Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

Matja Allina called her back into the bedroom. “Play that thing you did for dinner last night.” Her voice was fretful, her face was flushed, there was a shallow vertical pain-line between her brows.

“This one, Matja Allina?” She let the easy undemanding song drip from her fingers. Boring. Boring. All of it. Stifling. Gods, I want to… I want… She didn’t know what she wanted, except it wasn’t this.

“You’re frowning. What are you thinking?” Matja Allina’s eyes caught what little light there was, seemed to glow. “Kizra Shaman, do you know something about Pirs? What is it? Tell me. You have to tell me.”

“No, Matja Allina. Of course not, how could I? I was just… just thinking.”

“About what? What worries you?”

Kizra blinked at her. Not even my own mind belongs to me, she thought mutinously. What to say… what? Ah. “Kulyari,” she said. “I was thinking about how disappointed she’s going to be when the Arring walks in. What a snit she’s going to throw.” She moved her shoulders. “That wasn’t what bothered me, it’s what she’s going to do next. After the Arring walks in.”

“Walks in. Yes. So we must hope.” Allina closed her eyes, the brief spurt of energy draining from her.

“Matja, ah…”

“What is it?”

“Aghilo didn’t want me to bother you, but… Is there ANY way you can find out who Kulyari was talking to?”

“Little chapa, it’s all right.” The Matja’s feverish intensity faded to a drowsy musing. “It’s no bother because I don’t need to ask. I know who she was calling. Rintirry. My loving brother-by-law. Dear Rintirry who is so very fond of his brother he tried to rape me as soon as he saw Pirs wanted me.” She clicked her tongue. “Hai, Kizra, you listen so deeply it’s easy to say far too much. Pirs doesn’t know about that. No one knows. I broke the bastard’s nose for him and he went away. Please. If you say anything it will make more trouble than you can possibly understand.”

“All right.”

Matja Allina closed her eyes. “Go find Gilli chal, will you, please. Then come back and tell me what Kulyari’s doing.”

Kizra knelt beside the bed, her hands folded in her lap. “Kulyari slept until just after the noon gong. She went into the garden and pulled heads off flowers there until Polyapo looked out, saw what she was doing, and scolded her back inside. Then Kulyari hung around the Great Hall. When she thought no one was around, she tried to get into the Arring’s study. Gilli chal says she had a screaming snit when she found out it was locked. She’s back in her room now, trying on clothes, changing her hair, driving the maids till they’re ready to bang her on the head and stand the consequences. That’s it.”

“Polyapo. Do you think she’s involved in this?”

“If I had to guess, no. There’s no tension in her. And she’s not… um…” Kizra sneaked a glance at Allina to see how far she dared go.

Matja Allina narrowed her eyes to slits, her mouth twitched. “And she’s not intelligent enough to hide it.”

“Well, yes.” Kizra got to her feet. “It’s time you should eat something, Matja Allina. You know what Tinoopa said, small meals but frequent. Do you want me to ring the kitchen?”

“No. I don’t want much. A cup of broth and a roll will do.”

“Just a minute, then.” Kizra crossed to the fireplace, took the lid off the brazier, and set on the covered pot of broth. She put a fresh roll in a small dutch oven, then leaned against the bricks of the chimney while she waited for the food to heat.

“Chapa Kizra, come here, help me to sit up. Bring the extra pillows, will you?”

Time passed.

Matja Mina drowsed.

Kizra went back to watching what was happening in the court below. To wondering what her dreams meant. To speculating if she and Tinoopa would get what Allina promised them. To yearning for release from this tedium. It always came back to that. She loathed being shut away from what was happening. It was as bad as being in jail, at least according to Bertem’s tales. Or Tinoopa’s. Boredom and being jerked about by anyone that had the power to jerk.

And even if I ran, where do I run to? I don’t know who I am or where I belong. I don’t KNOW anything. How can I DO anything…

The day ended finally.

That night Kizra sweated through more nightmares, worse than any night before this. She remembered bits each time she woke:

giant spiders with intelligent eyes and orange pompoms where their ears would be if spiders had ears, relentless, implacable, she shuddered with horror when she saw them…

crashing in a small fast ship, going down and down and nothing she could do about it, dying, all the pain and emptiness of dying…

women dancing, thin, etiolate, all bone and skin and huge dark eyes, eerily unexpectedly lovely creatures that brought with them the anguish of loss (she knew why in the dream but couldn’t remember later)…

a red-haired woman weeping for a lost child, a grief Kizra shared as if it were her own (she knew her in the dream, knew her like a sister, a deeply loved sister, but when she woke, there was only the face and the hair, the long fine red hair)…

two cats died and a man cried out in anguish and rage, a lion man, she shared that anguish till the dream faded…

Nightmare followed nightmare until she dropped into a hard-fisted sleep that left her as tired when she struggled out of bed as she was before she lay down.

Matja Allina’s estate office on the ground floor was small and intimate with a bow window looking out into the Family Garden. She sat in a cushioned armchair drawn up to a swaylegged table, her hands were folded on the table, and she was listening to a dispute over the distribution of cloth.

Polyapo stood beside the door, despising everyone in the room for allowing the dispute to happen.

Sitting on a low bench in the bow window, half-hidden behind a carved and pierced screen of some dark rich local wood, Kizra watched the Ulyinik’s long nose twitch and thought:

if it were up to her, everyone involved in this would be whipped until they knew their place and left to go without cloth until they were naked and properly grateful for anything they were given.

“The promise, Matja Allina. The Daughter’s Promise. I want the bolt for Lahirra’s wedding. Blue cloth, fine blue, not just ordinary tirrk. For all girls when they wed, by your word, O Matja.”

The Weavemistress snorted. “And you got it, Luwlu chal, on Winterstart, you signed for it and carted it off and you know it.”

“Can I help it if N’gwaral gets hisself clawed by some filthy l’borrgha and dies two months later leaving my Lahirra a sorrowing widow? What’s a mother to do? Ignore her child once she’s wed and let everything after go as it goes? The promise is made, when a daughter weds, cloth for her dowry. So Lahirra is going to wed with N’trurr next week. So she’s due another bolt.”

Aghilo slipped through the door and stood beside Polyapo, looking agitated. Kizra rubbed at her chin. I wonder what’s up.

Matja Allina’s eyes flicked to Aghilo, then she returned to her absorption in the speeches of the two women.

“Huh,” the Weavemistress said, “the way the girl goes through husbands, she should open a clothing store. Lahirra has her dower, all she has to do is carry it down two doors when she moves in with N’trurr. And take better care of this one so he doesn’t die on her.”

“Hard, hard, you’re so hard, Nunnikura chal, how’s my little girl to blame, she didn’t send her man out there to get chewed up.” She burst out sobbing and keening, producing more noise than tears.