Skeen's Leap

by Clayton, Jo;

  Pegwai’s captain, Terwel Mo, came in a few minutes later. Balayar, something Skeen expected, young to have his own ship. He looked almost as new and tender as the Aggitj boys and was a lot more beautiful. His skin was burnt dark by wind and sun, yet soft and supple, so fine-grained it seemed poreless. Large mouth with full lips sharply defined as if carved by a sculptor given to excessive emphasis on line, bold jutting nose, a beak with flaring nostrils, that mixture of vulgar elegance which Skeen found aesthetically pleasing. She could look at Pegwai’s Captain with the same sort of detached appreciation and enjoyment she felt with Z’la the Min without being at all aroused by him while Pegwai’s blurred, almost comic version of those features put a heat in her groin and a tingle in her nipples when she looked at him or brushed against him. Terwel Mo was so young. Shrewd, no doubt, intelligent, forceful, maybe even charismatic, but sooo young, so many certainties and jutting corners to him that time had not yet broken off or rubbed smooth.

  The Captain’s long black eyes roamed the table as he came up, settled on Timka, and began to glow. Skeen watched with amusement and appreciation as he maneuvered himself into the space next to the little Min and focused intently on her. Timka looked a bit startled at first, then settled into a slashing exchange with him that she seemed to enjoy as much as he did. The Min saw her watching, winked at her, and went back to the thrust and parry with the Captain.

  The dinner wound on, fragrant with grand food and grander laughter, a complex of crosstalk, wine, ale, mulled ciders, the kopj and side dishes of small crunchy deep-fried crustaceans, and finished with a great mound of salad and pots of tea. Four hours of eating, drinking, and talking reduced the feast to shreds and the feasters to a comfortable torpor.

  After a long whispered colloquy with Timka, Captain Terwel pushed back his chair and stood. “Tide turns an hour before dawn. The Meyeberri is bound to leave with it. Those sailing with her should be there at least an hour beforehand so we can get you settled in and, if you’ll pardon the terms, out of the way of my crew.” He nodded at them, exchanged a long smoldering glance with Timka, then went sauntering out.

  Pegwai sighed and got to his feet. “My baggage is already stowed,” he said. “It would take a dozen men and a vat of icewater to get me out of bed that early; I’ll be sleeping on board. See you sometime after sunrise.”

  The Aggitj conferred in low voices, waved a hasty farewell, and hurried out to spend some of their wages on a last night celebration through the tavern quarter of Oruda. Timka laughed as she watched them clatter through the door. “My turn, Skeen. I’ll see you on the ship.” She got gracefully to her feet and strolled to the door, grinned over her shoulder at Skeen, then went out.

  Left alone, Skeen moved to a chair by one of the fires, a glass of Portakil’s own plum brandy in one hand. She sat staring into the small fire while his daughter and the hired girls cleaned away the tattered remnants of the feast. She’d got away clean. Enough time had passed to make that fairly clear. She sipped at the brandy, feeling warm and floaty, and thought about hunting some company for the night, but she didn’t move. She was too lazy, too comfortable where she was. Feet up on the fender, the warmth of the fire washing over her, the warmth of the brandy spreading to meet it, she drowsed and dreamed.

  The Nagamar came into the mostly empty room and crossed to the fireplace. Skeen glanced up, then away, doing her best to seem indifferent. She set the glass down on the chair arm and let her hand fall close to the darter.

  Greenish copper eyes shimmering in the firelight, the Nagamar gazed at her without blinking, translucent membranes sliding over her eyes and away.

  “You’ll know me again,” Skeen said, giving the Nagamar a sleepy guileless smile.

  “Yes,” the Nagamar said. “I will know you.” She came closer, reached toward Skeen’s arm but stopped her hand before she touched the skin. “Permit me, vovo.”

  Skeen bought time with a yawn, worked her mouth, blinked up at the guard. “Not gon bite?”

  “No, I will not bite.” The Nagamar took hold of Skeen’s wrist, lifted it, turned her hand over and sniffed daintily at the palm.

  Skeen tried not to sweat; she kept her arm limp and reminded herself that abandoning the clothes she wore, scrubbing every inch of her with soap and mud and a hot bath since in the Grinning Eel’s bathing chamber, disassembling the cutter and cleaning every surface, polishing the lockpicks and the knife, the only things to come back to the Inn with her and even those were wrapped in parchment sealed with wax.

  The Nagamar set her hand gently back on the chairarm. “What species are you, strange one? Are you male or female?”

  Sitting ruthlessly on her relief, Skeen smiled with lazy amiablity. “A species too courteous to intrude in another’s private concerns. By what right, by what authority do you ask me anything?” She thought it time to wake a bit and let some indignation show. She sat up, swaying a little, playing drunker than she was, though she wasn’t all that sober. The Virgin was young with the stern, pinched look of the moral autocrat.

  After staring at her a moment longer, the Nagamar moved around the chair with the stalking-silent power of a highly successful predator. She looked back once again, then passed out the door into the heavily overcast night.

  Skeen looked at the quarter inch of brandy left in the glass and decided it was a little too sweet for her now. She got heavily to her feet, threaded through the tables and chairs, ignoring the locals seated at them who paid her no notice either, being too involved with their own business. She waved to the sleepy nephew behind the bar and started up the spiral ramp, wincing when a foot slipped or a toe stubbed into a shadow.

  DEPARTURE BEFORE DAWN.

  or

  THREE HOURS’ SLEEP! HOW HOW HOW DO I GET MYSELF INTO THESE THINGS.

  Despite a hangover that banged behind her eyeballs and a brain still dead asleep, Skeen was almost dancing as she walked down the ramp. Somehow, in spite of the miseries of her childhood, she had acquired a hope, almost an expectation, that one day the fabric of the universe would crack open and magic would shine through. She didn’t know what the magic would be, but she associated its glow with the shivery happiness she felt when a sudden touch of light or color turned familiar things strange and wonderful. That instant after a rainstorm when colors had power. The moments during storms when lightning walked around her and thunder rumbled in her bones and she felt like a giant striding across the cityscape. Through all the scrambling she did and the hammering she took as she worked her way into a ship and a profession of sorts, she’d never lost that quiver of hope, that subliminal glow of expectation that came each time she started a new project. There’d never been any magic in the things that she did, no magic in her lovers even when she was free to choose them, no magic in the worlds she raided or the Pit Stops where she played. The closest thing to it was her feeling the first time she took Picarefy out; it was the casting off of shackles, the throwing off her clothing to swim naked between the stars.

  Now she walked down a curving ramp lit by oil lamps newly filled and still smoky, their odor stronger with the pressure of a dawn still two hours off, and she felt that quiver of expectation again, laughed a little at it and let herself enjoy it. Another beginning ahead of her, another crack opening for wonder; more than anything else it was this feeling that made her jump at the mumblings of an ancient Soak. A Gate between universes. What could be more magical? More fundamentally absurd? She’d done it before, this leap into the dark grabbing for the flickering vanishing tail of a dream, sometimes connecting, sometimes missing and falling on her face.

  She paid her bill with the last of the Poet’s gold and went into the dark silent streets with the holster flap tucked back and the lanyard engaged. If Mallat decided to act without proof, she was going to get a fight she wouldn’t forget.

  There were dark silent forms slipping after her; she didn’t try to challenge them and they stayed a steady distance behind her. She reached the wharves without incident and ran l
ightly up the Meyeberri’s gangplank, went along the rail until she was out of the ordered confusion on the deck; Terwel Mo’s crew knew their work so well that they needed no instruction, accomplishing an enormous amount in a very short time. The Captain stood on the quarterdeck watching with a relaxed alertness. When he saw her, he waved her up to him.

  “Duppra Mallat sent to ask about you, where you were going, who was traveling with you, and how you paid your fare.”

  “She say why?”

  “She never says, only asks. Do I have to look for trouble?”

  “You’d have to ask her that, not me. I’ve never met the woman, just saw her a couple of times when she came into town.”

  He raised a brow, but had obviously expected such an answer and had asked for form’s sake only. “The messenger seemed most interested in the fare and disappointed when I told her you were accredited Seeker and the Scholar Pegwai Dih was paying for the whole party.” He bent over the rail, called a crewman up and ordered him to take Skeen to her cabin. “Timka Min is there already,” he said and looked complacent. Skeen left without saying anything, telling herself he was, after all, very young.

  Timka sat on one of the narrow bunks in the closet-sized cabin, perched on the end nearest the small square window. The parchment hole-cover was rolled into a tight cylinder at the bottom, the laces were twin coils tied with decorative bows. The storm plug was lifted flat against the wall above the opening, held in place by a pair of spring clips. She was looking out at the spread of dark water with its small curls of mist. Skeen swung the door shut, dropped the latch. “Got the bag up? Pegwai has to pay the Captain before we pass the locks.”

  “I know.” She pushed her feet out, sat looking down at them. “It’s under the bed.”

  “Any problems?”

  “No. No problems. It was just complicated. Juggling shifts and that weight. Just complicated.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “I thought not, but who knows.”

  “See any Nagamar about?”

  “Not while I was diving. A short while ago there was a Nagamar on the wharf watching the ship. I think the one who came in last night when we were eating. Have they found some way to link you to the gold?”

  “I doubt it. I was followed coming here, but no one interfered with me in the streets or tried to stop me coming on board.” She shrugged out of the backpack, swung it onto the upper bunk. “Come up with me and watch the departure.”

  “There’s no lock on the door.”

  “Djabo, Timmy, who knows what’s under your bed? Pegwai and he’s asleep and wouldn’t touch it anyway. Nagamar might guess, but there’s none of them on board. And even if it’s stolen, remember how I got it; I’d just have to go to work again.” She slapped at the holster, ran fingers through her tousled hair, tugged her tunic down. “Well, I won’t argue. Sit here if that’s what pleases you. Me, I want to watch the sails go up. I’ve never seen an ocean sailer leaving port, but I’m told it’s a pretty thing.”

  In the light from smoky torches and lanterns strung about the ship where they’d be out of the way, she saw that the organized chaos on the deck and the wharf had settled to a low hum. The Captain shouted orders that turned the bustle into a dance of straining muscles and shifting bodies, a syncopated ballet of strength and skill. The heavy fibrous cables came away from the snubbing posts, the sails rose with snaps and creaks and fluttering hooms. The ship moved away from the wharf with a massive delicacy that reminded Skeen of a mid-sized spacer backing off from an umbilical.

  She glanced at the wharf. The young Virgin stood on the wharf watching the ship leave, her strong features cut out of darkness by the torch burning above her. She wants me to see her, she wants me to be a little afraid. Skeen pushed her hip onto the rail and watched the slice of water widen between the ship and the wharf. Idiot, doesn’t she see that she’s showing me I’ve got nothing to worry about. No one believes her suspicions or she’d be standing beside me now. Skeen wriggled about until she was comfortable, sucked in a breath, and let it out in a silent whoomph of relief. She went back to feeling good.

  The Meyeberri passed across Tepa Hapak at an easy ten stads an hour, speaking several other ships on the way, reaching the locks by mid-afternoon. Computer driven, finely machined, the locks were built and operated by Funor who’d lost the least in their leap through the Gate. Despite their smooth operation, the day was finished by the time Meyeberri emerged from them into Tepa Vattak. The Captain hung lamps with red horn sides to the bow and stern and the top of the mainmast and kept on going. They met more ships, red lamps showing, who meant to heave to by the locks so they could get an early start on the passage through them. Terwel Mo also kept close watch for lake barges; these were low in the water and tricky to spot.

  Skeen stayed on deck for a long time, watching the rise of the diminished moon, thinking about the two-score days she’d been stranded on Mistommerk, watching the lurid glow from the mast lamp drip like blood down the taut canvas, listening to the web of sound. She had imagined that anything powered by wind alone would glide silently and magically through the water, but there were the shouts of the watch, snores and groans from the deck passengers, and all the body noises of the ship—hums, creaks, long groans, a mix of smaller sounds. The ship flexed and complained and muttered like a live thing. Picarefy, who had her own sweet voice, her subliminal sounds that Skeen knew like the throb of her heart, Picarefy rode thunder up and down the gravity wells of a thousand worlds, but inside her walls her voice was a gossamer whisper alongside the cries of the Meyeberri. Skeen sat with her back against the rail trying to deal with the things stirring in her. Not knowing, that was the worst irritation. Tibo, Tibo … Djabo’s claws, thinking of him reminded her of the hurt and rage she kept suppressing, but it also brought an aching itch to her groin. She told herself it was as much habit as need. She was always hot on journeys and usually had company to help cool her down. There were the Aggitj; no, she didn’t want them—thinking of them turned her off. Almost. They were too young. Too what? Dumb? No, not dumb exactly, but tracked, yes, they were already what they’d be if they lived to die of old age. Put them back in Aggitj lands and they’d be what their fathers were, everything acquired outside Boot and Backland sloughed off like an old dead skin. They’d never betray her like Tibo had, they’d never delight her like Tibo had. Twisty as they came, he was capable of immense generosity—she’d seen it a thousand times. Never mean. She’d owned a part of him, at least that’s what she thought, but never the whole and that was the way she liked it. Always the edge of danger, of uncertainty, the possibility of pain that made pleasure so much greater. She expected him to run out on her some day, but steal from his kind? She rubbed at her breasts again, glanced at the Captain standing on the quarterdeck still, looking out over the ship with a pride in his stance she could read from where she sat. No. Like the Aggitj, he was too damn young. Besides, the way he looked at Timka, Skeen was too old, too angular, too assertive for him. He’d shy like a startled horse if she propositioned him. He’d be polite and tell her how honored he was and turn her down gently and carefully, even tactfully, but oh so definitely. In her mind’s ear she could hear him when he was home on his island and relaxed and maybe a little drunk, telling friends and cousins how he was hit on once by this gaunt crow of a woman, old enough to be—a wink and a poke of the elbow—his auntee-in-law, do yourself a mischief on the potong’s hip bones. That wasn’t anything she wanted to think about. What she needed now was sleep, what she really needed was sex and sleep, and if not sex some cuddling. She shook her head and went below.

  She stopped, her hand on the latch to her cabin door, stood staring at the panels, Why not, what can he do but turn me down. She moved to the next door over, hesitated a moment, then knocked lightly at a panel. Maybe he’s already asleep, she thought, but she waited without moving, her stomach in knots.

  The door opened. Pegwai looked up at her. “Skeen?”

  “Peg, could I talk to
you?”

  He looked uncertain, then stepped back, pulling the door open wider. “Shall I light a lamp?”

  “No.” She sat down on one end of the lower bunk and watched as he pushed the door shut and settled at the other end of the bunk, his face in shadows. “Peg,” she said softly, “I know … I know you don’t want me.” She saw his hands move on his thighs, then go still; she spoke again, more hastily than she’d planned. “What I’m saying so clumsily is … is this, I suppose. Where you love and where you desire is no business of mine and has nothing to do with this moment. At this moment I am driven by urgencies that have … that don’t require either from you. What I’m saying is will you please, my friend, will you hold me and caress me and help quiet the heat in me?” She looked at his hands, they clenched, opened. She thought of saying more, but did not.

  A tense silence. A long sigh. Pegwai pulled his face deeper into shadow, lifted a hand, let it fall. “Why me, Skeen? The Aggitj, a deck passenger, any of the sailors could give you what … what I more than likely cannot.” Before she could say anything, his voice came again, squeezed and filled with pain. “Should not. Must not.”

  She made a brushing gesture with a hand. “I don’t want them.”

  He abandoned the shadow, leaning forward to stare at her. “Me, but I’m.…”

  “Ah well, I didn’t ask you where your fancies flew, don’t ask me to explain mine.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t want to start something I can’t handle. I.…”