Moonscatter (28 page)

The Agli's eyes were open, but he seemed to see nothing. Tesc loomed over him, looking down at him with disgust—disgust and a brooding satisfaction.

“What's that?” Tuli pointed at the brazier.

Tesc snorted. “Tidra.” He moved until he was standing by the Agli's head. “They put a pinch of it in the fire at the tiluns to help them work up the folk and make them pliable.” He snorted again, and as she gasped in surprise, he carefully, precisely, kicked the Agli in the head. The drugged body jerked, the Agli's head slammed over against the mat then rolled back. This time the glazed eyes were closed.

“Is he dead?” Tuli leaned against the door jamb, frightened by the barely controlled violence in her father.

“Not him.” Tesc glanced at the brazier, scowled, kicked it hard away from him. It skimmed over the floor for several feet, bounced onto its side and began to roll noisily along the floor, spilling coals and the gummy resin that was the source of the smoke. He nodded with grim satisfaction then walked to the acolyte's body. With a grunt he scooped it up, carted it to the altar, the broad flat basin where the fire was dancing high into the heavy air, hot and crackling. Turning his face away, he dumped the boy's body into the flames and leaped back, nearly tripping over the Agli's outflung arm. He steadied and stood watching a moment as the flames shortened and blackened then started building up again as the black robe kindled.

Tuli shivered as the sweet smell of roasting flesh joined the mix of odors, remembering suddenly and unwillingly Nilis thrusting her arms into that very fire. She moved over to the door. The paint stink was welcome now, something cleaner than the odors fighting in the meeting room. She leaned her head against the jamb, breathing shallowly, waiting for the others to come past her. Their job was done; it was time to get out of here. She wanted terribly to get out of here. When she didn't hear footsteps, only the soft murmur of voices, she gathered herself and turned around.

Tesc and Teras were standing on opposite sides of the Agli's unconscious form, looking thoughtfully down at him. A cold smile curled her father's lips; he rubbed a hand along his chin. “Think you could find some of that paint?” He jerked a thumb at the doorway.

Mischief danced in her twin's eyes. “Yah,” he said. A grin on his face, he ran past Tuli without seeming to see her. Tuli watched him disappearing back toward the front of the structure. Her uncertain temper flaring, she flung herself back into the meeting room, glared at her father, scuffed about the room, glancing repeatedly at him, snapping her fingers, hissing to herself trying to work out her anger. She kept well away from the fire that was beginning to send up oily black smoke to coat the clean whiteness of the new-painted ceiling. She stared at the film of grease, took a deep breath for the first time since she'd entered the room, realizing for the first time too that she'd been almost not breathing as she wandered about. She looked up again, her hand over her nose and a mouth.
What's left of a man
. She shivered and went to stand beside her father, seeking comfort from his strength and vitality.

He was kneeling beside the Agli, using his knife to cut away the dark robe from the man's arms and shoulders.

“What're you going to do with him?” Tuli shoved her foot into the Agli's side, nudging him so that his arms moved a little.

Tesc lifted his head, frowned at her. “I forgot,” he muttered. He sat back on his heels. “Rope. Tuli, go find me some rope. Keep your eyes and ears open. I don't think there's anyone in the building, not with all this wet paint.” He rubbed at his nose. “Enough to strangle a bull hauhau.”

Happier to be included even though she still didn't know what was happening, Tuli ran out. She was only a few steps down the hall when she met Teras coming back. He was carrying a large paint pot. A coil of rope was looped over one shoulder; when she saw it she quivered with disappointment and annoyance. She bit at her lip, then turned to walk beside him, glancing at the paintpot and brushes. “What's all that for?”

He grinned. “You'll see.”

“Tchah! Teras.…” She took hold of the rope and began working it off his shoulder. “Sometimes I could hit you.”

He stopped walking to let her slide the rope over his arm. “Use your head, Tutu. What do you think we could do with paint, rope and that clown?”

The rope dangling from her hand, she snorted softly, repeatedly, at the use of her baby name and followed him into the room. She dropped the rope beside her father and stepped back, pressing her lips together to contain her laughter.

Tesc was slicing off the Agli's thick black hair, having some trouble since his knife wasn't a particularly good razor. The Agli's head had a number of slow bloodworms crawling over the pale skin. When he heard the whispery splat of the rope, he rose to his feet, frowning at Tuli. He took hold of Tuli's shoulders, turned her about and pushed her toward the door. “Go outside and keep watch.”

Tuli wiggled away from his hands, swung around. “I want to watch here.”

“Do what I told you. Get.”

Her eyes fell and she shuffled backward to the door, her gaze sullenly on the naked body of the Agli. When her shoulder touched the jamb, she lifted her head.

“Get,” her father repeated. The look on his face showed her the futility of argument, so she stumped off down the hall grumbling at her exclusion from the fun.

“Just because Da stripped him.” She blew a gust of air through her nose. “Just because I'm a girl. Girl! Who took care of the spy? Me. And now they sent me away to protect my young eyes. Tchah! Girl!” She kicked at the dirt of the street, went to stand leaning on the edge of the smaller basin, glaring at the pile of pale ash and scattered coals with a flicker of red left in them. Overhead the clouds had closed in again until only TheDom's broad glow shone through, a vague circle of dull yellow light. The wind blew stronger and too hot; the night was stifling; in spite of the air's pressure against her, she felt smothered as if someone had dropped a blanket over her. She rubbed at her eyes. They were sore, felt swollen. Waiting was hard, a lot harder than the running and fighting she'd done not so long ago. She was suddenly tired, very tired. Her arms ached. Her legs ached. She wanted to cry, she curled her fingers into claws, wanting to tear at someone, anyone, her father and her brother for pushing her out here to wait alone while they played their games with the Agli's naked body.

She heard a whispery scraping sound. Tesc and Teras came through the entrance, dragging the Agli behind them. They'd fitted a sort of rope harness about his body, looping rope between his legs and under his arms, the second length of rope, the tow rope, knotted to the harness between his shoulder-blades, they were pulling him along on face and belly. A smear of paint trailed off behind him along the tiles of the hallway. He was still unconscious, his head lolling about as they let him fall and strolled over to stand by Tuli and inspect the twin timbers projecting from the wall over the entranceway, left over from the days when the structure was used as a granary. Tesc looked at Teras. “Ready?”

“In a minute.” Teras cocked a thumb at the hall. “Lost his drawers he did.” He stooped beside the Agli, rolled him over and began slapping more paint on his groin and genitals. Tesc watched a moment, then tossed the end of the tow rope over one of the timbers. “Don't forget the Maiden's Sigil,” he called over his shoulder.

“Got it.”

“Start working on the wall, I'll pull him up.”

As the Agli rose in the air, hanging limply in the harness, the ropes cutting in his soft but meager flesh, Teras hauled the paintpot a little way down the wall and started scrawling characters on the mud bricks. Wrapping the rope about his arm, Tesc began walking back along the wall until he reached a hitching post. He glanced around, narrowed his eyes as he saw Tuli watching with a face-splitting grin. “Get over here; little bit; tie this off for me.” He held the rope taut while Tuli knotted it to one of the rings bolted to the post. The rope stretched a little as he let it go. The Algi's body jerked up and down. Out in the street again, Tuli bounced from foot to foot, a hand clamped over her mouth to stifle the giggles that threatened to explode out of her.

The once-formidable priest was a comic figure, dripping slow drops of thick white paint. From knees to navel he was slathered with paint. On his hairless chest Teras had drawn the Maiden's Sigil. While paint coated most of his head, Teras had left circles of unpainted flesh about his eyes and mouth and ears. He looked like a toy clown dangling from a string.

Teras tossed the paintpot into the street. The clatter drew Tuli's eyes to what he'd been doing. “Soäreh's pimp?”

Tesc caught hold of her shoulder and swung her around. “Never mind that.”

Tuli stumbled ahead of him as he kept tapping her lightly on the back urging her along. “Don't see why you didn't put that rope around his dirty neck.”

Tesc moved up beside her, took her hand. “Folks don't laugh at corpses.” He glanced over his shoulder, smiled with satisfaction, led her briskly across the street toward the grove where their macain waited. He swung Tuli into the saddle, watched to be sure Teras was up, then mounted quickly and led them out of the grove. “Seems to me a good belly laugh can cure a lot of foolishness.”

CHAPTER X:

THE QUEST

The well was a hole in the ground, a burrow gnawed from the chalk and sandstone. The water was twenty feet down, off center, a well within a well, hidden from the light by the overhang, protected from the blowing dust though not completely. A sweethorn tree grew some distance from the well itself, yet each year a squad of vassals had to cut away the web of hair-fine white roots that crept into the hole to steal the water. A few grey-green needles about an inch long clung to the first spans of the shiny black branches as they slanted precipitously upward. The rest of the needles lay scattered about the hard pale earth while the outer portions of the branches bore only hard black thorns longer than needles with upcurving points finer than the points of needles. Smaller doerwidds with foliage like scabby green-grey lichen clustered in a west-facing arc about the sweethorn.

Their Sleykyn captors had spread one of Serroi's blankets in the shade of that arc beneath the sweethorn tree. They were kneeling in a ragged circle on the brown wool; now and then one or more of them looked at her, eyes animal-blank, inhuman because to them she was inhuman, more than that, less than beast. The interaction between meien and Sleykynin had a long, unhappy history. The Sleykyn order was implacably hostile to the Biserica as if the meien threatened them on such a deep level they had no need to think, only to react, were driven to humiliate, debase and destroy any meie so unfortunate as to fall unprotected into their hands.

A burst of raucous laughter came from the kneeling men as they tossed oblong ivory dice and watched them wobble and slide about on the dark brown wool. She knew only too well what that was about, she looked at them and forced herself to show none of her fear. A Sleykyn groaned and cursed, fell back off his knees until he was sitting with his feet stretched out before him, removed from the circle on the blanket.
Bad luck
, she thought.
First out, last in
. She almost laughed at that bitter joke, but turned instead to Hern.

The Sleykynin had dumped him on a dusty flat some yards from her, left him unprotected in the sun after kicking and beating him with casual brutality, something he owed to her, owed to the fact that he dared ride with her in Sleykyn lands. He was sitting hunched over, short sturdy legs stretched out before him, tied at the ankles with the quick but effective hitch herders used when they threw bull hauhaus. Sweat rolled down his grim, intent face. He wouldn't meet her eyes even when she tried smiling at him. His broad thick shoulders moved slowly, the deliberation of power kept under stern control. She remembered suddenly how she'd seen him the night of the Moongather, tied naked to a chair, waiting to be demon-swallowed, working with iron patience to win at least one hand free. Serroi tugged at the ropes around her wrists but the Sleykynin knew how to bind without pity. The turns cut into her flesh, cut off her circulation. Already her hands were swollen and numb. Her weaponbelt was gone, thrown casually across the saddle on her macai, her bow was clipped to the saddle. They'd pawed her cautiously (snake-handlers holding a viper) to make sure they had all her weapons—but they'd missed the knife in her boot, paper-thin and balanced to a hair. The tajicho was busy at what it did best, protecting itself, protecting the knife as it did so.

A yell from the kneelers. A Sleykyn stood, the second man out. He stood watching the others, shucking himself out of his armor as he watched. He made a comment, most of which was lost in a sudden burst of laughter, something about leaving some meat on the bone. He threw corselet and bracers into a careless heap, stooped to unbuckle his greaves.

Velater hide. Deep-sea predators, the velaterim. They spent most of their lives out in the middle of the Ocean of Storms, spawning every five years in shallow coves a little north of Shinka. Hunted in their spawning by magic and desperate greed. Velater hide. Inner side soft, supple, breathing like live skin. Outer side covered with tiny triangular scales with razor edges. One swipe of a velater glove would rip skin and flesh away to the bone.

A third man out, one who kept sending her sour looks as if his lack of luck was somehow her fault.

She was left waiting deliberately; she knew that. How does one get ready for rape? Sit and watch and know it's coming, fear seeded and growing in the mind. She was supposed to participate in her own degradation. That was important to them—that she validate what they did to her by helping them do it.
Let me get my hands free
, she thought, sighed,
and give me time to get the feeling back in them
.