Early morning of their fourth day on the island. The biterswarms were still sleeping off the night's excesses, the air was pleasantly warm though heavy with damp and just enough wind was blowing to brush the flat, lacy surfaces of the puzzletree fronds against each other, producing a gentle susurrous. Nflowee was sitting on the fallen tree near the sandy stretch where the flits had landed, Kayataki beside her; she was playing a jokesong on her kitskew and singing harmony with her daughter. Stripped to shorts and an undershirt, Kikun was dancing on the sand, a slow sinuous twisting that was more plantlike than animal.
Shadith stood at the water's edge, frowning at the enigmatic swamp; she couldn't see more than a few meters into the trees, not with her own eyes and she was feeling more than a little burned out after the nightly sessions flying over the city, not so much from the effort it took as from what she had to look at. She'd seen death before, destruction, war. She'd never learned to look at it with indifference, perhaps because after the first time, the time her family died, she'd always been been an outsider with none of the resources the locals had for deadening that fear and loathing. None of the justifications. None of the righteousness. Rohant had been gone for hours. At least it seemed like hours. He's restless… only four, no, three days, can't count this one yet, and he almost can't stand it. Maybe its the length of the rope tieing us down, the longer the tether, the closer to breaking it, the more impossible…
She glanced over her shoulder at the others, smiled, then went back to glooming at the water. They're out there now, the shikwakola, I don't have to reach to fed them watching. Kikun was right. We're going to have to go somewhere else. Soon. Where? No answer. How? Worse. No, boats, no flits, no nothing. We're almost as much in prison as we were in the Kasta, they stuck us in the pantry to save for later, the kuudj… might as well've stayed where we were… except for the burning-Sar! don't want to think of that… Walk out? There's Miowee… she'd have to be carried… and Kaya… it's impossible… a raft? have to cut down trees… hard to know what the shikwakola would think of that. Feed us to a slither, maybe?
She clicked her tongue, kicked sand into the water. Cut down trees, Sail With what, our teeth? I swear, next time I get to a city, rm going to STAY there. Hang on with teeth and fingernails if I have to and kick the crutch off anyone who tries to shift me.
Kiscomaskin strolled from under the trees. "No, don't stop," he said. "A charming tableau. Finish your song, please, my dears." He dropped to a squat beside Shadith and watched Kikun dance to the song Miowee and Kayataki were singing.
When they were finished, he clapped politely, then straightened up and moved away from the water's edge. "I imagine you're getting rather bored with this… ah… solitude. Where's the Hunter?"
Suddenly wary, though she was careful not to show it, Shadith got to her feet. "You said it, bored. He's off nosing around the swamp." She reached for the nest of muddaubers she'd located in case of trouble. "He'll be back before dark. Probably not much before." She felt Miowee's eyes on her, but she wasn't worried about the streetsinger fumbling a cue. Or Kaya-the girl had learned before she could walk to smell trouble and keep her head down.
Kiscomaskin inspected Miowee as she set the kitskew on the trunk beside her and reached for its case; Shadith felt him decide the cripple was nothing he should worry about. "Too bad. I was hoping to make a sweep of you all." He slid his hand beneath his coat and brought out a small quickfirer…
… and before he got off a shot, Miowee put a bullet through his head, using the pistol in the kitskew case. "Shadow," her voice was a harsh rasp, "any more of them?"
"He wouldn't bring witnesses."
"Don't give me logic. Are there any more?"
Shadith loosed the daubers and made a quick sweep around the island; she caught a distant hint of Rohantcoming back for lunch as usual. Not as usual when he gets here and sees what dropped in. Shikwakola, too. Watching. More of them. Not good. No one else. Mee can let her hormones rest.
"Rohant's coming in, no strangers around," she said wearily. "At least we have transport, courtesy of that." She waved a hand at the corpse. "Has to be a flit back there, or a boat. We'll need it, the shikwakola about ready to pop. Better to go before they do-if we had any idea where to go."
Kikun looked at her, moved quietly off into the trees.
Kayataki had her legs pulled up and her thin arms wrapped round her knees; she was a little paler than usual and she was carefully not-looking at the dead man, the man her mother had killed. She was too calm. Shadith read emptiness in her. Seven years old and she'd seen more death and torment than men ten times her age.
Like the child, Shadith was feeling nothing. No revulsion. No regret. Not even anger. Not any more. Not at Ginny, not at the people running this world, not at Fate or Luck or whatever it was that ran the universe. She was worn out. She went over to the dead man, stirred him with the toe of her boot in his ribs. "Why?" she said after a while. "I don't understand. Why?"
"Weyy-ah, I don't know." Having broken the gun down, Miowee was cleaning and oiling it. "I could guess. You're too hard to control. Like trying to hold a live kilifish. It keeps squirting out of your fingers no matter how tight your grip. He'd get more mileage out of you dead, especially if he could lay the blame for killing you on the Nistam." She inspected the barrel, gave it a last wipe, and began reassembling the weapon. "He can't do what the Makh Hen did; he'd have to coax you and that wouldn't work, would it? The three of you've made no secret about wanting to go home, wherever it is you call home." She put the gun in the case, snapped the latches and set the case on a clump of grass beside the trunk. "Kaya, you all right?" She reached down, stroked her daughter's hair. "Home, child a mine, the man goin home," she sang softly, her voice in its lowest notes, caressing yet remote. "Walkin the hard way, the long way, walkin on stones he pile up hisself…" She began humming and plucking single notes from the strings.
After a while, her voice shaking, then gaining strength, Kayataki took up the chorus: Walkin home, walking home.
"Home, child a mine, the man going home," Miowee sang, repeated the phrase, Kayataki blending with her, child soprano light and pure, woman contralto, worn, ragged, as powerful as it was let to be. "A long way, a hard way on the shells of his hurts…"