Skeen's Leap (20 page)

“It's a caravan.”

“Isn't it.”

“I can see why you didn't object to adding one more.”

“A bit late for that.”

“Expensive.”

“Now that you're part of the expense, you might throw in another dollop of information. Some names to be considered as our involuntary patrons.”

“Tactfully put.” He fidgeted nervously with the coil of tape. “It's pleasant outside from the look of the light.” A quick wave at the light shining down from high narrow windows.

She got to her feet. “Why don't you give me a quick tour of the grounds. I need to be back at the landing by sundown, but I'm free till then.”

Pegwai Dih pushed his chair back and came to his feet with the lightness she'd seen before in men of his build. Showing off a little. She rather approved of that. He knew what he was doing, shared his understanding with a sudden smile, a wink of complicity. Not ashamed, amused at his own antics, the scholar standing back and watching the natural man be himself. A lot like Tibo, oh Tibo you baster, you jackal, you bloodworm, lost your own ship in that crazy business with the Heeren, you had to take mine, oh you slipt in the nod, you.… He knew what the Junks would do to her once they ran her down, he knew, he had to know, he knew how to hurt her, how could she have misread him so completely? Nothing to tell her what … should have known … I should have I should have known … how could I know … what was there to tell me he would steal my ship, strand me? The uncertainty about her perceptions had shaken her badly, like standing on earth that shifted suddenly under her feet, that opened up and swallowed her.

She stopped thinking and looked at Pegwai Dih. His head was shoulder high on her, about where Tibo's came, but he was near two of Tibo wide. His hands were clasped behind him, hiking the robe up a little over his solid rump. The jut of his solid little rear was the one part of his body Tibo was self-conscious about, the one thing he wouldn't let her tease him about. And he didn't want to hear her fell him how it excited her. Ai-eee, Djabo, stop this, woman, stop it stop it stop it, there has to be an explanation, some reason.… Pegwai was strolling along, square shapely feet appearing and disappearing beneath his homespun robe, the afternoon sun glistening off his square shaved head. All this time since the Junk had squeaked the news at her, she'd been playing games with her hurt and anger. There's no need, she kept telling herself, no need to face these wounds as long as I'm in fair control of my life. As long as she had directions she could move in where she didn't have to trust someone. Now there was Pegwai, proposing to come with her. Maybe it was all right, maybe if she didn't depend on him for more than a moment's aid and not at all if there was trouble, maybe she still had maneuvering room. She emerged from her self-absorption and looked around.

They were strolling in an open woodland, probably that between the lake and the Lumat grounds; a slight breeze stirred the humid heavy air, smells that were hot and thick, afternoon smells, a little stale from being around all day. She was tired, felt like she'd been wrestling alligators the past few hours. “Know much about the other side of Oruda?”

“We're not cloistered here, Maneke, and I'm a man who likes homebrew when he's got coins to rattle in his pocket. And there's a cookshop near the Eastend where they make a telazera to dream on.” He slanted a glance up at her, sly laughter in his eyes, knowing very well why she'd asked the question, taking pleasure in verbose sidetracks. “That's a dish of cheese and breadcrumbs and lazzo. Lazzo being those small purple lake spiders, the ones with the pointed spiral shells.”

“Good?”

“The smell alone would raise the dead.”

She eyed him speculatively, then decided to follow his lead. “How do I find it?”

“Prozzi Loe's place up near marsh edge. You're in the Grinning Eel, come out under the arch and turn right.…” He ambled along giving her more precise instructions about how to find the cookshop, chatting on about the man who ran it, Prozzi Loe, a friend of his, a Balayar come north to leave behind some tangles he'd knotted about himself on his home island. Pegwai kept up a gentle flow of genial chatter until he led her from the trees to a rustic bench beside a small noisy stream that tumbled down a shallow declivity and boiled past their feet.

“Skeen,” she said. “My name.” She propped her boot heel on a rock and crossed her ankles. The bench back creaked under her shoulders, but held her comfortably. Her hair was starting to kink up as sweat popped out and began trickling down her neck and the side of her face. She drew the back of her hand across her brow, grimaced at the muddy smear on the skin. A yawn caught her by surprise. She coughed and blinked. “Running all day is easier than this poking about.”

“You wouldn't find many who'd see it that way.” Pegwai loosened the robe about his neck, pushed the sleeves up past his elbows. He was sweating very little, a few drops on his brows, on the smooth tight skin of his arms. The muscles of his arms were long and sleek and powerful, just enough fat to keep from looking ropy. Thick wrists. Strong hands, long tapering fingers, a useful look to them, that aura of competence and skill that clung to the hands of artists and artisans and made her wonder what they'd feel like touching her. She lingered a moment on the thought. I'm getting horny as hell, must be getting close on my period. Djabo, I've lost track of days in all this mess. Lousy timing and there's probably nothing like a tampon on this whole lousy world. Hm. I wonder if any of the waves are offshoots of the cousin races? Too late to check that out now. No problem with the Aggitj, no fertile mix there. Pegwai, now, he even smells like a relative, not that he's making any show of noticing the signals I'm putting out. Well, soon as this month's leak is finished, I'd better check my implant, the way my luck's running, I'll end up pregnant. Djabo's nimble tail, who'd be a woman. Well, none of that, you're just depressed, old girl, because Pegwai's treating you like his favorite sister. She sighed, then was annoyed with herself for doing it. “Can we talk now?”

He flushed, leaned forward and gazed at the water. “Perhaps I was exaggerating the difficulty.” He straightened. “But I must live here, I want to live here.”

“Fair enough.”

The wind freshened and began blowing spray at them, a cooling mist that touched away the stickiness from the heat and beaded on her hair.

“I'm tired of improvising this jaunt,” she said after a short silence. “You know country and cost. Give me some idea of the gear we'll need and the expenses of traveling. No, not now, make some notes. I can pick them up when I come to do my chat.” She stretched her legs, crossed them the opposite way. “I have to do some prospecting before I do any buying.” She turned her head, raised her brows. “I asked this before. Perhaps I can get an answer out here. You happen to know any very rich and morally scabby types? The kind that folk around here would enjoy seeing dumped in a mudhole?”

“Let me think about this a little. You're asking me to make a large alteration in the way I think about myself.” He gave her a rueful laughing look, then swiveled around to stare at the stream, his back to her. He wasn't happy about turning fingerman, but he'd come around. Before long he'd be justifying himself by concentrating on the flaws in those she planned to rob. As long as she stole the ill-gotten gains of evil folk (she grinned at the thought), he'd talk himself around. It wasn't so different from what he did on his begging rounds—flattering bigots and tyrants, licking the feet of pretentious would-be literateurs, snobs, and slavers and other parasites. His nimble-footed capers about his own integrity and his tongue play were a sort of whoring (he had no business teasing her about her tastes), doing indirectly what she proposed to do a lot more directly and effectively. So it took him a while to readjust his thinking, so he should get on with it. She kicked her feet out, drew them back, wriggled on the bench, rubbed at the nape of her neck. Well, he was intelligent, not a bad trait, and even better, seemed to have a fair fund of common sense, and he could laugh at himself. She was rather looking forward to sharing laughter with him, to enjoying the absurdities of the world with him. The Aggitj boys were fine and fun, but they thought with their bodies. Timka was intelligent and capable of saying interesting things, had even laughed a time or two, but there wasn't much fun in her, at least none that Skeen had discovered thus far.

A scrape and a chuckle broke into her musing. Pegwai had swung back around and was gazing at his linked hands, enjoying some private vision.

“Funny?”

“I was visualizing Kerakevaladam floundering in a juicy mudhole. He's one you might tap to the cheers and encouragement of most in Oruda. Renegade Chalarosh. Calls himself a spice merchant; rumor is he controls the flow of tersk which is a particularly nasty addictive drug. One of these days some father or sister or whatever is going to put a knife in him. And there's the slaver Duppra Mallat. Nagamar. She trades in slaves, runs whorehouses in every fair-sized city on the Plain, stocks them with her own merchandise, mostly women and children. Those two are the richest, the most despicable, and, my dear Skeen, the most dangerous pair in Oruda. Kevaladam keeps samchaks, nasty little vermin, poisonous, miserable dispositions, attack any thing that moves, go after your ankles, drop on your head from the rafters. Nagamar are rather good with the poisons also, and Mallat has a stable of guards with noses so sharp they could track a moth on its mating flight.” He frowned, looked anxious, as if he already regretted mentioning either of them.

Skeen got to her feet. “I've a lot of thinking to do before I go hunting. Time I was heading for the landing and my ride across the Lake.”

Pegwai nodded and walked beside her as she started into the trees. “A year ago one of my students thought up a project; she's going out Seeking in a year or so. Methodical little thing. Skirrik, so she's very good at translating three dimensions into two, chart-making, I mean. For practice, she made a complete scale map of South Oruda, the drawing alone is beautiful work, but she went a lot further and named every major structure in the city. I'll have a copy made for you. You can pick it up tomorrow.” He grinned at her, a nervous twitch of his full lips that left his eyes unhappy. “I'll look it over tonight and mark some other possibilities for you. Oruda has a healthy clutch of folk needing a moral lesson or two.”

He was still uneasy; she could hear it in his voice, see it in the set of his body. Though he'd object strenuously to the characterization, he was very much an innocent, sheltered most of his life in a way Skeen knew she couldn't comprehend. Tibo was like that too, what he told her about himself, it was like a fable in a child's book; she couldn't believe in it. Tibo … no. Pegwai had convinced himself that he was acting in a good cause, but everything he'd been taught warred with that feeble conviction. Sheltered. Yes. Her own first memories were of her uncle, her mother's brother, who took her and her sister in when their parents were killed, memories that still surfaced as nightmares when she was under stress, memories of pain and fear and sick rage. No shelter for her. Pegwai had a solid thereness to him that told her a lot about his family; there was love back then and acceptance. And he had a place here in the Tanul Lumat which he wasn't really afraid of losing no matter what he said. No, he wasn't afraid. It was that web of beliefs and truths he learned in that warm and happy family. Thou shalt not steal. All right to lie and trick and flatter money from pockets not your own, but not all right to reach in your hand and take. Well, she'd never been against such teachings; in fact she quite approved of them when her own possessions were involved. She recognized the inconsistency in her attitudes and was amused by the capacity in her for righteous indignation when someone did to her what she'd made a habit of doing to others.

Though she didn't share them, she liked Pegwai for his scruples, liked him all the more because he didn't bray about them or try pushing them on her. She liked the way he struggled with an alien viewpoint and gave it its due. There were some who'd say he was struggling to corrupt himself, that he was being tempted from the path of righteousness by the Evil One, cloaked as usual in the lust-rotted filth of female flesh. She knew that Voice. She had it recorded in the bones her uncle had broken, in the scars on her back and buttocks, heard that Voice in her uncle's mouth when he shut her in a room with him, preached that Sermon to her, ranted to her about her sins—her evil nature, her corrupt flesh—ranted at her, then buggered her, then beat her for seducing him. Everything that happened between them, it was her fault, always her fault. Her uncle told her it was her fault. Her aunt told her she was a liar and filth and beat her, too. But the worst thing, the worst thing in her whole life, the very worst day came when she was nine, the day her uncle took her into the center of the city to register her for trade school, the worst day came when she caught a glimpse of her uncle standing beside her in a long mirror, no, not a mirror, it was a plate glass window with blackness behind it that made an imaging glass that was too accurate for her comfort. They stood by a streetlight waiting for a robocab to take them back to the grim suburb where her uncle clung to the rags of respectability. By that light she saw herself beside her uncle, saw too a likeness that struck deep into her, turning her deathly ill, though she had to conceal the sickness behind the bland baby mask she'd learned to paste over pain almost before she learned to talk, when she saw that his face and his body were stamped into her bones and into her flesh and she'd never be rid of him, not as long as she dared look into a mirror. Nine years old and visited with a doom like no other doom she knew. She fled two months later after killing him and chopping his face into hamburger, but it was another ten years before she managed to reclaim her body as her own and not a wretched surrogate of her wretched uncle.