Megan tried to stand, staggered in a wave of dizziness. Shkai’ra threw a supporting arm around her shoulders and clamped a hand under the opposite armpit.
The Zak tried to shrug off the arm, staggered again and gripped at the back of her comrade’s tunic. “Thank you,” she said.
Shkai’ra grunted noncommittally, wincing at the pain of a pulled leg muscle as she took the first step toward the door. She set the pace carefully; they could both ignore pain if they must, but the body did not give its warning lightly, and there was little danger of pursuit in the immediate future.
The street outside was dark; the lanterns did not survive long in this part of the New City, and the merchant princes of the municipium were stingy about their replacement. They cut an odd figure, both bloody and torn, powdered with dust and woodchips and new scabs that cracked across as they moved. Megan was spitting to clear her mouth and dragging at bits of hard candy on her eyelids; Shkai’ra waited with the saber naked in her hand, and the sleeve of her tunic was sodden and flopping to the elbow, more than enough to deter any predators attracted by their wounds and weariness.
As she hung on to Shkai’ra’s arm, Megan felt very strange. She dismissed it as the aftereffects of the fight and the close brush with death. She set herself to keeping up to the slow pace that Shkai’ra set, thinking that the hot, pulsing feeling in the wound in her shoulder would fade now that a bandage was on.
Outside, the cooler air was a relief; the moon had finally risen to light their way. The burning sensation and shortness of breath didn’t fade but spread in slow waves centering on the wound. The night swam in front of her eyes and grew darker, shot with patches of colors that couldn’t be there. Megan set her teeth and ignored it. If it was what she thought, then resting wouldn’t help; only the sorceress could. It was growing harder and harder to force herself to breathe.
They were almost to the Old City gates before Megan staggered again; her knees buckled, and Shkai’ra swayed as her friend’s weight came fully on her arm.
“Ahi-a, what is it?” she inquired.
“My—shoulder,” the smaller woman gasped.
Shkai’ra leaned her back in a puddle of light to examine it. The injury was a typical puncture wound, deep and narrow; the wadded cloth and the hardening syrup had prevented much bleeding. It had begun to close by the time she had put a temporary pressure bandage on it, back at the factory. Painful and bone-deep, but it should not be giving her this much trouble, not without having hit a major artery. There had been no nerve damage; Megan moved the arm too well for that. The Kommanza had been dealing with wound trauma most of her life; she was puzzled until she saw the faint bluish discoloration around the edges of the wound and convinced herself that it was not a trick of the pale uncertain flame of the lantern. She rocked back on her heels, gone white about the mouth, and let out a shuddering breath. The smell of the sudden fresh sweat that broke out on face and flanks and armpits was rank in her nostrils.
“Poison,” she said quietly. “I thought ... it usually acts so fast, but the cloth, and then the sugar ... probably got most of it.” She paused, then added with startling intensity, “We’ve got to get to the spook pusher! Can you walk, kh’eeredo?” To herself she added: And when we get there, she’s going to help or learn the look of her own liver.
“Walk? Of course not,” Megan murmured. The thin ghost of a smile strayed across her mouth. “But I can crawl, if I have to.”
Shkai’ra bent to pick her up; not that she could carry the Zak far in her present condition, but ...
The sound of rubber-shod wheels on the brick pavement brought her head up with a snap. A three-shaaid gang-pedicab, the pedalers approached, pumping with predawn weariness.
“Ahi-a, halt!” she cried, then cursed vilely as she realized she had spoken Kommanza. Fatigue pressed on her, burning in her joints; her mind seemed to. be moving like sheets of glass separated by wet sand. She repeated the call in Fehinnan, waving the meter-long length of steel for emphasis.
The pedicab was typical of its type, a four-seater carriage of light wood and leather on spindly wheels, pulled by a pyramid of toilers standing over pedals geared with ceramic and hardwood that powered back to the rear axle. It was a cumbersome vehicle, and the human engine was tired; still, they moved with remarkable speed. The whole clumsy apparatus seemed to circle in its own length and begin to accelerate back the way it had come. But for a moment inertia held it, straining.
Shkai’ra moved. Faster than was natural; almost faster than could be believed: she had called on the last reserve against extremity, nearly gone ahrappan, berserk, body powered by a hysterical strength that might have pulled muscle loose from bone. With an effort that cost almost the last shreds of sanity, she forced herself not to plunge the saber between the rear pedaler’s shoulder blades. Instead, she laid the crusted edge against his throat. “No.”
He looked around, and screamed. Millimeters from his eyes was ... not a face, a mask. Lips thinned to vanishing peeled back from teeth bared almost to the angle of the jaw. Foam spattered, hot and rank; eyes showed the whites around the entire edge. And even in his terror, he knew astonishment that a human voice could speak from that frightfulness, in syllables of grating ash.
“New City—House of Terhan’s-kin now or die, get of a nomad pig. Pick her up and go!” The voice almost spiraled up into a falsetto shriek, almost but not quite into the blood trill of the Kommanza zh’uldaz; Shkai’ra’s neck quivered with the effort of denying the killing squeal.
Shkai’ra stood before Yeva, representative of the Guild of the Wise, and stared into the blind white eyes. She was without fear, not even truly conscious. The disciplines of the Warrior’s Way had stood her in good stead, and the training of the Warmasters that many did not survive; it allowed her to call on reserves down to the cellular level, and keep drawing until the last were exhausted. She was using them recklessly; in this state, she could continue until the blood vessels in heart and brain burst loose from their moorings.
Megan lay very quietly. The bluish discoloration had spread and she was having trouble breathing. For the last two kilometers Shkai’ra had been holding her, forcing air into and out of her lungs with pressure under the diaphragm.
She said nothing to the magician. No words were necessary, and she was beyond words. Silence. Yeva leaned forward from her nest of cushions and laid a hand on Megan’s forehead.
* * *
In the darkness somewhere a newly familiar voice called and faded. The blackness was shot with blue and flashes of stars. Out of the pit of her mind, Megan rose on the fog in a whirlpool of ghosts and dead things. She floundered, lost in the night, and called for her father. He came, but only as he had died, in the Va Zalstva, the arena. He raised a flayed hand to her and was swept past her to disappear into the black She followed, falling endlessly screaming into the depths of her mind, surrounded by the hated and the loved things in her life; and still she fell. And fell. And fell.
A hand touched her in the darkness. She turned and saw the shadowy figure of the sorceress Yeva beckoning. Sure that this was another of the misty shadows that offered false assistance, she almost ignored it. Then the voice called her name again and spoke.
“Young-kin. Your time of growth is not yet on you. There is one who calls, one who still needs. You should not pass this way, for I bar it to you. There lies your way.” She pointed into the mist, then her image swelled and pulsed, as it blocked the way out of the bottom of Megan’s mind, whirling into an intense bloom of light. Megan threw her hands before her face and thought, One who still needs me? A bright sword danced before her eyes, light gleaming off its curve, pointing the way that Yeva’s image had indicated. Faint as a curlew’s cry on the wind came the sound of her name, shredded and tattered but still hers. She gathered the shards of herself together and called back.
“I come.” She stood now in darkness and realized that she stood only in her mind. Vaguely she could feel something beneath her; for a dizzying
moment she was both standing and lying, then with a wrench she pulled another name from the dark, hurled it before her and followed it like a slung spearshaft out of the night.
“SSSHHHHHHKAAAAAIIIRAAAAAA”
* * *
For a long moment little seemed to happen and the sorceress held her pose as Shkai’ra waited. Then the Zak’s chest heaved, paused, settled into a more normal rhythm. The bluish tinge began to leave lips and fingers; not quickly, but the normal pink began to creep back, and the angry red of burns somehow looked more superficial, as if only the upper layer of the skin had been parboiled, and not the layers of subcutaneous fat and muscle beneath.
Yeva withdrew her hand, “So,” she whispered. “The body knows the secrets of its own healing. We merely show it the way.” Though the downward spiral of the cosmos was to death and dissolution, life was as strong a force. She could feel the minute particles in the blood seeking out and neutralizing the toxin that had been spreading, clogging the tiny flashes of nerve transmission; felt the fluids moving and isolating heat-damaged tissues. She urged the process forward; warmth and breath and life flowing to fill the dark places, the damaged places, healing.
Shkai’ra’s gaze stayed fixed and inhuman, until the signs were unmistakable. Then the process of release began, the implanted commands loosening their hold on heart and glands and organs. As she began to crumple toward the floor, she could feel the Warmaster’s voice, echoing down the decades: For everything there is a price.
What a headache coming, she thought with a last flicker of rationality before her arms and head struck marble—and heard Megan murmur her name, softly.
Chapter XXII
When Megan woke, she lay a moment savoring the languid feel of lying on a soft surface, still feeling a bone-deep tiredness in every limb. Her thought drifted as lazily as the drowsy buzz of a cicada that she heard in the distance. Until last night’s events replayed themselves for her.
She sat up abruptly, clutching the edge of the divan as dizziness swept over her. Her knife harness lay under her hands, tangled in the light sheet that had covered her. A light robe that had apparently lain by her feet now lay on a patterned stone floor. This was definitely not the Weary Wayfarer.
Shkai’ra lay to her right, snoring slightly, her hands grasping the strap of her scabbard, on another divan similar to the one Megan now sat on. Plants filled the room, growing toward the skylight, moving gently in the green-smelling breeze blowing from the open windows to the double doors at one end of the room. They also stood partly open, revealing a glimpse of a garden outside. A waterfall cascaded down the wall at that end of the room, filling it with a trickle of sound. Sunlight slanted into the room, and as the plants moved, they cast cool green shadows across the low table that stood before her, bearing a red glass decanter and three goblets.
She felt as if her tongue were wrapped in dusty wool, and her breath rasped her throat dry. The decanter, condensation sliding down the glass, drew her like a lodestone. Her legs were shaky, and she stumbled once before she sank down by the table and seized the pitcher. Then she hesitated. So many people had tried to kill them lately—even if they would have been easy to kill while unconscious.... She shrugged, and though every sinew protested, poured the pitcher into the plants. At the waterfall, she looked down at the fish swimming placidly in the water. Seems safe enough. She scrubbed the goblets and the pitcher before filling them from the water falling into the pool.
Water flowed down her throat in a cool rush, and it took an effort of will to stop before she made herself sick with drinking.
Ach, she thought, wobbling back to the table, that is the closest I’ve ever been to Death and still cheated him. Her skin was still burned, but only as if she had fallen asleep in the sun in late afternoon, while the dagger wound gave off faint twinges of a weeks-old injury. Her head ached, but the water soaking into dehydrated tissues would ease that soon. She refilled the goblet and sipped again, looking over at Shkai’ra, who slept on, oblivious.
Megan’s legs trembled less as she bent over the Kommanza and reached a hand toward her shoulder. Then she reflected on the tight grip the sleeper kept on her sword hilt, stepped back a pace, and called her name.
The Zak looked down at the bladetip poised beneath her chin, then at Shkai’ra. “A little jumpy, are we?” she asked.
The Kommanza brushed sleep out of her eyes and laughed softly. She looked around for the delight of seeing—“I know we’re not dead or I wouldn’t feel so terrible.” The sword slid back into the sheath with a slithery rasp, and Shkai’ra gingerly felt her head.
“Yes, it’s still there. Do you think a goblet of water would help?” Megan asked innocently.
“Now why would I want to wash? Wine is what one drinks.” Shkai’ra swung her legs to the floor and shuddered, holding her temples. “On second thought, water would be better.” At Megan’s chuckle, she pretended a glare that dissolved into a grin.
Megan handed her a goblet of cool water, sat down next to her as she drank it, trickles escaping the sides of the cup, trailing down her neck and breasts.
Megan put out one hand and rested it gently on Shkai’ra’s arm. “I ... realized something, finally.”
Shkai’ra bent to put the cup on the floor and covered Megan’s hand with her own when she straightened, the touch carefully casual. “Oh? Anything I should know?”
“I think—I think ...” she paused. How big a fool am I going to look if I say this? She’s probably just interested in making love to me, because I’m exotic in this part of the world. “Why were you so upset?” She changed her mind at the last moment, retreating to a safer topic.
“What, at you getting poisoned and nearly croaking on me?” Shkai’ra opened her mouth to make a flippant answer and paused as she caught the intensity of Megan’s stare. She looked down at the smaller woman and then closed her eyes, sighing. “I don’t know how to explain it,” she said at last. “My people don’t have words to describe what I’m feeling....” She scuffed the tile floor with the ball of her foot. “I can hardly say I ‘love’ you. That’s something I can’t say to a person. In my tongue, the closest I can get is, A-moi lei-ehuk naigz! “I suffer a state of affection for my horse!’”
She sighed and scrubbed her hands through her hair. “I could say fa’hr—respect, or lawkup—admire, but the words are only approximate to what I feel!” She pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged, her brow furrowed as she went on.
“I’d miss you. I’ve always liked you, ever since you went over the rail of that boat rather than just give in and be a slave. I’ve ... gotten used to having you around and ... well ...” She raised her hand as if to touch Megan’s face, stopped it, hovering. “I’ve been attracted to you, too, as the Fehinnans say. But I wanted you too much to push it—you’d have hurt me if I tried to force things. I feel, I guess, what Fehinnans call gratitude and I’d call obligation. You’ve saved my life—”
“—as you’ve saved mine,” Megan broke in. But at the interruption, Shkai’ra didn’t continue but shrugged helplessly.
“We’ve shared steel,” Megan prompted.
“Ia. But ... well, I’m not stupid enough to think that most other races like my people. We aren’t nice, we aren’t likable, and we don’t care as long as other people fear us.”
“You care. Are you afraid I won’t like you because you’re too Kommanza?” Shkai’ra’s answer was a reluctant half nod. “I already do like you; and what you’re describing of your feelings sounds an awful lot like love to me. Or at least the beginnings of love.”
“I don’t know how!” Shkai’ra said, throwing her hands up. “I was never taught to love the way Fehinnans, Pensa, or anyone else seems to!” Her voice spiraled up in frustration and anger.
“These emotions! They’re like great rocks grinding around in my head! I was content with the way I was before, why do I have to change to fit what everyone else, every ekafrek in the world, thinks is right? I’m what I was taught to be. Why go throug
h the bother, the trouble, the discomfort of changing?” She slammed a fist on the divan, winced and cradled her head.
“You already have changed as far as I can see,” Megan said gently. “If your people are so brutal, they couldn’t have friends. You’ve introduced me to three friends of yours and talked of others; friends in the Fehinnan meaning of the word.”
“Well, I could hardly get along in this city without following some customs!” Shkai’ra answered tartly.
Megan smiled. “You’ve changed, then. You’ve changed enough to feel something you don’t have birth-tongue words for. Do you trust me?” she asked.
Shkai’ra nodded, a little puzzled. “But what does that have to do with love?”
Megan raised her face to the other woman. “You’ve been very careful how you touch me ... akribhan. I trust you not to frighten me.”
The puzzled look in Shkai’ra’s eyes faded as she understood. The foreign word sounded like “kh’eeredo,” which she’d already been applying to Megan, without comment. Kh’eeredo—one who covers my back—in most contexts. It was the only word for anyone close.
She leaned down slowly, hesitantly and touched Megan’s lips with hers; felt her tremble. Holding herself back, in a way she never had before, she touched Megan’s face, gently, and ran her hands down to her breasts. She says I’ve changed, but have I changed enough for her?
Megan caught her hands there and faltered for a long moment before pressing them to her, shaking as if terrified, her breath coming in long gasps. “I ... I’m afraid. Even if you think less of me for it.”
“It’s all right, kh’eeredo, it’s all right.” Shkai’ra murmured, and somehow it was. She didn’t feel contempt for the admission.
“You’re beautiful,” Megan whispered. “I’d be lonely here, without you.” Shkai’ra kissed her, slid her arms around her. Megan clung to the taller woman as if drowning, as long forgotten sensation woke in her body. “Ach! Akribhan, my Steel-kin! Gently, please. I’ll give myself to you, but please, gently.”
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