“When is the Kritaloi?” Paula asked. The ceremony was the climax of the festival.
Pedasen came after her, his hands in his tunic sleeves. “At three bells.” David scowled at him and moved between her and him.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He lives here,” Paula said.
David shot an angry look over his shoulder at the slave. “Come on. I’ll show you the poppet I want.” He ran off down the street ahead of her.
“I knew he’d get like that about me,” Pedasen said. “He’s a black, no matter what you do.”
A parade of Krita masks bobbed toward them. They passed the shop that sold illusion helmets. The street was sprinkled with bits of paper, mushed pala-cakes, ribbons, and grass. David turned and jogged back toward her, the grass like an Elizabeth ruff over his shoulders. Ten feet from her, a mob of little boys leaped on him.
They screeched. Their arms milling, they fought in the street. David kicked and struck at them; he was smaller than the smallest of them. Paula rushed in among them. They were tearing off his prizes. Her fingers in David’s belt, she pulled him out from under three other boys, and they turned on her. David struggled in her arms. She held him tight against her while the other boys slugged her and kicked her shins. In a moment they raced off.
Ketac said, “What’s going on?”
She let David go. His cheeks were slippery with tears, and he thrust her violently away from him with both hands. Bleeding scratches striped his forehead. His flags were gone. He shouted, “I don’t need you—I can do it—” Crying with rage, he wheeled on Pedasen. “You didn’t even stop her—” He ran off into the crowd. Paula bent and rubbed her sore ankle.
“Are you hurt?” Ketac asked her. Pedasen was going away.
Paula shook her head. “He’s too little to fight.” Her throat felt tight, and her eyes burned.
“So are you,” Ketac said.
Along the shore the men stood in rows, shoulder to shoulder, clapping their hands. The beating rhythm and the bells made Paula’s head throb. She put her hand on the covered chair beside her. Below her, beyond the mass of people, Saba walked into the water. Dakkar and Ketac followed him. The water purled around them. Saba went in to his waist and turned to face the shore. He took off his belt and his shirt and gave them to Ketac. The pale medal of his order swung across his chest. Dakkar held out a sheath, and Saba drew the curved knife out of it. He slashed an X in the black water before him and carved an X deep in his forearm. Paula jerked. Blood streamed down his arm. He plunged it into the lake. The people let out a great breath of a cheer, shaking their sleeves of bells, waving their belled hats. Ketac gave his father a piece of cloth, which Saba wrapped around his arm, and he put his clothes on.
“He bled quite a lot,” Illy said, inside the chair. “A good omen.”
Paula swallowed the bad taste in her mouth. Saba walked out of the water. His people cheered in voices half-drowned in bells: “Krita! Krita! Krita!” David came around the chair toward her.
“When I grow up, I’ll be brave as Papa.”
Paula turned away.
Saba told Illy that he was taking Ybix out on another long mission. All Paula’s usual means of spying on him failed to discover where he was going. To keep her from working out their target from the kind and amount of supplies they laid in, he had Tanuojin outfit the ship from Yekka. She went to Yekka herself, on the bus, but before she could learn anything Tanuojin caught her and sent her back to Matuko.
Ybix took the men away. Ketac stayed in Vribulo, as Saba’s pitman, and Dakkar, the prima son, ruled Matuko. Paula knew that Dick Bunker would arrive in Styth as soon as the Committee found out Ybix had left. She told Ketac to watch for him.
VRIBULO
The mid-city gate was massed with people. Paula got off the bus in a tide of other passengers from Matuko and fought through the people trying to board to go on to Yekka, the next stop. Most of these were Yekkit farmers, with empty baskets on their shoulders, going home from the markets of Vribulo. She ducked a swinging elbow and slid between two fat veiled women toward the street.
“Paula.” Ketac came across the chipped tile floor. Two slaves carried a handtruck past her, and she went by it to meet him.
“I brought a chair,” he said. “What’s this all about?”
“Where is he?”
Ketac took a firm grip on her arm and maneuvered her toward a side door. “I found him coming in, as you said, but he got away.”
“He—”
“Easy. I caught him again, I have him in my room. He’s a slippery little nigger.”
The clear doors to the street had white X’s drawn on them, to keep people from walking through them. Outside, in the crowded street, a chair sat on its stump feet, the slaves who carried it squatting at the poles. Ketac hurried her inside. She sat facing forward, and he sat opposite her. The chair bucked up into the air, back end first, and sped away.
“How long has he been here?” she asked.
“Only three or four watches. You were right, he came in from Yekka.”
The drapery of the chair enclosed them like a cloth room. She opened the front of her coat. “Good. You did a good job.”
“If Machou gets a smell of him, I’ll have to give him up. You know that.”
She nodded. The chair hurried along, rolling from side to side. Ketac sat deep into the bench across from her, his head back against the fabric wall. She said, “Have you heard anything from Ybix?”
“No, nothing.”
Saba had been gone over three hundred watches. She rubbed her fingers together, wishing she knew where they were. The chair tipped steeply forward and she pulled the curtain open enough to see out. They were going down the hill around the foot of the lake. Pale blue grass grew along the street, the leaves shaped like swords.
“We’d better walk from here,” she said.
“Why?”
“If you don’t want Machou to know I’m in Vribulo.” She leaned out of the chair. “Stop here.” The slaves stopped, panting. She put her hood up and fastened the cloth across her face. Ketac helped her down to the street.
They went into the Barn. Dick Bunker sat on the bed in the back room of Saba’s office, his hands and feet yoked together. A Styth stood guard over him. Paula sent that man out and shut the door.
“Hello, junior,” he said. “Do I owe you for this?”
She sat on the foot of the bed where she could reach the yoke on his ankles. “I told you not to come back here.” She jammed her thumb against the spring tab in the side of the white plastic yoke. It would not budge. “I can’t open this.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in force. This is the second time you’ve gotten me arrested.” He moved his feet out of her range. His eyes glinted; he was angry. She sat back and looked him over. He looked much the same as ever, graying, but still slight and dry.
She said, “My sense of territory is highly developed.”
“I was coming to Matuko when I finished here.”
“How long have you been in Styth?”
“Awhile.” His thin shoulders rose and fell, casual. “I lose track of time here.”
Then the Committee had known Ybix was leaving before she broke orbit. Their spies were probably all over Styth, in every White Market. She looked around the room. The washbasin stuck halfway out of the wall, a dirty towel draped over the edge, and Ketac’s used clothes covered the chair. The wall over the battered chest of drawers was scribbled on. She went to look. Most of the scribbles were women’s names with checkmarks after them. A scoreboard.
“What’s going on in the Middle Planets?” she asked.