by Jo Clayton
Once on the roof she dragged the branch along the creaking shingles to the corner where the roof seemed to be in the best condition. She knotted the rope about her waist then to the long section of the branch. Bracing herself, feet wide apart, she swung the limb back and forth then heaved it as high as she could.
The branch bumped against the stone then fell back, almost knocking her from the roof. She dropped carefully to her knees, her heart bumping painfully. Three days without food had weakened her more than she’d realized. Head swimming, trembling all over, she tried again, a desperate expenditure of all the effort she could gather. This time the branch went over the wall, though with less than an inch to spare. She heard the dull clunk of the wood as it banged against the outside of the wall, felt the tug of the cord at her waist, saw the taut white line running from her middle to the wall and over. She tried to feel triumphant but inside there was only grief. Hands shaking, she began pulling at the line, hauling her improvised grapnel back up. It has to catch, has to…
The end came up over the wall, hesitated, then flattened out as the side branch that formed the hook caught and held.
She edged up to the wall and tugged at the rope. It held. She threw her weight on it. It held. After she untied the end from her waist, she reached up as high as she could and began climbing. About two feet off the shingle’s she felt a sickening lurch and stopped climbing. When she looked up, she saw that the branch had slipped a little. She hung a moment, teeth clamped on her lower lip, then she snorted in a deep breath and pulled herself higher. The branch held. She drew her feet up, reached again.
The branch came flying away from the wall, dropping her heavily onto the roof. The shingles cracked under the sudden weight and she went through to her hips. Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself from the hole, splinters forced into her flesh by her efforts. She lay out flat, close to the edge. Below, on the flags she could see the broken branch and the white coils of braided rope. She couldn’t cry; she was too exhausted, hungry and discouraged to cry. She started at the stone paving twenty feet below, wondering dimly if she should simply let herself fall, but even at the depths she didn’t seriously consider this, it would be the admission of defeat more profound than she was willing to admit. As long as the Noris lived, she’d fight him. She had to.
As the sky darkened, she sat up. She ripped off the stained robe, got recklessly to her feet, not caring much what happened, balled the robe into a damp compact bundle and threw it at the top of the wall with all the strength in her small arms. Caught by a rising thermal it sailed over the top and disappeared. She stood with her hands on her hips and laughed until the breath caught in her throat, then she swung over the edge of the roof, kicked about until her legs wrapped around a cage bar. She climbed down and wandered about the court, drank at the tap, the cold water making her empty belly ache, splashed water over her face and body, mounted the stairs and beat on the door, took a last kick using the heel of her foot to make the door boom. Finally she went to lie down in the slowly evaporating pool of water by the tap, staring at the night sky with its dusting of stars and string of many-sized moons, willing a bird to fly past, anything alive. Anything at all to break her solitude.
On the fifteenth day, the hands came back. They fed her, washed her, dressed her, manicured hands and feet, brushed her hair to a high gloss, then stayed near her, watching-if invisible hands could be said to watch-to make sure that this time she found no way to spoil their work.
About midmorning they took hold of her arms and urged her out of the cell. She resisted, refusing to walk, lifting her feet from the ground, struggling against the grip on her arms, flinging her body about. “I won’t go to him,” she screamed.
They lifted her clear of the floor and carried her through the door and across the court. The slab of bronze in the tower wall opened smoothly ahead of them and they carried her inside, all the way into the great bright room she’d seen on her first day in the tower. A table had been placed against one wall with several chairs tucked under it. The hands pulled out a chair and dumped her in it, forcing her back when she tried to scramble out. She kept them busy trying to restrain her until the Noris entered the room.
He came quietly around the table and stood beside her. “Be quiet, Serroi.”
Frightened and confused by the music of his voice, something she’d forced herself to forget, she clung to her determination to resist without let-up. Tears in her eyes, she spat up at his face.
He jerked his head back then stretched out a hand. One of the invisible servants floated a handkerchief to him. He wiped his face and dropped the kerchief to the floor. The servant picked it up and whisked it out of sight. The Noris caught her face in one long-fingered hand, forcing her to meet his eyes. Black and shiny, they grew and grew until she could see nothing else. Her arms fell limp into her lap. Her legs hung down without moving. She slumped in the chair, passive as a rag doll. He turned a chair around and sat facing her, frowning a little.
She stared hate at him and nearly wept when he looked troubled. “I don’t understand you,” he said. “Why do you keep fighting me, Serroi?” He rose with the controlled grace that pleased her without her willing it. “I thought we shared a common goal. It’s not logical, the way you’re acting. You can’t hope to win.” His face went hard. He glared at her, but at that same moment his hand reached out and pulled gently at one of her curls.
She tried to slide away but her body was taken from her control. She was helpless. Tears gathered in her eyes. “No,” she breathed. “I won’t give in. Never. Not ever.” She sat, glowering at him.
The Noris stood over her, a black column against the pearly light. Five pale fingers swam in front of her blurring eyes. His voice came from a vast distance, whispered music. “Your hand, child.”
For a moment the words echoed in her head making no sense to her; when they did, she refused to move, then cried out with frustration as her hand moved on its own, reaching up to meet his. He knew her too well, had learned too much from her-and she was fighting her own needs as furiously as she fought him. His hand closed over hers. She wanted that touch so much and feared it so deeply that her stomach convulsed, flooding her mouth with sour yellow fluid which burst from her lips and spilled onto her robe.
The Noris jerked away with an exclamation of disgust. He stepped back and stood brooding down at her while the hands brought fresh clothing and cleaned her up. When he took her hand again, he spoke a WORD that crackled through the pearly light and shivered it into darkness. Abruptly they hung side by bide in a blue-green glow.
Water. They were deep under the surface. She panicked, but her body was clamped in place. After a moment she calmed as she found herself breathing without pain, floating like a fish in the water. The Noris’s hand left hers and she was drifting about as his WORD shook the water about her. She dived and flew through the water like a strange fish, the Noris forgotten behind her. She curved her body and swooped in a grand spiral, silent laughter bubbling out of her, filling the blue water with silver bubbles that tickled her when she swam through them. A long blue-grey fish with a white belly swam out of the blue and arched with her in her joyous flight. The large dark eyes sitting forward in its head were warm and friendly. As it swam under her, she caught hold of the fin in the middle of its back and rode astride as the fish danced with her, taking her down and down, then up to the surface, bursting through the barrier film for a golden moment that piercing agony in her lungs; then they were back again in cool blueness.
The summons came, twisting through the water, pulling them back and back to something she’d forgotten but remembered as terror. A dark figure drew them, fishes on a single hook. She tried to uncramp her fingers from the fin and kick the fish away from her. She couldn’t. She was bait to trap this fish. Bait. She saw and remembered the Noris then, and knew she was bait tossed in the water to catch this particular fish. She lay along its strong muscular back, felt the knobs of the spine moving under her, whispered soundless
ly, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.
The fish hung in the water in front of the Noris, its body moving slowly as it adjusted automatically to the slight tug of a sluggish current. Serroi tried to move, but could not, lay stretched out along the fish, struggling to lift her head, keeping it turned so that the eye-spot did not touch the fish anywhere. The Noris drifted closer. His hands curved with terrible gentleness about her head and eased it down until her face was flat against the slippery skin, her eye-spot pressed to the fish’s spine. The Noris’s hand continued to rest gently on her head as he used her to reach into things he would have no access to otherwise, into the life-affirming forces. The cool water that bathed her and sustained her began to stink and thicken as she tried to fight him away. Things came swimming around, circling around her as she lay on the fish’s slowly rotting body, beautiful translucent things that thickened and rotted with the water, that came slowly to the Noris and submitted to him. When he touched them, they blackened, were whole again, but whole in another way, solid black, shiny, filled with a terrible energy and slaved to the Noris. The water grew stiffer, blacker until everything was dull black…
When Serroi woke, she was in her old room, lying in a dainty bed, a new bed. There was a Sankoy rug like a woven sunrise on the floor. Chairs, familiar bookscrolls, a line of robes pegged on the wall, paper and pens on a familiar table, an alabaster lamp. The magic mirror. She lay in silken sheets, wore a brief silken shift, Dazed for a moment, she lay blinking at the splendor, then memory came rushing back and she scrambled out of the bed. With a scream of rage, she pulled the lamp off the table and slammed it to the floor, laughing wildly at the resounding crash and the skitter of alabaster fragments over the brilliant rug. Hoarse with anger, she tugged hangings down, tracked bloody footprints into the priceless rug, stripped sheets and quilts off the bed, more blood on the rug as she ran heedlessly over the alabaster fragments. When everything she could lift or fug down was piled in a tattered heap on the rug, she ran to the window.
The tower fell away beneath her, straight down to the sea far below as the cliff continued the line of the wall. For a long time she watched the water curling around the rocks, the white-tipped waves a painful reminder of what had happened. Finally she went back to the mess on the floor, rolled up the rug, stuffed the awkward bundle through the window. She leaned out and watched it turn over in the air, spewing fragments of glass and fabric, splatting finally in the surf to bob up and down or paste itself in sections against the jagged rocks. After a moment more she turned away, padded to the bed, leaving more bloody footprints on the naked floor. She crawled up onto the mattress and sat with her legs crossed, glowering at the door, waiting for the hands to come.
The Woman: VIII
The double line of small fires went north and south as far as Serroi could see. “I didn’t quite expect this,” she said quietly. She tugged at the strap of the boy’s cap as the bright dots blurred then steadied. The Tarr was beginning to wear off. She straightened her back and looked around.
“What are those fires?” Dinafar sounded awed.
“Pilgrim campfires. Along the Highroad. On their way to Oras, walking, I imagine.”
Clouds were gathering overhead. The first half of the Gather was up over the horizon and still free of cloudcover, touching the hillsides with silver light. The moon-knot was pulling tighter. For a moment Serroi was tempted to renew her clingy with another Tarr button and keep riding. There was certainly enough light. No time, no time, she thought. She looked to the North. A day and a half riding, longer if I walk. And there’s Dinafar to deal with. She looked at the girl beside her. “Dina.”
“Yes, meie?”
“The Highroad goes south almost the whole way to the Biserica valley. You could be there in half a passage, twenty days of steady riding. There and safe.” She waited for questions, but Dinafar was silent, watching her. “The other way, that goes to Oras. You’ve seen the danger I’m in. Go south, little one. Knock at the Biserica gates, they’ll take you in. You don’t need me anymore-if you ever did.”
“I’m going with you.” In the moonlight Serroi could see Dinafar’s face take on its sullen, stubborn scowl. “If you won’t take me with you,” she went on, “I’ll follow you.”
Serroi shivered. “We’d better camp.” She scanned the hillside below. There was a small grove of brellim about a quarter of a mile ahead. “There,” she said, pointing.
They tied one groundsheet on a slant against the wind and spread out their blankets on the other after Serroi weighted it down with a few rocks, some of the many dredged up by the brellim’s mobile roots. As Dinafar gathered wood for the fire, Serroi unsaddled the macain and turned them loose to graze.
They worked in silence, putting aside the quarrel that lay between them until they’d eaten.
The fire had burned down to coals. Serroi shook the cha pot, poured the last of the liquid into her cup. Then she crossed to her blankets and settled down under the slant of the groundsheet. She sipped at the cha and looked down at Dinafar lying beside her.
“Five days ago… Maiden bless, only five days… five days ago my shieldmate and I were part of the Doamna’s guard in Oras.” She rubbed at her eyes and drank some cha. “The Doamna, Domnor Hern’s head wife, Floarin, a royal bitch. Tayyan… Tayyan was a mountain lord’s niece. A Stenda. Her father taught her a boy’s skills and a love for racing macain.” She smiled. “A racing macai would make our pair look pale. She loved those savage, near intractable beasts with a passion no one could beat out of her and sneaked away to races whenever she could, even after our training was done and we were sent out on ward.”
Dinafar wriggled around until she was lying on her back, her legs, drawn up, her hands laced behind her head. “I don’t see…” she began, then pressed her lips together, blushing because she dared to interrupt.
Semi lifted a hand. “I know. I ramble. It’s the drug, I think. I hope. Never mind, I’ll get on with the story. Five days ago, just about this time…” She flicked her fingers at the fragments of sky visible through the leaves. “When we were going off duty, Tayyan pulled me aside. She’d heard about a macain race, an illegal one, held outside the city walls. The Sons of the Flame had managed to shut down all the races at the arena, called them incitement to sin. For some reason, I didn’t know what at the time, Morescad had ordered all the meien warding at the Plaz confined to their quarters for the night. Tayyan wanted me to go with her, said Morescad was a stiff idiot with bone for a brain and no reason to order the meien curfewed except he didn’t like us. She said she didn’t see any reason to obey him. She’d met one of her father’s old riding mates. A distant relative. And he’d told her of the race. As I said, she loved the racing macain and she hadn’t seen a good race for a long time. She was determined to go. I let her persuade me. We went out of the Plaz through the Doamna’s private garden and over the wall into the stables on the far side.” Serroi sighed and turned away, watching red run across black on the dying coals. “At least she had that. It was a good time. We came back into the city drunk with much wine and more excitement.”
They clattered over the cobbles, Tayyan excited and counting her winnings, Serroi quiet and increasingly disturbed. Her eye-spot throbbed uneasily and she had a sense of impending disaster.
“Here.” Tayyan caught Serroi’s hand. “This is yours.” She dropped coins into the small palm and closed short fingers over them. “I put down a couple of decsets for you.”
Serroi shook her head. “You know I don’t play those games.”
“You’ll spoil no sport tonight, little worrier.” Tayyan lifted her hands to the gathering clouds, yawned and groaned with the pleasure of stretching stiff muscles.
Serroi walked several minutes in silence, then she sighed and put the coins in her money sack. “Thanks,” she said.
They continued in silence until they came to the bulk of stone that was the Domnor’s Plaz. The Plaz stable backed against the outer wall, close to a small, seldom-used door.
Serroi and Tayyan stopped across the street. While Tayyan waited, Serroi probed for guards. “Nothing,” she whispered. “Come on.”
They climbed the pole gate, both of them having some difficulty with balance, Serroi grimly concentrating, Tayyan full of giggles and nonsense until they both nearly tumbled in the thick macai muck in the corral. They slogged through the muck, weaving unsteadily around the sleeping macain, then started fumbling through the dusty vines tumbling down the wall. “Hey, where’s the rope?” Tayyan’s hoarse whisper sounded loud even over the increasing wind. “Maiden’s breasts, windrunner, what the hell’d you do with the rope?”
“Shh,” Serroi hissed. “Wake the macai. Wake ol’ Morescad.” She jerked at the vines, sneezing as the leaves dropped dust and pollen around her. “Must be here. Who’d wade through that slop but a pair of idiots like us?”
Tayyan looked briefly offended, then she giggled and lifted a filthy boot. “Wash it off in Floarin’s pool. Wonder what the royal cow’ll think when she gets a whiff of its new perfume.”
“Unh.” Serroi shook the rope free of the vines. “You first or me?” Taking Tayyan’s snort for an answer, she started climbing, making hard work of it as the wine fumes wheeled in her head.
They got up the rope with whispered curses and slipping boots then slid down into the garden. Serroi started to shake loose the grapnel and pull the rope in. Tayyan tried to drag her away, but she jerked loose, stumbling back into a pleshtree, bringing overripe fruit down around her. While Tayyan watched, swaying and grinning, Serroi scraped a dollop of plesh off her front. “My rope, it’s my damn rope, you grinning beanpole,” she hissed. “Be damned if I leave it hanging there.”
