Shadowplay

Chapter 20: Scrambling and scratching

Sassa circled above the city, seeking out and riding the thermals that rose from the barricade fires, slipping sideways to avoid the prowling kana flits and the streetlights with their straying pellets and catapulted stones. It was the gray, clear firstlight of morning and even the fires were tired, though the fighters didn't seem to be, the clashes went on and on, breaking off and starting again or shifting from one winding alley to another, from one decaying structure to another.

For a short while longer he flew for the pleasure of soaring, then he began to get nervous at the length of his absence from Rohant and swung out across the bay. He was a curious mix of raptor lines, a construct rather than a hybrid; Shadith thought of him as hawk mostly because he looked like one of the larger buteos, but his capacities were much more extensive than the natural strains. He'd take ground targets and birds in flight, but preferred fish when he could get it; he liked savannahs for hunting and rocky shorelines for breeding, but he'd tolerate heavy forests and take prey from treelimbs if he had to. This morning he was after fish and he got one on his second stoop; with it flapping in his talons, he flew back to the perch he'd established on the roof above the cell where Rohant was.

Shadith sat up, blinked. The hate and rage she'd picked up through Sassa lingered like a foul taste. Ginny might have sparked the overt rebellion, but the explosion must have been building for years, even generations. This boil was going to be a bloody mess when it broke open. She shivered, started to lie down again and pull the quilts over her, but her bladder felt like a balloon so she dragged herself over the edge, went down the ladder, and trotted into the bathroom.

When she finished her business and stood, she saw the smear of blood on the seat and swore fervently. "Of all the things I didn't need…" She washed off the seat and went into the bedroom to fetch a tampon and another of the sleeping shifts the infirmary had sent along with her gear; the one she had on was a mess. Her body'd been telling her for days she was due, her breasts were sore and there was a dull floating ache around tile base of her stomach, but she'd been too distracted to notice these signs. So many things happening, wrong body-weight (not much difference in the gravity but enough to throw her reactions off), days the wrong length, getting shot and drugged and fever ridden, no wonder she'd lost track of her cycle.

She rinsed out the bloody shift and hung it from a hook, then stepped into the shower and let the hot water beat on her back, breathing in the steam that rose around her, reveling in the warmth-until the water turned tepid and ended her brief heat orgy.

When she came back, Miowee was awake, watching her from the lowest bunk.

Shadith hesitated; she'd provoked scathing comment when she'd lifted Miowee onto the bunk without waiting to be asked for her help; the streetsinger was touchy about doing for herself. "Use a hand?" she said finally, nodding at the bathroom.

"No. Later, maybe." Miowee frowned. "You're an oddity, you really are, I can't make you out. Sometimes you're a child, sometimes you act like you're older than time. How old are you?"

"Consider me an old soul. Um. I just thought of something. Some cultures like yours, a menstruating woman is unclean, taboo, supposed to sit in her house and hide till it's over."

Miowee smiled. "Wa-hyeh, there're some touches of that about, in the fervent and the male like our high and holy Gospah. You going to tell him?"

"Unfortunately it rather proclaims itself, first two days, I gush like someone stuck a pin in me. Have to change tampons every hour on the hour. Blasted nuisance, times like this."

"Even you starpeople with all your klem?"

"Klem? I don't think I know that word."

"Maka word, street talk. Take what you call hi-tech, mash that in with all the things you know we don't."

"Ah. Yes. There're drugs that'll suppress the cycle. I don't fool with them, don't want to mess myself up case I want to have kids later. I don't know if I do or not, but it's a bit soon to be foreclosing options. My body's sixteen standard, somewhere round that anyway, I couldn't say exactly, time gets royally • twisted traveling 'tween worlds, you never know exactly when you are even if you do know where."

"De-ah, de-ah." Miowee pulled herself up, grinned at Shadith. "What a wise child it is."

"De-ah, de-ah, what a crock." Shadith yawned, stretched. 'Well, well, maybe it's not so bad after all, buys us more time. Weasel-face can't blame me for this delay."

"That's what you think."

"Naaa. Even he must know the blood comes when it comes."

Miowee laughed, then shook her head. "There are drugs on this world too, Shadow. Drugs that can dry you up faster than a summer drought. And he'll use them if he takes a notion to. You have no say in it."

"I'm not local flesh, Miowee. He might find himself with a corpse on his hands if he gets too busy. I swear, some of the things they shoved into me when I was shot came closer to killing me than that pellet did. They had to pump my stomach twice and restart my heart at least once. The good Doctor Meskew was a lot more careful after the heart thing."

"And the Nish'mok knows about that?"

"Oh, yes; that slimebag doctor was sweating rivers when I opened my eyes after my heart quit. Weasel-face was standing behind him looking like he could chew nails."

"Then you're right, you've bought some time. You can't go to the Chambers while you're in blood. Oppla's teeth, that'd be a sight, Ay-no-wit would have a stroke on the spot, they'd have to reconsecrate the whole damn place, himself included. Sheeht Talk about your evil omens." She laughed until she started coughing. Shadith pounded her on the back, then brought her a glass of water. Her giggles finally trailed off into bubbles in the water.

Once again Shadith hesitated, but she was tied in knots as long as the Nish'mok had that child. She had to try prying her loose. Once that was done, she could see about breaking out of here. The thing now was to get this across to Miowee without the listeners knowing what she was after.

She thought a minute, then dug out her notebook, brought it to the bunk. "Look, you can't sleep, I can't sleep, might as well not waste this time." She knelt beside Miowee and flattened the notebook on the covers. "Do you think this might make a song? Min mudda aksira ana ajuana ana a'ishashana ana asukninana. That's how it sounds, what it means… come along here, what would be the best way of saying this in Kiskaidish?" She scribbled at the page for a short time. "Look here. This is what it means…" She pretended to read what she'd written: "A short time ago I was hungry, I was thirsty, I burned with fever."

Miowee looked astounded, then gasped as she understood what was happening. She wriggled around and crawled along the mattress until she was hunched over the notebook. She read what Shadith had actually written: My Talent-mindriding beasts-seeing, hearing, feeling what they see, hear, feel. It will take time but I think I can find your daughter-if she's anywhere in the city-would that help?-could you get her away?

Her voice steady, her face expressionless, Miowee said, "I like the way it sounds in the original, you could use that as a refrain of sorts; it's meant to be a love song?"

"Yes. The rhythm though, the two langues are very different… I don't know…"

Miowee took the stylus, wrote: Yes. Yes. Yes. I can. I will. Don't ask how. Not even you. If you are playing games with me, I will strangle you. Or something. Somehow. How long?

"If you can shorten the phrase," she said, "Break it into different repeats. Like this maybe." She wrote more, read aloud: Min mudda aksira My saklimo-heh strayed from me A short time ago, an eternity Min Mudda aksira ana ajuana My saklimo-heh sets my soul on fire I thirst for him, I perish from desire

Shadith took the notebook. "I see. Yes, it can be done that way and the phrases would still make sense. But wouldn't the repetition get terribly monotonous? Or… I just had a thought, why not exaggerate that monotony?"

She wrote: No games-don't know how long-depends where she is and how much beastlife there is about-need eyes to look through-can move from mind to mind-can't linger long without base-or see without actual physical eyes-if don't find her before mens. over, be limited to sleeptime search-take lots longer. With luck, could be tomorrow-without, who knows?-want something for this-help to hide-if manage to get away-till rescue. Three of us.

She wrote more, read aloud: Min mudda aksira-o A short time ago Min mudda aksira-i My saklimo-heh strayed from me A short while ago, an eternity Min mudda aksira-o A little week ago Min ana ajuananee Thirst consum-ed me Min ana a'ishashana aree a'rire My saklimo-heh set my soul on fire I thirst for him, I perish from desire

Miowee looked up, smiling, made the Kiskaidish formal-sign for agreement (a pressing of the palms together, a dip of the head), then she reread the last lines. "No, no, Shadow, you've gone over the edge, it just doesn't work." She yawned. "I'm tired, even if we're not going to be working today, let's get some sleep." She pushed the notebook at Shadith. "I think you need to change again. You're showing through that shift."

"Ahhh! What it is to be a woman." Shadith grinned at Miowee, gave her a thumbs-up and took the notebook into the bathroom where she shredded the pages and flushed them away.

Seven days later seven women came for Shadith, gray-haired matrons dressed in heavy black robes, black gloves, black veils thrown over their heads and held in place by a crown of jayshi antlers, the ends fluttering about their knees. They circled her, singing a dirgelike chant, closed in on her and stripped her. They whipped her with soft wool straps the color of fresh blood, a ceremonial scourging. They wrapped her in a bright red blanket, pulled over her head a white jayshi skin painted with sacred patterns and deeply fringed, the fringes splitting over her arms and hanging to mid thigh in front and back. They spun her round and round, then took her from the room. Seven prepubescent girls lifted the kitskew from its case and carried it after the matrons. Seven unmarried maidens wearing long yellow cloths wound about their breasts and loins brought in buckets of purified water and began scrubbing every inch of the cell.

The matrons took Shadith to the Kisa Misthakan and drove her at a trot around the outside of the Great Wall, scourging her as she ran with the red wool straps.

Wearing only thick black blindfolds and black loincloths, two Kam priests swung open the postern gate and stood with their backs to the opening, their faces to the wall, as the matrons led Shadith inside the Purification Court.

At the far end of the octagonal court a large wooden tub steamed gently into the brilliant morning air. The matrons stripped Shadith again, bathed her, stood her on the blanket and anointed skin and hair with perfumed oils, then one of them took black and white paints and soft wood sticks and drew geometric patterns on her face and on her arms and down along her body to her feet. Another unfolded a shift, its fine white cloth billowing in the wind. Three drew it over her head and tied the laces that snugged the bodice against her slight form while the loose skirt fluttered about her legs, brushed against her bare and painted feet. In silence with the others silently following behind, two matrons took her wrists and led her from the court into a lightless maze-she could hear bare feet pattering, hands sliding against stone, siss, siss, the women around her breathing in unison.

This whole thing was beginning to have an odd effect on Shadith. Ancient and rational, of a species able to manipulate such things, fully aware of the way these rituals develop and the reasons behind them, yet she was catching awe and wonder from the women and the girls-perhaps it was the impact of their deep belief in what they were doing, perhaps some sense of the antiquity of this rite. It made her uncomfortable, that feeling, yet it was close to irresistible because there was a part of her that NEEDED to belong to something which would reach out and enfold her. She was lonely; she hadn't let herself think about that, but it was part of her fear of University, of being alone on a whole world with no one who knew her history, no one she could talk to without holding back… she tried to shake off the malaise, but it ate deeper and deeper into her… made her all too susceptible to the power of the rite…

A door boomed open ahead, with the sound of the crashing of thunder, more thunder came, the beat of huge drums, their boom-doom vibrating in the bone.

The matrons brought Shadith into an immense hall, three stories tall, galleries rising rank on rank along the sides, sunbeams slanting into torchlight from twin rows of clerestory windows while incense drifted lazily down from silver censers dangling on silver chains bolted to the ceiling beams. Na-priests in black leather and black wool stood shoulder to shoulder, silent and ominous, filling the lowest gallery, five hundred of them, staring down at her. Above them the second gallery was crowded with Kisar judges and scholars, the wealthiest of the Kawa merchants. Women-Kisar, Kawa, and Plicik-each in their own sections, filled the third gallery. On the floor, Plicik males like beaded peacocks stared with easy arrogance at Shadith and her retinue.

The matrons brought her to the foot of the curved shallow-stepped stair to the altar stage with its Chair of the Gospah and above that the Totem of Oppalatin-an immense maskin carved from some dark tight-grained wood, rearing on his hind legs, reaching out with silver claws extruded and gleaming, as if to at once embrace and threaten the accembled believers. The women backed away from her and lay on the crimson carpet, their faces pressed to the wool, their arms outstretched. The girl-children with the kitskew came timidly forward, placed it on the lowest step, then backed away and dropped flat behind the matrons.

The Gospah Ayawit stood beside his Chair, a massive backless banc with the form in abstract of a maskin crouching, carved from the same wood as the Totem. He beat his staff on a wooden soundboard beside his feet, "Opplatin Awashoneeotehiya'asewacikapiyah," he intoned in the liquid heart-rhythm of the ancient langue. "Oppla's bounty blessings be. Well done, Omisa, Otanisan. Depart now, your work is complete." He brought the staff down again, stood waiting while the matrons and the girls got to their feet and backed out, spines arched, heads bowed over hands pressed together, fingers up. When they were gone, he stood smiling benignly down at Shadith. "Prepare, O Nikamo-Oskinin, prepare." A third time he set the board booming. "Ni-tahwaikis."

A flute and a pair of basenote Longhorns joined the drums. The Sound filled the chamber, beating with her heart, throbbing in her brain. She relaxed and let it take her, swimming in the seething, complex stew of emotion in that great chamber, emotion as strong for her as the sound.

A masked figure danced through long, velvet, beaded drapes at the left of the altar, an androgynous figure with grasses and cornhusks knotted into a rustling robe and wooden plaques linked to form scapulars before and behind; it held a black and white blanket, swinging it up and around as it came toward Shadith. She dropped to her knees as she'd been exhaustively instructed, the blanket dropped over her, concealing her completely.

"Tahnokipo Waposh." Boom-boom went the sounding board.

A second figure danced out…

The ceremony went on and on, the tension lessening, rebuilding, lessening, building to a higher plateau, the drums throbbing, seizing control of every heart in that sounding chamber, bringing them into unison, seizing control of the breath until there was a single creature breathing, the cynical and the unbelieving there for status and curiosity caught with the others in the powerful impulse of the rite…

Shadith wrinkled her nose at the door, set her back against the steel and grinned to Miowee. "I'm holy again."

"Wahhh-weh." Miowee plucked a tinkly tune from the kitskew. "Do I bow, do I slap my brow on the slates you consecrate?"

"Yes, you bow, come now, kowtow." She whirled dizzily about the room, tripped over the hassock and went skidding on a rug until she slammed against the bunk, folded in the middle and collapsed on the husker mattress.

"Grace incarnate." Miowee played another phrase of the jokesong. "You finished?"

Shadith rubbed at the sore spot where her head had cracked against the bunkframe. "Looks like. You know, it's funny, I thought the Gospah would have his nose out of joint at this messy hangup. Female thing."

"Why? Wikpriest on up, they have to deal with bodies all the time, there's a rite for everything from spitting to shifting." Miowee shrugged, picked another tune, it was the one they'd been working on to camouflage their conversations, now it was the question she couldn't ask.

Shadith groaned and got to her feet. "After all that, I'm hungry enough to eat a Slither raw. And tired! Wake me when the food arrives." She shook her head (an unspoken answer to the unasked question), climbed the ladder and slipped into the top bunk.

For the past week she'd been methodically ransacking the Kasta, searching for the child; she'd been sure Makwahkik was keeping her close at hand in case he needed to beat on Miowee. Needed was an ambiguous word and an apt one, because Miowee opened wounds in him that he refused to acknowledge yet suffered from. What she was, what she said, what she did, all of it was a scathing condemnation of everything he'd given his life to. His trouble was he wasn't stupid, so she reached through his defenses and showed him to himself and he didn't like what he saw. He NEEDED to crush her, to destroy her independence, her integrity, to force her to acknowledge his rightness, his worth.

With their question tables and surgical theaters, their prisoners mutilated in mind and body, the cellars made her weep and swear and churn with nausea, but she kept looking. No child. After she finished that part of the search, she lay a long time staring into the dark, trying to forget what she'd seen.

Ground level had a kilometer-squared of floorspace; it was a maze of offices and kana sleeping quarters and kitchens and a kana cafeteria with separate officer dining halls and preliminary interrogation units and cells and cells and cells (Miowee had lived there over two months before Makwahkik's demonstration) and prisoner chapels and kana chapels and detention suites and a repair facility for the kana flits and assorted storerooms, plus a scatter of anonymous nooks and crannies. Even late at night there were kana scribes working there, kana torturers hauling prisoners to the question tables, kana guards coming in and out, bringing back wounded and dead kanaweh from the stone and fire fights in the city, bringing in battered and wounded prisoners, along with whatever dead Makas and Tanaks they could lay their hands on so they could identify them and haul in their families to suffer for their misdeeds. It took five days to search that level and even then she wasn't sure she'd nosed out all of it. No sign of the child anywhere.

Second level held the infirmary, larger and more elaborate offices, meeting chambers, record rooms, computers, corn banks, guest suites for visiting kana officers, more kitchens and washrooms, an armory (light arms), the flit garage, a fuel dump, a number of anonymous nooks and crannies, but not so many as below. She finished that level the night before the rite was scheduled. No child.

She lay on the bunk and wondered if her assumptions were correct, but that was only a bit of foreplay before she plunged into the exhausting search. Unless she was entirely mistaken in everything she thought she knew about him, Makwahkik simply couldn't let the child go far from his hand. She closed her eyes, found a prowling cat, and slid into him. There were cats everywhere, cats were Makwahkik's clan totem and untouchable; besides this, they earned a welcome because they kept down the vermin attracted by the muck in the cellars, the food in the kitchens; they paced through the halls, trotted through the maze of heating ducts with the arrogance of ownership, slept on top of cabinets, on desks and in chairs with the clerks and others shooing them without thought when they were in the way; they went where they wanted when they wanted without being much noticed. And they served Shadith as well as they did Makwahkik and the kanaweh.

Third level held Makwahkik's office, the high chapel of the Kana (used for funerals and graduation rites and other Kana ceremonies), the Nish'mok's personal flit storage and repair shop, quarters for his bodyguards, for his Aide Nahwac, reception rooms of varied stages of grandeur, assorted high security suites like the one where she was now, where Rohant and Kikun were living, another armory, communication rooms that were busy day and night, busy now as she sent the cat trotting through them. This floor being much less extensive than the two below, she pushed on so she could finish with it before her lessons started again.

"Food, Shadow, food." A clatter of metal against china. Shadith released the cat and dropped back into herself. "Yeh," she muttered and fought the dizziness that came from prolonged riding. Levering herself up, she looked over the edge of the bunk. "Ah."

Miowee was sitting at the table, pouring herself a cup of the local tea. "Any interesting dreams?"

'Fraid not." She swung down and seated herself across from the streetsinger. "Maybe later. This so-called meal could bring on a few." She made a face at the soup and salad and single paper-thin slice of dry toast. "This is all? After what I had to do this morning?"

"Be glad Ay-no-wit hasn't decided you should fast for the duration."

"Hunh! Tell you something, I don't deal well with being ordered about."

"Eat your soup while it's still warm."

"Yes, mama-not." She sighed and picked up the toast. "So. What is this Culmination thing? When I asked the Gospah, he soured up his face like I spat in his wine."

Miowee took a long drink of tea, sat the cup down with an exaggerated care. "Why bother? It's just a collection of rituals, you'll learn, they have to teach you the songs."

"Uhhh-huh! Tell me."

"How should I know anything? I'm Maka, they barely teach us to read."

"You're Maka like I'm Ay-no-wit's twin sister."

"My mother was. It's the truth, Shadow."

"And your father?"

"Why should I tell you that?"

"No reason. Doesn't matter, anyway I could probably guess a lot of it. You're good as someone else I know at avoiding answers. And you're making me more nervous by the minute. What hellish little surprise has the Gospah got waiting for us?"

"You're a nice child, Shadow, there's heart to you. I don't know what your home is like; being it produced you, it must be a pretty good place to live."

"Why do I get the feeling that's a eulogy over my corpse? Come on, Mee, you're not my mama, curb those hormones, huh? What I don't know could hurt the hell out of me."

"Know. That's the problem. I don't KNOW anything. Just rumors. Stories. Last Pakoseo Year was a long time ago, no one remembers it. My grandmother wasn't even born yet." She pushed at her hair, made a face at Shadith. "All right, all right. Calm down, will you. And eat while I'm doing this or I stop right now." She waited until Shadith started spooning up the soup, sighed, and started talking again. "Story is there are always Avatars, sometimes more than one set of them. There's holy dances and holy songs and at the Culmination there's the Sacrifice."

"To coin a phrase, I see." Shadith broke the toast in half, sat holding the smaller bit. "That's how the Gospah keeps his grip on things, right?"

"You got it."

"Come on, come on, give." She popped the toast in her mouth, rubbed her thumbs rapidly across her bunched fingers. "The whole thing," she said thickly, "not just a hint."

"The Avatars return to Oppalatin."

"Aaah! Details, woman. How?"

"Remember, you asked. The story goes there's a mock battle, not so mock where you're concerned, you three. You're tied to stakes and the stakes are piled round with oil-soaked wood. There's singing and music and someone cries out that you go willingly to the Father of All. And they light the fire. And when it's over, they gather the ashes and take them up in a flit and drop them over the heads of the Pilgrims and everyone goes home, edified and sanctified."

"Oh, yes. We'll see about that." Shadith drained her cup, pushed the chair back. "I'll sleep on it a while, see if I can come up with something."

Late that night, hours past midnight, she found Miowee's daughter lying curled up on a mat at the foot of Makwahkik's bed.