Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

The voices were louder; she began picking up some words, enough to know Elmas Ofka was sending Harli Tanggаr out to a pile of stones where she could get a clear shot at the flat with her crossbow, placing others on guard beside the sarsens. The crossbow worried Aslan. If she knew it was me, Harli Tanggаr wouldn’t shoot, but the light’s so bad she’d have no idea who she was killing. Aslan bit her tongue to choke back a half-hysterical giggle. Poor baby, she thought, she’d be awfully sorry. Not half as sorry as me.

The islet settled back to silence except for the whistle and groan of the wind and occasional loud clacks as bits of stone lost balance and went bounding down slopes of scree. The damp cold crept through the layered wool she wore, struck to the bone. She shivered, locked her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. And began to wonder if she’d last until the Outsiders arrived.

She heard a buzzing like gnat noise. It was so faint that at first she thought it was something the wind was doing. Then it got louder. She eased her head out and looked up. A skip. Coming in from the west.

Holding her cloak close to her so there’d be no flicker of motion to catch Harli Tanggаr’s eye, she climbed from the hole and stretched out on the rubble so she could see what was happening.

The skip hovered a moment, then dropped. It landed at one side of the cleared circle, and a large form swung down, followed by a smaller. Once again Aslan closed her teeth on her abused lower lip, fighting back a surge of very mixed emotion. The second figure was a shadowy blob, undetailed, but she knew that way of moving, the high-headed arrogant strut. “Allo, Mama,” she whispered.

Voices. A man’s, deep and pleasant; it didn’t carry well and she couldn’t understand what he was saying. Her mother wasn’t saying anything yet. Elmas Ofka listened. “Do it,” she said.

The next minutes were busy ones. Half a dozen small squat remotes hummed from the skip. Three carried a bundle larger than all three of them, a bale of heavy cloth from which Gorruya teased occasional gleams like flows of liquid silver. The other three scurried about exploding pitons into the stone floor of the circle. Before Aslan sniffed three times, the bundle expanded into a large domed shelter anchored by the pitons. She watched with envy as Elmas Ofka waved her guarding isyas inside and shouted Harli Tanggаr down from her post. That solved that problem, she thought; she watched Harli disappear behind the dome. Let them get settled, she thought. She pulled the hood closer about her face, pinched it shut over her mouth and nose, started to straighten up.

She looked up into her mother’s face. “Allo, Mama.”

“So what’s all this about? Sneaking around.” Adelaar touched her cheek briefly. “For a stodgy professor-type, you get yourself into more trouble…”

“I-told-you-so, Mama?”

“If you stopped falling on your face, I could stop having to pick you up.”

“Ooh-yeha. Like it was all my fault this happened.” Aslan sat up, clutched at her head. Stunned, she thought, understanding finally what had happened to her. Her mind wasn’t working all that well right now. Behind her mother she could see a tall dark man with a lazy twinkle in eyes so pale they might have been borrowed from another face, and beside him, Elmas Ofka looking grim. Aslan managed a tight smile. “Sorry, Dalliss, someone spoiled your surprise.”

Elmas Ofka blinked, but took the cue smoothly. “Waiting upwind was not the brightest thing we’ve done. One of our visitors has what one might call a nose for news.”

Adelaar’s mouth twisted into a half-smile; she wound a curl of Aslan’s hair about her finger and tugged it, hard, but she said nothing. She gave her daughter’s head a last pat, then forgot about her and marched over to the memplas table growing like a mushroom in the center of the chamber.

The shelter was large enough to hold them all with plenty of room left for moving about. Whoever’d brought Aslan in had laid her on a memplas bench close to the valve. The isyas were standing or sitting, their backs to the shallow curve of the wall; Lirrit and Harli glanced once at her then ignored her, the other isyas weren’t interested, they lived in gul Inci or at the Indiz Farm and there was a lot they didn’t know about events at the Mines. As the tall man and Elmas Ofka moved to join Adelaar at the table, Aslan saw for the first time the other member of the group, the Aurranger Rau. Elmas Ofka had mentioned the Rau in her report to the Council, so Aslan knew he was about and she knew who he had to be, there were NO other Aurrangers offplanet; she hadn’t actually met him while he was at University, but she’d heard stories. She was startled at the strength of her reaction to him, she wanted to pick him up, cuddle him, smooth her hands over and over that velvety fur; more than that, she felt intensely protective, if one of the isyas attacked him she realized with a great deal of surprise that she’d go after the woman tooth and claw. Amazing, she thought. With Pels kurk-Orso to prod her memory, she realized who the light-eyed man was. Swardheld Quale. Mama must have hired him, she thought, Ooo-yeha, she has to ’ve spent a fortune and a half. If ever Luck shat upon me, she did now. I’m going to hear about this for the next fifty years, if we don’t strangle each other before then.

At the table Adelaar toed up a chair, got herself settled, then she took a bundle of fac sheets from a case, squared them and set them in front of her. “The suspect files,” she said, “and the report on the internal security at the Palace that Quale saw fit to donate.” There was an astringent acerbity in the last statement. Quale chuckled, but didn’t bother to answer the challenge. She lifted out a flake-reader, then a case of filled flakes. “We discussed this and found it simpler to let you and your technicians do whatever marrying is necessary to make further copies of this material. The reader is included as another little gift from our generous friend here. The first twenty flakes contain the stats on the Warmaster and her… well, you can’t really call them a crew, the people living on board her. The twenty-first-they’re all numbered, using your system, of course, so you won’t have any trouble identifying what’s which-the twenty-first has the data on the free corridors. You’ll wish to inspect the flakes; don’t worry about inadvertently erasing them, they’ve been impressed. Loading’s simple, just slide the flake skin-and-all into the slot there, then watch the screen. You can manually jump about, there’s a pencil attached, write the number you want on that sensor there. Again, use your own system, the player has been adjusted to respond to it. If you want automatic random access, touch the pencil here. That’ll jump you about so you can get a fair idea what’s on the flake. If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. You have something for us?”

Elmas Ofka nodded. “Har cousin,” she said. Harli Tanggаr marched to the table and set a large pouch in the middle. Without comment she went back to her post beside the valve. Elmas tugged open the mouth, took out a swatch of black velvet and a small metallic object which she unfolded into a balance scale and a pair of calipers. Then she withdrew several smaller pouches, opened one and let the pearls spill onto the velvet.

The exchange was quick and wordless and the two women began a meticulous examination of what each acquired from the other.

Quale left them to it and strolled over to Aslan. “Be interesting to know just who the surprise was for,” he murmured. He had a pleasant baritone, well, rather more than pleasant; for the first time in months Aslan remembered how long it was since she’d had sex with a man who excited her rather than scaring her rigid. What she’d had with Parnalee wasn’t sex or pleasure, it was a propitiation of the gods of chaos. And even that was, what? two years ago? He had nice hands, long fingers, they ruffed through his beard. It was crisp and short, a few white and gray hairs in the black, just enough to make him look distinguished. She wanted to smooth her fingertips over it, to…