Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

“Sammang Schimli? The Shipmaster?”

He looked up, the lines deepening between his thick black brows, the corners of his mouth dipping deeper into the creases slanting from flared nostrils. He ran his eyes slowly over the woman standing on the far side of the table. “Shove off, whore, I’m not looking for company.” He shut his eyes and prepared to ignore her.

The woman pulled out a chair, sat across from him.

“Nor I, Shipmaster. Only passage out of Tavisteen to Utar-Selt. And I’m not a whore.”

Eyes still closed, thumbs moving up and down the sides of the tankard, he said, “I’m going nowhere soon, woman.”

“I know.” His eyes snapped open and he stared at her. “If you’ll tell me just what you need to shake yourself loose,” she went on, “and we can agree on terms, I’ll see what I can do about financing your clearance.”

He looked her over. No. Not a whore. Not reacting to him right for that. She was interested, but in an oddly childlike and at the same time cerebral way. None of the body signs of sexual awareness. Under the mask of calm, a nervous uncertainty. He clicked tongue against teeth, widened his eyes as he realized who she must be.

She had large green eyes in a face more interesting than pretty, rather gaunt right now as if she’d been hungry for a long time. A full mouth held tightly in check. Skin like alabaster in moonlight. The hands on the table were long, narrow, strong; hands not accustomed to idleness. Shoulder, length soft silver hair catching shimmers from the tavern’s lamps whenever she moved her head. Wholly out of place here. He had a sudden suspicion she’d look out of place an ywhere he could think of. By Preemalau’s nimble tail, how she ran loose in this part of the city was a thing to intrigue a man. He drew his tongue along his bottom lip, tapped his thumbs on the table. Maybe she could break the Girl loose, maybe she’d put his head in a Temueng strangler’s noose. A gamble, but what wasn’t? “Why not,” he said.

“We can’t talk here.”

He thought about the rumors, the dead on the plain, the dead in the city, the dead floating in the bay, then he drained the tankard, set it down with a loud click that made her hands twitch. “I have a room upstairs.”

She smiled suddenly, a mischievous gamin’s grin that changed her face utterly. “Be careful, Shipmaster. You don’t want to make me angry.”

He stood. “Your choice.” Leaving her to follow if she would, not so sure anymore he didn’t want female company, he went up the several flights of stairs, hearing now and then her quiet steps behind him. He was rooming on the fifth floor, up under the roof, not so much for the cheaper price as for the breezes that swept through the unglazed windows. He unlocked his door, shoved it open, walked in and stopped.

Two children sat cross-legged on his bed, moonlight glimmering on pale hair, glowing in crystal eyes.

The woman brushed past him, settled herself in the rickety chair by one window. “My companions,” she said. “Close the door.” When he hesitated, she giggled. “Afraid of a woman and a pair of kids?”

He looked at the key in his hand, shrugged. “Might be the smartest thing I’ve done in months.” He pulled the door shut, latching its bar and went to perch on the sill of the nearest window.

“Yaril,” the woman said, “any snoops about?”

“No, Brann.” The fairest of the two children grinned at her. “But Jaril did drop a rock on Hermy the nose.”

“Nearby?”

The child with the shade darker hair waggled a hand. “So-so. Got him a couple streets back, fossicking about, trying to figure out what happened to you. No one else interested in you, well, except for the usual reasons.”

“Hah, brat, talk about what you know. Still, mmh, I think you better go prowl about outside, see we aren’t interfered with.” She turned to Sammang. “Let him out, will you please?”

“What could the kid do?”

“More than you want to know, Shipmaster.”

He shrugged. “Come on, kid.”

When the latch was again secure, he stumped to the window, hitched a hip on the sill, angled so he could look out over the roofs toward the estuary and at the same time see the woman and the remaining child. “Why me?” he said. “Why not a Temueng ship? They’re going in and out all the time. Cheaper too, because I’m going to cost you… Brann, is it? Right. I’m going to cost you a lot. Maybe more than I’m worth. You who I think you are, you’ve already fooled Temuengs high and wide, seems to me you could go on fooling them just as easy. Not that I’m usually this candid with paying customers, you understand, but I want to know just what I’m getting into.”

“Candid?”

He raised both brows, said nothing.

“You know quite well what you’re getting into, Shipmaster.”

The child-he was growing more certain it was a girl-slid off the bed and walked with eerie silence across the usually noisy floorboards, touched a pale finger to the wick of the stubby candle sitting on the unsteady table that was the room’s only other piece of furniture. The wick caught fire, spread a warm yellow glow over Brann and Sammang, touched the hills and hollows of the lumpy bed. She went back to where she’d been and sat gazing intently at him for a long uneasy moment, sharp images of the candle flame dancing upside down in her strange eyes.-Tell him,” she said. “He’s hooked, he might as well know the whole, maybe he could come up with better ideas than we can; he knows this city and the Temuengs. You can trust him with just about anything he isn’t trying to sell you.”

He scowled at the girl, snorted at her impudent grin, turned to the woman. “Have you heard of Arth Slya?” she said. Her voice broke on the last words; she cleared her throat, waited for his answer.

“Who hasn’t?”

“It was my home.”

“Was?” He leaned forward, suddenly very interested: if Arth Slya was gone, the Slya wares hidden in his hold had suddenly jumped in value, jumped a lot.

“Temuengs came, a pimush and fifty men. Tried to take my people away, killed…” Once again her voice broke; hastily she turned her head away until she had control again. In a muffled voice she said, “Killed the littlest and the oldest, marched the others off… off for slaves… on the emperor’s orders… the pimush told me… slaves for the emperor… He called him old lardarse… the pimush did… he’s dead… his men, dead… I killed… the children and I killed them… my folk are home again, the ones left… trying to put things… things together again.” Her shoulders heaved, she breathed quickly for a space, then lifted her head and spoke more crisply, her mask back in place. “Slya woke and Tincreal breathed fire, scrambled the land so Arth Slya is shut away. As long as the Temuengs hold Croaldhu I doubt you’ll hear much of Arth Slya.”

He tugged at his earlobe, narrowed his eyes. “You’re going after the emperor?”

“No. Well, not exactly. This is the year of the Grannsha Fair.”

“I know, Slya-born, I came for it and caught my tail in this rat-trap.”

“There were Slya folk at the fair. The pimush told me they were taken to Andurya Durat where they were going to be installed in a special compound the Emperor old lardarse…” She laughed; it was not a comfortable sound. “He built for them. Slaves, Shipmaster. My father and two of my brothers, my kin and kind. I will not leave them slaves.” She spoke with a stony determination that made him happy he was neither Temueng nor slaver. He nodded, approving her sentiment, it was what he’d have done in similar circumstances, which Buatorrang and the Preemalau grant would never happen; he wasn’t so sure he wanted to involve himself and the Girl in this, but it might be worth the gamble; where she was now, she was like to rot before he could pry her loose. There was a lot the woman wasn’t telling him, but he didn’t think this was quite the moment to bring that up. “My greatest difficulty,” she said, “is I haven’t been out of Arth Slya before and know very little about the world down here.”