by Clayton, Jo;
Lipitero found a small pouch, filled it from her cache of dried fruit and nuts, tied the pouch to her harness so it dangled beside her thigh. “I hear. You know, Skeen, I’ll be pleased to pass the Gate.” Her fur roughed, she shuddered. “I don’t like this … this covetousness. It was bad enough in Cida Fennakin, but it was the sort of thing you expected from Angelsin and her kind. You can deal with being a commodity. This is different. I feel like I’ve got fingermarks, no, eyemarks, all over me. I want to scrub myself for hours to get rid of this.…” She twitched again, settled on the floor beside her pack.
Timka rubbed at her eyes, curled up and went to sleep again. Nothing she could do; it was simpler to sleep and let the time pass.
Lipitero fidgeted about the deck ignoring the Nagamar squad leader who started getting edgy when the time for Lipitero’s rise came and passed. As the afternoon slid on, the Nagamar started getting shrill. Finally Lipitero shrugged, threw off the robe she’d been wearing and rode the lift field high enough to catch some wind and began her long loops over the river. The loops stretched gradually longer until the last one broke and the Ykx vanished into the frizzled clouds.
The squad leader waited till the sun was coloring the western sky, then she laid hands on Usoq and warbled at him. He writhed in her grip, signed one-handed and gabbled out a flow of Trade-Min, word tripping over word; to Skeen (who was sitting unnoticed, she hoped, with her back against the mast) it was mostly nonsense, half-disclaimers, broken protests, other things, perhaps words to remind the Nagamar of other times, old debts, whatever. It sounded like babble, but it worked, the squad leader let go of his arm, not exactly calmed down, but her anger was no longer focused on the furry little man. She tromped about the deck hissing to herself, stopping to glare at Skeen and Pegwai. Around and around, out to the bow to gaze unhappily into the gaudy clouds. Around and around, stopping by Rannah and the young guard. She kicked the guard off the boat, pulled Rannah to her feet and dragged her over to Usoq. She pushed the Aggitj girl against him and began snapping through angry signs. Skeen got quietly to her feet and moved so Usoq could see her and she could see the girl. She unsnapped the holster. “Peg,” she murmured, “watch the crew girls. They’ll be dangerous if they see him going down.” She felt at the darter, switched to spray. Djabo’s weepy eyes, why can’t I teach these fuckin’ eyes of mine to aim straight: …
Usoq patted Rannah on the shoulder. “Calm, calm, there’s no problem here. No, no, no problem here. Rannah love, tell the kurshup here what you know about the Ykx, why she’s not here, tell her and me I’ll translate.”
More patting, more flickers of his hands telling the squad leader what he was saying. Skeen watched the lean musuclar shoulders of the woman, saw their contours soften a little and knew he was translating accurately. As she’d suspected, the Nagamar knew more Trade-Min than she admitted to. Clever little man.
Rannah blinked, turned to stare at the darkening clouds. “Oh. She didn’t come back?” She swung round to gaze wide-eyed at the Nagamar. “I didn’t notice, I was talking to Kisri, you saw me. You want me to guess, I’d say she didn’t like all these people staring at her. She said she felt like a bird in a cage. I think she must have decided enough was enough and took off, but I don’t know that.” She stopped talking, stood looking as dewy and innocent as a downy chick. Skeen disciplined a smile away. Maggí’s daughter, yes, indeed.
Usoq finished his translation, paused a moment, then added some more. At the same time he nudged Rannah with his elbow, urging her away. The squad leader ignored her and started a silent elbow-swinging wrangle with him while Rannah ambled over to Skeen and Pegwai.
Skeen rested her shoulders against the mast and slid down it till she was sitting. Rannah dropped beside her. The girl touched Skeen’s wrist, tilted her head, her whole body a single wordless question.
Skeen winked at her. “The veritable daughter of Maggí Solitaire,” she murmured. “You do learn fast.”
Rannah grinned happily. She lifted her bowside shoulder, dropped it. “Not coming back?” she murmured, taking pains to move her lips as little as possible. “What will they do?”
“No. I don’t know. Um … in a minute or two, go down and let Ti know what’s happening. Peg and I had better stay in sight for a while longer.”
The night slipped down on them. The squad leader paced around the deck a while, went overside into the water, came flashing back a short while later, paced some more, her movements angular and filled with irritation. Skeen stayed on deck until moonrise, watching two more of those departures and returns, then she went below, leaving Usoq at the wheel and the crew girls taking turns bringing him food and scrambling to follow his orders as they worked to ride the edge between racing and recklessness.
Morning. No Ykx rising. Moaning mourning whistles from the trees. Louder. Louder. Grieving. Demanding. The Nagamar squad leader crouched in the shadow of the sails, watching, suspicious, unhappy. Skeen came on deck briefly, looked around, winced at the volume of sound directed at the ship, the number of dark silent forms in trees on either side, and went back down.
The Morass began changing, the change increasing as they fled battered by the sound, Usoq and the crew working harder as the winds grew more erratic while clouds gathered overhead, graying the day, underlining and intensifying the dolor of the griefsong coming from under the trees.
Skeen fidgeted with a bit of wood but couldn’t concentrate on it; the sound was muffled down here but that didn’t seem to help much. As if her skin had been flayed off, her flesh and nerve ends left bare. She cut carelessly at the wood, swore as the knife slipped and nicked her thumb.
Pegwai looked up from his notebook. “Try sleeping.”
“Hah! Tell me how. Then tell me how much longer that’s going on.”
“Timka seems to manage well enough.”
“Her? She could sleep in the crater of an erupting volcano.” She slipped the knife back into the arm sheath, dropped the scrap of wood and kicked it recklessly away, narrowly missing Rannah who was squatting beside Pegwai, watching him write, making her own entries into her own notebook. Skeen bit her lip, waved her hand in a half apology. She stretched out on the bunk, pulled a blanket over her ears and tried to ignore that miserable idiot sound.
She fell into a half-doze and a succession of dreams, enough to wear her out emotionally and physically, dreams that had her sweating and moaning, working arms and legs, throwing her head about. Pegwai shook her awake a little past noon. “I’m waking you so you can get some rest,” he said dryly, “and give us some peace.”
She sat up carefully, her head felt swollen and sore, her eyes inflamed. “Gahh, Djabo’s sorry face, I’ve got morning after without the fun of the night before.” She pressed her forearms against her temples. “Ehhh, what a head!”
“Come up on deck a while. Some fresh air for your head, some hot soup for your stomach, you’ll feel better.”
“Yeah, mother.” She lifted her head, looked startled. “The noise, it’s just about gone.”
“We’re just about out of the Morass.” He held out his hand. “Come, you’re hungry, that’s most of it.”
‘Any trouble with the Nagamar while I was sleeping?” She caught hold of his hand and let him pull her onto her feet.
“I’d have waked you, do you doubt that? There were a few moments when things looked tense; nothing came of it though. The Nagamar have their own peculiar honor. They won’t harm anyone they’ve given shelter to, whether that’s tacit toleration or the whole formal game.” Pegwai let her stumble out in front of him and precede him up the passageway. He stood beside her at the mast, looking forward along the ship to the storm visible ahead, the curtains of rain like silver veils falling so heavily it obscured the landscape ahead so completely Skeen couldn’t tell what kind of terrain they were moving into. She moved into the bow, turned and looked back along the boat. No Nagamar aboard. She walked back along the rail, staring down into the water as she moved, holding onto the rail
with her single hand to fight the pull of vertigo. The water was much cleaner here, sandy bottom, pale, almost white. She could see the dark shapes of fish and other waterdwellers drifting backward as the boat blew past them. No Nagamar in the water. She scanned the trees. No groaning mourners in the trees. She drew in a breath, let it out in an explosive puff, threw out her arms and danced in an unsteady circle, a small triumph, had to be small, no space and the deck wasn’t that steady underfoot. She went back to Pegwai, moving more sedately. “No Nagamar,” she murmured.
Pegwai stared ahead. “Yes.” His voice merged with the wind, she had to listen hard to hear him. “They left an hour ago after a long argument with Usoq. I don’t know what it was about, I tried a bit of prying, but he talked over and around me until he had me chasing my tail.”
“Trouble?”
“Ahhh, ask me again when Petro’s back with us.”
“I see. Temptation?”
“What do you think?”
“We don’t turn our backs on him ever and we sleep in shifts.”
He stopped talking as one of the crew girls ran past; the wind was erratic, it kept changing direction and force, managing the sails took hard work and close attention. He squinted at the black clouds piling up ahead. “We’re coming up fast on that rain. You find a spot out of the way, I’ll go fetch that soup.”
Skeen looked into the empty bowl, set it down beside her. “You were right. I needed that.”
Pegwai glanced at the sky again, surprised himself with a gentle belch. “Pardon. Hmmm, yes, even a day like this looks brighter with hot food inside you. Which reminds me. Remembering what happened in Fennakin, you think we need worry about Usoq and the food he provides us?”
She yawned. “I’m not awake yet, I think. Eat in shifts? I suppose.”
A fistful of warm rain splatted down on them. They collected their dishes, went for a leisurely circle around the boat, both of them relaxed, enjoying the quiet, the occasional flurries of rain, the interval between crises, then they went below.
The Pouliloulou plunged into the storm and flounced through it, giving the passengers so rough a ride Skeen was sick over the rail and Timka went wan and flaccid, wondering if she was after all going to suffer a Chorinya of some kind. Both of them snarled at Pegwai whenever he showed his placid Balayar face. Unfair, oh, unfair for him to be enjoying himself, not just enduring the swoops and jolts, the yaws and twists, but enjoying himself. Skeen told him in descriptive detail how obscene his grin was, Timka twitched a cat-weasel head onto her shoulder and hissed loathing at him. He scooped up Rannah (who was a bit pale, no more) and took her topside, telling her in far too audible a voice, a voice too audibly amused, to leave those soreheads with their miseries, the air was a lot better on deck.
They came through the storm into a grassy wasteland, clouds still thick and low over banks that were tangles of briars and a few stunted grayish trees, though part of that grayness might have been the clouds that seemed to suck color from everything and everyone. Washboard knolls rose in packed waves beyond the banks, covered mostly with sparse bleached-out grass, old growth from last year. Skeen had left this part of the world toward the end of summer and was returning to it in time to catch the dregs of winter; even this far south there was a chill in the air once the sun went down, a damp cold that settled into the bones. Timka dealt with it by shifting to cat-weasel and spending most of her time nose to tail in one of the upper bunks. Pegwai hauled out a pair of knitted trousers and a soft wool undershirt. Skeen dug out Angelsin’s fur-lined cloak, cut nearly a meter off the bottom and had Rannah hem it for her. And so the second day out of the Morass slid by.
Shortly after nightfall Skeen was standing in the bow, staring ahead, worrying (though she’d deny it ferociously if challenged) about Lipitero. The river island was on the edge of the cultivated land; according to Usoq they’d reach it soon after dawn tomorrow. She’d deny too that she’d expected Lipitero to come sliding onto deck most of the day; the Ykx surely knew they were getting close. All day she’d watched the boiling gray sky, but she saw only a scattering of birds dipping in and out of the clouds. She cursed the clouds and cursed the missing hand that meant she was useless about the boat, couldn’t even work to use up excess energy and pass the time away. Couldn’t sleep, too many nightmares when she did manage to doze a little; she was sick of nightmares and the ruts her mind trudged over and over. What she could do was keep away from the others as much as possible. Her nerves were too naked to endure the abrasion of much contact with them and she didn’t like how she felt when she was nasty with Pegwai or Timka and she didn’t want to start on Rannah. She knew herself well enough to know she’d savage the child with as little restraint as she would the adults. A hand touched her arm. She jerked away, her heart clenched and thudded, she swung around ready to claw, caught hold of herself and stood shivering, glaring at Timka. “What is it?” She heard the snarl in her voice and wasn’t sorry for it. If Timka wouldn’t take the hint, she could take what came.
“Min,” Timka said. “Up there. Over us. More ahead.”
“Ah.” Skeen raked her hand through her hair until it stood in spikes about her face while she struggled to put the pieces of her head together. “Ah.…” She bent at the waist and leaned closer to Timka so she could get a better look at her face. “They know about you yet?”
“I don’t.… No. Unless Telka’s there or one of her top Holavish. And I’d feel them if they were.”
“How soon before they know?”
“If they don’t swing this way, maybe no more than a half hour. If they do, any minute.”
“They know it’s you?”
“Might. Once they get close enough. Someone like me and who else would be coming this way?”
“All right. I hear. These like the little birdboys that followed me out of Spalit time when?”
Timka closed her eyes and concentrated, her features squeezing down into fine curved lines. She was shivering from the cold, she’d thrown on one of her loose cotton robes, her feet were bare; she’d come the moment she’d felt the touch. Skeen watched her a moment then turned to scan the darkness overhead. If there were bird Min up there, they were above the clouds.
Timka came out of her trance, cleared her throat. “Holavish,” she said. “Fighters, I think, not scouts. Well, some scouts but most not.”
Skeen glanced at her ringchron, then past Timka at the crewgirl at the helm. “Let’s go below.” She grinned. “It’s time Peg shared a little of the miseries.”
Morning.
Clouds high, raveled dirty wool. Patches of remote and chilly sky. Angular black silhouettes of large birds of prey, drifting in broad slow circles high over the boat. Beyond the range of crossbows. Also beyond the reach of Skeen’s darter.
Brisk wind, drier, the smell of it smoky and herbal, taint of animal droppings heavy on it.
Small herds of deer-like beasts with palmate horns grazing on the rippling ridges. Rodents bustling about low hutches mounded close to the waterline, tending tuber gardens they planted haphazardly in the mud, the vines crawling everywhere, new leaves uncurling, the old hanging in limp folds. Fingerlength bugs like a cross between ant and centipede rushed about in chaotic swarms along broad runways, their bodies brushed amid the pebbles.
The river looped east as the land changed again. Beyond the west bank the ridges grew higher and stonier, turned into low rounded hills with few trees but much thorny brush and low writhing bushes with dark purple red bark and small stiff round leaves. The east side was different, the land was much flatter, with patches of cultivation, large herds of ruminants in fenced pastures, now and then a wheel for raising water from the river, smaller horse herds, some woolies on the wild lands with shepherds on the slopes beside them.
The Pouliloulou clawed steadily upstream, Vohdi at the wheel, Cepo sleeping and Usoq below somewhere. The wind was blowing off the east pastures; as the boat followed the curve of the river, she shifted balance and began to lose way, bu
t as long as the wind was steady and the curve easy, the boat was rigged so the girl could handle it alone. Timka watched as she worked cranks with one hand, kept the wheel steady with the other, seemed to have one eye on the sails and the other on the river ahead and all the while her lips were pursed for a happy lilting whistle, her dark eyes were crinkled with pleasure and her whole body seemed to dance. Rannah crouched by Timka’s knee, watching also, fascinated. “It’s like Rak’yagel on a horse,” she murmured. When Timka bent down, brows raised, she said, “Back home there was this old man, a Pallah, he took care of the animals for us. There are wild horses up in the mountains around our place. Sometimes they came down and tried to raid our herds, so he made some traps. He caught this stallion in one of them. Big and black as the heart of night, not pretty, rough and covered with scars, but wonderful. I don’t know how to explain it. Anyway he tamed the stallion and used him to sire some of our best horses, but even when the stallion was old and, oh, you know, seeing Rak’yagel riding him it was like seeing a storm riding a storm. It was kind of beautiful and kind of terrible and it made me, I don’t know, want to do things—not just ordinary things, something kind of wonderful like that.”
Usoq came on deck carrying a broad, flat stone; it was grayish white and looked like someone had put it together from cement and reeds. He settled it in a boxy object close to the steering gear, stood and dusted his hands. “You feeling helpful, you two,” he said, “you could give me a hand bringing up some things. ’Course now I wouldn’t want to be spoiling your morning for you. Though maybe those might.” He waved a hand at the bird Min over them. “I’d like to get together some little surprises for them, case they come to visit.”
“Why not.” Timka pushed away from the rail and followed him down.
They brought up a brazier and a sack of charcoal bits, a small cauldron half-filled with a tarry substance that looked rather like brownish black glass, five crossbows (which Usoq cocked and set carefully down beside the box) and a wicker box filled with crossbow bolts that had straggly collars of firemoss bound behind the points.