“Whyn’t you let me buy that, chichi? Then you won’t have to look anymore, will you?”
“Zaz off, grot. If I was looking and I’m not, it wouldn’t be for you.”
He ruffled her short curly mop with a big hand, leaned down till she was nearly choking from the haze of obat thick as smog around his mouth. “Your loss, hunbun,” he said. “You sure?” His voice was amiable and lazy as the yawn of a well-fed tiger in a patch of summer sun.
“Yeah, genman, just want to hear the music.” He shrugged and wandered off.
She waved at the stink he left behind, shifted in her chair as sounds of movement on the stage trickled through the noise.
Flute in one hand, the other shading his eyes, a tall thin man with a bald head and skin that glistened like well-rubbed mahogany ambled along the edge of the stage peering into the crowd. Chali, she thought.
He came round to her side of the stage, grinned, dropped to a squat. “‘E Shadow. Bisa said she saw you come in.”
“Yoh, ’s me. Since I was here a while, thought I’d come give you a listen.”
“We using some of the stuff from last time.” He grinned, broad square teeth flashing white against the dark brown of his lips. “Any more you want to gift us with?”
“Don’t want much, do you?” She chuckled and got to her feet, wriggled past the table. A single step took her to the stage and she held up her hands. “Give me a lift.”
She sang with them several times that night, Chali, Bisa, Herm, and The Max. Flute, viola, keyboard, and bass. At first her hands itched for her harp, then she noticed a change in her singing. She was beginning to develop echoes in the audience, almost weaving dreams again as she had when Kikun was there to give them form. It wasn’t quite right, not yet, but it was coming and it was real, the ache in her head told her that.
She ended the night with just Chali playing and the song she’d written and sung on Ambela not so long ago. “I am fathoms deep,” she sang, and felt those listening come into the circle of her arms, felt them seeing she didn’t know what except it was a dark and melancholy vision as hers had been when she wrote the words.
I am fathoms deep
In love with dark
I fill my mouth with night
And drink the absence
Of the light
Dense and stark
I think
I will not endure
The pure white silence
Of the day
I will sleep the bright away And rise
With the moon
To reprise
The melodies of night.
Stark black and white, her sisters danced for her, the veils they wore swirling about their angular forms. Their eyes were wide and dark with sorrow and farewell, as if they knew they would not come again for her, no matter how strong her gift might grow. They would be wholly dead at last. Dead as Shayalin, burnt to a cinder eons ago, long before her second life in the Diadem and her third life in this body. Dead and gone.
When she finished, the room was silent for several minutes, then the hum of speech rose again and the rapid tinkle of the drink orders and the clunk of the Market tokens in the slots.
She watched the misty outlines of Naya, Zayalla, Annethi, Itsaya, Tallitt, and Sullan fade and vanish. Even with drugs and dreams she couldn’t call them back; the knowledge chilled her to the marrow of her bones, never again, never never never again.
She let Chali and Bisa lead her away. In a little while she was going to tease from them all they knew about the Kliu while she asked them to help find Adelaar’s protegee. In a little while. When she could get her head working again.
7
“Hoo, chals, I’m wiped.” Shadith moved her shoulders, then patted a yawn; the room’s single window was bright with the striated colors of the diurn dawn. “Been dogging on my job long enough.”
Bisa grimaced, worked her mouth. “Something died on my tongue. Job, Shadow?”
“Looking for someone, what I should be doing. You all feel like having a peer at a phot?”
“Why?”
Shadith ignored the sudden wariness in Herm’s voice. “I’m hunting for this girl. A rescue of sorts, no prosecution. She got conned by a scamjack and went off with him because she was too scared to stay behind. Poor kid. Her boss said she’s near genius with tech stuff and a real klutz with everything else. Boss wants her back on the job. The jack’s probably long gone, but the girl’s supposed to be floating around the Market somewhere.”
Bisa held out her hand and scowled when The Max caught her by the wrist. “The two of you can take a long walk out a short lock. Any dirtkickin’ kid that hits the Market without a clue or connections is in bad trouble and you know it.”
She took the flake viewer, clicked it on, and swore. You didn’t say how young she was Shadow.”
“She’s around twenty standard. But a babe when it comes to knowing what’s what. She came out of a foundling home and lived in a dorm when the client took her on as an apprentice?’
Chali took the viewer from Bisa, glanced at the image and passed it to Herm. “Mind telling us who the client is?”
“I’ll tell you this much. I’ve know her for a number of years now She’s the mother of “a friend of mine, and we’ve done a bit of business, together that worked out real well for me. She’s prickly and hard-nosed and I don’t much like her, but when she says she’ll do something, she does it; she plays fair and doesn’t hold grudges. If any of you happen to know the girl, talk to her first, see what she says.” She yawned again. “Sar! I’m tired.” She took the viewer from The Max. “Think about it. I’m hiving in Mimarose. If you decide to give me a call, as a favor, not before Node noon.”
Shadith drifted out of sleep, shifting off her stomach onto her side. It didn’t help. She didn’t want to wake, but her bladder gave her no choice. Grumbling under her breath she rolled off the bed and stumbled to the fresher.
When she came back, she saw the message light blinking. She rubbed at her eyes, tried to wake herself enough to cope with whoever was calling. “Read message.”
The words unreeled in a minatory tone as the Marratorium governors wanted to make sure she knew she couldn’t receive pay for singing unless she had a cabaret license and was she planning to apply any time soon? She groaned. “Abort that. Any more messages?”
“One message received and read.” The hum ended and the light clicked off.
“Ah spla. I was afraid of that. Ah well, I did my best. Now it’s back to slogging along the hard way.”
One by one she hit the smaller places along the Circle, showing the viewer, asking her questions. Have you seen this girl? She’s a lamb ripe for shearing and I want to send her home. Do you know anyone who might know where she is?
She chatted with waiters and barmen, waitresses and barmaids, the occasional full-time drunk or dreamer, Cousin and non, even a meditating Sikkul Paem with ve’s budlets sitting in pools of focvoda, doing ve’s drinking for ve, passing the vibes along the rootlets that connected them to their parent. Sometimes she traded stories with all of them about what could happen to girls trying to get by without connections, sometimes she simply gossiped about this and that, her ears primed to pick up any information she could about female smugglers.
Footsore and hoarse from talking so much for such little result, awash from the drinks she’d had to buy, she reached the Tangul Cafй toward the end of the Node afternoon. The shell was beginning to darken and it was the slow time, too late for the working crowd and too early from the night owls. The place was almost empty.
She dropped into a chair at one of the tables near the bar, sighed with the pleasure of getting off her feet, then sat slumped with her head against the wall, her eyes closed. After a moment, she pried them open and inspected the menu written in liquid crystal above the bar mirror.