by Clayton, Jo;
She thrust her hand in and her fingers closed on a smooth curved form. Warmth leaped up her arms. Her hand came out. Came up. She couldn’t open her fingers. The films of color danced around her, painted the streamers of fog crawling through the open window. I threw it in the bay, she thought. I heard it splash. I felt it fly out of my fingers. I heard it splash.…
come come come come sister lover sister no more trouble no more pain we love and laugh and live in butter-rich sunlight there is no anger no hate no oppression here there is no anguish here there is no hurting we live in beauty no hunger no want no abandoned children we have as gift everything everything we want we need don’t fight us come all you have to do is will it want it come you can come sunlight and beauty sunlight and joy come come sister lover (They were all around her, glorious wraiths twittering alluringly, antennas flicking encouragement, affection, love, promising all those things her soul longed for.) come sister (they whispered) come lover
The whistle from the boiling water reached her, the small shrill sound cutting through the spell the fliers had woven. She swung around, deliberately bashing her fist into the wall, the sudden pain breaking her loose from the Eye’s hold. She ripped a piece off the ruined cafta and tied the crystal in it, then hooked the rag over the handle of the wardrobe door, breathing a sigh of relief as she walked across to make her cha.
At the House of Records, Gleia watched Temokeuu walk toward the main entrance. He looked over his shoulder at her, the sharp angles of his narrow face throwing off glints of red and blue from the two suns, then he vanished through the door she had no right to enter. She sighed and pushed through the bonder’s gate.
In the salla, body disciplined to the proper stance of humble submission, she stopped in front of the clerk’s desk and waited for him to notice her.
“What you want, bonder? Be sure you don’t waste my time.” His fat arrogant face was creased in a frown meant to emphasize his importance. He fiddled impatiently with some papers piled in front of him.
“By Thrim and Orik, the bonder’s law,” she said meekly. Fishing in her pocket, she pulled out a silver obol, laying it on the desk in front of him. “Thrim and Orik.” She placed two more oboli on top of the first. “I come to buy my bond.”
He grunted as he swept the coins off the desk. “Straighten up, bonder. Let me see your mark.”
She lifted her head.
“Closer. You think I can read the sign across the room?”
She leaned across the desk. He touched the brand. “Thief. That’s fifty oboli.” His hand slid down her neck and moved inside the cafta, stroking the soft skin there as he moved his pale tongue over dry lips. “And an investigation to see if you’ve reformed. There’s a lot of work in voiding a bond.” He took a fold of her flesh between his fingers and pinched. She closed her eyes against the sudden pain. “Unless you can convince me how reformed you are.”
Gleia stiffened. She hadn’t planned on paying that sort of bribe. If she refused him, he’d set a thousand niggling obstacles in her way until she exhausted her money and her strength and sank beaten back into the slow death of her bondage. For the moment anger paralyzed her, slime trying to make himself big, then she forced the anger and the sickness down. If that was the price, it was no big thing. No big thing, she told herself. Not when set against the very big thing she wanted, the right to spit in the face of slime like this and walk away. She thought of Abbrah. No big deal. She leaned into the fat clerk’s hand, smiling at him.
He wobbled his pudgy body around to the gate and swung it open. “Interrogation room this way.” When she’d moved through the gate, he shoved her along the hall and pushed her into a small bare room with a lumpy couch, a soiled chair, a washstand with a basin and cracked ewer on it. Gleia pulled off her cafta and lay on the couch waiting for him.
The Kadiff was sitting behind his high bench looking bored. He tapped long slim fingers on the desk top as the clerk led Gleia in. “What’s this?”
“Bond buyer, noble Kadiff.”
“Umph. Bring her here.”
Gleia came to the desk, suppressing her annoyance at the servile behavior expected of her. She glanced quickly and secretly around as she bent her body into a low bow. Temokeuu came quickly from the shadows and stood beside her. The Kadiff raised his eyebrows and looked a trifle more interested.
“Noble and honored Kadiff, may I offer a small evidence of my appreciation for your Honor’s condescending to disturb your magnificent thoughts to hear my small and unimportant petition?” She reached back and touched Temokeuu’s arm, inviting him to share her game. His fingers touched hers, nipped one lightly, letting her know he was appreciating her performance. Her irritation faded in the pleasure she felt at this sharing.
The Kadiff inclined his head and she came closer, feigning a shy timidity, inwardly contemptuous of the man for swallowing her mockery, he was no better than that nothing clerk grinding on her body dreaming himself a rutting male taking his pleasure though what pleasure he could get out of that business she certainly couldn’t see. After a hasty calculation she placed six gold pentoboli on the table in front of him and backed away.
He tucked the coins into one of his sleeves. “You have investigated her reform?” he asked the clerk, his words perfunctory, making it obvious he was bored with the whole thing and didn’t care what the man said.
“Yes, noble Kadiff.”
The Kadiff sniffed. “No doubt. Have you sent for the bond holder?”
“Yes, noble Kadiff. The caftamaker Habbiba. The wardman was sent and should be here momentarily.”
“While we’re waiting you’d better send for the brander. If we have to cancel the bond, he should be here.”
“It will be done, noble Kadiff.” The clerk scurried out, looking pale at having forgotten this.
The Kadiff tapped the end of his long nose with a neatly polished nail. “It’s unusual to see one of the seafolk in this place.” He looked around disdainfully. “Let alone one of your status, ambassador.”
Gleia fought to keep her face a mask. A little influence, he said?
Temokeuu bowed his head with a delicately exaggerated solemnity, that delighted Gleia. “I owe blood debt to this person, noble sir, and would stand surety for her.”
The Kadiff folded his hands. His attitude altered subtly. He sat straighter, looked more interested and considerably more respectful. “Fifty oboli for the bond. You need ten more for the brander.”
“I have it, noble Kadiff.” She kept her eyes on her feet.
“A lot of money. You’re fortunate to have a sponsor, young woman.”
Temokeuu bowed slightly. “The honor would have been mine, save that my daughter has earned the money to redeem herself.”
“I didn’t know sewing girls made such pay.”
“If you please, illustrious Kadiff, my designs have received some praise and brought much money into the pockets of Habbiba my bond mistress and she has seen fit to share some of the bounty with me,” Gleia murmured.
“Share!” Habbiba came storming into the room, the hapless wardman trailing behind. “The creature wouldn’t work without extra pay. Why am I dragged out of my house? For this?” She jabbed a shaking finger at Gleia, then her hands went flying, touching her earrings, dabbing at her lips, brushing down over her chest. That and her angry lack of respect provoked the Kadiff into a scowl of petulant displeasure.
“Be quiet, woman.” He glared at the wardman who hastily came up behind the angry Habbiba. “You are here,” he went on, “as required by law to witness the canceling of a bond.”
“What!” Forgetting where she was, Habbiba shrieked and lunged at Gleia, small hands curved into claws. The wardman caught her and got a scratched face for his pains. He wrestled her back, holding her until the Kadiff’s astonished roar broke through her rage, putting her on notice that she was in danger of a massive fine. The thought of losing money quieted her fast. “I most humbly beg your pardon, noble Kadiff,” she shrilled, falling onto
her knees in a position of submission. “It was only my anger at the ingratitude of this girl that made me forget myself. I gave her a home and a trade and paid her well, better than she deserved, and now she wishes to leave me when the Maleeka herself has asked for her to work the cafta her daughter will wear on her nameday.”
Gleia saw the Kadiff lean back, his eyes shifting uneasily between them. “May a lowly one have permission to speak, magnificent Kadiff?” she asked.
“Granted.” His eyes moved from the fuming Habbiba to the stern face of Temokeuu. Like black bugs they oscillated back and forth as he tried to calculate where his best interest lay.
“The design is completed,” Gleia said. She spoke slowly, clearly. “The design is the important thing. There are sewing girls with skills greater than mine to execute the work.”
Driven—as far as she could see—by his distaste for Habbiba and his instinct to bow before the power Temokeuu represented, the Kadiff scowled at Habbiba, willing her to confirm what Gleia said. “Is that true?”
Habbiba glared furiously at Gleia but didn’t quite dare lie. “It’s true,” she muttered.
“What?”
“It’s true.”
The Kadiff sighed with relief. “That answers your objection, woman. And you, bonder, I hereby cancel your bond. The fifty oboli, if you please.”
Gleia stood in front of the wardrobe. Deliberately she unhooked the rag bundle and took it to the bed. She sat holding the bundle in her lap. “Well.”
The crystal moved inside the cloth like something alive.
Rubbing the skin beside her new brand, Gleia contemplated the bundle. “Looks like I’ve got several ways I can go from there.” She poked at the cloth, rolling the hidden Eye about. “I can stay here and work for Habbiba. If she gets bitchy I can quit any time and go with a competitor.” She wrinkled her nose and stared at the window without seeing it. “And I’ll know what every day will be like the rest of my life. Every day.” She shivered. “Or I could head south.” She poked at the crystal some more, scowled at the straggles of thread unraveling from the edges. “A bit too hairy, I think. Look what happened to me in Carhenas and this is a place I know.”
She scratched the end of her nose, feeling warmth stroking down into her thighs from the stone. “I know what you want. Mmm. I could go with Temokeuu and Tetaki. That’s a leap in the dark too, but at least I’d have friends.” She smiled. “I have some influence. Hah! Ambassador. My friend, oh my friend.”
Carefully, moving with slow deliberation, she untied the knots in the rag and touched the Ranga Eye. The warmth spread up through her body and once again she saw the fliers. The male spun in ecstatic spirals and the others danced their jubilation. She could feel them drawing her out of her body. She wanted to let go. She wanted desperately to let go, to fly on glorious wings, free and joyous. So easy, it would be so easy just to go sailing away from all the pain and misery of her life here. Why not? Why not just go, let them take her to fly in joy under a butter-yellow sun.
“No.” She jabbed her thumb into the burn on her face, using the pain to wrench herself from the Eye’s influence. “No. You promise too much,” she muttered. She folded the rag about the Eye, knotting the ends to make a neat bundle of it. Levering herself onto her feet, she took the bundle to the wardrobe, opened the door and tossed the rag with the Ranga Eye into the back corner. “No. You’re too much like a trap. How could I trust you?” She shook her head. “I’m free now. I don’t owe anybody anything and I won’t stick my head into any trap.”
Patting her pocket to make sure her money was safe, she went down the stairs for the last time, nodded pleasantly to Miggela as the squat figure came out of her nest. No reason to bother about the old rat any more. Gleia laughed to herself as she remembered dreams of telling her landlady just what she thought of her. But it wasn’t worth the wasted energy.
She stepped into the cruelly bright afternoon, pulling the cafta’s hood up over her head. Without hesitation she turned into the alley, leaving behind with few regrets the drab reality of her past and the glittering dreams of the crystal. Temokeuu was waiting, would wait until sundown for her answer. She smiled and began to run past the stinking hovels.
SECOND AND THIRD SUMMERS
Interlude Among the Shaborn
In the late spring a mammal came among the seaborn on Cern Myamar, walking quietly behind Temokeuu the Shipmaster. At Midsummer Eve the conches were blown to announce her formal adoption into Temokeuu’s clan, though there were some who opposed this. After the horning, Jaydugar swung twice more around the double sun while Gleia lived those 2100 days as Temokeuu’s daughter, enduring for Temokeuu’s sake the scandal and hostility around her until her quiet ways won a place for her and she found a few friends.
2100 days. The snow came and retreated twice. On the mainland, the tribes drove their armor-plated yd’rwe in great loops across the two thousand stadia of grassland of the Great Green and back again to their winter places in valleys heated by scattered hotsprings, fighting their magic wars on both arcs, ceasing only at the tradefair where Caravanners came to buy and sell. And the Caravanners made their spring and summer rounds twice, rumbling along their trade roads and in the mountain valleys where the parsi farming clans twice harvested their crops and three times celebrated Thawsend. As did the other divers members of humankind and otherkind scattered about the world. In little pockets everywhere the descendants of a thousand ships that came crashing down on the shiptrap world struggled with legend and nature back to a nine-tenths-forgotten technology.
2100 days of peace, of study, of swimming and laughing and teasing and testing. Most of all 2100 days of healing. Gleia had two brand scars on her face and far more than that inside. Temokeuu’s salve healed the new brand, his affection and care and Tetaki’s teasing did more than the passing of the years to heal those old wounds deep inside her.
But as the third thaw came and spring brought warmth and growth to the land, Gleia began to grow restless.
The spring that took the mammal to Myamar brought a ship to circle Jaydugar, brought a man back to a world he’d left behind long ago and thought never to see again and set him on a quest for an ancient evil.
THE FOURTH SUMMER’S TALE
A Thirst for Broken Water
Jevati touched the honor medals dangling over her flat chest. “I think he’ll die today.”
“I didn’t.…” The sail began luffing the moment Gleia pulled her eyes off the telltales. Her mouth clamped shut. The breeze was maddeningly unreliable, while her patience seemed to have deserted her with the winter ice. A twitch of the tiller filled the white triangle belly-taut again.
Behind them Horli’s giant bulge was a velvet crimson half-circle above the jagged line of Cern Myamar’s central ridge. She risked a glance at her friend. Jevati stirred, Horli’s light sliding like bloody water over the delicate angles of her face. “Keep on this tack much longer and we’ll be in the Dubur’s Teeth,” she said.
Gleia tightened her fingers on the tiller bar, suppressing her irritation, uncomfortably aware that she was overreacting to nearly everything these days. “Watch your head.” The boom came sliding across in a smoothly controlled jibe, skimming just above the seaborn’s tight blue curls. The sail filled again and the Dragonfish began gliding along the port tack.
“Nice.” Jevati straightened. “For a mammal.”
“Fish.” After a minute, Gleia said. “You look better.”
Jevati tugged at the son-honor. “It was a hard birth.” Her hand fell into her lap, fingers pleating her fishskin swimtrunks. “It’ll be a long time before I go through that again. I’m sorry the old man’s dying, but I don’t want another of his wigglers.” She lifted her head and let the breeze blow drops of water across her face.
Gleia frowned at the fluttering telltales, more worried than she cared to admit by her friend’s frailty. “You’re not much more than a wiggler yourself. If you don’t marry again, what are you going to do?”
&nb
sp; “Wiggler!” Jevati slapped at the rail in disgust, then shook her head. “I don’t know. Depends.” Her fingers moved back and forth along the rail. “I have to survive the Widowjourney before I make plans.”
The red sun was giving the air a real warmth even this early in the day. Thaw was over and the long summer was finally more than a memory frozen in the ice of deep winter. Jevati let the silence build between them, comfortable with it—unlike Gleia who worried at what she’d heard. Widowjourney? Survive? Ask or let it rest? The breeze teased tendrils of brown hair from the leather thong she used as a tieback and whipped them about her ears. Even after six years-standard with the seaborn she still came upon occasions when she was uncertain about what she should do. She sighed and surrendered to her curiosity. “Widowjourney?”
“Home to Cern Radnavar.” Jevati stretched, delighting in the feel of the wind and spray playing over her body. “Thanks for getting me out of that tomb. I was about ready to escape through the underways.”
“Firstwife didn’t like my coming around. I thought she was going to snap my head off.”
Jevati sniffed. “Firstwife Zdarica never has approved of me.” She grinned. “Matter of fact, I don’t know what she does approve of.” Her mother-of-pearl teeth glinted crimson like small bloody needles as they caught and gave back Horli’s light. “Idaguu’s woman-ridden. I’ve always wondered how he got up enough nerve to add another wife to his household. Temokeuu-your-father is a man of sense. Only one soft little mammal to tease him.”
“Jevati!”
Jevati stopped giggling and looked wistfully at her webbed fingers. “I’d give this hand to be you.”
“Head down.” Gleia eased the boat into the final tack that would take them into the mouth of the small bay at Cernsha Shirok, the smaller volcanic island out beyond Radnavar’s harbor. “Why did you marry him? Sixth wife. You must have known how that would be.”