Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

The valve hummed. Pels came in; his black lips were curled into an odd grin, his ears were standing straight up and twitching a little. He was humming, she could hear a rumbling brumbrum as he trotted to the table, dumped the comsets onto the memplas and swung around to watch the exit.

Harli Tanggаr ducked through, stepped to her place beside the valve as the man following her straightened and looked around.

Parnalee, Aslan thought, good god, what’s she think she’s doing? How’d she get hold of him?

“Parnalee Tanmairo Proggerd,” Elmas Ofka said. “In the course of his work, he has visited most of the cities of the Littorals. When he joined us two days ago, I saw him as the answer to your need.”

Maybe, Aslan thought, but that’s not the whole story. What are you up to, Dalliss? Smiling, urbane, wearing his public face, Parnalee walked to the table, touched hands with Quale. He wants this, she thought, why? He looked over his shoulder at her and she saw the beast in his black eyes, hungry beast promising her silently what he’d promised in words. Undercut me and you’re dead. She shivered and made up her mind she was going to be very very sure she was never alone with him any time anywhere.

Quale got to his feet. “That’s it, then. Call us when you’re ready, Hanifa. You want to leave first, or shall we?”

Elmas Ofka closed the lid on the case, snapped the latches home. “We’ll go. Don’t get yourself killed.”

1. About ten days after the meeting on Gerbek.

Karrel Goza in Ayla gul Inci: Waiting for the Lift-Off

Karrel Goza forked slimy rotten leaves from the second stage vat into a tiltcart. The stench that eddied around him crept through his stained overall and nestled against his skin, oozed through the overage filter on his mask. The stink was the least of his problems, the mist that stank would open ulcers in his skin and rot his lungs if he stayed in it long enough. The Huvved Kabrik who owned this shed had the patronage of the Fehdaz and the manager was under orders to squeeze the last thread of use from the gear. And more, if he could get away with it. The manager before him had been fired for being too easy on the workers; she was local, some of her employees were cousins and affiliates, others belonged to the Families of friends and associates. Herk’s crony didn’t make that mistake twice. The new manager came from a Guneywhiyker Daz, he had no family in Inci, no pressures on him to look to the safety of the workers. Karrel Goza didn’t bother complaining; it wouldn’t do any good and there were a hundred more desperate and thus more docile workers to take his place. He had too many small accidents, had called in sick too often in his need to cover absences when he was flying for Elmas Ofka, he was growing more marginal a worker as the weeks passed, a complaint was all the manager needed to boot him out. His Family was one of the poorer septs, small business folk living on the edge of failing, clerks and such; they needed twice what their earners were pulling in to pay the fees and taxes and all that Herk was squeezing from folk like them. A few years ago his pilot’s pay tithed had brought them comfort and a degree of security they’d seldom known. He’d sponsored and paid Guildbond (Pilot) for his cousin Geres Duvvar, he’d sponsored and paid Guildbond (Skilled Trades) for three score other cousins, sisters, brothers, affiliates. That was finished now. Drive, talent and a large dose of luck gave him a chance at a profession not usually open to boys from his class. Bondfees in the Pilot’s Guild were far too great for a Family with the income his had; even stretching they couldn’t afford such an expense, nor could they afford to tie up so much coin so long in a single member. When he was a middler near the end of his schooling, he earned his first coin flying soarwings on the Garrip sands in the semiformal races sponsored by a coalition of merchants and Sea Farmers. The purses were big, the entry fees small; he and an uncle who was a carpenter built his wingframe and an aunt who was a weaver made the fabric cover. He’d found his talent the moment he got his first kite up and when he was old enough to enter the races he made it pay. Time after time he won. There was danger in this racing; fliers crashed-misread aircurrents, were crowded offlift, showed bad judgment in their turns or were victims of sabotage. Men and women came from a dozen Dazzes to watch and wager on the fliers, there was a great deal of money floating about and the temptation to goose the odds was strong and seldom resisted. Orska Falyan of Sirgыn-Falyan was a devotee of those contests; he began betting on the agile boy who seemed to feel the air with every sweaty inch of naked skin, who slid again and again from traps meant to break him; he was elated when the boy continued to win, sometimes by huge leads. The old man more or less adopted Karrel Goza; he sponsored him to the Pilot’s Guild, paid his Guildbond, and when he gained his pilot’s rating, hired him on at Sirgыn Bol. Orska Falyan continued to take an interest in Karrel Goza, had him teach some Sirgыn and Falyan youngers how to soar, left the boy a small legacy when he died ten years later.

Karrel Goza finished filling the cart, wishing as he’d wished so many times before that the slave techs would finally come up with a machine capable of that noxious work; the fibers were tough, slippery, treacherous and finer than a woman’s hair; every mechanical forker they’d tried jammed after an hour or two. It took a man’s dexterity to manage the transfer. He kicked the gong to let the handler know and the cart purred off, a new one clanking into its place. Around him other forkers were working with steady minimal swings; another gong clanged, and a third after a silence so short that it seemed more like an echo than a sound in itself.

He coughed, felt a burning in his throat and lungs. The fumes from the vat were beginning to get to him. He looked around. The overseer was out of the room. That figured. The lazy bastard spent most of the day in his office, a glass-walled room raised fifty meters off the floor. He could sit in comfort and watch the forkers sweat. Karrel coughed again, cursed under his breath and climbed off the platform. There was a naked faucet waist-high on the wall near the only door. He turned the faucet on full so the water beat into the catch basin. Holding his breath, he slipped the mask off and slid the filterpack from its slot. He looked at the discolorations on both surfaces, swore again; he held the pack in the stream of water until some of the overload was soaked out of it. That only took care of the grosser particles, the absorption of the wad was a joke; he shook it, wondering what he was putting into his lungs. He swished it back and forth in the water, shook it again and clicked it home. The wetting was weakening it, he could see pulls and a small rip. He’d been asking for a replacement for three weeks now. Oversoul alone knew when he’d get it. Likely he’d have to buy a pack on the black market. If he could find one. Elli might be able to do it for him, get a filter from her Family. He splashed water on his face, coughed again, felt like he was trying to rip the lining from his throat. He pulled the mask back on; as bad as it was, breathing that miasma over the vats without any protection at all was a thousand times worse. He went back to work. Not much longer, he told himself. Hang on, Kar; twenty days. Twenty days and Elli will get her chance at Herk. Ah, to see him dangling head down in that vat.

“What?” Karrel Goza set his cup down, blinked wearily at his Ommar.

The Parlor was small and by intention intimate; the wallposts, the ceiling and its beams were carved and painted in jewel colors, small angular flower patterns on an angular emerald ground; a fire crackled cheerfully behind a semi-transparent shell guard; ancient tapestries hung from ceiling to floor, colors muted by time, still dark and rich. The Ommar sat in a plump chair, its ancient leather dyed a deep scarlet and mottled by decades of saddlesoap and elbowgrease, its arms and ornaments and swooping clawfooted legs carved from a brown wood age-darkened to almost-black. She was a small woman with a halo of fine white hair about a face dominated by huge black eyes, ageless eyes. She wore a simple white blouse, an old black skirt smoothed neatly about her short legs, legs too large for her size. She’d been a diver before she married into the Goza family, not one of the premiere Dallisses though she shared their arrogance; even now he could see the merm marks on the backs of her hands. She sniffed impatiently, repeated what she’d said.