Fire Dancer

by Ann Maxwell

  Ilfn smiled fondly and rubbed her cheek over the boy’s forehead.

  “Is he all right?” asked Rheba, looking at the limp boy supported by Ilfn’s strong arms. His hands wore braids of blue-silver light.

  “He’s a dancer,” whistled Ilfn, referring to Lheket for the first time in the tones of an adolescent rather than a child.

  Rheba glanced uncertainly at Kirtn, but there was no tinge of apprehension for Lheket in the Bre’n’s smile. With a sigh, she allowed fear and adrenaline to ooze out of her. The time of violence was over; she could let go and find the healing oblivion that Lheket had instinctively sought. Her hair whispered, releasing energy until she was blessedly empty. She whistled the complex Bre’n trill that activated the ship. The ramp tongued out invitingly. She moved toward it, grateful as she had not been since Deva simply to be alive.

  “Not so fast, kaza-flatch.”

  She froze. It was a voice she had thought never to hear again, except perhaps in nightmares.

  XXVII

  Slowly, Rheba turned around to face Lord Jal. He followed her every motion with a weapon that looked like a small crossbow. The distance was not great; he would have no difficulty killing her with the squat arrow that was already in place, waiting to be released. Nor would she be able to use the weapon against him, for its operation depended on stored mechanical energy rather than chemical or atomic energy.

  “I see you understand my choice of weapons,” said Jal.

  Rheba, caught in the flood of light from the Devalon’s portal, said nothing. Without seeming to, her eyes checked the position of the J/taals. Close, but not close enough. They could reach Lord Jal and kill him, but she would be dead first. The same was true of Kirtn: he could kill, but not before she was killed. Ilfn, with Lheket in her arms, was as helpless as Rheba. Rheba bit back a sound of despair and silently began collecting energy she did not expect to live long enough to use.

  “Over there,” said Jal, gesturing to a clear space between abandoned ships. “All of you get over there. Slowly. If I don’t like what I see, the bitch dies where she stands.”

  Snarling silently, clepts and J/taals retreated. Kirtn flexed his hands longingly, but had no choice except to follow. Ilfn carried Lheket away from the Devalon’s shadow, hatred in every line of her body.

  “Whip,” said Jal in a loud voice. “Bring the rest of the slaves.”

  Dapsl appeared from behind the ship. A whip hung from his small hand, but dripped no violet fire. Lord Jal had been very careful to use no weapons that Rheba could turn against them. Dapsl stood aside and gestured abruptly. A line of slaves bent around him, heading for the place where Kirtn and the others stood beneath the canting wreck of a spaceship.

  Three chims of guards brought up the rear of the procession. All six men and women were armed with rapid-fire dart guns. The energy they used would be minimal, the darts poisoned. Nothing there for a fire dancer to steal.

  As the guards took up positions all around the slaves, the J/taals and clepts shifted position, marking out one guard apiece. At the least inattention on Jal’s part, J/taals would strike. So long as their J/taaleri was under a Loo gun, though, they would do nothing to endanger her. Rheba watched, and understood the J/taals’ movements. She also understood that she would have to call for an attack. When she did, the Loo would die. And so would she.

  Fssa stirred in her hot, rain-wet hair. “You were beautiful, fire dancer.”

  The Fssireeme’s goodbye was so soft that its emotion registered with her before the meaning did. She felt Fssa slide out of her hair, hang for a moment, then drop to the ramp. In the rain he was nearly invisible. She sighed goodbye to the Fssireeme, knowing his sensitive receptors would pick up sounds Jal would never hear. There was no answer. She had not expected one. She hoped that he got away; he had earned whatever small haven the slave planet could give him.

  “The most dangerous slaves on Loo,” said Jal, a certain grim irony in his tone as he watched the silent file of people walk to the opening between ruined ships. “Odd how they all ended up here, isn’t it?”

  Rheba said nothing. Jal laughed.

  “But maybe it isn’t so odd after all,” continued the Loo. “The male polarity’s furry was one of their leaders. Imagine my delight when I found them huddled behind your ship. A few of them still are. They didn’t believe that primitive weapons killed just as efficiently as the modern variety.”

  Jal’s face changed. Rheba’s breath stopped in her throat. She had thought only Bre’ns could contain that kind of rage.

  “But I underestimated you, kaza-flatch. You were the most dangerous one of all. What happened to the city, bitch? What happened to the amphitheater and the Imperial Loo-chim?”

  She said nothing.

  Lord Jal’s fist struck his now-useless master’s belt. “The city power is dead! Slaves run wild! Where are the voices of Imperial rage? Where is the Loo-chim?”

  “Dead.”

  “Dead?” said Jal, voice thin with disbelief.

  “All of them. Dead. Like your belt. Like your city. Like you should be. Dead.”

  She almost died then, Jal’s hand tightening on the trigger. But he was a survivor. He needed her for a bit longer. He controlled himself with a coldness that was more frightening than his rage had been.

  “As you might have noticed, the spaceport is burning,” Jal smiled, and she took an involuntary step backward. “You’ve destroyed a city and a culture that is greater than your animal mind can comprehend. What you haven’t burned, that demon storm washed away.” He stopped, struck by a thought. “Was the storm yours, too?”

  “No,” she said, but she could not help looking toward Lheket.

  Jal followed her glance, saw the boy unconscious in the Bre’n woman’s arms. Then Jal stared back at Rheba with eyes that knew only hatred. “You’ve destroyed my people, my city, and even my ship. You’re going to take me back to Onan. Now.”

  She did not bother to agree or disagree. She was not going to take Jal anywhere, because as soon as his safety was assured he would kill her. She knew it. He knew it. There was nothing left to say. She stared past him.

  A small movement caught her attention. Fssa was sliding from shadow into the firelight reflected by a shallow puddle at Jal’s feet. Water divided cleanly about the snake. He vanished beneath the hem of the Loo’s sheer robe.

  She looked away, not understanding, but not wanting to call attention to Fssa. Her glance caught Kirtn’s. He, too, had seen Fssa vanish.

  Jal shivered, drawing his wet robe more closely around him. “Up the ramp, bitch. It’s cold out here.” With both hands he steadied the crossbow. He was shivering violently, as Rheba had shivered in the dungeon. “C-cold . . . !” His body convulsed, jerking aside the crossbow.

  Rheba threw herself off the ramp the instant Jal’s crossbow veered from her body. Before she hit the ground, six guards died in a J/taal onslaught. Dapsl disappeared into a melee of former slaves. When they parted moments later, he lay dead, his whip tight around his broken neck.

  Kirtn and Rheba reached Jal in the same instant. The trader was dead, already cold to the touch. No, not cold, freezing. As they watched, raindrops congealed on his flesh, encasing him in a shroud of ice.

  Fssa slid out from a fold of clinging robe. Rheba expected him to be cold, black, but he was not. He glowed metallically with the heat he had stolen from Jal, not only the heat of life but some of the very energy that had kept his atoms alive. As cold as a stone orbiting a dead star, Lord Jal lay on the spaceport pavement, staring up at the sky with eyes blinded by ice.

  “I told you,” whispered Fssa, all sadness and shame. “I’m a parasite. That’s how Fssireeme live during the long Night.”

  His whistle was bleak and terribly lonely as he moved sinuously toward the darkness, away from his friends. Rheba realized then why he had said goodbye; he thought that they would not accept him once the proof of his true nature lay dead before their eyes.

  “You’re not a par
asite,” said Kirtn quickly. “You’re a predator. Like us.” He bent down and scooped up the retreating Fssireeme. He held the snake at eye level. Fssa glittered like a necklace spun from every precious metal in the universe. “You’re very beautiful, snake. And if you try to run away from us again, I’ll tie you in knots.”

  “I’ll help,” Rheba said quickly. “My knots are tighter.”

  Fssa’s sensors scanned from Bre’n to fire dancer. Then there was a shimmer of incandescence as he dove from Kirtn’s hands into Rheba’s hair. He vanished but for the sound of soft laughter just behind her ear.

  M/dere and the other J/taals approached, bands full of the weapons and transparent pouches they had stripped from the Loo. Silently she offered the spoils of battle to her J/taaleri. Rheba was on the point of refusing when she saw a bone-white gleam from one transparent purse. With a cry, she snatched the pouch and spilled its contents into her hand.

  Two Bre’n carvings stared back up at her, lying on a pool of loose gemstones that quivered and winked. Ignoring all but her own earring, she stared, transfixed by its infinite mystery. The Face turned slowly between her fingers, revealing tantalizing curves, profiles endlessly changing, a murmur rising in her mind as of voices singing sunset songs, whispered harmonies hinting at the central enigma of Bre’n and Senyas, man and woman, hushed voices telling her . . .

  “Rheba.” Kirtn shook her gently. “We’ve got to get off planet before any other Loo finds us.”

  She blinked, not knowing where she was for a moment, held in thrall by the Face that was like her Bre’n, always familiar yet never fully known. Colors flashed at the corner of her sight as M/dere gathered gems and put them back into the pouch. The other earring was gone, fastened to Lheket’s ear by the gentle fingers of his own Bre’n.

  “Yes, of course,” said Rheba, putting on her own earring. “Fssa. Translate.” She turned toward the waiting people who had once been slaves. “We’ll take anyone who wants to go. If you know the way to your planet, we’ll take you home. If you don’t, we’ll do what we can to find your planet. Or . . . She hesitated. “You can stay here. The slave masters are dead.”

  No one moved to leave.

  “All right.” She stepped aside, giving free access to the Devalon’s ramp. “Get aboard.”

  The J/taals and clepts spread out, distributing themselves among the people who mounted the ramp. Until M/dere had taken the measure of her J/taaleri’s new shipmates, they would be kept under the mercenaries’ unblinking eyes. Rheba saw, and started to object. After a glance at the people climbing up the ramp, she changed her mind—it was as bizarre a collection of beings as she had ever encountered.

  The first person up the ramp wore a robe that was more blood than cloth. On her shoulder rode a sleek animal as black as a hole in space. They were talking to each other in a rapid series of clicks. Rheba watched, but could not be certain whether the animal was pet, symbiont, partner or superior.

  The next two were men. At least, they looked rather like men. Their eyes, however, shone like Fssa’s sensors, and their nails dripped opalescent poisons. Their bodies were covered by a tawny fur that was matted with blood. She doubted that it was their own blood. She looked up at Kirtn. He was watching the same two people with an intensity that equaled M/dere’s.

  The illusionists boarded, too exhausted to do more than wear their own colorless exteriors.

  A trio of men and women came next. They were obviously of different races, and just as obviously a team. They looked absolutely harmless. Rheba and Kirtn knew that Jal’s assessment of the slaves was probably much closer to the truth. Very dangerous. Nothing harmless could have survived Adjustment and the Hour Between Years.

  Standing close together, Rheba and Kirtn watched former slaves board the Devalon. Each person seemed more striking than the last. The Bre’n sighed as a quartet went up the ramp, their bodies black and silver and hard, their eyes quite white, laughing and talking among themselves as though at a festival; and in their hands black daggers, shards of glass, and two babies teething on pieces of a dead Loo’s bloody power belt.

  Wordlessly, Rheba and Kirtn looked at one another.

  “I wonder,” fluted Kirtn, tones of rue and amusement resonating in each note, “what the trip will be like.”

  Rheba’s hand traced the outlines of her Bre’n earring. Faces murmured to her, telling her about Bre’n and Senyas and another kind of fire. Her akhenet lines smoldered. From them flared a glowing net that surrounded Kirtn with hot possibilities.

  She smiled, touching him with hands that burned. “I guarantee, my Bre’n, that it won’t be boring.”

  ANN MAXWELL lives in Laguna Niguel, California, with her husband, Evan, and their two children. She is the author of a number of excellent science fiction novels and has co-authored many books with her husband on subjects ranging from historical fiction to thrillers to nonfiction. Some of her earlier works have been recommended for the Nebula Award and nominated for the TABA Award.