Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

She tossed her jacket on the bed, crossed to the basin and washed her hands, splashed water on her face, then sat on the bed and tugged her boots off. Still without saying anything, she swung around with enough violence to make the bed squeak under her and stretched out, the pillow folded under her head, her fingers laced over her stomach.

Kikun coughed, a failure at covering a chuckle. “Hard day?”

She wrinkled her nose, thumped her thumbs on her stomach. Cool down, she told herself. Come on, Rose, don’t be a fool, it’s not his fault you’re hot to trot. Shayss, what a phrase, Digby would never let me forget it if he heard me… “Hard night,” she said. “Nearly got jumped. Not a problem, I think, just some shisskop after spare change.” She gave him a quick summary of what she’d learned from Bungkuk. “You get anything more?”

“I took a look at the Kipuny Shimmery. Didn’t try to go in. Busy place, even early, I went over before noon. Then I went to the auctionhouse where Sai has a grungy office-two rooms, third floor, bayside. Got a hulk guarding the place, he sits in a corner with his feet up, chewing a cud of Kunja, a ottoshot on his lap big as he is. That thing ever goes off, it’ll knock out the whole front wall. Two overage whores answer com for him and take messages. When there’s nothing doing, which seems to be most of the time, they chatter away, one of them does tapestry, the other works on lace, I suppose they’re doing it for money, he can’t be paying them much. From what the women were complaining about, he’s almost never there, he stays out massaging his contacts and keeping his links clear with the different kevars.

“Two calls came in while I was sitting in a corner watching. One was a merchant looking for a shipper willing to go south, he didn’t say much, but apparently there’s some problem involved so he can’t go through the hiring hall. The other was a shipmaster looking for cargo, specific cargo which he seemed to think Sai knew all about.”

“Hmm. Sounds like he has possibilities. You’d better see if you can get a look at him, find out his patterns so we can lift him out, say we have to. I’ll take the Kipuny Shimmery…” She let her eyes droop closed, then forced them open; she was very, very tired. She wanted a bath before she slept, but if she didn’t shift herself soon, she’d be waking up come morning with her clothes on and a mouth like something died in it. “Kipuny Shimmery…” She sighed and started watching the candle shadows dance across the high ceiling. “Bungkuk says they play Vagnag there,” she said, her voice dreamy. “They tell you about my grandda? No? Hnh. He was an important man, you know. Almost as important as he thought he was. When I was born, he was CEO Botanicals Division, Cazar Company. We were living in the Chateau in Juoda City, Klan Karra. He never acknowledged my mama was his daughter, but he kept her close and ran her like she was his slave, didn’t quite kill the life in her, but he turned her sour, I remember… well, never mind… The man who was supposed to be my father, he ran off, Mama said he got killed somewhere, she thought, or maybe just dived down a deep hole. Grandda raged for days when she got pregnant, wouldn’t see me for almost a year after I was born. Don’t know why he didn’t make her abort me, or boot her out or something, well, yes, I do, it wasn’t that we were family, we were property and anyone who laid a hand on us was robbing him. My sire, that oof’narc, he scuttled like a rat, he knew he was a dead man if he stayed, it wasn’t that that made Mama so mad, it was because he didn’t even ask her if she wanted to get out with him, she was still furious about that the day she died. Wouldn’t ’ve gone, she said, but at least he could ’ve asked, anyway, what got me on this was Vagnag, when I got old enough to talk, Grandda used to keep me around like his dogs, long as I had sense enough to stay quiet, said I was his mascot, brought him luck. He had this thing about gambling games, Vagnag especially, he wanted to work out a way to win consistently without the down-and-dirty cheating which could get you killed in the company he liked to play with. I got SO bored. There was nothing to do but watch him and his sharks going at it, so I learned the games they played.” She sighed, yawned. “Big mistake. One day he caught me playing my own version of Vagnag with the Chateau boys, taking money off them, because I used to win most of the time, and it wasn’t because they were letting me win, I was just the Chateau bastard, even the sweep was more respectable than me, at least he had real family, family to claim him. Anyway, I was about six, regular little prodigy. A natural mimic with a trick memory. Impressed the hell out of Grandda, which surprised me, scared me, actually. He wasn’t an easy man with kids, and I’d heard nasty stories all my life about the kind of things he did to people when he was mad at them, so I didn’t like it much when he started paying real attention to me. Besides, life went sour on me after that. He brought in men, women, had them teach me everything they knew about playing all kinds of games, especially Vagnag. Fifteen years of hell, that’s what it was, Kuna, hour after hour, day after day, manipulation, math and aerobics and weightlifting, took all that and more. I ran away a couple times. He jerked me back. Third time was the winner, he was just settling in at a new place, moving up, using me to get where he wanted, I ran when I got a smell of a chance and this time, I got clear. Had a pretty good life for a while, yeh, walking the knife-blade, you can understand maybe what I felt; finally free of Grandda and his strings. Well, after a wild ride, I fell off the blade. I ran into this oof’narc who thought he was hot stuff, papa was a local bigass with a lot of pull. The oof’narc lost, accused me of cheating and tried to jump me, real loser, I didn’t mean to kill him, I was trying to keep him off, clumsy cretin, it was like he threw himself on the knife, the other players disappeared, I only knew their handles and gambling was illegal anyway on that world, so they were outta there. I hadn’t a hope in hell of getting off, it was the Strangler’s Cord for me, I was so damn scared, I was almost ready to yell for Grandda, not that he would ’ve come…” She stopped talking and lay gazing dreamily at the shadow-play on the ceiling.

Kikun shifted on the cushions. “What happened?”

“Huh?” Jolted out of her drowse, she turned her head to look toward the shadow in the chair.

“How did you get out of that?”

“Oh.” She pushed up, swung her legs over the edge and sat with her head in her hands. “It was Digby, he sent one of his Ops to make a deal. Hah!” She straightened up. “The Op would spring me if I either paid Digby’s fee or went to work for him. Digby I mean.” She pushed onto her feet, grabbed a robe off the foot of the bed. “I’m for a bath. If I’m going to get into a game at the Shimmery I can’t be so ripe no one will sit next me.”

The door was three massive planks with a dalbir jug carved in low relief head high in the center plank. She pushed the door open and stepped into a long room with bare roof beams and smoky lubrinjah-oil lanterns hanging from those beams. It was a warm and rosy room, the amber lamplight waking amber and crimson lights in the smoky oily wood and the crimson leather on the stools.

Funny, she thought, all the worlds I’ve been on, a bar is a bar is a bar…

There were groups of men sitting at tables, others on stools at a long solid counter by the inner wall. It was built atop a knee-high platform that was just wide enough for the scatter of stools. They must lose a lot of drunks on that, she thought, fall off and break their necks. Oh well, that’s their problem.