Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

He pulled free of her – tired of being tugged at, handled, dealt with. "I won't hide beneath a blanket – and doubt there's any need to." It was wonderful what salvation and a good night's sleep accomplished, even for the very sore and starving.

Ambassador MacAffee appeared to be surveying the ground as he came. Bajazet saw his hat tilt as he stared down left, then right. A single spear – thrown very hard – came suddenly up and nearly to him, so he seemed to hop in the air like a magical rabbit, and the javelin flew under.

Hands clapped in appreciation of the throw, or the avoidance. Bajazet saw the boy – Errol – standing back by the little clearing's edge. He was watching the Boston man with almost an idiot's attention, mouth slack… half open.

Then the Ambassador to Middle Kingdom, the cheerful and merry Master MacAffee – swung over them like a kite… hovered a moment, then a moment more. A light, curved scimitar was sheathed at his belt. Bajazet saw the man's ruddy face under the blue hat's broad brim… the ruddy face, and bright-blue eyes visible even at that height.

Bajazet saw – was seen – and received a sudden look of fury, instantly smoothed to smiling. Boston's ambassador sagged in the air for an instant, apparently having lost concentration, then rose and hovered over.

"Good morning, Prince!" he called, rocking a little in the morning breeze. "I so regret my lateness. I see you've survived politics – and found friends… of a sort."

Now regretting his bow, left lying by the blanket unstrung, Bajazet considered what the Made-girl had mentioned, and shouted, "You seem to have lost your friend, MacAffee!"

The ambassador, hanging high in the air, the rising sun bright over his left shoulder, confirmed that with an amused shrug, and called down, "Oh, Boston can always find friends who wish a crown. They sprout like spring onions along your river!"

"Then they will go as this traitor king has gone!" Bajazet's heart was pounding so he seemed to shake with it. "- As you will go, you fat dog, if you come down!"

MacAffee shook his head, smiled – then suddenly swung around in a swift half circle that made Bajazet dizzy to watch. He'd drawn his scimitar; sunlight glowed along the curved steel.

Tribesmen were shouting again, along the valley's little stream.

Bajazet turned… and saw a distant motion through the air – but no hundreds of futile javelins rising toward it, no hurled hatchets. It might have been the ancient American totem-eagle sailing, white-headed, wings spread. Then the sun caught dark blue, the wings of an open greatcoat, and long white hair streaming.

What flew – or Walked-in-air – swerved nearer… nearer… then near, coat billowing in the wind, and Bajazet saw it was the Boston-woman who'd watched him from a tree.

She called something, but the breeze took it away.

"Exile!" Master MacAffee shouted at her. "- Condemned by town council!" And drifted sideways through the air – sliding toward her, first slowly, then faster.

"He'll kill her!" The Made-girl, Nancy, slid her hatchet from her belt – leaned far back, then threw it with a harsh grunt of effort. It spun thrumming, and surprisingly high… but still short and behind the ambassador as he went sailing. "He'll kill our friend!"

"No use," Richard said.

The Boston woman – sitting erect, legs crossed – flew to meet the ambassador, her paper-white hair bannering out behind her. She wore black boots, blue trousers, and white blouse beneath her open blue coat – and seemed, from Bajazet's sun-dazzled sight of her, to be smiling. She lifted a slim-bladed scimitar from her lap – and struck MacAffee's stroke clanging aside as they came together.

Then the air sang with sharp steel's music as they turned and turned together like mating hawks, but winged in blue. Tribesmen were running up from the creek, calling to each other as they came – until there was a growing crowd shifting Warm-time yards this way and that, beneath the fighters in the air.

Bajazet, jostled by wiry naked men smelling of smoke, roasted horse meat, and dried blood, still could hear faint grunts of effort above him. The scimitars wove bright ribbons of motion to ring ring ring… while both air-walkers dipped and fell to rise again.

Bajazet saw the woman fought with a two-hand grip, and she spun full around, sometimes – first one way, then the reverse as she struck… Whirled one way again as he watched, began to turn back – then didn't, so MacAffee, anticipating, guarding wrong, was suddenly back-slashed across the belly, flew staggering back and back in the sun's glare, a dark silhouette that seemed to bow… bow deeply… then slowly somersaulted forward.

MacAffee fell from his height… fell in a fat flutter of blue and spattering red… and was caught, as if by arrangement, on the tribesmen's spears.

The Made-boy, Errol, hummed a three-note tune.

The Boston-woman, her weapon wiped and sheathed, sailed down after the fight – only lightly sliced along her forearm – to leaps and roars of congratulation by the file-toothed men. Dwarfed in their crowding as she retrieved her opponent's fallen sword, then its scabbard, she treated them like noisy children – presenting that slender scimitar in pretend thrusts and blows, so the men danced away in mock terror, laughing. In celebration, the tribesmen then stamped and trampled the dead ambassador into a muddy red mess with one half-open eye.

… When the warriors quieted, began to drift away, the Boston-woman pushed through lingerers the little distance to the Made-peoples' clearing – looked Bajazet up and down, then held out her hand. Though she was small and neatly collected as a girl, she seemed at least in her forties. Her face was marked with a faint web of fine wrinkles, and her hair fell prematurely white past her shoulders. But her eyes seemed of no age, and black as a moonless night… Blood had trickled down her wrist.

"Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley," she said, gripped his hand surprisingly hard, and noticed him noticing her bleeding. "Twenty years ago, he couldn't have touched me… So, you're Toghrul's boy – and, I'm sure, his image, though somewhat worn after your long run." She let his hand go. "Your First-father and I might have met – did you know that?" An oddly merry smile. "I believe something of that sort was planned by the Faculty. And if we'd met, I suppose he would have fallen in love with me – since I was very beautiful, and clever…"

The Boston-woman then turned away and called, with copybook obscenities, to a lounging, tall, naked Sparrow with a fine-feathered necklace and an ax… They walked away together, the Boston-woman's wide-brim blue hat hanging down her back on a plaited cord.

Bajazet sat by the fire awkwardly, and with a grunt of discomfort from stone-rasped skin and bruised muscles. "A 'friend'?" he said to the Made-girl. "- That Boston-woman?"

"She is a friend." Nancy slightly lisping her is as she watched the Boston-woman go. "And a Person, made as we were made, only more subtly – you know that Warm-time word, Prince?"

"Yes."

Richard, sitting beside the fire. "I consider myself an extremely subtle creation – of juice mainly of a Boston breeder, but partly of a grizzled bear, placed within a certain woman Shrike."

"Have you Persons on your great river?" The Made-girl cocked her head for Bajazet's answer.

" 'Persons'… such as you?"

"Yes, and others. Moonrisers."

"Moonrisers…"

"As you are a Sunriser." Becoming impatient. "You true-blood humans are called Sunrisers, everywhere." She'd lisped Sunrisers.

"Not on the River," Bajazet said.

She stared at him. Yellow eyes and odd pupils… "In this country, there are many Persons like us. And named Moonrisers," she reached out and tapped his knee with a narrow black-nailed hand, "because Sunrisers are plain as day – and we are not."