A flute and a pair of basenote Longhorns joined the drums. The Sound filled the chamber, beating with her heart, throbbing in her brain. She relaxed and let it take her, swimming in the seething, complex stew of emotion in that great chamber, emotion as strong for her as the sound.
A masked figure danced through long, velvet, beaded drapes at the left of the altar, an androgynous figure with grasses and cornhusks knotted into a rustling robe and wooden plaques linked to form scapulars before and behind; it held a black and white blanket, swinging it up and around as it came toward Shadith. She dropped to her knees as she'd been exhaustively instructed, the blanket dropped over her, concealing her completely.
"Tahnokipo Waposh." Boom-boom went the sounding board.
A second figure danced out…
The ceremony went on and on, the tension lessening, rebuilding, lessening, building to a higher plateau, the drums throbbing, seizing control of every heart in that sounding chamber, bringing them into unison, seizing control of the breath until there was a single creature breathing, the cynical and the unbelieving there for status and curiosity caught with the others in the powerful impulse of the rite…
Shadith wrinkled her nose at the door, set her back against the steel and grinned to Miowee. "I'm holy again."
"Wahhh-weh." Miowee plucked a tinkly tune from the kitskew. "Do I bow, do I slap my brow on the slates you consecrate?"
"Yes, you bow, come now, kowtow." She whirled dizzily about the room, tripped over the hassock and went skidding on a rug until she slammed against the bunk, folded in the middle and collapsed on the husker mattress.
"Grace incarnate." Miowee played another phrase of the jokesong. "You finished?"
Shadith rubbed at the sore spot where her head had cracked against the bunkframe. "Looks like. You know, it's funny, I thought the Gospah would have his nose out of joint at this messy hangup. Female thing."
"Why? Wikpriest on up, they have to deal with bodies all the time, there's a rite for everything from spitting to shifting." Miowee shrugged, picked another tune, it was the one they'd been working on to camouflage their conversations, now it was the question she couldn't ask.
Shadith groaned and got to her feet. "After all that, I'm hungry enough to eat a Slither raw. And tired! Wake me when the food arrives." She shook her head (an unspoken answer to the unasked question), climbed the ladder and slipped into the top bunk.
For the past week she'd been methodically ransacking the Kasta, searching for the child; she'd been sure Makwahkik was keeping her close at hand in case he needed to beat on Miowee. Needed was an ambiguous word and an apt one, because Miowee opened wounds in him that he refused to acknowledge yet suffered from. What she was, what she said, what she did, all of it was a scathing condemnation of everything he'd given his life to. His trouble was he wasn't stupid, so she reached through his defenses and showed him to himself and he didn't like what he saw. He NEEDED to crush her, to destroy her independence, her integrity, to force her to acknowledge his rightness, his worth.
With their question tables and surgical theaters, their prisoners mutilated in mind and body, the cellars made her weep and swear and churn with nausea, but she kept looking. No child. After she finished that part of the search, she lay a long time staring into the dark, trying to forget what she'd seen.
Ground level had a kilometer-squared of floorspace; it was a maze of offices and kana sleeping quarters and kitchens and a kana cafeteria with separate officer dining halls and preliminary interrogation units and cells and cells and cells (Miowee had lived there over two months before Makwahkik's demonstration) and prisoner chapels and kana chapels and detention suites and a repair facility for the kana flits and assorted storerooms, plus a scatter of anonymous nooks and crannies. Even late at night there were kana scribes working there, kana torturers hauling prisoners to the question tables, kana guards coming in and out, bringing back wounded and dead kanaweh from the stone and fire fights in the city, bringing in battered and wounded prisoners, along with whatever dead Makas and Tanaks they could lay their hands on so they could identify them and haul in their families to suffer for their misdeeds. It took five days to search that level and even then she wasn't sure she'd nosed out all of it. No sign of the child anywhere.
Second level held the infirmary, larger and more elaborate offices, meeting chambers, record rooms, computers, corn banks, guest suites for visiting kana officers, more kitchens and washrooms, an armory (light arms), the flit garage, a fuel dump, a number of anonymous nooks and crannies, but not so many as below. She finished that level the night before the rite was scheduled. No child.
She lay on the bunk and wondered if her assumptions were correct, but that was only a bit of foreplay before she plunged into the exhausting search. Unless she was entirely mistaken in everything she thought she knew about him, Makwahkik simply couldn't let the child go far from his hand. She closed her eyes, found a prowling cat, and slid into him. There were cats everywhere, cats were Makwahkik's clan totem and untouchable; besides this, they earned a welcome because they kept down the vermin attracted by the muck in the cellars, the food in the kitchens; they paced through the halls, trotted through the maze of heating ducts with the arrogance of ownership, slept on top of cabinets, on desks and in chairs with the clerks and others shooing them without thought when they were in the way; they went where they wanted when they wanted without being much noticed. And they served Shadith as well as they did Makwahkik and the kanaweh.
Third level held Makwahkik's office, the high chapel of the Kana (used for funerals and graduation rites and other Kana ceremonies), the Nish'mok's personal flit storage and repair shop, quarters for his bodyguards, for his Aide Nahwac, reception rooms of varied stages of grandeur, assorted high security suites like the one where she was now, where Rohant and Kikun were living, another armory, communication rooms that were busy day and night, busy now as she sent the cat trotting through them. This floor being much less extensive than the two below, she pushed on so she could finish with it before her lessons started again.
"Food, Shadow, food." A clatter of metal against china. Shadith released the cat and dropped back into herself. "Yeh," she muttered and fought the dizziness that came from prolonged riding. Levering herself up, she looked over the edge of the bunk. "Ah."
Miowee was sitting at the table, pouring herself a cup of the local tea. "Any interesting dreams?"
'Fraid not." She swung down and seated herself across from the streetsinger. "Maybe later. This so-called meal could bring on a few." She made a face at the soup and salad and single paper-thin slice of dry toast. "This is all? After what I had to do this morning?"
"Be glad Ay-no-wit hasn't decided you should fast for the duration."
"Hunh! Tell you something, I don't deal well with being ordered about."
"Eat your soup while it's still warm."
"Yes, mama-not." She sighed and picked up the toast. "So. What is this Culmination thing? When I asked the Gospah, he soured up his face like I spat in his wine."
Miowee took a long drink of tea, sat the cup down with an exaggerated care. "Why bother? It's just a collection of rituals, you'll learn, they have to teach you the songs."
"Uhhh-huh! Tell me."
"How should I know anything? I'm Maka, they barely teach us to read."
"You're Maka like I'm Ay-no-wit's twin sister."
"My mother was. It's the truth, Shadow."
"And your father?"
"Why should I tell you that?"
"No reason. Doesn't matter, anyway I could probably guess a lot of it. You're good as someone else I know at avoiding answers. And you're making me more nervous by the minute. What hellish little surprise has the Gospah got waiting for us?"