The January Dancer (25 page)

(Here comes Kerinomata. We got her…)

“Hey! Where’d she go!”

In the lightless interstice between two streetlamps, Bridget ban had leaped aside, leaving a pair of sandals standing in the walkway behind her—as if she had simply evaporated in place. Wooden soles would make noise when running and silence now was worth any price. Fleet as a whippet, she sprinted between two darkened dwellings into a shared greenery behind: trees, a fishpond, several beds of colorful flowers, a stone garden. As she ran, she gathered her srong up and tucked it into her waistband. Now, it was a short skirt, and her legs were free. She bounded over the pond, ran a few steps along a bench, and—up!—over a hedgerow of fat-leafed oily plants.

And down—in another back garden, again shared by several houses. She crouched, knees bent, fingertips lightly touching the grass like a runner poised for the gun, and listened. A whistle in the distance, on the block she had come from. Was this a world where people pulled the shutters closed when they heard such sounds at night? Or one where they ran to their windows and spied on the dark with comm units clutched in hand?

Long hours in the training room now returned interest a hundredfold. She sprinted out to the next street, where she paused, sniffed, listened, looked. Nothing.
Across the street,
and repeat the process over to the next street. Could she run fast enough to put herself outside the radius of what they would consider a reasonable search area? How far to the next maglev station?

No. Forget that. They’d be watching the maglev stations.

She paused, panted, looked around the neighborhood.

A large hulk of a building stood in midblock, like a rock among soap bubbles. The walls were rough, unfinished granite and bore in front a colonnade whose pillars seemed the least bit too wide and short. It appeared more lasting than the evanescent homes around it; more serious than anything the frivolous ’Cockers would build. Its stolid facade bespoke an earlier epoch in the planet’s history. If other buildings of this ilk had ever squatted along this street, they had long since been demolished and replaced.

An official building, then; dark, unlikely to be occupied at this hour. Perhaps it was a library, or a meeting hall. Was it open? Locked? Alarmed?

By now, her description was abroad. There would be someone waiting in her hotel room. Her ship would be guarded. (She hoped no one was so stupid as to try to break into it. The ship’s intelligence frowned on such mischief.) They would be expanding the search, block by block.

They had been fools to send only four men to arrest her. She could not count on them remaining fools. If they had woken Pulawayo by now—likely—he would tell them she had left his home an hour earlier, and that she was wearing her Hound’s uniform, as they had expected. This would confuse them for a time. Were they chasing the right person, or another redhead tourista coincidentally in the same neighborhood?

Either way, they would want to find her.

She found a back door to the building, where she could work unobserved in the dark. Her night vision was very good, at one with her enhanced smell and hearing. She studied the walls, saw no wires, no receptors. She paid particular attention to the mortared crevices between the great stone blocks. If she were to insert a monitor into the walls,
there
would be a good location…

Nothing.

Remembering the vestibule at the STC tower, she leaped to no conclusion, remained crouched there, pawed a little at the door, snuffled. It was hinged to open inward. A lever latch. She pressed it down.

No alarms. This far from the tourist areas, the ’Cockers did not fear unauthorized entries. Among themselves, custom was a stronger bar than locks and alarms. Those who found trespass unimaginable would find it hard to imagine trespassers. Briefly, she wondered what it might be like to live in a society that did not bar its doors.

Her implant returned the datum that buildings of this style were called
remonstratoria,
or Halls of Remonstration. They were thought to be either law courts or temples, but no off-worlder had ever been inside one, and what rites were performed within remained a mystery.

Wonderful. She could add sacrilege to her list of offenses.

The door swung noiselessly inward, revealing a darkened corridor. She stepped through, closing the door softly, and found herself in a rough basement. She squatted there, panting from her run, and sniffed. A harsh chemical odor stung her nostrils. It might mask the odor of a human being—a custodian or night watchman.

But listening, she heard nothing save the creaking and settling of the building itself. This was an old building. She could smell the age in the dank stone, in the seasoned wood. The years had soaked into them and settled there.

Old buildings are sacred in societies ruled by custom.

Sacred because it was old or old because it was sacred, it made no difference. But how could she enter such a building and not explore? Hounds are, by their nature, always sniffing around.

She picked out a flight of old wooden steps twisting up a narrow stairwell. The runners had rounded dips in their centers, worn by countless feet over countless years. She thought the building might pre-date the Reconnection, when some of the Diaspora worlds had recovered the ability to slide between the stars.

Stairs are meant for climbing; and so, she did.

She paused again on the main floor to sniff and listen. The chemical scents were stronger here, but the silences remained as profound. Light glimmered through shutter slats covering the windows. A tree must have stood between the window and the streetlamp because the light flickered irregularly as the branches outside wavered in the fitful night breeze.

She made out row after row of racks reaching nearly to the ceiling and arranged in rigid precision from the front of the room to its back. The severity of the geometry was at one with the architecture of the building—and very unlike the free-flowing, unwalled improvisations of modern ’Cockers.

A library,
she thought,
or possibly an art gallery.

Drawing nearer, she discerned solid objects mounted to the walls. Sculpture, perhaps? If so, sculpture of little variety. Equally spaced in rigid rows, each seemed roughly the same size as all the others. Well, sonnets were all the same “size,” yet each could be an exquisitely different work of art—for the greatest art, Die Bolders believed, lay in “achievement within restrictions,” just as accomplishment in sport required hurdles and nets and balk lines.

Brief bursts of dim light alternated with closeted darkness as the leaves fluttered in front of the window. Bridget ban stepped into an aisle to get a better look at one of the sculptures.

And came face-to-face with a wide-eyed, grim-lipped elf with wild, frizzy hair.
It required all her Hound’s training to stifle the cry that climbed up her throat.

Discovered! There had been a watchman, after all.

But the elf said nothing. The eyes did not blink. The mouth did not part. A disembodied voice spoke through sewn-still lips. “I am Billy Kisilwando. I killed my partner in a drunken fit…”

And the horror of discovery gave way to the discovery of horror.

It was a head, carefully preserved by the taxidermist’s art, eyes replaced by glass, lips stitched closed, mounted to a wall bracket. Beneath was a plaque bearing a name, an offense, and a date. Evidently, if someone stood for a time before a particular head, an intelligence would play that person’s last words.

When Billy Kisilwando killed his partner in a drunken fit, he was given one hundred days grace to set his affairs in order and to meditate, which he did. He set off into the Malawayo Wilderness with a rucksack, a hiking staff, and a small, but faithful terrier. He emerged after ninety-nine days, minus dog and staff, and reported to the District Head, confessed his sin, and prayed forgiveness from his partner’s
manu.
Then they cut off his head, preserved it, and mounted it in the Hall of Remonstration, where it is admired by all who pass through the Nolapatady District on their journeys. And forever after he repeated his confession to all who came to see him. Such is the cruelty of custom: not that a man be given the grace to contemplate his end; but that he feels bound to honor its expiration.

Bridget ban contemplated the head of Billy Kisilwando, and passed judgment.

“Now,
that’s
different,” she said aloud.

She wandered fascinated through the hall, and found aisle after aisle of stuffed and mounted heads. The panels near the street entrance were newer; those near the back or in side chambers were older, more severe in their lines, with classical moldboards and trim. The older plaques bore dates in the former “Peacock’s Era.” The newer plaques bore Gaelactic dates, but with the Year of the Peacock noted parenthetically underneath.

There were fewer elves in the back rooms, and in one especially dusty room, the only heads were identifiably men and women. These older displays were crowded closer together, and the heads were tattered and moth-eaten. As the displays grew more recent, the heads converged toward the androgynous average.

On the newer walls, brightly painted in the exuberant pastels of modern Peacock, were mounted among the elves the heads of others: pale, flat-faced Jugurthans; golden women from Valency; thin-featured Alabastrines with skin like night; even a Cynthian warrior’s head, dripping with jewels, cruel arrogance, and barbaric splendor—and hard must have been the severing of
that
neck. The off-worlder faces all bore a look of immense surprise; as if they could not credit what was being done to them; all except the Cynthian, who managed somehow to sneer even in death. Curious, she waited until it spoke its confession.

Eat my dick,
the head whispered, and an involuntary smile caught at the ends of Bridget ban’s lips. One thing you had to grant the barbarians of the Hadramoo: they died in style.

A Hound can construct marvels out of odds and ends, and in the
remonstratorium
she found all she needed. The preparation rooms downstairs contained a dye with which she darkened her entire body from gold to brown, save on the palms and soles. She had known Megranomers who styled their bodies so. A knife in the same room cut off the longest part of her hair, and a thong bundled the rest of it atop her head. A bit of charcoal from the machine shop added lines to her face and aged her appearance in subtle ways, and two small coins found in a drawer and pressed into her nostrils altered the shape of her nose.

Finally, she wound her srong about her waist. It was possible that the enforcers had gotten a picture of her clothing. But she had been in the dark between two lamps when she slid away, and they had been sauntering complacently behind, thinking themselves clever and undetected. At best they might recall the srong having “many iridescent colors,” which would narrow the sartorial odds not at all. She dared not try to alter the pattern, because she had purged the cache and most of the memory in the fabric was now taken up by the STC database. She contented herself with turning the fabric the other way out, which reversed the pattern and presented a slightly more muted version.

Ponchos, however, were not native to this world and they would notice hers immediately. She could not discard it, since part of the copied database resided in its mems; but she did manage to tighten the neck hole into a headband—the old-fashioned way: there was needle and thread in the prep rooms—and she wrapped the whole thing above her head in a fair imitation of a Chettinad turban. This served the double purpose of concealing the remnant of her red hair.

She still looked like an outworlder, but she might be an older Chettinad or a Megranomer or at any rate not the fleet young golden Hound who had fled from them the night before. “Ah aim abutt mahyõ bizz,” she said aloud, practicing a Megranomic accent from the Eastern Isles. Best not lay it on too thick. The idea was to be unnoticed.

Finally, it could not be good for any outworlder to be found too near the
remonstratorium
. So, as the eastern sky grayed just a little, she worked her way through still, silent gardens toward the maglev line. There, she found a copse in a public park and concealed herself. Outdoors, the waning night was chilly and she wrapped her arms about herself, wishing she hadn’t had to disguise the poncho.

In the morning, as people began to gather at the Uasladonto Street maglev station for the ride into town, Bridget ban spotted a mixed trio of touristas. She slid from concealment and crossed the walkway so as to come smoothly into line with them. As she expected, they were delighted to find “another real woman,” the man in the group being especially appreciative. He was from High Tara itself, and sported checkered kilts, a fringed cloak, and an admiring glance. The Jugurthan woman with him was robust of physique and carried an umbrella matching the pattern of her srong. She introduced a Valencian woman she had met in a nearby restaurant.

And so, in this chatty company, to all appearances boon traveling companions, Bridget ban sauntered past the weary enforcer standing by the entry with a digital image in his hand and the upcoming shift change on his mind. He was looking for a younger, more athletic woman, traveling alone.

Entry to her ship was simple. She contacted the intelligence over her implant and the guards that had been placed about the ship were knocked out by a sonic burst from the ship’s defenses. She then slipped aboard, locked up, and let them wake up naturally. Later, she would call the hotel and have her belongings shuttled over, tell them she had spent the night aboard “on Hound’s business.” If the events of last night were brought up, she would profess ignorance. Yes, she had been wearing her “undress greens,” because Pulawayo had seemed much taken with her uniform. Yes, she had left Nolapatady at such and such an hour: they could ask Pulawayo. With only a little luck, they would feel so foolish at chasing some other red-haired tourista through the streets of Nolapatady that they would not press matters further. That would only attract the interest of the League and, more dreadfully, of the other Hounds. There would be no trace of her download of the STC database, and the Director would corroborate all the important details.