Rift (32 page)

Once during the night he thought he saw Dante hovering over him, peering closely.

“Did Quixote kill my orthong? Tell the truth, Spaceman!” he whispered. “For the insult to Princess Loon?”

Reeve, muzzy-headed from sleep, could only say, “He did not. I swear it.”

“Someone must pay, though,” he heard Dante say.

He thought he heard his door close, and Reeve slept again. By morning, bright autumn blue reclaimed the skies, with Dante holding forth under his pavilion once more, and Marie attending despite the yellow cast to her skin.

The canyon country had now become a high and rocky passage through which the Tallstory flowed swiftly, forcing them to break out the oars at times to make any progress. With their vision cut off from any wider prospects, it seemed their craft was aimed into the heart of the rocky planet, where the cliffs towered ever higher. Once, a great cave appeared halfway up the starboard canyon wall, drawing every eye to its gaping orifice, as though Lithia’s trolls might be seen within, forbidding or blessing their passage. Spar nodded at the cave as if it were the eye of the Lady herself, and whether she condemned or approved them Reeve was not about to ask. Spar dipped his head at Reeve, one of the few exchanges they’d had since their fight. Reeve smiled in return, not hoping for a Spar smile, and not getting one.

As the days passed in this stone tunnel, Reeve joined Kalid in his cabin for tentative science lessons, aware that he must teach cautiously, allowing Kalid to set the pace and not fan their rivalry. Kalid was an apt learner, his memory suited to the regularity and logic of physics and chemistry; but he had only rudimentary math, and Reeve scrambled in his role as teacher. Still, Kalid took great pleasure in learning, often keeping Reeve up late into the night.

His fighting lessons, however, showed no reciprocal restraint; and Kalid gave Reeve sound thrashings, to the delight of the crew and courtier alike. But Reeve learned to kill a man with his bare hands, with a stick, and with a knife.

Meanwhile, Loon quickly assumed complete freedom of the ship, including climbing the masts and into the rigging, drawing deference from the jinn, who took
great stock in her open eating of soil. They could observe this when, the ship at anchor, she swam to shore. Reeve noticed that small offerings of food and trinkets appeared regularly outside her cabin door, and just as regularly disappeared. Perhaps Loon took such offerings as her due, or perhaps she just disliked the mess outside her door. Whether owing to Spar or a spontaneous assumption, the crew began to refer to Loon as “daughter of Lithia,” and the notion seemed to give them the same comfort it afforded Spar—that Lithia’s malice was tempered with a slim but redeeming streak of mercy.

The only one who remained aloof from Loon’s spell was Marie, ever antagonistic to glosses of science and superstitious spins on reality. “Lithia’s daughter!” she groused one day. Turning to Isis, but speaking for the benefit of Reeve and Spar, she said, “How many
daughters
have you seen, or
sons
? If she’s the first, it would take hundreds of thousands of years for her progeny to establish themselves. Humans will be long gone before that, I assure you.”

“You got a harsh view of evo-lution,” Spar mumbled from the sidelines.

“Evolution plays no favorites, Mr. Spar. Not even for humans.”

“Playth no favorith,” Isis repeated, coughing up a small clot of mucus.

That night, a brisk wind sent Dante and crew belowdecks for warmth. Reeve remained on deck, pretending to scan the canyon walls but hoping for a chance to talk to Loon. This time of evening was her time to swim, and she was soon over the side, dressed only in her shirt. When she finally returned, she seemed oblivious to Reeve’s watching her, but sucked on her fingers—a gesture that Reeve tried to see as dirt-tasting, but which had become intensely erotic. The shirt hugged her as the moonlight sculpted her
body in silver highlights. Meanwhile, lounging against the opposite rail, Spar pretended to watch the water.

Reeve finally turned away and descended into the hold, where, without words, he took Dante’s smallest concubine, Joti, by the hand and led her to his cabin. He closed the door behind her. Her hair was drawn back into a golden braid, which he unfastened, releasing it around her shoulders. Her face betrayed no distaste, but to salve his conscience, he asked her if she would share his bed. In answer, she removed her clothes; as Dante’s slave, she could have given no other answer. Partly in shame, partly in relief, he led Joti to the bed and bent over her hungrily. By the light of a small candle he saw her body in flickers, and it became Loon’s, and he became part of her, again and again.

As they lay side by side, Reeve held her and savored the lift and roll of the ship and the peacefulness of this trough of his passion. Then he heard a click. His door had become unlatched. It might have been the rocking of the ship, but then he saw that a hand held it open a few inches. It stayed thus for a long time, as Reeve stared at this intrusion. For a moment he caught a glimpse of a yellow nimbus of hair around the watcher’s face. With a shock, he realized it was Loon, and his desire peaked again. He ran his hand down Joti’s body, pinching her gently and signaling her for her attentions. He rose to meet her mouth and abandoned himself to her ministrations, lost in a haze of desire that for a while swept aside his confusion about Loon and why she watched, and why he couldn’t have her and why it mattered.

A long while later the door gently closed and Reeve, spent and depressed, sent Joti away. Pulling on his clothes, he went to the door and peered into the narrow passageway. It was deserted. But there on the threshold was a small pile of stones, still gleaming wet from the river.

•  •  •

A raging sunset ended their seventh day on the Tallstory River. The startling intensity of the display brought every jinn to a standstill, gaping, their faces tinged in crimson. Striping the fiery swath, a few cirrus clouds glimmered gold, then cooled to orange as the sun fell away.

By the next morning it was clear that the reason for the glorious sunset was a major volcanic eruption. Already, a curtain of ash covered half the sky and winds were fast spreading this veil to the horizon. The jinn assumed it was volcanic, and there was little reason to doubt them. They had seen skies like these before, and had suffered weeks of dark and cold from the worst of them.

By mid-morning, the ash cloud eclipsed the sun and everyone’s spirits. Dante ordered pipes and dancing, but few jinn gathered to watch and the effort at merriment dwindled. In the afternoon, flakes of ash began to descend. Isis, despite her breather, began coughing so hard that Dante ordered the entire entourage belowdecks to attend her. Kalid was tasked with making all possible haste to the confluence of the Gandhi River, where a northward course would take them, Marie assured him, to King Gabriel’s camp.

Actually finding the camp was a problem that she and Reeve discussed often. Poring over Kalid’s maps, they thought they could pinpoint the site of the proposed geo nanotech project, but whether or not Bonhert would use that location for his altered plans they couldn’t know. In the end, Marie and Reeve were prepared to escape Dante and conduct their own search for Bonhert’s group. However, the matter of Spar and Loon was a point of contention between them. Marie argued for leaving them behind, while Reeve solidly refused. But as the day turned black as dusk, more pressing questions plagued them, such as
whether their breathers would withstand this new onslaught, and how long their supply of them would last.

Despite the ominous skies, Reeve felt a grim confidence about his mission. They had finally begun to make good time on their journey, traveling under the best security they could hope for. To be in the midst of such an adventure on the planet itself, with their fortunes as Dante’s prisoners so recently reversed, filled him with a strange joy.

By sunset, with another neon show in the west, Kalid and Reeve leaned against the ship rail once again, joined this time by Spar. The ship swayed at anchor; Loon swam off the port side; from below, Isis could be heard barking like a walrus.

“I have seen the like before,” Kalid said. “It will pass, like the others.”

There hadn’t been a question in Reeve’s mind that it might not pass, but now the thought stopped him. “Does this look different from the others?” Several times Reeve had seen planet-enveloping ash clouds from Station, but he had no way to compare the two perspectives.

Kalid pursed his lips. “It is vast, this time.”

Spar nodded. “This is what Lithia looks like, when she coughs.” He seemed to take somewhat less delight in Lithia’s revenge than usual.

“In the Dark Days,” Kalid began, “when Mount Woden blew, the skies went black for a year, or so they say.”

“Yeah, crops went down, all at once,” Spar said. “Then your granddaddies, Reeve, they got so scared they wet their pants.”

“
Your
ancestors too, Spar!”

Spar shot a wad of spit off the ship’s side. “Zerters were no kin of mine.”

“Nor mine,” Kalid said, firmly establishing Reeve’s sole claim to zerter lineage.

“That was a long time ago. When do we forget the sins of our fathers?”

Kalid smiled, an unpleasant grin. “I’ll tell you a story, Spaceman.”

On the shore, Loon had crouched to pick something up. Into her mouth it went, as though she were a toddler. Reeve watched her, and Spar seemed to stand guard over his watching.

“There lived once,” Kalid said, “a woman named Willa Achebe. This was in the Dark Days, at the beginning. She had one child, and like women do with one babe, she put all her hopes on this child. She was the wife of an important man, and when night came to stay for a year, they had plenty of food. Her son was eight years old. Her husband was unfaithful.”

As they watched the sunset burn itself out, Kalid continued: “The husband was a scientist at the great lab-oratories, where his lover also worked, and all the conspirators who planned to steal the Station. On the day of the taking of Station, he sent Willa on an errand. When she returned, he had taken the child. She rushed to where the rockets took flight, along with everyone else who knew by then what the scientists had done. But when she got to the place, it was too late. She cried at the skies to bring the ships back. Then she found one of her child’s toys, a music box. Inside, the child had cut off a lock of his hair, the only part of himself he had known how to give her.

“Willa never spoke again, but let the music box speak for her, opening it when the need came to speak. And in time, it is said, the music box began singing, and became her voice, saying whatever was needful. Since then, the box has been handed down from mother to son as a sign of devotion. And a warning against betrayal.”

“Now that is a hard tale,” Spar said.

They all watched Loon as she dove into the water for her return swim.

A long silence ensued. Reeve wasn’t sure why Kalid had told him the story, but it didn’t seem prudent to pursue the topic. Reeve was descended from zerters, Kalid from those they had wronged. He could not much blame Kalid for wishing to remember the very thing that Reeve wished to forget, but it was a strange irony that the zerter had fixed the music box that sang out against him.

As Kalid took his leave of them to pay his respects to Isis, Loon clambered up the anchor rope, scrambling back onto the deck.

Reeve spoke softly for Spar’s ears only. “Why do you come between Loon and me, Spar? Because I’m a zerter? That old hate?” Spar picked at his teeth, not answering. “Or because she’s some kind of goddess in your way of thinking, and no man’s good enough for her?”

“You think too much.” Spar turned back to watch the waves chop up against the ship’s hull.

Reeve could hear another lecture coming. Whatever he was, he was wrong, from Spar’s point of view. Wrong clave, wrong culture, wrong skills, wrong philosophy. Now he would learn what else was wrong with him.

And sure enough: “You don’t need to get all bolloxed up, Reeve-boy. That Station Clave, they got funny ideas about edu-cation. Teach you to count the stars and eat from tubes, and don’t teach you ’bout people.”

Now that was unfair. Psychology and sociology were things he’d studied, yet here was a claver who could hardly read telling him he didn’t know anything about people. Reeve took a calming breath, determined to avoid reacting to whatever Spar might say.

The older man went on: “Mam’s special. She ain’t your jinn sex slave.”

This outrageous remark deserved a response, and he spat out: “That what you think I want her for, just sex?”

Spar turned toward him enough to fix him with one hawk eye before turning back to his river watch.

Reeve struggled for the right words, struggled to control his outrage.

In this silence came Spar’s words, softer now. “I swore to protect her, and on my sword, see? That means, from Tallgrass clavers, from jinn, and from you, if you mean to have her body and not love what she is.”

“And what is she, then?”

Spar nodded to himself. “She’s a miracle. Now maybe we’re all miracles. Could be it’s a miracle any of us got lives left at all. But to me, she’s a daughter. That’s who she is.”

Reeve’s anger fled, a fire collapsing. It was as simple as that, then, a question of whether Reeve loved Loon.… And
did
he? In truth, he didn’t know. To his shame, he hadn’t asked himself, hoping for simple sex and thinking that liking Loon was good enough. But he could see Spar’s point: Here, on this world, with this young woman, it wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. He wasn’t sure why, but Spar was right. Even if Loon wanted him, it wasn’t right to take her casually. Damn his luck.

“So it’s not because I’m a zerter.” He had to respond somehow, and for now this was all he could think of to say.

Spar grinned his gap-toothed smile. “That’s bad, all right. Zerter’s real bad. But not much you can do ’bout that, I figure.”

Then a thought occurred to Reeve, and he blurted it out. “Well, I don’t have a clave anymore, Spar. Technically, I can’t be from a clave that doesn’t exist, can I?”