"It's gone five," 3e said. "I thought you might like to know."
"Thanks." Warreven glanced back at the screen, touching keys to begin the shut-down. "Are you leaving?"
"Yeah. Malemayn's gone."
"Give me a couple of minutes, and I'll go with you."
"Lost your keys again?"
"No, I just--" He broke off to touch a final set of codes, and the screen went blank. "They're in my carryall somewhere, and I don't feel like digging."
Haliday grinned, but mercifully didn't pursue the matter. "Your dinner's at, what, seven?"
Warreven reached under the shelf desk for his bag and straightened up carefully, reaching across to sweep an untidy handful of disks and papers into the carryall's main compartment. "Six-thirty. At least, I'm supposed to be there at six-thirty. Whether I get dinner depends, I expect, on whether or not I agree to run."
"I wish to hell I knew what he was up to." Haliday shook 3er head. "There's no reason in this world for him to make you seraaliste--"
"Unless he's counting on my apparently legendary inability to bargain," Warreven said, a little too sharply. He stood up, slinging the still-open carryall over his shoulder. "I don't know what he wants, Hal."
"Sorry." Haliday stood aside to let him out into the entrance-way, and followed him out through the reception room into the painted hall. The sun was low on the eastern horizon, the band of light stretching now almost to the door, falling heavily on the sandals stacked haphazardly in the mud tray. Warreven shoved his feet into the nearest pair, the leather warm under his toes.
Behind him, Haliday turned the heavy key, then laid 3er hand flat on the sensor plate to set the security system. "How does Ironroad look? Any chance of a settlement?"
"Hard to tell," Warreven answered. "I'll know better once I've had a chance to talk to the complainants--what's-it and Farenbarne."
"Catness. He's the Ferane."
Warreven pushed open the main door and held it for 3er."Chauntclere may know him."
Haliday grinned, but said only, "He might, at that. See you in the morning, Raven."
"In the morning," Warreven echoed, and turned down the narrow alley that ran between their building and the silk-spinny next door. The sun was blinding at this time of day, the lower limb of the disk almost touching the horizon; he shaded his eyes and picked his way down the dry side, wrinkling his nose at the familiar pungent smell of the land-spiders' pellets and the soft continual purring from their pens. The spinny door banged as he reached the end of the alley, and the purring suddenly doubled in volume, nearly drowning out the voice of the child who came to feed them. Warreven went on up the outside stairs, kicked off his shoes again on the second-floor porch. The house stood at the highest part of Blind Point; only the lighthouse stood higher, marking the entrance to the Sail Harbor. The porch faced just north of west, looking out over the open water of Lethem's Bay, and he paused for a moment to scan the harbor, the vivid sails dotting the metal-bright water. The afternoon's storm was long gone, not even a shred of cloud to screen the setting sun, and he looked away again, blinking hard to clear the green streaks from his vision. If he was made seraaliste, most of those ships, and the dozens of motor barges and lighters and round-bottomed coasters that ran between Bonemarche and the Stiller mesnies along the sunset coast, would be his business, the sale of their cargoes his responsibility. And Temelathe Stane was a hard man to refuse.
He reached into the bottom of the carryall, scrabbling through the disks and folders until he found the box of keys. He pulled it out, thumb already on the selector button, and set it against the plate. The door clicked twice and sagged open, and Warreven went on into the warm dark. He had left the house system shut down to avoid having to reset everything if there was another power surge, and he didn't bother to flick on the lights until he reached the bedroom. He still had to bathe and change--Temelathe would be satisfied with nothing less than proper dress, and besides, he himself needed the reassurance of wealth and status--and then arrange for a car to get him across town to Ferryhead where the Most Important Man kept house. The last was something he should have done before he left the office. He sighed, and went back out into the main room, shedding clothes as he went, stopping only to turn both bath taps full on. The hire office was at least used to him, and Stiller had a standing contract for the Important Men and Women; he was able to order the car and driver for the full night, with only a nominal surcharge for the late notice. If everything went really well, he thought, stripping off the last of his clothes as he headed for the bath, he could maybe get together with Chauntclere, or Shan Reiss if Clere wasn't ashore, and tour the harborside clubs with him. It had been a while since he'd been out.
He stepped into the tepid water, sliding down until the ripples touched his chin. He had shaved two days ago, wouldn't need to do it again for another few days, but his hair was a mess, matted and sweaty. He ducked his head under the nearer tap, then shutoff both before he overfilled the generous tub. Soap stood in a jar beside the bath, and he reached for it, freed the stopper, and dug his fingers into the soft cream. Its heavy scent filled the air--sweetmusk mingling with the sharper note of the witch's-broom--and he was tempted for an instant to rub it between his legs, over cock and balls and into his cunt, and ride the drug's bright euphoria into the next morning. But it was easy enough to lose an encounter with Temelathe, even without the broom's overconfidence, and he rubbed it into his hair instead, working the soap into a heady lather. Even so, when he reluctantly hauled himself out of the now-cold water, he could feel the broom singing in his blood.
As he worked a comb through his tangled hair, he caught a glimpse of himself in the larger mirror, and stopped for a moment to stare, thinking of 'Aukai. He was still slim, was if anything going stringy, the old curves resolving into wiry muscle, breasts too small to sag, but a little incongruous above the bony rib cage. The boyish penis was just as incongruous, and he looked back at the smaller mirror, concentrating on his hair. Whatever 'Aukai had thought, he was certainly too old now to play trade--though it had never been his looks that worried her--but not, he thought, too old to run the harborside clubs.
He went back into the bedroom and began to pull clothes out of the chest, tossing the discards onto the piled quilts that made up the bed. He settled at least for an ivory tunic-and-trousers suit, the slubbed silk cool against his skin, and rummaged through the smaller box until he found the vest he wanted. Folhare had made it for him, from the scraps left over from making the topmost bed quilt: she had liked the colors against his skin, and said she knew she wouldn't get the chance to see him displayed against the quilt itself. The closely stitched fabric glowed like sunset in the narrow room, and he wondered if Folhare would be at this party. She was a Stane, but of the Black Watch; this was probably just a White Stane event, he decided, and emptied his jewel box onto the bed. He sorted through the heap of bracelets and earrings and chains, metal, glass, and carved wood, pulling out the pieces that had been forged from the wreck of the colony ship that had brought his ancestors to Hara. He slid the bracelets onto his wrists, circles of twisted iron that still carried the marks of the hammer and the off-world shipbuilder's tools, fastened his collar with a square of plastic from the engine room. There was only one earring left--the other sliver of gold-washed circuit board had descended in a different branch of the mesnie--and he paired it with a plain, heavy gold hoop. This was a night for status. He smiled at his reflection, the angular, broad-boned face not yet too worn by the sun, eyes blacker than ever from the broom, and was pleased with the result.
The coupelet was waiting by the time he'd finished dressing, the driver leaning on the steering bar with an expression of infinite patience on his sun-wrinkled face. The destination was already set; as soon as Warreven closed the door behind him, the driver eased the heavy vehicle into motion. They turned south, onto the harbor road, sounding the coupelet's whistle almost constantly as he worked his way into the slow-moving stream of traffic. This was a bad time to try to g
et through the harbor district--the market there was still open, the day-boats would just be docking, and the shopkeepers and brokers and the occasional pharmaceutical's factor would be crowding the quay to inspect the day's take--and Warreven leaned forward to flip the intercom switch.
"Why aren't we taking Stanehope Street?"
The driver looked up, fixing the younger man's face in his mirror. "Sorry, mir, but there's been some trouble at the Souk, rana dancers. The baas told me to come this way."
Warreven nodded, and leaned back in his seat, resigning himself to a long, slow ride. The rana groups were always active around the Midsummer holiday, their riot presaging the overthrow of the year; lately, the radical political groups, Modernists like himself and the fringe groups even further to the left, had taken over the ranas' tactics, and staged their own protests with dance and drumming. Not that the ranas had ever really been apolitical, of course, but the Modernists had honed and focused the protests, trying to say new things in an old voice. The Centennial Meeting would begin at Midwinter, and the Modernists had already announced that they wanted to put the question of Hara's joining the Concord to an open vote. That meant bringing a lot of other issues into the Meeting--the question of the pharmaceutical contracts, of Temelathe's control of the government, and the existence of trade and the whole question of gender law--and Tendlathe and the Traditionalists vehemently opposed the idea. A number of the old-style ranas supported their position, and there had already been fights between the two groups.
Traffic slowed around them, and the couplelet's engine moaned as the driver geared down yet again. Warreven leaned sideways, trying to see around the driver's head and the shays and runabouts that hemmed them in. Ahead, Consign Wharf jutted into the main harbor, and there was a crowd gathered at its foot, spilling out into the roadway, completely blocking one of the four lanes.
"Someone's made a good haul," he said, but even before he heard the driver's noncommittal grunt, he realized that he was wrong: There were too many runabouts in the knotted traffic, not enough shays and three-ups--too many people altogether, he thought, to be a buying crowd. The coupelet lurched forward, gained another fifty meters before it ground to a halt, and he could hear the noise of drums and the shrill note of a dancer's whistle even through the coupelet's heavy shell. Three people--ordinary people, sailors and dockworkers by their clothes, without the usual tattered ribbons that marked a rana group--were standing on a platform balanced precariously on a cluster of fuel drums, arms around one another's shoulders, chanting and swaying to the drums. He couldn't hear the words yet, or much more than the dull rhythm, but he could see the defiance in their faces, and the tension in the movements of the listening crowd. The driver reached across his pod to flip a security switch, locking the coupelet's doors.
They inched forward, into the fringes of the crowd, and Warreven leaned back in the seat, making himself as unobtrusive as possible. Most of the attention was directed toward the people--two women and a man--on the platform, but there was no point in attracting trouble. And trouble was already present: to the left of the car, on the edge of the concrete mole that marked the end of the buyers' lot, a man in a traditional vest and docker's trousers banged an ironwood wrench against a wooden pot. His hand rose and fell in an insistent counter beat, but any sound was drowned in the noise from the platform. He knew it as well as anyone, turned his fierce scowl on the people around him, exhorting them to join in disrupting the singers' chant. He had painted red-and-white flames, the mark of the Captain, the spirit that Tendlathe was trying to make the Traditionalists' patron, across each cheek. Most of them ignored him, or stood open-mouthed and undecided, looking at him and then back to the singers. Then at last a stocky man jumped up on the wall beside him, clapping his hands and calling to the others. The coupelet slid past before Warreven could see what happened.
They were almost abreast the platform now, and a woman's clear voice--the voice of a sea chanter, someone trained to make herself heard over a full gale and the chaos of a sinking ship--soared over the insistent drums.
"Shineo was the Captain's daughter," she began, and most of the people answered automatically, conditioned by years of sailing.
"Way-hey, Shineo."
"I love her a little bit more than I oughter," the chanter sang, and the response faltered, some voices dropping out, others coming in full and triumphant.
"Way-hey, Shineo!"
"Oh, Captain, Captain, I love your daughter." The chanter's voice was full of mocking challenge, not just of the Traditionalist with his painted face, but of everything he and the Captain stood for. The same note was in the crowd's answer--as if, Warreven thought, they were all twelve again, and just learning there were real words, strong words, names for all the things they weren't supposed to do, or be.
"I'll carry her across the deep blue water--"
The driver gunned the engine, and the coupelet lurched for-ward into a gap in the traffic, but the sudden rumble couldn't drown either the crowd's gleeful response or the driver's curse.
"Garce bitch."
Warreven lifted his head, and the driver met his eyes in the mirror, the half of his expression that Warreven could see caught between embarrassment and mulish conviction. Everyone knew Warreven was a halving, wry-abed, and a Modernist to boot, but this, the face seemed to say, was too much. Warreven lifted an eyebrow, and the driver's stare faltered.
"Sorry, mir," he muttered.
Warreven nodded, and looked away. A couple of Temelathe's militia--the mosstaas, mustaches, technically members of the city patrol association, were standing on the edge of the crowd, heads turned toward the chanter. One rested his hand on his ironwood truncheon, but they stood otherwise passive, without noticeable expression, watching the crowd and the singer. There would be trouble later, Warreven thought, and wondered if Chauntclere was safe at sea.
Traffic eased as they swung away from the harbor, moving into one of the new mixed-use districts, where old warehouses and crumbling factories had been reclaimed for the workers in the newer plants south of the Goods Yard. Few people were visible in the streets, but here and there the wide doors were open to the evening, and Warreven caught a quick glimpse of a group of women, traditionally skirted, breasts pushed up and out by the tight traditional bodices, gathered around an open stove. A few children, most in ragged hand-me-downs, played on the cracked paving, under what had been a loading dock. They stopped their game to stare at the coupelet, and as it passed, the tallest threw a stone. It fell short, but Warreven saw the driver's eyes in the mirror, watching them, and heard him mutter something indecent under his breath before he looked away.
The sun was well down by the time the coupelet drew up in front of the compound that surrounded Temelathe's house, the cool twilight thickening toward dark. Lamps were lit on either side of the gate, and the taller of the mosstaas on duty there waved them through without hesitation. The driver maneuvered the coupelet between the pillars and slid it neatly to a stop outside the main entrance. The house itself was bigger than the clan house over by the Terminus, was easily as large as the White Watch House, and was rumored to have cost several years' of Template's disposable income. Even if that weren't true, Warreven thought--and knowing Temelathe, he doubted it--it was still an impressive sight, a mute statement of all the ways that Stane out-stripped its neighbors. Lights blazed through the open doors and windows, and a woman in full traditional regalia, tiered and beaded skirts and tight bodice, crown of shells and flowers on her braided hair, came hurrying to open the door.
"Makado will show you where to put the car," the woman said, to the driver. She had the high, breathless voice of the old-fashioned high-housekeepers, but only off-worlders failed to recognize its authority within its own sphere. A dark man in off-world clothes loomed silently out of the shadows, beckoning, and Warreven let the coupelet's door fall shut behind him. The heavy vehicle slid away toward the sheds at the far side of the compound.
"Mir Stane is waiting," the
housekeeper said.
And standing on his dignity, too, Warreven thought. Or maybe it was just her habit to refer to Temelathe by the most exalted form of his name. He nodded, and gestured for her to precede him into the house.
The party hadn't started yet, but a few of the guests were already present, gathered in one of the anterooms outside the main hall. The housekeeper swept him quickly past the doorway, but Warreven saw Aldess Donavie standing in the center of a circle of admirers. She saw him, too, and smiled graciously, showing perfect teeth, but did not beckon him in. There was no sign of Tendlathe--which was probably just as well, Warreven admitted. After their last argument, he'd rather keep out of Tendlathe's way for a while.
The housekeeper stopped outside a familiar door and tapped lightly on the frame. "Enter," a voice said, only slightly deadened by the dense wood, and the housekeeper pushed open the door.
"Mir Warreven, Mir Stane."
Temelathe was sitting in his favorite chair, beside the massive cast-ceramic stove. It was unlit, of course, wouldn't be lit until the coldest nights of the winter, but it was more expensive evidence of the clan's power. "I'm so glad you could come," he said, and Warreven heard the housekeeper shut the door behind him. "Sit down, make yourself comfortable. Liquertie?"
Warreven glanced at the tray that rested on the cold stovetop. The flask was filled with indigo liquid, and a dark, twisted shape floated in its depths: not just ordinary liquertie, then, but black nectar, liquertie infused with the root pod from a vinegar tree. "Thank you. May I pour you a glass, my father?"
Temelathe nodded, a slight, slightly indulgent smile on his weathered face. He had never been handsome, had broadened with age until he looked like one of the aged wood carvings of the Captain. He cultivated that resemblance, of course, but it was still compelling, the fierce brown eyes enmeshed in the web of fine lines that covered his face. Warreven filled the delicate glasses with liquor that flowed like thick ink and handed one across with a slight, polite bow, falling into a familiar role. The dutiful son was useful, and generally safe: it gave no opportunity for criticism and rarely required one to commit oneself to anything.
Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) Page 8