Melissa Scott - Shadow Man

He reached into the bottom of the carryall, scrabbling through the disks and folders until he found the box of keys. He pulled it out, thumb already on the selector button, and set it against the plate. The door clicked twice and sagged open, and Warreven went on into the warm dark. He had left the house system shut down to avoid having to reset everything if there was another power surge, and he didn’t bother to flick on the lights until he reached the bedroom. He still had to bathe and change—Temelathe would be satisfied with nothing less than proper dress, and besides, he himself needed the reassurance of wealth and status—and then arrange for a car to get him across town to Ferryhead where the Most Important Man kept house. The last was something he should have done before he left the office. He sighed, and went back out into the main room, shedding clothes as he went, stopping only to turn both bath taps full on. The hire office was at least used to him, and Stiller had a standing contract for the Important Men and Women; he was able to order the car and driver for the full night, with only a nominal surcharge for the late notice. If everything went really well, he thought, stripping off the last of his clothes as he headed for the bath, he could maybe get together with Chauntclere, or Shan Reiss if Clere wasn’t ashore, and tour the harborside clubs with him. It had been a while since he’d been out.

He stepped into the tepid water, sliding down until the ripples touched his chin. He had shaved two days ago, wouldn’t need to do it again for another few days, but his hair was a mess, matted and sweaty. He ducked his head under the nearer tap, then shutoff both before he overfilled the generous tub. Soap stood in a jar beside the bath, and he reached for it, freed the stopper, and dug his fingers into the soft cream. Its heavy scent filled the air—sweetmusk mingling with the sharper note of the witch’s-broom—and he was tempted for an instant to rub it between his legs, over cock and balls and into his cunt, and ride the drug’s bright euphoria into the next morning. But it was easy enough to lose an encounter with Temelathe, even without the broom’s overconfidence, and he rubbed it into his hair instead, working the soap into a heady lather. Even so, when he reluctantly hauled himself out of the now-cold water, he could feel the broom singing in his blood.

As he worked a comb through his tangled hair, he caught a glimpse of himself in the larger mirror, and stopped for a moment to stare, thinking of ’Aukai. He was still slim, was if anything going stringy, the old curves resolving into wiry muscle, breasts too small to sag, but a little incongruous above the bony rib cage. The boyish penis was just as incongruous, and he looked back at the smaller mirror, concentrating on his hair. Whatever ’Aukai had thought, he was certainly too old now to play trade—though it had never been his looks that worried her—but not, he thought, too old to run the harborside clubs.

He went back into the bedroom and began to pull clothes out of the chest, tossing the discards onto the piled quilts that made up the bed. He settled at least for an ivory tunic-and-trousers suit, the slubbed silk cool against his skin, and rummaged through the smaller box until he found the vest he wanted. Folhare had made it for him, from the scraps left over from making the topmost bed quilt: she had liked the colors against his skin, and said she knew she wouldn’t get the chance to see him displayed against the quilt itself. The closely stitched fabric glowed like sunset in the narrow room, and he wondered if Folhare would be at this party. She was a Stane, but of the Black Watch; this was probably just a White Stane event, he decided, and emptied his jewel box onto the bed. He sorted through the heap of bracelets and earrings and chains, metal, glass, and carved wood, pulling out the pieces that had been forged from the wreck of the colony ship that had brought his ancestors to Hara. He slid the bracelets onto his wrists, circles of twisted iron that still carried the marks of the hammer and the off-world shipbuilder’s tools, fastened his collar with a square of plastic from the engine room. There was only one earring left—the other sliver of gold-washed circuit board had descended in a different branch of the mesnie —and he paired it with a plain, heavy gold hoop. This was a night for status. He smiled at his reflection, the angular, broad-boned face not yet too worn by the sun, eyes blacker than ever from the broom, and was pleased with the result.

The coupelet was waiting by the time he’d finished dressing, the driver leaning on the steering bar with an expression of infinite patience on his sun-wrinkled face. The destination was already set; as soon as Warreven closed the door behind him, the driver eased the heavy vehicle into motion. They turned south, onto the harbor road, sounding the coupelet’s whistle almost constantly as he worked his way into the slow-moving stream of traffic. This was a bad time to try to get through the harbor district—the market there was still open, the day-boats would just be docking, and the shopkeepers and brokers and the occasional pharmaceutical’s factor would be crowding the quay to inspect the day’s take—and Warreven leaned forward to flip the intercom switch.

“Why aren’t we taking Stanehope Street?”

The driver looked up, fixing the younger man’s face in his mirror. “Sorry, mir, but there’s been some trouble at the Souk, rana dancers. The baas told me to come this way.”

Warreven nodded, and leaned back in his seat, resigning himself to a long, slow ride. The rana groups were always active around the Midsummer holiday, their riot presaging the overthrow of the year; lately, the radical political groups, Modernists like himself and the fringe groups even further to the left, had taken over the ranas’ tactics, and staged their own protests with dance and drumming. Not that the ranas had ever really been apolitical, of course, but the Modernists had honed and focused the protests, trying to say new things in an old voice. The Centennial Meeting would begin at Midwinter, and the Modernists had already announced that they wanted to put the question of Hara’s joining the Concord to an open vote. That meant bringing a lot of other issues into the Meeting—the question of the pharmaceutical contracts, of Temelathe’s control of the government, and the existence of trade and the whole question of gender law—and Tendlathe and the Traditionalists vehemently opposed the idea. A number of the old-style ranas supported their position, and there had already been fights between the two groups.

Traffic slowed around them, and the couplelet’s engine moaned as the driver geared down yet again. Warreven leaned sideways, trying to see around the driver’s head and the shays and runabouts that hemmed them in. Ahead, Consign Wharf jutted into the main harbor, and there was a crowd gathered at its foot, spilling out into the roadway, completely blocking one of the four lanes.

“Someone’s made a good haul,” he said, but even before he heard the driver’s noncommittal grunt, he realized that he was wrong: There were too many runabouts in the knotted traffic, not enough shays and three-ups—too many people altogether, he thought, to be a buying crowd. The coupelet lurched forward, gained another fifty meters before it ground to a halt, and he could hear the noise of drums and the shrill note of a dancer’s whistle even through the coupelet’s heavy shell. Three people—ordinary people, sailors and dockworkers by their clothes, without the usual tattered ribbons that marked a rana group—were standing on a platform balanced precariously on a cluster of fuel drums, arms around one another’s shoulders, chanting and swaying to the drums. He couldn’t hear the words yet, or much more than the dull rhythm, but he could see the defiance in their faces, and the tension in the movements of the listening crowd. The driver reached across his pod to flip a security switch, locking the coupelet’s doors.