Skeen's Leap (6 page)

She went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, filled a ceramic mug she found there, then stretched out on the bed waiting for the food to arrive.

SKEEN IS HIRED WITH SOME CONSIDERABLE CEREMONY. I'M IMPRESSED, OH YES, WHEN DO YOU BRING ON THE ACROBATS?

Morning. Early. Light coming through an irregular opening above the broad end of the bed, a diffuse creamy glow through a skin scraped until it was translucent, then allowed to dry and harden on a frame. She could hear voices, laughter, the braying and blatting of beasts. Wonder if those are citizens or food? And how do they keep it straight? Skeen grinned, then she stretched and yawned, feeling rested and filled with renewed energy. The firamay, a bovine little creature, had brought her a tray filled with cold meats, cheeses, slices of a sweet yellow fruit in a tart sauce, crusty rolls, and a large goblet of cider. To think of hiprots paste in the same breath was blasphemy.

She wriggled between the quilts, enjoying the soft give of the fleeces under her. She was clean again, head to toe, and she'd have clean underwear, really clean this time, having washed undershirt and pants along with herself and hung them up to dry while she slept. She luxuriated a moment longer in that pleasure, then swung off the bed before it went stale on her.

She exercised vigorously for a while to work the knots out of her muscles, then padded into the washroom where she'd hung up her clothing.

She frowned at the skirt and blouse hung where her tunic and trousers had been. Came in while I was sleeping, maybe that cider was drugged, shit, I'm really past it if some idiot serving maid can creep in here and do all this without waking me. She went poking about, found her tunic and trousers neatly folded on shelves, her boots next to them. The boots had been cleaned and rubbed to a finer gloss than they'd seen in years.

She jerked the blouse and skirt off their pegs and threw them into the other room. Not fuckin' likely! I don't care if you have twenty fits, I'm not wearing that junk. She stomped back to the washbasin, pulled out the tap handles, and began splashing hot water over her face. Hot water had surprised her last night, but the taste, a faint hint of sulphur, explained its presence. Now she scrubbed at her eyes, splashed water along her arms and shook it off again, shaking off with it most of her anger at Telka's attempt to manipulate her. She was willing to hire out her services, but not her … well, call it soul; she'd stopped selling that a long time ago and wasn't about to start again. If they couldn't take her the way she was, too damn bad; there were other ways of getting hold of sellables, especially now she had a useful language and enough information to go on with. She dressed, stamped her feet into her boots, checked her hideout knife and the other bits she had tucked in hidden pockets. All there. She straightened Idiot! and strode into the other room.

Her backpack was in a heap by one end of the bed, close enough to where she'd dropped it, but not how she'd dropped it, the folds were different. She had a special small gift, the ability to recognize patterns once glimpsed, and the ability to extrapolate from these memories to recognize similarities in other patterns. She went through the pack. Everything was still there. Some neat-fingered busybody had searched it, though. She didn't much like that, but she wasn't surprised; it was something she'd do herself given the opportunity. She clicked her tongue, dropped the pack, dug into the fleeces and found her darter. That, at least, no one had touched but her. She fished out the belt, swung it around her waist, and snapped the latch shut. After another moment's thought, she went into the washroom, dumped the old water in the darter's reservoir and refilled it at the cold tap. She strolled into the bedroom, sneered at the blouse and skirt, then yanked on the bell pull and settled back to wait for her breakfast.

Telka was annoyed when she saw what Skeen was wearing. Her heavy brows clamped down, her full lips compressed to a thin line—for an instant only—then her face cleared. She ignored the clothing tossed in a bunch on the floor. “The Synarc will see you.”

Skeen fumed quietly. She'd lived in underclasses and among outcasts all her life and it took very little to wake resentment and rebellion in her. She sat without moving.

With barely restrained impatience Telka said, “Skeen Pass-through. Coming so far with me was a kind of promise. Do you renounce it? Do you treat Min like all the rest of your kind?”

“Not my kind,” Skeen said firmly, “you've never seen my kind.”

Telka's instant frown came back, instantly disappearing. She was a politician all right, knew when to push and when to leave off. The ones Skeen had come against before seemed born with the knack, even those chugging along at half-load. Which Telka definitely wasn't. Skeen wrestled her resentment down, got to her feet with a wide smile (I can play pol as well as you, see?). “Don't mind me. Does things to my temper, being closed in like this.”

Telka led Skeen through a maze of gnarly corridors, moving so swiftly Skeen had no chance of ever finding her way through them again, then settled her in the arched exit of a tunnel, facing a court smaller and more intimate than the ones she'd passed through last night. The half-roof was almost complete, though there was a hole in the center large enough to let a condor through. The floor was paved with an elaborate mosaic made from bits of different kinds and colors of stones, incorporating differing surface textures that changed color and design with the changing angles of the sun. All around the court were other arches, the mouths of other passages. Trusting lot, Skeen thought. Bolt holes in case someone in the Synarc turns nasty. This place is a rat run, gives me strangulation of the brain.

“Sit here, Skeen Pass-through. And please, again, don't speak until I speak to you.”

Skeen nodded, crossed her legs and settled herself as comfortably as she could. She felt herded in. Can't hurt to listen, she told herself. And repeated it several times as she waited for something, anything, to happen.

Shadowy figures moved into the arches and sat in what they meant to be intimidating silence, watching her. Screw you, she thought, as long as you pay me, I don't care how snotty you want to be.

Telka appeared in the arch and settled gracefully on the cushion waiting for her. Half a breath later a big golden male appeared beside her, so broad he filled the arch to bursting. When all the arches had occupants, Telka held out a hand. The big male was holding a short baton with bulging ends. He spun it so the larger end smacked into her palm. “Skeen Pass-through,” she said, the neutral controlled tones back. “I Z'naluvit, have summoned the Synarc that we might inquire of you in what circumstances you will do a thing for us. I have a sister who knows our minds and hearts more fully than is comfortable to us because she languishes in the hands of the Pallah Nemin, a slave. Our hope ere this has been that the Nemin does not know who he has. Our hope has been that our sister has not so lost herself in her degradation that she has told her master secrets of the Min. I will name the Speakers of the Synarc. Think of what you desire from us, say you will act for us.” She waved her free hand at the arch on Skeen's immediate left. “Flet. P'takluvit.”

Speaker for those who wear wings and hunt from the sky. Uh huh.

A little woman, smaller even than Telka, fine-boned and fragile, with little flesh between those delicate bones and the shimmergilt skin stretched over them—what Skeen could see of it. Flet wore a loose robe made from cloth like canvas whose angular folds concealed everything about her but long nervous hands, a stretch of arm, and her taut and haughty face. Wide dark pupils, the iris a shining gold rim. Her eyes were fixed on Skeen with the shallow intentness of a predator on its prey. When Telka named her, the golden woman bowed her head, then went back to staring.

“Nerric P'shishulavit.”

Speaker for warriors/hunters.

A dark lithe man; hair, short and curly like the wool of a black sheep, covered his head, chest, arms, grew down over the back of his hands. He wore his fleece like a shirt. On his lower half he wore tight-fitting leather breeches that creaked when he moved. Bare feet, square and powerful—Skeen could see the bottom of one; it had thick gray pads like a big cat's. He reminded her a lot of the Cat-man Rijen, but wasn't him. She suppressed a smile, Nerric didn't manifest much humor. None of them did, so full of themselves and their importance. He'd be horrified at what she was thinking; she was amused by how vividly she remembered that naked man strutting away from her. Nerric shifted restlessly on his cushion making it obvious he was there under duress. The gaze he turned briefly but repeatedly on Skeen made the bird woman's almost friendly by contrast.

“Strazhha V'duluvit.”

Speaker for herds and herders. Uh huh. Who herds you.

A large, not-quite-fat woman with eyes round as copper pennies and about the color of new-minted copper, a blunt wide nose and a mouth of the width called generous by flatterers, her thin lips a pale pale pink. Horn knobs, pointed, slightly curved, about as long as the first joint of Skeen's forefinger, poking out through coarse hair that matched the color of her eyes. She wore a robe like Flet's but wore it carelessly, the hood pushed back, hands resting bare on bare broad knees, large hands to match the rest of her, shapely and well-cared-for. She watched Skeen with a detached amusement that was little kinder than the more overtly hostile gazes, made Skeen feel as if she was back on the line at the fish house. She'd spent some of the most miserable days of her teen years in a youth labor pool, swept off the streets with hundreds of others by a labor pressgang. Under that woman's measuring gaze she felt like a sub-standard fish fillet.

“Z'la. Chovluvit and V'klav.”

Speaker for men, uh huh. Warchief, oh yes, no need to translate that one.

Massive muscles. So massive he looked fat. He wore a sleeveless leather jerkin, laced loosely across a chest that might have been carved from pale teak. His arms were bigger around than her thighs, his legs threatened to burst out of homespun trousers dyed a dark russet. He had a stiff mane of sunbleached coarse blond hair considerably longer than Skeen's. He watched her from mild, coolly curious yellow eyes. She'd never met anyone who exuded so much raw male power, such calm acceptance of himself, though she'd met quite a few men (Tibo that baster was one, damn his pointy ears) who didn't come close to matching his physical presence but were as comfortable as Z'la in their maleness, their knowledge of who and what they were, who weren't threatened by anyone, male or female, no matter how powerful. He saw her watching him, looking him over, and grinned at her. Hunh. This one might actually have a sense of humor. He returned her gaze, eyes moving over breasts and hips, then he was done with her, dismissing her as uninteresting. She was both amused and appalled by her reaction. Anger and despair at being rejected by a hunk of muscle who wasn't her type anyway. Well, hell with you too, hunk.

Telka touched her lips, her heart. “Telka. Z'naluvit.” Right. Speaker for women. The way you share the middle with the hunk it looks like you two run this show. Sitting next to that mountain of muscle Telka should have been diminished to nothing, a nullity, a blackhole pinhead-sized. But it wasn't so. She cut as large a space for herself as he did, dominating by the force of personality and will.

“Sussaa. Kirushaluvit.”

Speaker for earth, for rooted things and those who tend them.

Sussaa, a secret man, huddled in robes stiffer and more encompassing than Flet's. His hands were intermittently visible as he played with a string of worry beads, the sunlight shimmering along the muted olive, ocher, and pale umber of his delicately scaled skin. The beads clacked rhythmically through unnaturally long unnaturally thin fingers, more of them than the five the others exhibited; Skeen couldn't tell just how many fingers he had but got the impression of a flickering like spiderlegs. The cowl of his robe was pulled too far forward for her to see anything of his face, but she thought (from the angle of the folds) that he was looking down at the beads, not at her. Always rather liked snakes, even poisonous ones. Very polite creatures—leave them alone and they reciprocated. Tibo made a lot of jokes about them the time she had that baby constrictor wandering through Picarefy's corridors, said it meant she was oversexed. Hah! Old Lionface over there wouldn't agree with you. Maybe I ought to haul you back here, you little worm, and feed you to him. He looks like he doesn't mind tough meat. Long as it's fresh. Huh, you'd give one hell of a bellyache—you're good at that, damn you, damn you, damn you.

“Kladdin Delat'luvit.” Speaker for artisans.

A little hairy gnome of a man who was far more interested in the chunk of wood he was carving on than he was in what was happening here. Artisans. Interesting. That's a lovely little knife he's got there. Local work? Traded for? Wonder if whoever made that makes swords. Always some dimwit willing to pay high for a hand-crafted sword. She looked back at Z'la. He lifted a lip in a sort of smile, baring a pair of hefty fangs. He wouldn't bother with swords. Not with those teeth.

Mmm. This place was grown here, I'm sure of that. Old Snakehands or his granddaddy did it, no doubt. All right, what do I ask for? Anything I can pick up getting this sister out? Hunh. That I don't ask for; that's my business, not theirs. I need information. Yeah, but not for payment. Gold? No way. Too heavy. Can't carry enough to make it worth while and it'd be kinda hard to outrun a saayungka pack hugging a hundredweight to my meager bosom. Gem stones or jewelry. Jewelry's best. Good old jewelry, artifact and gemstones combined, best price for the weight. And I get paid before I start. This bunch I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw the hunk.

YOU'RE RAMBLING THROUGH A DAMN FANTASY, SO RELAX AND ENJOY IT.

or

GETTING IN AND OUT OF DUM BESAR.