by Linda Nagata
He spoke softly, earnestly, knowing he had to convince her. “This talent that’s taken you . . . it’s not a blessing. This is not a way you can live. Phousita, you have to be careful. If the police discover what you can do, they’ll extradite you. If they can’t cleanse your body of the Maker, they’ll terminate you. There’s no mercy in this. The Commonwealth exists to stamp out the kind of talent you’ve become.”
“Liar!” Arif shouted. “You want her for yourself.”
“I’m not lying! I—” He broke off abruptly. What was he trying to do? He couldn’t help her. He’d had some nebulous intention of offering her refuge at Summer House, but that was absurd. Even if she were willing to leave Arif and the children, she could never get through police Gates carrying an illegal Maker. “I just want you to live, Phousita. Get rid of the Maker now, if you can. All the money in the world won’t stop the cops once they scent your trail.”
Arif stepped forward, shaking his outrageous head. “Back inside,” he growled. “You’re the fugitive. Back inside before the police find you.”
At nightfall the children started crowding into the shack, lying down upon the floor or under the shelf, giggling and whispering until Sumiati shushed them with a song.
Phousita came into the dark hut later, carrying a flashlight. Sandor watched her, his eyes half closed. She stepped carefully over the sleeping children; he didn’t know how she found room to place her feet.
Suddenly, he realized she was coming to him. He stiffened, caught between anxiety and glee. What could she want of him? Where was Arif? In a panic, he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep. A moment later, he felt the touch of her hand against his shoulder as she lay down, squeezing in between him and a young boy of eight or nine. Where was Arif? He could feel her breath on his cheek. It was scented. It reminded him of the perfume of some exotic flower. Against his best intentions, he looked.
She’d slipped a brown cloth over the flashlight, so only a little light came through. It was enough to set her eyes aglow with an aura he’d seen only once, in an old Dutch painting. His heart raced. He tried to remember if Arif had come into the shack with the children. He didn’t think so, but it was so hot. He couldn’t be sure. What did she want from him?
Phousita frowned, a puzzled expression on her face. Then she touched a finger to his neck, and immediately, his body began to cool. Fear left him, tension began to bleed out of every pore, and the shack no longer seemed so oppressive. Her frown turned to a smile. “Arif won’t be back for many hours,” she whispered.
Sandor nodded, his mind toying with the possibilities inherent in that news. Her face was all that he could see in the world, and he wanted nothing more. “What did you do to me?” he whispered.
“A spell to soothe, that’s all.”
He smiled, delighted at her skill. “I want to touch you.”
She seemed pleased. “Yes. Do.”
With his fingertips he touched her cheek, her lips. Her skin was smooth and dry. “Who are you?”
The smile left her face. She looked away, and he was instantly sorry he’d asked. “No one.”
“Phousita—” His hand was left hovering in midair.
“I’m only a servant of the sorcerer who rides me,” she whispered. She looked at him again, took his hand and placed it once more against her cheek. He drew closer to her, until their foreheads touched. “He brought you here, you know,” she said. “They were going to put you on the funeral truck, but he suggested they throw you in the river instead.”
Sandor scowled, confused. “How—?”
She showed him her palm again. “I have many tiny servants. They drift about the air like dust. They tell me of the world, and sometimes, they’ll do things for me.”
Sandor nodded his understanding. “They’re like behavioral viruses, then.”
“I don’t know, tuan. I’m just glad that they—” Her gaze fell; she took his hand, pressed her lips against his palm. “I’m so glad you’re still alive. I have never . . . I—I. . . .” She closed her eyes and sighed. “I enjoy what I sense in you. It makes me happy.” Her eyes popped open. “You’re happy too? With me?”
He almost quailed before the earnestness of her gaze. He had never been happier, he wanted to tell her that, but it was too ridiculous to say. Proper words eluded him, until suddenly he realized he didn’t need words. She smiled and nodded and they kissed. Her mouth was warm and inviting.
“Your face was in my dreams,” she muttered. “I had to find you.”
He kissed her cheeks and her neck. She was so tiny! He didn’t want to go too far. There were children all around. His hand found a way inside her breastcloth though, and he stroked her nipples, while her tongue performed delightful acts on his ear.
“Come back to Summer House with me,” he begged.
She drew back for a moment, her eyes aglow with pleasure. “I will dream of that.”
“No! I’ll make it real.” His own determination frightened him. He didn’t understand how his feelings for her could be so strong, so soon.
Sensing his hesitation, she pulled away. “I still don’t know who you are,” she said. “Why are you important to the sorcerer? When he first came to me, the only thing he could remember of all the world was your face. Why?”
Sandor shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Come to Summer House with me.” He started to kiss her again, but she turned her face away.
“Don’t,” she said, a cold chill of fear in her voice. “I was wrong. Arif is coming now. He despises you. Please go to sleep.”
Sandor bristled. “I’m not afraid of Arif.”
She touched her fingers to his lips. “Then be afraid, for me.” She flicked the flashlight off, then wriggled over so that her back was to him.
“Phousita!” he hissed. He touched her shoulder, “Phousita!” But she refused to answer. By her breathing, she seemed to be already asleep.
Sandor sighed and lay back against the wooden shelf. He didn’t find the transition to sleep so easy. He stared into the dark, listening to the sounds of the sleeping children, wondering what magic it would take to get Phousita out of the Spill. After a while, the cloth that served as a door rustled, and Arif came in. His face glowed an eerie yellow in the dark. He crouched by the door, staring into the hut as if he were trying to find someone. Sandor watched him until fatigue finally closed his eyes.
He awoke at dawn, Phousita still beside him. He stood slowly, cautiously, unsteady on his feet, and picked his way carefully to the door through a tangle of sleeping bodies. He must relieve himself in the street. His hand touched the soft, splintered wood of the door frame. He lifted the cloth door aside—and swayed in shock!
A mass of humanity filled the street. Intent. All eyes on him. Except for a meter-wide demi-circle around the door that they’d left respectfully void, he couldn’t see how another individual could squeeze into the alley. He shivered in the eerie silence and ducked back inside the hut.
Arif stood at his shoulder. “They’ve come,” he said quietly, as if he’d expected this.
“Why are they here?” Sandor whispered.
Arif stepped past him, to peer around the edge of the cloth. “To see the messiah. The fools. But I’ll make her their queen.”
Chapter
14
Kirstin’s ghost stood with Zeke Choy on the edge of a preternaturally silent crowd that packed a narrow alley deep in the Spill. She and Choy were both far taller than most of the people jammed into the alley, so she could see easily over their heads. Far down the crooked little street the morning sun blazed against the face of a long, dilapidated shed. Doorways opened into the narrow building at intervals of three or four meters, each of them—save one—crowded with spectators. It was the one curtained doorway upon which the crowd focused its attention.
“This is very bad,” Choy muttered. “Very bad.”
Kirstin had to agree. People were jammed in so tight, there was no way her officers could force a passag
e through the mob. If Phousita really was in that curtained hovel, as the rumors on the street claimed, they’d have to walk on the shoulders of her fans to get to her.
And what then? It wasn’t hard to imagine how the crowd would react if the Commonwealth Police tried to arrest their newest messiah.
Choy turned to look at her. Deprived of his visual input, the shifting crowd froze in Kirstin’s sight. She scowled at him in annoyance. But he took no notice. “Call your people off,” he said. “You can’t get to her now. You’re going to have to wait for a better time.”
“What’s on the other side of the shack?” Kirstin asked.
Allende, who was listening from his post on Castle, answered: “A narrow alley; about two meters wide. But it’s jammed too.”
“Bring up the dogs,” Kirstin told him. “We can’t do anything until these streets are cleared.”
“No!” Choy cried in outrage. He grabbed her wrist. She was a ghost, but she existed within his atrium. She was real to him. “Bring in the dogs and you’ll start a panic. Anything could happen. People will die.”
“I don’t think you understand how serious this contamination could be,” she told him calmly. “If we don’t contain it quickly, we’ll have to consider radical measures, even thermal sterilization. A lot more people will die then.”
Choy’s mouth dropped open. He gazed at her in open horror.
“Look at the crowd,” she told him. “I need your eyes to see what’s happening.”
Sandor crouched by the curtained door, squinting against the glare of the morning sun as he gazed out past the cloth at the crowd. The sight terrified him. He’d never seen such a gathering before—so many people, silent, intent. Slum-dwellers. Each one of them painfully clean and neat despite worn and faded clothing. Somehow they’d heard of Phousita, and overnight this little shack had become the focus of their desperate lives, a place to find salvation.
Could they believe that?
He knew they could. He could see it in their stance, in their determined eyes. And he felt tiny before them. He knew he could easily be trampled here. He turned to Arif, but the other had moved away. Sandor had no desire to be left at the door alone. He turned to follow.
The sun had found its way into the torrid little hut. In its light, Sandor could see Phousita sleeping peacefully on the wooden shelf, a slight smile on her face, while a little boy cuddled against her belly.
“Get up, country girl,” Arif growled, laying a heavy hand on her shoulder. “The day is here, and you have a thousand clients waiting to buy your talents.”
Her eyes opened blearily. She looked at Arif, a tiny scowl of confusion on her face. Then her gaze shifted to Sandor, her wide dark eyes aglow with concern. “Are you all right, tuan?”
“Sure,” Sandor said. He tried to smile, but instead he glanced nervously toward the door. “There’s a problem, though. Things have gotten out of hand, and—”
Arif turned and cuffed him. His head snapped back as a hot wave of pain sent colors dancing in his eyes. He stumbled half a step. Little hands pressed desperately against his thighs to prevent his falling.
“Don’t let this boy scare you,” Arif said to Phousita. “There are some people here to see you, that’s all.”
She scrambled to sit up, fear bright in her eyes. Sandor hated to see it there. He wanted to help her, hold her. Hide her perhaps? If only they could both vanish like ghosts. Reappear together on the other side of the sun, in some cultivated city where no one ever went hungry. Why were they stuck in this hellhole?
“Is it the police?” Phousita whispered.
Arif laughed at her: contemptuous, mocking laughter. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he seemed to say, while she hung her head in shame. And Sandor wanted to kill him. For the first time in his life, he felt hate strong enough to ignite the desire to kill. His hands flexed, fingers curved like claws. A growl rolled up from deep in his throat. He laid a rough hand on Arif’s shoulder; yanked him around.
Suddenly Sandor found himself without breath, on the ground, on his back. He could feel children wriggling desperately to get out from under him. His sternum was ablaze with pain. Arif had hit him. In retrospect he saw it: one sharp blow to the chest, no more effort than it took to shoo a fly and he’d gone down. How could the man move so fast?
And now? Already Arif had returned his attention to Phousita. Sandor knelt, racked with shame and self-derision while Arif took Phousita’s hand.
“The police wouldn’t dare touch you now, my magic princess.” Arif pulled her to her feet. “Come have a look. See how your reputation has spread.”
Sandor watched, befuddled, uncertain, wanting to interfere yet hesitating while Phousita found a path between the children. She tentatively lifted aside the entrance cloth. Immediately she drew back, uttering a tiny cry of alarm. “What have you done?” she whispered to Arif.
Arif flashed an ugly leer of triumph. “All I had to do was talk about you in the right places. You and your healing powers. A hundred other people did the same—everyone who saw what you did last night—it’s in the nature of people to talk. By tonight there’ll be no one in the Spill who hasn’t heard of you. You are a goddess.”
He reached out and ripped the cloth from the door frame. Morning fell across him like a benediction, yellow clown aglow in yellow light. Brave and absurd lord of nothing, wanting everything. He reached a hand toward Phousita.
A low murmur ran through the street, rapidly rising in volume. People surged forward. Hundreds of hands stretched toward her. The crowd was an entity, demanding her presence. Sandor could feel its need, its desperation like a brittle wavelength shuddering through his mind.
Phousita seemed stunned. But she took Arif’s hand.
The children were all awake now, jabbering like small birds in the dawn. They pressed around her, staring out the door, and suddenly Sandor couldn’t see her anymore. She’d disappeared amongst the kids and once again he realized how truly tiny she was. He scrambled after her, trampling toes and earning curses until he was at her shoulder. He swept up her free hand in his. “Phousita?”
She turned to him, her eyes glittering with excitement. “Come,” she said. “You and Arif must shelter me.”
He swallowed against the pressure of fear in his throat. He didn’t want to go into the crowd. But he would not tell her no.
He pressed Phousita’s arm under his and together the three of them stepped forward.
Immediately the crowd flowed around them, cutting them off from the shack. Bodies pressed against him. Intent, frightened faces jostling on all sides. The air was thick with a stench of sweat and perfume and incense. Someone shoved him. He stumbled against Phousita, struggling to keep his feet. His heart was racing, aquiver with a contagious panic that swept through the mob. And he could see no way out of this. No way at all.
Then suddenly everything changed. The morning light seemed less stark. The faces that whirled around him began to soften. The press of the crowd eased, and smiles flashed from face to face. Sandor felt his own heartbeat slow. He drew a deep breath, eager to pull in more of the magic that Phousita had loosed upon the air.
He could see the wave of her influence traveling outward in a demicircle through the street, a spirit of peace, sweeping through the mob. People relaxed. They no longer shoved against each other. They stood quietly, eyes bright with expectation, all anxiety gone.
Those nearest still reached for her. Countless fingers stroked her face and hair, the folds of her sarong, the dark skin of her arms, the soft curve of her hands. Fingers like the close press of vegetation, touching and sweeping past, giving way as she slowly moved through the crowd.
As she passed, joy blossomed on face after face. Sandor could feel his own mouth turned in a giddy grin. He didn’t know what Phousita was doing, if she really was casting healing spells or only charming this audience. He didn’t care. This moment seemed to outweigh his whole life. He was beyond questioning; beyond fear. He could have continued in this state
forever.
Kirstin’s ghost hovered on the edge of the crowd, watching as Phousita emerged from the shack, escorted on one side by the clown-faced goon she’d seen the day before, and on the other by a tall blond youth.
Sandor Jiang-Tibayan! Kirstin realized with a start.
But he was supposed to be dead, the victim of an overzealous municipal police officer. And besides, Nikko had sworn Sandor was not involved.
Yet here he was.
She felt the rush of a strong emotion, something fierce, between fury and delight. Nikko had lied to her again. He’d lied to protect his brother. But to no purpose. Because here was Sandor Jiang-Tibayan, exposed in guilt that would follow him all the way back to Summer House.
Allende called. “The dogs are coming in on a truck. Twenty of them. They should be in the vicinity within three minutes.”
Kirstin beckoned to Zeke Choy. He stood transfixed by the sight of Phousita. “Look how she controls the crowd,” he said in awe. “How can she do that? How?”
“Come,” Kirstin said. “The dogs will be here soon. We need to get out of the street.”
“No.”
She glared at him, annoyed. Then she shrugged. What did she need with Choy now? She shunted her electronic pattern into one of the approaching dogs . . .
. . . and trotted beside the animal as it left the truck and entered the streets. Its great head swung from side to side, scanning its surroundings. The few people still in sight fled at its approach.
It passed an intersection. Kirstin caught a strong whiff of gunpowder. The dog stopped. It lifted its head, its nostrils delicately combing the air.
A truck approached from the cross street. Olive-drab, and painted with the raptor insignia of the local government. The dog stood in the vehicle’s path. The truck roared toward the animal. For a moment, Kirstin thought it would refuse to stop. But at the last second, the driver slammed on the brakes. It squealed to a halt just a meter from the beast.