by Jo Clayton
No more this and that and the other. Out. Away. Far away as I can get, fast as I can get there. The last daughter is still sleeping, so is the bondmaid, but she is going to wake soon and start screeching the minute she sees the third daughter is gone. I kick the wedge away and whip out the door into the garden.
The Kadda wife is waiting in the garden for me. I get maybe two steps before she grabs me. I try to jerk loose, but her cold hands are hard and strong as iron chains, and they drain my strength away somehow. It is as if she sucks it out of me. I am scared witless. I think she is going to drink me dry right there. She doesn’t, she pushes me back into the nursery and across it into the hallway. I go without making a sound, I can’t make a sound though I try screaming; something is pulling strings on my legs as if I were a puppet in a holy play. No, an unholy play.
She takes me high up in the palace to a small room under the roof, shoves me inside and a minute later there is this pain in the back of my head.
When I wake, it’s dark again-or still dark, I don’t know which. I am hanging on an iron frame like a bed stripped and set on end, my wrists and ankles are tied to the corner with ropes. There is a gag in my mouth, probably because of the open window high in the wall on my right, and a strong smell of anise, I am getting very tired of anise. The mix smells stale, as if it had been floating round the room a long time and that scares me all over again, more than if it’d been fresh. They hadn’t eaten the daughter yet; looks like I’m going to take her place this month. My wrists and ankles are burning, my mouth is like leather, my head feels like someone kicked it.
After a short panic, I start fiddling with the ropes and go a little crazy with relief when I find I know more about knots than whoever tied me. I get myself loose and start looking for some way out.
There is no latch on the inside of the door, just a hole for a latchstring or maybe a pin key. Nothing in the room I can use on it. I push the frame over to the window and climb up to look out, I climb carefully, the frame creaking as if it will collapse if I breathe too hard. I get halfway out the window and look down. There is nothing, much between me and the water except a lot of straight up-and-down cliff and the surf is white wrinkles about black rocks. Way way down. The wind is blowing against my face, cold and damp, but it feels good.
Fingers touch my ankle. I know it’s her. I kick free before she can drain away my strength again. Somehow I keep myself from falling as I wiggle out the window, so scared all I know is that I have to get away fast. I hear cursing behind me and the squeal of metal as the frame collapses under her. I stand in the window and look down at the waves crashing against the rocks. No joy there. I look up. The endhorns of the eaves are close, but not close enough so I can reach them. Behind me I hear curses and other noises as she drags something to the window. She’s coming for me. I take a chance and jump. My hands slap around a horn and I am hanging free. I start pulling myself up. Fingers close about my ankles. I kick hard, harder, but can’t get loose. My hands slip.
So here I am. And here I stay till the Kadda witch is dead, down in the water with me, dead, you hear me, brother, you hear?
Aituatea winced as he felt a nip in his left shoulder.
“Look.” Her crystal arm sketched in touches of moonlight. Hotea jabbed her finger at the Phras ship.
The ship’s dark bulk was suddenly alive with lanthorns shining red and gold behind horn sides, dozens of them lighting up the deck and the swirl of dark forms moving over it. He could hear snatches of speech too broken for understanding, the blast of a horn as one of the figures leaned over the rail to call a water taxi from the Woda-an. The hornblower had to repeat the signal several times before the slide of a red lanthorn marked the passage of a taxi from the watercity to the blind ship.
A slim, energetic figure swung over the rail and went down the netting with skill and grace. Aituatea swallowed the sourness in his throat. A woman. By outline alone, even at this distance, a woman. The Drinker of Souls. He cursed under his breath. The weight of centuries of custom, of his sister’s shame and fury, of his own battered self-respect, all this pressed down on him, shoving him toward the thing that twisted his gut. He pressed his hand over his mouth, stifling an exclamation as two more forms balanced a moment on the rail then followed the woman down, small forms, children or dwarves or something. The old man on the mountain hadn’t said anything about companions. He glanced up at Hotea. She was staring hungrily at the woman, bent forward a little, her hands closed into fists, her form shivering with a terrible urgency. The strength of that need he hadn’t understood before, despite all those scolds, all those bitter accusations of cowardice and shame repeated so often he ceased to listen; he squirmed uncomfortably on the fleece.
The taxi came swiftly toward the wharf, the stern sweep worked by a young Woda girl, the lanthorn on the bow waking coppery highlights on sweaty skin the color of burnt honey. Her short black hair held off her face by a strip of red cloth knotted about her temples, she swayed back and forth in a kind of dance with the massive oar, her muscles flowing smoothly, her face blank and blandly animal, as if she lived for that moment wholly in the body. Aituatea stared at her, his tongue moving along dry lips, a tension in his groin reminding him how long it’d been since he’d had a woman. A stinking Woda bitch. He ground his teeth together and went on watching her. Frog ugly. In his Hina eyes she was a dirty beast, beastly with her strong coarse features, her broad shoulders, her short crooked legs-but she roused him until he was close to groaning. Six months since he’d been to a joyhouse, he’d tried it once after his sister fell in the bay but he couldn’t do anything there. Hotea’s ghost followed him everywhere as if a string tied her to his left shoulder; he tried to drive her off for a little bit, but she wouldn’t go; he thought maybe he could ignore her long enough to get his relief, but when he was with the girl he could feel Hotea’s eyes on him, those damn judging angry eyes, and he shriveled to nothing and had to pay the woman double so she wouldn’t spread talk about him.
The taxi bumped against the wharf. The strange woman laughed at something one of the children said, a rippling happy sound that jarred against his expectations. Drinker of Souls conjured dour and deflating images. The children’s giggles echoed hers, then she was up the ladder and swinging onto the wharf. The children followed. In the moonlight they looked like twins, pale little creatures dancing about the woman, flinging rapid bursts of their liquid speech at her, receiving her terse replies with more laughter. After a last exchange that left the woman grinning, the twins capered away, disappearing into the maze of boxes and bales piled temporarily on the wharf, waiting for the Godalau fete to pass before they were tucked away into the godons. Aituatea heard the children chattering together, then the high rapid voices faded off down a grimy alley. The woman turned to look across the water at the Phras ship where the lanthorns were going out as it settled back to sleep, then she gazed along the curve of Selt toward the many-terraced mountain of Utar. He saw her follow the line of torches burning along the causeway, the lampions that marked the course of the looping roadway, her head tilting slowly until she went quiet, stood with a finger stroking slowly and repeated alongside her mouth, contemplating the topmost torches, those that burned on the gate towers of the Tekora’s Palace.
She had long straight hair that gleamed in the strengthening moonlight like brushed pewter, the front parts trimmed to a point, the back clasped loosely at the nape of her neck. She was taller than most Hina, wider in the shoulders and hips though otherwise slim and supple. Her skin was very pale; in the moonlight it looked like porcelain. She wore loose trousers of some dark color stuffed into short black boots, a white, full-sleeved shirt with a wide collar that lay open about her neck. Over this was a sleeveless leather coat; when a gust of wind flipped it back for a moment, he raised his brows, seeing two throwing knives sheathed inside. She wasn’t Phras or any of the many other sorts of foreigners that passed through the port of Silili, but he wasn’t too surprised at that, seeing what she was.<
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Behind him he heard the stomp and clatter of the godon guards and the whining of their rathounds. He took a chance and watched the woman to see what she would do.
Poking long spears into crevices to drive out drunks or sleepers, sounding their clappers to scare away ghosts and demons, whooping to keep up their courage, the godon guards came winding along the wharves.
The woman stirred slightly. Touch-me-not spun out from her like strands of mist, real mist spun up out of the water until she was a vertical dimness in a cocoon of white. Aituatea watched, uneasily fascinated, until the guards got close, then dropped his face into the fleece and waited.
As soon as the patrol had clattered past, he looked up again.
The cocoon out by the water unraveled with a speed that startled Aituatea, then his stomach was knotting on itself as she came sauntering toward him, as unstoppable and self-contained as the wind. What’s she doing here? Why’d she come to Silili? He hadn’t thought about it before, but now he saw her… What’s waiting for her here? Old man, you didn’t tell us nothing except she was the one who could face the witch. What else didn’t you tell us? What else do you know? Crazy old fox, said nothing worth salt.
* * *
The old man settled onto his haunches, his dirt-crusted hands dropping onto his thighs. Eyes the color of rotted leaves touched on Aituatea, shifted to Hotea and ended looking past them both at the woolly clouds sliding across the early morning sky.
Hotea drove her elbow into Aituatea’s ribs. He lurched forward a step, bowed and held out the lacquer box filled with the rarest tea he could steal.
Ah, the old man said; he got stiffly to his feet, took the box from Aituatea. Come, he said. He led them into the single room of his small dwelling. It was painfully clean and quite bare except for a roll of rough bedding in one corner and a crude table with a chair facing the door and a bench cobbled from pine limbs opposite. He went to some shelves, mere boards resting on wooden pegs driven into the wall, set the box beside a jumble of scrolls and a brush pot, shuffled back to the chair. Sit, he said.
Aituatea glanced over his shoulder. Morning light cool as water, filled with dancing motes, poured through the door and flooded across the table, picking up every wrinkle, wart, and hair on the old man’s still face. Thought he was uneasy with emptiness at his back, Aituatea slid onto the bench and sat plucking nervously at the cloth folds over the knee of his short leg. He wanted to shut the door but he was afraid to touch anything in the but and afraid too of shutting himself in with the old man. He twitched but didn’t look around when he felt the cold bite of Hotea’s hand on his shoulder. His eyes flicked to the serene face across from him, flicked away, came slowly back. The old man looked harmless and not too bright but there were many stories about him and brash youths who thought they could force his secrets from him. Some said it was always the same old man, Temueng to the Temuengs and Hina to the Hinas, or whatever he chose to be.
The but was filled with a faded tang of cedar and herbs; the breeze wandering in from outside brought with it the sharp aromas of pine and mountain oak, the dark damp smells of the earth, the lighter brighter scents of stone dust and wild orchids. It was warm and peaceful there, the tranquility underlined by the whisper of the breeze, the intermittent humming of unseen insects. In spite of himself, Aituatea began to relax. Hotea pinched him. Stubbornly he said nothing. This visit was her idea, something she came up with when she couldn’t drive him into action with bitter words or shame. If she wanted help from the old man, let her do the talking.
The sunlight sparked off her outflung arm. I’m drowned by a Kadda witch, she burst out. Her voice made no impression on the drowsing sounds of the small room, but the old man looked at her, hearing her. I want her dead, she cried, in the water with me. Dead.
The old man blinked, pale brown eyes opening and closing with slow deliberation. With his shaggy brown robe, the tufts of white hair over his ears, his round face and slow-blinking eyes, he looked to Aituatea rather like a large horned owl. The tip of a pale pinkish-brown tongue brushed across his colorless lips. All things die in their time, he said.
Hotea made a small spitting sound. Aituatea looked at his hands, feeling a mean satisfaction. This wasn’t what she’d come to hear, platitudes she could read in any book of aphorisms. Not that woman, she said, her voice crackling with impatience. Not while there’s young blood to feed her.
Even her, he said.
I want her dead, old man, she said. I want to see her dead. Hotea’s hands fluttered with small, quickly aborted movements as if she sought to uncover with them some argument to persuade him to interfere against his inclination. Look, she said, Temueng children have died. Do you think Hina won’t pay for those deaths? Ten for one they will. We’re guilty, old man, whether we do anything or not. They can do no wrong, they’re the conquerors, aren’t they? Besides, leave the witch alone, how long before she eats everyone on Utar-Selt? Hotea went still a moment, then her voice was a thread of no-sound softer than usual in Aituatea’s head. Teach us, old man, she said, teach us how we can front and kill a Kadda witch.
The old man stared at her a dozen heartbeats, then turned those pitiless eyes on Aituatea. They swelled larger and larger until they were all he could see. He began to feel like weeping softly and sadly as they searched his soul, as they spaded up fear and waste and the little niggling meannesses he’d done to his friends and to his sister, and all the ugly things he’d buried deep and refused to remember. As he stared into the old man’s eyes, he was finally forced to see that he would never do anything about the Kadda witch without someone to take the brunt of the witch’s attack, that he would keep putting it off and putting it off, growing more wretched as the years passed, as Hotea grew more caustic.
The old man leaned back, his worn face filled with pain as if he had absorbed from Aituatea all that self-disgust and fear. He slumped, his body shrinking in on itself, his eyes glazing over. Kadda witch, he murmured, blood drinker, knows no will but her own, evil, recognizing no right beyond her own needs. I see… there’s a counter… I see… He flinched, drew further into himself. Powerful, he said, another power comes… an ancient enemy… His eyes moved in a slow sweeping arc, but he was seeing nothing in the hut. Aituatea felt his stomach knot.
One comes, the old man said, husky voice reduced to a whisper. A woman… something between her and the witch… like the witch… no, not the same… drinker of life, not blood… not evil, not good… Drinker of Souls, she comes the eve of the Godalau fete. Set her on the track, let her sniff out the witch, buy her with Das’n vuor, and point her at the witch. She comes with the rising of the Wounded Moon, will leave before the rising of the sun. The Drinker of Souls, come back to Silili after years and years… a hundred years… ah! her purposes mesh with yours, angry ghost. He muttered some more, but the words were unintelligible, intermixed with sudden chuckles. It was as if he had to wind back down into his customary taciturnity and something amusing he saw was retarding this return.
Aituatea sat frozen, sick. Three months’ respite, then he had to face the witch or face himself. He glared at the old man, silently cursing him for setting the limit so close.
The old man lifted his head, looked irritably at him. That’s it, he seemed to say, you got what you came for, now get out of here!
Shadow spread out from him, dark and terrible, killing the light, the warmth. Aituatea scrambled back, knocking over the bench; the smell of cedar choking him, he ran from the hut.
Another nip in his shoulder. Hotea getting impatient. “Go after her. Stop her,” she shrilled. “Don’t lose her, fool. You won’t find her again, you know it. And we’ve only got till sunup.”
Muttering under his breath Aituatea swung down from the bales and limped after the woman. His hip hurt but he was used to that and almost forgot the pain as he hurried past the godons and stepped into the Street of the Watermen. She was making no effort to hurry-it was almost as if she wanted to be followed, had set herself out as b
ait, trolling for anything stupid or hungry enough to bite. He kept back as far as he could without losing sight of her. The peculiar lurch of his walk was too eye-catching, even in the leaping uncertain light from the torches burning in front of businesses still open, casting shadows that lurched and twisted as awkwardly as he did. She circled without fuss about the knots of gambling watermen and porters crouched over piles of bronzes and coppers, tossing the bones into lines chalked on the flagging. She slowed now and then, head cocked to listen to flute and cittern music coming in melancholy brightness from the joyhouses, ignored insults flung down at her from idling women hanging out second-story windows, walked more briskly past shops shuttered for the night-a herbalist, a shaman’s den, a fishmonger, a geengrocer, a diviner, and others much like these. Some cookshops were closed for the night, others were still open with men standing about dipping noodles and pickled beans and pickled cabbage from clay bowls or crunching down fried pilchards. He watched her careless stroll and felt confirmed in his idea she was bait in her own trap. Maybe she’s hungry, he told himself and shivered at the thought. He dropped back farther, his feet dragging. For no reason he wondered suddenly where the children were. Now and then it seemed to him he heard them calling to each other or to the woman, but he was never sure and she never responded to the calls.
“Where’s she going?” he muttered and got Hotea’s elbow in his ribs for an answer. That she was heading the way he wanted her to go, uphill and vaguely north, made him nervous; it was just too convenient; as Hotea said, it happens sometimes that everything goes easy for a while but old Tungjii’s getting together with Jah’takash and they’re waiting for you to put your foot in it. But he kept limping after her, eaten by curiosity and buoyed up by nervous excitement.