Suddenly everything was quiet, everything around her and in her mind. The stone wall was cool against her cheek. She pushed herself away from it and shakily stood without support. Gemmi was gone.
Mischa knew that if she went back to Center now she might be forced to return as soon as her sister was able to call, but she would not stay and wait to be summoned like a slave. For a short time, at least, while her sister was unconscious, no one in the world had any hold over her.
Jan Hikaru's Journaclass="underline"
Ah, I don't understand. Mischa came, and now she's gone, but I don't know where or why, or even if she's coming back. When she did not return for her lesson, Subtwo called me in, asking where she was, and I gave him some kind of incomprehensible babble about emergencies. I'm worried about her, but I don't even know where to look for her. How can I help if I don't know what's wrong? I thought we had built up some trust... maybe her troubles require more than
trust to solve.
I had to get out of Stone Palace, beyond the arc, the bars, the beggars. Only on top of the hills can one get even a spurious feeling of spaciousness; otherwise, anywhere in Center is like being in a cell.
Late in the morning, Mischa reached the floor of Center and started along the Circle. Gemmi had not called her again.
The cries of hawkers and drunks and parties and beggars closed in around her as she entered the arc. It was like walking through an invisible morass. A twisted child crawled toward her and caught at the back of her jacket. She walked faster. It clutched at her ankle. It mewled at her, and she broke into a run. She could not look at it, even with the sneer with which her peer group usually regarded beggars. Especially with the sneer. She was afraid to look at it, afraid of new mutilations on familiar bodies, afraid of blanked-out memories, afraid of the dull resignation in all the eyes.
She had always forced herself to do the things she thought she feared, but she did not force herself to look at the beggar. She fled it, running faster through the arc until her breath exploded in her throat with every inhalation. She pushed herself between people who grew angry and would have beaten her if they could have caught her. Tears spilled down her cheeks and half-blinded her, but still she ran. The deep sand seemed put there purposely to slow her down. Then, in front of the Palace, ranks on ranks of the beggars confronted her. She stumbled to a stop, and they turned to stare at her. She looked back and forth quickly, almost frantically searching for an alternate route that did not exist. A hand with only the first joints of fingers pawed at her; she shied like one of the caravannaires' ponies. "Get away—" They came closer, smiling when she looked away. They had two weapons in their trade: guilt and fear. Either was effective. The hunched, ancient children advanced on her; they knew her: the aloof young thief with never a coin nor a sympathetic word, only arrogance. They saw her scared; they smiled, baring rotten teeth. One of them laughed. Its voice was a high stringed instrument, badly bowed. Mischa backed away, until a rough wall barred her, the ramp above just too high to reach. She pressed her hands against the stone. The beggars moved closer to her, seething like a tide of rats. Mischa was frightened, but not of the physical danger they represented. She tried not to look at their faces. One moved toward her from the edge of the semicircle. She slammed him on the chin with the heel of her hand. Her hand sank into boneless flesh. Next to the wall, she leaped over him; she pushed past another and jumped for the edge of the helix-ramp. She pulled herself by her fingernails and began to
climb, headlong.
Mischa left the door ajar behind her. The curtain of Chris's niche was torn a third of the way across the top and no lights showed beyond the gap. But Chris was there, she knew he was there: she stood very still and finally heard his shallow breathing, and felt him, almost silent in his mind. She pushed the curtain aside and saw him lying in his bed. She moved, and light from the doorway touched his hair. His eyes, half-closed, glinted beneath his long eyelashes.
"Chris?"
Some time later, he answered. "Yeah?"
"Can I stay here for a little while?"
Again a pause. Chris pushed himself up on his elbow, barely raising his shoulders and head. His bones were prominent. "Mischa?"
"Yes."
"Sure."
She slipped past the curtains. He squinted against the brief, bright illumination, gone before his translucent hand could cut the glare. Mischa glanced at the drab cloths hiding the far wall, relieved that anything on it was obscured.
"Hey," Chris said. "What's wrong?"
She sat on the floor next to him. "I just went home."
He touched her hand with fingers like a bat's wing, narrow and frail. "Can I help?"
She shook her head. He was helping just by being there and being alive; he was helping because though his eyes were bloodshot and the pale skin below them shadowed with exhaustion, his gaze did not wander.
"What else?"
Mischa had somehow almost forgotten how calming and pleasant Chris's voice was when he was not whining. He sounded concerned, and very tired.
"He sold the kids."
Chris tightened his hand on hers, slowly. "Ah."
"We—" She stopped. She could not put any of the blame for this on him. "I never did anything for them. I should have taken them—"
"He would have made Gemmi make you bring them back."
"I could have tried. I couldn't with Gemmi, I couldn't stand her so close
all the time, but maybe with them. like you did with me."
Chris looked away. "That was different, between you and me.it wasn't the same at all."
"Why not?" She said it dully, not for an answer, because she did not think there was an answer.
Chris shrugged without speaking, still staring at the covered wall. After a while he turned his head and looked at her and pushed himself half up. "Misch. Misch, you know if he really wanted to do it, there's nothing either of us could have done." His voice was gentle.
"Nothing."
He reached up, lifting a great burden, and touched the drying tears on her cheek. She wiped them on her sleeve, quickly, ashamed. Chris moved over. "Come and sleep."
Gratefully, she slid under the thin blanket beside him. Chris did not tell her that everything would be all right, and for that she was grateful too. He took her in his arms and held her; in her exhaustion she could imagine him to be the dependable and defiant person he had been when both of them were younger. Huddled against him, she felt him smooth the tangled hair back from her forehead with a gentle hand that trembled.
Chris seemed not to have moved at all when Mischa woke up, nor, she thought, had he slept. But he had felt her waking; he was not shutting out the world.
"How are you?"
"Better," Mischa said. "Okay." She stretched, hands over her head, fists clenched. She sat up and looked around Chris's dim room. It was almost empty. The drab cloths hung across his work-wall like a shroud. She got up and wandered through the room; she was hungry, but there was no food.
"Chris, I'm leaving."
He raised his eyebrows in a question; they did not ordinarily explain themselves to each other.
"I'm leaving Center, I mean. The Palace has new people in it. I'm leaving with them in the spring."