Skeen's Return (24 page)

Skeen gulped at her wine, put the glass down clumsily. She was having trouble using her left hand for anything but the simplest actions. “Families? Which Wave?”

“Five families, five Waves. Balayar. Pallah. Skirrik. Funor. Chalarosh, mostly sedentary, though there are a few cells from the desert tribes; these are tolerated until they do something fatal, then they're stepped on. The Waves get on fairly well. There's a general council with representatives from the Five and a city manager who handles everything but conflicts between two or more of the Families.” She turned to the Aggitj. “One thing, don't you go job hunting here, no outsiders are permitted to work. Enjoy yourselves and pay your debts without arguing. It's an expensive port. Things will cost two to three times what you're used to, but the Sikurose won't be trying to cheat you. You can haggle in the markets, but not in the taverns or eating places. Streets, even back alleys, are generally safe no matter what the hour. If a city guard tells you to do something, you do it then, there, and without arguing. They don't argue, they'll just kill you. They carry wrist slingers that use small iron shot they can send through a solid inch of oak. And they don't miss. They generally travel in double pairs, one pair visible, the other acting backup so even if you take out one pair the other will get you. No, no, don't look like that.” She chuckled at the consternation on the Aggitj faces, “Be your usual cheerful friendly selves and play as hard as you want, you shouldn't have the least bit of trouble. They like the trading ships here in Sikuro. They understand crew and passengers kicking up their feet after being confined so long to a ship's deck.”

Skeen used her napkin to wipe wine off the stem of her glass; she didn't see Maggí's pained expression as the dark red wine stained the snowy cloth. “We can take rooms onshore?”

“If you want. There are plenty of Inns in the Port quarter. And no curfew. Just remember what I said about the city guards.”

Skeen shrugged, dipped her left forefinger in a drop of wine and began drawing awkward designs on the wood.

Timka watched her, scowled, then turned to Maggí. “Are there Min living in Sikuro?”

“Not supposed to be.” She glanced at Chulji, lifted a corner of her mouth. “I'm not as certain about that as I would have been a year ago.” She thought a minute. “This time of the year five to six ships a day tie up at Sikurose wharves, could be Min on any of them. If these Min don't know Sikuro, I suppose they could consider having a try at you; if you're attacked, you can defend yourself, but that'll mean trouble for both sides; everyone the guards get their hands on will be thrown in the nearest cells, and you'll stay there until I'm ready to leave. Maybe longer. Better to avoid trouble if you can manage that. Should you find some stupid Min going after you, dive for cover and yell for help. Guards should be here fast. Even if the Min abort the attack and vanish, you'll be showing your peaceable intentions. Once you explain, chances are the manager will give you a Skirrik bodyguard for the rest of your stay. If they've got half a brain apiece, most Min should know that so they won't bother.” Maggí frowned at the Boy. “Which reminds me. My young friend, you'd better stay on board with Lipitero. Ravvayad assassins don't care if they're caught or not. I know it's boring, but you don't want to endanger your friends, do you?” She smiled at his downcast face. “Hal, there are always magicians and acrobats in the markets and I can remember several funny puppet shows. You look around for something you think the Boy would like, I'll pay the fees, you bring them on board. One a day, I think.”

The Boy grinned. Hal nodded gravely. Domi lifted his glass, his eyes laughing. “And you don't need to worry, we'll be careful who we choose, no sinister strange robed figures or animal acts whose beasts are more than they seem,” he said, laughter moving from eyes to voice.

The four days passed with little change in the activities of Maggí or the company of questers. There were no attacks by stray Min or fanatic Chalarosh. The Boy reveled in the little luxury of having his own shows and he graciously allowed the Aggitj, Rannah and any of the deck passengers who happened to be hanging around to watch with him as the acrobats, conjurers, or puppeteers performed. Maggí stopped to watch too whenever she was onboard the Goum Kiskar, but most of the time she was onshore, dickering with merchants, especially those who had fully tanned fur pelts trapped during the winterdeep on the high peaks. Because of Skeen's gold, she could afford to tie up more of her working capital in these furs than she usually did and she was in an ebullient mood most days.

Skeen flung herself onshore as if released from prison. She didn't grudge Timka or the Aggitj the gold to pay their way, no, she ladled it out with a generous hand. But with a crackling intensity in her voice, a sharp abrasive edge to her words, she told them to keep away from her, play their own games and leave her to hers. Lipitero had done her best, producing a tiny burred beeper that Timka tried to hook onto the back of the eddersil tunic; Skeen discovered it immediately, as if even here in a world where such things weren't supposed to exist, her nervous system was so sensitized to electronic snooping she felt the burr like the princess felt the pea. She pulled off the burr, ground it under her heel and said some bitter unforgivable things to Timka and Lipitero before she left the ship.

After she acquired a room in a midlevel tavern near the wharves, she wandered aimlessly about, drifting from market to market, tavern to tavern. Grimly determined, Timka-owl flew overhead, following her that way, anxiously examining her walk as she left each of the taverns, wondering if she was going to stumble onto the downslide she'd begun in Fennakin, but Skeen didn't stay long in the taverns. She seemed to be on an orientation ramble, finding out which places she liked, which she'd rather avoid. She began to acquire company, male and female, until she was in the middle of a small clot of folk who strolled along laughing, exchanging toppers, shouting ribald comments to acquaintances they passed, enjoying themselves in a loud but comfortable way, under no pressure to perform for each other. It might have been interesting if Timka had been one of them, but flying overhead she found the whole thing intensely boring. And it went on and on, past sundown, past midnight. Skeen finally went home with one of the men, her step still steady, her hilarity subdued. Timka perched on the roof of the tavern, wondering how far she should go to insure Skeen's safety; should she slip down and see what was happening in the room? Everything in her resisted that. On the other hand, Skeen was more vulnerable than she'd ordinarily be, her ability to defend herself radically diminished by the loss of her dominant hand. She'll kill me dead if she catches me snooping like that, Lifefire! I'd kill me dead. Timka stayed up on the ridgepole and dozed until dawn. Stretched to the limit of flesh and spirit, she told herself Skeen wasn't likely to be out and away for some hours; she flew off to her own room to snatch some sleep.

Still the dreams came—daymares now—stealing from her the rest she needed; she didn't try to fight them. They led her deeper and deeper into Skeen's life, teaching her why Skeen had grown so restive and hostile. It wasn't so much the loss of the hand and the pain that went with the amputation as an accumulation of irritations from the whole of the trek. Skeen didn't deal well with people, at least not in long stretches; she needed solitude like most folk needed air to breathe. She hated being responsible for other lives, she shucked that responsibility as soon as she could with a skill acquired from much experience; her problem with the Company, us, that's different, there's no way she can ease herself free of us, not till we reach the Gate. Really, not even then. There's Lipitero and me on the other side as well as this; she knew that and it grated on her, exacerbating the small irritations that living in such close quarters was bound to produce. She was easiest around Chulji since the Min Skirrik boy spent the least time with her. She needed a lot more time than four days free of them all to flush out her system; where before Timka had dreaded the time in port, now she welcomed it. She found herself almost hoping that the wind would abandon them, forcing Maggí once again to spend a month tied up here. It seemed a secure enough place, stray Min weren't likely to attack, the Boy was safe onboard the Goum Kiskar, Lifefire help any Chalarosh stupid enough to try anything there.

I thought I was a solitary being, I thought I kept myself apart and preferred life that way, I thought it gave me power to be secret and sly and share nothing and take nothing but those things that kept my body comfortable. Now, looking into the mirror of a true solitary, she understood how greatly she had misread herself. Looking back at those years in Dum Besar, she saw that though she hadn't let herself recognize it, she'd been happy; looking back at the Poet, she found a deep fondness for him—and a degree of respect—that she hadn't at all expected. There were a lot of Pallah she'd like to kick in the butt, the ignorant bigoted bastards who'd gone out of their way to make her life a misery; yet there were a lot more who'd treated her well enough, they couldn't help doing stupid irritating things because they understood nothing about her. Even so, there were good hearts under the bumbling. She'd seethed with resentment at the time, but a lot of those times were almost funny now. And she didn't want to see them slaughtered. And she didn't want to see her own people slaughtered either, caught up in a futile, vicious war. Telka and the Holavish were driving toward that, willing to risk all Min to rid the world of the Pallah, the warhawks among the Pallah landholders displayed an equal fervor for wiping out the Min. Each of these forces had to be defeated. She was beginning to have a glimmer of how that might be done, a vague notion involving Carema and her web of friends, the Poet and his along with the unspoken and generally overlooked good will that existed between Pallah and Mountain Min along the border between them after years of barter and the commonplace exchanges of emergency aid when children or livestock were in trouble. She went back and back to that idea, refusing each time to associate herself with it. I'll work it out and write it down and see it gets to Carema. She can take over from there. Yes, that's it, that's what I'll do. Work it out, write it out.

Every morning the wind blew south, every evening the wind blew north. The days were bright and clear, with a gentle nip in the air. The hills around the city were laced with reds and oranges, golds and brilliant browns, the water in the Gullet danced to the wind, sparkling blue like broken glass. The ships coming and going showed off the fine details of their rigging even when they were far enough off they might have been toys. The markets were lush with fruits and nuts, with cheeses and ropes of sausage, with wools and hanks of fibers raw and dyed, with bottles of all shapes, with jugs and barrels heavy with homebrew and cordials, booths and pavement heaped and overflowing with the good things the Sikuro valley produced. Musicians played; acrobats leaped and whirled; dancers swayed, leaped, tantalized; puppeteers played their dolls; beggars whined and displayed their sores (though beggars here had a ruddy health that even their dramatic skills couldn't quite hide). Day was swallowed by day, each the same, a pleasant, comfortable, comforting sameness.

Maggí finished her cargo and spent the early half of the fourth day getting it stowed. Cabin and deck passengers were coming aboard all day, checked against the Mate's list before they were allowed up. The Aggitj loitered on the wharf for a while, but they weren't allowed to work and got bored. They drifed back into the city to spend the last of the money Skeen had given them. Pegwai had vanished among the Balayar on the first day and hadn't been visible since. He came dragging onboard a little after noon, looking a dozen pounds heavier and so tired he barely managed to move his feet. Maggí tried teasing him, but he declined her openings, telling her his brain had been asleep since morning and he wouldn't be a worthy opponent for her wit for at least another three days. He went into his cabin and collapsed on one of the bunks. Chulji played on the quarterdeck with Rannah and the Boy.

Midway through the afternoon, clouds began thickening overhead. The wind blew strongly out of the north with no sign of dropping. In its usual pattern, it turned erratic about this time of day and finally sighed to nothing before rising again in the south, the sundown wind that blew ships back up the Neck on their way to the Halijara. Clouds bumped and boiled and turned black and ominous, while jags of lightning walked through the gloom. The heavy air smelled cold and burnt. Flurries of huge cold raindrops came slapping down. Maggí cursed and got her ship snugged to the wharf with extra lines, then hustled her passengers onshore for the duration of the storm (Lipitero, Chulji, and the Boy excepted). The city provided snug hostels for these little emergencies. She routed Pegwai out of his blankets, and sent him to find Timka. “Tell her to stay where she is. And Skeen. No one's going anywhere until this storm clears out.”

The clouds blew off by morning and the wind dropped to nothing, dainty puffs that barely dimpled the surface of the broad lake. Maggí took a look round, recognized conditions and didn't bother swearing. One day, a dozen, Lifefire solo knew how long the calm would last. She slapped the rail, turned to the Mate who was standing beside her looking morose. “Tell the crew they can draw against their shares if they want, but remind them we don't know how long this tikkush will last. I want a five-man guard aboard all times, especially watch out for Chalarosh, stop any that try to come aboard. Crew couldn't stop a guard double pair, but should that happen, send a runner for me fast if I'm not here. They'll be after our flying friend, should that happen.”

Houms grunted. “Saw Yiatch's brat yesterday. Counting the load, I think. You'd better see the Guard Capo. If there's going to be Haamitti in the water, I want to issue crossbows to the crew.”