Crystal Heat

2

The ship was larger than hers and newer. I forgot about my ship, she thought. Looks like 1 will be going back after all. She smiled at a sudden picture in her mind, swooping low over the Dukeri House and the High City and giving the bons there the scare of their stinking lives. Grow up, woman, she told herself, but she was still grinning as she stepped onto the Bridge.

A man sat in the pilot’s seat, not a woman. Age hung like an aura about him and looked out of eyes like winter ice, though his ananiles were still holding, so there was little gray in the thick braid that came over his shoulder and was long enough to brush at his belt. The lines in his face were shallow and fine, as if someone had pasted a spider’s web across it. Two young women sat in the other chairs, his daughters or granddaughters if appearance meant anything.

“So,” she said. “I been sold to Contract?”

When he spoke his voice was rough, but not unpleasant, and there was that same swing to his interlingue that she’d heard in the woman’s voice. “We would not consider such a thing, Lylunda Elang. It is a simpler task we have and a pleasurable pile of gelders from the doing. You will be tucked away safely in a calm and quiet place, and when I say tucked away it means that however cleverly you scheme, there you will be until the patron comes to take you home again. And fetch you home he will, he sends to you his sworn word on this.” He put stress on the last words, but his eyes slipped away from hers.

“Kak!”

“Ah yes, you will be knowing him better than we. Our ship is yours to wander as you will, but lest you harbor wishful thoughts of taking it from us, you should know we are Jilitera. All things on board shut down after a time unless we whisper to them in the Secret Tongue which is more than words. Consider what it means to drift in darkness for eternity.”

“I have heard that,” she said. “Tell me the name of my prison.”

“Bol Mutiar. Only the Jilitera trade there these days because it is death to outsiders who do not understand its ways. We will tell you how to go and we will put our Blessing on you. Unless you are irredeemably moronic, you will have a pleasant life ahead of you.”

You will eat some tung akar every, day, she read and sighed as she looked at the knobby, dark yellow tuber with its beard of fine white rootlets. “You look about as appetizing as a dog turd. Maybe if I think it’s like taking vitamin supplements…”

You will bless and treat with courtesy the children of tung akar “Sounds reasonable. Bless? Hope they give me the local version of that. I’ve run into a few occasions when my idea of a friendly greeting nearly got me handed my head.”

The blessing is Smarada Diam. Love and Peace. It works best if you evoke some shadow of these things within yourself. This is for formal occasions, when meeting and greeting folk you have not met before. A simple Diam is sufficient with those you have met more than once. Do not concern yourself overmuch with pronunciation; exactitude is not required.

Lylunda settled back in her chair and watched the figures moving through assorted greeting scenarios. She didn’t understand the words yet, hadn’t gone under the crown to get the Pandai poured into her head, but it seemed a simple and mellifluous langue, one that rolled easily off the tongue. She examined the figures of the locals with considerably more interest than she took in the greetings.

They were a smooth brown people, built low to the ground, broad in shoulder and hip. “Eee! I’ll fit right in.” She wriggled in the chair, sighed. “Except for the hair. If that sample isn’t skewed, it’s mostly light brown with a redhead in the mix now and again.”

The figures marched off and a new maxim slid onto the screen. Never take a plant or another living thing for your food or for any other purpose without asking its permission and thanking it afterward. Like the greeting, this is a part of necessary courtesy. Ignoring these strictures will not get you slapped, it will get you dead.

Lylunda made a face at the images that followed, bloated, rot-blackened corpses. This was the third time they’d run the lesson flake for her and those corpses appeared after every four maxims, along with the stats now scrolling down half the screen, telling her who the dead had been and how they’d gotten that way. It was meant to impress on the viewer how seriously she should take those maxims, but even a litany of the horribly dead could get boring if you heard it too often.

When the lesson reached its end this time, the screen went black and Beradea’s voice broke into the silence. “Come to the comroom, Lylunda ’njai. It’s time you learned the Pandai langue.”