CELL 7
Each circle was closed about a small bonfire sprinlded with aromatic resins, a fire streaked blue and green. The matrons sang their caste hymns, preparing to receive the blessing of the Pasepawateo Mitewastewapal, each set of hymns counterpointing the other, the women were apart yet one, parts of a greater whole, celebrating Oppalatin's creative force in ways profoundly traditional and profoundly subversive. Ignoring the former and incensed by the latter, the Gospah (High Priest) Ayawlt sent his enforcers out and whipped the women from their circles. Na-priests in masks and black leather beat them while their families watched, took the Malta leader from her circle and the Tanak leader from hers, and led them to the Ma Misthakan and the Question.
And so it went, violence and destruction present in every scene except those with the tapwits and their provisioning, Ginbiryol Seyirshi examining and testing each of them, rejecting some, marking others for further exploration, selecting the rest for storage. There was a film of sweat on his face, but no other sign he was affected in any way by what he was seeing in the cells and feeling through the instrument on the ledge before him, the one he called a pathecorder.
He saved the central cell for last, the one that was larger than the others, the one with his prime actors in this bloody drama. He watched with satisfaction, then apprehension and anger as they struggled to understand what had happened to them.
CELL 1
A bright green meadow cuddled by pointed peaks and a ring of ragged conifers. An immense tree grew In the center of that meadow, spreading out over half the open space. A larger wicker basket lay on its side and a wicker trunk, its top thrown back, sat beside the basket. Shadith stepped from the shadow under the tree and walked toward Kikun who stood beside the trunk, delicate reptilian hands on his nonexistent hips, watching Rohant the Ciocan wrestling with a pair of large black cats, roaring his pleasure at being reunited with them.
Ginbiryol Seyirshi made a slight adjustment to the pathecorder, then he touched the transfer:test sensors and shivered with pleasure as Rohant's currently uncomplicated joy rolled through him, and Shadith's anger and Kikun's less classifiable emotions. He touched his tongue to his lips, closed his eyes until he'd composed his face into its usual calm, then he looked up. "Puk."
Pukanuk Pousli put an agent on hold, turned his head. "Ginny?"
"Where is the ambush? I do not see the locals and they are not registering on the pathecorder."
"They're flyin in, Ginny. Havin to scramble a bit, remember, we're three months early."
"Get them in position as soon as possible. I will not tolerate sloppy work." He watched the action in the center cell for a moment, scowling at Shadith who'd walked over to join Kikun; that was a nuisance, the girl knowing so much she shouldn't know. He snatched a quick look at Ajeri and Puk, they'd both argued against bringing her. If they thought Luck was leaving him, they'd come at him like sharks, ready to tear into him the moment he let his guard down. That was not comfortable, he'd have to get rid of them and he didn't want to, they were satisfactory subordinates. Say it and see how they jump. Yes. "The girl knows my name, Puk. How does she know my name? I do not like that. She is too closely connected with the Hunter. I think we must do something about her."
Pukanuk Pousli grinned, insensibly reacting to the implication of control, reassured for the moment that Boss knew best. "If the final scene works out like you've planned it, Ginny, none of them down there's goin to be a problem. Not 'less there's such a thing as a real spirit-talker. Dead is dead and there's nothin quieter'n that." Chapter 7. So that's what it's all about-maybe
Kikun looked at Shadith from some unfathomable distance, his narrow, lined face blank, no recognition in his copper gaze. As if her appearance triggered something in him, he dropped to a squat, moved his arm in wide sweeps over the grass. With a frogtongue snap of his hand, he trapped something small down among the roots, held it between his two cupped palms as if he were tasting it with his handskin.
He shook his hands. She could hear small eeping sounds from inside them, smell a sudden stench wafted toward her by the crisp breeze.
He matched his voice to his tiny captive and sang it from terror to a burring calm. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his top hand, slid it away. A small gray-green lizard lay curled on his palm, its color his color so it was almost like a blemish on his skin rather than a separate entity.
It opened white-ringed yellowbrass eyes and stared into Kikun's copper irids. It yawned. He yawned. It stared. He stared.
Shadith looked round as Rohant the Ciocan came ambling over to her, his cats walking beside him, wreathing round his legs, rubbing themselves against him. "Your friend there, he's weird."
Kikun tossed the lizard to the wind, flung himself flat, and began rubbing his face against the grass, snuffling and biting at it and the earth it grew from.
Rohant yawned, brushed at the shreds of dried grass clinging to his dreadlocks. "What do you expect from a god incarnate?"
"Huh?"
"What m' son says. Lissorn ran across him on a capture run, hired him as a guide, and brought him back with the load. Had his reasons, no doubt. We haven't talked about it."
Kikun seemed to explode off the grass; he went running about the meadow with the wild abandon of a cat kept shut up too long. If there'd been walls, he'd have been bouncing off them.
"Opalekis-Mimo," she said. "Holy Dancer."
"Nanilody," he said. "In his home langue. Clown-dancer god. What are you talking about?"
"What I heard Ginny say." She dropped onto the grass, settled the harpcase beside her and folded her legs', in a lotus knot.
He lowered himself with the smoothness of movement that kept surprising her in a man as big and bulky as he was; the cats curled beside him. "You ready to talk now?"
She squinted at the sky. A large hawk was swinging in slow circles over the meadow. "Yours?"
"Mine."
"Ginny went to a lot of trouble, didn't he. Cats, hawk, he must have carried them in stasis pods, I didn't… um… and snatching you two, keeping you drugged so you wouldn't know who had you. Why?"
"My answer depends on yours."
"I don't like talking about… well, I suppose we're in this together and it doesn't matter all that much what that b'naduk finds out. I mindride. Just animals, people are too complicated, signals clash, give me a headache. Anyway, what I mean is when I want, I look through eyes, hear through ears not mine."
Kikun came ambling back; he dropped on his stomach beside her, pulled loose a strand of grass and began chewing on it. After a minute he spat out the shreds of fiber, reached round the harpcase and began stroking her arm.
Shadith ignored him. "The man who snatched us, he's got this pet, a simi; he likes to keep it around. I used its eyes and ears and picked up a few things. Names, for one. Ginny the Boss, Puk the Lute, Ajeri the Pilot. This world's called Kiskai."
Kikun wrapped his hand about her wrist, rubbed it against his face, smelled at it. She tried to pull away, but his long slim hands were much stronger than they looked. She jerked at her arm, glared at him.
An image bloomed in her head: Kikun and not-Kikun, painted in black and white stripes, head to toe, dancing with energy and an oddly attractive awkwardness, naked and grossly priapic, grinning amiably, that friendliness a little frightening.