Shadow of the Warmaster

by Jo Clayton

  The door into the lowest level was locked and barred.

  Elmas Ofka waved the others back, swung the spotter in a wide arc, watching the bright green line that trembled across the readout. The walls were thick stone, N’Ceegh had warned her she couldn’t fully trust the sensors if that stone had traces of metal and most of the stone the old fathers used was like that. The line wobbled in one place but she didn’t know if that was her hand or a sign. She swung the spotter back, held it still where she’d seen the tremble. After a moment she was sure she was seeing a spike. She moved the sensor array a hair to the left, another spike. She counted four spikes and a wiggle that might have been another, or a rat in the wall. She thumbed off the spotter and slid it away. “Four,” she said, “maybe another. Off that way.” She pointed. “Hri cousin, you and Lri cousin be ready to jump soon’s we get the door open. Ti cousin, you and May cousin and Hay cousin back them up. Ji cousin, handle the cutting. Then you and Bi cousin stand watch out here. Questions? Right. Let’s move.”

  10

  The two isyas ran down curving stairs, their mocs scuffing minimally on the stone. They took the last four steps in a flying leap, landed braced on the stone flags of the chamber floor, darters snapping up. Four men sat at a battered table playing cards and drinking from a skin they passed around. They looked sleepy, bored, uninterested in anything, even the money riding on the outcome of the game. The eyes on the man facing the foot of the stairs went wide and he opened his mouth to yell as he shoved his chair back and started to dive away.

  Harli Tanggаr put a dart in his cheek, another in his arm and shot the man at the left end of the table as Lirrit Ofka took out the other two. While Elmas Ofka walked to the table to inspect the dead and make sure they weren’t shamming, the other three isyas ran silently from cell to cell, opening each grill-wicket and shining a light inside.

  “Ondar,” Tez Ofka called, her voice low and angry. “Come here, please.”

  Melly Birah was on her knees by the lock, using the cutter carefully, its lightblade angled toward the ceiling so she wouldn’t inadvertently slice into the occupant of that cell. She finished as Elmas Ofka reached them, got to her feet and pulled the door open.

  The boy sleeping heavily on the chain-braced plank moaned and twitched but didn’t wake. Elmas Ofka shone her light on his face, sucked in a breath, let it trickle out, too shocked to say anything. His nose was broken, his face bruised and swollen, there was something wrong with one eye, the lid sagged inward; he was breathing through his mouth so she could see that a number of his teeth were missing. With a secret guilty relief she knew it wasn’t her brother; she leaned closer, tried to fit the battered features into a shape she knew, all the boys who’d vanished were her brother’s friends, she’d seen them with him more than once. Angrily, she shook her head, straightened and stepped back. “Who…”

  Hessah Indiz pushed past her, knelt beside the bed. “Fazil,” she said. “It’s Fazil Birah. We were going to…”

  Elmas Ofka frowned, nodded. “See if you can wake him, isya. We’ve got to locate the others.” She moved out of the cell. “Any more here?”

  Lirrit Ofka scraped her moc across the filthy floor, Harli Tanggаr fidgeted and wouldn’t look at Elmas Ofka. The other isyas stood with their hands behind them, eyes shifting toward and away from a cell near the stairs. Tezzi Ofka came from behind the door. “Ondar…”

  Elmas Ofka stiffened. For a moment she stood very still, then she ran past Tezzi into the cell. She pulled up, gulping as her stomach convulsed at what she saw. Bodies stacked on the floor like firewood. Bodies so torn and battered they weren’t even butcher’s meat. She moved the light over the faces visible, stopped it on one. Her hand trembled. “Tangus,” she whispered, “Tangus Indiz.”

  Tezzi’s hand closed on her shoulder, tugged at her. “Ondar, Fazil Birah’s awake, he wants you.”

  Elmas Ofka shuddered, she wanted to scream, she wanted to swing round, clawing and kicking. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself calm. Feeling brittle as a sheet of sugar candy, she turned with slow care and walked out of the cell without really seeing the door or Tezzi Ofka or anything. Fingers just touching the wall, needing the contact with stone and wood to keep in mind where she was and what she had to do, she moved toward the first cell. Tangus Indiz was her baby brother, she’d raised him from the time he was weaned, taking care of the youngers was one of her jobs before she went to diving. Of all the toddlers she bathed and clothed, cuddled and taught, he was her favorite, a fey baby, happy, terribly bright with the accent on terrible, too full of jagged energies to fit comfortably inside the settled outlines of farm life. She’d felt the kindship of his spirit which was more to her than the kinship of the blood and bled for him as time passed and took him out of her hands. She was a diver and gifted enough to know she was going to be Dalliss with all the freedom that meant, her energies were funneled that way, she didn’t have to fight to breathe. He did. He had a dozen talents but none of them seized hold of him like diving did her, he drifted and used his energy on mischiefs, things that were giggles at first, puncturing pomposities to the general applause of the middlers in school or early apprenticeship. He was punished; pomposities don’t appreciate needles, clever or not, or those who use them, and generally have the power to enforce their disapproval. Except for Elmas Ofka and a few others, the middlers who laughed at his antics and urged him on left him dangling when he was caught. The past year she’d seen him turn bitter and his fancies take on malicious overtones. She worried about him, she couldn’t reach him anymore, he wouldn’t listen to her. No more worries now. Tears stung her eyes. No. I won’t cry. Not here. Not now. She stopped walking, closed her eyes and fought herself calm again, then moved into the cell with Fazil Birah and knelt beside the plank.

  The collapsed eye was still shut, sealed with blood and mucus, but the other eye was open and filled with pain and triumph. “Herk. He…”

  “I know. We’ll hang the bastard for this.”

  His mouth stretched in a shaky gaping grin. “Fazi, what’d he want? Why’d he grab you?”

  “Rozh… ’earlz. W-w’ere…”

  “He wanted to know where the beds are?”

  “Y-yeh. Din’ know… w-we cu’un’t tell him.”

  “He didn’t know he should’ve taken women?”

  “Nu no. W-we din’t t-tell him. Tan tang’z curse him. W-wu’n’t tell him nothin…” He was breathing hard, growing visibly weaker. When he tried to speak again, Elmas Ofka shushed him.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “Tangus cursed him, wouldn’t tell him spit. None of you told him anything. Look, Fazi. The isya is going to give you something so we can get you out of here.”

  He stirred, agitated. A broken hand clawed at her arm. “No,” he managed. “Lea’ me… ’nzide… buzted.” He closed his eye, his mouth moved; he said something, she couldn’t hear it, had to bend down until her ear brushed his lips. “Kill me.”

  She pushed away from him, pressed her fingers to her eyes. After a moment she sighed, nodded. “Yes.” She unclipped her darter. “Thou my brother, thou my lover, may thy return be in happier times.” She shot him, sighed again and got to her feet. Hessah Indiz was trembling, her eyes glazed. Elmas Ofka wrapped her arms about her isya, held her tight until she stopped shaking, then she stepped back. “Let’s get out of here.”

  11

  After a quick look at Elmas Ofka, Karrel Goza busied himself with the controls, holding the miniship level in spite of the erratic winds bouncing off the cliff. As soon as all the isyas were climbing the ladders, he began venting air, taking the ship gradually higher until they were inside and the hatches were closed, then he sent the ship angling steeply upward, where he caught a tail wind and went whipping back toward gul Inci.

  The sky was clearing rapidly, starsprays newly brilliant in the rainwashed air touched the seaswells below with subtle grays; Elmas Ofka watched the wrinkled water pass beneath them until she saw the shore approaching. She
glanced at Karrel Goza. He was cat-quiet again, knitting steadily at a sleeve; he had a gift for silence; she hadn’t appreciated it before, but it worked to ease the pain in her. “They were dead. All but one and he was dying.”

  “Ah.”

  “You were right. Herk didn’t know.”

  “And he still doesn’t, mmh?”

  “The boy said they didn’t tell him. I don’t know.”

  “You going to warn the Families?”

  “Not me. How can I? Someone will, I’ll see to that.”

  “Going after Herk?”

  She sat rubbing her hands back and forth along the chairarms, her eyes fixed on his face. “Yes,” she said finally. “You in?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “It’s time to do something.”

  “He’ll be expecting it.”

  “Herky Jerky? Never, who’d dare.”

  “What’d you do with the guards? Dead? Thought so. Then he’s got a pile of dead men inside his Palace and a litter of footprints in his veggies, might be enough to shake some sense into him.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ll just have to be cleverer.”

  “You know what worries me most?”

  “I’ve a suspicion. The Sech?”

  “Yeh. We all better keep our heads down while he’s nosing around. Your brother being in it, he’ll be after the Indiz. And the families of the other boys. Um. Sorry I didn’t think about this before, your footprints, they’ll be too small for men, the Grouch, he’ll probably bounce the Dallisses around. All the divers.”

  She smiled. “We’ve been doing this a while, Karrel Goza. Things being the way they are, it doesn’t matter that much about me, the Sech will have more than a suspicion who ran the raid; still, no use presenting him with proof so he can make trouble for the others. We took care of that little problem before we called you back.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “We appreciate the thought.”

  “Dance Ground coming up, a couple minutes.” She looked at the clock. “We made better time than I thought.”

  “Tailwind.”

  She smiled at him, it felt good to smile again, the tight thing in her chest was beginning to open up. “Good pilot is more like it.”

  “Could be.” He grinned back at her.

  “You can give us a little extra time?”

  “Sure.”

  “Put Windskimmer to bed for us.”

  “Windskimmer?”

  “Her name.”

  “Nice.”

  “Sssaa, you!”

  “Nah, I mean it. Things I was flying had names like Fud 40 and Kek 10, you can’t do much with Fud.” He reached for the panel.

  “Wait. We usually don’t land where we took off. There’s an old wharf out east of Inci, no one uses it any more. Let the isyas down there.”

  “Gotcha. I’d better make a wide sweep round, don’t want to wake the nightwatch.”

  “Yes.” She swung the chair around. In the dim gray light she saw her isyas sitting with their knees drawn up, arms crossed on them, looking very different now. They’d changed from their blacks and were back in blouses and skirts and sandals, there was nothing on them to show where they’d been or what they’d been doing. “Tomorrow evening,” she said. “Those of you who can come to Yuryur Beach. Unless there’s trouble, I’ll meet you. We need to say Avvedas for our boys. Say them in your soul if you can’t be with us. As I might have to do. If I can’t be with you, I will be thinking of you all, my blessings, my sisters. Forget Herk until the Avvedas are said, then, my sisters, my loves, think how we can pay him without destroying our Families. My blood is cold, my sisters, my blood is ice. He will not live to boast what he has done. There is no hurry to it, there is no urgency in it, there is certainty beyond all question. Herk will pay. It may take years, but Herk will pay.”

  VII

  1. Three months std. after the meeting on Telffer.

  Helvetia.

  It took the usual day and a half to work through the Helvetian perimeter fortifications and stash Slancy Orza in the parking grid; there was also the usual argument over leaving Kinok and the current Kahat on board, but everyone knew the idiosyncrasies of the Sikkul Paems, so the objections were perfunctory; I bought an exception permit and that was the end of that. Getting onto Helvetia’s surface is tedious, tiring and at times humiliating, but nobody complains; in a chaotic universe where currencies are wildly various and often of dubious value, Helvetia offers a means of assessing and balancing values plus the register circuit for contracts and other services no single government or group of governments can provide. Access to Helvetia is sometimes vital and at all times useful to anyone trying to trade beyond the borders of his/her local hegemony. If you want Helvetian services, you play by Helvetian rules.

  Whistling snatches of songs I’d picked up here and there (a habit of mine that Kumari never appreciated, but she wasn’t there at the moment) I ran through Slancy’s defenses, making sure she was thoroughly buttoned up before I left her. Even with Helvetian security watching the grid and Kinok nesting down in the driveroom, I wasn’t going to underestimate the talents of the types Bolodo could afford to hire. Especially after watching Adelaar work over those defenses on the way here. Like most of us she found insplitting a complete bore and preferred to have something to occupy her, so she was paying part of her fee ahead of time. What I was getting at, after watching her I wasn’t as happy as I wanted to be, anybody with her talent could peel my poor Slancy like an overripe orange. Given time. Which I hoped Security wouldn’t give them. So, having gone completely round the circle, there I was playing with what I’d got. I was finishing up when Adelaar came onto the bridge. I looked over my shoulder and smiled when I saw the rapier she’d buckled on; no fancy ornament, it had a used and useful look. “You’re well prepared,” I said.

  “I’ve been here before.” She touched the bone hilt of the sword. “And had to use this before.”

  Helvetian rules. No weapons except knives or swords allowed downsurface, they catch you with a gun, a lightlance, whatever, you’re fined and it’s no fleabite, they catch you again and you go to work on one of the farms or in the mines. Never heard they caught anyone three times. Result of all this is it’s a dueling society, the little daytime clerks become nighttime rogues and swaggerers living out byzantine fantasies with an edge of real danger to them. Outside the trucegrounds you’d better hire a bodyguard or be able to defend yourself. The Faceless Seven who run the place refuse responsibility for anything that happens to idiots who should know better. Colorful place.

  I rather enjoy my visits here. They take me back to my first body when I was earning my living with a two-handed broadsword my daddy gave me. Actually he made it for the local lord’s braindead whelp, but when I had to hit the hills to keep my neck in one piece, he booted my backside for old time’s sake and gave me the sword to remember him by. Which is by way of explaining that the sword I take downsurface is a two-handed broadsword with a pora-ini stressed crystal edge bonded onto the lightweight byttersteel alloy. Not that I’m challenged much these days. After I acquired this body and Slancy and had been trading in this and that for a year or so, time came I had business on Helvetia. I knew how things worked there so I went to an acquaintance who was a metalsmith in his spare time (with highly irregular access to some very special alloys), and had him make most of Harska (I named her Harska after an old old sometime friend); I did the bonding myself, a little trick I picked up from the R’Moahl. And I fixed up a sheath that could hold her so I wouldn’t slice my butt off if I had to do some dodging. That was Kumari’s first trip with me and we went out celebrating after we finished business. When she’s dressed for playtime, she’s beautiful in her eerie way, she’s got no more figure than a teener boy, but what there is of her is elegant. Some local hotshot decided he was the answer to her dreams and wouldn’t back off when she informed him she wasn’t interested. So she told him in a voice that cut like Harska’s edge that he had
the intelligence of a sea slug, that she wouldn’t be interested in him or any other man since she belonged to another species and was neuter besides and even if she weren’t, he smelled bad. I wasn’t going to interfere; I’d seen her in action a couple of times with the dozen or more small knives she has tucked away here and there about her body; she was willing and more than able to handle that character herself though she looked fragile as thistledown, but he wouldn’t have it that way, probably didn’t suit his self-image; he challenged me instead. I took his arm off and an ear with it in the first thirty seconds of that duel; one of his friends tried to cry foul, but there was nothing in the rules about fancy touches like that edge. It said sword and sword she was. And sword she is.

  Kumari came in. She raised her brows. “Not dressed yet?”

  She meant Harska. I grinned. “Just making a last go-through. Got us on a shuttle?”

  “Twenty minutes on, so don’t waste time primping. The next opening is six hours from now. There’s a bubble in the lock, ready for the transfer. I’ve booked us into an ottotel trucehouse and set up a tentative appointment with O-nioni tomorrow to get the contract working and settle the escrow. Ti Vnok wants to talk to you tonight. If possible. He says a shielded room at the Treehouse and come blankshield. Which means Pels and I will be there ahead of you working the house. If you think it’s worth the trouble.”

  “Let’s see what’s waiting first. We might have to do some tailcleaning.”

  “Right. If Pels’ nose is as sharp as he thinks.”

  Adelaar clicked her tongue, a sharp impatient sound. “What are you two talking about?”

  “Pels thinks we have ticks on our tail. Followed us in after we surfaced out beyond the Limit.”