She stunned him, then looked round for the child’s clothing. Nothing.
She found shirts in a chest by the door, used her beltknife to shorten the sleeves on one of them and pulled it over the comatose child’s limp body. She took another two shirts, rolled them into tight cylinders and shoved them down the front of her shirt; the anya could turn them into clothing after they got young Isaho cleaned up. She pulled one of the quilts off the bed, laid Isaho on it, and tied the ends into a sling.
Using another quilt as a rope, she lowered the sling to the ground, then climbed after it.
In the courtyard Shadith set the bundle down. “I have her. She’s fainted or something, but she’s alive.” She untied the knots, rewrapped Isaho in the quilt with her head clear, her fine hair pooled like black water, her small bare feet out the other end. “I’ll carry her.” She pulled her cowl forward to conceal her face, eased her arms under the quilt, and lifted Isaho as she stood up. “You walk guard, Thann, and chase off the nosy with an avert sign. One that says sickness, keep away. The streets will be filling up with dayworkers, but that should stop them from looking too hard at us.” She settled Isaho, so her face was pressed against the robe and concealed from the casual viewer. “Let’s go.”
They moved through the winding streets at the trailing edge of Gajul, a zone of silence and emptiness about them generated by Shadith’s size, the limp and apparently lifeless child cradled in her arms, the rifle tucked under the anya’s arm, xe’s warning gestures. No one spoke to them or tried to stop them; even the guards yawning in their kiosks only watched as they strode past.
The paved street became a dirt lane that wound for a short distance between small but intensely farmed plots of land and fmally turned into the woodlands where she’d stashed the miniskip. Shadith sighed with relief when the lane cleared for a moment and she was able to move unseen into the lingering shadow under the trees.
She lowered Isaho onto the leafmold, turned to face Thann. “I’ll be here a while,” she said. “Until nightfall, at least. If you want to stay, that’s all right. Or you can move on. I yvon’t stop you.”
Thann sank to the ground beside Isaho, letting the rifle fall from cramped arms. Xe smiled and shook xe’s head, then wearily, as if xe had barely enough will left to move xe’s hand, xe signed, +No. Where would we go?+
“All right. I’m heading for the mountains above Linojin. If you’d like to go with me, I can take you. It might be safer there.”
The anya’s fatigue-dulled eyes brightened, and xe managed a grin that gave new life to xe’s thin, worn face. +We were going to Linojin before the, slavers took Isaho. Thank you.+
“Ah Spla, the ways of fate.” Shadith pulled off the robe with a sigh of relief, hung it on a limb stub to air out for a while. She thought about discarding it but decided not; what happened next depended too much on when Yseyl heard the song and what she did about it. She swung into the tree where she’d left the skip, got the emergency rations, the canteen, and the medkit and dropped down again.
Thann was stroking the child’s face, xe’s thin fingers shaking with anxiety and fatigue. Xe looked up as Shadith walked across to xe but didn’t try to sign.
Shadith twisted the top off a tube of hipro paste. “Here. Eat this. Food concentrate. Doesn’t look like it, but it’s good for you. Think of it as pate.” She gave Thann the tube and chuckled as xe eyed it dubiously. “Squeeze it in and swallow fast as you can. Believe me, you don’t want to taste it. And here.” She unsnapped the cup from the canteen and filled it with water, passing it across. “Wash it down with this.”
As Thann followed instructions, Shadith opened the medkit and ran the scanner along Isaho’s body. “Hm. Your daughter’s torn up a bit, but the physical stuff isn’t bad. Do I have your permission to give her something to keep away infection?”
Thann nodded, then drank hastily from the cup as the after effects of the hipro began working on xe’s taste buds.
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t advise letting any offworlder give you medication, Thann.” She turned the scanner over, ran the pickup long enough to suck in a few dead cells for Isaho’s baseline. “But my boss sent along a kit tailored to your species. Just in case, you might say.” She fed the scanner’s data into the pharmacopoeia and tapped in the code for antibiotic. “He’s a being who thinks of things like that. I say being because I’m not quite sure what he is these days, other than an intelligence that has made a home for itself inside a kephalos or maybe it’s a system of kephaloi. This is my first assignment.” A small green light came on and she pressed the spray nozzle into the bend in Isaho’s elbow, activating it with a tap on the sensor. “There. That’s done. And if I get caught here, it could be my last.”
She set the pharmacopoeia in its slot, took up a transparent tube filled with green gel. “When we get her clean, I’ll give your daughter a shot of nutrient. That’ll help bring her strength up. Chances are she’ll wake on her own once she feels safe again.”
Thann rolled the hipro tube into a tight cylinder, dug into the leaf mold and the earth below it and buried the tube, concentrating on what xe was doing with an intensity that was a measure of xe’s fear. Xe sat staring at the little heap of decaying leaves and dark brown dirt.
Shadith unbuttoned the shirt and slipped it off Isaho.
She, used her belt knife to start the cut, then began ripping the shirt into rags.
The sound of tearing cloth brought the anya’s head up. Xe moved closer, signed, +Why?+
“I thought it would be helpful if the child woke to the smell of soap, not those oils smeared over her.” Shadith wet one of the rags, squeezed out a dollop of soap and rubbed it until it lathered. She handed the rag to Isaho. “I’ll do her arms and shoulders. Better, I think, if you took care of the rest.”
The anya shook out the quilt and helped Shadith ease Isaho onto it. The femlit sighed deeply and moved on her own for the first time, turning onto her side, her thumb going into her mouth; she didn’t suck on it, only left it there for the comfort it gave her.
“Ah,” Shadith said. “That’s good, baby. You’ve got time, lots of time now.” She pulled the quilt over the femlit, tucked it in, then stood, stretched, patted a yawn. “Thann, you think you could stay awake for a couple hours?”
+Watch?+
“Yes. I need to get some sleep. Anything that worries you, wake me. There’s a way we can get out of here fast, but I’d rather not use it in daylight.”
Shadith woke with a collection of aches and a taste in her mouth like somebody died. It was full dark. She’d been asleep for at least eight or nine hours. “Thann? You should have waked me sooner.”
The anya moved from the shadows. Xe shook xe’s head. Xe’s hand moved in signs Shadith had to strain to see. +No one came. And you needed the sleep. I’ll rest when we’re away from here.+
“Aahhhh Splaaaaa, I feel like someone’s been beating me with chains. How’s your daughter?”
+She still sleeps, but it seems to me she’s easier.+
Shadith dug out another two tubes of hipro, held out one of them. “Get that down. If you faint from hunger, you could fall off the skip and take your daughter with you.” She squeezed the paste into her throat, swallowed hastily, grabbed the canteen, and gulped down the last of the water. “Try shaking the femlit while I’m fetching the skip from the tree. It’ll be safer for us all if she doesn’t wake in the middle of the flight and go into a panic. Well, you don’t know what I’m talking about, and how could you? Anyway, see if you can wake her.”
She jumped, caught hold of the lowest limb, pulled herself up. It was an easy climber, that tree, which was the reason she’d chosen it; no point in making trouble for herself if she had to get to the skip fast.
She unhooked the straps that held it in the crotch, put the lifters on hover, and swung her leg across the front saddle. A moment later she was easing it through the mass of thin whippy twigs and oval leaves that grew at the end of the branch. She brought it round, kicked the landing struts down, and let it sink to the ground beside the quilt. She dismounted and began stowing the things she’d scattered about the campsite, rolling up the blankets, tucking the medkit away, removing all traces of her presence. Then she strolled over to the anya and stood looking down at the sleeping child.