Shadowkill sq-3, page 14
part #3 of Shadith's quest Series
Azram watched the dark red liquid round into beads on his fur. When he thought there was enough of it, he wiped his hand across it; in a continuation of the same motion, he smeared the blood across his cousin’s face.
Kinefray screamed, lunged up, and leaped at Azram.
Azram ducked away, circled him, batting at the hands reaching for him, claws out. He kept his claws carefully sheathed; at first he was afraid, but his reaction time was unimpeded by drugging, so he was much faster and stronger than his cousin.
Kinefray snarled, slashed at him-but seemed to realize finally that there was no threat here, seemed to realize finally that this was only Patti-Paw. Confused and uncertain, he retracted his claws.
Azram darted in, caught him about the torso, and muscled him to the cell floor.
In minutes they were play-fighting, wrestling vigorously, even enjoying themselves…
##
Savant 4 (speaking to notepad):
ADDENDUM: By application of several primal forces-blood smell, anger, strenuous physical activity, subject 3A (native name: Azram) has managed to reestablish the kin-bond and to a considerable degree negate the effect of the drugs and the conditioning.
RECOMMENDATION: Considering the expense, the loss of subject material and the ineffectiveness of the drug treatments, this series of experiments should be brought to an end. We should concentrate on more efficient ways of acquiring information. We will also need more subjects for experiment. Though the acquisition of that young female lost with subjects 70s (native name: Ossoran) and 7Fy (native name: Feyvorn) cost us a number of agents and proved useless in the end, I believe we should attempt to acquire more females. It might also be useful to build up a stock of pre-pubescent males. The one thing we must do is locate additional sources of Dyslaera. Spotchals is becoming difficult about our presence there; according to reports from our assets in the records department, this is due to the continuing agitation of one Digby of Excavations Ltd and one Miralys, Toerfeles of family Voallts and Director of Company Voallts Korlatch. The abduction of that female has stirred even the most lethargic of the Spotchallix authorities to action.
NOTE: Our security seems suspect. It is as yet uncertain whether the Toerfeles Miralys knows who took her people; however the suggestion is that Digby has discovered what happened at Koulsnakko’s Hole. How? This is a question that MUST be answered.
Shadith (Kizra) On The Farm 4
1
The skimmer landed in the main Court, pulverizing a number of the paving stones, taking up most of the open space. On the side facing the House, a ramp unfolded. As soon as it was down and stable, the Artwa Arring Angakirs Cagharadad came marching out and stood before the stairs like the earth was his but beneath his notice. Rintirry lounged behind him, looking bored and beautiful.
Perched in the opening behind the oriel window above the Great Doors, Kizra watched Rintirry look around and decided Allina had splendid judgment when it came to men.
He straightened suddenly, his eyes fixed on something across the Court.
Kizra pressed her face against the glass, swore under her breath. Tamburra the Kiv’kerrinite was standing in a patch of sunlight that turned her hair to fire, emphasized the translucence of her skin, the perfection of bone and body. Posing for him.
Gods. That’s trouble, that is.
The Artwa was a tall lean man with an abundance of coarse white hair and a vigorous white mustache. His face was bright red, his skin rough as a rutted road. He glared at the silent facade and twitched his long nose.
Everything was stilled, waiting.
The great doors opened and Matja Allina came out, leaning on Aghilo’s arm, Polyapo and Kulyari a half-step behind her. She stood quiet a moment at the top of the stairs, looking down at the Artwa. A flutter of her fingers summoned Polyapo to her side. With both women helping her, she came down to greet him.
She stopped five paces away from him, placed her palms together, bowed her head, then let Polyapo and Aghilo lower her to her knees. While they prostrated themselves before the Artwa, Matja Allina rounded her back, brought her hands up, palm to palm, pressed her thumbs against her brow and waited to be acknowledged.
The old man spoke. “Matja.”
“Ghanar Rinta is honored,” Matja Allina chanted in the tonal version of the local langue, a formal singsong that her voice made into music, “Artwa Arring Angakirs Procagharadad. Amurra Bless thee and thine. This House and all in it are thine. What is thy pleasure, Artwa Arring?”
In the cloudless pale blue sky a single raptor glided in wide circles over the Kuysstead and precisely on cue gave its wild, eerie call, then went swooping off after something Kizra couldn’t see. She pressed her hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles that threatened to burst out of her (nervous giggles-though the scene had gone comical on her, there was still a soupcon of fear in it).
“Get up, get up, girl,” the Artwa said, a heavy geniality in his loud voice. “I’m an easy man, you know. These formalities…” He waved a hand, then scowled. “Where’s my son? Got his nose stuck in a book somewhere? Or is he so grand these days he can’t come to welcome his old father?”
With Polyapo and Aghilo boosting her, Matja Allina got to her feet. “Artwa Arring Angakirs, there was a raid on one of the outer pastures. Arring Pirs has gone with guide and guard to look into the matter. If he had known you were coming, Sar, of course he would have postponed his departure long enough to greet you. If you will enter your House, Sar? I have set the servants readying the Honor Suite for you and your household. Will you take some wine and cakes and rest yourself a while?”
He nodded graciously and strode past her, half-running up the steps, then striding into the House.
Rintirry strolled after him. He reached with languid grace toward Matja Mina as if he intended to draw his hand across her belly. She didn’t lift a hand to stop him, simply looked at him with calm contempt.
Rintirry laughed at the Matja; it was meant to be a taunting laugh, but it didn’t quite come off. He waggled his fingers at her and went sauntering up the steps.
Kizra ran her fingers through her hair, hurried back to her room.
2
There were two tables at the end of the Great Hall, the high table where the men sat and the lower one for the women. The high table was in a large curtained alcove raised a good two meters off the floor. The candles in the torcheres flickered in the drafts that wandered through the hall, waking shimmers in the damascened cloth-of-gold tiedrapes and a deeper sheen in the green velvet folds behind the gold. The rug was the color of fresh blood, the table a dark tight-grained wood, the dinnerware silver with gold wire laid into it in a series of interlocking double spirals. The wine in the crystal goblets was oxblood and there were yellow and white and blue flowers in oxblood vases.
Artwa Angakirs wore viridian and gold, a heavy gold chain about his neck set with emeralds, turquoise and chrysoprase, rings on all his fingers with more emeralds in them. Green and gold were the family colors and much of the Family wealth came from the emeralds found on Caghar Rinta, the gold in its streams and hills. And the pockets of turquoise that kept turning up. In the flickering candlelight he was magnificent, an old king: stupid as a rock, vain and selfish, but an impressive presence when presence was all you needed.
Rintirry lounged beside the Artwa in a smaller chair, dressed in a gold-crusted crimson velvet tunic with wide oversleeves trimmed in white fur. They fell back to show the black sleeves of his undertunic, a silky knit that hugged his muscular forearms. His only jewel was a single earring, a black opal teardrop hanging like dark fire from his left ear. The candlelight played games with his bright hair and gave an illusion of strength to a face that was a sculptor’s dream.
Kizra sat in shadows on the second level, concealed from the tables by a carved, pierced screen, six panels of polished wood, hinged together and zigging across the small stage. She was playing musical wallpaper again, waiting for the dinner to start.
The double doors opened and Matja Allina walked into the light as onto a stage, a queen to more than match the power of the old king waiting on the dais, tall and slender, graceful despite the heaviness of the child. She wore a dress of royal blue damask, high waisted and full in the skirt, not hiding her pregnancy but diminishing it. Her hair was braided into a regal knot, with a chain of aquamarines and silver twisted through the silver-gilt plaits. A wide necklace of beaten silver and aquamarines filled in the scoop neck of the dress, the pale greenish blue of the stones almost a match for her eyes. The sleeves of the dress were narrow, fitting close to her arms with wide wristlets of aquamarines and silver made to match the necklace and the heavy earrings. She wasn’t pretty like Kulyari following very much in her shadow, not beautiful either with her wide full mouth and angular bones.
In a room full of women, you’d look at her first, and if you looked away, you’d come back to her. A sharp and ironic intelligence, vigorous moral force, tightly controlled passion like a perfume, invisible but potent.
Angakirs was leaning forward, his weight on his forearms, his body tense. He was watching Allina intently, a glitter in his eyes, hating her and wanting her with about equal intensity.
Behind her screen, Kizra used one arm to wipe the sweat off her face while she kept the tinkle tune going with her other hand. If they got through this night without disaster, she was going to be very much surprised.
After a quick lift of his head when he heard the doors open, Rintirry lounged gracelessly in his chair and stared at his plate, doing his best to ignore the women. Hate as strong as the Artwa’s came off him like smoke. Hate and desire.
He tried to rape me at my betrothal feast, that’s what the Matja said. I thought she was um exaggerating, but I sure as hell believe her now.
Matja Allina crossed the hall and came up the stairs without help, the other women trailing after her, mostly unnoticed.
Kulyari glanced repeatedly at Rintirry, but he was so busy pretending to ignore the Matja he didn’t have time for her. When she realized this, her smile lost its glow, her movements were angular with rage.
For the first time, Kizra felt some sympathy for her. These last few years couldn’t have been easy. There was Angakirs blaming Allina for alienating Pirs, his favorite before the marriage, and seeing her as a failure as a wife since all her sons had been stillborn. There was Utilas the heir, jealous of Pirs and willing to do anything that would injure him (as long as he could do it without his fingers showing). There was Mingas the third son; an old suitor gone sour, he wanted to see Allina reduced to poor relation and presumably available for seduction. And there was Rintirry the youngest who wanted anything he could get his hands on whatever he had to do to get it. All of them urging her, tempting her, sending her here to Ghanar Rinta to seduce her uncle and get rid of Allina. It must have taken her less than a day to discover how hopeless that was. Take an ambitious and shrewd girl, put her where ambition was thwarted and shrewdness was useless, no wonder she wanted Pirs dead and Allina dispossessed. And now it was obvious that Rintirry had no eyes for her, only for the Matja.
Matja Allina bowed, then let Aghilo help her into her chair. She lifted the silver bell beside her plate, rang it, and the meal began, male servants sweeping in with platters of meat and all the rest of it.
Kizra laid the wallpaper noddling to rest and began the program that Allina had laid out for her.
He likes the old epics, the Matja said. You’ve learned something of the Gharadion, you’ll begin with that; it doesn’t matter that you don’t know the words, you wouldn’t sing it anyway, he wouldn’t stand for a woman singing that or anything else, not at dinner. As soon as the first serving is finished, I’ll send Impajin around to you, he’ll do the singing. Hmm. And Paynto, he’s fair with a flute, knows all the old songs. After the Gharadion, he’ll take the lead, you can improvise around him, give some depth to the music; he’s pedestrian at best. He’s loyal, though, and he’s got the ear if not the talent. He’ll be happy enough to have you there, distribute the blame if any; the praise will come to him, not you, he knows that.
The meal went on with murmurs and the clink of silver against silver, the sounds of glass and china, Paynto’s flute and Kizra on the arranga blending and moving apart and Impajin’s rough tenor louder than both. The candles flickered, the colors shimmered, shifting light and shadow picked out texture and sheen; it was like a brocade print, gorgeous and rare. And spoiled for Kizra by the constant undercurrents of hate and fear, anger and disgust.
Tinkle toot, let’s get this thing over with.
3
The door slammed open and Pirs came striding in. There was a bloodstained bandage on his head and another on his arm. His face was so tight with rage that the bones seemed to be leaping against the skin. He nodded perfunctorily at his father, went bounding up the steps to the second table, nodding tightly at his wife, grabbed hold of Kulyari’s arm and jerked her from the chair. Ignoring her protests, he took her up the short flight of stairs to the main dais, flung her to the floor in front of Angakirs. “I will not have this THING in my house. She called my moves to my enemy and I was brought near to death. She is traitor to the Blood.”
Kulyari was so startled by all this that at first she could only gasp and struggle; she was frightened now. “No no, lies, no,” she cried; she pushed up onto her knees. “It’s lies, all of it, I didn’t… the Blood, no…” Without trying to get up, she swung round and held out her arms toward Rintirry. “Tell them…
Rintirry shoved his chair back, came round the table. Kulyari let her arms drop, her mouth widened into a triumphant smile.
He caught hold of her hair, jerked her head up, and cut her throat. “Traitors die. That’s what I say.”
Dyslaera 8: News From Home Is Better Than A Kick In The Pants
INTERROGATION
NOTE: Drugs used instead of probe because subject 7R (native name: Rohant, Ciocan of clan Voallts) tests in the dangerous zone re: probability of probe damage. Unusual configuration of energy zone. Tech I refused to guarantee results if probe is not used. Claims since subject has not been fully broken from the fugue state, drug trance cannot be established properly and mechanical/electrical responses cannot be calibrated to a satisfactory degree of precision.
FURTHER NOTE: Tech 1 is showing signs of deviance. Investigate.
TECH 1: Subject is prepared.
SAVANT 4: Tell me your name.
SUBJECT: Rohant vohv Voallts, Ciocan of Family Voallts, Gazgaort of Company Voallts Korlatch of Spotch-Helspar.
SAVANT 4: Who are we?
SUBJECT: I don’t know.
SAVANT 4 (to Tech 1): Well?
TECH 1: Given the limitations…
SAVANT 4: Yes, yes, we’ve been through that. TECH 1: I like to have things clear. 1 would say he’s probably lying.
SAVANT 4: Ciocan, you heard?
SUBJECT: Yes.
SAVANT 4: Look to your right; you can turn your head sufficiently to see the bench by the right wall. Do you see it?
SUBJECT: Yes.
SAVANT 4: What else do you see?
SUBJECT: Someone lying on the bench, his face is to the wall, but it looks like Tejnor.
SAVANT 4: Yes. He is drugged at present, but can be
revived if we need him. If you lie, we will remove parts of him. We won’t let him die, he’s valuable test material, but we won’t waste painkillers on him. Do you understand?
SUBJECT: Yes.
SAVANT 4: Who are we?
SUBJECT: Omphalos.
SAVANT 4: How do you know that?
SUBJECT: I saw Omphalites at Koulsnakko’s, I see you.
The robes are not the same, the smell is the same.
SAVANT 4: Is that last metaphorical or physical?
SUBJECT: Both. Please yourself how you explain the metaphorical part. The physical? You and four others of your kind-they’re not here now-you walked past me at the Hole. I have an excellent memory for sensory data.
SAVANT 4: I didn’t see you.
SUBJECT: Considering the nature of my activities, that shouldn’t be surprising. We took care to keep out of the way.
SAVANT 4: You had no prior knowledge of our presence and our plans?
SUBJECT: No. We were there for Ginbiryol Seyirshi. SAVANT 4: I see. Your Toerfeles was quite possibly warned about us. How would you explain that? TECH 1 (interrupting): There was a very strong surge of emotion at that statement, Savant. You are giving him information he didn’t have before, information that excites and pleases him.
SAVANT 4: Yes, yes. Ciocan, answer the question. OBSERVER’S COMMENT: In the following answer, note how subject 7R takes extreme care with word choice. Observe the readings appended, see how he manages to keep his statements in the neutral realm while providing as little useful information as possible.
SUBJECT: I can’t know… uuuh… absolutely… but you can have my conjectures. Seyirshi attacked Voallts Korlatch viciously during the past year, we were bombed and murdered by his agents, forced into defending ourselves in any way we could. Necessarily this made us sensitive to all unexplained inquiries and intrusions. You made me watch the incident with
OssOran and Feyvorn, I saw the girl, I knew her. You got her from Voallts. Your agents must have left traces behind. Voallts always defends itself from any attack and the best defense involves knowing the attacker.
SAVANT 4 (to Tech I): Well?
TECH 1: He’s not lying. Maybe hedging a little, but not lying.
SAVANT 4: By what other means would your Toerfeles learn of us?
SUBJECT: Digby, Excavations Limited. It’s what we pay him for. Don’t bother asking me what his sources are. Digby presents results. How he got them is his business and he’s not about to disclose it to outsiders.
SAVANT 4: Well?
TECH I: Not lying. Being careful not to lie.
