Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

“Do you want work?” Tanuojin said. But he was watching Paula.

“What?”

She said, “You can work for me.”

“What would you pay him with?” Tanuojin said. His hands slid under his belt. He never looked at David. “Vida, I need a pilot. I’m buying Ybicket .”

“ Ybicket ,” David said. He came two steps into the middle of the room, circling Tanuojin’s chair to face him, and she knew she had lost. “Where is she now? How much are you paying for her?”

“I still owe Ketac four million dollars of it, which I won’t have until your mother starts to cooperate. The ship’s in Matuko. Can you go get her?”

David stuck his open hand out. “I need bus money.”

“Take Junna to navigate for you.” Tanuojin gave him credit. Paula sat, watching them, silent. His hair was too fine to stay clubbed. The side of his face was bruised. Tanuojin said, “Dock her in the number 4-A slip in the mid-city gate. Report to Marus when you’re done.”

“I’ll bring you something from Matuko,” David said to her. He left.

“That’s the anarchist in him,” Tanuojin said. “No loyalty.”

“He’s Saba’s son too.” Her voice sounded rough. She coughed to disguise it. Useless.

“I warned you,” he said.

Tanuojin went to Yekka. Ketac took her to the Akopra. During the interval between the first two dances, Bokojin came into the box. Ketac had obviously expected him; they stood talking. Paula sat with her back to them, sipping kakine. They agreed to meet sometime indefinitely later and the Illini Akellar went out.

The Vribulo company performed three more short dances, two old, and one experimental. New rAkopran were rare and she watched this one with attention. It bored Ketac, who played with her hand, talked to her, and tried to get her to caress him.

“Come to my house,” he said, when they were leaving the theater.

“Not if Bokojin is going to be there.”

They went across the lobby, through little knots of people dressed splendidly in long brocaded shirts, in dresses trimmed with metal lace. Ketac took a firm grip on her arm. “How do you know Bokojin is going to be there?”

“You agreed to meet him, don’t you remember? Just two hours ago.” She went ahead of him out the door. The long blue paper banners hanging on the eave of the porch advertised the next cycle. The street was thick with the people just out of the theater.

“He won’t stay long,” Ketac said.

“I hate him. Ask him what he thinks of me. I’ll see you in the middle watch.” She pulled her arm out of his grip, and he let her go. She went down the street toward the corner.

There, in the midst of the crowd, she turned and looked back. Ketac was going off in the opposite direction, toward his house. She trotted after him through the swarming traffic and followed him across the city, staying about forty feet behind him. He was easy to keep in sight, taller than the crowd, his black hair tied sleek among the shaggier Vribulit heads of the other men. Whenever his long stride took him to the limit of her vision, she broke into a run to catch up. He led her through the edge of the slums by the lake and down the Steep Street, cut into broad steps. At the foot of the hill he went through a gate in the wall of his new house. Paula circled around the corner into the next block, ran down the alley, and climbed onto the recycling bin and dropped over the fence into the yard.

The house was built in a hollow square, one room thick all around. In front of each of the windows was a trellis covered with vines, to keep the place private. She crawled between the wall and the vine screen over Ketac’s bedroom window. The skirt of the black dress caught on a strut of the trellis and ripped.

Ketac’s room seemed empty. She reached in across the deep sill and dragged herself into the room. The torn skirt of the dress tangled in her legs. She got up, pulling the dress off; she wore a pair of overalls under it against the cold.

The bed was on a bench built out from the wall on her left. A blue curtain hung from the ceiling hid it. She looked in to make sure it was empty and tossed the ruined dress onto the pillow. Crossing to the door, she slid it open an inch.

All the rooms opened onto a circular inner yard. Ketac liked to spend his time there, and he was there now, standing at the far end beside the bilyobio tree reading a piece of paper. She pressed her eye against the crack in the door. A slave came from one of the eight rooms ringing the yard and spoke to him, and Ketac nodded. Paula watched him cross the yard toward her. He ambled, looking around him with a proprietor’s critical eye, moving a chair and stooping to fuss with a loose flag in the neat grass-seamed pavement. Bokojin came out of the house.

Paula sucked on the inside of her cheek. They met with the little greeting ceremony of their way of life, jibing, punching each other, and finally shaking hands and sitting down. Bokojin sat facing her, his feet primly together.

“Where is she?”

“I let her go back to the House.”

“You what?”

“I couldn’t very well drag her off in the middle of the street. She doesn’t like you. She said she wouldn’t—”

A slave brought them a tray with cups and a jug. Bokojin reached for one. Peevish, he said, “Damn it, I left her to you because you said you could—”

“Why are you so high?” Ketac said. He waved the slave away. “I’ll handle my mother. You handle Tanuojin.”

Paula straightened away from the door and rubbed her eye. She wondered if they were planning a gambit in the Chamber or something more direct. Bokojin said, stiff, “I wish you wouldn’t call her your mother.”

Ketac laughed. “She’ll do anything I say. Don’t worry about her.” He slung one leg over the arm of his chair. “How is Machou?”

“Drunk. How is he ever? When we’ve done this, we should get rid of him. He’s useless.” Bokojin got up, a cup in his hand, and sauntered around the yard, expansive. “The main thing is to put the rAkellaron in order, the way things are supposed to be.”

There was a crash inside the house on the far side of the yard. Paula put her face against the slit in the door to see better. Ketac stood and Bokojin’s head turned. The door of the far side of the yard flew open.

“Akellar—” A man ran two steps out toward them and pitched forward on his face. Six inches of a throw-stick thrust out of his back between his shoulder blades.

Bokojin gave a loud cry. Three men rushed into the yard. The man leading was Marus, and he had a blowgun in his hand.

Bokojin put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Ketac took two steps sideways, into the open away from the chairs.

“What is this?”

“You’re under arrest,” Marus said. He looked from Ketac to Bokojin. Two more of his men came into the yard.

Ketac backed toward the door where Paula watched. “What for?”

Bokojin broke for the door he had entered through, and Ketac sprinted toward Paula. She backed in a rush to the window. In the yard someone shouted. Bokojin whistled again. She climbed over the window sill down into the narrow space between the house and the vinework.

Ketac’s slaves clogged the area around the front gate. She went close enough to see through the main door into the house. That room swarmed with armed men. In their midst half a dozen patrolmen stood with their belts strapping their arms down. Someone shouted, “The Akellar is dead!” The slaves around her wailed in chorus. Paula elbowed and wiggled a way through to the gate onto the street. It was shut, and two men stood guard over it, leaning against it. Behind her there was a splintering crash.

One of the gate guards saw her. He grabbed the other man and pointed at her. She slid back among the slaves.