Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

A long file of women came walking toward her, baskets on their heads; they were laughing and talking, walking with willow grace. Beyond them there were several handcarts and a tractor pulling a line of flats trundling along at a crawl beside the carts. Other flats and handcarts and oxcarts were coming from behind her. When the women got close enough, if she broke away suddenly, cut around them, didn’t get run over by a tractor, with a reasonable amount of luck she could get lost before the guard made up his mind what he was going to do. She risked a glance at him, stopped walking, her mouth hanging open.

The guard was sinking to his knees, folding down with a surprised look melting from his face. A small gray-green figure in a gray-green shipsuit had him by the elbows and was easing him down so that he didn’t bounce.

She looked at him and remembered. Z’ Toyff! Kikun. He hissed at her, flickered his long fingers impatiently, gesturing at her to get on, let him deal with this.

Right, Li’l Liz.

She swung round and strolled off, the incident immediately wiped from her mind along with Kikun.

She moved through a double dogleg, found herself in the kind of place she hadn’t seen before, a green space, grass and trees and a small fountain in the middle and behind that a graceful columned structure that was the antithesis of every other building in the city, open and airy, white marble with insets of colored stones in repeating patterns like those in the cloth the women wore. Three women were dancing on the grass, three women drummers squatted beside the fountain, along with a flute player and a woman crouched over an angular stringed instrument, plucking at it with a metal pick like a teardrop. A ninth woman sat cross-legged beside the walkway, murmuring blessings as passersby dropped coins in the wooden bowl in front of her. When Rose got close enough, she saw that the woman was blind. There were terrible scars on her face and one hand was mutilated, three quarters cut away, with only the little finger and a stub of thumb remaining.

The blind woman lifted her head as Rose walked past. “I am smelling blood,” she cried out. “I am smelling danger. A demon is walking among us.”

Embarrassed and annoyed, Rose walked faster, muttering to herself. Very impolite. Commenting on visitors to their faces. What about a little friendly hypocrisy, haah? She walked quickly on, constrained to a steady pace because she didn’t want to look like she was running, though she would have run if anyone had done more than stare at her. Everyone around stared at her. Blind bitch, what right had she got, saying things like that. You want demons, lady, look closer to home, haah!

A few doglegs on she stopped, sniffed. Sea air all right, where… ah! that way. Now, Rose, find a place you can go to ground. Then we’ll see, we’ll see…

Autumn Rose stood on the walkway and examined the house. Another white card in another brass and glass case.

The Rumach was as shabby as the rest she’d looked at, so far, with worn, weathered shakes on the upper floors and salt stains on the shutters, but there was a vigorous vine growing about the door with trumpet-shaped crimson blooms nodding in the brisk wind off the, water behind her, water glittering between two warehouses on the far side of a space that was more like a street than any she’d seen in this place, its form dictated by the water’s edge one line of buildings away.

She considered the Rumach. The flowers were nice, the touch of color appealed to her, it was the first she’d seen on the outside of any house. She curled her toes inside her boots. There was a burning on her heel where a blister had burst, she knew it had, she could feel skin moving with each step. Goerta b’rite, if this Rumacha is marginally less a sleaze than the other oof’narcs I’ve talked to so far, this’ll do.

She climbed the short flight of stairs, tugged at the stag-hoof that served both as bellpull and signifier.

The woman who opened the door was tall and lean, with a cloud of tightly curled white hair and a face carved from dark chocolate. Offworlder and female. Rose sighed with relief. “I’d like one of those rooms you’re advertising,” she said, “I’ll be here several weeks.”

Rose shut and locked the door, tossed the key on the bed, shrugged out of the backpack and dropped it on the floor next to a large overstuffed chair with a blue throw on it sewn from the silky cloth she’d seen in the clothing of many of the women. She yawned, threw herself into the chair and sat a moment running her hands along and along the padded arms, relishing the cling and slide of the brilliantly colored material. Then she bent, jerked off her boots, tossed them aside and scrubbed her feet back and forth on the rug, braided from more of that cloth, green and red and purple and bright blue. The room was shabby and well used, but clean and comfortable and pleasant on the eyes, furnished by someone who had a love for color and the strength of personality to force order out of exuberance.

There was a saggy double bed with crisp white sheets and a pile of quilts. A table beside the bed with a lamp and a blotter and stylus, a ladderback chair pushed in under it. Next to the table was the room’s only window, deeply recessed with a cushioned window seat built atop a chest. Kikun was sitting there, nested, among the pillows.

Rose gasped, blinked. “Hello, Li’l Liz,” she said finally. “Um… can’t you fix it so you don’t do this to me every time? I could drop dead with a heart attack.”

The folds of skin on Kikun’s face shook with silent laughter.

Rose unlatched her belt, pulled it from around her, tossed it on the bed with the key. “I picked up ten emas, two hundred peras and a handful of kuries for the junk I brought off the ship. How much did you get?”

“I haven’t counted it yet. Let’s see.” He dumped his sac on the cushion, began arranging the coins. “Hmm. One hundred coppers to one silver, one hundred silvers to one gold, right?”

“What kephalos set the assayer to.”

He swept the coins back into the sac, announced the total. “Fifty emas, three hundred peras and about a hundred kuries. And a handful of offworld coins, no telling what they’re worth, I don’t recognize any of them.”

She yawned. “Z’ Toyff, I’m tired. Hungry, too, but I don’t feel like moving.”

“Trailfood in your pack.”

“I know. I’ll dig it out in a moment. Kuna, you going to be all right here? This doesn’t look to be a good world for outsiders and you’re more outside than most.”

He shrugged. “I’ll get along.”

“Well, take care, I’d rather have a disappearing dinhast than a decaying corpse.” She yawned a third time. “I think I’ll get some sleep. It’s been a long day. Tomorrow’s soon enough to begin winnowing out our targets.” She groaned, pushed onto her feet. “You want the right side or the left?”

“Huh?”

“The bed, Kuna. What’d you think I meant? There’s one of it and two of us. Which reminds me, I’ll have to get a key cut for you tomorrow, I don’t think I’d better ask the Rumacha for an extra. So, which is it, right or left?”

“I don’t like walls. Let me have the outside.”

“Good enough.” She stretched, groaned again, shook herself and started breaking open the fastening on her shirt. “If you wake first, Kuna, shove me out. I’m so tired I could easy sleep till next week, but the sooner we start looking, the sooner we’ll know…”

Shadith (Kizra) In The Halflight