Woman's Work: Shikari Book Four

by Alma T. C. Boykin

  Kor rose up on his toes and looked over her shoulder at the image. She moved her head out of his way, hand still moving. “Hmm.” He looked up, then down again. //Curiosity/anticipation// tickled her nose. “Wise Eye, beside the small, forked tree. What do you see?” He pointed past her with his forefoot.

  She sighted down his foreleg to the tree in question, a slender, smooth-barked specimen that formed a Y-shape two meters from the ground. “An open area, sir, like a meadow but smaller, with darker grass between it and the stream.” She glanced at her drawing, up at the meadow-let, down, and up again. “Is it round, sir?”

  Kor hop-walked past her, detoured to avoid a mean-looking yellow-green bush with thorns, and into the meadow. “Follow,” she ordered Martinus, and he trotted ahead. Rigi waved to Tomás, who waved back, then got to his feet. Rigi followed Martinus and Kor, accelerating as she watched Kor start hopping around the edge of the meadow, then bend over and dig. Grass and then dirt flew, and Rigi winced as Martinus joined into the fun. She hated having to clean out his claws and the paw-pad sensors. “Your scout partner is being a bad influence on my m-dog,” she warned Tomás.

  He spread his hands, indicating his helplessness in the face of—or tail end of in this case—Kor’s eccentricities. Rigi shook her head a little and picked a way through the knee-high grass and around the shower of soil. She and Tomás reached the hole just as Kor sat back, forefeet in the air. “Behold, the answer to your question, Mistress Rigi.” She and Tomás peered down and their faces peered back. No, reflections on water peered back. Tomás hunted around and found a light-projector, which he shone at an angle on the surface. They could see black and green tiles under the water. “You stand on solid ground,” Kor assured them as Rigi began edging away from the hole. “Such pools are divided and colored by Stamm, or rather they are now.”

  “I wonder if this was colored by temperature, sir.” Tomás began peering around, studying the grass, his head cocked a little to the side as Rigi did a quick drawing before taking a holo to mark the location. “Let’s try here,” he pointed to an especially lush patch of thicker-stemmed grasses. Once more the dirt and grass clods flew, and Rigi wondered how she would get the dirt out of Tomás’s trouser knees. “Yes!” The males backed up. “It’s warmer, and it is the same dark blue as beside the stream.”

  Rig turned and looked, then moved a pace or two and looked again. She hunted around in her satchel for her little far-viewer and studied the hillside a kilometer or so behind them. “On top of the hill. The rocks. And what’s beyond them.”

  The males looked for themselves. Kor chewed as he looked, his ears tipping first left, then right. “The terraces of the dead. And a watching place. And this washing place.” He rubbed one ear with his forefoot, heedless of the dirt. “A memory, something in memory, what is it?”

  Rigi stood with her hands palms together, holding the tip of her nose as she tried to recall. Something from the First World stories, something that had not made sense when the old male had recited it to her in his illness, something about swallowing and washing. Swallowing and washing and a lost place, swallowing and washing— “Sir! the fragment of memory song, the one about the place of washing and swallowing. The tongue of mixed rocks that the new settlement is on, that’s on top of the remains of the wall. What if the land moved, if a hillside collapsed or something, and swallowed up a settlement except for the place for washing?”

  Kor turned to her, ears perfectly still, forefeet at his sides, eyes dilated. He began almost chanting something, the sounds too fast for her to catch all the meanings. Tomás whispered into her ear, “It’s one of the oldest memory chants, one that makes no sense, about a place-spirit that devoured a town just before it was completed. Some of the survivors remained to keep away others, and left their bodies as a warning, sort of cautionary ghosts. Except Staré don’t have anything like that today, and it doesn’t match any of the carvings or images known.”

  “The Terrace site. This may be a single, enormous complex.” She could hardly breathe for excitement. Realization washed over as well. “The Sogdia Elders will have a collective herd of wombows.”

  “And it will be a battle royal between them and the xenoarchaeologists. And the settlers, human and Staré both.”

  “Will there be?”

  Tomás snorted. “Unless Dr. Xian and Dr. De Groet can come up with a way to remove the entire terrace site, intact, to a workshop, probably yes. Unless another set of Elders can override…” He gave her an odd look, one that shifted as she watched. “You are not thinking of—?”

  “It depends on Kor, doesn’t it? He is the senior Staré here, and what we found at Terrace is Staré.” She turned to him.

  Kor nodded, making a complicated swirling motion with his forefeet. “Xian knows not of the memory songs.”

  Tomás looked to Rigi. She nodded. “Correct, sir. I did not speak of them to anyone, and the Elders have all my notes. There were no copies.”

  //Satisfaction/pleasure.// “Good. Inform Xian and De Groet, yes. Of memory songs, nothing.” Rigi and Tomás both bowed their agreement. “The Elders have decided,” Kor chanted. Then he looked down at his forefeet. “Hsss,” //irritation/annoyed/chagrin.// He stalked to one of the newly-revealed pools and began washing. Rigi and Tomás turned away so they wouldn’t be tempted to laugh as he tried to get the mud off of his ear.

  “What do we do if he falls in?” Rigi murmured.

  “Make a quick holo for blackmail, then pull him out. Or wait and see where he re-appears, if the current is strong enough.”

  Rigi giggled, just a little. Tomás squeezed her shoulder, as much as he dared do while in uniform.

  “Wooeef.”

  “Indeed,” the humans replied in unison.

  “…and so Frisker will be both here and on the western coast,” Tomás concluded. “I did warn you that it was complicated.”

  “You did, my love, and I see why Lexi has been giggling behind his forefeet since the rumor-tree bloomed.”

  Rigi had thought that human mate-seeking could be confusing. Staré customs dwarfed humanity’s most entangled variations. Just how Kor had managed to negotiate everything remained unclear, but she suspected that he'd been considering options since the Fur Drop outbreak. If Rigi understood everything correctly, Kor’s future mate lived on the western coast, not all that far from where Rigi’s brother and sister-in-law made their home. Kor had paid her family part of his army wages, plus some other things, plus several prime pelts, plus half of Frisker. Except Frisker would remain on a stud farm near Keralita and do his duty via long-distance freight. Kor planned to visit his mate once or twice a year, but each would remain in their respective territories otherwise. Kor’s brother would raise one of Kor’s offspring, and Kor’s mate would raise the other, and after two they would renegotiate if they so chose. That much Rigi managed to make sense of, but the rest? She’d given up.

  Kor was mated but not exactly. He was doing his duty to the community but not quite the way he was supposed to. And he’d managed to irk his twin in the process, as usual. “Dear, does Kor stay up nights contemplating how to do what he’s supposed to while still causing Tortuh to pull his fur out?”

  “No.” Tomás had disappeared behind his file-reader. “It seems to come naturally, almost without effort. Tortuh is,” a loud sigh. “Very aware of his own dignity and even more aware of others’ dignity or lack thereof.”

  “Ah. All is clear. Thank you.” Rigi returned to her embroidery. The little one seemed intent on distracting her from counting the stitches, confirming in Rigi’s mind that she carried a Prananda male.

  “Speaking of clear, is there any word from Dr. De Groet about the legal conundrum?”

  “Not yet.” Rigi finished the row of stitches despite the double distraction. “He’s confirmed all the documentation with the xenoarchaeology department and the Royal Xenoarchaeology Society’s ‘Best Practices’ guideline was followed almost to the letter and comma, and he added testimony f
rom the two companies on Shikhari that handle large ceramics that neither of them possess the equipment necessary to fire a flat piece that large. I believe the next step is to send Lexi, Makana, Kor, and one of the holy-terror birds to discuss the matter in person, or so Lexi intimated.”

  “Hmm.”

  He returned to his reading. Rigi started working once more, then noticed wombow fur on the black material. Oh dear. She thought she’d gotten all of that off of her clothing and person, but apparently not. Slowth had shed not one coat, but two, in the space of four days. Rigi and Makana had alternated brushing him three times daily each, trying to keep him from scratching himself raw and knocking the shed down in the process. He’d developed a thick, fine undercoat while he was in the north and the fur got into everything. Rigi was starting to wonder how much it would cost to genetically modify wombows to be hairless. But then they’d probably sunburn. Well, she could always paint him different colors to keep him covered, with patterns that changed depending on the season, the holiday, and what was fashionable. A little giggle escaped her before she erased the mental images. She returned to her sewing.

  Tomás had one more day before he had to return to duty. He still blamed himself for the deaths of the four scouts, and Rigi had done what she could, mostly by listening and being calm. It seemed to help. He’d had nightmares once, and she’d left the bed until he woke on his own, just in case. He’d had predator eyes for several minutes and she waited in the work-room, soon to be a baby-room. Only when he asked her to come back did she return. “Thank you.” He held her and they returned to sleep. The next day she’d insisted that he talk to Uncle Eb, and the two men had gone somewhere for several hours. Tomás came back calmer, if not entirely at peace. He would not be on leave again until it was time for the baby to come, if then. Rigi was not happy, but she tried to understand. He was here, on Shikhari. That was better than many military couples endured.

  Something moved in her peripheral vision, and a tray descended beside her, coming to rest on the small table. Cool drinks and little fruit things on sticks graced the tray. “Thank you, Nahla,” Rigi said. Makana had the day off and Andat still could not quite manage carrying truly heavy things with his mangled shoulder and upper arm.

  “You are most welcome, Mistress.” Nahla returned to her kitchen, and Rigi caught her husband’s wink as he got up and helped himself to the afternoon snack. Uncle Eb and Lexi had almost begged on their knees for Nahla to stay, or to teach Aunt Kay how to cook better. Poor Nahla had been terribly confused, and had thought she’d done something wrong until Rigi explained what was going on. Now she made and froze things, and when Uncle Eb or Aunt Kay stopped by, or Tomás or Rigi went to visit, they took the frozen nibbles with them. That had been easier to explain than Rigi’s pregnancy.

  Poor Nahla! She’d missed learning about “the facts of life” before her parents and family died in the plague, and no one had thought to teach her. Rigi’s face started to warm as she remembered the lack of help the males had provided. Apparently such things were not discussed by the opposite sex among the Staré. Rigi’d had to explain first Staré biology, then human. She’d received no sympathy from her husband, leading her to seriously consider making him teach their little one about human reproduction when the time came.

  Rigi had a few of the fruit sticks and two cups of the fruit-water blend. When she finished, Tomás helped her out of her chair. She’d gotten a bit awkward, and she did not turn down his assistance. After a quick kiss, she visited the necessary, then checked on her comm files. She found four more requests for wombow portraits and wondered if she would be remembered in the art history books as a painter-of-wombows, like that man Stubbs on Home was forever known for his horses and dogs. Well, the Creator and Creatrix provided, and she would need the income soon, so she sent copies of her basic prices and contract forms. Even better, she found a note from their landlord agreeing to allow them to finish the upper floor and put in a proper staircase. Rigi did a little dance in the chair before sending an acknowledgment and thanks. Now she and Tomás just had to find someone to do the work.

  “Dear, there’s personal note from Lt. De LaMere,” Rigi called. Tomás appeared at her shoulder as fast as thought. They read it, and he rested his hands on her shoulders and squeezed, then kissed the top of her head.

  “Scout and Huntress be praised.” His hands tightened again, then relaxed. “I think that is a wise decision, although he was a very good officer.”

  “I agree. The army is too small for the story not to travel with them, I’m sorry to say.” She’d been offering prayers and intentions for the couple since before all of them had returned to NovMerv. Rigi wondered for the hundredth time if she could have done more. Yes, but perfect hindsight never cured anything. The other officers’ wives should also have done more, before events reached such a disastrous point. Once again Rigi silently asked for forgiveness, and for healing for the couple. “Shall I reply?”

  “Just say that he has our support and that his decision is understandable. I’ll reply officially when I know officially.”

  “Yes, sir.” He returned to the family room and Rigi went to the next message. It was from her mother, with a list of things Rigi needed to have done already, as well as those to do instantly, including budget for several meters of diaper fabric. Rigi acknowledged the list and moved on. Now was not the time. She loved her mother dearly but she and Tomás were supporting three Staré and Slowth as well as trying to expand the house and prepare for the new arrival. And she was not going to use only cloth diapers, not since an outlet had opened that offered disposables at a very reasonable price.

  An incoming comm chimed, and Rigi answered it to find Uncle Eb arguing with an undersized, tawny-spotted leaper. What? Rigi blinked and rubbed her eyes. No, he was trying to get a large, tawny-spotted-leaper-shaped stuffed animal toy out of his way. Oh dear. She and Tomás had been worried about how their aunt and uncle would take the news of the pending arrival. There had been a few tears, but more laughter and joy.

  “Ah, good afternoon Uncle Eb.”

  “Lexi, what is this thing doing—Good afternoon, Mistress Rigi. Lexi, what were you thinking?”

  Aunt Kay appeared and plucked the leaper out of his hands by one paw. “I put it there so you would not forget to take it when you went to NovMerv, dear.”

  Rigi giggled behind her hand. A few things remained constant, blessedly, wonderfully constant.

  Afterword

  Rigi’s adventures are based on a number of accounts about women on the edges of civilization in the 1800s. Eccentric Englishmen and English women could be found around the globe. Sketching and botanizing (collecting plants) were considered quite proper pursuits for the science-minded women of the time.

  MacMillan, Margaret Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India is an excellent general work on the topic.

  Kaye, M.M. The Sun in the Morning and The Golden Afternoon describe life in the Raj between 1910 and the late 1930s. I highly recommend the first volume for the life of a child during the Raj.

  Kaye, M.M. The Far Pavilions a novel of the Raj, about the Guides, the Northwest Frontier, and military life. Almost as good as Kim in places, but different.

  deCourcy, Anne. The Fishing-Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj focuses on the fraught processes of courtship and marriage in British India, going back to the days of the British East India Company.

  About the Author

  Alma T.C. Boykin grew up reading anything she could reach. This included large chunks of the Just So Stories, The Jungle Book,Rudyard Kipling’s Complete Verse, and novels by Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, novels and non-fiction by John Masters, and other tales of bravery, treachery, and frontier adventures.

  Alma still lives on the edges of cultivation, teaching, writing, doing history, and serving a calico cat.

  www.AlmaTCBoykin.Wordpress.com

  Also by Alma T.C. Boykin

  Shikari Auriga Ber
nardi and her cousin Tomás Prananda stumble onto a secret that may turn Shikhari upside down.

  Staré Rigi Bernardi returns to Shikhari and finds an old mystery and new trouble.

  Stamme Courtship, adulthood, and xenoarchaeology. What’s a proper young lady to do?