Skeen's Return (6 page)
Authors: Jo; Clayton
Skooo ah nair sko ah nair
Braay fuss bro tair
Over and over they chanted that, over and over till they broke and ran and other children came to dance round and round him.
Oy da tis ay glow ka nair oy da di o ti enthay.
Pag gi day so sko a nair, ap pa tay.
So sou tis ay
Glow ka nair sko ah nair, day oh say
Fai nay, fai nay, kik lon doan
Prauto, prauto, tris eh own
He continued to ignore them and moved from shop to forge to shop, his gut in a gelid knot. He didn't hurry, but he didn't linger either; he no longer tagged anyone, he simply wanted to get out of here and let the meatmen begin their harvest.
Day oh say, sko ah nairâso the children sang.
Air ka par ah Corbi-me, air ka, air ka, tris an drisâso the Corbi sang and mingled magic syllables with the tintinnabulation of her singing silver bells.
He walked slower and slower; his feet seemed to stick to the bricks and pulling them loose took more and more of his energy. His thoughts moved slower and slower, but the chill, driving terror in his gut snapped them loose and the beast that lived within went round and round struggling to escape.
The children danced round and round him, chanting at him.
Somewhere behind him, the Corbi rang her bells, chanting with them.
And he finally understood what they were saying, from the first of the circle chants; he understood what they were doing to him.
Weave weave the binding ring, | That the children sang. |
About him thrice, three times around. | |
Slave maker, listen, slave maker hear us. | That the Corbi sang. |
Shadow man, shadow man | That the children sang. |
Baby eater | |
I know who you are, gray man, I know why you're here. | |
I will trap you, shadow man, I will trick | |
You, I will so. | |
Gray man shadow man, I am binding you | |
Weave weave the binding ring | |
About him thrice, three times around | |
I am binding you | That the children sang. |
Come to Corbi, come, come | That the Corbi sang. |
Come oh come, you tear making men |
His body stopped completely and stood like stone on the bricks. He felt more than saw a shadow pass overhead, heard the whine of the meatwagon. He knew then what the Corbi tolled because the meatmen weren't due until he left and signaled them. The beast within shouted in fury and frustration, trapped inside stony flesh where no one and nothing could hear him.
The whine groaned down to a subsonic growl. The bells rang louder, the rhythms more jangled, the sound reaching deep and deep, stirring things in him he didn't want stirred up; he fought but the music was far stronger than him, he was meshed in a web from which he couldn't break loose. Other voices joined the chant, mature voices, deep and rich. Over these he heard a dull steady shuffle.
The chanting came closer. The bells rang louder. The Corbi danced around where he could see her. Her face and her eyes glowed with a wild and burning light. The beast within that was the real him quivered with a terror like that his victims must have felt, something he'd never expected to know. He was a careful man, he was a cautious man, he was too good at his work. He had fooled a thousand tracers, ten thousand guards; he'd dipped in and out of worlds no other slave maker managed to penetrate and left no proof behind that he'd ever been there; empires had mobilized to catch him and he'd laughed at them. Yet here, now, a lanky half-grown child had trapped him, prepubescent babies had bound him fast. Had done it as easily as if he were a brain-burned phlux head. Children! He would have ground his teeth together if he could have moved his jaw. The beast within raged at the Corbi and she smiled back, glowing with triumph, arms, hands, body moving effortlessly through the sacred dance.
His meatmen tramped around where he could see them. They wore purple paper chains wound about and about them and bowed under the imagined weight of these ephemeral bindings; their jaws bulged as they strained against that weight while the gentle breeze sent paper edges scraping lightly against their arms.
Slave maker, the Corbi sang at him. Slave maker shadow man, the children sang at him. They knew. They all knew. From the seaside spiral to this tiny mountain village, they'd touched and tasted him; when he thought he was fooling them, they were laughing at him for he was the fool.
Corbi danced before him and rang her silver bells; the children wheeled round and round him, chanting, swung round and round the line of meatmen, chanting. The adults of the village made three sparse rings about them all, two rings moving one way, the ring in the center opposing them; they boomed along in their deepest tones, mate and female alike, while several sopranos and high falsettos performed elaborate descants, weaving in and out of the song of Corbi and the children.
Coldness crept up his legs and up his arms, his eyes grew dim and dull, the sounds wheeling about him went far away and when the light was gone out of his eyes and the sound gone out of his ears, the beast within that was him lay down and died.
The adults of Tinkle's Thwart levered the stone statues from the middle of the road and took them down to the station platform and left them standing there looking away along the slick silvery rail. As the years slid past, new batches of children replaced the paper chains with flower ropes, winding them around and over the gray chalk figures until these finally wore away to shapeless pillars and everyone forgot what they had once been.
A drunken Pallah leaned against her, patted her shoulder; the fumes of the quatsch he was drinking mingled with her ale and made her head swim. “Lu like th tha story. Goo good stuff.” He sniffed juicily, slapped at the bar, his hand hitting it obliquely and sliding. His elbow crashed down and he grunted, the knock on the funnybone breaking through the anesthesia of the quatsch, not enough to hurt, though it did get his attention away from her a while.
A pair of elderly Aggitj nodded and sighed. “Lurvlee,” one managed. “Like Tilimai uss used to tell b b back.⦔ His voice trailed off; he lowered his head onto the bar and went to sleep. The other continued to nod a while, then brooded at a pool of spilled brandy gradually fuming dry. He cleared his throat, spoke slowly and with great care, his eyes fixed on that splotch. “I know uhhhm I know some un here. Like that slaver st stink. You know un.⦔ He nudged his sleeping companion, eliciting a breathy snore but no further response; he went on as if he'd got a coherent answer. “Uh huh, you know un, Gresh Gresh Gredgi. Stinkin snot. Hah! Nochsyon Tod. Got our Hixli. Li like to have that Corbi h h here, yes I would. Turn ol' Toad into chal chalk. Hoptoad chalk.” He started giggling. “Chalk Toad. P p pizz ul on im. M melt im in to mud. Dir ty mud. Mud. Mud.” Lost in giggles, he slapped his companion on his back; the other Aggitj struggled upright and joined in though he had no idea what the laughter was about.
Skeen gulped down more ale, coughed and sprayed half of it out again as a rising giggle caught her in the throat.
The Pallah roared with laughter. “Piss on un. Melt un down. Do it, yah, me, I'd do it. Do it. Yah.” He quieted after a while and glowered at the barrels piled up behind the bar. He produced some guttural mutters that finally surfaced into audibility. “⦠dirty sodding renegade smearing shit on all us Pallahs ⦠somebody gonna get him.⦔ He clenched his fist about his glass, opened his eyes wide because he'd forgotten he was holding it; he gulped down the quatsch left in it, made a soft gargling sound and slid bonelessly off his stool, curled up on the floor and started snoring.
Skeen blinked down at him, shrugged and banged her glass on the bar, calling for a refill. She turned to the Aggitj. “What uh what happen to what's his name, urn, Hizli?”
Heavy clank, metal sliding jerkily over wood, acting on her head like a dentist's drill, worrying her out of a stuffy, nightmare-ridden sleep.
Skeen started to lift her head, lowered it with extreme care as first her stomach then her whole body protested. She cracked gritty eyes enough to register the painfully bright morning light filling the room, snapped them shut and tried to swallow. She was hideously thirsty; her mouth and throat demanded gallons of anything wet, but her stomach felt delicate and stirred with a pre-nausea that was more a warning than an upheaval. There was a stink in the room she didn't really want to think about. The sounds continued, adding the slosh of water and the scratch-scrutch of a scrub brush. There was something she should remember, but her head wasn't working too well. So she worked her mouth. Djabo, I'm dry. Gahh, if my mouth smells like it tastes, I could lay out a dreegh. Another clank. Bucket, brush dropped into it. Skritching sound like a finger drawn across a slate. She shuddered. I'm going to have to stop this cruising the bars. Must be something in the ale. She took a long breath, spat it out. Sweet sour stench of vomit. Djabo bless. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and tried to think. Oh, Djabo, Djabo, I am not going to do this again. I am not going to do this again. Not, not ⦠ah, Djabo, once an addictive personality, always ⦠I am not getting into that. Oh, fuck, I haven't vomited on myself since I was ⦠I'm too old for this.â¦
The longer she lay breathing in the vomit stink and the harsh fumes of the lye soap someone was using to clean up after her, the worse she felt. She started remembering things she'd done; that didn't help.
On hands and knees, crawling along some street, slapping grumpily and ineffectively at small hands tickling over her body like lice.
She didn't need to check her belt pouch; whatever was in it left in those hands.
Feeling her way along walls until she crashed into the night wicket, pounding on it until the porter came out cursing her. He booted her inside, slammed the wicket, put the boot in a couple more times, then went grumbling back to bed.
She could remember being dimly surprised as she crawled painfully toward the stairs. He hadn't raped her; she wasn't particularly appetizing at the moment, but that hadn't stopped men before.
Angelsin looming large and pale in her chair at the end of the bar.
Does she ever move from there?
Groaning onto her feet, feeling a stabbing pain somewhere around her ribs. Nausea threatening. Angelsin would kill her if she messed in the taproom. Throw her out, anyway. Lurching up the stairs, falling too many times, cracking her knees, her shins, her elbows, struggling to reach her room before voiding the burden hanging at the end of her throat.
Head threatening to break off and roll away, gasping with the effort, she untangled herself from the blanket and sat up. She clutched at herself, groaned.
Timka raised her head, a cold anger on her face, then she went back to scrubbing the floor.
Skeen smoothed her hands down her body. She was clean, even her hair. Naked but clean. She lifted her head. Her eddersil trousers and tunic were fluttering by the window, the morning breeze whipping out the last of the stink. The hooked rug was rolled up against the wall under the window. Doesn't look damp, maybe I missed that. She rubbed at her nose, watched Timka scrubbing angrily at the planks, and winced as snatches of last night came back to her, humiliating fragments of memory. Small strong hands wrestling her around, holding her, as she vomited. Angry whispers as Ti stripped off her soiled clothing. Towel's corner soggy with cold water dragged across her face, the roughness of a mother at the end of her patience with a fractious child. Hefted into bed over a narrow shoulder. Covers pulled up. A sigh. A small hand drawn softly along her face. A door shutting.
Skeen shook off those memories. She'd learned early on that thinking too much about the immediate past guaranteed a sour head to match the sour stomach she already had.
Timka dropped the brush in the bucket, sat on her heels, drew her arm across her face, pushing straggles of hair out of her eyes. She turned her head slowly, her arm still up, the soft black hair falling over it, and scowled at Skeen. “How many more times are you coming back like that?”
Skeen ran her fingers through tangled oily hair and couldn't remember the last time she'd washed it. “No more,” she said absently. “I've decided which one to touch.” She pulled her fingers loose and passed her hand from brow to nape. Timka gazed at her, saying nothing, her skepticism tangible. Skeen took a corner of the blanket and scrubbed it across her eyes. “I know what I'm talking about, Ti.” She dropped the blanket across her knees. “I've been here before,” she muttered, went on rather more hastily than she meant, “and I've pried myself loose before, it just sneaked up on me this time ⦔ she dropped the blanket across her legs, touched her hair, grimaced, “⦠for a lot of reasons you don't want to hear about.” She poked at the blanket, began twisting an edge, her hands working until it threatened to tear. “This fuckin' stupid world, run your legs off to your crack and get no place. Ahhhh, Tibo, WHY!” She started crying, hiccuping, swaying back and forth, clutching at the blanket, her head aching, her stomach cramping, her mind in confusion saying I don't do this kind of thing, I don't do this, I don't cry, not even when I'm drunk, I used up my tears twenty years ago, I don't ⦠I don't.â¦
Timka sat watching, cool and distant, only half-believing what she saw and heard. She'd seen this remorse too many times before, with Skeen and the Poet both, not crying but near enough; she'd heard both mutter promises it wouldn't happen again. And it always did. And there were always reasons and the reasons were always different and always meant the same thing. She waited until Skeen's spasm was over and the lanky woman had control of herself again. “Lipitero and I, we finished the night in with the others. I doubt anyone got much sleep but you.”
