Shadowkill

##

Rohant stretched out on his plank bed, closed his eyes. He’d tiptoed round the truth and got away with it. Shadow was out there somewhere. Her and Kikun. It had to be them.

Somehow. Miralys was well. The fear was gone, that sick emptiness that’d been rotting at his guts since he’d seen young Kalaksi in that cage. Miralys was well and tending to business.

And I’d better be, he thought. Shadow. I don’t have her gift, but maybe something like it…

He remembered what happened between her and him when she mindrode Sassa. Two-way flow there. Maybe… we never thought it was possible, the Tie, yes, the blood-bond with the tiebeast, but mindriding… I don’t know. Well, it’s time to start thinking the impossible. I certainly haven’t anything better to do these next few days.

Fishing In A Smaller Sea: Kikun And Autumn Rose Troll For The One Who Knows

Kikun came yawning onto the bridge and stood a moment blinking at the woman in the pilot’s chair. Autumn Rose was wearing dull brownish-purple trousers and an acid green tunic. And she’d dyed her hair an ashy brown, her skin olive-tan.

Clicking his tongue and shaking his head, he sauntered over to her. “Rose, you’re a sight for sore eyes and if they weren’t sore before they’d be now.”

She chuckled. “Camouflage, Kuna. You have yours, this’s mine.”

“Tlee!” Scratching at the skin folds under his chin, he frowned at the green and blue and brown and streaky white of the world taking up most of the screen. “So tell me about that.”

Rose grimaced, a twist of her wide mouth, a quick wrinkling of her long nose. “Well, I have an idea or two. Look.” She played a moment with the sensor pad, talking while she worked. “Barakaly came here about once a year.” She clicked her tongue. “The man was a cretin, you know. He had the best blocks available installed in his kephalos, then he goes and keeps his list of keys in this idiot antique desk in his quarters. Took me all of fifteen seconds to find the secret drawer he put his faith in, once I had time to look around the place. I mean, there it was…” she paused,, frowned at the screen where a map was developing in one cell, with images clustered about it of buildings and individuals and a sidebar slowly filling with data; she made some changes, then went on, “this old… um… THING just sitting there begging me to go poking about in it. I found porno flakes and a bunch of crecards in different names and… ah well, never mind… anyway, there was this notebook with all you need to know to uncrunch his codes, so I’ve been going through his personal records. Not a nice man, Barakaly Lak Dar. Chatty though, I mean looks to me like he got kicks from telling about the things he pulled, business and personal junk. Not a nice man. Oh, no.”

Kikun lay back in the chair and let his eyes droop nearly closed, absorbing what she was saying through skin as well as ears, tone of voice and behind-emotion, everything she was saying through intonation as well as words. Thinking was for him a physical process, sensual more than rational.

“You say it’s Omphalos responsible for this. Maybe yea, maybe nay, but one thing’s sure, Barakaly doesn’t know from Omphalos, not a word even in his twistiest files and if you’d ’ve seen what he’s got there, you’d know he must ’ve put EVERYthing in. He’s been to Arumda’m lots of times, though. Seems there’s a Black House there that provides victims to order,” she coughed, grimaced again. “All I can say is, it’s no wonder he was one of Ginny’s clients. Anyway, it’s a mess of a world. Every island its own nation and there are a furtzen lot of islands, haeds they’re called.” She grinned. “You’d think with that many heads around, they’d have a little wisdom thrust on them, but not so, my friend, not so. The place is full of tiny wars, whenever some local vaarlord gets an itch for someone else’s land, he whips up a war and tries to take it. It’s worst in the south, there’s more land there, more big islands, sub-continents I suppose you’d call them. Haemundas to the Rummers. Don’t look at me like that, Kuna. That’s what they say when they’re talking about each other-according to Barakaly, though I admit he’s not a source I’d trust about anything sensitive. We’ll just have to wait and see. Anyway, where was I? Ah, good thing that’s in the north.” She pointed to the city map. “The biggest city they have. Tos Tous. The Landing Field’s there and it’s a Freecity, lots of strangers coming in and out. Offworlders too, freetraders and types like Barakaly in for the… um… amenities. I’ve dug out the names of some contacts he had who might be useful. They set up his stays at the Black House and other little pleasures. Seems to me, those are the types who’d have the information we need to get at… well, call it Omphalos. What I think is, we go in, look over the ground, go after these contacts, take them, question them and…” She shrugged. “That’s as far as I can go now. What happens after that depends on what we find out. Probably we scat for home and Digby and Miralys. We’ll need a small army if Shadow and the others are here. If they aren’t, well, we better go add our ignorance to the rest and see what we can do about it.”

He blinked at her. “Question?”

“Nothing bloody, luv. Even for Digby, I don’t do torture. But I picked better than I knew when I took this ’un. Barakaly has himself a nice little selection of head softeners. Drugs, luv. Our targets, they’ll sing like baby birds when some of that stuff hits the blood.”

As she started fiddling some more with the sensor pad, there was a familiar rustle of feathers, a scratch of feet. Kikun turned his head and stared into the corner beyond Autumn Rose. Gaagi was there, his armwings folded tight against his sides, his golden eyes wide and staring. Grandmother Ghost was half behind him, bent over, peering around the wings, snorting repeatedly because she was allergic to feathers. She winked at him, but didn’t say anything-for which he was profoundly grateful; every time she opened her mouth, she dropped him in trouble so deep he thought he’d never see day. Gaagi spread his arms wide, caught Grandmother in the face with a feathered membrane and left her sputtering with annoyance. He began signing, his supple fingers moving so fast that Kikun had difficulty following him.

Journey of many days, many sorrows, hurt and hunger, tedium and terror. It finishes here, yes, it finishes here, but not this journey nor the next. Come home, Nayol Hanee, come home, O Ta’anilcay, or die here and know the Dinhastoi do die with you.

Rubbing at her nose, Grandmother Ghost pushed past Gaagi, who faded into a black film, then was gone. She shoved her little bulldog face at Kikun, waggled her crooked forefinger at him. Her voice was a mosquito whine in his mind’s ear.

Aya aya, get you home or I be a fly on your backside biting. Get you that girl and leave off this interfering in foreign hashendilis, you got your own to worry over. Hah! I give you till you finish this’n, then you won’t know what sleep is you hang off any longer. Hah! Ya!

And she was gone.

Kikun sighed. None of that was any help. If that was all his gods and ghosts could do for him… Tlee! when Grandmother got mad, she had a bite like a borer fly, he rubbed his shoulder, grimacing at the memory. That wasn’t the only place she’d got him, either.

“Messages?” Autumn Rose sounded irritated.

“What? Oh, No, nothing to do with this.” That wasn’t quite true, but he didn’t intend to spend his time explaining Grandmother. Or Gaagi either. “Rose, something’s occurred to me. What are you going to do with the ship?”

“If you’d been listening to me…”

“Sorry.”

She snorted. “Really. What I was saying is, I don’t want to leave her parked in orbit. This is a free trader’s market which means basically that anything left lying around unguarded is fair game. Bunch of pirates, even the best of ’em. Not putting them down, you understand, I’d probably do the same, given the chance. What I’m saying, a sweet ship like this without a watch on board is gone. Even without you to clue ’em, Kuna, the average trader round here would get past security not even breathing hard. And I don’t want to put her down at the Landing Field. Too many noses around wondering what your business is. And too expensive. Anything’s too expensive. Except for my crecard, I’m about broke and Barakaly doesn’t carry cash, at least, I didn’t find any. They’re used to traders slipping in, doing their business and scooting; no one’s going to pay much attention to us. I’ve picked a place to stash the ship. See that isthmus? No settlers and close enough to where we have to go.”