And all of that was beside the point. She tried ignoring him; it wasn't, easy. Even with her attention focused on Sassa, she was intensely aware of Rohant bending over her, waving the fan across her face to keep the flies off, she could feel his heat, she could smell him, smell the rich musk rolling off him, sending her barely post-pubescent body into an uproar that made thinking the hardest thing she'd ever done; much more and she was going to forget all about size differences and the bloody habits of mating Dyslaera…
She clamped her teeth on her tongue and wrenched her mind once more from her erogenous zones, furious at herself, raging to get after Kikun, to find him and bring him out of whatever he'd fallen into. Even as she struggled, though, there was a small voice down under that turmoil saying: why all this passion, Shadow? You've known this pair three days, to speak to. They're not friends, they're barely acquaintances. That's not to say don't go after the little man, he's an odd and charming little man and doesn't deserve to be abandoned, but cool it, hmm? She ignored the voice, got Sassa under control and sent him winging north and east, hastening to the place where the hopper was, the place where Kikun had come out of the boat to walk on land.
Shadithmind rubbing uncomfortably against Rohantmind, she sent the hawk swooping low over the treetops, discovering then following a ridge of dry ground that wound through the water and the muck, the reeds and gnarled trees standing knee-deep in the wet, a ridge frequently interrupted by sections where water had eaten away stone and earth.
A faint glow seeped through the heavy canopy off to the left of the ridge, a subtle graying scarcely perceptible in the light of the largest of the three moons. She took Sassa down into the tops of trees growing thickly on an islet like theirs, let him find a perch among the fronds, then looked through his eyes at the scene below.
Kikun was tied into an inert package and thrown on the ground beside one of the several small fires, tethered neck and ankles to two trees. At the moment he was being ignored, but Sassa's eyes showed Shadith the tears, abrasions, and assorted bruises developing on the areas of flesh visible; he'd been beaten savagely. She shivered with rage, but clamped down on the reaction before she lost control of the hawk. She began scanning the rest of the camp. Four… six… seven men… What a bunch of scrags. At least three rungs down from Silvercreep's lot. Which I didn't think possible. Gods.
One of the men was kneeling beside what looked like a pile of junk. He cursed, slapped at a part of the pile, getting a wobbling shriek that went through to the bone but cut off before it did major damage. Sassa.shook his feathers, then settled to sulk as Shadith blocked all his attempts to get out of there.
"Pey, nish, nisto, Shaker. Come, come, come. Swamp-man here."
The com sputtered, broke into a low whistle; riding the whistle, a tiny, tinny voice: "Mita, sanki, niya, Swampman. Make it fast, kana swarmin all over us."
"Pass word, Shaker, we got part a what the' wan', gonna go lookin fer th' rest come mornin. Set a meet. T'morra night. Tell 'm don' push, no way the' gonna find 'em 'thout us. Nish, pay, niya, out." Swampman slapped the corn off, got to his feet. He was a tall man, bone thin with a head like a skull. He wore a profusely fringed leather shirt and leggings, a bright red loincloth, bones threaded on string, along with nuts, seeds, and bits of mirror. He strolled over to Kikun, kicked him in the ribs, not a gentle tap, but no hostility behind it or malice, Kikun was just meat, Shadith fought down another spurt of fury, then loosed Sassa and let him climb into the sky; the hawk was eager to get back, he needed to be closer to Rohant and he wanted more, sleep.
Shadith sat up, leaned against Rohant's knee and drank another cup of Asteplikota's soup. "Trouble," she said. "A band of swamprats have him, seven of them. Seems they have connections outside, the leader made a corneal! while I was watching, probably to Aina'iril. How close are we?" She set the cup beside her, drew her hand across her mouth.
Asteplikota sat on his heels, stared past her into the dark beyond the islet. "Say, forty iskals. We're in the outer edge of the Wetlands. The Fringes. You saw a comset?"
"What's so surprising about that? This world seems littered with them. He had a comset and he was talking to someone about selling Kikun. Us too, by the way. The rats are coming for us in the morning."
"Yes, yes. Of course. You heard what you heard. What's odd is comsets are bad Oteh, urn, luck, fate, something like that, to the shikwakola, the people who live in these Wetlands. They're skittish folk, they don't like drylanders and they won't have dryland Wiha, tech, in their makees, those are the clan houses in, their temporary villages, they're nomadic, pick up and move every few months, take their houses with them. Dryland Wiha puts bad Oteh on a makee. Probably some instrument shorted out in the wet and burned a house down, killed people. Even the Pariahs don't..:" His mouth twitched into a brief smile. "Sorry, Shadow, seems one is a crea ture of habit, ancient habit." He rubbed his hand along the gray/blond stubble blurring his jawline. "One supposes what you saw was a band of Pariahs."
"Pariahs?"
He looked away again, a mix of regret and amusement on his square face. He wasn't a handsome man and he wasn't young; as he himself said, he wasn't the sort you looked at twice, but the more she knew him, the more she found herself liking him. "We do seem to have a propensity for exiling our misfits. What did they look like?" When she finished, he nodded. "Yes, one could even put a name to him. Bonetalker. Not one of our finer citizens. Pariahs. Drylanders started calling them that and they adopted the name. Take a kind of perverse pride in it. They live out here on the Fringes and control the trade, what there is of it, between swamp and dryland. Raid both sides for women." He glanced at Shadith, looked quickly away. "Don't underestimate them. They're dangerous. This is their Homeplace and they know it like you know your music, child. Every third plant in here is poisonous. They know which and how to use them. There are bottomless sinkholes scattered through the Fringes, stories say they herd trespassers and raiders into them, then stand round, drink, and watch the men struggle and go down, wager on, how long before the sink eats them. There's a species of carnivorous muddaubers with stings that could drop an ox; rumors say the Pariahs have tamed the things, can set them on anyone they take a notion to kill. And they share other, even less appetizing habits." He laughed, a few harsh barks. "Which is a pun one would rather not explain."
"Oh, lovely. And you brought us in here."
"Yes, Shadow. Bad as they are, the Question is worse."
"I see."
"No. I don't think you do. I hope you never learn, I had a wife once, I had to watch them… listen while they…" He looked down at his hands; they were shaking. He pressed them against his thighs, stared at them until the shaking stopped. "That doesn't matter now. I thought the shikwakola, the tribes, or the Pariahs, they wouldn't bother me or anyone I brought with me, we have a common enemy, the kanaweh and all such. And we have a bargain, my associates and the swamp folk, unstated but generally honored. We bring the Pariahs medical care and… urn… things they couldn't otherwise get and they give us free passage and shelter when we're pressed. One hadn't quite realized how high a price the Nistam and Ayawit would set on your heads or how soon they'd get the word out. It looks like all bargains are off, for the moment anyway."
"We've got some time. From what I heard, even if his lot don't get us, he's not going to give Kikun up or hurt him until he gets his price."
"We have NO time, Shadow. As soon as that go-between opens his mouth, the Na-priests will have him and there'll be an army of kanaweh heading for the Fringes. And the Pariahs will vanish into the swamp beyond anyone's reach. Which means we get the Dancer back now or not at all."