A Bait of Dreams (30 page)

Rubbing at her arms, Gleia watched Shounach walk away. “I wasn't thinking,” she muttered. “Sorry, Deel.” She turned and walked slowly to the Dancer, stopped beside her. “You're seeing things. I'm nothing like him.” She took the mug Deel lifted to her and curled the fingers of both hands around it. She stared down at her hands, realizing they were shaking only when the hot cha slopped over the rim of the mug and burned her. The shaking moved up her arms. Waves of shudders passing through her body, she dropped clumsily to her knees. When she tried to lift the mug, her hands shook too badly and she lowered it until it rested on her thigh. That she couldn't even drink a mouthful of cha was a last burden added to all the others piled on her shoulders until they were more than she could bear. Blinded by a sudden flood of tears, she flung the mug away with a nervous flick of her hand, huddled lower, crying and trying to regain control of herself, frightened by the surges of wild emotion, ashamed of giving way to them, unable to stop crying no matter how she struggled.

Deel patted her shoulder, slow comforting touches that left Gleia more confused than before. When she was too tired to cry anymore, she sucked in a long wobbly breath, then felt warmth against her hands as Deel closed her fingers about a fresh mug of cha and helped her raised it to her lips. The hot liquid was pure pleasure sliding down her throat; she gulped it down until the mug was empty, then picked bits of cha leaves from her tongue. Finally she looked up. “I never cry.”

Deel chuckled. “No, I see that.” She shook her head. “Nothing wrong with a good hard cry; cleans the system out.”

Gleia scrubbed her sleeve across her face, looked wearily around. “Where is he?”

“Supposed to be getting water to douse the fire. Avoiding this …” She reached out and drew a finger along Gleia's damp cheek “… is more likely.”

“Sorry about the fire.”

“Can't be helped. It's done. I just hope no one happened to be looking this way.”

Gleia rubbed at the nape of her neck, her eyes on the boiling clouds that showed no sign of releasing their burden. “Let's get out of here, take a chance on the tower.”

“Mmmh, might be a good idea.” Deel looked past her. “He's coming. Finally.” She rose to her feet with a graceful economy of motion that made Gleia sigh as she struggled up to stand beside her.

He handed the bucket to Deel. “Here's your water, Dancer.”

“You took long enough.” She kicked the pot over and emptied the bucket over the coals.

In the next series of flashes, Gleia saw his face with exaggerated clarity. He looked tired but calm, purged of his annoyance at her. In that moment she understood him more clearly than she had before or perhaps would again. As the moonlight had stripped away the differences of coloring between them, so fatigue cleared away the emotion that blurred her view of him. Absorbed by her sudden insight, she forgot Deel, forgot where she was, and spoke slowly, softly. “I wondered what you might do to me if I got you angry. Companion, you said. You don't even try. You were punishing me, weren't you.”

Deel's stifled exclamation brought her head around and she realized wearily that she'd inflicted hurt without meaning it. “I shouldn't have said that. I wasn't thinking. But he needs you, Deel. And he knew I was watching. You might as well face that.” She turned back to Shounach. “You're using us both, aren't you. As you'd use anyone and anything to get at the source of the Eyes. You don't give a damn about either of us.” Oppressed by the futility of more words, she fell silent, listening to the rustle of Deel's feet as the Dancer fled the clearing and the uncomfortable confrontation there.

“It's not so simple as that.”

Gleia lifted her head.

He stood gazing down at hands held open a little, fingers curled up, his clever juggler's hands. He looked up, changeable eyes paling to a silver gray that gave him a blind look. He took a step toward her. She started back. He closed his hands over hers. “No one ever has a single reason for any of the things he does to other people. Gleia.…” His tongue moved along his upper lip, touching the small beads of sweat gathering there. His hands trembled. It cost him to wrench his armor open and let her see the creature inside. “Since my brother … no, since the man who raised me … since he died, I haven't let anyone get close to me … close enough to hurt. We're alike that way, Gleia … whether Deel's right or not … when the thissik threw you in with me and I saw my brother's face—your face—for the first time in … oh god, Gleia.”

Gleia looked down at the hands holding hers, believing against her will the pain in his voice. She was right about him, but she found herself thinking he was right too. She was confused and miserable but the anger was draining away.

“Old habits die hard,” he said. His fingers tightened about hers until she winced. “You're right. I'll use you, but I'll use myself as ruthlessly. You are … when you pull away from me, when you go against me like you did with Deel, I.…” He coughed, then stood waiting, saying nothing more.

Gleia drew in a long ragged breath. “You really are a bastard, Fox. Playing with me like the things you juggle. A while there I could have murdered you and danced on your corpse.” She tugged her hands free. “Do you know what humiliates me most? I can't even keep on being angry with either of you. How am I supposed to act? Tell me. I've got no experience in this kind of thing.”

He caught one of her hands again, held it loosely, small square and dark against the long pallor of his own. After a moment he lifted it, touched his lips to her fingertips. “Act? How do I know, Vixen?” He held her hand against his face, his breath warm on her wrist, then he set the hand gently by her side. “My bitch mother saw to that when she passed her curse on to me. I learned the hard way what to expect. You'll start by resenting me and end hating me—unless I leave before then. That's what I have to offer, Vixen. A rough ride and a miserable end. But I need you. For a while at least I need you.”

“Stop juggling, Fox.” She sighed. “Just … I don't know. Don't push. And I reserve the right to yell a lot if I don't like what you're doing.”

Shounach drew his hand along the side of her neck, gently caressed her throat with his thumb, a softness on his face she'd not seen before. He pulled her against him, his hands playing in her hair.

“Look here, Juggler.” The deep voice with its slight lilt was amused and contemptuous.

Shounach pushed Gleia gently from him and turned to face the man standing at the edge of the clearing, several other forms dark in the shadows behind him.

“Good boy.” The speaker was a short broad man with black hair, black eyes, dressed in tunic, trousers and boots, all black, a black tabard buckled across the bulge of a pot belly, a red hand with its fingers spread appliquéd on it. Gleia stiffened.
The fire. That damn stupid fire.
In the flickering lightning a long thin scar was a black string slanting across his face.
Hankir Kan.
He walked forward two steps, stopped, snapped short thick fingers.

Deel came stiffly from the shadows, gray-faced with terror, arms wrenched behind her by another of the Rivermen, a knife at her throat. A third Riverman walked beside her, a crossbow aimed steadily at Shounach. A skinny rat-faced man slipped from behind him and went to hover at Hankir Kan's elbow, restless eyes shifting from Gleia to Shounach, past Shounach to the gaudy shoulderbag leaning against the bydarrakh, its glossy sides catching and throwing back the flickers of lightning. His eyes swept round the clearing, then he ran quickly to the bag, squatted beside it, tipped the flap back and started rummaging through it, pulling the contents out item by item, examining and dropping them.

“You kicked shit out of Istir, Juggler.” Kan smoothed his hands down over the bulge of his belly. “I got word you climb walls without ropes and some other fancy tricks. You going to tell me about that?” There was a conspiratorial, almost friendly, gleam in his eyes. Gleia shuddered as she remembered Deel's face when she'd talked earlier about Kan and his pleasures.

Deel,
she thought.
I forgot about Deel.
She turned from the silent contest between Kan and Shounach and scanned the Dancer's face. What she saw there frightened her.

Deel's eyes were glazed, unfocused—or rather, focused inward on nightmare. Her earlier stiffness was beginning to change. Her sagging face muscles tightened, her head lifted; she was visibly nerving herself for desperate action. Gleia stroked her brands, not sure what she could or should do. Deel had survived a lot, but she'd survived not because she had the strength to endure, but because she simply got away from the trouble and put it immediately out of her mind. Killing herself to escape the pain and degradation she knew was waiting for her would be just another flight, an impulse yielded to with little consideration for its consequences. When Deel's lips parted slightly and her body tensed, Gleia tensed also, shouted, “Deel. Don't.”

The Hand holding Deel needed no warning. As soon as he felt the thrust of her body, he whipped the knife aside and sent her sprawling with a powerful shove that stretched her at Kan's feet. Gleia closed her eyes a moment, went to stand at Shounach's side, feeling a little sick as if she had somehow betrayed her friend.

Deel lay still, dazed, resolution draining away, then she moved, blindly, hesitantly. She flattened groping hands on patches of grass and tried to push herself up, but her arms were shaking and too weak, her hands slipped on the tough grass and she fell on her face. Before she could try again, the silent Hand was kneeling beside her. He slipped a strangling cord from a belt loop, pulled her arms behind her and tied her wrists.

Kan turned suddenly; Gleia met his assessing gaze, saw him dismiss her, jerk a thumb at her, saw the Hand nod and get to his feet. She knew she should be happy that the man had underestimated her so badly, it gave her an edge on him, but she couldn't help preferring a healthy respect on his part for her lethal potentialities even if he had no use for her as a woman. She felt a fleeting amusement at herself in spite of her overriding fear and anxiety, looked out of the corner of her eyes at Shounach to see how he was taking this.

Face expressionless, body relaxed, he stood waiting in apparent passivity for events to progress around him. She wasn't fooled by that, though she hoped Kan's lack of perception would extend to him. She lifted her face to the clouds, eyes almost shut against the glare of the lightning. A few raindrops blew at her, but the storm still refused to break.

The Hand walked toward her, cord dangling from his stubby fingers. His unbroken silence was acquiring a powerful
presence,
it even extended to his walk. He was a chunky man with short, thick legs but his booted feet made no noise at all on the twig- and leaf-strewn earth. He was a shade, about as noticeable as a single stone among a hundred others in an ancient wall, but with that ponderous silence he drew over himself a kind of dignity. He held her wrists behind her as he wrapped the cord around them and pulled it tight, his short strong fingers quick and deft at their work.

When he stepped away from her, Kan jerked his thumb in another silent order, this time at Shounach. The silent man slipped another noose from his belt and moved behind the Juggler. Shounach stiffened then forced himself to relax. Breathing again, unwilling to witness the Juggler's mingled frustration and desire as his eyes followed Kan about, Gleia examined the four Hands, trying to assess their strengths and weaknesses as best she could.

Kan—a power eater, he wanted Shounach's abilities under his control, and he wanted that intimacy that could link torturer and victim.
Poor Deel,
she thought.

Rat-face by the bag was greedy, tricky and—as far as she could tell—negligible.

The Silent Man was disconcertingly competent, perceptive, quick and to a large degree unreadable. From the feel of the cords around her wrists—her hands were already swelling, stiffening, as the cords cut into her flesh—he took a more realistic view of her aptitude for creating difficulties. He frightened her a little because she couldn't think of any way to reach him.

The Bowman bothered her too, but in another way. She'd seen crazies like him in her sojourn with the street gang, had learned to walk very carefully around them, to avoid them if it was at all possible.

The Bowman's hair was long and light and in the flares of lightning it looked crimped as if, freed, it might curl as exuberantly as Deel's. He had it pulled tightly back and tied with a strangling cord, but short hairs escaped to coil with absurd delicacy about his long bony face. He was taller than the other Rivermen and put together differently, all legs with no body to speak of. He fidgeted nervously, kicking at the debris on the ground, adjusting his tabard, fiddling with the bow. His light eyes were slightly protruberant and he had a habit of opening them wide every few moments, showing white rings about the hazel iris. She had the feeling that anything could touch off the violence pent up inside him—even something as trivial as a leaf fluttering against his hand. A dangerous man—but Kan had him leashed. Gleia saw the fear in his staring eyes whenever they turned to the Head Hand. He was competent enough as a guard; the point on the bolt never left Shounach and however much his eyes shifted about they never left the Juggler long enough to matter.

“Anything interesting?” Kan was watching rat-face as he pawed a last time through the things from Shounach's bag.

The skinny Hand scooped up the clothing, gear and juggling paraphernalia and stuffed it back into the bag. He stood, kicked at the bag, then slouched sullenly back to Kan, disappointment on his wizened face. “Junk,” he snarled. “All junk.”

“Mmm. He does funny things with that junk. Saw him in the market in Istir a while back.” Kan smiled genially at Shounach, patted his arm as one would pat the head of a favorite dog. “We'll talk about that, you and me.” He stepped away from Shounach, stopped beside Deel. The Dancer sat with her legs tucked beneath her—but the paralyzing terror that had seized her was gone; she was slowly coming back to life. “Don't let him near that bag, Gabbler,” Kan said. The silent man—Gabbler—nodded. Kan looked over his shoulder at Shounach, one eyebrow raised. “Tricky shit,” he said. He hooked a hand under Deel's arm, lifting her to her feet with a casual ease that was an eloquent testament to the strength in that round body.