A Bait of Dreams (27 page)

When she woke, a broad beam of red light was streaming through one of the window slits and painting a horizontal crimson rectangle on the wall above her. She yawned and stretched out cramped legs, wincing as pains shot from her knees. The boat was lying at rest in water that gurgled slowly past its sides. She could hear bird song and the rustle of leaves and small scrapings as something scratched the boat's side. Wondering why Deel hadn't bothered to wake her, she sat up, groaned as stiff sore muscles protested, rolled onto her knees and crawled to the bunk.

Shounach lay deeply asleep, his chest rising and falling in long slow breaths. His skin was cool and dry. The puffiness was gone and the bruises were rapidly fading. A corner of her mouth curled up.
How much more do I have to learn about you, Fox? An ordinary man would have the courtesy to spend at least a week recovering from hurts like those. One day, hunh!
She stroked gentle fingertips across the flat taut planes of his face.
All that worrying. A waste.
Feeling a little foolish, she sat on her heels and looked around. The bucket was gone; a locker low in the forward wall had been broken open.
I missed that?
The cabin door was unlatched, tap-tapping against the jamb in time with the gentle rocking of the boat. After a last look at Shounach, she climbed into the crimson dawn.

Deel had turned the boat's nose downstream and used the current to wedge it in among a thicket of suckerlings, young shoots growing from the drowned roots of an ancient horan. Five fingered leaves were dark green spangles marching in pairs up the lengths of the reed-slim suckerlings, brushing against each other and the sides of the boat in spasmodic whispers, dancing in the thick red light from the great red half circle on the eastern horizon. High overhead a falcon cried out, the harsh wild sound snapping her head up; the bird was gliding through overlapping loops a crisp clean silhouette against the red-violet glass of the cloudless sky. The morning air was fresh and invigorating, sharp with a thousand smells and songs. Her blood sang in her veins and she laughed aloud with the sheer joy of being alive. Almost dancing, she walked to the bow where the boat was tied to the huge old horan. Its trunk was lightning-split into two great limbs, one more or less vertical, secondary branches providing abundant concealment for the mast and raised boom. The second limb sprang away from the trunk in a low arch, supporting part of its weight on the steeply rising riverbank, providing a natural bridge from boat to land. Sobered by the implications of what Deel had done, Gleia swung herself onto the low limb and ran along the springy rebounding arch. She stopped where the limb touched the earth, looked up the bank to a small clearing where Deel was kneeling beside a bed of coals, humming a lazy tune as she stirred something in a blackened pot. Her thicket of sorrel curls was neatly combed, her dark skin was taut over the bones of her face, glowing with the sheen of hand-rubbed hardwood. She tasted the mixture in the pot, wrinkled her nose, dusted a pinch of salt or some other seasoning across its surface. Gleia stretched and stepped from the limb and started walking toward the fire, her sandals rustling through sun-dried grass, crunching over debris-strewn earth.

Deel sniffed at the fish stew, lifted the pot from the coals and replaced it with a kettle filled with water. She heard footsteps, swung around, relaxed and smiled. “You're looking better.”

“I'll live.” Gleia raised her brows at the kettle and the other things piled in a ragged heap by the fire. “You've been busy. The locker in the cabin?”

“Uh-huh. How's the Juggler?”

“His fever's gone. He's still asleep.” She glanced over her shoulder at the patches of the boat visible through the suckerlings. “I don't know.…”

Deel dipped stew into a metal plate. “Here. Eat some of this. Takes a full belly to make the world sit right.” She held the plate out, nodded as Gleia dropped beside the fire and sat looking dubiously at what she held. “Only fish stew.” She brushed aside a rag, lifted several small tins and found a second plate. “Once I got the boat tucked away, I poked around a bit. Found that.” She rested the plate on her knee while she waved the dripping ladle at a ragged net hanging to dry on the lower branches of a gnarled bydarrakh. “And the rest of this junk.” She grinned. “I made enough noise. You and the Juggler—you didn't wiggle a finger.” She filled her plate and settled back, tucking her legs under her. “There's a spoon by your knee. Toss it, will you?” She caught it, dug into the stew. “Not bad, considering what I had to work with.”

The breeze stirred the foliage over their heads, stripping a last few raindrops from the leaves, spattering them with scattered touches of icewater. Though the frosty nip had lingered longer than usual for this time of year, the air was slowly warming as Horli climbed higher with blue Hesh like a wart poking from her side.
Bad storms and cold mornings already,
Deel thought.
Likely a hard freeze coming up.
She laid her spoon down and gazed pensively at the barrow section of glassy green water she could see sliding past at the bottom of the slope.
An early winter
—
and a bitter one if the signs don't lie. I can't keep drifting like this.
She scratched at her nose.
How do I get myself into these things? A wintering place. Not Istir.
Her lips twitched and she swallowed a gurgle of laughter.
Definitely not Istir. What's left? Jokinhiir? Gahhhh
—
not for me, not with Hankir Kan drooling over me.
She blinked, startled out of her reverie as Gleia's spoon clattered loudly enough on her plate to scatter into flight several small brown birds scratching through the rubble not far from them.

“Why did you stop here? And tuck the boat away like you did?” Gleia's forefinger was tracing the brands on her cheek, something she had a habit of doing when she was disturbed. She pulled her hand down, stared at it a moment, then got to her feet and turned her back on Deel. “You think someone could be following us from Istir?”

“After the Juggler blew away half the city? Not likely.” Arm resting on one raised knee, hand dangling, Deel watched the shifting patterns of steam on the kettle's sides. “Once it got light enough I could see around me, first thing I saw was the Mouth of the Chute. I wasn't about to sail past the watch tower there in a stolen Handboat. Not in daylight anyway.” The coals began hissing as the water boiled and steam blew out the kettle's spout. Deel grabbed at the handle, snatched her hand away, pulled her sleeve down over her fingers and lifted the kettle from the fire. “And not even at night unless it's raining and blowing hard enough to keep the Hands there more interested in their fire than what's happening on the River.” She set the kettle down, twitched the lid off and dumped in a handful of cha leaves. The lid back in place, she jiggled the kettle, sloshing the water about for a moment, then put it aside to let the leaves settle out.

Deel settled herself more comfortably and watched with some amusement as the nervous brown woman moved restlessly about, glancing at Hesh and Horli as the double sun rose above the treetops, glancing repeatedly at the boat, stopping by one tree to rub her fingers along its bark and sniff at them, touching a brittle bydarrack leaf, pulling it between thumb and forefinger. She snapped the leaf away and marched back to the fire, her cafta hem jerking about her ankles, collecting leaf fragments and bits of grass. Deel poured cha in a mug and held it out to her.

Gleia shook herself as if she was trying to shed some of her urgency. She dropped onto a patch of grass, facing Deel, took the mug and wrapped both hands around it. “Watchtower?” The corner of her mouth jerked into a very brief half-smile, a dimple danced in her unmarred cheek. “Start with the basics.”

“Know what a Hand is?”

Gleia sipped at the cha, considering the question. “You don't mean the thing that grows on the end of an arm?”

Deel chuckled. “Right.” She pushed onto her knees and scraped a rough oval of ground clear of debris, then she straightened, looked around vaguely. “When I got to Istir a couple of winters back, Gengid—my boss, the creep—made me hustle for drinks when I wouldn't whore for him. I was broke and new in the place and I didn't know Merd yet, so.…” She frowned, looked about again, caught up her spoon, wiped it on the grass, reversed it, fitting the bowl into the curve of her palm. “Hand. Comes from Svingeh's Hands, because they put the touch on anyone trying to get past Jokinhiir without paying toll. Well, I sat at a lot of tables listening to a lot of Rivermen, Hands mostly, slobbering on about their problems. I heard a lot more than I wanted to know about Jokinhiir and how the Svingeh runs things.” She bent over the cleared spot and used the spoon's handle to scrape a line in the dirt, ending with several swooping curves. “The River.” She continued drawing until she had a crude map of the Istrin plain to the west and the hinterlands to the east. The Plain was a blunt wedge driving into the mountains. From the point of that wedge she scratched two lines parallel to the River. “The Chute.” She jabbed the handle at a spot near the lower opening. “We're here.” She looked up. “You sure you want to go on? Once we get in the Chute, we're in Hand territory with nowhere to go but Jokinhiir.” She tapped the map at the top of the Chute. “There. That's Jokinhiir.” Muscles beginning to cramp, she wriggled around until she was sitting with her legs crossed in front of her. “Well?”

“No choice,” Gleia said curtly. “Reasons I can't talk about until I talk with Shounach.”

“Mmmph. Like I said, Hands are the Svingeh's enforcers. Lot of trade travels the River.” She flicked her fingers at the wiggling line, then gathered in the lands beyond the Chute with a quick curving gesture. “Knives and tools from Kesstave, cloth from the weavers of Maytol, horses bred in Ooakalin on the Plains, you get the idea. Anything that passes Jokinhiir, the Svingeh takes his cut. Nothing—no pack trains, no free-boats—nothing goes through the Chute either way without paying toll. Hands see to that. Hankir Kan told me once what they do to smugglers.” Deel shuddered. “His way of getting me into bed. Hankir Kan. The Big Fist.” She tried to smile. “Makes my skin crawl.” A nervous laugh. Hands combing through her hair, passing over the back of her head. She nodded at the boat. “You know what we did? We stole the head Hand's boat. I should've known it, he tried hard enough to get me on it. We stole Hankir Kan's boat and now we're sailing it right back to him.” She scrubbed her palms hard along her thighs, trying to wipe away the memory of his groping fingers. “I'd really rather keep away from Jokinhiir.”

Gleia started tracing her brands again. After an uneasy silence, she murmured, “I wonder.…” She looked around, her brows drawn together. “Describe him.”

Deel scanned the still, brown face then sighed and settled back on her heels. “He's a little worm. I could set my chin on his head if I was so inclined, which I'm damn sure not. Looks fat. Isn't. It's mostly muscle. Personal experience, he tried using it on me till Merd tied him in knots one time. Black eyes. Straight black hair. Full of himself. A strut like he owns the earth. Scar from here to here.” Starting at her hairline just above the cheekbone, she ran her finger across her cheek, grazing the end of her mouth, slanting across her chin. “Wide and deep as a bit of binding twine.” She leaned forward again, watched Gleia's unresponsive face, “know him?”

“Not me.” Gleia shoved at hair falling across her eyes. “Maybe Shounach. Ask him. I'm just along for the ride.” She sat watching the water glide past. “We're here till dark—no, until the storm breaks. If there's a storm tonight.”

“It's the season.”

Gleia nodded absently. Lost in thought, she got to her feet, drifted down the bank and across the arching limb. Deel heard the soft splat as she jumped onto the boat, the scraping of her sandals as she crossed to the cabin. Then there were other sounds rising above the resonant susurrus of the River—fragmented laughter, shouts, the snorting of horses, a steady scraping.

Deel glanced around the clearing. Where she was anyone coming up the River could see her. She ran to the bydarrakh, scrambled up it and settled herself in a limb crotch, her back against the knobby trunk, concealed from the River by a thin screen of stiff dark-green leaves. A barge slid into view, drawn by eight massive dapple-grays, their creamy feathers rippling, their heads bobbing up and down as they plodded steadily along the tow-path cut into the opposite bank of the River. On the deck of the long barge men were scattered about, talking or gambling in small groups, some asleep among their barrels and bales. Isolated at one end, a group of players laughed together, worked on costumes, exercised, a vibrant splash of color against the duller hues of the merchants and their wares. “Hah,” Deel breathed. “I forgot. Jota Fair at Jokinhiir.” She scratched thoughtfully at her upper lip, feeling a rise of excitement and just a little awe.
Juggler's luck,
she thought. Kan used to bitch about the fair. About using his men to handle drunks and prod a bunch of slippery merchants into paying the tollage. He'll be calling them in from the towers, if he hasn't already. She settled against the trunk with a sigh of relief, smiling drowsily at the antics of the players until the barge passed out of sight.

Hesh and Horli were almost clear of the treetops when she slid back down the bydarrack. She brushed away shreds of bark, thinking she should get some sleep. She glanced toward the boat, shook her head, twisted at the waist, winced at the protest of sore muscles. Stringing wordless sounds into an airy melody, she started working the knots from her body. After a short series of stretches and bends had raised a sheen of sweat on her skin, she began dancing about the clearing, her worries forgotten in the demanding joy of movement.

Finally, the shadows growing shorter and the heat thickening about her, she hunted out a sheltered spot where she curled up on thick, sweet-smelling grass and went to sleep.