Shadowplay

CELL 1

The barrier island was a stretch of sand half a meter at its highest above the sea with a skim of gray-green, salt crusted brush and reeds plus a thorny tangle of the ubiquitous amtapishka vine. The boats were pushed up onto the sand on the landside of the island, tethered to the poles which were driven into the sand.

The ocean was a brilliant blue, like sapphire at once liquid and crystalline, restful despite its patterned restlessness. The sky was the same blue, but softer and more diffuse, as empty as the sea. A few cloud puffs intensified rather than diluted that emptiness.

Rohant lay stretched out on the sand, wrapped in one blanket with another rolled up for a pillow. He was asleep, snoring, a gaunt look lying uncomfortably on his broad face. Painfully reddened with flakes of skin peeling off It, his nose jutted like the beak of his hawk, his chin was a minor promontory.

Kikun sat at his feet, a small nub of a man, not sleeping, but huddled in on himself, visibly plumping as if he drew sustenance from the sun's heat and the whip of the wind that blew onshore with enough force to tear the bushes loosed their roots hadn't gone down to bedrock.

Asteplikota lay in the boat, gauze laid loosely over his face to keep off the biters. He was not doing well. He was restless with fever despite the antibiotics Shadith finally took a chance on and fed him, knowing the odds were they'd kill him; they brought the fever down enough to prevent brain damage, but they weren't right enough to do more than ameliorate the infection. He was asleep, moaning in his sleep, but comfortable and warm with a big cat dozing on each side of him. The hawk perched on a thwart, tearing at the body of a small rodent.

Shadith stood looking out across the empty ocean, the wind blowing strongly against her, molding her torn and bloodied clothing against her body, teasing at hair matted into clumps and tangles. There were shadows under her eyes and furrows dug from her nose round the corners of a mouth too wide and too defined to match the childish contours of her face, a childishness that was rapidly melting under the stress of the flight; her cheeks were hollow, emphasizing the Jut of her cheekbones. The delicate rondure of her child's limbs had gone hard and knobby. When she unfolded her arms, her hands shook.

As if she could see the EYE-though of course she could not, that was impossible, the direction of her gaze was chance-she scowled straight at him. "Ginbiryol Seyirshi, hear me. It's your game. If you want us on the board, get your ass in gear and send us some backup." She turned away from him and once more stood staring out to sea.

Ginbiryol Seyirshi was raging, but he didn't let it show. He controlled every nuance of his behavior. He was never caught napping, he was always ready to handle anything that came at him. He took immense pride in his imperturbability, it was an important part of his mystique, it was something he fought fiercely to protect. He could feel Puk the Lute watching him, Ajeri the Pilot was looking sideways at him, waiting for him to react to Shadith's Challenge.

He shook with hatred for that girl with her sneaking Talent, but he couldn't show it. If he railed against her, he called in question his own judgment-and his Luck. He chose to bring her here, it was his decision to let the Avatars run loose for a while. They were doing what he brought them here to do, generating rumor and stirring up the castes, setting the low against the high, and they were doing it very effectively. No one could deny that. At least five hundred Pariahs were dead or dying, the flits had left behind them a swath of destruction thirty km wide. And the Three had moved through that chaos as if they truly were gods, with witnesses in plenty to testify to it and spread word about it. Grace of that oddity who called himself Kikun. There Ginbiryol's luck had served him well. That drunken Dyslaerik Unmate who sold them the information had told the truth, hard as it was to believe. Ginbiryol had a moment's regret that he'd let Puk have the creature to play with before he'd squeezed every drop of data from him about this putative god incarnate, but that was unimportant at the moment; if he wanted more data, all he need do was reach out and take it. He decided all that mattered was Kikun's belief in this absurdity; his conviction would convince others without him doing anything. Especially if they wanted to believe.

Luck. The Lady had brought him everything in one throw of his net. Even though this girl was insolent and probably dangerous, she was quite satisfactory as Virgin God. If he didn't need her in the production, he'd have her as Penitent in a Praisesong none of them would forget; as it was he would have to make do with the end Ayawit had waiting for her. Luck, yes. Kikun was a demigod and the Ciocan with his tied-beasts was perfect for the Hunter. Gathering him up had given Ginbiryol more than a little satisfaction. It was a Ismail earnest of the payment Family Voallts were going to make him for the insult they had put on him when they refused to deal with his agent. There was not a man, woman, or other alive who could say he had put the hurt on Ginbiryol Seyirshi. He did not allow that to happen. If it did happen, he erased it. The Ciocan had felt his hand already, the rest of Family Voallts would be destroyed one by one when he found time to deal with them.

Calming himself by thinking of that and of the Ciocan's inevitable, unenviable end, he produced a smile, chirruped to the Pet and coaxed the simi to his lap. Stroking the round velvety head, he turned to Puk. "We must see that her end is a strong chastisement of her insolence."

Pukanuk Pousli looked wary. "Yes, sir."

He didn't elaborate. It irritated Ginbiryol that he didn't elaborate. He kept his eyes fixed on Puk the Lute, a silent inescapable demand for more. Behind the gaze, though, he relaxed a little, pleased, when he saw Puk's face begin to shine with sweat.

The Lute fidgeted. Finally he said, "You want I should get onto one of our men in Kiscomaskin's camp, say Shipayupal, and have him set up a coast search so he can find them?"

"It would have been more use if you'd alerted him the minute the search and slaughter began."

"Yes, sir. I missed that, I was inexcusably blind to possibilities."

The words were contrite, but Ginbiryol could read a cavil behind them: You didn't think of it either. It was becoming clear that Puk was going to need disciplining and soon. Perhaps even before this operation was completed. He made a note to set a personal, dedicated closeEYE on his Second and check it frequently. "Apologies will not restore Asteplikota if he dies, Puk. If I told you once, I have said it a dozen times…" he relished the fear he saw in his tame killer, the drop of sweat that collected at the end of Puk's nose and splatted onto the arms he'd folded across his ribs in an absurdly childish sketch of self-protection, "… I need Asteplikota alive and ambulatory. See that it is accomplished." He did not wait for Puk to answer him but turned to his scanning of the other cells. Chapter 13. Still running. When do we get to stop?

A touch on her arm drew Shadith out of a restless, hag-ridden sleep. She pushed the blanket away and sat up, brushing the sand off the side of her face. Kikun squatted beside her, waiting for her to get herself together enough to notice him. "What is it this time?" she muttered. She plucked at her hair, grimaced at the knots and the greasy stickiness, smiled as Kikun passed over the comb he'd gotten from her pouch. "Intuition or foresight?"

"There's a sail on the horizon. It looks like you got through to Ginny and he's been pulling strings."

Shadith winced as she worked the comb into a serious tangle. She continued teasing at the knot while she thought over what he'd said. "Not more trouble from the Powers?"

He fluttered his fingers, an inadequate answer but obviously all she was going to get.

"Hmm. Aste?"

He blinked slowly, coming back from somewhere, wherever it was he went on these occasions of absence; small changes eddied across his fine-boned, angular face, but even with her Talent she had no idea what they meant. When he spoke, though, his words were prosaic enough.

"About the same. Still under, fever's no better no worse."

"Don't need to ask about Rohant, I can hear him snoring from here." She dragged impatiently at the comb, swore as it tore out a clump of hair. "I suppose I should take a look, find out who they are for sure."

"If you wish." He contrived to be suddenly more present. "Consider this also, they'll pass us by unless we let them know we're here."

"If we want them to know. All right, oh god, I hope they have a doctor onboard." She reached and settled into the hawk, got a firm hold on him and sent him winging out to sea. Riding him was even more of a problem this time because Rohant was still sleeping; though only marginally aware of her in the hawk, he had less control of his basic emotions; she shuddered under a blast of concentrated lust that shook her to her heels.

To the north of the wander of sandy barrier islands splayed along the curve of the Wetlands, an old three-master was tacking slowly south.

Leaving in place a thread of control to keep the bird circling over the ship, she dropped into the ship's cat, a lazy torn with one ear and a truncated tail, big enough and certainly tough enough to eat the average dog. He fought her with every nerve in him, nearly went into convulsions in his struggle to throw her off. The men working the ship around him ignored his cavorting; apparently they were used to his fits.

She subdued him and sent him prowling about the deck while she listened to the crew.

They weren't talking much; one of them, a boy, he couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen, had a pipe as long as his arm and was producing sounds that approximated music, a lively bit of noise that made the pulling and hauling easier. Another lot of the misbegotten. I wouldn't want to meet a one of them in a dark alley. Bright alley either. Smugglers, I suppose, if they're not from… no… no. Not on the side of the Powers, not them. All right, all right, who's in charge… who signed you on, lazy fourfoot, you bloody old mangler?

She sent the cat scooting up a steep ladder onto a smaller deck that was built over a substructure of some kind. There were three locals standing in a loose group. One of them was a big sloppy man with a massive torso and long arms, a stained and raveled mustache and a nose that wandered a finger's width off center; he was scanning the coast through a crude spyglass.

"M'tika!" The shout came from the top of the midmast. She'd been thinking and reacting in interlingue having waked in that mindset, so for a moment it was just sounds she heard. "M'tika, Wa Tipli." Her mind shuddered and clanged over to Awenakis as the watch yelled some more look-looks, more captain-captains, and went on: "That the bird, in't it? T' one you say look for. And in't it raat over us goin round and round like it knew who we was?" The cat twitched nervously as the hoarse voice came down through the bulging canvas, the whining shrouds.

The three men stared up at the circling hawk. The Tipli lifted the spyglass, focused it on the bird. "It a strange 'un, all raat. Have a look." He passed the glass over.

The second man was short and square; he'd a petulant pouty face with bulging eyes and a full red mouth. He snatched the glass, set it to his eye. After some fidgeting and focusing, he stared for a long moment at the bird then lowered the glass. "That's the one, for sure. It matches the description." His voice suited his body, it was high and whiny and dry enough to hurt an ordinary ear. "They must be around here somewhere, if they're still alive."

The third man was slight, neatly made, with a thin intelligent face and a pointed gray beard, the first chin hair she'd seen on a local. He, wore the neat twill jumpsuit and the bronze arm bands of a high caste doctor, Kisar at least. She sighed and felt a weight drop off her shoulders when she saw that. He looked up at the hawk but waved away the glass when the second man offered it to him. "The question is, where did it come from?" His voice was a pleasant rumble that sounded more suited to the burly shipmaster. "Lipatchin, ask your man if he got a line on it."

That gave Shadith an idea. She withdrew from the cat, let him go streaking off to hide in a coil of rope, took hold of Sassa and brought him swooping down the length of the ship, screaming as he passed. She took him in a last circle, then sent him darting toward the sandy islet. He wanted to land beside Rohant, but she wouldn't let him; she made him hover briefly over the islet, then sent him winging back to the ship. Once again he circled the topsails, flew to the islet, flew back.

The third time he reached the ship, the crew was launching a longboat. When the boat was in the water and the men in it saw him leave again, the boy played him a rollicking salute, then launched into a quickbeat as the sailors started rowing along the line Sassa'd given them.

Shadith let the hawk come where he wanted to be and went back to combing her hair. She glanced at Rohant who was awake and sitting up, watching her. "They're on their way," she said.

"What? Who?"

"Some locals. Part of Aste's lot. I think."

"Think? Dio!" Eyes glazed, each breath a wheezing rasp, shudders running through his big body, he got to his feet and went to stand looking out to sea, waiting for the longboat to appear, his hands clasped behind him, his fingers curled about her stunner.

Kikun eeled through the brush and squatted beside her; he yawned, glanced out at sea, played in the sand a minute, then slanted a look at her. "Aste is restless. He feels hotter to my hand."

Shadith moved her shoulders impatiently, unzipped a thighpocket and squeezed the comb into it. "I'm not going to give him any more of my stuff. God knows what it's doing to him, sure not me. There's a doctor on that ship. Let him handle the fever." She whizzed the zipper shut and got to her feet, "Anyway, here they are."

The four sailors beached the longboat and squatted by its prow, the boy stayed where he was, the short square man from the upper deck swung over the gunnel and came striding up the sand to stop in front of Rohant. He stared up at the Ciocan, looked past him at Shadith, then Kikun. "There should be another," he said abruptly.

'You're got a name? Who are you?" His voice an impatient growl, Rohant folded his arms across his chest and looked down his nose at the newcomer.

"I am Shipayupal. Where is the fourth one?"

Rohant thought that over another minute. Standing behind him and a few paces to the left, Shadith saw his body tense as he suppressed a cough. "Name him," he rasped.

"What?"

"You heard." The Ciocan's voice was scraping bottom now, but he ignored that and pressed on. "You want to know what happened to him, give me a name."

"Happened to him, what do you mean happened to him?"

No uayton

"Name first. Tells me what side you're on, fool." Shipayupal glared at Rohant, then he shrugged. "Asteplikota."

"Wait here. Kikun, come with me." Rohant swung round and strode off.

Shipayupal gazed tightlipped after them, then turn his eyes on Shadith. Her first impulse was to follow Rohant's lead, to challenge him and make him take them on their terms not his. But the Ciocan was tired, sick and riding Dyslaera instinct, not using his brain all that much. And playing Ginny's game. But aren't we all. Huh. "He's looking at me. Wonder what he wants? I don't think I like this local, I don't care what side he's on. He's a handler, that's all he is, tenlper boy working the edges, out for what he can get. Perfect soulmate for Ginny the Creep.

"Come over here, girl. Get in the boat."

She tightened her lips, suddenly furious, logic and reason melting like a summer mist. "I'll wait."

"Don't be foolish, we haven't time for it. Wepi, Ahtay, put her in."

She caught hold of Sassa, brought him diving and screaming past Shipayupal, talons ripping at his face, missing this time, but making the threat palpable; at the same time she brought out the darter. When the hawk was circling overhead again, she showed them the weapon. "I will not be handled. Don't touch me."

"You'd best do what she says." Rohant's cracking rumble came with an underpinning of soft snarls from Magimeez and Nagafog; he was standing in a gap in the brush, holding Asteplikota cradled like a baby in his arms, the black cats looming beside him, huge and ominous, creatures out of myth and nightmare; they showed their teeth and twitched their tails as he spoke; Kikun waited behind him, nearly extinguished under the pouches, her harpcase and their blanket rolls. "None of us are in a mood to take any chousing."

Shapayupal scowled at Asteplikota. "What happened to him?"

Rohant cleared his throat, spat to-one side. "Cutter hit him. You got a doctor on that ship? We've done the best we could, but that isn't much."

"Yes. There is a doctor. We knew about the strafe and thought if you survived you might need tending." Pale blue eyes flicked from Rohant to Shadith, slid over Kikun in an uneasy wince. "You are unharmed?"

"Luck of the toss." Rohant whistled to the cats and marched • for the boat with them pacing on each side, heads turning, yellow eyes gleaming, red mouths open, showing the tearing fangs. The sailors scattered, scrambling to put distance between them and the beasts. Eyes wide with a struggling mix of fear and delight, the piper boy stayed in the boat, backed up as far as he could from Rohant as the Ciocan settled Asteplikota carefully across two thwarts with the cats beneath him to support him where the thwarts didn't.

Rohant straightened, ran his eyes over the nervous locals. "Get in, let's go. The painkiller's wearing off and he's going to need help soon. The cats are tame enough, they won't touch you long as I tell them not, to." He looked over his shoulder at the boy. "You're not afraid, are you."

The boy managed a wobbly grin, sweaty hands clutching the pipe as if it were a safety line.

Kikun grinned, his eyes gleaming copper in the brilliant sunlight. He dumped his load beside Shadith, climbed into the boat, and settled in the bottom beside Nagafog's head; he scratched behind the beast's ears, then began slapping his hand rhythmically on the nearest thwart, threading a whistle through the drumming, a cheery tune that the piper boy picked up, his sound uncertain at first, then strong.

Sheepishly, the sailors came back, laid hands on the boat to push it into the water, Shipayupal started toward them.

"Wait." Shadith caught his arm, stopped him. "There's not enough room for all of us and our gear in that boat. And no point in trying to overload it. Aste has to go now, no question of that. Answer's simple, they can send it back for us."

"Us?"

"Certainly. You don't expect me to wait here alone, do you? Or trust you to come back for me? Forget that. We wait together."

He opened his mouth to object, heard the beat of Sassa's wings, and changed his mind. With a shrug he waved the boat off, kicked together a pile of dry weed, and lowered himself to wait for its return.

"Who are you? Where do you come from?"

Leaning against the pile of pouches, Shadith thought about the questions as she fought off a weariness that turned her bones to water; her brief sleep had left her nearly as tired as when she laid down. She had no inch-nation to open her soul for Shipayupal; on the other hand, she didn't want to antagonize him any more than she had to. In her mind if not in her heart, she regretted using Sassa to intimidate him; she'd humiliated him in front of the others and he wasn't going to forget that. She definitely didn't need any more enemies; this was another time she'd let her mindset get warped by fear and anger. Cool she wasn't, and she kept paying for it. This body she'd acquired was a powerful drag on her mind when it came to crises. It reacted as its original owner had trained it; war was bred into the bone of its people, attack and destroy were the approved mode of action. She kept forgetting how intricately mind and brain were interwoven; for so long, so very long, she'd been a sketch of a person, mechanically reproduced inside an unliving matrix; now everything was new, her immediate reactions were raw, undirected by reason. Ahlahlah, what do I do now? I'd like to forget it and just sit here. Just sit and listen to the ocean tickle at the sand. Gods, if it weren't for Aste, I'd say run like hell for the city and crash the kanaweh headquarters, I'm sure the skipcom's there, where else would it be?

"We were kidnapped and dropped here," she said after a silence she knew was too long; her voice was flat, unconvincing, she couldn't dredge up the energy to make that worn list of half-truths and whole-lies sound believable. "We were picked up like stray cows and carted off," she said, and thought how blah it is. "I don't know why, all I know is I want to get back where I belong." Even that had no strength behind it, though it was the one fully true thing she said.

"Word is you claim to be Nikamo-Oskinin."

"Claim? I claim nothing. That's somebody else's stupid mistake."

"You're a singer?"

"I'm a student of music. From a half dozen other places. I don't belong here. How many times do I have to say it?" She closed her eyes, rubbed at her temples. Her head was aching; she felt sick and wondered if she was catching Rohant's cold.

"And the green one?"

"Green? He's more gray than green. I've known him… what? three days. Ask him what he is."

"And the big man?"

"Same." She got to her feet, stood staring out across the ocean. The ship was a faint waver of sail and spar against the pale clutter between sea and sky; she couldn't see the longboat for a minute or so, then it heaved up and vanished again. About halfway there. She moved her shoulders, trying to shrug off the fatigue that dragged at her; she was tired of talking, she was tired of thinking. She pulled the harpcase over to her. She'd been too busy to worry before, but now she was anxious about the harp, what the gouts of steam and scalding water might have done to it.

Scowling as she felt small blisters like a bad case of measles, she ran her hands over the wood, then threw the latches and took out the harp. There were a few stains on the padding, she chewed her lip when she saw theta, turned anxiously to the instrument. There were traces of moisture on the dark, lustrous wood. She took the polishcloth from its niche and began wiping gently at the damp places, inspecting them, wiping again and again until the glow was back, deep and alive. She tightened the strings, tried each, listening for the tones and halftones and undertones. When she was-finished with that, she played one of her simpler homesongs, played until she broke a fingernail and had to stop. Sighing, she eased the strings, shut the harp away. It was time anyway, the boat was coming back.

As soon as they were onboard, the ship turned east and ran for the islands.