Shadith (Kizra) In The Halflight 2
She sang.
Wordless sounds filled with joy, pain, desire, fear… In a half dream, deeply relaxed, she sang to her sisters, her six dead sisters, the Weavers of Shayalin…
They rose from the mirror tiles, slender and angular, black and silver similitudes of Naya, Zayalla, Annethi, Itsaya, Tallitt and Sullan, spinning threads from themselves to shape the images of Goyo dreams…
She sang the ancient croon that mated with that dance and filled the spaces this alien voice she’d claimed could not reach with the pure flowing tones of the harp…
Her sisters danced HER joy, celebrating her love with her, commiserating with her on its ephemeral nature, helping her to rejoice in what it was and refrain from unreal expectations…
She sang laughter as she saw Itsaya wink at her, saw Naya smile and clap her slender hands, saw Zaya shake her hips and grin over her shoulder, as she saw each of her dead sisters show their pleasure… She rode that surging wild wave, a hair away from disaster always, out of control… rode it with a mastery she’d never reached before and might not again…
1
Shadith prowled about her room, going round the bed and back again in the narrow floorspace left for her to move in, window to door, door to left wall, back again.
Memory. Funny thing. Still can’t remember how I did it… or why… set up this forgetting…
She shuddered as another image intruded…
Cut his throat?
Skinned him?
Hung herself on the rope she braided from his skin?
Gaaah! Don’t think about that.
Memory. Lizard. I set up the trigger to trip the next time I saw Kikun and got it tripped by a six-inch garden lizard. That’s a giggle. My mind’s more creative than I thought. Just as well, Kikun’s a long way off, dead maybe. No… Li’l Liz is too slippery for that… I hope.
All right, all right, now’s not the time, but I’ve got to get out of here. Stop leaning. Drifting. I know a lot now, my name, friends’ names. If I can get a call out, someone will come. Call…
That means getting to that city, what was it? Nirtajai. That’s not so easy.
Won’t get easier if I sit around and do nothing. Drifting. Can’t do that any more.
I’m safe here and comfortable.
Comfort’s an illusion and nobody’s safe.
Do it now. Now. Start working at it, anyway. There’s lots I can do to get ready…
She paced, the movement cooling her rage and impatience, planning how to get back to the port city and win access to a skipcom so she could call someone to come get her. In essence it was the same problem she’d had on Kiskai, but there she’d had Rohant and Kikun to help. And Asteplikota. And mobility. She wasn’t stuck off to hell and gone with the only transport available walking around on four legs.
She stopped at the window and scowled down at what she could see of the main court and the skimmer that mostly filled it. It was a gray and gloomy day with scattered spatters of raindrops pattering against the walls and the skimmer’s dome.
Stow away? No.
He’d have thought of that, the Artwa would.
This kind of society, no way the Irrkuyon would trust their precious persons to unsecured transport.
Kitchi-kooing round the Artwa? Since he had a thing for dark girls? No.
MEMORY:
Kikun caught up a tree branch, knocked out the last fragments of glass in one of the windows, climbed through it. Shadith climbed through after him. The wind snatched at her skirts, threatened to whip her off the narrow, heavily-carved ledge. The stone around her had an eerie luminosity, faint but enough to give her the outlines of the building, the walls and towers…
She reached the end, clutched at the stone and waited for lightning; the tree was jerking desperately about, creaking groaning; a section of branch tore loose, came flying by her and slammed into the window beside her, then went clattering away along the wall.
Flash.
She jumped, landed sprawled across the limb, clutched at it as it bucked under her. She steadied herself and crawled cautiously inward, cursing as her dress snagged on a broken branch. She tore free and struggled on…
The thought made her want to vomit.
And it wouldn’t work.
He wouldn’t take her with him-not back to his home ground where people would see what he was fucking.
She smiled. It was comforting that inclination matched with circumstance. Not that she’d have done it anyway. She wasn’t backed into a corner here and there are some things that corrupt so deeply that whatever advantage they give is destroyed in the doing.
There has to be some way. At least 2000 kays. Fifteen days travel across land I don’t know. Fifteen days in a truck, not on horseback. We were attacked twice on the way here, followed, sniped at and we had a dozen guards, armored trucks and a gatlin. I need allies.
Brushies… I wonder… Tinoopa… I don’t think so. City woman.
Couldn’t sit a horse three days let alone the thirty or forty days it’d take.
Maybe longer. Don’t know if I
can. Who… Damn, it looked like a good thing having the
Mafia favor me… made life easier… would have been better if I was down with the rest… stuck up here, isolated as much as if I were in purdah… damn… have to get out more… talk the Matja into giving me a break…
I have to get out of here… somehow… get to Nirtajai… find a skipcom… like on Kiskai… wonder how they’re getting on with their reforms, if they’ve got the world they wanted or if it’s falling apart in their hands… Miowee’s probably back to singing in the streets if things went like most rebellions… Aste back in the swamps… well, that’s their business…
She heard noises below and leaned out the window. Something was happening in the court, but she couldn’t see anything from here. She pulled back in and ran for the door.
MEMORY:
The pod was on the launcher, a shadowy black seed. She crawled into the flightspace, stretched out on the pad and eased herself into its hollows, fitting her skin against the sensors.
A moment later she felt the hard sharp kick of the launcher.
Her vision cleared. She could see the Cillasheg floating half a kilometer away, could see all round herself. She shifted her vision out and out until she could see the asteroids, frost in the darkness, white and black glitter in the light of the dim, distant sun, shifted down again until her vision was confined to an area the width of her wings at full deployment. She snapped the wings out full, gossamer fields like shadows in glass. The light-winds filled them, pushed her outward. She gathered speed for the turn, feeling the sunmoth come alive under her as she drank the winds and rode them out and out.
She laughed and groaned, making love to the winds, laughed again and swung round, tilting her wings, slipping the winds, tacking right, tacking left, sweeping toward the sun, on and on, faster and faster, time compressing to nothing. Her blood was wine, her body sang, on and on…
2
There was no one at the oriel window, though it was one of the better outlooks in the House.
She climbed into the round hole, pressed her face against the colored glass.
Pirs stood at the top of the steps, ignoring the splatters of rain that came every few minutes. He was standing very erect, his head up. He wasn’t saying anything.