Skyblaze

by Sharon Lee

  She did not look at the street. Instead, she paced forward until she faced her daughter, trying to ignore the dark clouds overhead and in her daughter's visage.

  ''Fereda dea'San,'' she said to set face and distant eyes, ''we shall leave here together. On the morrow, if the planet is still here, we shall sit and speak together, telling over my errors.''

  Her daughter shied away from the offered hand, but she began walking through the dust toward the end of the road, Vertu dea'San Clan Wylan, the Delm Herself, threw the gunbelt over her shoulder, and cinched the strap, walking as firmly as she could, stride for stride with her daughter.

  This world, it made no sense any longer.

  Tomorrow -- tomorrow, she would do something about it.

  * * *

  Port City, Surebleak

  The wind whipped by, the now familiar sound rushing down the narrow side-streets becoming a brief moan before becoming a continual rattling susurration of air, grit, and weather. Her well-used coat wrapped as tight as the seals allowed, Vertu dea'San forged ahead into the morning, the dim light of the promised dawn aiding her very slightly as the day's snow began with a gust and a swirl.

  The coat was a regretful purple color, with a collar imitating any of five different animal pelts, none convincingly. Despite its age and aesthetic deficiencies, it was warm, hung well on her, and swept the path she walked without impeding her Liaden-length stride. Her tall-peaked hat was hand-knit and accidentally color coordinated with her coat, with purple symbols of good luck splashed around the red-orange that was so often seen as winter colors here.

  The hat was pulled down over her ears and tucked into the collar wrapped with the heavy ugly purple and orange scarf, which was also hand-knit locally. The hat peak was stuffed with an extra pair of light gloves in the top pouch, while her so-called wind gloves were still in her pocket, where their bulk warmed her hands and helped disguise her size, and perhaps her capability.

  Being no-nonsense, she tried as much as possible to put aside the recognition that this morning might well be the coldest morning she'd experienced in her life, just as she'd put it aside yesterday. The boots did as advertised, being the most expensive of her recent acquisitions, and the only certifiably (as much as anything might be certified on Surebleak!) new ones. Her other outer clothes were used and comfortable, for she'd bought early, having whiled her time in the long lines by listening to the chat of those who were native. The wisdom of the natives was also to buy clothes somewhat large, for oversize became the perfect size when layered and layered again. The boots, of course, were harder to layer, but with them she wore thick socks -- and had been glad of both on the first morning that the mush in the street tripped her -- mush gone stone hard and jagged on the overnight.

  The weather had been unrelenting, windy and cold, for the past seven-day now, and the forecast for the morrow was much the same. The night winds would move over the seacoast, pushing moisture into the swamp-regions, where it would gather energy from the barely frozen rivers, then push to and over the bowl of the city as the winds changed with the morning -- and it would snow. The local at the bakery -- Granita -- promised Vertu that it had been a warm year so far, and that when real winter arrived, she'd wear her hood, sight loss or no, lessen she got herself some working blizzer goggles to hold on her face.

  The street was not empty, but it being the dark of morning rather than the dark of night it was much safer than it might have been a quarter spin before. The doors of the open bars were far fewer, and the doors of the day businesses shone with the white blue of guide lights.

  The door she wanted was across the street, and she looked both ways for traffic of vehicles, and then for people within intercept distance, and crossed to Brickoff Flourpower, where the door recognized her and whined open as she approached.

  Behind the counter, Granita looked up with a grin. ''There you are, more on time than I'd guess!''

  Vertu bowed in her direction wordlessly, letting the warmth comfort her as she read the words to be a welcome. It was good to expected and greeted, and she found it happened more often on Surebleak than it had in Low Port, and more often in Low Port than many of the Higher places she'd frequented in Solcintra. Who expected the ragged to recall one's usual time of arrival?

  ''Why so, mother of baking?'' Vertu ventured, pulling her hat off and checking the room in the same motion. The Hooper sat in his corner, hands cupped around his mug of 'toot . . . she knew it was 'toot because he asked for it by name, and sometimes she was here before he was. He got '''toot and crackers'' most mornings, the ''crackers'' being yesterday's flatbread covered in a pasty flour-sauce with soy crumbles.

  Granita extended a hand with two fingers straight up, which meant, here, ''hold that thought'' and rushed to the back to do something in response to a quick-triple beat beeping noise. The ticking wall clock chimed about then -- it did count the quarters -- and Vertu wondered if the clock-count was part of Granita's secret to good service . . .

  Vertu's usual morning dish of Ronian Cheese was warming, it being a port-staple at all hours, and a proper-size cup sat on the counter side among a triple dozen of other unmatching and mostly oversized cups, the one waiting on Vertu, as had become a custom at the Flourpower these last seventy-seven mornings.

  The Hooper said little to anyone, save Granita. In respect of his station, and also in acknowledgment of a service done her, Vertu accorded him a nod, and a half-raised hand, which was considered a ''good-morning'' here.

  Chatter overheard from others of Flourpower's reggers taught Vertu that The Hooper was an ''organeer'' -- a musician, so she gathered, though the precise instrument eluded her understanding. Still, it would seem that any life event of importance -- births, deaths, trothings -- was made moreso by the presence of The Hooper and the blessing of his art. There were such on Liad -- galan'ranubiet they were called: Treasures of the House.

  True enough that The Hooper little looked like a Treasure. His clothes in winter-come were the same as in winter-coming -- a brown hat with a brim all around and a small crown festooned with tiny green and white feathers -- and a coatlet half as thick as hers, which he took off without fail upon entering, to reveal a vest with two dozen vari-size pockets, each pocket showing the tip of something metallic. He rarely took off his hat, which covered a half-bald spot in a head of otherwise bushy colorless hair, and when he did it was to neaten the thick sideburns of the same no-color that stopped abruptly in a razor sharp line, giving way some days to a light stubble and others to a face as smooth as hers.

  Vertu had thought him an elder when first she had seen him; an impression that persisted. Others of the reggers called him Old Fellow, and others his proper name -- and none with anything but respect.

  Some mornings, The Hooper bent over his mug as if hoarding it, sipping his 'toot with no crackers, and those mornings his hands moved restlessly over his pockets, as if he counted, as if the contents were pets that required gentling. On other mornings, he sat relaxed with his 'toot and crackers, and a side of morning beans, and even engaged in an odd kind of conversation with others of the reggers, though never with Vertu herself.

  Quite outside his obvious status as a Treasure, Vertu acknowledged a debt to The Hooper. Her first morning world-side, cold beyond any previous experience, disoriented and lost, she had someway stumbled after The Hooper, who had walked as a man who knew his street and also his destination, entered Flourpower in his wake, and stood behind him at the counter. He had ordered his meal, and she, tired and ragged-minded, uncomprehending the menu scrawled upon the pale blue wipe-board, had scarcely managed a whisper -- ''What he is having, I will have.''

  That was the second from the last time she had willfully ordered 'toot, though of a day she might yet ask for crackers, and now that she was acknowledged regger, she owed him too for the information that, ''Dems reggers that brin thanown cup, dems saves a cup of fife!''

  The fifth filled cup was free if you had your own cup, brought to the counter and o
ffered, that stayed on the premises. Both Granita and her late-help Bets knew each cup by its owner, and knew, too, what went into each without fail.

  Vertu's beverage might be the oddest of all, for into her cup now went a measured haspoon of the local Yellobud tea, which was acceptable if brewed half as long as the locals did, the boiled water tempered by a cube before it was poured.

  By now, besides The Hooper, she probably knew most of the reggers by face, and could tell if they'd been in, as they'd know if she had. If her cup wasn't on the counter and she wasn't at one of the two back tables she favored, then she'd comin-gawn, because usually dishwa happened once per day at close.

  The reggers sometimes talked about the years with numbers of the local calendar, and it had been those discussions -- forwarded perhaps for her edification, who knew? -- that had convinced her of the good boots. They had told over people she saw sometimes daily, walking with a gait they'd ''picked up on '66 and they'd lost the little toe for burnfrost,'' or ''backta '59'' when the rains came for a week in mid-winter and toes and feet had mildewed or molded along with the clothes, until the thaw died.

  Granita returned from the kitchen, her skinny face coming back to a smile from its work-a-day lines, as she answered Vertu's question.

  ''Huh, girl. You come in here wif snow in your curls and boots, and down inside the collar. That's a day with wind, and newfuns sometimes takeaback when the real weather gets in. Still, you're a worker, I can tell, and bet you don't let no boss down timewise.''

  The bow fell from her shoulders along with the nod -- here at least no one was annoyed if she might have Liaden habits, nor asked. Here was reggers, locals, strangers, or flights, and reggers might share a confidence, or might never. She'd seen some of the reggers in the wider world, where they'd sometimes think to raise left hand to left eyebrow in recognition, but else reggers mostly left reggers be, if not invited to converse.

  ''Not my best sun, this morning,'' she said, using one of the common phrases, ''but bright enough to get in!''

  Granita's smile got broad, and she pointed toward the warming tray.

  ''Got's some starcheese just in to spice our Ronian Cheese if you want some, or the crackers haven't been hardly dredged yet 'cept for The Hooper, if you want something ribstickers.''

  Vertu blinked, considering. She'd be early in line if the snow slowed folks down: early in and as likely early out.

  ''Ronian Cheese, that be fine.''

  The bow came to her shoulders again, but the woman was already fetching the cube for her cup, and missed it.

  *

  Her ears burned, and not from the wind and snow.

  Vertu held herself at her fullest height, glad for a new reason that her collar was high and her coat voluminous. She continued to look ahead as well she could while the man behind her muttered to the man behind him in a Terran so odd even that one had requested a sayagain.

  There were things on Surebleak of which she was still unsure and finding answers was not always as easy as asking the person in line behind you, nor reading an infoscreen.

  ''Hworked treedays, mysel, liddle miz, donya haz to hwork toady yuwon booznrazzle. Payada ferya, feedsya an feelya fine. Gotz heat, gotz smokes, gotz dembigbed, yez, no bliz tashov, no dreamslong.''

  That was as clear as she'd made it out after he'd tapped her diffidently on the shoulder -- he'd apparently been repeating something she hadn't understood was directed at her.

  She shouldn't have asked for a sayagain, for it came with a wide gap-toothed grin and the clear odor of alcohol and smoke and rampant decay.

  The hurt of it was that his face was comely with mouth closed, and his person elsewise no more unkempt than any of the seven in line behind him.

  She'd managed a ''Nothangya,'' accented as well as she might recall from bakery talk, holding back the bow as much as it hurt her nerves to do so, for the bow would have brought her closer to the lips with their near-blue inner smoke stains.

  For the first time this day she doubted her decision to leave Liad and then shook herself with a derisive inner laughter in recognition that the choice had barely been hers.

  Still, of the outcomes she'd considered, public solicitation for prostitution was proof that she'd erred --

  NO!

  She stamped her foot, the act stinging for her and unremarked by others here -- who knew when one needed to rid the boot of snow or ice or mud, after all?

  Well, at least the foot was warm, if still tingling from her anger. She bowed a tiny bow to herself, permission to admit error. That was a trick her only social mentor taught her a bare day before she was off to be Contract-wifed: sometimes the only real person in the room is yourself, but manners must be served even so.

  In fact she was being unfair to herself, for she'd had such offers from travelers and drunks from the time she'd first driven for her clan, in fact since her second fare. Well she recalled that, and moreso since that person was seated yet on Liad, comfortable and honored on the Council of Clans, while she, Ring stripped from her finger, stood in danger of -- but, again, no. She would not permit herself to believe that this banishment, this mercy from her daughter the delm, might yet end in the death for which the Council had sued.

  The line moved, with the work-pair who'd stood in front of her moving now together toward a table to the left while four other tables with work supplicants in place were revealed to her. A very short line; apparently the weather was expected, indeed, to ''turn bad.''

  The man behind shuffled close and whispered toward her, and she glanced at him, hard, pushing the lingo through her teeth, near as she could.

  ''Nothangya, heerit?''

  He mumbled and backed away a half-step, lips tight.

  Compared to the offer from a clan head to pet her face with tongue and tumescence, this man's offer was downright honorable: ''I've worked three days myself, little miss. You don't have to work today if you want to booze and wrestle. Payday for you, food for you, feels fine for you. Got heat, got smokes, got a damn big bed. Yes, I say no blizzard to shovel, no dreaming alone.''

  Her delm had been unimpressed by her outrage -- a lesson well learned, that. A Lower House could hardly bring such a complaint against one of the High without evidence -- and such evidence, were there any, would hardly survive the impoundment.

  Here, the offer was a passing of the time of day. Practical and even, perhaps honorable. That she had living funds for less than a Standard more in this place weighed on her, but work was in fact available at times . . . and she was in noways desperate, this day.

  The table to the right cleared, a man of middle height and middle years smiling and hurrying off with a bright blue chit in hand -- going to do something for the street association, she'd figured out over time. That would be day-pay and not long-term, she'd heard in the bakery, but day-pay was day-pay, after all.

  She took the vacant spot with alacrity.

  ''Heavy manual labor?''

  The man behind the table was familiar; his voice was brusque and impartial as ever. She raised her head in consideration, and made a counteroffer, staring at the seven bright blue tubs behind him, each mostly empty, and the brown one, with scraps in the bottom.

  ''Mechanics, systems, detail work, Trade-writing, Liaden-writing, light stock and inventory, driving.''

  The man pursed his lips.

  ''Picked up anything new overnight? This ain't being a busy day.''

  ''Translation? Garden design?''

  He shook his head, muttering, ''Don't think so.''

  He turned dutifully and pulled the few sheets of hard copy out of the brown tub, fanning them, glancing up with a sigh and going through the sheets one by one, the first quite dismissively.

  ''I got armed security, long-term -- bring your own gun, night work. I got 'crete formula mixer, experienced.'' He paused, shook his head. ''That one I bet you can do, sound of you, but they want experienced, which I'm betting you can't.''

  ''This is true, '' she admitted. ''I can learn --'
'

  ''No on the job training, they're right clear, since winter-time set-up is nothing for beginners.''

  He pulled another sheet. ''Whorehouse needs all positions, mixed hours.''

  She closed her eyes. Not yet.

  ''Serious work there,'' he said earnestly. ''An' they got need for some folk who ain't doing the customers . . .''

  She moved a hand, cutting him off. ''And else?''

  He dropped the cards back into the tub with a shrug.

  ''Guess else is tomorrow, if we can keep the doors open.''

  A half-bow she offered, and then gave a second thought.

  ''Security, night work? Is it experienced?''

  The man sat back, looked at her shrewdly, appraising.

  ''Bring your own gun,'' he reminded her, but he reached into the tub for the flimsy.

  ''If necessary, I can do that.'' She straightened, and took a deep breath. Be assured, she told herself. Show no doubt. She had done well, Skyblaze night, had she not? She could --

  ''Yeah, I mean we all can, right? But they're looking for serious hardware . . . damn, I was impressed when I read it coming in.''

  He flipped the sheet, then pulled free the clip-attached sheet, with notes on both sides, running his gaze rapidly down first one side, then the other.

  ''Here it is, let's see . . . dumbty here it is . . . 'Must be Nordley, Bangtu, Lademeter, or certified genuine Resh & Rolfe or Zombin.''' He looked up into her face. ''Big guns, ma'am; not street-wear.''

  She held his eyes a moment, then half-bowed, hiding her sigh, and her hand.

  ''Do they mention caliber or charge-range?''

  He glanced down, then again to her.

  ''It says here, service-rating. That's a gun that can be shot every day and --''

  ''Yes,'' she said, drawing close as if to peer at the paper, at the same time briefly displaying her cradled hands.

  His eyes widened. He nodded, several times, and cleared his throat.

  ''Oh, yes, umm, a Nordley Thirty Pack would do,