A Bait of Dreams (28 page)

The air quivered under the hammering of the double sun when she woke. She sat up slowly, licked dry lips.
About the middle of high heat. Why couldn't I sleep through?
Rubbing at her throbbing temples she got to her feet and stumbled toward the River, her eyes closed to slits in a futile effort to shut out the glare that seemed to stab through the deepest shadow.

Collecting the bucket on her way she stopped at the River's edge, then waded carefully into the water, testing each step before she committed herself. River bottoms had a way of acquiring sudden holes and a night of fighting the River's current had taught her respect for its power. She worked her way to an eddy moving in slow circles between two huge roots, dunked the bucket into the water and upended it over herself, gasping with pleasure as the cool water splashed onto her head and ran down her body.

Bucket filled to the brim in one hand, splashing dollops of water onto her legs and feet, Deel ran along the arch of the limb and dropped onto the boat; it rocked under her, the suckerlings swaying languidly in the steamy heat as it pressed against them and they pressed back. The deck was drowned in violet shadow, the thick foliage of the ancient Horan protecting it from Hesh's claws. The cabin's door was propped open to let a little air creep through to those inside. Deel set the bucket down and crossed to the door.

The Juggler was still sleeping. Gleia sat with her back against the side wall, her face shiny with sweat, her eyes glassy with fatigue. She looked around as she heard Deel, tried—not too hard—to smile, lifted a hand in a limp, half-hearted greeting.

“How's he?” Deel settled herself in the doorway, dabbing at trickles of sweat on her face and neck with the hem of her sleeve.

“The same. No fever. He just keeps sleeping.”

“It's an oven down here. Come up on deck with me.”

Gleia frowned, gave a slight shake of her head.

Deel caught her arm. “Don't be an idiot. Does he look like he needs you?” Smiling with satisfaction when Gleia yielded, Deel pushed her out, then moved past her to the bucket in the bow. She scraped up a dipperful of water, swallowed some of it and emptied the rest over her head. “Ah, that's good.” She filled the dipper again and handed it to Gleia. “How'd you meet him?”

Gleia drank greedily then settled herself beside the bucket. With the dipper resting on one knee, she stared past Deel at the River, narrowing her eyes against the glare. The River was molten metal in the blinding light of this end-of-summer high heat. “I was living with the seaborn,” she began, then her voice trailed off. She was smiling a little, as if at some gentle memory.

Deel stretched out beside her, her knees raised, her cafta pooling in folds across her pelvis. She was restless and bored, unaccustomed to so much inactivity. Getting Gleia to talk about herself was a game she could play to make the hours pass. She lifted her brows, lifted her head a little. “Seaborn?”

Gleia dipped her sleeve into the water, mopped at her face. After a moment she began absently tracing the letters burned into her skin. “When I was working to lift my bond, I thought it would be marvelous to have someone take care of me, to get whatever I needed without having to fight for it.” She lifted the dipper and drank slowly, then rested her head against the railing, her eyes closed. “Temokeuu-my-father taught me—many things—gave me a comfortable home, affection, even interesting work. I had friends and freedom and anything I wanted. And after two winters of this I was starting to climb the walls. I left—with my father's blessing. He understood me very well. I left, got picked up by some people scrounging for slave labor who'd picked up Shounach before they came on me, we escaped, split up, got together again and ended up in Istir.”

Deel closed her fingers about Gleia's ankle, shook it. “Slavers? Why? How did you get away? What happened?”

Gleia yawned. “It's too hot for anything that complicated.”

Deel wrinkled her nose, sighed loudly. “What else have we got to do?” As the silence continued, she patted a yawn while she watched a few puffy white clouds float out from behind the horan's crown and drift across the sky's glassy, blue-violet dome. She laced her fingers behind her head, chewed on her lip, a restless itch crawling about inside her skin that kept her fidgeting, jiggling her feet, moving her buttocks in small nudges back and forth across the planks. “Told you I was island-born,” she said when she was unable to endure the silence any longer. Hoping to tease more out of Gleia, she dug into her own past, something she usually avoided like a bad case of sun-itch. “A stretch of islands a long, long way south of here. The Daraghays. You think this is hot, you should be on one of the Daraghays at midsummer. Families were scattered along the islands but my people lived on Burung, the big island. It had a small mountain range with caves in the biggest mountains. When it got too hot outside, everyone—from all the islands, not just Burung—everyone packed up food, clothes, and household goods and moved into those caves. We'd sleep days and at night we'd eat and drink and dance on the sands. When the fall storms started, the people moved back to their homes, but we had a giant feast before they left and drank up all the shua wine we had left, married off all the new couples, said good-bye to some we wouldn't see again for maybe two years-standard when the next summer would be on us. We got some wild storms in winter but no snow.” She rolled onto her side, fixed her eyes on Gleia, willing her to speak.

Gleia looked away but yielded finally to the pressure of Deel's steady gaze. “I don't know where I was born or who my people were.” Her mouth worked as if she tasted something unpleasant; she drank, emptying the dipper and dropping it back in the bucket. “I sometimes have this nightmare. It starts out with a lot of noise and ugly faces, some kind of raid, I think. A woman screaming. I never see her face clearly, it's always blurred. My mother? I don't know. There's a man struggling and yelling as other men hold him down. I don't see his face. My father? Don't know. He's killed. I'm somewhere in that room, hidden I think. It's confused and bloody and I'm terrified.” She stared down at hands clenched into fists, forced them open and rested shaking fingers on her thighs. “My first real memories, I'm on my own in Carhenas, about five-standard I think, running with a gang of street kids. A lot of us died that winter.” She shivered. “I don't know why I'm alive, except I fought like an animal to survive. The next years—I can remember begging, digging through garbage piles to beat the scavengers to bits of bone and half-rotten fruit. I was hungry all the time, I was always too hot or too cold, I couldn't trust anyone much, though there was one girl … until she died. The gang … I was the littlest, the skinniest, and in a lot of ways the smartest, so they boosted me into windows in rich men's houses, windows they couldn't wiggle through. Sometimes I hunted up another window and let the boys in, sometimes I just took whatever I could carry and passed it out to them. Locks … there was a shaky old derelict who lived in one of the falling-down houses, Abbrah our gang leader said he was his brother, anyway he taught me about locks. I had a few scares.…” She grimaced, her fingers moving over the letter branded on her cheek. “Guards caught me inside a merchant's warehouse one night. I was branded and bonded … sold.…” Her voice trailed off, her hand dropped into her lap and she sat brooding over the old memories.

When it became evident that she wasn't going to say more, Deel swung her legs around and pushed up. She sat scratching idly at one palm, a small muscle jerking at the corner of her left eye. Things were coming back to her too, things she hadn't thought about in years, things she didn't want to think about. The suckerlings behind her stirred, leaves rustling as they brushed against each other. At first she thought her movements had tilted the boat into them, then she felt a breeze tugging at her hair—little more than a sighing against her face that came and went. Snatches of birdsong came from the trees and a coughing bark from somewhere near the cliffs upriver. The molten glow of the River was beginning to soften. The interminable day was after all falling toward its end. Deel stopped scratching, smoothed her palms over the sweat-slick skin of her thighs, her cafta still bunched around her hips. “I was a four-winter bride,” she burst out. Gleia's head came up. She leaned forward, her brown eyes bright with interest. Deel pressed her palms together. “Only fourteen years-standard when I married Alahar.” She touched her tongue to her lips, leaned against the boat's side, her eyes closed. When she spoke again her voice was soft and dreamy, she felt like she was floating outside her body. “All of us in the islands married young,” she said. “After all, what else was there to do? No one had to work very hard to live a good life, the islands were generous that way. Alahar was my cousin, tall and strong and beautiful and I wanted him terribly. He chose me, I think, because he liked the way I danced. He loved dancing almost more than anything. We went to live on a little island not far from Burung. Tattin it was called. It had a few trees, a spring. You could walk across it in a sneeze and a half. Our families built us a house. We had a feast. Then we were alone. Alahar taught me to dive and handle the fish-boat for him. He found a good spot for pearls. We never worked very hard, diving was more like playing. I found a big kala shell washed on the beach one day. I put it on a shelf. After a few months it was heaped with pearls, all sizes, shapes and colors. We used to play with them and dream wild dreams about what we would buy with them.” She stopped, swallowed, went on. “Between the trips to Burung, the drinking and dancing and the games we played at home, I was so happy … so happy … and marrow-of-my-bones-sure this happiness was going to last forever.” She sighed, opened her eyes. “Well, I was very young.”

“Young,” Gleia said wistfully. “I don't think I was ever young. Not that way.”

Deel rubbed at her nose. “I was pregnant by the time we started getting ready to move to the Caves. Well, I'd been married over two years by then and was beginning to wonder. I was far enough along that I was glad I was going to be with my mother for the next few months. Alahar was getting restless too; he wasn't sure he wanted the baby, it interfered with our good times, I couldn't go swimming and diving with him anymore and I was starting to get nervous about being out in the fishboat. We had our first serious quarrel, made it up, but I was moody and unsure of myself and our second quarrel followed fast on the first. We made that up, but it wasn't the same between us. One day when we were packing up the fishboat a couple of Alahar's friends came by to tell him a trade ship was anchored in Burung's Bay. They stood there on the sand ignoring me, talking a hundred words a breath, slapping each other's forearms, jigging from foot to foot, laughing, excited. After the friends took off Alahar was going to leave me alone and sail the outrigger to Burung. I yelled at him and cursed him and drove him away when he tried to convince me that he needed a new knife and he wanted to buy me a mirror to celebrate our baby. All I could think was he was leaving me alone. In the end he got angry too, jerked the outrigger into the water and took off.” Deel stopped talking, dropped her head onto arms crossed over her knees.

With a soft exclamation, Gleia crossed to her and sat beside her, closing warm strong fingers about her hand. She said nothing, but Deel relaxed under the strong current of sympathy flowing to her. She lifted her head. The story wasn't finished yet. Painful images boiled in her. She had to get rid of them before she could be at peace again.

“I didn't worry that first night when he wasn't back. Besides, I was still on the boil because I knew he was fooling around with his old gang, bragging about this and that, maybe flirting some, drinking the shua wine he liked a little too much. When the second night came and went without him, I lost my temper again and took the fishboat to Burung.

“The tradeship was putting out to sea when I sailed into the bay. I ran the boat up onto the beach and went steaming about Bararigash hunting for Alahar. Lots of people had seen him, some had talked to him. Several said he'd been showing pearls to one of the traders off the ship. But no one had seen him since yesterday morning. When high heat came on, I went into the council house to wait it out; I sat in a corner, refusing to talk to anyone. My anger cooled as the heat rose. I was beginning to be frightened. I could understand his staying to drink and dance, but why hadn't he come back to me so we could unsay the things we said and be happy again?

“At dusk I walked along the beach, kicking through the foam edging the incoming tide. I didn't know what to do. One time I stopped and looked back. I could hear the drums and the shell horns and some laughter, someone singing, could see the glow of the bonfires built on the sand. I didn't go back. I felt better when I was moving so I just kept walking. I came to a place where a lot of rocks had tumbled down the mountainside and spilled onto the beach and into the water.

“Alahar was there, sitting with his back against one of the rocks. He was dead, of course. Crabs were starting to nibble at his legs, birds had eaten his eyes. A mirror lay beside one knee, laid flat so it wouldn't break. His hands were locked tight about something. I couldn't bear to touch him, but all I could think was I had to find out what he had in his hand. I pried his fingers open and watched a small crystal drop from them and roll over one foot. A Ranga Eye. He'd traded our pearls for my mirror and a Ranga Eye. It lay on the sand glowing in the moonlight. I looked down at it, started to kick at it, but stopped my foot, afraid if I touched it, it would eat me too. I got down on my knees, the child was heavy in me, so it was hard; but I did it. I took a rock and killed the Eye. I beat it into slivers and dust. When I'd finished it, I got back on my feet, took hold of Alahar's wrists and dragged him across the beach and gave him to the sea. It was a stupid thing to do; I should have gone back to the village for help, but I didn't even think of that. I waded back to the beach, got on my knees again and smashed the mirror, grinding the shards into the sand with the fragments of the Eye. Then my pains started. I tried to get back to the village. I didn't make it. A courting couple found me before I bled to death. My mother took care of me, gave my baby to the sea for me and tried to comfort me. I wouldn't be comforted. I hugged my grief to me like it was my baby. As soon as I could get around I pestered everyone in Barangash until I had everything they could remember about the trade ship, its captain and the trader Alahar had talked to. I loaded up the fishboat and took off early one morning for the mainland. I was going to hunt down that trader and kill him. I did manage to get there, the mainland, I mean—luck of the crazy, I suppose.” She slipped her hand from Gleia's, started scratching absently at her palm again. “I never found him, of course. Since then … since then, I've stayed alive.”