Lamarchos (16 page)

Breaking through the flimsy line of spindly low-growing brush, Aleytys came to a backless wooden bench. She turned and waited for Loahn.

“What is it, Lahela?” She could hear the concern in his voice. He wasn't worried yet, simply disturbed that she should call him apart this way. She brushed at the dust and leafy debris on the heavy plank seat, then dropped down facing him.

Rubbing at her forehead, she stared past him at the muddy water. “Poor Puki, she didn't like your going off with me.”

“You didn't call me to talk about the demoiselle.” The archaic term of respect for an unmarried girl was a deliberately unemphatic refusal to discuss his relationship with Puki. “What do you want?”

“Sit down.” When he was sitting stiffly beside her, she went on. “You know why we're here. We hit tonight. I want you to stay with the baby. I don't trust Maissa with him and I can't leave him alone that long. Kale …” She shrugged. “He'll be at watch.”

His head jerked up. “You?”

She laughed, the brief low sound almost lost in the increasing rustle of the leaves overhead. “I'm a thief as much as any of the others, Loahn. I can't let him go in alone.” The silence between them thickened. Aleytys rubbed her thumbs over the folds of the cloth where it bent with her body, feeling through her preoccupation the smooth movement of the coarse weave over the skin of her thighs. Abruptly she broke the silence. “I saw: your face when Firstman gave you back that knife.” She bent forward and flicked the hilt with her forefinger, feeling him shudder with a kind of dread.

“Without it I'm not a man,” he said simply.

“That I can't believe. You were very much man with me the night after we found you on trail.”

“The blade was mine again as soon as you lifted curse; there only remained the actual body return.” He shrugged, stroked the smooth worn hilt with loving fingers, touching it with the familiar affection and ease of a long accustomed lover. “The Karkesh blade cut my foreskin at my blooding, drank the dark blood that ran warm from the center of my being.”

“Ummmm. What if a man has sons but nothing to buy the steel?”

Loahn shuddered again. “Never. Don't say such a thing.” He stared at his toes as they dug into the dampish earth and flung tiny clods into brief flight. “Why do you ask such things?”

“What if Karkys vanished?”

“You?”

“I don't know?”

“Why?” His thumb caressed the colored stones set into the hilt moving up and down over the smooth surfaces.

“Lakoe-heai set me four things to do. The second was to curse Karkys and drive the off-worlders away.” She pinched her lips together and clasped her arms over her breasts, running shaking hands over her biceps, fumbling toward the only certainty she knew, the solid reassuring feel of her own flesh. “Ahai, Loahn, I don't pretend to know the rights and wrongs of this. It seems to me the Karkiskya do no real harm here. You've made them part of your lives, an important part. This is your world. Tell me what to do.”

“Me!” The boy looked shattered.

Overhead the sky darkened, the ever-present sworls of color tightening against the approach of night into amorphous lumps that drifted above the earth like thunder-heads. Hidden by the thin screen of brush they heard Puki urge the two teams out of the water and lead them away. Loahn rubbed a hand over his inch long stubble. “No Karkys.…” He muttered. “Why?”

Aleytys wrapped her fingers about his leg just above the knee, feeling the tension that hardened his muscles. “Could be the Lakoe-heai are jealous. The Karkiskya don't recognize them. It sounds foolish … to destroy so much for an itch in the vanity. I don't know. The Karkiskya are cheating you, do you know that?”

“Cheating us?” He swung around to face her. “How?”

“Keon says the poaku you trade for your blades bring many many times the worth of a knife off-world.”

His mouth twisted into a one-sided smile. “And how would we get the poaku off-world? Why should we try? A bargain is a good one if both parties are satisfied. If you drive the Karkiskya off, how will boys know they're men?” His head moved slowly away from her toward the ugly towers that rose above the tree tops. “They've been here a long time … a long time. No one remembers when there was no Karkys.” The lines deepened in his thin face, aging him suddenly beyond his twenty years. “If the Lakoe-heai demand it.…”

“I don't have to do it.”

“They'll make you.” He licked his lips. “They're a nasty lot to tangle with.”

“I could talk with them. If they realized they were wrecking their own people.…”

“Their own people! You don't think they really give a damn about us, do you?” He spread out his hands. “I know it sounds funny for me to say that after what they did for me. It's caprice, Lahela. Why they do things is beyond …” He tapped his forehead with his forefinger. “Beyond the working of our minds.” He jumped up and prowled back and forth in front of her. “That's how we live, Lahela, waiting for the dice to roll. Most of the time, though they leave us alone. For which we give thanks.”

Aleytys stood. “I can't do it, Loahn.” She walked around the bench and stopped with her hand on the dusty bark of the tree's trunk. “The Karkiskya, this city. They're both important to people. If I curse the city who would come here?”

“No one.” He glanced up again at the towers. “Gikena says, we do.”

“Dammit, I won't be driven. No.” She kicked at the dirt and flung her head back defiantly. “I won't do it.”

He caught her hand and held it against his face, saying nothing.

“Loahn. Tonight. Come in the caravan with us; it'll be well into the night before we leave and I don't want to have to hunt you in the dark.”

He nodded. “Lahela?”

“What is it?” She rested the fingers of her free hand against the trunk, once again reaching out for security to solid physical things.

“You're totally committed to that man?”

She felt a lurch in the beat of her heart, a knotting around her stomach. “Totally? Why?”

“Puki.”

She freed herself and moved away from him. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I'm committed to him.” Then she smiled and shook her head. “I'd never make it as a woman on this world, Loahn. You'd be wanting to strangle me before the leaves turned.”

His cool skeptical eyes went flickering over her slender body. Then he shrugged. “Maybe so.”

Chapter VII

Stavver thumbed a stud on his belt, waking a circle of light that spread out under his feet. In the chameleon web he was a faint flicker in the deep shadow under the wall, hands and face floating in mid-air, the mooncream absorbing light until even these were reduced to vague blurs. A hand blur gestured impatiently.

With considerable trepidation Aleytys stepped onto the light circle: It shuddered under her bare feet like something alive, sending tremors of distaste shivering up her legs. She clasped her arms around him and pressed herself against him. Under her entwined fingers she felt silent laughter vibrating in his chest.

Riding the pale circle they drifted up over the wall then skimmed along the facade of the building. Stavver stopped the ascent beside a narrow window sealed with a thick block of clear material that somehow didn't look like glass to Aleytys. Didn't feel like glass either when she reached out an exploratory finger. She withdrew her hand and clung to him as he ran the softly buzzing tool in quick swooping sweeps back and forth across the plug. The clear material glowed sickly yellow then began to flow sluggishly in a messy dribble down the stone.

When the embrasure was clear Stavver moved the circle of light up until his feet were on a level with the sill. Then he maneuvered them inside. They floated near the floor with a tidy economy of motion. A hand's breadth above the dull rubber matting he tapped the stud on his belt. They fell the short distance to the floor, Stavver sagging slightly, Aleytys stumbling, failing to her knees.

The corridor outside the room was barely wide enough to accommodate Stavver's body, waking a claustrophobic shudder in Aleytys. The thief turned to the left and moved swiftly, intently along, ignoring her.

.… Tread the obscenely warm … obscenely soft … rubberoid flooring … like walking the intestines of a worm … coil round and round in a downward spiraling helix … terror … growing slowly, slowly more intense … her breathing quickened, sweat blurred her eyes, there was a tight constricted feeling around her chest.…

At each branching of the worm hole, Stavver hesitated, glanced at the dial face nestled in his palm, then moved forward, following the pointer.

.… Down and down … an eternity … boring … boring … boring … nausea surged sourly into her mouth as fear churned the juices of her stomach … better, a thousand times better, to walk the fields in the sunlight doing the hard unending labor of a farmer … what am I doing this for? Why am I here? Mother … phah … Shareem of Vrithian.… Madar, what made me think that stupid capricious female would find a place for me … Loahn wants me … no.…

No, another voice whispered to her, he wants your power. He's greedy for the respect of his own, having suffered their spite so many years. Do you really think you could spend the rest of your life … the rest of my life … how long will that be … how long.… The Vrya live long long … how long could Loahn tolerate an unaging wife … what would he do when he doddered about a white bearded elder with a wife who looked like his grandchild … could any man endure that … maybe that's why she said we never have complete relationships … maybe … grandchild.… do I want more children.… I love Sharl … god, he's the one thing I can love … I don't want another baby … how many years until he's old enough to be on his own.…

Amber light flared behind her eyes triggering a spurt of fear. She jerked to a halt. Ahead the corridor split into three branches … a brief image like a figure illumined by lightning … a hooded Karsk coming swiftly down the righthand passage. She blinked, startled, then touched Stavver's arm, feeling him flinch from her touch. He's forgotten I'm here, she thought.

His eyes were hard and impatient.

“One comes. There.” She flicked a finger at the passage.

Moving tautly, Stavver slid into the side passage. He pushed her behind him then crouched against the wall, facing the main corridor and nearly invisible in the web suiting. The hooded Karsk glided bonelessly past, radiating a calm heedless security, totally unaware of the intruders in his territory. When the sliding slap slap of the narrow feet died away, Stavver twisted his torso around to face her, eyebrow raised in interrogation.

Aleytys nodded. “Not the slightest notion,” she whispered.

Once again they wound downward through the too-constricting passages until Aleytys wanted to scream and claw her way out of the entrails of the beast building. Then, where the corridor stretched empty and straight, the amber light flared again. She swung her head searching for a corner to conceal them but there was nothing, not even a doorway. The walls were pinkish grey and rubbery and terrifyingly unbroken. She touched Stavver again. “One comes.”

“How close?” Stavver slipped a short black rod from a pocket in his belt. Aleytys sensed it was a weapon and shuddered at the thought of seeing a being killed. She closed her eyes. “There. Where the corridor turns. About a half-minute beyond.”

Swiftly, silently, Stavver ran over the matting then crouched at the point where the curve turned most tightly. Aleytys fingered the rubbery walls drowning her fear in an active resentment of this coiling curving wormhole without any straight lines—even the place where the flooring met the walls was a gentle curve. She raised both hands and touched her temples. In flashing disturbing vignettes she saw the Karsk come closer and closer. Sick and shaking with the emotions clawing at her, she clutched at her head. She heard the soft shuffle of the alien feet then a tingling chill shuddered through her drowning out the fear. The diadem chimed softly. “Miks.”

“Shut up,” he hissed.

She ignored that. “Be ready to move.”

The sliding footsteps were nearer. They heard a senile muttering. Then the diadem chimed a second time and the sound plunged down to a subsonic itch. Aleytys shoved at Stavver, pushing him ahead of her. He was pliable enough but seemed to have lost any spark of intelligent control over his body. Struggling with the awkward flesh puppet she maneuvered him around the curve past the bent frozen shape of the old Karsk. The air was thick, gelatinous. It was hard to breathe, hard to think, but she fought down the new burden, an unwanted addition to the fear and claustrophobia she already suffered.

Breath sobbing painfully in her ears, she pushed and tugged Stavver's shambling body past the bent, grey ghost-figure. Then she turned to see if the old one was balanced properly. If he fell when the spell lifted.… Whimpering and miserable, she fought around the second curve then propped Stavver against the wall while she tried to catch her breath and listened to the diadem sing time back to reality.

Stavver stepped away from the wall, shaking his head, still dazed from his plunge into stasis. Then, abruptly, he was the predator again. He slid to the curve and peered around to see the slobbering old Karsk go muttering unconcernedly off, having noticed nothing at all. He turned, touched Aleytys on the arm and pointed on down the corridor. “What's ahead?” He whispered the words as he slid past her.

“The way's open ahead.”

On the ground floor Stavver knelt before the massive door leading to the showroom. Unclipping the compact bundle from his belt, he unrolled the tool kit, spreading the soft black material like a splash of ink on the floor, the bright metallic surface of the tools shimmering amid the darkness.

As Aleytys watched, calmer now, his fingers played over the pockets, plucking things from their places with a swift efficiency that obscurely pleased her. She leaned against the wall while he constructed a spindly thing whose working was incomprehensible to her but whose purpose became immediately apparent as the door slid silently open. Resenting her ignorance, she transferred that resentment momentarily to the thief calmly getting on with his business. Then her sense of the ridiculous reasserted itself and she stiffled a giggle.