Skeen's Return Read online

  She let the Ants pat her and stroke her and she gave them silver bits and taffy and smiled at them and told them how clever they were and sent them, chattering, giggling out of the cavern.

  Hopflea came ambling back, his arms full of Skeen’s gear; he settled behind the chair, sitting cross-legged on the furs piled there and began exploring the pockets in the belt, fiddling with the contents until Timka wanted to scream. She didn’t know what those things were, but was sure they were dangerous and probably fragile. Skeen would be furious if that idiot broke them. He tucked everything back where he found it, began playing with the darter. He shook it, frowned as it sloshed. He fished out one of Skeen’s picklocks and began prying at every crack. Timka locked her teeth—stupid little twit, you’ll wreck it—breath hissed through tight nostrils, claws scraped over stone. He put the pick away, shook the darter again, peered down the front end. Timka tensed, but the slideplate was clicked home over the sensor spot and he never managed to dislodge it. He set the darter aside and began fiddling with the cutter; the cover over its firing sensor defeated his prying fingers, though he did manage to get the cap off its business end. He peered into the aperture, tried to get at the jeweled lens that glittered inside, then threw the enigmatic little cylinder onto the furs and picked up the money pouch; counting the coins inside was obviously a more satisfactory experience. He fondled them, piled them onto his thigh, counted them again and with evident reluctance slipped them one by one back in the pouch.

  The last child she could see climbed from the chair and pattered away into the dark mouth of the nearest out-passage, the sound of his feet fading swiftly. Angelsin stirred, sighed, turned her head; she said something but the echoes scrambled the words so badly Timka couldn’t catch a single syllable. Hopflea gathered up Skeen’s gear, set everything where he’d found it, searched out the cutter and tucked it away, climbed up the chair’s side and dumped his load in Angelsin’s lap. She began picking through them much as he had, murmuring to Hopflea, raising her voice to push questions at Lipitero, questions the Ykx ignored. Lipitero sat silent, huddled, the silky blue-violet cloth draping in graceful folds over her body, pooling around her on the floor of the cage.

  Timka curled into a knot, tail wrapped around her muzzle. The cold of the stone was seeping into her in spite of her heavy belly fur; she thought she felt it chilling her brain, she couldn’t decide what to do now that she was loose and able to act. Skeen wouldn’t dither about like this. She seemed to know this sort of thing as if it were imprinted so deeply in her bone and blood she didn’t need to think. How comforting that must be, how simple. Timka found herself starting to boil with resentment, envy, a sense of futility; she closed her eyes, locked her forepaws over her face and struggled to calm down. I’m fighting with ghosts I’ve created for myself. Ghosts. Her envy of Skeen’s competence and her despair at her own ineffectiveness were distortions of a far more complex reality. She was laboring against years of conditioning and doing not so badly at it. Stop biting your own tail, Ti, get on with some positive thinking. You don’t have to depend on anyone, even Skeen. You’ve proved that. You’re wasting time you haven’t got. Think! She lifted her head, yawned, flared her whiskers, opened and closed her eyes and kneaded at the stone, these small actions stirring the sluggish eddies in her brain as she began assessing the difficulties ahead of her.

  Four Funor shorthorns, clumping about before the line of cell doors, were too far off to be an immediate problem, especially if she could get hold of the darter, but they’d have to be taken out fairly soon. The children were gone. For the moment. Lifefire solo knew when they’d be back. Hopflea. Treacherous, yes, a nasty fighter. Take him first? He’s the most mobile, the most dangerous. Angelsin. She looked formidable, well, she was formidable, but she couldn’t move fast … no, no, can’t count on that. She stretched her mouth in a cat grin. As Skeen would say. If Angelsin was angry enough, who could guess what she would do.

  Hopflea listened, his body limning the intensity of his concentration; he nodded, climbed down the chair and started toward the cells.

  Timka came onto her feet in a quick and utterly silent surge. She hesitated a second longer to make sure he wasn’t headed for the passages. No mistake. Going for one of the prisoners. She went leaping from behind the stalagmites, covering the distance to the chair in great silent bounds.

  A shorthorn yelled.

  Timka gathered herself, leaped and landed in Angelsin’s lap. Claws retracted, she slapped at the Funor woman’s face, then doubled up and closed her teeth on the belt with the holstered darter.

  Angelsin’s arms whipped around her, surprising her with their crushing monstrous strength, frightening her; before she could react, she was nearly dead, Angelsin’s steel fingers digging into her body, driving for the S’yer that held her life, the master control of her malleable body. Pain. She was burning. She squawled and lashed out with claws and teeth but she couldn’t get any purchase or put any power behind her blows; she did some damage to the massive arms. She could smell blood, but not enough, not nearly enough, most of the time she was clawing air.

  Sound like cicada scrapings. So odd and unexpected it got through to her though she paid little attention; her life was burning out of her; Angelsin’s hand were digging deeper and deeper. Cicada scrapings. Louder.

  Angelsin’s arms went slack. Her hands fell away.

  Timka rolled off her lap, fell onto the furs piled up around the chair. She didn’t wait to catch her breath or discover what had happened, but shifted immediately to her Pallah form and scrambled frantically until her hands closed on the belt. She whirled onto her feet, ripped the holster flap open and caught hold of the darter’s butt. With a continuation of that movement, she swept her arm in a whipping arc that flung holster and belt off the barrel’s end, flipped off the cover plate and put darts into the shorthorns running at her, bellowing; they fell away and she darted Hopflea before he could skitter into more solid cover.

  She stood a moment holding the darter stiffly in front of her, then she dropped to her knees as her legs lost all strength; shaking with relief, she let her arms drop, the darter fell cold and heavy on her thigh. Her fingers had the strength of wet paper; they opened and let the darter slide away; it fell onto the fur without a sound and lay tilted against her foot. Lipitero was yelling at her, her name over and over; the Ykx sounded distant, weak, as if she was so far away her voice barely reached Timka. She was rattling the bars of the cage, that sound penetrated the haze, made Timka’s head ache, but she couldn’t raise the energy to do anything about it.

  Cicada scrapings. She twitched, moved a hand; her shoulder prickled, arm and hand went numb, for one startling moment it seemed to her a part of her body had vanished; she straightened up, fighting the lethargy that was like chains wrapped around her. Something heavy fell against her.

  Gradually her shaking stopped and the heaviness began to flow away. After a few deep breaths, she lifted her head. There was a solid weight pressing into her side but she ignored it as she gazed blankly at Lipitero.

  The Ykx was busy at the cage door. With a soft exclamation filled with satisfaction, she pushed at the bars and the door swung open. She came swirling out, her robe fluttering in the local breeze about her vigorously moving body. She brushed past Timka who smelled the sweet bite of her fur and the subtle soapy aroma of the fluttering silk. She scooped up the darter, stepped back so Timka could see it. “How does this work?”

  Timka moved her shoulders, pleased and rather surprised to find her strength returning. “Point the long cylinder, touch the dark glassy spot near your forefinger.”

  She watched as Lipitero lifted the weapon, held it at arm’s length and put two darts into Angelsin. The big woman was bleeding sluggishly from the scratches on her arms and her skirt had a few rips in it, but overall, Timka had done very little damage despite her frantic struggles. She stared at Angelsin, thought about the cicada sound. “What happened?”

  Lipitero didn’t answer her
. She’s good at not answering, Timka thought. The Ykx turned a rapid circle, scanning the cavern, as much of it as she could make out, then faced Timka. “Can you move?” Impatience sharpened the words.

  Timka sighed and lurched onto her feet. One of Angelsin’s Ants fell past her; she’d missed seeing him somehow. She blinked, touched her toe to the fingers frozen about a short ugly knife. Lipitero stepped around her, put a dart in the boy. “Nice weapon,” she said. “How long will they be out?”

  Timka rubbed at her arras, shivered; it was cold and dank in this huge chamber in spite of the heat put out by the lamps and she regretted the loss of the cat-weasel’s thick fur. “At least an hour, probably longer. What was that noise? You got them off me. Thanks.”

  Lipitero tapped at her chest with a long thumbnail very like a claw and produced a muffled metallic click. “Stunner,” she said. “Fast but only a short time relief, enough to catch your breath. The effect passes off somewhere around five minutes.” She looked over her shoulder at Angelsin. “Short range too, I didn’t know if I could reach her; Lifefire’s blessing I did. If you’re feeling shaky now, I probably clipped you with the spray from the beam.”

  “Doesn’t matter, she was killing me.”

  “Formidable, that one.”

  “Eh, Petro, I’ve never been so scared.” Timka sneezed, shivered. “Let’s fetch the others and get out of here.”

  Lipitero nudged the darter’s barrel up and down the side of her face as if she scratched an itchy thought. “Complications,” she said slowly. “We’ve got to decide.… Get your clothes and let Skeen and the Aggitj loose, I’ll keep watch here.” She tapped the darter against her thigh. “Ah … it might be a good idea to hurry, I’m feeling.…” She didn’t finish the thought and didn’t need to.

  Skeen stood with hands on hips, examining Angelsin. A half-smile lifting one corner of her long mouth, her yellow eyes laughing, she turned to Timka, raised her right eyebrow.

  Timka tugged nervously at her blouse. “She had the darter in her lap with the rest of your gear. I thought I could get it and get away.” She rubbed a fold of cloth between thumb and forefinger, embarrassment mingling with a remnant of resentment. “I didn’t think she could move that fast. Petro stunned her or I’d be dead.” She stared at her feet and felt like an inept child.

  Skeen laughed. “That’s one of the great secrets, Ti, having good backup around for the times you screw up. Me, I’m pleased as hell you and Petro did all the work getting us loose.” She turned slowly, her laughter fading as she surveyed the dozens of dark holes pocking the arching sidewall between clusters of stalagmites and stalactites. “Djabo! What a maze.” She stamped around and scowled at Angelsin. “Do we have to wake her to get out of here?”

  Lipitero held out the darter. “That’s not important; if we get lost, Ti-cat can nose our way up.” She started kicking about in the furs. Looking for the belt, Timka thought; she frowned, trying to remember where it had flown to. “Seems to me this puts a knot in our plans,” Lipitero said. “Ah.” She scooped up the belt, stood holding it in one hand while she fluttered the fingers of the other at the comatose Angelsin. “Otherwise we’ve got to do something about her. I haven’t the vaguest notion how to handle her, Skeen. She’s got too many ways of striking at us. I strongly suggest we get away before the mountains land on us. Any ship going anywhere.”

  Skeen chewed on her lip, scowled at Angelsin. “Another port I might agree. I could always leave a message with the Aggitj at the Slukra, they’d see Maggí got it. But.…” She glanced round at Lipitero.

  Timka recognized the half rueful, half sassy look Skeen got when she was about to say something possibly hurtful and certainly true.

  “Truth is, you’re the problem, Petro. You’re the one puts the rest of us at risk. Here anyway. This slaveport. Look what happened where we’ve at least got maneuvering room—on a ship, well, I don’t want to put that much temptation on someone I don’t know. No. We have to wait for Maggí.”

  Timka looked round at the shadowy spaces of the great chamber. Maneuvering room for sure. Echoes murmured over every word spoken here; it was getting so they murmured over and around the words in her head. The long difficult night was turning eerily unreal; she was tired, she was filled with a low-grade anger that only time would bleed away, she was getting more and more impatient with Skeen and the silent Aggitj who stood a short distance off, waiting with that amiable patience of theirs for someone to decide something. For the first time she doubted Skeen’s ability to deal with the mess they were in; for the first time she was painfully aware of Skeen’s tendency to alternate between terrifying rashness and an irritating obsession with safety where she fussed for endless moments, even hours, overproviding emergency exits in case something went wrong. Timka wanted to shout at her, get on with it, Skeen; she didn’t because she didn’t quite know how to do that getting on.

  “Well,” Lipitero said, “that being so, what do we do?” She held out the belt, took back the darter for a moment while Skeen buckled it on.

  Skeen clipped on the lanyard, stood a moment, hands on hips, looking around at the fallen, finishing with the huge slumped figure of the Funor woman. “Hal.”

  “I hear you, Skeen ka.”

  “You think you and your cousins could lift her,” she nodded at Angelsin, “back up to the chek?”

  Hal wrapped his hand about a lamp pole, shoved at it, nodded with satisfaction as the tough wood resisted. “Cut us two of these and let Lipitero lend us that robe, we could make a stretcher.” He grinned. “Be some heavy, but …” he flexed his biceps, “we got practice hauling barrels of saltfish.”

  Ders giggled. A quick skipping step took him to Angelsin’s side. He lifted her meaty arm, let it splat down. “Yip-yip, can’t carry her, we can always roll her up.”

  “Why bother.” Hart’s voice was gruff, his words clipped. “Cut her throat. Save a lot of trouble. You don’t want to do it, I will. Scum like that shouldn’t be let live.”

  Skeen opened her mouth, closed it, made the tight little sign with her left hand that Timka read as don’t bother arguing, he won’t understand you and you haven’t got the words to convince him. She’d seen that sign several times before when Skeen had given up on her; what brought it on now was something Timka couldn’t answer. She agreed with every word Hart said, it seemed to her the best solution would be to cut that massive throat and hide the body for the short time they’d have to wait. What was Skeen doing? Did she have some weird idea she should defend this monster? Timka got a strong feeling that for a brief moment she and the others were on the far side of a glass wall that had come down between them and Skeen, that Skeen was seeing all of them as enemies, though why she felt that she didn’t know. I’m so tired I’m hallucinating, she thought.

  Abruptly Skeen relaxed. “Bad idea, Hart. I take it you’ve never seen what happens when a boss like Angelsin either vanishes or is killed. Soon as the news got out—and it would, my friend, the moment her lines of command went slack and that wouldn’t take long—there’d be at least half a dozen contenders for her place. In that kind of war there aren’t any neutrals allowed. You dance with one side or another and hope you pick the strongest. And there’s more shit could land on us. She’s got uphill connections, Hart; what if they decided to close the port and wipe out the Cusps?”

  “Why should they? For something like that.” A stubborn growl in his voice.

  Skeen sighed. “Think a little, Hart. She’s too open about what she is, what she does, like she’s flaunting herself in their faces. She might be outlaw but she’s not out of touch. She runs South Cusp for them, keeps order, collects taxes, lets them keep their hands clean while they make a juicy profit from her acts. Hai!” She slapped her forehead. “No rants, Skeen, this ain’t the time.” She dug into her tool kit, took out the cutter and knelt by one of the taller lamp poles. “Be ready to catch, Hal.” She sliced the cutter beam through the wood close to the stone, watched him steady the pole. “Angel
sin can’t move fast.” Timka made a sound in her throat, Skeen grinned over her shoulder at her. “Not on her feet, you’ll admit that.” She moved on her knees to another long pole. “Ready for the second, ’ware the hot oil.” She leaned into the pole, cutter ready, waited until Domi was there to catch it, then sliced it loose. “And she’s vulnerable; let someone get the idea she’s being mauled about and having to take it, she’s done. Depends on how good she is at keeping her temper, but maybe we’ve got a thin chance there.” She cut the lamp off the first pole and set it on the stone beside the furs. “If we can maneuver this so no one knows what we’re doing to her, if we can make her believe all we want is to get the hell out without getting burned, then maybe, just maybe we can keep the lid on long enough for Maggí to show up.” She dealt with the second lamp, then stood back and watched as the Aggitj cut strips from the tough blue-violet silk and bound Lipitero’s robe of concealment onto the poles. “It’s going to be a nervous few days, that’s for sure.” She slapped her forehead again. “Djabo! I am not thinking. Time. Time. What time is it? Anybody got an idea?” Not waiting for an answer, she started feeling in her belt pockets, then poked about in the pouch. “Ah.” She slid the ringchron onto her finger, glanced at it and smiled. “Well. Not too bad. About two hours past midnight. That gives us plenty of time to get set before we have to face the world.”

  “Skeen, aren’t you forgetting something?” Timka nudged the Ant with her toe. “This one. Hopflea. The shorthorns. What do we do with them?”

  Skeen made an impatient gesture. “You want to do some throat cutting … No!” she shouted as Hart started toward the boy. “I was joking. Put them in the cells, we can let Angelsin deal with them later. Yes, I know, probably comes to the same thing, but she’ll be happier if we let her handle things like that. Believe me. Better she doesn’t think she’s completely helpless. No. It is not good tactics to make her desperate. We want her to cooperate, not dig her hooves in and decide to take as many of us with her as she can. Of course she’ll be plotting the minute she wakes up; I want that. It’ll keep her from doing something precipitate, like ordering her Ants to swarm us, calling in her hardboys to back them up; she won’t do that unless she’s pushed into it. I think I’m shifty enough to thwart her, for a while anyway. Um. Bring Hopflea over here. We’d better have him up there too; he might be missed. He shouldn’t weigh much, you think you could carry him, Petro? I’d like Ti-cat running scout ahead while I guard our rear. Good. Weil, let’s get moving. Sooner we’re settled in, the better I’ll like it.”