Shadowplay

WATCHER 9

"One Sing "Tom He c the

"One Sing "Tom He c the

"One has learned your lesson, Singer," Makwahkik said. "Tomorrow it will be eight." He clapped his hands again and the kanaweh began herding the

Ginbiryol Seyirshi stroked the simi and smiled with contentment as the scene played out. He was almost regretting the need to ash the world. This was better. Much better. Experience counted, after all. Yes. Makwahkik was handling her very well indeed. And I was right about that streetsinger, she will be more important than ever if I read him correctly. We Praise again this night. Yes. Yesss.

He turned his head. Ajeri Kilavez was playing with her sensorpad, readjusting the EYE transmissions. "I am aware, Ajeri tiszt, how difficult it was to shift the EYEs, all those EYEs, without losing important scenes. Good work, Pilot."

"Thank you, sir."

He cleared his throat. "Puk is?"

"I think we can untie him tomorrow."

"Not tonight?"

"Better not."

"Hmm." Ginbiryol swallowed his disappointment without much difficulty, it was the tiniest of flaws in his vast and increasing happiness. He went back to studying the Cells, one hand stroking the simi, the other moving over the test:transfer sensors of the pathecorder outlet. Chapter 19. Somehow, someway, I'm going to get out of this

The room was a cube, covered floor, ceiling, walls with institutional gray enamel, so many layers of paint the thickness was tangible like an ancient dirty hide pulled over the stone. The entrance was a rectangle of gray-painted steel with a slot waist-high for mealtrays and a head-high covered grill for looking in at whoever occupied the room; a second door led into a smaller room with a toilet and shower, washbasin, and mirror. A three-layer bunk bed was shoved into the corner opposite that door. There were two battered wooden chairs pushed against a wall, a table and an hassock out in the middle of the floor. In a futile attempt to liven what was essentially a prison cell, some hopeful soul had brought in rugs with geometric patterns in bright primary colors and scattered them about and had tucked matching coverlets over the bunk beds. There was no window, air and light came through a grill up where the walls met the ceiling.

Shadith pulled a hand across her mouth, looked at it, then at Miowee. "Don't be more stupid than you have to. Killing yourself won't change anything. He'll just bring another lot in here and hold them over our heads."

"So I should let you corrupt me when he couldn't?"

"Corrupt? Sar! Look, dead, you're dead, he goes on. That seem like a good trade?"

"Dead he can't use me. Dead he can't suck me into his rot."

"If you're set on it, take him with you. At least it wouldn't be a total wipe."

Miowee stared at her, laughed. "You're something else, you really are."

"Well, it's not my world." She frowned, glanced at the ceiling, not seeing the stains crawling over the gray paint, seeing Ginny's Bridge instead. She twitched her shoulders, folded her arms across her chest, hugging herself. "And it won't be yours much longer," she burst out. "Any of yours, not even him."

"What?" Miowee lifted the patch, wiped at the scarred socket beneath it. She fitted it back, dropped her hand to her lap. "What you 'on about, girl?"

Second thoughts chased each other round and round in Shadith's head, she suspected Makwahkik had arranged to overhear whatever passed between her and Miowee and she wasn't happy about whispering her secrets in that yellow-eyed jakal's ear. "I wonder if weasel-face is listening now?" She snorted. It seemed suddenly hilarious that there might be another nose snooping into her business. Concentric shells of panting voyeurs with old Shadow sitting mouse in the middle.

Miowee sniffed, wriggled backward on the lowest bunk until she was leaning against the wall. "Someone out there listening, or electronics? And anyway, what's it matter?"

"Hmm." Shadith dropped onto the hassock, sat with one foot tucked under her thigh. After a minute, she smiled. "Serve him right if he is."

"This conversation stopped making sense 'bout three or four sentences back."

"That's because I've left things out."

"So put them in."

"Why not. There's a thing with a clutch of names, Planetbuster, Worldbanger, maybe just Buster or Banger, Nutcracker, Eggpeeler, you get the idea, right? Right. Part bomb, part… something else-very else. Weird. Anyway, it goes boom and instead of a world, you've got rubble."

"You telling me the Mahk Hen has one of those?"

"Na, and he wouldn't use it if he did. He's not terminally stupid, just corrupt-to use your favorite word." She scratched at her knee, shook her head as Miowee twisted her face into a comic grimace. "All right, all light, I'll stop wuffing. I've lied so much I doubt if I can ever remember the truth, but here goes. This is a play. A drama. All you Kiskaids are actors in it, you turn and twist for the amusement of an audience you'll never see, your lives and your deaths, every emotion you feel, every joy, every agony…" slapping her hand on her knee she counted out the words, ".. all your pains and pleasures, all of it is being recorded for clots with too much money and a dearth of brain cells, slimy little perverts who get off on other's people's pain and torment." She drew her mouth down, shook her head. "Sorry about that lurid bit, call it lack of editing." She sighed, shook her head again as she saw Miowee's face go blank with rejection. "Listen, don't turn me off yet. We were brought here, my friends and I, to make your passions more intense and your suffering worse. Not by our choice, believe me on that if nothing else. The Director of this drama did all the deciding, he reached out and took us and dumped us here. We weren't supposed to know what was happening or why, but he slipped up there. I'll explain later, if you really want to know. You can see why he lighted on the Ciocan and his beasts, impressive, yes? And the way you Kiskaids feel about reptiles had to play some part in why he chose ICikun for the Dancer. Me, I'm a music student. With baaad luck." She reached inside her shirt and rubbed carefully around the wound, it helped the itch a little.

"You expect me to accept this, this fantasy?"

"Expect? Accept what you want. Believe what you want. Maybe I'm lying, though what the point would be, I don't know. It's up to you if you want to play the fool. If not, open your ears. Asteplikota told me about the plague that started all this, how it popped up out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere. He did it, him sitting up there now watching us." She jerked a thumb at the ceiling. "Ginbiryol Seyirshi. Ginny the Creep in his perambulating, poison machine. It was him planted plague on you. Yeh. He wanted a Pakoseo Year and that was the fastest and surest way to get it. Oh, it's just a guess, I admit that, but if I were you, I wouldn't bet against it."

Miowee shook her head. "I don't believe it. Do you know how many people died?"

"Not his people. Besides, that's what he wants, people dying, he feeds on that dying, sucks up the agony to pleasure his customers."

"I… look, if it was for power or revenge, maybe… but for a picture show?"

"I was told his picture shows bring him… mmm, consider the worth of everthing produced on this world for… say five years since you don't have a lot of hi-tech here, then multiply that by a thousand." Shadith spread her hands. "Got it? No? Don't blame you, it's one of those numbers that's too big to make sense."

"Shows? How many has he…"

"I don't know."

"I thought the Nistam was a monster, but…"

"Yeh. And talking about the Nistam, I have no doubt at all that Ginny's stuck his thumb in your rebellion and he's still beavering away on both sides to make the hate come stronger and the fighting worse. He buys men and women, you know, he uses people like he's using us, tricking them into doing what he wants." Agitated and uncertain, she pushed her hands back and forth along her thighs, her palms catching on the zippers; she didn't want to say the rest of it, but she was sick of lying. "We got word out to our families, we had to, you know, we used your high Hoofta's own skipcom, they're coming for us…" she laced her fingers and squeezed palm against palm, "they're a long way off, eighty-three days altogether, though it's less than fifty now, they'll have started as soon as they heard… the thing is, my people… Ginny's afraid of them… I'm afraid… because of us… as soon as he gets the pictures he wants… boom! Good-bye evidence. Which means good-bye Kiskai." She forced a smile. "Makes it rather silly to play at suicide, don't you think?"

"That the point of this… this… whatever it is?"

"No point, really. I just got tired of playing games. There's still room for maneuvering, it's pretty damn hopeless, but, well, to be honest, the only times I've contemplated suiciding myself is when I'm petrified with boredom and the one thing you can say about this mess, it's not boring."

Miowee stared at Shadith for several minutes, then switched round on her stomach and wriggled to the edge of the bunk so she could see the grill. "He's watching us? Now? Through that maybe?"

"Through that? Not him. Weasel-face maybe, not him, he doesn't work that crude. Probably is watching, I'm one of his catalyst points, his stars, you might say. That's a guess, there's no way I can be sure."

"Why not? You seem to know everything else."

"I've a Talent, not omniscience. You can't see or detect EYEs, that's the point of them."

"What Talent?"

"Not mindreading." She turned her head, tilted it back. "You hear that, Jakal? You can relax now. Your secrets are safe."

"I see."

"You Kiskaids say that a lot."

The door clanged open, two kanaweh came in, separated and stood on either side of it with weapons drawn. Miowee snickered.

They ignored her, though there was a brassy tinge to their ears, and waited with punctilious rigidity for whoever it was they were escorting to appear in the doorway.

Shadith was not greatly surprised to see Makwahkik walk in. She sat where she was, her mood turning peculiar on her, a swimmy feeling like she had in the first days after she was shot; her emotions had been yanked around so much recently, it was as if she'd been put in a wringer and squeezed dry. She was surprised when he pulled a chair out from the wall and sat down, she'd expected to be hauled off and questioned about the Banger.

"I want to make some things quite clear," he said. "Do you hear me?"

She blinked at him, shrugged.

"Do you hear me?"

"Yes."

"The woman there will go with you at all times; you will not be touched, whatever you do. Any punishment you earn, she gets, so think hard. Singer, before you act…" he paused for emphasis, then went on, "and speak.

I'm telling you now, say nothing to disturb the people training you. And I don't want quibbling about what I mean by disturbed, I'm sure you're quite aware what subjects should be avoided. Do you hear me?"

"There's a cycle of twenty-seven songs you'll have to learn within the next two weeks. That instrument of yours isn't suitable, we'll provide one, the Paleka Kitskew." His streaky eyes flicked to Miowee at the squeak startled out of her, shifted back to Shadith. "The Gospah Ayawit has consented to its use. It's a stringed instrument like the one you were given in the infirmary, only bigger. I've been told the fingerings aren't complicated and shouldn't present any great problems to a musician of your ability." Once again he turned to Miowee. "You know the songs, you'll play with the Singer, rehearse her until she does them properly." He examined the streetsinger's frozen face, bared his teeth in a grin as much a threat as any of the Ciocan's, though he lacked the Dyslaeror's tearing fangs. "You have a daughter. Yes. We found her. You didn't expect that, did you? No. But what's a little betrayal beside your treachery, traitor? The Singer's misdeeds will be punished on your flesh, yours will be punished on your daughter's." He reached up his left sleeve, withdrew a flat photo, took it by a corner, and skimmed it at Miowee.

She caught it, sat gazing down at it, her face expressionless. Shadtih got to her feet and went to look over the streetsinger's shoulder at the picture. The daughter was a pretty child, seven, perhaps eight, with her mother's coarse black hair and intensely blue eyes; the way she was scowling from the print, she also shared her mother's temperament. Shadith could see almost nothing of the room the child was in, it was a featureless out-offocus blur. Deliberately so, she thought. Though she knew Miowee wouldn't welcome her sympathy, she closed her hand on the singer's shoulder, just to let her know she was there if she was needed. She looked up, met Makwahkik's streaky gaze. Oh, you miserable buuk! You and Ginny deserve each other, If there's ANY way I can make you hurt, I'll leap at it.

The Nish'mok got to his feet. "Exquisite little creature, hard to believe she's yours. It'd be a sad thing to scar that delicate skin. Perhaps we wouldn't have to, I know a certain person here in Iril who'd find her enchanting. For a while, at least." When he reached the door, he turned. "Singer, your training begins this day, the first hour after noon. The two of you will be escorted to the Kisa Misthakan where you'll be measured for your robes, then taken to the Choirmaster and the Paleka Kitskew. Be diligent, Singer, or your companion will suffer for it."

"I want my harp."

"I don't like the tone of your voice, Singer. Must I already have your surrogate punished?"

"Don't be a bigger fool than you were born to be. Push me too hard and I say hell with it, find yourself another Avatar."

"Push me too hard and I might."

Shadith shrugged. "My pleasure. I hereby resign."

"cipapiu,

"Yes, Makwahkik Sa-pe." A slight man with dead eyes moved around the Nish'mok and crossed to Shadith; he put his gun to her head and waited for the order to shoot.

"There's only one way to resign, Singer. Say the word and,the thing is done."

"I've a feeling I'd make one hell of a mess out of your plans if I said yes; wouldn't do my plans much good either… hnun… alive is marginally better than dead. I'll be polite in public, in private's another thing altogether. That enough?"

"Now that you've got that out of you, shall we proceed?"

"My harp."

"No. I don't want you wasting your time with it."

"I won't waste time with it, but I want it."

"I'll consider it. After today's session is finished. Be diligent, Singer and you'll get your reward."