Rohant kicked the comset apart and dumped it in the mud with a grunt of satisfaction.
Asteplikota rested his knife on the rope he'd been sawing at. "That won't stop them." He started cutting again; Kikun was nearly extinguished by a cocoon of ropes, all of them knotted and reknotted so he couldn't be simply unwound; it was going to take work and time to free him. "The moment the go-between opens his mouth, the Na-priests will start peeling his skin; they might not pin this islet, but they'll get the general area out of him and blanket it with sleds and searchers."
Shadith came back from poking about the unconscious Pariahs. "It's not a guess anymore, hmm? They know we weren't in the sled when it blew."
Asteplikota nodded. "If they didn't before, they do now." He pulled the last of the ropes off Kikun's torso, ' waited.
Kikun smiled amiably at him and lay without moving.
Sighing, Asteplikota started freeing the lacertine's legs. "We should get to the coast as fast as we can. The closer we are to the edge when the kanaweh swarm, the likelier we are to break loose. No one fools with the Kihcikistiliks."
Shadith laughed. "I couldn't even say it."
"The Islands in the East, if that's better."
"If we murder your langue, forgive us. We had it thrust upon us rather abruptly with no say in how it was done."
"One had wondered how you knew it." He started peeling the ropes off Kikun's legs. "If you were dumped here as you said."
"There was a bit more to it than I told you."
"I see." He got to his feet, pulling Kikun up with him. "There's no time for histories now, we've got to get moving. I'll lead since I'm the only one with an idea where to go. One had hoped to get a guide from the Pariahs. Things being as they are, that's out. Shadow, I want you in the boat with me with your harp ready to play." why.
"You three have to be The Three. Flaunt it! Loud and filled with color. We can't try sneaking along, we'd simply invite attack. We can't fight the Pariahs, even with your weapons and your talents, my friends. We have to keep them away from us. We have to confuse them, set them arguing among themselves. It's the only way we'll get out of here alive."
Rohant snorted, picked up the blanket he'd dropped in the attack, sneezed twice and wiped his streaming eyes. "Some demigod," he said, "dripping with a cold."
Kikun watched with half-closed eyes, projecting enigma and amusement.
Shadith frowned at him, irritated by that inappropriate insouciance. She ran a hand through her hair, pushing it into peaks, turned to Asteplikota. "Do all of you eat your enemies? Or should I say your victims?"
"No! Of course not. What do you mean?"
"If the Pariahs, the shikwakola, don't believe like you, why should they care about your gods, demigods, whatever they are?"
"Ah. I see. In the Five Nations, the practices differ according to caste or according to kind among the out-caste. Island or Main, God is one and his Servants are honored."
"Aren't you asking for trouble, then, playing games with your own beliefs-or don't you believe?"
"Who's to say one is playing games? More often than not the Avatar himself does not know what he is. She is. Oppalatin works as he will, he is not bound by the fallible logic of man."
She gazed at him a moment, shook her head. "One thing I learned all the long years, you don't argue a man's religion. Come on, let's get out of here."
They slid through the winding channels, poling as quickly as they could to put distance between themselves and the islet, between themselves and the sunken boat, the hunk of metal that would shout its existence if the kanaweh had metal detectors on board their sleds. Shadith knelt before Asteplikota, as she had before, this time plucking tunes from her harp, singing a while, then playing again. It was an eerie feeling, performing for those unseen ears, sensing shikwakola all around her, gliding in parallel streams, sensing their fear, their confusion, the ebb and flow of their anger.
She was beginning to understand how Ginny was using her and the others. It was clear, too clear, clear enough to make her sick when she saw it. They didn't need to do anything, they just had to exist. Everything happening down here was forcing them into the roles he'd planned for them. Everything. They couldn't escape his manipulation-except by literally escaping, getting off this world. Damn the man. I won't be his Typhoid Mary, I WILL NOT! How you going to stop it, Shadow? Look what's happening, Virgin Singer. We've got to get off this world and soon or we'll have done all the damage he wants, everything he wants from us. Pretty little petlings dancing to his jingeetune, dipping our toesies… ah no no, up to our assies in a ocean of shit. I am going to kill that monster. If I ever get my hands on his neck, I'll squeeze till his eyes pop out.
She sang Mad Mara's Lament and put all her rage and sorrow into it and felt an answering anguish from the thinning darkness on either side of them. She wanted to cry out to those hidden listeners, don't believe it, it's not true, but she wasn't about to offer herself as sacrificial victim. There didn't seem to be any middle ground, if she wanted to live, she played the role, if not, she died and what good would dying do? Just get the others killed along with her. No doubt, they'd end as martyrs anyway and that could be the spark that set the world on fire. Ahlahlah, I wish I hadn't thought of that. Martyrs, oh gods, I KNOW that's on his pea-brain agenda. He's going to see the Gospah or the Nistam or both are blamed for killing us and watch the world explode. Maybe you're wrong. Sar, I've got to be wrong. When we're out of this trap, if we get out of it, I'd better have a long talk with Aste about this; if anyone knows, he does.
The air shook and the brightening day turned suddenly dark as a vast blanket of sleds filled the sky over them, flying low enough to brush the fronds of the taller trees. Sassa came screaming down, landed on the bow of Rohant's boat; he perched there hunched over, complaining at the noise and heat with querulous squawks and beak-clashes.
Cutter beams slashed through the foliage, churned the mud, boiled the water around them, bracketing them again and again, missing them each time though they were scalded by the steam from the suddenly heated water and slapped by severed fronds. Hastily, Shadith laid the harp flat on the pouches and dropped to a crouch in the bottom of the boat. Fragmentation bombs dropped around them, missing them every time though she heard screams from the shikwakola who'd been following them, cries of rage, fear and pain. She was splattered by mud thrown up by the bombs, metal fragments went whining through the sides of both boats, inflicting a few small cuts, one ripped across her arm an inch below the pellet wound, another clipped a tuft of hair above her ear. She yelped and grabbed at her arm; a second later she heard a scream behind her and swung round.
Asteplikota clutched at the pole and screamed again, a cutter beam had sliced across the side of his head, removing scalp and hair and the tip of his ear, cutting off the end of his shoulder, she could see the bone glare white in the blackened flesh, she could smell charred hair and carbonized muscle. It wasn't a killing wound, but it was horrible and she shuddered at the pain that scraped her own mind raw as her Talent resonated to it. Cursing under her breath, she dug into her pouch, found her firstaid kit and crawled back to him. She set the kit down, twisted the pole from him as gently as she could and lowered him to the bottom of the boat. He screamed every time she touched him and moaned between the screams. Sweating and crying, she got him down, set a popper against his neck and squirted painkiller into an artery, then sprayed a temporary bandage over the burns and cuts. Asteplikota relaxed and closed his eyes. She eased him onto the pouches, took her roll of gauze and wound it about and about the wounds until they were a little better protected from contamination and unexpected jars.