Skeen's Leap Page 20

  SKIRRIK: Their nest domes are made of macerated wood treated with a hardener to waterproof them; they are bunched together like clusters of soapbubbles, each cluster a separate Nest. They are light and airy inside, with drafts that move gently but constantly through the complex structure, carrying with them the fresh green smells from the many small gardens and fountains scattered about the knobby complex of openface rooms and the walkways that are made from a lacy webbing that looks fragile but is capable of supporting the weight of the oldest and heaviest females. Plants grow everywhere, some throwing out blooms, some producing brilliantly colored galls, pods, nodules, or seeds. Except around the fountains, these plants are gathered in clusters like highly colored abstract tapestries, living tapestries that change day by day as parts grow, mature, die, are removed, and replaced. The changes are coaxed and guided by individuals who live near the clusters. Skirrik see no need for privacy, though each has territorial rights to specific corners of the Nest and each spends time and effort making his or her corner both recognizably separate from the nearby areas and recognizably his or hers. The neuters have their own separate society and customs that rarely agree with or impinge on those of the males, the breeding females, or the non-breeding females who act as neuters but are not—their state being a choice usually taken because they are too busy and interested in what they occupy themselves with to take time out for the debilitating process of producing eggs. Also they tend to lack ambition; the road to power among the Skirrik is motherhood. Female minds shut down when the body is gravid, female bodies go into a torpor that lasts until the eggs are expelled. But the breeding female is a nexus of relationships that give her constituencies that make the sacrifice worth while; the greater the number of males mated with, the wider her net is thrown. An average laying produces five fertile females, two fertile males, eight or ten neuters. A special cadre of neuters, the elite among them, tend the brooding mothers, wash and wipe them, feed them, give them drink, treat them like mindless infants for the six months the brooding lasts.

  Pegwai and Skeen followed the immature female through the complex interior of the nest to an airy chamber near the apex of the largest dome. The room swam with sunlight. A huge female sat in the sac-like open space, her carapace a purple so dark it was nearly black, only the sliding highlights as she moved testifying to the true color. The chitin on her upper body was elaborately inlaid with amethyst and ivory until it seemed she wore jeweled armor. Like all mated females, her antennas were a matte black, rising over her head in graceful arcs, so fine at the tips they were more like stiff thread. They swayed as she moved her great head, swayed when she was still, touched by the circling air currents. The walls of the chamber were a mosaic of mosses, greens and ochers, winding threads of vermilion and garnet. A subtle varying of textures wove a secondary pattern across the pattern of the colors. The old female (High Mother Ramanarrahnet) was working on more of the mosses, using tools with points so fine she wore magnifying lenses over her triune eyes. Ferns swayed about her head, providing a lacy sweet-smelling shade.

  Their guide scurried over to the High Mother and skritched at her, more than half of what she said inaudible to the visitors. Ramanarrahnet took off the goggles and turned to gaze at Pegwai. When she spoke, her voice was full and rich though she had a little trouble with her plosives, but her Trade-Min was clear and easily understood. “Pegwai Dih, young Helsi tells me you bring news of Daughter Scholar Dissarahnet.”

  Pegwai bowed low, held out with both hands the thick packet he’d brought from the ship.

  High Mother Ramanarrahnet took the packet and slit it open with the claw at the end of one of her grippers and scanned the looping scrawl that made bold patterns on the shiny surface of the pale gray sheet. When she was finished, she eased herself about, settled her large stiff body more comfortably for talking. A number of the small black neuters came rushing in, helped her shift her legs, moved her worktable out of the way, brought cushions to tuck around her until they were satisfied she was settled properly, then they vanished as quickly as they’d arrived.

  “Daughter Scholar Dissarahnet tells me you go on a long and difficult journey and solicits my easing your way by whatever means I can. We will speak of this in a nush or so. Tell me Scholar Dih, my daughter writes that she is well, but she’d never worry an aged parent. Is she content and healthy?”

  “High Mother, the Scholar Dissarahnet sings when she rises and pursues her studies with the enthusiasm I am sure you remember. She has an ache or two in the joints on cold damp days, but so do I. It’s merely a question of advancing age and bodies starting to wear out, nothing more. The Nest at the Tanul Lumat is well cared for, the nidlings you send to serve the Nest and the Scholars do their work well and without fuss. You may rest easy, High Mother, the Daughter Scholar Dissarahnet is healthy for her age and content with her life.”

  “You reassure me, Scholar Dih, for which I give you many thanks. Lifefire send you success in all you do. What can the Skirrik of Istryamozhe do to forward your journey?”

  “Your kind wishes, High Mother, and perhaps a letter of introduction to a High Mother in Atsila Vana, asking for her favor and reassuring her that my companion and I will do our best not to disturb or bring harm to them.”

  “Yes. What this one can do, Scholar Dih, this one is happy to do.” She turned her head with a spate of Skirrik speech sent young Helsi scurrying out. She turned back, bent her soft triune gaze on Pegwai. “The Ykx, Scholar Dih? You seek them in Atsila Vana?”

  “There’s a report of a Gather on the shores of the Coraish Sea.”

  “I have heard that said; I have also heard that the Gather is empty, but that is a rumor of a rumor. I will not say don’t go, I will say go prepared for disappointment.”

  “Even an empty Gather is worth seeing.”

  Skeen stopped listening as Pegwai and the High Mother began talking about matters she had no interest in. She moved a step to one side and began examining the nearest of the moss mosaics, discovering that the mosaic had a double pattern, the abstract flow of the colors and the figurative arrangement of the textures. If she looked very carefully and endeavored to blot out the play of color, she could make out the image of a male Skirrik, a full-body portrait. She coveted that living tapestry with a passion all the more powerful because it was so impossible to buy or steal.

  The return of the young Skirrik woke her from her frustrated contemplation of the mosses. She looked around to find the High Mother watching her with complacent interest, wondered briefly if she was expected to say something, but in the end kept her silence and waited. It was a fairly safe rule that the powerful of whatever species considered it their prerogative to begin and end all conversations.

  “What you see there, Seeker, is a twenty-summer tapestry. My final mate.”

  “What I see there, High Mother, is a marvel that would grace an emperor’s walls. I sigh because such a wonder will never be mine.”

  “If you wish instructions for the making of your own, Seeker, I will be pleased to give them.”

  “Alas, High Mother, I never stay in one place long enough for such a work to root.”

  “It seems it’s often so among your kind, Seeker.” A deep chuckle that sent the ferns to quivering. A gesture of a forearm, sweeping along her massive form. “I am far too unwieldly to engage in such dartings about.” She turned to Helsi and spoke briskly for a short time. The young Skirrik produced a pad and stylus and began writing rapidly as the High Mother dictated to her; when the letter was finished, she knelt and held it out. Ramanarrahnet took it, read it over, reached out and took the stylus a neuter was holding up. Skeen blinked—the little Skirrik appeared so suddenly it seemed to materialize out of the air. The High Mother signed the letter, folded it into a small packet, reached out again, received a moistened wafer, and used it to seal the packet. A flicker, a faint rustle, and the neuter vanished again. The High Mother held the packet lightly, looked from Skeen to Pegwai, a pensive tilt to her head. After
a brisk nod in answer to whatever question she was considering she shot an order at the guide, moved restlessly in her cushions. The neuter popped in again, this time with a glass globe filled with a transparent liquid; it held the globe up while the High Mother sipped at a long bent glass straw. Skeen glanced at Pegwai; he was standing with his hands clasped behind him, looking sleepy and endlessly patient. She sighed and reached for her own patience.

  Sounds from outside the chamber. The High Mother pushed away the globe, straigtened up a little. “Scholar Dih, I have a favor to ask.”

  Three young Skirrik came in, the immature female and two even younger males, antennas milk white, their only jet the birth gift triangle that one wore set in the chitin of his head, the other on a silver chain about his neck.

  “Milgara Rahneese,” the High Mother said, “daughter’s son, her final brood.” The male with the jet on his head bowed, said nothing. “Chulji Sipor, rahnaffiliate honored friend Sanasa.” The male with the jet on a chain bowed, said nothing. “As a service for a service I ask you Scholar Dih to take these youths with you to the Nests at Atsila Vana. It’s time they started earning jet. In return for their passage and your care of them, I offer this,” she held up the packet, “a letter to Demmirrmar, High Mother of Nest Irrmar, with a request that she tell you all she can discover about the Gather on the Ykx on the Coraish coast and facilitate your visiting that Gather whether it be occupied or empty.”

  Pegwai glanced at Skeen. She grinned and nodded, amused by collecting another brace of stragglers to add to her companions. “One can bunk with me,” she said, “the other with you.”

  The lands changed, the fields became woodlands, the woodlands gradually turned to wetlands as the meanders of the river grew broader and more frequent; the only times it ran fairly straight were when it cut across oxbows. Pools of water glinted among the trees; after a while water spread in sheets deep into the forest. The air thickened, clouds of small biting insects swarmed everywhere, what breeze there was carried the stench of ancient mud and rotting water. The deck passengers were subdued, they burned piles of ashishin leaves on the braziers and produced clouds of pungent smoke that gave some relief from the biters and almost none for the lungs. After three days of stifling claustrophobic creep along that green-brown flood, the woodland began thinning, replaced by vast stretches of reeds, open water, scrub, giantfern, scattered hummocks of low many-trunked twisty trees, with fragments of other life appearing and vanishing among them, the rutted backs of large reptiles, fish and eels leaping to catch a breath from water thick enough to walk on.

  The main current began to split and diverge. The Captain sent two crew out ahead in a small boat with sounding lines and edged along behind them, holding the Meyeberri back with drag anchors. “The bottom here changes almost hour to hour,” he told Skeen. “We’ll be picking up Nagamar pilots soon, when we make the first village.”

  The village was built on large and small islands of matted reed, some of the islands with smaller less complex versions of Duppra Mallat’s reed palace, other islands with small somnolent cattle, dogs, tamed reptiles, other livestock. The Nagamar poled from island to island, kneeling in shallow reed boats, darting about like waterbugs skating over a pond surface. Children splashed in and out of the water, agile as their pets, looking half fish with the water gleaming on their softly scaled skin. Not a word or shout or laugh out of them. Skeen was amazed until she saw the flashing wiggles of fingers, hands, arms, the eloquent twisting of faces, a silent language to maintain their privacy before strangers. The Captain called the sounders back, and began bargaining with the Nagamar who scooted toward the ship in their kneelboats, shouting names, offers.

  The pilot he closed with brought on board four others; Terwel Mo was annoyed—two was customary, four was an imposition, but he didn’t argue. He knew better. The Nagamar were touchy and if his pilot refused to guide him, no other would take her place; more than that—he’d be jeopardizing his access to the Rekkah for several years, perhaps forever, depending on the influence of this pilot and the degree of her vindictiveness.

  The extra two were tall tough females. The moment Skeen saw them, she knew why they’d come aboard; if she’d had a hope otherwise, the way they looked at her would have erased it. Cool, calm, measuring, giving nothing away. She gave them back the same with an additional touch of bland and beaming vacancy, and was quietly delighted that the Skirrik male had his pallet in her cabin, that Timka slept with the Captain and kept the stolen gold under the Captain’s bed behind a door that locked. Maybe I should borrow your crystal diviner, little Seer. Caution does have its points.

  When she strolled to her cabin on the second night after they picked up the pilots, she caught one of the Nagamar searching her cabin, mimed anger and ordered the woman out. A long insolent inspection, hair to heels, then the Nagamar left.

  In the morning, Skeen warned Timka to be sure the gold was well hid, in case the Nagamar managed to get into the Captain’s quarters. Not likely but they certainly had the gall to try.

  With one Nagamar swimming ahead, the second at the wheel, the ship moved swiftly through the wetlands; other reed villages were visible at some distance, but the Captain called for no stops until he reached the mouth of the river and the largest of the marsh settlements, a city not a village. Standing at the rail, the Aggitj crowded around her, Skeen saw her second queenhouse, a huge edifice of reeds woven, bound, braided, compacted. The Captain dropped anchor, the deck passengers scurried about, the evil-tempered Chalarosh and other cabin passengers had their goods on deck, there since first light that morning. As soon as the sails came down, the waters swarmed with reed boats loaded with:

  perfume, essences, drugs, pearls, feathers, live birds, furs, reptile skins, meat, dried seeds, liqueurs, lengths of cloth, art objects.

  their paddlers seeking:

  blades, axes, machetes, spear heads, cooking pots, charcoal braziers, beads, glassware, bottles, mirrors, silk from desert looms, damasks from the Lumat, batiks from the Balayar.

  The pilots and the spares stayed below out of sight until dark, continued to linger as long as they could push it, left reluctantly. Skeen hunted them out and made sure the Captain knew they were aboard; they ignored his annoyed questions, went over the side with silent ease, no protest but resentful last looks at Skeen. They’d found no evidence she was the one who invaded Duppra’s House. She watched them drop into empty kneelboats, sighed with relief and exasperation as they paddled off. And decided she’d better spend the night patrolling the rails to make sure they didn’t come back.

  Shortly before dawn she stood close to the mainmast, hidden in the shadow there, the moon still up but just barely. She heard a soft chunk, not enough to alert the two sailors standing guard, one on the quarterdeck, the other in the bow, or the sleeping deck passengers. Bona Fortuna touching her on the shoulder for once, Skeen happened to be looking in the direction the sound came from and saw the small grapnel bite into the wood. A shaggy head followed almost immediately. Before the intruder was high enough to swing over the rail, Skeen called out, “Come farther, whoever you are, and I’ll drop you before you get one foot on deck.”

  At her first word, the form went still, by the time she finished the sentence, it disappeared. She heard two very faint splashes, then nothing more.

  “What is it?” The guard on the quarterdeck called down to her.

  “Nothing now. Stickyfingers, most like, not waiting to explain.”

  “Fuckin’ frogs.”

  There was more stirring, muttered complaints as peddlers and small merchants riding the Meyeberri’s deck roused themselves to guard their goods from any return of the rousted thieves. Skeen looked around and decided she could leave angry traders to keep the watch and get some sleep herself. She was tired and bored, the edge gone off her alertness because she was reasonably certain the Nagamar wouldn’t be back.

  With dawn’s first stain, the Captain upped anchor and started across the Tenga Bourhh, heading
for Rood Meol and the multi-city Atsila Vana.

  THESE MIN, THESE MIN!

  or

  NEXT TIME I LEAN AGAINST A TREE I’M GOING TO PINCH IT TO SEE IF IT SQUEAKS.

  Tenga Bourhh. The Mother of Storms the Balayar called the stretch of water straddling the equator. It lived up to its name. They ran into one of the Tenga’s offspring a little after sundown. The crew fought the wind to tie the stormnets over the passengerwell and the Captain chased all his cabin passengers off the deck, ordered them to lock down the storm plugs and stay put, keeping out of his hair until they passed out of the storm.

  The ship began leaping and cavorting like a drunken mountain goat, the movement sending Skeen’s stomach into uneasy knots. By the time she staggered into her cabin and forced the door shut, the young Skirrik had tucked himself into the upper bunk and was very quiet, even managing to look a bit limp despite his rigid exoskeleton. Poor little nit, looks like he feels worse than me—and me, I feel like the ash-end of a three-day drunk. She jerked the plug from its spring clamps and slammed it into the windowhole, but not before she got a face full of icy spray. Working by touch, she brought the hasps around and clanked home the pins that locked them in place. Slammed from wall to wall, floor dropping on her then threatening to slam into her chin, she staggered to the bunk and sat clutching the end post and contemplating the fuzzy blackness about her. Wonder how long this lasts. She swallowed experimentally, then swallowed again. Djabo, dry land for me. Can’t believe I was complaining so much about a silly little thing like humidity. At least the ground was steady under me.

  She heard a groan. Poor kid, he sounds bad. Wonder if Skirrik vomit? Djabo, his head’s this end, maybe I better take a look. No looking in this mess, where’s that fuckin’ lamp. Ah. She used her cutter to light the lamp, being in no mood to fuss about with wet matches even if she could find them, turned the wick way down, uncertain about the wisdom of a fire in these conditions, then staggered back to the bunk.