She slept, ate, slept, woke again with someone standing over her, the Nish'mok Makwahkik this time. She closed her eyes, she didn't want to see him.
He wanted to know everything about her and Rohant and Kikun, about the explosion of the flit, about how they escaped the harrowing of the swamp, about Asteplikota, about Kiscomaskin, about the Islands, why and how they ended up in the capsules-he threw question after question at her, prypicks meant to dig out specific nuggets of data. She said nothing, just lay with her eyes closed, wondering when the painkiller would wear off this time and if the nurses or doctors or whatever they were would throw him out, too. He waited for a beat between questions to give her a chance to answer, then went on with his one-sided inquisition until he finished his list and stood silent beside the bed. The silence lasted for several minutes. Keeping her eyes closed was hard, but she did it. "I see," he said finally. "Think about it. I'll be back."
She thought about it and lay in a cold sweat until one of the young nurses came to give her a bedbath.
Helping Asteplikota had drained her medikit so she was dependent on local drugs and half the time the treatment seemed to make her sicker than the wound.
Fever seized hold of her, sleeping and waking.
She dreamed. Pain. Strangeness. Sliding into Kikun's head, looking out through the lacertine's eyes. In the nightmare, it seemed at once ordinary and terrifying that she was there. Pain. Locals were beating himlher, shouting questions-but they didn't stop for answers, they didn't really want answers, the questions were only an excuse to continue tormenting Kikun, the hate and fear in that small cell were smothering, the stench of them almost lethal… snake, they shouted at him, slimeviper… in the nightmare she knew that Kiskaids had a deep aversion to snakes; Kikun wasn't really, but he was close enough to wake that race horror and unleash a pitiless cruelty born of xenophobia and fear. In the nightmare she knew they were torturing him not for what he knew but for what he was…
In her delirium she cursed and cried out, flung herself about, several times reopening the wound and bringing on new and more dangerous bouts of fever.
She felt the nurses trying to hold her down and fought them, cursing them as torturers in half a dozen langues because she was Kikun fighting his tormenters, crying curses on their heads; it was the only weapon he had.
She babbled.
The nurses heard enough to make fearful, wondering guesses at the tie between her and the other Avatars and what this tie was doing to her.
Meskew came and listened. He had them time the crises and he checked those times against, ICikun's torture sessions.
Kikun was left alone after that.
Very much alone.
Locked in a cell and fed like a beast.
Rohant was left alone, too. The kana screwworms had tried their tricks on him, less the miasmic hate and fear. He simply glared at them and went nincs-othran, dropping into a trance-state where he could see and hear, move and tend to his body's needs, but felt nothing, either physically or emotionally. The Dyslaera had a far bloodier history and pre-history than the Kiskaids could even imagine or attempt, despite the efforts of the Napriests and the Nish'mok's own torturers; that trap-response was a survival trait selected for over aeons of ambush and feud. After viewing flakes of Question sessions, Makwahkik conceded defeat. There was no point in beating on an insensible, unresponsive block' of flesh.
Days passed. Weeks. It was like inskip joumeytime, everything else on hold, with the locals waiting for her to regain her strength so they could beat it out of her again-not much of an incentive to recover, but her body was young and strong and when her will faltered, her flesh prevailed.
She regained the weight burned off her by the fever, the wound closed over and pain retreated until she no longer needed the local painkillers; she was happy to dispense with these because they nauseated her and addled her head until she couldn't stand straight and twitched all over her face and lost the feeling in her toes and fingers.
The Gospah Ayawit didn't come back. She didn't miss him, but she worried about his absence whenever she thought about it.
The Nish'mok Makwahkik didn't come back. She worried about this a lot more.
She was confined to the single room; when she was able to get out of bed and allowed to walk around, all she could do was pace from wall to wall. She couldn't even look out; there was a window, but the glass in it was acidwashed and as good as a wall at keeping her from seeing what lay beyond it. She was bored, bored, BORED. They wouldn't bring her harp. It was too heavy, bound to put an unnecessary strain on newly knit flesh, and besides, wouldn't it press so painfully against the wound she couldn't use it anyway?
Late on the night when she was given the bad news about the harp, the youngest of her nurses slipped through the door; Shadith looked up from the tedious, turgid theology text which was all she had to read. "Wayan?"
"Singer, the Nato'isk said you had to turn off the light and sleep."
Shadith looked at the page she'd been working at, sighed, and shut the book. "No great loss. Any chance for some hot cider? If you're thinking about feeding me a sleeping pill, forget it."
"The Nato'isk said you had to take it, Singer." Wayan sighed, she went through this every night and was obviously getting tired of it.
Shadith grimaced and gave in once again. The head nurse had the personality of a truncheon and less than half the charm; that warhorse was quite capable of sitting on her head and ramming the thing down her throat with a steel rod.
Once again Wayan brought her a glass of water and gave her the pill; once again, Shadith tucked the capsule under her tongue and let the water slide down her throat. She was reasonably sure the little To'isk had no illusions about the pill actually following the water, but the girl was careful not to ask unnecessary questions and when she took the glass away, she was tactful enough to turn her back.
Her sandal soles squeaking softly on the composition floor, Wayan hurried to the door, opened it a crack and stuck her head through. For several minutes she spoke to the guard outside; from the tone of her voice, she was coaxing him to do something. As Shadith listened to them murmuring at each other, she tucked the pill into the cache she'd contrived in the side of the mattress, lay back, and wondered what the hell was going on.
Wayan reached through the opening, brought in a black, bulb-ended case. Smiling triumphantly she carried this like a victory prize to Shadith and set it on the quilt beside her. Brown doe-eyes shining with a private laughter, she patted the belly of the case. "When he was about my age, my oldest-but-one brother thought he was going to be an ilili-nikasoh and sing his way to fame and fortune," she giggled and began undoing the latches, "but it got to be too much like work so he went to the Kastakana instead." She lifted from its frayed green velvet bed a delicate lutelike instrument and set it on Shadith's stomach. "None of the rest of us has any gift for music, so I thought why not? This kitskew isn't heavy and you won't hurt your shoulder, it sits in the lap when it's played."
Shadith pushed up, touched the wood, then the strings; it was a lovely, graceful instrument, if not a work of art, at least one of high craft. "It's beautiful," she breathed. "I can't take this, Wayan. It must have cost an arm and a leg."
Wayan wrinkled her nose, primmed her mouth. "Waweh! What it cost. Helli was a pretty boy and bouncing in and out of Plicik houses from the day his hair was cut for a man. He had the kitskew off some hag he bedded for what he could tease out of her, he called it Kishi and kissed its backside when he told me. Better you have it, Singer, you're right, it's a nice thing and doesn't deserve the smell of its getting. Use it and make it sweet again."
She glanced round at the door, twisted her face into a comical scowl. "But if you please, dear patient, not till the morning, or the Nato'isk will have my hide." She put the kitskew back in its case, clicked the latches home, and set it on the floor beside the bed. With a quick, conspiratorial smile she straightened her starchy robe, adjusted the folds of her white service shawl and went scurrying out. A moment later, she stuck her head back in. "And shut off the light, remember?"