The Kindly Ones

by Melissa Scott

  And then, at last, there was a blare of music from the stage, and the Blackbird's manager stepped up into the lights, holding out his hands for silence. Conversation slowed reluctantly, but at last he was able to make himself heard.

  "Good people, I thank you for your patience," he began, drawing a hoot from some of the nearer tables. "After much careful consideration, our judges have come to their decision—and a very difficult one it was, too, as you could tell from the impressive performances we've seen tonight."

  "Come on, get to the point," Rehur muttered. Glancing down, I saw his hands close into tight fists, nails digging painfully into his palms. Rohin clutched the table edge in an ecstasy of anticipation.

  "First, however," the manager went on. He was obviously enjoying himself. "I would like to give you the results of our popular poll. By overwhelming vote—" He paused again, drawing it out. "By overwhelming vote, you selected Witchwood as your favorite."

  There was a burst of applause, and Rehur gave a brief shout of triumph. The puppetmasters embraced excitedly, and Rohin pounded one hand against my shoulder.

  "And now," the manager said, and the room quieted again. "The results of the judges' poll." He made a production of unrolling the meter-long scroll and scanning the results. "The winner is . . . Mirabile!"

  Mirabile was the dance group. There was more applause, and that covered the silence at our table. Rowan's face fell, and Ash said quietly, "Oh, damn!"

  Rehur mouthed a curse, but managed to recover enough self-possession to clap politely with the rest of the audience.

  As they quieted, Ash said, "Well, it's the popular vote that convinces the houses."

  Rowan nodded loyal agreement, though her disappointment still showed in her face.

  Ash shook herself, managed a smile. "We did damn well—you were wonderful, Rehur, scary—and we deserve a celebration." She lifted a hand to wave to the last members of the company—another technician and the four actors who had formed Belos's entourage at the very end of the sono—and Rowan reached to key the order box. Rohin put out a hand to stop her.

  "Please, let me."

  Startled, but too good a company manager not to agree, Rowan nodded. Then, looking from Rehur to Rohin, she finally recognized the relationship, and smiled. The other actors crowded up, wedging themselves in around the too-small table, submerging the rest of us in a stream of theatrical gossip. The twins leaned together again, still talking, but Rehur soon broke away, easing back into the general conversation. He was good company, quick-talking and clever without much malice; I saw Rohin watching him rather wistfully, as though he envied his twin's quick-silver tongue. The others, flushed with their popular victory, were as exuberantly outgoing. It was good to be around actors again, for however long. I let myself relax as I hadn't in months, and ended up admitting, to win an argument, that I'd been an actor myself in the Urban Worlds. Rehur's eyes lingered speculatively on me for a moment too long after I'd said that, but before I could decide if it meant anything, I'd been drawn back into a discussion of the Urban Worlds. The Witchwood people argued well. Leith did not excuse herself until she was nearly asleep in her chair, and Guil, who left with her, looked back wistfully as they went. Rohin, too, rose to leave, and I would have followed, but Rehur caught my wrist.

  "Rohin can get home by himself, surely," the actor said, with a smile for his twin. "Stay a while longer—I want news of the family, if we can get a minute to ourselves."

  I let myself be persuaded, and found myself walking up Broad Street in the early hours of the horological morning, slightly drunk and feeling charitable toward all humanity. We had all become good friends, in the easy way actors have. It probably wouldn't last, but while it did it was a warm and pleasant feeling, the more so because I had been so long away from the profession. Agamemnon shone brilliant blue and white overhead, almost full, its distorted disk dominating the starless sky. I squinted up at it, looking for Orestes' shadow crossing its face, but couldn't find it. A tram rattled toward us, and three of the entourage flagged it down, calling farewells to Ash and Rowan. I would have gone with them, but Rehur caught my arm again.

  "Don't go," he said. "I meant it, I want to hear the family news—if you don't mind, of course."

  He was a little drunk, too, but no more than I was. I let him persuade me, ignoring the sneer on the face of the last actor. Rowan, Ash, and the other technician broke away shortly after we turned off Broad Street, heading into a battered, once-grand building. Belit winked at Rehur, and pulled the other actor—Solvar, his name was—on ahead of us. By now, I had a fairly good idea of what Rehur intended, and was inclined to go along with it.

  He and Belit and Solvar all had rooms in the same nondescript building. Rehur's was a single-room flat, furnished neatly but not lavishly. Most of the pieces of furniture were old and showed signs of hard use. Rehur touched a wall panel as we came in, fading on the lights but keeping them low, touched with a hint of amber. I suppressed the urge to laugh. Until then, I'd been able to forget just how young Rehur was, and I wanted to go on forgetting.

  "Have a seat," Rehur said, "and let me get my makeup off." Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared into the tiny bathroom, leaving the door ajar. There were no chairs in the room, unless there were folding stools buried in the storage blocks stacked against the far wall. I sat on the stove-bed and waited. After a moment, Rehur reemerged, still rubbing his face with a towel. He had taken off his vest and undershirt, and was barefoot. He tossed the towel aside and started to say something, then gave an urchin's grin and flipped a switch on a breadboarded control plaque instead. Music—very soft, slow music—spilled from speakers on top of the storage boxes. "Do you dance?" he asked.

  "Not usually," I answered, watching him. Even without the transforming makeup, he had huge eyes, very dark in his long face. Like most holopuppet models, he shaved off his body hair, to make it easier for the puppeteers to add later detail. It was startling, but not unattractive, and there were lithe muscles beneath that hairless skin. Oddly, though, there was a band of tattooing on his left arm, encircling the bicep like a bracelet. I wanted to touch him. I let my eyes wander over his body, saw his mouth curve into a knowing smile.

  "Make an exception," he said, but there was no need. We were of a height; our lips met, and we eased slowly into his bed.

  We slept late the next morning, and I would've slept later, if I had not had to be back in the Halex Tower by the end of the horological day. Rehur roused himself enough to tell me where he kept his spare toothbrush and the makings for coffee, but he didn't leave the warmth of the stove-bed. I left most of the coffee in the hob for him when he was ready to get up, and let myself out into the dark streets.

  Agamemnon's disk was still a hair less than full, but I could finally track Orestes' shadow on its brilliant face. I made my way through the crowds, glad to lose myself among them. I was feeling strangely guilty—mostly, I realized, for being grateful for the casual parting. I had had my fun, but I wasn't an actor any more, and there was no point in pretending to be one. And there was at least fifteen bio-years' difference in our ages—sixteen bio-years, I amended, and couldn't help laughing at myself. I knew Rohin's age, and thus Rehur's; this was one romantic fantasy that would have to face reality, and die. I turned toward the main greengate. It had been a pleasant night, a windfall night. I wouldn't ask any more of it.

  A souvenir vendor had set up his stand just inside the greengate, his placard proclaiming "Theatrical Gifts Our Specialty." On a whim, I stopped to look over his stock. Like most of the vendors, he carried dozens of crudely colored prints of famous sonon, and smudged black-and-white stills of noted actors. I flipped through those, but Witchwood hadn't released any photos of its stock players. There were fuzzy holocubes as well—much too expensive for what they were—and glossy holoalbums from the bigger theaters, many of them featuring Jahala or Javas. I was about to turn away when I noticed the clusters of ribbon hanging from the corners of the cart. Each ribbon h
eld a dozen or so medallions about three centimeters in diameter, each one painted with an actor's face. Some were clearly in character, others were not. I sorted through them curiously, the vendor watching me like a hawk, and one face seemed to leap out at me. It was Rehur, made up as Belos: either he had played the part before, or the little artist had worked overtime.

  "Can I help you?" the vendor asked suspiciously.

  "How much are these?"

  "A kip." Seeing me hesitate, he added, "The one you're holding, that's Belos Kyrle—"

  "I'll take it," I said, and handed him the money. The vendor detached the medallion, voluble in his thanks, and I pocketed it with only a quick glance to be sure I had the right one. I wasn't quite sure why I'd bought it—I don't often buy souvenirs of casual encounters and I could never display it openly in the Tower without offending Herself, and maybe the rest of the Family, too. But then, I told myself, Rehur was a fine actor, and he could be a great Belos, if Ash and Rowan ever got up the capital for a full-scale production. I was entitled to a memento of the performance.

  Chapter 4

  Trey Maturin

  I took an early train back to the Halex Tower, not wanting to see Rohin again until his twin's spell had faded a little. I called Leith from there, and left a message with the para'an Guil ex-Tam'ne explaining where I was and why I'd left, and inviting her to visit me at the Tower if she had the time. As I'd expected, Leith did not come, but I did get a brief note on the mailnet, thanking me again for the evening at the Blackbird. Pipe Major was scheduled to leave Orestes shortly after Sunrise, to return in six calendar weeks: we would try to get together then, she said.

  To my secret relief, Rohin stayed longer in Destiny than he'd originally planned, not returning to the Tower until two calendar days later, just after the eclipse. By then, I was able to face the Demi-heir unblushing—which was just as well, since Rohin was visibly knowledgeable when we finally did meet again. For safety's sake, however, I pinned the medallion to the inner curtain of my stove-bed, and let the painted face—Belos's face—replace the memory of the actor's body.

  As always after I took even a single day off, business was backed up in my files. Most was routine—supervising other mediums employed by the Halex Kinship; seeing that registered ghosts received their stipends from their Families; providing more detailed reports on the areas where Herself's attempt to restructure the Mandate's economy were, or weren't, working; handling the Matriarch's off-world business—but a few things required more careful attention. Chief among those was the "death" at Feibourg. The Matriarch had read my first report, and wanted more detail before sanctioning a review. I chose to take that as encouragement, and spent the next two calendar-weeks preparing a second brief, even taking a snow car up to Feibourg to interview the parties involved in the first decision. By the time I had finally finished my report, it ran to fifty close-printed pages, and I felt smugly confident that I had secured a review.

  Herself turned it down, of course. To obtain a review, she told me privately, I would have to have proved fraud, or, at the very least, malice. I had proved nothing. The council had been unusually strict, but its decision was within the letter of the code. And that was that: there is no appeal from a living genarch. I told myself I should have expected it, but I still felt as though I had been betrayed—worse still, as though I had betrayed the ghost in Feibourg. And I had betrayed her, for all I had been careful to warn her that I couldn't promise anything, and that she shouldn't hope too much. I threw myself into my other work, wincing every time I had to deal with the Kinship's ghosts, trying to concentrate on the off-world business. The Halex Kinship as a whole owned both mines and woolen mills, both of which did an increasing export business. I was able to negotiate the year's agreement-to-buy with a consortium of off-world clothiers, selling them an increased weight of hoobey yarns without the Kinship's having to absorb the shipping costs.

  Still, the Feibourg business left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I felt no compunction, ten calendar-days after the decision, in asking for another few days' leave to see the hoobey races. Perhaps the Matriarch was feeling guilty, too; at any rate, she granted my leave without question, and even offered a few extra days in Destiny afterward. That I refused—the Kinship needed me, and I knew it—but I took the three days' leave gladly.

  Several other members of the mainline Family were going to the Garnocks, though only Ixora was actually racing a team there, and I was glad of their company. The Garnock Steppes—the race is named for the upland plain in which it takes place—is in the Axtell Mandate, on the far side of the moon from the main continent that holds the other three Mandates, and the Axtell Kinship is probably the most code-bound of all. Of late, too, the Axtell had supported the Brandr against the Halex in the Kinship Council, and I did not want to give either of them any more grounds for complaint. I would never be as aware of the code as a native-born Oresteian, but with Jesma and Rohin among the party, I did not think I would make any significant mistakes.

  We took the short flight to the Axtell Mandate, east and north across the Shallow Sea, then farther north over the chain of mountains that forms the Hook to Garnock Town just south of the Axtell Tower. We landed just before Midnight on a field already crowded with heavy transport craft. I stumbled down our transport's side stairs after the others, and stopped dead, staring up at the sky. I had been in the Axtell Mandate before, of course, but never after Dark, and in the Day it had not been so noticeable. Agamemnon had vanished from the sky, invisible from this side of Orestes; instead, the scudding clouds parted to reveal a starscape even more brilliant than the skies of Athene, outshining even the field lights. Atreus was part of a particularly dense starfield, I remembered tardily, but Agamemnon's light hid that glorious spectacle from half the moon. I looked for Electra, but she had already set behind the mountains ringing the Steppes. Iphigenia, I remembered from the almanac pinned to the wall of my room, was on the far side of the system, invisible behind Agamemnon.

  Someone touched my arm, and I turned to find Jesma smiling at me, her face very pale in the starlight. "Our car's ready, unless you want to stay and help Ixora unload."

  I glanced over the woman's shoulder. The dockers had already opened the transport's nose, sliding back the massive doors so that a mouth seemed to gape beneath the pilots' compartment. Ixora and her team were clustered around that opening, two of the young men straining at a hoobey's lead-lines while a third struggled to fix the animal's hobble. Ixora gestured angrily, then sprang to throw her weight against the hoobey's shoulder. The animal snapped at her by reflex, but gave way, and the handler managed to snap the hobble into place. I shook my head, smelling the lemon-and-pepper scent of a rutting jill.

  "Wouldn't they do better to get the jills out of scent-range?" I asked.

  Jesma nodded, frowning. "Usually, they do—I don't think it's lxora's jill, even, someone else has let their beast make its mark. . . ."

  "Careless," Rohin agreed, coming up behind her. "I hope the racemaster fines them. Are you coming? We don't want to be late for the dinner."

  As sponsors of the race—the meeting, in Oresteian terms—the mainline Axtell Family was obligated to hold a prerace banquet two nights before the start. We had arrived just in time for the event, and to give the Axtell credit, it was a very gracious affair. It was held at the Axtell Tower, of course, though all of the racers and most of their kin stayed in Garnock Town, in the greenhouse at the top of the Tower. We were well above the snowline, and I was glad of the warmth. From there, we had a perfect view of the racecourse, its snows gleaming in the starlight. The starting line and the turn post were marked with banners that looked almost black in the starlight, though I knew they were blood red, the Axtell color. Looking down from the Tower, warm and well-fed and flushed with ice-wine, the snow seemed beautifully serene, untouched, the post banners beckoning me on. From what Rohin had told me, and from the voices around me, with their tales of injury and death, I knew that was an illusion. Firmly,
I turned my back on the pretty scene, and concentrated on the conversation.

  Despite the amount of food and drink I had consumed at the banquet, I woke early the next morning, and was not surprised to find Rohin ahead of me in the inn's breakfast room. He waved for me to join him, and I did so, glad that the awkwardness had evaporated.

  "Ixora's taking the team out for a trial run," he announced, as the inn servant brought the breakfast cart. "She asked me to ask you if you wanted to come along."

  I hesitated over my choice of food, glancing warily up at the Demi-heir, and Rohin grinned. "Oh, it's not a racing team, Trey. She just wants to let the jacks stretch their legs."

  "Are you going?" I asked, and helped myself to the better part of a sweet cake. Rohin's grin flickered.

  "For penance, yes. Zimri Rhawn—he usually mans the brake for her—ate something that disagreed with him last night, and he's sick in bed. Myself, I think its nerves."

  "You encourage me," I said, dryly.

  "Will you come?"

  I smiled. "Of course."

  The inn was only a short distance from the Halex crew's camp, along a well-trodden path. I let Rohin fit me out with a face mask and heavy, felted boots from the Halex crew's spares, then followed him between the temporary shelter-domes to the hoobey pens. The jacks were restless, milling nervously inside the electric fences. The smaller jills, penned separately, were quieter, and I could smell their rut for a hundred meters. Someone had set out a smudge pot, but it did little to disguise the jills' odor.