A Bait of Dreams (18 page)

The Ayandara drifted over to her, followed by her fluttering court. The ice-blonde tilted her head and examined Gleia's scarred face. “Ugly,” she murmured. Shuddering with distaste, she traced the brands with her fingernail. “Bonder from up north, isn't she?” She stepped back. “But you said the merchant didn't buy her for her looks.” With a ripple of laughter, hastily echoed by the others, she went on, “A lusty bull like Lorenzai might find a fascination even in this thing. You better watch her.” The tip of her tongue traveled around her lips and there was a glazed look in the milky eyes. She slid those eyes to Amrezeh. Her thin lips stretched into a faint smile.

She's enjoying this,
Gleia thought suddenly.
She knows exactly what she's doing to Amrezeh.

“She's what? I forget.”

Amrezeh closed her eyes. After a major effort she subdued her rage and said softly, “She designs and embroiders, Ayandara.”

“So. What is she working on now?”

“Hold up your work, girl. Show the Ayandara.” Amrezeh was calm again, seeming resigned.

Gleia held the cafta so it fell in graceful folds from her hands, the front panels carefully displayed.

“Ay-ai!” The Ayandara abandoned her teasing and stared at the panels. She snatched the cafta away from Gleia and held the work closer to her short-sighted eyes. She fingered the stitching. “A treasure. Rezeh, give her to me.” She dropped the cafta on the floor as she turned imperiously to her half-sister. Gleia quietly retrieved it.

“I want her,” the Ayandara repeated.

Gleia held her breath, the avrishum dripping from her hands. Not now. I can't leave here now. Not before tonight.

Amrezeh sank into a deep curtsey, her head almost touching her knee. “Though despois Lorenzai bought her for me, I don't own her. Lorenzai is master of this house. I dare not give away anything of his without his consent.”

Gleia began to relax, silently cheering Amrezeh on. In a tiny way the small blonde was getting a touch of her own back. Anything the Ayandara asked for would get the same soft answer that said nothing except refusal but said it in such a way that the refusal was hard to counter even by the Ayandara.

The thin blonde was not accustomed to resistance. “We are displeased,” she said icily. “We begin to think you don't want us to have this slave.”

“I only have to ask,” Amrezeh went on smoothly. “I am sure he is as eager to honor the Ayandara as I. The girl will be sent to you tomorrow.”

Her lower lip trembling with petulance, the Ayandara said, “We are seriously displeased.” She swept toward the door, her women parting hastily before her. In the doorway she turned, glared at Amrezeh, her eyes taking on a hard glitter foreign to her pose of elegant languor. “We will be more than displeased if that slave isn't in our hands by tomorrow morning.” She sailed out, the women following, cautiously silent, though more than one of them darted contemptuous and rather startled glances at the stubborn little figure kneeling in the center of the sewing room.

When they were gone, Amrezeh rose stiffly to her feet. She took the cafta from Gleia and stroked her fingers over the stitching, then gave it back. “Continue,” she said abruptly and went out.

Gleia was still working, sitting at the sewing table in her room, when Shounach slid in through the window. He dumped his bag on the floor and stood scowling at her. “You'll end up blind.”

She folded up the avrishum, wrapped it in muslin and stuffed it into the loot bag, along with extra thread and needles and her scavenged gold. She smiled at him. “It helps steady me.” She slipped the strap over her shoulder and smoothed the bag against her side. “I'd have gone crazy waiting for you with nothing to do. Had a little trouble this afternoon. The Ayandara covets me, nearly walked off with me. Would have, if Amrezeh hadn't stopped her.” She shuddered. “Let's get out of here.”

At the entrance to the maze she took his hand. “Madar grant they haven't changed the pattern,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes and began counting the turns.

When they stepped into the corridor on the other side, Gleia went more boldly. Lorenzai would want no witnesses to his activities this night. Outside Amrezeh's bedroom, she dropped to her stomach and signed Shounach to lift the latch and ease the door open. When the room proved to be empty, she jumped to her feet and slipped in.

Grinning at her, Shounach sauntered through the door and started for the one leading to Lorenzai's room. Gleia caught hold of his sleeve. “Wait,” she whispered.

“There's no one in that room.”

“How do you know?”

“No questions, Companion.” He frowned. “Why not get rid of this?” He touched the slave ring. “Stand still.”

She heard the faint clicking of the probe, was intensely aware of his strong nervous hands brushing against her neck and shoulder, aware too of a suppressed irritation of her nerves, an impatience with herself and with him that they hadn't taken care of this in some safer place. Then the lock clicked open. He broke the ring and pulled it away from her. As she rubbed at her neck, he dropped the ring and kicked it under Amrezeh's bed. She sighed with relief as it vanished, then looked up as his hands came down on her shoulders. He dropped a light kiss on her lips then turned her about and pushed her toward the other room. “Time to move.”

He stopped by Lorenzai's table. “The Ranga Eyes. Where?”

Gleia crossed to the wall and stared at the carving. It was harder to remember the right spot than she'd expected. She fumbled exploring fingers over the sprays of salt-flowers, then gave a small gasp of relief as the panel popped open.

Shounach reached a long arm over her shoulder and scooped out the box, startling her because she hadn't heard him come up behind her. He turned back the lid and stared down at the Ranga Eyes. “You said there were fifteen?”

She looked over his arm. “They're getting busy. Five left.” She shrugged. “Why don't you leave them there?”

“You know why.” He snapped the box shut and slid it into his bag. “How do we get down?”

Sighing she moved along the wall and began hunting out the flowers that opened the hidden door.

“Need light?”

“Lorenzai didn't bother … ah!” The door swung open. She took a deep breath and stepped into the passage.

Six turns into increasing darkness. Then a sudden graying ahead. She hesitated, felt Shounach's reassuring hand on her shoulder. She touched it briefly then edged around the turn. The stairs opened into a twisting hole that turned steeply downward. A knobby fungus growing in patches on the walls glowed with a cold greenish light. A deceptive light. She stumbled uncertainly. It was hard to judge distance without shadows. When she reached out to steady herself, her fingers brushed against the fungus. It had a rubbery warm texture, almost like living flesh. She wiped her hand vigorously on her sleeve, then looked back over her shoulder.

Shounach ducked down as he left the stairs, too tall to stand upright in this claustrophobic worm-hole. With a rueful smile he motioned her forward.

She nodded. Better to get out of this discomfort as soon as possible. She went on as fast as she could, wondering how Lorenzai managed his bulk in this cramped place.

As she negotiated the difficult dips and turns, her excitement rose until her heart nearly choked her. She was working free of this trap, using her wits and luck to outwit man and circumstance. She felt light-headed, soaring with elation. Poor Lorenzai. Standing down there waiting for his ship to arrive. She giggled. Waiting for us though he doesn't know it and a bump on the head and being stowed away where Zuwayl can't see him while we take his place.… She giggled again then frowned. After several more turns of stumbling and swaying and knocking into walls, she became aware of a faint sweet odor. The fungus. She tottered along, wiping at her face with trembling hands, struggling to bring her mind and body back under control.

The wormhole wound down and down until a low sound began to merge with the near inaudible slip-slip of her feet. The sound quickly grew louder until it was a rhythmic booming that bounced around the hole with deafening force. Then she was out of the blow hole, tottering on a narrow scratch carved from the side of a great echoing bubble in the stone whose top was lost in shadow and whose bottom was drowned in rocking black seawater. The fungus grew over the wall, thicker here because of the salt damp. The track, wide enough for two large men to walk side by side, had no guard wall or anything between her and the drop. It angled steeply down to a short pier whose planks were sodden with the salt water which was just backing off it as the tide fell. She walked to the edge and looked down. The black water washed against the black stone far below. At least fifty meters. Looking down so far with nothing for her hands to grasp made her dizzy. She retreated, bumping into Shounach as he came up behind her.

He chuckled, wrapped his arms around her, edged her around and released her, then was off down the scratch ahead of her, his booted feet silent on the stone.

Gleia pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, biting down hard on her finger to stifle her annoyance. He was taking over her escape. She watched him flit down the track, an absurd figure in his crimson trousers and the loose blue jacket that was flying open to expose its gold lining. With a reluctant smile she started after him.

A spark of light angled along the rock some distance below. In the treacherous cold light of the fungus she saw a dark shadow, solid and large, carry the small flame along the pier toward the end, footsteps heavy and dull on the water-soaked planks. A torch flared. The candle flame moved to the other side of the pier and a second torch was burning.

Gleia blinked. The sudden brightness of the flame killed the feebler glow of the fungus and her dark-adaptation at the same time. The cavern was suddenly black except the small area of torchlight where Lorenzai stood, elbows out, fists socked into his sides, staring out into the darkness. Gleia shut her eyes and waited a moment, trying to re-adapt. As she began creeping downward again, Shounach stepped onto the pier and started toward Lorenzai.

“Lorenzai!” The shriek burst into the silence, was echoed and re-echoed around the bubble. “Lorenzai … renzai … zai … ai … ai … ai.”

Gleia wheeled. Amrezeh was plunging recklessly down the track, her face twisted with fury. She must have been up there all the time … followed us.… Gleia jerked back but Amrezeh was on her, biting and scratching, whining in her eagerness to hurt and punish. Her fingernails furrowed Gleia's cheeks. As the clawed hands drove for her eyes again, Gleia twisted away. She pulled her head down and slammed her fist into Amrezah's diaphragm, driving her back, choking and gasping, stumbling, finally falling hard on her buttocks.

Scrambling frantically, Amrezeh caught herself before her head cracked against the stone. Eyes glazed over, hands clawing, she was up immediately, driving at Gleia, knocking her back against the wall, mashing her against the patches of fungus, grinding the slimy stinking mess into Gleia's shoulders and hair.

Bleeding and nauseated, sick as much from the stench as from the violence, Gleia brought up one leg, planted a foot on Amrezeh's stomach and shoved blindly.

For a frozen moment Amrezeh tottered on the edge of the track. Her eyes opened wide. Her mouth gaped soundlessly. Then she fell back, tumbling over and over in eerie silence until just before she hit the water. A brief tearing shriek. A splash. Silence.

Dabbing at her face with her sleeve, her stomach churning, her hair clotted with the mashed fungus, Gleia staggered to the track's edge and looked down. The black water was lapping lazily at the stone, the surface rising and falling like the side of a panting beast. “No,” she whispered. “No.…” She dropped to her knees and vomited until there was nothing left in her, until she knelt trembling with fatigue and soul-sickness.

“Gleia?” Shounach's shout and its echoes jerked her back to reality. She got shakily to her feet and looked down.

Shounach stood over a dark mound, his body tense. He relaxed a little when he saw her but called again to make sure. “Gleia?”

The word broke into fragments as it echoed around the bubble. She winced and tried to scrape some of the fungus off her hair. “It's me, Juggler,” she called. She scrubbed at her face with her sleeve then tugged at the cloth that was sticking to her back. Then she went slowly and unsteadily down the track. A few moments later she met Shounach on the pier.

“You stink, Companion.” He wrinkled his nose and backed away.

The look on his face surprised a short laugh from her. “I know, Juggler. I'm closer to it than you.” She squeezed sections of her hair between thumb and fingers, then flung the mess into the water beside the pier. “Is he dead?”

“No.” He nudged Lorenzai with his toe. The body fell over to lie with arms and legs tumbled awkwardly. “Just out cold. He went berserk when Amrezeh fell off the track.”

Gleia dropped to her knees as her legs gave way with relief. The man's chest was rising and falling steadily; she could hear his rasping breath. Not dead, Madar be thanked, he isn't dead too.

Shounach sniffed. “As I remember it, you swim.”

She looked up. “Yes, why?”

“Swimming seems a good idea right now.” He grinned at her. “We've had enough melodrama, love.” Grimacing with distaste, he picked her up before she could protest, strode the length of the pier, and dropped her off the end into the cold salt water.

Half an hour later, scrubbed pink, hair clean and damp, back in a soggy cafta, she stood beside Shounach over the bound and gagged figure of Lorenzai. She winced away from the fury in his eyes and turned to the Juggler. “Where are we going to put him?”

“I'm thinking about it.” He began playing with the pouch of gold he'd taken from Lorenzai's robes, juggling it from hand to hand. From somewhere he produced the large and clumsy key to the armory's door and began tossing them both up and catching them, managing effortlessly the two radically different weights and shapes.