching men. The platform at her feet was already littered with flowers and a few coins; the shaal spread out between the two drummers in front of the platform held maybe a fivemeg more in small change. There were a few off-world coins among the scattered seaglass, and more flowers. He cocked his head, seeing the latter, and then the dancer straightened again, and he saw the three parallel lines drawn in white across her cheek. Not just a dancer, then, but a vieuvant, one of the old souls who served God and the spirits, and this was not just a performance, but an offetre, a service to the spirits: she danced for, danced as, the Heart-breaker, the spirit who was spring and lust and all the unruly powers of procreation. The counterpoint drummer wore the same marks on his beardless face.

  "She's very good," Malemayn said again, and reached into his pocket. He came up with a handful of coins and tossed half dozen onto the shaal with the rest.

  "She is," Warreven agreed, and looked around for a flower seller. He spotted one almost at once--they knew enough to congregate when a vieuvant danced, seemed to come from nowhere--and held up a black quarter-meg. The boy came over eagerly, basket held out in front of him.

  "I have ruby-drop, mir, and rosas, and dragon-cor, the Lady likes those--"

  Warreven nodded, not really listening, and picked up a spray of the horn-shaped ruby-drops. "How much?"

  "A quarter-meg, mir, any coin," the boy answered promptly. "Picked fresh this morning."

  "Fine." Warreven handed him the stamped glass disk and turned back to the platform. Above him, the vieuvant was spinning down to the end of this part of the dance, her skirts flaring out into a perfect bell of silk. He tossed the flowers onto the shaal--he had been fond of the Heart-breaker as a child--and followed it with a couple of long-bits and quarter-megs. Malemayn smiled.

  "You always get cheated, Raven."

  Warreven returned the smile. It was true enough; he was no hand at haggling. "Only in the market, cousin."

  Malemayn shook his head, still smiling. "It's a good thing we can afford it. And, speaking of affording things, I thought you wanted to get back to work."

  "I did, I do," Warreven answered. "I'm coming."

  They threaded their way through the crowds to Harborside where it skirted the Market's edge. Just beyond the Market it narrowed, becoming little more than an access road for the ware-houses that stood along the waterfront. Warreven wrinkled his nose at the acrid smell of split power cells that seeped from the nearest building and turned up the first side street, into the shade of the low houses. They had been built for the construction crews building the railroad terminus and hadn't been meant to last much beyond its completion; thirty years later, the poured sandstone walls were crumbling, but the neighborhood was more crowded than ever.

  It wasn't a long walk to the base of Blind Point, where the partnership rented space for their mesnie. It wasn't a real mesnie, of course--there were only three of them, and none of them was married to any of the others, and besides, Haliday, the third partner, lived two buildings away--but it was easier to call it one than to explain it to the traditional indigenes among their clients. Traditional people had enough trouble sometimes understanding the rules of trade; it was easier to explain if the general setting was at least a little familiar. The building was tall for Blind Point, where the original settlers had built close and low, but relatively narrow; its brick frontage was eroding at the corners, and the door was set into the right-hand corner, to make the inside rooms as large as possible. Warreven scuffed his feet on the stone of the sill and kicked his sandals into the mud tray, no longer aware of the narrowness of the hall. Sunlight was streaming in through the one hand-span window at the far end of the building, throwing a wedge of light across the painted plaster wall. The design of twined doutfire and creeping stars had faded there; the colors were still true by the door, where the light never reached. Warreven made another mental note to find a painter, and pushed open the door to the main room.

  It was empty, all the lights switched off to save on power fees, and Malemayn said, from behind him, "Where's Chattan, then?"

  "I thought he'd be waiting," Warreven answered.

  "Raven?" Haliday's voice came from the inner room. "What the hell is going on?"

&nbs
p; Warreven frowned, wondering what 3e was talking about this time, and Malemayn chuckled.

  "What have you done now?"

  "I don't know," Warreven said, quite seriously, and went into the offices.

  It was bright, all the lamps lit and the heavy curtains drawn tight against the contrast-destroying sun. They had divided the space into three cubicles when they formed the partnership and moved in, but the gray foam-core walls barely reached Malemayn's shoulders, so that anyone could see in to the clutter and the bulky computers with their illuminated screens. Haliday stood in the center space, hands on hips, glaring down at one of the three screens that was linked to Bonemarche's narrowcast networks. Ȝe was wearing off-world clothes, as usual, and as always it gave Warreven a small shock to see the anomaly of 3er body revealed so clearly by the close-fitting fabric. But then, Haliday had always been stubborn that way: 3e had insisted from childhood that 3e was herm, not the boy 3e had seemed to be then, and even now, after 3e had lost 3er case, and been declared legally a woman, 3e refused to answer any pronoun but 3er own.

  "What's Raven done this time?" Malemayn asked, and dropped the wallet that held the court disks on the nearest desk.

  "Since when did you get into politics?" Haliday demanded, 3er eyes still fixed on Warreven.

  "Æ?" Warreven said.

  "Politics. You know what that is, though you always say you won't play--except when Temelathe calls, of course." Haliday touched the top of the display. "Why'd you wait to put your name on the list, Raven, were you afraid I'd talk you out of it? Or were you afraid I wouldn't?"

  "What are you talking about?" Warreven asked, and came around the cubicle wall to get a look at the screen.

  Haliday stepped out of his way, pressing 3er hips against the edge of the desk platform. "I'm talking about the election lists, that's what."