A Gathering Of Stones

10

Brann rubbed her eyes and sipped at the near boiling tea that Carup had brought to her as soon as she heard her moving around. She yawned and tried to clear the clots out of her head.

Hands clapped outside the curtain. Brann’s hand jerked and she nearly spilled tea down her front. She swore under her breath, brushed some drops off her trousers. “Yes, Carup, what is it?”

“Subbau Kamin brought fresh bread this morning, she says her grandson is full of devils and laughter and her son is over the moon about the change, she blesses you and hopes you will accept this small gift. Piara Sansa came with her and brought sausages. Would you like me to bring you some of this? The bread smells wonderful.”

“Yes, yes, but take some for yourself, hmm?”

“I will, thank you, Jantria.”

Brann finished her breakfast and stretched out on the bed, her fingers laced behind her head. She stared up at the ceiling, traced the cracks and played games with the stains, but found no answer anywhere. She was still tired, her energy badly depleted. And her head seemed to have shut down completely. She closed her eyes.

The sounds of the Kuna trickled in, women gossiping as they did the wash at the aqueduct overflow across the alley, slap-slapping the clothing against the washboards, laughing, scolding their children, the children running in slap-and-kick games, screaming, laughing, bawling, creating a cacophony thick enough to slice like sausage. Dogs barking, howling, whining and growling in sudden fights that broke off as suddenly when someone threw a brick at them or tossed water over them. Several streets off, some men were fighting, she couldn’t tell how many, others were gathered around them yelling encouragement or curses, making wagers on the outcome. Voices everywhere, the Kuna was stiff with noise, wall to wall, every day, all day, late into the night. There were always people in the alleys, going and coming from the lodgings, thieves coming back from their nightwork, pimps with their strings of whores, gamblers inside and out, running their endless games. To say nothing of the people who couldn’t afford even the meager rents and were living on the street. And the caudhar’s baddicks sniffing out those pimps who didn’t pay their bribes, running down thieves suspected of dipping their fingers into high purses, pride having outmatched sense, or just looking out for healthy youths who’d make good quarry in the Isun chases. Though she despised these hunters of men, they smelled like rotten fish to her, she left them alone when they were working the alleys; if one was found dead, the whole quarter would pay.

She pulled her mind back from that morass and tried to concentrate on her current problem. I can’t spend all this time on her. Yaril means a lot more than she does; I don’t even like her all that much. What in Forty Mortal Hells am I going to do with her? She sighed. Hmm. It’s been ten years since she left home, that’s a long time… I wonder how old her father was then… maybe he’s dead. Would that make a difference? Sounds to me like those brothers were spoiled rotten and might be worse than the old man. What did she say the family name was? Ah! Ash-Kalap. I need mother’s name, father’s name, eldest brother’s name. All right. Let’s get at it. She sat up, swung her legs over the edge of the bed and scowled at nothing. She moved her shoulders, opened and closed her hands, clenched and unclenched her toes, working the muscles of her arms and legs. “Carup,” she called. “Come in here. I need to talk to you.”

Two days later.

Night. Late.

The rain had stopped for a while, but the alleys were noisome sewers still.

Brann was picking her way across the mud, thankful her days in the Kuna Coru had deadened her nose so she couldn’t smell the fumes rising from that muck. A large nighthawk swooped low and went climbing into the darkness.

*Hunting.* Jaril’s mindvoice was filled with accusation and annoyance. *You know you shouldn’t go out when I’m not there for backup.*

*Go home, Jay, and wait for me. I don’t intend to argue this up to my ankles in mud in the middle of a street.*

Trailing disapproval like a tailplume, the hawk shot ahead.

Brann shook her head. Like I’m his child. She frowned as she reached the hovel and sloshed around to the kitchen door. Jaril was sitting at the kitchen table, the wine jar at his elbow, along with two glasses. He’d lit the lamp.

She kicked off her sandals, stepped out of her trousers and took the kettle from the sandbed. She touched it; there was still a little heat left. She poured the lukewarm water into a pan, put her feet in it and sighed with pleasure. “You can give me a glass, if you feel like it, Jay.”

He was still temperish and glared at her. “You don’t deserve I should, going out like that, you could have been killed.” He splashed some wine in the glass and pushed it across to her. “You could have been KILLED. I can’t get Yaro without you.” Radiating misery, anger, fear, he gulped at his own wine. “I might as well go knock on the smiglar’s door and say here I am, eat me.”

Brann swished her feet in the water, mud swirling off them. “I was careful, Jay. But I needed to go.”

“You needed to go.” Despair and disgust sharpened his voice. “You didn’t need anything, you got filled up the night before I left.”

“All right, have it your way. I went because I wanted to. Does that satisfy you?”

“Satisfy! Bramble, what’s got into you? It’s like you’re twelve, not two hundred plus.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. What’d you find out?”

He shook his head at her. “Bramble… All right, all right, here it is. You had the right hunch. The father is dead. Stroke. Five years ago.” He relaxed as the wine was absorbed into his substance, his eyes dropped and his face softened. “The oldest brother took over the farm, he’s married, two wives, I counted five children. It’s a big house for that size farm, it’s got packed dirt walls, two stories, flat-tile roof. It’s built inside a ten-foot wall, packed earth with a canted the top. There’s a garden of sorts, the mother keeps it in order. She’s still alive, looks a hundred and two, but probably isn’t more than sixty, sixty-five. Tough old femme, like one of those ancient olive trees that just gets stronger as it gets older. One of her daughters is living with her in a two room… I suppose you’d call it an apartment, built into a corner of the wall. The other daughters are married to farmers in the area, mostly second wives. The younger brothers seem to ‘ve moved out; no sign of them at the farm or in town. After the father died, I expect the heir cut off supplies. It’s a small farm, it can’t really afford to support five grown men with a taste for beerbusts. I did some nosing about. Your Carup was exaggerating a trifle. Even if her father were still alive, she would have her mother’s protection, should her mother care to give it. Once a woman who’s had children makes it past fifty, all bets are off. She’s got whatever freedom she wants; the rules don’t apply to her any more. She can tell her old man to take a flying leap and get away with it. I expect that’s how she kept the daughter home. If she wanted to shelter Camp, no one could stop her. Your Camp knows all that and she knows how old her mother is. Do you think she just forgot to tell you? I don’t. You can shove her in a coach and send her home with a clear conscience.”

Brann took a towel from the table, set her foot on her knee and began wiping it dry. “That is… marvelous, Jay. One incubus off my shoulders.” She yawned. “Ahh, I’m tired.”

“Get rid of her, we can’t waste more time on her. Bramble, Yaril keeps… trying to wake, I can feel it. She’s wearing herself out. I can’t really touch her, it’s like seeing her in a dream. A nightmare. I can’t talk to her, let her know we’re here. She won’t rest. She’s wasting herself. I’m afraid she thinks I was caught too. I said a year. I think we’ve got less than half that.”

“Slya Bless.” She traded feet, rubbed hard at her sole, scouring off dead skin and the last of the mud stains. “I used to think Camp was so passive she wouldn’t try to get away if there was an open door in front of her, I used to think she’d stand there crying and let herself get eaten.” She laughed, an unhappy sound. “I wouldn’t mind having a little of that passivity now; I get the feeling she’s set her teeth and she’s not going to be pried off. Never mind, I’ll manage somehow.” She looked at the filthy towel. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this. Hmp, I won’t try. There’s something I thought about last night, nearly forgot it when you came ramping at me. This is a trap, right?”

“Right. So?”

“The Chuttar’s been going about her business as if she doesn’t give a counterfeit kaut whether we show up or not. Why? What does it mean? Maybe she knows all about us and is just waiting for us to make the first move. Why she’d do that, I don’t know, I haven’t the least notion why any of this is happening. What about it, Jay? Am I right? Are they just sitting there? Have you seen any sign of agitation? Well?”

“1 hear you, Bramble. I think… a memory search… let me…” He looked at the inch of wine left in the glass, pushed it away, pushed his chair back and stood. Abruptly he shifted form and was a sphere of glimmering gold light that rose and floated over the table.

Brann watched as he drifted with the wandering drafts. She emptied her own glass, looked at the jar and decided she’d had enough for the moment. She glanced at Jarilsphere again, then picked up her trousers and inspected the mud drying on the folds and the ends of the drawstrings that tied about the ankles. She reached for the towel and started to scrub at the scummy cloth.

The lightsphere quivered, came drifting back. Jaril changed again and dropped into his chair. “Memory says the smiglar aren’t concerned about anything. They haven’t upgraded security, I mean there are no new guards human or otherwise. And they don’t leave the place except for the Chuttar and all she does is visit her clients. No one’s out looking us, at least no one connected with that doulahar.”

Brann brushed mud off a fold of cloth. “I haven’t seen any unusual interest in us. A couple baddicks hang around, but that’s just the caudhar making sure we don’t short him on his rakeoff.” She held up the trousers, scowled at the stench from the muck that impregnated the cloth. “Tchah!” She threw the trousers to the floor, dropped the towel on them. “Jay…”

“Yaro is in there.”

“You said it was like a dream.”

“Yaro is in there.”

“All right, you’re the one that knows. How do we neuter them? Can we?”

Jaril frowned, shook his head. “Back home, we didn’t fight them, we just ate them. Stuvtiggors, I mean. The stuv weren’t as… well, smart as this bunch and they didn’t play round with urn magic; these smiglar stink of it. So I don’t know. Except, maybe you should try Maksi again.”

Brann nodded. She left, came back with a call-me cupped in her palm. She dropped it on the floor, knelt beside it and hammered it to dust with the heel of her mucky sandal.

The glassy fragments vibrated wildly; miniature, hair-fine lightnings jagged over them, died away. Nothing else happened.

Brann dropped the sandal, got to her feet and wiped her hands on her shirt. “That does it, Jay. He’s in trouble. Slya bless, everything’s twisting into, I don’t know.” She bent and brushed her knees off, straightened and gazed at the fluttering curtains. “You didn’t fight them,” she said slowly, “You ate them. You could still do that, I mean even if you’ve passed from aeta to auli?”

“Yeh. So?”

“The Skia Hetaira, remember? We did have Ahzurdan to shield us, but…”

Jaril blinked at her, puzzled. Then he grinned, beat his hand on the table. “Don’t fight ‘em, eat ‘em. You and me and Yaro, we ATE Amortis. We whittled her down and sent her scatting off, scared to her toes.”

She sat. “Quiet, Jay. We don’t want to wake Carup. Pour me some wine.” She lifted the glass, took a sip and sat watching the red change as the lamplight wavered. After a while, she shook her head, as if she were shaking out uncertainty. “We’ll keep it simple. If we’re lucky… though the way things are going, I doubt we get any breaks… maybe the Chuttar will be gone for the night, give us less to cope with. Whatever, we go in tomorrow, after midnight, when the servants and so on will be asleep. You circle overhead until I’m inside, then come down fast. That could reduce the time they have for reacting. Unless they can locate me as easily as they can you. We’ll just have to hope they can’t. Argument?”

“None. Go on.”

“Everything we’ve learned says the Chuttar’s personal suite is the heart of that place, so that’s where she’d most likely keep Yaro. No one goes in there but smiglar, not her clients, not the maids, no one. It’s on the third floor, the main house. There’s a smiglar guarding the roof, another at the top of the stair and a third guard stays in the suite whenever the Chuttar’s not there. Not counting the Chuttar, that leaves two other smiglar. One of them acts as relief, the other is the Chuttar’s Housemaster. Camam Callam, Carup called him. Got his nose in everything, day and night. You say he’s second to the Chuttar in power and if the two of them get together, that’s trouble for us. I think you’re right. Without Maksi to back us, all we can do is try whittling them down. Eat ‘em.” She gulped some wine, drew her hand across her mouth. “I’ll get over the wall and into the house, shouldn’t be too hard, break a pane on the glass doors that open on the terrace, turn the latch. You overfly first, let me know where the Housemaster is and the spare guards. I’ll avoid them, if possible, drain them if I have to. That’ll warn the others, won’t it?”

“Yeh. When a bunch of aetas hit a stuv nest, they suck them up and get the hell out, fast, because the place is going to be swarming in minutes.”

“You’ll feel it too?”

“Yeh.”

“Good. You stay high and keep track of me. If I make contact before I reach the stairs, you come in, take out the roof guard and if need be, the stair guard. Eat ‘em fast, Jay, I don’t want them landing on my back. If there’s no contact, if I get up those stairs with no trouble, I’ll mindyell as soon as I’m ready to take the guard there, that’s when, you come in. We’ll try hitting the stair and roof at the same time. Then it’s a dash for the bedroom. If the Chuttar’s out for the night, we hit the guard there, grab Yaro and get out before the others converge on us. If the Chuttar’s there, I’ll keep her busy while you see if you can get Yaro out of stone and mobile. Yes, yes, you told me, it’s likely to be a slow unfolding. If you can’t get her out, can you fly and carry her?”

“I suppose. You mean leave you there?”

“If you have to. I’ll be doing what I did with Amortis. Draw and vent. Draw down the Chuttar and use her energy to fry the other smiglar if they come at me.” She smiled at him, lifted a hand. “Once you get Yaro someplace fairly safe, if you feel like coming back, I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

“This sounds more like a stampede than a plan. Bramble, there are at least a hundred ways we could screw up.”

“I’d say more like a thousand.” She shrugged. “Nothing ever goes like you plan it, you should know that, Jay. If we keep moving fast enough, maybe the momentum will carry us through. It’s got to be fast. For Yaro’s sake.” She pushed the straggling gray hair off her face. “If you can think of a better way, tell me.”

He shook his head. “I’m not even going to try.”

Veiled and cloaked, dressed with a subdued richness, she’d absorbed taste from the Chuttar if nothing else, Carup took the bodyguard’s hand and climbed into the traveling gada; she ignored his blatant appreciation of her body, but she was pleased by it. Her dark eyes flicked to his face for a moment, then she settled back and he closed the door. He climbed to the seat beside the driver, slapped the man’s arm; the driver snapped his whip over the ears of the lead pair and the gada started north along the dusty, rutted road, heading for Pattan Haria.

Brann watched for a while, wondering if Camp would relent and wave. She didn’t. From the moment they stepped onto the landing, Carup had refused to see her. She hadn’t said good-bye and she didn’t look back now. Her resentment had gone deep; she would have rebelled if she’d dared, but she knew too well the futility of fighting powers greater than her own. Bitter, resentful, and rich. A bad combination. She was going to make someone’s life a hell.

Brann sighed and stepped into the longboat. “Go,” she said, and settled back as the man pushed off and began rowing her across the moat. I’ve done the best I can, she told herself, I can’t change the world by myself. Maksi tried changing a piece of it and look what happened to him.