Crystal Universe - [Crystal Singer 03] - Crystal Line (21 page)

While Biyanco slept, before the full lorries glided back to the clearing, she probed her patchy memory again and again, stopped each time by the Guild Master’s cynical laugh. Damn the man! He was haunting her even on Armagh. He had no right to taint everything she touched, every association she tried to enjoy. She could remember, too, enough snatches to know that her previous break had been as disastrous. Probably other journeys, too. In the quiet cool dark of the sleeping room, Biyanco motionless with exhaustion beside her, Killashandra bleakly cursed Lars Dahl. Why was it she found so little fulfillment with other lovers? How could he have spoiled her for everyone else when she could barely remember him or his lovemaking? She had refused to stay with him, sure then of herself where she was completely unsure now. Crystal in her soul?

Experimentally, she ran her hand down her bare
body, to the hard flesh of her thighs, the softness of her belly, her firm breasts. A woman never conceived once she had sung crystal. Small loss, she thought, and then, suddenly, wasn’t sure.

Damn! Damn! Damn Lars Dahl. How could he have left her? What was rank to singing black crystal? They had been the most productive duo ever paired in the annals of the Heptite Guild. And he had given
that
up for power. What good did power do him now? It did her none whatsoever. Without him, black eluded her.

The sound of the returning lorries and the singing of the climbers roused Biyanco. He blinked at her, having forgotten in his sleeping that he had taken a woman again. With solemn courtesy, he thanked her for their intercourse and, having dressed, excused himself with grave ceremony. At least a man had found pleasure in her body, she thought.

She bathed, dressed, and joined him as the full fruit bins began spilling their colorful contents into the washing pool. Biyanco was seated at the controls, his nimble fingers darting here and there as he weighed each bin, computed the price, and awarded each chief his crew’s chit. It was evidently a good pick, judging by the grins on every face, including Biyanco’s.

As each lorry emptied, it swiveled around and joined the line on the tract-float that was also headed homeward. All were shortly in place, and the second part of the processing began. The climbers took themselves off under the shade of the encroaching jungle and ate their lunches.

Abruptly, noise pierced Killashandra’s ears. She let out a scream, stifling a repetition against her hand but not soon enough to escape Biyanco’s notice. The noise ceased. Trembling with relief, Killashandra looked
around, astonished that no one else seemed affected by that appalling shriek.

“You are a crystal singer, then, aren’t you?” Biyanco asked, steadying her as she rocked on her feet. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure you were, and I’ve not such good pitch myself that I’d hear if the drive crystals were off. Honest, or I’d have warned you.” He was embarrassed and earnest.

“You should have them balanced,” Killashandra replied angrily, and immediately apologized. “What made you think I might be a crystal singer?”

Biyanco looked away from her now. “Things I’ve heard.”

“What have you heard?”

He looked at her then, his black eyes steady. “That a crystal singer can sound notes that’ll drive a man mad. That they lure men to them, seduce them, and then kidnap ’em away to Ballybran, and they never come back.”

Killashandra smiled, a little weakly because her ears still ached. “What made you think I wasn’t?”

“Me!” He jabbed at his chest with a juice-stained finger. “You slept with
me!
”

She reached out and touched his cheek gently. “You are a good man, Biyanco, besides being the best brewman on Armagh. And I like you. But you should get those crystals balanced before they splinter on you.”

Biyanco glanced over at the offending machinery and grimaced. “The tuner’s got a waiting list as long as Murtagh River,” he said. “You look pale. How about a drink? Harmat’ll help—oh, you are a witch,” he added, chuckling as he realized that she could not have been as drunk as she had acted. Then a smile tugged at his lips. “Oh-ho, you are a something, Killashandra of Ballybran. I should’ve spotted your phony drunk, and
me a barman all these decades.” He chuckled again. “Well, harmat’ll help your nerves.” He clicked his fingers at one of the climber chiefs, and the boy scampered into the living quarters, returning with glasses and a flask of chilled harmat.

She drank eagerly, both hands on the glass because she was still shaky. The cool tartness was soothing, though, and she wordlessly held the glass out for a refill. Biyanco’s eyes were kind and somewhat anxious. Somehow he could appreciate what unbalanced crystalline shrieks could do to sensitive nerves.

“You’ve not been harmed by it, have you?”

“No. No, Biyanco. We’re tougher than that. It was the surprise. I wasn’t expecting you to have crystal-driven equipment …”

He grinned slyly. “We’re not backward on Armagh, for all we’re quiet and peaceful.” He leaned back from her, regarding her with fresh interest. “Is it true that crystal singers don’t grow old?”

“There’re disadvantages to that, my friend.”

He raised his eyebrows in polite contradiction. But she only smiled as she steadily sipped the harmat until all trace of pain had eased.

“You told me you’ve only a certain time to process ripe fruit. If you’ll let me take the tractor down the rails past the first turn—No …” She vetoed her own suggestion, arriving at an impulsive alternative. “How long do you have left before the pick sours?”

“Three hours.” And in Biyanco’s widening eyes she saw incredulous gratitude as he understood her intention. “You wouldn’t?” he asked in a voiceless whisper.

“I could and I would. That is, if you’ve the tools I need.”

“I’ve tools.” As if afraid she would renege, he propelled her toward the machine shed.

He had what she needed, but the bare minimum. Fortunately, the all-important crystal saw was still very sharp and true. With two pairs of knowledgeable hands—Biyanco, he told her, had put the driver together himself when he had updated the plant’s machinery thirty years before—it was no trick at all to get down to the crystals.

“They’re in thirds,” he told her needlessly.

“Pitch?”

“B-flat minor.”

“Minor? For heavy work like this?”

“Minor because it isn’t that continuous a load and minors don’t cost what majors do,” Biyanco replied crisply.

Killashandra nodded. Majors would be far too expensive for a brewman, however successful, on a tertiary fishing world. She hit the B-flat, and that piece of crystal hummed sweetly in tune. So did the D. It was the E that was sour—off by a halftone. She cut off the resonance before the sound did more than ruffle her nerves. With Biyanco carefully assisting her, she freed the crystal of its brackets, cradling it tenderly in her hands. It was a blue, from the Ghanghe Range, more than likely, and old, because the blues were worked out there now.

“The break’s in the top of the prism, here,” she said, tracing the flaw. “The bracket may have shifted with vibration.”

“G’delpme, I weighed those brackets and felted them proper …”

“No blame to you, Biyanco. Probably the expansion coefficient differs in this rain forest enough to make even properly set felt slip. Thirty years they’ve been in? You worked well. Wish more people would take such good care of their crystal.”

“That’d mean less call for crystal, bring the price down, wouldn’t it?”

Killa laughed, shaking her head. “The Guild keeps finding new ways to use crystal. Singers’ll never be out of work.”

They decided to shift the pitch down, which meant she had to recut all three crystals, but that way he would have a major triad. Because she trusted him, she let him watch as she cut and tuned. She had to sustain pitch with her voice after she had warmed them enough to sing, but she could hold a true pitch long enough to place the initial, and all-important, cuts.

It was wringing-wet work, even with the best of equipment and in a moderate climate. She was exhausted by the time they reset the felted brackets. In fact, Biyanco elbowed her out of the way when he saw how her hands were trembling.

“Just check me,” he said, but she didn’t need to. He was spry in more than one way. She was glad she had tuned the crystals for him. But he was too old for her.

She felt better when he started the processor again and there was no crystal torment.

“You get some rest, Killashandra. This’ll take a couple more hours. Why don’t you stretch out on the tractor van seat? It’s wide enough. That way you can rest all the way back to Trefoil.”

“And yourself, Biyanco?”

He grinned like the old black imp he was. “I’m maybe a shade younger than you, Crystal Singer Killashandra. But we’ll never know, will we?”

She slept, enervated by the pitching and cutting, but she woke when Biyanco opened the float door. The hinge squeaked in C-sharp.

“Good press,” he said when he saw she was awake. Behind, in the lorries, the weary climbers chanted to
themselves. One was a monotone. Fortunately they reached the village before the sound could get on her nerves. The lorries were detached, and the climbers melted into the darkness. Biyanco and Killashandra continued on the acid road back to Trefoil.

It was close to dawn before they pulled up at the Golden Dolphin.

“Killashandra?”

“Yes, Biyanco?”

“I’m in your debt.”

“No, for we exchanged favors.”

He made a rude noise. And she smiled at him. “We did. But, if you need a price, Biyanco, then it’s your silence on the subject of crystal singers.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m human, no matter what you’ve heard of us. And I must have that humanity on equal terms or I’ll shatter one day among the crystal. It’s why we have to go off-world.”

“You don’t lure men back to Ballybran?”

“Would you come with me to Ballybran?”

He snorted. “You can’t make harmat on Ballybran.”

She laughed, for he had given the right answer to ease his own mind. As the tract-float moved off slowly, she wondered if he had ever heard of Yarran beer. A chilled one would go down a treat right now.

She slept the sun around and woke the second dawn refreshed. She lazed in the water, having been told by the pug-nosed host that the lunk ships were still out. Biyanco greeted her that noonday with pleasantries and no references to favors past, present, or future. He was old enough, that brewman, she thought, to know what not to say.

She wondered if she should leave Trefoil and flit around the planet. There would be other ports to visit,
other fishermen to snare in the net of her attraction. One of them might be strong enough—
must
be strong enough—to melt the crystal in her. But she tarried and drank harmat all afternoon until Biyanco made her go eat something.

She knew the lunk boats were in even before the parched seamen came thronging up the beach road, chanting their need. She helped Biyanco draw glasses against their demand, laughing at their surprise to see her working behind the bar. Only Shad Tucker seemed unamazed.

Orric was there, too, with Tir Od Nell, teasing her as men have teased barmaids for centuries. Tucker sat on a stool in the corner of the bar and watched her, though he drank a good deal of harmat to “unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.”

Biyanco made them all stop drinking for a meal, to lay a foundation for more harmat, he said. And when they came back, they brought a squeeze box, a fiddle, two guitars, and a flute. The tables were stacked against the wall, and the music and dancing began.

It was good music, too, true-pitched so Killashandra could enjoy it, tapping her foot in time. And it went on until the musicians pleaded for a respite and, leaving their instruments on the bar, swept out to the cool evening beach to get a second wind.

Killashandra had been dancing as hot and heavy as any woman, partnered with anyone who felt like dancing, including Biyanco. Everyone except Tucker, who stayed in his corner and watched … her.

When the others left to cool off, she wandered over to him. His eyes were a brighter blue in the new red-tan of his face. He was picking his hands now and again because the lunks had an acid in their scales that ate flesh, and he’d had to grab some barehanded at the last.

“Will they heal?” she asked.

“Oh, sure. Be dry tomorrow. New skin in a week. Doesn’t hurt.” Shad looked at his hands impersonally and then continued absently sloughing off the dying skin.

“You weren’t dancing.”

The shy grin twisted up one corner of his mouth, and he ducked his head a little, looking at her from the side of his eyes.

“I’ve done my dancing. With the fish the past days. I prefer to watch, anyhow.”

He unwound himself from the stool to reach out and secure the nearest guitar. He picked a chord and winced; he didn’t see her shudder at the discord. Lightly he plucked the strings, twisting the tuning knob on the soured G, adjusting the E string slightly, striking the chord again and nodding with approval.

Killashandra blinked. The man had perfect pitch.

He began to play softly, in a style totally different from the raucous tempi of the previous musicians. His picking was intricate and his rhythm sophisticated, yet the result was a delicate shifting of pattern and tone that enchanted Killashandra. It was improvisation at its best, with the player as intent upon the melody he produced as his only audience.

The beauty of his playing, the beauty of his face as he played, struck an aching in her bones. When his playing ceased, she felt empty.

She had been leaning toward him, perched on a stool, elbows on her knees, supporting her chin with cradled hands. So he leaned forward, across the guitar, and kissed her gently on the mouth. They rose, as one, Shad putting the guitar aside to fold her in his arms and kiss her deeply. She felt the silk of his bare flesh beneath her hands, the warmth of his strong body against hers and
then … the others came pouring back with disruptive noise.

As well, Killashandra thought as Orric boisterously swung her up to the beat of a rough dance. When next she looked over her shoulder, Shad was in his corner, watching, the slight smile on his lips, his eyes still on her.