Shadowplay

Chapter 8. On sale/marked down

"Sssh." A hand was cool on her mouth. Kikun. She touched it and when he took it away, tried to sit up. The pain in her head was so bad she nearly bit through her tongue trying to hold in a groan. Stun rifles here were effective all right, but probably not too safe. She sat with her head in her hands, wondering with considerable trepidation just how mangled her brain was.

Kikun took hold of her wrist. "Shadow," he murmured, his mouth close to her ear, "the cats are waking and Rohant's still under."

"Yahhh," she breathed. "If their heads are like mine…"

"Can you…"

"See what you can do about him." She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and tried to think. We're in some kind of cage. This isn't the first time they've held prisoners here. This thing's been around a while. Ahlahlah, it's cold. Pouches in here? No. If those d'dabs junked my harp, I'll… I don't know, something… Smells like rain, they going to leave us to catch pneumonia? Gods! I'm wandering all over the place. Get your head together, Shadow, before you have to pull it out of a cat's mouth. Preposterous gowks, putting those carnivores in with us without bothering to tie them down! Ya-Yah! My head's going to blow apart…

She thrust her fingers into her hair, massaged the back of her head, a futile thing to do, but the breathy broken growls from the cats, the scrabble of their claws across the packed earth of the cage floor sent shivers crawling up her spine and tied knots in her stomach, especially since every time she reached for them, her brain whited out.

She scowled at the black figures seated by the fire, two of them standing, and shivered involuntarily as she heard the two on their feet arguing on and on about something she couldn't make out. Fragments of words in the seried staccatos of the liquidly rhythmic local langue floated to her on the wind. One voice: "Itwewe, Kiscomaskin p'taw.." Another voice: "Gospah Ayawit sh'pikew omish…"

It was about her and the others, she knew that, it was like an auction in a way, as if they were agents bidding for the contents of the cage. She squeezed her eyes shut, her head was trying to translate the jumble and not quite making it and generating another humungous headache. Ahlahlah, ya-eeh! Forget that, Shadow, think about getting out of here. Mmh, I wonder… Yesss…

She thrust two fingers into her boot, smiled as she touched the hideout's hilt. And the needler was a cool spot under her breast. The locals hadn't bothered to search their catch-at least, they'd left her alone, maybe they'd gone over Rohant and Kikun, that pair being more obviously dangerous. Sometimes it pays, I suppose, looking like a child.

She jumped as Magimeez produced a coughing spitting snarl. Sheesh! Once they shake off the stun, the cats'll turn this cage into an abattoir. No running room in here, hardly big enough for the lot of us. Ginbiryol Seyirshi and his Limited Editions! It's a farce he's producing, that gormless cretin. His god/avatar heroes are going to be hamburger before the first act begins.

Behind her, she could hear Kikun massaging Rohant, murmuring to him with no response that she could detect. She pushed onto her hands and knees, but froze in place as Magimeez lifted her head, shook it, her ears flattened against her skull; her tail switched back and forth slapping against Shadith's left arm. Beside her, Nagafog was sheathing and extruding his claws, his snarls peaking to squeals as pains like those stabbing into Shadith's brain ripped into him. She smelled rage rising in both cats as their bodies began to respond. Magimeez was trying to get to her feet. Her hindquarters were still numb so she whipped around, bit at her own flank. Gods! One, breathe, two, breathe, three, breathe, pussshhhh, Here we go round the ambury bush Ambury lambury diddledee hussshhh Out of the cradle.endlessly… something.. Where did I hear that? I know it's not mine. One, breathe, two, breathe, three, breathe, pussshh, Turning and turning in a widening… something… Sorrow is a forest of black widows, red bellies shining… There was a time when I believed in, gods… All right, Shadow, you can do it. Reach!

Focused at last, she plunged into the hot red brains of the furious, hurting cats, took hold of them, locked them down, then spent the next minutes soothing them, comforting them, working away their pain, losing her own pain as she worked.

Rohant's hand closed on her shoulder.

Impatient at the interruption, she snapped, "Leave me alone, five minutes, will you?" She didn't bother lowering her voice, she wasn't thinking about the cage, only about the cats; she continued to work with them until they were relaxed and purring like idling dynamos. Then she sighed and sat on her heels. "All right, what is it?"

"Company." Rohant's voice was dry, all expression squeezed out of it. He was rigid with fury. Musk rolled off him in clouds, pungent and aggressive, the kind of aroma that was an assault in itself. Old lion, he doesn't deal well with cages when the bars are round him, not one of his beasts. Can't say I do, either. Company?

She turned her head. A weedy looking reject with a straggly beard and mustache was leering at her through the bars, a silver tooth gleaming in a loose-lipped mouth. He wore a big felt hat with round silver medallions linked together for a hatband, in fact he had silver hanging all over him, linking and tunking in time with his twitches, shimmering in the light from the sliver of a moon starting to slip from view behind the trees. He had enough knives to supply a knife act, was cradling a pellet rifle, wore ammo strips over both shoulders, the loops decorated with silver wire. Yukh, what a winner. If he's got notions he can forget it, I'm not going through that again. Hmm, wonder who that other one is? He comes from a different litter, that's for sure.

A second local stood a step behind the Silvercreep, a solid square man with a hard knotty look and the eyes of a fanatic under shaggy brows that jammed against the heavy vertical crease in his forehead. He gazed with contempt at his companion, then at Shadith and the others, his lips pressed into a tight line.

Silvercreep scratched at his jaw. "Tan'eshinisashoya'akila'am?" His eyes lingered on Shadith, but he turned to Rohant for an answer when he finished speaking. He wanted to know what their names were. Affronted by his dismissal of her as a person of substance, acidly amused by her reaction, she decided to keep her mouth shut and let Rohant do the talking; besides, she didn't feel like telling that Weed anything.

His mane brushing the net pulled tight over the top of the cage, the Ciocan loomed like one of the giant trees over the Weed, who tried to control his squirming but couldn't quite manage it. After a thick silence, the Dyslaeror spoke in his deepest voice, "Mola

I don't know you, with the implication I don't WANT to know you.

Then Shadith's mind completed the shift between langues and she started thinking in East Kiskaidish or Awenakis, the indigenes' name for the dialect.

Silvercreep snarled. "Hoity-toity, beeeg man, won't be so big when the Gospah's screws get finish with you." Gospah? Who's… aid Head Hoofta of the local religion.

Rohant looked at him, long and cool, then he grinned, baring his formidable tearing teeth. He folded his arms and looked down his long nose at the man.

Kikun squatted by the Ciocan's left knee, fluttered his hands and giggled.

With a glare and a spit, Silvercreep swung round and stalked off.

The silent one, the fanatic, stared at the three of them another minute or so and continued to say nothing, then he strolled slowly off toward the fire. Shadith watched him start talking at Silvercreep, arguing with him, continuing the argument she'd seen them having before this bit of playacting.

"That was sweet." She scratched at the skin between her thumb and forefinger. "They didn't bother searching me. Should the occasion arise, I've a Pa'ao needier with lethal loads and a braincrystal knife. What you think, one of them belong to Ginny?"

"Don't give a shit." Rohant wrapped his hands about two of the bars and tried to shift them, but they were set solid; changing his attack, he tested a claw on the heavy rope, grunted with satisfaction when he pulled several.threads loose. "What I want to know is what's their transport and how do we get hold of it?"

"Want me to look round?"

His ears twitched in the twin sharp jerks she was beginning to associate with embarrassment; obviously he'd forgotton aobut her Talent. He scowled along his shoulder at her. "Do it. Don't waste my time asking."

Kikun winked at her.

She felt a flush of warmth, almost affection for the little lacertine; it startled her and suggested something rather chilling. Had Ginny been running his fingers through her head, knotting in ties to keep the three of them bound together? She resolved to think about it later when she had time for playing with what-ifs. She gave Magimeez a rub beneath her chin, settled with her back against the uprights and closed her eyes.

There was a complex web of small-lives living around the clearing, but most of these were tucked away for the night. She extended her reach, sweeping through wide arcs, finally touched on a big-eyed moth hunting gnats along the dark. The broadwing saw in the infrared, supplemented by a complex radar system and her tiny brain sorted through the gusts of data she sucked in with surprising efficiency. Shadith had trouble translating the impressions into something she could use, but once the adjustment was made, she found the flight so absorbing she almost forgot what she was supposed to be hunting for.

She went swooping through the dark with the prowling moth, in and out among the trees, soaring on muffled wings that read the air currents so exquisitely they beat just once or twice a minute, only speeding up when she rushed down on a swarm of prey insects. After a few minutes the moth swung across a creek that curved about the glade without coming into it. There were immense congeries of insects buzzing about the waterweeds and suckerplants growing on the banks. She plunged into those swarms, feeding avidly.

A sudden burst of heat drew her like a magnet-heat radiating away from the cooling engines of a grounded flit, an open flier capable of lifting a score of thinnish males. There were some assorted lumps in the back that might be their luggage. Good to know-if true. The moth played in the thermals like a child dancing in wavefroth, forgetting her hunger in the exuberance of her tiny joy.

Shadith slid reluctantly from her mount-and almost vomited at the reaction as she crashed back into her usual sense-set.

While she was struggling to re-orient her brain, she heard someone shouting. She paid no attention until Kikun wrapped his fingers around her arm, shook her lightly, murmured her name, "Shadow, Shadow."

She forced her eyes open, shuddered, then steadied as the world settled in ordinaryness about her. "What?"

"You're being summoned, twiceborn."

The Fanatic was standing by the bars holding the harpcase. "This is yours, girl?"

Still dizzy from her moth flight, she stepped over the cats and stopped a handspan from the bars to stare at him. After a minute, she said, "Yes."

"Good." He shoved the case between two of the bars: "Take it. Play."

She caught it as he let go. "Why?"

The crease above his nose deepened, his brows squeezed closer. "Persuade me to stop Kwantawiyal selling the you to the Na-priests." He produced an angry smile. "Since you're new here, maybe you don't know them. Take my word for it, you won't like them."

She hesitated; she had a strong suspicion he was right about the Priests, but performing for this bunch of… she turned to Rohant. He was stinking like an angry civit, eyeing the Fanatic as if he were a bloody haunch he was about to take a bite out of-all of which gave her no help. Kikun touched her arm, let her feel the urgency in him. All right, this puppy wags her tail for you. Hope you know what you're doing, Clowndancer.

She dropped to the ground, opened the case.

When she had the harp the way she wanted, she began playing snatches of danceries and balladins she'd collected in her wanderings, the time twenty millennia ago when she had her first body and was free to go where she would. For a while, despite the pressure she felt from the listener outside the cage, she couldn't settle to anything more, but when the Fanatic knocked against the bars with the hilt of his knife, she pulled herself together and played a Uejasoh stomp all the way through, then a Herkulkana jokesong that was intransigently untranslatable since it consisted entirely of puns that only worked inside Haarakiena.

The music was laughter's mother; despite his dour expression the Fanatic tapped his knife hilt in time with the beat and when she finished, he snapped thumb against forefinger, hissed his pleasure, and asked, "Does that thing have words?"

"Yes, but there's no way I can translate it. You satisfied?"

"You can play. Can you sing?"

"I don't know any of your songs."

"Sing."

She stiffened; once again Kikun touched her arm, calming her. "Hmm. There's a thing I came across on a green world a lot like this, a Lost World…" she paused and smiled sweetly at the Fanatic to make sure he caught her meaning, ".. going wild fast, seeding out, whatever you want to call it. Song's called Mad Mara's Lament. Who Mara was I have no idea, the man who taught me just knew the song and liked it, he was a man with a penchant for hurting women.." she paused again, smiled at him again, then shook her head. "Now, that didn't come out quite right, what I mean is he attracted and was attracted by women who'd been hurt. I'm going to have to switch langues, I can't translate on the spot like some. You want to know what it says, I'll tell you after." She checked the tuning, played through a verse to catch the mood, it was slow and sad, lovely in its simplicity. Then she sang. O wild wings fluttered in my head And wild thoughts muttered there In waking dreams I saw you dead Your body rent, your throat gone red Your splendid thighs ripped bare. I cannot sleep, cruel love Memory's my Mourning Dove Cuckoos call out: horned maid See your faithless lover fade All oaths broke, all hope betrayed. O wild wings fluttered in my head And wild thoughts muttered there In waking dreams I felt you near Your honey hands, the words you said In my willing waiting ear. I cannot sleep, cruel fair Memory's my Roan Nightmare Cuckoos call from everywhere: Lover's oaths are writ on air. O wild wings fluttered in my head And wild thoughts muttered there…

Her voice rose in a final mourn-filled cry; she broke it off, flattened both hands on the strings, silencing them. For a minute she couldn't speak; she cleared her throat, forced her mind back into the Awenakis, said huskily, "Satisfied?"

He wiped his hands down the front of his jacket, jerked his head up and back, his long fair hair dancing in the wind. There was a yeasty excitement in him that she didn't trust, a softening, almost a change of face. "You'll have to learn Kiskaid songs. Are you a quick study?"

"Depends upon the material." She cleared her throat again. "And the inducement."

"I see."

While she was singing, Silvercreep had walked over to the cage; he was leaning against the bars, watching her from squinted eyes. The Fanatic got a grip on his arm and hauled him away to the fire, took up the argument again.

Shadith wiped off the harp, eased the strings and settled it back in the case. After she'd snapped the catches home, she looked up. "Well," she said.

Rohant's eyes were red slits, his ears were fficking back and forth as if he were fly ridden. She smelled the rage on him again, part of it was turned on her. "Anooristi?" he snapped at Shadith. "Toh anth?"

"Wha.. Oh." He was back in interlingue-what did you find? where is it?-this jumping from langue to langue was starting to scramble her brain, which was in no great shape to begin with, not since Ginny then the locals started booting her head about. She glanced round; there were a number of locals staring into the cage. They looked away rather than meet her eyes but showed no sign of moving off, reason enough for caution.

She rubbed at her brow, sighed. "There's a stream, I think… um, I don't know, it's difficult. I think it's over there on the other side of the clearing, far enough into the trees that the firelight doesn't reach it. There's a flit tucked away in the brush beside that stream. I think… it was almost impossible to be sure with the kind of eyes I was looking through… I think our gear is in there, which is good if true. Case you're interested, I can tickle a lock with the best."

He gave a shout of laughter, shook himself. "University can't know what it's missing."

"Hmm. You think these d'dabs are ever going to sleep?"

"Shouldn't 'ye stirred them up so much."

"Well, thaaank you, so glad you enjoyed my singing."

"Didn't say that." He wiggled his heavy brows and smiled at her, mouth shut, mustache tails lifting-not the grin he gave Silvercreep; tooth baring was a threat-gesture among the Dyslaera, not a pleasantry. He waited another beat. "I did, though. You're older than you look."

"I told you that."

"Yeh, but I didn't believe you, it's the sort of thing kits always say. They're putting more wood on the fire, seems like they plan on staying a while."

"Waiting for the high-bidder to arrive, I suppose."

"Could be." He looked up, produced a peculiar fluttering whistle. Sassa came swooping down, flew over the cage; at another whistle, he went spiraling up again to perch among the fronds of the tree top. "Good bird. I raised him from the egg. Braincrystal knife, hmm? Should cut through that wood like cheese. They'll have a sentry posted. What kind of a shot are you?"

"Adequate for the occasion."

"Lots of occasions it seems."

"Flattery? What do you want?"

He laughed, slapped his leg. "I do like you, little cat. Lovely claws you've got there. Remind me of Miralys when she was a kit."

"Toerfeles?"

"Vanity, vanity, thy name is woman."

"Well?"

"True."

"So?"

"Let me use the needier."

She caught hold of his hand, measured her own against it. "I don't know. It's so small you wouldn't even feel it." He gave her a smoldering look. "I can handle little things."

"You think so, huh?"

"Know so."

"All right." She yawned. "I'm going to snatch some sleep, wake me whe." she yawned again, "aahhh! When it's time."