by Jo Clayton
“How soon, do you think?”
“Not before they think everyone’s asleep. They think we’ll be trapped inside that.” She nodded her head at the corral. “I say we turn the trap on them.” She looked at Jaril. He nodded. “Me out at long-scout, night-owling it. Jaro staying with you to carry reports. What about numbers? I think four or five of them is all right, we’re sure hungry enough to handle them. Ten or more we’d, better scare off, we could cut some out, two or three maybe, hamstring them so they can’t run, what do you think, Bramble?”
Brann felt a twinge of distaste, but that didn’t last long. The Ular-drah were a particularly unpleasant bunch with no pretensions to virtue of any sort, the best of them with the gentle charm of cannibal sharks. She nodded at the corral. “Tell them?”
“I vote no,” Yaril said.
Jaril nodded. “Let ‘em sleep. They’ll just get in the way.
Brann sighed, then she smiled. “Just us again.” Her smile broadened into a grin. “Look out, you wolves.”
JARIL LOOKED UP. “Six of ‘em. On their way.” He blurred into a wolf form and went trotting into the dark.
Brann pulled her fingers through her hair, the black stripping away, until it was white again, blowing wildly in the strong cold wind. She pulled off her tunic, tossed it to the ground beside the stone wall, stepped out of her trousers, kicked them onto the tunic. The air was very cold against her skin but she’d learned enough from the children to suck a surprising amount of warmth from the stone under her feet and bring it flowing up through her body. Comfortable again, she still hesitated, then she heard the yipping of the wolf and set off in that dii action running easily through the darkness, her eyes adapting to the dark as her body had adapted to the cold. She reached a small, steep, walled bowl with the meander of a dry stream through the middle of it, a few tufts of withered grass and a number of large boulders rolled from the slopes above the bowl. A horned owl came fluttering down, transforming as it touched the earth into Yaril. “You might as well wait here. They’re a couple breaths behind me.” Then she was a large gray wolf vanishing among the boulders.
Brann looked about, shrugged and settled herself on a convenient boulder, crossed her legs, rested her hands on her thighs, and cultivated a casual, relaxed attitude.
The Ular-drah came out of the dark, a lean hairy man walking with the wary lightness of a hunting cat. The rest of the drah were shadows behind him, lingering among the boulders. He stopped in front of her. “What you playing at?”
She got slowly to her feet, moving with a swaying dance lift, smiled at him and took a step toward him.
He looked uncertain but held his ground.
She reached toward him.
He caught her arm in a hard grip. “What you think you doin, woman?”
“Hunting a real man,” she crooned to him. She stroked her fingers along his hard sinewy arm, then flattened her hand out on his bare flesh and sucked the life out of him.
As he fell, she leaped back wrenching her arm free. In the boulders a man screamed: others came rushing at her, knives and swords in hand. She danced and dodged, felt a burn against her thigh as a sword sliced shallowly, slapped her hand against the first bit of bare flesh she could reach, pulled the life out of that one, More pain. She avoided some of the edges, took a knife in the side, touched and killed, touched and killed. Twin silver wolves slashed at legs, bringing some of the men down, blurring as steel flashed through them, wolves again as swiftly. Three men drained, two men down, crawling away. Touch and drain. Man on one leg lunging at her, knife searing into her side. Touch and drain. Touch and drain. All six dead.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, she jerked the knife free and tossed it away, the wound healing before the knife struck stone and went bounding off. She straightened, felt the tingle of the life filling her. The wolves changed. Yaril and Jaril stood before her, held out pale translucent hands. They had expended themselves recklessly in this chase and the drain of it had brought them dangerously close to quenching. She held out her hands, let the stolen life flow out of her into them, smiling with pleasure as the mountain’s children firmed up and lost their pallor.
When the feeding was complete she looked around at the scattered bodies, felt sick again. I’ve saved Slya knows how many lives by taking theirs… She shook her head, the sickness in her stomach undiminished. Shivering, she strode back to the stone circle, Yaril and Jaril trotting beside her, looking plumper and contented with the world. She pulled her hands back over her hair, darkening the shining silver to an equally shining black. She stepped back into the trousers, pulled the laces tight and tied them off, wriggled into the tunic and smoothed it down. Suddenly exhausted, she leaned against the stone wall. “I’m going to sleep like someone hit me over the head. Any chance we’ll get more visitors?”
“Not for a while,” Yaril said. “I didn’t see any more bands close enough to reach us before morning, but I’ll have another look to make sure.”
Brann nodded and stood watching as two large owls took heavily to the air. She watched them vanish into the darkness, hating them that moment for what they’d done to her, for what they made her do. A lifetime of draining men to feed them and Slya knew what that word lifetime meant when it applied to her. The flare-up died almost as quickly as it arose. There was no point in hating the children; they’d followed nature and need. And as for living with the consequences of that need, well, she’d learned a lot the past months about how malleable the human body and spirit was and how strong her own will-tolive was. Like the children, she’d do what she had to and try to minimize the damage to her soul. Like them too she was in the grip of the god, swept along by Slya’s will, struggling to maintain what control she could over her actions. She followed the high stone wall around to the gate and went in.
Taguiloa sat by the fire, breaking up chunks of coal with the hilt of his knife, throwing the bits in lazy arcs to land amid the flames. He looked up as she came into the light, then went back to what he was doing. She hesitated, then walked across to stand beside him.
“How many of them?” he said.
“Six. How did you know?”
“Figured. Got them all?”
“Yes.”
He tossed a handful of black bits at the fire, wiped his hand on the stone flagging. After a moment he said, “The three of you were looking washed out.”
“We wouldn’t hurt you or any of the others.”
“Hurt. I wonder what you mean by that.” He began chunking the hilt against another lump of coal, not looking at her. “What happens when we get to Durat?”
“I don’t know. How could I? My father, my brothers, my folk, I have to find them and break them loose. You knew that before you took up with me. I don’t want to have to choose between you… and the others… and my people, Taga, keep you clear if I can. I’ll leave you once we get to Durat, I’ll change the way I look.” She shrugged. “What more can I do? You knew it was a gamble when you agreed to bring me to Durat. You know what I was. You want to back, out now?”
“You could destroy me.”
“Yes.”
“Make it impossible for me to work where there are Tem uengs. “
“Yes.”
“You knew that in Silili.”
“Yes.”
“You know us now. We’re friends, if not friends, then colleagues. And still, if you have to, you’ll destroy us.”
“Yes.”
“All right. As long as it’s clear.” He smiled suddenly, a wry self-mocking twist of his lips. “You’re right. I gambled and I knew it. Your gold to finance a tour and a chance for the Emperor’s Sigil against the chance you’d get us chopped.” He touched his shoulder. “Tungjii’s tough on fainthearts. I go on. As for your leaving us, could cause more talk than if you stayed. You’re part of the troupe the Duratteese are waiting to see. Until we perform at the Emperor’s Court, if we ever do, you’re part of the troupe, remember that and be careful.”
She lift
ed her hands, looked at them, let them fall. “As careful as I’m let, Taga.”
5. Brann’s Ouest-Andurya Durat: The Rescue and Attendant Wonders
TAGUILOA STOPPED the wagon at the top of a stiff grade, sat looking down a winding road to the oasis of Andurya Durat. Dry brown barren mountains, ancient earth’s bones sucked clean of life and left to wither, two files of them blocking east and west winds, funnelling south the ice winds of the northern plains. Andurya Durat, doubly green and fecund when set against those mountains, steamy damp dark green, lush, born from the hot springs at the roots of Cynamacamal, the highest of the hills, its angular symmetry hidden by a belt of clouds, its cone-peak visible this day, splashed thick with blue-white snow.
Absently stroking and patting the neck of her fractious mount, Brann stared at the mountain, feeling immensely and irrationally cheered. It was a barebones replica of Tincreal; she felt the presence of Slya warm and comforting. She would win her people free, she didn’t know how yet, but that was only a detail.
Taguiloa watched her gaze at the mountain and wondered what she saw to make her smile like that, with a gentleness and quiet happiness he hadn’t seen in her before. He turned back to the road, frowned down at the dark blotch on the shores of the glittering lake, sucked in a breath and put his foot on the brake as he slapped the reins on the cob’s back, starting him down the long steep slope, wishing he could put a brake on Brann. Godalau grant she didn’t run wild through those Temuengs down there.
ANDURYA DURAT. Stuffed with Temuengs of all ranks. Glittering white marble meslaks like uneven teeth built on the shores of the largest lake, snuggling close to the monumental pile still unfinished that housed the Emperor and his servants, vari-sized compounds where the Meslar overlords lived and drew taxes from the Jamars in the south, the Basshar nomad chiefs in the north. Along the rivers and on the banks of the cluster of smaller lakes, there were Inns and Guesthouses that held Jamars from the south come up to seek an audience from the Emperor so they could boast of it to their neighbors, to seek legal judgments from the High Magistrate, come up to the capital for a thousand other reasons, and there were tent grounds and corrals that held the Basshars and their horse breeders down from the Grass with pampered pets from their tents to sell for Imperial gold, with herds of kounax for butchering, with leatherwork, with cloth woven from the long strong kounax hair, with yarn, rope, glues, carved bones and other products of the nomad life. Scattered among the Farms that fed the city were riding grounds for the horse and mallet games played with bloody kounax heads, a noisy brutal cherished reminder of the old days when the Durat Temuengs were nomad herders on the Sea of Grass, ambling behind their blatting herds, fighting little wars over water and wood. Times the old men among the Meslars spoke of with nostalgia, celebrating the ancient strengths of the People. Times even the most fervid of these celebrators hadn’t the slightest inclination to recreate for themselves.
There was another Andurya Durat tucked away behind massive walls, the Strangers’ Quarter, a vigorous vulgar swarm of non-Ternuengs. Shipmasters and merchants from the wind’s four quarters, drawn to the wealth of the ancient kingdom. Players of many sorts, hoping for an Imperial summons and the right to display the Imperial sigil. Artisans of all persuasions, many of them working under contract to build and maintain the gilded glory of the vast city outside the walls. Inn and tavern keepers, farmers (mostly Bina) in from the local farms with meat and produce, scribes, poets, painters, mages and priests, beggars, thieves, whores. And children, herds and hordes of children filling every crack and corner. Winding streets, crowded multi-storied tenements with shops on the ground floor and a maze of rooms above, taverns, godons, the market strip, all these existing in barely contained confusion and non-stop noise, shouts, quarrels, music clashing with music, raucous songs, barrowmen and women shouting their wares, yammer of gulls, bubbling coos from pigeons, twitters and snatches of song from sparrins and chevinks, harsh caws from assorted scavenger-birds, screams from falcons soaring high like headsmen’s double-bitted axes, sharp-edged and cleanly in their flight.
Taguiloa inserted himself and his company into this noisy multicolor polyglot community, just one more bit of brightness in a harlequinade as subtle and as blatant as frost-dyed leaves in a whirlwind, taking his troupe to the Inn where he and Gerontai stayed the time they came seeking to perform for the Emperor.
Papa Jao sat outside his inn on a throne of sorts raised higher than a Temueng’s head, his platform built of broken brick, rubble arranged at random, set in a mortar of his own making that hardened and darkened with the years so the stages of the throne’s rise were as clearly evident as the rings on a clamshell. On top of the pillar he’d built himself a chair with arms and a back and covered it with ancient leather pillows. It was his boast that he never forgot a face, something likely true because he wrapped his hands around the chair arms, leaned out and cried. “Taga. Come to make your fortune?”
“You know it, Papa Jao. How’s it going?”
“Sour and slim, Taga, sour and slim.” Bright black eyes moved with a never-dying curiosity over the wagon and the rest of the troupe. “Ah ah,” he chortled, “it’s you been tickling gold out of Jamar purses.” The chortle fruited into a wheezy laughter that shook every loose flap of flesh inside and outside his clothing. He was a pear-shaped little man with a pear-shaped head, heavy jowls, a fringe of, spiky white hair he drew back and tied in a tail as wild as a mountain pony’s brush after it’d been chased through a stand of stoneburrs. “How many rooms you want? Four? Yah, we got ‘em, second floor, good rooms, a silver a week each, right with you? Well, well, rumor say truth for once.” He leaned round, yelled, “Jassi! Jass-ssii, get your tail out here,” swung back. “You want stable room for the horses and a bit of the back court for your wagon? Silver a week for the horses, we provide the grain, three coppers for the wagon, oh all right, I throw in the court space.” Leaned round once more. “Angait! Anga-ait! Get over here and show saii Taguiloa where to go.”
THE NEXT DAY Taguiloa busied himself burrowing into the complicated and frustrating process of getting the troupe certified for performing in Durat, working his way up the world of clerks and functionaries, parting as frugally as possible with Brann’s coin, returning to the inn that night, exhausted, angry and triumphant, the permit, a square of stamped paper, waving from a fist sweeping in circles over his head. Harra laughing. Brann clapping. Negomas slapping a rhythm on a tabletop. Linjijan wandering in with the practice flute he was almost never without.
Taguiloa’s return metamorphosed into an impromptu performance for the patrons of Jao’s Inn, Taguiloa dancing counterpoint to Brann, Han-a whistling, Linjijan producing a breathy laughing sound from his flute, Negomas playing the tabletop and a pair of spoons-the whole ending in laughter and wine and weariness. Taguiloa went up the stairs relaxed, mind drifting, frustration dissipated; rubbing against his own kind he had rubbed away the stink of Temuengs and their stupid arrogance.
WHILE TAGUILOA was swimming against the stream of Temueng indifference and stupidity, while Negomas and Harm were out exploring the market, watching street conjurers and assessing the competition, Brann set out to do some exploring of her own, hunting without too much urgency for a niche where she could make changes without interested observers; she wanted no connection between Sammang-if he had come to Durat-and Taguiloa’s black-haired seer. The Strangers’ Quarter swarmed with people. Not a corner, a doorway, a rubble heap, a roof nook empty of children, beggars, women and men watching the ebb and flow in the street. She worked her way to the wharves, finding more space among the godons as long as she avoided the guards the merchants hired to keep the light-fingers of the Quarter away from their goods. Yaril found a broken plank in one of the scruffier godons, flowed inside and kicked it loose while Jaril-hawk flew in circles overhead watching for guards.
Brann crept inside, stripped off the skirt and coins, stripped the black from her hair, altered her face to the one Sammang knew. She straightene
d, smiling, feeling more herself than she had in weeks, as if somehow she’d taken off a cramping shell. A sound. She wheeled, hands reaching, straightened again. Jaril stood looking up at her.
stay.” he said.
“Why?”
“I’m tired.”
“I should hunt tonight?”
“Uh-huh.” He looked around at the dusty darkness. “Who knows what’s hived in here. You’ll want the skirt and things when you’re ready to go back to the inn. Be nice if they were still here.”
She frowned at him. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Don’t fuss, Bramble, I gave Yaril a bit extra, that’s all. In case something goes bad round you.” He blurred into a black malouch and curled up on the skirt, his chin on the pile of linked coins, his eyes closed, running away as he always did when she tried to probe his thoughts and feelings. As Yaril always did. She shook her head impatiently, ran her hands through her hair, dropped to her knees and crawled out into the street.
Yaril walking beside her, a frail fair girlchild again, Brann began searching along the wharves for Sammang or one of his crew. Ebullient Tik-rat who’d be whistling and jigging about, center of a noisy crowd. Hairy Jimm who’d tower over everyone by a head at least, a wild woolly head. Staro the Stub, wide as he was tall with big brown cow eyes that got even milder when he was pounding on someone who’d commented on his lack of inches. Turrope, lean and brown and silent, Tik-rat’s shadow. Leymas. Dereech. Rudar. Gaoez. Uasuf. Small brown men like a thousand others off a hundred ships, but she’d know them all the moment she saw them. And Sammang. There was a flutter at the base of her stomach when she thought of meeting Sammang again. She wove in and out of the godons, went up and down the piers jutting into the river, looking and looking, her face a mask, never stopping, fending off hands that groped at her, sucking enough life out of men who refused to back off to send them wandering away in a daze. From the west wall to the east she went, searching and finding none of those she searched for, stood with her hand on the east wall, tears prickling behind her eyes, a lump in her throat-until she convinced herself that Sammang would keep his men out of trouble while he waited for her and the best way to do that would be to keep them off the wharves. She rubbed at her forehead, trying to think. Where would he be? If he was here. How could he make himself visible but not conspicuous? Hunh. Phrased like that the answer was obvious. If he was here, he’d be sitting in a wharfside tavern waiting for her to walk in.