Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls

“Our witch.” Caressing sound in the man’s voice. “You’re set. He won’t bother you. Maybe ask questions. Mmmh. Certainly questions. You’re all right as long as you’re suspicious, Bramble, but soon as you relax, you talk too much. You talked too much to me.”

“What harm would you do me?”

“Bed you, child.”

“I keep telling you…” She sighed impatiently. “It wasn’t a child’s body you loved. I don’t know what I am any more, only that I’m not Arth Slya’s Brann waiting for her eleventh birthday so she could make her Choice. Sammo, I was going to be a potter like my father. He made a teapot and drinking bowls for an old man’s birthday. Uncle Eornis. My birthday was his too, he was going to make a hundred this year… the oldest among us…

Her voice broke. After a moment she cleared her throat and went on. “That he was killed two weeks before his hundred… funny, that seems worse…” She seemed to be speaking to herself. Taguiloa was caught up in them, his imagination responding to the emotion in the soft voice, emotion that was all the more powerful because of the quiet restraint that kept the words so slow and easy. “I saw a Ternueng take my baby sister by the heels and dash her brains out against the Oak, I saw them fire my home and walk away with my mother, my uncles, aunts and cousins, I didn’t cry, Sammo, all that time I didn’t cry. And now I weep for an old man at the end of his life. Look at me, isn’t it funny?”

“Brann…”

“Don’t worry about me, Sammo, I’m not falling apart. Like aunt Frin always said, complaining is good for the soul. A purgation of sorts.”

Silence. The man began walking about, stopping and walking, stopping and walking, no regular rhythm to his pacing. Pulled two ways, Taguiloa thought, wants to stay, wants to go.

“Three months,” the Panday said, his voice stone hard with determination. “Enough time for you to learn how to go on and work out a way into Audurya Durat, then make your way there. In three months I’ll be tied up at the wharves of Durat waiting for you.”

“No!”

“You can’t stop me.”

“The Girl. What if something happens to her?”

“Thought about that. Plenty of inlets near the mouth of the Palachunt. Jimm can wait there with the Girl; your gold will buy a ship I don’t have to care about, all it needs is a bottom sound enough to get us back down the river. And the children flying guard.” He chuckled. “Now argue with that, Bramble-all-thorns.”

“Dear friend, what about the crew? Who’re you going to take with you into that rattrap? Tik-rat? Staro the stub?”

“Better to ask who I can persuade to stay behind and if I’m going to have to part Jimm’s hair with his war club to make him wait with the Girl.” He cleared his throat. “You’re part of the crew now, Bramble. You’re our witch.”

Soft gasping, snuffling sounds. The witch weeping. Taguiloa scowled into the darkness, his pulses shouting danger at him, danger to stay so close to a woman who could spin such webs. He started to creep out of the shadows, froze as he heard the door slam, feet running down the steps. Then the Shipmaster slowed to a deliberate walk. The gate creaked open, bumped shut. Taguiloa stood, still in half-shadow, and worked the cramps out of his body. Behind him he heard the soft murmur of voices-the children and the woman. He closed his ears to them, started cautiously for the gate, staying in the shadow of the plantings, moving with the silent hunting glide that had served him so well other times.

A faint giggle by his side. He looked down. The blond boy, trotting beside him. Taga ignored him and went ghosting on until he reached the wall.

The boy caught hold of his arm. “Wait,” he breathed. A slight tug, then a large horned owl was powering up from him. It sailed over the wall, circled twice and came slanting back. Feathers soft as milkweed fluff brushed at his arm, then the boy was standing beside him. “No one out there, not even a servant.”

“Why?”

“It’s late. Only a couple hours till dawn.”

– “You know what I mean.”

The boy grinned at him, danced back a few steps, turned and ran into the darkness. Taguiloa stared after him then turned to the gate. With a silent prayer to Tungjii, he lifted the latch and walked through.

THE KULA PRIEST came from the house and paced round and round the pyre with its festoons of silk flowers and painted paper chains and the paper wealth soaked in sweet oils to make a perfumed and painted fire. He waved his incense sticks and the sickly sweet perfume drifted on the breeze to Taguiloa. If funerals had not provided a steady income and a place to show his work, he’d have missed them all; the smell of the roasting meat, the sight of the earthsoul and skysoul oozing out of the coffin surrounded by that smell which the incense never quite covered twisted his stomach and made the inside of his bones itch.

The fire was crackling briskly as the Kula finished the final tensing round. He stepped back and chanted, binding the sparks into a web of light so there was no danger of the House or the Watchers catching fire.

Taguiloa sensed a presence and looked down. The blond boy was standing beside him, watching the show with amused interest. There was a companionable feel to the situation that made him want to relax and grin at the boy, ruffle his hair the way he hated to have done to him when he was a boy. He’d stopped being afraid of this maybe-demon, this changechild; he smiled at the boy and went back to watching the fire burn.

The shimmer that was the skysoul wriggled free and darted skyward like a meteor shooting up instead of down. The earth soul, a bent little man looking much as old uncle had looked in life, hovered near the pyre as if it didn’t have the strength to leave the meat that had housed it. After a while, though, it seemed to shrug its meager shoulders and begin a heavy drift upwards riding the streamers of smoke. The death was clean, the old man had nothing to complain of, there was no violence against the meat to hold the earthsoul down, a clear testament to the way Csermanoa performed his family duties.

As the fire began to die down, the party grew livelier. The servants came bustling about, replacing the plundered food trays, setting out new basins of steaming spiced wine, drawing the lamps down and replacing the candles in them; the joygirls were circling through the guests, teasing and laughing, cajoling sweets from the men, whispering in their ears. It was clearly time for the players to leave. He looked down. The child was gone. He watched a moment more, then edged around the walls of the summer court and went into the paper pavilion. Yarm had the gear packed and was curled up, dozing, beside it. He shook the boy awake, caught up his own pack and left Csermanoa’s compound by the servant’s entrance, the sleepy doorkeeper coming awake enough to hold out his hand for a tip. Feeling generous, ignoring Yarm’s scowl, Taguiloa dropped a dozen coppers in the palm; the broad beaming grin he got in return seemed worth the price.

As they wound through the irregular narrow streets, Yarm kept looking back, something Taguiloa didn’t notice until they were about halfway to the players’ quarter and the house and garden he’d inherited from Gerontai. He endured Yarm’s fidgeting for a while, then looked back himself, half-suspecting what he’d see.

The small blond boy was strolling casually along behind them, making no effort to conceal himself. He stopped when he saw them watching him, waved a hand and sauntered into an alley between two tenements. Taguiloa tapped Yarm on the shoulder. “Forget it,” he said. “That’s nothing to trouble us.”

“Who’s he? What’s he want?” Petulance and jealousy in the boy’s voice.