Skeen's Return

by Clayton, Jo;

  “Soon as the gear is stowed. Which I’d better see to right now.”

  Skeen watched him walk away, then glanced at the sun. Halfway to noon already. Might be slow, but I’m coming, Tibo. Enjoy yourself, you baster. When I catch you, I’ll skin you slow. Maybe I will. Why’d you do it, you little … little devil? Why did you strand me? Why?

  LOOK, LET’S NOT TALK ABOUT THE GLAMOUR OF QUESTING. MOST OF IT SEEMS TO BE KEEPING THE RAIN OUT OF YOUR BLANKETS, FLEAS OR THEIR ANALOGS OFF YOUR PERSON, FOOD IN YOUR BELLY AND THE LOCALS OFF YOUR BACK. OF COURSE, NO ONE CELEBRATING THESE EPIC JOURNEYS PUTS IN ANY OF THAT—TOO DISILLUSIONING AND WORSE, TOO BORING. SO LET’S SKIP THAT TRIP DOWNRIVER. TAKE AS READ THE UNRELENTING HOSTILITY OF THE PLAINS MIN CREW AND THE DISCOMFORT OF THE RIVERBOAT.

  NO AMBUSHES, NO THREATS TO LIFE AND LIMB, JUST DAY AFTER DAY OF COLD WET JOLTING.

  or

  ARRIVING BROKE IN CIDA FENNAKIN.

  Cida Fennakin was a rambling city of interlocking compounds whose walls were an elaborate play of textures and colors climbing the small steep hills above the ragtag working port. The higher the compound, the more elaborate the stone dressing of the walls, the more power the Funor inside had over the days and nights, the lives and loves and general subsistence of those who lived outside those walls. The Port itself was a conglomeration of elbow to elbow structures. Warehouses, taverns, half-ruined compounds turned into shelter for the flotsam off the ships that were continually arriving and departing—abandoned or runaway sailors, escaped slaves, servants who had lost their usefulness from age or disease or crippling accident, ruined gamblers, thieves, whores of both sexes and assorted kinds, beggars, street players, the mad and half-mad, druggers and drugged, hardboys collecting the sub-taxes for local thuglords, small traders, rag and bone men, cookshop owners, tailors, cobblers—a thousand other small enterprises that brought in enough coin to feed and clothe the families who ran them. A noisy, stinking, lively port, the streets so filled with folk that walking was like swimming in a powerful river. Cida Fennakin, the most important port on the western end of the Halijara sea, the last stop of most trading ships, the gateway to goods from the interior.

  The Patjen brought the riverboat past the rubble at the outskirts of the port as the tip of the sun pushed over the highest of the compounds, a sprawling mass of stone whose broad towers were boldly black against the gray-pink sky. He nosed the boat up to a tottery wharf, the first in the long line of wharves that followed the bulge of the river, a dusty unstable structure long abandoned, its piles loosened by the working of spring floods and winter ice. Without ceremony, he put them ashore and dumped their goods onto the groaning planks, then took his ship back into the main current and hastened toward more propitious surroundings.

  Skeen frowned at the ruins around her. Not a soul in sight. Nothing happening here. Silence, cool and damp. Almost no breeze, shadows with edges sharp enough to cut, the river a dull, sub-audible yet pervasive sound. Trickles of sand and eroded brick rattling down here and there. A hint of voices, far off, broken tones rising and falling, punctuated by an occasional shout. Smell of urine and excrement, of something dead not so far away, of rotten food and the dry rot in the planks of the wharf. The remains of a warehouse that had burnt out a decade ago, battered by the seasons, crumbling back to the soil it was built on, eaten at by fungi and weeds. And deserted. Even the worst off of Fennakin beggars found better shelter elsewhere. “Lovely,” she said.

  Pegwai stumped over to the pile of gear and rooted out his pack. He straightened with it dangling from one hand. “No point hanging about here.”

  “Noooh.” Skeen clasped her hands behind her, turned her head side to side, scanning the draggled wrecks collapsing onto rotting planks. “Let’s wait a while.”

  “Why?”

  “Something I’m remembering.”

  “What?” He took a step toward her, leaped back as the plank started to collapse under his weight, dry rot turning the wood to dust under the lightest pressure. He glared at the plank, transferred the glare to Skeen. “Hardly the time to indulge in nostalgia, woman.”

  Skeen clicked her fingers impatiently. “Nostalgia? Nonsense. Listen, the place where I grew up was on a river like this with blights …” she waved a hand at the tumbledown structures on the bank, “… a lot like this, and whenever anything happened around those blights, we used to snake down there and see if we could make a dime or so out of it. Street kids can be useful, Peg, if you trust them as far as you can see them and know a little about how to take them. And right now we need one.” She looked around at the others. Lipitero, her form and face concealed by a voluminous cowled robe, sat with her back against one of the old bitts, an anonymous lump, waiting and willing to continue waiting until Skeen was ready to move. Timka perched on another bitt, her eyes half shut, her face unreadable. Ders was jittering about, but that meant nothing. He seldom sat anywhere longer than five minutes at a time; she suspected he couldn’t stay still any longer, that there was a switch in his brain that set him on PACE at predetermined intervals. Hal and Domi were immersed in a game of stonechess. Hart was talking softly to the Boy who was absently making the Beast sit up and beg for bits of raw fish. Chulji squatted on his four hinder limbs while he preened his antennas with the hooks on his wrists. “Let’s wait a while more,” she said. “We might acquire a guide. Which is better than barging in and starting something we maybe can’t handle.”

  A small skinny boy ambled down the cluttered alley, a pre-pubescent Funor, the knobs of his horns two gray velvet buttons poking through lank dirty hair whose original color might have been a pale reddish brown; it shifted with the wind and the quick darting moves of his head. He wore a ragged tunic of some thick coarse material rather like worn canvas, the arm-holes and sliced-off bottom blooming with cottony fuzz. He kicked casually along the coarse dirt, tickling weeds with a whippy stick, whistling through tooth gaps. After the first furtive glance at the strangers, he seemed to ignore them though Skeen’s memory told her he was keeping a sharp eye on them.

  She stirred. “Got a minute?”

  The boy stopped (well out of reach, poised to dive away if it seemed necessary) and considered her briefly, then his dark eyes skittered from her to the others and back. Then he raised a small hand with three fingers, one excessively thin, the other two thick as the thumb. Thumb and thick fingers looked clumsy but that was probably deceptive. He rubbed his thumb across his fingers in a rapid flutter, a sign that had so far in Skeen’s experience proved universal.

  Skeen dug into her belt pouch (regrettably flat), brought out one of the broad coppers that served as small change on this world and held it up. The boy gave it a scornful look and fluttered his thumb some more. She shook her head. He turned to leave. She let him go. He took one step, then another, then looked over his shoulder at her. She held up two coppers. He drifted back, cupped his hands together to make a hollow. She tossed him one of the coppers, kept the second. “We want a place to light,” she said. “Somewhere that’s quiet …” she paused after the word, gave him a one-sided grin, “and the Keeper’s reasonably honest, don’t pitch the clients to the nearest slaver, and where the ale don’t take the lining off your throat. You got that? Good. And cheap, young friend. We aren’t silkers looking for delights.”

  For the first time, he gazed directly at them, one after the other, ending with Skeen, his mouth open, stupidity glazing his eyes; he picked at his nose, kicked one foot back and forth over the dirt, blinked slowly at Skeen, held up his skinny finger.

  Ders snorted and would have said something, but Domi touched his arm before the words could spill out. “Wait,” he murmured, “let Skeen work.”

  Skeen frowned, tossed the boy the coin she was holding, dug out another and showed it to him. “When we get there.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, then nodded and stopped looking quite so stupid. “Angelsin Yagan’s Chek,” he said. “Tain’t much, but’s a roof and walls.” He turned his shoulder to them and
sidled away. “Coom,” he said, “coom, ’s not far.”

  He led them through weeds and ruins, led them deeper and deeper into the slum quarter. As they wound away from the river, the crumbling buildings grew gradually steadier, stuffed with folk of all sorts, teeming with life, noisy, nosy and assertive, questions shouted at the boy in half a dozen languages besides the Trade-Min, most of which he ignored. The streets filled up with strollers, with porters carrying bulky loads at a trot, with beggars and street performers, singers, dancers, jugglers, magicians, shell and pea men, meat pie venders, water sellers, several women with goats who sold cups of warm milk, a pancake woman with a horde of small children dashing about delivering hot cakes and collecting coppers from those that bought them, dozens of other street venders selling everything from secondhand clothing to scrap metal and rags, cutpurses (very wary because the street would turn on them and stomp them if they weren’t deft indeed and choosy about their victims), hardboys who swaggered along taking whatever they wanted, protected by their relationship to the secret ones who ran the quarter. The boy trotted along without stopping until a tinny drum sounded over the noise. He hustled them into a back alley the moment he heard the tonk tunk of that drum and warned them to stay put while he nosed out what was happening.

  Skeen grabbed him by the shoulder, swung him around and demanded an explanation of his jitters.

  “Eh, lemme go.”

  “A minute. Tell me about the drum, what it means.”

  “Chicklee turds, them. Guards. Thump you if ya don’t skip.”

  “Tell me ’bout ’em.”

  “All you gotta know is keep clear.” He wriggled and squealed with pain; she ignored that, knowing it was playacting, and kept her clutch on his shoulder. “Lemme go, huh,” he whined. “I NEED to see what those turds doin’.”

  “Drum’s not moving that fast, there’s time. Why do we have to duck them? We’re not making trouble now and not going to either, so what’s the scream?”

  “They ben agitatin’ round recent, pickin’ up strays like they figurin’ on cleanin’ out South Cusp. Mines want hands, that’s it, you keep ya head low when the mines they want hands. Loose strangers, they get picked up fast. You wanna spend ya life inna hole?”

  “Do they go in the cheks?”

  “Nuh-uh, ’cept taprooms say they hear fightin’ or they followin’ some terp or they got a thirst.”

  “So they’re not ferrets.”

  “Nuh-uh. They grab what they see.”

  “Won’t come around here?”

  “Prolly not, what I gotta see ’bout if you lemme go.”

  She watched him trot off, stepped quickly to Chulji. “Follow him, bird’s best. Get as much as you can about those guards and what they’re doing.”

  Chulji gave her the wriggly Skirrik grin, shifted and took off as a hunting hawk, spiraling high and moving after the Funor boy.

  Skeen touched Pegwai’s arm. “You see? Nostalgia has its uses. We might have put our feet in something we couldn’t scrape off.”

  “It’s not seemly to say I told you so.” He spoke with the austere dignity of a slightly pompous instructor of youth, exaggerating a natural trait as a pedantic sort of joke.

  She chuckled, pinched his arm.

  Ders fidgeted out of the hole where the boy had stuffed them, kicked about in the shadows that filled the littered alley, nosing into anything that looked a bit interesting. Domi swore under his breath and collected his cousin with more force than he usually showed.

  Lipitero pulled her robe more closely about her and moved to the crumbling corner of their niche. (It was a boarded-up gateway in a high thick wall, deep enough to give them some protection from a casual glance along the alley.) “Do you think the child will return?”

  Skeen nodded. “More likely than not; he’s still got a copper coming and he’s curious about us. And he’ll get a commission for delivering us to Yagan’s Chek.”

  Timka leaned against her and stared down the alley. “You grabbed him. Won’t that scare him into running off?”

  “Wouldn’t have scared me when I was his age. He gets a lot more pinching and bruising from his friends than he got from me. No way for me to say anything for sure. He could be selling us to the Guard right now. That’s why I sent Chulji to watch him. I’d bet a copper or two on him keeping out of sight and doing what he said, but I wouldn’t trust our lives on it. Chul knows that; he’ll be careful, let us know if we should jump.”

  The boy came sidling back a few minutes later. “Looks like they aimin’ for Tes Silah’s wharf; bunch of slaves comin’ in and they after the Bohant’s Levy. ‘Nother squad, they comin’ this way but not hurryin’, sticking to Sukkar’s Skak. We go careful, we can make Yagan’s Chek without us gettin’ close ’nough to smell the turds. Ya coom?”

  He led them to a tall narrow structure, a building cobbled together from bits and pieces, old stones, bricks, wood beams plastered over with heavily strawed river clay, a surprisingly neat and well-built place, with a workmanlike finish to it that spoke of skill and pride. Skeen liked the look of it immediately, though she wondered about the cost of staying there. She wasn’t ready to start prowling yet; the more she saw of Cida Fennakin, the more she wanted to know about customs and conditions before she lifted a finger. It had the smell of a dangerous place for a misstep and missteps were all too easy when you didn’t know where to put your feet.

  The main entrance was open, the door pushed back against the wall; it was built from massive planks crossed and recrossed by iron bands and had an equally massive lock. Skeen glanced at it as she followed the Funor boy inside and suppressed a smile. You’d need a picklock the size of a crowbar.

  The room spread the length of the building, dim and shadowy, lit by the early morning sunlight trickling through parchment covering the windows. A small fire burned on one of the hearths but did little to cut the gloom. The Funor boy trotted across the room to the end of the slab of wood set on sections of pile salvaged from the river, a long wide bar with a polish on it that drew light into the depths of the wood. A thronelike chair was built on a low dais at the end of that bar, a huge Funor woman sitting silent in it. Not fat, just big. If she stood, she’d probably be somewhere around two and a half meters tall. Large bones, solid muscle wrapped around them. Coarse reddish hair twisted into a braid that hung forward over one shoulder, the tassel at the end pooled on her broad thigh. Ivorine horns rose like half crescents poking through the frizzled bands of hair drawn back past her ears. Her face was a pale blur, her mouth a slightly darker blur, her eyes velvety shadows with an occasional gleam in the depths. A powerful hieratic figure. Skeen felt an atavistic chill along her spine as she stood in front of the woman and waited for her to acknowledge their presence.

  Their juvenile guide flopped onto his knees in front of her, reached over and laid his grimy hand on the toe of her shoe. “Angelsin Yagan,” he said, “These folk want a place to light where the host is sorta honest and the ale doon’t ream out their throats.”

  A rumbling chuckle. A deep rich voice. “Quoting, Hopflea?”

  “Yah, mam.”

  Shadow eyes glimmered at Skeen. “How long?”

  “Say a fortn’t. If we need longer, we’ll talk then.” Skeen took out the third copper, flipped it to the boy. “If we can agree on price.”

  The hawk tapped at the window frame. Skeen swung it open and let Chulji flutter in. When he’d shifted from hawk to Skirrik, she said, “You’ll be bunking in here with Timka, Lipitero and me. Took all my silver to hire two rooms. What about the guards?”

  Chulji scratched around until he was squatting comfortably on a hooked rug, a long oval put together from soft rags in muted earth colors. “The Funor boy climbed a wall and stretched himself out on a roof so he could watch the squad tramp past. Weird how that street cleared out in front of them. You remember how busy it was, hardly room to breathe? Well, when the guards came in view, wall to wall it was empty like it’d been sluiced clean. Folk didn�
�t look scared exactly, more kind of cautious. They faded into doors and alleys soon’s they heard that drum. Skeen, seems to me it’s dumb for guards to announce themselves like that. Anyone they figured on catching would duck when they heard the first tunk. I mean, that’s what happened, wasn’t it? Why the drum?”

  “If I was guessing, I’d say they leave the drum quiet when they’re serious about catching someone specific. Other times, well, it’s a winnower. The ones who duck are homefolk, the ones who don’t are outsiders and fair game. Like we’d have been except for Hopflea. The Funor boy. What’d he do when he came off the roof?”

  “He had a few words with some folk, an old woman and two kids about his size. Then he scooted back down the alley to you. I figured there was no problem with him, so I stayed up in case the guards turned round. They didn’t. They went straight to a wharf about a half a kilometer on and collected some men in chains and marched off with them. I was flying high enough so I could keep an eye on you all; that’s how I knew where to come.” He grinned at Timka who sat on a low stool, her back against the wall. “And once I was close enough, all I had to do was feel around and find the right window that way.”

  Skeen laughed, shook her head. “Min, hunh.”

  Timka gave her a slow smile. “Sometimes it’s useful; nothing’s ever a complete loss.”

  “I wouldn’t bet a snipped-off fingernail on that. Seriously, Chul, did you touch any other Min while you were feeling about?”

  “Well, there was the Crew and the Patjen, but they were easy enough to screen out, being all lumped together like they were. No mistaking them.” His mouthparts clicked together, his antennas twitched. “I’m not sure … I wasn’t really trying for anyone but Timka … I think maybe I skimmed past some others … two, three … I’m not sure … did they brush me too? If there were really Min there …? I don’t know, I couldn’t even guess.”

  Skeen rubbed at the back of her neck. “And if you go hunting them to make sure, they’ll be sure about you. Hmm. Keep your feelers out … sorry, you’re right, Ti, no need to tell you that. Hunh, Ti, what would you do if your face froze like that? Chul, you be thinking what you could do to earn some legitimate coin, we’re going to meet in here after the noon feed to talk that over some. Maggí Solitaire won’t be here for another three weeks. We came downriver a lot faster than I expected, so we’re going to need some eating money. I’m down to a handful of coppers and some lint.”