by Clayton, Jo;
“Does this girl know the kind of man you are, bastard?” Maissa wrinkled her nose.
“Last resort only, love. I like the kid.”
Maissa glanced back at the ship. “What’s that she’s carrying?”
“Her child.”
“Yours?” Maissa scowled.
“Nope. Told you, she’s no playmate of mine.”
“Then you must be slipping.”
“No, my dear one. Fool around with her and you end up fried.”
“Well, well, never thought I’d see the day. All right. She comes too. With the kid. But this is one hell of a favor, Miks. You’re going to owe your skin. And I’ll be sure to collect.” She grinned maliciously at him, her amber eyes dancing with triumph.
“My skin is yours.”
“You better get your little friend. She looks damned uncomfortable out there.”
Stavver glanced over his shoulder at Aleytys, who was picking her way slowly and carefully across the lava, wincing as her tender feet touched the hot surface. He watched her a minute, then sneaked a look at the boiling cloud cover.
“You’re nervous as a flea on Baltis. Expecting company …? Oh, ho, I see. The hounds.”
“Right.” He swung around. “Wait a second till I fetch her and then we get out of here fast.”
“Got you.”
As Stavver ran toward Aleytys, a gray pebble-shaped object broke through the layer of steam and began settling toward the ground. He scooped up Aleytys and tossed her over his shoulder, Sharl howling as his sling slammed back and forth. He darted across the lava, caught hold of Maissa’s hand, and popped through the barrier. The tiny woman swarmed up the ladder and vanished inside. Aleytys followed more clumsily, hampered by sore feet and the babysling. With Stavver hovering impatiently behind her, she stumbled into the lock.
As Stavver pushed Aleytys into the bridge, Maissa flicked a switch and the viewscreen sprang to life. The gray pebble-shape hovered beside the shield. Finger tapping the glass, the tiny woman stared into the screen. After a minute, she glanced up and back at Stavver. “I guess you were telling the truth.” She sounded somewhat surprised. “That’s RMoahl, all right.”
“Anything you could do?” He looked over her shoulder, frowning at the sight of the ship.
“You wasted a lot of time,” she said absently, reaching toward the control surface. With a delicate forefinger she touched a blank glassy square. Its pale pearly glow strengthened a trifle. A feeling of stirring life flowed up his legs, unconscious response to a subtangible vibration.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Let them think we’ll surrender. I expect they’ll be on the codar in another minute. Surprise is the only way we’ll get free.”
“It’s hard to fool those spiders.”
“Hmm.” She glanced back at him, suspicion flickering in her eyes. “I thought you said you lost the diadem. Why’re they still on your tail?”
Stavver shrugged. “Want to search me?”
“Umm. No time now. But you better have a nice story ready for me, love.”
The dark leather face of the RMoahl Two suddenly filled the screen. Maissa hastily waved Stavver out of the range of the viewscreen. She tapped another square. “Yes?”
“Ship.” The big voice boomed majestically into the little control room. Maissa hastily lowered the noise level.
“Acknowledge. Why do you block us?” She spoke coolly, her face a bland mask.
“Drop your shields.”
“I’ve done you no harm. Why hassle me?”
“Drop your screen.”
“Very well, but I protest. I’ve done nothing to you.”
Maissa touched a third square. “My shields are down.”
“Acknowledge.” The big coarse face blinked off the screen.
She swiveled to face Stavver. “On the floor,” she whispered tensely. “Flat out. Miks, tell her. We’ll be moving fast and I imagine you don’t want her smashed flat.” Behind her, the screen showed the big gray ship settling leaf-light onto the black rock.
“Open the hatches.” The face was back. “Send out the thief and the wearer of the diadem.”
“Look. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The woman and the man.” Although the face showed no change of expression, the basso voice boomed impatiently.
Maissa shrugged and reached toward the ranked series of glassy activators. With a quick ripple of her fingers, she wove a brief pattern across the panel. In the viewscreen, the earth seemed sucked away from beneath them. In an instant, Jaydugar was a mottled ball spinning in blackness. Concentrating fiercely, Maissa danced her fingers over the panel, trailing behind them fleeting flickers of light.
Finally she leaned back and ran her eyes across the lights and readout dials. Then she stood up and hitched a hip on the panel’s edge. “Well,” she said calmly. “We made it.”
Stavver sat up. Rocking his fingers on his bony knee, he raised his eyebrows. “The hound?”
“We busted loose and we’ll stay loose.”
“You’re a wonder, my sweet. How?”
“I had something a Vryhh male wanted. He fixed the ship for me.” She rubbed a thin finger over her pointed chin. “Just a little warning, Miks ol’ buddy. You try to take this ship away from me and you’ll get the nastiest surprises.”
“Why, Maissa, the thought never entered my mind.” He grinned at her.
“Now, my lying friend. So you lost the diadem. Ha! You get your story ready. And make it good.”
Aleytys sat watching them, her eyes bright with curiosity. “He’s telling the truth,” she said calmly. “He lost it and I got it. Not that I want it.” She stood up and walked over to the control panel, touching the cool surface of the screen with exploring fingers. “Ugly as a hairy sept.” She swung around to face them. “As Stavver will tell you, the diadem and I are intimately attached.”
Maissa stared at her, surprised. “Since when does a barbarian speak the interlingue? Stavver teach you?”
Stavver put an arm around Aleytys’s shoulders, avoiding the babysling by stepping to her left side. “I told you she was talented, Maissa. I certainly taught her nothing.”
“And she’s got the diadem? No wonder you wanted to bring her along.” She eyed Aleytys speculatively. “Where is it?”
Aleytys shuddered. “Here.” She tapped her temple with a forefinger, evoking a ghost chime that vibrated faintly in the tension of the bridge.
Hugging Aleytys against him, Stavver said, “You’re tired and hungry, Leyta. So am I. And I suppose you want a bath.”
She chuckled. “Ahai, you know it.”
Maissa spoke sharply. “Before you two get involved with your stomachs, where do you want me to send this ship?”
Stavver rubbed his finger across his scraggly moustache. “I think well leave that up to you. I want to ransom my skin, my sweet. After that …” He shrugged.
“Then we head for Larmachos.”
“Huh. If that’s your scheme, my love, you’ve got holes in your head.”
“Hear it first before you judge.”
“I will. Be sure of that.” He turned to Aleytys. “Come with me. While Maissa’s setting course, I’ll show you how to get around.” Glancing at the silent woman, he said, “Have you got something she can wear?” He flipped his free hand along his body. “And me?”
“You know where,” Maissa said briefly. “When you’ve got her settled, come back here. We’ve got talking to do.”
Feeling lost in this place where she had few clues to tell her the unwritten rules of conduct, Aleytys leaned around Stavver’s propelling arm. “Could I come back when you’ve done your talking?” She looked wistfully at the viewscreen with the black of space in it and a dusting of stars. “I’d like to watch the stars pass.”
Maissa shrugged. “Don’t touch anything.”
“I thank you.” She smiled and let Stavver lead her out of the room.
Trailing brief rainbows,
the stars spun in an endless dance across the darkness. Aleytys watched with a hunger grown rapidly insatiable, a desire to know.… She bent her head over her sleeping baby, then held up a hand and watched the polychromatic glitter flash palely on her skin. I’m here, she thought. I’m really here. And it’s just the beginning.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Diadem Saga
Chapter I
“Still raining?” Stavver ducked into the lock and knelt beside her, eyes on the rain which fell in a depressing, grey curtain.
Aleytys brushed her hands over her black-dyed hair, breaking up the clinging drops of mist that had drifted in from the rain, then glanced briefly at the moisture beaded on her forearms. “Not a break yet.”
“Maissa will be spitting like a cat. She hates getting wet.”
“I can’t get the feel of her.” She waited for a response. “Sometimes she actually frightens me.” More silence. “So much anger …” Still no answer. Flicking a hand upwards, she said, “What about up there?”
“A Karkesh skimmer went by a minute ago. Still no sign they know we’re here.” He relaxed against the far side of the lock and smiled at her. “You don’t look like yourself.”
Aleytys glanced down at her altered body. Her breasts were bare, except for pale blue tattoos of butterflies fluttering in a line to her shoulders. A wide coarsely woven batik, printed in pale blue, wound twice around her hips and pinned with a silver wire brooch. Her skin was darkened to a warm russet. “Each time I look in a mirror I get a shock.” She ran her eyes over him, assessing his changes as well: white hair dyed black, pale blue eyes now deep brown, skin dyed darker than her own, finally, the bold blue lines of tattooing on face, arms, and shoulders. “Each time I look at you …” She chuckled. “I woke up last night and nearly had a fit when I saw the stranger in my bed.” She yawned and stretched. “What about you, Miks?”
“Standard tactic in my profession, Leyta.”
“Well I haven’t your vast experience with all this changing about. This is only the third world I’ve seen and Maissa wouldn’t let me off ship to see more than a snatch of the place where we picked up Kale.”
He wrapped his fingers around her ankle and waggled her foot back and forth, ignoring her protests. “Poor, innocent, little mountain girl.” He chuckled. “I’ve seen you in action.”
“That wasn’t me, idiot. Let go.” She pulled her foot free and feinted a kick at him. “You of all people—you should remember the diadem. You stole it.” She touched her head and made a face at him when the faint chime sang through the hiss of the downpour outside. “It’s let me alone since we left Jaydugar, thank the Madar.”
The grin on his face dissolved. He got onto his knees and leaned across her to stare at the ceaseless, dreary rain. “Damn this weather. We’ve got things to do.”
Aleytys watched him settle back, arms circling his knees, face pulled into a brooding frown. The pervading, dull hiss of the falling water pounded on the sensitivity which made him a brilliant thief and was also his major flaw. A quiet tension quivered in the beaded air while she waited silently for the return of the sardonic mask he used to hide this weakness from the world’s malevolent eyes. She studied him, sensing a peculiar unease; curious because she could discover nothing in their present circumstances to justify his anxiety. Feeling about to find what was troubling him, she voiced a thought that lay like a wrinkle under the surface.
“Are we really supposed to fool anyone into thinking we’re natives of this soggy …?” She shrugged and jerked a thumb out the lock where the rain had begun to thin. Ghost images of several trees were developing in the greyness.
Stavver blinked slowly and lifted his head, the somber frown flowing into blandness. “Maissa explained all that.”
“I still don’t believe we’d convince a blind baby we belong.”
Stroking the darkened skin beside the jutting beak of his nose, Stavver said patiently, “People see what they expect. Would the nomads on Jaydugar know Maissa wasn’t a caravanner?”
Aleytys rubbed her shoulders against the ridged metal of the ship, frowning thoughtfully. “Isn’t this different? You said there aren’t as many physical types on this world as we had at home.”
“You’re the key, Leyta. If they accept you as genuine—and why shouldn’t they, aren’t you a genuine healer?—you cover any slips we make. You’re to be gikena, healer and worker of small miracles. We’re merely humble nonentities attached to your service.” He dipped his head in a servile bow. “Who would look twice at us?”
“It only takes one. The right one.”
“So we’re all from across the sea. Strangers. That should explain any oddities. If the natives accept us, the Karkiskya certainly will. From what Kale told us, his people have very little contact with them.” He grinned at her. “Kale says you’ve got the language down better than any of us.”
Aleytys heard the dry note in his voice and turned her face away. “One of my talents.”
Outside, the rain was only a trickle of wetness, the shimmering, orange circle of the sun visible through the thinning clouds as it hesitated just above the western horizon. Swinging around so her legs hung out the lock, she gazed thoughtfully at the dark, steaming earth with its thin patches of short, prickly grass, debating whether to say what she had to say or leave it till Maissa returned. She walked her fingertips over the heavy, batik material, drawing a measure of reassurance from the familiar feel of herself. “Maissa puzzles me,” she said slowly.
Stavver’s long back was curved into a section of lock-side, while his thin, wiry legs stretched out over the black, rubberoid flooring. He ran lazy eyes over her body, the smiling mask back on his face again. “No doubt.”
“My skin crawls when she’s around you or Kale.” She waited for an answer. When he stared past her out the lock, saying nothing, she gave an impatient exclamation. “Dammit, Miks, this isn’t idle chatting.”
“She doesn’t like men,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t want to talk about her, Leyta.”
“I guessed that,” she said dryly. “All men?”
“Yes.”
“And you said she hates getting wet?”
“Yes.”
“Mmmhh.” Aleytys slicked the mist off her knees and stared thoughtfully at the rain pools below. Silence spread through the lock, vibrating tensely against the irregular pattering of the breaking rain. The warm, humid air made their lungs labor and their nerves tighten but neither made a gesture toward the more temperate atmosphere of the ship. The shadows of the grey half-light deepened their facial lines and occluded their eyes, obscuring expression and giving a somber harshness to both faces.
“She’s due back about sundown. How long is that from now?”
“The ’phemer lists the day length as nineteen hours. That leaves her about two to play with.”
“She went to get caravans with horses. She didn’t say how she planned to acquire them. Do you know, Miks?”
“What difference does it make?” His mouth tightened repressively. “Let’s not discuss it, Leyta.”
She glanced around at him, eyes moving over his curved shoulders and forbidding face. “Why not?”
“You won’t like the answer.”
Aleytys reached back and set her hand on his leg, feeling the hardness of the long, wiry muscles in his calf. “She’s a killer?”
He nodded. “It’s how she gets her kicks.”
“You called her to us.”
“You remember how close we came to getting snatched by the Rmoahl Hounds? She was the only one I could reach that day.”
“I’m not blaming you, Miks. But I also have to remember the price we pay for her help. Stealing the treasures of the Karkiskya for her. I don’t like being a part of slaughtering the innocent.”
“The Karkiskya are far from innocent.” The next words came out slowly, painfully. “Keep clear of Maissa. Don’t question what she does; do what she says, don’t get underfoot, and you’ll stay alive.�
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“If she’s so dangerous—”
“Leyta, believe me, Maissa in a fury is capable of anything.”
“Am I so helpless? Even without the diadem I crossed a world alone and pregnant.”
“Aleytys, my Lee, my innocent, healthy-souled mountain girl—you’ll never understand Maissa. Never. To know her you’d have to walk in her shoes, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” He sighed and moved to sit beside her, his long legs dangling out the lock. “She was born on Iblis. Her mother was a two-obol whore on Star Street in Shaol. Her father—who knows?” He stared gloomily at his bare feet. “She was raised to the infant trade. Knifed her mother when she was seven and took to the streets.”
“Knifed her mother?” Aleytys felt a sick horror clutch at her stomach.
“Her mother. The woman who rented her child to anybody who’d give her the price of a drink. Maissa was two years old the first time.”
“Madar.” Aleytys shut her eyes, a sour taste in her mouth. “Two years old.”
Stavver shifted slightly, his skin squeaking across the metal. “Right. Since then—well, she’s survived.”
“You’re right, Miks. I’ll never empathize with the result of that life. Madar! I won’t try.” She shuddered.
“So walk lightly around Maissa until this game is over.”
“Isn’t there some way to help her?”
Stavver made a brief, impatient sound. “She doesn’t want help. Let it lie, Aleytys. Don’t interfere in what’s none of your business.”
Aleytys wrenched her thoughts from the sickening images in her mind. “Well,” she said briskly. “All that being true, then you’d better know this right away. If this world doesn’t welcome me, you can forget about my being gikena.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Aleytys smiled tightly and watched her toes wiggle. “Exactly what I said, Miks. If the natives don’t accept me, they can make it impossible for me to do any of my ‘tricks.’ Better put the ladder down so I can ask them to let me play the game.” She glanced up at the dark grey blanket of clouds. “At least the rain has stopped for a while.”