Skeen's Return (27 page)

Old Harmon, Timka thought, but said nothing about that. She felt vaguely guilty about knowing so much Skeen most likely wouldn't want anyone to know about her; at the same time she couldn't help enjoying her secret understanding. “I see,” she said.

“You've been busy too.” There was a lazy curiosity in Skeen's voice, an invitation to confide if she wanted, be silent if she didn't.

Timka leaned into the rail, feeling the movement of the ship deep in her muscles, feeling a quiet pleasure in the tranquility of the night. Up and down the ship went with a soothing periodicity, up and down in a harmonic web of sound, merging seamlessly with the flow of the night. “Old lessons,” she murmured. “Trying to remember things I've let slide a long time. Too long. Too too too long. Ahhhh.”

Skeen rubbed her body against the rail. “I know.” She shook her head sharply, scattering the mist clinging to her hair, sucked in a long breath and let it trickle out. “I was in a lovely velvet rut when all this started happening. I suppose Mala Fortuna couldn't help sticking her long nose in. She won't leave anyone comfortable for too long.”

Timka watched cold fire slip along the side of a dolphin leaping through a cluster of shimmering fliers. “Velvet rut. Are you going back to that once this business is finished?”

There was a long silence. Timka remembered then the glimpses she'd got of a sore Skeen couldn't keep from tonguing like an aching cavity in a back tooth. The shadowy little man who meant what? lover? friend? betrayer? Flickering images of something never seen clearly that had to be Picarefy the ship, an eerie amalgam of woman and machine. Man and ship wreathed about with pain and painful questioning. She wondered if Skeen was thinking about those two. She couldn't ask.

“This business. Sometimes I think I'll never be rid of it.” The sleeve of the shortened arm had come unrolled and was dangling. Skeen rolled it back as neatly as she could with one hand. Stroking two fingers over the gray film, she gazed up at the moon's fattening crescent. “Depends on what I find when I get back.” A long sigh. She shook her head again, pushed strands of damp hair off her face. “Time to worry when I get there.”

Maggí paced the quarterdeck, volcanic energy barely controlled, eyes darting without cessation from sailor to sailor scurrying about taking care not to call down the Captain's wrath and flaying tongue on themselves, moving from these to the deck passengers settling in for the crossing, a worried speculation in her gaze as she examined each of them.

Skeen and Pegwai came up to watch the departure, took one look at Maggí and the swirling chaos on the deck and found a back corner where they'd be out of the way. Skeen brought her head close to Pegwai's. “Our Captain's been like a bear with a sore foot since she came back. I didn't smell anything over there,” she nodded at the cluster of buildings that made up Efli Baq, “to explain it. You?”

“No … not exactly.” Pegwai frowned. “A cousin of mine is tied up a couple of ships down.”

“Djabo's hairy gonads, Peg, how many cousins do you have?”

“It's not that there are so many of us, it's just that we get around a lot.”

“So, your cousin said.…”

“Nothing direct. He wanted me to transfer to his ship. He didn't give any reasons for it, but he kept on at me to switch. The only thing he'd say when I pushed him was that the Min had vanished, gone to ground in the hills, he thought. When I asked him what difference that made, he said if I wanted to be a fool that was my business. Wouldn't say a word more, just hoofed me off his ship.”

“Hm. Ti said something about a faction of Sea Min that wanted to trade … no!” A snort of laughter. “Peg, no, not trade, the good old fashioned pay-off scam. Look, I'm operating on a barrel of guess to a drop of fact, but I'd say this is an enterprising bunch of Sea Min. They made a deal with their dry cousins to sell the dirty Nemin safe passages across the Halijara.” She giggled. “Djabo's greedy gullet, I wonder how old that racket is. Do you understand? You pay their fee and they see you get across with no holes in your hull. How long has your cousin been … never mind, it doesn't matter. Maggí's been sailing these waters for more than twenty years.” She sobered. “Of all the fuckin' times, Peg; you know what your cousin was telling you?”

“I very much fear I do.”

“That … Telka, I'd like to feed her inch by inch to the Ever-Hunger.”

“You think her reach is this long?”

“I think she either bought them off or scared them shitless. I think somewhere in the middle of this bright blue sea we're going to get thumped.”

“Tell Maggí?”

“Think we need to?”

“Skeen!”

“I didn't mean it like that. What I meant was, she knows. Look at her.”

Pegwai watched the Aggitj woman stride about, listened to her shout orders, a growl like a hungry cat in her deep voice. “We'd better wait until she's not so busy.”

Skeen chuckled. “Better.”

“Your sister's been busy.” The cook and his helper had cleared the table, leaving behind stemmed crystal and a cut glass decanter filled with rich ruby wine. The meal had been an uneasy one, none of them wanting to bring up the subject haunting them, at least those who knew and cared what was happening. The Aggitj and the Boy sat together around the foot of the table, the Aggitj still drifting, uncertain about where they were going, the Boy curious, interested, annoyed because he couldn't read the undercurrents he could feel swirling about the table. Chulji crouched beside him, subdued; he'd eaten his greens and soup with a listlessness foreign to him. His antennas quivered when Maggí broke the silence, he folded his forearms tight against his body and waited for her to go on. Timka dropped her hands into her lap, raised her brows, but said nothing. Lipitero watched, withdrawn, waiting. Skeen and Pegwai exchanged glances.

“Twenty years I've crossed here,” Maggí said. “The only trouble I've had was jitsibays raising the fees. Twice a year every stinking year my Goum Kiskar noses out of here, dues paid, and goes sweetly across the Halijara without a smell of trouble other than the storms that shag down on you all the time out there. Twenty years and it's never happened that I go slipping into Stira's Court and find the shuping place empty. Not a jit there, just a few tinks trying to sell old metal. And they look at me like I'm crazy when I ask them about Kyalay and Lavan and half a dozen others. Gone home, I get told. Home? Where's that I ask. I get a shrug and an eyeroll. I go hunting for Captains whose ships I see tied out here either side of mine. Idiko Dih. Ximinarallan. Zehlen Papayesa. They don't know or won't say more than one day in middle of some dickering a jit came around and gathered up all the jitsibays and went off with them Lifefire knows where. Ordinarily this isn't something I'd mention and, my friends, I'd be obliged if you didn't say anything about it outside this room, not even to each other. Pegwai Dih, forget you're a Lumat Scholar and don't pass this on. It gets out, you'll mess up a lot of lives.” She looked round at their faces, spent a bit longer examining Skeen and Pegwai. “Hai Lifefire, it looks to me like my fire's drawn already. Never mind, call it a favor to me, don't talk. Jitsibays are Min go-betweens. The Sea Min clans who live in these waters aren't such bad sorts, you can do a deal with them as long as you don't make a noise about it. Been profitable on both sides. We get weather news and a clear passage, they get … well, what they want. No point in talking about that. I certainly wouldn't mind doing some more direct trading with the Fish, but they don't dare be that open. It would get them fried in their own grease. They've got nasty neighbors down there. I repeat, every jit in Efli Baq has vanished. Ti, that sister of yours has got to them some way. I doubt if our Fish will be in on the attack, they're too slippy for that; they'll disappear down there like the jits did up here. No, she's done a deal with the sharks alongside and let our Fish know they'll have to back off, join the sharks or get stomped. Lifefire send her rootrot and rheumatism, if she keeps those shtupyens stirred up, she's going to make my life one stinking mess.”

Skeen fiddled with her napkin. “You could avoid these waters until things settle down.”

“I could.”

“And you could dump us. That would make a smaller mess.”

“I could.” For a moment Maggí's face was stern, but there was a touch of warmth and humor there. She broke the mask with a laugh. “I won't. Know why?”

Skeen lifted her glass in a silent salute. She sipped at the wine, set the glass down. “One,” she said, “if you can send those sharks running, you'll have the local Fish in your debt. I doubt you'd put much weight on gratitude, but a little fear's a healthy seasoning to any deal. The next time you negotiate your passage fees, you'll have that good will and fear working for you. Two. If ever you had a chance of fighting off a Sea Min attack, it's now with Ti and Chul to fly watch, with Petro and me on board,” she grinned. “Not that we're so much in our persons, it's what we bring with us. So you're throwing the dice and hoping they come up winners.”

“Well?”

“I'd say it depended on how many come at us. Unless you've got sources you haven't mentioned, I can't see that we have any way of knowing that. So it's play or leave the table. You've got the most to lose, it's your choice.”

Maggí nodded. “Ti, what about you? Can you add anything to that? Or you, Chul?”

They both started talking; Timka broke off, signed Chulji to finish what he was saying. His antennas flattened out and back as he ducked his head, embarrassed. “It's nothing much, just what I can remember about some stories I heard when I was a nidling. One of the nurses was an unmated female. Min Skirrik but you'd never know it by the way she acted, except when she was telling my sisters and me about the places she'd been. She'd been everywhere,” his squeaky voice went even higher on the last word. “She told us about the gunja and the Pochiparn.” He looked round at the uncomprehending faces. “None of you ever heard of those? Not even you, Ti?”

Timka closed her eyes, dug into her memory. “No, Chul. Neither one.”

“Triffakezaram said the gunja were like the great, great, great grandsons of tattolits.”

‘Ah. Those I know about.” Timka swung round to face Maggí and Skeen. “In the elder days before the Gate was opened, Min were collected in nokaffari which were loose groupings of clans; the clans were loose groupings of families who shared kinship and were usually neighbors.” She laughed at Pegwai's eager face. “No need to take notes, Scholar, I'll go over this with you later when we've got the time.”

Pegwai nodded. “I'll hold you to that, Ti.”

“Patience, Skeen, this does have a purpose. You've got to have a little background to understand about Tatts. Nokaffari were almost always fighting about something; we were a contentious folk, bound to take offense at fleabites. But if we wanted a reasonably good life for our children and other dependents, we had to trade. So there were the truce fairs in early autumn and there were the zecolletros. These, what shall I call them, these aggregations of Min, these guilds, they reached beyond family, clan and nokarif. If your family or clan or nokarif was warring with some other group and one of the enemy made a zecolletro sign at you and it was your zecolletro, it was a call to truce. You couldn't ignore it. Both sides in the war would turn on you.” She cleared her throat. “Which meant unless your group was too poor, you hired your fighting done. That way you didn't have those embarrassing halts to the bloody business. You went to a different sort of zecolletro, the Tatt-Habor. You hired a cell of tattolits to do your fighting. These Tatts were where we shoved our bad boys, the ones that were more trouble than clan or family could handle. The ones who liked hurting, the ones who got sexual pleasure from setting fires, the oversized who seemed born to be bullies, the undersized who wanted vengeance on the world for their lack of inches, the rebels, the too bright, the disrupters. And there were the boys who went on their own for who knows what reasons to the training halls of the Tatt-Habor. Once they were Tatt, they had no family, no clan, no nokarif. Their whole world was their particular cell, their only loyalty was to that cell, the cell's only loyalty was to its employer. There were no rules for tattolits. No. I'm wrong. There was one rule. Win. However you could. Whatever you had to do.” She gave Lipitero a quick twist of her lips, a parody of a smile. “One thing the Ykx did for us when they made the Gate and came through, they killed off the tattolits. Had to.” She sighed. “End of lecture. Almost. One last thing. Something the Poet thought.” She had a softer smile, a raised hand for Pegwai. “He knew a lot he wouldn't talk about to anyone but his family. Most everyone thought he was a fool. He wasn't. He had the tact not to question me,” dry laugh, “he wouldn't have got much. I knew less than half he did about my own people. As long as I kept out of sight and didn't interfere, he let me listen while he talked with his … his informants. One thing Telka and the Holavish are doing—they're trying to put together a new Tatt-Habor. So far, it keeps falling apart on them.” She leaned across the table toward Chulji. “You're saying the Sea Min have a Tatt-Habor?”

Chulji worked his mouthparts, his antennas drooped. “I don't know, Ti. It's only old stories I don't remember all that much of. Let me think.” Under the table his feet and feet-hands did a clattering dance on the floorboards. “Aaah, Triffakezaram said she didn't stay long under the water, she wasn't all that welcome there. And she didn't like them much either, except for their poets—she was a bit daft on poets.” He opened and closed his dactyls, twitched all over. “I remember this. Gunja have practice matches. Triff told us about one … aaah … how did it go? Like a kind of lethal dance, she said. Closing and fleeing, weaving about each other, one against one, one against three, one against more and more until one dies the play death. And then the dance is over. One of the few times they weren't terribly boring she said. Most of the time they sit around playing with their weapons and talking fight with other gunja. You can understand one word in ten, she said, and that's not because they speak a kind of Min that's very different from Land Min, though they do. That's because nine words out of the ten are terms they've got for some fancy way of holding a hand or a tentacle or whatever, that sort of thing. Very, very boring, she said. Other times, they're not so bad. They have poetry contests, she said, when the prize goes to the one who can improvise the finest couplet on some topic someone throws at them. The more couplets, the better they are, the higher the esteem given the speaker. She went on and on about that till I stopped listening. Verrry boring.” He twitched his mouthparts in a Skirrik grin and stopped talking.