Shadith sighed. If ever I wanted rain…
She landed the miniskip in the fringe of the thile trees along the city side of the riverbank, hid it high up in ancient thile, strapped into a threeway crotch, invisible from the ground. Despite that, she set the shocker to stun anyone trying to steal it, checked the stunrod strapped to her arm, clipped the rifle to her belt so it hung along her leg where the robe would conceal it most of the time. Too bad she had to fool with the rifle, but the locals would snicker and ignore the rod, and she’d waste too much time waiting for them to wake up.
She slung the. Brother-robe over her shoulder and dropped from limb to limb, landing with a scrape of booted feet on the knotty roots. Wrinkling her nose with disgust, she shook out the robe. It was stained and smelled of sweat, the hem she’d ripped out to get more length was stiff with dirt. She pulled it on anyway and started walking into the city.
Getting through the streets undiscovered was easier than she’d expected. Intent on their conversations or performances, Nightplayers glided around her as if she were a post in the street-something in the corner of the eye that they avoided without having to take note of it.
Street guards leaned from their kiosks and shouted quips at the Players or slumped against the back wall and drowsed; they, too, ignored her.
A silence in the center of waves of noise, she walked on and on, the radio tower her only cue in that maze of curving streets where straight lines of any length were rare and the only cues were names that meant nothing to her.
The Players, pickpockets, and cutpurses grew thicker as she got closer to the station, the guards had moved out of their kiosks and on occasion marched off a cutpurse clumsy enough to raise a howl from the victim. Except when she stepped out into the street to check direction,
Shadith kept as close to the walls as she could, walked with eyes on the pavement, hands carefully tucked into the long sleeves.
She swore under her breath when she rounded a bend and saw the station ahead-and something she hadn’t noticed in her overflights, a wrought iron fence set in the spaces between the tower legs, at least six feet high with sharpened spear points on the pales.
She leaned against a garden wall and contemplated that fence, wondering once again if she should have simply coerced the tech in the Yaqshowal station into duplicating the master for her onto wire spools. She hadn’t trusted his skill all that much and, from the little she’d heard, the quality of the recordings on those spools diminished rapidly with the mounting generations of copies, but she was tired and sweaty from all that walking and trying to sing after climbing over those spear points was not an appealing thought.
Why don’t I forget the whole thing? Yseyl is probably still in Linojin anyway.
She followed with her eyes the upward curve of the nearest leg and the soaring spindle of the tower. This station was the most powerful on Impixol with the widest range and the biggest audience. I should have come here first, she told herself. Still… She pushed away from the wall and began walking around the square, hunting for a gate. Picking a lock would be a lot easier than trying to haul herself over that fence. A lot more exposed, though… She glanced at her ringchron. Around two hours till dawn. Didn’t leave a lot of time.
As she walked around the second leg, a band of anyas danced past, big eyed and silent, hands busy with the flow of gesture talk like five-finger dances; they wore wide bronze neck collars with bronze chains linking them together. A one-eyed mal with a scattergun and a spiked knucklebar walked beside them, looking warily about, his single eye narrowing to an ominous slit when other Nightplayers got too close.
As she watched the group move on, she realized suddenly that she’d seen very few anyas among the Gajullery Nightplayers. There’d been two or three tribonds, but none of the flowing partner exchange. She remembered things she’d seen, things hinted at in the Ptakkan teasers. Ah Spla! I don’t care what Digby says, that Fence has got to go. Once the pressure is off at least some of this will stop.
She moved quickly along this lesser fence and turned the corner in time to see a cloaked mal come swaying toward her. He stopped near the middle of this side, felt around under the cloak, then began to stab a key of some kind at a lock she couldn’t see from where she was standing. Shadith moved quickly, quietly up behind him, reaching him as he finally managed to locate the hole in the gate’s lock.
Insulated in an alcohol fog, all his attention focused on turning the key, he noticed nothing. With a grunt of satisfaction he lifted the latch and shoved at the gate, then sputtered in confusion and surprise as she caught hold of his collar and the seat of his pants and walked him inside. She tripped him, rescued the key and slammed the gate shut before he managed to get back on his feet.
“Wha… who… Brother? What?”
“Let’s go.”
He stood swaying and blinking. His crest was braided into dozens of thin plaits threaded through silver beads that clicked musically whenever he moved. The sound of her voice cut through the muzz in his head, enough for him to realize something odd was happening. “You’re not…”
“All things will be explained once we’re inside. Aren’t you late for work?”
“God!” He shuddered, struggled to pull himself together. “Rakide’s go going to ki kill-me. Ahhhurrr. Can’t talk straight.” He stared at her for a moment, then swung round and stumbled toward the station’s single door.
“Just stay where you are and there won’t be any problem.”
The mal she’d followed in stood rubbing at his face and looking both dazed and harried. A lean, hard-faced fern taller than usual glared at her, thin lips pressed so tightly together her mouth nearly vanished, her face a net of wrinkles, dark smudges under her eyes. She sat in the corn chair, earphones draped around her neck, one hand on the control panel, the other on the arm of the chair.
Shadith saw the hand on the panel start to shift, lifted the rifle. “I won’t kill you, but a pellet through the wrist won’t be pleasant.”
“What-do you want? We don’t keep coin here. Stupid, there,” she nodded at the mal, “he might have a stash of muth around somewhere, but I doubt there’s much left. He doesn’t get paid for another week.”
“I’m here to give you something, not to take anything away.”
“Oh, really.”
“Really.” With her free hand, she pushed back the cowl and smiled at the twitch of the fern’s face as she registered what stood before her. “I have some songs I want to sing. They’ve been well received otherwhere.”
“Ahhh, I begin to see. I recognize your voice now. What do you want for the master?”
“See that it gets played often and aired widely. That’s all.”
“You wrote them?”
“Yes.”
“You have more?”
“Not to give away. Well?”
“Harl, go set up studio two. And do it right. If I lose this because you zekked up, I’m going to skin you strip by strip. You hear me?”
The mal’s greenish-gray skin went papery pale, and his eyes got a distant look.
“And if you heave in here, I’m going to use your tongue to mop it up. Get on with it.”
Shadith left the station reasonably satisfied that Rakide wasn’t going to spoil her exclusive acquisition of those songs by sending guards after the singer. The one broadcast had gone out, but what fussed her most was a feeling that it would be the only broadcast. From what she’d heard on her way here, Gajullery Station was given more to comedy and romantic songs and management might have something quelling to say about stronger fare. Yaqshowal Station had given them a good play, but Yaqshowal was under siege. Ciselle Station had broadcast the spool four times while she was in range-and had added several similar songs in other voices. The war was hitting them harder now with the floods of refugees and the fear that the phelas would move on them next. For the Gajullery, though, the profits from the war were flooding in, the arms dealers were here and the dealers in flesh, the harbor was crowded with the ships of the coastal traders. She’d heard a farm fern talking to a merchant tribond, saying that the rainfall had been good this year, they’d gotten three harvests already and a fourth lot was growing well, and when she finished, the merchant fern nodded with smug satisfaction as she sang the praises of her family’s profits. And they were only one pair out of many Shadith had heard on her way in who mouthed talk deploring the horrors of the war, but whose eyes were shiny with satisfaction.