Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

She tucked her hands into the muff. It had been Illy’s but Illy had given it to her as a homecoming present. They turned into a lane between high buildings, and behind them a man shouted something. She glanced over her shoulder. A knot of men was coming after them. She grabbed Saba’s arm. He and Tanuojin stopped. Another pack of Styths was blocking the narrow way ahead of them. One of these walked forward. His shirt was spangled with bits of metal. His face looked as if it had been cut to pieces and sewn back together again.

Saba shoved her. “Get out of the way. Run.”

She backed away from them. The man with the scarred face stopped; she knew it was Ymma, and his ruined face was Tanuojin’s work.

Saba said, low, “Keep moving.” He lunged at Ymma.

The two packs of men rushed together, like two hands clapping. Paula ran to the fence along the alley, looking for a way through them. Their reek made her heart pound. She could not see Saba or Tanuojin in the fighting. Sliding along the wall, she headed for the street. An arm hooked around her neck. She was hoisted off her feet, the crooked arm strangling her. She wrenched around and slid out of the grasp but someone else caught her.

“Hold her—”

She squirmed uselessly in a pinion grip. A hand yanked her head up by the hair. Someone snarled in her ear. “Watch. This is what happens to people who defy us.” She bit her lip to keep from crying out. Ymma’s men clogged the alleyway. Five feet from her they had Saba down on his knees, with his belt around his chest pinning his arms down. He was rigid, coiled; if they had let him go he would have shot up like a spring. Tanuojin lay on the ground. Ymma and two of his men were kicking him. She whined, and the hand in her hair twisted so hard tears ran down her cheeks. She heard bone crackle; she saw Tanuojin’s eyes close. They went on trampling him long after he began to bleed. At last Ymma stood back, signaling to the other men to stop.

Saba said nothing. He raised his head and gave Ymma an instant’s glance and turned his gaze back to Tanuojin. Ymma gave a sharp order. His men surged off along the alleyway. They carried Paula with them, out to the street, tucked like barter under one arm. A hand pressed stifling over her face. She fought for breath. Abruptly they dropped her and ran off along the street.

She gained her feet again, gasping in the rancid air. All along the street, people wheeled to watch Ymma’s men run by. She went back into the alley. Saba knelt beside Tanuojin. On the ground behind him lay his broken belt. The ground was covered with blood. Tanuojin’s head lay in a great puddle of it. She squatted down and put out her hand toward him, and Saba caught her arm.

“No. Don’t touch him. Find out where Ymma goes.”

She got up and trotted back to the street. Ymma and his men were nowhere in sight. She loped up the street in the direction they had gone, looking down the side streets. The thick stream of passers-by slowed her. Ahead, near the curve, where the street turned up, she saw a dozen men all traveling together, and she quickened her step.

In the dark she could not tell from such a distance if that band was Ymma’s or not. They turned into a side street, and she ran through an alley and climbed a fence and jumped down into another trunk street, which brought her much closer to them. Now she could see the bits of metal on one man’s shirt, and she went after them at a flat run.

Above her head Upper Vribulo stretched like a roof in the darkness. On the black lake half a mile from her a boat floated upside down; its bow light gleamed on the water. Ymma and his men walked up the curve toward the lake shore and turned to follow it. She realized where they were going. She went along another street, keeping them in sight on the curved wall of the city, and followed them that way down to the rAkellaron House.

They circled around to go in through a side door, avoiding the Barn. She was tired, and she had never been inside the House. Warily she went up to the door. The building loomed over her, large even for Styths. She went in the door and saw Ymma and his men at the far end of a long dim hallway, going through another door. When they had all disappeared, she ran down the length of the hall, her feet pattering on the stone floor. That door opened on a stairway.

She was afraid to go farther. The stone walls around her chilled her to the bone. She went back outside and waited awhile, to see if anyone came out, but no one did. After about half an hour, she went around the House to the Barn.

Saba was in Tanuojin’s office, sitting on the desk drinking whiskey. He watched her come in and shut the door.

“How is he?” she said.

“He’s bad.” The big Styth set his bottle down. “He’s still bleeding. I didn’t think he could be hurt that bad any more.”

She went to the desk and took the bottle. “Ymma went to the House.” The liquor burned her throat.

“Damn him.” Saba slapped his knees. “I knew he wouldn’t dare do that without help.”

“Is Machou behind it?”

“Probably.”

She drank another gulp of the whiskey. “What’s going to happen?”

“I’ll call Ymma down, next watch, and get Machou on my back, and Tanuojin won’t be there to step in for me. I’ll end up six places down the rank, if I’m lucky. And kicked to pieces.”

He took the bottle back and drank, full-throated. She watched the level of the liquor fall. He was afraid, and his fear made her cold. She went through the office to the little room.

Tanuojin lay on his back in the bed, wrapped in the blankets. He was profoundly asleep. His face was swollen shapeless. Saba came in past her and bent over him.

“He’s stopped bleeding.” He took her by the shoulder and turned her around. “Come on.”

There were two time meters on the wall of the middle room of the office, one for Yekka and one for Vribulo, which read forty-two minutes into the low watch. She hadn’t even heard the bells ring. She walked up and down the room past the computers.

“There has to be something we can do.”

“Yes. I can tear Ymma apart, before they maul me.”

She wheeled around toward him, her temper rising. “Stop talking as if it were certain. There has to be some way we can come out of this on top.”

“You don’t have to fight.”

“If I did I wouldn’t give up before it even starts.”

He pushed a stack of tapes off the top of a cabinet and sat down on it, staring at her down his long aristocratic nose. She heard the pulses banging in her ears. Her fist was clenched. Finally she looked away. “All right. I’m sorry.”

“If you help me maybe we can do something.”

“What?”

“Go into the House and look around for me. See who’s in this.”

She gathered her breath. “I will.”

“Good girl,” he said. “I’ll go stir up the flocks.”

The steps up to the front of the House were like ledges. Her legs began to ache before she was halfway to the porch. The broad expanse of concrete was nearly empty of people. The double doors into the House stood open. She went into an entryway, blinking in the dark. The wall on her right glinted. Twelve feet high, it was covered with Styth letters set in gold into the stone. She realized that was the Gold Wall, decorated with the names of the rePriman.

She was wearing slave clothes, a white scarf tied over her hair, and the two men standing guard just inside the entryway never even looked at her. She started up the steep stairs. Saba had told her to go to the third floor, the Prima Suite, where Machou lived. Two men passed her, coming down, one of them Ymma’s man. They ignored her. The stairs ended at the third-floor landing. Even before she opened the door she could hear the roar of voices in the hall of the Prima Suite.