She pulled free. “I know the drill, Krink. It’s not something you forget. I’ll take my chances tonight.”
“Grinder won’t like it.”
“He’ll just have to live with it. I’m too tired to make nice. I want my bath and some sleep and I’m going to get them.”
She heard chimes as she keyed open the door to her room. The first thing she saw when she stepped inside and turned on the lights was the comset installed by the window. She tugged the door shut and sighed. “So much for locks,” she said. “Just as well I get this into my head right now. Where Grinder wants to go, he goes.”
She, crossed to the, corn, tapped it on. Acid in her voice, she said “Greetings, oh, mighty Grinder-jun. And how may I serve you?”
Grinder scowled at her. “That mouth of yours will get you skinned one of these days, Luna.”
“Could be.”
The scowl lightened. “Just wanted to say you did good today. Bug’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time. Want you to come to dinner tomorrow night. Meet my other kids.”
It was phrased as a request, but she knew her options well enough. There weren’t any. “Thank you, Grinder. What time?”
“Krink will be over to pick you up round six. It’ll still be light then, give you some time to walk round the garden.”
“Um. Grinder, if it’s all right with you, could you send someone else? No no, don’t get yourself revved up, he did his job just fine, no problems. The thing is, I don’t like being around him and he loathes me. You push him too hard, you might lose a handy tool.”
The eyes that had gone flinty for a moment softened, and he smiled. “Always thinking. Maybe I want to push him.”
“Uh-huh. Ba da, you’ll do what you want, you sure haven’t changed in that. I’m just asking find some other poor fool to do your levering, huh?”
“A’ right, I’ll do it this once. Dodo’ll bring you. You’n Bug break off early, you hear? Get your hair done. Wear something nice.”
After his image faded, she touched off the com and then dropped into the chair, shaking and nauseated, sweat popping out on her face, running down her back. She started to swear, then snapped her mouth shut. That was Grinder’s corn. Everything she said here, maybe even everything she did would be picked up and recorded. What she’d said to Bug applied to her, too. Grinder might pretend a sentimental attachment to her and say all the right words, but he wasn’t about to trust her.
I’m a fool, she thought, I shouldn’t have come back. I thought I knew how things worked here, but I’d forgotten a lot of it and I didn’t know about Grinder. Jaink!
A loud cry from outside broke into her thoughts. She tapped off the light, moved to the window, and looked out. The hooded Aptzers were standing in a circle in the center of the street. Their torches were lit now and cast red shadows on the walls and the pale ’crete pavement.
One of the Aptzers lifted his voice hi the Call; he had a powerful tenor trained to cover distance. “0 Beloved,” he sang. “Surrender your wills to the tenderness of Jaink. Search your hearts and know that you have sinned.”
A second Aptzer took up the Call when the first was done. “0 Beloved,” he sang. “How easily you forget that which Jaink requires of you. Search your hearts and know that you have failed Him.”
When the third sang the 0 Beloved, Lylunda sighed and moved away from the window. At least she could manage a bath, though it seemed sleep was going to be more elusive. They were going to keep that up till dawn. The only good sign was that they hadn’t brought the drums, so the harrowing itself would happen another time, the scourging and purging, the bonfire of vanities and the public confessions.
The Lekats of the Izar would come out, though there were few who paid more than lip service to the Behilarr god. They would play the Aptzers’ games, invent confessions, lay their clothes and ornaments on the burning piles, let themselves be cuffed to the whipping posts, do anything they had to in order to survive. They’d learned long ago the costs of rebellion. The Behilarr controlled the water and the food; if they shut off the mains and closed the gates, the Izar died.
3
“Don’t know if you remember me, Lylunda. Amalia Eskurat?”
“Forget the prettiest girl on Babalos Street?” Lylunda bowed, touching her fingers to lips and heart, her face carefully blank. Jaink! She’s younger than me, but she looks a hundred years old and all of them hard.
“That’s kind of you. Perhaps it was true, once. You look tired. Has Grinder been working you too hard?”
Lylunda grimaced. “How I look comes from 0 Beloveds chanted the whole night under my window. I maybe managed three hours’ sleep. I’m giving serious consideration to moving into the keph vault’s Overnighter.”
Amalia nodded. “Not a bad idea. Come “walk with me, I’ll show you around.”
She moved slowly along the flags of the walk in the arcade that ran round the outside of the court. “See the names on the doors? There’s mine. Grinder’s generous. When one of his women gets pregnant, he moves her in here. And the apartment is hers for the rest of her life. Some of the others have gotten married and brought their husbands here. He doesn’t mind. You’ll meet most of them at dinner. It’s like in a palace, you see. Everyone comes to dinner when Grinder says he wants it formal.”
When they reached the back of the garden, Amalia opened a door and gestured Lylunda through. She stepped into a smaller garden with graceful, dark-leaved minikuna trees, their long withes blowing like hair in the evening breeze. By each tree there was a small grassy mount with a flat stone on top. Each stone held a small urn. Amalia walked to one, stood looking at it. “My daughter,” she said. “She killed herself when she was seven. I don’t know why. She was always a sad child.”
Lylunda shivered at the flatness of the woman’s voice, a gray hopelessness she’d never felt, no matter how tight things got. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“No matter. It’s been five years now. Life keeps on in spite of everything. I come here so I can tuck her away for the night. Not really, of course, I know that, but…” Her voice trailed off. “We’d better get back now. She’s the only child here, you know. The rest were mothers. Once you give Grinder a child, you belong to him even after you’re dead.”
There was no change at all in her voice, the same soft sad murmur, but Lylunda knew she was being warned to walk very carefully or she’d find herself trapped the way all these women were. As she moved through the door, she set her hand on Amalia’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze to let the woman know she’d gotten the message.
The days that followed slid past with little to divide one from the next, even the Harrowing of the Izar. She missed most of the Harrowing, having moved into the Overnighter, a room opening off the kephalos’ terminal chamber, no bigger than a closet with a basin and a toilet and a narrow, lumpy cot that made sleeping an endurance sport. Except for meals she spent her time with Bug and did her best to avoid Grinder and his men, though he insisted she dine at his house at least twice a week.
After three weeks, the Aptzers retired to the Temple, satisfied with the havoc they’d wreaked on the guilty. The Izar came to life slowly, warily, like a wounded animal checking itself for more hurts. Lylunda moved back to her room on Saltoki Street.
She was getting restless. No one had come after her, not that she’d noticed. And Grinder would probably have mentioned it if someone on Star Street started making snuffling noises pointed in her direction. Maybe the Kliu hadn’t got onto her world of origin. She didn’t talk about it much in the Pits, only in a blue mood when she was high on pelar. Jingko iKan knew where to find her but he was no chatterer. It’d take more than a dollop of Kliu gold or a threat or three to pry his mouth open. Maybe she’d broken her back trail effectively when she came here.