Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

All things end.

Two hours later the airship beat through the fringes of the storm and settled into a steady drone. Karrel Goza clicked on the autopilot and went limp with relief. He turned his head.

A trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, Elmas Ofka was struggling to sit up. Holding the chair steady with her shoulder, Harli Tanggаr crouched beside her working at the jammed clamps on the restrainers.

Lirrit Ofka came and leaned on the back of his chair, her breath warm against his ear. “There were times…”

“There were.” He clicked off the straps, began sucking at his torn finger. He watched Harli wipe Elmas Ofka’s face and tip some visk into her mouth from a pouchflask. He tilted his head back, smiled up at Lirrit. “You got one of those?”

She laughed and passed him her flask.

The thick, sour drink ran down his throat and warmed some of the soreness and fatigue from his aching body. He snapped the lid down on the leather covered bottle and returned it to her. “What happened back there?”

“You remember those things that went past us?”

“Aliens?”

“Outside aliens. Where the slave ships come from.”

“Uh.”

“They were after the mainBrain too. One of them lost her daughter, she’s here to get her back.”

“You talked to them?”

“Talked and talked. There was time for it.”

She was almost glowing she was so excited, she was teasing him with it, making him ask. He caught one of her hands, put her finger in his mouth and bit down on it. She giggled, and pulled his hair.

“So tell me,” he said.

“We are going to take the Warmaster. We are, are, are.”

“How?”

“Elli did it. She hired them. Rosepearls, Kar. They’ve got a ship, they’ll ferry us up and get us in.” She pressed her forefinger against his cheek. “One’s a man, big man, if I danced with him I’d bang my nose on his beltbuckle. He did the bargaining.” Middle finger. “There’s the woman; she plays tunes on that Brain like Jirsy does on her shal.” Her breath tickled his ear as she laughed in little soundless gasps. “She doesn’t know it, Elli didn’t tell her, but her daughter’s living at the mines. You’ve met her, the one called Aslan. The teacher. We’re keeping her as a kind of hostage, Elli doesn’t trust them much.” Third finger. “There’s the cutest little furry being.” She reached over his shoulder and flattened her hand on his stomach, below the spring of his ribs. He’d come about here on you.” She brought the hand back to his shoulder, began kneading the hard tense muscles there. “You ought to see him, Kar. Big brown eyes, the softest sweetest fur, makes you want to pick him up and cuddle him.” Her hands stilled for a moment. “Except it isn’t really fur. When he wants, it changes color… and everything, so you just can’t see him. He went across a floor like he was part of it and whap! the guard was down and out, didn’t see a thing.”

“Doesn’t sound very cuddly.”

“They’re going to meet us on Gerbek Island nine days on, you can see what I mean then.”

He grunted, saw Elmas Ofka watching them. “You don’t trust them.”

“It’s not .a question of trust. Greed, young Kar.” Her mouth moved into a twisted grin. “Greed. We’ll give them enough this time to make them hungry for more. They won’t, be so apt to cut us down if they plan on coming back. And there’s always the daughter.” She frowned. “We’re not lost anymore, Kar.” She sounded troubled and uncertain, not at all the Dalliss Elmas Ofka who walked in power, unfettered and formidable. “That man and his crew are just the first wave. There’s going to be a lot more like him before we’re dead and gone/born and back. I don’t know how anything’s going to turn out any more. I used to know.” She closed her eyes, started to lean back but changed her mind when the chair started to wobble. “Atch! Even this.” She slapped at the chair arm. “Everything’s bound to change. Tidal wave of change. How am I going to ride it, Kar? How are any of us going to keep from being drowned in it?”

He stared at the knotty darkness rushing past outside. Not lost any longer. People knowing about us. Outsiders coming here. Changing us. Changing everything. It was like standing naked on the Speaker’s Minaret with a mob muttering in the Circle below. He shivered, then winced as his bruises stung him. Lirrit Ofka muttered something he didn’t catch, her hands were warm on his shoulders, working more of the tension out of him. “Was Lirrit right? Are they going to ferry us to the Warmaster?”

“Yes.”

“So, what do we do when we get there?”

“What do you think?”

“Take it, I suppose. Somehow.”

“According to the Brain there’s only a handful of techs, a few Huvveds to run things and a squad of Noses to keep them all honest. The rest are support. Two hundred, counting whores.”

“Take a big hand to close round two hundred.”

“Shifts, Kar. Like the retting shed where you’re working now. One third on duty, one third playing, one third sleeping. None of them expecting trouble. A score of us could take her. I could lay my hands on twice that many in less than a week.”

He nodded. “I know. Them at the mine, Jamber Fausse’s raiders, the Dalliss web. Give you two weeks and you’d have a hundred or more. Thing is…” he smoothed his thumb over and over the torn nail, “who can you trust once they’re up there?” He scowled at her. “And what are we going to do with that horror once we’ve got it?”

“I know.” She sighed, shook her head. “If it weren’t so pathetic, it’d be funny. We can’t kick Pittipat out if we don’t take the ship. So we have to take the ship. But we can’t operate her and we can’t trust anyone who can operate her because they’d take her away from us and we’d be worse off than we are now. And we can’t stay put and hold her because we don’t know how to work the defenses so any rockbrain bitbit who’s been up there and knows how to push a button could take her from us. And we can’t tell the aliens thanks but some other time when we know what we’re doing because the next clutch of visitors might be types that’d make a Huvved Torturegeek look like a nursery nana.”

Karrel Goza leaned into Lirrit’s hands, comforted by her strong fingers. “We’ve talked a lot about taking the ship, but whoever expected us to do it?” After a moment’s heavy silence, he said, “What about N’Ceegh? From what I saw, all he wants is to get back to his workshop.”

“He does now, but what would happen if he had all that power in his hands? That changes everything, Kar. Tell you true, I wouldn’t trust me with that ship if I knew how to work her. Would you? Trust yourself, I mean?”

He didn’t try answering her; he didn’t have to. “If there was some way we could get rid of her…”

“We’ve got a month to think of something, the man said he wouldn’t take us up until he finished collecting the folk he’s come for. Kar…”

“Yeh?”

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Not yet.”

“Geres Duvvar and some of my cousins know about the raid. If I don’t give them something, it’ll be worse than kicking over a karints nest; we’ll have them swarming about us trying to find out what happened.”

“Mm.” She stared past him, fingertips tracing a merm scar. “Tell them this, the female alien pulled all the suspect files from the mainBrain, then she wiped them out of Memory so whatever the Grand Sech doesn’t have as hard copy is gone. She’s printing the files for us so we’ll know how much he knows and what he suspects. And she’s set up some safe corridors into the Palace, we’ll be getting the stats for those and passing them on to whoever’s interested. That ought to satisfy anyone who cares to ask. What time is it? The board clock has quit on us.” She frowned. “And where are we?”