“Yeh.”
“I thought so. Catch.”
The sac landed in Shadith’s lap with a series of dull clunks. It was heavy. She loosened the drawstrings, pulled the neck open. Coins inside. She raised her brows.
“Incentive,” Tinoopa said. “I’m a thief, remember? What I’d like you to do, get word to my son where I am. Jao juhFeyn. He runs a tavern called Kipuny Shimmery on a world called Arumda’m. Iskalgun 9. Let him know where I am. All right?”
“Consider it done.”
“Thanks. The Matja authorized hot water. At least you can ride out feeling clean.”
“Tinoopa, this Mingas… he’s mean, maybe a bit crazy.”
Tinoopa waggled a hand. “He’s not going to live long enough to be much trouble. If the Matja doesn’t get him, I will.”
“All I can say is, I’m glad I’m going to be somewhere else.”
“Interesting times.” Tinoopa straightened. “The Lady bless, young Kiz.” She left.
Shadith cupped her hand under the sac, hefted it. “Well.”
The weight of it makes all this real. No more dreams, no more dithering. In a few hours I’m going. I’m really going.
She felt like throwing up.
Terror, that’s what it is. Sheer sick-making terror.
Swearing under her breath, her legs shaking, she stood, tossed the money sac into the knot of quilts, and went out.
Shadith rode out from Ghanar Rinta an hour before dawn.
She had a packer on a lead rope, one of the rough-coated ponies that the shepherds used; she rode a small sturdy bay pony with a black mane. The Matja had offered horses, but the Jinasu Jhapuki insisted on the ponies. It’s a long way, she said, horses will die on you, get a notion in their silly heads and go down and they won’t get up. The ponies won’t go fast, but they’ll get you there. Walk as much as you ride and give them plenty of time to browse.
The Matja had provided a map, with roads and ayntis marked on it, notes Pirs made about water and campsites, estimates of time between trailmarks, notes about ambushes, the map he usually carried around in his gear. He’d left it behind when he took the chal and the supplies to Caghar Rinta.
The pony’s head bobbed rhythmically before her, his hooves beat out a slow syncopation on the hardpan underfoot, his tail switched, now and then stinging against one leg or the other. Mesmerizing. Put her into slowmotion, into a drifting inconsequent reverie. She thought about memory.
Memory was everything.
Its fragile, dead-leaf lace was threaded through her present and in a way controlled her future.
When her memories were temporarily displaced, she turned passive, fearful, every step she took threatened to drop her off the brink of the known; in a way her brain and body began reverting to the dead meat she’d revivified such a short while ago. Only her underlying toughness and the prodding of those nightmares she’d resented so much had kept her alive in those pre-lizard days. The nightmares and Tinoopa providing a stable pole she could revolve about.
After this business was over, if she survived it, she’d move with measurably less assurance through her days. That was one thing she’d learned. Another thing-maybe more important-was how desperately she needed other people in her life. She’d known people quietly content with living alone, preferring a filled solitude to empty company, but these were always settled into stable societies where tradition and the ambient culture were sufficient surrogates for family and friends.
It’s what Aleytys was hunting for all those years. A context. That and a family to replace the one that drove her out. She’s got it now, family and friends and work. I want that. Not the details. Gods, I’d be petrified on Wolff, I don’t even like Grey that much. Family and friends and work…
She thought about Mingas, the Artwa, Matja Allina in the prison of her culture, wasted and unwanted, distorted by what was demanded of her and by what was forbidden.
You’d better be careful what kind of context you pick, Shadow. Very careful. There’re downsides to everything, you want to be sure what they are before you commit. Ay-yah. That’s the third thing you’ve learned here and likely the most important.
##
She pushed hard at first, letting the ponies alternate between a fast walk and a canter; riding the little bay was like sitting a jit on a corduroy road, but she spared neither herself nor her mounts.
The day heated up as the morning winds dropped and finally she knew she couldn’t go much longer. She let the pony slow to a tired shuffle and fished out the map. The brush on both sides of the rutted dirt road was a meter higher than her head. There was nothing else to see but the tan road and a sky yellow with a punishing heat. She checked the angle of the sun. Almost directly overhead, around a half-hour past sunhigh. She pulled the map into the shade of her hat brim to cut the dazzle of the parchment, squinted at the tiny black writing. There was a bridge some way ahead, built over a wide swooping bend of the river that ran past the Rinta. Water and browse. A good place to stop and wait out the worst of the heat.
She folded the map again, tucked it into the saddlebag, and slumped into the sway of the pony’s walk.
10
She reached the bridge at the beginning of the fourth hour past sunhigh.
The river was silt-laden and sluggish, but under the pohn trees there was a tentative small breeze that hugged the water and barely stirred the stiff leaf lozenges and the shade was balm for her burning eyes.
She watered the ponies, stripped their gear off, gave them some grain on a square of canvas, and left them to eat and browse as they wished. She hung the saddleblankets over a low limb to dry out, laid down her groundsheet and stretched out on it, using the saddle as a pillow. She was asleep in seconds.
It was two hours later when she woke, she was sticky and sore, she had a crick in her neck and a hollow feeling in her stomach. The shadows were longer, thicker, the sun low in the east. She sat up, rubbed at her neck and felt around for the ponies.
They’d stayed close by; they were nosing among the dried grasses under the trees, nipping at choice bits and chewing patiently once they had a mouthful.
She dug her fingers into her hair, scratched extravagantly. “Half a day… Sar!”
She dug the map out of the saddlebag and sat studying it. “Well, Shadow, I might as well spend the night here, can’t reach the next water before dark. Hmm. Looks like I’d better do some planning, isn’t going to work riding straight through, that sun’s a killer.” She scowled at the map, dismayed by the tiny distance she’d covered in those hours of riding. At this rate, it’d take forever to reach Nirtajai.
A high whining broke through the whisper of the leaves, the mutter of the river.
Off to her left a black dot arced by, cutting in and out of sulfur-colored clouds, gone before she could get to her feet.
“Mingas. Ahead of schedule. Hunh.” She yawned,
She sat watching the fire die. The wind was rising; the clouds had blown away, taking the heat with them; the blanket round her shoulders actually felt good.
Alone. She was starting to feel comfortable with that. As long as there was an end to it. Comfortable. Even happy.
I know what it is. I’m not drifting any more. I’m doing something.
She wrapped the blanket around her, stretched out on the groundsheet, her head on the saddle.
Even if I had to get booted into it.
She sighed with pleasure and gazed up at the sky; the moon hadn’t risen yet, the stars were thick and brilliant. It was like the sky she’d seen as a child when she was so young she still had the skin on her eggsac slinging.
A spark popped from the circle of stones, landed on her hand, startling her awake.