Shadowkill sq-3, page 29
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
He slept.
11
Rose came from the fresher, went to the mirror. She inspected herself, leaned closer, touched a fingertip to the slight sag under her eyes.
“Rose.”
She straightened, wheeled, relaxed. “Kuna.”
“Right.” He dug his fingers into the folds under his jaw; he’d turned his options around and over and around again, he still wasn’t sure about it, but he’d decided the truth was best and this was the best time to tell it. “Ah… mmm. Barracuda is Omphalos all right. He made a com call the first break. Black House. He’s arranged to have you picked up the moment you leave the Shimmery.”
She moved her shoulders, looked irritated. “I don’t NEED this.”
“Thought I’d better tell you.”
“Yes yes, you’re right. You’ve got your stunner… of course you have. Look. The next break, it’s for a sleep session. Six hours. You remember… ah… according to…” She touched her lips, frowned. “I was told he’d come by flit, if he came at all. It has to be parked somewhere close. While we’re sleeping, you think you could find it?”
“Oh, yes.”
She didn’t try telling him what to do when he found it; one good result of a touch of healthy paranoia about being overheard, it kept her from belaboring the obvious, something she had a tendency to do. Irritating to be treated like a subnormal child.
“Right.” She sighed. “It’s back to work.” She caught up the hood, slipped it over her head, adjusted the eyeholes. “Let’s go, Li’l Liz.”
12
Sunhawk was waiting when she walked in, standing apart from the others. His hood was a gesture, no more; everyone in the room knew who they entertained. His eyes flickered as Kikun slipped in behind her, then he forgot, Kikun’s Gift wiping the image away, abetted by the obsession growing in him, an obsession that became apparent as soon as he spoke.
He touched her arm. “Autumn Rose,” he said. His voice was a caress. “I haven’t seen such play in years.”
“Oh,” she said. “I suggest you find a mirror; you’ll see a better one than I am.”
“Gracefully said, but not true.” His fingers stroked the bird on the rayed circle. “Is this your profession?”
“No, I play when I have the time and funds. My life is elsewhere and I prefer it that way. A diet of desserts is quickly boring.”
“Hmm. There’s no time at the moment, the game is about to begin again. Consider changing your mind. I offer security-no, more than that-luxury, anything you want. All I ask is a game now and then.” He lifted a hand. “No. Don’t give your answer now. Not till the end of this Game. Consider where you are and what I can give you.”
Kikun’s ears twitched. The voice was genial, the words innocuous, but the intent behind them… Oh, Rose, it’s almost comical, half of Tos Tous is going to be waiting out there ready to grab you.
Grandmother Ghost the Lael-Lenox pinched his arm: Just like a male, look at him, preening like a fool, tchah! just because that bitty chile does something he wants to get his hands on, he reaches out and grabs, didn’t his mamah teach him better? But what’s a mamah to a man once he gets his growth? You try going on like that round me, baby, I’ll snatch you skinless, you hear?
Otter leaned over, patted Grandmother Ghost on her head with his stubby handpaw:
You doing THAT dance again, old woman? Boring, boring, we heard it all before. Heard it all, heard it all, kvetching carping, boring, boring.
I stop carping when you get a brain, hair fool!
Kikun turned them all out, leaned against the wall, and tried to sleep. The Lael-Lenox was the sole female in his personal clutch of gods and sometimes found it necessary to defend all females in sight.
When she was in one of those moods, she was capable of raising such a storm, he threatened more than once to exorcise them all and find his peace in absolute, unadorned reason. The ultimate atheism.
They were powerful, though, these gods he’d birthed for himself from his flesh and soul and the collective experience of his people. They were not, perhaps had never been-even in their crudest form when he was a child groping toward consciousness-merely convenient ways of dealing with parts of himself he was incapable of understanding. He knew on one level that the only reality they had was what he chose to give them, but at a deeper level by far, he NEEDED them. They had a grip on him he’d never shake loose. Most of the time he didn’t want to. Most of the time.
He slept.
##
Grandmother Ghost pinched him awake when the Game broke for the third time. The Players departed by their separate doors, Hadluk collected the women and took them out. Jao juhFeyn supervised the cleaning of the Mewa Room, took a last look round and went out, locking the door behind him.
Kikun slipped away with the women, then followed juhFeyn as Jao checked the Shimmery’s security.
When Jao left for bed, Kikun undid the alarms on the back door, went out.
13
Morning.
He collected a fork, a spoon, a plate and a cup from the kitchen, then followed the girl carrying breakfast into Rose’s room, waited in a corner while she laid out the meal on the table, knocked on the bedroom, got an answer, then left.
Rose came out yawning, blinked when she saw Kikun sitting at the table sipping at pinkish-yellow fruit juice from a crystal pitcher. She looked over her shoulder, shrugged, came across and sat down. “I don’t know who’s listening.”
Kikun leaned back, watched her pour the rest of the juice into her glass. “No one.”
She pulled her mouth into an inverted smile, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, “maybe so. Well?”
“Found it. There’s a park out back, chain fence around it. Guards. Three flits in there. Black and silver one with some kind of sigil on it, that’s probably his. Didn’t try to get to it. No point in that, not yet. It’ll be locked. He’s either carrying the keys or has them in his rooms. I’ll take a look there during the first break. See what I can find.” He yawned, yawned again.
“You look like someone’s sucked the air out.”
“Just tired. Lot of things going on. Takes it out of you, you know.”
“Kuna, nothing’s going to happen today, except more of the same. Why don’t you stay here and sleep?”
“It’s an idea.”
“Have a nice hot bath, stretch out on the bed. It’s a good bed,, comfortable, lovely sheets, like this…” she smoothed her hand along the heavy silken stuff of her dress, “only white.”
“You sold me.” He got to his feet. “You’re just a wall away. You need help, scream.”
She giggled. “Go to bed, Kuna. Scream, huh! Not likely.”
He wriggled all over, shaking his skin along his bones, then strolled out.
The bed was as comfortable as promised.
He stripped, stretched out between the sheets, started to sigh and was deep asleep before the sigh was finished.
14
Grandmother Ghost the Lael-Lenox pinched him awake a short time before the maid came in to make the bed and straighten the rooms.
Kikun pulled on his clothes and strolled out.
Rose was talking with the Pirate who was describing an improbable fish he’d encountered in the Southern seas. Kikun listened a moment, drifted on. Must be using him as shield against the High Vaar, he thought. Tlee! what a bore. He stopped beside her chair, raised his brows. The small table where her stake was piled was bowed under the weight of the gold on it, more rouleaux piled beneath it and around its legs. Rose could have herself cast lifesize in gold and make herself half a dozen copies. How we’re supposed to cart that off, even a third of it…
Grandmother Ghost leaned into him, inspecting the pile: Yellow peril, sad stuff, poison stuff, that chile has the right idea, baby.
Otter giggled, faded when Grandmother turned to glare at him. He’d suffered his share of pinches and scolds and wasn’t looking for more.
Blackbear touched Kikun’s arm.
The maids were coming from the suites. They circled the room and left.
Kikun yawned and went to search Barracuda’s room.
15
Rose shook him awake.
He sat up, bleary-eyed and yawning.
She laughed. “Scream, hunh!”
“What?”
“Just a comment, not a summons. Supper’s laid. Get yourself up, wash your dishes, come join me.”
##
It was a light supper, half of a smallish bird, soup, several rolls and a large salad. A pot of local tea sat in a quilted nest, a curl of steam rising from its spout.
After she divided the meal meticulously in half, they ate in silence for several minutes. “Find anything?” she said at last.
“He keeps his keys on him, or they’re locked in the com-box. Which you’d have to handle; my training lies in other lines.”
“Hmm.”
He drank the last of the soup, refilled his cup with tea from the pot. “You seem to be doing well at the Game.”
“Well enough.”
“Not excited? There’s gold enough there to gild half the roofs in the city.”
“Gold, tchah! Hadluk’s been in this backwater too long, he’s lost his perspective. You know, Kuna, I’ve played single passes where more value changed hands. Couldn’t get enough gold in that room to interest some types I’ve been in games with, you know, like Ginny’s clients. Well, that’s not why we’re here, is it.
“Is it?”
“’Course not.” She wrinkled her nose, then grinned at him-and he found himself liking her better than he had for a long time. “Sure, I hate to let that idiot Hadluk cheat me, but no way I’m going to go running off with half a ton of gold stuffed down my front. My fun’s in the playing. Riding the high. I told you, I can always get money.” She sobered. “Just as well we’re not planning to hang around after this is over.”
“High Vaar getting possessive?”
“You got it. He’s bidding for a permanent partner. Got so far as to say I’d make someone a fine wife, someone who liked Vagnag, him for instance. Z’ Toyff!”
“Well, it’d be an easy life.”
“Wash your mouth out, saaaa, easy, that plasticman pawing over me, make me sick just thinking about it. Besides, I like my work. I’d kill myself if I had to sit around doing nothing.” She looked at her ringchron. “Time in. Where’d I put that hood?”
16
The Game went on and on.
At the close of Chapter 30, the end of the second day of playing, Autumn Rose sat like an icon of the Lady inside of walls of gold, piles of gold, a black, white and golden image with the fugitive glimmers of the crystal in her necklace.
While the attendant Dasuttras brought the gold she’d won in the last Chapter, she got to her feet and walked out surrounded by a tense and angry silence.
##
“Not taking it well, are they?” Kikun bit a piece out of a chunk of green from the salad bowl.
Autumn Rose snorted, jerked off the hood, threw it at the nearest chair. “They say they want, a good game, doesn’t matter win or lose. Hah! What they mean is I’m gonna break you to your last copper.” She backed up to him. “Unbutton me, will you? I want to get out of this.”
He wiped his fingers on a napkin, began unhooking the thread loops. “Sounds like you’re not enjoying it any more.”
She shrugged out of the dress, draped it over her arm.
“I’d forgot how boring Forty Chapter gets,” she said and went out.
“When you’re winning,” he murmured.
“I heard that,” she called from the bedroom. “Win, lose, after a while it’s all the same. Booooring.”
He ate more salad and waited.
She came out pushing her arms into the woolly robe, tieing it tight around her. “Goerta b’rite, I’ll be glad when this is over. One more day, Kuna.” She dropped into her chair, poured herself a cup of tea and reclaimed the salad from Kikun. “One. More. Day.”
“Hmm.” He broke open a roll, spread butter on it. “What happens when it is over?”
She snorted. “What do you think? Hadluk and Pulleet will try to kill me if they see a way of keeping all the gold. Sunhawk, our esteemed High Vaar, will give his best shot at disappearing me into his little place on the hill there. Barracuda will be torn between knocking me on the head and hauling me off or waiting till I walk out and letting his thugs do the job.”
He chuckled. “A piece to each, maybe?”
“Hunh.”
“So?”
“So, I think Jao is likely to squash Hadluk’s ambitions, I’m not going to bother my head about him… hmmmm, you’re stronger than you look, Kuna. Could you carry Barracuda any distance, like out back to his flit?”
“Why bother? I’ll liberate a rolling tray from the kitchen, fold him up on it and wheel him out.”
“Good enough.” She emptied her cup, refilled it. “One more day, Kuna.”
17
Restless after his long sleep, Kikun followed the cleaning maids from the Mewa room, went out and wandered the semi-streets about the Shimmery.
The crowds had left, gone home for the night.
That was usual. Once the sun went down, Tos Tous was dead. No lights and crazies in the shadows.
He wandered to the wharves near the Auction House. There was no sign Sai’s body had been found. No new ships in port. Quiet. Dull. Ropes slapping, wood creaking. Not even a strong wind.
The Harbor Watch as usual hung about the incinerators spread along the bayfront, standing in clusters of two or three, talking, drinking, taking a leak over the edge of the wharf, strolling out to look up and down for stragglers trying to sneak onto the ships or steal the rescue ropes hanging in coils from mooring posts at intervals of half a kilometer.
Kikun drifted near one of those groups, listened to the men talking.
Nothing about Sai. One man was cursing his wife who’d walked out on him, going on and on about what he was going to do with her when he found her. After a while the others got bored with this and shut him up.
At the next incinerator a man had a pair of lottery tickets and the others were hooting at him, telling him the things were always rigged, he wasn’t anyone’s nephew, he hadn’t a hope of winning.
“Better than that,” he said. “I got a bit of cloth from her dress, slept over it, and dreamed those numbers. I’m gonna win, you’ll see…”
“Who’d you buy it from, Djikki the Snot? He stole my wife’s sister’s skirt off the wash line, tore it up, been selling it to any fool who’d bite.”
“Naaa, I snatched it off a Angatine and she got it from some trip who tore it loose hisself. I saw the whole thing. I’m gonna win, I know it.”
“You seen the woman?”
“Yah. Tall, skinny thing, bet you’d do yourself a misery on those bones you tried to djink her. Not bad looking…”
Kikun moved on as the men traded comments on Rose’s attributes, not especially flattering ones. It was their way of rebelling against circumstances that set them down at the bottom of their world, discards, straw to be walked on and used by the powerful. He understood it, didn’t like it, was glad he didn’t have to deal with the anger disguised by those mocking debunking words.
He met more of that anger as he walked along. The men by the bricks admired and hated Rose, used her as a way of talking about tabu things, complaining about her supposed excesses as a way of getting at the powerful they didn’t dare speak against. The Players in that game of Topenga Vagnag could lose more than a hundred men could make in a year, a thousand men. Ten thousand like them. And who’d pay? They would, people like them. The Vaarmanta would squeeze their losses out of their people’s hides. It was a story he knew only too well. It was happening on his world, the conquerors acting like conquerors everywhere, the sweat of his people paid for Daivigili excesses, kept the eternal queen in luxury. It was why he’d come away with Lissorn, to find help, weapons maybe, knowledge mostly, someway, somehow to throw the Daivavig out of Keyazee, send them back to their hot, dry southlands.
He twitched his ears, scratched at the skin folds under his jaw. Soon. Like Rose said. One more day.
He went to the Rumach, used the spare key, and went up to the attic where he’d hidden their gear after Rose left.
He roped the travelsacs to his back, went shuffling through the streets, his NOT-THERE blasting out to keep the predators off him. When he reached the Shimmery, he went round to the woodshed beside the fenced-in flit park and stowed his burden up in the rafters where only the spiders went.
Back inside the Shimmery, he found an empty room and curled up to wait for morning when juhFeyn would open the Mewa again and he could get to Rose.
18
Autumn Rose stalked in, tore the hood from her head and flung it on the floor, plucked the pins from the knot she’d twisted her hair into and tossed them on the hood. She shook her head, scratched her fingers vigorously through her hair, turning it into a fright wig. She flung her arms out. “Aaaaghhhh!”
Kikun chuckled, tilted his head. “Well?”
“Well!”
“Clean ’em?”
“Near enough.” She scowled at a knock on the door, combed her hands through her hair, trying to smooth it down. “It’s not locked.”
Jao juhFeyn came in. Hadluk a shadow behind him. Jao bowed, straightened. “Autumn Rose, you are the sole net winner. Do you understand that you’ll be paying my full fee?”
“You made that quite clear.”
“Will you trust me with the count, or would you prefer to do it yourself?”
“Do it. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. What do you charge for using your credit-link?”
