Skeen's Leap

by Clayton, Jo;

  She waited, kicking at the hard wood of the bitt, listening to her boot heels thunk. The lake was big and Timka could be anywhere in it, though she was quite able to count even in her water form and would probably be close in tonight. If she wanted to keep traveling with Skeen. Skeen didn’t understand why Timka stayed with her; if she’d been the little Min, once she hit the lake, she would have kept on swimming and found someplace on the far side of the world where Telka would have fits trying to find her. Ah well, Timka was a good traveler, she didn’t bitch or complain, did her share of the work (sometimes more than her share because she’d done all the hunting and gathering), though she was quite willing to let Skeen do all the cleaning and cooking. A comfortable division of labor. And it was quite handy having a winged scout smelling out troubles ahead.

  A splash, a flurry in the water some distance from the shore. A dolphin leaped high, blurred in mid-air into a wide-winged owl. The owl glided in to shore, circled Skeen’s head, and went sweeping high to drift in wider circles.

  Skeen got to her feet and strolled back to the Grinning Eel.

  When she was in her room, she opened the window and stood back.

  The owl tucked her wings in, slipped through the unglazed opening, popped her wings wide, and landed with a faint thud on the braided rug beside the double bed. A moment later Timka was standing on the rug; she looked around, saw a belted robe spread waiting for her on the bed. She raised her brows.

  Skeen nodded. “Bought it in the market this evening.

  “Thank you.” Timka pulled on the robe, tied the belt about her, then sat on the bed, her eyes on Skeen. “Any trouble?”

  “Nothing to speak of. You?”

  “No. I’m tired of fish.”

  Skeen chuckled. “Portakil’s cook will cure that.” She stretched, groaned, leaned against the wall, her hands laced behind her in the shallow curve where her buttocks pushed her backbone from the flat. “Two boys showed up in feathers, annoyed because you weren’t with me. I told them you got a whiff of Min and took off in the fog. Doubt if they believed me. Oh, and I acquired some companions, four Aggitj extras. Nice boys.”

  A shadow passed across Timka’s face. “Do they know it could be dangerous?”

  “I told them. They nodded like they were treasuring every word and I’m sure they didn’t listen to anything I said.” She sighed. “Djabo’s tickling toes, what happens is on their heads now, not mine. I suppose they’ll be useful sometimes and they’re good company.”

  Timka gazed down at a hand pleating smoothing pleating the cloth of the robe. “Have you visited the Tanul Lumat?” Her voice was soft and submissive, made Skeen want to slap her.

  “No time yet. We rode in around sunset today.” She yawned.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Do my best. Any suggestions?”

  “There was a scholar who used to talk to me, most of the others ignored me like they did the musicians who played at dinner. Pegwai Dih. Balayar. Didn’t pat my bottom either. He was … was interested in me. Yes, that’s it. He was interested in everything. Little man, wide as he is tall, so alive you don’t see how he can hold all that energy inside his skin.” Warmth, unexpected and pleasant to hear, in the Min’s voice; a small smile teased at the edges of her mouth. She smoothed her hand along her thigh, looked up. “The Aggitj. Why are they riding with you?”

  Skeen thought of saying because they like me, but she didn’t believe that herself. “They think they want to cross the Gate with me. Didn’t say so, but I’m sure of it. Didn’t know I won’t let that happen.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re good kids. I like them. My worlds would chew them up.”

  “You’re taking me through.”

  “Hunh you! You’d take on the sharks, chew them up, and spit them out. You’re a survivor like me, know to trust folk about as far as you can throw ’em.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Judgment call. But I’d back it with cash.”

  “The shifting?”

  “Part. Part seeing you and your sister together. Said you could beat her at anything she tried. It showed. I wouldn’t take her. Look, Timmy, I’m easily twice your age. Maybe more. I’m still alive because I learned about people, well, most of them. Tibo that baster, he suckered me good. Never mind that. In fact forget the whole thing. What do you want to do?”

  “Want? What do I want?” Timka closed her hands into fists, beat those fists on her thighs. “Want?” The repeated word had a whispered intensity. “I want to be left alone. I want a man who will keep me comfortable and treat me well when he’s tired of me. I want silk against my skin and scented oils in my bathwater. I want clean sheets on my bed and fine food and finer wines. I want each day to be like the day just past, with a little variety but no jolts. Don’t tell me I’d get bored because I’m the one living inside this skin. The years I spent with the Poet were the best I’ve known. But I can’t go back to him. Telka can’t stand the thought I’m alive somewhere; she’s persuaded herself that I can’t be trusted and persuaded the rest of the Synarc I’m a dozen times traitor to the Min. As long as I’m alive she’d never let me be. Never. Never. Nev … er.…” Her voice trailed off, a dying groan with a click at the end. She looked down at her fists. With visible effort she uncramped her fingers and flattened her hands on her thighs. “Which is why I have to go where she can’t follow me.”

  Early next morning Skeen left Timka to do what she wanted with her day and went out to find the Tanul Lumat. She stopped by the stable to check on the horses and the hostler told her the Aggitj boys had already found work. Aggitj extras, especially fours like her friends, were prized by the local employers. The Aggitj were cheerful, honest, and hard workers, not given to ambition and generally handsome in their long skinny way. There were a number of communities of extras outside the Boot and the Backland who gathered in and helped the stream of new extras as they were forced away from their homes. Even those whose clans were feuding in Boot or Backland set those differences aside while they were beyond the Distergas, the mountain range that cut Aggitj lands from the rest of the continent.

  Pleased with the boys’ success, Skeen strolled out and found herself caught up in the bustle of morning in Oruda. The fish market was in full cry, noisy and damp, with the faint mossy smell of fresh fish. Fish, eels, shrimp spread in wriggling glistening piles. Clams and oysters in buckets. Lobsters and crabs scuttling in slat boxes, clattering and clanking as carapace knocked into carapace. Other crustaceans of wild aspect and violent color swimming in vats and tanks. All vanishing into buckets and baskets of motley appearance, carried by a motley assortment of types male and female, even Funor Ashon in their enveloping robes, gloved hands passing over coins for fish their gloved fingers pointed to. Chalarosh from the desert—folk gave them all the room they needed because of the poison they could spit from pouches in their necks. Balayar from the Spray—square and brown, ebullient, arms waving, full of laughter and shrewd bargaining. Aggitj from Boot and Backland—old and young, few women among them. Skirrik of all ages—from the dewiest youths (antennas just budding, the only jet they had the hatchday triangle set between their triune eyes) to ancient females, their burnished exoskeletons a deep purple with scarlet glows. At least half the buyers and seliers were Pallah, most of them refugees from the feudal villages on the Plain where they were little better than slaves.

  Skeen ambled through the busy noisy bustle, enjoying the sights and smells, the crowds surging around her, alert to cutpurses and snatch artists, in no hurry to get anywhere, feeling sentimental about being in a city again, though she knew how silly that was, mooning over garbage two-legged and otherwise.

  She made her way eventually to the wharves and moved along these, careful to keep out the way of those working where ships were unloading; she waved to Ders and Domi who were hauling timber off a barge, and wandered on. She passed an old man sitting beside a fishing pole propped into a brace and whittling at a chunk of wood. The whittle
rs of the world, like the old man who took care of her when she ran away from the uncle who alternately beat and raped her. Whittlers. Elusive, dealers in anything that required no great effort, ears pricking for every rumor going, sometimes drunks, seldom druggers, sometimes burnt out, sometimes disaffected, subversive in a passive way. They generally knew everything about everyone and passed on rumor among themselves and those few they trusted. Nothing ever to anyone remotely connected to those in authority. Under coercion they were instantly senile—confused, drooling, rheumy old cacklers about a breath and a half from turning vegetable. Her old whittler taught her to read and write and when she showed some aptitude how to tickle open locks. He’d given her enough training to show her how much she didn’t know when the whole section of slum was bulldozed clean and those who lived there were pressed into the labor cadres.

  She walked the length of the lakefront, saw several more whittlers, walked to the edge of the marsh, the intricate lacery of channels when the river flowed through reeds and water-weeds into the lake. All the early morning bustle seemed concentrated on the south side. Here by this miniature swamp, away from the noise of the shops and the wharves, she could almost feel the silence oozing from the north side. A pier or two, some small boats tied to them or nosed in on the sand, pleasurecraft or transportation, not working boats. As she watched, several small robed forms came through breaks in the massive walls and began using long-handled rakes to comb neat patterns into the broad sandy shore between the walls and the water, removing every trace of debris, even the smallest feather.

  She watched a while, learning little except that those who lived behind the walls wanted no contact with outsiders, then started slowly back toward the busy lakefront.

  She ambled out to the edge of a wharf, lowered herself to the planks and sat with her feet dangling overside, a double arm-length from a whittler. He had a pole anchored to a snubbing post with a double twist of rope and a slip-knot, the line dangling into the water below. While he waited for a bite he was whittling at a smallish block of wood, carving something, but he hadn’t got far enough into it for her to tell what it was. He was one of the Oruda Pallah, a solid old man with heavy shoulders and a soft sunken belly that rested on his thighs. He wore a wool jerkin over a sleeveless shirt, brown homespun trousers with frayed hems brushing at his ankles. Worn leather sandals on horny, gnarled feet. The nail on the great toe on his left foot was thick and bruised black. His feet were dusty with old gray dirt ground into the calluses, but otherwise he was a very clean old man. His clothing looked and smelled fresh, his bony hands were scrubbed pink. Some time in the past he’d injured the tendon on his left forefinger; he held it stiffly straight, away from the wood he was working on. He glanced at her when she sat down, pale blue eyes under tangled gray-brown brows, and went back to his carving.

  Skeen swung her feet and thought about him, amusing herself by making up a life history about him based on things the Aggitj and Timka had told her about the Pallah.

  A land-fasted who ran from his fief. A younger son with less than nothing to expect from life there but endless back-breaking labor and a maybe-wife without a dower. No trade but working in the fields and no love for that work. Perhaps more brains than was good for him—more than the usual run, making him restless, not letting him forget the misery and the hopelessness around him which was what waited for him, too. So one day he looked around and saw an uncle or a cousin old and worn and mute as a beast and he said to himself, not me. So he waited till the night and slipped away to join other restless, kinless wanderers.

  The water slapped gently against the piles, curled chips of wood made tiny ticks when they fell into a tin plate set between his legs. A lakebird let out a mournful cry. Farther down the wharves the noise of unlanding made a curiously peaceful background to the silence around them. Without looking at the whittler, Skeen said, “Catching much?”

  “Some.” His voice was deep, gravelly, sounded rusty from lack of use.

  She let a new silence lengthen and fill itself with the sounds of the morning.

  The float jerked. With no hurry he set aside knife and wood, jerked the knot loose and took the pole from the loosened rope. He set the hook with an expert snap of the pole. Another measured twitch and the fish flew up, slapped into his free hand. With a smooth redirection of the fish’s motion, he slammed its head against the snubbing post. He set the pole down. With neat-fingered care to avoid the spines about the mouth, he worked the hook loose and tossed the fish into a bucket. When he had the pole tied in place again, he rebaited the hook and tossed the line out.

  Skeen kicked a foot out at the quiet stretch of city on the far side of the lake. “They like their privacy over there.”

  “They do.” He turned the chunk of wood over and over in his hands, examining it with slow care.

  “Tanul Lumat,” she said.

  “Ah.” He ran his thumb over the side that was taking on a complex curve.

  “I hear they answer questions.”

  “Ah.” He began smoothing the knife over the most pronounced part of the curve, taking off tiny peelings fine as hairs. “Say you got the price.”

  “Costish?”

  “Some.” He turned the block over and began flicking off small chips from the unworked side. “Depends on the question.”

  “Slides, then.”

  “Ah.”

  A fish struck and was hauled in, hook rebaited and tossed back.

  Skeen watched the whittler pick up his knife and start work on the block. “Got into town yesternight.”

  “Ah.”

  “Big place this. Say you wanted to get to the Tanul Lumat, how’d you go about it?”

  “Be needin a boat.”

  “Hm. Hire?”

  “Grandson’s got a boat. Hauls things here and there. Might haul a passenger, price was right.”

  “There and back.”

  “Long way to swim otherhow.”

  Skeen kicked her feet and watched the float bob up and down a while, listened to the tink of the chips as they hit the pan. She sighed. “Where? When? How much?”

  “Here. Straight up noon. Settle price with m’ grandson Langgo.”

  “I hear.” She sat a bit longer, watching the play of light on the water, the hypnotic dance of colors on the restless surface, then she got to her feet. “Noon,” she said. “I’ll be here.”

  THE QUESTER’S OBLIGATORY VISIT TO THE SACRED ORACLE.

  or

  SKEEN AT THE TANUL LUMAT: HOW TO EMPTY YOUR PURSE IN ONE SHORT AFTERNOON.

  With a helpful boost from the rear, Skeen climbed onto the stubby landing; she turned to look down at the skinny brown boy in the ancient boat hardly larger than a rowboat though it had a large sail that was so new it shone a blinding white and creaked with every slight shift of the wind. His sun-bleached light brown hair blew about his tanned face, his light hazel eyes were squeezed into wrinkled slits. “Pick me up an hour before sundown,” she said. “I’ll add an extra copper if you have to wait long.”

  “Hour before sundown. Got it.” He pushed off, scrambled to the stern and swung the sail so it would fill. By the time she stepped onto dirt he was sliding swiftly alongshore, heading for a small knot of hooded and robed Funor about halfway back to the rivermouth.

  Skeen followed a flagstone path that dipped between huge wrinkled trees with stiff scalloped leaves and bark like badly tarnished pewter, cracked and folded, rough as weathered granite. The trees had a pleasant earthy smell with a tang to it that caught her at the back of her nose whenever she took a deep breath. Not unpleasant, just very noticeable. She shortened her stride, enjoying the peace and solitude. This was tamed land; the ground under the trees was planted with a lush dark green grass and small beds of flowers, all of them in bloom.

  The ground swelled into little hillocks, the trees thinned and drew back from the path. She stopped at the crest of a hillock and gazed with interest and surprise at the Tanul Lumat.

  Gray domes bunched toge
ther like a cluster of dirty soap bubbles. A short distance beyond these, huge round towers with crenellated tops like stone teeth biting at the sky. Swung in a shallow arc beyond these, the peaks of giant stone tents, their outlines graceful catenaries sculpted in a white stone that glared like snow in the summer sun. Farther along that gentle arc, long tunnels of woven reeds, like two-story worm-castings pressed together, a rich warm golden brown. Curving back toward her, several adobe houses, white-washed with sod on the roof, gardens with small shrubs, flowers, grass. The far cusp of the lune, long wooden houses built on piles, roofs of tile, the flat tiles a deep warm brown, bright red tiles in half-barrel shape riding the ridge pole, the eaves glittering with mirrors and the one wall she could see so intensely decorated with so much jewel color it made her eyes ache and her mouth grow dry with reawakened greed. In the center of the arc a series of stone buildings, graceful in their heavy way, with flying buttresses and cloister walks, cascades of arches around half-seen courts. It seemed reasonable that those extremely varied structures in the shallow arc were the living quarters of the scholars and the central complex housed the meeting rooms, the library Timka had mentioned, whatever else they had there, of course the administrative offices.

  She followed the path to that central complex, walked through an arch into a broad tiled hallway. It was dark in there after the glare outside. She stood blinking about her, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There were doors in twin rows down both sides of the hallway, heavy wooden doors with bronze latchhooks hip high on the left side of each door. No way to tell what any of them led to. She started walking. The silence was profound, only deepened by the grate of her bootsoles on the tiles. Annoyed but controlling it—anger was a loss all round in a bargaining contest—she walked to the end of the hall and found another door, this one marked with the glyphs for enter.