by Clayton, Jo;
“Sent to work. The thissik on the left speaks some parsi. When they saw the body, he asked what happened. Captain’s crew told them.”
“I can imagine what they said. What about you?”
“No one was asking me.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You were tired. Might as well sleep.”
The thissik finished the examination of the body and came to them. “You come.” The speaker pointed at the door. “To Keeper.”
Thissik went in and out of the Day Court ignoring the two standing by the shell table. When the Keeper finally appeared, he looked wearier than ever. He moved slowly past them and sat behind the table. “A man is dead.” He straightened his back. Gleia felt her back ache in sympathy when she saw the effort he put into that small movement. “We were told you killed him.”
“No.” Shounach smoothed his hand over the side of his bag. “Putting a woman in with two dozen men was idiotic. Bound to cause trouble.”
“I don’t know your customs.” The Keeper’s hands twitched and his eyes turned restlessly about the room, avoiding Gleia. With a quiet dignity, he said, “Whatever the cause, a man is dead at your hands, Fox. Yes, I know you.”
Gleia was tired of being ignored. Without waiting for Shounach’s answer she burst out, “That’s wrong. He didn’t touch the man. After I cut him up, one of his own crew finished Korl.”
“The woman fought the man?” The thissik shifted in his chair, losing the momentary calm he had acquired as she spoke. He still would neither look at her nor speak directly to her. He seemed to have trouble even speaking about her.
“Yes, I fought him,” she snapped. “I didn’t feel like being mauled about by that …” Her lips closed over the words she wanted to say. Temokeuu had finished what the Madarmen had started, giving her a certain fastidiousness about the language she used. “I didn’t kill him. Why should I? Hamstrung, he was no danger to me. Ask your own men. Two cuts on his arms, deep slashes on the back of one hand, a cut on his leg, the hamstringing. Those are my marks. The neck stab was a present from his crew.”
The Keeper’s ears twitched. The tip of his tail moved over the tiled floor, scraping slowly at the small bright squares. Once again he straightened his slumping body and spoke to the guards in the squealing whistling thissik tongue. He listened intently to the reply then stared down at the table, a short thin forefinger moving idly over the translucent sections of shell cemented together to make the table top. The tip of his tail tapped rapidly at the floor. At last he sighed and leaned back in the chair. “Do you confirm, Fox?” When Shounach spoke his brief affirmative, he nodded. “To prevent more trouble, the woman will be housed apart.”
Gleia laced her fingers through Shounach’s. “Let him be lodged with me.” She felt a flicker of amusement at the annoyance in the Keeper’s weary face. His expressive tail was jerking about like a demented snake. Her voice bubbled with that amusement when she spoke again. “You wouldn’t be bothered by me then; he could do the talking.”
The Keeper’s mouth twitched but he quickly suppressed the smile. “An extraordinarily convincing argument.” His tail jerked upright, the tip swaying gently just above the top of his head. After his momentary lapse in courtesy when he responded almost directly to Gleia, he was very much on his dignity. “The woman will cover her face in the presence of the thissik. She will not speak to the thissik. You both will work. The guard will direct. If there is any more difficulty, you will speak, Fox. The woman will not come here again.” Without waiting for an answer he put his hands flat on the table and pushed himself erect with some difficulty then marched past them, tail held high.
As they followed the guard out of the Endhouse, Gleia glanced idly toward the pier. She gasped, then broke away and ran down the slope into the arms of one of the seaborn waiting there. “Tetaki-my-brother, what happened? How’d the thissik get you?” Her eyes moved over the startled faces of the seaborn. “Mladuu? Drazeuu? Chikisui? And the rest of you? Can’t say I’m glad to see you here, ornamented like me.” She tapped her finger against one of the ring weights.
Tetaki hugged her, then grinned. “In the middle of trouble as usual, Gleia-my-sister. I was almost expecting you to show up.” He touched the ring around her throat, scowling to hide his distress, then stroked a finger across the thief brand on her cheek. “The thissik weren’t in any mood to honor embassies. Before I could open my mouth they had the collars on us.” He glanced past her. “Your escort is getting impatient.” His arm about her shoulders, he walked her back down the pier. “I saw Jevati last night,” he murmured when they were far enough from the others. “When the thissik took you, she went deep and came straight here.”
Weak with relief, Gleia stumbled and would have fallen except for his supporting arm. “She must have been worn to a thread.” She looked up the slope at the agitated guard. “What are you doing for them?”
“Salvaging material from the starship. They herd us out there in the morning, bring us back just before Horli-set.”
She stopped at the end of the pier, turned, put her hand on his arm. “If I can, I’ll promote a swim around Horli-set so we can talk.”
“Take care.” He stepped away from her and strolled back to the others as she returned to Shounach and the guard.
Tail switching back and forth in nervous annoyance, the guard marched along the path kicking up clouds of powder ash. Shounach scowled at her. “That was a damn fool thing to do. You might have been killed.”
Gleia smiled at the guard’s stiff back and twitching tail. “Would they shoot a woman?”
“Don’t press your luck. Who’s your fish friend?”
“My brother.” She giggled at his grunt of disbelief. “Adopted of course.” Her eyes narrowed. She licked her lips, spoke slowly and very clearly, her voice deliberately pitched to reach the guard’s ears. “Our father is a very important man among the seaborn. When he hears about this.…” She broke off with a little cry of pain as Shounach’s fingers closed hard around her neck. “What.…”
He looked disgusted. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Why not just beg them to burn you?”
“Oh, damn.” She rubbed at the bruise on her neck, feeling as stupid as he’d named her. “I didn’t think of that.”
The guard waited for them at the tumbled gateposts of Threehouse. “Stay here,” he told Shounach. “I fetch tools.”
Shounach watched him trot off, his short legs scissoring rapidly through clouds of pale gray powder ash. “How is your father supposed to learn about your captivity?”
Gleia brushed off one of the gate stones and sat down. She rubbed at the dust on her hands, then sat watching her toes wiggle. After a minute she said, “Why should I tell you?”
“That’s up to you.” He stroked long fingers over the smooth material of the bag he never left behind and smiled blandly. “The guard just went in Endhouse. I wonder why he did that.”
“You win.” She stretched and patted a yawn away. “Tetaki told me a friend of mine is out there free. A seaborn. She saw me taken and followed.”
“Good friend?”
“Very. Like a sister.”
“And she’s gone to tell your father what happened?”
“Temokeuu already knows they’re here—the thissik, I mean. He sent Tetaki to them. Could be the Council is discussing this right now.” She shrugged. “Could be not. Jevati—my friend—is staying around to see if she can find some way to help, I’m sure of that.”
His fingers began tapping slowly on the material of the bag. “Has she any weapons?”
“A knife. All seaborn carry knives. Why do you take that bag with you all the time? And why didn’t the thissik take it away?”
His mouth curved up. He dipped into the bag and pulled out two shimmering blue spheres. He popped one into the air then the other. They caught and threw back sparks of Horli’s crimson as he kept them swinging in an easy rhythm. “The tools of my trade,” he said. “Not that easy to replace.” H
e kept the spheres going a moment more, then caught them and slipped them back in the bag. “Nothing else in the bag; why take it. Our little friend had just come out of the Endhouse. Not hurrying now.”
“Think I’ve really wrecked things?”
“Wait and see.” He looked across the bay. “Your friends are in a boat heading out. They seem to be on a longer tether than the rest of us.”
“They have to be. They’re bringing up things from the ship.”
“Ah.” He moved his fingers thoughtfully along the gray metal of the ring. “Ingenious things, these. They let a handful of guards control a much larger number.” He grinned. “To get them off we’d have to part the Keeper from the key. But we can’t get close enough to take the key from him so we can get close enough to take the key. If you see my point.” He wheeled suddenly and stared at her.
“Your friend? Jevati!”
Their words crossed and both started laughing. He pulled her off the stone and swung her around and around until she was breathless, then he set her back on her feet and smiled down at her. His thumb caressed her cheek, moving across and across the brands. Then he bowed his head and his mouth moved softly on hers.
Gleia pulled away, rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth. “Don’t. I don’t like it.” She let her hand drop. “If it’s a problem for you, I pay my dues. I won’t enjoy it, but that’s never mattered much before.”
The expression went out of his face. “I’m not that much in need.”
The day passed slowly. Gleia worked inside Threehouse, digging at the ash that had drifted through broken windows and shoveling it into sacks constructed from a tough coarse fabric that made her itch whenever it touched her skin. When one was full, she dragged it outside and Shounach carried it away. When he wasn’t carting off her bags, he was digging at the ash banked up against the walls. The thissik guard kept after them to work faster. They were permitted a short rest and given a cold lunch at midday then sent back to work under the nervous harassment of a new guard.
At Horli-set Shounach laid down his shovel. “Gleia,” he called. “Quitting time.”
She tottered out of the building. “I ache all over,” she moaned. “And look at my hands.” She spread them out. Fluid from two broken blisters cut trails through a layer of grime. “I’ve got to have a bath.”
“Got an idea.” He climbed the slope to the ruin where the guard was sitting. About midafternoon the thissik had gotten increasingly shrill and agitated. His tail had gone limp and started sweeping about in the powder ash. Eventually he’d retreated to the shattered building and spent the rest of the time crouched in a corner where the roof was still intact.
Gleia watched as they talked. At first the guard was stiffly unreceptive. Shounach waved his arms about. She couldn’t tell what he was saying though the sound of his voice floated down to her. The guard turned his head from side to side; his tail twitched then seemed to sag. Shounach waited. Finally the guard shrilled a few words and turned his back on the Juggler.
Shounach trotted back to her, grinning, jumping nimbly from rock to rock. He stopped beside her. “Want to go for a swim?”
“Do you need to ask?”
Gleia splashed happily about in the shallow water. Her filthy cafta floated up around her but she ignored that and scrubbed at herself with handfuls of coarse bottom sand, ignoring also the stabs of pain from her blistered hands. She sighed with pleasure and watched Shounach paddling about a little farther out. “This is a marvelous idea.”
He slapped idly at the water. “Naturally.”
She ran her stiffening hands through her hair, grimacing at the oily feel. “A little soap would be nice though.”
“Greedy.”
A hand touched her leg. She suppressed her start and looked down. The seaborn’s body was a shadow by her feet, barely visible in the deepening twilight. She stretched and yawned. “Shounach, my love, come help me scrub my back.”
The Juggler splashed over to her. “What is it?” he muttered, lips barely moving. “Be careful. Sound carries over water.” He scooped up a handful of sand and began rubbing at the material pulled tight over her shoulders.
“That feels good.” She sighed, moving her back muscles under his hand. “I never asked. You speak seaborn tongue?”
“I speak a lot of languages. Why?”
“Look down.”
Keeping their bodies between him and the shore, Tetaki slid his head out of the water. “How you doin’?”
“They work us.” She patted his cheek. “Forget parsi, Tetaki-my-brother. The sea-talk’s better here. Besides you have trouble setting your mouth around some of our sounds.” She switched languages and said. “Any trouble about this morning?”
“The Keeper asked some questions. By the way, he knows sea-talk. So watch it. I said you were my adopted sister. You lost your parents when you were a baby and my family took you in. Thought you ought to know what I told him. Asked me about our father, how he stood among the seafolk. You been bragging?”
She sighed. “Some.”
“Stupid.”
“I’ve heard enough of that.” She glanced around at Shounach who was rubbing lazily at her back.
“Think next time.” Shounach straightened, stretched and took a look at the guard. “Our friend is starting to twitch.”
Tetaki grinned. “Telling Gleia to think’s a waste of time. Her mouth runs faster than her head.”
“Fish!”
Shounach pinched her ear. “Shut up, Gleia. Tetaki, how much is left in the ship?”
“Hard to say. We’ve been bringing these things up for the past seventeen days. Looks like quite a bit left.”
“Mmh. What about weapons?”
“I’d say they got those out themselves. First thing.” He wobbled as he changed position slightly. “I’m getting stiff. Anyway, I’ve got no idea what half that stuff we pulled up is used for. Talking about ideas, if you can figure a way for getting at the Keeper, Jevat’s not collared.”
Gleia looked at Shounach. His eyes were bright with amusement. “Great idea, Tetaki,” he said.
The seaborn looked from one grinning face to the other. “A bit late, I see. You figured out how we can reach him?”
“Sorry. You?”
“Not a glimmer.” Tetaki scowled. “He’s always surrounded by dozens of thissik.”
The guard’s shrill hysterical summons brought Gleia to her feet. “Watch yourself, brother, and keep Jevati safe,” she whispered.
His dagger teeth gleamed briefly then he slid beneath the water and faded away, a shadow lost amid shadows.
Shounach strolled into the middle of the room and stood looking around. When Gleia started to speak, he shook his head and put a finger to his lips.
She watched, bewildered, as he dug in his bag, pulled out a faceted yellow crystal and began tossing it idly in the air as he moved about the room. In one corner a deep basin was filled with clear salt water from the bay. It was about two meters wide and three long. He stopped beside it. “What’s this?”
She crossed to him and looked thoughtfully at the slowly rippling surface of the water. She knelt, pushed up her sleeve and thrust her arm into the water up to the elbow. A gentle current tugged at her arm and she pulled it out, shaking the sleeve back down. “They must have fixed the windpumps.” She settled back on her heels and watched his face. “It’s a bed.”
He raised an eyebrow then walked away, whistling softly, tossing the crystal up and down, watching the play of moonlight on its facets. Gleia sniffed. “Big man.”
He laughed and finished his circuit of the room then moved past her to the barred windows in the end wall. He slipped the crystal on the ledge of one of them and came back to her.
“What was that about?” she said.
He dropped beside her. “Checking to see if the thissik planted an ear or an eye on us.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Any idea where the Keeper might sleep?”
She sh
ook her head. “These houses are built to shelter a lot of people. Given Jaydugar’s winters, it’s better to build one big house, not a lot of little ones. At least when the people living there have some kind of ties. The seacoast cities on the mainland don’t count. Too many strangers.” After a minute’s silence, she said, “You seem to know something about the thissik. I saw the Keeper recognized you. That should give you more of an idea where he could be than any knowledge of seaborn architecture.”
“Good point.” He scratched at his chin and stared thoughtfully past her shoulder. “Trouble is, what I know doesn’t fit this …”
The door slammed open. Two thissik walked in. One approached Shounach and both carefully did not look at Gleia. “You are required, Fox. Come.” He turned and walked out, the other following.
Gleia trailed Shounach to the door. “Luck,” she said finally, not knowing what else to say.
He looked amused, his changeable eyes twinkling as he smiled into her anxious face. “Don’t worry,” he said. He pulled the door shut behind him. She heard the bar chunk home then the staccato clicks of his boots moving crisply down the corridor outside. She scuffed across the room and pressed her face against a windowgrill that let her see a short section of the pathway. After several minutes she saw the two thissik and Shounach heading for the Endhouse. She stayed at the window a while after they passed out of sight, then moved restlessly about the shadowy room, kicking at the hem of the still soggy cafta.
She stripped the cafta off. There were three windows in the back wall; the glass of one was broken and a stream of cooling air was pouring through it. The window grills had a series of stubbs at the top. She hung the cafta over a stub, spreading it out over the broken window so the air coming in would dry it a little faster. Trailing her fingers over the fitted stone, she moved slowly along the wall to the third window. The two moons were still behind the houseridge, but they were beginning to lighten the gloom outside. In the west above the bit of Endhouse roofs she could see a halo of red coming through the kala-shell roofing over the Day Court. She stood watching the steady glow as the Crow slid into view and arced toward the western horizon. She shivered and moved slowly along the wall, stopping at the cafta to squeeze the cloth between thumb and forefinger. It was still wet. She looked about the room. It was filled with shadow, soft dark shadow hanging still and comfortable. In the corner the rippling water surface painted a net of reflected light on wall and ceiling while fragments of moonlight danced across it. She sighed and lowered herself into the water. The lightweb danced wildly on the wall and lines of light rippled in arcs around her body.
