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  “Take the Parakhuzerim and instruct her in her role so that she can take her place in the rites tomorrow.”

  “Im, kipu.” Gapp grinned at Aleytys. Aleytys backed away another few steps and looked rapidly around.

  “Must she?” she asked sharply.

  The kipu ignored her. “Gapp,” she said heavily. “listen to me.”

  “Im?”

  “Control your … your little fancies.” Once again the kipu’s face showed distaste. “If you touch her before the rites, I’ll send Sukall with the Discipline. Is that clear?”

  Gapp pouted sulkily. “Why? She coupled with that Migru, at least she says so.” She caught the skin and muscle on Aleytys’ arm between her thumb and forefinger then squeezed hard. “She might enjoy playing with me. Why not?”

  “Because I said so. I don’t want her marked, Gapp, or so jangled she can’t do what is necessary. I know the games you play. Well?”

  Gapp fidgeted. “After?” she asked hopefully.

  The kipu shrugged.

  “You promised. I’ll keep hands off her now, but remember, you promised her to me.” She smiled wetly at Aleytys. “Just wait, soft one, we’ll have some fine times.”

  “You. Parakhuzerim.”

  Because the damper was scrambling her head again, Aleytys was slow to understand and answer. At last she nodded clumsily.

  “I don’t want to see you again. Not here. You understand?”

  “If I need anything?”

  The kipu shrugged. “Tell the guard.”

  “Yes, kipu.” Aleytys spoke with proper submissiveness. But behind her back her hands closed into fists so tightly her nails cut small crescents into her palms.

  “Hm.” The kipu rubbed her long supple thumb across her chin. “Take a little advice, Parakhuzerim. You can have a very pleasant life if you choose. Serve us for a year, then I’ll give you your freedom.”

  “Yes, kipu.” Aleytys choked down a sudden flare of rage. Free, she thought. Liar!

  “Although I would prefer not … for various reasons … I’ll drug you if I have to. If you cause me too much trouble, I’ll do it. You understand?”

  “Yes, kipu.”

  CHAPTER VI

  Aleytys tugged at the tight crotch of the stiff gold bodysuit, while sweat trickled down her neck as the heavy elaborate helmet pressed on her head until it ached with a dull throb. The monotonous chant went on and on while the sacerdote Harran, wreathed in clouds of heavy incense, paced multiple circles around the pile of logs. After another few minutes of discomfort and boredom, Aleytys thrust her thumbs into the armholes and tried to ease the strain put on her breasts by nayid tailors who didn’t know how to cut clothing for a mammal. She glanced along the line of blank-faced sabutim.

  Near the eastern edge of the flat-topped butte, wrapped in layer on layer of thick gold cloth until it was a flattened, grossly enlarged seed resting on a shallow gold platter, the old queen’s body lay in state on top of the bunting-draped criss-crossed logs. Seated at her feet, wound with blue-dyed ropes, the knots accented with gilt paint, Lisshan stared out with dulled unseeing eyes, lost in some fine euphoria, floating on the wings of a drug. Hiiri were looped below him around the base of the pyre with their own small peninsulas of crossed and criss-crossed logs less than half the diameter of the massive timbers in the main pile. But of course they didn’t count … slaves now, slaves for eternity.

  And the chant went on.

  And the sacerdote walked back and forth in front of the pyre wreathed in clouds of heavy incense.

  Sick to the point of nausea, Aleytys glanced at the guards on both sides of her. They faced forward without a tremor in their rigid concentration on the rite. Abruptly she rebelled. She cautiously stepped back, slipping behind the guards to the edge of the cliff where the air felt somehow a little cleaner. Standing on the edge with her back turned to the interminable ceremony she looked out over the dreaming innocent land.

  It spread out in muted patchwork interrupted by scattered towers of rock that were other buttes rising in rugged grandeur above the fields. Beside these buttes were dark blotches where houses clustered in walled cities clinging to the base of the precipitous rock. Here and there, on pale straight lines, vehicles like small black bugs scooted in nervous spasms belching behind them clouds of steam. The river came looping out of the blue in the east in long lazy bends, glinting gently in the light from the setting sun. That way, she thought, down the river in that blue mist where that sick blue sky comes down, there’s the star city. That’s where I have to go.

  The river came to them and split in half, one side hugging the base of the butte, the other swinging out in a wide lazy crescent that circled the city and separated it from the farm lands. But I have it backwards, she thought. Funny. The current runs the other way, from me to the east. Why’d I think of it coming to me?

  A hundred meters below she could see the small green patch of her garden sealed within the massive gray bulk of the mahazh and its outbuildings, a walled fortress inside the walled city, smooth and sterile except for that green nodule like a cysted tumor. She studied the city outside the walls of her prison. On the western side there was more green—scattered trees and shrubs around walled houses like gray beehives, the streets between quiet and empty.

  So seductive was the peace and serenity below she could almost hear the cicada’s drowsy hum and feel the warm sweet breeze ruffling her hair.

  On the eastern side the beehive houses crowded in a kind of cheerful elbow-in-the-ribs confusion along twisting streets whose narrow strips of paving almost disappeared beneath awnings striped in brilliant clashing stained-glass colors. These streets were crowded and busy, though she caught only glimpses of tiny nayid figures bustling from shop to shop. Where the city met the river the walls widened into low blocky warehouses with piers stretching a short way into the river. Three ships were tied there, their lengths parallel to the bank, most of their cranes idle, one or two desultorily unloading bales which a few hand-truck pushers were wheeling into the warehouses.

  Behind Aleytys the chant broke off momentarily and a single massive basso began intoning a long invocation which she resolutely ignored, running her eyes back along the river until she was staring intently at the eastern horizon.

  The invocation finished. A sudden crackling sound closed her hands into white-knuckled fists. She swallowed and swallowed and still the sour taste came back. A chorus of screams from the hiiri trembled through her body. She felt the heat of the fire already burning through the heavy cloak hanging from the bee-broaches on her shoulders. She remembered the brown naked figures, tiny tiny people rubbed to a high gleam with the same oil that soaked the logs.… Aleytys stopped that thought but the smell of roasting flesh drifted past. She swallowed but the sour taste wouldn’t go away. Blindly, breathing in short sharp gasps, she stared at the innocent lovely land below. The screaming went on, high descants to the heavy basso chant from the massed choir of hieratic nayadim. The stench hovered on the breathless air.

  She felt a presence behind her and glanced quickly around. One of the huddle of strangers standing respectfully behind the kipu had come over to her and was watching her with mild interest, a dark brown man just a little taller than she with dull black hair standing out from his head in a tidy bramble bush. He smiled. White teeth flashed. Nostrils flattened. The yellow sun struck red-amber highlights from his dark dark skin.

  “They do go on.”

  She accepted the overture, glad to turn away from the horror behind her. “Yes.” She almost smiled at the banality of her answer. Her fists uncurled and she could feel herself relaxing. “You’re not nayid. Who are you?”

  “Ffynch Company Rep,” he said crisply. “Sombala Isshi.”

  She noted that he tactfully refrained from questioning her in return although his curiosity was clearly evident. “Ffynch Company?”

  There was cool speculation in his eyes as he examined her with almost insulting thoroughness, but still he refrained fr
om asking her any questions. “Do you know the Companies?”

  “A little.”

  “Ffynch Company operates in this sector. Look there.” He rested one hand lightly on her shoulder. She could feel the heat of it through the cloth-of-gold cloak. Again she felt a fleeting twinge of gratitude. She looked down, following his pointing hand until she was gazing at the flat roof of the mahazh. She saw the skimmers clustering there like fleas on a hairless hog’s back. “We provide skimmers and maintain them. Among other things.”

  “You’re traders, then.”

  He smiled suddenly, widely, as if she’d said something that amused him. “In a way,” he said temperately. “May I ask you something?”

  She watched him for a while, feeling the flicker of chaos hovering. She yearned to reach out and read him, to break through his skilled facade, but she hastily clamped down on the urge. “What do you need to know?”

  “About you. If I’m not nayid, neither are you, lady. What role do you play down there?” He flipped a long-fingered hand with over-size knuckles turning the narrow digits into gnarled roots at the mahazh. He smiled his charming smile again. “To a trader all knowledge has value.”

  She thought about what she should say. An imp of mischief tickled her stomach. “I’m nursemaid to the new queen. In a way,” she said demurely. As the sacerdote’s voice once again boomed into a monotonous invocation she looked restlessly away and saw a massive column of smoke climbing suddenly next to one of the buttes. “What’s that?”

  It was his turn to follow her pointing finger. “Ha! The wild hiiri choose good time for a raid with the kipu busy here.”

  “What?” She peered at the smoke, working out distant indications of turmoil, brilliant flashes breaking through the purple-gray coils. A flicker of motion caught the corner of her eyes, jerked her attention to the mahazh. Three skimmers rose from the roof and darted off to the east. “Will they catch the hiiri?”

  “They never have before. By now the raiders are scattered, sitting under shelter, laughing at the futility of the nayadimi effort.”

  “They must catch some of them. Where’d they get those?” Her hand moved slightly toward the hiiri burning behind them. “Or the others down there still?”

  “The hiiri sell their own.” He smiled cynically. “One tribe will fight another. They only started taking prisoners because they started getting a price for them. Before.…” He shrugged. “Ritual torture. My enemy is not my enemy only if he’s dead and his wife and his children and his brothers with him.”

  Aleytys shuddered. “I sometimes wonder why men are cursed with intelligence when they use it to such ends.”

  “Don’t ask me. Takes me time enough to justify my own existance.”

  Behind them the stench of roasting flesh was becoming oppressive while the chanting began again and went on and on and on and on until she ceased to hear it. Together they stood and let time flow over them in a sort of shared disgust. After a while she examined his face, meeting a humorous speculative look that stirred the driving curiosity that betrayed her once again as the damper roared on, blocking the mind thrust she aimed at him, not consciously but out of the habit that tripped her up so many times she lost count of them. She tottered and nearly tumbled over the cliff.

  Through the whirl that blanked out everything but the fragmented images in her mind she vaguely sensed a strong grip on her arm. She fought back against the chaos, slapped her mind into order. Panting lightly, she righted herself. “Thanks,” she muttered thickly. As her vision cleared, she smiled nervously at him.

  “Rab’ Sombala Isshi.” The words were spoken almost in a whisper so they wouldn’t interfere with the chant. He glanced over his shoulder. Sukall stood mask-faced and rigidly erect waiting with total discipline for his response.

  He turned immediately, bowed with careful respect. “Yes?”

  “Kipu requests you rejoin your company.” Her message delivered, not doubting his instant compliance, she turned to Aleytys. “Parakhuzerim, your part in the rite comes near. Kipu requests that you come and prepare yourself.”

  Aleytys glanced quickly at the funeral pyre where the flames still leaped high in the air. The hiiri were silent, to her great relief. She hoped that smoke inhalation had killed them before they had time to feel the pain of being burned alive. Driving the memory of the screams from her mind, she moved away from the cliff edge, her stomach knotting and unknotting in a sickening rhythm.

  CHAPTER VII

  Shadows stretched in a long thin bars across short springy grass still damp from the morning’s dewfall. Aleytys snapped the wrinkled sheet open, doubled it and spread it over the grass, then collapsed cross-legged in the middle of the pale yellow rectangle. She shivered and rubbed her knees, the slight chill in the early morning air magnified by the excitement that churned her blood. She moved restlessly, plucked at the shoulder straps on the rose chiffon falling in soft careless waves around her legs. As a leaf rustled and a six-winged insect zzedded past her ear, her body jerked, shivered. A purposeful crackle snapped her head around. Burash pushed through the circle of giant bamboo and pines shutting her into the clearing.

  Eagerly, Aleytys jumped to her feet and stood, fists clenched, heart throbbing, blood rushing so fast her body was bathed in a layer of cold sweat Flushing then paling in rapid alternation she began to tumble into the too-familiar confusion as the damper sent waves of itch agonizing across her back.

  Burash caught her as her knees sagged. Leaning against him she sucked in a deep breath, then another and another, disciplining herself to the smooth deep inhalations, making them longer and longer, slower and slower, not-thinking not-feeling until, shaking with reaction, her body colder, a dull feeling at the base of her stomach, she pushed away from him and lowered herself cautiously to the sheet, jerking trembling lips into a momentary smile for him.

  Burash settled beside her and held out the knife. “Be careful with this, Leyta.” He cupped his free hand behind her head, his fingers warm and comforting on her neck. “What are you going to do with it?”

  Aleytys pushed the knife down so that it rested on his thigh beside his open hand. “Keep that a minute.” She closed her eyes. Rider, she thought into the blackness, remember your promise, remember, remember.…

  “Leyta?”

  “Never mind. What do you know of me, Burash?”

  Letting the knife slide off his legs onto the sheet, he brushed a knuckle gently over the twitching muscle at the corner of her mouth. “Why, Leyta?”

  “I have some … some uncomfortable gifts, uncomfortable for anyone wanting to control my actions.” “So?”

  “I need you to do something. No.” She held out her hand, not letting him answer. “There’s … oh god … I don’t know.…” She wiped at her face, reached toward him, pulled her hand back. “I need you to do something for me. If you want … if you’re willing to do it.”

  “Yes?” His voice was quiet, full of affection. Supported by this unspoken commitment Aleytys felt the febrile over-stimulation of her nerves flow away until she was calm and relaxed, able to speak with precision and detachment.

  “Because he was warned, the slaver took steps to avoid endangering his investment. There’s a damn lot I don’t know, only the result. He put a thing, a disc, in the muscles of my shoulder, or rather, he had a surgeon do it.” She twisted around. “Here,” she said, “just under my left shoulder blade. Feel.”

  He slipped his hand beneath the chiffon and probed the muscles in her back. “There’s something hard here.”

  “That’s it. He called it a psi-damper.” She laughed nervously. “It sends my head into pieces sometimes. Burash.…” The tip of her tongue flicked over her lips. “I want you to cut it out of me.”

  “What?” He turned pale, his antennas thrashing wildly as the shock of her words bit into him.

  “It won’t be hard,” she said rapidly. “It’s up to you … has to be up to you. The thing is just under the skin. You said you could feel it
. Don’t be worried about hurting me, you won’t and soon’s it’s out, as soon as I can smash the damn thing, I can heal myself. You can do it, Burash, please … ah, please, it’ll only take seconds, naram, and you’ll set me free, you don’t know, you don’t know, it’s one thing being shut up in a few rooms, a prisoner, but being shut up in my mind, how would you feel, Burash, if one of the sabutim put her thumbs through your eyes, broke off you antennas, and it’s worse than that for me … remember what it does to me, you’ve seen it, you saw it just now, please.”

  Drowning in the flood of words, Burash shook his head then shook it again, but more slowly, his reluctance dissipating, his resistance crumbling. “I won’t hurt you?”

  “I won’t feel a thing. I promise you.”

  “Not just feeling, what if I do something wrong? Injure you?”

  “I’m a healer, Burash, when I’m free. I can heal whatever you do in … in seconds. Seconds!” Her lips vibrated against his palms, then slowly she pulled his hands away from her face. After a minute of heavy silence, she said slowly, “I need this terribly, Burash. But only if you want to do it. There’s something in me that reaches out when I’m in need and slaves those I need. I don’t want to do that to you.”

  He pulled free. “If you’ll take off that thing and turn over.” His voice shook at first then strengthened as he settled into his decision. He picked up the knife, firming his beautiful mouth into a hard straight line.

  When Aleytys was stretched out on her stomach, he felt her back, located the hard place, and touched the tip of the knife to the skin. It was harder than he thought, making the first cut. The knife was sharp but his hand shook, all the strength ran out of his fingers. He shut his eyes for a minute and drove the point through the skin. Grimly he cut the tough reluctant flesh until the point of the knife scraped on metal, then worked the point beneath the smooth disc and with a quick convulsive twist snapped it out of her back.

  Blood streaming thick and red down the smooth pale gold skin of her back, Aleytys squirmed rapidly around and closed her fingers on the blood-smeared damper. “Got you,” she said fiercely.