Since Murra had used the fruit-juice trip as an opportunity to fill her in on details that he apparently did not want her to share with Tere, she did not mention the notion of trying to contact the Nature Spirits, nor the names of the people who were supposed to be coming from off-world to try to rescue Gorsh’s chattels. The less everyone knows the better, Murra had said. What they don’t know, they can’t reveal even under torture, he had explained, and Shyla had shuddered. She had seen the Overseer whip a slave while Gorsh had watched, and she knew that Jaqui had seen that sort of a thing more than once.
Tere knew about the escape plan, but Shyla didn’t think that he knew about the scheme to dye Jaqui’s hair—at least she had not told Tere about it. What Tere thought Jaqui wanted from her mother’s rooms Shyla did not know, but she was certain that Jaqui had gone there to sneak out a hair-dye kit. She couldn’t ask for it, and she had no money to buy anything, so she was reduced to stealing from her mother. But, as Tere had noted, pilfering was a common activity on Gorsh’s lands, so the theft would probably pass without much notice.
*****
It was getting on to midnight, and Shyla was waiting for Jaqui among the sweetberry bushes on the empty lot. They had agreed, that afternoon, to meet there after dark. They had exchanged a few quick words when they had passed one another in the open area by the Citadel.
“Wait for me if I’m late,” Jaqui had whispered. “I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get away.”
Shyla did not have much in the way of provisions. Tere had got a small back pack for her from somewhere, and had put some dried foodstuff in it—probably stolen from the cafeteria where the slaves, and the employees who lived on the premises, ate. There wasn’t much, and it didn’t look very appetising, but it might keep body and soul together until she and Jaqui could obtain something better. Shyla had her one change of clothes, and the few underthings that she owned—if a slave could be considered to own anything. Plus she had a tiny off-world light that Murra had given her; he had told her that he had taken it from the pocket of the comatose man. It was the only thing of value either he or the lizard people had had, and it had been missed by Gorsh’s searchers because it was a small button of a thing; they had probably assumed that it was a part of the man’s clothing. But it could give off light beams of different intensities, and would be very useful if the girls had to travel in the dark. Murra had insisted that Shyla take it.
Finally, Shyla heard tentative rustling among the bushes.
“Jaqui?” she dared to ask.
“Oh, there you are,” came Jaqui’s voice. “Sorry I’m so late. I’d made arrangements with Rosa to dye my hair—she’s good and won’t tell anybody what I’m up to, though she guessed right away—and then that shit-face Gorsh dragged me to his bed, before I could meet Rosa. She waited for me though, and said that it was probably better that he did that—he won’t be looking for me for a while, now. I didn’t tell her that I was going with you; like you were saying the other day, the less anyone knows, the less Gorsh can force them to tell.
“But my hair’s brown now—all wet though.”
Shyla flashed the light on its lowest setting for a moment, and saw, indeed, that Jaqui was no longer a red-head. Her face was still pale, lot paler than Shyla’s or any Waywardian that she had ever seen. Still, that paleness didn’t stick out the way the fiery red hair had; they had a chance now.
“Rosa said to go south; that’s where we can get away from Gorsh’s holdings the quickest. We’ll still have to watch it, since he’s been bribing Wardmen for ever, but he doesn’t have nearly as much money for bribes as he used to, so they won’t be hopping for him the moment he asks them to.
“Where’d you get the light?”
“Murra gave it to me. He said that he found it in one of the comatose man’s pockets—I guess Gorsh’s searchers had missed it because it’s so small. He thought that we could maybe use it, if we travel at night time, and hide during the day.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to do that, until we get away from Salamanka, at least. I got some food from the cafeteria, and a bottle for water. Rosa said that there are public water taps on the main streets, so we won’t die of thirst.”
They had started walking. There were no streetlights in this part of Salamanka—perhaps because Gorsh’s night time doings did not bear scrutiny. For the escapees this was just as well; the sky with its myriad stars gave enough light to travel by, while their forms were mere shadows in the dark. If they ran into an obstacle they could always get their bearings with the button light, and then turn it off again as soon as it was no longer needed. Once they were out of the sweetberry bushes they stopped talking; they had no idea whether others of Gorsh’s people were out and about in the night, and they did not want to be recognized from their voices. So they would not be passing the time chatting, but, instead, would be looking around them furtively while trying to give the impression to anyone who might be around that they knew exactly what they were doing, and where they were going.
*****
Time passed.
The girls kept walking, always towards the south, using the grid pattern of the streets as their guide, even as Rosa had told Jaqui to do.
Rosa was an old woman who had worked for Gorsh for a long time and had grown disillusioned. She was too old now to find another job, and there was in Salamanka no such thing as pensions, so she kept on working in Gorsh’s kitchen even while she seethed with fury at his treatment of the chattels, especially the innocent young women. When Gorsh had taken Jaqui for his bed warmer, Rosa had nearly lost it, especially since the girl’s mother did not seem to care. That was when Rosa had realized that Jaqui’s mother was in love with Gorsh and would have done anything for him—even though by Gorsh’s reckoning she was too old for him to bother with. He had one old wife already—though Milla was not that old, either, just not fertile—and he did not want another. Gorsh wanted sons to whom to leave his property.
Rosa had rallied from her fury, mainly because she had decided that she would be Jaqui’s protector as much as anyone could be, and when the girl had asked if she would dye her hair brown, Rosa had been delighted. It meant that she had decided to try to escape from the horrid place! Rosa had given Jaqui as much information and advice as she had managed to glean during her years of working, first for Milla, and then in Milla’s husband’s kitchen. When Jaqui had been late for their appointment because she had had to service their boss’s sexual needs, she had at first been furious all over again, but then it had dawned on her that, under the circumstances, that was a good thing. Jaqui had the opportunity to get a good start on her way before Gorsh would even notice that she was gone.
The girls were still in the city when the eastern sky began to gleam with light. They were far past the centre of Salamanka, however, so Jaqui assumed that they must have left Gorsh’s holdings behind.
“I think we’re out of Gorsh’s area,” she said in a low voice, “but we still should look for a place to hole up for the day. Some Wardman might wonder who the heck we are, since we obviously don’t belong in his part of the city. Rosa said that the Wardmen keep track of strangers in their Wards, because they’re on the lookout for crimes committed by outsiders. We don’t really want anyone to call up Gorsh, or his Overseer, and ask them if they’re missing a couple of young women.”
Shyla looked over the landscape. They were in a residential area and it did not look like there were a lot of hidey holes to be found. The street they were on, in the increasing light, appeared to be lined with small houses that were surrounded by gardens, with no sheds or other outbuildings in sight. This time of the morning there were no other people around, but should an early riser decide to come out on the street, for whatever reason, the two girls would not be able to fade into the background.
“It doesn’t look good,” she muttered nervously.
“We better keep walking the way we’ve been going,” Jaqui said, peering ahead. “It looks like the land’s dropping of
f a few blocks ahead. Maybe there’s a stream bed, or something there, maybe vegetation, too, that will give us a hiding place among trees or bushes.”
It was about the only option they had. Elsewhere the houses, with their little gardens were growing more and more visible as sunrise approached. Shyla sighed, and tried to walk faster, even though she was tired, and her feet ached. Jaqui must be feeling about the same, she figured, although the red-head who was no longer a red-head spoke not a word of complaint.
They saw the river almost at the same time, and immediately their spirits rose. The bank was a wild tangle of vegetation—the yards of the habitations apparently did not extend to it. The street they were on did not go down to the river either; only a narrow path cut through the thick undergrowth, and it disappeared among the low trees that hid the water’s edge from the girls’ eyes.
“If there’s a path along the water, maybe we can use it to get out of the city,” Shyla said. “Rivers always run through towns.”
“That’s a thought,” Jaqui agreed. “If the path is hidden enough that a flit or a flyer won’t be able to pick us out while we scamper along.”
“You think that Gorsh would send a flit or a flyer looking for us?” Shyla asked.
That possibility had not occurred to her, maybe because the world from which she had been snatched had not used air transport at all.
“He might,” Jaqui replied. “If he wants either of us back badly enough.”
“Well let’s hope that he doesn’t value us that highly. He doesn’t seem to like women much, so maybe he doesn’t.”
“Don’t count on it. Just because he doesn’t care for you doesn’t mean that you aren’t worth money. And me—well, a man like him will have to find a replacement for me, if I disappear. That’s not always easy. I wish he’d take my mother; it would make her happy.”
Her bitter tone made Shyla give her a long look. This was not the time to pursue the topic however; they had reached the path that would take them to the water.
“Hope none of these things are noxious weeds,” Shyla laughed when she noticed that the undergrowth around the path, most of it wildflowers, reached up above the girls’ heads as they threaded their way towards the water.
“Oh, they’re probably someone’s idea of noxious weeds, but not ours,” Jaqui replied just as cheerfully. “They do a good job of hiding us. They’re a lot taller than they looked from the top.”
She was leading the way.
The path opened up to what was apparently a kids’ swimming hole. There was a muddy bit of a shore—no beach—and this early in the morning the water had not been mucked up yet by eager feet, so the girls could see the bottom with its plethora of rounded stones. The river was fairly wide; Shyla wondered whether they were close to its outlet. She dipped a finger into the water and tasted it; no salt flavour at all, which meant that if they were close to the river’s end, it was flowing into a lake, not an ocean.
“We can’t stay here,” Jaqui said. “One of the first places that they’ll look for us will be the lake-side port. We’ll have to go upriver. Well, that’s okay, I think we’ll be going sort of southeast, and therefore getting farther and farther away from Gorsh’s holdings.
“Can you see anything resembling a path going that way?”
Shyla walked over to that side of the clearing, to examine the vegetation there. She did not see the mostly overgrown trail until she was nearly upon it; then she realized that there was a narrow opening in the undergrowth, wider at the bottom, and almost not there at her head level, as if the plants had spread out again since the path had last been used.
“Yeah, looks like it hasn’t seen much use recently,” Jaqui agreed, when she came over to inspect it. “Which is better for us. I wonder....”
She looked back at the bare but muddy shore longingly; then shook her head.
“We better not linger here, though it would have been nice to choke down some food, and drink a little water in an open area like this. And dangle our toes in the river. But we don’t know how early the kids who use this start showing up, and we don’t want to be here when they do.”
“Right,” Shyla agreed with a sigh. “We’ll find some spot under a tree for our rest, a place where only ones to see us will be small animals and insects.”
*****
The path did not offer any good places to stop.
Some minutes later the girls hauled out some food and their water bottles, and ate and drank a bit while on the move. They were tired; they had been walking since midnight, after a day of doing chores on Gorsh’s property, and now it was getting to be mid-morning.
“All I ask for, right this moment, is a place where I can stretch myself out, and sleep in some small amount of comfort for an hour or two,” Jaqui muttered, once she had finished gnawing on the dry piece of bread that had been her breakfast.
But it looked like there was nothing like that in sight. There was only the narrow path which was looking more and more overgrown with every passing moment. The grasses and the underbrush were so tall that the girls could see nothing around them except the vegetation. They had no idea how close or far the river was, and whether or not they were approaching the countryside outside Salamanka. And neither of them had the energy to fight their way through the thick weeds and brush to the water, even if it was near, to take their bearings.
Jaqui had begun to believe that her whole existence had turned into a trudge down a narrow path, and Shyla, behind her, had to concentrate hard to keep from stumbling every step, when suddenly everything changed.
The half-obliterated trail opened into a clearing. The clearing was unexpectedly far from the river; in fact, the river was hidden from sight by trees, the only sign of it, a well-trod path that crossed the ground at right angles to the trail that the girls had been following, and continued into the trees on the downward slope. There was a small building in the clearing—a little house! It was surrounded by a vegetable garden and flower beds; it looked like a small oasis of fecundity and beauty in the otherwise overgrown river valley.
Shyla stared at it, hardly believing her eyes. She blinked, and then blinked again, but the cottage and its surroundings stayed where they were; they were not a mirage. She wanted to touch the house just to make sure that it was real, but didn’t quite dare. It seemed impolite, somehow, to go and paw the wooden wall just to ensure herself that it was not a hallucination.
“It’s a Wise Woman’s home,” Jaqui said. “Or maybe a Shaman lives here—but I bet it’s a Wise Woman. Rosa said once that you can’t mistake a Wise Woman’s home; it’ll look like a fairytale oasis, she said! Hah, just what we were looking for, and we haven’t even left the city yet!”
Then she sighed tiredly.
“Maybe she’ll let us sleep on her floor, or in her garden—or somewhere where there’s enough room to stretch out. I think that I’ll knock on her door and ask.”
She swallowed the nervousness that she felt, and crossed the last metres between the edge of the clearing and the house’s door. Shyla followed her, even as she had done all morning. Jaqui took some comfort from the other girl’s presence; it was good to not be all alone when she knocked on a stranger’s door.
To the girls, the woman who answered the door looked ancient. Her hair was white, her face was wrinkled, and she was shorter than either of the two of them—and neither of them was tall. But she had merry eyes, a smile on that creased face, and an air of knowing exactly what she was doing.
“Oh, thank goodness,” were the first words that came out of Jaqui’s mouth. “You are a Wise Woman!”
The woman laughed. It was a nice laugh, and the nicest sound either girl had heard for quite some time.
“That I am,” the woman replied. “Were you looking for a Wise Woman?”
“Yes,” said Jaqui.
And Shyla blurted:
“But we didn’t think we’d find one until we were out of town!”
The woman laughed again and looked at Shyla’
s tired face.
“Does it look like you’re in the city right now?” she asked her.
Shyla glanced at the vegetation of the river valley around them.
“No, not really,” she answered tentatively.
“We came into the river valley from a street,” Jaqui explained. “Out there where some kids have a swimming hole in the river. Then we found the overgrown path and started to follow it, thinking that we’d get out of the city if we kept moving upriver.”
“But you’re hot, dusty and tired; and hungry and thirsty, too. And you were looking for a Wise Woman, so you’ve accomplished something at least. You’re running away from somebody, or something.”
The last words were not a question; they were a statement.
“How’d you know?” It was Jaqui’s turn to blurt.
Another laugh.
“It’s not hard to tell. Not very many people find their way here. And none stumble on this place while walking along the river valley down the old, overgrown trail, except maybe an adventurous child or two, who usually think that they’ve gotten lost in a picture book when they come upon my cottage. Two pretty girls in their late teens, looking like they’ve got the weight of the world on their shoulders, looking for a way out of the city—of course you’re running away from something. And if you’re looking for help from a Wise Woman, things must be pretty bad.
“Come on in. I’ll feed you and give you drink. Then we’ll talk; I’ll find out what the situation is, and we’ll see if I can help, and if there’s time for you to get some rest.”
*****
“Did Slaver Gorsh mark you?” The Wise Woman Seleni asked the girls, after she had fed them bread, soup, and restorative tea.
They were sitting on wooden benches on the north side of the cottage, and under some shade trees. Shyla was struggling to stay awake in spite of the tea. She thought that Jaqui looked a little more alert than she felt.
“Mark us?” Jaqui asked. “I don’t know what that means.”
She stared at Seleni questioningly.
Showdown on the Planet of the Slavers Page 29