Faan stopped to watch her, smiling for the first time since she crossed the Bridge. Then a Cheoshim youth more than half drunk bumped into her, grabbed at her. Ailiki hissed a warning, raked her teeth along his leg, slicing through cloth into muscle. Faan hurried on, keeping close to the buildings, flitting from shadow to shadow, reminded that this was no longer her home-place.
When she reached Bamampah the Woodman’s abandoned compound, she ran round the back, touched the gate and plunged in as soon as it flew open, Ailiki trotting beside her, tail high, a satisfied grin on her small flat face.
Reyna, Dawa and several other Salagaum had moved into the Woodhouse when Bamampah packed up his lathes and benches and everything else he could stuff in handcarts and trundled his household and business across the Wood Bridge into SouthEdge. Woodhouse was a big place with a tall brick wall around it and heavy gates of ironbound hapuawood, reasonably safe from the Prophet’s torchmen and from Shindate persecution, though the Shinda Prefecture was too weak and disrupted these days to make a serious nuisance of itself.
During the day this back yard was a busy place. Using the Salagaum as his labor force, Reyna ran an infirmary from the larder next the kitchen, got sacks of-food to Edge families and anyone else who needed it, and-through a web of abosoa kassos as poor as their neighbors-issued forged silver coins to buy the little water that came down the aqueducts into cisterns of;the Shinda Prefecture.
Faan hauled the heavy gate shut again and slapped her hand against the wood, willing the bars into place. She didn’t wait to see them chunk home, but moved quickly past the supply sheds to the kitchen door.
Thammir and Raxzin were sitting at the kitchen table sharing a pot of tea and waiting for the wash water to boil-wash water because Faan could see jugs standing beside the sink with stained cloths draped over the wide mouths. Like the rest of the Edge, Woodhouse Salagaum used River water for everything but drinking and like them strained and boiled it first; with all the aban-
doned and half-charred houses about, firewood was cheaper than good water.
Thammir looked up, grinned. He was a little Salagaum with hair like copper fuzz and the yellow eyes of a cat; here in the house he wore Salagaum dress again, a long white robe with a wide red leather belt cinched tight about a narrow waist. The apron he had ready for the washing up was bunched on the table beside his cup. “How’s it goin, Fa?” His voice was a basso rumble, so deep it sounded as if he were growling.
Faan waggled her hand at him. “So so,” she said. “Reyna in?” Ailiki trotted off, sniffing at sacks and cupboards, rearing up to peer into the water crock.
“Emergency came up. One of Mama Kubaza’s women, a kid really, she ran into a pain freak.”
“Already? They’re just getting set up out there.”
“Didn’t take this shrat long to get going.”
• Raxzin snorted. He was Fundarim like Rey, with a thin bony face and eyebrows like inverted vees, his long black hair gathered in a tail tied with a leather thong. “You always leave everything out, Thamm. Fa, this kid, her name’s Zembee, she went to see her Mum on the sly, Mum being a slave in one of the Sirmalas, and she was coming back to Mama’s House when this shrat jumped her and hauled her off into one of the Greens, though you can’t call it green, the way things are these days, I hear they cut off Fountain water even to the Biasharim. Well, this shrat wouldda killed her but this STRIKER band comes stomping by. As usual, they don’t know what’s happening, they so into that poop they do, but the shrat he don’t know that and he takes off. Zembee’s tough, she gets on her feet and buzzits back to Mama. Tore up pretty good, from what the boy said when he came for Rey, but not gonna die. Want a cup while you waiting?” He lifted his, raised a peaky brow.
“Ahsan, Rax, not now.” Faan scratched at her arm, frowned at the door into the front of the house. “About how long, do you think?”
Thammir rubbed at his nose. “‘Bout an hour ago he left. Shouldn’t be long. You said Mama Kubaza was out on the lane?”
“Diyo.”
“Then he’s probably on his way back now.” He nodded at the basket. “What you got good?”
Faan set the basket on the table. “Fresh greens and some medicums Tai sent along.” She settled on a stool. “So what else has been happening?”
› › ‹ ‹
Reyna dropped his cloak and his bag of medicines, hugged Faan vigorously, then pushed her back and stood with his hands on her shoulders, smiling down at her. “You look better.” He drew the tip of his forefinger in a shallow curve under her eye. “No black bags.”
“SHE’s been leaving me alone. It’s like SHE’s waiting for something.” She walked beside him, snuggled up against him, his arm around her shoulders as he moved from the entry toward the stairs Ailiki came from shadows and glided at her heels.
He stopped by the newel post. “Go on to the sitting room, honey. I need to change my clothes and wash up.”
Dressed in a crisp white Salagaum robe, his hair brushed and wound into a loose knot atop his head, Reyna looked ten years younger. He smiled at Faan, nodded to Dawa and the other Salagaum sitting round the single lamp, repairing hems, darning holes, working over their old clothing. Cloth was almost as expensive as water these days. He dropped into a chair, reached down to touch Faan’s head as she settled on the floor beside his knees.
Furrah set his work down. “How is she?”
“I’ve seen rough, we all have. Nothing so ugly.” Reyna shivered, rubbed his thumbs across his fingertips. “He did a job on her face, especially her mouth and nose. I sewed the wounds up, but she’ll have scars.” He shook his head. “She gets a look in a mirror, maybe she’ll wish he finished it. Cut her on the breasts and legs. She says he was going to gut her, then rape her again. It got him excited, telling her all that, where the cuts were going and how deep. A Biashar, she said. Mama’s putting the word out, we’ll find him.”
Goandee touched a scar slanting past the corner of his mouth. “He get her eyes?”
“Left them alone so she could watch him strut. He thought he cut her throat when the STRIKER band came by, but he was in a hurry and she got her arm in the way and he didn’t stop to make sure.”
Faan twisted around and looked up. “Rey, you remember the time I nearly sliced my thumb off?” She held up her hand, fingers spread, turned it slowly in the yellow lamplight to show them there was no scar anywhere. “When she’s well enough to walk, take her to the Sibyl.”
“Fa, what Sibyl’d do for you… “
“Make it a visiting night and I’ll go with you.” Faan stroked her fingers down the side of her face, shivered when she thought of the girl not that much older than her. “We can’t let the jeggers win all the time.”
Silence stretched out for several minutes. Furrah went back to embroidering with tiny precise stitches over a tear in a white shirt. Dawa smiled at Faan, took up another pair of trousers, and began darning a hole in one of the knees. Reyna lay back in the stuffed chair, his eyes half-closed, his face weary. Faan leaned against his legs, quietly happy; it was almost like being in the old Beehouse again, on one of the nights when Reyna and the others stayed home and rested. If she had a choice, this was where she’d live. She closed her eyes, sighed. Choice? Tsah! the way she was now, she killed people she stayed around.
Goandee ran his finger around the cuff he’d been mending, snipped the thread loose and began folding the trousers. “Went by Ladroa-vivi this morning. Chez’s place. He’s down with fever. Saw three dead rats in the wynd.”
Reyna opened his eyes a crack, made a face. “K’lann! It just needs that. There’s already cholera about.” He pulled his hand across his face. “We’d better organize flea baths and get ready to dunk the laggard. Druggers don’t give a rat’s ass what happens to them, they’ll spread plague like fire.”