"Company." Rohant's voice was dry, all expression squeezed out of it. He was rigid with fury. Musk rolled off him in clouds, pungent and aggressive, the kind of aroma that was an assault in itself. Old lion, he doesn't deal well with cages when the bars are round him, not one of his beasts. Can't say I do, either. Company?
She turned her head. A weedy looking reject with a straggly beard and mustache was leering at her through the bars, a silver tooth gleaming in a loose-lipped mouth. He wore a big felt hat with round silver medallions linked together for a hatband, in fact he had silver hanging all over him, linking and tunking in time with his twitches, shimmering in the light from the sliver of a moon starting to slip from view behind the trees. He had enough knives to supply a knife act, was cradling a pellet rifle, wore ammo strips over both shoulders, the loops decorated with silver wire. Yukh, what a winner. If he's got notions he can forget it, I'm not going through that again. Hmm, wonder who that other one is? He comes from a different litter, that's for sure.
A second local stood a step behind the Silvercreep, a solid square man with a hard knotty look and the eyes of a fanatic under shaggy brows that jammed against the heavy vertical crease in his forehead. He gazed with contempt at his companion, then at Shadith and the others, his lips pressed into a tight line.
Silvercreep scratched at his jaw. "Tan'eshinisashoya'akila'am?" His eyes lingered on Shadith, but he turned to Rohant for an answer when he finished speaking. He wanted to know what their names were. Affronted by his dismissal of her as a person of substance, acidly amused by her reaction, she decided to keep her mouth shut and let Rohant do the talking; besides, she didn't feel like telling that Weed anything.
His mane brushing the net pulled tight over the top of the cage, the Ciocan loomed like one of the giant trees over the Weed, who tried to control his squirming but couldn't quite manage it. After a thick silence, the Dyslaeror spoke in his deepest voice, "Mola
I don't know you, with the implication I don't WANT to know you.
Then Shadith's mind completed the shift between langues and she started thinking in East Kiskaidish or Awenakis, the indigenes' name for the dialect.
Silvercreep snarled. "Hoity-toity, beeeg man, won't be so big when the Gospah's screws get finish with you." Gospah? Who's… aid Head Hoofta of the local religion.
Rohant looked at him, long and cool, then he grinned, baring his formidable tearing teeth. He folded his arms and looked down his long nose at the man.
Kikun squatted by the Ciocan's left knee, fluttered his hands and giggled.
With a glare and a spit, Silvercreep swung round and stalked off.
The silent one, the fanatic, stared at the three of them another minute or so and continued to say nothing, then he strolled slowly off toward the fire. Shadith watched him start talking at Silvercreep, arguing with him, continuing the argument she'd seen them having before this bit of playacting.
"That was sweet." She scratched at the skin between her thumb and forefinger. "They didn't bother searching me. Should the occasion arise, I've a Pa'ao needier with lethal loads and a braincrystal knife. What you think, one of them belong to Ginny?"
"Don't give a shit." Rohant wrapped his hands about two of the bars and tried to shift them, but they were set solid; changing his attack, he tested a claw on the heavy rope, grunted with satisfaction when he pulled several.threads loose. "What I want to know is what's their transport and how do we get hold of it?"
"Want me to look round?"
His ears twitched in the twin sharp jerks she was beginning to associate with embarrassment; obviously he'd forgotton aobut her Talent. He scowled along his shoulder at her. "Do it. Don't waste my time asking."
Kikun winked at her.
She felt a flush of warmth, almost affection for the little lacertine; it startled her and suggested something rather chilling. Had Ginny been running his fingers through her head, knotting in ties to keep the three of them bound together? She resolved to think about it later when she had time for playing with what-ifs. She gave Magimeez a rub beneath her chin, settled with her back against the uprights and closed her eyes.
There was a complex web of small-lives living around the clearing, but most of these were tucked away for the night. She extended her reach, sweeping through wide arcs, finally touched on a big-eyed moth hunting gnats along the dark. The broadwing saw in the infrared, supplemented by a complex radar system and her tiny brain sorted through the gusts of data she sucked in with surprising efficiency. Shadith had trouble translating the impressions into something she could use, but once the adjustment was made, she found the flight so absorbing she almost forgot what she was supposed to be hunting for.
She went swooping through the dark 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. After a few minutes the moth swung across a creek that curved about the glade without coming into it. There were immense congeries of insects buzzing about the waterweeds and suckerplants growing on the banks. She plunged into those swarms, feeding avidly.
A sudden burst of heat drew her like a magnet-heat radiating away from the cooling engines of a grounded flit, an open flier capable of lifting a score of thinnish males. There were some assorted lumps in the back that might be their luggage. Good to know-if true. The moth played in the thermals like a child dancing in wavefroth, forgetting her hunger in the exuberance of her tiny joy.
Shadith slid reluctantly from her mount-and almost vomited at the reaction as she crashed back into her usual sense-set.
While she was struggling to re-orient her brain, she heard someone shouting. She paid no attention until Kikun wrapped his fingers around her arm, shook her lightly, murmured her name, "Shadow, Shadow."
She forced her eyes open, shuddered, then steadied as the world settled in ordinaryness about her. "What?"
"You're being summoned, twiceborn."
The Fanatic was standing by the bars holding the harpcase. "This is yours, girl?"
Still dizzy from her moth flight, she stepped over the cats and stopped a handspan from the bars to stare at him. After a minute, she said, "Yes."
"Good." He shoved the case between two of the bars: "Take it. Play."
She caught it as he let go. "Why?"
The crease above his nose deepened, his brows squeezed closer. "Persuade me to stop Kwantawiyal selling the you to the Na-priests." He produced an angry smile. "Since you're new here, maybe you don't know them. Take my word for it, you won't like them."
She hesitated; she had a strong suspicion he was right about the Priests, but performing for this bunch of… she turned to Rohant. He was stinking like an angry civit, eyeing the Fanatic as if he were a bloody haunch he was about to take a bite out of-all of which gave her no help. Kikun touched her arm, let her feel the urgency in him. All right, this puppy wags her tail for you. Hope you know what you're doing, Clowndancer.
She dropped to the ground, opened the case.
When she had the harp the way she wanted, she began playing snatches of danceries and balladins she'd collected in her wanderings, the time twenty millennia ago when she had her first body and was free to go where she would. For a while, despite the pressure she felt from the listener outside the cage, she couldn't settle to anything more, but when the Fanatic knocked against the bars with the hilt of his knife, she pulled herself together and played a Uejasoh stomp all the way through, then a Herkulkana jokesong that was intransigently untranslatable since it consisted entirely of puns that only worked inside Haarakiena.