by Clayton, Jo;
Gleia swung around, her hands pressed briefly over her mouth, then pulled back to her sides. Shounach went without further protest, without even a look at her. It would have worked, Gleia thought, it would have worked except for Toreykyn. She turned back to face the Lossal. His hands were folded on the table; a small, satisfied smile pulled his thin lips into a tight arc. She suppressed a shudder. She must have made a sound, though she wasn’t aware of it; he swiveled his head and examined her, his smile widening as he enjoyed her distress. He began touching the shawl again, watching her intently as he pinched and smoothed the material. A faint flush bloomed in his cheeks; the tip of his nose reddened. Gleia began sweating. She swallowed, nauseated by the feeling that his hands were moving over her body.
He pushed the shawl away and leaned back. “You’re gifted with your hands, girl.”
She stared at him.
“No point in wasting that talent.” He got up, smoothed his robes down over his small round belly, walked across the room to the guard. “Put her in a room in the servants’ quarters, away from the others, put a guard outside to see she stays there. See she’s fed, bring me the shawl when she’s finished with it.” He strolled out leaving Gleia seething behind him.
The Harrier reached for her. She jerked away. “I need my things,” she snapped.
He scowled at her. “Don’t take all day.”
Gleia moved around the table without arguing. For the moment she was too tired to keep fighting. She folded her things and put them back into her bag, ignoring the Harrier’s impatient muttering. When she leaned over, reaching for one of the handkerchiefs, she kicked something on the floor. Shounach’s bag was sitting beside the Lossal’s chair. She folded the handkerchief with shaking hands and slipped it into her bag. Unarmed, she thought. Ay-Madar, what will he do? The Harrier was fidgeting by the door, paying little attention to her. She caught the strap of Shounach’s bag and slipped it over her shoulder, then covered it with the strap of her own. Holding her bag in front of the other, she walked slowly to the door, her shoulders slumped in weary acceptance of her servitude, trying to hide her nervous anxiety.
The Harrier grunted impatiently and urged her out of the room, too much in a hurry to bother about what she carried. She walked ahead of him along the high echoing hall to a pair of swinging doors. On the far side of the doors the hall was smaller and a great deal rougher. A few horn lamps lit the undressed stone of wall and ceiling; the coarse matting on the floor was worn but thick enough to muffle footsteps. They passed several closed doors then came to a busy kitchen. Gleia’s stomach cramped as she smelled the scent of cooking food. She stopped walking. The Harrier went on two steps before he realized she was no longer with him. He wheeled, grabbed for her. She evaded his fingers. “The Lossal told you to see I’m fed. Food and candles. I need both.” She faced him, her head up, her eyes defiant. For the moment she didn’t give a damn about anything.
Reading this in her face, he backed away. “Wait here.”
He left her standing in the hall outside the kitchen. She was tempted to slip away but she couldn’t leave Shounach. She hugged his bag against her hip, wondering what was happening to him, then shied away from the thought. He can’t die. It would be absurd for him to die now. Even as she thought this, she knew that anyone could die any time, absurd or not.
The Harrier came back with a covered pannikin and a handful of candles, thrust both at her and hustled her on down the hall. After turning several corners, he caught her arm and shoved her inside a small room. After he slammed the door and stalked off, she tossed the two bags onto a narrow cot and looked nervously about. There was a small barred window, and a table holding a battered candlestick clotted with wax. She put the pannikin and the candles on the table, stretched, then went quickly to the door and pulled it open.
A Harrier was coming down the hall, not the one who’d brought her. He speeded up to a trot, opened his mouth to speak. She shut the door.
There was a narrow space between cot and table, just wide enough to let her walk back and forth. She paced nervously, angry, confused, and afraid, worried far more about Shounach than she was for herself. Back and forth until her legs ached. Back and forth, rubbing her sweating palms up and down her sides, feeling the rough material of her cafta riding up and down against her skin. Abruptly she kicked the stool from under the table and sat, taking the lid off the pannikin. There was a hunk of bread soaking in a thick stew. It smelled good and re-awakened her hunger. She fished the spoon out of the gravy and began eating.
The morning dragged by. Again and again, she went to the door, but the guard was always there. She tried talking with him. He told her to get back inside and stay there, said nothing else. She worked on and off at the shawl, stopping when her hands began to shake, paced awhile, sat down again to send the needle dancing in and out of the material as her mind circled endlessly and futilely around and around Shounach and her own uncertainties.
Once Shounach and she were loose—she wouldn’t think of any other outcome to this mess—she could let him go off on his obsessive quest and strike out on her own. In a way that was the easiest road, the most comfortable choice. She wouldn’t have to change at all, just go on the way she always had. She could sell the shawl or trade it for passage to another city where she could keep herself with her skill. There were times when this path seemed irresistible, when she was sick of trying to adapt herself to another person’s needs, friend or lover.
Deel had asked her to go south with her. The dancer was brisk and practical; she represented a way of life that was strange and exotic to Gleia. The dancer fascinated her both as a person and as a symbol. Most of all, she would be someone to talk to, to share things with. The need to share was growing on Gleia, perhaps because she’d been getting more practice at it. It fought with her urge to autonomy, it was a contradiction to all she thought she wanted, but she couldn’t deny that need.
Or she could go on with Shounach, trying to learn the rules of pairing, finding herself forgotten again and again as he pursued the source of the Ranga Eyes, moving in and out of danger with him, living in pain and fear and confusion.
Late in the afternoon she was sitting on the edge of the cot, the shawl on her knees, her mind milling in its endless circle. She jerked her head up, tried to smile as the door clattered open and Deel swept inside. The dancer shut the door, leaned against it, her arms crossed below her breasts. “Some mess you got yourself in.”
“How did you know?” Gleia tucked the needle into the material and folded the shawl into a neat square.
“Merd.” Deel laughed, left the door and went to sit beside Gleia. She dropped a hand on Gleia’s, a brief comforting touch, then wriggled around until she was leaning against the wall, her long legs tucked to one side. “He got me in here to dance for the Lossal. Guess he figured he could make points if they liked me. They stick us artists with the servants.” She laughed again. “Unless like your Juggler we’re sleeping with the masters. Anyway, the servants, they’re buzzing like a bunch of night-crawlers about you and your friend.” She wiggled long fingers at the door. “The guard out there, he’s seen me with Merd so he let me in. Why the hell’d the Juggler go fooling about in the garden?”
Gleia ran her hands over her curls, shook her head. “He had good reasons. You said it right. Some mess. You better keep away from us.”
“Get away’s a better way to say it.” Deel sucked in her lower lip, bit down on it with small white teeth. “The servants got other things to talk about. They say the Stareyn is laid out, barely breathing, that he could go any minute. Look, I’m not going to be penned up in this stinking city while a bunch of power-hungry families fight for the Stareynate. Bad enough if I was sworn to one of the families. I figure people like you and me, we’re going to get squashed. We could get out of the city tonight, go south like I said. It’s tonight, I think, or not.” She narrowed her eyes, swept them over Gleia’s face. “I don’t suppose you’d care to forget the Juggler?”
“Not while he’s in here.” Gleia rubbed nervously at her scars. “You know where they’ve got him?”
“I can find out.”
“Be careful.”
“You’re telling me?” Deel grinned. “I’ll be so damn careful nobody’ll know I’m around. Can you use a knife? I could get us a couple.”
“Deel, I grew up running the streets. Four summers. You know what that means.”
“Yeah, too well.” she pushed up off the bed. “I’d better get back, I have to be dancing soon. It’ll be late when I come, better that way, I suppose; most of the place should be asleep. Just you pray to whatever gods you know the Stareyn doesn’t die on us before we’re ready.” She touched Gleia’s cheek, then swirled out of the room with a flutter of her favorite amber silk.
The candle was guttering in the gusts of cold air coming through the window. Gleia paced back and forth past the table, her distorted shadow jerking dramatically on the wall. She wheeled and faced the door as she heard voices, then a choking sound and a thud. The door opened and Deel stepped in over the body of a Harrier. She bent down and took hold of one of his arms. “Help me. Quick.”
Together they pulled the dead man into the small room. As Gleia shouldered the two bags, she looked down at the Harrier. He was very young; she hadn’t noticed how young he was before. He had a wispy blond moustache, a scattering of pimples on his nose and cheeks, a reed-thin neck. Deel pulled her knife loose, wiped it on his trousers. She looked up at Gleia. “Had to be.”
“I know. I don’t have to like it.” Gleia shifted the straps to settle the bags more comfortably then took the knife Deel handed her. With a last glance at the dead boy, she followed the dancer out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Talking softly as she walked, Deel said, “Far as I can tell, there won’t be any Harriers down below. The Lossal left with a bunch of them not so long ago. There’s no one in the halls, not in this part of the house anyway. Feels like they’re all shivering in their beds. Matter of hours before the Stareyn goes, I expect. Piece of luck for us since that keeps the old viper busy.” Her hand on Gleia’s arm, the dancer pulled her along the hall and around the corner. “The stairs to the cellars are just ahead. We better not talk after this.” She stepped briskly ahead of Gleia, pulling her dark cloak tight against her body. Stopping in front of a heavy door, she swung it open enough to slip through. Gleia followed, eased the door shut behind her.
She found herself on a small square platform at the top of a steep stairway, one side against the wall, the other a precipitous drop to a floor some distance below. Gleia moved quickly to the wall side, refusing to look down again. Deel glanced at her, grinning, her teeth glistening in the uncertain light from the torch burning smokily halfway down the stairs. Fingertips of one hand brushing the wall, Deel ran down the stairs, surefooted and silent, her dancer’s body balancing easily. Gleia followed more cautiously. The darkness off the side spread into a vast silent cellar under the floor of the House, dark and eerie, amplifying the slightest sounds until the whisper of her feet on the stone came back to her like the breathing of some great animal.
At the bottom of the flight Deel stopped her. “Cells just ahead,” she whispered. “Through there.” She pointed at a torchlit arch a few feet farther along the wall. “I’ll go in first, distract the guard. When you see a chance, take him out.” She stripped off her cloak, handed it to Gleia, patted at her hair, moistened her lips, shook her arms, took several deep breaths. “Don’t wait too long, hon.” Without staying for an answer she moved toward the arch, hesitantly at first, then with her usual swinging swagger.
Gleia hurried after her, feeling it almost like a shock to the heart when the dancer vanished through the opening. At the arch, she dropped to her knees, edged forward until she could see what was happening.
Deel was smiling at the only man in the room, a hard-faced thug with a hairy bare chest, short bowed legs encased in greasy trousers, knotty bare feet. He wore a leather apron stiff with old stains. Deel touched his bulging arm with a teasing giggle, dancing back as he grabbed for her.
He scowled at her, moved around the table where he’d been sitting, stopped in front of her. “Who you, girl? What you doin’ here?”
Deel circled closer, ran her slim red-brown fingers up his arm. “I wanted to see the strongest man in Istir.” She danced around behind him, running her fingers over the massive muscles of his shoulders, reappearing on the other side of him, pulling him around so his back was to the arch. “Show me how strong you are.”
The man lunged clumsily at her, his meaty hip knocking aside the table. He was at least half-drunk. There were two empty bottles on the floor and a third rolling across the tabletop. It smashed against the stone as Deel danced away before the Ironmaster, smiling and flirting her eyes at him, narrowly avoiding his groping fingers, the slotted skirt swirling around her long slim legs, her light teasing laughter bringing the blood to his face. He lumbered after her, caught her arm, pulled her against him.
Gleia slipped the straps from her shoulder, was up and on her feet, running for him. As he held Deel helpless against him, his mouth avid on hers, Gleia drove the knife between his ribs, slamming the blade home with all her strength.
With an animal bellow he threw Deel sprawling and turned on Gleia, his animal strength as awesome as his ugliness. She fled, terrified.
Then he faltered, his face went blank, he coughed, spat blood, crumpled to the floor, falling on his face. Feeling a little sick, Gleia looked at Deel. The dancer rose slowly to her feet, walked to the Ironmaster, scrubbing and scrubbing at her mouth. She thrust her toe in his ribs. He gurgled, moved his hands slightly. Deel beckoned impatiently to Gleia. “Come on. Help me turn him over.” The dancer caught one of the man’s thick wrists in both hands. “Hurry, I don’t know how long we got. The keys, Gleia. We need his keys. And take your knife back.”
They labored several minutes, finally got the heavy body on its back. Gleia ran her bloody knife under the leather thong that held his key ring, cut it free, then while Deel stood watch at the arch, she ran along the line of cells.
In the third cell a dark figure lay sprawled on a rough plank bench. “Shounach?”
The figure stirred, tried to sit up, collapsed. Hands shaking, breath harsh in her throat, Gleia tried the keys until the lock finally turned over. When she slipped inside, he was trying again to sit, using the backs of his hands to push against the planks. He looked up, moved his battered mouth into a slight smile. “What took you so long?” The words were slow and blurred so badly it took her a while to understand what he was saying. He lurched heavily and was finally sitting up. She reached out.
“No!” The word was whispered but vehement. She waited, biting her lip, hugging herself, as he got slowly and painfully to his feet. In the dim light from the torches outside the cell she saw that he was naked, his body covered with cuts and bruises, his face distorted into a crude mask hardly human. He stretched out one trembling arm. “Let me lean on you, Jove. I’m a bit sore for hugging.” Again his words were indistinct, spoken slowly and with difficulty. His arm came down on her shoulders until she was supporting much of his weight. “Not too fast.”
Deel gave an exclamation of horror when they emerged. She brought the Ironmaster’s chair and helped Gleia ease Shounach into it; then she stepped back and raised an eyebrow. “Juggler, you’re a mess.” Gleia bit her lip, ran to the arch.
She came back with the garish bag hugged against her breasts. When he reached for it, she gasped. The inner side of his fingers and both palms were seared black, the skin charred and cracking. She looked from the bag to him, not knowing what to do.
Shounach examined his hands, grimaced. He was badly beaten, his face bruised and swollen, his back raw with lash marks that circled around his rib cage and ended in ragged purpled cuts. There were marks of the hot iron on his groin and flat stomach. His mouth moved in a painful smile. Swollen and reddened, his changeable eyes glinted
green. “Companion,” he murmured. He brushed her hand with the backs of his fingers. “You are a delight. Hold the bag open in front of me. Deel?”
“What?” The dancer glanced anxiously at the arch, then back to the battered man.
“See if you can find my clothes. They should be somewhere around here.” As she swung off, he scowled, opened and closed his savaged hands, then reached into the bag.
“Fox, can’t I do that for you?”
“No.” Sweating, his face twisted with pain, he pulled a small leather case from the bag and dropped it onto his thighs. He reached in again and pulled out a thick roll of bandage, then leaned back carefully, closed his eyes and said, wearily, “Put the bag down and open the case for me.”
The case opened easily when the two sides were pressed apart. Following Shounach’s instruction she tipped a pale blue wafer from one of the vials and slipped it between his lips.
While he was resting, waiting for the drug to act, Deel came back with his jacket, trousers, and boots. She dumped them on the floor beside him. “Can’t we hurry this? I’m having a fit every few minutes when I think of someone finding us here.” She waved a hand at the arch.
“You can leave if you want.” Gleia began smoothing a thick white liquid over Shounach’s cuts, bruises, and burns. Sighing with impatience Deel began helping her. Together they covered his burns and other wounds with the pain-deadening antiseptic and began wrapping the gauze bandaging around his body, finishing with his hands, wrapping the gauze neatly over the palms and, at his whispered instructions, around each of his fingers so he could use them. When they were done, he stood, swaying a little at first, working his fingers stiffly.
He dressed as quickly as he could, more in command of himself than Gleia would have believed possible, even for him. When he’d stamped his feet into his boots, he looked around, his eyes pale gray with effort, glittering with the effects of the pain and the drug. Gleia watched, worried, then went slowly to the arch to fetch her own bag. When she returned, he was kneeling beside his bag.