by Mary Gentle
On the facing edges of the steps, on the door-arch, and round the base of the pillars, are carved stylized and alien representations of death’s-heads. I stood in the dawn light and was chilled. The Golden Empire, worn down by time and wasteland erosion, still incarnate among its poor and shabby inheritors.
There was light enough now to see that all around that enigmatic structure there were guards armed with spear and winchbow. And they wore the brown scale-mail of Kel Harantish.
‘Surely this has to be the Company’s primary objective,’ Pramila Ishida said, as we turned into the entrances of the lower level rooms. ‘These people must want to trade. They’re so poor.’
Evening of the next day: I’d decided to risk lifting the grounded shuttle the short distance to Maherwa. Now I had Pramila here, and better comlink equipment. I led the young Asian-Pacifican woman towards the inner chambers, where Douggie and David Osaka were eating with the Ortheans, an evening meal of del’ri-bread and arniac-tea.
‘You go through.’ I stopped in the outer room. ‘I’ve something to do. I’ll join you.’
The low-ceilinged room was partially lit by mirror-reflected light. The walls were plaster-covered, stained in bright patterns with metal oxides. This room was full of outlanders, some in Melkathi robes, some – despite the heat – in Rimon boots and britches; out of place among the hiyek-Ortheans. All of these northern continent Ortheans wore harur-nilgiri and harur-nazari; and were mostly stretched out on the padded benches, drinking fermented del’ri-grain and playing ochmir, and talking in a patois of Rimon, Melkathi, Morvrenni, and four or five different Coast languages.
I halted beside a female Orthean. ‘T’an Haldin, isn’t it?’
She was lying on a bench, legs up on a table, booted ankles crossed. ‘Haldin Damory, of the Medued Guild-house. Have you made your mind up yet, s’aranthi?’
‘A contract,’ I said. ‘Guard duty. And no other contracts taken on while you do it.’
She grinned lazily. ‘That costs more.’
So Blaize Meduenin once told me. When I think of him, I wonder that I trust mercenaries at all.
‘I’ll pay.’
Whoops, yells, appreciative comments and a few raucous jeers – her fellow mercenaries approved. They were all young, not one over twenty-five; and all had that savage, laconic and utterly careless attitude towards violence.
Haldin, hands resting on the hilts of harur blades, said, ‘Guard duty … does that apply to all you offworlders here?’
I made a mental note to repeat that question to Doug, he has the sense of humour to appreciate it. ‘All,’ I said firmly, and we closed the contract. I thought, I’m not sorry to be doing this where hiyek-Ortheans can see and know. Another precaution.
I walked through into the inner chambers, pushing past Ortheans, most of whom had hiyek-Anzhadi patterns woven into belt or headband or meshabi-robe. Some light still entered the unshuttered windows. The last evening breeze brought the smell of dried-dung fires. Clusters of glass bells hung from every window and door-arch, chiming softly. I sat down between Doug and Pramila, on one of the fine metalwork benches, padded with del’ri-fibre matting; and drank the acrid arniac while Doug and David talked with Ninth raiku, and imagined schemes of advantage behind every friendly, curious, or indifferent Orthean face.
I should steer this in the right direction, I thought. Can you help us with access to the technology here? If not, are you useful as a way back into Kel Harantish? That’s all the Company needs to know. But … But?
The young Asian-Pacifican woman beside me stirred, restless. Then she raised her head, looking me right in the eye. ‘Lynne, these people are starving. The children show all the signs of chronic malnutrition. I’ve been talking to some of them – there hasn’t been a siiran-harvest brought in without a war for the last nine years. Lynne, these people need a Trade&Aid programme!’
The outburst surprised me; not something I expected from this small, sallow-faced girl. No, I realized guiltily, and you didn’t expect her to object to this, because she’s Company. As if being in a multicorporate made you blind …
‘It isn’t that simple,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘You set up Trade&Aid, feed these people, and you’ll send the birthrate up,’ I said. The siirans will be even more overcrowded, they’ll overflow. Instead of harvest-wars, you’ll have fighting all year round. Soon the cities won’t be neutral territory, and the ashiren won’t come in to them, to group into raiku.’
I sipped at the arniac, cupping the metal bowl between my hands. ‘Then there’ll be dozens, hundreds of kei-raiku people here. Do you have any idea how that will unbalance this culture? The raiku are self-supporting groups, everything – trade, crafts, ships, the hiyek-bloodline itself – is based on that group. Break that up and you’ll have changed these people out of all recognition!’
Pramila, looking stunned, said, ‘Did the Ortheans here tell you that?’
‘No, I –’
am under the starry sky of Dustsun, standing with my four companions, before the keretne of the hiyek.
‘By this blood –’
The metal knives cut. I put my gashed hands in turn to those of my brothers and sisters in raiku, feeling the flow of memory between us.
‘– rediscovered, bind us together –’
The rock cold under bare, high-arched feet; meshabi-robe a scant protection; but joy warms me, I have found my other sharers in truth –
‘Lynne?’
What the –?
I shut down the flood of vision, concentrated on Pramila’s face. ‘I’m saying that leaving these people to starve is cruel, and changing their world out of recognition would be cruel; what kind of cruelty should we prefer?’
Voices interrupted as the small room began to fill up with hiyek-Ortheans. Sethri, with Jadur and the others of Ninth raiku: the twin sisters Wyrrin-hael and Charazir-hael … Feriksushar and a crowd of others, and the keretne male Hildrindi …
What happened? Is it so easy to think like a hiyek-Orthean?
Frighteningly easy.
‘Bad news?’ Doug Clifford asked, as Pramila moved over to talk with David Osaka.
‘What? – No, sorry; I was thinking of something else.’
‘You’ve surprised me,’ he said, under cover of the general noise. ‘I don’t have anything like your grasp of the Coast culture, and I’ve been here – well, the Hundred Thousand –’
‘The Hundred Thousand isn’t the Coast.’
That round face was bland. ‘Lynne, there’s no need to bite my head off. There would be much on hypno-tapes, I suppose, that never got transcribed into data-net holo-records. It’s a pity, in some ways, that we can’t use hypno-tapes now.’
‘If you’d been through the Psych programmes that I have, to undo the damage –’
‘Oh yes. Quite. Not a serious suggestion.’
If I could talk to anyone, it would be to Douggie … but I held off. Held off and thought, Am I ill? If it’s a recurrence of that trouble I had after the hypno-tapes … but it isn’t like that. In Morvren I thought, It’s as if I’d never been away from the Hundred Thousand. And I have the same feeling here. I know how the hiyeks function, what life is like in the siiran; every language falls familiar on my ears. But I can’t know. Ten years ago, I never even came near the hiyeks of the Desert Coast …
David Osaka, leaning forward intently, finished giving the standard advantages-of-Trade&Aid speech. He glanced over at me. Yes it’s my job and yes, it’ll get back to Molly Rachel that I’m not displaying proper enthusiasm on behalf of the Company. Too bad.
An ashiren stood, slender and pale-maned, and reached up to close the metal window-shutters, excluding the night air. Another child brought fresh arniac. There were a dozen or so Ortheans here I could put names to, far more that I couldn’t. Now the mirrors began to reflect starlight into the chamber, bright enough to read expressions on alien features. Sethri-safere pulled a metal lattice shutter across the doo
r-arch. Through it, I saw Haldin Damory and her troop still in the outer rooms.
‘… and if we do go to war with hiyek-Nadrasiir, the fighting will end when the rains come. If the rains come.’ The woman Feriksushar glanced up from her conversation with David Osaka. She looked at me. Tour shan’tai Clifford has said we will not benefit from trade. That it would change us. That we would become like Earth.’
Pramila frowned. When I caught Doug’s eye, he was entirely unrepentant. I thought, The Coast is not the Hundred Thousand … and we sit here and drink arniac, eat del’re-bread; relying on hospitality that hiyek-Anzhadi may not be able to afford.
As much to myself as to Feriksushar, I said, ‘If you have Trade&Aid here, it will change your lives. I don’t know. Before, I was in the Hundred Thousand, and to them one can say ‘stay free of Earth’ because they don’t need help. I don’t know if we can say that to you.’
Glancing past the gold-maned female, I saw the pinched face Hildrindi-keretne. When I mentioned the Hundred Thousand, I saw a hatred as brief as it was impersonal.
‘That said – I have to be honest. All PanOceania’s help will come with a price-tag attached. This time it’s access to the Witchbreed technology, the canals. You’ll have to decide whether or not you can pay that price.’
A heated discussion broke out. Jadur, seated on the floor, leaning back between Sethri’s legs, looked up and caught the arm of his brother-in-raiku, speaking urgently. Wyrrin-hael leaned across to speak to her twin, white mane falling across her eyes. Each of the hiyek-Ortheans in the room seemed determined to out-shout the others. I saw Pramila lean forward to speak to David, and Feriksushar (in a gesture that passed unnoticed) take Hildrindi’s arniac bowl from his hand that shook with weakness.
‘We can’t trade in Witchbreed abominations!’ the keretne said.
Jadur lurched to his feet. ‘Shan’tai Christie, we fight our wars with mercenary troops and weapons. Weapons from offworld would aid us. Will your Company trade for them?’
Shit, I thought. That’s a question I hoped I wouldn’t hear.
In the days when my government controlled relations with Restricted worlds, I could quite genuinely have said, We have a policy forbidding that. Now the multicorporates have the same policy, but I fear how flexible it might prove to be.
Before David or Pramila could express an opinion either way, I cut in: ‘I’m not convinced that you can offer access to the canals, shan’tai Jadur.’
He scratched awkwardly at his mane, and sat down again beside Feriksushar. ‘It would have to be secretly … with danger … perhaps not even then.’ Forced to that honesty, he looked away, discomfited.
When Hildrindi spoke, it was with an effort. The nictitating membrane opaqued his pale eyes. ‘The keretne will not agree to this. We listen to the Brown Tower, and to the Hexenmeister; and the Tower will not have s’aranthi weapons or s’aranthi engines on the Coast!’
‘There is this,’ Sethri-safere interrupted. ‘While we live in this arid land, we will always be in debt to someone. We have merely a choice of creditors. Kel Harantish, or Kasabaarde, or – s’aranthi offworlders.’
Voices were raised again, and I leaned back against the cool wall, watching. Sethri made himself heard: ‘Listen to me! War between all the Coast hiyeks is coming. It can’t be avoided now. We’ll be fighting before the end of Wintersun. The only choice is whether to have war to our advantage, or to our enemies’.’
Claw-nailed hands gestured, one of the males I didn’t know stood up, shouting; Charazir-hael drew the hook-bladed knife from her belt, but Jadur restrained her. The stocky Feriksushar was on her feet. A tall male, blustering, shouted, ‘Give us weapons, we’ll free ourselves of the Harantish Witchbreed!’
Another male looked up lazily and said, ‘There are no pure-blooded Witchbreed now. Our ashiren have gone to Kel Harantish, their ashiren have come into our raiku –’
‘If you have ‘Breed blood in your hiyek, no need to accuse us of the same filth!’
Sethri-safere came and sat down on the bench beside me. I saw Doug had gone – and then saw him talking with Pramila. The yellow-maned Orthean grinned at the violent reaction.
‘That’s stirred them up. They don’t trust me, because I’ve commanded mercenaries, and that’s a dirty job. But it does mean I know what I’m talking about.’
War between the hiyeks? ‘Who are your enemies, Sethri?’
Nictitating membrane slid over his tawny eyes. He said, ‘When your Company comes offering to trade, all the Coast hiyeks became each other’s enemies.’
Some cold professionalism in me ignored the implications of what he was saying; merely thought, Thank God for someone who understands the problem.
‘Suppose I tell you – and it’s true – that there’s a strict prohibition on our bringing in Earth weapons technology?’
No matter what we might be offered in exchange?
He looked down at strong, narrow fingers, spread on the weave of dirty meshabi-cloth; the claws trimmed back on all but the sixth finger.
‘Christie, anything is a weapon. Say you trade us a cure for cropblight – there’s a hiyek that will grow strong, have many ashiren. A hiyek that will be able to pay to send mercenaries against other hiyeks, to seize what siiran it needs to feed that number.’ He shrugged. ‘Which means that the three or four most powerful hiyeks at the time will band together to fight that one, and then fall out among themselves when the war’s over …’
Sethri-safere. An attractive face, with a deceptively open look that owed much to fair mane and brows and nothing at all, I guessed, to temperament.
‘You have an answer?’
He turned his head slightly so that no one should see what he said, and it was an automatic gesture: he was more than used to concealment, he revelled in it. I thought, You should have been born in the Hundred Thousand, a player of the game.
‘There aren’t answers. Maybe we can adapt. If raiku can be allies, than why not hiyek?’ The skin round his eyes crinkled, bare evidence of amusement. ‘I’ve little talent for sowing or harvest in the siiran, the city trade bores me, commanding mercenaries is a regrettable necessity – but I can persuade raiku into seeing things my way.’
His hand was cool on my arm, dry, with the swift Orthean heartbeat felt through fingertips on my skin. I thought, I trust self-interest even more than expediency – you want to break the stasis the hiyeks are held in, but even more, you want it to be you that does it …
‘Christie, you see, I’m honest with you. Who else is to help me to that leadership, if not s’aranthi? And who else but me would be willing to help s’aranthi get what they want from the ruins of the Golden Empire?’ His smile was warm, mocking, collusive. ‘I mean to make a friend of you, Lynne Christie.’
An hour later I left the crowded chamber, going out to stand in the cool night. A boot-heel clicked. I glanced down the paved way, under the overhang – the mercenary, Haldin Damory, lifted a hand in reassurance, and stepped back into the shadows.
I looked out across the pit-floor of Maherwa. The Heart Stars shone bright enough to cast shadows from the dome-structure and pillars, and illumine the distant figures of Harantish guards.
And word will have gone back to Kel Harantish. That’s the obstacle – or should I be grateful that there is an obstacle?
All the Coast hiyeks exist between the power of Kel Harantish and Kasabaarde, Kasabaarde –
I swung round, and hit the chiruzeth wall hard with the heel of my hand. Vision trembled at the edge of consciousness. A tide of memory that will flood over me, sweep away all that is Lynne Christie –
What is it? What’s happening to me?
‘Lynne.’ Doug Clifford’s face was in the shadow, but concern was plain in his voice. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’
‘Let’s leave Pramila and David to it,’ I said. ‘The mercenary troop have a few bottles of siir-wine; let’s have a drink, and catch up on what we’ve been doing since – where was it? – Mel
huish’s World.’
And Doug Clifford, with urbane tact, agreed.
Four days later, Wintersun-28, word came through on the comlink of Molly Rachel’s imminent arrival.
All through the intervening days, raiku from Anzhadi and other hiyeks poured into the city: groups of three, four, or five Coast Ortheans; some elderly, some still ashiren. The speed of communication amazed me, until I saw the heliographs flash across the flat, barren landscape; and as for their mobility – travel along the waterways is, like sea travel, faster than most forms of land travel in low-tech cultures. By Wintersun-28 there were Ortheans in Maherwa from as far up the Coast as Quarth, all of two hundred and fifty miles away.
And by Wintersun-28 I had grown used to sleeping three hours at midday, and six at night, to fit into hiyek life; and to carrying on PanOceania’s business while armed mercenaries guarded the door.
‘We’ll go up and meet the shuttle,’ I said. Haldin Damory stood, and joined me at the door. The dirty del’ri-cloth curtain had been looped back, to let in morning light, and the noise of squabbling ashiren on the paved way outside.
‘Are you interested in a warning?’ the young female swordfighter said as we left the inner chambers.
Nights in Wintersun have still a bitter cold, but the frosts were passing. Now first twilight had gone, and Carrick’s Star as it rose left half the city in deep shadow. Haldin paced beside me, alert; dark curled mane carelessly braided up. She wore a horn-mail coat, and one six-fingered hand rested lightly on the hilt of harur-nazari.
Four days is long enough to hear rumour, gossip, intrigue. I slowed as we passed an area where the overhang was deeper, going further back into the cliff-face, where the stalls of a market were being set up.