A Bait of Dreams (2 page)

Being beaten and hurt until she grew old enough to fight, learning to leap immediately into all-out attack whenever she had to fight, no matter what the cause, until the bigger children let her alone since it wasn't worth expending so much of their own meager energy to defeat her.

Being casually raped by a drunken sailor, then forgotten immediately as he staggered away, leaving her bloody and crying furiously on the cobblestones, not wholly sure of what had happened to her, but recognizing the violation of her person and vowing it would not happen again, screaming she would kill him kill him.…

Running in a gang after that, being forced to submit to Abbrah, the leader, bully-stupid but too strong for her, taking a perverse pride in being chosen, never liking it, realizing about that time the vulnerability of male pride and the superiority of male muscle.

Learning to steal, driven to stealing by Abbrah, stealing from a merchant's warehouse, caught, branded, bound into service with Habbiba.

Scrubbed up and forced to learn … the lessons, oh the interminable lessons, shadowed impersonal faces bending over her, voices, hushed and insistent, beating at her.…

She started. A cowled figure moved soundlessly past, the coarse cloth of his robe slapping against her ankles. She watched the Madarman halt beside Habbiba and begin talking. Habbiba nodded and the two figures moved out of the room, both silent, both trailing huge black shadows that spread depressingly over the sewing girls. What's that about, she wondered. Madarman sucking about.…

Cowled figures, voices demanding, learn or be beaten, memorize and repeat, mechanical rote learning, paying no attention to what is learned, cram the songs, the histories, the Madarchants into the unwilling little heads. Repeat. Repeat. Work all morning, then, when her body rebelled, when she yearned for the freedom of the streets with a passion that swamped even her continual hunger to know, set to school by order of the Madarmen to save her pitiful soul.

History in chant. Jaydugar, the testing ground of the gods. The Madar's white hands reached among the stars and plucked their fruit, the souls that needed testing, catmen and mermen, caravanner and hunter, scavenger and parsi, plucked wriggling from their home trees and dropped naked on the testing ground. Chant of the Coming. I take you from the nest that makes you weak and blind. I take from you your metal slaves. I take from you your far-seeing eyes. I take from you the wings that sail you star to star. I purify you. I give you your hands. I promise you cleverness and time. Out of nothing you will build new wings.

New wings. Gleia snorted. Several girls turned to look at her, their faces disapproving, she smiled blankly at them and they settled back to work. She could hear the furtive whispers hissing between them but ignored these. Her needle whispered through sheer white material, popping in and out with smooth skill. She sniffed scornfully at the other girls' refusal to accept her into their community.

New wings. She frowned down as she looped the thread in a six-petalled flower and whipped the loops in place. It might make an interesting design … new wings … the stars … she drove the needle through the material in a series of dandelion-bloom crosses. Did we all come here from other worlds? How? Her frown deepened. The Madar … that was nonsense. Wasn't it?

The Madarman came down the aisle and stopped beside her. He held out his hand. Reluctantly Gleia set the needle into the material and gave him her work, biting her lip as she saw the dark crescents of dirt under his fingernails. She held her breath as he brought the cloth up close to rheumy eyes.

“Good,” he grunted. He thrust the cloth back at her and stumped off to rejoin Habbiba. Gleia took a minute to stretch her cramped limbs and straighten her legs as she watched Habbiba usher him out. Looks like I'm up for a new commission, she thought. She looked over the line of bent backs, feeling a fierce superiority to those giggling idiots raised secure in homes with fathers and mothers to protect them. Here they are anyway, doing the same work for a lot less pay than I'm getting. Me. Gleia. The despised bonder. The marked thief. She wriggled her fingers to work some of the cramp out of them, touched the brand on her cheek. Then she sighed and went back to the design. Her thoughts drifted back to her life.

Remembering

Being forced to learn rough sewing, then embroidery, taking a timid pride in a growing skill, taking a growing pride in making designs that she soon recognized to be superior to any others created in Habbiba's establishment.

Learning she could buy herself free of the bond if she could ever find or save enough money. Fifty oboli for the bond. Fifty oboli for the bribes. More to keep herself while she hunted for work. Joy and despair. And joy again.…

Demanding and getting special pay for special projects. Her work brought fancy sums to Habbiba's greedy fingers and more—a reputation for the unique that brought her custom she couldn't have touched before. The old bitch tried to beat her into working, but Gleia had learned too well how to endure. She was stubborn enough to resist punishment and to persist in her demands, sitting resolutely idle through starvings and whippings and threats until she won her point.

Gleia jabbed the needle through the cloth. It glanced off a fingernail, coming close to pricking her finger and drawing blood. She leaned back, breathing fast, trying to calm herself. A drop of blood marring the white was all she needed. Not now. Not so close to winning. She couldn't stand another month of this slavery. She fingered the mark on her cheek and knew they'd throw her into permanent slavery as an incorrigible felon if she tried to run away. If they caught her. Which they would.

Sometime later Habbiba made her last round, inspecting the day's work. She stopped beside Gleia and picked up the cloth, running the unworked length of design through her plump white fingers. “Fah! too slow. And there.” She jabbed a forefinger at the last sections of work. “You did finer work when you were learning. Tomorrow you come in one hour early. Abbosine will be told to let you in.” She pinched the material between her fingers “Take out that last work to here.” She thrust the strip of embroidery into Gleia's face and indicated a spot about two palms' width above the last stitches. “I won't tolerate such miserable cobbling going out under my name.”

Gleia closed her eyes. Her hands clenched into fists. She wanted to smash the old woman in the face, to smash—smash—smash that little weasel face into bloody ruin, then wipe the ruin on that damn cafta. But she doubted whether she could stand without tumbling over, so she managed to keep her head down and her mouth shut. When the old woman went off to scold someone else, she sat still, hands fisted in her lap.

Habbiba's scolding voice faded as she left the room. The other girls moved about, chatting cautiously, eyes turning slyly about, watching out for the sudden return of their employer. When they had all trickled out, bunched into laughing clusters of workfriends, Gleia forced herself onto her feet.

The world swung. She grabbed at the sewing stand and held on tight until the room steadied around her. With neat economical movements she folded her work and put it in the box, then she walked through the rows of silent tables, a fragile glass person that the slightest shock would crack into a thousand fragments.

Outside, the darkening twilight threw a veil of red over the crowded streets, blurring covered carts with screeching wheels into horsemen riding past in dark solid groups into single riders gawking at the city sights into throngs of people pushing along the wooden walkways. She hummed the Madarchant of the peoples.
Chilkaman catman fishman hunter, parsi plainsman desert fox herder, firssi mountainman caravanner hawkster
.… In spite of her fatigue she sucked in a deep breath and watched furtively the fascinating variety of peoples flowing past her. Chilka catmen from the plains with their hairy faces, flat noses and double eyelids, the inner transparent one retracted into the damp tissue folds around their bulging slit-pupilled eyes. Caravanners, small and quick, pale faced. Mountain hunters, far from their heights with dark gold skin and brown hair bleached almost white at the tips, leading horses loaded with fur bales.

A breath of salt air, cool and fresh as the sea itself, stung her nose. A flash of opaline emerald. Impression of scaled flesh flowing liquidly past. A seaborn. Ignoring the irritated protests of the other pedestrians she turned and stared after the slim amphibian walking with the characteristic quick clumsy grace of the sea folk. She didn't recognize him. Disappointed, she edged to the wall and stumbled tiredly through the crowd thinking about the only friend she'd ever had, a slim green boy … so long ago … so long.…

She walked slowly into the dingy front hall of the boarding house, putting each foot down with stiff care, wondering how she was going to get up all those damn creaking stairs.

“Gleyah 'spinah.” The hoarse breathy voice brought her to a careful halt. She inched her head around, feeling that her burning eyes would roll from her head if she moved too quickly.

“Rent.” Miggela held out a short stubby hand.

Gleia closed her eyes and fumbled in her pocket, sore fingers groping for the packet of coins she'd put there earlier. Her fingers closed on the egg-shaped stone; she frowned, not remembering for a minute where the thing came from.

The rat-faced landlady scowled and flapped her pudgy hand up and down. “Rent!”

Gleia slid her hand past the crystal and found the packet. Silently she drew it out and handed it to the old woman.

Miggela tore clumsily at the paper. Her crusted tongue clamped between crooked yellow teeth, she counted the coins with deliberate slowness, examining each one with suspicious care, peering nearsightedly at the stamping.

Gleia rubbed her hand across her face, too tired to be irritated.

Slipping the coins into a sleeve pocket, Miggela stood staring up into the taller woman's drawn face. “You're late. You missed supper.”

“Oh.”

“And don't you go trying to cook in your room.”

“No.” She wasn't hungry anymore but knew she had to have food. Her legs trembled. She wanted more than anything to lie down. But she turned and went out. She walked carefully, slowly, over the uneven planks, heading aimlessly toward the edge of the nightquarter and a familiar cookshop.

Gleia strolled out of the cookshop feeling more like herself with two meat pies and a cup of cha warming her middle, a third pie in her hand. She sank her teeth into the pie, tore off a piece and drifted along the street chewing slowly, savoring the blended flavors, watching the people move past her.

Horli was completely gone in the west with only a stain of red to mark her passing, while the biggest moon Aab was thrusting over the rooflines to the east, her cool pale light cutting through inky shadows. Gleia knew she should get back to her room. There were too many dangers for a woman alone here. Sighing, she began working her way through the noisy crowd toward the slum quarter. She finished the pie, wiped her greasy hands on a bit of paper and dropped the paper in the gutter for the scavengers to pick up in their dawn sweeps through the streets.

The crowd thinned as she left the commercial area and moved into the slum that held a few decrepit stables and row on row of ancient dwellings converted into boarding houses. Some were empty with staring black windows where the glass was gone—stolen or broken by derelicts who could find no other place to sleep. One by one these abandoned houses burned down, leaving behind fields of weeds and piles of broken, blackened boards.

Gleia looked up at the gray, weathered front of Miggela's place. She was tired to the point of giddiness but she felt such a reluctance to go inside that she couldn't force her foot onto the warped lower step; instead she went past the house and turned into the alley winding back from the side street. Moving quickly, eyes flicking warily about, she trotted past the one-room hovels where the small scurrying scavengers lived anonymous lives and desperate bashers hid out, waiting for sailors to come stumbling back to their ships. She went around the end of a warehouse, the last in the line of those circling the working front where the bay was dredged. The water out here was too shallow to accommodate any but the smallest ships.

She saw a small neat oceangoer, a chis-makka, one of the independent gypsy ships that went up and down the coast as the winds and their cargoes dictated. The ship was dark, the crew apparently on liberty in one of the taverns whose lights and noise enlivened the waterfront some distance in toward the center. Out here it was quiet, with ravellings of fog beginning to thicken over the water. As the waves slapped regularly at the piles the evening on-shore breeze made the rigging on board the chis-makka creak and groan.

Gleia edged to the far side of the wharf and kicked off her sandals. Then she ran along the planks, bent over, making no more sound than a shadow. She slid over the end of the wharf and pulled herself onto one of the crossbars nailed from pile to pile under the broad planks. Ignoring the coating of slime and drying seaweed, she sat with her back against a pile, her legs dangling in space, her feet moving back and forth just above the rocking water.

For a long while she sat there, the sickening emotional mix settling away until she felt calm and at peace again. The fog continued to thicken, sounds coming to her over the water with an eerie clarity.

Something pushed against her thigh. She remembered the Ranga Eye that had thrown her so disastrously in the morning. As she reached into her pocket, the water broke in a neat splash and a glinting form came out of it, swooping onto the crossbar beside her. In her surprise she nearly toppled off into the agitated water, but the seaborn caught hold of her and steadied her.

Her face almost nosing into his chest, she saw the water pour from his gill slits and the slits clamp shut. The moonlight struggling through the fog touched his narrow young face and reflected off his pointed mother-of-pearl teeth as he sucked air into his breathing bladder then grinned at her. “T'ought it was you. No ot'er land crawler ever come here.”