Shadow of the Warmaster

2

“What?” Karrel Goza set his cup down, blinked wearily at his Ommar.

The Parlor was small and by intention intimate; the wallposts, the ceiling and its beams were carved and painted in jewel colors, small angular flower patterns on an angular emerald ground; a fire crackled cheerfully behind a semi-transparent shell guard; ancient tapestries hung from ceiling to floor, colors muted by time, still dark and rich. The Ommar sat in a plump chair, its ancient leather dyed a deep scarlet and mottled by decades of saddlesoap and elbowgrease, its arms and ornaments and swooping clawfooted legs carved from a brown wood age-darkened to almost-black. She was a small woman with a halo of fine white hair about a face dominated by huge black eyes, ageless eyes. She wore a simple white blouse, an old black skirt smoothed neatly about her short legs, legs too large for her size. She’d been a diver before she married into the Goza family, not one of the premiere Dallisses though she shared their arrogance; even now he could see the merm marks on the backs of her hands. She sniffed impatiently, repeated what she’d said.

“Youngers and middlers from Goza House have been running with the inklins. Gensi, Kivin, Kaynas, it’s an isya, I think, one just forming with Gensi as the Pole. Zaraiz, Bulun and half a dozen boys, they call themselves…” her weary wrinkled face lifted suddenly, lighted by the grin that made him and everyone else adore her when they weren’t afraid of her, “the Green Slimes, or something like that. They were in that hoohaw last night, dropping sludge bombs on the guard barracks. At least it wasn’t fire, they haven’t gone that far, both sets, it’s mischief still, but the inklins they’re mixing with aren’t playing, Kar. Nor are the bitbits. Streetgangs, tchah! what nonsense. You weren’t like that, much more sensible.”

Karrel Goza thought about a few of his exploits when he was a younger (which he fervently hoped she’d never find out about) and didn’t think he’d been all that sensible. He wasn’t too old to remember the feeling that he and his agemates were alone against a stodgy disapproving world, how they built up a powerful secret world of their own that no adult had access to. He couldn’t see this crop of pre-adults welcoming interference, but the world was infinitely more dangerous these days and the Ommar was right. Something had to be done. “Yizzies? Homemade or borrowed or what?”

“Gensi boasted she made her own; I suppose they all did, which means they’ve been stealing, there’s no other way they could have got the materials, you know very well no adult in this family has coin to throw away on idiocy like that.”

“Where are they keeping them?”

“Not in the House. I’d have the obscenities smashed if I could lay my hands on them.”

“The boys, do you know which is the leader?”

“Zaraiz Memeli, as much as any. That clutch of shoks, it’s not even an imitation isya and as for being a gang, tchah!” She leaned forward, urgent and more upset than he could remember seeing her, her tangled white brows squeezing against the deep cleft between them. “I am afraid of them, Kar. I know their faces, but not what they’re thinking, if they’re thinking at all; I look into those shallow animal eyes and I wonder if there’s anything but animal behind them.” She straightened her back. “In any case, they have to be stopped. Bad enough to have those street-sweepings making trouble. Tchah! Do you know what Herkken Daz will do to us if Sech Gorak finds one of our boys dead on the street or shoots one of them out of the sky? Goza House will be translated to Tassalga brick by brick. What’s left of it. I’m talking to you, do you know why? Because everyone here knows what you’re doing and I have this faint hope the boys will listen to you. If they don’t, I don’t know what to do. The girls…” she brushed a hand across her eyes, “the girls, ahh! Kar, they look at me… animal eyes, nothing there. I thought I knew girls, I don’t know these. Talk to them, Kar. If you think it would help, can you get that Indiz Dalliss to see them? You know who I mean.”

He sipped at the tea to cover his hesitation. After a minute, he said, “That might be difficult. The Huvved put a price on her head and the Jerk has doubled it.”

“Try.” Her voice was iron, her eyes pinned him.

“This is not a good time,” he said, “she won’t come.”

“What use are you Kar, if you can’t do this small thing for your Family? What do I say to your mother? We have protected him and lied for him, covered his shivery ass, and when we ask a small, a minute thing for us, his Family, what does he say? I can’t, he says.

“Let it lay, Ommar. Please.” His hand shook, tea splashed onto his knees.

“Why should I? What is more important that the moral discipline of your sisters, your nieces, your cousins?”

“I can’t tell you that. Please. I can’t.”

She relaxed, her back curving into the cushions. “I see. How long will you need cover this time?”

“I don’t know, maybe four, five days.”

“When?”

“When I’m called. I can’t say more.”

“Hmm. It will be better if we prepare for this.” She smiled, no glow to her this time, just a tight bitter twist of the lips. “You’ve been doing too much, Kar. You look like a walking ghost; no one will be surprised if you go down seriously sick. If I pull in some markers, I can set your cousin Tamshan in your place, so we don’t lose the earnings.”

“Gorak watches all pilots; we don’t want that; the job takes me off his list.”

“As long as you’re supposed to be coughing your lungs out, he won’t bother his head over you.”

“If he believes it.”

“You think he’s going to push his way in here and time your spasms?”

“If he wants to, he will.” He rubbed at his eyes; he’d been noticing a haze-effect for several weeks. Eyes, lungs, his whole body was breaking down. He was averaging four hours’ sleep a night. It was weeks since he’d had any appetite, he hadn’t seen Lirrit for… how long? Gray day melted into gray day. He didn’t know how long. Too long. He hadn’t even thought about her for days. He closed his eyes, shivered as he realized he couldn’t bring her face to mind. No time for thinking, less for contemplating marriage; he and Lirrit would wed when times were easier, but in the miasma of weariness, fear, horror that usurped his day and dreamtime lately, it was impossible even to dream of such things. Maybe it was just as well he got out, he was running on autopilot, abdicating his responsibility to himself, depending on Elmas for direction and impetus. Some time to himself… he savored the thought, then put it aside. It wouldn’t happen this month or the next; there was too much to do. After then? Who knew, not he. “Zaraiz,” he said. “I don’t know him. How old is he? You told me his line name, but I don’t remember it.”

“Memeli. He’s a first year middler, no discipline, he’s insolent, a bad influence on everyone.” She slapped her hands on the chair arms. “Memeli, tchah! Had I been Ommar that generation, we wouldn’t have the problem, we never would have affiliated that collection of losers.”

Karrel Goza lowered his eyes, played with his cup. The intolerance of a Dalliss, her inability to see worth in folk who didn’t conform to her personal standards, it was the ugly side of their Ommar. He tilted the cup, gazed at the rocking tawny fluid as if he saw Elmas Ofka’s face there; that intolerance, that ignorance, that inflexibility were her faults too, they’d bothered him from the first. He’d forgotten that… no, not forgotten, he’d stopped thinking. With the end so close, yes, take the time, yes, go back to thinking, yes, be there to stand against her when the need arises, yes… Hands heavy with weariness, he rubbed the crackling from his eyes. “All right,” he said, “I’ll talk with the boy. Maybe it’ll do some good.” He coughed, gulped down a mouthful of the lukewarm tea. “In the morning,” he said, “locate Zaraiz Memeli for me; don’t bother him, just let me know where he is, I’ll collect him myself.”

“I will do that, yes.” She lifted the teapot, beckoned him over and refilled his cup with the aromatic liquid; she had expensive taste in teas and indulged it more than she should in times like this; sitting here, savoring the flavor, he resented it, his sweat and pain bought her these luxuries and she took them as her right when there were children of the House-not Goza, no, but of the House as much as any Goza child-who needed food, clothing, medicine. This can’t keep on, he thought, it has to change, we’ve got to make it change. He thought of the teacher at the Mines and what she’d been telling her students; it was not happy hearing; we’ll be different, he told himself, we’ll make this work. When he was seated again, she said, “Ommars tell me that slaves are disappearing, not one or two but whole chains of them.”

“Oh?”

“Is that all you’re going to say?”

“Yes.”

The Ommar leaned forward again, her eyes fixed on him, trying to get past the face he presented to her. After a minute she sucked at her teeth, shook her head. “This can’t go on,” she said.

He looked up, startled by the echo of what he’d been thinking; then he realized that she meant something far different.

“Inci is better off than most from what I hear, but give her another few months and she’ll be burning down around us. Before Herk lets that happen, he’ll call on the stingers and blast those lunatic children out of the air and he won’t care what else he levels. I’m telling you, Kar, you tell her and the rest of them. Do something. If her lot won’t or can’t, then we crawl to Herk and lick his toes. We’ve got no time left for playing hero games.”

He got heavily to his feet; it was more difficult than he’d expected. The comfort of that chair, the warmth of the room, the soothing fragrance of the chamwood burning on the hearth, these things were like chains on his arms and legs. At the door he turned. “I will pass your message on, Hanifa Ommar, but I will say this, though I probably am talking too much, this is not a good time to insult her.” He went out.