The Burning Ground

2. Ambela

Autum Rose took the hand of the driver and stepped with stately elegance into the hotel shuttle. She wore a lace-edged privacy mask; her hair was dyed black and swept into a braided knot atop her head, her earlobes were stretched into long flesh loops with a black pearl set in silver at the apex of each loop, her face paint was a stark white, widow’s mark for the Suvvojan femme she was supposed to be.

Shadith stood scowling on the metacrete, using the toe of a worn boot to herd luggage that kept trying to ramble off until the driver could lose sight of his tip long enough to open the back doors of the shuttle.

The driver was a Ptak male in premating molt, the soft curly feathers on his head detaching themselves at intervals to go floating off on the acrid, eye-biting breeze that swept across the landing field. Once Rose was seated, he came rushing back, his toe claws scratching irritably at the ‘crete. He slapped his hand against the palmlock and stood twitching with impatience as Shadith chased the bags up the ramp and crowded into the servant’s bay after them.

Digby’s notes said the Ptak are roaring snobs, she thought, stroking her fingers over the faux skin that covered the hawk etched into her cheek. I’d say he underestimated it. Useful. Now that the sorting’s begun and they’ve got my place in the hierarchy settled, they’ll ignare me nicely.

Disdain in the lift of her chin and the set of her shoulders, Autumn Rose inspected the suite. “Adequate, but not what I’m accustomed to. Ah-ay-mi, Mar Tana, what a widow must endure.” She patted a yawn. “I am tired. I’ll sleep a while. Set the shield so I’m not overlooked, then see what there is in this tedious place that might possibly prove amusing.”

Inconspicuous in her dull gray-brown tunic and trousers, her hair hidden in an intricately folded kerchief, Shadith stepped from the service tube, ambled through the busy traffic of flesh servitors and ‘hots and emerged onto The Strip.

Lala Gemali was the largest city on Ambela and the only place where off-worlders moved about with any freedom. It was a mix of Ptakkan towers and generic star-street architecture, of brilliant primary colors and muted browns and grays. Holoas swarmed like confetti, brushing through the visitors riding the chain chairs and the mover mats, turning the air into a kaleidoscope of color and ghostly shapes, whispering the glories of the viewing palaces, joy houses and casinos.

Songbirds flew everywhere, alone and in flocks of hundreds, blipping unconcerned through the holoas, flitting from tower to tower, tiny patches of jewel-bright color.

The Ptakkan towers were airy open structures, more glass than wall because of Ptak claustrophobia, with great play of arches and flying buttresses as if the Ptaks sought to recreate the tree forms of their natal world. And every surface was painted a different color or a different shade of one of the colors already used. There was no place for the eye to land and linger; the din of the colors as noisy and persistent as the twitter of Ptak voices that overrode all other sounds.

The dull, squat outworld buildings scattered among these elaborate towers were like basso roars, jerking the eye to a halt on broad planes of gray or buff or muted green. The rambling streets went suddenly straight each time they passed one of those structures. The contrasts were disturbing and reinforced the effects of the floating holoas. After a while the visitor had to get inside to rest his eyes and ears.

Out in the middle of The Strip, chain chairs clanked and shook in continuous circuits. Mover mats ambled along at a slow walk beside them, rubbery ovals about three meters wide and four long, with polychrome rails and leaning posts for the drunk or merely shaky. The area closest to the buildings was an ordinary walkway where the visitor could maneuver on his own feet without the pavement shifting under him.

Though it was still early afternoon, The Strip was filled with visitors. Shadith began to understand Digby’s warnings as she listened to the talk that swirled around her.

Phrase fragments from the Viewers-a mix of fascination and disgust, avidity, indignation, blasй boredom.

Talking about cannibalism, blood, exploding flesh and bone.

About stalking. Men stalking men like beasts.

A sense that the Viewers go back and back to this place and that, like a tongue worrying a sore tooth..

Pleasure and pain. Pleasure in pain.

Savoring horrors that made the speaker’s comfort more precious.

The Ptaks talked money.

Rolled the count of obols on the tongue.

Tallied the aliens like sheep in their fields, sheep to be sheared to the last curly hair.

Shadith wandered unnoticed among them, growing more depressed by the moment; it was a huge city not only in numbers but in area, difficult to hold in the mind because she didn’t yet understand Ptakkan patterning despite the weight of data Digby had provided.

Play the game, she thought.

Walk the edge.

Tsah! I’m on a job.

She sighed as she contemplated her sense of responsibility.

Bourgeois to the bone.

Edge. You’re as bad as this lot, wearing a safety tether, hunting carefully tamed thrills.

Ah-weh. Don’t be silly, woman. You do what you do. Playing head games with yourself wastes time and energy. Spla! You better get back in gear.

A group of offworlders came like a dark wave from one of the joy houses; chattering in Cobben-speak, moving with complete disregard for the others on the street, they took over a mover mat, continued their comments as they slumped against the supports.

Shadith swallowed hard and stepped onto another mat, careful to keep a somber Bawang between her and the group two mats ahead of her.

Nightcrawler Cobben? Digby didn’t mention there were Cobben involved. Assassins and mercenaries, yes. Maybe his sources didn’t know. Or they could be here on holiday. Do retail killers find wholesale slaughter a relaxing hobby?

She smoothed her fingers across the faux skin covering the hawk, checking to be sure it was firmly in place. The Cobben of Helvetia had more than one reason to be annoyed at her. She leaned against a post, found a birdmind, and eased into it enough to keep it circling above the Cobben while she watched through its eyes.

They reached the end of the mat’s route, stepped off, and strolled along a side street, too busy talking to notice a small fretting bird that flew in sweeping circles above them, uttering agitated twitters.

Eyes on the ground, only enough mind on what she was doing to keep from bumping into things and people, Shadith slouched along two streets, over, a rambling narrow way that ran roughly parallel to the one the Cobben was taking.

They passed through an area of blocky warehouses whose utilitarian forms were concealed behind hedges and thick ropy vines, emerged into what looked like the bedroom community for the imported laborers who did the unglamorous jobs of cleaning and repair, servants, waiters, translators, guides, all those who kept Lala Gemali running smoothly. There were small houses, duplexes, ottotels, transient lodging for all purses from scab joints to militantly respectable boardhouses.

The Cobben went into one of the ottotels, a gray-faced anonymous structure that sat among thick shrubbery and small trees almost as if it pulled a cloak around itself.

She turned her mindmount loose and ambled about the neighborhood, getting it set in her mind and looking for another ottotel where she could settle and keep an eye on the Cobben. If they were Ptak-hires, they knew things she needed to know-and sooner or later they’d be heading over to Impixol. She meant to hitch a ride on their transport.

There were no Ptak visible on these streets, only a mix of drab offworlders she decided were leaving for shifts on The Strip; here and there grifters of various sorts worked cons on the off-duty souls, a scatter of streetwalkers smiled with painted tenderness, while other furtive types scratched a living selling assorted and usually adulterated drugs.

The flocks thickened overhead, the cries became more raucous as waterbirds took over from the singers. She watched them a moment, smiled. Odd how on every world that had seas, birds that lived by the sea produced almost the same sound, as if there were a sort of optimum noise that carried across water.

It was mid-afternoon by the time she reached the lake-shore and there wasn’t much going on. The fishboats moored there were empty, waiting, their owners and crews gone home till it was time to leave for the next day’s catch, the tourist docks were mostly deserted, the brightly painted boats rocking empty and idle. Some distance along the shore she could see a few container ships still unloading grain and other supplies from the farms on the far side of the water and there were more such transports in view out on Lake Incunala.

She walked to the end of a deserted wharf and settled on a bitt, swinging her booted feet and lifting her head to the damp cool wind coming off the water.

“Haven’t seen you around before.”

She turned her head. The speaker was a bald old man with a face like polished teak and a body still hard but perhaps more brittle than it had been a few years back. He set his bait bucket down and eased himself to the planks beside it. She watched as he dipped a chunk of bait from the bucket, gave a dexterous twist to a hook, and sent it smoothly through the dark meat. With an equally dexterous flick of his wrists he sent the line swinging out, the weighted end dropping into the water with a quiet splash.

“Haven’t been around,” she said. “We just got here.”

“We?”

“My employer and me. Widow. She decided she wanted to spend her official mourning time watching folk slaughter each other and her kin provided the coin real fast.”

“Like that, hm?”

“I’m a woman of strong moral convictions, or I would have strangled the bitch two days into the flight. With a little luck she’ll fire me, that way she’ll have to cede me a severance.”

“You don’t want to get stranded here, young and juicy as you are. You’d be thinking that time with the widow was paradise.”

“Maybe.” She went silent as his line jerked, watched him reel in the fish, unhook it, and drop it into the bait bucket. When the line was out again, she pointed at the wooded island and the spray of rocky islets that trailed from its base. “What’s that called?”

“Graska Wysp. Government run for government business. The Ptaks can get real nasty if they think folk are sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

“Hm.” She glanced at the buttonchron clipped to the breast pocket of her tunic. “Ti-ta, I need to be there when the Widow wakes. Good fishing, man.” She slid off the bitt and strolled away, stopping at the mouth of the alley to wave to him.

Autumn Rose was stretched out before the suite’s wall screen, watching bands of fighters stalking each other. She clicked it off, turned her head as Shadith came in. “Anything interesting?” She flicked a hand toward the shield generator sitting on the table, a small green light glowing against the dark plastic cover.

“Yes. I had a bit of luck, ran across a Nightcrawler Cobben and tracked them to where they live. Remember what Digby said about hired assassins?”

“Mm. Planning to hitch?”

“I think so. We should probably have our quarrel in the morning. I need to listen in on what they’re talking about and the closer I am, the better.”

Rose sighed. “Just as well. I’m going to have to find a game, I’ve never been so bored.”

Shadith watched the door slide closed behind Autumn Rose, shook herself, and sighed with relief. The careful politeness between them could get more wearing than hard labor. She moved about the suite, picking up Rose’s discarded clothing, cleaning the bathroom, turning down the bed, playing the servant’s role for the watchers who’d be looking in on her at intervals now that the shield was turned off. Digby’s assessment. The Ptaks are paranoid about visitors interfering with the cash flow. Unless shielded by a caster whose capacity you’re sure of, assume you’re watched.

She moved to one of the long mirrors beside the door, ran her fingers through her short curly hair, checked the faux skin to see if it was still sealed in place, and went out to do her own kind of playing. She wasn’t looking forward to the quarrel; they’d choreographed it on the way here, but there was too much negative energy between them to make that fight an easy thing.

The light came on suddenly enough to blind Shadith as she came back from her night ramble.

Autumn Rose caught her by the shoulders, shaking her, screaming insults in a guttural Suvvojan, finishing, “Where were you? I don’t pay you to go whoring round the town, you miserable piece of nothing. You’re to be here when I need you, you hear me? Get that look off your face. I won’t tolerate insolence.” She swept her right arm back and slapped Shadith hard enough across the face to send her staggering backward into the hallway.

Shadith straightened, stared at Rose; she touched her face, looked at the smear of blood on her fingertips from the cut one of Rose’s rings had made, then she returned the slap with as much force as she could put in it (wondering even as she swung if Rose had found as much relief in this exchange as she was enjoying right now).

Autumn Rose recoiled. “That’s it. That’s all. Get your things, I want you out of here now. Now,” she screamed. “Five minutes, then I call the authorities.”

The cut scabbed over, a bruise forming around it, her gear beside her feet, Shadith stood in the middle of the lobby and looked around. Behind a long counter a female Lommertoerken clerk sat at a keyboard, eyes on the screen, her long, deeply lined face intent.

When Shadith rapped on the countertop, she looked up. “Yes?”

“Is there somewhere close I can rent a lockup?”

The Lommertoerken smiled, wrinkles spreading like stage curtains, her large brown eyes shining conspiratorially as they swept across the bruise. “I can let you have a locker here for a few days.” She lifted a bony shoulder. “Have to charge you for the keycard, company policy. You need a place to stay?”

Shadith sighed. “That I do. Somewhere cheap, she has to pay me severance, but…” She shrugged. “You know anything down near lakeshore? My fa was a fisherman, I can catch my dinner if I have to.”

The clerk ran her fingers over the keyboard, tongue clicking rhythmically as she worked; after a moment, she tapped a key, waited for the printing to finish, then tore off a sheet with half a dozen addresses on it, short paragraphs beside them listing requirements and costs. “You want to be careful,” she said. “Some of the boardhouses out there funnel women to bordellos and worse; they advertise cheap prices and give you more than you pay for, but nothing you’d like. These are all right, though.” She pushed the list across the counter. “If you’ll get your things, I’ll show you where to put them.”