"Had all I could do to fly the damn thing and keep my eyes open same time." She set the cup down, brushed her hand across her face, depressed again. "I don't know why I'm fussing, we can turn and twist all we want, but Ginny's pulling our strings, we can't get away from that. He takes a notion, he can bring all hell down on us."
Roh ant stretched, growled, "That's your bones talking, Shadow. Get some sleep, kit-cat."
Shadith snapped thumb against finger. "My bones are just fine, thank you. You'd better see to that meat before it burns."
"Meat's all right." He coughed, turned his head, spat. "Hmp. With a pinch of luck, we can flip this around. Sooner or later someone's going to take a look at these buildings. Unless it's a circle of beaters moving out from the Estate…" He glanced at Asteplikota; the local shook his head. "Glad to hear it. Makes things easier. Probably a squad in a flit, then. Or a boat. Four, five, six men. We can handle that if we work it right. And we get transport out of it." He took the cup Kikun handed him, scowled at it, then drained it in one long gulp. "Dio, that's slop." He sniffed, rumbled with satisfaction as his nose began to clear and the fatigue washed out of his body. "Works, though. Thanks, Kikun."
Shadith sat up. "Ante, this is your world, is the Ciocan right? We have a chance of breaking loose?"
Asteplikota smiled at Rohant, his eyes sinking into a web of wrinkles. "You think like my brother, Ciocan. Yes, Singer. The kanaweh aren't all that bright, you know. Intelligence is a handicap in a headbuster." He looked up as Kikun came across to him with a third cup; he took it without comment, drank it and set the cup down.
His attention drawn from the meat he was tending, Rohant looked over his shoulder, showing his teeth in a sketch of a challenge grin. "Your brother, huh. We get a minute, I want to know about him. Kikun, those tubers about done? We'd better eat now, time's running out on us too damn fast to be fussy."
The powerboat came down the river, buzzing like a swarm of elephantine mosquitoes, the noise announcing it several minutes before it appeared, a squat black bug crouching close to the water. It curved over to the sagging wharf, dumped out four half-armored kanaweh, who yelled and swore as the rotten, waterlogged timbers gave under them and threatened to drop them into the muck below. Their leader leaned back, put his feet up, pulled his helmet visor down and prepared to doze until the search was finished.
Stretched along a wide flat branch in the thickly fronded tree growing close to the shack they'd sheltered in, part of the dense tangle of trees, vines, and thornbrush behind the abandoned landing, Rohant worked his mouth, the drooping tails of his mustache twitching in derision as he watched the men blundering about, visors carelessly pushed up. They were just going through the motions, convinced this search was a waste of time. The Ciocan winked at Shadith who was perched on the next branch over, dragged his sleeve across his dripping nose, then darted two of the kanaweh as they rounded a corner and moved out of sight of the others-a dart in each face, inch-long translucent slivers that drove through flesh and bone and exploded poison deep into the brain. When the men dropped without a sound, he looked at the tiny weapon, raised his brows. He gave Shadith a tight-mouthed grin and rubbed his thumb across the polished wood inset in the grip, a small silent accolade. Shadith eased her finger away from the trigger sensor of the stunner, tucked the tube into the fan of frondlets before her on the branch. Rohant went back to watching and waiting for another shot at the kanaweh.
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. One of the searchers came out, kicking vermin from around his boots, cursing them. He shoved his pelletpistol into its holster, gave a mangy lump a last kick. "Dyesh, Mikka, Tank, where the hell are you? Nobody in this dump but cha-sakin' mitsish."
The second kana came out of a shack, brushing cobwebs off his arms. "E-heh." He glanced toward the wharf, saw Kikun step into the boat. "Kekwa?" Shouting as he ran, he lunged toward the wharf.
Shadith lifted the stunner, waited.
Not trusting his aim at that distance with the unfamiliar weapon, Rohant tapped the darter to spray and swung the line of darts across the face of one runner then the other, dropping them in mid-stride.
In the boat Kikun was behind the driver; as the kana jerked awake, the lacertine took his helmeted head into an enveloping embrace, twisted sharply. Shadith winced. She was too far away to hear the CRACK, but she felt it in her own neck. With a continuation of the neck whip, Kikun flipped the local into the river on the shoreside, used a boathook to shove the body under the wharf where it got hung up among the rotting piles.
Shadith and Rohant swung down from the tree and started toward the boat as Asteplikota came hurrying out of the tangle behind them, carrying their pouches and Shadith's harpcase, the two cats loping beside him, watching him with the amiable speculation of sated carnivores. Sassa spiraled into the sky and circled overhead, waiting to be summoned.
Asteplikota joined the other two as they stopped beside one of the bodies. "That was the last easy thing," he said as he shrugged out of the tangle of strapping. "When they find these dead, there will be no more lazing on the job."
"No doubt. Shadow, you and Kikun load up the boat, get the cats settled, get it ready to go. Aste, you and me, we'll clear up this refuse." He strolled to the corpse, coughed and spat, landing a gob of clotted mucus on the turtle armor bulging over the dead man's chest. "We'll put these bodies under the wharf with the, other one. Give us a bit of luck, they won't be noticed for a while, long enough for some lead time. I take it, it wouldn't be a good idea to be found with kana equipment on us."
"Right. On the other hand, we don't want anyone wondering who's that in a kana boat. The cats can go under a blanket, but we better have those helmets; we can leave them with the boat when we leave the boat.
We can't ride it all the way to Aina'iril, there's too much traffic. Go through their pockets for their money, it's anonymous enough and we could need it."
"Mmh. Grab his feet, will you. Let's move."
Twenty minutes later, they were on their way, going full out down the river, riding the edge of disaster. Since Shadith didn't dare explore the instrument board, she didn't know what the riverbottom was like. Asteplikota lay back in the seat beside her, his eyes on the cloudless sky, scanning for the flits Rohant had seen earlier. Kikun sat in the back with the brewpot between his feet; it was sending out wisps of steam and a thickening green smell. Eyes glassy, faced flushed to a dark copper as his cold took a deeper hold on him, Rohant sprawled beside Kikun, the cats leaning heavily against him; he was coughing and sneezing between sips at the brew. After a while he slept.
She turned bend after bend, the boat droning through a bluesky morning and an increasingly busy countryside. Hundreds of flits zipped back and forth like lie blackfly swarms Rohant had called them; they ignored the boat, but Shadith could see grounded flits and men stopping trucks on the levee road, other flits dipping down at what looked like random intervals so kana could search groves and farms, factories and anything else that caught their attention; at first, the search was disorganized, chaotic, but as time passed it tightened up and she began to wonder just how long they could go on unmolested.
The river was wide and muddy, the current was frighteningly powerful, a giant hand grasping the keel; as the traffic thickened, she slowed and as she slowed, that current took on a demonic perversity and seemed bound to smash her into something. There were barge strings around every curve; there were freighters and tankets, fishets, sailers, even rowboats. There were snags and shoals, bridges and wharves. Trouble and trouble and trouble.