Skeen's Leap (12 page)

“Spalit. The river divides there. One branch goes west to the Lakes, the other goes south to the Wetlands, gets lost in the swamps. And those swamps are full of Nagamar who don't want to see, hear, or smell outsiders. Spalit is about half the size of Dum Besar. There's a palisade around it, but nothing like Besar's wall. Rumor says every second person is a thief and every sixth is available for anything including murder if the price is right. And they don't pay proper taxes. The Byglave used to get very exercised about them around tax time and the Poet had to soothe him down and remind him tactfully about what happened the last time the Casach decided to discipline the Splitters by collecting back taxes and fines out of their hides.”

“What happened?”

“The Casach sent a hundred armed men. By ship, so warning wouldn't run ahead of them, leaving on Black Night when there wasn't even a moon to light them. Ship ran into cables stretched across the Rekkah about twenty stads north of Spalit. Anyone not drowned had his throat slit by a collection of thugs wearing bags over their heads. Two did manage to escape, though wounded. When they stumbled into Spalit come the morning, the town Mozeed was appalled and indignant; he told them so, then launched himself into a diatribe about the failure of the Casach to protect their people against such outrages. If I'd known you were coming, he told the sore and weary men, I would have sent my patrollers out to meet you and keep you safe. He went on about that for some time, the story goes, and repeated it to the emissary from the Casach. The point was taken and the experiment was not repeated.

Skeen heard distaste in the quiet voice, but no reluctance to speak about these things; Timka responded to her questions about the Pallah with an odd docility that she didn't understand. But was it really docility? Timka was like water yielding to everything, yet in the end going her own way. Remembering all her attempts to find out about Min life, Skeen had to acknowledge (ruefully but honestly) that the Min was smarter than she was and a lot better at manipulating people. Timka frustrated her, made her angry, and fascinated her. She tried to break through the soft slippery surface and make Timka see that she didn't have to be that defensive any longer, then she'd find herself ordering the Min about, tacitly acquiescing in the role Timka seemed to demand of her. She would run her hand through her hair, curse under her breath, then try to come to terms with this impossible situation so she could do something to save her self-respect. Timka acted as her personal slave whether she wanted a slave or not. She'd taken on this companion as a kick at Telka, acting on impulse. Tibo that little snake, he told her one time that she seemed to have a valve that popped whenever she'd been cautious and prudent overlong, and anything she did then was almost guaranteed to turn out a disaster. I took you on impulse, you baster, and you prove your prediction right.

They rode across rich dark soil heavy with planting. The air was humid and still. Skeen felt if she set a foot down too long it would take root. She sweated and the sweat stayed on her skin, laying over her body like a sheath. The saddle was wet where her legs and buttocks pressed against the leather: the eddersil let sweat through it without absorbing any, so she didn't have to worry about soggy clothing. Though she washed her face and hands as often as there was water to do it, dirt seemed to grow beneath her nails and in the creases of her hands. And she could almost feel her hair growing. Salt sweat beaded on her eyelashes and rolled into her eyes. She wiped her face again and again with a handkerchief that had been soaked so long it was speckled with mildew and smelled strong enough to scare off a garbage dump rat.

Three days. Four. A handful of days. Nights as warm and even damper than the days. The horses were restless, as uncomfortable as Skeen, their tempers worsening by the day. They needed grain. There wasn't enough forage outside the fields and Skeen was still avoiding notice, so she didn't stop at any of the tiny villages. So, no grain.

Six days. Seven. A double handful. On the tenth day they rode round a grove and came out behind a packtrain of Ygga, short-legged stolid beasts with great ivorine horns reaching out a meter on each side of long skinny heads, the nose a trunk of sorts slightly longer than a big man's handspan, these noses swaying like pendulums of wrinkled flesh. Goods were piled so high on their broad backs, they looked like traveling tents under the protecting tarps. They brushed the bushy growths on both sides of the narrow track and Skeen was compelled to eat their dust if she wanted to keep to the road and that she did want. The packtrain was as good a cover as any for going into Spalit and the dust, however irritating, was as good as a mask. Well, better than a mask. A mask carried mystery and provoked curiosity. Dust was just dust, cast up by the clawed feet of the Ygga and deposited on ten days' worth of sweat. Fine red dust as slippery as chalk that got into the eyes, nose, mouth, and more private crevices of the body, that flew out from the eddersil with every move she made. She giggled silently to think how peculiar she'd look, perfectly neat black trousers and tunic, boots that looked like someone painted dust on them, a dust mask runnelled with sweat, dyed hair gone a dull red with that same dust—like she'd put on clean clothes for town but hadn't bothered to clean herself.

When they reached the gate, she roughened and deepened her voice, tossed a bronze coin to one of the gate guards. “Eh-vakkit, what's a place we can get a tun of wine to cut the dust and a hot bath to chase it altogether?”

The Watch looked at the coin in his hand, grinned at her. “The Spittin Split will do yo all that. Turn riverside where yo see a house with a red door.” He flicked a long thumb at the end of a long nose, winked at Timka. “She look like she ull clean up fine, but yo want a change, Red Door they got some lively ass. Go twar River till you see a big shup with a wall 'bout it, 'n a signboard swing over an arch, two-head fish, one spittin water t' other spittin wine. 'N hey, tell ol' Nossik that Tiddin sent you by.”

“I'll do it.” She gave him a two-finger wave, heeled the weary horse into a walk, and started along the shell-spread street. The shells kept the dust down, but did little for the stench from the sewer ditches on both sides of the broad street. The stillness of the air was beginning to break with the coming of night and made the smell inescapable. Timka caught up with Skeen and rode beside her. “How did you know what to say to him and how?”

“You told me what the town is like.”

“But I didn't know.…”

“There's always a town like this and a Watch like that. And he's generally the one on duty late in the day like this because that's when travelers want steering the most and are most willing to pay for it. He gets a commission for everyone he sends to Nossik or the Red Door. He knows I know it and will be sure to mention his name. It's all part of the rules and because I know the rules, I slide in easy. Folks round here will know I'm a stranger but not really a stranger because I've got the mark on me.”

“I don't understand any of that.”

“Thief's mark, Timmy.”

“Don't call me that. My name is Timka.”

Skeen shrugged, rather pleased to get that much reaction out of her. It'd been building for days, Timka was tired and dirty and surrounded by folk she distrusted, even feared, so it was no wonder she allowed herself to get a bit grumpy.

“Are you really going there?” Timka said.

“Why not. I want a bath so bad I'd stomp a tiger for it. If you're fussy after the last dozen days, Djabo's asshole, you'll never be satisfied.”

“Won't it be … dangerous. And … and not clean.”

“Clean as anything we can afford here. Old saying a line-boss used to beat into me and kids like me. Cut your cloth to fit your purse.”

“The price you got for me.…”

“Never mind what I got for you.” Skeen grinned at her, mud splitting and flaking off her face. “It's coin I picked up from your Poet that's going to feed us and pay for our baths and get us across this river.” She stopped her mount, sat contemplating the cleverly carved Innboard. The wine-spitting fish had a silly grin on its face and a wicked gleam in its eye, the water-spitter had a look of fine disgust. She slid down and led the horse through the broad arch into a tidy paved courtyard. “If you want to do something, take these horses round to the stable and see they are fed and curried while I see how little I can pay ol' Nossik for room with bath.”

Skeen took a long pull at the tankard, sighed with pleasure. “Ah,” she said, “that cuts the dust.”

The taproom was dark and shadowy, the front half of the ground floor, with huge fireplaces at each end and smoky lamps dangling from heavy iron chains spiked into beams running the length of the room. Around each hearth, in a ragged arc, the host had placed wooden wingchairs with one arm broadened into small tables for the convenience of the patrons. And there was a low rail where those patrons could put their feet up for toasting on inclement days. Between the two semicircles, tables were scattered about, light backless seats pushed in around them. Only one of the fires was lit, more a token than a source of heat. The men sitting by it were talking in low voices, continuing conversations begun weeks or months ago.

Nossik laced his fingers over the short leather apron wrapped round his ample middle. “Plenty dust.”

“Could have plowed and planted me and reaped enough to pass a winter. I like your sign.”

Nossik chuckled. “Water has its uses.”

“Exteriorally.” She thought it over and decided she'd said it right.

“Wouldn't argue with that, my profession being what it is.” He was puzzled by her, aware she was female, but uncertain how to treat her. Females dressing, talking, acting like her weren't something he saw every day. He tended to hover, but she didn't mind. Happy to have someone to talk to she didn't have to make allowances for. Timka was upstairs, too nervous to come down; her edginess had got worse instead of better after a bath and a meal. Skeen wrapped long thin fingers about the tankard and sighed; it was a good fat drinking cup, they knew something about life's little pleasures here in the Spittin Split. “Hot,” she said.

Nossik mopped at the bar, a universal gesture, a matter of marking territory and attracting the eye to meaningless motions while the shrewd measuring eye of the man behind the bar assessed his customers. “Oh, it's not so bad. Now last year …” he paused, folded his wipe into a neat square, “last year it was really hot. Got so your taties came out of the ground already baked. Generally, folk waited till dark to eat 'em, you could burn your back teeth otherwise. Talking o teeth, you want another?”

She pushed the tankard across to him. “Why not. Have one yourself, friend. Ale this good goes best in company.”

“Now I wouldn't say no to that. My Yenna has so deft a touch at brewing, it's a temptation to drink up my profits.”

While he was gone, Skeen swung round and looked lazily about the room. The Pallah by the fire were bent over a complicated game involving numbered sticks, flat stones, and a board marked with squares. A trio of Skirrik males squatted in a padded niche sipping something through metal straws and skritching at each other, looking as relaxed and contented as she was feeling right now. Their antennas had an orange tinge and they glittered with jet; most likely they were heading home to dance for a bride. Four tall thin types, very young, pushed the door open and came strolling in, all bone and gristle and immense drunken dignity. Very very young. I never was that young, she thought and sighed. Silky pale not-hair, beaky noses, very small mouths. Aggitj extras. What Sussaa tried to make her; she ran her fingers through fake-blonde hair, caught the boys looking at her, polite but puzzled. And was retrospectively annoyed (considering that excess of nose and near absence of chin) at Telka's insistence she'd pass for a perfect Aggitj. Nossik's daughter went over to them, got them settled, took their orders. Their voices were high and soft, a touch androgynous. I'm getting a little sloshed, she thought and swung back around as Nossik brought her refill and his. She pushed a pair of coppers across to him.

“Praise the Lifefire,” he said.

“Praise the Lifefire and drink to good living.”

Nossik drank, licked his lips, put the tankard down. “You're right, he said gravely, “it is a touch warm these days, but I still say, nothing like last year. Yooo, that was hot! I had to buy ice from the mountains to put in my henhouse just so I'd have eggs for nogs; 'thout that, they were laying 'em hardboiled.”

“Know what you mean. Where I grew up, we had a lot of days like that. I remember one time, we had this old dog. Smartest dog I ever saw. Of course, it was never so bad as you get here; desert country, lot of sand about, dry heat.”

He nodded. “It's not the heat, it's the humidity gets you down.”

“Uh huh. This dog I was talking about, he had tender feet; come midsummer he stopped moving unless he had to. He slept a lot like old dogs do and sometimes he was forgetful. One day what he forgot was that shade moves with the sun; he woke with one hellaceous thirst and all the shade on the far side of the tent. It was a little after noon and the sun was beating down and the sand was sending up heatwaves tall as houses and twisty as a born liar. Old dog started for the well trough to get him a drink, took one step, and let out a yell you could hear over the horizon. I heard the noise and stuck my head out. I was just a kid then, this high, I was supposed to be sleeping but I was sweating too much. Like I said, I heard the yelp, then some funny scratching sounds, and I looked to see what was happening. There was Old Dog, stomping on those heat waves like they were springs, bouncing along, kaboing kaboing kaboing, until he ran out of waves because it was enough cooler by the well to turn the waves into flimsy little shivers. Never hold him and he knew it. I saw he knew it because he stayed on the last big wave and went bouncing up and down up and down, higher and higher. I saw him eyeing the well with a considering look, then he went up a last time, came down slanting, and took off, sproinggg, like a chizzit with its tail on fire. He missed the water trough, though, and went splashing down the well. Took us a day and a half to get him out. He sure didn't want to leave all that cool, but he got hungry and he couldn't abide fish or frogs and that was all there was to eat down there.”