A Bait of Dreams (35 page)

“Make an excuse, get in the bitches' tents. Spot her anywhere veil or not.” His face twisted again, the hate in it naked, undisguised by the masks custom and caution imposed. Gleia shuddered and stepped back. “Fox.…”

“I know.” He slid a hand into his pocket—and paused, frowned down at Kan, his eyes unfocused, his face troubled. After a moment, he shrugged and brought out the disc. He thumbed the dials to a different setting and slapped it on Kan's neck. He straightened, smiled at Gleia. “What I'm using on him is outlawed just about everywhere. For good reason. And available just about everywhere. For the same reason. It's a powerful conditioner.” Gleia raised her eyebrows; he flicked her cheek with a long forefinger. “Means I can tell him what to do, what to think, what to say—and what to forget. I can shape his mind and memory like a sculptor shapes clay.”

“And when he wakes up?”

“The shaping holds. One thing.…”

“What's that?”

“I like Deel.”

“I noticed.”

“No, not just that. She has … generosity of spirit.” He smiled at Kan, a harsh unlovely grimace. “I don't. There's a very appropriate side effect of the drug. Females are passive, their senses dulled to nonexistence. Males are affected more strongly that way and are temporarily impotent.”

“Lovely idea; let the punishment fit the crime.”

Shounach chuckled. “What sharp teeth you have, my Vixen. Shall I watch my cha?” He didn't wait for a response, but bent over Kan and began speaking in soothing tones, drawing from the mumbling muzzy man the responses he wanted. Gleia strolled to the window and leaned into the embrasure, listening to Shounach lay the geas on the Hand—forget about Deel, forget about them, leave the three of them alone, and, as an afterthought, the Sayoneh had done nothing to thwart him, he was to be neutral to them, neither welcoming nor harassing.

Currents,
Gleia thought.
Poor old Kan, if he wasn't so awful, I'd feel sorry for him. Poor old monster, caught up in the currents we generate without the faintest idea what's happening.
Red streaks were spreading across the sky, blocked in part by the bulk of the Svingeh's Keep across Skull Crusher's chasm. She backed out of the embrasure, started to speak, then stared. Shounach wasn't on the bed any longer, he was standing by a hole in the wall, scooping coins into his bag. She patted the bags hanging heavy on her own shoulder, started again to speak, then stiffened.

A faint sound of excited voices floated through to her, the door boomed as someone pounded on it with a sword hilt. There was a lot of yelling, muffled by the thickness of the planks, but audible enough, Kan's name, demands to know if he was all right. Hastily she started fumbling with the window, looking for its catch. Behind her Shounach bent over Kan, closed his eyes with a quick brush of his hand. “Sleep. Wake in three hours. Say you understand.”

“'nerstan.'”

Gleia got the window open. Shounach boosted her into the embrasure and crawled in behind her. When she reached the outer end of the hole, she looked down, gasped. The tower was built on the edge of the chasm and she was looking straight down at the roaring white water of Skull Crusher. Shounach caught her around the waist. “Out you go.”

“Madar!”

“No time to argue.” He shoved her out, jumped after her.

They dropped like stones, the chill air whistling past them. She clutched at the bags, her eyes screwed shut, the sound of the tumbling water roaring up to her louder and louder until she was rigid with terror.

A familiar skin closed around her plummeting body, a rubbery second skin that tugged at her, slowed her, and finally set her on the ground gently as a falling feather, then loosed her.

She stumbled, started to fall, but Shounach caught her, held her, warming and comforting her, until her shaking stopped and the strength came back into her body.

She stiffened her arms and pushed away from him. Over the noise of the water that bounded and rebounded from the granite cliffs, she yelled at him, “Don't you do that again. Don't you ever do that to me again!” He grinned at her, mimed repentance that she didn't believe for a moment. She flounced around and started walking toward the glassy slide of the River a short distance away where the Skull Crusher's ravine opened out and a more subdued tributary joined the larger flow. They'd landed on a rocky stretch of ground between the cliff and the edge of the water, difficult walking with the stones turning under her feet. She shifted the bag straps to a more secure position on her shoulder and shortened her strides. Shounach caught up with her and strolled easily beside her.

As they rounded a slight bend, she saw a flat-bottomed ferry bobbing on the water, winched against a landing built of massive planks. Thick hawsers swayed in the breeze, swooping in shallow curves to the far side of the river. There was a man on the landing, sitting with his back against the windlass, his legs stretched out before him, his head hanging forward, chin on chest, his mouth open. A hand rested on an overturned jug. His snores were lost in the river noise.

Gleia stopped. “Almost a shame to wake him.”

Shounach dipped into his bag, pulled out a few coins from Kan's hoard and clinked them together, smiling. “Kan's paying our way, we can afford to be generous.”

Her hand on his arm, she frowned up at him. “What now? After we get across the river, I mean.”

“Find a way of going on.” He looked around. “Wait for Deel.” He shrugged, laughed, lifted her onto the landing and jumped up beside her. “Right now, I want food and a bath.” He rubbed gently at the curve of her neck. “Let's enjoy the Fair for the next few days and leave worrying to Kan when he wakes up.”

SUMMER'S END

Old Acquaintances and New

On a dew-wet morning Shounach and Gleia strolled down the steps of the ferry landing and along the warped planks of an improvised walkway, the wood squeaking underfoot, the River a whispered roar beside them. Gleia knew she was forgotten for the moment as the Juggler focused on the peacock scene before and around him, sorting the parts, assessing the possibilities; he was a peacock figure himself, crimson clinging trousers, the skirts of his sky-blue jacket fluttering back to show the bright gold lining, red hair blowing in the wind, pale skin like ancient whitewashed leather even paler in the thin red morning light. A sort of camouflage, all that—she'd seen it work when the Lossal in Istir dismissed him as a negligible fool and later when the Hands had let their contempt for him undermine their vigilance; she expected to see it happen again. He moved with a smooth swinging stride that made her hustle though there was no hurry to him; he looked relaxed and casual, but Gleia knew he was far from being as calm as he looked. The hand resting on the magicbag sometimes smoothed over the silky green surface, the red and blue stars, sometimes drummed restlessly and soundlessly, sometimes fingered the steel rings that connected the strap to the bag. Never still. Alive with the tension he would not show otherwhere.

Endings. Summer's end, quest's end. She was tired. And like all the humankinds and otherkinds on Jaydugar, her body and mind were responding to the signs of ending. It was time to prepare for wintering, for dormancy, for life encysted and slowed; it was, urgently, a time for searching out shelter. She slanted a quick glance at Shounach, then frowned at the walkway. He seemed to have escaped these urgencies by his long absence from Jaydugar. How long really? Could she really believe the tales he fed her? She smiled at the splintery planks, a sudden rush of affection warming her though she had few illusions left about what would happen if she got between him and any of his obsessions. Ranga eyes. He'd tromp over her or use her as ruthlessly as he'd planned to use Deel. And she didn't mind that much as long as he didn't try to make a fool of her. She hated and feared Ranga Eyes and approved of eradicating them from the face of Jaydugar, yet for her it was a willed detestation, not the fire that burned in Shounach and drove him on. It was expiation for him, a righting of an old wrong, the wrong that had bitten into him, water into rock, until he had to find some way of atoning or cease living.

Ahead of them the cliffs swung back from the River in a great arc that softened into rolling highlands with forests that were a blue-purple band as Horli pushed up above them. Shadows were long and indistinct, coming at them across the muddy ground where sun-dried grass was trampled into the slop by the split hooves of various sorts of cattle, the ironshod hooves of various sorts of riding stock. Most of the herds were across the River where the cliffs of the Chute were gone completely, the land opening out to the north, rolling prairie-land with scattered herds dotted thick on the grass, dark above the pale yellow grass, waiting for the abattoirs to reduce them to pieces suitable for the smoking racks and the salt barrels, waiting for the barges and packtrains to take those pieces and barrels away to cities and steadings stocking up for the winter. The herd-owners from the inland ranches and their drovers were finished with that part already, their herds sold for whatever they could get for them, good prices or not; it wasn't worth driving them back and finding feed for them over winter, or butchers and barrels enough to store their meat.

The beasts on Jokinhiir's side of the River were breeding stock. There were black-and-white milkers, lankier and taller than the broad-backed dun gavha that were raised mostly for meat and leather. There were small mountain cattle with short curled horns and slender legs and long shaggy coats that the mountain folk wove into a heavy coarse cloth that could be treated to repel water. Haywains trundled down the aisles between the open-face sheds, men standing on them forking hay down to the mangers.

On the nearest of the wains a man over two meters tall with a shaved head and blue-black skin that glistened with amethystine highlights in the thin red morning light was pitching hay into the mangers of a shed that held the tiny mountain cattle. He straightened, wiped sweat from his face. In strongly accented parsi, he called to the man in the next lane over, whose charges were the black-and-white milkers, “Who gonna buy those eaters of fields, freeze into statues one puff a winter?”

Grinning, the short dark man dug his fork into the hay, leaned on the handle and yelled back, “How d'ya keep track a those mice? Let 'em run loose in the walls all winter?

The black man's voice had been lazily amiable, the answer was equally amiable. Old friends, despite their differences, as accustomed to trading insults as they were to trading mugs of beer. Gleia heard the belonging in all this noise and sighed. Even among the seafolk this was something she'd never known. And with a sudden insight she realized it was one—though only one—of the prods that drove her from safe havens into the unknown, this hunger for the kind of camaraderie these men had without effort. She listened as the retreating cliffs echoed with their noise, the words blending with birdcalls, the lowing of cattle, an occasional bellow from the carefully separated bulls and the powerful basso whisper of the River, the shriller broken boom of the tributary Skull Crusher.

The haymen stopped to stare at Shounach with a curiosity that they were too cautious or perhaps too courteous to express, but went back to their raucous exchanges once the strangers were safely past.

The sounds muting behind them, Shounach and Gleia left the cattle sheds and moved on to the corrals and stalls where the horses were, where the noise was more subdued, the tension greater.

The horses were already fed. Handlers were leading some out for exercise on the track visible behind the barns. Others were washing down or currying their beasts, braiding manes and tails with wired ribbons. Riding beasts, racers, huge draft animals like those that towed the barges upriver and a few exotics, tiny beasts smaller than dogs but perfect in their conformation, all brought to be haggled over and sold.

While the hired hands worked, the owners walked through the sheds or huddled in small groups gesturing nervously or with an exaggerated calm that fooled no one, talking in short bursts, their eyes continually assessing their own stock and that of their rivals. Much depended on the auctions and the private deals they made here at the Jota Fair. The men with the racing stock were especially alert; they had guards around their prizes. Betting was heavy and men had been known to interfere with favorites if given the opportunity—not a healthy shortcut to wealth; the Svingeh had several maimers skinned and swung from gibbets to discourage this kind of thing, but the breeders still took no chances. The money earned here and the supplies hauled home could make the difference between a comfortable wintering and a winter of dead children.

The day was beginning crisp and cool. The hay was a crackling and a stinging in her nostrils, the grain in the boxes had a more subtle tang with a hint of bread about it; the fine leather harnesses and saddles and the rest of the gear, the manure and mud and sweat and oil combined into a dark rich smell thick with life and energy, oddly pleasing in its pungency. Gleia breathed deeply and smiled, looked up to see Shounach watching her, his eyes green with laughter. She laughed aloud, walked on, deeply content, refusing to think about what lay ahead of them.

They left the stock sheds behind, walked through a thin line of trees and emerged into another space where a number of weathered flimsy structures poked like gray fingers from the crumbling cliff-face. At the far end, in the shadow of the cliff, there was a large shapeless opening she thought looked rather like the toothless mouth of a sea slug. Yawning, stretching men and women were emerging from the mouth and strolling toward the walkway laid above the mud.

A tall thin man in black velvet robe crudely embroidered with silver wire, bits of faceted glass and many small mirrors came sauntering toward them; as he reached the walkway, he glanced casually at Shounach, looked away, looked back, stopped and waited for them. “Juggler,” he said. “Never thought to see you this side of the ocean.” He had a thin face with delicate features that gave way to the dominance of thick straight black brows, a square black beard and rat-tail moustaches that curved around his mouth to meet the beard. Gleia examined him with a fascination she didn't try to hide, this bit of flotsam floating up from the past that Shounach wouldn't talk about.