Earthblood (22 page)

He walked on in silence, heading for the jumble of shacks behind the port. Had it been this derelict—this dirty and depressing when he'd left it as a boy?

It didn't matter. He was returning as a Man, and he'd come for a purpose, and let anyone who got in his way look out . . .

Roan marched the men past the tented Soetti Quarter, under the walls and towers of the Veed section, into the gracyl slums. He almost marched past his old house without recognizing it. Everything seemed smaller, dirtier than he remembered. A group of unwashed gracyl infants dug morosely in their instinctive way in the dust of the yard, and Roan thought fleetingly how strangely each gracyl reenacted his race's evolution from a primitive burrowing rodent. The flower garden was gone and no one had whitewashed the house for years. A suspicious gracyl mare peered from the window where Bella had once flapped a towel to call Roan to meals. He swallowed a nostalgia that he hadn't expected to have and marched the men on past the garbage dump, now bigger than ever. No one knew, or asked, why he took that route. He walked confidently, head up, his guns strapped to his hips, his boots kicking up decisive splatters of mud as though he knew where he was going.

He had no friends to look for, no hint as to how to find Bella. But Uncle T'hoy hoy had had a favorite haunt—a tumbledown bar where he had been wont to huddle with other hard-bitten slaves, sipping at vile Yill drinks and muttering unknowable Yill secrets. It would be a starting place. Roan turned a corner, and the men behind him murmured, and he could picture the grins spreading. This looked more like it, the pirate's part of his mind noted automatically. Ahead a carefully trimmed wine vine made an enclosure, and beyond could be seen the spangled tops of rich houses. A small party of Veed petty nobles was coming through the gate; some had iridion clasps on their pleated skirts and one had a diamond class badge attached to his neck. The only weapons they carried were daggers and whetted talons, and their slithering gait had the native insolence of those who think daggers are enough. Roan felt the men slow behind him, watching the Veed; he turned and gave them the look of ferocity that came so easily now.

"All right, you hull-scrapings, I've warned you! The first man that gets out of line gets a bullet in the guts."

"These Geeks friends of yours?" Noag inquired loudly, watching the Veed move past. Noag was a Gook and he had no use for Geeks.

"I have no friends," Roan said. "If you think I'm kidding, try me." The Veed had paused and now two of them swaggered over.

"Get you gone from the places of the noble Veed," one said in flat, badly accented Interlingua.

"And take these mud-swine of half-caste Terries with you," the other added. They stood with their hands resting on their knives and they looked as though they hoped someone would give them some slight cause to draw them.

"OK if I kill these two?" Sidis asked hopefully. He was grinning and his polished teeth shone like silver.

"No killing," Roan said. The other men moved up and began to ring in the two Veed; they moved together, suddenly nervous, realizing that these were not local outcasts.

"Begone," Roan said in the faultless Yill Bella had taught him. "My slaves scent easy blood."

The two Veed took their hands from their knives and made inscrutable Veed faces. "Take your vile scent with you," one said, but he moved back.

"Before you go," Roan said, "give me news of T'hoy hoy, the Yill bard and teller of tales." He put his hands on his guns to show that it was no idle inquiry.

"It is said the one you name can be found over his cups in any pothouse so undiscerning as to accept his custom," the Veed snapped the answer. Roan grunted and turned on toward the gate. He remembered that once the Veed Quarters had been sacred and taboo, and that he hadn't been good enough to be allowed there except when he ran messages or delivered merchant's goods. But now he was Roan the Man and he went where he liked. He strode through the gate, and Veed faces turned, ready to hiss their anger; but a silence fell over them as the small party tramped past. There were a few halfhearted catcalls, but no one moved to intercept them. The Veed had seen the byplay at the gate with the two dagger men, and understood that it was a time for discretion.

On the far side of the Veed Quarter, in the swarming artisan's section of the city, Roan halted the men at a tavern under the battered red, green, and purple symbol of an all-blood establishment.

"You wait out here," Roan said. "I'll send out a round. And keep your hands off your guns and other people's belongings."

There was a Yill inside; he wasn't Uncle T'hoy hoy but he was the Twix caste, one of those inconspicuous ones who were always to be found in public places sitting unobtrusively in a corner to pick up information, compose their strange Yill poems, and be available in case there were messages to be sent.

Roan slid into the cracked seat across from the Yill, ordered Bacchus wine for himself and Fauve for the old Yill, then took out an oblong coin and put it on the table.

The Yill winked his eyes at Roan and let the coin lie there. There were many things a Yill would do for money and other things nothing could make them do, and the Yill was waiting to find out which kind of things Roan had in mind.

"First," Roan said, coming directly to business in the Yill fashion, "I want to find my mother, Bella Cornay. Then I want to find T'hoy hoy, my foster uncle."

The Yill took the coin with pointed fingers from which the fighting talons had fallen long ago, deposited it under his tongue, and watched while the clumsy, frizzle-haired waiter brought the wine. He smelled the Fauve, looked keenly at Roan, and said, "I am L'pu, the Chanter of Verses. I know you: the flame-colored Terran boy who filled the empty life of the faded beauty Bella. You were a small, wild flame of a youngling, and you have lived to become a fire of a man. Your mother's heart would have leaped for your beauty, which is that of all great beasts of prey."

"Mother is . . . dead?" Roan felt a slow sadness. He had never loved his mother enough, and it had not been fair. All he'd ever thought about was Raff.

"She is no longer alive," the Yill said. He was being precise about something. Roan waited to see if he would say more, but he didn't and it was no use to ask.

"Uncle T'hoy hoy?"

"At this moment, T'hoy hoy listens at the house of the autocrat of the noisome Soetti. Would you have me fetch him?" Roan nodded and the Yill drank off his wine and slipped away. Roan sat and waited in the small, dank tavern; the room smelled of a hundred liquors, poison to each other, and of alien sweats. Outside the flaps of the cellophase windows the men were bored, talking too loudly and throwing knives carelessly at each others' feet. Rain started up and drummed on the tin roof. It reminded Roan suddenly, overwhelmingly, of Bella. But he thrust the emotions back under a gulp of strong wine. Home was gone, had never been. Tambool was a place like any other and in a few hours he'd be on his way. He had another drink and waited. Bella was no longer alive, L'pu had said. What did that mean?

Finally he heard the men jibing at someone outside, and the tavern lighted with an opening door and feet shuffled. It was Uncle T'hoy hoy. He had gotten old, so old, and his gray face was like shriveled clay, but it rose into smiles for Roan.

"My boy," he said. "Oh, my boy." And Roan saw that if a Yill could cry, Uncle T'hoy hoy would have cried.

Roan embraced the old slave and ordered two more Fauves.

"I guess I've changed," he said. "Would you have known me?"

"You have changed but I would have known you, Roan. But tell me the story of your years. Have you killed and have you loved and have you hated?"

"All that and more," Roan said. "I'll give you my story for your collection. But my mother. What happened to Bella?"

Uncle T'hoy hoy reached under his belt, inside his tunic, brought out a thick gold coin and offered it to Roan. "Your inheritance," he said. "All that remains of a once-fair flower of Yill . . ." Uncle T'hoy hoy was a storyteller and he couldn't help being poetic, Roan told himself, suppressing his impatience.

"Where did Bella get gold?" Roan fingered the coin. It was an ancient Imperial stater, and represented a lot of money in the ghettos of Tambool.

"She had nothing for which to live, with Raff dead and you stolen. She sold herself to the Experimental College for vivisection. This was her pay, and she left it for you in case you should ever return."

"And . . . she left no message?"

"The deed speaks all that need be said, Roan."

"Yes . . ." Roan shook his head. "But I don't want to think about that now. I have to hurry, Uncle T'hoy hoy. My men are itchy for action and loot and if anybody even looks at them sideways they're going to cut loose. I came here to find out who I am. I know Dad and Ma bought me at a Thieves'

Market here on Tambool, but I don't know which one. Did they ever give you a clue?"

"No clue was needed, Roan. I was there."

"You?"

"I came here, all the way from a far world, to kidnap you," T'hoy hoy said, remembering an old irony and smiling his strange Yill smile at it.

"You!" Roan was grinning too at the unlikely image of the old Yill as a hired adventurer.

"Ah!" T'hoy hoy said. He shook his head. "Better it were perhaps if all this were left untroubled under the mantle of time—"

"I want to know who I am, Uncle. I have to know. I'm supposed to be of Terran blood—Pure Strain. But who were my parents? How did the dealer get me?"

Uncle T'hoy hoy nodded, his old eyes remembering the events of long ago.

"I can tell you my story, Roan. Your story you must find out for yourself."

"I've shot my way in and out of a lot of places," Roan said. "But you can't shoot your way into the past. You're my only lead."

"We came here," T'hoy hoy said, "following orders. We were minutes late at the bazaar—but the dealer talked a little. We trailed the purchasers, and they went to earth in a closed place where tourists never venture. When we saw them, we laughed at how easy it would be; a frail Yill woman and an old hybrid Terran in an ill-fitting suit . . ."

"Raff was never old."

"So we discovered. It was incredible. He fought like a fiend from the Ninth Pit, and even after his body bones were broken, he fought on, and killed all the others, and he would have killed me, but the lady Bella saw that I was Yill, like her, and that I would yield; and she needed me, so my life was spared. Then by my oath I was forever bound to her, and to Raff. And to you."

Outside, the men had begun a game of rolling the tankards their drinks had been served in, and shooting at them. Inside there were only Roan and T'hoy hoy, and the bartender frowning worriedly over his pewters, and casting glances toward the door.

"Send out a refill," Roan called. He poured his and T'hoy hoy's glasses full.

"Dad used to say I was Pure Strain; but whenever I asked him what made me any more valuable than any other more or less pure Terran, all he said was that I was something special. What did he mean, T'hoy hoy?"

"Special you were, Roan, for many men died for the owning of you. But how, I cannot say."

"This market where I was bought, tell me where it is; maybe the dealer who sold me knows something."

"As to the bazaar, tell you I will, but as for the dealer . . . alas, he died of a throat ailment."

"A throat ailment?"

"There was a knife in it," T'hoy hoy said a little guiltily. "Ah, I admit, Roan, I was not so even-tempered then as now." T'hoy hoy told Roan the location of the Thieves' Market on the far side of Tambool. "But let me advise you to stay clear of the place, Roan. It was a evil haunt of the scum of the Galaxy twenty-five years ago, and the neighborhood has since deteriorated . . ." Roan was watching through the window as a large company of Veed gentry went by outside; his crewmen stood silent, watching, but everything in their stance suggested disrespect. Sidis was tossing his knife in the air and catching it without looking, and grinning his steel-toothed grin.

"They're like children," Roan started, and broke off. A lone Veed had hurried past, trailing the group, and the diamond at his throat had glinted like a small sun, and from the corner of his eye Roan caught a sudden movement and now he heard an almost silent thud.

He was out in the street in a moment, in time to see Noag's short cloak flutter at an alley mouth. Roan sprang after him and whirled the lumbering Minid around, but it was too late. The young Veed noble's head dangled at a fatal angle. An angry buzzing was growing among the gathering bystanders. They didn't like Veed nobles, but strangers killing them in the public street was too much.

"Come on, you brainless slobs!" Roan yelled. "Form up and let's get moving." He looked at Noag, and the Minid fingered his knife and looked back.

"You can stay here with your Veed and his diamond," Roan grated, and passed him by.

"Huh?" Noag looked puzzled. "You can't do that! It'd be murder," he roared, starting after Roan. "I got no Tamboolian money! I don't know the language! I won't last a hour!"

"Tough," Roan said. "Cover him, Askor, and shoot him if he tries to follow us."

T'hoy hoy was trotting beside Roan, looking back worriedly. "Cleverly done," he puffed. "The sacrifice will satisfy them for the moment, but you'd best not tarry. Farewell, Roan. Send word to me, for I would know how your saga ends."

"I will, Uncle," Roan said. He pressed a heavy Imperial Thousand credit token into the old Yill's hand and hurried after his men. At the gate he looked back; Noag was squatting at the alley mouth. Tears were streaming down his face but he was cutting the diamond off the dead Veed.

It was a steaming, screaming color blaze of a bazaar, and the dust was like yellow poison, and as Roan marched his men through the narrow, twisting ways between stalls, no one gave them a second look. No one gave anything a second look in the Thieves' Market unless it was something he wanted to steal.

They came out into an open plaza and wended their way across it among sagging stalls with sun-faded awnings. Merchants too poor to rent booths squatted by heaps of tawdry merchandise and gold and green death-flies buzzed everywhere, and the air reeked of opulent perfumes and long-rotted vegetables and sweat and age and forbidden drugs. They passed a scarlet and blue display of Tirulean silks that were worth fabulous amounts and a spread of painted esoterica that was worth nothing at all and came up to a crumbling wall cut from the chalky ocher rock face that towered over the square. A hand-painted sign beside a dark stair said YARG & YARG, LIVE