by Sharon Lee
"How is it," began Corbinye—and the cab shuddered once, violently enough to throw Anjemalti against her and Witness against the door, and slammed to a halt.
A glance out the window showed a narrow street lined with shabby houses, several with broken windows, sealed with battered doors.
"This is not the spaceport!" Corbinye cried. "Taxi! Proceed upon your coordinates!"
"This unit is forbidden to continue," the mechanical voice announced. "This unit's key is known to appropriate local municipalities. This unit—"
"Law force." She spun, gripped her unconscious cousin by his good arm and shook. "Anjemalti, be aware! The cab is stopped and the police approach!"
He made no reply and she gasped, shifting around again in the cramped confines of the cab without realizing how close that gasp had sounded to a sob.
The robot's central system was easily identified by the leaden shield protecting it. Corbinye grunted and pitched half over the low divider, finding the shielded wires by touch, laboriously following them toward the main console, willing the stupid Grounder hands to taste each nuance of shape and size and smoothness and—the break in smoothness.
"Yes . . ." she hissed. She worked her knife around, ignoring the growing sounds of sirens, patiently got the blade where it would do the most good and, one hand on the hilt and the other palm cradling the tip, pulled with all the body's force.
The stupid wire stretched, withstood—and snapped with a suddenness that sent her toppling back as sparks crackled and the console flared—and all the doors flew open.
"Out!" she shouted at Witness, and thrust the Trident into his startled hands, turning to get a grip on Anjemalti and haul him free.
Haul him she did, but his weight overbore her, who had once been able to lift double her mass and hold it for a count of five. She toppled to the gritty walkway, he sprawling atop her, and the sirens sounded perilously close.
Out of nowhere came hands, square and hard and competent, lifting Anjemalti as if he were the veriest babe. Corbinye scrambled to her feet as Witness settled Anjemalti across his shoulder with matter-of-fact ease. He glanced up and used his chin to indicate the thing leaning against the cab's fender.
"It is forbidden that one set to Witness should touch the Smiter."
"Your pardon, I'm certain." Almost the impulse to leave the damned thing overmastered her, then reason returned: How, after all, could she convey Anjemalti to safety, if the one who was able to carry him stayed to watch the Trident?
She snatched the thing up, took a moment to decide that the sirens bore in from the north, and set off to the south, Witness following after.
An odorous alley crossed the main way and she took it, though it jogged off parallel to the port. It might, she thought half-wildly, be defensible, should it come to that. She gasped a laugh and leaned suddenly against a stretch of splintering fence.
"Defensible, certainly!" she cried aloud, dismayed by the edge of hysteria in her own voice. "With a bladed knife and a half-rotted relic for weapons!"
"I have a knife, O Warrior," the Witness said from beside her; "and some knowledge of the lore."
She turned to study him. "Do you? And is one set to witness permitted to fight?"
"A man may fight," he said solemnly, and a grin abruptly split his sober face. "But a dead man may not Witness."
She laughed, still hearing the hysteria there and feeling her heart battering against her ribs. "Spoken like a Crewman! We may yet make the spaceport, with such a will! Let us—"
A siren wailed distressingly near at hand. At the further alley-end a police car pulled up, and stopped.
Corbinye swore and leapt forward, running as fast as the weak body would allow toward the top of the alley and perhaps a chance at another strike for the port and Hyacinth. Behind her, she heard Witness, moving not so quickly as she thought he might, having a care, no doubt, for Anjemalti, draped unconscious across one broad shoulder.
At the top of the alley, a car slid into view, annihilating the hope of the street beyond. Corbinye slammed to a halt, a wordless wail escaping her. Defensible . . .
"Morela! Quickly, Morela, come in!"
She turned, saw the fevered eyes, the thin hand holding wide a gate in the scabrous fence and plunged within, Witness on her heels.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Beyond the gate was garden. Corbinye caught a blurring glance of bright blooms against lavish green before her sleeve was caught in a wire-thin hand and she was bustled through another archway and into dimness.
"Close the door," directed the stranger and Corbinye heard the catch work, saw Witness standing just within the tiny foyer, Anjemalti dangling from his shoulder like a dead man.
"Ship's mercy!" Corbinye spun toward their host. "Grace . . ." she hesitated; deciphered the nuance half-shielded by dark hair, thinness and a certain fevered, burning energy—"madam. My cousin is wounded and requires aid. . .."
The dark eyes widened, shifted to take in the hale man and the wounded. "This way." The tug on Corbinye's sleeve was renewed and she followed its command, waving her hand at Witness to come.
The tunnel-like entranceway gave to spacious brightness. Corbinye glanced up to the skylights, looked at the wall which had been replaced entirely with glass, saw the easel set to catch the light—so—and here and there a screen, cutting what might be an alcove or another room off from the main studio.
"Behind the red screen is a couch, antiseptic and gauze in the chest beside it," said the stranger. "I'll opaque the windows, disconnect the bell . . ." She hurried away and Corbinye turned with Witness toward the red screen.
Anjemalti groaned when they laid him down, but made no sound when Corbinye cut the sleeve and bared the wound.
Witness brought medicines and lint from the chest and the stranger came bustling back, bearing a pan of water. She set it next to where Corbinye knelt beside the couch and stepped back.
"The cops are going down the alley, ringing bells," she said in her harsh, high-tension way. "I pulled the plug on mine and shut down the windows. They know the signs of vacancy."
Corbinye spared one glance at the flushed face. "Will they enter regardless, knowing you are not home?"
Teeth flashed briefly. "One of the few advantages of being related to the Board of Directors. The cops will leave me strictly alone, never fear."
The wound daubed clean, Corbinye spread antiseptic lavishly, then wrapped the whole tightly with gauze. It would do, she reckoned, and knew a sudden, aching desire for Hyacinth and the medical unit there.
Carefully, she got to her feet and made shift to settle Anjemalti more comfortably against the cushions. Witness reached to help and she let him take over that task while she pulled the coverlet from the couch-back and shook it wide.
She had bent to cover him when a certain gleam caught her eye, nestled between his hip and the worn upholstery.
"Here, what's this?" She reached, found her wrist captured by Witness' big hand.
"It is the gem that drove the Harcourt mad," he said. "The gem Anjemalti had intended for the bandit chief." He loosed her hand and leaned over, patting the unconscious man's pockets. "The totem box is gone." He straightened.
"Anjemalti had taken care to enclose this stone with all proper respect, which is the wisest course with magical things. It might perhaps be given a place to live, but I do not believe it should be left out in the air where it might freely partake of events."
"Enclose?" Corbinye frowned, recalling all too clearly Harcourt's scream and sudden madness. She tucked her fingers into her belt, having no wish to touch such a thing.
Unexpectedly, their host came forward, leaned close to study the stone before shrugging bony shoulders. "Just a moment," she said brusquely and bustled away.
She returned in something less than a moment by Corbinye's reckoning, holding a small metal urn with a stopper attached to it by a copper cord and a pair of wooden tongs. Briskly, she bent, captured the stone with the tongs and deposited
it in the urn. She pushed the stopper firmly into place with the heel of her hand and handed the sealed bottle to Corbinye.
"There. That'll keep it out of mischief." Another show of teeth, in what was possibly the best of her smiles. "A genuine djinn's bottle, the merchant who sold it to me swore. If it was powerful enough to hold a djinn, it'll certainly do for an ugly rock."
Corbinye blinked. "My thanks to you. For all your kindness."
The face shadowed, as if the words blighted, rather than eased, and the too-bright eyes sought the floor. "You know I'd do anything for you, Morela." The eyes flashed back, searing Corbinye with their passion. "Anything."
Corbinye hesitated, drew breath and looked directly into that gaze.
"You believe you know me."
"Believe!" The voice conveyed astonishment. "As if you could ever be mistaken!"
"And yet," Corbinye persisted, with unCrewlike gentleness, "you have mistaken, if not the body, then the person who now resides within it." The other woman's eyes took on a tinge of distress; the face betrayed confusion.
"You have heard, perhaps," Corbinye said softly, "of a place called The Blue House?"
Distress conquered confusion; and half a moment later had erupted into fury. "He dared! To punish her for one of his made-up slights, I'll swear! To make her heel, as if she ever would. To make her—it's insupportable, horrible! He won't win this one. . .." The eyes had turned calculating, hard. She looked back at Corbinye. "What is your deadline?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Your deadline! How long a time did you buy in her body? A month? Two? . . . Six?"
Corbinye's head reeled. Had the Grounder gone mad in her grief, or—?
"You mistake the case yet again," she said, and this time the coolness the Crew reserved for Grounders was evident in the rich, stranger's voice. "I am Corbinye Faztherot, who should be dead, except that—someone—bought a newly-dead body and had me placed within it, to become, as you see . . ."
"NO! I don't believe it! Morela—dead? Even he wouldn't dare—" She jammed her fist into her mouth, stared wildly from Corbinye to Witness to Anjemalti, unconscious upon the couch, turned and quit the alcove at something very near a run.
Corbinye felt herself flick forward, controlled the hasty reaction and deliberately closed her eyes, taking breath after deep breath: The Eelvinc Maneuver, designed to impose calmness, reestablish tempo and inner balance.
"Died and reborn," the chant came softly from behind. "She who was not is become She Who Is. Death's Warrior steps into event, and takes oath to serve the Smiter's Chosen."
She spun, staring for one long minute at Witness, standing there with his arms outstretched, beatitude in his eyes.
"Blessed be," he sang. "Shlorba's Smiter stirs and the stars and the plants and the mountainsides are full with expectation."
"Oh, Ship's grace, man, have sense!" She flashed a glance at Anjemalti, still caught in the depths of his swoon. "The only expectation we can have is that girl will immediately have the police or the Vornet upon us—or both! Much good to your Smiter then!"
"The Smiter shakes event, and event of necessity responds," Witness stated, eyes half-glazed, as if he had drunk overdeeply of one of the Head Engineer's more potent distillations. "What shall gainsay the Smiter, the Chosen and the Champion of Death?"
"What, indeed?" Corbinye returned, with calculated insouciance. "Saving only the Vornet, the cops or Anjemalti dying of his wound."
The Witness smiled at whatever glassy vision he gazed at, and slowly lowered his arms. "Anjemalti shall not die," he announced.
"You set my mind at rest," Corbinye told him, but apparently his was not a nature receptive of sarcasm. He chose a corner of the alcove for himself and settled cross-legged to the carpet, eyes dreaming upon the Trident, lying where she had left it before the medicine trunk.
"I go to find our host and beg her not to be precipitate," Corbinye said, without much hope that he was attending her. "Do me the favor of minding my cousin, and of calling me if he wakes."
A long moment passed before he raised his eyes, clear and sane-seeming, to her face. "Warrior," he said calmly, "I shall."
"See that you do," she snapped, all out of patience with his ways, and stomped off to find the owner of the house.
Chapter Thirty-Six
But their host was not so easy to find as that.
Corbinye warily checked behind the three remaining screens and found no more sign of the woman than was evident in the open studio-room. Baffled, she took up a stance in the middle of the room and began to slowly revolve on the balls of her feet.
The door was set flush to the westermost wall, painted an identical off-white. Only the shine of the palm-plate betrayed it.
"So." She walked silently across the smooth stone floor. Standing slightly askance, so that any mischance waiting behind the door might miss her with its first shot, she laid her palm against the plate.
The door swung open, silent on grav-pins. If mischance waited beyond, it was wily and well-used to the game.
Hating to trust so important a move to the ill-trained and ungainly Grounder body, Corbinye swung into the room, poised to leap, should mischance at last show itself.
The room was very small. Spotlights illuminated each of the paintings hanging on the four white walls. A carpet of silvered blue covered the floorstones.
In the center of the carpet sat the owner of the house, salt tracks glistening on her cheeks, eyes hot with something beyond even madness.
Corbinye shifted weight with utmost care, sinking flat-footed into the soft pile, hands deliberately limp, dangling from strengthless wrists.
The woman on the carpet laughed. "No," she said, "you're nothing like her at all, are you? She moved—she moved as if every step were an—experience: a poem. You move as if every step has a purpose. . .." She shuddered and hid her face.
Corbinye considered her. "And how else should it be, when one is Worldwalker and an unwary step might bring the Ship to grief?"
The other woman only shuddered again, and waved an agitated hand about her, indicating, perhaps, the paintings. Her face she still held hidden.
Corbinye glanced at the painting directly across; arrested, she stared, and took three unnoticed steps along the rug.
The woman in the portrait gazed back serenely, her great black eyes soft and distant as she executed some weirdly sensual dance step, breasts thrust against the filmy stuff barely covering them, long yellow hair hanging unbound and shining down her back.
The painting to the right showed her seated, clad in costly brocades, bent forward with outstretched hand and beatific face to the children clustered at her feet. The next painting showed her nude, yet some way inviolate, as if her skin were all the garment she ever needed. The next had her dancing again, fully clad and as wanton as any spacebar hussy.
"She was a dancer at Jiatlin's Playhouse—a storyteller. A singer," the voice of the other woman wavered, cracked. "Everyone loved her. She could have had the protection of any of a dozen of the most influential . . . She could have—but there was Qaffir and what claim he held over her she would never tell me! He abused her, made her crawl, stole from her—and she never . . ."
All at once she moved, springing awkwardly to her feet, and threw her arms wide, as if to embrace all the painted women at once. "You see why I cannot believe she is dead!" she cried, and without awaiting an answer, spun to face Corbinye fully.
"Tell me!" she demanded. "Did he kill her? I'll hurt him, if he dared it—hurt him like he hurt her. . .."
"Forgive me if I say that seems unlikely," Corbinye said, meaning no cruelty, but with her eye full of the other's awkward, passion-driven movements. The woman recoiled.
"You doubt my love," she said bitterly.
"Indeed I do not," returned Corbinye. "But love has very little to do with the matter, the beloved now being dead. And while revenge is certainly yours to claim, if you find the one who deprived you of your friend, revenge is mos
t efficiently carried out in a cooler state of mind, without temper, or hatred—or fear."
The glance that went across her face very nearly scathed. "You sound very sure of yourself!"
"I have had some experience of revenge—and related matters. A Worldwalker must know defense, offense—must judge the utility of either—to deal successfully for the Ship among Grounders." She tipped her head, making no effort to trick the other's eye. "What is your name?"
Consternation showed, followed by an ironic bow. "Theo." It seemed she was on the verge of saying more—and was cut off untimely by the pounding.
Corbinye spun, willing the body into a crouch. She was two steps nearer the door when Theo cried "Wait!" and lunged forward to grab her sleeve.
It was well that the body she wore was not her own. As it was the slap the Grounder woman received sent her crashing to one knee, hand covering her cheek—but the other hand yet amazingly gripping Corbinye's sleeve, while the undamaged eye glared, undaunted.
"Wait!" she repeated, with less volume, but more urgency because of it.
The pounding ceased abruptly, and voices could be heard, indistinct as to words, but clearly arguing. They rose and fell for very nearly a minute, then a third voice joined in, and shortly thereafter came the sound of footsteps, marching away.
"There must be a new cop on the beat—one who doesn't know the signs," said Theo. "That happens sometimes, but the older ones always put them straight." She fingered her cheek, wincing. "You didn't have to hit me so hard!"
"But I hardly hit you at all," said Corbinye, with a mildness she was far from feeling. "You would do well to learn not to snatch at me, mistress!"
The clear eye widened, the lips parting while some sort of notion altered the grief riding in her face. She might indeed have said something, but a shadow came then across the open door and Witness put his head carefully within.