by Dave Freer
It was Beywulf's turn to look serious. "The Tyrant is `not nice' like terminal VD is `not nice,' son. He's as cunning and vicious as a wolverine. And don't underestimate Cap. I'd rather take on the Tyrant, myself. Forget your vendetta against the Morkth. They can't breed. They lost their queen or we'd all be neck-deep in little chittering bugs by now. Another hundred to a hundred and fifty years and they'll all be dead anyhow."
"How do you know so much about them?" Keilin asked.
"Cap is the planet's Morkth expert. He's lived in Dublin Moss for hundreds of years. He doesn't give information out easily, but over the years it's sort of leaked out in dribs and drabs to our folk. He's always known he can just outlive them," said Beywulf.
"Then what persuaded him to start on this quest?" asked Keilin, suspicious.
"Now there you've got me. . . ."
* * *
The mountains stood cold now, in the mouth of winter. Keilin's tensions had begun to ease. Now all he had to worry about was a blizzard or two in the passes. He wondered if any of the others had realized how the party was watched through the fossicker's heartlands in the foothills. Only his wariness, and the turquoise-concha belt he wore proclaiming his status as an experienced local had stopped them from getting their throats cut. Those who lived along the final section of the way were really little more than bandits. They would allow anyone across from the east to spread out along the mountain/desert front, knowing that if they lived, and tried to return . . . Still, this high, with small drifts of snow in the shadows and wind lees, and a greasy-rag sky promising worse, they should be left in peace.
Shael shivered. "To think a few days ago I was so hot, every time I breathed out I was scared I'd set fire to this horrible animal. Still, the worst is over now, isn't it, Keilin?"
It was Bey who answered, however. "I smell snow. That gray sky is starting to look soft. How much longer to shelter . . . and how much higher?"
"Two passes. I was planning to overnight before the last neck. It was about three to four hours from there to Steyir . . . that's the nearest village, where the turquoise traders and the fossickers meet and cheat each other."
"Youth, if we spend tonight up here these beasts'll freeze, and we might be here for a month. There's really bad weather coming up. I say we stop skulking along and ride as fast as we can."
* * *
The lights of Steyir shone like a beacon through the wind-driven snow. For the last hour Keilin had seriously thought they weren't going to make it. It wasn't a mean, smelly village now. It was a haven of light and warmth. Especially warmth. As they'd mounted the last pass, the wind, funnelled by the towering snowcaps all around them, had suddenly come howling and whimpering at them like a wolf in pain. With it came the first tiny flakes. As the afternoon died, more snow had begun to fall. So had the temperature with the coming of darkness. Once over the pass and down to the treeline they'd had to follow Beywulf's nose, hunting fire smoke. Seeing the lights of the town, Keilin silently swore that he'd never belittle the sensitivity of that organ again. No wonder the man was such a master of food.
"S'truth. I never thought a measly village could look so good," Cap said. "Has it got an inn, boy, or do we knock on doors for shelter?" His voice suggested that he'd knock a few down if he didn't get it.
"There's a tavern . . . but it's just a bar really. Mostly the fossickers sleep over at Lucy's . . ." said Keilin, the cold in his ears and nose overriding his brain for a while.
"Well, I suppose their doss house will do, boy. Lead us there, and be quick about it."
The glow spreading up Keilin's face partly thawed his nose. "Er . . . I've another idea."
He led them off up a small lane to the house where he'd parted from Honest Clarence. It was more prosperous looking than most in the village, and set apart from them, with a view out into a deep valley. "This is one of the jewel buyers. He actually stays here in winter, whereas most of the others go south. Let me just go ahead and try my credit here. Um . . . Lucy's is a very dirty, cheap brothel."
He knocked.
"Who is it, at this time of night?" came a suspicious voice from inside.
"Keilin Skyann. I've just come over the pass, and brought some fine stones from the desert. You said you wanted to do business with me if I came back," said Keilin, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.
A peephole opened.
"Good Lord, boy! It is you!" The door was opened. "Come in. Come in. You're letting the cold in."
Keilin's sharp eyes noted the boar spear still rocking against the wall. "I've some friends back there, sir. Womenfolk too. Not fitting to take them to Lucy's . . . can we have some shelter?"
Honest Clarence looked him up and down. And then smiled and beckoned the others forward. "I wouldn't leave a dog out on a night like this, least of all Skyann's boy. Besides there's a story in this, an' maybe some good stones? Bring your beasts around the house. The stable door is on the slope. It leads under the house." He looked at the dejected animals with surprise. "Camels, eh! Haven't seen those since my young days down south! Hope they don't frighten the horses too badly."
Ten minutes later they were all sitting in front of a roaring fire, in a warm wood-panelled room soft with fine carpets from the far-off southlands. Clarence's wife, a short, plump little woman was having the time of her life, plying them with hot drinks and fussing over the arrangement of the chairs. She was city-born, and found the long winters here in this remote village gave her scant opportunity to do what she enjoyed most: entertaining. And those she saw during the summer were other gem buyers and occasional traders. This group was something different and exciting.
Soon she fussed off into the kitchen, and subtle appetizing smells began to emerge. Clarence produced a bottle of red wine. By the dust on its shoulders, it had waited some years for this. "With the diggers in the Margery, I drink that pigswill beer they serve. It's what the diggers want an' expect. But I'm a wine lover myself. An' seeing as you're the first digger to come to my house you can drink my tipple for a change."
He poured the wine. It was deep red tinged with a faint chestnut brown edging, heavy with a complex amalgam of the summer scents of berries and fungus-touched leather. A sigh of sheer contentment came from Beywulf's beatific face. "And to think I was regretting not spending the night at what my young friend described as `a cheap brothel.' Magnificent . . . fourteen years old . . . Shiraz Cabernet-Sauv blend . . . from the heavy granitic soils around southern Ormsburg I'd guess."
Clarence looked at him, startled, and then a vast smile broke across his face. "You, sir, are a marvel, and a connoisseur to boot. It's a pleasure to meet you. Most of the folk around here can describe a wine as red or white . . . with difficulty. Come. Tell me. How did you fall in with young Skyann? Last I saw he was goin' west. He never came back through Steyir. I'd have known."
Beywulf smiled tolerantly at him. "You talk to Cap and the rest about all that. I'm going to check out what your lady wife is doing to that ham and those"—his nose twitched—"dried chantrelles, while I enjoy this truly superb wine."
* * *
The succulent ham with its apricot glaze was a thing of yesteryear. So too was the thick golden-crusted clove-laced apple pie, and the big jug of steaming yellow custard. Several dusty wine bottles were unforgettable history too. Now they were facing a soft and creamy greeny-blue veined cheese with a life of its own, with smaller glasses of yet another of the gem buyer's vintages. Keilin hoped the flinty-flowery yellow stuff was a match for that truly evil cheese he was obliged from sheer politeness to finish. Clarence was saying to his wife for perhaps the thirty-third time, "From Port Tinarana! It's a bloody marvel. I don't know if you see the commercial possibilities. It's a good thing our boy's not here . . ."
He could have been telling her that the privy in the garden was haunted by fifteen-foot harpies and green pigs for what it was worth. Sometime during the evening she'd gathered that she was entertaining a Princess and a member of the Cru. Her happiness would
have been complete if Mari could have had her sister in Polstra witness the dinner. And Ella had thought she was so grand when she had the mere burgomeister to tea . . .
Soon the party headed for the soft beds that had been made up for them in the loft and spare bedrooms. All except Keilin, and because of a soft pull on her hand as she turned to go, Shael. When the others were upstairs, Keilin tapped his host's shoulder, distracting him from his contemplation of the balloon glass and the firelight. "Eh! What's that? Sorry, young Skyann. Haven't made such a night of it for many a year. What can I do for you then?"
"You wanted to see some stones?" said Keilin quietly.
The buyer enjoyed fine wines, good company and dreams of grand ventures. But there was no doubt where his heart really lay. It was why he was here in this bleak mountain fastness and not in a major trading center, where wines and company would have been far more available. He sat up at once, set aside the glass, and then went to turn up the lamp that hung above the table. Without ceremony he pushed the remains of supper aside to make space for the turquoise.
Looking at the first rough nodule carefully, his voice was reverent. "Ol' Marou's pipe. Thank God. I thought it was lost with him." He caressed the roughness. "Of course the price is not what it should be . . ."
"Ol' Marou said I should deal with Deep-Pockets," said Keilin with a smile. He knew full well that Marou had sold his turquoise to Clarence and to Clarence's father for six decades. He also knew this had been Marou's threat for all those years.
The gem buyer was not to be distracted. He went on examining and sorting all sixty-three pieces. Finally he looked up, a little smile on his mouth. "What!? Y'don' trust Honest Clarence!" Then he smiled, and looked at his hands. "Tell you a little secret, but don't ever let it leak out. I'm the only game in town. Me, Deep-Pockets, Square-Deal, even True-Blue Jonny, we're all part of the same syndicate. Now . . . as to price. Who am I dickering with? You, or this young lady?"
"She's my partner."
"What?" said Shael, unprepared and feeling suddenly both hot and foolish.
Keilin spat on his palm and held out his hand. She looked startled and backed off a step.
"Why are you doing that?" she asked warily.
Clarence intervened. "If you want a partnership, girl, spit on your hand and shake. It's worth more than any piece of paper, on the other side of the mountains."
Cautiously she spat, sealed the sticky handclasp, and then wiped her hand rather gingerly on her dress.
"Now let's talk money. Let me try your new partner, Master Skyann," said the gem buyer, rubbing his hands.
It was a decision he regretted. She knew nothing of the value of turquoise, but Shael had been trained to read the smallest nuances of speech and gesture. She got far closer to the precise values than Keilin would have. Her hands sweated furiously through the first two transactions, but her brief glance at Keilin brought a nod of reassurance. Suddenly she knew she had the edge and, relaxing, she had the time of her life. At the end Clarence shook his head and stood up. "Phew! You've got yourself a damn fine partner there, young man. Next time I'll dicker with you, I think. Now, I owe you, let me see . . ." He totted up the figures, and then got up to go and fetch the money.
"Cay, what does this mean?" she held out the hand she'd spat on.
"It means you get half of the money," he said with a grin. "You could live for a couple of years on it, cautiously."
"But . . . why, Cay? I mean, it's yours. The old man left it to you, not me."
"There's plenty. And I noticed you don't have any spending money. You rely on the stuff Cap buys for you, and Leyla's castoffs. It's cold up here. You'll need some warm things. Also, it's kind of what Marou did for me. Besides, I'm going after the Morkth. I probably won't get a chance to spend too much. I'm going to give S'kith some, too."
She felt the hot prickle of tears behind her eyelids, her throat tighten. What right had he to know how it galled her to be always beholden? How had he known? Why was he doing this? Was he trying to buy her? Logic struggled with this idea. Hell. On the voyage from Port Lockry he had done everything to avoid her physical snares. It had been different since . . . since that cellar. She was scared of physical contact now. In a sudden flash of insight she realized that he did know just how she felt. He was an empathic psi. He probably didn't even know that he responded to other people's feelings . . . but that was what made him the person he was. And that was why he'd been so glad to be in the desert. She shrank within herself. No wonder he'd avoided her snares.
Then Clarence bustled in with a small sack of silver.
"By the way," he said, "there's a description out of Amphir circulating to all jewel buyers. If I didn't know you better, youngster, I'd say it was yours. They're offering a fair reward for news of this feller that looks rather like you."
He smiled at the alarm on Keilin's face. "I never saw anyone coming up from Amphir. Only an old friend coming over the mountains. And it'll be spring before Mari gets a chance to tell her big-mouthed sister. You'll be long gone by then. An' I wish them luck followin' you into the desert."
Keilin would have headed straight for bed, but Shael now touched his hand and gestured with a nod toward the fire. They walked back to the dying embers and waited until their understanding host had drained his glass and taken himself off to bed.
"Cay. How did you know you could trust him?" she asked finally, when the only sounds were those of the wind and the occasional crackle of the fire.
Keilin looked confused. "I don't know. But you can trust him . . . about big things I mean. Not bargaining. That's like a game to him."
"You feel other people's emotions. Especially," she swallowed, "if you're physically attracted to them."
"Not all the time. That . . . would be dreadful. Just sometimes . . . when the feelings are . . . too big. Really happy. Desperately sad. Anger too," he said quietly.
"You knew I was being raped in that cellar. That was why you came running."
He nodded, looking at the fire.
"It was the other one. Not the man I killed. The one I killed . . . just steadied the pentacle. That's when I managed to claw him. When he fell down, the man who . . . was busy with me nearly didn't even notice. I had to stop screaming so he would hear his disgusting master dying."
"He's dead, you know." There was no emotion in his voice.
"I know. You don't recover from tetrodotoxins. I just wish I had managed to scratch the other one, the Guard Commander, too."
"Not the Patrician . . . the man you scratched. The Guard Commander is dead. His name was Kemp." He saw recognition dart across her face.
"The one who followed us . . . followed you off into the desert," she said.
"Yes. He . . . assaulted me, too, long ago. When I was small and . . . pretty. He wasn't fussy about taking boys or girls . . . as long as there was pain," he said evenly. "He would have killed me, but I was lucky. I escaped to the desert. He's haunted my nightmares ever since. But he won't any more. I went back the next night to make absolutely sure. I found him, or what was left of him. He had located one of the few aquifers in the desert. He could hear water dripping. Only, it was inside the rock. He ripped all the flesh off his own fingers trying to get to it. Then the vultures came down and tore his liver out. By the blood trails, he was still alive while they did it. He was less than ten feet from a cistern full of cold, clear water when he died."
He held her small sobbing body for a long time in the soft firelight.
CHAPTER 15
The sleigh ride to the river had been exhilarating at first. Now it was just cold. They huddled deeper into the blankets and furs, but the knife edge of the wet-snow wind cut in somewhere, somehow. Beside Keilin, Beywulf muttered, "To think I used to like that song about dashing through the snow."
"At least you have some hair to keep it off. Think of Cap and S'kith," said Shael, only the tip of her nose protruding from her new fur parka.
"Hmph! And by the looks of you, you envy my beard
and moustache. Not to worry, yours is coming on nicely, broad beam. A little more chicken manure on the inside . . ." There was a muffled thump.
"Ow, damn you! I've broken my nail," said Shael crossly, "Well, half ape, at least nothing else can be as cold or as miserable as this."
She was wrong. A river barge could be. It edged its way downriver through the chilly mountain valleys, with greenish ice slurry forming in the wake, and thin sheets of floe ice gunshot-cracking and scream-splintering in front of the heavy prow. Of course these sounds were loudest at night, making sleep uneasy, as the Nawleans wallowed her ponderous bulk downstream, racing the river freeze. Belowdecks, where hold space had been converted to make up two tiers of bunks for them, it was narrow, dark and windowless. The damp air did warm up faintly when they were all down there, but the heavy blankets still felt clammy.
Keilin found he simply couldn't take being shut in. The only real cover on deck was the steersman's hut from which they were expressly banned by its unpleasant occupant. Otherwise one could huddle against the cargo hatch edge or the gunwales, but neither were even headhigh on a sitting man. Rain, which would have been snow a hundred feet higher up, fell in a thin drizzle which was whipped across the deck by the icy winds from the surrounding mountains. Occasionally, for variety, there was sleet. Despite this Keilin stayed up on the flat deck, with his back to the cargo hatch. So did S'kith, although the bare-headed man plainly felt the cold even more badly than the skinny desert rat.
Keilin was worried about the man. S'kith usually asked him a steady stream of questions. These had dried up. Expression had recently begun to appear on the man's face, and rare smiles. Now there were no more of the odd looks of wonderment. Instead a sort of desperate unhappiness began to underpin the near-blank face. S'kith would simply sit in silence on the deck and stare morosely out into the darkness.
