She took her hand away and left, slipping shadowmouse through the wide service door into the kitchen quarters.
She scowled at the black figures seated by the fire, two of them standing, and shivered involuntarily as she heard the two on their feet arguing on and on…
It was about her and the others, she knew that, it was like an auction in a way, as if they were agents bidding for the contents of the cage…
She thrust two fingers into her boot, smiled as she touched the hideout’s hilt. Braincrystal knife, limber as a Company Exec’s morals. Hold it wrong and it would whip back on you and slice your hand off. Rohant dropped to a squat beside her. His eyes shown red like bits stolen from the fire. “Soon,” he said.
She nodded. “Soon.”
Kizra clicked her tongue. Matja Allina. She wasn’t sure how far she trusted the Matja. The woman would serve her own first and drop overboard anyone or anything that threatened them, promises or no promises, good will or ill. Still, there was no one else right now who even looked like offering protection, so what could she do?
Moving as swiftly and silently as she could manage, cursing under her breath when an awkward turn made her bump the arranga against the white plastered dirt wall, she went up the back stairs. Her nerves were stretched tauter than the arranga’s strings.
Turn and turn, then out on the second floor, scurry along the service corridor, push out into the main hall after listening nervously and hearing only the hiss of candles burning, after peering out and seeing only shadows
Stand before the Matja’s door and wonder: should I knock or not? If I don’t knock, how does anyone know I’m out here?
##
The door opened. Aghilo took her wrist and tugged her inside, an urgent, fearful pull on her arm.
Matja Allina looked up, nodded, then let her head fall back, her eyelids droop closed again. She said nothing. Her daughters were crouched at her feet. They didn’t know what was happening, but they’d sensed danger and were pale and tense. Ingva was looking fierce again.
She extended her reach, sweeping through wide arcs, finally touched a big-eyed moth hunting gnats along the dark stream.
She went swooping through the night with the prowling moth, in and out among the trees, soaring on muffled wings that read the air currents so exquisitely they beat just once or twice a minute, only speeding up when she rushed down on a swarm of prey insects.
A sudden burst of heat drew her, heat radiating away from the cooling engines of a grounded flit, an open flier capable of lifting a score of passengers. The moth played in the thermals like a child dancing in wave-froth, forgetting her hunger in the exuberance of her tiny joy.
Candles were burning in here also; the current that fed the bedroom lamps had been diverted into the Honor Suite.
Hot wax and fear. The stink of both filled the room.
Aghilo dropped her arm and went back to the chair where she’d been sitting.
Tinoopa was already here, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the lefthand corner of the room where she had a view of the door but was inconspicuous behind the chair where Polyapo sat.
The titular Housekeeper looked older by half a century than she’d been at the start of the meal. Though Polyapo was Irrkuyon by birth, she was also female and a poor relation without any protection but her relatives’ good will. And when relatives fought, if she guessed wrong about who’d win, if she went too far with the wrong loyalties, she’d be one of the first to perish. She wasn’t an intelligent woman, but instinct told her that this situation could go in any of half a dozen directions, most of them deadly, that she could do nothing to influence the outcome. Nothing but sit here and pray to whatever gods a preybeast had that the powerful and the angry wouldn’t notice her.
The Jili Arluja was in more or less the same situation, but she was in less danger, being without ambition. She was content to be here and teach the girls as long as they needed her, what happened after that she was also content to leave to the good will of the Matja. Any dreams she had, time had leached out of her. She was sitting quietly beside the girls, touching them now and then, a gentle encouragement and comforting. Especially Yla. As Kizra crossed to Tinoopa, Yla gasped suddenly, turned and pressed her face against Arluja’s knees. The tutor sighed, stroked the girl’s hair.
MEMORY:
Stripped to his dry rough hide, Kikun strolled away from the cluster of buildings and walked along the ruts to the wharf. Shadith looked at him, found herself looking away, forgetting him, looking back, startled each time she saw him. His hands were empty, he had no weapon, nothing visible anyway. She looked away again, forgetting him again as she heard yells of anger and disgust, then a rattle of shots from the largest of the crumbling warehouses.
Shadith lifted the stunner, waited.
In the boat, Kikun slid behind the driver; as the kana jerked away, the sauroid took his helmeted head into an enveloping embrace, twisted sharply. With a continuation of the neck whip, Kikun flipped the local into the river on the shore side, used a boathook to shove the body under the wharf where it got hung up among the rotting piles.
Kizra dropped beside Tinoopa.
The woman touched her arm in greeting but said nothing. Like the Jili, she knew when to keep her head down.
The women sat and waited. No one spoke.
The curtains were pulled back from the windows and moonlight streamed in to fight with the candles. Shadows flickered over the faces of the women and the silent girls.
Clouds were blowing in, rapidly thickening and there was a dampness in the wind that howled around the towers, rattled the diamond panes and crept through the cracks; it promised a storm before the night was over.
Matja Allina opened her eyes and sat up. “Kizra.” She cleared her throat. “Play. Something light. Quiet.” She closed her eyes and sank back.
Kizra rested the arranga on her knees, tested the strings, then went with meticulous care through the complex process of tuning though she could see that the jagged disconnected sounds were setting the women’s teeth on edge.
Shadith inspected the fingernail she’d glued on to replace the broken one, then swept her hand along the harp strings.
Happiness came by me again
(clap your hands, oh yes oh yes)
Yesterday
(clap your hands, my dears)
He wouldn’t stay
I wrapped him in my arms
Displayed my charms
Like smoke he slipped away
She played a lively tune, brought them onto their feet swaying and clapping a counterrhythm.
Sorrow came by me again
(clap your hands, o softly softly)
And stayed a while
(clap your hands, my dears)
To caress and beguile
Bittersweet
Is better neat
And tastier
Than honey
I would not let him go
But he faded so
Like smoke he blew away.
dancing in the drafts.
When she finished, she thought a moment, then let her fingers walk the strings in a simple tune that slipped without thought from dreamtime, maybe from her past. It was a happy tune with a tinkly, spritely lilt to it. There were words, but not in the Irrkuyon langue. She played the tune and played with the words; translation was useless, but maybe she could… Yes. Section by section. She smiled, a dreamy inward smile. It wouldn’t be elegant, her rendition, but maybe amusing. Considering the situation. Why not. “Step easy, Stepchild,” she sang…