Skeen's Leap (22 page)

The replay faded and Skeen moved on.

Moved deeper into the horrors stored in her mind.

Her uncle coming at her, over and over, hand raised and mouth working in a soundless rant.

Running silent with herds of children scrambling away from the labor pressgangs.

Fighting in the pits, clawing other phluxes bloody for a dose of pilpil, the watchers screaming for blood and maiming.

Her uncle coming at her.…

Because she'd gone through this before, gone deep into her head and faced the demons that lived there, they didn't throw her now; she knew what was happening and ignored the horrors that swam at her out of that fetid fecund darkness. Yet they were getting to her, the mix in the air, the mess in her blood, disorienting and disturbing her. Tibo came again and again. Go with the flow, let it flow, keep on keeping on. Tibo came, mocking her, sneering laughter she couldn't hear but heard anyway. Tibo came with her uncle. It went on and on and the worst was knowing she was doing it to herself. She kept walking, soft soles coming down soundless on a floor she couldn't see. Couldn't see the walls either, in spite of the fungus and the pinlight clipped to her sleeve. They melted and ran like mush boiling over the sides of a pot. The rustles and creaks were sometimes inaudible and sometimes roared at her, confusing her even more.

The pinlight touched a shimmer of scarlet, the acrid stench was suddenly thick enough to chew. Clicking sounds, high warbling shrieks. Glitters of crimson, emerald, gold darting at her. Out with gas egg. She threw it ahead of her, pinched her lips together and ran through the wisps of paragree, laughing to herself because she already had the plugs in place, threw another globe into the writhing mass of lizards. Seemed to be thousands of them, but the spray they spat at her could be multiplying them as if she saw them with a fly's multifaceted gaze. Might not be there, all illusion, delusion, part of Nagamar magic. She threw more of the pressurized globes, stopping only when the stillness about her convinced her, vision or not, the lizards were out of it. She moved carefully through the bodies, cursing because she had to use the globes, the crashes as they broke like thunder in her ears.

The Nagamar behind the heavy reed doors swept peacefully on; the corridors stayed empty.

She reached a corner where a different light spilled round the bend, a flickering red-gold, playing over floor tiles and woven reeds. On her knees she eased closer, listened. No sound, but a feeling of tension, an intangible almost nothing that brought the hairs erect along her spine. She felt in the bag and cursed her drugged recklessness, only three globes left. She held one cuddled in her hand, garnered herself, threw herself around the corner, keeping low, almost on her belly, flung the globe at the tiles in front of the two guards as they started for her, curled onto her feet and stood waiting, knife ready.

They ran into the cloud of gas, took another two steps, faces gone slack, bodies driven by will and impetus, then crumpled to the floor, spears clattering beside them.

She reached for another egg, changed her mind, let it click back against its mate. Using strips cut off their kilts and their leather gear, she bound the guards' hands and feet and gagged them, then she hauled them into a corner and left them facing the walls. As she straightened, the bodies swelled and seemed to be trying to change into large lizards; for a moment she was fooled, jumped back gasping, swaying, stumbling into a strong current of air that flooded over her, flushing away some of the confusion in her head. The guards were Nagamar again, unconscious, tied, laid like logs against the wall. She looked up. She was under one of the towers and it was funneling air and moonlight down to her, a yawning emptiness overhead. Made sense. No point in having woozy unreliable guards. The air felt marvelous on her skin. She thought of taking the plugs out, then thought it would be really stupid to be caught by her own gas. Head not working too well, woman. Get a move on, will you, the night won't last forever.

She turned to the massive door the armed females (the Duppra's notorious virgin guards) were protecting. The first wooden door she'd seen here, a massive slab of light colored wood with an intricate glyph carved in it. A torch burned at the left of the door, turning the glyph into a twisty, snaky thing that oozed menace at her. She rubbed at her eyes. Damn lizard spit. With slow care, using hands and ears as well as eyes, she examined that door, remembering what Pegwai said. You don't steal from Duppra Mallat and you don't try cheating her. Cheats paid her back with an arm or a leg or both depending on how much they owed her; thieves she ate whole. She'd got a taste for exotic flesh and had roasted her share of every species in Oruda during the five years it had taken to establish herself in Oruda. That was over three decades ago, but the stories still went the rounds, with the speculation that some of her more succulent slaves left the pens for the stewpots of Mallat House.

The door was too solid to yield under the small pressure she could apply with her fingertips and the hinges were on the inside. No latch visible. The other door was hinged on the left, probably have to do both sides anyway if there's a bar. More than one bar, yes. If the rumors are true and she keeps her hoard in there. Djabo grant they're true or I've wasted a lot of time tonight. She slid the cutter down the slit between door and jamb, starting with the right side. Acrid stench from the charred wood. She pushed at the door. It gave a little but wouldn't open. At least one bar. She moved swiftly to the other side, started the cutter at shoulder height and brought it to her waist, pushed again. This time the door swung open with a heavy silence. She listened a moment, then slipped inside.

A number of lamps burned about the room, horn and alabaster, providing a dim and tranquil light, faintly orange, very restful on the eyes, but tricky, making you think you saw a lot more than you actually did. Faint lizard stink, not enough to bother. Skeen pulled the door shut.

Steady even breathing from the big bed. Djabo, that thing's huge. Longer than it was broad and broad enough to bed Skeen, Pegwai, the four Aggitj boys, a girl for each of them, leaving space for Timka, Telka, and Z'la. Tall, too, the top was higher than her head; she might be able to hook fingers over it if she stretched. Elaborately carved sides, four mighty posts like piles holding up a wharf, also carved in deep relief. A glistery canopy draping in graceful curves between the posts. The breathing suggested Mallat was in her bed, but there was no way Skeen could tell without climbing up and looking.

Another heavy breather, lower and closer. An ancient Nagamar female, hair a dirty off-white in this faint light, sleeping on a pallet spread over a huge chest with sides carved as elaborately as the bed. A quilt pulled up to her shoulders. A small pile of carved wooden adornments on a table beside the chest—beads, bracelets, earrings that looked massive enough to drag her ear lobes down to her waist. Shaman for sure. Skeen looked covetously at the adornments, sighed, and took out one of the grenades. She sucked air through the nose plugs, not clogged yet. Good. She took careful aim and broke the globe against one of the bedposts, threw the last one against the chest near the sleeping shaman's head. The shattering of the first globe jerked the shaman out of sleep just in time for her to get a good lungful from the second.

Skeen stepped beside the comatose shaman and began climbing the nearest bedpost then swung atop the footboard. She clutched at the post and stared down at the bulk in the nest of silken coverlets. She felt a flash of satisfaction, then grinned at herself. Taking all this too seriously, woman, stop gloating and get busy. She slashed strips from the coverlet and bound the huge woman's wrists and ankles. No wonder her chair bearers had crooked legs, she must be a ton of muscle on the hoof. Skeen stuffed some of the coverlet into her mouth and bound it in place. I hope you're not a mouth-breather, dead I don't want. Weren't snoring, so that's not likely. Not that I'd weep terrible tears if you popped off. She sliced more strips from the coverlet, then swung off the end of the bed onto the chest. She tied the shaman and rolled her onto the floor, kicked pallet and quilts after her. She started to move the table aside, stopped, and frowned down at the shaman's regalia. She lifted one of the bracelets, ran her thumb over the carving. There was a man on Sekkur-nakala who'd drool.… Reluctantly, she put the bracelet back and shifted the table. Taking that regalia would put smellers on her trail forever. Chances were good they'd off everyone they even suspected might have done this thing. Can't have that. She stepped back and scowled at the chest. Bound with hoops of sword steel and a bulky lock. She ran her fingers along the belt, fingered the cutter's tube for a moment, then shook her head and took out one of her larger lock picks. She knelt by the chest and began working. Brute force, very little skill. She sighed at the crudity of the lock and had it open in a breath and a half, didn't even have to strip off her gloves. She turned back the lid and nodded. Right. Miser like they said. Coins, jewels, like a pirate's treasure chest in a child's adventure book, the ones that glittered with heaps of gold and ropes of pearl and dangling diamonds and amber beads, all dripping in extravagant excess over the sides. She sighed at the jewelry but left it as she had left the shaman's regalia, and began filling her lootbag with gold and silver coins; she wanted nothing that could be easily identified. Handfuls of silver and gold shoved into the bag, gold was worth more but silver was easier to spend. Struck by a sudden thought, she took some necklaces and brooches, stuffed them down the front of her shirt. Let Duppra Mallat waste time looking for those, they'd be sunk in the mud on the bottom of the lake. Confusion to you, old witch, may you be stuck with the taste of it for a long long time. To make a little more confusion, she stirred the coins up, then snapped the lock and turned the wards. Confusion, confusion, oh lovely confusion. She spread the pallet on the chest, muscled the shaman onto it, stretched her out and smoothed the quilt over her.

She retraced her steps, moving swiftly, her feet a soft pad-pad on the tiles; the resident lizards were sleeping off the gas so the air was clearer. And her head was clearer. Ten minutes, less, and she was easing out the door. The raptors were dozing on their perches. And sweetest dreams to you, Djabo bless. She ran the jagwalk and jumped onto the grass, her head swimming with a euphoria that was a mix of the lingering effects of the lizard spit, the intense satisfaction of bringing off a very neat little caper and the possibilities it opened for her. She sucked in a long breath, exploded it out, and reminded herself the night was far from over. She had to break the trail first, wipe away all scent connection between her and Mallat House. She started running toward the lake.

When she reached the water, she tipped her tools onto the grass, then waded out until the water reached her waist. She whistled a fragment of tune, slapped the water in time with it. A sleek black dolphin broke the surface, swam over to her. She wriggled her shoulders, slid the bag free. Timka-dolphin creaked at her and she laughed. “Here, my fish, dump it deep,” she said. She let the bag down so Timka could get her teeth into the strap. With a flirt of her tail flukes, the dolpin submerged and was gone.

Skeen laughed again, reached her into her shirt and pulled out the jewelry. “Look hard, Mallat.” She flung it out as far as she could, watched it plop into the water, then started stripping. When she was down to her skin, she tied everything, boots, mask, gloves and all, into a compact bundle. Using her feet she kicked a shallow hole in the lake bottom, tromped the bundle into the hole, scraped mud, rocks, gravel back over it until she couldn't feel cloth underfoot any longer. She swam out into the lake, submerged several times, scraping at her skin; didn't do much good, the oily mess clung to her and refused to wash off. Closer to the shore, she brought up handfuls of mud and plastered it over her, rubbed it into her skin. When she was finished with that, she could still smell the stink of that salad dressing. A nudge. Timka floating beside her. The Min shifted, waded to a small pile of scummy rocks, took from a crevice a bowl of soap.

“Thought you might need this, so I went owling back for it. Your clothes are half a stad along the lake. There.” she pointed. “Where there's a deep bite out of the shore. I put a scrap of cloth on a bush to mark the place. Yellow.” She shifted back to dolphin and went flashing away.

Skeen wrinkled her nose at the soap. Cheap oversweet perfume strong enough to turn her stomach. Ah well, it was soap. She scrubbed herself all over again, hair to toenails, then did another mudrub to get rid of the soap stink. She heaved the soap bowl into the lake. “Sorry, fish, but what can I do.” She collected her tools, rinsed off the picks and the knife, sealed the cutter and swished it through the water, then swam slowly steadily until she reached the inlet where the cloth fluttered in the rising wind.

She was rubbed dry as she could manage and getting dressed when Timka came back. She spat two fish onto the sand, shifted to biped form and began poking in the bushes. “Any problems I should know about?”

“No. Lizard spray got to me a bit, but I don't think I dropped any stitches; two guards got a glimpse of me, nothing to worry either of us. What about you, any trouble with the bag?”

Timka worked a fishcreel loose and put the two fish in with others already there. “No difficulties, but raising that weight will be harder than sinking it. What was it like in there?”

Skeen smoothed the fly shut, pulled the tunic over her head. “Stink and dark.” She ran a comb through her hair, pulled on a knitted cap, tucked hair ends carefully under it. “Lizards like lice in the walls, local watchdogs I suppose.” She'd taken to wearing the cap the past several nights so no one would think it odd if they saw her with it now. She looked around. Dawn was so close she could smell it on the wind. “We'd better get back.”