She certainly didn’t regret giving up on the Arbiter. He drew his power from the hohekil running from the war. This was their last hope and he controlled access to it. Let the Fence be removed, and there was no more reason for anyone to listen to him. I was really stupid, she thought, I didn’t think it through. Even Cerex knew I couldn’t get anyone actually to use the disruptor, no one important, anyway. Politics, pah! I’m a thief and I fall on my face every time I forget that.
Yseyl came back to her room on the fourth day to find Zot sitting on the bed, her biggest grin blooming as the door opened.
Zot bounced on the mattress, so full of herself she almost took flight as she slid off it and came running toward Yseyl. “Kumba did it,” she said. She caught hold of Yseyl’s hand, tugged her through the door. “He’s this mallit I knew before he got in trouble because he sorta stole things, I mean he could wiggle into places you wouldn’t even think was places…” She broke off as she reached the stairs, clattered down them and stood waiting impatiently in the foyer for Yseyl to join her.
When they were in the street, Zot kept her voice low, but her excitement was such the words seemed to burst from her. “… but this mal who used to buy what he got, he was cheating him, and when he got smart enough to know what was happening, he wouldn’t bring him stuff anymore, and the mal sent a whisper round, and Kumba got booted out from the Hall.” She gulped in a breath, looking round to make sure no one was paying attention to them. “Anyway, we stayed friends and sometimes he banks his stuff with me till he can find a buyer, so I thought about him, but it took a while to find him. I told him what you wanted and why, don’t get mad, he had to know so he’d know what to look for, but I din’t tell him who. Anyway he says there this Pixa ixis or what’s left of it, there’s one old fern and her bond anya, xe’s got joint problems and don’t get around too good, two femlitsone of ’em kinda sick, she’s in the Mercy hospital with the old anya-three young ferns, and two anyas. The bunch of ’em went hohekil and just got here and already they got trouble.”
She tapped Yseyl’s arm, and they turned into a narrow alley between two large hostels. “Over one of the anyas, well, you know anyas are kinda sparse on the ground these days, free anyas anyway, and even the Anyas of Mercy they got to watch themselves. This mal he started hanging round the anya, xe’s living outside the wall in Fishtown, things get kinda wild there sometimes. That’s where we’re going now, I wanna show ’em to you. Vumah vumay, he wouldn’t leave xe alone, kept offering money and other stuff and paying xe no mind when xe say back off. The mal he tried grabbing xe and xe’s fembond she beat the thuv outta him, but he’s kin to one of the Arbiter’s guard, so he goes and gets himself some bigtime help…” She grinned at the guard lolling beside the small archway, tossed him a coin and darted through, then stood dancing from foot to foot, once again waiting for Yseyl.
“… but the rest of the ixis, even the old ’un, the Heka, they land on those fugheads so hard they crying for Main and Baba.” An unpaved path led from the arch toward a clutch of small dark structures built on stilts just beyond the dune line of the bay shore. There were a number of fishboats in various states of repair drawn up on the sand and clutches of old Trials seated near them repairing nets. Other mals and ferns and some children walked slowly along the shore, digging out shellfish and picking up drift the tide had left behind. The path itself was empty for the moment and tot plunged ahead, still riding the high of an excitement that was beginning to bother Yseyl. If the child had set her hopes on coming along…
“Anyway, I figure, first, these ferns and anyas they’re tough and they fight good, second, they jezin sure know they better be somewhere else for a while, third, from what Kumba tells me they really really hate the Fence, he says Luca, she’s the fern stomped that mal, she goes out and stares at the Fence like she wants to stomp it worse’n that mal. They got a tent on the far side of that lot there.” Zot’ pointed.
The Pixa hohekils lived in a series of ragged tents pitched in the woods that grew outside Linojin’s southern wall, a stretch of brushy wasteland separating them from the village.
Yseyl dropped her hand on Zot’s shoulder. “You did good, sounds exactly what I want. Did you set up a meeting?”
“No. I figured you’d want to take a look at them first.”
Yseyl smiled at her. “How did you get to be so smart? Just born that way, I suppose. Never mind.” She dropped to a squat beside the path, patted a tuft of grass beside her. “Sit yourself and tell me the rest of what you found out about them. The more I know, the better the bargain I can make.”
Zot settled on the grass, legs crossed, hands slapping on her knees to emphasize the points she thought were important. “Ah-huh, so. They call themselves the Remnant of Shishim, all their mals are dead, even the little ones. There’s the Heka, her name is Wintshikan, her anya’s called Zell. Zell’s the one in the Mercy hospital with the femlit, she’s called Zaro. They aren’t real sick, but traveling here was hard on ’em. Then there’s a fern called Xaca who mostly takes care of them and the other femlit, her name’s Kanilli. Then there’s two sets of fernanya bonds, they’re kinda wild. There’s Luca and Wann, Wann’s the one the mal tried to go off with, and there’s Nyen and Hidan. The others were settling down well enough, but those four, they don’t really fit in the villages and there’s for sure no place for them inside Linojin.” She took a deep breath. “Kumba picked up a lot of gossip about them, thing is they got here with a good store of coin and a bunch of jomayls, got more coin selling all but a couple of the jomayls, made people curious, you know, ’cause Pixas mostly don’t get here, with much but the clothes on their backs and maybe a gun or two Well, you know, femlits talk, even Pixa femlits, so word gets out. Seems there was this band of robbers on the Peddler’s Trace, they’d done a lot of Pilgrims and peddlers and hohekil coming over Kakotin Pass, but the Remnant did them this time and got all their stuff. Vumah vumay, Luca and the rest of the younger ones, they kinda make folk nervous and when you put the gossip with what happened to the mal, well, like I said, better they find somewhere else to be for a while.” Zot twitched her mouth and wrinkled her nose. “That’s about it.”
“Hm.” Yseyl got to her feet. The child seemed calmer now; time to try easing her away. “Zot, I want you to point out their tent, then stay out of sight. Hush! I’ve got a reason. I don’t want them connecting you with me: Depending on what happens when we talk, I might want you watching them. Understand?”
Zot’s face lost the last of its glow and settled into its usual tough, alleyrat cynicism. “I hear you,” she said and jumped up. “You want me to go ahead now so the others don’t see us together.”
To Yseyl those words read I know what you’re doing, it’s what everybody does, use me, then shove me away like a dirty snotrag. A fist closed round her heart and she knew, whatever it cost, she couldn’t do that to the child. Zot was in this till the Fence came down. If she was hurt or killed, well, better that than another shove down the road Yseyl herself had taken. fish! What’s happening to me? Can’t even make a plan and stick to it. I don’t want this… I can’t deal with… that femlit… under my skin… why did I take her out of that pack… I know well enough… something about her reminded me of me… I just wish she’d let it go… let me go… I’m the worst choice she could have made. Until the Fence is down… what about after? No, I can’t… there’s no… I’ll have to get away from here. Cerex? I could give him that call.
Or Digby? There’s no time to think about it now I don’t want to think about it. God!
She turned her shoulder to Zot and scowled at the scrubby trees, hacked about till they were half dead because of the campers’ need for firewood. The tents were mostly old, patched sails passed on by coasters as part of their inkohel duty to the Yeson, turned a yellowish-gray by salt, sun, and age. Children played in the dirt outside a number of these tents, chals fought or slept by them, old ferns and a very few old mals dozed or worked on this and that, leather crafts or repairing shirts and trousers that had already been repaired so often they had more darns than cloth. The breeze that wandered past was bitter with the stench of urine and hopelessness.