There was no sign anyone was about. Which was a relief; she’d improved her control since she ashed the man on the Jang, but she never felt sure of her hold on those capricious and deadly flamelets.
Stepping onto the Bridge was like stepping into an oven. Panting and drenched with sweat, they hurried up and over the high arch. Beneath them the River was a grayish-brown, an unpleasant smell drifting up from the muddy water. There were a few coasters tied up at the Southbank wharves, only one on the north side, at the Temple Landing, east of the Iron Bridge. The fish-boats were gone; they were down in the Koo Bikiyar and wouldn’t be back till tomorrow night. It was a two-day trip now; everything near the mouth of the River was either dead or too poisoned to eat.
The Wild Magic came swirling up as Faan passed the midpoint, went shooting by her in a silver-gray arrow; they slipped between the Approach Pillars on the Northbank and spread into a cloud that shimmered a neutral gray.
Ma’teesee shifted her basket to her other arm, made a face at the fine mist at the end of the Bridge. “I hate going through that stuff, Fa. Makes me feel itchy.”
Faan slapped at her friend’s arm. “Not stuff, Teesee. I told you. People. Wildings.”
“I see stuff, I call it stuff. Hunh.”
“Tsah, Teesee, they’re just telling us there’s no problem that end. No STRIKER bands hanging about.”
Dossan snorted. “Don’t waste y’ breath, Fa.”
Ma’teesee pinched her arm, swung around, and danced backward. “Choo-eee choo-ee, Miugi the
Lump,” she chanted, “dump her, ooh hee he dump her, dump her, dump her, dump her.”
“Shut up, leesee.” Faan put her hand on Dossan’s arm. “You all right, Dossy?”
Dossan glowered at the worn wood mosaic of the Bridge floor, shrugged Faan’s hand off, walked on a few steps. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said finally.
They trotted from the Approach and turned into the nearest wynd, walked quickly along it, a few of the Wildings drifting with Faan, flittering about her like flies. Ailiki swung her head from side to side as she trotted along, now and then baring her teeth and hissing at the hovering specks.
› › ‹ ‹
They rounded the end of a tenement, shied to the far side of the wynd as four looters came through a window.
The leader grinned and started for them.
Faan let fire flutter on the backs of her hands and the skinny, scarred boys went gliding off, vanishing into shadow before they’d gone half a dozen steps.
Ma’teesee clicked her tongue. “Yaras,” she whispered. “I wonder who they got?”
Dossan glanced over her shoulder, shivered. “Every time I see something like that, I think it could as easy be Mum’s place.”-She hugged the two baskets closer against her, hurried ahead of the others.
“Buzzit, Thesee,” Faan muttered. “Likely one of ’em has a paymaster in a STRIKER band.”
“Choo-ee.” Ma’teegne pulled the cloak closer around her and hurried after Dossan. “Fa, you don’t think…”
“Rey said…” Faan trotted past the two girls, slowed, but kept a step ahead of them… everything over here’s chance these days. You don’t know who’s buying what with your life.”
Ma’teesee shifted the basket, rubbed at the red mark on her ann. “That jeggin’ Barrier, what’s Honey Mother thinking… “
“T’s! I don’t know. I don’t even care any more. Wait here a minute.” She ran along the last bend of the wynd and stopped in the shadow of the tenement, frowning along Verakay Lane. “Good. They’re setting out the barrels now and… ah… Mutri Maship and his band, they just this minute come out of Peshalla’s Tavern. Soon’s they get started, we can cut across the lane.”
Dossan gave Faan the basket she’d carried for her, whistled a quick trill, repeated it, waited.
The kitchen door opened a crack; it was dark inside except for the leftover sunset filtering in through the dusty, cramped windows.
A vague figure peered through the crack, whispered hoarsely. “Dossy?” Fasirill, Dossan’s mother. “Diyo, Mum.”
“Shh, Dossy.” The door opened a few grudging inches more. “He’s drunk. Come on in, quick.”
Faan pushed Ma’teesee ahead of her, turned, and waved to Dossan. “See you ‘n an hour, Dossy.”
› › ‹ ‹
Ma’teesee banged on the back door. “Mum” she called, keeping her voice low, “come on, open up.”
Faan’s mouth thinned as she heard the undercurrent of pleading in her friend’s voice; it was the same every time. Though she came on the same day each week, almost the same hour, half the time Ogadeyl forgot her daughter was due; she was fond enough of Ma’teesee, but the girl was simply not important to her.
“Teesee.” Ogadeyl’s high sweet voice floated into the dusk as the door swung inward and the lanterns of the kitchen painted a yellow rectangle on the rutted wynd. She was a pretty woman, small-boned, skin like amber velvet, more charm than Maleesee would ever have.
“Loa, Mum.” Ma’teesee moved quickly inside, turned and waved to Faan before she pulled the door shut. “See y’
‘n a hour.”
Faan heard the music blare out and the singing begin before she reached Verakay Lane; she shook her head, irritated by the bubble people that flitted about her. “Flies around a carcass,” she said to Ailiki; the mahsar reared on her hindlegs, snapped her teeth at a floating mote. Faan laughed, shook her head again. To the Wildings she said: You’d better go back to your sisters, little ones. I appreciate the warding, but I’ll be safer on the Lane if I’m not noticed.Nay nay, they chorused in tiny whining voices, canna canna do. SHE say hanga with you. True true.
Faan sighed. So tuck yourself in under the cloak and keep out of sight. What SHE says, we do, but we don’t have to flaunt it.There were three or four bonfires burning in the middle of the Lane, fueled by wood torn from abandoned houses. On the boardwalk the Taverners and Mulemen had set up planks on barrels as temporary bars. There was a curfew of sorts in the Edge, decreed by the Prophet and enforced by the STRIKER bands. All businesses had to be closed at sundown or they’d be burned out and their owners flogged. The drinksellers and the pimps got around this by moving their stock outside. None of them liked it, but the dark was their time and they weren’t about to let the profits go.
Mama Kubaza and Mutri Maship were out with their musicians and dancers, slave women who doubled as habatrizes between sets, taking their customers into one or another of the burnt-out buildings.
The customers were sailors bored by the tame nightlife in the SouthEdge, slaves and tied-workers from the Maulapam Sirmalas, young Biasharim and Cheoshimsome of whom were in the STRIKER bands by day, drawn to the violence then as they were to the vice after dark. No real crowds, but enough custom to let the Edgers keep existing.
Ailiki gliding behind her, Faan slipped into the Lane, her cloak pulled close about her, the basket beneath it, out of sight. Verakay was dangerous for a girl alone, but the wynds and ways around it were worse; at least there was some light here and people about.
Dressed in gold tissue trousers and vest, Mutri Ma-ship stood on an upended barrel, swaying to make the sequins glitter on his vest and along his arms, singing Kalele style while his drummers tapped and brushed and the daround player’s fingers crabbed across the strings so fast the blurred. OU SING ZUUL, Maship sang, almost shouting to break through the noise of voices and Mama’s Band, though he kept an icing of lyric tone, NA GID A MEE YUN. DU SING ZUUL GIDDA MEEYIN.
Three young women in studded dresses danced in front of the musicians, two of them moving with lazy twists and turns to show off their bodies to the men gathering around. The third was different. She was lost in the music and happy inside her skin, enjoying the play of her muscles, bare feet stamping, kicking high, body wheeling through flips where no part of her touched the rutted dirt; a film of sweat spread over her face and arms and she seemed to glow with pleasure.