The Burning Ground

2. The meeting

Yseyl lay stretched out on the limb of a bulky maka tree, the cinque-lobed leaves rubbing stiffly against each other in the breeze that trickled downslope from the peaks. The Outlook was some distance behind her, around the curve of the mountain, but she was still nervous about being watched and not quite recovered from the sudden appearance of that small black box that had scared the stiffening out of her bones* when it popped up from behind a boulder, called her name and brought her here to listen to that… what did Cerex call itThollow something. Sweet talking twisty-tongued… why do I bother?

The painted air folded itself up when the spiel was done and was sucked by a flat black slab with its eggchild clicked into a hole in its side. She almost couldn’t see it any more, last fall’s dead leaves blown across it by that same breeze that was tickling her hair.

This was the day when that offworlder was supposed to be here. She checked the setting on the stunrod for the tenth time, then went back to chewing on her lip and getting angry that the fool creature hadn’t shown up and in less than an hour the sun would be going down.

The offworlder came gliding into the open, deft and silent for such a big and lumpy creature. This one’s a hunter, Yseyl thought. Not like Cerex and the rest. Be careful, fern. Don’t give her the slightest opening…

She knelt beside the slab and did something to it; the surface went white, and there was a flow of writing across it. Reporting that I came, Yseyl thought. Maybe that I’m here now?

As the offworlder shut off the box and started to stand, Yseyl shifted the stunrod so that it pointed at her. “Stay where you are,” she called. “On your knees.”

“Ah.” The offworlder sank back on her heels. “Mind if I say your name?”

“Do you know it?”

“I think so. Cerex said you’re called Yseyl.”

“How do you know him?”

“The person I work for has hired him on occasion.”

“You work for an arms dealer?”

“No. Digby’s… urn… strongly opposed to such people. We find things for people, dig up information they can’t get any other way, at least not so quickly or easily. The company is called Excavations, Limited and my boss calls himself Digby. Which is a pun but you wouldn’t know it because it doesn’t translate into Impix.”

A whirring sound, a rasp of leaves, and a faint thud brought Yseyl’s head around. A large black bird landed on a branch near her. It blinked at her, then closed its eyes and settled into a stoic silence. A moment later a second appeared, then a third. Then several smaller brown birds. Odd.

She couldn’t afford the distraction, so she ignored the soft sounds as more birds arrived. “Why are you here?”

“We were hired to get the disruptor back.”

“What’s that?’’

“Now, Yseyl, it’s long past the time for playing, that game. We tracked you from Marrat’s Market, got confirmation from Cerex about what happened there.”

“He thought no one could do that.”

“Well, Cerex has never been one of Caan’s brighter products. That’s an interesting talent you’ve got. Digby collects talents. He asked me to tell you he’d be interested if you decided that you might like to work for him. Once this bit is finished, of course.”

Yseyl didn’t like the tone of that last comment; it was far too confident. She thought about stunning the hunter and getting out of there, but the offworlder had already tracked her from the Market and God only knew what resources she had to hand now. “You said you had a deal. Well?”

“I assume you’ve stashed the disruptor somewhere while you looked for a way to use it.” The hunter looked toward Yseyl, amusement written on her face. “Trusting your own people about as much as you trust me. I also assume that you’ve about run out of patience with the people you thought might help you. You wouldn’t be sitting in that tree if that weren’t a fair description. This is the deal. I can help you take down the whole kis’n Fence. Wipe it out. Then you won’t need someone to lead the Impix and Pixas through a hole, all you have to do is let Impix nature take its course. Within a few months ships and people would be heading out, too many of them for the Ptaks to stop. Besides, they’ve gotten lazy after so many centuries of penning you up. No arms, no ships, just a few fliers to ferry techs and assassins back and forth. In return, I want the disruptor. And you, of course, if you care to come back with me.”

“Now, hunter, explain to me just why I should believe a word of that.” She heard a soft whuff, glanced over at the black bird. It flapped its wings again, did a kind of dance on the branch. Overhead, the brown birds were flitting from branch to branch, restless but silent, not a whistle out of them. Her hand tightened on the stunrod, and she went back to watching the hunter kneeling on the dead leaves.

“I have drugs that would make a rock sing arias. I could nun your head inside out and get everything you know in less than an hour. Digby’s techs have done their best to adjust them to Impix bodies, but there’s an appreciable chance you’d end up dead or mindless. Having a certain degree of distaste for that kind of thing, I’d prefer to deal rather than drug.”

“You’d have to catch me first. Seems to me it’s you who’re caught.”

“Appearances are somewhat misleading, Yseyl. I gave you a clue a while back, but you overlooked it. Too bad. I see I’m going to have to illustrate my point.”

The black bird darted at Yseyl, its talons struck her hand, knocked the stunrod from her grasp and slashing through the skin before it went sweeping away. At the same moment, the brown birds began mobbing her, pecking and screeching. Other black birds were stooping at her, striking her buttocks, her shoulder, pecking at her eyes, tearing her skin.

As she tried to fight them off, she lost her balance and fell from the tree.

The hunter caught her before she hit the ground, spun her around and in a couple of seconds had first her wrists then her ankles wrapped in tape that stuck to itself and wouldn’t yield to the strongest pull she could manage.

Face impassive, eyes cool and patient, the hunter stood a few paces off and watched her struggle.

“Point?” she said finally.

Yseyl lay still, lids lowered to hide the rage in her eyes. “Point,” she said. “Let me go.”

“Not quite yet. Not till you stop thinking about how to kill me. No, I don’t read minds, but what you’re emoting is like print to me. You’re set to come at me the minute you see a chance.” She clicked her tongue against her teeth, a series of small irritated sounds. “All that means is that I’d use your own stunner on you and then have to wait around till you woke up again. Stupid waste of time.”

Yseyl drew a long breath and tried to calm the roar in her blood. After a moment she said, “A clue?”

“I told you, Digby collects talents. I’m one of those.”

“Ah. What are you going to do now?”

“Well, first I take care of the damage those birds did to you. Then we get back to negotiating.”

While the hunter bent over a backpack, fitting the medkit into its pocket, Yseyl brought the hands the woman had freed around in front of her, smoothed her fingers along the fake skin sprayed over the wounds from the black beaks; it was as if she were a photograph and the wounds had been painted out, no pain, no give to the touch, no nothing. She reached down and tried to pull loose the tape about her ankles.

A chuckle brought her head up.

The hunter was sitting on her heels, watching her. “My name’s Shadith,” she said. “Call me Shadow. There’s not a knife made that will cut a tangler tape. I have to key it loose.”

“Do it.”

“In a while. I’ve a strong feeling you’ll listen better if you can’t disappear into the mountains.”

“Then give me something to listen to.”

“Right. The Fence is created and kept in being by a group of satellites, ancient clunkers that have been up there since the Ptaks drove your ancestors out of the rest of Ambela. Ptaks being what they are, they do as little as possible to keep them maintained and operational. Why fiddle with something that works perfectly well with a minimum of attention?”

Yseyl grimaced. “Your idea is we go up there and do something to those satellites?” She’d kept picking at the tape but was ready to concede defeat; it was too snug to push over her feet, and she hadn’t managed to loosen it to any perceptible degree.

“Simpler than that. The Ptaks do oversight from the ground, course corrections and other routine things that don’t require replacing components. The ground they’ve chosen to do it from is here on Impixol. Secrecy, I suppose. Or convenience-in Ptak terms, at least. Or maybe it was a requirement of the tech they used way back when they set up the system. Hunh! If it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it. Waste of good coin. I got a fair look at the place.” She grinned, the outline of the bird branded into her face jumping as the muscles moved. “Through the eyes of a bitty creature like a worm with fur.”

Ysey1 fought to resist the seduction of that voice, the warm rich tones that caressed the ear, the laughter that seemed to lie just below the surface. Shadith… Shadow. that’s a good name for her… remember she’s a shadow, you can’t get hold of it and it changes when the sun moves. Shadow was doing it deliberately, Yseyl was convinced of it, using her voice to ooze behind the thinking mind. Don’t let her get you, Pixa. Keep your eyes on the cards so the trickster won’t slide one in on you. “Worm with fur? Must have been an ulho. So what are you saying?”

“Get me into that building, and I can give those satellites such a chewing over that the lot of them will have to be replaced not repaired. And the minute they go, the Fence is gone. All of it.”

“What’s to stop the Ptaks from doing what you said, replacing the satellites and putting the Fence back up.”

“Not my business, that. Me, I’ll be on to my next. assignment.” She grimaced. “If Digby doesn’t give me the boot for getting involved with locals.”

Yseyl glanced at Shadow, then looked down. She picked up a dead leaf, began breaking pieces off it, watching them fall. “Why do you need me?”

“I don’t. I may find the Fence and the mindset that made it appalling, but I find lots of things appalling. I’m not about to go round setting the universe right. I’m not even sure I know what right is. I’m being lazy, you know. If I worked at it, I could probably find reasons enough to blow a dose of babble into you, go get the gadget and take off. Don’t push it, Ghost. Where was I? Oh, yes. To get into the Control Center without rousing the whole base, I’ll need the disruptor. Their security’s laughable, but that one building’s shielded and I don’t have your talent for fooling scanners.”

Yseyl dropped the last of the leaf, brushed her hands together. “But I could get in?”

“I expect you mean I should tell you what to do and let you go do it. If it were something simple like punching a flake in a slot, well, no problem. But from what I’ve seen, that equipment is so old, the software so overlaid with layer on layer of accretion, centuries of accretion, I have to be there to work my way through it. You couldn’t, you don’t have the training.”

So very plausible, Yseyl thought, anger acid in her throat. So very good at making lies taste sweet. If they are lies. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know your kind. She plucked at the narrow white tape around her ankles. If I could just get loose…

“Why should I trust you?” she burst out. “If I decide to go with this, I have to bring out the disruptor. All you have to do is take it and leave me with nothing but a memory of pretty words.”

“I don’t have to deal. Remember?” Shadow tapped the pack resting beside her knee. “One squirt from the pharmacopoeia and you’ll tell me anything I want to know.”

“You keep saying that. Why don’t you just do it?”

“That a challenge? All right. You’d babble, but I’ve a feeling you hid the gadget in a hole in the ground. You could tell me where the hole is and chances are I’d walk right over it without seeing it. I’d find it eventually, but why waste all that time? More practical for you to fetch it yourself.”

Shadow twisted her face into a grimace she probably thought was comical. Yseyl found herself unable to appreciate the hunter’s attempts at humor. The tape round her ankles was strangling more than bones. “If I say do your worst, what happens?”

“I give you a few minutes to think it over, then I shoot you full of goop and record the pearls that fall from your lips.”

“Do we do this thing with just the two of us, or do you have friends waiting for your call?”

Shadow smiled at her. “I do my recruiting on the ground. You saw some of my troops a little while ago. No, I know you meant people. If I could guarantee everything would go by plan, the two of us could handle the job.”

“Hun/a. That never happens. There’s always a crack you have to patch.”

“You’re so right. You think you could come up with say five or six people you can trust? When I say trust, I mean they won’t shoot themselves in the foot, they can take orders without playing games, and they won’t chatter about this once it’s over.”

For the first time Yseyl’s doubts began to fade. She dropped her eyes to hide the glow, then swore at herself because she’d forgotten that Shadow could read every emotion that passed through her body. She felt a surge of distaste; it was almost more of an invasion than reading minds. She drew in a long breath, let it out, and looked the hunter in the eye. “I’ve walked alone for thirty years. I’ll have to find strangers and it won’t be easy. In Linojin, either people are religious and sworn to serve without arms or they’ve had their fill of fighting.” She sighed. “But if you went where the real killers are, out among the phelas, I also doubt you’d find many interested in stopping the war.”