The sandwiches vanished inside Zot’s shirt. “So what’s this leading up to?”
“You’re twelve pushing thirteen, aren’t you? What happens after that?”
“Look, I’m a guide. You get off on sob stories, find yourself a whore. You want, I’ll show you where and that’s it.”
Yseyl grinned at the femlit. “Vumah vumay, no one ever said I had any manners. What this is leading up to, I’ve got some things to sell and I need to know a buyer who’s reasonably honest and no gossip.”
Zot stared at her a moment. “You come to Linojin the Holy City looking for a fence?” She refilled her drinking bowl, added the sugar and bent over the bowl, stirring the lukewarm tea with a vigor that sent the spoon clinking loudly against the porcelain.
Yseyl looked at the straggly black hair falling past the closed face and wondered if she was going to get any answer at all, then Zot lifted her head, her mouth stretched into a broad white grin. “Today?”
Mehll looked like one of those round dolls Pixa mals carved for their children from sija wood, the base sphere filled with lead shot so that when you tapped it, the doll rocked back and forth but didn’t tip over. Xe’s face was round with a cascade of chins and a web of smileywrinkles digging into the soft pale flesh. Eyes like plum bits in a hana bun flicked from Yseyl’s face to her hands as Yesyl laid out on a black display cloth some of the pieces from her stash.
“This and this…” Yseyl’s forefinger nudged a brooch, then a necklace. “I acquired in Icisel. The rings come from Gajul. I’ve had them for several years now.”
+You get around some.+ Mehll pulled an embroidered length of cloth hanging from the ceiling. A beam of yellow sunlight touched the display cloth, making the gems shimmer and glitter like the sea on a summer day. Xe fixed a glass in xe’s eye, lifted the necklace, and began inspecting it.
“So I do.”
Zot sat on a stool in a corner, reading one of the books Mehll kept on a shelf there; she was very much at home in this place-which Yseyl found interesting.
It was a comfortable room, shadowy except for that one bright ray, filled with armies of small carvings and decorated boxes and other intricate ornaments of a size to fit in the palm of the hands. As the shadows shifted in the room, they leaped to the eye and sank back into obscurity a moment later.
Mehll set down the last of the rings. +Nice pieces,+ xe signed.
Yseyl raised her brows.
+I don’t haggle, dear. I know what I can sell these things for, and I subtract my profit. What’s left I pay you, if you choose to take it. Which is four hundred grams silver. What do you say?+
“I’ll say it’s fair, and I’ll take it.” She reached for her backpack and lifted it into her lap as Mehll opened a cashbox and began counting coins into a balance scale. She leaned back in the chair, turning her head so she could see Zot who was bent over the book, her body shouting her immersion in what she was reading. That was as good an endorsement as any words would have been. “I’ve a feeling you know people better than most, Anya Mehll.”
+So?+
“I’ve got a problem. No. Better to call it a puzzle. I think I want to talk to you about it.”
For several minutes Mehll signed no response, just kept adding coins to the pan. When the weights balanced, she tipped the coins into a leather pouch, pulled the drawstrings tight and pushed it across the table toward Yseyl. +My question is do I want to listen? I don’t think so. There’s a darkness in you that worries me. I feel myself being sucked into it and I won’t allow that. Do what you have to do, but let me be. Let Zot be.+
Yseyl didn’t touch the pouch. She folded her arms on top of the backpack and gazed coldly at the old anya. “I earned that darkness the hard way, Anya. I’ve stalked and killed nine men in the past three years. Offworld arms dealers. Vumah vumay, more than that, but I don’t count the others.”
+You’d better go. Now.+
“The tenth dealer I stalked convinced me to let him live by giving me something. I can open a hole in the Fence, Mehll. Anywhere, anytime, with no alarm. A hole big enough to let a ship sail through. I want to lead people away from this stinking war. But I’m a thief and a killer. My ixis counts me dead and anyway, they always thought I was crazy. Probably right, too. You see my puzzle? I’ve got this wonderthing, but how do I use it?”
+Why me?+
“Anya. And what you do. You can read I’m speaking my truth, and you might be able to look beyond that to what’s really there. And that.” She nodded toward Zot. “How many children read those books?”
+They say Humble Haf loves his cat.+
Yseyl nodded wearily. “If you won’t hear, then you won’t. Think about it. Think about sailing to Sigoxol, walking free on land where there’s no war.” She lifted the money pouch and stowedit in her pack. “Eh, Zot, let’s go find me a place to stay.”
14
By the Spindle Plots are spun for good or ill.
Chapter 8
Shadith woke to the sound of voices, laughter, and the hum of lifters. Her head throbbed from the stale air and her muscles were cramped; she started to stretch, froze as she remembered where she was.
She listened a moment. She couldn’t make out words, but she relaxed anyway because the voices were easy and unworried, a good match for the emotional tone she was picking up from the passenger cabin above her. Her ringchron told her she’d been asleep for more than three hours which probably meant the flier was over the Wandel Sea at the moment.
She rearranged herself cautiously, did a few tense-relax exercises, closed her eyes, and sent the mindride searching. She brushed against a bird mind, slid into it, and found herself looking at the long blue heave of the sea and a distant glitter that she knew had to be the Fence.
She let the bird slide away and tried to work out what she’d do once the flier touched down, but the steady droning, the stuffy air, the futility of planning without data was a soporific mix, and she was soon mindsurfing through nightmare.
She woke again with the sudden glare of light, cursed herself for sleeping too long and sent stiff fingers after the stunner in her sleeve.
“What?” Orm’s voice, sounding irritated.
“What I said. Let that wait unless you feel like hoisting those bales about yourself. The ‘bot developed some kind of epilepsy and either won’t lift at all or hurls stuff over its shoulder. Bijjer’s working on it, but he won’t have it back together before tomorrow.”
Spitting out a curse, Onn slammed the hatch shut and went stomping off.
Shadith started breathing again.
When the outside sounds had faded, she got her supplies together, crawled over the padded bales, and eased the hatch open a few inches.
She listened for several minutes, but the only sounds she heard were the distant twitters of several birds, the whisper of the wind, and an abrasive hiss that she didn’t recognize until she looked down and saw the grit wind-driven across the stone floor of the place where the Cobben had parked the flier. A brief mindsweep confirmed what her eyes and ears had told her. She finished opening the hatch and jumped down.
The flier was sitting near the edge of an immense hollow wind-carved into the stone of the cliff face. A few meters to her left there were boxes and bundles piled in ragged dusty heaps on a floor of loading pallets. Some of them were covered by tarps, but most were abandoned to the wind, their padding tattered by the abrading grit. At the back of the hollow, protected by a sheet of transparent plas, a row of two-seater miniskips hung from clamps set into the stone, looking like a dozen witch’s brooms waiting for a Sabat.
She brushed away dust-clogged webs and chased off the minute arachnids that had spun them, then went after an assortment of fur-covered slugs with dozens of tiny legs, sending them scurrying into cracks and beneath the pallets.