He heard a stealthy movement and dropped to the ground behind the rock, gripping the wireblade.
Einduix raised his fuzzy head above the brush ten meters uphill, a quizzical expression on his wizened features.
Ruiz remained cautious. Was the little man alone? Was he perhaps a decoy for Gejas? No, he thought in mild embarrassment. Gejas would have potted me by now.
“Einduix,” he said. “Come out; it’s all right.”
Einduix shuffled toward him, scratching his head and smiling a wry smile. Ruiz sat back down.
Einduix sat beside him, small thin hands on his knees. He turned his face up to Ruiz and his mouth worked, as though he were chewing a mouthful of pebbles. Eventually his mouth opened, and he spoke. “Gunderd?” he asked in a voice squeaking with disuse.
Ruiz was a little surprised, but the cook’s concern was transparently genuine. “Dead,” he said. “He died to give me a chance. I’m sorry.”
Einduix’s face fell, but he didn’t seem surprised.
“I wish you could tell me what’s been happening,” Ruiz said.
Einduix cleared his throat at some length, then spat decisively. “I can tell little,” he said. His accent was archaic, but he spoke the pangalac trade language understandably.
Ruiz was quite startled. “You speak?”
Einduix frowned at Ruiz, as at a willfully slow child. “So it would seem.”
“Then why did you pretend…?”
Einduix made a curious flapping gesture with his hands, as if waving away a bad scent emanating from Ruiz. “Do you see no advantage in such a subterfuge?”
Never had Ruiz expected such a conversation, there on the dead hillside. “I guess I do, but was it worth the… lack of companionship?”
Again Einduix made his disrespectful gesture. “What lack? Need you jabber with your friends to know their love? Gunderd did not.” Einduix smiled painfully. “His jibes? Only affection, which he gave me in his own manner. True, as a chef I possessed little talent, but never was I seasick, so my food — such as it was — appeared with regularity. No more important quality is there, at sea.”
This long speech had apparently exhausted the little man, because now he hunched down into his shipsuit like a skinny orange turtle.
“I see,” said Ruiz. “Why are you speaking now?”
Einduix curled his wrinkled lip. “I am past all ruses.”
Ruiz felt a touch of disorientation. He shook his head violently and attempted to return to the business at hand. “Have you seen the tongue Gejas? Or anyone else?”
“No one. And will the hetman soon be here, to bite out our hearts?” Einduix seemed more annoyed than terrified by the possibility; he gave Ruiz an odd wry smile.
“I don’t think so,” said Ruiz. “I killed her some hours ago.”
A wide yellow-toothed grin lit the tiny face. “Ah? I am delighted to hear this. My deadliest enemy always has been Roderigo — a pestilence on them and may their years be numbered. Because our captors were Roderigo, I slept the sleep like death, so as to deprive them of my torment.” He cocked his head to the side, looking like a clever curious monkey. “But then… who did I see in the hetman’s armor? Your love?”
“My love,” Ruiz said sadly.
“A fine ruse,” said the cook, who now seemed a great deal friendlier. “It worked well?”
“To a point.”
“Ah,” said Einduix in a tone of deep commiseration. “And your love?”
“Gone now, where I cannot follow,” said Ruiz, who suddenly wanted to cry.
“I am sorry, truly.” Einduix patted his shoulder, his hand as weightless as a little bird.
The two of them sat together in a mournful silence that Ruiz somehow took comfort in.
It was Einduix who finally turned and said, “So what will you do, now?”
Ruiz shrugged. “I’d like to live a while longer. I expect that to keep me pretty busy. How about you?”
Einduix pursed his mouth judiciously. “I have no particular plans.” Then the little man looked out over the ruined slopes, lit kindly by the golden morning light. “It is enough that I have come home. To the island’s scent my body woke.”
Ruiz looked at Einduix, puzzled. Then the image of Somnire came into his mind, with his odd yellow skin, his black eyes, his puffs of fuzzy hair. What might a long hard lifetime on the sea do to a person of Somnire’s race? Might it not burn his skin orange, bleach the color from his hair, give him a thousand wrinkles?
“You’re a stackperson,” Ruiz said, astonished that he had taken so long to make the connection.
Einduix’s eyes narrowed to slits and he jumped up. “Where did you hear that term, barbarian?”
“From Somnire, in the virtual.”
The cook’s eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. “Somnire? You spoke to him?”
“Yes,” said Ruiz. “He gave me a job to do, but I don’t know how I can do it now.”
“Somnire,” said Einduix, and now tears trickled down his small worn face. “Somnire, so glorious once. How fares he in his dream?”
“Well, I think,” said Ruiz. Then he thought of Leel. “Though he must sometimes make ugly decisions.”
Einduix flapped his hands. “What being does not? Somnire… to think you bespoke Somnire last night. And the city? Beautiful still?”
“It was,” said Ruiz. He felt a sudden urge to give the little man a gift of some sort. “Somnire took me flying above the city, on a fine day. He showed me the white palaces, the shady courtyards. The sarim flew the air. Music rose up from the fountains and perfume from the flowers.”
Einduix sat heavily and lowered his face into his hands. Ruiz began to wonder if perhaps he had been cruel.
But finally Einduix looked up, and his face showed some warm transformation. “You have been gracious to me, Ruiz Aw. And this task?”
“I don’t know how I can do it now. It requires me to go to SeaStack.” Ruiz was surprised by his own words. When had he decided he must see to the purging of the enclave alone?
Einduix stood and threw back his narrow shoulders. “Come with me. Friends will guide you by secret ways to a place of leaving.”
Ruiz smiled. “Lead on, then.” He stood abruptly and winced.
“You are injured? Here.” Einduix took the limpet from his pocket. “See? I am useful already.”
Gejas limped up the trail in the noon sunlight. The limpet had restored his vitality sufficiently that he could go in search of The Yellowleaf. He took no precautions against ambush. If Castle Delt had landed a sweep team, he would soon be dead no matter how carefully he hid, and as for Ruiz Aw, he was sure the slayer had left the island in the submarine. May you suffer a long time in Corean Heiclaro’s hands, Ruiz Aw, he wished. The thought gave him little pleasure; he would not witness the slayer’s expiation, and no matter how passionate Corean’s cruelty might be, her expertise would fall far short of Roderigo’s.
He reached the campsite in the hills, and paused to rest for a bit. He settled on a rock and extended his throbbing leg carefully. The limpet still covered the torn flesh; he could feel the peculiar itchy pain of accelerated healing.
His eye fell on the octagon of crushed grass where The Yellowleaf’s tent had been. Was it only the night before that the mad slayer had swaggered into The Yellowleaf’s tent and made his outrageous demands? Gejas shook his head wearily. Sook had turned for a few hours, and his life had torn. Had gone with The Yellowleaf, away.
She was dead, she was dead. He accepted the fact, though he didn’t understand how such a magnificently vital being could have disappeared so suddenly from the universe. The stars had not trembled in their courses, the sky had not split open.