Shadowkill

1

No memory and a new name

Stench.

Unclean bodies packed in a small, bare, room with icy breezes wandering everywhere.

Where?

What am I doing here?

Who am I?

Who AM I?

WHO am I?

She curled up, knees against chest, thumb in mouth, eyes squeezed shut.

Her head hurt.

Who am I who who am I who am I who…

Women were talking beside her, around her, women and girls.

She was afraid of hearing what she didn’t want to hear and tried not to listen, but she heard them anyway. Their voices were like the odors of their bodies, inescapable.

Where is this place…

What…

Girna or something like.

Aghirnamirr..

So you so smart so what you doin here…

So what’s it like, this Aghawatsis…

Cold as Hoobi’s Hell, that’s what…

Diggin in the dirt, that’s what…

Field work…

What’d ye think, frega, you’d be sitting round sucking tit? Didn’t they tell you unskilled, what you think unskilled mean? Grubbin, that’s what.

No choice…

Yeh…

No choice at all?

You sign up? You did? (Laughter, harsh and bitter.)

A hand on her shoulder. “You all right, child? If you can, you should be getting up, the vendage it’ll be starting any minute now.

She took the thumb from her mouth, opened her eyes.

A big, solid woman with warm brown eyes and a friendly smile was bending over her.

“Vendage?” she said and was startled by her own voice-she’d forgotten what she sounded like. A singer’s voice, she thought. Who am I? She closed her eyes again, but didn’t resist as the woman took her hands and hauled her up.

“Hey, you want honesty, I should’ve said meat market. Us, child. The locals they look us over and choose who gets which.”

Head throbbing, stomach queasy, she clung to the warm strong hand. She heard what the woman was saying, but it was hard to understand how the words applied to her. She shivered.

“Hai hai, not used to frigger travel? Get you in the gut, don’t it. Scramble what brains you got. Yes, luv, yes, just you hang on to Tinoopa a minute or two, the fuzz will clear out y’ head now you on you feet. You want to be looking perky and full of it at the vendage. Yes. You want to be first pick. First pick gen’rally get the best jobs. Being so young, I expect this you virgin contract.”

She thought that over. “I don’t know…”

“A weel a weel, that don’t matter. You just listen to Tinoopa, she been round and back and round again. Think you can walk now? Let’s go wash your face. Move you foot. That’s it. Now the other foot. One and two and one and two and here we are.”

The water was cool on her face, the dizziness retreated. The sink was clean, white, the towels and washcloths hanging there were clean with a faint sweet smell. They were old and threadbare, but clean. This surprised her, though she couldn’t think why. Why should she expect filth? Then she remembered the smell she woke up to. The smell that was coming off her as well as wafting past her. How long since we had water for bathing? Why? One more why to add to the list forming up in her mind.

She held her arms out and submitted passively to the scrubcloth and the cold water.

Somewhere there were answers. I must have know them once. What happened?

The panic was still there, but distanter somehow. Maybe it was having someone take care of her. Like a mother. Do I have a mother? Do I have friends? She shook her head, impatient with herself. She wanted to DO something, but there was nothing in her head or outside it to get a hold on. Except Tinoopa. Irritating. Letting other people do for her irritated her. Must be something from before, something that survived whatever or whoever it was took her memories from her.

The room they were in was as clean as the sink, scrubbed until the walls and the floor were silky white with the stoning they’d gotten. It was a crude structure, thrown together from rough-hewn planks cut green so there were cracks where they’d split or warped apart. Harsh sunlight and a cold dry wind was coming through those cracks, the wind eddying about the prisoners.

Why did she think of them and herself as prisoners? She shivered.

“I s’pose they figure anyone who gets sick in here isn’t worth putting to work.” Tinoopa wrung the scrubcloth out, draped it over a bar, pulled loose a towel, and began rubbing her dry. “You be careful round the local men,” she said, “some of these types go for anything with a hole in it. One good thing, you’re not pretty.” She chuckled, pushed the hair off the face she was drying. “Don’t worry ’bout that, luv. Pretty fades fast. Cool head does you better. Hmm. My name, the whole thing, Tinoopa juhFeyn of FuyoGeeyur on Shimmaroh.” She hung up the towel and inspected her handiwork. “You starting to look like you maybe gonna live. Convict,” she added cheerfully, “me, I mean. Thief. Good at it, too, though you couldn’t tell it from what you seeing now. Luck took a walk on me, cop stuck his fat nose where he had no business being and caught me wrong place wrong time. They give me the choosing between life in a Shimmaroh jail or ten years contract labor and don’t show my face again. A weel a weel, seeing what those jails are like, wasn’t much of a choice. Done five years already, five to go. Miss my kids.” She wiped her hands along her sides, looked round the crowded room. “Haven’t had a word from them. A weel a weel, no way they could find me. Six girls and a boy. Talk about spoiled, that lad. Still, My Jao’s fond of his ol’ mum and…” Her comfortable flow of chat cut off and her brown eyes twinkled shrewdly. “Well, he wouldn’t thank me for running on about him. What’s your name, child?”

She’d been listening with pleasure, but that question hit her like a brick in the face. She crumpled and started crying. “I don’t know,” she got out. “I can’t remember anything. I don’t know…”

Tinoopa caught hold of her face, long strong fingers on one side, long strong thumb on the other. She turned the face to the light, pushed back the thick springy hair at the temples, flipping aside longer hair to expose patches of new growth where her head had been shaved. “Mindwipe. ’S no wonder you such a mess. Now I do ask myself what you been up to, luv. You don’t look old enough to be that dangerous… well, never you mind, don’t matter what it was, you just start, looking ahead.” She let go and stepped back. “You going to need a name. You let me give you one?”

“Please.”

Tinoopa set her hands on her hips and chewed on her lip. “Elegant bit of work on your face. Left cheek, yes, that’s right,” Tinoopa nodded as she reached up, drew her fingers across her cheek, “etched into the skin, looks like. Must ’ve hurt like hell, but who did it is one real artist. Hawk, hmm. Can’t call you hawk, you not big enough. Kizra, that’s a little ’un where I come from. What they call sparrowhawk in interlingue. Kizra. You like that?”

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll be Kizra.”

“All right, come over here, Kizra, let me do something about that hair. Looks like you got knots in it been there for years.” Talking all the time, she nudged Kizra to a corner of the room, took a piece of comb from a pocket in her coverall and began working on what was left of Kizra’s tight-curled hair.

Dyslaera 3: Exercise And Illusion

Azram stepped from the dark tunnel, stood blinking.

It was an open pen, maybe twenty meters on the short sides, thirty-five or forty on the long ones, tall thin watchtowers with bulbous tops growing from the outer two corners. The walls were at least three stories high, covered on the inside with ceramic so slick even the dust wouldn’t cling, pale green, ugly green, an insult to the eyes.

“Vomit,” Kinefray said and pushed past him. “Eestee, Azri, look at that.” He started running across the gritty cement.

In the endwall to the north there was a spigot about waist high. It was dripping into a skim of scummy water in the shallow sump beneath it.

They stripped and scrubbed each other. Cold water on a cold day-at first they were shivering, then their blood was steaming; they splashed water at each other, started chasing each other, bouncing off the wall, wrestling…

The door slammed open. Tolmant stumbled out.

Azram saw him, pushed Kinefray off and sat up, staring.

Tolmant seemed disoriented. His eyes were wild, his ears tight to his head. A line of drool crawled from the corner of his mouth.

Nezrakan came from the tunnel, caught hold of his uncle, eased him across the pen, and got him seated with his back against the wall, his knees up. He moved Tolmant’s arms onto his knees, brought his head down so it rested on his forearm.

He touched his fingertips a moment on the gray-sprinkled fur between his uncle’s ears, then he straightened, crossed to Azram and Kinefray. “How you two doing?”

Kinefray scratched at the stubble on his chin. “I’m full of holes and Azri’s bored to stone.” He pointed with his mouth at Tolmant. “What’s…”

Nezrakan started to answer, was interrupted by a shriek of rage. He wheeled, started running.

Tejnor screamed again, swung round and started back into the tunnel.

Cables whipped from the wall, caught him by the legs and torso and slammed him against the ceramic.

An augmented voice boomed from one of the towers: “Don’t move, you.” A pellet ricocheted from the concrete near Nezrakan’s foot. “Next one moves an ear’ll get it shot off.”

One of the novice wards who escorted them about came from the tunnel, still trying to pull his robe to some kind of order. Tejnor had clawed him good when he broke loose after he’d gotten a look at Tolmant. He undid the belt to his robe, straightened it out, slapped it a few times against the concrete. The belt was six leather straps, all of them studded with burrs of steel.

He proceeded to beat the shit out of Tejnor.