A Bait of Dreams

by Clayton, Jo;

  “Hush.” The small hand came down again on her lips. “Sayoneh,” the soft voice breathed after a moment. “To ourselves we are Sayoneh, the delivered ones.”

  Deel stiffened as a too-familiar voice sounded just outside the tent. Kan. The small hand stroked her cheek, passed gently over her hair, touched her lips, reassuring her and reminding her to keep quiet.

  “A woman. A smuggler. In the River.”

  “No stray females here, Hand. Look for yourself.” The contralto voice was polite with a hint of cool distaste. “The watchers would have reported any such occurrence immediately.”

  “The tent, Saone?”

  “You heard what I said, Hand.” The voice was really chill now. “And you know our strictures.”

  “I heard you, Saone. The watchers would have reported to you, hah! I notice you carefully didn’t say if they had. One day, Saone. I’ll remember this.” Deel shivered at the anger in Kan’s clipped words and began to feel guilty for drawing these women into her troubles. Kan stomped off, clearly refusing to waste his breath arguing and for reasons she couldn’t understand, equally unwilling to use force. She let herself relax, the rug under her wonderfully soft, the thigh beneath her aching head soft and firm at once, the robes of the small saone smelling pleasantly herbal. Distantly, through the waves of sleep that were washing over her, she heard the scrape of sandals coming toward her. Sighing, she forced her heavy eyes open once more.

  Enigmatic behind the long blue veil with its embroidered eyeholes, a tall woman stood looking down at her. “Now, Dancer,” the contralto voice said crisply. “Perhaps you’ll explain what this is about.”

  Gleia winced as Shounach laid her on a shelf bed supported by rusty chains that groaned and rasped when her weight settled on the worn planks. The only light in the narrow cell came from the torches flickering and smoking in the icy drafts that swept along the walls of the cellar outside, a cellar filled with well-oiled, well-used objects of sinister purpose. Shounach touched her cheek, winked down at her, then straightened and turned to face the closing door. “Hand.”

  Gabbler ignored him and slammed the heavy door shut. Gleia saw Shounach’s hands close into fists, then open, wondered what he was up to. He rounded his shoulders, shambled forward a few steps. When he spoke again, he was using the whiny beggar’s voice that turned her a little sick though she knew well enough what he was doing once the performance began, having seen him playing a fawning, worthless vagabond for the Lossal the day he faced a spy’s death. Saved his life with it though he couldn’t save his body from the Lossal’s malice.

  “Noble Hand,” he whined, “if you remember, the noble Hankir Kan requires me whole.” Gabbler’s face appeared in the small barred opening in the door; he was frowning but he was listening.

  Gleia smiled. Play him, my sweet Fox, tease the shirt off his back. Shivering again, this time from the cold, the movements of her body setting the chains to creaking, she tugged at her sodden cafta, hugged her arms tight across her breasts. I could use that shirt.

  “I’m wet, noble Hand, I’m cold and hungry. I’ll die, noble Hand.” Shounach’s whine was louder, tainted with a weak insolence. “I’ll be dead come morning if I don’t get dry clothing. And blankets. And hot food.”

  Gabbler listened with stolid indifference. Intermittently visible behind him, the Bowman radiated contempt and muttered continually into the Gabbler’s ears. The Silent Man refused to be hurried. He moved his eyes slowly over Shounach who stood shivering and looking miserable enough to underline his words. He glanced past Shounach at Gleia, then without a word or any other apparent response, he moved away.

  Gleia shivered again, pulled her legs up and raised herself until she rested her back against the wall. She sat rubbing at her arms as she watched Shounach straighten his shoulders and flex his fingers, then cross the few steps to the door. He stooped to look through the opening (though it was head-high for the Rivermen, not excepting Bowman Raver, it hit him below his shoulders) and gazed out at the room beyond. Abruptly he stretched, yawned, set his compulsions aside for the moment and came toward her, his face shadowed, the torchlight creeping in from outside touching the curve of a cheek and lighting up one of his long narrow hands. He dropped beside her, his legs stretched out before him, his arms lifted, his hands laced together behind his head.

  “Think that will do any good?” In spite of her effort to speak casually, her voice shook and her teeth clicked together.

  He swung around, touched her face, began rubbing her hands gently, warming them with his. His body felt furnace hot, but oddly not feverish, a different quality in the heat. “Might,” he said. “If not, I’ll chance fetching my bag.”

  She raised her brows.

  “Raver chucked it down under a torch on the far side of the cellar, sweet man that he is.” His eyes darkened with amusement. “Vixen, shame, remember how I got you over the walls?”

  She laughed then, a chattery uncertain laugh, sobered. “Hope hard Gabbler doesn’t think of that.”

  He pulled her up, opened his jacket and held her against his chest, the warmth of his body seeping through the soggy cafta and into her shuddering flesh. She sighed with pleasure and lay against him, limp and drowsily content. “Madar bless, Fox,” she said after a few moments.

  “For what?” He sounded as content as she felt and as sleepy.

  She rubbed her cheek against his chest, yawned, murmured, “You didn’t need any of those things. What if he turned the Bowman loose?”

  His slow chuckle rumbled under her ear. “Go to sleep, love.”

  The thin blonde woman pushed the brazier into the cell and backed out again, carefully avoiding the Bowman. In spite of this he shied away from her, eyes white-ringed, a crazy hatred twisting his long face. Roused from a deep sleep by the scraping of the brazier across the stone, Gleia watched this byplay with drowsy interest, then looked around for Shounach. He stood by the end of the bed, arms folded over his chest, leaning against the wall, his face lost in shadow.

  The woman came back, struggling with a large basket, holding it in front of her with both hands, straining back to balance the weight of it. She had thick almost white hair standing out from her head in a ragged untidy bramble crimped into tiny tight curls. Her long pale face was scarred by sun-itch, some of the skin still flaking from the newer cankers. Long thin arms poked from the minimal sleeves of a dirty homespun shirt, a milky white like her face, scarred like her face; she had no pigmentation to protect her from Hesh’s bite and that shift certainly wouldn’t. Gleia’s mouth tightened. The Rivermen didn’t need chains to keep her kind at the towers. No more expression on her face than a wooden doll might have, she set the basket on the floor by the brazier and left, edging around Raver. The Bowman’s body-type, height, facial structure and hair shouted of shared blood; the revulsion the woman woke in him was a measure of his hatred of that blood, his rejection of that blood. The door creaked shut, the iron bar shrieked as the Bowman dragged it through the staples. With a last kick at the planks, he stalked off.

  She woke again late at night. The storm was over and the cell was filled with silence, the darkness broken only by the dying flicker of the torches outside. Shounach stood at the barred opening in the door. She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders and lay watching the man, warm enough though there was very little red left in the brazier’s coals. She started to call out to him but changed her mind. He was intent, straining, all his will and thought focused on something outside the cell.

  A dark bulk rose before the opening. The faint glow from the brazier woke fugitive green gleams in the shiny side of Shounach’s magic bag as it hovered before the cell door. He reached through the bars and caught hold of it. Tipping back the flap, he thrust an arm deep inside, reaching, she knew, into that eerie magic place that somehow seemed to hold more than the bag itself could contain. When he pulled his hand out, the dim red light touched a dull rod held between thumb and forefinger. As he dropped it into his jacket pocke
t, she sucked air between her teeth, making a small hiss that brought his head around. He grinned at her but said nothing, then he was fishing in the bag again. This time he brought out a rectangular leather case. She’d seen that before also, it held the drugs that had kept him moving after his torment in the Lossal’s cellar. He eased it through the bars, slid it into his pocket. Once again he tensed. The bag slid away. A few minutes later she heard a gritty thump then a soft exhalation from Shounach.

  As he came toward her, she saw that he was very tired, that only his will kept him on his feet. His will and her need. With a sudden flood of warmth, she let herself believe finally that she was important to him. She brushed a hand down along her body under the blanket, touching the loose long tunic, the black Riverman tunic worn threadbare over the elbows, the trousers torn on one knee, almost transparent on the other but dry and warm in spite of this. His jacket and trousers were dry; he was warm. He’d be warm in the middle of a snowdrift. He hadn’t needed any of this, but he’d risked a lot to get the food, clothes and blankets for her.

  He moved her legs closer to the wall, making a space for himself on the plankbed. Then he was bending over her, pushing the tunic up until it was bunched about her waist. He began undoing the laces on the trousers, his fingers warm against her skin, each fleeting touch sending small thrills through her. She murmured a protest when he eased the trousers under her buttocks and pulled them off entirely.

  “Hush, love,” he murmured. “Let me take care of this.” On the inside of her thighs the raw flesh had hardened over and started cracking while she’d been asleep; when he touched those chafed places, she bit down hard on her lip to hold back a moan. Then the hurting touches stopped. He straightened and his shadow slid down from her head and shoulders. She heard a small snap, then the shadow flowed back as he bent over her once more, spreading coolness along the inside of her legs, a salve with an herbal bite to the vapors rising from it. She sighed with pleasure, then lay quiet as he set the case on the floor, his shadow now a swooping blackness running across the stone. Then his hands were stroking her legs, moving slowly up, heating her as they moved. His lips touched the shallow curve of her stomach, moved upward as he helped her ease the tunic over her head.

  The morning air was chill on her face when she woke for the last time. She was dressed again, though she couldn’t remember pulling the tunic and trousers back on; the blanket was tucked carefully around her. The cell was filled with a cold gray light that drained color and life from everything visible, even Shounach. He was listening to voices that came to her as unintelligible fragments of sound. His hands in the pockets of his jacket, he lounged against the cell door, one corner of his mouth twisted up, a sardonic look on his lean face.

  Gleia sat up, keeping the blanket pulled around her. She yawned, pushed at oily tangled hair.

  Shounach looked around, grinned impudently at her, last night’s tenderness something left to memory.

  “He-goat.” Chuckling softly, she flexed her legs, wiggled her toes, and had to admit that the salve had worked a small miracle on her legs, though—she wrinkled her nose as she discovered them—she’d managed to collect some other bruises and aches from last night’s exercises on the hard planks. She yawned again. “Unh! Do I need a bath.”

  The voices outside were growing louder. She couldn’t make out the words, but the anger, malice and bitterness in the tones made her acutely uneasy. She drew her feet up, tucked them under her to warm them again. “What’s happening?”

  “Arguing. Bowman wants you along as his personal playtoy. Gabbler says you ride like a half-empty sack of grain and you’ll slow us down. He wants to leave you here.”

  “Some choice.” A small black speck crawled from her sleeve onto the back of her hand. She stared at it, grimaced and pinched it between the nails of her thumb and forefinger, scowled as she felt dozens of other small tickles, making her uncomfortably aware she had lots of company under the blanket. She unwrapped it hastily and dropped it to the floor. Her fingers busy under her tunic, hunting the small lives crawling about on her skin, she watched Shounach as he continued to listen to the argument outside. “What are you going to do about this mess?”

  “Wait.”

  “What about me?”

  “Sit and scratch.”

  “Hell I will.” She swung her legs over the edge of the plankbed, then groped under it for her sandals. As she buckled them on, she said, “Don’t expect me to stand about and admire your tricks, Fox. Madar!” She pinched another black speck off her instep. “I’ve had enough of being handed around like lumpy baggage.”

  He lifted a brow. “Lumpy?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “Fool.”

  “Bless you, child.” He rubbed at his nose, suddenly serious. “They’re coming. Think you could push Raver into jumping you?” He stepped away from the door. “He might get his hands on you before I can take him out.”

  “I expect so.” She frowned, remembering the Bowman’s hand pinching and groping at her on the track last night. Absently she popped another small life. “Playtoy, hunh!” She smiled grimly. “There’s a button I can tromp. I’ll poke him hard, Fox.”

  Gabbler dragged the bar free. One end hit the floor with a reverberating clank as he leaned it against the wall. He hauled the door open, stepped back a body-length from the cell and beckoned Shounach out.

  Hands in his pockets, Shounach strolled through the door. When Gleia started after him, Gabbler waved her back. Across the cellar, standing on the lowest step of the short flight leading up to ground level, the Bowman snickered, giving her the excuse she needed. “Laugh, you horse’s ass,” she snarled. “You son of a crimp-head whore. Your ma was too dumb to know wet from dry.”

  With a howl of rage, the Bowman cast his weapon aside and lunged at her, everything forgotten but his need to get his hands around her throat.

  Sputtering a curse, Gabbler leaped for the bow, but pulled up when a fingerthick rod of light touched it and exploded it to ash. He turned slowly, glancing as he did at Raver who was writhing on the floor, screaming and clutching at a leg that was gone from the knee down, vaporized as the bow had been vaporized. Gabbler fixed his flat dark gaze on the small rod in Shounach’s hand. “What now?”

  With a tug of admiration for the man’s calm acceptance of this series of misfortunes, Gleia jumped over the Bowman and moved to Shounach’s side, stumbling a little as the trouser legs unrolled and threatened to trip her. She knelt and began rolling them up again. Shounach touched her head; she paused in what she was doing to look up. “You wield a wicked tongue, Vixen,” he said.

  “My pleasure, Fox. What do we do with them?” She nodded at the silent Gabbler and the howling Bowman.

  Tugging at a stray curl, laughing as she jerked her head away, he said, “Through the hoop for you. Just for you.” Still chuckling, he turned to face Gabbler. The squat dark Riverman had wrapped his ponderous silence about himself and stood waiting with an exaggerated patience that was a reproach for their frivolous waste of time and energy. He was waiting, it seemed to Gleia, with the patience of a stalking Tars for them to make a mistake. But he hadn’t tried taking advantage of Shounach’s apparent inattention, perhaps he didn’t care to lose a leg as Raver had. “In.” Shounach jabbed a thumb at the cell. Gleia dusted off her knees as she rose from her crouch. “Drag that with you.” Shounach nodded at the cursing, whimpering Bowman.

  Gleia slammed the door shut behind them and helped Shounach slide the bar through the staples. She stepped back, frowning at the arrangement. “That won’t hold them any longer than it takes to yell someone down here.”

  “This will.” Shounach twisted one end of the rod, inspected it a moment, then stood slapping it against his palm, eyeing the door. Abruptly he shrugged and pressed the rod against the point where the bar touched the staple. The light this time was a murky red. The iron boiled and flowed together and congealed again when he took the rod away. The
bar was welded to the staple and it would take a heavy maul, perhaps even a steel chisel to break it loose. He fingered the other staple, shook his head and dropped the rod into his pocket. Gleia watched, puzzled. Something was bothering him about the rod but she didn’t know enough to tell what it was. She started to ask, shut her mouth again as he stepped to the opening in the center of the door. “Hand,” he said.

  “What now?” Gabbler’s voice was expressionless, but Gleia shuddered and hoped she’d never fall in his hands again.

  “I’ve fixed it so you won’t get out of here without time and hard work. Too late to catch us. You could try sending the Watchman after us. Give you one guess how much chance he’d have of bringing us back. If I stood in your boots, once out, I’d head for distant parts where Hankir Kan couldn’t get his hands on me.” He waited a moment but Gabbler said nothing. Patting a yawn, he crossed the room, retrieved his bag and started for the stairs. Gleia trailed behind him, unhappy at the thought of climbing back on a horse, any horse, swearing under her breath as her trouser legs started to unroll again.

  “Seren.” There was a gentle reproof in the small saone’s voice. “Let her rest. She’s almost asleep now.”

  The tall woman moved a hand in an abrupt, angular gesture of denial. “A Hand, Chay. That Hand. We have to know what and why. Know it now, little Chay. So we can plan. Dancer, do you hear me?”