Melissa Scott - Shadow Man

“He called around noon,” Tatian answered. “Oddyny’d been over to look at 3im. He said there hadn’t been any change, that he’d call if there was. He left a number at the hospital, though, if you want to try that.”

Warreven took another swallow of the sweetrum, started to nod, and felt the muscles of his neck tighten painfully. “Yes—it’s not that I don’t trust you, I just want to talk to him myself.”

“I figured,” Tatian said, and stepped back out of the doorway.

Warreven slipped past him, still carrying the bottle of sweetrum, vaguely surprised that the off-worlder’s presence was so reassuring. Maybe it was the very matter-of-fact way that he’d stepped in, the ordinary, reasonable common sense of it all—which hardly seemed to be common anymore. The media center was lit, both screens turned to news channels, and Tatian cleared his throat.

“You seem to have made the narrowcasts.”

“Me?” Warreven looked at the screens. Both showed the Harbor Market, crowded not with merchants but with the same sort of crowd that had been dispersed the day before. Even the rana band was back, half a dozen drummers now, and a pair of flute players, perched on a platform that looked higher and less stable than die previous day’s stage. People were dancing—any time there was drumming, people would dance—but beyond them crates and spent fuel cells and all the other debris that collected on the docks had been dragged into a crude barricade. Tough-looking dockers—and not just dockers, Warreven realized, but men and women in ordinary clothes, with only the multicolored rana ribbons to mark them as something different—leaned against it, blocking all access to the Gran’quai.

“Officially,” Tatian said, “they’re continuing yesterday’s protest against the ghost ranas. But the main thrust of what they’re saving is, if you and Haliday aren’t safe, no one is.”

“Wonderful,” Warreven said, and took another swallow of the sweetrum. The pain was starting to ease, even the headache, and the lights were beginning to show faint, rainbowed haloes. It was going to be difficult to balance comfort and sobriety.

“The code’s there,” Tatian said, and pointed to the table beside the media center. He had found the remote as well, Warreven saw, and stopped to collect it, then turned to the couch, shoving aside the quilts Tatian had left neatly piled there. He sat down, setting the bottle beside him, and ran stiff fingers over the remote’s control surfaces, bringing up the main screen and then the new codes. The menus flickered past, a montage of text and symbol, bringing him first into the hospital’s main system, and then into a secondary paging system. He entered the last segment of Malemayn’s codes, and waited. The communications screen went blank, except for a time display; in the screen beside it, the drummers moved in frantic rhythm, following a chanter’s gestures. His shadow fell across the heads of the dancing crowd, stretched to the edge of the empty Market. As he turned, jeering, to the camera, Warreven could see the Trickster’s mark vivid on his cheek.

“Raven?” The communications screen cleared with the word, and Malemayn’s face appeared at its center. Warreven could see white walls behind him, and the occasional out-of-focus figure of a nurse or doctor, elongated shapes in pale green: still calling from a public cubicle, he thought, which meant Haliday wasn’t well enough to have a private room. Malemayn sounded worn out, and the stubble was dark on his cheeks. Warreven touched his own face, feeling the coarse hairs starting, and wondered if he would be able to shave himself in a few days, once the swelling went down.

“How’s Hal?” he asked.

“Stable,” Malemayn answered. “No change from what I told Tatian. That off-world doctor, Oddyny, she was here again, and she says he, 3e should be moved over to the Starport as soon as 3e’s able, which should be in a day or two. Ȝe’s still unconscious, but Oddyny says not to worry. They’re keeping 3im under to let the treatments work.”

Warreven allowed himself a long sigh of relief. He hadn’t realized, until that instant, just how frightened he had been. “So 3e’ll be all right?”

Malemayn nodded. “Oddyny says it’s going to take a month or so, but 3e’ll be fine. How are you?”

“Sore,” Warreven said, and Malemayn laughed.

“You look like death. No, you look like the Doorkeeper.”

Warreven looked sideways, found his reflection in the glass of the nearest window. With the black bandage covering one eye, he did look a little like the popular drawings of Agede the Doorkeeper, the spirit of death and birth and change. “Thanks,” he said sourly, and did not reach for the sweetrum. Agede was always drawn with a cane and a bottle; there was no need to complete the resemblance.

“The tech said you should be sure and reschedule your appointment, have your eye looked at sometime tomorrow.”

“Reschedule?” Warreven scowled at the invisible camera.

“They wanted to see you this afternoon,” Malemayn said. “I mentioned it to Tatian, but he thought—we both thought—it was better to let you sleep. The tech said you should be sure and come in tomorrow, though.”

Warreven nodded, not looking at the off-worlder. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked Tatian’s looking after him, wasn’t sure he entirely disliked it, either. But then, it had been Malemayn’s decision, too.

“I’m going to stay for another hour or so,” Malemayn went on. “Oddyny said she’d be back to take another look at Hal, and she said she’d have time to give me an update then. And then I’m going home and get some sleep.”

“What about Hal?” Warreven asked, a little too sharply. The old fears rose in his mind: Haliday left alone, unconscious, the doctors deciding to castrate, or simply not to save, 3er ambiguous body, all because there was no one there to protest—

“Relax,” Malemayn said. “I made it very clear, and Dr. Jaans was with me, that Hal’s to be treated like they’d treat an off- worlder. I left a couple hundred megs with the ward nurse, too.”

Warreven nodded, appeased. “That ought to be enough.”

“I’ll pay more if I have to,” Malemayn said.

“Let me know what I can put into the pot,” Warreven said.

Malemayn shook his head. “We’ll adjust this through the partnership. Once this is all over. Æ, Raven, I don’t know how we’re going to keep working, with Hal in the hospital and you supposed to be being seraaliste —”

He broke off, shaking his head again, this time in apology, and Warreven looked away, embarrassed. “I know, Mal, I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t my idea.”

“And this wasn’t Haliday’s either,” Malemayn said. “I know.” He sighed, looked down at something beneath the camera’s line of sight. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll call you if there’s any change, any news at all, but if you don’t hear from me, everything’s fine.”

Warreven nodded again. “Give Hal my love,” he said, softly, even though he knew Haliday couldn’t hear the message yet. Malemayn nodded, and broke the connection.

“I hope you don’t mind my not waking you,” Tatian said, after a moment. “I went in and looked, but you were pretty well out of it.”

In the main screen, a shay filled with mosstaas pulled into the Market, and Warreven caught his breath before he realized it was a clip from the day before. “It’s all right,” he said, still watching the screen. “I think sleep was probably the best thing for me.”

“That’s what I thought,” Tatian agreed.

The image in the screen changed again, returning to the live feed. Warreven frowned, trying to figure out where the cameras were stationed—on the Embankment, maybe, or on the Customs House balcony—and the off-worlder cleared his throat.