Skeen's Return

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  Skeen’s Return

  Jo Clayton

  WELL, HERE WE ARE AGAIN; YOU’VE HAD YOURSELF A NICE BREAK, TIME NOW TO GET BACK TO OUR QUEST.

  SKEEN AND COMPANY HAVE DONE SOME REORGANIZING AND SHE HAS FACED THE FACT THAT THE RETURN TO THE STRANGER’S GATE IS GOING TO BE AS LONG AND DANGEROUS AND TEDIOUS AS THE JOURNEY AWAY FROM IT.

  or

  WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE FOR ONE OF FLITTER HINKEY’S RETREADS.

  “Djabo’s ivory overbite.” Skeen pushed her fingers through her hair until it stood in dark spikes about her thin face. A dozen meters south of her and considerably more than that above her, near the elaborate Gate that led to the Min Temple Maze which filled the center of the Sacred Island, Pegwai and the sponsors from the Sydo Gather were in a noisy, arm-waving argument with the Island sacerdotes while Plains Min stood about looking superior. “Every argument we covered in the past five days.”

  She closed her eyes. Tibo, ah, Tibo you baster, where are you? what are you doing? where’s my Picarefy? why did you dump me? Same old questions, same old nothing. No answers, no way of finding out anything, anything, anything at all. She glared at the shifting knot of Min and Ykx circling about Pegwai and the Sydo Remmyo. Fuckin’ backassed world. Months! Months before I can get back to the Gate. Months while you’re skittering Djabo knows where. I can’t stand it, I.… No, Skeen. Cool, Skeen. One foot after the other. You’ll get there. Yes, you will. If you don’t fall on your face. She sighed, clasped her hands behind her back, turned to Lipitero. “They have to go over everything again?”

  Morning started out well enough. When dawn was still red in the eastern sky, a lakeboat beached on the sand below the Gather cliffs. Half a dozen Min Ykx from the Sacred Island in the middle of the lake lifted from the deck, drifted over and dropped to stand before the Sydo delegates and exchange ritual greetings with them.

  Britt moved closer to Skeen. The guide’s plushy fur roughed and his glands gave off an acrid stench as he watched the Islanders. He didn’t like them or want anything to do with them. “They’ll cut your guts out,” he said. “All the gold on Mistommerk wouldn’t change that. You keep away from them.” He growled, a soft sound inaudible a step away. A strained silence for several minutes. He spoke again, “You can trust the Ykx, that’s a plus for you. They’re cunning gits and you’d better watch for bait-and-switch before the handshake, but after that, no worry. The last time I talked with Dibratev, he said everything was set. He said the boat would be there this morning, docking out to the Island.” He extruded his claws, picked delicately at the fur on his arm. “Plains Min you can do business with. Get past the hostility and they play by the rules. They let me come and go as I please; they get more out of me that way. Yours is a one-shot, so maybe you should worry some. I hear when they go down to Cida Fennakin, what they buy most of is slaves, ones with skills they can use; they like Pass-Throughs because these know things most other Nemin have forgot. That’s you, Skeen, Dih’s a prize, too. And given I was pushed to it, I’d say they’d give a lot to twist what the Boy knows out of him. Min and Chalarosh mix like oil and fire. Chulji, well, I’d say he wasn’t worth their trouble. Too young to know much, but there’s the chance they’d consider holding him against the services of older Skirrik. Other hand, he’s only Min Skirrik, they despise their kin who’ve put off what they call the True Min shapes and they wouldn’t be sure how much True Skirrik might be willing to pay for him. Lifefire solo knows what they’d do to Timka, no, that’s not something which wants thinking about. So listen,” he drew his claws lightly along her arm, waking memories that made her shiver with pleasure, “listen, Skeen, you and Timka had better split night watch between you. And maybe Pegwai. For a Scholar, he’s pretty shrewd. I’m not saying they’ll jump you, they probably won’t. Just be careful, that’s all.” He glared at the Island Min, growled again, then stalked away, disappearing into the mouth of the Guest Valley.

  Lipitero shook out her flight skins, folded her arms so the skins draped gracefully about her body. “Don’t fuss, Skeen. It’s the nature of the beast. He was born to make trouble, that one, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Pegwai was intermittently visible among the gleaming shimmering flight skins that shifted with every movement of Ykx and Min Ykx bodies, catching the light and turning it to liquid ambers and bronzes. Mixed among the True and Min Ykx were other figures, long and narrow, taller than both sorts. Plains Min. Bipedal. The sharply defined eyes of avian predators, melting gold irids hot and hungry. Long narrow hands, the number of fingers varying from three to seven. In a curious asymmetry none of these Min had the same number of fingers on their right and left hands; four fingers and three, seven and five or any other of the possible non-matching combinations. Their faces had a vague similarity to the Ykx faces, the malleable Min flesh reacting to the presence of the Nemin on their borders. Odd though, odd that they kept their original forms so completely. Timka’s folk, the Mountain Min, were mostly Pallah in their primary forms and Min Skirrik, well, only the Skirrik could pick out Min from True. These Plains Min were more intransigent in every way.

  And having noted that, what did it say about the Islanders who were fully Ykx down to the ornamentation they chose for their harnesses? Was serving on the Sacred Island as much exile as honor? A weeding out of weaker flesh?

  The troublemaker doing most of the talking was a shining almost ghostly figure, creamy white all over with no gradation in the color of his fur like the other Min and True Ykx showed. The Ciece Kirkosh was as vehement in his cold restrained way as Pegwai was, dividing his diatribe between the Scholar and the Speaker for the Sydo Gather.

  Skeen watched the exchange, fuming. “What’s taking so long? I’ve paid the gold, what more do they want?” She kicked a pebble against a boulder, watched it go bounding off, glared at the dusty splotch on her boot, then started jigging about in small tight circles, trying (but not too hard) to work off her temper.

  Lipitero yawned, settled herself on a flat boulder. “That spook thinks we’re his pets and he gets his fur ruffled when he sees outsiders coming between him and us.”

  “Pets.” Skeen mouthed the word like a worm dropped on her tongue.

  “Oh, yes. They all do. When they get too pushy we have to slap them down, and things get tense for a while until the Remmyo’s cadre chat them into forgetting their snit. Look. The Remmyo’s interrupting Kirkosh. Shouldn’t be much longer now.”

  “So now we’re back where we started, all that time and energy wasted.”

  “So it seems.” She chuckled, her eyes narrowed to slits and gleaming with a gentle mischief. ‘You’ve never had to wait through this nonsense before? Are folk on the other side so reasonable and calm about things? Do you tell me you’ve never had to sit and sit and sit to wait for idiots to talk themselves into doing something everyone including them knew they were going to do?”

  “Oh, endlessly. Endlessly, Petro. Still, there’s always the hope that it won’t be necessary in some new place.”

  “Ever happened?”

  “No.” Skeen sighed. “But I keep looking; I’m as unreasonable as the rest.”

  Lipitero laughed, then shook her head; she sat silent for several minutes watching Skeen fidget about, working her body to bleed off the impatience and irritation that might warp her judgment come a crisis. With considerable relief, she interrupted a series of squat thrusts and pointed along the shore. “You can relax, Skeen. Look there. The riverboat has arrived; it’s tying up at the dock end.”

  The long narrow ship rocked gently against the pilings. Black and sleek, with stubby masts and waterjet
s flaring from its stern, its hybrid shape was for Skeen a paradigm of the incongruities and anachronisms she found here on Mistommerk. The crew moved about on deck, keeping their backs to the land; some leaned on the railings watching the strangers with a hostility they didn’t bother concealing. Skeen remembered Britt’s comment about what the Plains Min would like to do to Timka; what she saw in those mean faces told her how right he’d been.

  The Aggitj, who usually took little notice of pointless prejudiced hostility, were staying well away from the boat; they sat in a tight group on a tussock of coarse grass, the Chalarosh boy pressed up close against Hal’s leg. He’d adopted Hal as a surrogate father after the young Aggitj killed the Kalakal assassins responsible for the slaying of his mother and father. Chulji squatted a short distance off, his tripartite eyes fixed on the Min crew, his forelimbs moving restlessly, his mouthparts snapping together with vigorous disapproval. He had budded into a happy family, spent his childhood in a friendly and peaceful society, lapped in the warmth of a general approval, a society filled with immutable hierarchies that tucked every hatchling and every budling into a niche it would never quite break out of no matter what it did or felt, but also a society that accepted it without reservations, that cherished it and tolerated its rebellions, its idiosyncracies. On this long trip he’d grown accustomed to a similar acceptance from outsiders and, more than that, to praise for his talents. He was angry at these Min for rejecting him without cause and, like them, made no attempt to hide what he was feeling. Some distance farther along the shore Timka sat alone by the water, her knees drawn up, her arms crossed over them, hands dangling; she stared out across the lake, lost in what looked to be unhappy thoughts.

  Skeen strolled away from Lipitero and walked to the end of the dock where she stood inspecting the boat and ignoring the scowls from the Crew. The craft looked swift and efficient, good on the river but probably a heller to run out on open water. Djabo bless, since Chulji had mastered his waterform, none of them suffered from seasickness; even the short distance across the lake to the mouth of the river was likely to be tricky on the stomach. Built like a spearhead with a knife for a keel, not meant for bulky cargo, that craft. Slaves, fah! Skeen stared into hot gold eyes with a hostility of her own and a comforting sense of superiority; she might be a Rooner raping the ancient histories of assorted worlds, but she drew the line at dealing in flesh. Nostrils flaring, she turned her back on them and walked away.

  Kicking aimlessly at small stones, she wound through the sprays of large and small rocks along the stony shore and finally dropped beside Timka. “Hurry up and wait,” she murmured.

  Timka looked blank a moment, then smiled. “Are you that anxious to get back? Think about Telka and her minions waiting to skewer us all. That should fuel your patience a while longer.”

  “Pah!” Skeen wiped at her boot with the heel of her hand, rubbing away the dust from the stone marks. “Fuckin’ right I want to get back.” Gloom saturated her voice. “Telka? We’ll fox her till she doesn’t know which end is up. Thing is, no more gold left, just small stuff; I don’t like being tapped out this far from a city.”

  “First time I saw you worry about money.”

  “It’s a bitch trying to wring coin out of a bunch of rocks.” She scowled over her shoulder at the barren shore.

  “Our fares are paid; there shouldn’t be any bother about funds until we reach Cida Fennakin.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve seen this kind of thing before. The only cure for such wounded souls is a slather of gold. Guess whose gold.”

  “The Ykx will provide; you’ve got them round the neck. Stop grumbling.”

  “It’s something to do while that farce is going on.”

  “Why aren’t you over there with Pegwai doing some shouting of your own?”

  “Lipitero. She said I’d better leave the talking to him. Said I’d lose my temper and get us all skinned. Said I wasn’t tactful when I was angry.”

  Timka giggled. “So right.”

  “I know. I know.” Skeen passed her tongue across her upper lip. “What a lousy place. What do they do to pass an evening round here?”

  “You asking or still muttering?”

  “Still muttering. Never mind. Tell me what you used to do, come sundown.”

  “Mmmm.” Timka gazed thoughtfully at the lake-water lapping a handspan from her toes. Truebirds fluttered past overhead, raucous cries each time one of them stooped at the water and rose with a fish in its talons. “When I was living at the hostel with Aunt Carema …” her voice was muted, with a smile in it, her words ambled along at a nostalgic gait, “… and her six apprentices, they were all talented to earth and rooted things. Not me, but Carema wouldn’t talk about my talents or let me boast either. Aunt Carema. She was what you hope all aunts are like, big and shapeless as a pillow and twice as warm. Not sickly sweet, no, she had a tongue that could strip the bark off a tree at twenty paces. She couldn’t abide fools and let you know fast when you were being a silly lackbrain. Evenings … evenings … mmm, some evenings Carema would have friends over, older Min, some of them reaching back so far they’d stopped shifting and spent most of their time rooted deep and husked over; she’d feed them hot worran nuts and apple brandy. And they’d tell us about times that were legend to most of the Min, even the busy-busies like my father. They’d do chants for us, they’d tell stories of things that happened when they were young or sometimes stories other ancients had passed on to them in just this way.” A wistful sigh. “Sounds like it should be dull, but it wasn’t. They were very impressive … yes.” She smoothed her thumb across her chin. “Sometimes there were healers and herb doctors from other Min groups, sometimes travelers who were drifting about because they were restless or involved with quarrels at home. I liked these; I’d sit and listen to them until they were tired of talking. They’d fly in and Carema would give them courtesy robes for the length of their stay and they’d try to tell us and other Min about the world outside. But they’d give that up fast, except for me.” Timka moved her shoulders, grimaced. “Most of my kin and kind don’t want to hear about anyplace else or anyone else. Might disturb their satisfaction with themselves. I don’t know … I still don’t understand why they are so afraid of changing. In spite of everything they do, things do creep in from outside, things do change. We’ve got Pallah and Balayar words not just in Trade-Min but in the home tongue. Balayar spices growing in our gardens, and hundreds of plants from the Skirrik. I could name a lot more … and Telka, miserable, meeching Telka. She and her Holavish seem to think they can stop that creep. ‘Get rid of the Pallah,’ they say, ‘shut the Valley, then we can be True Min again.’” She laughed scorn at that. “The Holavish are laying up weapons and recruiting followers to do that thing. Fools. When I was with the Poet he knew all about them. His brother the Byglave knew. The Besar Casach knew. I didn’t tell them. How could I? I didn’t know anything about Telka’s maneuvers until the Poet told me. He enjoyed letting me know how Telka was using me to stir the Min up, to make them afraid of the Pallah; he’d laugh like a fool and I’d feel a handspan high. Oh, he liked that, especially when the Byglave was riding him about something he did or didn’t do.” She broke off, shook her head. “Sorry about the rant.” She leaned back, looked up the hill. “They’re breaking up. You’d better go see what Pegwai has committed you to.”

  Skeen sniffed, got to her feet, reached her hand down to help Timka up.

  Timka shook her head. “Better not. They’re touchy about stray Min. Send Chulji over to me. We’ll play last on board.”

  Skeen frowned, glanced at the dark ship. “You sure?” She waited a moment longer in case Timka changed her mind, then walked away. She hesitated again as she came even with the Min Skirrik youth, then put her hand on his top shoulder. “Chul, Ti wants to talk with you.”

  “How come?”

  “She’ll tell you. I think you should go.”

  “It’s those Min, isn’t it. Stinking znaks.”

  “Tal
k to Timka.” She moved on toward the dock. Behind her Hal got to his feet, tall and lanky, the silvery not-hair moving softly about his head. He was excited but controlling it; he was the one responsible for the others; he was the oldest, generally the calmest. He urged the others up and went with them to stand behind Skeen as she met Pegwai near the shore end of the dock.

  “How much?” An edgy tartness in her voice.

  Pegwai flung his hand out in an angry angular gesture. “That misbegotten son of a corpseworm claimed we’d pollute the boat so it’d have to be burned, that he couldn’t let it back in the lake. Either the Patjen and his crew should back out of the deal, or you should be charged the full value of the boat.”

  “Yeah, I expected something like that. And?”

  “Dibratev tried soothing him. That didn’t work so he put the squeeze on. The Ykx own a quarter share in the riverboat, and they’re the ones who keep it running. Dibratev mentioned that.” Pegwai grinned. “Dropped it into a moment of silence when Kirkosh was snatching a breath. The silence got a lot louder.” Skeen matched Pegwai’s grin; he chuckled, then turned serious. “The next thing he said was the Sydo Ykx weren’t happy with the Islanders, too much interference and he was looking at Kirkosh when he said it. If that interference kept up, the Ykx might decide to withdraw from the Min-Ykx compact. He wasn’t just throwing that on the scales. He meant it and it showed. The Patjen saw he meant it and turned on Kirkosh so fast it was almost funny. Fare was paid, he said, and if the Ciece wanted to fool with the deal, maybe they’d better call on the Synarc to adjudicate. The Islanders started whispering at Kirkosh and he spent the last half hour worming out of the mess he’d got himself in. Good thing we’re leaving right away, give him a hint of an excuse and we’d be fueling bone fires.”

  Skeen rubbed at the back of her neck. “No extra gold?”

  “None.”

  “When do we board?”