by Jo Clayton
“When it started, I was fierce for the war,” Wintshikan whispered.
+I know.+ Zell’s hand traced out the signs on Wintshikan’s thigh.
“The Impix were doing evil in God’s sight, dirtying the land and air and water.”
+Yes.+
“I thought we’d teach them the Right Way and with God and the Prophet guiding our hands, it would be soon over and things would be right again.”
Zell sighed and stroked her hand along Wintshikan’s thigh, xe’s fingers eloquent in the gentleness of their touch.
Shishim Ixis was camped here, in the hills above Shaleywa, when word came of the Impix marching into the mountains to build their filthy smelters and claw away God’s flesh in their hunt for iron ores that they might go on in their blasphemous ways, destroying One’s body, stealing One’s blessings from their own grandchildren. And there on the Meeting Ground of Shaleywa the Hekas of all the Ixin and the Elders of the Pixa came together to declare Holy War. The Heka Wintshikan was strong in her loathing and sure of her rightness, impatient with the doubters and proud beyond pride when her mate Ahhuhl was first among the swell of volunteers to take arms.
It was here, in the hills above Shaleywa, that Ahhuhl lay for the last time in the arms of Wintshikan and Zell, his bondmates.
He was dead before leaves fell in the first War Winter.
It was her habit, when the Shishim Round brought her back to this stopping place, to spend her days in thoughts of God and her nights in contemplation of the occurrences of War, mourning her malbond and her only son who followed his father to God’s Arms the year after.
She heard Zell hiss, then lifted her head and saw Luca come strolling into camp, her face sullen, her bare feet filthy from tramping off-trail. “Bhosh! I wish I knew what got into that fem.” She lifted her hands, cracked them together. “Luca, get over here. Now.”
Luca was the youngest of the ixis ferns, moody and secretive, refusing to keep the Right Way. She came late to Praise and stayed at the edge of the group, hovering there as if she were readying herself to run at the first break she got. She wouldn’t learn the Sayings, wouldn’t join her heart to the heart of the ixis, wouldn’t take an anyabond though she lay with any mal who’d have her. She didn’t come out and say she refused to give a child to the ixis, but it was in her eyes and in her deeds. She hunched her shoulders as she answered the Heka’s summons, not quite daring-yet-to refuse to answer it.
“Why do you take your tent into the trees away from us when you’ve been told again and again that your place is in the heart?”
Luca shrugged, dug at the ground with the toe of her foot.
“If you find this ixis unbearable, though we would sorely miss you, Luca, I will speak at the Meeting Ground and find another for you.”
Luca’s mouth tightened, her throat worked as if the words she’d swallowed for months and yet more months were fighting to find a way out of her. In the end, she said only, “It doesn’t matter, does it. They’re all the same.”
Wintshikan pressed her lips together; it was a moment before she could speak. “I’ll think on that,” she said. “In the meantime, raise your tent where it belongs, or we will do it for you.”
She watched the fern stalk off, anger putting energy into her walk.
“Ah, Zell, do you see the world falling apart? I do. There’s no joy left in the Way. It’s like a shirt that’s been washed too often, only a few threads holding it together.”
“So sayeth the Prophet,” Wintshikan sang as the Praise began. “Rejoice in the Land for it is God’s Flesh given for your pleasure.”
“Rejoice,” the ixis sang back to her, the anyas whistling and signing-an uncertain thin sound with all the mals gone except Oldmal Yancik and Blind Bukh. Ten ferns (it should have been eleven, but Luca wasn’t there), seven anyas, two very young mallits and three femlits.
“So sayeth the Prophet,” Wintshikan sang. “Touch the land lightly, for it is God’s Flesh given for your sustenance.”
“Lightly,” the ixis sang back to her.
“So sayeth the…” She broke off as a band of Pixa mals came gliding into the firelight, nine of them; they moved into the circle of ferns, ignoring her and the Praise. A Pixa phela but no one she knew, led by a mal with a thumb missing and angry red scars on his face.
He set his hand on Xaca’s shoulder. “Where’s your tent?”
Wintshikan was shaking with anger. The phelas that had come by before had been perfunctory with pleasantries, but none so unrighteous as to break into a Praise or expect the ixis ferns to spread their legs without the courtesy of choice. “You are unGodly,” she said, her voice coming out strong and full, powered by the anger in her. “Step back and let us finish.”
He stared at her a moment, and she grew frightened when she saw there was no soul behind his eyes. He turned his back on her. “You want it here,” he told Xaca, “‘s all right with me.”
In the flickering firelight, Xaca’s face drained of color. Trembling, she got to her feet. “No. I’m not an animal.” Her voice shook as she said it, and she wouldn’t look at him. She walked ahead of him to her tent at the edge of the trees and went inside, still without speaking. She gave him no blanket blessing, telling him without words that she was unwilling.
Nyen, Patal, all the ferns except the missing Luca and old Yaposh went with varying degrees of reluctance into the tents with the mals of the Phela. The anyas huddled together around the children, holding them silent and still, silent themselves as always, shuddering under the waves of emotion amplified for them by the thinta that was their blessing and curse. Oldmal Yancik stared at the ground, and Blind Bukh waited with stolid patience for the Praise to go on.
Wintshikan closed her eyes a moment, tried to gather serenity around her like the Shawl, but she could not. For the children, she thought. We have to finish for the children’s sake. She cleared her throat, managed a smile as Zell’s fingers closed briefly round hers. “So sayeth the Prophet…” she sang.
When the phela had gone, Zell pushed the flap aside and ducked into the tent. Xe signed, +They are gone,+ then knelt beside Wintshikan and leaned on her thigh, looking down at the cards spread on the silk scarf, two in the top row, three in the middle, one on the bottom. +Change?+
Wintshikan sighed. “So it seems. I haven’t tried the reading yet. Hold my hand and look with me.”
She touched the bottom card with a fingertip, murmured, “From the Egg all things arise.” The card was a stiff leather rectangle painted white with an oval drawn by one sweep of a brush, set inside a thin blackline box with the number glyph for one at the top, a saying from the Prophet printed at the bottom, the whole varnished with a clear shiny substance. “A new thing arises and only God can judge whether it is for good or ill.”
She touched the first card in the second row. “Here are the determinants that mark the days ahead.” Inside the blackline box was a thick jagged line with arrow points on both ends and the glyph for nine.
“Lightning is God’s Fire, both joining and sundering, illuminating and destroying.”
She touched the second card, an inverted U drawn with one quick sweep of the brush by the long dead painter who’d made the cards; at the top was the glyph for six. “Mountain and fern, nurture and life, stability and the handing on of the Right Way.” The third card in this middle row showed an oval like the first, but this was one filled with black. Glyph twenty-four. “Death. The end and the beginning.”
She contemplated the row for a moment, then she shook her head. “Each sign is a contradiction of the others. I see only confusion not direction.”
Zell patted her thigh.
“Yes. Finish the first scan, then try to sort.” She moved her finger to the lefthand card in the top row. “These are guides to direct us to the Right Path.” Three vertical lines, the sign of the tribond, mal-fem-anya. Glyph three. “As God is All and In all things, so should the Three be one, cherishing difference and celebrating oneness. I feel this
as a rebuke. I have left the Right Path and must return. I am Heka and have led my own astray.”
Zell pinched her, shook xe’s head, pointed at the last card.
Wintshikan moved her fmger, touched the card. Two vertical strokes with a third across the top, joining them. Posts and lintel. The Gateway. Glyph twelve. “The sign in the middle that looks two ways.”
She contemplated the layout for several more minutes, finally shaking her own head. “All I can take from this is that we are on the edge of something, walking the balance between good and evil. And we must be wise in our choices.” She gathered the cards and folded the scarf around them, replacing them in the bone box the Painter had made for them,
+You think of going hohekil?+
“I helped stone Raxal when he went hohekil, I called him a deserter and abandoned of God. I’ve cursed hohekil at the Meeting Ground. I’ve roared with the others to drown out their words. I never listened to them when they tried to tell us all that we’d chosen the wrong road, that this is not God’s war, but ours.” She rubbed her hands across her face. “Why isn’t anything clear and simple any more? Yes. I’m very close to standing before the ixis, taking off the Heka’s Shawl and saying to them ‘stone me if you must, but I turn my back on the war and walk away.’”
+I am glad. My heart for this war died with our son.+ “You never said.”
+What use are words? I could not leave you and I didn’t wish to add to your grief, Wintashi.+
A scream broke into the silence of the camp. Zell paused to gather up the card box and slip it into xe’s pouch, then ducked past the tent flap.
Luca stood by the embers of the fire, wild-eyed and panting. “Get away,” she shrieked, “They’re coming, Impix are coming, I saw them, they’re following that phe…” There was a shot out of the dark behind her, a sudden leak of blood darkening her sleeve. She dived away, scrambled on hands and knees into the shadow under the trees.
Then there were Impixa everywhere, yelling and shooting…
3. The thief
The thief stared at the smuggler she’d tried to kill.
Yseyl was small and slight, little larger than an anya and almost as dark. Her face was thin and the color of late year leaves, a mix of green and brown, her fine long hair also greenish brown; ordinarily it was braided tightly, but the smuggler had pulled it loose when he searched her for weapons.
She’d slipped all his traps but the last, was caught in a sticky web she couldn’t see or fight; it moved with her when she moved, held her with an unrelenting gentleness that she found more frightening than threats or pain.
She watched the smuggler as he finished unloading his shipment of ammo for the mountain guns above Khokuhl, black thoughts surging through her head, despair chilling her. How many more dead, how much more destruction? She was Pixa, but it’d stopped mattering a long time ago which side killed the other. She no longer believed in God nor cared what the Prophet said. And she knew she was not exactly sane these days. That didn’t matter. She’d stalked and killed nine smugglers before this one, and if she could figure a way to get at him, she’d add him to her list.
He was an odd creature, like nothing she’d seen before, not much taller than she was, with fur like sooty plush covering all visible parts of his body including his face, mobile round ears set high on his head, eyes like pools of melted silver with pointed pupils. His ship was like him, sleek and black, with something about the paint that made it hard to see even on such a bright day as this was turning out to be.
She tried again to gain some ease in the invisible web, looked up, and met that enigmatic silver gaze. Why was he keeping her alive? That niggled at her, disturbed her concentration. Anyone with a grain of sense and the firepower he controlled would have ashed her the minute she tripped the trap.
He set the flare to let the Pixa gunners know where to find the load, swung the crane around and dropped a net beside her. When he got close enough, she could hear him singing something that-ached her ears with its scratchy falsetto. He lifted what looked like a small rock from a cairn beside three bushes, tossed it in the air, caught it, then tucked it in a pocket of the broad belt he wore about his narrow middle. He spread the net out, tipped her into it, pulled it tight around her.
A moment later the crane lifted her into the hold of the ship.
Alone in that dark place, drowning in a sea of sour smells, she felt a shudder, a slight pressure, then nothing-or rather, nothing but a Sound that vibrated in the center of her bones.
That stone. Whatever. That was the control. He set it in a niche by the door. Door. Sphincter. Shat him out of here. God curse… focus, Yseyl. feel it… feel… “Ali!”
The stone was a hot little bit of business, but she’d handled worse getting to the other smugglers. The only reason she’d fallen this time was the cleverness of the furman. He’d set out more obvious traps to herd her to this one and left it quiescent until it was triggered by the shutting down of the rest. It had her before she could identify the source. If I manage to get out of this, I’ll have to sniff around more…
Yseyl shook off anger and began reading the forcelines in the control. It was slippery, shifting with every touch, like trying to pick up a bead of mercury. Someone knew about mind fingers and what they could do. The thought chilled her, but she pushed it away and concentrated on finding the force knot that marked the shutoff.
After a while that her heartbeat told her was almost an hour, she tweaked a fine hot line, twisted another, there was a small pop and a smell-and she was free-and falling over as her muscles spasmed.
As she got to her feet, lights came on in the hold and a voice with a lisp and drawn out vowels spoke to her. “Remarkable. Adelaris swore even the psi-talented couldn’t defeat that web.”
“What do you want? Why did you…?”
“Capture you instead of killing you? Come talk to me. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
“Have I a choice?”
“Not really. If I can’t get value for you one way, I will another. There are places that buy people like you and play with them.”
“I would die first. After I kill you.”
“Yes. I’m sure you would. Number ten on your list, hm? I’d rather not test your skills in that area if you don’t mind. You don’t like the war, do you?”
“I don’t like arms dealers.”
“Nor do I, sweet assassin. It’s not a profession I’d have chosen if I had any choice in the matter. How’d you like to put holes in that Fence?”
“What do you think? And why trap me?”
A weary sigh. “Because I want out from under. I want to buy my contract. To do that I need a thief who can pass through security like a ghost. You.”
“I see.” Yseyl found that she believed him, primarily because she could think of no other reason for what he’d done. “Vumah vumay, I’ll listen.”
“Follow the lights.”
Yseyl stepped from twilight into brightness. The furman sat in a large armchair facing the door sphincter, a heavy weapon on his lap. She leaned against the wall, crossed her arms, fixed her eyes on him. “So. Explain.”
“Heard about the others you got to the past three years. I knew two of that nine, and they weren’t gullible or fools. Three more I knew by reputation. You were sliding through wards that would stop anything up to a battle beam, anything more tangible than a ghost. I mean, you offed old Vervin, he’s snakier than Holdam viper in a snit. Well, maybe this is wasting time, but I wanted you to know why I came up with this idea.” He shifted the weapon as she changed her stance.
She forced herself to relax. “You mean you’ll promise to ferry anyone I bring you across the Fence and over to Sigoxol?”
“Would you believe me? Hah, don’t bother answering. Even I wouldn’t believe me. No smuggler’s going to chance taking passengers past the Fence, so chuff that out of your head. It’s something else I’m offering.”
“I’m waiting.”
He lifted his lip, s
howing his tearing fangs; it might have been a smile, but she didn’t think so. “Plenty of time, sweet assassin, before we get where we’re going. Hm, you might reach out and grab hold of that loop beside you, in about half a breath…”
Craziness. Like the time she’d smoked khu with Crazy Delelan. Chaos criscross, floating floors and gloating doors, melting and pouring, terror’s musk, puffball dust…
Then the floor was solid under her feet, the wall cold and firm behind her back.
“What…”
“Shifting to ‘split. Upsetting when you’re not used to it.”
“Where…?”
“That’s part of the tale, Ghost. Yes. That’s what I’ll call you. Ghost.” He set the weapon aside, waved his hand at the other chair. “Sit down and relax.”
Hand closed on the loop, Yseyl bent a knee experimentally, leaned out from the wall. The vertigo was gone, her legs seemed prepared to hold her, and the floor had stopped melting. She took a, step, then another. A third step brought her to the empty chair. She swung it around and settled herself in it, facing the furman. “So why have you stopped being nervous?”
“Haven’t, but I dnn’t think you’re stupid. Kill me,” he reached around, tapped a sensor. The expanse of black glass across the front of the room went an iridescent gray with loops and swirls of pale color shifting in ways that woke nausea in her upper stomachs. “And that’s where you’ll spend the rest of your life.”
“Hell?”
“Who knows.” He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and dropped his hands on the armrests. “I can tell you how to put holes in the Fence. Big enough to pass a boat through and slick enough that no warning gets to the Ptaks. You want to hear it?”
“What’ll it cost me?”
“There’s a… mm… drug… a group of drugs, actually… that can extend the number of a person’s days approximately tenfold. Very very expensive. Very very desirable, hm?”
“So?”
“I want you to steal some for me.”
