by Clayton, Jo;
Gleia settled herself on the canvas. “Nothing you do is what it seems,” she said suddenly, unwilling to cater to his black mood, not caring at the moment if she put him in a rage. “What are they, those earrings?”
He glared at her, his eyes a flat silver. He said nothing, scooped his bag up and stomped from the room, slamming the door so hard it bounced open again. After a while she got up and shut it.
She went back to the canvas and sat watching the candle burn lower, the stink of tallow strong in the room. She was awash with contradictory emotions, angry and oddly happy and frightened and more sure of herself, somehow, than she’d ever been. The room was growing colder as night settled down over the Inns and the winds grew stronger and blew storms at them, but she was cold for other reasons. He left because he couldn’t trust his temper and was afraid he’d hurt me. He values me. He left because he didn’t want to try justifying himself to me. Because he knew he couldn’t and didn’t plan to change what he was doing.
He’s using Deel again. Using her without her knowledge or consent like that time before when he meant to dangle her as bait for Hankir Kan. No wonder he was happy to leave her with the Sayoneh. He’s got a way of tracing her as long as she keeps the earrings with her. Setting her up to betray the women who saved her life, who shelter her still.
Gleia clasped her hands over her knees and stared at the dying flame. She had little regard for systems of morality. Most of them, from her experience of them, seemed merely ways for a few folk to run the lives of many. The Madarmen had drubbed the Madarchants into her, but they only put words into her head, not beliefs. She didn’t like killing, but she’d done it before and would again without remorse as long as there was clear necessity. She stole with equally little remorse; most wealth, as far as she could see, was stolen in one way or another, only not so directly and honestly as she would do it. And she avoided promiscuity at first because she found sex painful and unpleasant, avoided it later because she’d gained a sense of her own worth. Shounach had taught her the pleasure of her body and his, but that was so bound up with who and what he was to her she didn’t know if she could repeat that pleasure with anyone else. Everything else was vague and shifting and had little meaning to her; law and custom, manners and politics, none of these touched her life. But there were two very specific rules she’d followed longer than she could remember, even before she could speak enough to put them in words. Help those who are hurting and never ever harm a friend. In a sense they were the same. Help those who are hurting because their hurt hurts you; don’t harm a friend, because you harm yourself that way.
Not easy rules. If she told Deel what she suspected, she would be hurting Shounach who was friend and more than friend. If she kept silent she hurt Deel and herself in the same way, made them partners to the betrayal of women already too often beaten and betrayed, women who had done only good to both of them. Nor was that the only knot for her to unravel. What this revolved about was a real evil. Ranga Eyes. Whatever else they were, whatever else they did, the Sayoneh were responsible for the soul-deaths of countless men, women and children who’d never heard of them, let alone done them any harm. The Sayoneh traded in this subtlest and most horrible of betrayals. However admirable their conduct otherwise, they undercut whatever worth they had by their remorseless pimping for death. And yet—and yet, they were targets of hatred, villification, persecution. Without the freedom the Eyes bought for them, how could they continue to exist? She wanted them to exist. How many times since her first memories had she been victimized simply because she was female and alone? How many times had she been furious because she’d been treated as prey not person? Among the many reasons she had for valuing her Fox, he was the first of her kind to rate who she was higher than what she was. She understood better than Deel that the Sayoneh were a refuge for women who could no longer endure the lives they were forced to live. In helping Shounach destroy the Eye-source, would she be destroying them?
She stared at the flame and tried to sort out the aspects of the problem, but finally knew she could not. There were not clear rights and wrongs here, but a weave so tangled she couldn’t separate the threads. The Sayoneh refuge. Deel’s self-respect. Her own self-respect. Shounach’s need. His acts in servicing that need. Ranga Eyes. What they bought and what they did. She sighed and turned to the consideration of her choices.
She couldn’t stop Shounach, only lose him. Might be close to losing him now. How much would he take from her? His brother’s face or no, how strongly was he tied to her? Last night she would have sworn the bonds between them were forged of steel, this night she knew they still existed but they seemed weak as wet paper.
She wasn’t about to tell the Sayoneh anything. She owed them nothing except what she owed any person—to refrain from causing them harm. But if she stayed with Shounach, she must harm them; there was no way of avoiding it. She had to live with that. She hated having to make the choice but she couldn’t and wouldn’t evade her responsibility. The Sayoneh would have to find another way to protect themselves.
There was one thing she must do. She had to tell Deel about the earrings. She had to let the Dancer decide what she wanted to do. She couldn’t be Deel’s conscience. Or Shounach’s. When she told him what she’d done, he would rage, he would … she didn’t know what he’d do. She was afraid, but she couldn’t afford either fear or hesitation. She’d warned him once before that she’d do what she thought was right no matter what. She’d meant it then. She had to mean it now. If their relationship couldn’t stand the strain, well, so be it. She gazed at the door as the candle guttered out. He won’t be back tonight, she thought and was glad of that. Better not to say anything to him until she’d talked with Deel.
Zidras was tootling a bouncy tune on a tin-whistle while Shounach juggled a cabbage, two eggs and a tuber of some sort, using hands and feet in a comical skipping dance, teasing his audience with absurdities of fear and doubt and astonishment at the impossibilities he was accomplishing with an understated ease. The crowd was large and happy, laughing, a little drunk, enough to loosen them up, not enough to make them mean. She stayed a moment to watch. Even with Zidras sharing the take, they’d get a good pile of coin from this bunch. Reluctantly she moved on, winding through busy aisles toward the grove where the Sayoneh had their camp.
In the grassy glade where the young Sayoneh had played ball, Deel was teaching six of them to dance. She seemed so happy Gleia almost went away, miserable at the thought of disrupting that serenity; she felt as if she stood on quicksand, every way she moved promising disaster. The Dancer lived in presenttime, ignoring past and future whenever she could. She had a wintering place and folk to care for her, food and shelter and friends, so she was as joyous as any kitten playing games with its shadow. Not the worst way to live. Gleia watched the lesson, listened to the music, putting away for the moment the dreary task that had brought her there. She smelled dust and sweat and bruised leaves and liked the smell, and liked the vigor and honesty of the girls before her, liked their intense concentration on what they were doing.
Then a saone tripped and others fell with her in a tangle of arms and legs and flying robes.
Deel stood laughing at them, hands on hips, then she waded into the mess to sort them out and help them to their feet. When that was done she looked around, saw Gleia, waved to her. She sent the young Sayoneh scurrying off and came over to the trees, wiping at her face, scraping off dust and sweat.
“Looks like fun,” Gleia said.
“Mmm,” Deel said. “Hot for it, though.”
“Come for a walk. Can you?”
Deel wiped her hands down her sides. “They’d rather I didn’t. Not dressed like this, even without the veil. Folk get mean.” She moved her shoulders impatiently. “I don’t see the problem if we keep away from drovers and the market. Come on.”
They threaded through the trees until they were walking along the River’s bank in shade thick enough to protect them from Hesh’s bite. For a whi
le Gleia said nothing. Finally, without looking at Deel, she broke her silence. “Shounach drugged Kan, made him talk about the Eyes. About who brought them to the Svingeh.” She moved out on the bank until she could stand looking down into the eddying water.
Deel came to stand beside her. “I’m not going to like the answer, am I.”
“If you think about it, you already know it.”
“Uh-huh. Sayoneh.”
“Right.”
“I wondered why Kan backed down so fast after they pulled me out of the water.” When Gleia looked at her, the buoyancy had gone out of her. “I wish I thought he’d lied,” Deel said. She brooded a while. “I wish you hadn’t told me.” She bent with sudden energy, scooped up a bit of rock, flung it at the water. “They don’t know. The young ones.”
“Probably not.”
“Why did you tell me? Chances are I’d never have found out and would have gone on content.” With a soft gasp she reached both hands up, cupped them over the copper and amber earrings, pressed them against her head and neck. “Juggler,” she said, her voice a sad whisper. She took the hoops from her ears and stood gazing at them. “He never gives up, does he. What do these do?”
“Maybe nothing.”
“You don’t think that. Or you wouldn’t be here.”
Gleia sighed. “I don’t know anything, I suspect there’s something in them that lets him follow you.”
Deel gazed at the earrings a bit longer then flung them far out into the River. “Aschla bite him.”
“Where it hurts most.”
After a while, Deel smiled, With a reluctant admiration she said, “Tricky bastard.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’ll be mad enough to bite nails when he finds out you told me. What’s he gonna do to you?”
“Don’t know. Not going to think about that if I can help it. But I couldn’t.…”
“Yeah.” Deel rubbed her hand across her forehead. “They were so good to me. I thought I’d stay with them, I really did.”
“They mean hope for a lot of women. Deel?”
“Huh?”
“If you want to tell them or stay with them, don’t bother about Shounach and me. You know us. One way or another, we’ll get where we mean to get.”
“I like them, I really do, but.…”
“Ranga Eyes?”
“If it’d been anything else. Anything.”
“I know.”
“I can’t forget Alahar. How he died.”
“Deel?”
“What?”
“You can come with us if you want. Shounach will come around, once he’s thought about it some. That’s no problem. You’d be better off, though, forgetting the whole thing. Madar knows what we’ll run into.”
Deel brooded some more, then she shook her head. “I have to bury Alahar’s ghost or he’ll ruin whatever I try.” She fumbled for words, finally she shook her head. “I’m crazy, I expect, but, well, if the Juggler doesn’t bite my head off.…” She tried to smile. “Anyway, I don’t really think I was made to live with just women. I’d probably be climbing the walls by winter’s end. Oh … come on, let’s get it over with. Stay with me while I tell the Saone I’ve changed my mind?” She went quickly up the bank, stopped and waited for Gleia to come up with her. “I’m a bit scared.”
Gleia took the hand she held out and walked beside her. “Will they make trouble?”
“Don’t ask me. I’ve just found out how little I really know about them.” She frowned. “Maybe you ought to wait for me somewhere.”
“No. Anyway, there’s always the Juggler to pry us loose if the Sayoneh turn sticky.”
Deel made a face. “You think he’d bother?” She sighed again. “I really wish you hadn’t told me all this.”
“You said that already.”
“I know.”
Shounach stopped just inside the door. Gleia was putting the last stitches into the black shawl she’d started working on in Istir. Deel had a brush and a bowl of soapy water and was working over her dancer’s silks. He came across the room in a few swift strides, took hold of her chin and tilted her head. “The earrings?”
Deel jerked free, set the brush aside, spread the silks on the canvas beside her. “At the bottom of the river.” She got to her feet with a graceful twist of her body, an almost-levitation, and went to stand beside Gleia. “You know why.”
Gleia tucked the needle into the soft black wool, clasped her hands so their shaking wouldn’t show. “Deel’s a friend, Shounach.”
“And what am I?”
“Whatever you want, as much or little as you want, but never my master.” She shivered at the fury in him; he was a skin over fire that turned to ice as she watched. She was afraid, not for now but for what his brooding would bring down on her later. “Or my conscience.”
“You make yourself mine.”
“No. I’m not telling you what to do. How could I, when nothing I say will change your mind? But grant me the right to keep my self-respect, Shounach. If your acts involve me, then I can only do what I see is right with what I know.”
“Know? What you know?” There was scorn, even contempt in his voice. She lowered her eyes without speaking when she couldn’t look at him any more.
He turned on Deel. “Get out of here.”
Deel hesitated, started to speak.
Gleia touched her leg, stopped her. “For now, please? But come back later. Give us awhile to fight this out.”
Deel frowned down at her, then fixed angry eyes on him. “You hurt her, I’ll carve her name on your ribs, Juggler.” She swung away from Gleia, kept wide of Shounach, and bounced out of the room, slamming the door with a crunch that sent it bounding open again.
Shounach scowled after her until the door slammed, then his shoulders seemed to soften; when he faced Gleia again, his mouth was working as he tried to hold in the laughter turning his eyes green, his anger derailed for the moment. “I think she’d do it.”
Gleia put the shawl down, got to her feet and crossed to him. She pushed his jacket aside and touched her lips to the smooth skin where his ribs met, then slid her arms around him, the feel of him so good under her hands she almost couldn’t endure the wanting that burned through her. She tilted her head back and laughed up at him. “And you’d have to start wearing shirts, vain man.”
When Deel returned, looking pugnacious and wary, Shounach was stretched out on the canvas, dozing, and Gleia was back to working on the shawl. Where there’d been rage and defiance boiling in the room, there was now only contentment and amity. She looked from one to the other, sighed, went over to the bowl and brush, picked up the crumpled silks and settled on the edge of the straw to continue her cleaning.
The next several days Shounach and Deel performed at his pitch, attracting larger and larger crowds, including several bands of the Sayoneh, who watched in silence but never tried to talk to Deel or persuade her to return to them. At first the Dancer was nervous, then she put them out of her mind and just enjoyed herself. Gleia watched them now and then, not quite able to appreciate their shared performances, but reluctant to succumb to the jealous agonies of the time downriver. Most days she ranged through the Fair, bargaining for and buying the things they’d need for their journey into wild country. All but the horses. She knew too little to avoid being cheated, that was for Shounach when they were ready to leave.
Tucked away beyond the market booths and tents was another arena, much smaller than the racecourse, more private. She finished bargaining with a miller’s wife for a sack of flour, winced as a roar went up from the arena and echoed back from the cliff. “Madar!” She hefted the sack, set it down on the counter of boards stretched between two barrels. “What was that?”
“Cat-pit. I tol Halk I di’un like settin up here.” The miller’s wife wiped the back of her hand across her round sweaty face, tucked a straying wisp of hair under her coif. “They yell like that, some un or somefin dead. Fights.” She spat in the dust to one side. “Sl
avers, they go catch um some catmen. Out on the grass.” She jerked a long broad thumb at the cliff, elevated it, flattened her hand in a wide sweep that was a silent but adequate description of the high grassy plateau beyond the forest. “Set um at each other, killing. Bet on who wins. I tell Halk, I catch um going there, I snatch um balder’n he be.” She shrugged. “Men,” she said, spat again. She watched as Gleia counted out the coins, took them, looked them over with shrewd care, tucked them away in a metal cashbox sitting on a barrel at the back of the tent. Then she nodded at the sack of flour. “You need help with that, young Arv he just finishin ’is lunch.”
Gleia shook her head, winced as another roar went up, swung the floursack onto her shoulder and went back to the room where the pile of supplies kept growing as her supply of coins diminished. She wasn’t over-worried about that, Shounach and the Dancer were shaking coin out of the crowd like rain from a stormcloud and Zidras’ clever fingers harvested more each night. She set the floursack down, shook white dust off her shoulders and thought about Zidras.
The man had worked loose from his Players and attached himself to the three of them. He was useful, but far too sensitive to nuance for Gleia’s comfort, and aware that there was something none of the three spoke of around him. He was more complex than shed first thought, with many rituals which he hid from casual observation, but he rode his compulsions so lightly and unobtrusively he seemed a loose and easy man, a waterweed bending with the current. At first she saw him as lazy and unambitious, content to keep himself with a minimum of effort, but as the days passed she began to understand that was all surface and beneath the surface was something much darker and more threatening. Shounach seemed unaware of these depths, but lately she knew nothing about what he was thinking; he spent little time with her after that one spate of passion when Deel moved in with them. Such a brief happiness, ghosts of it left when he forgot and smiled at her, when he brushed his hand along her arm or touched her face. Ghosts only, though. Her confidence began draining away and she withdrew into herself more each day. She knew it only made things worse between them, but she didn’t know how to change, and having Deel there inhibited her until she was ready to scream—and instead went quieter, more remote. And saw Shounach reacting to this by leaving her more and more alone. Days passed, each one a slipping away from intimacy and joy. By the time she climbed into the saddle before dawn and got ready to leave Jokinhiir, she clung to a single hope. He hadn’t left. He hadn’t shrugged them off. He was irritable and secretive, but he still came back to her. She watched him as he stood talking to Zidras, tried willing him to look back and smile at her. He didn’t. He mounted, checked the leadrein of the packer, then kneed his horse into a walk toward the skim of trees hugging the base of the cliff. She nodded encouragement to Deel and started after him.