The other women in the labor cadre stood beside her, a ragged group lingering by the only thing they knew, the truck. The youngest and newest to Contracts (Tictoc, Eva-lee, Dorrit, Vuodee, and Vassikka) were looking eagerly about, poking each other, whispering and giggling. The rest stood silent, waiting for someone to tell them where to go, what to do.
Tinoopa watched the Matja and the Arcing meet, then nudged Kizra away from the others. She turned her shoulder to the landrover, set her hands on her hips, and gave what she could see in the growing dark a good lookover. “Quite a place,” she said. She’d pitched her voice to carry.
“Uuuuh HUH!” Kizra said. “Considering how many rifles it took to get us here, lovely walls.” She stretched, groaned. “I would KILL for a hot bath.” She, too, let her voice carry, made a song of the words, a song to remind Matja Allina how much ease they’d given her during that miserable journey. She snatched furtive looks at Allina as the woman stepped away from her Arring and raised her hands in a ritual greeting to her household, then spoke quietly to Aghilo, pointing as she did so at Tinoopa and Kizra.
“Hey, it worked,” Kizra murmured.
“Maybe,” Tinoopa said. “Maybe she meant to all along.” The Shimmarohi tapped Kizra on the shoulder, a habit she had before she dropped into aphorism disguised as advice. “Good intent is a fine thing, but you don’t chance you life on it, Kiz. Rules say they have to pay us, treat us right. Yeh. Tell you this and you remember it. Rules mean shit-all out here. Forget everything else, but remember that.”
“If I’m allowed.”
“A weel a weel, that’s not like to happen twice, luv. Not here, anyway.”
Leaning heavily on her Arring’s arm, Matja Allina went up the stairs and into the house.
Aghilo took Tinoopa and Kizra in behind them.
The rest of the women were lined up and marched into the women’s quarters in one of the side wings.
2
The second floor hall was lit by rank on rank of torcheres with dozens of wax candles impaled on spikes, candles with glass chimneys over them to keep off the drafts that wandered throughout the House despite its thick earthen walls. The herbal perfume from the oils in the wax drifted on the drafts, riding atop the heavy stink of the hot wax. Tinoopa and Kizra sat on an inadequately padded bench outside the door to the Matja’s suite.
##
“No electricity,” Kizra said after a lengthy and fidgety silence. “Candles, shooh!”
Tinoopa chuckled, a warm rough sound that rubbed against Kizra like a blanket. “You,” she said. “You don’t know what bad is.” She thumped Kizra’s shoulder; it was lay-down-the-law-time again. “Listen, luv, from now on, no comments. I know people like this pair. They can be generous, but it’s on their own terms. You show ’em you think you have rights, you threaten ’em. They get mean. Happens every time.” She frowned at Kizra. “Don’t complain. And be ready with that little extra bit of service. If you’re valuable, you’re treated better. We made a good start. But it’s only a start. It’s a rough world, this’n, looks to me like someone could get killed round here.”
Kizra yawned, thrust her hands into the side pockets of her coverall. “All right. Look, there’s something been itching at me. How come I still know stuff… things like about laser markers and different worlds and… well
… I mean… stuff? Doesn’t mindwipe get rid of all that?”
Tinoopa twisted around, raised her brows. “We’re all talking local, aren’t we? How? Think about it.”
“Oh.” Kizra rubbed her shoulder against one of the knobs on the seat back. “Oh, yeh.”
Tinoopa chuckled again. “Yeh. Easy when you think about it, huh?” She straightened around, folded her arms across her breasts, and dropped into a doze.
Kizra yawned and yawned. She was exhausted. And bored. And if something didn’t happen soon, she was going to go to sleep in spite of the knobs on this damn bench. She fidgeted some more, wiggled her toes, scratched at her head (wondering with irritation if she’d picked up visitors from the scabby places she’d been sleeping in recently), sucked at her teeth…
… until Tinoopa lost hold of her temper and slapped at her head (slapped lightly, but hard enough to get her attention). “Act your age, nit. You driving me buggy.”
“Age?” Kizra fit the tips of her fingers together, tapped them against each other one by one, forefingers first. “What age?”
“Hmp. Just sit still, will you?”
“I sit still, I go to sleep. How much longer we stuck here?”
“Until. Now be quiet.”
Kizra subsided. Till now she’d been frightened, groping for she didn’t know what. Coming up here, though, just a minute ago, something had happened to her. Like a boot in the behind. Between one breath and the next, she relaxed all over; it was as if she’d shed centuries of worry and just sort of settled into her body, letting it do its thing. Or maybe she was just so tired, she didn’t have enough energy left to stay scared.
There was a kind of freedom, now she thought about it, in having no history to set its claws in her. She didn’t know who and what she was, so she could make herself up as she went. Well, not quite free. Tinoopa was there to tell her things, poke her when she needed to notice something. Talking about poke, why did they put knobs on this furtzen bench just where they were sure to poke the sitter in the ass… hmm… funny how the oil in that wax made little balls of fog about the flames, then went eeling up out of the chimneys…
Tinoopa drove her thumb hard into Kizra’s ribs, muttered, “On your feet, nit. Look sharp, will you?”
Kizra was up and smoothing her coverall before she was awake enough, to be aware of what was happening.
Aghilo touched her arm. “Come,” she said. “They want you.” She nodded at Tinoopa. “Both of you.”
3
The rooms were rich with dark wood, warm red-brown wood with umber streaks in, it, polished until it glowed with soul.
They crossed a short hall with closets, a kind of anteroom, and stepped into a sitting room with a soft, silky blue-green rug on the floor, backless benches instead of chairs, piles of cushions covered in rich damasks, in striped cloths and embroideries. Heavy drapes fell in gleaming folds over two windows opening to the north. On tall stands flanking the windows there were flowers in cloisonnй vases (Kizra pulled that word out of memory, startling herself-it didn’t seem likely a Labor Contractor would include it on his langua-tape. Who was she that she knew things like cloisonnй? She started tensing up again, then told herself forget it, doesn’t matter, isn’t worth a sneeze). It was a warm, cluttered, cozy room, filled with flickering shadow from the candle lamps in brackets on the walls.
She took an incautious step and slipped on the silky pile, waved her arms to regain her balance without kicking over one of the little tables with their litter of bijouterie.
Tinoopa caught her, steadied her. “Watch your feet, luv.”
“It’s like walking on ice,” she muttered. Her boots were worn and old, the soles smooth as ice. She lifted her feet and put them down with exaggerated care and thought about those boots. She hadn’t before, they were just there, she took them off at night and put them on in the morning and that was that. They were like cloisonnй, not something a Contractor would have provided; they must have come from the time she’d lost. Later, later, she told herself. You can think about it later. Keep your mind on what you’re doing. Tinoopa might be sleep-inducing on the subject, but she’s right.