A Bait of Dreams

by Clayton, Jo;

  “Better just wait to see what happens.”

  “Not many choices available if you won’t talk.” She sighed and leaned back. “I gather we’re captives.”

  The sky was dark with black smoke burping out of the cone in scattered lazy puffs. The waters of the bay swallowed the drifting smuts and occasionally spat back surges of gas. Gleia tried to breathe shallowly as she followed the sullen scowling crewmen off the dhoura onto the short pier near the last of the clanhouses, built around the inner arch of the bay. She shivered as she looked around at the tormented earth. No wonder Vrestar’s seaborn abandoned their holding. The houses were drowned in pale ash that grew deeper as the wings of the arc approached the center, where congealed lava rose in waves around the tormented lumps that marked the council hall and the high market.

  Their thissik captors prodded them toward the Endhouse. It was already dug clear of the ash. Farther on, Gleia could see small gangs of men working on the other houses. She glanced over her shoulder at the Juggler and saw him looking sharply around, his changeable eyes moving and moving, his pale face shuttered into inscrutability. He saw her watching and shook his head slightly.

  Inside the house the walls had been washed down and the bright colors of the murals glowed like jewels in the light from short tubes that had replaced the oil lamps. The thissik herding them along were small creatures, dressed in gray overalls that concealed most of their bodies except for the long tapering tails held rigidly erect. Each thissik held a strange crooked rod in one hand. The sailors avoided these, rounding their shoulders and pulling in their arms whenever one of the thissik moved past. Weapons of some kind, she thought.

  In the Day Court all the benches had been moved out, leaving it desolate except for the gentle rippling pool in the center. At the far end of the room the kala-shell panels were painted over but glow tubes lit that end with bright red light. A thissik sat there at a delicate shell table. The gray fur on his pointed ears faded through silver to white and the short plush on his face was paler than that of their guards. Behind him were banks of machines and several sturdier tables covered with untidy piles of paper. He said something in a high squeal to one of the guards, oscillating rapidly between high and lower notes. At times his mouth moved but no sound came out. The guard answered with a brief burst of the same sort of sound. Then the Elder turned his large round eyes on the captives. “I am Keeper. Who of you iss masster?” He spoke parsi with a strong hissing accent and an occasional hesitation as he searched for a word.

  “Me.” Captain Korl took a step forward, stopping abruptly when a guard hissed and jabbed at him with the crooked rod. He was big, looked powerful, but his belly strained the seams of his tunic and bulged over his wide leather belt. His elaborately ringletted black hair was streaked with gray as was his bushy beard and moustache. His face was seamed and craggy, a ruin of power.

  “I’m my own man.” Shounach stepped apart from the sailors, ignoring Korl’s malevolent scowl.

  “I also. I speak for myself,” Gleia said hastily. She moved as far as she could from the sullen crewmen.

  The Keeper exchanged a rapid set of questions and answers with the guard, then turned back. His eyes flitted over the line and stopped on Shounach. “That seemss reassonable. Kneel now. All of you.”

  Gleia hesitated. Shounach’s hand came down hard on her shoulder, pushing her down with him as he knelt. She smoothed out a wrinkle under her knee and waited, wondering what was coming. Without warning, one of the sailors jumped up and ran cursing at the Keeper. A guard flipped up his rod. The other sailors scrambled desperately away from the berserker as a cone of light licked out from the rod. He was silhouetted like a black doll against the crimson light then was gone, wiped away.

  “It iss to be hoped the resst of you will not be sstupid.” The Keeper picked up a dull gray metal ring. At one side it had two trapezoidal lumps. He let the ring dangle from one small hand. “You are now.…” He hesitated, looked down at the ring then back at them. His tail began jerking back and forth, the naked tip moving like a pinkish metronome behind his head. “You are now slaves. The people of shipThelar …” His mouth tightened and his face was suddenly bleak. “We are here very much against our will and our desiress, but here we are and here we musst sstay.” He spoke slowly, the tips of his ears twitching slightly, the tip of his tail slowing and moving in a small circle. His hissing accent began to diminish until his sibilants were barely noticeable. “We must build our lives here and build them quickly. You will help make these houses liveable for us. The guards will move behind you and place these rings about your necks. Anyone causing trouble will be removed immediately. By removed, I mean what you have just seen. We have neither time nor inclination to tolerate fools.”

  Two of the guards slipped medallion chains up over their heads and dropped them onto the table; then they put the rings about each neck. The locks snapped home with small sharp clicks. A third guard circled wide around them and stopped about a body-length behind them. The ringers picked up their medallions, put them back on, then stood beside the Keeper.

  “You may sstand.” The Keeper sounded tired as if he had spent too many days in a battle where even the winners lose. The pale tufts on his ear points twitched as he folded small fine hands on the table in front of him. “For honorss’ ssake I sspeak.” His large eyes closed for a moment then opened again, sinking back into the loose folds of grayish skin that pleated around them. “We are free traders whose ship was our life. That is over. Yet we still exist, and existing, must adapt. We are under pressure of time and need and must do things … things we find abhorrent.” His eyes moved slowly along the line of men, stopped at Gleia. He examined her then seemed to shift uneasily in his chair. Then he faced Shounach; his pale tongue touched lightly at thin lips and the tail tip behind his head began to jerk erratically. He looked puzzled, then he straightened his narrow shoulders and turned back to Korl. “The collars you wear limit you three ways.” He tapped the table-top with the nail of his forefinger. In the silence the small click seemed disproportionately loud, making several of the captives twitch; Gleia started, scraped a foot across the floor tiles. The Keeper’s eyes turned briefly toward her then slid away. “One: You may not approach any thissik closer than one body-length.” The nail tapped again, twice. “Two: You may not go farther than one hundred body-lengths from this house. Three: you may not seek to remove the collars without the key that is kept on my person.”

  Once again he paused and moved his eyes down the line, stopping briefly on each face though he skipped rapidly over Gleia and paused longer on Shounach. “It is to be hoped you are less stupid than that man,” he told them. “One: If any of you seeks to approach a thissik, you will feel pain that increases as you move closer. A demonstration.” He waved a guard forward.

  As the small gray figure came up to them, the pain was like a minor burn at first but increased in intensity until it became unbearable. Gleia backed away then screamed as she passed the limit of the thissik behind her. She crouched, arms crossed tight against her breasts, rocking and moaning.

  Then the pain was gone. The guard was back beside the Keeper who waited until the captives had recovered then went on. “Two: If you attempt to go beyond the tether limit, the same thing will happen. If you endure the pain and press farther, at one hundred fifty body-lengths the collar will explode, neatly removing your head.”

  Gleia glanced sharply at the alien face, thinking she heard a touch of grim humor behind the even words. For a second he reminded her of Temokeuu. She put the idea aside for later consideration and continued listening.

  “Three: If you attempt to remove the collar whether by torch, saw or lock pick, the collar will explode.” He fitted fingertip to fingertip with neat precision and contemplated them. “Once the houses are ready and the contents retrieved from our … from where they are, there will be no more need for your services. You will then be freed from the collars.”

  He didn’t look at us, Gleia though
t. He would not mention the word ship in connection with freeing us. She felt a chill. There were a lot of ways to read his last statement, most of them not comforting to think about. She rubbed at her arm as she watched the Keeper lean back, some of the stiffness passing from his small body. He looks so terribly tired, she thought.

  The guards herded them out of the Endhouse into a red dusk. Horli-set. Overhead, the two moons Aab and Zeb were on the point of kissing, their pale ghosts gradually beginning to glow as the sky darkened. A number of small boats were tied to the pier, dwarfed by the black silhouette of the dhoura. Gleia touched the cold metal at her throat. Without that.… She sighed and trudged along behind the Captain’s broad back.

  The new captives were taken into the second house, moved through dusty airless corridors then directed through a wide doorway into the long narrow room with grilled windows marching down one side. A number of men lay about on the floor, bone-weary from a long day’s hard labor. Most of them were already asleep. At the base of the unpierced sidewall a long trench was half-full of water. The trench passed under the far wall but a grill had been fitted over the opening so that the men inside could not get out. The heavy door slammed shut behind them. Gleia looked around and shivered, the hairs lifting along her spine. She was the only woman in the room.

  “Take this.” Shounach’s voice was a thread of sound as he pressed a hard object against her back. She reached around and found the hilt of a knife pressed against her palm. She moved a little away from him, then glanced back. His face was a pale mask, cool and indifferent. As he walked away, she turned to watch the Captain.

  Korl had appropriated the corner nearest the door, evicting the sleeping men already in possession. He and his crew were standing in a muttering huddle, their eyes repeatedly seeking her out. She shivered once more and looked about a little desperately for the Juggler. He was leaning casually against the wall near one of the last windows. The other men were negligible, most of them not even awake. Korl and Shounach. One at each end of the room. Two poles of power. Gleia moved her fingers along the hilt of the knife now hidden in the folds of her sleeve. You make your choice, she thought, and then you pay the price. She swallowed, feeling a little sick at losing the integrity of body that six years-standard of peace had given back to her. Keeping the knife hidden she turned her back on Korl and began moving toward Shounach.

  A meaty hand came down hard on her shoulder and swung her around. “You goin’ the wrong way,” Korl said.

  “Take your hand off.” She kept her voice calm, spoke with cool contempt.

  His fingers tightened on her shoulder. Chuckling, he pushed her toward his watching men. “That skinny nothing not for a nice little thief.”

  Gleia brought the knife up, slashed at his arm and whirled away as he howled with pain and slapped at her head, spraying drops of blood over several startled sleepers. Gleia held the knife ready and danced back, watching his hands.

  Korl’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the blood still dripping from his arm, then at her as she stood holding the knife in a street-fighter’s grip, close in to her body. He grinned and slipped off the leather shipmaster’s vest. “Little cat,” he said and flicked the end of the vest at her head.

  Gleia ducked and twisted past the vest, slashed at his arm, opening a deep cut, and was away before his hand could close on her. He looked down at the cut, amusement replaced by rage; he roared and charged at her, counting on his strength and reach to outmatch her knife. Gleia danced back then dived under his arms, opened a cut on his leg, ran full out away from him, leaped over a watcher and stopped in a small open space. Korl staggered, then jumped forward. He was between her and Shounach, the grin gone from his seamed face. He began moving toward her, far more cautiously now. Gleia retreated step by step, not daring to take her eyes from him. She began to sweat, wondered how close she was getting to the crew. Korl’s eyes shone with anticipation.

  He stopped suddenly. “Juggler.” His voice was hoarse; he was breathing heavily. “Where you stand in this?”

  “Nowhere.” The deep voice was cool and disinterested.

  “Do I watch my back?”

  “I’m not moving. Read that how you want.”

  Korl grunted. He flicked the vest at Gleia’s head and came in low when she leaped back. He flicked it again. She stumbled over a watcher and nearly went down, scrambled frantically and managed to tear free when his hand closed on the sleeve of her cafta. She left the sleeve in his hand and glanced over her shoulder to see how much room she had left, forced down panic when she saw how little it was.

  The Captain was panting, sweat streaming down his face, and the cut on his leg was bothering him, slowing him down. She tried passing him again but misread the crouch. His hand closed on her ankle. Squealing in her fear and anger, she slashed repeatedly at his hand, wrenched her foot loose and rolled desperately away.

  The Captain shook the blood off his hand. He had trouble closing his fingers into a fist.

  Gleia got to her feet and pushed at hair plastered by sweat to her face. Eyes on the Captain, she edged along the wall toward the Juggler. She mopped at her face and let her shoulders sag. Before her eyes dropped, she saw Korl’s begin to shine again. She stepped clumsily back and bumped into the wall—then darted at him low and fast, slashing at his hamstrings. As he crashed to the floor she was up and running.

  Breathing hard, she stopped in front of the Juggler. “Well?”

  “Good job,” he said calmly. “Companion?”

  Briefly she wondered why—and why he’d given her the knife—then she nodded. “Companion.” Handing him the knife, she stepped into the corner behind him and sat down, feeling every wrench and bruise now that the excitement of the fight was gone.

  Korl was groaning and clutching at his leg. His men watched, then one of them walked quietly over to him—a skeletal gray shadow, an emptiness in the shape of a man. He knelt and examined the hamstrung leg then without a word moved on his knees along the body, touched the Captain’s suddenly pale face, then plunged the knife into his neck. With the same lack of emotion he cleaned the knife on the Captain’s shoulder, resheathed it, flattened his palm on the dead man’s chest and pushed himself back on his feet. Without looking back he walked heavily to the corner and the watching crewmen.

  Gleia closed her eyes but still saw the spurt of blood. “Not even hate,” she murmured. “Like a butcher.”

  Shounach eased himself down beside her. “What does it matter once a man is dead how he got that way?”

  Gleia looked down at trembling fingers. “It has to matter.”

  There was a clear space around them. The crew was still huddled together at the other end of the room and the others had drawn away. Shounach was sitting as he had been the first time she’d seen him, knees drawn up, long clever hands resting lightly on his knees. She turned her head away. The glow tubes went out suddenly, plunging the room into darkness filled with the breathing of the man beside her. Through the window just beyond her feet Gleia saw suddenly bright stars in an ill-omened shape—the Crow. She shivered and moved closer to Shounach. “Them Empty Man. What’s wrong with him?”

  Shounach scratched at his chin, working his fingers through a two-day stubble. “Addict. Ranga Eye. Saw him with it a few days back.”

  “It ate him?”

  “He’s lasted longer than most.”

  She swallowed. “You knew what it was. Have you ever.…”

  “Once.”

  She watched the Crow’s beak dip out of sight, remembering the egg-shaped crystal that had tripped her up one morning in a street in Carhenas, remembering the images it brought to shimmer around her, butterfly people wheeling and dipping under a golden sun, glorious, enticing images that had nearly sucked the soul out of her body—had nearly eaten her like the Eye had eaten the Empty Man. “I found an Eye when I was still bonded,” she said very softly, stroking the brands on her face, speaking from a need she couldn’t define.

  He moved her fingers asi
de and touched the two brands. “Dangerous for a bonder.”

  “I know.” She pushed his hands away. “Deadly.”

  “What happened to it?” He waited but she said nothing. “Did you sell it to buy your bond?”

  “No. Who’d buy such a thing from a branded thief? I threw it away.”

  “Why? How?”

  “It tried to own me. All my life I’ve had to fight to keep a piece of myself for me.” The whispered exchange had a strange soothing quality. She found it absurdly easy to say things to the dark form beside her that she’d never spoken of before, even to Temokeuu. “The beauty—that was the hardest thing. You know.”

  He hesitated then said slowly, “Yes. I know.”

  “Everything around me was so ugly. It would have been easy to give in, except.…”

  “It would have eaten you.”

  She nodded even though she knew he couldn’t see her, looked up at him. “Some things cost too much. You must know that. You broke free.”

  He was silent a long time. At first she thought he wasn’t going to say anything. She turned back to the window, feeling better as the Crow’s tail inched down behind the sill. “I’ve had training to resist such things,” he said finally.

  “Shounach?”

  “What is it?”

  “Do we stay awake all night?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Sore. Tired. Otherwise all right.”

  “Feel up to taking first watch?”

  “Yes. Go to sleep. I’ll wake you at Zebset.”

  Shounach shook her awake. She opened her eyes, blinked when she saw how light it was. “It’s late.”

  He pulled her to her feet. She turned slowly, looking around. The room was empty except for two thissik standing by Korl’s body. “Where are the others?”