Jo Clayton - Shadowkill

Matja Allina contemplated the older woman for several moments. “If I were wise, I would say interesting but nothing to do with me. I’m sorry about your daughter, that’s true.”

Tinoopa shrugged, “It was a long time ago.”

“In some things, time has no meaning.”

“No.” Tinoopa drew her thumb along her jawline. “You’re wrong there, Matja. It does have meaning, what I’m saying is this: grief heals and rage cools.” She dropped her hands onto her thigh. “But you’re also right, hate doesn’t die, it just gets old and cold and harder than stones.”

“Yes.” Matja Allina got to her feet. “Kizra, you’ll have to leave by dawn tomorrow so you’ll be far enough away by the time Mingas arrives that it won’t be worth the danger going after you. I can supply you tonight. Afterward…” She shrugged. “It’s short notice, I’m afraid, but you were going anyway. So. Make a list, let me know what you’ll need.” She didn’t wait for an answer but turned to Tinoopa immediately. “I will take supper in my room. When Kizra’s list is ready, bring it to me. I’ll mark what I approve and authorize you to dispense the materials. Be careful around P’murr. He isn’t liking me much these days so he’ll do what he can to make problems for anything I try.”

A knocking. “Kizra?”

Shadith rolled out of bed, pulled the robe around her and crossed to the door. Yawning, she let Tinoopa in. “That time already?”

“Not quite. Cook’s got breakfast ready for you, some sandwiches for later, she’s waiting to give you a sendoff.”

Shadith ran her hands through her hair, scrubbed at her eyes. “Gods, does everybody know? Some sneak.”

“Sit down a minute. Want to ask you something.”

Shadith dropped on the end of the bed. “Huh?”

“The Mindwipe didn’t take, did it?”

“There were um complications the operator didn’t know about. Things came back to me.”

“And you know where you’re going, what you’re going to do, who you’re going to call?”

“Yeh.”

“I thought so. Catch.”

The sac landed in Shadith’s lap with a series of dull clunks. It was heavy. She loosened the drawstrings, pulled the neck open. Coins inside. She raised her brows.

“Incentive,” Tinoopa said. “I’m a thief, remember? What I’d like you to do, get word to my son where I am. Jao juhFeyn. He runs a tavern called Kipuny Shimmery on a world called Arumda’m. Iskalgun 9. Let him know where I am. All right?”

“Consider it done.”

“Thanks. The Matja authorized hot water. At least you can ride out feeling clean.”

“Tinoopa, this Mingas… he’s mean, maybe a bit crazy.”

Tinoopa waggled a hand. “He’s not going to live long enough to be much trouble. If the Matja doesn’t get him, I will.”

“All I can say is, I’m glad I’m going to be somewhere else.”

“Interesting times.” Tinoopa straightened. “The Lady bless, young Kiz.” She left.

Shadith cupped her hand under the sac, hefted it. “Well.”

The weight of it makes all this real. No more dreams, no more dithering. In a few hours I’m going. I’m really going.

She felt like throwing up.

Terror, that’s what it is. Sheer sick-making terror.

Swearing under her breath, her legs shaking, she stood, tossed the money sac into the knot of quilts, and went out.

Shadith rode out from Ghanar Rinta an hour before dawn.

She had a packer on a lead rope, one of the rough-coated ponies that the shepherds used; she rode a small sturdy bay pony with a black mane. The Matja had offered horses, but the Jinasu Jhapuki insisted on the ponies. It’s a long way, she said, horses will die on you, get a notion in their silly heads and go down and they won’t get up. The ponies won’t go fast, but they’ll get you there. Walk as much as you ride and give them plenty of time to browse.

The Matja had provided a map, with roads and ayntis marked on it, notes Pirs made about water and campsites, estimates of time between trailmarks, notes about ambushes, the map he usually carried around in his gear. He’d left it behind when he took the chal and the supplies to Caghar Rinta.

The pony’s head bobbed rhythmically before her, his hooves beat out a slow syncopation on the hardpan underfoot, his tail switched, now and then stinging against one leg or the other. Mesmerizing. Put her into slowmotion, into a drifting inconsequent reverie. She thought about memory.

Memory was everything.

Its fragile, dead-leaf lace was threaded through her present and in a way controlled her future.

When her memories were temporarily displaced, she turned passive, fearful, every step she took threatened to drop her off the brink of the known; in a way her brain and body began reverting to the dead meat she’d revivified such a short while ago. Only her underlying toughness and the prodding of those nightmares she’d resented so much had kept her alive in those pre-lizard days. The nightmares and Tinoopa providing a stable pole she could revolve about.

After this business was over, if she survived it, she’d move with measurably less assurance through her days. That was one thing she’d learned. Another thing-maybe more important-was how desperately she needed other people in her life. She’d known people quietly content with living alone, preferring a filled solitude to empty company, but these were always settled into stable societies where tradition and the ambient culture were sufficient surrogates for family and friends.

It’s what Aleytys was hunting for all those years. A context. That and a family to replace the one that drove her out. She’s got it now, family and friends and work. I want that. Not the details. Gods, I’d be petrified on Wolff, I don’t even like Grey that much. Family and friends and work…

She thought about Mingas, the Artwa, Matja Allina in the prison of her culture, wasted and unwanted, distorted by what was demanded of her and by what was forbidden.

You’d better be careful what kind of context you pick, Shadow. Very careful. There’re downsides to everything, you want to be sure what they are before you commit. Ay-yah. That’s the third thing you’ve learned here and likely the most important.

She pushed hard at first, letting the ponies alternate between a fast walk and a canter; riding the little bay was like sitting a jit on a corduroy road, but she spared neither herself nor her mounts.

The day heated up as the morning winds dropped and finally she knew she couldn’t go much longer. She let the pony slow to a tired shuffle and fished out the map. The brush on both sides of the rutted dirt road was a meter higher than her head. There was nothing else to see but the tan road and a sky yellow with a punishing heat. She checked the angle of the sun. Almost directly overhead, around a half-hour past sunhigh. She pulled the map into the shade of her hat brim to cut the dazzle of the parchment, squinted at the tiny black writing. There was a bridge some way ahead, built over a wide swooping bend of the river that ran past the Rinta. Water and browse. A good place to stop and wait out the worst of the heat.

She folded the map again, tucked it into the saddlebag, and slumped into the sway of the pony’s walk.

She reached the bridge at the beginning of the fourth hour past sunhigh.

The river was silt-laden and sluggish, but under the pohn trees there was a tentative small breeze that hugged the water and barely stirred the stiff leaf lozenges and the shade was balm for her burning eyes.

She watered the ponies, stripped their gear off, gave them some grain on a square of canvas, and left them to eat and browse as they wished. She hung the saddleblankets over a low limb to dry out, laid down her groundsheet and stretched out on it, using the saddle as a pillow. She was asleep in seconds.