Shadow of the Warmaster

by Jo Clayton

  4

  Churri rested his head in Xalloor’s lap, crossed his legs at the ankle. “Trouble, yah,” he said. “Won’t last. If you go, Council isn’t going to tell anyone what you did, it’d make them look bad. Incompetent. No polit’s going to let that idea get around if he can help it.”

  Chilled by a touch of the ashgrays, Aslan watched the fire crawl over the coals and fought to keep her pride intact. Xalloor’s decision to stay behind with Churri left her feeling very alone and more than a little let down. After a minute she said, “Wouldn’t stop them dropping you and Xalloor down a hole and pushing a ton of rock on you.”

  Xalloor tweaked Churri’s nose, laughed as he mumbled a lazy protest. “Skinhead sweetie, he get busy, make a pome, spin ’em dizzy. Dearie dai, oh yes, you the poet all right, not me, so stir it, luv, chant them a ditty to milk tears from a stone, Aslan’s Mum’s search for her daughter through a thousand dangers with Bolodo’s Hounds sniffing at her heels, make their hearts swell with pride at the vision of Elmas Ofka reuniting Aslan and Adelaar, make those words roll, make ’em roll, roll… ow!” She slapped at the hand that had pinched her buttock. “Do that again and I tickle you till your bones crawl out, eh!”

  He chuckled. “Going local, eh? Eh!”

  “’Twasn’t a local give me the habit. Lan, are you going?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Well, how?”

  “I’ve been so busy making up my mind, I haven’t thought about that. Take a boat, I suppose.”

  Churri sat up. “No. I’ve got a better idea. You don’t want Elmas or her shadows to spot the boat and put you down before you’ve said your piece. Some of the locals have been coming in on yizzies. The vips here stow them at the depot, in one of the little rooms. It’s locked, but blow on the lock and it’ll fall apart for you.”

  “Not me. I haven’t had your education.”

  “Hmm. It’s a sorry lack and one you should be curing. I’ll come along and tickle her open.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “And don’t be worrying about the yizzy. You can manage a miniskip, University wouldn’t let you leave home not knowing. A yizzy’s cruder and crankier and slower, same thing, though.”

  “Same thing, hah!”

  “Negative thinking, Lanny; didn’t your Mum teach you to view the bright side?”

  “I repeat, hah! I notice you’re not volunteering to plant your rear on a shimmy stick for god knows how many hours.”

  “Nuh, I’ve too much sense in here,” he tapped his temple, “to plant this,” he slapped at the side of his buttock, “in misery I can miss without the least little dent in my self-esteem.”

  5

  She left in a rosy sunset, clouds piled on clouds feinting at storm but not yet ready to follow through.

  The twitchy wind was heavy with the smell of rain. Because she didn’t trust her touch with the controls and wanted to avoid being spotted by lookouts on the ground, she flew low, her feet occasionally whipping through the tops of trees as the yizzy went crank and dipped instead of rising. It was not difficult to fly, just rather unexpected at times, and not as uncomfortable as she’d feared; whoever had put together this one was good with his (or her) hands. There was a carved and padded saddle with stirrups on adjustable straps; there were handlebars of a sort with motor controls on the grips. It was nicely balanced; the yoss pods in the net over her head were attached fore-and-aft to the riding pole, their center movable to compensate for different rider weights. The motor was light and efficient and small even with the L-shaped fuel tank partly on top of it, partly before it, strapped to the pole; large rotors, hand-carved but very sophisticated; a tinkerer’s dream this gadget.

  After half an hour of tree hopping she began coaxing the yizzy higher. The forest was a dark nubbly fleece collected over the lower slopes of precipitous mountains, the river a silver thread reduced to half its width by overhanging foliage. Somewhere under there at the Minetown (also invaded and obliterated by those trees), Elmas Ofka and her isyas would be getting ready to sail, though they wouldn’t be starting for at least two hours. Ahead she could see the small deep harbor, the chop evident even this far off, the surf edge a startling white against the dark wet sand.

  The wind began to steady and strengthen, a scatter of heavy rain drops hit her and the pods. The yizzy shuddered and bucked under her; she swore and used her weight to steady it.

  For the next three hours the yizzy was a torture machine, the wind and the pole beat at her, the rain blinded and half-drowned her. The yizzy wasn’t meant for weather like this; she knew when she started that she might be going into a storm, though she didn’t, couldn’t know just how terrifying the flight was going to be, but if she didn’t now, there was no point in leaving and she had no intention of waiting for Elmas Ofka or the Council to hand her over; she despised such passive dependency; even contemplating it hurt her in her pride; besides, she didn’t trust them a whole lot.

  By the time she was near enough to see the chain of rocky islets, she was exhausted, but she’d also left the worst of the storm behind.

  She edged closer to the water, swung cautiously wide of the largest of those islets, the barren jumble of rock called Gerbek. The yizzy was slower than the boats Elmas Ofka and the others were coming in; the battering of the storm had slowed it even more. Her hands were gloved, she couldn’t see her chron, she had no idea how much time she’d spent in the crossing. When she left the Mines, she was at least two hours ahead of the others; right now she hadn’t a guess now how much of that playway was left.

  In the northeast where only the fringes of the prevailing winds brushed by, there was a shallow inlet like a bite taken out of a flatroll; it was the only anchorage the islet had and it was still empty, so she knew she’d got there first. At least, before Elmas Ofka. She wasn’t sure about the Outsiders, she hadn’t seen anyone, but the center of the islet was a jumble of rock and ravine, half an army could be hiding in the cracks. At one focus of Gerbek’s eccentric ellipse, there was a peak like a miniature mountain, at the other a flat space cleared of rubble and ringed by tall sarsens where Ishigi Pradites came to celebrate the equinoxes. She didn’t know much about the Ishigi, they were a heretical sect subject to some stringent penalties when discovered; the little she’d unearthed about them said they’d withered to nothing a century before, but she wondered now when she saw that cleared stone. No bird droppings inside the ring. She laughed at herself. Lan, were you tied to a spit over a roaring fire, you’d speculate about the mating habits of the gits about to eat you. In any case, it was the only area where a skip could land, so the Outsiders hadn’t arrived yet either. She didn’t know whether she was happy about that or not. If her mother wasn’t with them…

  She brought the yizzy lower and moved over the island; as soon as the little mountain broke the push of the wind, she went lower still until the rotors were laboring to hold the pole a meter above the stone. She wobbled around the circumference of the flat, looking for a place to anchor, a place where she could hide until she was ready for the confrontation. Nothing, nothing, nothing… there were dozens of cracks big enough for her, nothing big enough and deep enough to hold the yizzy.

  In the end she anchored it in a windcarved hollow low on the flank of the mini-mount and spent almost an hour getting back to the flat, crawling over rocks and scree, terrified of breaking something, a leg, an ankle, her head. She had to feel her way, there was almost no light; the clouds were thick and black, Gorruya was up alone for another hour and she was only a slightly obese crescent.

  As she reached the waste rock near the sarsen ring, voices came to her, broken by the wind; she caught her lower lip between her teeth and crept on until she came to a place where several of the sarsens had been quarried; there were piles of debris around the hole and down in it three cracked stones leaning against its side, a litter of stone shards piled on the holefloor. She lowered herself carefully onto the knife-edged rubble, then crept into the velvet black
shadow beneath the leaners and pulled her black cloak tight about her.

  The voices were louder; she began picking up some words, enough to know Elmas Ofka was sending Harli Tanggаr out to a pile of stones where she could get a clear shot at the flat with her crossbow, placing others on guard beside the sarsens. The crossbow worried Aslan. If she knew it was me, Harli Tanggаr wouldn’t shoot, but the light’s so bad she’d have no idea who she was killing. Aslan bit her tongue to choke back a half-hysterical giggle. Poor baby, she thought, she’d be awfully sorry. Not half as sorry as me.

  The islet settled back to silence except for the whistle and groan of the wind and occasional loud clacks as bits of stone lost balance and went bounding down slopes of scree. The damp cold crept through the layered wool she wore, struck to the bone. She shivered, locked her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. And began to wonder if she’d last until the Outsiders arrived.

  She heard a buzzing like gnat noise. It was so faint that at first she thought it was something the wind was doing. Then it got louder. She eased her head out and looked up. A skip. Coming in from the west.

  Holding her cloak close to her so there’d be no flicker of motion to catch Harli Tanggаr’s eye, she climbed from the hole and stretched out on the rubble so she could see what was happening.

  The skip hovered a moment, then dropped. It landed at one side of the cleared circle, and a large form swung down, followed by a smaller. Once again Aslan closed her teeth on her abused lower lip, fighting back a surge of very mixed emotion. The second figure was a shadowy blob, undetailed, but she knew that way of moving, the high-headed arrogant strut. “Allo, Mama,” she whispered.

  Voices. A man’s, deep and pleasant; it didn’t carry well and she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Her mother wasn’t saying anything yet. Elmas Ofka listened. “Do it,” she said.

  The next minutes were busy ones. Half a dozen small squat remotes hummed from the skip. Three carried a bundle larger than all three of them, a bale of heavy cloth from which Gorruya teased occasional gleams like flows of liquid silver. The other three scurried about exploding pitons into the stone floor of the circle. Before Aslan sniffed three times, the bundle expanded into a large domed shelter anchored by the pitons. She watched with envy as Elmas Ofka waved her guarding isyas inside and shouted Harli Tanggаr down from her post. That solved that problem, she thought; she watched Harli disappear behind the dome. Let them get settled, she thought. She pulled the hood closer about her face, pinched it shut over her mouth and nose, started to straighten up.

  6

  She looked up into her mother’s face. “Allo, Mama.”

  “So what’s all this about? Sneaking around.” Adelaar touched her cheek briefly. “For a stodgy professor-type, you get yourself into more trouble…”

  “I-told-you-so, Mama?”

  “If you stopped falling on your face, I could stop having to pick you up.”

  “Ooh-yeha. Like it was all my fault this happened.” Aslan sat up, clutched at her head. Stunned, she thought, understanding finally what had happened to her. Her mind wasn’t working all that well right now. Behind her mother she could see a tall dark man with a lazy twinkle in eyes so pale they might have been borrowed from another face, and beside him, Elmas Ofka looking grim. Aslan managed a tight smile. “Sorry, Dalliss, someone spoiled your surprise.”

  Elmas Ofka blinked, but took the cue smoothly. “Waiting upwind was not the brightest thing we’ve done. One of our visitors has what one might call a nose for news.”

  Adelaar’s mouth twisted into a half-smile; she wound a curl of Aslan’s hair about her finger and tugged it, hard, but she said nothing. She gave her daughter’s head a last pat, then forgot about her and marched over to the memplas table growing like a mushroom in the center of the chamber.

  The shelter was large enough to hold them all with plenty of room left for moving about. Whoever’d brought Aslan in had laid her on a memplas bench close to the valve. The isyas were standing or sitting, their backs to the shallow curve of the wall; Lirrit and Harli glanced once at her then ignored her, the other isyas weren’t interested, they lived in gul Inci or at the Indiz Farm and there was a lot they didn’t know about events at the Mines. As the tall man and Elmas Ofka moved to join Adelaar at the table, Aslan saw for the first time the other member of the group, the Aurranger Rau. Elmas Ofka had mentioned the Rau in her report to the Council, so Aslan knew he was about and she knew who he had to be, there were NO other Aurrangers offplanet; she hadn’t actually met him while he was at University, but she’d heard stories. She was startled at the strength of her reaction to him, she wanted to pick him up, cuddle him, smooth her hands over and over that velvety fur; more than that, she felt intensely protective, if one of the isyas attacked him she realized with a great deal of surprise that she’d go after the woman tooth and claw. Amazing, she thought. With Pels kurk-Orso to prod her memory, she realized who the light-eyed man was. Swardheld Quale. Mama must have hired him, she thought, Ooo-yeha, she has to ’ve spent a fortune and a half. If ever Luck shat upon me, she did now. I’m going to hear about this for the next fifty years, if we don’t strangle each other before then.

  At the table Adelaar toed up a chair, got herself settled, then she took a bundle of fac sheets from a case, squared them and set them in front of her. “The suspect files,” she said, “and the report on the internal security at the Palace that Quale saw fit to donate.” There was an astringent acerbity in the last statement. Quale chuckled, but didn’t bother to answer the challenge. She lifted out a flake-reader, then a case of filled flakes. “We discussed this and found it simpler to let you and your technicians do whatever marrying is necessary to make further copies of this material. The reader is included as another little gift from our generous friend here. The first twenty flakes contain the stats on the Warmaster and her… well, you can’t really call them a crew, the people living on board her. The twenty-first-they’re all numbered, using your system, of course, so you won’t have any trouble identifying what’s which-the twenty-first has the data on the free corridors. You’ll wish to inspect the flakes; don’t worry about inadvertently erasing them, they’ve been impressed. Loading’s simple, just slide the flake skin-and-all into the slot there, then watch the screen. You can manually jump about, there’s a pencil attached, write the number you want on that sensor there. Again, use your own system, the player has been adjusted to respond to it. If you want automatic random access, touch the pencil here. That’ll jump you about so you can get a fair idea what’s on the flake. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. You have something for us?”

  Elmas Ofka nodded. “Har cousin,” she said. Harli Tanggаr marched to the table and set a large pouch in the middle. Without comment she went back to her post beside the valve. Elmas tugged open the mouth, took out a swatch of black velvet and a small metallic object which she unfolded into a balance scale and a pair of calipers. Then she withdrew several smaller pouches, opened one and let the pearls spill onto the velvet.

  The exchange was quick and wordless and the two women began a meticulous examination of what each acquired from the other.

  Quale left them to it and strolled over to Aslan. “Be interesting to know just who the surprise was for,” he murmured. He had a pleasant baritone, well, rather more than pleasant; for the first time in months Aslan remembered how long it was since she’d had sex with a man who excited her rather than scaring her rigid. What she’d had with Parnalee wasn’t sex or pleasure, it was a propitiation of the gods of chaos. And even that was, what? two years ago? He had nice hands, long fingers, they ruffed through his beard. It was crisp and short, a few white and gray hairs in the black, just enough to make him look distinguished. She wanted to smooth her fingertips over it, to…

  She put the brakes on her imagination. “More tactful not to ask,” she said. “Not now, anyway.”

  He dropped beside her. “When we found out you jumped the wall, Del was wondering if w
e’d have to winnow the whole population to find you.”

  “Things were getting a bit… um… hectic, so I left.”

  “Saved us a lot of time and trouble, you turning up like this.”

  “Pride. And self-defense. Mama’s memory is her biggest asset unless you’re on the wrong end of it.”

  He chuckled. “Having spent more’n half a year insplitting with her on board, I know what you mean. She’s a marvel when she’s working, though.”

  “Swardheld Quale,” she said. “Pay his price and he gets things done. You’re a bit of a marvel yourself, if the stories are one-tenth true.”

  “I’d put the truth level in those things considerably lower than a tenth. Say something like one part in ten thousand. Maybe they get the name of a place right, the rest is… you’re an ethnologist, you know how that goes.”

  “Well, some heroes turn out to be a bit more than hot air.”

  His right brow quirked up, the scar that nipped its outer end bent outward with the movement. “Nothing to do with me.”

  “According to Elmas Ofka, you’re collecting slaves and taking them back.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “How many?”