Skeen's Return (26 page)

Skeen came awake in her bunk on the ship. She sat up, yawned. The ship was jerking about, resonant with groans, creaks and thumps. The storm plug was still down, but the parchment was drawn tight over the window, all the cords tied with double knots. Lightning flashed intermittently, the wind howled and hoomed and made a singing gourd out of the ship, heavy lines of rain beat with the steadiness of a stream in spate against parchment and shipside. Lipitero sat on the lower bunk opposite, working with delicate care on a small carving, timing her cuts to the movements of the ship.

Skeen swung her legs off the edge of the bunk and sat up. “What happened? We leaving in the middle of that mess?”

Lipitero dropped her hands to her thighs, the knife blade catching gleams from the swaying lamp. “What do you remember?”

Skeen rubbed at her temples, ran a hand through her hair. “I need a bath,” she said absently. She plucked a fragment of dead grass from her hair, sat frowning down at the yellow-gray brittle strand. “What do I remember … um … I was coming back with Kut'im.” She blinked at Lipitero. “Kut'im?”

“We found his body in your room, put it into the Gullet. We didn't want the Families nosing in.”

Skeen stroked absently at the film over her stump. “Too bad, he didn't deserve that.” She closed her eyes. “I unlocked the door, there was a bad smell …” she reached behind her head, probed through her hair, “ah, I can feel the knot. Don't remember anything after I opened the door.” She grinned wryly at Lipitero, “That's happened before when I was hit a good crack. Who?”

“Chalarosh. Ravvayad Kalakal, we suspect, though it's a little late to ask them. They collected Pegwai, then you, then they went after the Aggitj. They figgured Maggí being Aggitj, she'd be more willing to ransom other Aggitj than a gaggle of otherWavers, however friendly she was with them. Timka was still keeping watch over you. Yes, don't blow up, I know what you said, but think a minute. She didn't interfere, she was just there in case something came up you couldn't handle. And a good thing too, she saw the Chalarosh lowering you out your window and followed them. They took you to a charcoal burner's hut in the hills south of the city. Apparently some of them were locals, at least that's what Maggí thinks, they knew how and when to move to avoid the city guards. They were being very careful, doing a little bit at a time, it seems, taking Pegwai first, getting him clear, going after you, getting you stowed.” Lipitero looked down at her hands, set the knife and the chunk of wood on the blanket beside her. “They went for the Aggitj next,” she said, her voice a whisper almost lost in the storm noise. “Timka got back in time to warn the boys, but.…”

Skeen jerked forward. “What?”

“There was a fight. Domi was killed.”

“Ah.” Skeen folded over, clutching her stomach, breathing hard. After a minute she swung her feet up and lay back, staring at the slats of the upper bunk while she cursed in an aching whisper until she ran out of breath, tears slipping silently past her ears to soak her pillow. She sank into an unhappy silence for a while, hearing vaguely the ticking of the bits of wood Lipitero was chipping off and the dull storm noise outside. Finally she turned her head. “The Chalarosh?”

“Timka killed the two guarding Pegwai and you and left them to the maggots. Six of them were killed in the fight or shortly after, there in the Aggitj's room. Ders, Hal and Hart ran down the other two. They piled the Chalarosh corpses in the cart, Timka flew watch overhead, and they dumped them in the Gullet. Timka remembered you had company when you went back to the Tavern and figured they'd probably have to clean up there too. They found another place to put your friend into the water, thinking his bones would rest easier if they didn't have to lie beside the Chalarosh leavings.” Lipitero cleared her throat. “That's about it. Hal brought Ders onboard and Maggí gave him a draft that put him to sleep. Hart and Timka went to pick up Pegwai and you. I don't know what the Chalarosh used on you, maybe it was something to do with their poison, but you were limp as a squid and no one could wake you. We were worried, we were going after Chalarosh if you didn't wake come morning.” She smiled, her crystal eyes glowing in the shifting light. “I am delighted we weren't forced to try that. I have a feeling we wouldn't have learned much.”

Skeen hesitated, licked her lips, rubbed her hand nervously across her stump. “Domi?”

“They brought him onboard. Tomorrow Hal and Maggí are going to see the manager for permission to build a pyre for him. They've asked Timka to scatter his ashes in the mountains. Maggí's anxious to leave once the wind is right, but she's agreed to stay for that, as long as the Aggitj need.”

Skeen laid her arm across her eyes. For several minutes she said nothing, wrestling with a guilt she couldn't talk herself out of. If she hadn't let the boys come along, because they were useful, because she liked them about, because … oh, a thousand reasons and most of them accusing her now, if she hadn't neglected to take care of them like she should, Domi wouldn't be dead now. Out whoring around, trying to forget they existed. Djabo's pointy teeth, she knew there were desert Chalarosh here, she knew they'd never give up until the Boy was dead. Ah, now, Skeen, what's the point of this? If you're going to be guilty about anyone, try Kut'im. The Aggitj knew their danger and stayed, they didn't have to stay; Kut'im was an innocent bystander if ever there was one, got the usual wages of the innocent. She tried to feel something for him but couldn't dredge up more than a vague regret. She licked her lips again, wanting a gallon of ale to smother the ache in her. Domi, why did it have to be the best of them? Domi. Fuckin' brain, doesn't know what to forget. Images of Domi sharp as tryptich photos. Domi—face grave, eyes laughing. Domi gentling and calming Ders. Too many images. She tried to shut off the hurt, but she couldn't. She rolled on her side, face to the wall, and wept for Domi, for Ders who needed his cousin so desperately, for herself, most of all for herself put of guilt and hurt and loss.

LOSE A HAND, LOSE A FRIEND. OF THE TWO THE HAND IS EASIER TO DEAL WITH. ON EARLIER OCCASIONS DEPARTURES HAVE BEEN FILLED WITH EXCITEMENT AND HOPE. NOT THIS ONE. THEY LEAVE SIKURO LATE AT NIGHT, THE DARKNESS IS NEAR COMPLETE, THE MOON AND STARS ARE COVERED BY A THICK LAYER OF CLOUDS; THOUGH THE STORM THAT THREATENS HOLDS OFF UNTIL THEY ARE OUT FROM UNDER IT, THE WIND IS HOWLING MOURNFULLY BEHIND THEM, SHOVING THEM AWAY FROM THE CHARRED FRAGMENTS OF DOMI'S PYRE. THE AGGITJ HAD GATHERED THE BONE FRAGMENTS AND ASH AND GIVEN THEM TO TIMKA WHO FLEW THEM INTO THE HILLS AWAY FROM THE CITY, OUT WHERE THINGS WERE WILD AND FREE AND RELEASED WHAT WAS LEFT OF DOMI TO THE WINDS AND THE GREEN EARTH AND THE GRAY OF EARTHBONES. APPROPRIATE SEND-OFF, THE EARTH AND SHY AND SEA WEARING BLACK MOURNING GARB.

THREE DAYS LATER, THEY EMERGE INTO THE HALIJARA SEA ON A BRILLIANT DAY, THE SKY SHIMMERING LIKE THE INSIDE OF A SAPPHIRE, THE WATER GLITTERING LIKE BROKEN GLASS. THE AGGITJ HAVE LOST THEIR CHEERFUL EBULLIENCE, BUT THEY DON'T FLAUNT THEIR GRIEF; THEY ARE SIMPLY MUCH QUIETER THAN THEY WERE BEFORE AND KEEP TO THEMSELVES MORE. IN A VERY REAL SENSE, THEY ADOPT THE BOY AS A KIND OF SURROGATE FOR DOMI. HE'S THE ONE WHO QUIETS DERS NOW WHEN THE AGGITJ BOY'S EMOTIONS THREATEN TO GET OUT OF HAND, AND HE'S THE ONE WHO PROVES TO HAVE MUCH THE SAME ACERBIC GOOD SENSE. HE BRINGS HART OUT OF HIS DOUR SILENCES AND PUNCTURES HAL'S HIGHFLIGHTS WHEN HE STARTS TAKING HIS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE OTHER THREE TOO SERIOUSLY.

AH, WELL, THESE THINGS HAPPEN EVEN IN THE MOST MAGICAL OF QUESTS. THE GOOD DIE, THEIR PURPOSES UNFULFILLED. LOSE A HAND, LOSE A FRIEND. OF THE TWO, THE HAND IS EASIER TO PART WITH.

Supper in Maggí's cabin. Skeen, Timka and Pegwai are there. Rannah, the Boy and Chulji are eating with that portion of the crew off-duty for the moment. The Aggitj are still in their mourning fast, taking only a little bread and a few mouthfuls of water.

“It would be faster,” Skeen said stubbornly, “and we wouldn't run into the traps and trouble bound to be waiting along our backtrail. If you're worried about your profits, well, name your price. Peg's maps say the ocean west of the Halijara is reasonably narrow a degree or so above the equator. We could come at the Gate through the Backlands. Chances are we'd miss Telka and her Holavish completely; they wouldn't expect us to come that way.”

Maggí sighed. “If it were only so simple. Everything you say is true and everything you say is impossible. Think about this, have you heard of anyone crossing Okits Okeano?”

Skeen ran her fingers delicately along the stem of her glass; she thought about the stories she'd heard in the past few days. “No,” she said. “Doesn't mean a whole lot, but no.”

“I thought not. There are a lot of liars around but none who'd expect you to believe they crossed the Okits and lived to tell the story. Consider this, you came along the Spray with several Shipmasters. Did any of them leave the island shallows and cut across deep water?”

“You've made your point. What's out there?”

“Sea Min and their pets. Stick the shadow of a mast in what they call their waters and they'll take ship as well as shadow.”

Skeen turned to Timka, raised her brows.

Timka spread her hands. “Don't ask me. I know there are Min who live their lives out there, but they don't like Land Min all that much either. We meet maybe once a purple moon. And I only know that because I'm one of the few who talked with the travelers stopping with my aunt Carema. Fifteen, twenty years ago that was.” She frowned at her hands as she searched dim memories. “Seems to me I heard there were factions growing in them too, one group wanting a limited trade with Nemin as long as the Nemin kept off their waters, another wanting to slaughter any Nemin who came within sniffing range; and the biggest lot of them wanting the other two lots to back off and leave them alone. I have to agree with Maggí, Skeen. Cross into their waters and they'll forget their factions. Sorry. It was a good idea, but it just won't work.”

“Eh, Peg,” Skeen tapped his shoulder, waited till he turned round, “give me a hand, will you?” She chuckled at his groan. “Seriously, I need a sparring partner who's good enough so that I don't have to worry about him.”

He hitched a hip on the rail and examined her. “You're going to try switching your style left-handed?”

“Try's the word.” She held her hand out, wriggled the fingers. “I've got strength enough in this, that's no problem, but it's about as functional as one of Timka's cat paws. Means knocks for me and my partner,” she gave him a half grin, “mostly me, I expect.”

“Staff or hand first?”

“Staff. My feet have got to learn a new balance. I can work on fine manipulations later.” She rubbed her stump down the front of her tunic, looked at it. “I can use this to help control the staff. I think.”

“We'll have to see, won't we. You talked to Maggí about practice space?” He looked round the busy deck. “No room down here. You'd give lumps to half the crew and more of the passengers.”

“She says the quarterdeck's ours as long as we don't swat her. I put the staffs over there by the stairs.”

The Goum Kiskar skipped along the coast of Rood Saekol, flitting from port to port, none of them near the size or richness of Sikuro. Every day Skeen worked with an intensity that startled Timka to regain her one-time fighting skills, practicing feints, wheels, thrusts, every conceivable move and combination of moves with the staff, and when she was tired of that or had done as much of it as she thought her body could absorb for the day, she changed to the sort of exercises Timka had watched dancers doing as they got ready to perform for the Poet. They had that trick of repeating movements over and over until they were temporarily satisfied with how they did it.

With hard work and discipline Skeen quickly reacquired a degree of competence—first with the staff, then the openhand drills she practiced with Pegwai or under his eye, but even Timka could see how labored her movements were, how different from the easy flow before she lost the hand. Skeen plateaued at a place where she could do most of what she wanted but none of it as well as she wanted. Timka watched, fascinated, as she began defining where her greatest weaknesses lay, then used her long experience at surviving to work out ways of compensating for those weaknesses. That hard-edged discipline and those long hours of exploration threw new light on parts of the Skeen-dreams Timka had thought distorted, projections of Skeen's wishthink.

Most of the lump of material she'd sucked in from Skeen's mind was digested now, part of her conscious and unconscious self. She seldom dreamed that sort of dream these nights, only the old anxiety ones: she shifted to smoke and was torn apart by the wind no matter how she struggled to reassemble herself, she ran and ran from some shapeless danger, her legs melting from under her; she was caught in a universal Choriyn shifting endlessly, unable to stop.…

One night when witchfires danced along the masts and the wake was a phosphor furrow, she found Skeen leaning on the rail watching dolphins dance in the white fire. “You've been working hard.”

Skeen chuckled, echoes of the fire dancing in her eyes. “Didn't think I could, did you?”

“To say truth, no.”

Skeen smiled at her and went back to watching the dolphins and the flying seabeasts who'd come to join them, bits of iridescent shimmer shapeless except for the rayed fans they glided on. The ship grumbled and chattered about them, the wind blew cold drops against them. Skeen's hair glittered with the droplets caught there that trapped and refracted the light from the waxing moon. Off to Timka's right, Saekol was a low black line on the horizon. The night air was so clear she could see the flicker of the surf breaking on the rocky shore. Skeen stirred beside her. “Someone taught me once,” she said, “get it right tight and solid in the beginning and you won't have to mess with it later.”