3. The search
Zot grinned and came trotting over when Yseyl beckoned to her. “Missed you,” she said. “The incomers the past week have been mostly real boring.”
Yseyl led Zot around a corner to get away from the ears of the guidepack overseer, handed her half a dozen coppers. “Pay off your whip, hm? Tell her you’ve got a client for the next three, four days.”
“Four days? Akamagali!” She rubbed the elastic tip of her nose, stared at the ground. “You know I got to be back in Hall by an hour after sundown? I stay out all night, I lose my place in the pack.”
“No problem.”
Zot’s grin flashed again, then she whipped around the corner, was back in half a breath. “She wanted to know who and what I was gonna do, I said it was a Pilgrim I took to the Grand Yeson a couple days ago, now she wants to pray at all the shrines.”
“Zot, if I was the kind to worry, I’d fuss myself about how fast and easy you lie.”
Zot giggled. “Vumah vumay, you aren’t, so you won’t.”
“True. Had breakfast?”
“Yeh. They shovel us outta bed round sunup and feed us. Usual slop.”
“So you could eat some more.”
“I can always eat.”
“That teashop’s open?”
“Yeah. And they make graaaand womsi buns, and it’s still early enough they’ll be hot from the oven.”
Yseyl watched Zot devouring the big soft bun, a dot of the white icing on the tip of her nose. A powerful wave of affection for the femlit rolled over her, something she couldn’t remember ever feeling before.
Zot pushed in the last bite, looked up; her cheeks distended like a yeph at nut-fall. “Good stuff,” she said, the words muffled by the bread in her mouth. She gave the mouthful another few chews, washed it down with a gulp of tea, then sat waiting for Yseyl to tell her why she was here.
Yseyl shifted around so she was leaning against the wall, one knee crooked and resting on the booth seat; she lifted the tea bowl, took a sip, cradled it against her chest. “I’ve been up in the mountains for the past week. Anything interesting happen?”
“Funny you should ask. Yeh. There’s a huge hoohaw going on. This femlit, s’posed to come from way over in Khokuhl, least that’s what she says, me, I think she’s got futhus eating her brain, anyway, she says a Messenger of God brought her here with her anya, anya’s kinda sick, xe was in egg and the anyalit that hatched out, it bit her wrong and she almost went off, but the femlit says the Messenger of God saved her anya, anyway something did, but that’s not what’s got ol’ Humble Haf running to talk to her, and the Venerable Whosit the Prophet Speaker and even ol’ Noxabo went squinnying around to get the tale from the jomayl’s teeth and the Anyas of Mercy are lighting candles and just about everybody’s talking like they got the runs of the mouth. No, it’s ’cause the femlit she says the Messenger of God told her the Fence is corning down. Before the moon is new again, she says, the Fence will be gone. All gone.”
“Folks believe her?”
“For sure. Lots of ’em. Well, most of this lot would believe anything just about. Long as someone said God said it anyway. And them that don’t want it to happen, even they gettin’ nervous.”
“That is interesting.”
“You sound like you think it’s maybe true. I know. You saw something out in the mountains, din’t you. Tell me, huh?”
“Zot…”
“No. Tell me, or I’m going back right now.” She pushed along the seat until she was perched at the very edge, her hands flat on the table, that absurd dot of icing falling away as she glared at Yseyl.
Yseyl was briefly angry, then amused. “T’k, young Zot, try that on someone who doesn’t know you. I’ll say this much. I think I met your femlit’s Messenger Not from God.”
Zot’s grin threatened to split her face in half. She slid back along the bench, leaned across the table and whispered, “You gonna do it, aren’t you. You gonna take down the Fence.”
“Think what you want.”
Zot straightened, snatched the last bun and broke off a big piece. “So. What you want me to do?”
“I need some people with guns who know how to use them. Not crazies and not types who’ll use them on me.”
“Yeep, that’s not gonna be easy. How many?”
“Five maybe six.”
“Hm. There’s One-Eye Baluk, he’s got a stable of face-breakers he rents out when one of the merchants wants to collect a debt or a coaster captain is after a sailor who went for a walk and forgot to come back.” She scratched alongside her nose, shook her head. “They’re all dumber’n rocks. ‘Sides, I think Baluk don’t want things to change, and he’d be apt to bop you on the head if he thought you could really do something about the Fence. Nah, you want fighters, you not gonna find them inside Linojin.” She chewed on the bun, her brows drawn down, her eyes focused on air.
Yseyl leaned against the wall feeling peculiar. She’d been alone since Crazy Delelan disappeared. Whenever she was with other people, she didn’t connect with them, only used them. She was using Zot, that was the same, but how she felt about the child, that was different. Like the femlit was hatched from her egg, learned from her hand. It made her queasy, as if she’d picked up some kind of disease.
Another thought struck her suddenly and curdled the tea in her upper stomach. If she messed up Zot’s life, she’d have to do something to make up for that. She couldn’t just walk off and say tough and forget about it as she’d done before. Vumah vumay, she could, but she’d feel like the stuff you scrape off your foot if she did.
Zot straightened, wriggled her nose. “I think maybe hohekil who just got here would be the best place to look. Whyn’t you let me go talk to a couple people I know. How soon you need the shooters?”
Yseyl pushed away from the wall. “Keep it easy, Zot. No hurry.” She slid along the seat, got to her feet. “No hurry at all.”
The next several days while Zot ferreted about, Yseyl did her own looking and listening.
Pilgrims swarmed about Mercy House, waiting to see the femlit. Slipping around the edges of the crowd, Yseyl heard them calling for the Holy Child, heard excited, incoherent chatter about miracles. Fem, mal, or anya, it didn’t matter; tone, sign and fervor were the same.
Each day the excitement built. The Pilgrims walked the streets between the House where they waited for the Anyas to bring out the Child and the wharves where they stared at the golden flickers of the Fence wondering aloud if they were going to be among the blessed who got to see the Fence come down.
In the market the merchants were ambivalent. If the Fence vanished, none of them could figure how it would affect them. Life in Linojin hadn’t changed in generations, and they wanted it to stay like that. Maybe they grumbled about irritations and inconveniences and the idiocies of the Council of Religious who ran the place, but these were familiar irritations. Moving from the familiar to the unknown frightened many of them.
Along the wharves there was a similar mix of feeling with a spicing of wary skepticism and a lot of tentative preparations. The captains of the coastal steamers kept an eye on the Fence and each other and sent their navigators to the Yeson’s library for any information they could scrounge about the world beyond the Fence. These mats and ferns knew what Yseyl had picked up from the hohekil who came into the city to listen to the Child. In the villages along the coast there was impatience, irritation, a pent up need for space that was going to explode soon, whether the Fence came down or not. Zot was wiser than me. I should have thought of the villages before. Hm. Don’t need to worry about getting the word out. Soon as the Fence goes down, the coast is going to look like a futhu nest somebody’s kicked. She contemplated the thought with considerable satisfaction. It made her dealings with the offworlder easier to swallow.