The Burning Ground

4. Dreaming Gajul

Gajul lay beside a broad river flowing into a bay shaped like a leaf with three pointed lobes-a bay so big it was almost an inland sea. Shadith circled through scattered high clouds, using her binocs to examine the city that sprawled below her, its streets serpentines of glowing polychrome against a velvet black ground and in those streets a richly gaudy throng of wanderers that never seemed to stay anywhere for more than a breath.

The Nightplayers of Gajul had a lighter, more whimsical touch than those of Icisel; there were fewer refugees, and most of those were housed in a tent city on the far side of the river where groves of maka and thile trees hid them and the Brothers of God who cared for them from the dreaming gaze of the Gajullery.

She scanned and swore at what she saw. The streets and pocket parks around the radio tower were the busiest in the whole city. The tower itself was twice as tall as the one in Linojin. It was a mass of metal rising from four elegantly curved legs, with the station itself laid like a square egg between those legs. There was no way she could slip in as she had in Icisel, not without announcing to a few hundred Nightplayers and prowling street guards that something odd was happening.

With a sigh of frustration she left the city and followed the river until she found a thile brake nestled in a wide sweeping bend; it was deserted except for birds and a scatter of small beasts.

She made camp, fixed a quick supper, and rolled up in blankets to catch some sleep before she tried again.

About three hours after midnight, she was over the city again. Gajul was quieter around the edges, but in the center where the station was, some street musicians had set up in a small park and were playing for Gajullery who’d taken a notion to dance under the stars, at least what stars were visible. It was a lovely summer night, just cool enough to be pleasant, a wandering breeze to lift and flutter ribbons and set heart-shaped maka leaves to shivering, and the dance showed every sign of lasting till dawn. The streets themselves had gained another group, no hairpaint on mal, fern, or anya, sober clothing in dark colors with long sleeves-visitors from the farms and the lesser merchants out for a night on the town. Brothers of God moved through the mix, white motes in Brownian motion.

Shadith sighed. If ever I wanted rain…

She landed the miniskip in the fringe of the thile trees along the city side of the riverbank, hid it high up in ancient thile, strapped into a threeway crotch, invisible from the ground. Despite that, she set the shocker to stun anyone trying to steal it, checked the stunrod strapped to her arm, clipped the rifle to her belt so it hung along her leg where the robe would conceal it most of the time. Too bad she had to fool with the rifle, but the locals would snicker and ignore the rod, and she’d waste too much time waiting for them to wake up.

She slung the. Brother-robe over her shoulder and dropped from limb to limb, landing with a scrape of booted feet on the knotty roots. Wrinkling her nose with disgust, she shook out the robe. It was stained and smelled of sweat, the hem she’d ripped out to get more length was stiff with dirt. She pulled it on anyway and started walking into the city.

Getting through the streets undiscovered was easier than she’d expected. Intent on their conversations or performances, Nightplayers glided around her as if she were a post in the street-something in the corner of the eye that they avoided without having to take note of it.

Street guards leaned from their kiosks and shouted quips at the Players or slumped against the back wall and drowsed; they, too, ignored her.

A silence in the center of waves of noise, she walked on and on, the radio tower her only cue in that maze of curving streets where straight lines of any length were rare and the only cues were names that meant nothing to her.

The Players, pickpockets, and cutpurses grew thicker as she got closer to the station, the guards had moved out of their kiosks and on occasion marched off a cutpurse clumsy enough to raise a howl from the victim. Except when she stepped out into the street to check direction,

Shadith kept as close to the walls as she could, walked with eyes on the pavement, hands carefully tucked into the long sleeves.

She swore under her breath when she rounded a bend and saw the station ahead-and something she hadn’t noticed in her overflights, a wrought iron fence set in the spaces between the tower legs, at least six feet high with sharpened spear points on the pales.

She leaned against a garden wall and contemplated that fence, wondering once again if she should have simply coerced the tech in the Yaqshowal station into duplicating the master for her onto wire spools. She hadn’t trusted his skill all that much and, from the little she’d heard, the quality of the recordings on those spools diminished rapidly with the mounting generations of copies, but she was tired and sweaty from all that walking and trying to sing after climbing over those spear points was not an appealing thought.

Why don’t I forget the whole thing? Yseyl is probably still in Linojin anyway.

She followed with her eyes the upward curve of the nearest leg and the soaring spindle of the tower. This station was the most powerful on Impixol with the widest range and the biggest audience. I should have come here first, she told herself. Still… She pushed away from the wall and began walking around the square, hunting for a gate. Picking a lock would be a lot easier than trying to haul herself over that fence. A lot more exposed, though… She glanced at her ringchron. Around two hours till dawn. Didn’t leave a lot of time.

As she walked around the second leg, a band of anyas danced past, big eyed and silent, hands busy with the flow of gesture talk like five-finger dances; they wore wide bronze neck collars with bronze chains linking them together. A one-eyed mal with a scattergun and a spiked knucklebar walked beside them, looking warily about, his single eye narrowing to an ominous slit when other Nightplayers got too close.

As she watched the group move on, she realized suddenly that she’d seen very few anyas among the Gajullery Nightplayers. There’d been two or three tribonds, but none of the flowing partner exchange. She remembered things she’d seen, things hinted at in the Ptakkan teasers. Ah Spla! I don’t care what Digby says, that Fence has got to go. Once the pressure is off at least some of this will stop.

She moved quickly along this lesser fence and turned the corner in time to see a cloaked mal come swaying toward her. He stopped near the middle of this side, felt around under the cloak, then began to stab a key of some kind at a lock she couldn’t see from where she was standing. Shadith moved quickly, quietly up behind him, reaching him as he finally managed to locate the hole in the gate’s lock.

Insulated in an alcohol fog, all his attention focused on turning the key, he noticed nothing. With a grunt of satisfaction he lifted the latch and shoved at the gate, then sputtered in confusion and surprise as she caught hold of his collar and the seat of his pants and walked him inside. She tripped him, rescued the key and slammed the gate shut before he managed to get back on his feet.

“Wha… who… Brother? What?”

“Let’s go.”

He stood swaying and blinking. His crest was braided into dozens of thin plaits threaded through silver beads that clicked musically whenever he moved. The sound of her voice cut through the muzz in his head, enough for him to realize something odd was happening. “You’re not…”

“All things will be explained once we’re inside. Aren’t you late for work?”

“God!” He shuddered, struggled to pull himself together. “Rakide’s go going to ki kill-me. Ahhhurrr. Can’t talk straight.” He stared at her for a moment, then swung round and stumbled toward the station’s single door.

“Just stay where you are and there won’t be any problem.”

The mal she’d followed in stood rubbing at his face and looking both dazed and harried. A lean, hard-faced fern taller than usual glared at her, thin lips pressed so tightly together her mouth nearly vanished, her face a net of wrinkles, dark smudges under her eyes. She sat in the corn chair, earphones draped around her neck, one hand on the control panel, the other on the arm of the chair.

Shadith saw the hand on the panel start to shift, lifted the rifle. “I won’t kill you, but a pellet through the wrist won’t be pleasant.”

“What-do you want? We don’t keep coin here. Stupid, there,” she nodded at the mal, “he might have a stash of muth around somewhere, but I doubt there’s much left. He doesn’t get paid for another week.”

“I’m here to give you something, not to take anything away.”

“Oh, really.”

“Really.” With her free hand, she pushed back the cowl and smiled at the twitch of the fern’s face as she registered what stood before her. “I have some songs I want to sing. They’ve been well received otherwhere.”

“Ahhh, I begin to see. I recognize your voice now. What do you want for the master?”

“See that it gets played often and aired widely. That’s all.”

“You wrote them?”

“Yes.”

“You have more?”

“Not to give away. Well?”

“Harl, go set up studio two. And do it right. If I lose this because you zekked up, I’m going to skin you strip by strip. You hear me?”

The mal’s greenish-gray skin went papery pale, and his eyes got a distant look.

“And if you heave in here, I’m going to use your tongue to mop it up. Get on with it.”

Shadith left the station reasonably satisfied that Rakide wasn’t going to spoil her exclusive acquisition of those songs by sending guards after the singer. The one broadcast had gone out, but what fussed her most was a feeling that it would be the only broadcast. From what she’d heard on her way here, Gajullery Station was given more to comedy and romantic songs and management might have something quelling to say about stronger fare. Yaqshowal Station had given them a good play, but Yaqshowal was under siege. Ciselle Station had broadcast the spool four times while she was in range-and had added several similar songs in other voices. The war was hitting them harder now with the floods of refugees and the fear that the phelas would move on them next. For the Gajullery, though, the profits from the war were flooding in, the arms dealers were here and the dealers in flesh, the harbor was crowded with the ships of the coastal traders. She’d heard a farm fern talking to a merchant tribond, saying that the rainfall had been good this year, they’d gotten three harvests already and a fourth lot was growing well, and when she finished, the merchant fern nodded with smug satisfaction as she sang the praises of her family’s profits. And they were only one pair out of many Shadith had heard on her way in who mouthed talk deploring the horrors of the war, but whose eyes were shiny with satisfaction.

The complacency of the unthreatened. She heard more of it as she made her way through the crowded streets of the city, in a hurry to get away from there before dawn.

Laughter and pleasure, profit and ease, built on the bones of the dead-she’d seen these a thousand and a thousand times in her long life and longer unlife.

A wrong turn took her into the warehouses along the bay front. She ground her teeth at the delay and her own stupidity at getting so sunk in mind games that she forgot what she was about.

Hm. If I follow the bay front until I reach the river, I can follow that to the grove. And get out of here. She started walking faster, the rifle slapping uncomfortably against her leg, the ragged hem of the robe irritating her ankles.

A small figure came racing from a narrow alley between two warehouses, caromed into Shadith, and bounced off her into the wall. Two mals emerged from the alley, reached for the anya who was sitting up, shaking xe’s head, dazed, but not so dazed xe couldn’t shiver with fear at the sight of the mals and start scrambling away on hands and knees.

Shadith had the robe up and the rifle unclipped before they reached xe. “Back off,” she said, pitching her voice as low as she could. “Now. Or lose a knee.”

“That un’s ours, this is Kugula’s patch.”

She snorted. “I don’t know Kugula from that piece of crud you just stepped in. And I could care less. Back off.” She watched them intently, felt the one on the right gathering himself. Cursing their stupidity, she put a pellet in his knee, swung the rifle, and squeezed the trigger again. She missed the second thug, but that was no problem because he flung himself back, scrambling for the shelter of the alley.

She darted over, picked up the anya, tossed xe over her shoulder, and took off running, driving her weary legs as fast as she could move them.

She plunged into an alley on the side away from the water and a. few moments ‘later was thoroughly lost in the maze of littered, stinking little streets that never ran straight for more than a few strides.

When she felt she’d separated herself far enough from the shots, she slowed and looked around. Nobody in sight, no feel of watchers behind shutters. She lowered the anya to xe’s feet. “All right. We seem to be clear of that lot. If you’ve got someplace to go to, you’d better head there, sun’ll be up soon.”

She started to turn, but the anya caught her sleeve, pulled her back around with a strength born of urgency. When Shadith was looking at xe, xe signed, +What are you?+ Abruptly, xe made an erase-sign, went on, +Help me.+

“It seems to me I have. And I’ve got other places to be.”

+My daughter,+ the anya signed, xe’s face twisted with grief and fear. +She’s only twelve years old. They sold her. Slavers sold her to a mal old enough to be her granther. Help me get her away.+

The trouble with empathy, Shadith thought, it doesn’t let you tell yourself xe’s lying. Spla! Twelve. “Do you know where she is?”

+I know the direction. Thinta tells me.+ Xe pointed. +That way.+

Shadith followed the line of xe’s ann. Hm. That’s the way I want to go. I think Don’t interfere with locals, Digby said. At least, don’t get caught at it. And he laughed. And then he stopped laughing. Don’t make bad vibes for the business, Shadow. Not if you mean to keep working here. Spla! “Here, you take this.” She thrust the rifle at the anya. “What’s your name, by the way?”

+Thann.+ Xe took the weapon, tucked it under xe’s arm to leave xe’s hands free. +I do know how to use it, if you’re interested. And your name?+

“Call me Shadow. And do me, a favor, ignore the cues you picked up about me. I’m not supposed to be here.” +It’s the least I can do, Shadow.+

“Hm. Well, let’s go find your daughter.”

The sun was pinking the east when they reached the house where Isaho was. It was a big house, set inside a wall ten feet high with sharpened spears along the top. There were a number of trees inside the wall, but they’d all been trimmed, no branches allowed to thrust past the spear points.

The main gate had a guardhouse with a watclunal dozing inside, but around the corner there was a small door set deep in the wall. Shadith moved into the alcove and bent to examine the lock. “Thann, give a whistle if you see company coming. Shouldn’t take long, a baby could turn this thing.”

Despite the care with which Shadith eased the door open, the hinges squealed as if they were in pain. She stiffened, sent her reach sweeping across the ground. No alarm. Either no one had heard the noise or they thought it was outside in the street. She shoved the door wide enough to let them in, shutting it as soon as Thann was through.

They were in a small court paved with flags, an open arch at the far end.

“Hm, far as I can tell, the place is still sleeping. You thin any problems waiting for us?”

+No. God watches over us.+

“Over you, perhaps. I doubt he worries about me.” She pushed the hood back.

Thann stared, seemed to gather xeself. +One worries about all living creatures.+ Xe stepped away from the wall, settled the rifle under xe’s arm. +Isaho is that way.+ Xe pointed toward the southern corner of the house. +On the second floor. The room’ at this end, the one with the balcony and all the windows.+ Xe’s hands trembled, and xe stopped signing until xe had them under control again. +She is not… I don’t know… the sense of her is so weak… he… he has…+ xe’s hands started shaking again.

“Right. I’ve got it. You stay here. Be ready to get the door open the moment you see us. We may have to get away fast.”

As Shadith passed through the arch, she heard growls and the scratch-thud of running feet. She flung herself to one side, rolled up with the stunrod in her hand. The quickest of the chals collapsed with his drool on her foot, the other went down only half a step behind him. Spla! I think I’d better go up the outside. Who knows what I’d find prowling the halls in there?

A dusty ancient vine coiled up the side of the house, its rootlets set deep in the interstices between the courses of stone. She jumped, hung from her hands long enough to make sure it was going to hold her weight, then she half-walked, half-hauled herself to the balcony. She swung over the rail and crossed the deck in three quick steps, broke a pane of glass, reached in, and tripped the latch.

The huge room was filled with a mix of gray starlight and the tiny yellow flickers from half a dozen nightlights. Whoever he was, he didn’t like the dark. She crossed to a bed big enough to hold a dozen Impix or Pixas.

A small form lay sprawled on a pile of rugs as if the mal had shoved her from the bed when he was done with her. The smell of blood mixed with sharper sweeter odors from the ointments smeared over her.

An old mal lay on his back in a tangle of silken quilts, faint snores issuing from a sagging mouth.

She looked at him a moment, sighed. I know what I’d like to do, she thought, but I’m not your judge and definitely not your executioner.

She stunned him, then looked round for the child’s clothing. Nothing.

She found shirts in a chest by the door, used her beltknife to shorten the sleeves on one of them and pulled it over the comatose child’s limp body. She took another two shirts, rolled them into tight cylinders and shoved them down the front of her shirt; the anya could turn them into clothing after they got young Isaho cleaned up. She pulled one of the quilts off the bed, laid Isaho on it, and tied the ends into a sling.

Using another quilt as a rope, she lowered the sling to the ground, then climbed after it.

In the courtyard Shadith set the bundle down. “I have her. She’s fainted or something, but she’s alive.” She untied the knots, rewrapped Isaho in the quilt with her head clear, her fine hair pooled like black water, her small bare feet out the other end. “I’ll carry her.” She pulled her cowl forward to conceal her face, eased her arms under the quilt, and lifted Isaho as she stood up. “You walk guard, Thann, and chase off the nosy with an avert sign. One that says sickness, keep away. The streets will be filling up with dayworkers, but that should stop them from looking too hard at us.” She settled Isaho, so her face was pressed against the robe and concealed from the casual viewer. “Let’s go.”

They moved through the winding streets at the trailing edge of Gajul, a zone of silence and emptiness about them generated by Shadith’s size, the limp and apparently lifeless child cradled in her arms, the rifle tucked under the anya’s arm, xe’s warning gestures. No one spoke to them or tried to stop them; even the guards yawning in their kiosks only watched as they strode past.

The paved street became a dirt lane that wound for a short distance between small but intensely farmed plots of land and fmally turned into the woodlands where she’d stashed the miniskip. Shadith sighed with relief when the lane cleared for a moment and she was able to move unseen into the lingering shadow under the trees.

She lowered Isaho onto the leafmold, turned to face Thann. “I’ll be here a while,” she said. “Until nightfall, at least. If you want to stay, that’s all right. Or you can move on. I yvon’t stop you.”

Thann sank to the ground beside Isaho, letting the rifle fall from cramped arms. Xe smiled and shook xe’s head, then wearily, as if xe had barely enough will left to move xe’s hand, xe signed, +No. Where would we go?+

“All right. I’m heading for the mountains above Linojin. If you’d like to go with me, I can take you. It might be safer there.”

The anya’s fatigue-dulled eyes brightened, and xe managed a grin that gave new life to xe’s thin, worn face. +We were going to Linojin before the, slavers took Isaho. Thank you.+

“Ah Spla, the ways of fate.” Shadith pulled off the robe with a sigh of relief, hung it on a limb stub to air out for a while. She thought about discarding it but decided not; what happened next depended too much on when Yseyl heard the song and what she did about it. She swung into the tree where she’d left the skip, got the emergency rations, the canteen, and the medkit and dropped down again.

Thann was stroking the child’s face, xe’s thin fingers shaking with anxiety and fatigue. Xe looked up as Shadith walked across to xe but didn’t try to sign.

Shadith twisted the top off a tube of hipro paste. “Here. Eat this. Food concentrate. Doesn’t look like it, but it’s good for you. Think of it as pate.” She gave Thann the tube and chuckled as xe eyed it dubiously. “Squeeze it in and swallow fast as you can. Believe me, you don’t want to taste it. And here.” She unsnapped the cup from the canteen and filled it with water, passing it across. “Wash it down with this.”

As Thann followed instructions, Shadith opened the medkit and ran the scanner along Isaho’s body. “Hm. Your daughter’s torn up a bit, but the physical stuff isn’t bad. Do I have your permission to give her something to keep away infection?”

Thann nodded, then drank hastily from the cup as the after effects of the hipro began working on xe’s taste buds.

“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t advise letting any offworlder give you medication, Thann.” She turned the scanner over, ran the pickup long enough to suck in a few dead cells for Isaho’s baseline. “But my boss sent along a kit tailored to your species. Just in case, you might say.” She fed the scanner’s data into the pharmacopoeia and tapped in the code for antibiotic. “He’s a being who thinks of things like that. I say being because I’m not quite sure what he is these days, other than an intelligence that has made a home for itself inside a kephalos or maybe it’s a system of kephaloi. This is my first assignment.” A small green light came on and she pressed the spray nozzle into the bend in Isaho’s elbow, activating it with a tap on the sensor. “There. That’s done. And if I get caught here, it could be my last.”

She set the pharmacopoeia in its slot, took up a transparent tube filled with green gel. “When we get her clean, I’ll give your daughter a shot of nutrient. That’ll help bring her strength up. Chances are she’ll wake on her own once she feels safe again.”

Thann rolled the hipro tube into a tight cylinder, dug into the leaf mold and the earth below it and buried the tube, concentrating on what xe was doing with an intensity that was a measure of xe’s fear. Xe sat staring at the little heap of decaying leaves and dark brown dirt.

Shadith unbuttoned the shirt and slipped it off Isaho.

She, used her belt knife to start the cut, then began ripping the shirt into rags.

The sound of tearing cloth brought the anya’s head up. Xe moved closer, signed, +Why?+

“I thought it would be helpful if the child woke to the smell of soap, not those oils smeared over her.” Shadith wet one of the rags, squeezed out a dollop of soap and rubbed it until it lathered. She handed the rag to Isaho. “I’ll do her arms and shoulders. Better, I think, if you took care of the rest.”

The anya shook out the quilt and helped Shadith ease Isaho onto it. The femlit sighed deeply and moved on her own for the first time, turning onto her side, her thumb going into her mouth; she didn’t suck on it, only left it there for the comfort it gave her.

“Ah,” Shadith said. “That’s good, baby. You’ve got time, lots of time now.” She pulled the quilt over the femlit, tucked it in, then stood, stretched, patted a yawn. “Thann, you think you could stay awake for a couple hours?”

+Watch?+

“Yes. I need to get some sleep. Anything that worries you, wake me. There’s a way we can get out of here fast, but I’d rather not use it in daylight.”

Shadith woke with a collection of aches and a taste in her mouth like somebody died. It was full dark. She’d been asleep for at least eight or nine hours. “Thann? You should have waked me sooner.”

The anya moved from the shadows. Xe shook xe’s head. Xe’s hand moved in signs Shadith had to strain to see. +No one came. And you needed the sleep. I’ll rest when we’re away from here.+

“Aahhhh Splaaaaa, I feel like someone’s been beating me with chains. How’s your daughter?”

+She still sleeps, but it seems to me she’s easier.+

Shadith dug out another two tubes of hipro, held out one of them. “Get that down. If you faint from hunger, you could fall off the skip and take your daughter with you.” She squeezed the paste into her throat, swallowed hastily, grabbed the canteen, and gulped down the last of the water. “Try shaking the femlit while I’m fetching the skip from the tree. It’ll be safer for us all if she doesn’t wake in the middle of the flight and go into a panic. Well, you don’t know what I’m talking about, and how could you? Anyway, see if you can wake her.”

She jumped, caught hold of the lowest limb, pulled herself up. It was an easy climber, that tree, which was the reason she’d chosen it; no point in making trouble for herself if she had to get to the skip fast.

She unhooked the straps that held it in the crotch, put the lifters on hover, and swung her leg across the front saddle. A moment later she was easing it through the mass of thin whippy twigs and oval leaves that grew at the end of the branch. She brought it round, kicked the landing struts down, and let it sink to the ground beside the quilt. She dismounted and began stowing the things she’d scattered about the campsite, rolling up the blankets, tucking the medkit away, removing all traces of her presence. Then she strolled over to the anya and stood looking down at the sleeping child.

“Thann, you’re going to have to hold Isaho in your lap. I’ll strap the two of you together. Hm. It’s a warm night, but there’ll be some wind where we are. Tell you what, I’ll lift the femlit, you wrap the quilt around you and get yourself settled in back saddle. Put your feet in those stirrups there and signal me when you’re as comfortable as you can get. Remember, you’ll be spending six, seven hours seated because I’ll not be stopping unless we absolutely have to. T’k, that’s another thing. If you have to relieve yourself, you’d better do it now.”

Shadith fed power to the lifters and took the miniskip up slowly. She could feel the anya’s fear as the earth dropped away, but the darkness helped and the soft hum of the lifters was soothing, so xe’s jags of anxiety rapidly smoothed out. She stopped the rise when they were a few feet above the tallest trees and sent the skip humming along the curve of the river, avoiding the farmlands and the ranches with their grazing stock.

When Thann’s fear had simmered to a slight uneasiness, Shadith twisted her head around and smiled at the dark blotch so close behind her. “There, it’s not so bad, is it? If you need something, give a whistle and we’ll see what we can do, otherwise I’ll keep on till near dawn.”

Thann whistled a pair of notes to signify xe understood, modified the last into a soft warble that went on and on, a wordless lullaby, the anya singing in the only way xe could to xe’s sleeping daughter.

Shadith began thinking about the muteness of the anyas in this species, what it meant in terms of languages and things that voiced beings never had to think about. When she read about it in Digby’s file, it seemed an interesting twist on the things that life got up to and the sign language itself was fascinating, a language that could be translated to a degree but never fully into spoken words. Whistles like birdcalls for times of danger and times of need. Whistles for song like that lullaby. For the quick exchange of complex thoughts, though, anyas needed light and proximity so their gestures could be seen. Odd that the Impix had clung to the radio for the transmission of words, but had never developed or had forgotten coded transmission. Perhaps it was a reflection of the anya’s role in this society, the expectation that xes would not work outside the home except as religious and in that case did not need more than the occasional letter to their kin or clans.

That lullaby was lovely, though; it really crept under the skin, so much tenderness in it that words really seemed unnecessary.

Toward dawn she slowed until the skip was barely moving, swept her mindsearch as far as she could, hunting the bite of a thinking brain.

Horizon to horizon, the world seemed empty of everything but fur and feathers. With a weary sigh she chose a clump of trees where they could camp, kicked the landing struts into place, and put the miniskip on the ground beside the river.