Mischa knew everyone who lived down here: as many different types as individuals. A few had had a life and lost it. Some had never had a chance, and many simply did not care. She spoke to those who noticed her. They grew angry at pity, so she never let it show; there was no point in hating them; and she could not feel superior. They were much too close to her.
Gemmi had forgotten her fear almost as soon as Mischa turned her thoughts away from death. The child gurgled with excitement and pleasure as Mischa came nearer, until the voice of her mind mingled with audible, garbled words. Mischa pushed at the clinging sour fog of her, but Gemmi just bounced back and laughed. Their uncle knew the signs of Mischa's approach.
"Hurry up."
The door was left ajar for her to enter; she pushed aside the new, plush curtain beyond it. In a cave that always before had been dim, the light was dazzling. Her parents had not cared much about light, for they had been content in their own separate mind-worlds, growing more and more remote as the years passed, until one day Gemmi had begun to cry, so loudly and so desperately that both Mischa and Chris were drawn to her, to comfort her, to quiet her, somehow to make her stop screaming directly into their brains. She had reason enough: her parents were dead, and that must have terrified her, though the two dead faces wore expressions of peace. Mischa sometimes thought they had not so much died as pressed their existence to its logical extreme. She had seen so little of them in their life: she did not know what caused either's near-oblivion to reality. It could have been madness, withdrawal, apathy, or some capacity like Gemmi's for living in the minds of others. They had wandered about, seldom speaking, satisfying their biological urges, eating, sleeping, coming together for sex, neither bothering to suppress fertility. They and their children were cared for indifferently by the children's crippled uncle, supported first by Chris, then by Mischa.
Mischa's uncle: son of her father's father, of her mother's mother, half-brother to both Mischa's parents, who had not been related at all. A double half-uncle. He had never been happy, never been satisfied with subsistence rations. Since learning of Gemmi's power, his demands had increased, and lately accelerated. Now Mischa knew what he wanted the extra money for.
Bedecked in the style of Stone Palace, the old cave held soft cushions, tapestries, many lights. Delicacies, fruit grown outside, imported and expensive, filled a bowl on a low table. A companion lounged near the back of the single chamber, dozing or watching: one of the smooth, beautiful, sexless ones her uncle favored, but this one was classes higher than Mischa was accustomed to seeing down here. Classes higher, classes more expensive. Mischa knew the value of what she had stolen: not this
much.
Her uncle lay on a wide couch, dressed in a long, full robe that hid his crippled legs. In bizarre semblance of happy paternity, he held Gemmi cuddled in his lap. She nestled against him, content with any scrap of human contact. She was younger than Mischa but bigger, and beginning to mature. She wore only a shirt; no one liked the job of keeping her clean. The shirt had lost all its buttons, and its gaping revealed her breasts. The heavy chain on her ankle still secured her to the stone wall.
Mischa stood frowning, overwhelmed by the aura of wrongness. Only Gemmi, with her murmurs, broke the silence. The other children, the younger ones, were gone.
"Say hello to Mischa, Gemmi." He smiled. His teeth showed, in the very center of his mouth, as though he were sneering.
Gemmi tumbled over Mischa like a sandfall, but Mischa took the assault without flinching. "Where are the kids?"
"Gone."
"Where?"
"Where do you think?"
The blood drained from her face. She had expected him to send them out to steal for him when they were old enough, but she had never believed, never even considered, that he would use them worse than that. Her voice was calm and low with rage. "You sold them."
"They're mine."
"They're not. You had no right."
He laughed, and the harsh sound echoed around them. "Did you want them?" Gemmi cringed against his warmth, not realizing it was he whom she feared.
"But why?"
He gestured around him, and she could feel his pent-up envy and hatred. "For this. For this, instead of crying brats and boredom and stink and pain."
"You could have—"
"Depended on their gratitude?" He laughed, bitter and ugly. "They didn't have your talent." He was enjoying his hold on her. "Gemmi couldn't touch them. I'd never have got a thing."
Mischa's eyes burned with tears of anger and guilt that she willed back. "Where did you send them?"
"Where you're going."
"You try and make me."
"You got caught."
"So what?" Her voice broke, high, angry.
"You can't do anything for me when you're in trouble."
"I wasn't flogged for stealing."
He laughed again. "Sure." A long drawl of disbelief. "That's a lot of scars for nothing." He held Gemmi closer, fondling her absently, in a parody of love. "Take off your shirt."
"No."
He started, flushing, then relaxed and smiled. Contentment did not fit easily on his face. "You might not be worth much. They like to start you clean."
Mischa caught her breath involuntarily, for he had just told her, by implication, that her two small brothers and her baby sister had been sold as beggars, to be mutilated at some owner's whim and made into performing animals.
"When?" She backed toward the door, ready to turn and run, do something, anything.
"Long enough," he said. "They wouldn't even recognize you now. All they know is that they have to beg."
Mischa touched her knife.
"Oh, stop it," he said. "They didn't mean anything to you. Stop pretending they did."
"That's a lie." But it was true she had never tried to take them and raise them as Chris had taken her. None had really been a person to her: though more aware than Gemmi, they had all been of severely limited intelligence. Mischa and Chris had kept them adequately fed, adequately clothed, but now Mischa knew she had had one more responsibility that would never be discharged, because it was too late. They had deserved a chance to have their own lives.
Her uncle thought of pain, and of delight in her humiliation. Gemmi broadcast it. Mischa forced the intrusion away, but her resistance only hurt the little girl, and Gemmi cried through the incomprehensible war. "Leave her alone," Mischa said. Her mind crawled and spun. "I won't do it."
"I have an investment in you," he said. "And I think I should get it back."
Mischa pulled the bag and the small flat box from inside her jacket. She threw the bag at his feet. "That's from Chris." The box followed. "And that's from me. See if you still think we can do better kinking with some chuckie or crawling in the dirt."
He picked up the bag first, hefting it. "Maybe I don't need to call him back after all," he said. "But I heard he's sick."
"He's all right," Mischa lied.
He tossed the jewels aside. "He's harder to call than you are. But I will call him if he doesn't do better next time." Leaning forward, reaching around Gemmi, he picked up the box, slid his fingers across the smoothly pebbled top, and loosed the delicate clasp. Open, the box caught the light in its interior and flung it, even brighter, against the new tapestries. The companion sat languidly up, but even such a small reaction was a serious breach of pose, revealing covetousness. Through her tears, Gemmi saw the reflections and reached for them. The eyes scattered in the sand. Her uncle shoved her off his lap and slapped her. Mischa felt the wrench of muscles and the clacking pain of teeth hitting together; she tasted the salt of blood. She caught herself against the wall. Gemmi lay on the ground, writhing feebly with half-formed crawling motions. Beside her, similarly, their uncle scrabbled in the sand, picking up the shiny bits, and his companion, swaying, moved to help. Mischa stumbled away from the cave. She had not gotten very far when he realized she was gone. Gemmi began to scream. Her insane and stupid mind swirled down around Mischa, suffocating her. She could feel Gemmi being beaten. "Mischa!" The only name she knew. Mischa turned back. One final blow smashed against her temple, and darkness followed the pain.