Skeen's Return

by Clayton, Jo;

  In the shrouds and on the decks, crew shot and reloaded, a rain of bolts that managed some damage in spite of the fluid shifts of the gunja; most of these flickered through the double change and lost the bolts without losing a step. Kneeling behind the forerail of the quarterdeck, Pegwai chose his targets, put a handful of darts in each, overloading their systems with the drug before they could shift it away. As they got among crew and passengers, he had to be more careful, the darts wouldn’t kill, but the Fish would if a fighter collapsed before one of them. The Aggitj raced along the rail, working with saber and spear, agile and serious for once, doing a dance they’d learned from birth on the dueling grounds of the ancient holds. Boy and Beast scooted about after them, keeping low, spitting their poison at Min legs, tentacles, whatever they could reach without damaging defenders; they spat and Min melted into a sticky slime. As soon as Lipitero shut the blade off, Timka plummeted to the quarterdeck, shifted to the cat-weasel the instant her feet touched wood. She loped to the maindeck and wriggled through the fighting to Skeen’s side; the Pass-Through was striding about, using her bladed staff with deadly effect, cutting the attackers to such small pieces she got the S’yer more often than not, though when she missed, the undead gobbets of flesh oozed together, forming a new gunj. Ti-cat took care of those, slashing through the S’yers with a fierce satisfaction. Each one down was one less to come at her again; unlike Lipitero she wasn’t bothered by the killing; the dead had passed beyond pain and anger, she hadn’t. More Min came. And more. When she had a moment to think, Timka knew it had to be more than one cell attacking. Min and more Min, swarming over the rails. Pegwai refilled the reservoir of the darter and went on taking out as many as he could hit. Beside him Houms and the best shots among the crew picked off more, distracting those they didn’t manage to kill so the Aggitj, Maggí, the crew, the deck passengers, Skeen and Timka—whoever happened to be nearest—could finish the job. Poison exhausted, the Boy found one of the jagged stone Sea Min knives and scurried about, slashing at Min legs with it. He was kicked and grabbed at, but he was old in surviving and wriggled away before the tentacle could get a firm hold on him. Fluids from the dead and dissolving Min turned the deck into a mud slide, the Min sliding in the leavings of their flesh as badly as the Nemin did. Cursing, grunting, panting, screaming hate and pain, hissing, thuds, wild shrieks from both sides, the struggle went on and on, neither side gaining an edge.…

  Until Lipitero up above finally finished her adjustments on the excavator, shortening the beam so she wouldn’t punch holes in the ship, refining it until it was a rod of light a hair thick; she set it on millisecond bursts, eased out to the edge of the platform, hooked her feet into the ropes to steady herself and began picking off Sea Min, working around the edges of the struggle, triggering the burst only when she had a clear shot. Each Min she hit exploded like a tuber a cook had forgotten to prick.

  One. Two. Five.

  They were gunja drilled to blood and sacrifice; they endured and ignored all death, even the agony as Chalarosh poison dissolved their still living bodies, but when hot dripping bits of their brothers splattered over them, they faltered. The death struck and struck. They saw nothing, heard nothing. They died.

  Nine.

  They began to mill, moaning with fear and indecision. Their leaders were down, they moved in the residue of their own; invisible death came from nowhere, one cell had lost two thirds of its members, the other, half. Another exploded.

  Eleven.

  They broke and went overside into the sea.

  The deck stilled.

  Maggí rubbed at a weal on one arm where a Min tentacle had caught her. She nudged the comatose body of a darted Min with her bare toe, spat with disgust. “Houms,” she called. Her not-hair writhed about her head, lines of weariness dragged down the corners of her mouth. She swung around. “Baliard, Tritz, Ishal, Za Grann.…” Her crew—one by one she named them. Battered and bloody they gathered around her, those that could walk.

  Ti-cat watched for a moment, disturbed by the smell of the blood (that was the cat speaking in her); she glanced up. Chulji was aloft again, watching to make sure the decimated cells didn’t reform and return. He glided in slow circles, wings outstretched. She could feel his weariness in her own bones. She wasn’t so tired right now (that was the cat too, she was always surprised by the amount of energy the cat had), but she would be the moment she shifted. She ran up to the quarterdeck, swished her tail at Pegwai. He was refilling the darter’s reservoir again from the bucket of fresh water Maggí had provided; he stopped what he was doing and watched her shift through several forms, losing cuts, bruises, Min fluids and splotches of blood somewhere in the transformation. She finished as Pallah, pulled her robe on and jerked the belt tight. She was clean, almost cool, as neat as if she’d just come from a long thorough bath.

  Pegwai chuckled. “Don’t get too close to Skeen, Ti. She’s not going to appreciate the contrast.” He sighed, “I’ve never really envied Min before.”

  She smiled at him, too weary to respond with more than a nod. She went down to find Skeen.

  Three of the crew were dead; others were carrying the last of these up to the quarterdeck where they’d be out of the muck. Maggí was standing over the cook’s helper, a Pallah boy barely past puberty; his arm was out of its socket. Maggí put it back in, the boy screamed and fainted. She stepped aside and let two sailors take him below. The cook was in sickbay receiving the injured; he’d see, to the boy. She looked after the bearers, saw Timka, beckoned her over. She scraped her hand across her face, looked down at herself, then examined Timka clean and cool. “Min,” she said, exasperation in her voice. Then she shook herself, “Ti, I could use some help in sickbay. Up to you.” She swung her arm to take in the deck. “I’ve got to do something about this mess.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll fetch Skeen.”

  “Skeen? Ah, yes. If she will.”

  Skeen had her hip hitched on the rail; she was leaning into the shrouds staring at the sluggish water brushing slowly past, her eyes were heavy and she looked as exhausted as any of the rest. She was covered with blood and Min fluids, there was a small cut up near her hairline, an angry abrasion on the back of her hand, small round scabs like bloody freckles scattered across it. The staff with the knife embedded in the end lay rocking slowly against the rail, smeared with colloid and blood for half its length.

  “Skeen?”

  Skeen yawned, moved slightly so she could see Timka. “Min,” she said, exasperation in her voice.

  “That’s three of you. No imagination, you Nemin.” Timka stopped talking, lifted her head, startled. “Am I dreaming, or was that a breath of wind?”

  Skeen slid off the rail, looked up. “Hai, Petro,” she yelled. “It blowing up there?”

  The Ykx’s voice came drifting down to them. “Yessss, better by the minute.”

  “You coming down?”

  “In a little. I like it up here. Cool.”

  “Hah. If I had two hands, I’d be up there too.” Skeen yawned again. “You wanting something, Ti?”

  “Maggí needs help in sickbay, I’m going. You?”

  Skeen looked at her hand and the handless arm, she plucked absently at the eddersil tunic. “Me and my clothes need a bath. You go down, I’ll wash.” She looked at her sleeves and sighed. “And borrow one of Petro’s robes. This sort of thing keeps up, I’m going to need a change of clothes.”

  The children were out of the hold, helping tend the wounded among the passengers, fetching buckets of sea water so their elders could scrub the muck off the wounded and out of the well.

  The ropes were creaking as the winds strengthened, the sails booming out. Houms was bellowing orders to the weary crew; half of them were working the ship, the other half were rolling the darted Sea Min overside and scrubbing the residue off the deck planks.

  Maggí inspected all that with satisfaction, nodded as she saw Skeen and Timka go below. She crossed to the well. “Indu Annaji, any dead?�
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  A hefty Balayar woman looked up from the head she was bandaging; she was a series of soft squares, square head, square body, arms and legs jointed rectangular solids. “Lifefire’s blessing, no,” she boomed. Her laughter was as large and solid as her body, as infectious as measles. “Ykx’s blessing, I should say, say it loud and clear. Pop pop spit, like boiling mush.” She laughed again, sobered. “We’ll take care of our wounds, Captain, but when you’re not so busy, some tea and hot broth would go down easy.”

  “I hear you, Annaji. When I can spare the cook from the wounded, you’ll get that and more.”

  As the sun dropped lower and lower in the western sky and the wind continued to freshen, the ship was purged of its filth and corpses (not the crew dead, they were sewn into canvas and waited in a corner of the quarterdeck for the proper time and the proper distance from the Min dead; they waited until the decks were clean and Maggí had time and energy to give them a proper send-off, though with the heat being what it was and dead flesh being what it was, they couldn’t wait too long). Skeen had about exhausted her meager supply of antibiotics on the worst of the wounded, Timka and Pegwai had cut and sewn and bandaged until their eyes were crossing with weariness. The cook went back to his galley when Pegwai came down; he got busy with his pots and fires. The galley was a hell all its own in that heat, but he was used to it and glad to get away from the miseries of the sickbay.

  Up at the masthead, Lipitero stirred, stretched, moving with some care. As the wind blew stronger, the sway of the mast was increasing, and she was getting dizzy. She adjusted the hover field to let her down slowly, she got a good grip on the excavator, slipped off the platform and drifted to the quarterdeck.

  She glanced at the canvas bundles, sighed, and turned her back on them. She resorbed the handgrips and reformed the cube, tucked the excavator into its case and clicked the lid home. She reached down, scooped up the robe and squatted looking at it. In the bustle of the battle, the crew had tramped across it, it was still damp with her sweat, a filthy rag. She draped it over her arm, caught hold of the case and rose to her feet. She moved to the forerail, rested the case on it, and looked out over the ship. A scratch crew was working the ship, the others, she presumed, either wounded or getting some rest. In the deckwell the passengers were gathered about several lanterns eating a hot meal, talking (she couldn’t make out individual words, but the tone made her smile a little, she heard fatigue and satisfaction mixed), children laughing and excited, indulged by their parents in a way they seldom enjoyed, enjoying it as fully as they could because they knew how brief the license would be. She lingered watching the strange children play—only a few children—five or six, a leaven in the adult loaf like the children in Sydo Gather. The whole inside of her ached as she watched; she hungered for her own then, she needed them around her, the smells and sounds, the warmth of other Ykx, Ykx voices, Ykx laughter, Ykx … well … vibrations. She was alone and it was like death; for the first time she truly understood those Ykx penned alone by the Chalarosh, she understood their willing themselves to die; the pain of that total separation from her kind struck so deep, only the hope of finally ending that pain made it endurable. She reminded herself of her reasons for being here, shook off the malaise and went below.

  From being becalmed, the Goum Kiskar blew into a ferocious storm and blew out again in less than an hour, then settled to a fitful progress across the remaining stretch of the Halijara. After the storm, more cleaning up. Work on sails and rigging, pump out the deckwell. Bumps and bruises among the passengers, one broken leg, several broken heads. By the day after the storm, the lightly wounded were back on their feet thanks to Skeen’s drugs and Pegwai’s needles and Timka’s tending, able to do some of the lighter work and let some of their fellows snatch a little rest. And the badly hurt were resting comfortably without the fever that killed more than the original wounds. Maggí came down several times to visit the sickbay; she walked from one pallet to another, kneeling beside each to tease the man gently, to pat him a little, rising to move to the next. She nodded to Timka as she left, and went to find Lipitero.

  Quarterdeck. Early afternoon. Hot and steamy, a brisk wind, Goum Kiskar slicing through glittering water. Lipitero standing unrobed, the wind playing through her crimped silver-gray fur, her heavily metaled harness glowing richly gold in the sunlight filtering through the sails and shrouds.

  MAGGÍ: You’re opening the Gate for Skeen.

  LIPITERO: Yes. Or why would I be here.

  MAGGÍ: That’s a question I’ve wondered about.

  LIPITERO: No doubt.

  MAGGÍ: There aren’t many Ykx left on Mistommerk.

  LIPITERO: We don’t make ourselves obtrusive.

  MAGGÍ: That’s no answer. Ah, forget that, if you wanted to answer you would have. Skeen isn’t talking either, so I have to guess. There’s something on the far side the Ykx want. Or need. It’s my guess you’re passing through to get it and coming back with it. You’ll need transport?”

  LIPITERO: It’s not something I want to talk about.

  MAGGÍ: I suppose your reasons don’t matter all that much. There’s something I want you to do for me.

  LIPITERO: I’ll listen, Maggí. I owe you.

  MAGGÍ: I was in sickbay just now. Petro, three years ago the pirates round Tail End were hungrier than usual and hitting anything that floated past. We had a bad time with them, I had six crew wounded in that fight. One in the belly; you know this world, you know what that meant. He was begging us to kill him by the time we made the next port. Houms offered, but I couldn’t let him do my job. Two others died from the fever. Of the three that lived, two are still with me, one never got well enough to work again, he’s living in Karolsey. I go to see him most times I’m there. He was cook’s help, Petro, a baby. He’s not twenty yet, and he’s an old man. I’m always expecting to find him dead each time I drop anchor there. I think about that, then I think about Skeen and her hand, how close she was to dying and how fast she recovered once she used her own medicines. I think about that other time and I go down and see the wounded from this fight. I feel cool heads, I see clean wounds, I see a man hurt worse than Tefote was already up and mending sail. And what’s the difference, Petro, what’s the whole difference? Skeen’s pharmacopoeia. Petro, I want those drugs. Not just a stock, but a continuing supply. I don’t want to do Lifefire’s grace on more of my friends, I don’t want to see another boy go from puberty to senility with nothing between.

  LIPITERO: Shouldn’t you be talking with Skeen about that? What do I know about the far side?

  MAGGÍ: I like Skeen, but I know Skeen. She’s impulsive, generous. If I was in a tight place, I can think of few others I’d rather have at my back. But I wouldn’t want to depend on her, not for something that meant she’d have to meet a schedule, not for something that was supposed to continue for a long time. Oh, I could probably get her to agree to be my supplier, and she’d come through once, maybe twice, then she’d slide away. She’d have the best excuses, but the end would be the same. No, if it can be done, you’re the one to do it, Petra. Get Skeen’s help if you want, but remember what I said. Don’t do it for me, do it for the Ykx. Think of the market for these drugs. Me, but I’m only one. There are hundreds—no thousands—who would be as eager as I am to have a way to fight the killing fevers. Say nothing now, just think about it.

  MORE GROUND (OCEAN) TO GET ACROSS. DO I GO FOR TEDIOUS DETAIL OR SKIM LIGHTLY ALONG THE PEAKS? CONSIDER HOW LITTLE SUBSTANCE INTERVALS OF PEACE OFFER TO THE TELLER OF QUEST TALES (OR ANY OTHER SORT). OUR HEROES SLIP-SLIDE ALONG SLEEPING AND EATING AND PASSING THE TEDIOUS HOURS WITH TALES OF THEIR OWN FROM MORE ADVENTUROUS TIMES. HM, THIS SOUNDS LIKE A LEAD-IN TO SOME STORY TELLING. NO, I THINK NOT. I’M RATHER TIRED OF THAT PLOY. I THINK I’LL TRY THE NARRATIVE SUMMARY BIT INSTEAD.

  There is a kind of peace that comes after a killer storm, more exhaustion than peace, the time before the survivors gather themselves and start again. As the days pass, Timka begins to think
they are in such a period, that the Kalakal Ravvayad have exhausted their resources for the moment with that abortive attack in Sikuro, that Telka has wasted her last out-Mountain resources with the gunja defeat and will wait for Skeen and Timka to come to her. The Goum Kiskar drops anchor in the harbor at Karolsey. They visit the ancient poet Nanojan Sogan. They drop passengers, take on new after warning them there could be trouble ahead. They drop some cargo, take on more. Skeen talks Maggí into breaking away from her usual route up the Tail and darting across the short stretch of open sea between Tail End and the outer Bers and Bretels of the Spray, Maggí, reluctant because of her daughter and the crew who are as important to her, putting aside that reluctance because she’d have Timka and Chulji flying watch and Lipitero ready to use the clumsy but effective excavator.

  The voyage along the Spray is one feast after another. Pegwai Dih turns out to have cousins and collaterals in nearly every port they visit, whether that’s on a tiny Ber, a larger Bretel, or one of the heart islands they call the Leskets. He introduces Maggí as one to be valued and is seduced by the warmth and welcome and the wonderful food into telling over and over the story of the quest, of Skeen and Timka, the tragic death of the loyal Aggitj Domi, the terrible circumstances of the Boy. He cajoles Lipitero to come exhibit herself to folk who treat her with the most delicate of courtesies and an unabashed delight in possessing though only for the moment one of the wonders of Mistommerk, a magical mythical creature whose alien beauty will inspire their artists and musicians for seasons to come.