Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

She reached the end, clutched at the stone and waited for lightning; the tree was jerking desperately about, creaking groaning; a section of branch tore loose, came flying by her and slammed into the window beside her, then went clattering away along the wall.

Flash.

She jumped, landed sprawled across the limb, clutched at it as it bucked under her. She steadied herself and crawled cautiously inward, cursing as her dress snagged on a broken branch. She tore free and struggled on…

The thought made her want to vomit.

And it wouldn’t work.

He wouldn’t take her with him-not back to his home ground where people would see what he was fucking.

She smiled. It was comforting that inclination matched with circumstance. Not that she’d have done it anyway. She wasn’t backed into a corner here and there are some things that corrupt so deeply that whatever advantage they give is destroyed in the doing.

There has to be some way. At least 2000 kays. Fifteen days travel across land I don’t know. Fifteen days in a truck, not on horseback. We were attacked twice on the way here, followed, sniped at and we had a dozen guards, armored trucks and a gatlin. I need allies.

Brushies… I wonder… Tinoopa… I don’t think so. City woman.

Couldn’t sit a horse three days let alone the thirty or forty days it’d take.

Maybe longer. Don’t know if I

can. Who… Damn, it looked like a good thing having the

Mafia favor me… made life easier… would have been better if I was down with the rest… stuck up here, isolated as much as if I were in purdah… damn… have to get out more… talk the Matja into giving me a break…

I have to get out of here… somehow… get to Nirtajai… find a skipcom… like on Kiskai… wonder how they’re getting on with their reforms, if they’ve got the world they wanted or if it’s falling apart in their hands… Miowee’s probably back to singing in the streets if things went like most rebellions… Aste back in the swamps… well, that’s their business…

She heard noises below and leaned out the window. Something was happening in the court, but she couldn’t see anything from here. She pulled back in and ran for the door.

The pod was on the launcher, a shadowy black seed. She crawled into the flightspace, stretched out on the pad and eased herself into its hollows, fitting her skin against the sensors.

A moment later she felt the hard sharp kick of the launcher.

Her vision cleared. She could see the Cillasheg floating half a kilometer away, could see all round herself. She shifted her vision out and out until she could see the asteroids, frost in the darkness, white and black glitter in the light of the dim, distant sun, shifted down again until her vision was confined to an area the width of her wings at full deployment. She snapped the wings out full, gossamer fields like shadows in glass. The light-winds filled them, pushed her outward. She gathered speed for the turn, feeling the sunmoth come alive under her as she drank the winds and rode them out and out.

She laughed and groaned, making love to the winds, laughed again and swung round, tilting her wings, slipping the winds, tacking right, tacking left, sweeping toward the sun, on and on, faster and faster, time compressing to nothing. Her blood was wine, her body sang, on and on…

There was no one at the oriel window, though it was one of the better outlooks in the House.

She climbed into the round hole, pressed her face against the colored glass.

Pirs stood at the top of the steps, ignoring the splatters of rain that came every few minutes. He was standing very erect, his head up. He wasn’t saying anything.

The Artwa stood on the same step, a double arms’ length apart from his second son. The old man was seething, the younger one deeply disturbed, but there was no grief in either of them. At least none for Rintirry.

Pirs was miserable, but that had more to do with his father’s rejection than the loss of a brother.

Give him his due. Half brother. And one trying to kill him. Not the sort you mourned.

The big doors boomed open. Loujary and Wayak came out and moved carefully down the steps, carrying a litter with Rintirry’s body on it, wrapped in heavy white damask. Shadith relaxed; she’d expected a lot more trouble than this, infected with Tinoopa’s gloom, probably. And the weepy gloom of the day, as if the skies wept for the double death. She sniffed, fancies with no touch of reality, even old Cagharadad wasn’t grieving. She grimaced.

Lissorn was racing toward Ginny, stunner forgotten, claws out.

Ginny raised a hand.

Four cutters flashed from overlooks, hit Lissorn in midstride.

For an instant the Dyslaeror was a black core in the furnace where the beams met, then they winked out and there was nothing left, not even dust.

When his son died, Rohant screamed with grief and rage, his great voice filling the room…

Rintirry. He was a human being, just barely, but he was and someone should grieve at his passing and the manner of it. Someone. Not me.

Loujary and Wayak came silently from the flitter and went off toward the men’s quarters.

Arring Pirs dropped onto one knee and bowed his head, the watery sunlight that struggled through the clouds turning his long loose hair to melted gold.

Shadith couldn’t see the Artwa’s face, but she could smell the stink of his malice. He was beginning to enjoy this. “I leave no blessing on this House,” he intoned, his voice blaring out through the whine of the wind. “There is kin blood on this House. Until it is cleansed, I curse it and you. Kin Blood,” he repeated, liking the taste of the words.

Pirs said nothing. He didn’t move.

Shadith shivered. It was all too apparent that he revered his father, that he needed his approval. That he was suffering under the old man’s spite, that he didn’t see it as spite, would never see it as anything but a father’s justified distress over the needless death of a son, however worthless that son might be. The blindness startled her. He was an intelligent man, even a good man, given how he’d been brought up. And yet he let this… this vain, stupid old… warthog! rule him.

Aghilo was right. Pirs would never rebel against his father. He would hunt ways around the old man’s more irresponsible acts and edicts, but in the end he’d do what his father told him.

The Matja knows that, too, that’s why… Gods, the Matja means well, but what she’s promising… it probably won’t happen. The old man will see to that. And Pirs will do as he is told.

So I do for myself or it doesn’t get done.

The Artwa went stalking down the steps.

The skimmer door closed behind him, the motors whined. A moment later the court was empty and the flier a black speck vanishing into the clouds.

They threw Tamburra’s body into the river for the fish to eat. The locals didn’t want l’borrghas to get a taste for flesh that walked on two legs.

At the same time, the smoke from the pyre they built for Kulyari on Amur Hill rose black and solid into the clouds. She was Irrkuyon and couldn’t be discarded like offal; there was only the briefest of ceremonies with Polyapo there to represent the family and the Amur-speaker to say the Rest-rites, then the fire was lit and a cadre of charcoalmen left to keep it burning until even the bones were ash.

Ghanar Rinta settled into peace.

There were no more attacks from bands of tumaks. No one said anything, but they all knew what that meant-the supply of gold was cut off when the supplier died.