A Bait of Dreams (32 page)

On and on the eerie flight and pursuit continued while the storm began to abate and the rain to fall more gently. Deel grew aware that she had to try to ease herself free of the River or face rolling out to sea and making a meal for crabs; she tried a few slow kicks and was distressed by the leaden response of her legs; they were heavy, so heavy, worse than after a dozen days of dancing. She forced herself to kick harder, using the sweep of the current around an approaching curve to push her close to the bank.

As she struggled painfully shoreward, gaining a grudging few bodylengths, she saw torchlight as a red-gold glow coming toward her, but didn't understand what she was seeing until she knocked into something hard, floundered a moment and was sucked under. When she fought her way up again, she was being dragged along wooden planks. She struck out blindly. One hand slapped against a thick hawser, a mooring line. She clutched desperately at it, managed to wrap her body around it and cling there, gasping in lungful after lungful of air, only air, no strangling water. A moment later she heard shouts and twisted her head around.

The boat came nosing past the curve, the two men dimly visible in the stern. Overhead, on the deck of the barge, she could hear men stirring, a few sleepy complaints, nervous questions. Hastily, hoping she hadn't been seen, she lowered herself into the water and used the hawser to launch herself into the quieter eddies underneath the up-slanting rear of the barge. She kicked wearily to the bank and reached up, intending to pull herself from the water. Her hands clutched weakly at the capstones, slipped, caught again, but her arms had no strength left. She raised herself slightly then dropped back, her hands slipping, the gentler current dragging her slowly along the stone facing of the cut. She reached up once more, fumbled for a hold on the mossy stone.

Small, strong hands closed over her wrists. “Help me, Seren.” The words were a sibilant whisper, unmistakably female, as were the hands. Deel was weakly surprised, then relieved when this reached through her despair. Then other hands were on her arms and she was being pulled from the water.

“Sssah! Look at that.” Gentle fingers touched her back and she groaned, unable to bear any touch, no matter how gentle.

“Is she alive?” This was a soft contralto, little more than a whisper over the rustle of wind and the susurrus of the water, a crisp command in it nonetheless.

“Just, I think.”

“That's a Hand-boat coming up on us.” A third voice, this one with an eerie hoarse quality, almost like a growl.

“Remember the compact. No men in our quarters, even Hands.” The murmuring contralto was calm, encouraging, sustaining.
This one is the leader.
Deel thought about opening her eyes and looking around, but she didn't, she lay stretched out on the gritty stone feeling like a lump of dough, her brain like day-old mush. Over her she heard the rubbing of cloth against cloth, the grating of sandal-shod feet on the paving of the horseway. “Get her in the tent before someone on the barge comes over to see what we're fussing about. Better if we can deny seeing her.” A pause, then she said, acid in her voice, “Don't stand there like lumps. She's going nowhere by herself.”

Hands closed around her body. More hands than could belong to the three voices. She started to moan but a small palm pressed down over her mouth. Other fingers brushed sodden hair off her ear. She felt cloth against her face, warm breath and the vibration of soft lips against the ear. “Be still.” The whisper was a thread of sound, she had to concentrate to catch the words. “You've endured much, hold on a little longer.”

They carried her into a large tent lit by a single lamp and laid her belly down on a thick warm rug, someone's sleeping rug. Someone lifted her head and held a cup to her lips. Drinking was difficult with her neck so sharply bent, but she managed several mouthfuls of the thick sweet wine, sighing with pleasure as a soothing warmth spread through her chill, sore body. The one holding her took the cup away then eased Deel's head on to her thigh. She bathed Deel's swollen eyes and wiped them with a soft clean rag, smoothing away the mucous and clotted blood, then she eased Deel's head around so the Dancer could see the other women in the tent. They clustered about the entrance, bent forward slightly, whispering now and then, listening intently to what was happening outside. They wore long loose robes of homespun cloth dyed blue and green, ocher and umber and a deep rich russet—and blue veils completely concealed their heads. Deel shifted her gaze; metal and leather armor piled along the tent wall confirmed her guess about the identity of her rescuers. “Trail women,” she croaked.

“Hush.” The small hand came down again on her lips. “Sayoneh,” the soft voice breathed after a moment. “To ourselves we are Sayoneh, the delivered ones.”

Deel stiffened as a too-familiar voice sounded just outside the tent. Kan. The small hand stroked her cheek, passed gently over her hair, touched her lips, reassuring her and reminding her to keep quiet.

“A woman. A smuggler. In the River.”

“No stray females here, Hand. Look for yourself.” The contralto voice was polite with a hint of cool distaste. “The watchers would have reported any such occurrence immediately.”

“The tent, Saone?”

“You heard what I said, Hand.” The voice was really chill now. “And you know our strictures.”

“I heard you, Saone. The watchers would have reported to you, hah! I notice you carefully didn't say if they had. One day, Saone. I'll remember this.” Deel shivered at the anger in Kan's clipped words and began to feel guilty for drawing these women into her troubles. Kan stomped off, clearly refusing to waste his breath arguing and for reasons she couldn't understand, equally unwilling to use force. She let herself relax, the rug under her wonderfully soft, the thigh beneath her aching head soft and firm at once, the robes of the small saone smelling pleasantly herbal. Distantly, through the waves of sleep that were washing over her, she heard the scrape of sandals coming toward her. Sighing, she forced her heavy eyes open once more.

Enigmatic behind the long blue veil with its embroidered eyeholes, a tall woman stood looking down at her. “Now, Dancer,” the contralto voice said crisply. “Perhaps you'll explain what this is about.”

Gleia winced as Shounach laid her on a shelf bed supported by rusty chains that groaned and rasped when her weight settled on the worn planks. The only light in the narrow cell came from the torches flickering and smoking in the icy drafts that swept along the walls of the cellar outside, a cellar filled with well-oiled, well-used objects of sinister purpose. Shounach touched her cheek, winked down at her, then straightened and turned to face the closing door. “Hand.”

Gabbler ignored him and slammed the heavy door shut. Gleia saw Shounach's hands close into fists, then open, wondered what he was up to. He rounded his shoulders, shambled forward a few steps. When he spoke again, he was using the whiny beggar's voice that turned her a little sick though she knew well enough what he was doing once the performance began, having seen him playing a fawning, worthless vagabond for the Lossal the day he faced a spy's death. Saved his life with it though he couldn't save his body from the Lossal's malice.

“Noble Hand,” he whined, “if you remember, the noble Hankir Kan requires me whole.” Gabbler's face appeared in the small barred opening in the door; he was frowning but he was listening.

Gleia smiled.
Play him, my sweet Fox, tease the shirt off his back.
Shivering again, this time from the cold, the movements of her body setting the chains to creaking, she tugged at her sodden cafta, hugged her arms tight across her breasts.
I could use that shirt.

“I'm wet, noble Hand, I'm cold and hungry. I'll die, noble Hand.” Shounach's whine was louder, tainted with a weak insolence. “I'll be dead come morning if I don't get dry clothing. And blankets. And hot food.”

Gabbler listened with stolid indifference. Intermittently visible behind him, the Bowman radiated contempt and muttered continually into the Gabbler's ears. The Silent Man refused to be hurried. He moved his eyes slowly over Shounach who stood shivering and looking miserable enough to underline his words. He glanced past Shounach at Gleia, then without a word or any other apparent response, he moved away.

Gleia shivered again, pulled her legs up and raised herself until she rested her back against the wall. She sat rubbing at her arms as she watched Shounach straighten his shoulders and flex his fingers, then cross the few steps to the door. He stooped to look through the opening (though it was head-high for the Rivermen, not excepting Bowman Raver, it hit him below his shoulders) and gazed out at the room beyond. Abruptly he stretched, yawned, set his compulsions aside for the moment and came toward her, his face shadowed, the torchlight creeping in from outside touching the curve of a cheek and lighting up one of his long narrow hands. He dropped beside her, his legs stretched out before him, his arms lifted, his hands laced together behind his head.

“Think that will do any good?” In spite of her effort to speak casually, her voice shook and her teeth clicked together.

He swung around, touched her face, began rubbing her hands gently, warming them with his. His body felt furnace hot, but oddly not feverish, a different quality in the heat. “Might,” he said. “If not, I'll chance fetching my bag.”

She raised her brows.

“Raver chucked it down under a torch on the far side of the cellar, sweet man that he is.” His eyes darkened with amusement. “Vixen, shame, remember how I got you over the walls?”

She laughed then, a chattery uncertain laugh, sobered. “Hope hard Gabbler doesn't think of that.”

He pulled her up, opened his jacket and held her against his chest, the warmth of his body seeping through the soggy cafta and into her shuddering flesh. She sighed with pleasure and lay against him, limp and drowsily content. “Madar bless, Fox,” she said after a few moments.

“For what?” He sounded as content as she felt and as sleepy.

She rubbed her cheek against his chest, yawned, murmured, “You didn't need any of those things. What if he turned the Bowman loose?”

His slow chuckle rumbled under her ear. “Go to sleep, love.”

The thin blonde woman pushed the brazier into the cell and backed out again, carefully avoiding the Bowman. In spite of this he shied away from her, eyes white-ringed, a crazy hatred twisting his long face. Roused from a deep sleep by the scraping of the brazier across the stone, Gleia watched this byplay with drowsy interest, then looked around for Shounach. He stood by the end of the bed, arms folded over his chest, leaning against the wall, his face lost in shadow.

The woman came back, struggling with a large basket, holding it in front of her with both hands, straining back to balance the weight of it. She had thick almost white hair standing out from her head in a ragged untidy bramble crimped into tiny tight curls. Her long pale face was scarred by sun-itch, some of the skin still flaking from the newer cankers. Long thin arms poked from the minimal sleeves of a dirty homespun shirt, a milky white like her face, scarred like her face; she had no pigmentation to protect her from Hesh's bite and that shift certainly wouldn't. Gleia's mouth tightened. The Rivermen didn't need chains to keep her kind at the towers. No more expression on her face than a wooden doll might have, she set the basket on the floor by the brazier and left, edging around Raver. The Bowman's body-type, height, facial structure and hair shouted of shared blood; the revulsion the woman woke in him was a measure of his hatred of that blood, his rejection of that blood. The door creaked shut, the iron bar shrieked as the Bowman dragged it through the staples. With a last kick at the planks, he stalked off.

She woke again late at night. The storm was over and the cell was filled with silence, the darkness broken only by the dying flicker of the torches outside. Shounach stood at the barred opening in the door. She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders and lay watching the man, warm enough though there was very little red left in the brazier's coals. She started to call out to him but changed her mind. He was intent, straining, all his will and thought focused on something outside the cell.

A dark bulk rose before the opening. The faint glow from the brazier woke fugitive green gleams in the shiny side of Shounach's magic bag as it hovered before the cell door. He reached through the bars and caught hold of it. Tipping back the flap, he thrust an arm deep inside, reaching, she knew, into that eerie magic place that somehow seemed to hold more than the bag itself could contain. When he pulled his hand out, the dim red light touched a dull rod held between thumb and forefinger. As he dropped it into his jacket pocket, she sucked air between her teeth, making a small hiss that brought his head around. He grinned at her but said nothing, then he was fishing in the bag again. This time he brought out a rectangular leather case. She'd seen that before also, it held the drugs that had kept him moving after his torment in the Lossal's cellar. He eased it through the bars, slid it into his pocket. Once again he tensed. The bag slid away. A few minutes later she heard a gritty thump then a soft exhalation from Shounach.

As he came toward her, she saw that he was very tired, that only his will kept him on his feet. His will and her need. With a sudden flood of warmth, she let herself believe finally that she was important to him. She brushed a hand down along her body under the blanket, touching the loose long tunic, the black Riverman tunic worn threadbare over the elbows, the trousers torn on one knee, almost transparent on the other but dry and warm in spite of this. His jacket and trousers were dry; he was warm. He'd be warm in the middle of a snowdrift. He hadn't needed any of this, but he'd risked a lot to get the food, clothes and blankets for her.

He moved her legs closer to the wall, making a space for himself on the plankbed. Then he was bending over her, pushing the tunic up until it was bunched about her waist. He began undoing the laces on the trousers, his fingers warm against her skin, each fleeting touch sending small thrills through her. She murmured a protest when he eased the trousers under her buttocks and pulled them off entirely.