Fire in the Sky

1

Ragnal tilted his squeeze pouch, swallowed a mouthful of yang, shuddered, and rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

He was lounging between two roots on a huge tree that was part of the woods between the fields and the Kushayt where the Ykkuval sat like a fat greedy spider. Sifaed called these trees kerrehs. She was one of the local femmes who worked the backroom of Drudge Farkli’s lubbot, a big solid woman, not one of the wisps that broke in your hand if you touched them wrong. Reminded of her, he felt a stiffing and thought about spending a few baks on chich and emm but took another drink instead and glowered out across his fields.

The scowl smoothed out as he rested his eyes on the sogan mounds with their circle-crowns of dark green leaves, giant spearpoints on broad stems. Now that he’d sterilized and remixed the dirt, it was good soil, rich and black and full of nutrients; the first harvest of sogan had brought tubers larger than a man’s foot.

The Drudges were out on their floatboards, working the t’prags, snipping at weeds and stirring the earth around the tuber mounds. T’prags and boards alike were patched together castoffs, hiccupping along like yarks with a hangover because that ni Jilet kreash Hunnar who was running this operation was too cheap to get the parts they needed. Ragnal was a Koroumak cognate like the ni-Jilets, which is why he worked for Company Koroumak-Jilet, but he kept Family tighter than that; far as he was concerned the ni Jilet sept were employers only.

Chains of local women were crawling along replanting the harvested mounds with eye segments of the seed reserve from the first dig, the bright orange chunks like dice in their busy hands. He smiled, pleased at what he saw. If there were any justice in the world, he’d get a commendation for his efforts.

Not chichin’ likely.

Girs used to needle him about it. Dirtman, he called him. There’s no honor in booting Drudges about and fooling with bugs and worms. And Girs didn’t like Ragnal reminding him that he owed his education and his success to his older brother’s job. They sneer at me, he said, call me grubsuck and webfoot. It’s holding me back. You’re holding me back. Same thing over and over-till Ragnal would lose his temper and pound him. Arrogant little slunk. Last fight they had, Ragnal broke one of Girs’ teeth and got his own neck twisted so bad he had to have heat packs on it.

No more fights. No enough left of Girs to be worth burying. Taner! How’m I going to tell Mar her baby’s dead?

He squeezed out the rest of the yang, lumbered to his feet, nearly falling on his bum as the chichin’ sad excuse for honest gravity tricked him again.

Grumbling under his breath he walked ti-tuppy along, heading for a refill in Farkli’s lubbot, hating the strain he put on his muscles to keep himself on his feet, hating the bone leaching he knew had to be happening. Wasn’t the first light-world he’d worked on. If he had a say, though, it’d be the last. Say? That’s a laugh.

The lubbot was in the largest house still standing in what had been a local village. Ragnal was using most of the place to store his planting and harvesting equipment, but by old custom, he rented the extra rooms to Farkli. He’d had most of the other houses dozed and burned, leaving one of them for the Drudges to sleep and live in, a second for a Drudge s’rag, and a third for a sogan storehouse. They offended his eyes, those structures. Garish colors. Flimsy. A hard wind would blow them to kindling. Though it didn’t seem like this taffy world ever got anything like a real wind. Those floating blobs would be smears spread half a mile across those trees in a Chandava wind.

He pushed through the swinging door that old Farkli always managed to contrive wherever he was set down and stood a moment letting his eyes adjust to the dim, smoky light. The stink in the air was the same, too, as if Farkli bottled it and brought it along, a mix of sweat, lantern smoke, and the pungent stink of the yang distilled from sogan and Taner only knew what else he threw in the pot. Ragnal didn’t ask. Old man might just tell him. Better his stomachs didn’t know what he was running through them.

Lanterns. Rest of the place was lit properly but not here. The techs like it that way, the old yisser said. What they call good ambience, whatever that means. Drink more, too. Use the women in backroom ‘cause they don’t like coming after some chicher Drudge.

About a dozen techs from the Kushayt were spending some of their off-hours sucking yang and maybe a few of them working up the nerve to waste some oaks on the backroom femmes. Always someone ready to do the two-backed beast even with local scum. Ragnal’s mouth tightened and his scowl grew darker. Scum. Each time he had Sifaed he got a queasy feeling soon as he rolled off her, took a hard shower to make him feel clean again.

The bar was three doors resting on piles of used brick, the tables furniture from the houses Ragnal had knocked down. He’d tipped Farkli a sign to get his scavenging done before the fire and took his fee in noggins of yang. Other Dirtmen he knew demanded and got a percentage of a lubbot’s take, but that was dangerous. A bad batch of yang or a new Ykkuval cleaning house of side money and they could get broke to Unskill, just a notch above Drudge. Besides, Farkli’s youngest girl had been Girs’ wet nurse which made him Family of a sort.

Girs, ah, brother… He blinked hard and fast, his eyes burning. “Don’t you ever trim your wicks, Fark?”

Drudge Farkli inspected him for a moment, then nodded and pushed a glass of yang across the bar, following it with a jug. “‘S a stinkin’ oil t’ yerets make. Don’t even burn right.”

Ragnal smiled. Yerets. Scum. Locals. He sometimes thought that was why Farkli kept signing on tour though he was old enough for a pension back home. Hitting places where there was something lower than a Drudge. He took a mouthful of the yang, raised his brows, and looked into the glass. “New batch?”

“Ayyunh. Ykk’s Pet, he brung a pile of fruit over. Fed some to the women and watched them a couple days ‘fore I shoved it in. And they’s some weirds live in the Fen out there, they bring stuff. Like it?”

“Not bad.”

“Pressin’s from it burn better’n that oil.” He hesitated, stared past Ragnal’s shoulder. “Thought maybe some for lamps in Sef Girs’ shrine?”

Eyes burning again, Ragnal squeezed hard on the glass and stared at the yang inside; agitated by the tremble in his hand, its broken surface was picking up yellow from the lanterns. He didn’t speak until he was sure of his voice. “I’ll tell the Birad to let you in.” He didn’t want to talk about it any more; he took the jug and his glass to a table in a back corner and sat sipping slowly at the yang, his head getting muzzier as the light that crept through the painted windows darkened.

For a long time he ignored the raised voices coming from a table on the other side of the room. He wasn’t in a mood for company and he didn’t care what techs got up to on their off-time. Only one tech he’d ever had time for, but Girs was cinders and they could all go to the Taner’s lowest hell.

“… curse him, that ni Jilet kreash, incompetent thief, Genree the chich-up Chob tol’ me… he tol’ me… my bra’ he tol’ me… Zanne had t’ do ‘s own parts… parts… t’ get flier in air. Zanne said… Zanne…” The tech’s voice lost coherence on the last words and died away. He sucked in a breath, shuddered, took a long pull at his glass, slammed it down, drew his hand across his mouth. “Cinsin’ echt-born don’ gi’ moosh a kirg ‘bout us. Genree… pinch-nose idiot…”

Swaying back and forth, inner lids at half-down, their translucent film gleaming in the lantern light, he muttered on and on, railing against Genree ni Jilet, saying it was him who killed Choban, pocketing the money for repairs and spare parts while the little he did buy was so worn and useless not even Zanne could get it to work right. “… and you know Zanne can fix anything with a chew of zam and a bit of wire and Hun the kreash lets that chich get away with it… or maybe he’s got his hand in, too… licking the sweet off the top… leave the dregs go through…”

The others at the table were nodding and muttering with him, the same glazed idiot look on their young faces.

There was a bowl on the table, white porcelain like a deathlight. Ragnal blinked to clear his bleary eyes. Probably was one, lifted from Stores. It wasn’t burning oil but something else, looked like chunks of hairy bark-putting out a thick weighty smoke that hovered near the top of the table. As he watched, first one, then another and another of the techs leaned forward and sucked smoke into mouth and nose.

As Ragnal listened to the babble and smelled the sweetish acrid odor of the smoke, the drink chilled in his stomachs and his grief turned cold. Tech Dihbat. Choban’s baby brother. Like Girs was mine. Keeps on like that he’s gonna get busted to Unskill. Maybe a spat on chain at the Workfarm. Even listening to this kirg is dangerous. He emptied his glass, set it down with the careful precision of the very drunk and groped his way out, exaggerating his state to look so far gone that he was seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

There were techs and Drudges in the lubbot who wouldn’t have two thoughts about reporting Dihbat’s rant. Or Ragnal’s presence. He wanted to be able to claim he hadn’t noticed what was going on because he was drunk and grieving. With that and his reputation for keeping his mouth shut, he should slide away from trouble. Ykkuval Hunnar wasn’t vindictive, but he was a ruthless kreash and knew what letting such talk get loose could do to him. Dihbat was a fool.

As he pressed from the open fields into the wooded strip between the village and the Kushayt, his foot slammed into a root and he fell on his face. He lay without moving, gray dust settling on him, slow dust, so slow he could see it drift down. Chichin taffy world. Fall and it’s like a mattress. Ayee, Taner, not a mattress for Girs. Fire. Burning… Body contorting with grief, he cried for the first time since he heard the news about his brother, pounded his fists on the road, beating and beating the insensate dirt. Girs was dead and this karolsha world didn’t care, nobody cared, shovel the dead under and forget what made them dead.

A whistled tune. Footsteps.

Ragnal leaped to his feet, nearly fell over again, scrubbed at his face, slapped dust from his coveralls. As he straightened, he saw the local they called Ykk’s Pet coming round the curve in the road. Ugly chich. A map of wrinkles wrapped around twiggy bones that looked like they’d snap if you breathed hard on them. Watery blue eyes with all the expression of polished pebbles.

When the Pet saw Ragnal, his tune stopped, his shoulders came up round his ears, and he shambled to the far side of the road and stood there, eyes on the dirt.

Ragnal snorted, then walked away. The less he had to do with that one, the better he liked it. Even if they weren’t human, you could respect a local who gave you a good fight. Something like this, though…

When Ragnal emerged from the trees and into sight of the gate guards, once again he exaggerated his unsteadiness and the care-with which he was moving, pulling his perimeters in as if he were trying to walk through a glass shop on a floor that was tilting under him.

As he passed between the massive gate towers and into the Kushayt, his body loosened and his breathing got easier. Warped and distorted though it was, this was a piece of home. The buildings in here had the look of mass even if the weight wasn’t really there; they were built low to the ground with comfortably thick walls and no stupid windows to weaken the load-hold. The streets were straight and paved with grav plates so they had an honest pull to them; the corners square, the houses kept their hearts to themselves, no vulgar display to tempt the weakminded toward theft. It was everything the yerechs outside wouldn’t understand.

In the tiny private suite that was one of the perqs his status brought him, he stripped and stepped into the shower cubicle, stood there with pulsing needles of hot water beating at him, his forehead pressed against the wall, his eyes closed, the heat and massage of the water washing away more than the dust of the world.

When the hot water was gone, he stumbled out, dried himself, and fell into bed, his weight switching on the grav plate that made sleeping more comfortable. He started to think about what he’d heard, about Genree and Hunnar, about Girs’ almost daily complaints about the equipment, but before he got beyond memory into planning, he plunged deep deep into sleep.