The truck slowed, turned onto an even worse road; clouds of dust came up around them.
The sound of the tires changed. The dust fell away. They were on stone.
The truck stopped.
When the back flaps clashed open, the sun glared in; it was low in the west, maybe an hour from setting. The guards standing in the gap were dark pillars with melting outlines.
One of them banged against the side of the truck. “Out,” he bellowed. “Night stop.” He banged some more and kept on yelling. “Houp houp houp, out you napanapas. On your feet. Shithouse round back, got a hole waiting for your dirty asses.”
A limber stick slapped against his arm.
He yelped and swung around.
“The Matja Allina does not permit.” It was a rough, ruined voice, but pleasant despite that, calm and mild. The speaker was a long lean man with a badly scarred face.
“What you on at?”
“Go home, Knarkin, you and your cadre. We are all the guard that Matja Allina alka Pepiyadad needs.”
The guard glowered up at him, hating his need to bend his neck. Standing in the opening at the back of the truck, Kizra cringed as the man’s spite and petty fury came blasting at her. “Wasn’t you hired us, P’murr, was the Artwa.”
“Then you can go lick his boots until your time is up, tirghe. You leave now, you can make the aynti 1pirra before midnight. This aynti is hired to the Matja exclusive. Your choice. Under a bush or 1pirra.”
The guard glanced around. He had his four, but there were at least a dozen men standing relaxed and casual between him and the main house. Three of them started for the truck. He shrugged, hitched up his pants and walked off, his men trailing after him.
His long thick plaits slapping against his back, scarface P’murr swung around, waiting for his men before he spoke. These were very different from the city guards; except for P’murr they were a stockier, hardier breed; only one of them was blond, the rest were a mixed lot of browns and brunets. They wore thick gray homespun trousers stuffed into heavy handmade boots and elaborately smocked shirts. They all carried pellet rifles, ammunition in crossed bandoliers, handguns in holsters on leather belts.
Kizra and the locals stared at each other a moment, then P’murr brushed loose hair from his eyes and smiled at her. “Come on out,” he said, “we’ll be spending the night here.”
##
When the women were standing in a shivery clot beside the truck, he held up a hand. “One thing you need to know right now, nights are dangerous, there are walkers in the dark who’d cut your throat for a pair of boots. This is the only warning I’m going to give you, do what you want about it. For washing and like that, there are facilities around the back. Ilip here, he’ll show you.” He dropped a hand on the young blond’s shoulder. “Do what he tells you. Supper in half an hour.”
5
They were finishing a meal of stew and crusty bread when P’murr came into the barracks room where Ilip had brought them.
“Any of you know aught about birthing?”
Tinoopa looked up. “I do. She comin early?”
“You will address the Irrkuy as Matja Allina, chapa. No, it is only a little over five months, but it is a boy and boys come hard on women here. Anyone else? No? Come with me.”
Tinoopa pulled Kizra up with her. “Might need another pair of hands,” she said. “All right?”
He jerked his thumb at the door, then went out.
Matja Allina was sweating, in pain, listening with barely concealed impatience to a long-necked stringed instrument being tortured by a delicately pretty blonde girl sitting on a stool beside the bed.
Tinoopa pushed past P’murr and strode across the room. “Shut up that noise,” she told the girl. “Enough to turn a cat sick. Make yourself useful, scat to the kitchen and have them boil some water, eh? For hot bottles. You got them?”
The girl gaped at her, too startled to say anything.
Tinoopa snorted. “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get some empty bottles, fill ’em and cork ’em and wrap ’em in towels and get ’em up here like five minutes ago. And have the cook heat up some broth. If the Matja don’t need it, cook can drink it herself.”
Before the girl could get out any of the words crowding in her throat, Matja Allina lifted a weary hand. “Do it, Kulyari. Please.”
When Kulyari had flounced out the room, Tinoopa bent over Matja Allina, touched and prodded her, took her pulse, inspected her eyes and her fingernails, talking all the time in a comfortable flow, asking questions, hardly waiting for the answers-as if she knew them before they came.
“… should be examinin your head, comin on a trek like this, ’specially since you’ve lost ’em before. You have, haven’t you, lost ’em this late before?”
“It is woman’s lot,” Matja Mina said. Her words came out with the patness of a lesson long learned, but there was nothing pat or submissive about her face or the rigid set of her body.
Kizra went as pale as the Matja and sweated with her as another spasm of pain seized her.
Tinoopa was feeling nothing but placid interest and cool calculation and the handmaids-there was nothing in them but a pale sympathy. They all seemed opaque, stone figures, while she and the Matja were filled with light, red light, shining pain.
She moved closer to the bed, drawn against her will deeper into that flood of pain.
Matja Allina’s eyes opened wide. They were beautiful eyes, an odd, pale blue-green only slightly darker than polished aquamarine, exotic in her stern lean face. She stretched out her hand and Kizra took it, smiling uncertainly. If this is a two-way link… She thought: peace, calm, accept.
Quiet flowed like cool water through her arm and into Matja Allina, her stiffness and her anger washing away on that flood. Though Kizra couldn’t do anything about the pain, the Matja found it easier to bear now.
Tinoopa looked from one to the other. “A weel a weel, I’d say the trouble’s over this while. Where’s that silly girl with the water? And the soup. Have you eaten, Matja Allina?”
The woman smiled a little, moved her head from side to side. “I didn’t think I could keep anything down. Better to go hungry than start something I couldn’t stop.”
“True enough.” Tinoopa clicked her tongue. “Send someone for that ooba-onk or she’ll take all night. What you need now is warming inside and out.”
“Yes.” Allina turned her head on the pillow, freed her hand gently and beckoned to a short, stocky middle-aged woman standing in the shadows by the door. “Aghilo, you go. See that the soup and the water bottles are brought immediately.” After the woman had bobbed a curtsy and left, Allina folded her hands over the bulge in her middle and looked up at Tinoopa. “She’s a fosterling, Kulyari, youngest daughter of my brother-by-law Utilas ampa Cagharadad. If you don’t know the practice, chapa… what is your name?”
“Tinoopa, Matja
Kizra waited for her to add the rest of it, but Tinoopa said nothing more.
Right. Lesson for the lesser folk, don’t irritate your betters with more than they need to know.
She moved as inconspicuously as she could manage over to the bed table, finishing up with her back against the wall; she had a feeling this wasn’t a great time to attract attention; besides, she wanted a closer look at the instrument lying on the bedtable. Her fingers itched to get at it.
“If you don’t know the practice, chapa Tinoopa, it’s a game of lessening your responsibilities by passing them off to your kin. And you, child, who are you?”
Well, that didn’t work. “Kizra, Matja Allina.” Nervously she ran her fingers along the dark polished wood of the musical instrument, touched the strings with her nails. The wood seemed to caress her fingers, comfort her.
“How did you learn to ease like that?”