Shadowkill sq-3, page 18
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
Kizra bowed her head, said nothing.
“Yes,” he said. He closed his eyes a moment, then stirred himself and finished what he’d determined to say.
“And you, chapa Tinoopa, you have made the Matja’s life infinitely more pleasant even in the short time you have been here. I have said nothing before now. For this lack I ask your favor.” He turned abruptly, took the hands the Matja held out to him, and pulled her to her feet.
At the bedroom door, he looked over his shoulder. “Aghilo, if the chapai decide to stay here, take care of them, please. We know how surely we may rely on you.”
3
MEMORY:
A redheaded woman came riding through the Cicipi Gate, sitting in an arslibre howda mounted on the arching back of an immense and ugly warbot like the worse possible cross between a spider and a lobster.
Two more paced alongside and a third followed behind. They shot gouts of steam through spiracles along their sides, opening a path for themselves through the surging throng of pilgrims, walked with ominous sinuous agility through the steam clouds.
“Eh, Shadow, Dea ex machina reporting for duty.”
“Eh, Aleytys.” Shadith closed her eyes, opened them again as she remembered. “You better machinate some more or this world is going to go BOOM.”
Aghilo went out without waiting to ask if they meant to stay.
“Backwater worlds,” Tinoopa said. She stood, stretched, looked around the room. “It’s the floor for us, dust headaches and an aching back. Ah, well. Could be worse. You could easy have been the goat, Kiz. Hung out for that oogaluk to gnaw on.”
Kizra wrinkled her nose. Lecture time. Tinoopa was going sententious again. She was getting tired of being instructed, especially as her memory drained back. She loosed the strings on the arranga, set it on a table and moved to a chair.
Tinoopa rubbed at her arms and frowned at one of the windows. A raindrop splatted against the glass, then another and another. “We haven’t seen a strong storm yet, not the kind they call a kwangkular. Sound of that wind says this might be it. Too bad. Lasts a good week they say. No flying in that weather. Those two oogaluks might be stuck here for days. You’ve been shut up with the Matja most of the time, you don’t hear what the chal are saying. It’s only a matter of time, they’re saying. Pirs is better than most Irrkuyon, but he won’t stand up to his father, he never has except maybe when he courted the Matja. They’re taking bets how long he’ll last.” She glanced at the door, stopped talking.
MEMORY:
Arel the smuggler got to his feet. He was a small dark man with a bony sardonic face, fans of fine wrinkles about the outer corners of his eyes and his mouth. His long dark hair was pulled through a filigreed silver clasp at the nape of his neck and hung halfway down his back.
“What am I doing here?”
“You can bypass Goyo Security, get a lander down and off again unnoticed?”
“Oh, Shadow Shadow, you need to ask that? It’s my business.”
“I need a back door. Just in case.”
“Operating against one of the families, aren’t you?” His brow shot up.
She didn’t answer, figuring it was none of his business.
“You owe me danger money, then; those Goyo are tricky bastards.”
Aghilo came in, two maidservants following her with bedding and rolled up pallets. She waved Tinoopa and Kizra aside to give the girls room to make up the beds. “I’m going back to my room for the night. The door out there, chapa Tinoopa, you lock and bar it when we’re gone.” She twisted a key from the chatelaine on her belt, tossed it to Tinoopa. “I’ll knock and call out my name in the morning when it’s time for you to be up. Be very sure who’s out there, chapa Tinoopa, before you open the door. Use the peep to see if I’m alone. Do you hear me?”
“I hear, Aghilo chal.”
4
She died again in her dreams. Plunged down and down through fire and pain and crashed.
She woke sweating.
Tinoopa was getting up, smoothing her hair out of her face, shaking out her nightgown.
Someone was pounding on the outer door.
What… Kizra scrubbed at her eyes. There was a terrible urgency in that knocking, though it wasn’t as noisy as she’d first thought when it crashed into her dream. She kicked off the blankets, rolled from the pallet, and got to her feet. Lifting the front of her borrowed nightgown so she wouldn’t step on it and fall on her face, she followed Tinoopa into the anteroom.
The knocking continued; she could feel the desperation, the fear and anger in the woman on the other side of the door. Aghilo. What was happening?
After a quick look through the peep, Tinoopa turned the key, slapped the bar up, and tugged the door open.
Aghilo stumbled inside. Her face was drained of color, her mouth was working. She put out her hand, flattened it against the wall, and stood leaning into her braced arm while she caught her breath and stifled her panic.
After a moment she straightened, looked quickly from Tinoopa to Kizra. “You’d better get dressed,” she said. “There’s trouble.” She started past Tinoopa, but the Shimmarohi caught her arm.
“What happened?”
“Contract woman. She killed Rintirry, hung herself. I have to wake the Arring.”
“Wait, wait, just a minute. It’s barely light now, you’ve got plenty of time before the Artwa goes nova. Sit down.” Using her size and her grip on Aghilo’s arm, she maneuvered the smaller woman to, one of the benches and muscled her down. Then she stood with feet apart, hands on her hips. “How’d you find out?”
MEMORY:
The room was as stale and sordid as she’d expected; she felt a little sick when she saw it. She closed her eyes and told herself it didn’t matter. But it did. Arel put his hands on her shoulders. He was exactly her height, his mouth on a level with hers. She focused on that mouth, not daring to meet his eyes. “Give me a minute, Luv.” Whistling softly, he tossed the filthy bedding into a closet, brought out clean sheets. He made the bed with an expertise that had her smiling; he caught her at it and his whole body laughed. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.
He took an incense burner from his shoulder bag, filled and lit it. The scent of pines drifted to her, cool and clean. He brought out a pair of thick green candles, lit them and turned off the light.
The room was filled with flickering shadow, touched with magic. The outside world with its threats and dangers was banished for the moment.
“Come here,” he said.
Kizra collected Tinoopa’s clothes, brought them to her, then started pulling on her own clothing. When she was dressed, she dropped to the rug behind Tinoopa, where she could watch Aghilo but be more or less out of sight.
Aghilo twisted her hands around and around each other as Tinoopa was dressing. The sight of the Shimmarohi shaking out the nightgown and starting to fold it seemed to reassure her and she began talking. “Well, first thing I knew, Loujary chal was beating at my door, he’d gone into the Honor Suite to clear up and make sure things were right for when they woke, you know, warm the towels, pick up whatever was thrown about, kind of things they’d expect to have done and get…” she grimaced, “get cranky about if it isn’t. Anyway, P’murr let him in, said it’d been a quiet night, Rintirry hadn’t given him any trouble. Loujary said they talked some before he went in, this and that, he didn’t go into what they said except what I told you. Soon as he was inside, he twisted the rheostat way down and turned the lights on and went around picking up, getting things ready, you know. He looked in at the Artwa. Old man was sleeping. Snoring. He went in, picked up there, folded, set out. You know. Artwa didn’t stir, just kept snoring. He went in Rintirry’s bedroom.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t believe him, I had to go see.” She pressed her hand across her mouth, closed her eyes briefly, then forced them open. “I can’t forget…”
Tinoopa took her shoulders, shook her a little. “No time for that now. Listen, I need to know what it means for us. Chaps and chat, what do we have to do to protect ourselves?”
Aghilo squeezed her hands together, moving one over the other endlessly, the soft sound of skin on skin filling the tense silence. “Amurra bless, I’ve never seen worse, even…” she shook her head while her hands kept moving. “She cut his throat, that was first, I suppose. It had to be, that’s where the blood was… you could smell the blood all over the suite, I don’t see how Loujary didn’t, I suppose the door was shut then, shut it in… cut his head completely off and set it on the pillow, the eyes were open, it was like he was looking at you. And she cut him… ah… cut it off and put it in his hand like he was… ah… and she cut open his chest and took his heart out and put it down there where… ah… and the skin on the arms and legs, it was gone… ah… except for his hands and feet, it was like he was wearing gloves and slippers and… ah… she’d cut the skin she got in strips and braided it into a rope… ah… it must have taken her most of the night… ah… and when she was finished, she used that rope to hang herself… ah… from one of the bed posts, it’s a big bed, like the Matja’s, you’ve seen hers, carved like that, with posts holding curtains… it’s the drafts, come winter, it’s hard to heat the rooms, we don’t have that much fuel… ah… there’s coal in the mountains, but we’ve just started getting it out… she was naked, red hair hanging down to her waist, no blood at all, she’d washed it off, in the bathroom, bloody water and she’d oiled her body, smelled like… ah… I had to look… see everything…”
“Who?”
“The one called Tamburra, tall, red-haired. Strange woman. The Matja assigned her to the Herbmistress, she worked in the distillery.”
“How did she get in? Wasn’t P’murr supposed to stop that kind of thing?”
“I asked him. She didn’t go past him, I suppose she must have been inside already when the Arring set him there.” Tinoopa scowled. “I don’t know her…”
Kizra scratched at her nose. “She was the one who had nightmares every night. On the trip here.”
Tinoopa looked around and down. “What?”
“You must have heard her screaming. Woke everyone up several times. Didn’t explain except it was nightmares.”
“Got her. Yeh. The beauty. All she had to do was be where the man could see her, he’d work out the rest of it. Probably told her to go in and wait for him, keep quiet about it. He knew what, the Arring thought of him?”
“It wasn’t any secret.” Aghilo was settling into lethargy, as if by telling all this she was passing it on to Tinoopa, making it Tinoopa’s responsibility. “Us? Nothing we can do. Artwa might want P’murr skinned, he’s head guard. The Arring won’t let that happen. P’murr’s loyal; you can’t buy what he gives. If the woman hadn’t hanged herself, if she’d run, there be trouble. She’s dead. That should finish it. I don’t know. You understand, anything could happen… Artwa doesn’t need a reason, it’s his right, we’re his by law, chal and chapa, too. He can do anything to us he wants, all we have is the Arring and Amurra only knows how far he’ll go to protect us.”
“Right.” Tinoopa twisted round to look down at Kizra. “Kiz, get the sitting room cleared, I’m going to see what I can do with the maids and houseservants.” She straightened. “Aghilo, you’d better go on in and let the Arring know what happened. Tell him we’ll be ready for anything he wants us to do even if it’s just keep out of the way.” She hauled Aghilo to her feet. “Just tell him what you saw. He’ll know better than us what he has to do. He knows his father. You all right?”
“Better.” Aghilo smiled, shook herself, went soberly out of the anteroom.
Tinoopa murmured, “I hope this turns out better than I think it’s going to.”
Kizra shrugged. “We stick with the Matja, I don’t see we have any other choice.”
“And hope she can put some starch in the Arring’s spine. I’d better get moving. You take care, Kiz.” She looked like she was about to start one of her lectures, then she glanced over her shoulder at the door. “No time for talking. I mean it, child, keep your, head down.”
Dyslaera 9: Lizard Magic
Rohant sat in the Pen absorbing the sun; it was good to be out again. And eating again. He’d always been astonished how easy it was for other Cousins to fast for days on end without serious damage to their bodies. Digby said hunger goes away; you forget about it. You shake a little, get dizzy, but you forget about eating.
He smoothed his thumbclaw along his mustache. Dyslaera weren’t like that. He was not at all like that; he went cold and weak and his mind started shutting down.
There was a flicker of something down by the sump.
Lazily, not much interested, he turned his head, saw a small gray sauroid perched alertly on the rim of the sump. He smiled. It made think of Kikun. Li’l Liz.
The lizard(?) spun, its long thin tail snapped out, the prehensile end whipped round a large flier that was circling down for a drink and slammed it hard against the concrete floor of the pen. It sat up on its haunches, took the insect in its hands and turned it to expose the soft underside. With absurd small relish, it began biting fastidiously at its prey.
Interesting. Wonder what they call it here? It had an almost Dyslaer facility with those tiny hands. Tie with that? Why not.
Rohant let his eyes droop closed and considered the creature, tried to sense it with the faculty he’d used before he could speak. Male and female, Dyslaera were born with the Talent to link with certain beasts, to tie into their nervous systems, to vibrate in tune with their feeling lives. It wasn’t nearly as broad-ranged and apparently indiscriminate as Shadith’s ability to mindride, but there were possibilities…
It took time to build the Tie, time to understand the beast, to relate what was sensed to realtime acts and reactions. Time… lots of time… he’d had Sassa from the egg, carried that egg against his body, warming it, becoming slowly aware of the creature inside. He’d relinquished the egg just before it hatched to allow the hatchling to imprint properly on his own kind, took him back as eyas, kept him always near, sleeping in the same room, trained him, was trained by him, an intensifying give and take until the Tie was complete. Months and months, more than a year.
It was much the same with the mutated panthers Magimeez and Nagifog; he didn’t want to think of them, their death still screamed in his head, their terror and rage and pain.
He thought instead of the not-lizard.
A name. What should I call you, little liz? Miji. Yes. Nimble Fingers, abbreviated because the whole would be too long. Miji. I can’t take a year to get to know you, Miji, all I’ve got is an hour or so, but maybe we can hurry it up some. The sun is warm today. Very bright. Just a few clouds. A shadow of a cloud is passing over you, Miji, do you feel the difference in the warmth? Aaah. Yes. Astonishing. It seems rubbing against Shadow opened some doors in my head. Opened them a crack, anyway. Shadow…
no, Rohant, get your mind on what you’re doing. Do you have any curiosity in you, Miji? You’re not wholly a reptile, are you? Native to this world? Life in the process of evolving? The change altered or cut short by us intruders? Do you feel me… aaah…
Miji the not-lizard lifted his frilly head, stared at Rohant. His eyes were large for his head, black as jet beads, lively eyes, bright with the curiosity Rohant wanted to find in him.
Miji, Miji, come and see. He formed the words in his mind and tried to project the welcoming warmth generated around them.
Miji shivered, ran a few steps toward him, retreated. Time passed unnoticed.
Slowly, warily, Miji got closer and closer, finally close enough to sniff at Rohant’s fingers.
Rohant didn’t move.
Miji panicked, skittered back about a meter, sat on his haunches, and contemplated the Dyslaeror.
Rohant’s ears quivered. He heard the sound of footsteps in the tunnel; the walkers were several minutes off still, but he knew them. His warders come to take him back to his cell. For the first time he looked directly at the not-lizard. “Go,” he said aloud. He slapped his hand several times against the concrete, hoping Miji would understand the warning. It was a common one among the reptiloids of Dysstrael his homeworld.
Miji chirked (the first sound he’d made), slapped the spatulate tip of his tail against the concrete, then went scooting away, darting down the outflow pipe at the bottom of the sump basin.
A moment later the grill clanged open and the five masked wards assigned to him came stomping out.
##
Savant 4 (speaking to notepad):
A rather amusing incident. The Capture Specialist playing his tricks on a common sakali. Appears the subject is suffering from boredom.
QUESTION: Except for samples of body fluids and brain tissue and drugs to suppress the fugue state, the Ciocan has been left undisturbed by orders of the Council. The failure of all attempts to control adult Dyslaerors cannot, of course, be counted a waste of time; negative results are often as valuable as positives. However, work with the remnant of the sample has reached the point where further experiments will not be worth the expense. The council must agree that it is time to start collecting infants and gravid females and dispose of this lot.
SUGGESTION: Ransom one or more of them to Voallts Korlatch, alive but Wiped. If ransom is refused, then dispatch them to Black House so we can recoup some of our expenses. They are too dangerous to keep.
