Jo Clayton: Shadowplay

About half the Guardforce deserted and slid into the crowd the moment they got a chance to tear off their uniforms.

By will and the force of the discipline he'd imposed on Aspirants all the long years he'd been Gospah, Ayawit was holding the rite together despite the chaos out on the floor of the crater.

Though he was gradually losing some of his priests, the core held. The Longhorners played their bassnotes, the choir sang, the god-Mimes danced-and the Na-priests crouched in the guardline between the Gospah and the people.

One by one the weaker souls slipped away, throwing off their robes and cassocks, stealing clothing off the dead, melting into the mob outside. But the core held.

As Miowee went over the edge and landed with a thump on the planks behind the Pyres, Shadith sagged against the ropes.

They gave a little. She could move her hands, her arms.

After a moment, she understood why.

Getting the knife out, Miowee had cut through several loops of the coil that bound her to the pole and that coil was beginning to unwind.

Her leg burned a little, but she still wasn't feeling much pain, the crystal cut too clean.

She flexed her knee, gasped at the sudden agony, felt sick when her foot sloshed in the blood that was filling the boot; the knife hadn't touched an artery, but she was leaking like a holey pot.

I'm going to bleed to death, she thought. No!

She rocked her body. The rope unwound faster and faster.

Fire. She was fire.

The Gospah was coming toward her, his eyes glazed with the intensity of his concentration.

He didn't see the loosened rope.

She had the feeling he saw nothing but whatever it was inside his head.

His arms were outstretched and empty, but three Kam priests behind him held torches.

He stopped in front of her. He chanted something. A Kam priest gave him a torch. His voice rising to a shriek, Ayawit looped it onto her Pyre.

It landed by her feet; the sticks caught, exploded into a sheet of flame.

Shadith closed her eyes, stopped breathing. She shut down everything but that rough pressure against her body and the slow, agonizing dance that kept the rope uncoiling until she tore the last loops off her neck and shoulders.

She dropped to her knees, reached through fire and grabbed the knife, ignoring the pain as the hot hilt burned into her palm, then she flung herself off the back of the Pyre, her bleeding leg giving way as she landed on the planks beside Miowee.

"Your wrists, push them away from you."

Not daring to cut all the way through (she didn't have time to take care not to slice into Miowee's arms), she nicked the rope round her wrists deeply enough (she hoped) to let the singer break free, then started crawling toward Kikun's Pyre which was burning now as the Gospah marched away with the last torch, crossing to Rohant.

She heard shouts, shooting, ignored them as she stabbed the knife into a stick near the top, then concentrated on pulling herself up the back of the Pyre.

The choir's chant faltered, stopped, the Kam priests shouted and began pushing and jumping, trying to get away from something that was more terrifying than the Gospah's anger.

The Longhorns went silent, the Drums stopped sounding. There was a rattle of high-pitched pings so close together they produced an almost continuous whine that improbably filled the whole of the broken Bubble.

Shadith levered herself over the edge of the pile, retrieved the knife and cut cautiously at the coil of rope binding Kikun to the center pole.

He woke from his trance and began helping her peel the rope away. His face was blistered from the heat of the flames, he was coughing as a few tendrils of oily smoke blew into his nostrils.

The Fire quit.

One minute it was there, the next gone, leaving behind a foul stench and a sudden chill as if whatever had snuffed it had not only killed the flames but sucked the heat out of the fuel that fed them, out of the air itself.

Steadying herself as her leg threatened to give way again, Shadith grabbed at the center post and gaped at the devastation in the Bubble, bodies sprawled everywhere, piled on top of each other, stunned not dead (they were still breathing), the new arrival sitting calmly in the middle of all this on a huge warbot of worldclass ugliness, three smaller clones of the thing standing guard behind it.

Aleytys grinned at her. "Eh, Shadow, Dea ex Machina reporting for duty."

"Eh, Lee." Shadith closed her eyes, popped them open again as she remembered… "You better machinate some more or all we'll be is smears on rubble." She eased the blade into the center post, above Kikun's head. She didn't trust herself with it, not any more. "I suppose you didn't see any ship in orbit?"

"Someone was skittering for the Limit. Thought I'd better collect you first. Machinate how-and why?"

"That someone probably left us a little present. Planetkiller. Think you can locate it, say it's there?"

"Lovely friends you have. Here, before you bleed to death and waste my worry." Aleytys tossed a medpac to Shadith, then snapped a command to the warbot she was riding. It twisted its long jointed neck up and around, bringing its head close to hers; she began talking rapidly and inaudibly into its shielded sensors.

Leaving Kikun to finish freeing himself, Shadith eased down onto the quenched and blackened sticks, maneuvering her wounded leg around so she could see the cut. Not much point in cleaning it up now, leave that to Lee's Autodoc. Better stop the bleeding though. Sar! I've lost enough blood on this jauza world to feed a vampire for a year. Come on, come on, Lee, move it! We die now, I swear I'll haunt you… hey, I wonder if one ghost can haunt another? Sheehl Pm getting giddy…

She broke the seal, brought out the canned bandage and sprayed a thick layer of foam over the cut. The foam solidified into resilient fauxskin-that hurt! Pressure on the damaged nerve ends. Knowing what was doing it didn't help at all. Hands shaking, she dug out a painpopper, checked the dials, her eyes blurring unreliably, then managed to get a pop into her leg and shut off the agony.

Cool dry fingertips touched her face. "All right?"

"Right enough."

Kikun straightened, looked around. "Useful friend."

"Yeh."

"I had better cut the Ciocan loose, don't you think?"

"Cool him down first. Um. You know about the knife?"

"I know. Cuts anything."

"Not a great exaggeration, my friend."

"Wa." He gazed across the backs of the warbots, shook his head at the bloody screaming war going on out in the crater. "Wa weh."

Shadith grimaced as he jumped down, the knife held loosely in his left hand; he was surefooted but given the properties of the crystal, prancing about with it like that came absurdly close to suicide. She'd done the same thing a minute ago, but she hadn't been tracking very well just then.

Aleytys was still talking to that bot. Shadith's stomach knotted and she swallowed hastily to keep her dinner down. That ship of hers… Tigatri, she calls it… Daughter. I don't know. Maybe it… she… can handle the Banger. Be the baddest joke in the universe if Lee rescued us just in time we all get blown to nada… got here faster than I expected. Maybe… depends on Ginny. Double-knotter. If I read him right, he'll want to be insplitting before the Banger goes. If… Gives us some hours working time… maybe… I don't know, I don't know…

She hitched painfully over to the center pole, leaned against it and shut her eyes.

Its chelae absurdly gentle, the warbot plucked Shadith off the Pyre and deposited her beside Aleytys who was leaning back but keeping a wary eye on the readouts spread across the front of the howda.

Shadith forced herself erect. "Lee…"