Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

He blinked at her. “Question?”

“Nothing bloody, luv. Even for Digby, I don’t do torture. But I picked better than I knew when I took this ’un. Barakaly has himself a nice little selection of head softeners. Drugs, luv. Our targets, they’ll sing like baby birds when some of that stuff hits the blood.”

As she started fiddling some more with the sensor pad, there was a familiar rustle of feathers, a scratch of feet. Kikun turned his head and stared into the corner beyond Autumn Rose. Gaagi was there, his armwings folded tight against his sides, his golden eyes wide and staring. Grandmother Ghost was half behind him, bent over, peering around the wings, snorting repeatedly because she was allergic to feathers. She winked at him, but didn’t say anything-for which he was profoundly grateful; every time she opened her mouth, she dropped him in trouble so deep he thought he’d never see day. Gaagi spread his arms wide, caught Grandmother in the face with a feathered membrane and left her sputtering with annoyance. He began signing, his supple fingers moving so fast that Kikun had difficulty following him.

Journey of many days, many sorrows, hurt and hunger, tedium and terror. It finishes here, yes, it finishes here, but not this journey nor the next. Come home, Nayol Hanee, come home, O Ta’anilcay, or die here and know the Dinhastoi do die with you.

Rubbing at her nose, Grandmother Ghost pushed past Gaagi, who faded into a black film, then was gone. She shoved her little bulldog face at Kikun, waggled her crooked forefinger at him. Her voice was a mosquito whine in his mind’s ear.

Aya aya, get you home or I be a fly on your backside biting. Get you that girl and leave off this interfering in foreign hashendilis, you got your own to worry over. Hah! I give you till you finish this’n, then you won’t know what sleep is you hang off any longer. Hah! Ya!

And she was gone.

Kikun sighed. None of that was any help. If that was all his gods and ghosts could do for him… Tlee! when Grandmother got mad, she had a bite like a borer fly, he rubbed his shoulder, grimacing at the memory. That wasn’t the only place she’d got him, either.

“Messages?” Autumn Rose sounded irritated.

“What? Oh, No, nothing to do with this.” That wasn’t quite true, but he didn’t intend to spend his time explaining Grandmother. Or Gaagi either. “Rose, something’s occurred to me. What are you going to do with the ship?”

“If you’d been listening to me…”

“Sorry.”

She snorted. “Really. What I was saying is, I don’t want to leave her parked in orbit. This is a free trader’s market which means basically that anything left lying around unguarded is fair game. Bunch of pirates, even the best of ’em. Not putting them down, you understand, I’d probably do the same, given the chance. What I’m saying, a sweet ship like this without a watch on board is gone. Even without you to clue ’em, Kuna, the average trader round here would get past security not even breathing hard. And I don’t want to put her down at the Landing Field. Too many noses around wondering what your business is. And too expensive. Anything’s too expensive. Except for my crecard, I’m about broke and Barakaly doesn’t carry cash, at least, I didn’t find any. They’re used to traders slipping in, doing their business and scooting; no one’s going to pay much attention to us. I’ve picked a place to stash the ship. See that isthmus? No settlers and close enough to where we have to go.”

The air was fresh and sweet. They’d come down through a rainstorm into a mountain dawn and when Kikun emerged and looked around, crystal drops clung everywhere, picking up the sunrise, glittering red and gold and brilliant white. The local life was already recovering from the intrusion; there were grunts and whistles and a sudden soar of melody. Then the pattern repeated with changes.

He rode the lift down and walked into the middle of the meadow, absorbing shape and color, sound and smell, relaxing into this new world. The reprocessed air on the ship was clean and properly humidified, even faintly perfumed with touches of leaf and flower-choice air, one might say, pampered air. Despite this, it smelled of metal to him, as artificial as Ginny’s arm. He breathed deeply and his soul expanded.

They’d landed on the narrow isthmus that was the spine connecting the north and south nodes of Haemunda Chajiari, a sparsely populated area because the land was mostly vertical and stony, interrupted with steep narrow fjords where cliffs dropped a hundred meters straight down into the ocean water; the isthmus could support trees, grasses and small mammals, but a man would starve to death.

Kikun chanted under his breath, apologizing to the local life for the shock of the landing. Eyes watched from the treetops and the brush, looked up at him from the grass. Not much fear here, because no one came, just an ordinary wariness.

He settled his backpack more comfortably, leaned against a tree stump, and waited.

The lift hummed again. He turned. Autumn Rose was coming down with her pack leaning against her leg and two miniskips like hobbyhorses resting by her feet.

“Help me, Kuna,” she said when the lift reached the ground. “I want to run west with the edge of dark and we’ll miss it if we don’t start soon.”

He hauled his emskip onto the grass, shaking the icy dew over his feet and over its metal surfaces, then stood back, watched the lift rise, fold itself in until the skin of the skip was sealed tight once more.

“West by north,” Rose said. She touched on the effect, swung into the saddle. “Set the tonc at two seven four corrected. Got it? Good. Let’s go.”

They reached the Tola Hills above Tos Tous with dawn pinking the sky ahead of them, landed the emskips on a brushy ledge with a good ten meters of weathered stone rising above them and a drop over the lip of fifty meters straight down. Once the emskips were wrapped in a camouflaged groundcloth, it would take some hard looking to spot them; besides, as Rose said, who in their right mind would look there.

Despite the awkward weight of the pack, Kikun climbed the crumbly stone face like his looksake garden lizard going up a wall; Rose followed more slowly, grumbling all the way. She didn’t like heights, she wasn’t going to have any skin left on her front or her hands, besides she was freezing and starved. There had to be a better way, Z’ Toyff, there had to be. She reached up, Kikun caught her hand and helped her onto the flat above the cliff.

Tos Tous rambled around the curve of a wide lovely bay; the city was a quilt of many colors all of them gray or brown, thousands of small buildings gathered in haphazard clusters. No street-if they were streets, not merely gaps between adjacent buildings-went straight for more than a few meters.

“Lovely place. Anthill someone stepped on, squashed all to hell and gone.” Autumn Rose unfolded the map she’d had the kephalos print up for them, looked from it to the city below. “That’s the part we want.” She pointed. “There, near the middle of the curve where most of the wharves and warehouses are. Um. We’ll be going through the main market-if we’re lucky enough, and this is market day, you should be able to collect quite a lot of coin. Do the best you can, Kuna, we need the cash.” She chuckled, nudged him with her elbow. “You should be about the best pickpocket alive with that Talent of yours.” She sobered. “I can use my crecard in emergencies, but I’d rather not. I don’t know who or what’s watching readouts round here.”

Kikun sighed. “That’s the third time you’ve said that, Rose. I heard, I heard.”

“Nerves, Kuna. Always get ’em when I’m about to jump in something I don’t know anything about.” She frowned over her shoulder at the eastern horizon where the tip of the sun was poking up, a brilliant vermilion blob of light. “Twenty kays we have to walk. At least that. Well, better safe than sorry. Come on, Li’l Liz, let’s go.”