Irsud (6 page)

“Why not put Lisshan in Migru's place?” she said, then giggled again, jigging restlessly from foot to foot.

“Yes.” The kipu swung back. Nostrils flaring slightly as she curbed her descent into the fringes of emotion, she wrote rapidly then tore the sheet off the pad and thrust it into an embossing machine. She slapped the lever down, pulled the sheet free, then skimmed it across the table to a red guard, this one older with a seamed rugged face and crisply curling gray hair. “Sukall.”

“Im, rab' kipu?”

“Take that to the sacerdote Harran.”

“Im, rab' kipu.” She slapped her lance butt against the floor, wheeled and trotted away.

The kipu folded her hands and settled her face into a chill alabaster mask. She spoke slowly, rolling the liquid syllables over her tongue as if she enjoyed the taste of them. “It is done. Migru is assigned to serve you. Lisshan will serve the dead.”

“No!” Asshrud's face quivered in meaty agony. She stumbled against the table as she moved to confront the kipu sending the massive legs squealing several inches. “No. I forbid it.”

The kipu smiled. Her long reptilian fingers tapped gently on the tabletop, neat square nails clicking faintly against the hard wood.

“He's mine.” Asshrud straightened and repeated the words, trying to infuse strength into her faltering voice. “He's mine.” But the fire washed futilely against the kipu's calm. Asshrud looked ridiculous in her quivering agony. She knew she looked ridiculous, but the agony was real. Aleytys felt a faint sickness in the pit of her stomach and looked away from the scene.

Standing forgotten in the jostle and jar between the two nayids she felt suddenly sorry for Asshrud. She sensed vaguely, remembering her own troubled childhood, the agony of a fat ungainly child growing to repulsive adulthood in a place where all the others were lean and elegant. In spite of herself Aleytys felt the urge to soothe and comfort, but the damper interfered. It sent her mind reeling into confusion. She closed her eyes until the damper allowed her once again to spare attention for the scene in front of her. For the first time she noticed the nayid male hovering beside Asshrud.

“… Gave him to me. You know it.” Asshrud fumbled for the male's hand, tears washing down her pudgy cheeks. She began to plead. “Don't take him away, rab' kipu. Please don't take him away … Mother … she gave him to me. Please … Lisshan is mine. I need him. Don't.…” She broke down and sobbed pitifully, angrily.

“You can show me your deed of gift?” The kipu's nostrils flared once again and her thin lips pressed tightly together. “She let you use his services to quiet your whining whenever it got on her nerves.” She wasn't tasting the words now, she was spitting them out like bitter seeds.

Asshrud gulped and struggled to control her distress. “You could take another,” she blurted.

“No, this obsession for your mother's bed slave.…” The kipu hesitated, searching for the word she wanted. “Is nauseating. And the example you present.…” She raked her eyes over Asshrud's body.

The unhappy nayid flinched from the contempt in her gaze.

“These are difficult times,” the kipu went on, her voice icy. “We must all sacrifice the unnecessary, belit. Sabut!”

“Rab' kipu?” A red guard, one of the anonymous huddle by the wall, stepped briskly to the table.

“Take Lisshan and prepare him.” She flipped a finger at the pudgy male who looked increasingly sick. He tried to retreat behind Asshrud's bulk, then recognized the hopelessness of resistance and went numbly with the guard.

Asshrud followed him out of the room with her eyes, her face heavy with the agony working in her. She turned a blank glittering gaze on Aleytys. “You … you … I'll pay you.”

“You forget yourself, belit.” A slight slick oiling of satisfaction tainted the words.

Asshrud wheeled, knocked clumsily against the table, but she didn't seem to feel it although the table shifted sever inches. “And you … why?” She stretched out quivering hands. “Why do you always strip me bare?”

The kipu drew back and brushed the tips of her fingers fastidiously together. “Belit,” she said coldly. “I think you would feel more yourself in your own quarters.”

Asshrud looked at her again, her face full of impotent hatred, then she waddled around the table and stumped slowly out of the room.

Aleytys watched her go, pity once more strong in her. Not even a dignified exit, she thought. What a cruel thing … to be so ugly, so offensive to the eye that no one would take your deepest hurts seriously.

“Belit Gapp!” The kipu's sharp voice broke off Aleytys' musing. That name, she thought. Where did I hear … ah! She shuddered. Burash's brother's child. She ate her father when she hatched from his flesh. Like the old one will do me. Aleytys looked at the immature nayid and shuddered once again.

Gapp sauntered around her end of the table, an impudent grin on her blunt features. She stopped beside Aleytys, looked her up and down, like a horse trader judging the merchandise, then put her arm around Aleytys' shoulders and hugged her against her hard body. “You going to let me have this one? Favor for favor?”

With an exasperated sigh the kipu leaned forward and considered the untidy slouching figure.

Trying unobtrusively to free herself, Aleytys found time to notice that the subtle antagonism between the kipu and Asshrud was not present here. The kipu even exhibited a kind of indulgent fondness that one might give a spoiled but favorite child.

“Belit Gapp, as last-born you have a duty.”

“Yeah.” She pulled Aleytys around with careless strength, eyes moving up and down her body. Gapp let the fingers of one hand slide carelessly from Aleytys' neck to her waist, ignoring her quiet attempts to free herself.

“Gapp!” The word lashed suddenly through the young one's preoccupation, bringing her around so that she faced the kipu. “Release the Parakhuzerim.”

“Oh.… come on. Let me have her.”

“Gapp!”

Aleytys shuddered, Gapp's touching hands bringing nausea sour into her throat. She rubbed her arms absently. When I get back, she thought, I'll take a bath. I'll take two baths.

“Take the Parakhuzerim and instruct her in her role so that she can take her place in the rites tomorrow.”

“Im, kipu.” Gapp grinned at Aleytys. Aleytys backed away another few steps and looked rapidly around.

“Must she?” she asked sharply.

The kipu ignored her. “Gapp,” she said heavily. “listen to me.”

“Im?”

“Control your … your little fancies.” Once again the kipu's face showed distaste. “If you touch her before the rites, I'll send Sukall with the Discipline. Is that clear?”

Gapp pouted sulkily. “Why? She coupled with that Migru, at least she says so.” She caught the skin and muscle on Aleytys' arm between her thumb and forefinger then squeezed hard. “She might enjoy playing with me. Why not?”

“Because I said so. I don't want her marked, Gapp, or so jangled she can't do what is necessary. I know the games you play. Well?”

Gapp fidgeted. “After?” she asked hopefully.

The kipu shrugged.

“You promised. I'll keep hands off her now, but remember, you promised her to me.” She smiled wetly at Aleytys. “Just wait, soft one, we'll have some fine times.”

“You. Parakhuzerim.”

Because the damper was scrambling her head again, Aleytys was slow to understand and answer. At last she nodded clumsily.

“I don't want to see you again. Not here. You understand?”

“If I need anything?”

The kipu shrugged. “Tell the guard.”

“Yes, kipu.” Aleytys spoke with proper submissiveness. But behind her back her hands closed into fists so tightly her nails cut small crescents into her palms.

“Hm.” The kipu rubbed her long supple thumb across her chin. “Take a little advice, Parakhuzerim. You can have a very pleasant life if you choose. Serve us for a year, then I'll give you your freedom.”

“Yes, kipu.” Aleytys choked down a sudden flare of rage. Free, she thought. Liar!

“Although I would prefer not … for various reasons … I'll drug you if I have to. If you cause me too much trouble, I'll do it. You understand?”

“Yes, kipu.”

CHAPTER VI

Aleytys tugged at the tight crotch of the stiff gold bodysuit, while sweat trickled down her neck as the heavy elaborate helmet pressed on her head until it ached with a dull throb. The monotonous chant went on and on while the sacerdote Harran, wreathed in clouds of heavy incense, paced multiple circles around the pile of logs. After another few minutes of discomfort and boredom, Aleytys thrust her thumbs into the armholes and tried to ease the strain put on her breasts by nayid tailors who didn't know how to cut clothing for a mammal. She glanced along the line of blank-faced sabutim.

Near the eastern edge of the flat-topped butte, wrapped in layer on layer of thick gold cloth until it was a flattened, grossly enlarged seed resting on a shallow gold platter, the old queen's body lay in state on top of the bunting-draped criss-crossed logs. Seated at her feet, wound with blue-dyed ropes, the knots accented with gilt paint, Lisshan stared out with dulled unseeing eyes, lost in some fine euphoria, floating on the wings of a drug. Hiiri were looped below him around the base of the pyre with their own small peninsulas of crossed and criss-crossed logs less than half the diameter of the massive timbers in the main pile. But of course they didn't count … slaves now, slaves for eternity.

And the chant went on.

And the sacerdote walked back and forth in front of the pyre wreathed in clouds of heavy incense.

Sick to the point of nausea, Aleytys glanced at the guards on both sides of her. They faced forward without a tremor in their rigid concentration on the rite. Abruptly she rebelled. She cautiously stepped back, slipping behind the guards to the edge of the cliff where the air felt somehow a little cleaner. Standing on the edge with her back turned to the interminable ceremony she looked out over the dreaming innocent land.

It spread out in muted patchwork interrupted by scattered towers of rock that were other buttes rising in rugged grandeur above the fields. Beside these buttes were dark blotches where houses clustered in walled cities clinging to the base of the precipitous rock. Here and there, on pale straight lines, vehicles like small black bugs scooted in nervous spasms belching behind them clouds of steam. The river came looping out of the blue in the east in long lazy bends, glinting gently in the light from the setting sun. That way, she thought, down the river in that blue mist where that sick blue sky comes down, there's the star city. That's where I have to go.

The river came to them and split in half, one side hugging the base of the butte, the other swinging out in a wide lazy crescent that circled the city and separated it from the farm lands. But I have it backwards, she thought. Funny. The current runs the other way, from me to the east. Why'd I think of it coming to me?

A hundred meters below she could see the small green patch of her garden sealed within the massive gray bulk of the mahazh and its outbuildings, a walled fortress inside the walled city, smooth and sterile except for that green nodule like a cysted tumor. She studied the city outside the walls of her prison. On the western side there was more green—scattered trees and shrubs around walled houses like gray beehives, the streets between quiet and empty.

So seductive was the peace and serenity below she could almost hear the cicada's drowsy hum and feel the warm sweet breeze ruffling her hair.

On the eastern side the beehive houses crowded in a kind of cheerful elbow-in-the-ribs confusion along twisting streets whose narrow strips of paving almost disappeared beneath awnings striped in brilliant clashing stained-glass colors. These streets were crowded and busy, though she caught only glimpses of tiny nayid figures bustling from shop to shop. Where the city met the river the walls widened into low blocky warehouses with piers stretching a short way into the river. Three ships were tied there, their lengths parallel to the bank, most of their cranes idle, one or two desultorily unloading bales which a few hand-truck pushers were wheeling into the warehouses.

Behind Aleytys the chant broke off momentarily and a single massive basso began intoning a long invocation which she resolutely ignored, running her eyes back along the river until she was staring intently at the eastern horizon.

The invocation finished. A sudden crackling sound closed her hands into white-knuckled fists. She swallowed and swallowed and still the sour taste came back. A chorus of screams from the hiiri trembled through her body. She felt the heat of the fire already burning through the heavy cloak hanging from the bee-broaches on her shoulders. She remembered the brown naked figures, tiny tiny people rubbed to a high gleam with the same oil that soaked the logs.… Aleytys stopped that thought but the smell of roasting flesh drifted past. She swallowed but the sour taste wouldn't go away. Blindly, breathing in short sharp gasps, she stared at the innocent lovely land below. The screaming went on, high descants to the heavy basso chant from the massed choir of hieratic nayadim. The stench hovered on the breathless air.

She felt a presence behind her and glanced quickly around. One of the huddle of strangers standing respectfully behind the kipu had come over to her and was watching her with mild interest, a dark brown man just a little taller than she with dull black hair standing out from his head in a tidy bramble bush. He smiled. White teeth flashed. Nostrils flattened. The yellow sun struck red-amber highlights from his dark dark skin.

“They do go on.”

She accepted the overture, glad to turn away from the horror behind her. “Yes.” She almost smiled at the banality of her answer. Her fists uncurled and she could feel herself relaxing. “You're not nayid. Who are you?”