Shadowplay

Chapter 21. Running again

The flits darted flat and dark into the murk of the swamp fringe south of the city, landed on a sandy island thick with intertwining puzzletrees, a small, clear spring bubbling from the side of a hillock near the middle. The Shawanalotah piled out; a pair of them began work on the propulsion systems, breaking recklessly into the sealed units.

Shadith hauled her harp overside, hefted out her travelpouch and trudged with them to the fallen tree where a Shawal had deposited Miowee, Ler daughter, and her gear; Kikun came and squatted beside them on a patch of grass; Rohant strolled over carrying his pouch and Kikun's, the cats pressing close to him, irritated and unhappy. He dropped the gear to the grass and settled on the trunk beside Shadith.

"Didn't have a chance to say before," she said, "it's good to see you two again. What's that about?" She nodded at the flits.

He snorted. "Suicide," he said. "Or stupidity."

Miowee clicked her tongue, irritation momentarily chasing anger. "Not half, Hunter; talk about what you know. They've done this before, they know what they're doing."

She turned to Shadith. "They're inducing shorts, they're going to use the flits like flying bombs, send them at the Kiceota, that's the Nistam's pile up there on the Horn."

"Seems chancy."

Miowee shrugged. "We can't keep them anyway, have, to get rid of them, why not stick a bomb up the Nistam's arse?"

"Makh Hen's going to be spitting mad. He'll go through the Quarters with a burning rake."

"No, he won't." The child's voice was shrill and loud, colored with a disturbing satisfaction.

"Kaya?" Miowee sounded startled. "What do you mean?"

"They killed him." Kayataki yawned suddenly, groped for her mother's hand. "They took him away. Gonna dump him deep. What they said,"

– Miowee looked fierce and squeezed her daughter's fingers. "Good." She spread Kayataki's hand on what was left of her thigh, smoothed it with gentle strokes as if it were a kitten sitting there. After a minute she winked at the girl. "We'll have to swear off fish for a couple months or old monster's like to give us a belly ache."

Kayataki giggled drowsily, pressed her face a moment against her mother's stump, then cuddled against her; she was shivering, the night was chill and damp and all she wore was a skimpy white shift. Her lids kept drop.. ping, she was swimming with sleep, but when she looked up, her dark blue eyes were as fierce as her mother's. She had reason, there were bruises over all her body-. abrasions, burns, and ligature marks. Makwahkik had used her ruthlessly, knowing whatever he did would be erased when he had her killed which he'd scheduled for the day after the Culmination when there'd be no one left to claim her. Shadith watched her, sickened by the ugly mess of hurt and hate she read in the child and by the memory of what she'd seen in that bedroom; she hadn't said anything about it, and Miowee hadn't asked, perhaps because she didn't need to. No doubt the Nish'mok had thought his tastes were secret; like many of the ruling kind he'd have been appalled to learn just how much of his private life was known to the underclasses. All of which was beside the point, he was too dead to care what anyone knew. And they were alive and needed to get on with living.

The Shawanalotah clamped the workports shut and stood waiting beside the flits. They watched the sky and ignored their ex-paksengers, except for the Shawal who'd been carrying Miowee. He left the group, ran to the downtree, tossed a small bluedsteel handgun into the singer's lap, trotted back to his Triad.

"Friendly types," Shadith muttered. "I feel like lost luggage. Cheap luggage."

Miowee snorted. "What'd you expect, flunkies bowing you around?" She removed the clip, examined and replaced it, made sure the safety was on, tucked the gun into the case with her kitskew.

A third flit came skimming under the trees and landed beside the others. A Triad climbed out. The leader wiped under his mask, readjusted it. "Feeding the fish," he said. "Finished?" He nodded at the other flits.

"Ready to go. What about yours?"

The leader tilted his head back, measured the progress of the stars. "No time. Only an hour or so till dawn. There's a couple incendiaries left over, I'll set those before I jump. Let's go."

Rohant got to his feet, stood watching the flits vanish into the fog gathering over the water. "There's brave men and fools and that bunch is both. I wouldn't have got back in those things with a gun at my head. Shadow, any trouble close enough to bother about? I want to take the cats hunting, they're getting hungry, so am I."

Shadith sighed, gave Miowee a quick halfsmile. "I have to tell you, Mee, we didn't do all that well the last time we were in here." She put out feelers, tasting at the life forms around them; for the moment there seemed to be nothing threatening, no Pariahs for one thing. "Nothing I can smell out."

Kikun stretched, got to his feet looking sleepy and mostly absent. "No informers in the Pariah, not now not later." He shuddered, intoned, "Makh Hen made it so, there's no reward that's rich enough to pay for dead and maimed. Kana or Na-priest, come they near the Fringes, they are dead-and dead we'll be, should we stay too long." He opened his eyes wide, spread his hands and jerked them up-down, a chopping gesture meant to underline his words. "My azee tells me begone before the week ends."

Rohant scratched at his jaw, shook his head, then whistled to the cats who'd gone off exploring; when they appeared, he went striding away along the island with the great black beasts frisking beside him.

Shadith watched them vanish into the gloom. "Well, it is to be hoped nothing eats him or shoots him." She stood and looked around. "What now?"

Miowee scrubbed her hand across her face, bent to touch her daughter's hair. "There should be a shelter somewhere around the spring. I expect it's been provisioned for us."

"If not,, our stay'll be even shorter than Kikun suggests."

Kikun chuckled. He jumped to his feet, turned around twice, then fell onto his knees with his back to Miowee. "On," he said.

Miowee scowled at him, angry because she had no reasonable choice but to let him carry her. For over a decade, since she'd lost first her eye then her legs, she'd fought against pity and horror, distaste and averted gaze, fought against being shut away in a genteel home run by Kamsisters where her injuries wouldn't offend the passersby. Despite desperate times she never spoke of, including repeated rapes, muggings, pecking-order battles, and bearing her daughter alone on ragged sacking in a deserted warehouse, she'd made a life for herself where she was dependent on no one for mobility or support; more than that, she'd won a wide following for her love songs and joke songs and above all the passionate and powerful songs calling for redress of the wrongs done Maka and Tanak in the name of traditional values-those values that perpetuated ancient injustices and maintained in power and wealth those who'd always had power and wealth. And now she was discarded like sucked-out pulp and reduced in front of her daughter to the cripple she'd refused to be. She said nothing. She'd learned in a hard school to do what she had to without making a fuss about it. She swung herself onto Kikn's back, told Kayataki to take his hand and come along.

The shelter was a shikwakola makee, a three-room but on stilts with walls of woven reed and a thatch roof.

Shadith ran up the ladder, found a heap of supplies piled into the middle of the front room along with an assortment of spare clothing though there was nothing for Rohant except one extra-large robe that might or might not accommodate his shoulders.

She swung round holding up the robe as Kikun put Miowee down on an aromatic reed cushion. "Looks like Ro's going to be stuck with blankets if we're here long enough to do a wash."

Kikun heeheed and went back to collect the rest of the gear.

Miowee tried to smile, but the grimace evolved into a yawn. She shook herself, gazed thoughtfully at Kayataki crumped beside her, head on her thigh. With a visible effort she lifted her head and looked directly at Shadith. "Put Kaya to bed for me, will you please. I'm too tired to move."

A small but energetic fire crackled in a three-legged stone brazier set on a round ceramic tile in the main room. The cats were a complex knot of black fur in front of the door; in the puzzle tree spreading like an umbrella over the makee, Sassa was asleep and dreaming of fish. Kayataki was deeply asleep on the springy pile of bedmats in the small room to the left.

Shadith lay with a battered mug warming her stomach on the outside, most of its contents warming her insides. Her eyes were closed; she was looking through the eyes of a flying furwing similar to the furry she'd ridden the first night in the swamp, but considerably larger. "It's like someone pulled the plug, it must have been going on since before we got here. I suppose that's your people, Mee, passing the warning the town's getting too hot for anyone." She paused a moment, but Miowee said nothing. "The Pilgrim Road out of Iril is wall-to-wall people, far as the furwing can see, most of them walking, some riding or driving… urn… I suppose they're mos and kekelipis, not that I've ever seen those beasts… no motors… that's the rules, huh? Back at the city… kanaweh flitting about firebombing the Quarters and they're not being all that careful about boundaries… from the way they're built, some of the houses burning are Kawa. And the fires are spreading. The fools are going to burn the whole city if they don't cool it." She grinned into the twilight where the others were dark lumps barely visible. "I don't hear any groans, so I'll keep on. The Kasta, I can see some*windows boarded over, smoke stains, not much damage, it'll take more than a few bombs to level that lump. Flits going in and out like bothered bees. Hmm, that's odd. The guard on the roof is a Na-priest. Looks like the Gospah has expanded his territory. Well, well. The kanaweh out of control or near to it, the city burning and Makwahkik vanished, I'd say your people really made a dent this time. The Kiceota. Hmm. One of the flits seems to 've taken a hefty bite out of the north tower. There's a sag in the seaside wall, flit didn't hit that, but it blew one helluva chunk out of the cliff beneath. Searchlights all over the place, probably if we went outside, we'd see them from here. Small army on the walls. Maybe you didn't actually put the bomb up his arse, but I'd say you've got the Nistam sitting nervous. Ahhh! My head's getting tired. I think that's all for tonight."

Early morning of their fourth day on the island. The biterswarms were still sleeping off the night's excesses, the air was pleasantly warm though heavy with damp and just enough wind was blowing to brush the flat, lacy surfaces of the puzzletree fronds against each other, producing a gentle susurrous. Nflowee was sitting on the fallen tree near the sandy stretch where the flits had landed, Kayataki beside her; she was playing a jokesong on her kitskew and singing harmony with her daughter. Stripped to shorts and an undershirt, Kikun was dancing on the sand, a slow sinuous twisting that was more plantlike than animal.

Shadith stood at the water's edge, frowning at the enigmatic swamp; she couldn't see more than a few meters into the trees, not with her own eyes and she was feeling more than a little burned out after the nightly sessions flying over the city, not so much from the effort it took as from what she had to look at. She'd seen death before, destruction, war. She'd never learned to look at it with indifference, perhaps because after the first time, the time her family died, she'd always been been an outsider with none of the resources the locals had for deadening that fear and loathing. None of the justifications. None of the righteousness. Rohant had been gone for hours. At least it seemed like hours. He's restless… only four, no, three days, can't count this one yet, and he almost can't stand it. Maybe its the length of the rope tieing us down, the longer the tether, the closer to breaking it, the more impossible…

She glanced over her shoulder at the others, smiled, then went back to glooming at the water. They're out there now, the shikwakola, I don't have to reach to fed them watching. Kikun was right. We're going to have to go somewhere else. Soon. Where? No answer. How? Worse. No, boats, no flits, no nothing. We're almost as much in prison as we were in the Kasta, they stuck us in the pantry to save for later, the kuudj… might as well've stayed where we were… except for the burning-Sar! don't want to think of that… Walk out? There's Miowee… she'd have to be carried… and Kaya… it's impossible… a raft? have to cut down trees… hard to know what the shikwakola would think of that. Feed us to a slither, maybe?

She clicked her tongue, kicked sand into the water. Cut down trees, Sail With what, our teeth? I swear, next time I get to a city, rm going to STAY there. Hang on with teeth and fingernails if I have to and kick the crutch off anyone who tries to shift me.

Kiscomaskin strolled from under the trees. "No, don't stop," he said. "A charming tableau. Finish your song, please, my dears." He dropped to a squat beside Shadith and watched Kikun dance to the song Miowee and Kayataki were singing.

When they were finished, he clapped politely, then straightened up and moved away from the water's edge. "I imagine you're getting rather bored with this… ah… solitude. Where's the Hunter?"

Suddenly wary, though she was careful not to show it, Shadith got to her feet. "You said it, bored. He's off nosing around the swamp." She reached for the nest of muddaubers she'd located in case of trouble. "He'll be back before dark. Probably not much before." She felt Miowee's eyes on her, but she wasn't worried about the streetsinger fumbling a cue. Or Kaya-the girl had learned before she could walk to smell trouble and keep her head down.

Kiscomaskin inspected Miowee as she set the kitskew on the trunk beside her and reached for its case; Shadith felt him decide the cripple was nothing he should worry about. "Too bad. I was hoping to make a sweep of you all." He slid his hand beneath his coat and brought out a small quickfirer…

… and before he got off a shot, Miowee put a bullet through his head, using the pistol in the kitskew case. "Shadow," her voice was a harsh rasp, "any more of them?"

"He wouldn't bring witnesses."

"Don't give me logic. Are there any more?"

Shadith loosed the daubers and made a quick sweep around the island; she caught a distant hint of Rohantcoming back for lunch as usual. Not as usual when he gets here and sees what dropped in. Shikwakola, too. Watching. More of them. Not good. No one else. Mee can let her hormones rest.

"Rohant's coming in, no strangers around," she said wearily. "At least we have transport, courtesy of that." She waved a hand at the corpse. "Has to be a flit back there, or a boat. We'll need it, the shikwakola about ready to pop. Better to go before they do-if we had any idea where to go."

Kikun looked at her, moved quietly off into the trees.

Kayataki had her legs pulled up and her thin arms wrapped round her knees; she was a little paler than usual and she was carefully not-looking at the dead man, the man her mother had killed. She was too calm. Shadith read emptiness in her. Seven years old and she'd seen more death and torment than men ten times her age.

Like the child, Shadith was feeling nothing. No revulsion. No regret. Not even anger. Not any more. Not at Ginny, not at the people running this world, not at Fate or Luck or whatever it was that ran the universe. She was worn out. She went over to the dead man, stirred him with the toe of her boot in his ribs. "Why?" she said after a while. "I don't understand. Why?"

"Weyy-ah, I don't know." Having broken the gun down, Miowee was cleaning and oiling it. "I could guess. You're too hard to control. Like trying to hold a live kilifish. It keeps squirting out of your fingers no matter how tight your grip. He'd get more mileage out of you dead, especially if he could lay the blame for killing you on the Nistam." She inspected the barrel, gave it a last wipe, and began reassembling the weapon. "He can't do what the Makh Hen did; he'd have to coax you and that wouldn't work, would it? The three of you've made no secret about wanting to go home, wherever it is you call home." She put the gun in the case, snapped the latches and set the case on a clump of grass beside the trunk. "Kaya, you all right?" She reached down, stroked her daughter's hair. "Home, child a mine, the man goin home," she sang softly, her voice in its lowest notes, caressing yet remote. "Walkin the hard way, the long way, walkin on stones he pile up hisself…" She began humming and plucking single notes from the strings.

After a while, her voice shaking, then gaining strength, Kayataki took up the chorus: Walkin home, walking home.

"Home, child a mine, the man going home," Miowee sang, repeated the phrase, Kayataki blending with her, child soprano light and pure, woman contralto, worn, ragged, as powerful as it was let to be. "A long way, a hard way on the shells of his hurts…"

The song went on and on, adding travails to Kiscomaskin's route to redemption until Miowee laughed, ruffled Kaya's hair, laughed again as Kikun was suddenly there, handing her a mug of hot tea.

After they rolled Kiscomaskin into the water for the slithers to feed on, they sat and drank tea and ate stale biscuits and waited for Rohant to get back so, they could argue out what was best for them to do.

They were still arguing when the Na-priests came for them.