by S. L. Viehl
The trader produced a world-weary sound. “Colonel, these people are primitives, tribal savages who are entirely dependent upon the Toskald for their keep. Without us, they would have no food, medicines, or comforts. They have no technology, no weapons, and no means of transport off the planet. They can’t even enter one of our cities unless we first descend to the surface to transport them. Do you know what they call us? Windlords. We are deities to them.”
Reever listened to the sound of the engines engaging. “You have weapons caches from a thousand different worlds stored on the surface. What if they raid those?”
“They can’t access any of our armory trenches. Even if they had the intelligence to try, which they don’t, the trenches are constructed deep beneath the surface. They’re also fully automated and heavily guarded, and we always monitor them.” Aledver leaned forward to look through the front viewer panel. “You’re not in any danger, if that is your concern. Orjakis’s tribes remain loyal to the Kangal. A few more weeks of starvation and the others will submit, as always.”
The launch rocked and shuddered as it left the placid airspace surrounding Skjonn.
“The Iisleg were your slaves once,” Reever said while Aledver adjusted the hull’s temperature to prevent ice formation and the accompanying drag it caused. “Why did you free them?”
“We haven’t.” Aledver frowned as the launch lurched, and made another adjustment. “We’ve allowed them to believe that they are free.”
Reever shifted, using his body to block the sight of what his hand was doing under the console. “Shouldn’t you level out a few more degrees?”
“I know what I’m doing,” the trader snapped.
“Very well.” Reever tightened his seat harness. “Why do you permit the Iisleg the illusion of freedom?”
“Convenience, I suppose. They were brought here to dig out the armories, which we thought would kill them. Instead, they adapted in unexpected ways, and proceeded to breed like unchecked parasites.” The trader’s unlined brow wrinkled slightly as he studied his console readings.
“Many worlds use Akkabarr as their personal armory,” Reever said. “Why do so many trust the Toskald not to seize control of their weapons stores and use them for your own purposes?”
“If I told you that, I would have to kill you.” Aledver grinned at him. “Let us call it a matter of mutual trust. We Toskald are very adept at turning enemies into allies. Rather like what we did with the Iisleg once the trenches were completed. Our ancestors used the slaves’ natural attitudes about female subjugation to work out an arrangement of mutual benefit.”
Reever thought briefly of the breeding pens he had seen on different slaver worlds. The most successful were those that catered to the occupants’ most intimate desires. “A clever use of existing resources.”
“You do not know the half of it. Part of the tithe the tribes are required to bring to the Kangal are women, all of whom they were trained to treat quite shabbily. Over time, you see, the males have grown to regard their females as nothing more than nuisance property, and are quite happy to send their most attractive, competent females as tribute.” Aledver snorted. “They believe it to be some sort of honor, as if the Kangal would actually contaminate his flawless body by touching one of their women.”
Another revealing comment. “Instead, you sell them to slavers.”
“It’s all they’re fit for, you know. After being raised on the surface, the poor things are completely docile and work hard without complaint. We’ve become rather renowned for the high quality of female slaves we produce.” Aledver stroked the soft fur of his jacket sleeve. “The tribes may not be aware that they breed and train them for us, but they do a magnificent job of it, just as they do with their furs.”
Reever imagined Cherijo in such a society, and increased the power to the engines. “None of the Iisleg have ever become suspicious?”
“Why should they? I told you, they’re savages. To them, a warm fur is more valuable than a female. If only they knew how much their women earn at auction.” A sudden jolt made Aledver scowl and turn his attention back to the helm.
“You do know how to fly through this atmosphere?” Reever asked. “I would like to arrive with all my extremities intact.”
“You will.” They had reached the midpoint between Skjonn and the surface, and as the position readings registered, a warning claxon sounded.
Reever reached under the copilot’s console. “Perhaps I spoke too soon.” He switched off the helm power to the pilot’s console.
“What is it?” Aledver began punching controls. “None of these panels are responding.”
“It may be a systems error. Allow me to investigate.”
While he pretended to scan the helm controls, Reever initiated an emergency vent of the shuttle’s fuel supply, and launched a small probe to penetrate the stream and ignite it. The result, he knew, would create a long, fiery plume that would be visible from several miles away.
“Stop, there. I see what you are doing.” Aledver produced a handheld device Reever hadn’t seen since his last sojourn to Akkabarr. The device, commonly known as a tamer, was one slavers used to render the uncooperative unconscious. “You will transfer control of the launch back to me now.”
Reever inputted a preset flight code, and his screens went dark while Aledver’s lit up again. “The helm is yours.”
The trader kept the tamer trained on him as he turned his attention to the now-illuminated screens in front of him. “You idiot, you’ve brought us in at a ninety-degree angle. And why are you venting fuel?” He began encoding a correction to their course and heading. “You lied to the Kangal. Why are you here? What do you want?”
“Precisely what I told him,” Reever said.
The moment Aledver inputted the new codes—none of which were prefixed with the proper enabling encryption that Reever had programmed the computer to respond only to—the guidance system deactivated and locked down. With the helm now inoperative, the launch instantly rolled into a spin and tumbled out of control.
“What have you done?” The weapons trader dropped the tamer and gaped at the viewer. “We’re going to crash.”
Reever regarded the whirl of sky and land with little interest. “Yes, I know.”
Aledver lost his polished facade as he tried to reinitialize the helm. When it became apparent that the controls would not respond, he covered his face with his hands and wailed.
Reever reached under his console and pressed his palm to the scanner he had installed there. His print activated the emergency-landing protocol, which brought the launch out of its spin.
The cloud whips of the kvinka exploded into clear airspace. The surface of Akkabarr then seemed to rush up to meet the launch and swallow it whole in its blue-white gullet. Impact caused the port-side hull to buckle inward and wrenched at the interior seats and harness straps. The force tore Aledver out of his harness and flung him against the flight control panel. Reever, who had reinforced the copilot’s seat as well as its harness before leaving the Sunlace, remained safely strapped in.
The launch skidded along the surface, sending a giant plume of ice spray into the air. As the skid slowed, the cabin rocked from side to side, and shuddered as the launch came to a full stop.
Toskald blood, red as a Terran’s, spattered the interior of the viewer panel as Aledver produced a liquid cough. The pistol he removed from his jacket shook a little as he pointed it at Reever.
“Signal for a recovery vessel,” the trader gasped, blood streaming from his nose and mouth as he stumbled out of the pilot’s seat, “and if it gets here before the wreck rats do, I will let you live.”
“As you had planned to execute me as soon as we reached the surface,” Reever said, “I find that unlikely. Put down the weapon or I will kill you.”
“With what?” Broken teeth, painted scarlet with blood, appeared as Aledver coughed up a laugh. “You were a dead man the moment you bowed over the Kangal’s hand instead of p
lacing your crystal in it.”
“Crystal?”
“The keys to Akkabarr, Terran. Had you truly worked for Garnotan slavers, you would possess one. You would have never come near a Kangal without it.” He tugged out a chain that encircled his neck, which sported an etched crystal pendant. “They are etched with command override codes for your vessel. Such is the cost of doing any business with the Toskald.” He braced his wrist with his free hand and targeted Reever’s heart.
The timing and force of the movement Reever used to kick the weapon out of Aledver’s hand had taken him a year to perfect while fighting nonhumanoids on the sands of the Hsktskt slaver arenas. It was not a move any humanoid before Reever had ever attempted, and he had paid the Tingalean slave who had taught him with small rations of his own blood. He also managed the reverse of the movement, although it proved a challenge in the restricted space. That lethal blow drove one of the trader’s broken ribs through both chambers of his heart.
Aledver was dead before he slumped over onto the copilot’s seat.
Searching the trader’s body produced four more weapons, two recording devices, and a transponder. Reever kept the weapons and destroyed the tech, and then exchanged garments with Aledver. Removing the blood from the outfurs would take too much time, so Reever transferred a small quantity to his neck and face, to make it appear as if it were his own. He then positioned the trader’s corpse in the pilot’s seat, to make his injury appear as a natural result of the crash impact.
Reever contemplated the blood staining his hands for a long moment. He had not come here to kill, but the change of situation indicated he might have to do so again. He considered what little he had learned from the trader. There is more going on here than a native rebellion, he thought as he took the chain with the etched crystal from Aledver’s neck and hung it around his own, concealing it under his tunic. If the price of a single pilot’s doing business with the Toskald is the control of his ship, what is used to pay for weapons storage here?
Crumpled hull panels had rendered the exterior door panel inoperable, so Reever blew the emergency hatch and crawled through it. The cold outside clawed at his eyes and skin. He dropped three feet down into a bank of snow, ice that had been pulverized by the crash. The hard powder scoured some of the blood from his face as he wiped it away and found his footing.
Silent, motionless white surrounded the launch on three sides. Black-and-gray smoke etched a thick trail across the sky from the vented fuel Reever had ignited. To the north he saw a small blur of movement, figures in heavy furs flying fuel-powered skimmers low over a glistening glacial field.
They were flying directly for him.
“Hunters.” Daneeb lowered the magnifiers. “Small band, perhaps fifteen, flying in from the north. What does the box tell you?”
Malmi studied the instrument, which showed the warmth of the living, even while at great distances from them. “Two lights in the wreckage. One red, one purple.” She hesitated before adding, “The red moves.”
“That explains the hunters.” Daneeb nodded toward the devices. “They use the boxes to locate game.”
Malmi looked over at the other skela. They stood in a protective circle around Skjæra, keeping the wind from her while she prepared for her trek out to the crash site. “She should wait until we know how it will be.”
“That she will not do.” Daneeb handed Malmi her pack before she reversed her outfurs and covered them with strange, flowing ensleg garments identical to those Skjæra wore. The ensleg material seemed to crawl against Daneeb’s skin, but it had fooled every rebel they had encountered. Since Skjæra had become spirit made flesh, the dead who walked—the vral—such deceptions had become accepted among the skela.
At least, among those who blindly worshipped Skjæra. Daneeb would never feel at ease with this perversion of their work. Yet she knew she alone had been responsible for what had happened to Skjæra, that day on the ice.
The day they had killed Enafa.
The terrible guilt Daneeb felt over what she had done to the child and Jarn trampled down her objections. Two years and better she had lived with the consequences of her actions. She could no more stop Skjæra from her task than she could resist aiding her in it.
When will she go too far? When will I?
Malmi reached to adjust a fold of Deneeb’s head wrap. “You should permit one of us to take your place at her side now and again, Skrie. There are some of us who are not so frightened of her.”
A generous lie, for the headwoman had observed that while Skjæra’s silent strangeness instilled awe and admiration in her sisters, it also terrified them. It was not natural for someone never to speak a word.
I cannot stop trembling when she is near me, one skela had told Daneeb shortly after Skjæra’s transformation. She never makes a sound. Not so much as a cough or a whisper. And she has eyes like the jlorra’s are, just before they spring.
“It is best I go.” Daneeb herself was not very afraid of Skjæra, who might stop death with her bare hands, but who also regularly behaved as if old or simple-minded. Indeed, if she were not constantly reminded and attended, the healer would forget the simplest requirements of life, like feeding herself. One could not entirely fear the helpless.
Malmi looked over at the huddle of skela again. “Can you not persuade her to remain?”
“No.” Nothing prevented the Skjæra from making her treks, of course. Not ice storms or predators, not the threat of discovery or blades jabbed at her face by terrified hands. Certainly not Daneeb’s threats. The healer went wherever she wished, whenever she pleased, and carried out her masquerade as the vral in order to do her strange work healing the sick and injured instead of being skela and killing and skinning them. One of the older skela had told Daneeb that the reason the vral was beheld as a sacred being was because she would never know fear, deprivation, or death.
Those were also the reasons, Daneeb suspected, that Skjæra was crazy.
No, she blames herself for Enafa and what happened after I killed her. Skjæra probably thought she had been the cause of it, just as Daneeb did. They both had lived with it for a long time.
“There.” Malmi tucked in the ends of her head wrap. “One would never know what you are.”
Daneeb had never felt shame over being made a skela, either, not for a moment since hearing the words that had ended her once-life.
You are cast out.
The rasakt of Daneeb’s natal iiskar had formed an inexplicable grudge against Daneeb’s father long before her birth. Her mother had been sent to the Kangal as tribute as soon as Daneeb was weaned. Daneeb’s father had been killed on the ice, during an act of cowardice, or so the headman claimed. As a female child with no male to provide for her, Daneeb was made to suffer years of hunger, overwork, and harsh punishment for even the slightest infraction.
Sometimes punishment came even when she did nothing wrong. “Beat her,” was the rasakt’s favorite order whenever he noticed the thin, silent child she had been.
No one had to ask why. Daneeb was the image of her father.
Daneeb’s final, greatest crime had been to refuse to become the rasakt’s fifth woman. She had done so deliberately, knowing it would result in her death or exile. At the time she had been quite ready to die rather than warm the bedskins and bear the children of a liar and murderer. Being made skela instead hardly seemed punishment at all.
At least, it had not until Daneeb had been forced to murder a weak and helpless child. A child whose unwarranted death had changed everything, despair into hope, death into life, the familiar into the faceless.
Skjæra into vral.
“Skrie.” Malmi touched her arm to tug her from her thoughts. “Stay this time. This is her work. Let her go alone.”
“I should,” Daneeb agreed as she stepped back and wrapped her hands. “Do you know what I prayed for when I was a little one? A peaceful existence. I wanted it so much that I even gave up my once-life for it. She takes that from me alm
ost every day now.”
Malmi’s brow furrowed. “I do not understand.”
Nor would she, for the younger woman’s once-life had been rich with privilege. Daneeb did not begrudge her that.
“Consider what we are,” she told Malmi. “There are no men among us, and we cannot have children, but we suffer no true misery. You and I and our sisters are reviled, but we care for each other. We do our work, unpleasant as it is, cleanly and fairly. So tell me, why do I risk losing all this to honor Skjæra’s charade as vral, when I might save us all by killing her and truly returning her flesh to spirit?”
The blasphemy brought a soft sound of distress from the younger woman.
“I cannot, and I will tell you why,” Daneeb said. Someone should know. “Tarina, the skrie before me.”
“I did not know her.” Malmi cleared her throat. “It is said that you staked her to the ice.”
Daneeb nodded as she strapped serrats to her boots. “For those she had killed. Before I was made skela, she would starve those who were too young, weak, or old to work the ice.” She paused, remembering how she had discovered the former skrie’s crimes against the skela. It had been too much, and something had snapped inside Daneeb. She had not come to her senses until she had stood over the skrie’s dead body and watched her blood freeze on her blade. “Had the sisters not made me skrie, I might be now Skjæra.” And Enafa would yet live, for Jarn would have never ordered her out on the ice, and none of this would ever have happened.
“I cannot imagine anyone but you as our headwoman,” Malmi admitted.
“Truly, I could be as Tarina was. I could give Skjæra what D?vena denies her.” She had given enough thought to it. Killing her would definitely end her silent pain. If that was what the silence meant.
“No, Skrie.” The younger woman sounded horrified. “You cannot. You must not.”
“I am not Tarina.” Daneeb now met Malmi’s confused gaze. “I have to go with her.” She took her pack and shouldered it. “If we do not return within the shadow shift, take the others back to the crawls. We will make camp with the hunters.”
