Skeen's Return Read online

  “Skeen?”

  Skeen blinked. She cleared her throat, rubbed one hand across the other. “Maggí Solitaire is due around the end of this sennight.”

  “What? I know that. We all know that.”

  “Yes, yes, but there is a point. What will the Funor Lords do the minute Tod screams he’s been robbed?”

  “Funor? I don’t know. But if this was Dum Besar, the Casach would have all strangers gathered up and dumped in the cells … ah. I see.”

  “Too many hostages. You could get out, and Chulji, maybe Lipitero. The Aggitj and the Boy, they’d fight, kill a lot and get killed themselves. Pegwai would get sucked in.…” She spread her hands, sighed. “I want them on Maggí’s ship headed out of here before I touch a wall.”

  Timka played with the sketch plan, pushing it about with her forefinger. “Aggitj aren’t going to like going off without us.”

  “I know. Djabo, do I know.” She rescued the plan; Timka was tearing bits off one corner. “Take all the time you need to learn the woffit, I don’t want you going in until Pyaday …” she stopped herself, “don’t you think?”

  Timka chuckled, tapped the back of Skeen’s hand. “Pyaday’s fine. You want me to hunt up a boat we can use?”

  “You know anything about boats?”

  “About enough to tell a mast from an oar, enough to know we want one that floats.”

  “Idiot.”

  “Seriously, I’d take one of the Aggitj, Hal or Domi for choice. Domi told me once he was crawling around in boats before he could walk.”

  Skeen slid back in the chair until her head was hooked over the top rung. She yawned, used both hands to scratch at her head, flutter her hair. “You’ll have to stick pins in me to get me out of bed come the morning.”

  Timka glanced at the window. “Which isn’t that far off. The Balance is up. Which by the way and don’t ask me why reminds me about Angelsin. She watches us.”

  “She watches everyone.” Skeen pushed up out of the chair and began stripping. “Her Ant Pack are all over. One or another of them watches us every day we perform. I figure she’s one of the local bosses and is keeping an eye on the take.”

  “I think it’s more than that.”

  Skeen hung her tunic on a peg, looked over her shoulder. “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Like you and the garden.”

  “Hm. I’ll think about it. But if she’s planning something, she won’t have much time and she mightn’t know that; I paid for another fortn’t this morning.”

  “I keep thinking about Lipitero.” Timka glanced at the still mound on the narrow cot pushed up against the far wall where the shadow was so deep the forms of cot and sleeper were only dimly visible.

  “Petro hasn’t said anything to me about snoopers.”

  “Nor me. But she’s nervous, I can’t be mistaken about that.”

  “Could be she’s getting cabin fever shut up all the time in this room. No, no, I believe you. Soon as I have a spare minute I’ll see what I can find out.” She stepped out of her trousers, chuckled. “If you promise to clean up after me again.”

  “Skeen.”

  “No, no, I was only joking.” She yawned. “Djabo, I am too tired to sleep, I think. Well, only one way to find out.”

  WHILE PEGWAI WAS COPING WITH THREE ADOLESCENT PALLAH BOYS WHOSE CHIEF DELIGHT SEEMED TO BE THINKING UP INANE TRICKS TO PLAY ON HIM, TRICKS SO BRAINLESSLY INEPT THEY SOMETIMES EVEN SUCCECDED, WHILE CHULJI WAS IMMERSED IN RUST AND SMUT AND ROOT ROT, WHILE THE AGGITJ TOTED BALES AND HAULED BARRELS, WHILE LIPITERO CARVED AND SIGHED, WHILE TIMKA AND SKEEN PERFORMED BY DAY AND PLOTTED AT NIGHT, THINGS WERE HAPPENING ABOUT THEM THEY KNEW NOTHING OF AND ONLY GUESSED AT LATER, LOOKING BACK ON THAT HECTIC TIME.

  or

  SKEEN FORGETS THE WARNING AND TIMKA ACQUIRES THE RIGHT TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO.

  This is how it might have been, what a fly planted on the cavern wall might have seen and heard.

  “Hopflea, rub my knees,” says Angelsin. This is one of those nights when boneache occupies her head until she finds herself losing track of the strings she must pull to keep her puppets dancing.

  The small Funor boy brings over a footstool; with practiced ease he slides his hands under her instep (slimfinger curled to protect it) and lifts her foot onto the stool. He waits, kneeling, looking elsewhere until she slides her heavy skirt up to bare the massive knee. For some minutes he kneads the flesh around the misshapen bone, then he jumps to his feet with the celerity of his namesake and goes into the nearest of the cells cut into the wall of the cavern. He reappears a moment later, rolling a gum-wheeled trolley with a deep bowl on it crouched amid coals, sending up clouds of steam. He positions it beside Angelsin, kicks a brake in place. He uses a wooden forceps to lift a folded cloth from the hot water, teases it open, holds it out so Angelsin can judge the temperature with a quick touch of her slimfinger. She nods, takes a hard grip on the chair arms and endures the pain when he spreads the cloth over her knee. After a minute he takes it away, replaces it with another. Angelsin’s eyes go feral at this new pain. She half enjoys conquering it, half curses fate for cursing her.

  Her deep voice gravelly, she says, “Has anyone managed a clear look yet at the one who never goes out?”

  Hopflea looks quickly up, a flicker of apprehension on his soft face, then prods with delicate precision at the soggy cloth; when he speaks, the words come slowly, without much feeling in them. He gives the impression of shrewd but wholly amoral judgment. “No. I set the maids at her, but she keeps the door locked and has ears like a woffit’s, so there’s no surprising her. She sits with hood up and her back to the door.” He goes silent while he changes cloths. “You want I should buy a couple of hardboys and have her stripped sometime the others are out?” They are speaking Funorish and he has dropped the mangled speech he uses to bolster his stupid act.

  Angelsin’s eyes are half closed, but she doesn’t miss that flash of fear. It pleases her. Hopflea is her most valued agent and he knows it, but he knows too that if he slacks off or cheats her in any way, he’s dead. And if he quits her, he’s dead. He has made too many enemies in the long years he has worked for her. Given that the fly on the stone is reasonably perceptive, he must have seen by now that the Funor Boy is no boy at all. Though his face has a dewy youth that neither his years nor the things he has done seem able to touch, the flickering light from the richly decorated oil lamps brings out a patina of age and hard usage that is more apparent to the mind than the eye. “Not yet,” Angelsin says finally. “I want to know more about that clutch of misfits before I show my hand. The Pass-Through seems to be as much leader as anyone. You found out anything more about what she’s up to?”

  “She has not gone to the taverns in a while.” He changes the cloth again, sits back on his heels. “Something about the others—the Min and one of the Aggitj, they’ve been looking at boats. Noserat wiggled close enough to listen. He knows some Aggitchan. They were talking about how seaworthy several fishboats were.”

  “Buying?”

  “Not them.”

  “Settled on one?”

  “Didn’t show it if they did. They’re not so green as that.”

  “That’s enough heat on that knee. Use the oil. The Pass-Through. If she’s stopped the drinking, she had a reason for starting it. What?”

  “At first I think she a lush.” He bends over the knee, rubbing and rubbing, kneading the hot distorted flesh, his hands slippery with scented oil; he speaks in short grunted packets of sound with hissing gasps between them. “She drink she talk make jokes ’n stories. After while hits me. All them stories all them ’bout bad things happenin’ to slavers, money lenders, assassins, drug dealers, those types.” He sits back on his heels and looks away as she pushes her skirt down. “And what she got out of that was stories about folk here in Fennakin or sometimes just names, when someone says something like that should happen to Eller that filth.” He gets to his feet, frees the wheels and pushes the trolley to Angelsin’s oth
er side while she slowly, painfully, trades feet on the stool.

  “What names?” she says.

  “Esmerkop Eller, the moneylender on the Ditta Skak,” he says, “the one who’s always late with his tithe.” He kneels and begins kneading and manipulating the second knee. “Plossung Mil who runs the baby shop on Jatter Way.” He stands and uses the forceps to bring up a new cloth; he holds it out for Angelsin to touch, then lays it on her knee. “Nochsyon Tod. Hummerfig Tig who runs the front for Doodamsitirsabo, that Chalarosh tightfist who won’t pay any tithe, you know, the one who cut up Tiilk and his mob. Kar hes Kituk, he’s a drug dealer, works the North Cusp, stays out of our holding.” He changes the cloths. Angelsin closes her eyes. Her lips press into a thin line. Breath snorts from her nose. “A couple more,” Hopflea says, “but those’re the important ones.”

  “And tell me, Hopflea, why was she going for those names?” Her voice is harsher than before, ugly with the effort she is making to control it.

  “Thieving,” he says. Again he changes the cloth, using the forceps to make sure the hot cloth is covering the whole area.

  She cannot speak for several minutes, then forces out two words. “What more?”

  He looks slyly at her; he is going to dance a dangerous game around her, counting on his knowledge of her to help him stop in time. “What more? What more?” He taps his head. “This, that’s it, this clever knob, old lady.” Thick white eyelashes flutter. “Guess, huh. Guess which one she picked. Guess how I know. I give you a clue about who. The craziest choice of all.”

  “Don’t play stupid games.” She sounds angry, but an instant later, she gazes thoughtfully into the darkness, smiling a little, amused, as she thinks over what she knows about those named. “Tod,” she says finally.

  He giggles. “Worm, he happens to see this big old owl come flying out a those women’s window. He figures it is the Min going to do something she don’t want no one knowing about, so he goes twisting after. Moon’s high, owl’s big, flying low. Worm, he pick up Chickfat and the Tump and they go slip slip after and what do they see but owl flying round and round over Tod’s House, and it goes slip slip down, it sits on a house tower, turning its head, looking and looking. Then it goes flying off, back to the window and in whoomp and then someone shuts the window, but the light goes on burning for a long time. That same thing happens four nights running until day before yesterday, then no more owl. Easy to see the Min is scouting for the Pass-Through and maybe that other one and the Aggitj, they’re looking out a way to run so they don’t get picked up after the thing is done. Worm swears neck and gizzard he sees everything he tells me.”

  Angelsin shudders as he takes away the last cloth and the cold air hits her flesh, then sighs with pain and pleasure mingled as he pours the warm oil on and begins rubbing it in. “Min,” she says thoughtfully. “If … no. Can’t trust them. I wonder how the Pass-Through managed to tame that one? It might be wise to ask her that. Say you so, my Flea?”

  “Might be.”

  “But first we find out more about this Min. Nose it out for me, Flea; who is she, what’s it about her makes her different, why does she keep away from her own? And do it fast, Hopflea. If she’s looking at boats, we have not got a lot of time.”

  The male Min follows Hopflea cautiously into the chek and hovers nervously beside him as the Funor taps at the door behind the empty chair. A deep rich voice sounds through the heavy door, the young Min winces, glances at the entrance to the taproom, obviously regretting his decision to follow what he thought of as a Funor boy. “Come,” the voice says and even muffled by the wood, the single word is pregnant with threat and power.

  The room inside is huge, filled with so much saturated color that it is an assault on the eyes, so much intricate line work it is an assault on the mind, convoluted Funor writing scrawled in flaking gilt around and around the walls, echoed in the looping swirls in a crimson and gold rug worth a small fortune but spread with careless prodigality over a floor of fitted hardwoods. The Min blinks and shies, but Hopflea is waiting. He goes in feeling overpowered by it and by the huge Funor woman sitting in another of her oversized chairs. When he looks at her, she reduces that shouting room to a gentle background rustle.

  Hopflea leads him to an armchair almost as large as Angelsin’s. The Min is a slim delicate-faced young male whose primary orientation is avian; he looks and feels like a child when he sits. His feet dangle and the dark heavy chair swallows him, diminishes him. He is intensely uncomfortable. He doesn’t like being here. He is terrified of coming anywhere near Timka and her lethal protectors; he knows every Min who tries to seize or slay her becomes quickly and futilely dead. He knows her sensing range is at least double his; he has been told she will be gone all day, but he hates and distrusts all Nemin and these more than most. Nor does he trust Timka to do what she says she is going to do. He is convinced she is vicious and perhaps insane, that she hates all Min and wishes to see Mistommerk cleansed of them by whatever means she can devise. Nothing Timka could say or do would convince him otherwise; his mind is sealed against her.

  (That fly again, clever little insect; say it is perched in the loop of gilt painted on the wall behind Angelsin, a dot of black encroaching on the sweep of gold, our metaphorical fly on the spot reporting to us.)

  The young Min watches Angelsin and hates her and fears her. Being so close to her makes him sick; he can barely control his loathing and disgust. He fights the feelings because they distract him when he knows he needs his wits at full stretch. He is here because she offers him a chance at the destruction of one he KNOWS is a deadly enemy, without being destroyed himself. Only for this can he control face and gut sufficiently to stay quiet in that horrible chair and listen to that grotesque in the other chair. He holds his legs still, clasps his hands lightly over his cincture. His face he makes a mask, unsmiling, but also hiding the sneer he wears inside.

  Hopflea crouches at Angelsin’s feet, watching him.

  Angelsin inclines her head, makes a minimal gesture that might have meant anything. “It has come to my ears that you seek a certain Min, a female outcast from her folk.”

  He licks his lips, his hand twitch. “Yes,” he says.

  She raises a brow, then sits waiting, using her silence to force speech from him.

  “Yes, it is true we want the one called Timka.” He moves uneasily, realizes what he is doing and forces himself still. “She escapes us because she is well protected by those with her; so far all we’ve tried has failed.” He shuts his mouth, furious with himself for having said so much.

  “Her protectors are scattered during the daylight hours.” There is curiosity in her deep voice. She doesn’t try to hide it, rather it is another pin she is sticking into him. As if to say—do this yourself, don’t bother me.

  He collects himself and for the moment declines to let her prod him into more revelations. “That means nothing, she stays on the Skaks. Would you take her there? Certainly not. You say you can deliver her for a price. Name it.”

  She smiles. The light from the many gold and alabaster lamps slides with buttery richness along her ivorine horns and touches her large pale face, deepens the shadows about her eyes.

  He looks away from her, intimidated in spite of his loathing and his well-manured pride. If he could have killed with a look, she would be shriveling on the floor, but she terrifies him almost as much as Timka and those deadly Nemin with her. When his voice is sufficiently under control, he says, “How can I meet your price without knowing it?”

  She bows her massive head. His fear grows when he sees how sharp, glossy, lethal her undecorated horns look. He feels his essence shiver and he knows without understanding how he knows it that this Funor woman has the Min secret, that she can kill him with one hook of those horns because she knows where to put them. Her large right hand caresses the base of a lamp that sits on a leggy table close beside her chair. That oil flung at him is his death too, if she chooses to act. He jumps as she speaks, his mas
k breaking up. She smiles. “For the woman,” she says and pauses. Her voice is lazy, sensual. She looks like she is sucking on the words and getting pleasure from their taste. “For the woman, one thousand gold.” She smiles more broadly. “For protection against her companions, a guarantee they will not interfere with your pleasure, another thousand.”

  “You mistake me, Fomirie Nemin Angelsin Yagan.” He cannot help letting his bitterness seep into his voice. He has no authority to speak with her, emphatically none to dicker with her. He is supposed to be a forward watch, sent to observe only, expendable, little trusted, while the powers among the Holavish plot a trap for her in which he will have no part, will gain no renown; the ancients will not sing-chant his deeds into the dark of time. He does not lay blame on Telka or the other powers; they only follow their Necessity. It is Timka and her Nemin panders who have provoked Necessity. It is Timka and those with her that he hates for stealing away his fame. If he can snare her somehow, he alone, if he can slay her and take her S’yer back for proof, then who will be greater than he, who will need to know how he does the thing? If he can somehow meet this monster’s price, this great cow with her posturing and petty menace … he says petty to himself again, trying to diminish her as he is diminished by her. “There is no need,” he says, “to take the Min here and now. It is perhaps simpler and better to wait until she comes to us. For she will. She must. It might be worth something if we do not have to trouble ourselves. Something, Fomirie Nemin, but not over much. Say fifty gold for her, and let her familiars do what they will.”