The 97th Step (18 page)

"You should have followed up," Red said.

"So should you."

Ferret circled to his left.

Red bore in, lancing at him with a snap kick, a spinning back kick, a hammerfist and a flat punch. Ferret managed to backpedal away from the two kicks, then block the hammer-fist. The flat punch got through, however, nailing him just below his solar plexus. He was knocked almost breathless, but he spun away and slashed with a stiffened right hand. The chop bounced from Red's muscular lat, doing little damage, but hitting hard enough to elicit a grunt of pain.

Facing Red two meters away, Ferret couldn't breathe. He tried to take small sips of air through his lips, striving to appear uninjured. Never let them see you are hurt, Dindabe had taught him. You may be on death's doorstep, but pretend you are invincible and impervious to pain. If you take the best shot an opponent can throw at you and are able to laugh, it will unnerve him greatly.

Ferret didn't have enough air to manage a laugh, but he did force a tight smile. What wind he had recovered, he spent in speaking: "Good shot."

From behind Ferret, Dindabe's voice came. "Enough," he said.

Ferret and Red essayed military bows, choppy nods, and relaxed from their fighting stance. They turned and bowed to the Gura, who nodded in return then went back to showing a block to the school's other student, a big yellow-skinned woman named Zholti.

Quietly, Red said, "You wearing body armor under your shirt? That hit should have grounded you."

Ferret dredged up another smile, as much for being able to breathe again as anything. "Maybe you ought to work the punching
ita
a little more, Red. I hardly felt that little shove you gave me."

Red nodded, and went to do just that. Ferret began to practice one of the complicated fighting dances called
kata
, or
tari
, watching himself move in the plastic mirror. He was nowhere near his old form, but he was in better shape than he had been in for a long time. That was something, at least.

But as he danced with imaginary opponents striking at him. Ferret felt a sense of defeat in his moves. He was sober, but that didn't bring Shar or Shanti back. There was an emptiness where they had been, and he did not see that anything would ever fill that space.

After almost three local months, Dindabe put him to work in the pub, tending the bar. Ferret was allowed to mix drinks, if not to consume them, and he spent at least one shift a day serving patrons in the Electric Eel. It wasn't that he needed the money, certainly. It was more that Gura thought idleness high on the list of things to be avoided; since becoming sober. Ferret could handle his training at the school capably, if not easily; more, the Gura had taken in another student, and she was given the position of foot.

He was working the bar on a rainy Threeday evening when his life took another abrupt turning.

Ferret sloshed thirty cc's of rum into a mixing glass, added equal amounts each of vodka and bourbon, a squirt of havman-jani fireoil and sparkling wine as a mixer. The drink was called a Kohler Killer, and two of them would put most men into a drunken stupor. The man who ordered this one was a local, and he could put down three of them and still walk a straight line. Amazing the tolerance one could attain for chem.

Most of the people who came to the Eel were locals, and the place had a reputation for being reasonably priced and peaceful. There was no bouncer, per se, but Dindabe usually had one of his students working when he wasn't there himself. The locals knew who Dindabe was, knew too that he preferred peace in his pub, and was willing to do whatever it took to keep it that way. Locals didn't fight or even raise their voices too loudly in the Eel when Dindabe was around. On that particular evening, however, a starliner in need of major repair hung overhead in high orbit. The liner's ship-to-ground lighter had landed and discharged a fair-sized load of passengers while the necessary modifications were being effected on the vessel. A dozen or so passengers had somehow found their way to the Electric Eel, and now sat at the tables and bar. The smell of flickstick smoke drifted over the bar to Ferret, the pleasant aroma of burned cashews made into purple plumes by the smokers of the mild hallucinogen.

There was trouble in the pub's atmosphere. Ferret could feel it upon his skin like damp tropical air, but he was too busy mixing drinks and chem to worry much about it. Besides, the Gura was there, chatting with the regular customers, and Ferret had no doubts about Dindabe being able to handle any problems that might arise.

There came a lull when everybody was happy with his or her current beverage or smoke or powder, and Ferret had a moment to rest. He took the time to pinpoint the disturbance that had been bothering him.

At a table close to the door, four men sat drinking Sting from small porcelain cups. The drink was native to Simba(.)Numa in the CinqueKirli System, and was a hard-edged concoction that tended to make the drinker nasty when too much was imbibed. The four were on their second cup, and Ferret had no intention of selling them a third. They were spacers, ship's crew, and he figured them for shore leave from the starliner. Two of them were average-sized, the other two larger, and all four of them had the muscular look of men who worked with heavy machinery. They wore blue sweats and workboots, and talked quietly among themselves, giving no overt signs of trouble.

Three meters away from the four, a single figure sat at a table meant for six. Though the place was crowded, no one made any move to share the table. This character was part of the problem. Ferret felt, the focus of the four shippers' attention. And an interesting figure it was, too.

The person at the table alone was smallish, and draped in folds of some silky, dark gray cloth from head to feet. The robe left bare only the hands and a swathe over the eyes; the former were thin and well-formed, but showed no rings or jewelry. It was impossible to tell if the person under that covering was male or female, human or mue. Occasionally, he or she would raise a cup of splash and, using a straw pushed under a fold of cloth, would sip at the liquid.

"Something?" Dindabe said, suddenly standing right next to him.

Ferret managed to keep from starting. The Gura had a way of sneaking up on him without being seen or heard. "Maybe."

"The four by the door," Dindabe said.

Ferret nodded. Naturally Dindabe would have seen the potential problem. Ferret felt a sudden need to show his teacher that he had not lost all of his former abilities. "They're watching that one," he said, nodding slightly and pointing with his nose. "There, all wrapped in the dark blanket."

"A Sibling of the Shroud," Dindabe said. "A priestess."

A Woman, then. That Dindabe could tell did not surprise Ferret. But he now felt itchy. His scalp tightened. Action threatened. "Do you want me to ask them to leave?"

"No."

Even as his teacher spoke, one of the four men stood, the largest of the group. He sauntered toward the robed figure Dindabe had named priestess. The other three men also left their chairs, and drifted away from the table in different directions. They were surrounding the woman, trying not to be obvious, but failing. Half the pub's patrons were aware of the action now. The
wa
inside the Eel had been disturbed.

"Gura—" Ferret began.

"Watch. Watch and learn."

The largest of the four men stood looming over the seated woman. From behind the bar, Ferret couldn't make out the words, but the man's tone was angry and challenging. The woman looked up, inscrutable under her robed cover.

Around the pair, the other shippers converged, moving closer, shifting into fighting stances.

Ferret risked a glance at Dindabe. What was he doing? The priestess would be catfood before he or Ferret could get there, if they didn't move now—

"Watch them, not me," Dindabe ordered. He smiled, as if enjoying a private joke.

Ferret returned his gaze to the shrouded woman just as the shipper reached down with one big hand to grab the costume. Here it was—!

Later, when he had time to reconstruct it, Ferret's amazement was even more profound; but even in the moment, there was no lack of awe.

The small woman danced. For an instant, it seemed as if Shar had been reborn, so smooth and light were the robed woman's moves. She spun up from her chair as if she were lighter than air, spun away from the big shipper, who suddenly seemed to think it necessary to dive facedown upon the table, breaking the thing under the weight of his jump.

The others moved in, lancing at the woman with kicks and punches, cursing as they attacked. These men were fighters, more than ordinarily adept, and they flowed smoothly in their strike patterns. Ferret recognized skill, likely born of theoretical training tested in dozens of practical pub brawls, as the three moved in for the kill.

They might as well have been standing still, asleep on their feet. The woman danced around them like a butterfly around rooted flowers. She twirled, twisted, leaped, and each time she passed one of the attackers, that man seemed suddenly intent on learning to fly. But they were not birds, these shippers, and they flew like boulders in heavy gravity, smashing into walls and onto the floor.

Ten seconds after it began, the fight was ended. The four attackers lay sprawled like damp paper dolls, and the priestess stood quietly in the center of the pub, her arms by her sides, the pale brown of her eyes calm and impassive from within the gray shroud she wore. An apt name, shroud, Ferret felt. He had never seen anything so impressive. Even the coin thrower of his youth paled beside this fighter.

He tried to think of something clever to say. "Not what you'd call a passive order, are they?"

Next to him, Dindabe's smile still shined. "One of the four players who could beat me at my prime was an arrogant bastard named Zoner," he said. "The rest of us hated him, but we respected his skills. Siblings don't walk the Flex, but those of us who did heard rumors of their art. It is called sumito, and they have developed a complex and intricate system, as you have just seen. Zoner was hot to try one of the martial priests. Against the rules, he challenged one of them. That isn't done with civilians, you know, it's bad form to even defend seriously against one, much less
attack
a nonplayer. But Zoner loaded himself up with weapons and to Perdition with the rules."

Dindabe continued to look at the woman, who returned to her seat and lifted her drink to sip at it.

"Zoner bought himself a quick loss unarmed, like you just saw. So he pulled a poisoned dart. The shrouder took him out without working up a sweat. Zoner could beat me nine of ten, and a nonplayer handled him like a mother does a small child. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Zoner never had a real chance."

"Dead?"

Dindabe nodded. "Stabbed himself with his own dart trying to kill the priest. Karma."

Ferret thought about that for a moment.

Dindabe said, "Come on. There's trash to be thrown out. And you should meet the priestess."

"Me? Why?"

"A feeling."

After helping Gura move the unconscious men outside, where a medical van shortly arrived and loaded them, Ferret and the Gura went back into the pub. Ferret followed his teacher to where the robed figure sat.

"I am Elvin Dindabe, I own this place. Sister. I am sorry you were bothered here."

Though he could not see it behind the face wrap, Ferret was sure the woman smiled. When she spoke, her voice was deep, but definitely feminine. "Had you prevented it here, I would have had to deal with it later."

Ferret got the sudden impression he was only catching part of the conversation. It was almost as if they were speaking a foreign language; or, rather, some higher form of speech with nuances he could not quite catch. He thought he heard Dindabe apologizing for not preventing the fight, though the Gura didn't say exactly that; he also thought he heard the woman acknowledge that Dindabe could have short-circuited the attack, but chose not to do so, and was forgiven for it. How very odd—

"This is Ferret. My student."

Ferret snapped himself from his inattention. The woman regarded him for several seconds, her brown eyes unblinking, before she inclined her head in the slightest of nods.

"Ah," she finally said. "And now mine, I see."

Huh?

Dindabe smiled. "You honor me, Sister."

"Not at all. It is you who honor me." She and Dindabe gave each other slow nods, bows, and the woman looked back at Ferret. "In the order, I am called Moon," she said. "Welcome to the Siblings of the Shroud."

Ferret stared at her, uncomprehending. What was she talking about?

What in all the Seven Levels of Hell was going on here?

Eighteen

DINDABE AND FERRET left the pub and went to the school, leaving Moon sipping at her drink. He might be a lot of things, Ferret thought, but a candidate for any kind of priesthood was not among them.

At the school, he said so. But even as he did, he heard a defensiveness in his voice. It was almost a whine.

The two of them stood on the rubbery mats, the mirrors casting their reflections back at them. The background smell of old sweat draped the walls, a testimony to the neuromus-cular skills practiced within the school.

"You don't understand," Dindabe said. "The Siblings are very selective. They don't take just anyone." He stared off at the wall for a second. "I would have given anything to learn their art after I first saw it, anything. They wouldn't accept my application."

"I'm sorry, Gura, but—"

"But
what
! Who are you? You're a man who wears the name of an animal as a disguise. A thief, a drifter, a man who has money but nothing else! What
good
are you? What purpose do you serve?"

Beneath the anger, Ferret felt Dindabe's pain, and it resonated with his own like the strings of some hurtful musical instrument. Dindabe had examined his own life, that was obvious, and he now played part of his wonderment song aloud, revealing his personal fears: Who am I? Why am I here?