Shadowkill sq-3, page 6
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
She’d been listening with pleasure, but that question hit her like a brick in the face. She crumpled and started crying. “I don’t know,” she got out. “I can’t remember anything. I don’t know…”
Tinoopa caught hold of her face, long strong fingers on one side, long strong thumb on the other. She turned the face to the light, pushed back the thick springy hair at the temples, flipping aside longer hair to expose patches of new growth where her head had been shaved. “Mindwipe. ’S no wonder you such a mess. Now I do ask myself what you been up to, luv. You don’t look old enough to be that dangerous… well, never you mind, don’t matter what it was, you just start, looking ahead.” She let go and stepped back. “You going to need a name. You let me give you one?”
“Please.”
Tinoopa set her hands on her hips and chewed on her lip. “Elegant bit of work on your face. Left cheek, yes, that’s right,” Tinoopa nodded as she reached up, drew her fingers across her cheek, “etched into the skin, looks like. Must ’ve hurt like hell, but who did it is one real artist. Hawk, hmm. Can’t call you hawk, you not big enough. Kizra, that’s a little ’un where I come from. What they call sparrowhawk in interlingue. Kizra. You like that?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be Kizra.”
“All right, come over here, Kizra, let me do something about that hair. Looks like you got knots in it been there for years.” Talking all the time, she nudged Kizra to a corner of the room, took a piece of comb from a pocket in her coverall and began working on what was left of Kizra’s tight-curled hair.
Dyslaera 3: Exercise And Illusion
Azram stepped from the dark tunnel, stood blinking.
It was an open pen, maybe twenty meters on the short sides, thirty-five or forty on the long ones, tall thin watchtowers with bulbous tops growing from the outer two corners. The walls were at least three stories high, covered on the inside with ceramic so slick even the dust wouldn’t cling, pale green, ugly green, an insult to the eyes.
“Vomit,” Kinefray said and pushed past him. “Eestee, Azri, look at that.” He started running across the gritty cement.
In the endwall to the north there was a spigot about waist high. It was dripping into a skim of scummy water in the shallow sump beneath it.
They stripped and scrubbed each other. Cold water on a cold day-at first they were shivering, then their blood was steaming; they splashed water at each other, started chasing each other, bouncing off the wall, wrestling…
The door slammed open. Tolmant stumbled out.
Azram saw him, pushed Kinefray off and sat up, staring.
Tolmant seemed disoriented. His eyes were wild, his ears tight to his head. A line of drool crawled from the corner of his mouth.
Nezrakan came from the tunnel, caught hold of his uncle, eased him across the pen, and got him seated with his back against the wall, his knees up. He moved Tolmant’s arms onto his knees, brought his head down so it rested on his forearm.
He touched his fingertips a moment on the gray-sprinkled fur between his uncle’s ears, then he straightened, crossed to Azram and Kinefray. “How you two doing?”
Kinefray scratched at the stubble on his chin. “I’m full of holes and Azri’s bored to stone.” He pointed with his mouth at Tolmant. “What’s…”
Nezrakan started to answer, was interrupted by a shriek of rage. He wheeled, started running.
Tejnor screamed again, swung round and started back into the tunnel.
Cables whipped from the wall, caught him by the legs and torso and slammed him against the ceramic.
An augmented voice boomed from one of the towers: “Don’t move, you.” A pellet ricocheted from the concrete near Nezrakan’s foot. “Next one moves an ear’ll get it shot off.”
One of the novice wards who escorted them about came from the tunnel, still trying to pull his robe to some kind of order. Tejnor had clawed him good when he broke loose after he’d gotten a look at Tolmant. He undid the belt to his robe, straightened it out, slapped it a few times against the concrete. The belt was six leather straps, all of them studded with burrs of steel.
He proceeded to beat the shit out of Tejnor.
##
“Interesting. Close call there. If the ward had kept up the whipping about two seconds more, they’d have been on him, shot or not.” Savant 2 sniffed. “You ever smell one of them when he’s angry or frightened? B’sheeeh!”
Savant 1 sent the cursor to the opening sequences, began replaying the events. “There’s that reflex again: you hit my kin, you hit me. If we can isolate and do the right alterations on the triggers, we just might be able to convert that loyalty to us…”
Shadith In Shadows 2
1
The shed door opened.
Light blew in, cold blue-white light that broke the murky twilight inside, wiped it out, making everything clear, pristine. It even seemed to submerge the smells of sweat and stale urine issuing from the women.
Eyes tearing at the sudden brightness, Kizra followed close behind Tinoopa as the big woman marched out, then scurried around and walked beside her, glancing repeatedly and surreptitiously up at her.
Like all the women, Kizra included, Tinoopa wore a grubby gray coverall. It didn’t flatter her wide-shouldered, big-hipped body. She had beautiful skin, soft and smooth, a dark amber; her black hair was thick and coarse; she wore it in heavy braids wound about her head. She had a handsome strong face, bold cheekbones and a decided chin, heavy dark brows over eyes that Kizra had seen friendly and laughing. They went stony when the door opened. Kizra found herself believing that this was not only the motherly creature who’d tended her, but a practiced and successful predator.
##
The women were herded along an alley between massive stone and timber buildings and into a large pen where a number of other women were already waiting, about a hundred of them.
She stayed close to Tinoopa, clinging to her as the only certainty in a world that kept dissolving on her. She tried to be casual about it. The depth of her need frightened her. She couldn’t give in to it. That was another thing that came popping out of what she couldn’t remember; there was something inside her that said however frightened you are, however needy, hide it. Don’t let THEM see you whimper.
The beaten dirt floor was packed hard as rock by generations of feet… how many labor cadres had walked through here to what end? The walls were three meters tall, made of planks like the walls of the but with cracks and knotholes and warped places; the wind came through in much the same way. No color anywhere, nothing but gray. The unpainted wood was weathered to a soft dull gray. The fine clay soil was a grayish tan. The women were all in gray. And fair, with light-colored hair from ash blonde to dirt brown. All but one.
That one had hair so furiously red it seemed to pull in the meager sunlight and, burn with it. Red hair… Kizra tried to see her face, but the woman had her back turned… red hair… red… She looked away, angry and disturbed because there were things in her head she couldn’t get at…
There were other, more obvious problems about the look of the women in here. She frowned at her hands. Brown hands, darker than the dirt she was standing on. Dark as Tinoopa. She looked from them to the pale pink women all around her-and was suddenly afraid.
##
A walkway with a three-bar railing ran along the top of the west wall with doors opening onto it from the building behind. A man came from one of those doors. He stood looking down at them a moment, then away over their heads, his nostrils flaring. The wind blew his hair sideways, long hair, straight and fine, so blond it was almost white. He wore black wool and black leather and carried a heavy pellet rifle cradled in the crook of his arm.
He shifted the rifle, banged the butt against the top rail and began talking, raising his voice so he could be heard above the whine of the wind. ”Irrkuyon of the Families of Aghirnamirr will be coming here to look at you. They will select from you.” He fumbled at his belt, held up a short metal rod.
The name of it popped into Kizra’s head: laser marker. Language. I’ve forgotten everything else, why do I remember words?
He thumbed it on, moved it about; a round red circle flicked from woman to woman. “When you are chosen thus,” he dropped the marker, touched a woman’s arm with the dot, “move here.” The dot swept to the door they’d come through. “When the door opens, go out. A guard will take you to the holding room.”
He went away again.
A few minutes later a woman came out the same door. She was tall and lean with prominent cheekbones and a large mouth. Her hair was drawn tightly back from her face and covered by a wide band of black cloth; the little that was visible was as pale as the man’s. Her brows were almost white and her skin was colorless. She wore a heavy gray jacket fitted close to her body and a long, full gray skirt. She was visibly pregnant, five months or six, and her face was pinched, stern. Her hands were bare, large hands, strong hands. She gripped the rail tensely as her light eyes moved over the women in the pen.
Kizra read her anger and her dislike for this business, felt also the grinding weariness that she was struggling against. After a minute she realized what she was doing and was startled by it. A Talent? she thought. Yes. Is that why…
The man returned, stood beside the woman. He gave her the marker and waited.
Her mouth tightened, but she said nothing. She lifted the rod, flicked it on.
The red dot landed on Tinoopa’s arm.
For a moment Tinoopa didn’t move. The man stirred impatiently, scowled at her. Tinoopa sighed, patted Kizra’s shoulder and walked toward the door, her head high, her shoulders straight, light as a dancer despite her size.
Kizra folded her arms across her breasts, trying to hug reality to her as she felt it start to trickle away.
Then the red dot landed on her arm, breaking over a crease in her sleeve. With a relief that nearly turned her legs to jelly, she hurried after Tinoopa.
##
The big woman grinned, held out her hand as Kizra came into the waiting room. “Thought so. Anyone that’d pick me, she’d pick you. Noticed the rest, huh? They pretty much of a type, yes? Easy to figure the sort of nakaweeks settled this world, huh. Minute I saw ol’ whitehair up there I had me a baaad feeling, maybe Shimmaroh’s jail would’ve been better. A weel a weel, there’s no going back.”
2
When the Irrkuy woman had her quota, a set of guards herded the chosen women from the holding-room into a dusty mudbrick courtyard with a scant layer of gravel over brittle hardpan. White dust stirred and fell back with each twist of the sluggish breeze and filmed every surface in the place. Near the massive gate there were three vehicles parked in echelon-two landrovers and a huge boxtruck. The rovers were heavily armored and one was top-heavy with what amounted to a gun-station on its roof. All three had pneumatic tires made from some polymer that had come out a mottled purple fortunately grayed down by the omnipresent dust.
Kizra stared at them in surprise, she hadn’t expected to see wheeled vehicles-and gulped as the thought finished forming itself. And seized hold of it eagerly and nearly cried out when it slipped away from, her. It was a fragment from the past which had been scraped out of her, but only a fragment, a dislocated bit with no connections she could trace. Her eyes stung, but with fierce determination she refused to cry.
The guards herded them to the back of the boxtruck and sent them up two cleated planks into the dust-filled cavity.
There were cartons and bales packed around the sides with a thick layer of straw laid down in the middle, a strip of canvas laid over the straw. Up near the front a pallid light struggled through the grayish-white crud that covered two small windows. They were double-paned with wire mesh embedded in the thick glass, one window starred about a small hole.
Tinoopa stood with her hands on her hips, the rest of the women eddying around her as they hunted out places to sit. She ignored them and continued her leisurely inspection. She saw the hole in the glass and snorted. “Looka that, Kiz.” She snapped thumb against finger, pointed at the window. “Pellet. This thing been through the wars for sure and that’s where we going, right back into it. Huh.” She looked over her shoulder. The guards were standing around the back of the truck, talking in low tones. “A weel a weel, they don’t look much worried.” She shrugged, strode to a section of canvas next to a bulging cloth-wrapped bale, dropped easily down. “Come on, Kiz, no use gawking about, pick you a place.” She got her back comfortable and settled herself to sleep.
Kizra heard her breathing slow and deepen and she envied her. She crossed her arms on her knees, leaned on them, and stared past the other women at the pallid scene out the back end of the truck.
A thin, small woman went poking about the edge of the straw. “Blankets. Whatcha know, could be this’s better’n we think.” Her voice came out a basso bellow. “Eeda, have one.” She tossed a folded blanket to another woman who might have been her twin but probably wasn’t, then she started tossing blankets to anyone agile enough to catch one.
Kizra snagged one of them, shook it out and tossed it over Tinoopa, plucked another out of the air and wrapped it around her own shoulders; she drew her legs up, pulled the blanket over them.
The guards stopped talking.
The pregnant woman walked past, moving with an angry impatience despite the fatigue and pain in her face. She made a quick gesture and passed out of sight.
The guards closed the back flaps and chunked in the lock-pins. The box was suddenly stuffy and full of smells from the women and the goods sealed in with them.
Tinoopa snored.
Kizra gritted her teeth. Her coverall was too short in the body and cut into her whenever she moved and the armholes were in the wrong place and chafed at her skin. Helpful as Tinoopa had been, her easy acceptance of this situation was almost as irritating as the miserable coverall.
There was a muted roar, rough as an old wino clearing his throat The box began to shudder. The roar smoothed out a little, there was a grinding sound and the truck lurched forward. Wherever they were going, they were on their way.
Kizra slipped into a panic. The uncertainty of her future and the unknowability of her past merged into a black hole that dropped over her, choking her. She started breathing faster; her body shook.
The woman next to her patted her hand. “No so bad,” she said in interlingue spiced with a small lilt and a slurring of the sibilants. “Hard work and bad food…” she shrugged. “So so, you healt’y, you live okay.” She squealed as the truck jounced over a deep pothole and threw her hard against Kizra. When the vehicle returned to its usual sway and lurch, she resettled herself and went on talking as if nothing had happened. “Me, Bertem, these…” she waved her hand at the two women huddling close to her, “my cusinas, Luacha ’n Sabato.” The three of them were very much alike, with light brown hair cut short and waxed into spikes, cheerful monkey faces, tiny agile three-fingered hands. “Don’ worry, chickee, we been at this awhile, we know. What we call you?”
The skinny woman was sitting across from them, her legs drawn up, her arms draped loosely over bony knees. She leaned forward and grinned at Kizra. “That’s right, Kiz,” she said. “Me, I’m Jassy, that’s m’ sister Eeda. Our ma and gramma was Contract, too. We been ’cross the Known and back, an’t lost nothin but time. Your first?”
“She don’t know,” Tinoopa said. “Some gleek mind-wiped her and dumped her.”
Kizra started, then clamped her mouth shut, annoyed at Tinoopa for going off on her that way and the minute she woke up, broadcasting Kizra’s business to everyone.
“Mindwipe, yeeh-hah!” Jassy’s eyes opened wide and she stared at Kizra with increased respect, though she asked no more questions. “Bert’s got it,” she said, “you don’t wanna worry, kid. I don’t say it’s somethin you’d choose had you your druthers, but you gen’ly get clothes and mostly enough food.”
Beside her, Eeda nodded vigorously. Already it was obvious she did everything vigorously except talk; could be all those years with Jassy had suppressed the urge to words.
Kizra found her silence more comforting than her sister’s vehemence.
Eeda grinned at her, then pulled the blanket up round her shoulders and settled herself to sleep.
When Kizra looked around, Tinoopa was gone again and the rest of the women were either talking quietly and privately or dozing.
She was still angry, but the panic was gone. She wriggled around, tugged at the coverall until she was as comfortable as she could get, then she settled into a simmering resentment, its targets Tinoopa and the pregnant woman who’d more or less bought them, but most of all the person who’d stolen her life from her. All right, she’d survive. She’d not only survive, but she’d find the bastard and wring the reasons out of him-or her, and with them her history. Panic fluttered again as she realized the difficulties ahead of her, but she let anger burn it out, anger and determination. She closed her eyes and slept.
3
The lurching, the rattles, the bone-jarring vibration went on and on, bad roads and almost no springing. Tinoopa slept through all of it, adjusting to the bumps with an automatic ease.
Kizra didn’t. Despite her determination, the stale dusty air, the constant and punishing vibration and the pain from the binding seams of the coverall brought her out of her first heavy sleep and kept her dipping in and out of a nightmare-ridden doze until she couldn’t stand that any more and stayed awake.
