by Dave Freer
Keilin shrugged. "I'd rather come along. I don't like the idea of chains. Can I get my kit?"
CHAPTER 8
They were hunting core sections. So far four, including Keilin's pendant, were already in Cap's hands. Keilin had another one in the ring in the hidden ankle pouch. Kim had another core section set in the bracelet. He wondered if keeping them secret from Cap was wise. Then he remembered S'kith's reaction on finding it and decided it was, for now anyway. He must get together with Kim and thrash out a story. If Cap ever thought it over he might realize that her outburst implied the existence of another core section.
And now they were on their way to Amphir, city of the southern plains, riding through the night to leave behind some of the pursuit Keilin had stirred up. He looked resentfully at Kim. She'd obviously been on a horse before, often. After a few uncertain minutes he asked if he could run instead. The others had laughed, except Cap. He looked thoughtfully at the boy and nodded. "Keep up, or you get back on."
"Aw, come on, Cap, the boy won't last five minutes," Beywulf protested.
"Then he'll just have to get on again, won't he?" said Cap calmly.
So Keilin ran. Old Marou had trained him well. He'd used the boy both as a courser and greyhound in their hunts. On the overall Keilin was a better courser. The stony mountainside they were climbing was too steep and too broken for the horses to do more than walk anyway. Stung by the hairy ape's comments Keilin paced himself carefully. He could keep this up all night if need be.
It wasn't quite all night . . . but pretty close. Dawn was only a few hours off when they bedded down for the night. And before midmorning they were off again. Keilin was obliged to ride for an hour or so the next day, but when he saw how Kim was struggling even to walk after the long ride, he realized that running wasn't too bad. Amphir was far south in the wide plains beyond the mountains. It took them nearly three weeks to reach it, by which stage the party had become familiar with each other, and Keilin could ride. The one and only advantage of riding, he decided, was that he could talk to the other riders without craning his neck.
He had begun to establish relationships with the rest of the party, all except its leader. Cap remained aloof. He was without a doubt the commander of the party, but there was a complex hierarchy under that. Bottom of the pecking order was the Morkth-man. He would literally do anything anyone told him to. He showed no emotion at the occasional taunts. On the other hand he was both strong, and potentially deadly, as Keilin saw in a brief incident with foolishly optimistic bandits along the way. After that Keilin made a careful point of leaving the taunts to other people . . . particularly Kim who, after the first night, treated S'kith as if he was something unpleasant she'd stood in. But then that was only one of the aspects of her behavior Keilin found inexplicable. The fact that S'kith knew Keilin had another core section, and had contrived to hide it was odd, too. The other thing he found bizarre was the Morkth-man's attitude to Beywulf's cooking. The shaven-headed man always treated the meals as if they might bite him, but ate with a strange kind of greed.
Beywulf, the cook, was a bizarre mix between an axe murderer and mine host of the homely tavern. It had taken Keilin a while to realize that his slightly high-pitched voice and crude manner hid an intelligent, complex persona. The only thing that could always distract him from crude jokes and stirring for mayhem was exotic food. When he discovered that Keilin had come from the east coast, he grilled him about the curries and spices of that region. He'd only been there for a week as a bodyguard once long ago, but still his knowledge of the cuisine was a great deal wider than that of a street child's. Marou had been fond of food . . . Beywulf was fanatical. It was infectious. Keilin spent hours dredging his memory for the methods the women of Port Tinarana, and the more exotic refugees from across the gulf, used to enliven their poor diet of fish and lentils. The two of them were even immune to Leyla's put-out-at-being-ignored little barbs about the two housewives swapping recipes again. After her third comment Beywulf finally rose to the bait with a lofty reply, "It is a well known fact that women can't cook. They just have to."
"That just proves how stupid men are!" she returned cattily.
"Couldn't agree with you more. Luckily they're not my species. Now, about preparing that masala . . ."
The species comment lay in Keilin's mind. He brought it up that evening while they were dicing a tough piece of venison, which would later make part of a heavenly meal of herb-scented meatballs in a piquant lemon sauce. He put his fingers at risk by turning to ask Beywulf what he'd meant by it.
"Watch your hands. I mean just what I say. I'm not human . . . or at least I'm only half human. According to Cap I'm a Gene-spliced. I'm a descendant of the military-bred creatures that the humans made to defend themselves against the Morkth. I'm part chimpanzee, part Kodiak bear. I have natural speed, strength and agility that no ordinary human can rival. I also have a decent sense of smell. I'm faster and more deadly than a Morkth warrior-prime. For our services the human race rewarded us generously. They feared us `better' humans, so . . . I'm sterile or damn near. I've one child by another of my kind. I've had two other cubs . . . they both died. Cap kept my Wolfgang from dying. That is why I have left my inn and my family to go on a quest I have no interest in." There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice.
Leyla put an arm around his shoulders. "Never mind, you hairy Don Juan. If you hadn't been here I would never have discovered that your kind are perfectly in proportion, all over. You're so wide, and so hairy . . . nearly all over." This brought a coarse guffaw, and an even more coarse riposte, and the moment was broken.
By Leyla, Keilin was usually hypnotized the way a rabbit is by a snake. She made him make a fool of himself at least five times a day. He desperately wanted to impress her. He dreamed about her at night. Very vivid dreams. His night senses were honed enough to be aware that she amused herself with at least Beywulf and S'kith. He kept hoping . . . but she treated him as if he was a joke and worse . . . as if he were a child.
As for Kim, she was the one person Keilin felt he understood less each passing day. She had become positively fatuous about Cap. And if she told him that she was a princess now . . . he might almost believe her. He even got to half-believing the crap about being descended from Queen Lee. Fat joke, what would a Princess be doing with stolen goods, starving to death on the run? But still she became more stuck-up by the day, behaving like one of those fancy tarts on Deale Street. She expected to be waited on by all of them, especially Keilin. Next thing she'd be fluttering her eyelashes and behaving like one of the really cheap girls down on Dock Street. And all of this while speaking more fancy lah-di-dah than ever.
* * *
She hated all of them. Especially that stupid boy. How dare he behave like that. Ignoring her all the time. And he was always hanging around that big slut, like a bee around sugar water. Couldn't he see he was making an absolute idiot of himself? Yet . . . he'd not given her away, when he'd been caught . . .
As for that Morkth-man, creeping to her sleeping place without any trousers on! She blushed thinking about it. She had thought it was Keilin, and had called him closer.
Then there was the big ape-bear. He kept making rude jokes at her. And worse still, he could cook food which was better than the decorated and prettied dishes of her father's court. Of course she thought, loyally, his food wasn't as good as Mamma Mae's solid farm meals, but it was different.
Naturally, you had to treat Cap with respect. He was authority, and she was used to living in its shadow. But the rest of them! And now she was going to be involved in a jewel theft from Amphir, of all places. She didn't believe Cap's story about saving the human race from the Morkth, but there were some strange elements of truth in it. Some things he shouldn't have known, secrets only the royal family knew. Still, if she could have distracted Keilin from panting around that bitch-in-permanent-heat, she'd have run. He would be able to get them away, but she didn't think she could do it alone.
* * *
Amphir. Fabled Amphir, jewel of the plains gap. Place of a thousand exotic smells, many of them unpleasant. The gem trade capital of the world, the city straddled the north-south caravan route and had the only open trail to the eastern coast, too. It was the banking and gem trade capital of the world for one other reason besides its position: its security. As Beywulf pointed out disgustedly, it was so policed that you couldn't even fart without some flatfoot investigating your bowels with a potent laxative. Inevitably, a few jewels had been stolen from there. But Amphir's council, the richest in the world, had a policy. They followed up. They would follow, no matter where or for how long, and extract ten times the weight of any gem from the thief's body. They got to choose just which bit of body they took it from. Sometimes they made a considerable hole in getting to that part.
Keilin stared at the great city with its white onion domes gleaming above the red walls. At some time in its geological history the land had been wrenched and torn here. The red cliffline marched east to west for hundreds of miles. Once there had been a gap in front of them. Now the cliff wall loomed continuous, with Amphir's walls blocking the gap. If you wanted to go through you had to march your caravan through the toll passage. The toll was small. Merely a token payment. Although one that added up, with the numbers that came through it. If the toll had been more than trivial, merchants would have found it worth evading. That would have spelt disaster to the real income of Amphir. With the trade of a whole continent funnelled through it, a vast amount of wealth came through the city. Inevitably, quite a bit of it stayed there. The visible result of this accumulation was huge and imposing to the street-kid-turned-desert-rat. There was a measure of awe in his voice as he asked, "Where is the place we have to rob?"
"We don't exactly know." Cap was matter of fact about it. "And we'll only steal it if we can't buy it."
"What do mean you don't know where it is, you idiots? How do you know there are core sections here at all?" demanded Shael, forgetting respect for a minute. "I mean . . ." she floundered.
"You mean you spoke without thinking," said Cap coolly. Cap expected respect. It was plain he did not find its disappearance pleasant. "How I organize this search is my business. I am the commander. Don't ever forget that."
As if anyone could, thought Keilin. But the girl was adroit at talking her way out of the difficult situations her too-quick temper got her into. "Yes, I did speak without thinking. I'm sorry. I wasn't referring to you of course, Cap. Could you explain, please?"
Cap snorted. However, she had gauged his ego correctly. "We use the core sections to track other core sections. There is a resonance between them. They are partially self-aware complex computing systems, and they retain contact with central computing. Unfortunately only psis can communicate with them, so I've had to rely on the Morkth-man. Even S'kith can't communicate directly, but he can tell how far, and in what direction the sections lie. He also `sees' a core section's eye view of the place. That's how we know this section is in Amphir. The red walls and white minarets are very characteristic." He looked at them with sudden intensity. "Come to think of it, you two brats should be able to do the same. Maybe we can get more clues."
He produced a thin-bladed knife. "Wet contact is best. Saliva works to an extent, but blood seems more effective." Next to Keilin, Kim shrank back. Stupid girl. Yes, for a minute he'd thought Cap would bend him over a handy rock and cut his throat. But they were too valuable for that. And S'kith was still alive, wasn't he?
The same thoughts had obviously occurred to Cap. He laughed, not quite without humor. "I'm not going to gut you, and read your bloody entrails, girl. I'm just going to prick your finger, that's all."
"I'm scared of the sight of blood. Especially my own," she said in a small voice.
Cap raised his eyebrows. "And you, boy? Also chicken?"
Keilin fancied that knife's needlelike point not at all, but he couldn't see any way of backing out either. Not without appearing a coward and a fool in front of all of them. Gingerly he held out his hand.
Cap clicked his tongue as he took the boy's hand. "Look at the city." Keilin didn't even feel a prick. But there was bright blood welling from the ball of his thumb. Cap pressed the thumb to the core section he took from his pocket.
For a brief instant he was back in the desert, almost as if it was establishing context. Then the feeling of vastness again, and a feeling of recognition, questioning, drawing information, a feeling of the rightness of shaved scalp, of fear, of loneliness . . . of an erect penis? Suddenly it dawned on him. This was S'kith as he saw himself: The pendant was linking him with S'kith! Then his mind's eye saw the red wall towering upward. A double onion dome above. An expensive shop, with rare carpets and the scent of sweet cinnamony incense. It all faded into the terrible memory of betrayal again.
He was back among them. They were all staring at him, but his eyes quested for S'kith's. Was the normally expressionless man looking worried and . . . jealous? Keilin shook himself, and S'kith's face slipped back to its impassive mask. Keilin sat down, weak-kneed. After a few minutes he described the shop as best he could. But the rest of the experience he left unmentioned. Was there just a trace of relief in S'kith's face?
The next day they would go in search of the place, posing as ordinary merchants. Keilin's main worry was where to hide the ring in his ankle pouch. Beywulf had been to Amphir before and had told them of the procedures they would have to pass through to get in. They'd be searched. Weapons confiscated and held until they left. All possessions, especially jewellery, would be itemized. On their way out they would be checked again. They would have to provide receipts for any changes. The city jewellers each did duty for a day a week on the gate, and since the system's inception, the problem of gem substitution had vanished.
Then Cap announced that Beywulf would be remaining in the caravanserai outside the walls. Plainly he wasn't keen on putting core sections—or possibly other things—under the scrutiny of Amphir's officers. Keilin had already prepared a small slit in his saddle, but after a whispered consultation with Kim he had to enlarge it, to take her bracelet as well.
The next morning they were taken shopping in the vast bazaar that lined the toll passage. Here you could buy and sell everything but jewellery: for that you had to go into the city itself.
Keilin admired his new garb in the mirror. They were finer clothes than he'd ever owned, even if they were second-hand. Huh! The fuss Kim had made about that. You'd think she hadn't been wearing raggedy old boy's clothes since he'd met her by the way she went on about it.
He stepped out of the dressing cubicle, and caught his breath at seeing her. Well! She certainly was a lot prettier in her new dress than in her oversized trews and shirt. Keilin had rather forgotten she was female in the glare of Leyla's sexuality. He rapidly reevaluated his position with her.
* * *
How could he! Shael was still fuming. First to take her to some tawdry second-hand clothier, and then when she'd finally found something nice he'd sent her back to find something more dowdy. And now here she was trailing along behind them, pretending to be some kind of servant. So they'd given her the parcels to carry . . . It had been fun watching the boy's eyes nearly pop out when he saw her. She walked a little straighter, and a smile played across her lips. Coldly, Leyla told her to stop looking so cheerful and to slump her shoulders. "This is Amphir. A woman's place here is three paces in the rear, pretending that she worships the ground that those fatuous male pricks walk on." The voice was bitter.
"You sound like you know all about it," said the Princess sarcastically.
"I should. I was born here. I'm not happy to be back." The very matter-of-fact way it was said failed to conceal the loathing.
Shael was taken aback. It was the first time she'd considered Leyla as anything but a mattress. She could begin to understand how living in such conditions would affect someone as bounteous and outspoken as the woman by her side. They walked on in silence for a while. The outer
walls curved on for miles, lined with elegant residences and expensive shops. "All of this was built by women working in dark little rooms until their eyes went. Men assess jewels, and do bugger-all else. Women work the jewels . . . actually they do all the work, but their fathers, and then their husbands get the money. An Amphir woman never owns anything, not even the clothes she wears." Shael noticed that there were no unattended women in the street. Dowdily dressed and veiled women trailed listlessly behind the menfolk. The men would stop and talk. The women waited, eyes downcast, three or four paces behind their keepers.
"And do you know what the worst of it is?" commented Leyla viciously. "The bloody women maintain the system. Mothers teach their daughters that only a harlot would look a man in the eyes, that a woman's place is in the home to nurture and support her man, and her sons; and this is the way women are meant to be in the eyes of God. If they even suspect that a woman is unfaithful, the other women kill her."
"It sounds awful. How did you get out?" Shael asked, finding herself drawn in and curious.
The question seemed to startle Leyla. It was almost as if she'd been unaware of the fact that she'd had an audience. "I don't want to talk about it. Anyway, you're a fine one to talk. You jumped and hopped at your father's bidding, didn't you?"
Shael was both startled and angry. She drew herself up. "I'm a Royal Princess. I . . . I had to do . . . I mean, he was my father. It was the law!"
"Of course that makes it all right," Leyla said dryly. "Now slump down. You could get stoned here, just for walking like that."
Before Shael could react both Keilin and S'kith froze, looking for a moment like a pair of bird dogs. A waft of cinnamon incense carried above the city bouquet of unusual spices, jewellers' solvents, garbage, and inefficient sewage systems. Looking up, the double onion dome stared out at them . . . actually two domes, neatly in line. A little ahead yawned the mouth of Zaran's Opal Emporium, full of cinnamon halitosis.
