Jo Clayton: Shadow of the Warmaster

Karrel Goza splashed water over his face and hair, then climbed from the tub. “Throw me one of those towels you’re sitting on, eh?” He caught it and began rubbing at his hair. “I didn’t get out much. You see any of ours in Gilisim?”

“Living or dead?”

“Ahhh… both.” He wrapped the towel around him. “Come with me while I get some clean clothes.”

“Why not. I’ve got to get back to feeding the stock, but they can wait a bit, they’re not as hungry as they were.” He picked up one of the lamps: “Goza Ommar’s dead.” He touched Karrel Goza’s shoulder, patted it lightly, then pushed the door open. “Melter, not much of her left but I knew it was her and I told the deadwagon who she was. We’ll have to go through the back, I’ve got the other doors locked. Duvvar Ommar next to her, same thing.”

“Prophet!”

“Yeh. Melter. Left her face alone. Told them about her too.” He held the door open for Karrel Goza, went round him and up the back stairs, holding the lamp high to light the dark narrow enclosure, glancing over his shoulder from time to time, talking while he climbed. “Ollanin, dead, all three, Goza, Duvvar, Memeli. Saw my sister Avy and the Memeli Ommar. Alive.” He waited on the landing, then went along the hallway to the corner room Karrel Goza had lived in from the time he got his license to fly. “They’d corralled a clutch of youngsters, had them out collecting our folk; I expect most of those still alive will be back here by tomorrow noon.” He stepped aside and let Karrel Goza work the pinlock and open the door, then followed him into the room and set the lamp on a table by the bed. “Ylazar Falyan showed up at Sirgыn Bol yesterday with a couple of pilots from the Mines; like us, Prophet be praised, they missed out on the Surge.” He perched on a ladderback chair, folded his arms on the top splat and rested his chin on them.

“He looked around for mechanics, found me settling in here, hired me to go over a couple of the airships. Worked on the best till about midnight yesterday. He says he’s going to use them ferrying Incers home.”

Karrel Goza looked up from his trouser laces. “I left Windskimmer at one of Sirgыn’s masts, I didn’t see anyone there.”

“Took off for Gilisim this morning. Must’ve left before you got here.”

“Ah.” He went poking through his drawers hunting for a clean shirt, found one and shook it out, then loosened the laces and pulled it over his head. “Big of him.”

“Yeh. He’s praying real hard no one senior shows up and in the meantime making points for himself so he can keep his hold even if one does. I expect he’ll make it, he had the backbone to get out and over to the Mines when Herk started tightening down.”

“Hard to say.” He padded to the dresser, peered at himself in the mirror.

“Getting old, eh?”

“Twice as old as I look and that’s older than time.”

“You and Lirrit Ofka still going to wed?”

“Soon’s we get a moment.” He dragged a comb through his hair; the damp had tightened the curls into knots that made him swear as he worked them loose.

“Marrying out or she coming in?”

“I don’t know. Who knows anything these days. We decided to see how things shape up before we jump one way or the other.” He looked over his shoulder at Tazmin Duvvar. “Might not be any more marrying in or out.”

“Things going to change that much?”

“You don’t sound very happy about it.”

“Well, everyone likes to be comfortable and change is always full of burrs and bites.”

“You really want to go back to the way it was?”

“Nuh. Yeh. I don’t know. I want it to be comfortable like it was. I want to know what’s going to be happening tomorrow and a week from tomorrow and tomorrow next year. Yeh, I know better, but you’d better remember too, Kar, there’s a lot and a lot out there like me in those that’re still alive. Don’t get too fancy for us, eh?”

Karrel Goza dropped on the bed beside the shoestool, set his foot on it and bent over to put on his sandals. “You feeding the animals,” he said. “What else needs doing?”

“Just about everything, I didn’t have time yesterday or this morning for much but meals for me and the fourfoots. Looks like our folk dropped whatever they were doing where they were doing it and took off when the impulse hit.”

Karrel Goza switched feet. “Mess?”

“Could be worse. Left the fires going, the place could’ve burned down. Prophet’s hand on us, it didn’t, they just went out when the coal was gone.”

Karrel Goza stood. He yawned, moved his shoulders, clasped his hands behind his head and stretched; the shirt tail he hadn’t bothered tucking in lifted in the cold draft coming through the door. He shivered, found an old sweater and pulled it on. “Outside first. Starting to feel like snow.”

“Yeh. How long you going to be here?”

“Elli wants me back by tomorrow.” He waited till Tazmin Duvvar was outside with the lamp, then he pulled the door shut and reset the lock. “She says the serious fights should be starting about then and she’ll need all the backing she can get.” He let Tazmin Duvvar go ahead with the light. “You said you thought most of our folk will be here by tomorrow?”

“Laza said he’d bring them, favor to me if I’d work without pay since he’s short of coin. You want me along?”

“Yeh. If you’re going to be persuading people to back us, you ought to know what you’re talking about.”

The room was filled with slow moving shadows from the dying fire and wandering warm drafts mellow with the smell of the mulled cider steaming on the hearth.

The long window was closed but unshuttered, its embrasure was padded on the bottom and sides to make a comfortable windowseat; it had thick yunkhide tacked over the padding, rubbed to a deep glow by decades of soaping and sitting. Karrel Goza was stretched out in the window, sipping at a mug of cider, listening to the rain drum against the glass. Taz was right, he thought, morbid doesn’t make it. He was exhausted, sore and deeply content. The emptiness that was desolation in the morning now seemed to vibrate with possibility. An emptiness waiting, wanting to be filled. He sipped at the cider and thought about that a while and after a while he stopped thinking altogether. Tomorrow could wait until the sun rose. Now was hot cider, red fire and the steady beat of the rain.

1. 265 days std. from home and heading back.

In the Split.

I went out to the Belt and brought Slancy back, put her down on the plateau, then we started loading. I got the ex’s together and made my speech about how rough it was going to be riding in the hold for some three months while we were insplitting to Helvetia. I told them if they wanted to miss out on that, I’d take their names instead of them. They could wait for a more comfortable ride; I’d leave them shelters and a miniskip so they could get around. I didn’t want unhappy passengers; taking that many people I knew shitall about into Slancy made me very nervous; being trashed and rescued didn’t turn any of them into angels. I told them the food was going to be ship-basic which they’d get sick of very fast; there wouldn’t be water or any other way of taking a bath, so they’d be pretty ripe when they walked out of the hold; most of all, life was going to be very very boring. Insplitting was bad enough when you had something to keep you busy. Sitting around and staring at the hold walls was something else. I didn’t get a single taker; they wanted out of there, the sooner the better.

A few of them I knew something about, I brought up front. Stowed them in the crew cabins so I’d have some shooters back of me if there was trouble. Aslan and Adelaar, of course. N’Ceegh and his boy, along with the weapons he skipped over to the Mines to collect which I impounded for the duration, not that I didn’t trust him, he and Pels got on like long lost brothers, I just didn’t want that much firepower wandering around loose. Churri the Bard and his girlfriend; both of them were oldtime survivors, besides I kind of enjoyed baiting Adelaar. The Omperiannas; Kumari had a passion for music of all kinds, that’s why them. The rest brought the shelters in and set them up in the hold, got them organized in sectors like they were out under the trees, improvised screens for privacy areas; they worked almost like they were ’droids with the pattern imprinted. It was a smooth loading, surprised me a little till I thought about it. These weren’t your average thumb-fingered boneheads, Bolodo skimmed cream for them.