Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

Kikun frowned. “In the Cluster?”

“No. There’s a rift, then this system.” She touched in a code and a system schematic appeared, along with a short addendum.

STAR:IKSALGUN: gal. cat. MLG372-199-34

PLANETS:

inhabited: YONG’M(8)

ARUMDA’M(9)

KOCHIL’M(10)

other: seven burnt-to-bedrock spheres (1-7) kept that way by frequent sunflares, three gas giants (11-13), four large iceballs (14-17)

“The world called Arumda’m has the best climate, the biggest population,” she said slowly. “I imagine it’s the one we want.” She yawned, sipped at the tea she had left from the supper she’d dialed when she finished the purging. “There’s this, too, Kuna. Record shows Lak Dar’s been there several times.” Her mouth twisted. “He seems to be a type who needs to know every crack before he steps on it, so he’s got enough stuff in file to write an encyclopedia about the place. Clutter, most of it. Well, going through it will be something to do while we’re splitting there.”

Kikun inspected the schematic, then the index window. “I see.” He brooded a moment, ears twitching restlessly. “You said you were going to call Digby.”

“I put the call out.” There were shadows under her eyes like smudges of ink and the bones of her face seemed about to come through the skin. “He should be clicking in within the hour.”

“What are you going to say?”

“What is there to say?”

“If he calls you home?”

“I go. What do you expect, Kuna? What can I do on my own? Look, I’m sorry, but that’s it.”

He gazed at her until she twitched her shoulders and turned away, angry at herself and at him, then he went to the backwall and sat on the silken carpet, waiting for the call.

Digby’s face filled the center cell, broad and brown with black eyes in nests of smile lines. “Nice to know you’re alive, Autumn Rose.”

“Li’l Liz there,” she swung away from the screen, waved her hand at Kikun who was still squatting by the backwall, swung back, “he’s the one that did it. Listen, Dig. This is where we are now…” She sketched out everything that had happened since the debacle at Koulsnakko’s Hole, ended with the star system Kikun had dredged up. “So. We have the ship, it’s clean, plenty of fuel, we’ve got a thread we can pull on… or not. Up to you, Dig. Do I go with it?”

“Hmm.” For several minutes he communed with his ties, his face a lumpy mask, the life that informed the flesh gone, then he blinked and looked at her with grave approval. “How’s your rat supply?”

“Ten racked, two gone.”

“Should be enough. You’re on a roll, Rose. No point in wasting the impetus. Hmm. While you’re splitting, get down every detail you can remember and rat it to me. So Lissorn’s dead.”

“Ash. Saw it.”

“Too bad, another blow to Miralys. And you think the Ciocan’s alive?”

“I don’t know. Kikun says he’s one of the prisoners taken from the Hole.”

“Hmm. From what I’ve heard, his record’s good on that kind of thing.”

“Uh-hmm.”

“Omphalos.”

“Kikun again. I can’t confirm.”

“Right. Leave that to me and go with what you’ve got. Use the rats to keep me up on what you’re finding.”

“Will do. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment. Except… discretion, Rose. If you find the lode, don’t spook the guards. You can get a bit brisk, luv.”

“I hear you, Dig. Better watch the Dyslaera if you don’t want brisk.”

“I’ll deal with that when it comes up. Take care, Rose.” The screen went dark.

Autumn Rose pushed at her hair and sighed. “Brisk, huh!” She twisted her head around, gave him a tight smile. “There you have it, Kuna. Ticket to ride. You know, you’re a useful being to have about, Li’l Liz. We’d be nowhere without you.” She straightened, cleared the screen and began entering flight data. “While I’m doing this, why don’t you pick out a stateroom and get settled. It’s not a long way from here to Arumda’m, but we’ll be moving slower than usual because of the traffic in the Cluster.”

He got to his feet, went to stand at her shoulder. “How long?”

“Anything from two weeks to a month, depending, I’ll let you know later. Right?”

“Right.”

A useful being to have about. Kikun turned on his side, drew his legs up. The bed shifted gently under him, adapting to the changing weights and arrangement of his body. Useful being. Shadith worried about using him. Rose was more practical. And less attached.

His gods were shadows, his friends were dead or gone. He was empty, a skin stretched over a void.

He couldn’t go home, not yet awhile.

The daiviga K’tawal… Lissorn called her a subqueen which was close enough… who governed the Grass had put a price on his head and the Dawadai priests would haul him to the nearest stake and torch him the minute they got their hands on him.

How long was it?

Only five years? That was standard years.

Dunya years were longer. A little. He didn’t know how much.

Say five years.

That was close enough.

Five years. The K’tawal Ilafur wouldn’t have lost a feather in that short stretch, let alone her memory of the dinhast who’d hung up caricatures of her on every corner of Ootlakil.

Even without that, he couldn’t go home, not really home. His sept had cast him out, he was a non-being among the Dinhastoi. That was always the fate of the Clowngod’s avatar, according to the songs.

Clowngod was uncomfortable company.

A sport of nature fitting nowhere.

A singleton rogue in a people of triads and triad multiples.

A god who didn’t believe in gods, at least, not for worshiping, more for trading with or getting round.

A breaker of laws, disrespecter of persons, rebel and iconoclast, bad enemy and worse friend.

Personification of Change in a world more comfortable with day after day of the same thing, no matter how miserable that might be, where nearly everyone was frightened of the turmoil and chaos that change invariably brought.

Avatar. He was the avatar for this generation. He’d been given no choice about that. If the proposition had been put to his formless soul before it was seeded into his fetal body, he would have rejected it indignantly.

He tried rejecting it later. He shared the dinhast mind-set that was much like the Dyslaera mind-set when it came to kin and kind. He NEEDED friends and family.

It was no good. He was what he was.

He suffered because he couldn’t make dinhast life fit him or make himself over to fit it.

The alien friends he’d found helped fill the emptiness. He’d invested first in Lissorn, then in Rohant and Shadith. Friendship wasn’t enough, but it helped.

Lissorn was dead.

Rohant was gone.

Shadith was gone.

Shadith. He lay wondering what had happened to her. Was she alive or dead? Surely the Omphalites wouldn’t go to the trouble to capture her just to kill her?

Shadow girl, don’t do anything foolish. We’re coming for you. You must know we’re coming. Hang on. Wait. Wait…

He sighed and slept.

Shadith (Kizra) On The Farm

Kizra jumped down. Her knees went and she would have fallen if Tinoopa hadn’t caught her.

“Long day,” the big woman said absently. She was watching the man standing before large double doors at the top of a wide flight of s-curved steps. He was a tall, lean man, a gold and bronze man; he shone like a hem in a stained glass window. The bronze coal lamps at the upper comers of that door turned his fine blond hair into a shimmering halo about his lined face, sank his eyes into glinting shadow.