Skeen's Leap

by Clayton, Jo;

  Timka touched her arm. “You can stop,” she said.

  Skeen lowered the pipe, drew the back of her hand across her mouth. “Ga’ t’ sleep.”

  They were riding south in a long skinny valley between two sets of peaks with the Wall somewhere to their left and a small noisy stream on their right. The sun was tilted into the west, the shadows were growing toward night. Skeen’s head throbbed from the concentration though her dizziness gradually diminished. She slipped the cork of her waterskin and drank for a long time, letting a trickle of water slide down her aching throat. Finally she lowered the skin, tapped in the cork. “Less stob.” Her mouth was so sore, she had trouble articulating the words, sounded mushier than Old Yoech the Soak.

  Timka frowned at the sky intermittently visible through the thin screen of leaves. “I haven’t seen any searchers, but we should stay in thicker cover than this.”

  “Wha’ ’bout unner those?” She lifted a two-ton arm and pointed at three ancients with high round crowns that spread out over a grassy space, mottled light and shadows shifting and shifting.

  Timka sighed. “Why not.”

  HERE IT IS AGAIN, THAT OLD QUEST STORY, HERO TREKKING ACROSS A GOOD PART OF THE WORLD CHASING DOWN A MAGIC OBJECT MEANT TO RESTORE HER TO HER SEAT OF POWER.

  or

  SKEEN WAKES UP.

  A large brindled bird swooped under the trees, dropped the wet flopping fish on Skeen’s head, went powering away with cackles like human laughter. Skeen laughed, shook the fish at the bird. “Crazy Min.” She crossed to a tree-shaded flat rock that pushed a little way into the stream, knelt, and began gutting the fish. Timka had got scathing about lighting fires to cook fish when likely every Min in the mountains was hunting them, but Skeen just grinned and told her to wait and see. She dug a firehole while Timka was out fishing, lining it with small stones she collected from the stream.

  She took the gutted fish, dusted a few spices in the cavity, then plastered a thick layer of mud over the outside and set the fish aside as Timka-bird came back with a smaller fish. Skeen glared at her and the bird dropped it neatly by her knee. Another cackle and it was gone.

  Skeen cleaned this fish, fixed it like the other, carried them to the hole. Using the small flamer from her toolkit, beam spread to a fan, she heated the rocks red-hot, dropped the two fish in, covered them with more stones, heated those, pushed dirt over them … then settled back to wait.

  Timka-bird came back with a fish in each clawed foot. She dropped them onto a slab of stone, lit beside them, and proceeded to devour them with a neat efficiency that left little debris behind. Skeen found she preferred not to watch. When the bird was finished, her form smoked and changed into a naked Timka who had lost any trace of blood or muck in the shift. She moved to her clothes and began pulling them back on.

  Skeen watched, fascinated. “Shouldn’t you have waited until you digested that a little?”

  Timka pulled the neckstring to the proper tightness, tied the ends. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems.…” Skeen dropped it, no point in fussing about something she wouldn’t understand if Timka tried to explain. Besides, there was a question she found more interesting. “Hm. Things being the way they are, how do you know friend from food?”

  “Tie these things for me, will you?” Timka extended her arms. As Skeen tied the drawstrings about the delicate wrists (looked like Skeen could break them with a snap of thumb and forefinger, but she had a strong suspicion that was illusion), Timka said softly, “Min knows Min, doesn’t matter the shape. I’ve got seven basic shapes—bird, hunting cat, swimmer, deer for running, rock-leaper for climbing, and this one I’ve got now. But I couldn’t hide from another Min in any of them.” She shook her sleeves until the folds pleased her, bent for her vest. “I found them because Telka did, she was always pushing ahead of me and Carema my mother’s sister made me catch her, but I haven’t practiced them much; except for the bird, I don’t really know them.” She slipped her arms into the vest, began threading the thong through the grommets. “Most Min have two base forms, no more—this …” she waved a hand at herself, “and one other.” She tied off the thong, settled herself away from the rock she’d used for a table, on the grass where a bit of sun came through the leaves and painted warmth over her.

  Seven skins, Skeen thought, what a world. She went to dig up her fish, mouth watering, anticipating the hot white flesh flaking in her hands.

  They rode cautiously south, keeping to the mountains until they were several days beyond Mintown, resting in the daytime, sleeping, eating, letting the horses graze, riding at night, with Timka in her owl-form scouting ahead, making sure they didn’t accidentally stumble over a Min holding or a hunter out about his or her business.

  There were small holdings scattered through the mountains, three or four families that might or might not be related. Timka told her that most Min got nervous where there were numbers of Min around. The crowds at Mintown were there for a few days only, come to petition the Synarc for this and that. At times there were large gathers. Timka mentioned them in passing, almost by accident, but wouldn’t say any more about what happened at them. Skeen had some pictures in her head of what a whirly chaos of form and shift those meetings must be. She was intensely curious about them and about the Min, tried to get Timka to talk about herself.

  Timka seemed quite willing to talk and did a lot of chatting and it was several days before Skeen put things together and realized that beyond the few snippets of information she wrung out of her with questions about dangers they could face as they moved through the mountains, the little Min evaded any probing into her own childhood or into Min life with vague statements and a smooth transition into stories about her life with the Poet. Skeen found the Pallah boringly like a lot of other regressed societies she had dropped in on to track down rumors of ruins. By the time they reached the valley floor she was tired of prodding at a pillow; Timka could keep her hoarded secrets. She was free enough with information about the land ahead, that was all Skeen really needed.

  “Spalit. The river divides there. One branch goes west to the Lakes, the other goes south to the Wetlands, gets lost in the swamps. And those swamps are full of Nagamar who don’t want to see, hear, or smell outsiders. Spalit is about half the size of Dum Besar. There’s a palisade around it, but nothing like Besar’s wall. Rumor says every second person is a thief and every sixth is available for anything including murder if the price is right. And they don’t pay proper taxes. The Byglave used to get very exercised about them around tax time and the Poet had to soothe him down and remind him tactfully about what happened the last time the Casach decided to discipline the Splitters by collecting back taxes and fines out of their hides.”

  “What happened?”

  “The Casach sent a hundred armed men. By ship, so warning wouldn’t run ahead of them, leaving on Black Night when there wasn’t even a moon to light them. Ship ran into cables stretched across the Rekkah about twenty stads north of Spalit. Anyone not drowned had his throat slit by a collection of thugs wearing bags over their heads. Two did manage to escape, though wounded. When they stumbled into Spalit come the morning, the town Mozeed was appalled and indignant; he told them so, then launched himself into a diatribe about the failure of the Casach to protect their people against such outrages. If I’d known you were coming, he told the sore and weary men, I would have sent my patrollers out to meet you and keep you safe. He went on about that for some time, the story goes, and repeated it to the emissary from the Casach. The point was taken and the experiment was not repeated.

  Skeen heard distaste in the quiet voice, but no reluctance to speak about these things; Timka responded to her questions about the Pallah with an odd docility that she didn’t understand. But was it really docility? Timka was like water yielding to everything, yet in the end going her own way. Remembering all her attempts to find out about Min life, Skeen had to acknowledge (ruefully but honestly) that the Min was smarter than she was a
nd a lot better at manipulating people. Timka frustrated her, made her angry, and fascinated her. She tried to break through the soft slippery surface and make Timka see that she didn’t have to be that defensive any longer, then she’d find herself ordering the Min about, tacitly acquiescing in the role Timka seemed to demand of her. She would run her hand through her hair, curse under her breath, then try to come to terms with this impossible situation so she could do something to save her self-respect. Timka acted as her personal slave whether she wanted a slave or not. She’d taken on this companion as a kick at Telka, acting on impulse. Tibo that little snake, he told her one time that she seemed to have a valve that popped whenever she’d been cautious and prudent overlong, and anything she did then was almost guaranteed to turn out a disaster. I took you on impulse, you baster, and you prove your prediction right.

  They rode across rich dark soil heavy with planting. The air was humid and still. Skeen felt if she set a foot down too long it would take root. She sweated and the sweat stayed on her skin, laying over her body like a sheath. The saddle was wet where her legs and buttocks pressed against the leather: the eddersil let sweat through it without absorbing any, so she didn’t have to worry about soggy clothing. Though she washed her face and hands as often as there was water to do it, dirt seemed to grow beneath her nails and in the creases of her hands. And she could almost feel her hair growing. Salt sweat beaded on her eyelashes and rolled into her eyes. She wiped her face again and again with a handkerchief that had been soaked so long it was speckled with mildew and smelled strong enough to scare off a garbage dump rat.

  Three days. Four. A handful of days. Nights as warm and even damper than the days. The horses were restless, as uncomfortable as Skeen, their tempers worsening by the day. They needed grain. There wasn’t enough forage outside the fields and Skeen was still avoiding notice, so she didn’t stop at any of the tiny villages. So, no grain.

  Six days. Seven. A double handful. On the tenth day they rode round a grove and came out behind a packtrain of Ygga, short-legged stolid beasts with great ivorine horns reaching out a meter on each side of long skinny heads, the nose a trunk of sorts slightly longer than a big man’s handspan, these noses swaying like pendulums of wrinkled flesh. Goods were piled so high on their broad backs, they looked like traveling tents under the protecting tarps. They brushed the bushy growths on both sides of the narrow track and Skeen was compelled to eat their dust if she wanted to keep to the road and that she did want. The packtrain was as good a cover as any for going into Spalit and the dust, however irritating, was as good as a mask. Well, better than a mask. A mask carried mystery and provoked curiosity. Dust was just dust, cast up by the clawed feet of the Ygga and deposited on ten days’ worth of sweat. Fine red dust as slippery as chalk that got into the eyes, nose, mouth, and more private crevices of the body, that flew out from the eddersil with every move she made. She giggled silently to think how peculiar she’d look, perfectly neat black trousers and tunic, boots that looked like someone painted dust on them, a dust mask runnelled with sweat, dyed hair gone a dull red with that same dust—like she’d put on clean clothes for town but hadn’t bothered to clean herself.

  When they reached the gate, she roughened and deepened her voice, tossed a bronze coin to one of the gate guards. “Eh-vakkit, what’s a place we can get a tun of wine to cut the dust and a hot bath to chase it altogether?”

  The Watch looked at the coin in his hand, grinned at her. “The Spittin Split will do yo all that. Turn riverside where yo see a house with a red door.” He flicked a long thumb at the end of a long nose, winked at Timka. “She look like she ull clean up fine, but yo want a change, Red Door they got some lively ass. Go twar River till you see a big shup with a wall ’bout it, ’n a signboard swing over an arch, two-head fish, one spittin water t’ other spittin wine. ’N hey, tell ol’ Nossik that Tiddin sent you by.”

  “I’ll do it.” She gave him a two-finger wave, heeled the weary horse into a walk, and started along the shell-spread street. The shells kept the dust down, but did little for the stench from the sewer ditches on both sides of the broad street. The stillness of the air was beginning to break with the coming of night and made the smell inescapable. Timka caught up with Skeen and rode beside her. “How did you know what to say to him and how?”

  “You told me what the town is like.”

  “But I didn’t know.…”

  “There’s always a town like this and a Watch like that. And he’s generally the one on duty late in the day like this because that’s when travelers want steering the most and are most willing to pay for it. He gets a commission for everyone he sends to Nossik or the Red Door. He knows I know it and will be sure to mention his name. It’s all part of the rules and because I know the rules, I slide in easy. Folks round here will know I’m a stranger but not really a stranger because I’ve got the mark on me.”

  “I don’t understand any of that.”

  “Thief’s mark, Timmy.”

  “Don’t call me that. My name is Timka.”

  Skeen shrugged, rather pleased to get that much reaction out of her. It’d been building for days, Timka was tired and dirty and surrounded by folk she distrusted, even feared, so it was no wonder she allowed herself to get a bit grumpy.

  “Are you really going there?” Timka said.

  “Why not. I want a bath so bad I’d stomp a tiger for it. If you’re fussy after the last dozen days, Djabo’s asshole, you’ll never be satisfied.”

  “Won’t it be … dangerous. And … and not clean.”

  “Clean as anything we can afford here. Old saying a line-boss used to beat into me and kids like me. Cut your cloth to fit your purse.”

  “The price you got for me.…”

  “Never mind what I got for you.” Skeen grinned at her, mud splitting and flaking off her face. “It’s coin I picked up from your Poet that’s going to feed us and pay for our baths and get us across this river.” She stopped her mount, sat contemplating the cleverly carved Innboard. The wine-spitting fish had a silly grin on its face and a wicked gleam in its eye, the water-spitter had a look of fine disgust. She slid down and led the horse through the broad arch into a tidy paved courtyard. “If you want to do something, take these horses round to the stable and see they are fed and curried while I see how little I can pay ol’ Nossik for room with bath.”

  Skeen took a long pull at the tankard, sighed with pleasure. “Ah,” she said, “that cuts the dust.”

  The taproom was dark and shadowy, the front half of the ground floor, with huge fireplaces at each end and smoky lamps dangling from heavy iron chains spiked into beams running the length of the room. Around each hearth, in a ragged arc, the host had placed wooden wingchairs with one arm broadened into small tables for the convenience of the patrons. And there was a low rail where those patrons could put their feet up for toasting on inclement days. Between the two semicircles, tables were scattered about, light backless seats pushed in around them. Only one of the fires was lit, more a token than a source of heat. The men sitting by it were talking in low voices, continuing conversations begun weeks or months ago.

  Nossik laced his fingers over the short leather apron wrapped round his ample middle. “Plenty dust.”

  “Could have plowed and planted me and reaped enough to pass a winter. I like your sign.”

  Nossik chuckled. “Water has its uses.”

  “Exteriorally.” She thought it over and decided she’d said it right.

  “Wouldn’t argue with that, my profession being what it is.” He was puzzled by her, aware she was female, but uncertain how to treat her. Females dressing, talking, acting like her weren’t something he saw every day. He tended to hover, but she didn’t mind. Happy to have someone to talk to she didn’t have to make allowances for. Timka was upstairs, too nervous to come down; her edginess had got worse instead of better after a bath and a meal. Skeen wrapped long thin fingers about the tankard and sighed; it was a good fat drinking cup, they knew
something about life’s little pleasures here in the Spittin Split. “Hot,” she said.

  Nossik mopped at the bar, a universal gesture, a matter of marking territory and attracting the eye to meaningless motions while the shrewd measuring eye of the man behind the bar assessed his customers. “Oh, it’s not so bad. Now last year …” he paused, folded his wipe into a neat square, “last year it was really hot. Got so your taties came out of the ground already baked. Generally, folk waited till dark to eat ’em, you could burn your back teeth otherwise. Talking o teeth, you want another?”

  She pushed the tankard across to him. “Why not. Have one yourself, friend. Ale this good goes best in company.”

  “Now I wouldn’t say no to that. My Yenna has so deft a touch at brewing, it’s a temptation to drink up my profits.”

  While he was gone, Skeen swung round and looked lazily about the room. The Pallah by the fire were bent over a complicated game involving numbered sticks, flat stones, and a board marked with squares. A trio of Skirrik males squatted in a padded niche sipping something through metal straws and skritching at each other, looking as relaxed and contented as she was feeling right now. Their antennas had an orange tinge and they glittered with jet; most likely they were heading home to dance for a bride. Four tall thin types, very young, pushed the door open and came strolling in, all bone and gristle and immense drunken dignity. Very very young. I never was that young, she thought and sighed. Silky pale not-hair, beaky noses, very small mouths. Aggitj extras. What Sussaa tried to make her; she ran her fingers through fake-blonde hair, caught the boys looking at her, polite but puzzled. And was retrospectively annoyed (considering that excess of nose and near absence of chin) at Telka’s insistence she’d pass for a perfect Aggitj. Nossik’s daughter went over to them, got them settled, took their orders. Their voices were high and soft, a touch androgynous. I’m getting a little sloshed, she thought and swung back around as Nossik brought her refill and his. She pushed a pair of coppers across to him.