Snare (71 page)

‘He eats with us.’ Loy reinforced her words with gestures.

The servants each stamped a foot in thanks, then trotted back to the fire for more food. After they’d served Zayn, they took food for themselves and sat behind their mistress. The Chof women ate steadily and silently; Loy, Zayn, and Ammadin followed their lead.

After the females of both species and Zayn had taken what they wanted, Water Woman led them away from the place where they’d eaten. They sat in the shade of the Midas trees with the two servants haunched behind their mistress. At that point the males got up and went to eat the remaining meat straight out of the stew pot; they used the remaining bread to sop up the yap-packer broth. When they finished, they grabbed their spears and returned to their position between the females and the road.

‘Maybe I should have eaten with them,’ Zayn said in Vranz. ‘Should I go help guard?’

‘No,’ Loy said. ‘If you’re marked as having a higher rank, it’ll be easier to rescue your friends.’

‘Good. Would it be rude if I got up and put the horses on full tether again?’

‘No. Everyone’s finished now.’

Zayn got up, nodded pleasantly at the Chof women, then trotted off to take care of the horses. As soon as he was well away, Water Woman swung her head around close to Loy and Ammadin.

‘I speak-then with Sibyl this morning. She tell-then me that the other faction hide-then the Karshaks in an old building made of white curse stone. They be-now all near the hills.’

‘Curse stone?’ Ammadin said.

‘Your people make-then-long-time-ago this white stuff, like the picture cliff here. Chof have-not the power to destroy-then-now-next-soon, so we call it cursed. But tell-not Zayn. He want-maybe to rush off and try to rescue the other Karshaks. We have-not the power to rescue his friends.’

‘Is it too dangerous?’ Loy joined in.

‘Not dangerous, no. I explain-now our Chof ways. The faction go-then to find the Great Mother. They make-soon an appeal to her. We have-not power do-now more. Only Great Mother have the power to decide who be right, who be wrong.’

‘They’ve gone to the Great Mother already?’ Ammadin said.

‘No, but they be-now closer than us. They get-first there. And we Chof have-always a law. No one have the power to stop anyone who want to appeal to Great Mother.’

‘So,’ Loy said, ‘did Sibyl tell you they were going?’

‘No, they tell me. You learn-then about our secret roads from Zayn?’

‘The tunnels, you mean? Yes.’

‘I tell-next another secret. Chof talk-easy when we be in the roads. Listen.’ Water Woman raised her head, inflated her throat sac, and let out a deep note, so deep that Loy felt more than heard it. ‘When we do that, it travel-next long long way in the roads.’

‘Yes,’ Loy said. ‘I just bet it does.’

‘So what are we going to do, then?’ Ammadin leaned forward. ‘Will the Great Mother listen to us, too?’

‘Yes. Great Mother listen-always to all. I call-then-yesterday my other spear servants. When they come-next, we all go-soon.’

‘Are we going to travel in the tunnels?’ Loy said. ‘I’d like to see them.’

‘I know-not. We wait-next, spears come-soon, tell-next-soon. Maybe safe, not safe. The others be-now on the secret road. I want-not fighting, my spears her spears.’

‘Who is this other her?’ Loy said. ‘The leader of the faction?’

‘Yes.’ Water Woman raised her hindquarters a couple of feet off the ground and made a dipping motion before she sat back down. ‘Lastunnabrilchiri, Herbgather Woman. I wish-now that her eggs dry to a nasty dust. She put-then-now-next many spear servants on the secret road. I want no dead males, Loy Sorcerer, no dead females either, not even Karshaks.’

‘Good,’ Loy said. ‘How long will it take us to reach the Great Mother if we ride our horses?’

‘Days.’ Water Woman raised her head and moaned. ‘And Herbgather Woman, she have those days to talk talk talk in Great Mother’s ears.’

‘How close is Sibyl to this flexstone building?’ Ammadin put in. ‘More days’ ride?’

‘Many days’ ride, yes. The secret road run-not there. All must walk to Veeduhn Dosha.’

Loy felt a thin, cold line of excitement run down her back. Sibyl lived in N’Dosha Town, where the archives had been kept.

Although Loy had enough questions to fill fifty notebooks, she had few of them answered that afternoon. The rest of Water Woman’s loyal males – a contingent of some thirty spear servants, as she called them – arrived far earlier than the Chiri Michi had expected. Water Woman heard them first; she scrambled to her feet and stood looking across the road to the open field.

‘There they be!’ she said. ‘A good sign, a good omen! They get here so fast, no time for fighting.’

Thrumming and booming, the blue-kilted males came stalking across the dried grass. Water Woman thrummed in answer, then hurried off to meet them. The two servants calmly began packing the various boxes and sacks. Ammadin and Loy walked over to join Zayn, who looked merely frightened, not terrified.

‘Are you going to be all right?’ Ammadin said to him.

‘Yes.’ His voice sounded reasonably steady. ‘Having you along’s going to make a hell of a difference.’ He took a deep breath, then managed to smile. ‘It’s going to be interesting, anyway.’

‘That’s certainly true. And with all those spears along, it should be safe enough. There’s not much Soutan’s supporters can do against so many.’

‘Ah yes,’ Loy said. ‘Yarl. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him in your crystals.’

‘No, I haven’t.’ Ammadin thought for a moment, then turned to Zayn. ‘Another mystery – do you know what Soutan and Arkazo are doing out here?’

Zayn’s face became a mask. Even though Loy had seen him suppress his feelings before, she found it profoundly unsettling.

‘I’ll get the horses saddled and loaded,’ Zayn said, and his voice
carried not one trace of what he might have been feeling. ‘Either way, we’ll be getting on the road.’

Zayn hurried off to fetch the horses in from pasture. Ammadin stood looking after him, and Loy had no trouble understanding her feelings: raw fury.

‘Does he do that often?’ Loy said.

‘Yes. It’s his way of lying without saying a single word.’ Ammadin made a visible effort to calm herself. ‘Well, there’s no time to deal with him right now. Water Woman’s dithering is all I can handle anyway.’

‘I’m surprised at how badly conflict upsets her.’

‘It makes sense to me. Factions are like comnees, aren’t they? Being part of a comnee teaches us how to get along with other comnees in the Tribes, and in the Cantons, you’ve got families that do the same thing. Chof don’t have families like we do, because of the way their children grow.’

‘Of course! By the time they get back to land, the adult Chof can’t tell whose child is which, and the children belong to everyone.’

Water Woman and her male servants were all milling about in the field. Loy could just hear her booming voice, and now and then the males inflated their sacs; if they were speaking, they were doing so at too low a pitch for even her genetically enhanced hearing. Eventually Water Woman strode across the road and headed for the camp. Her spear males followed, some bunched together, others straggling behind. She waved both pseudo-hands and boomed as well.

‘Good news!’ Water Woman called out. ‘The tunnel roads be-now safe. We travel-next-fast to meet the Great Mother.’

Warkannan had his copy of the
Mirror,
and Jezro had brought a thick pad of rushi and some pens to make notes as they hunted for Soutan. Otherwise, Warkannan decided, they might have gone half-demented shut up in that white room, and mostly because of the noise. The shiny flexstone surface absorbed so little sound that they were forced to whisper. During the day they left their blankets spread out in a corner and sat on them, but even the thick wool muffled few of the reverberations. Every time they spoke in a normal voice, their words echoed and boomed under the glittering ceiling.

The first day after their arrival, they’d mostly slept; when they woke, in mid-afternoon, they’d inspected their prison carefully only to arrive at the conclusion that they’d never be able to dig or climb their way out. The floor met the walls in a smooth curve of material rather than any sort of seam or join, giving the impression that a single sheet of flexstone had been folded and fused to form the cube.

At twilight, the lavender female appeared with a crude basket filled with greasy rounds of some grain-based baked thing and a chunk of roasted meat. When Jezro asked her for a lamp, she obligingly handed over a light stick. After a few false commands, Jezro succeeded in making it work, but its high setting made the walls glare like the heart of a fire. He spoke fast and returned it to a dim glow.

‘Not enough to read by,’ Warkannan said, ‘but that’s all right, I’m not complaining. How did the Settlers live in rooms like this?’

‘They hung the walls with panels and tapestries, I suppose,’ Jezro said. ‘And put rugs on the floors.’

‘That makes sense. Well, if we can’t read the
Mirror,
we’ve got to figure out something to do besides sit here and worry about Zayn and Arkazo. Too bad we don’t have a chess set.’

‘Yes, it is; or wait, we could make one out of rushi. You know, draw a board and write the names of the pieces on scraps.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

With their improvised game they picked up a tournament that had ended abruptly at Jezro’s supposed death. Warkannan was amused to realize that even after ten years, they each remembered the exact number of their wins and losses, a hundred thirty to a hundred twenty-eight, with Jezro in the lead. On the border all the officers had played for money, and the side betting had grown fierce, but considering the circumstances, they decided that this time, the winning itself would be enough of a reward.

‘I’ll never play with Benu – I mean, Hassan again, though,’ Jezro said. ‘It was humiliating how fast he beat me, and every damn time, too.’

‘It’s not like you were his only victim,’ Warkannan said. ‘Did he ever lose a game to anyone?’

‘Not that I ever saw. He must have won enough to double his salary. Well, now we know why, don’t we? It’s that memory of his. Between turns he could probably refer to every book he’d
ever read about the game.’ Jezro paused, laughing. ‘And I’m going to give him hell about that, too, if I ever see him again, anyway. An officer and a gentleman, cheating at chess!’

‘Well, you could make a case that way, but it’s not like he could help it.’

‘True. It’s a funny thing, memory. I haven’t thought about those games for years, but seeing the pair of you again has brought it all back. I keep remembering Haz Kazrak, too, and how much I used to love it.’

‘I don’t see why you’re surprised. It’s your home.’

Jezro started to speak, then hesitated, his eyes abruptly sad. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Home. A powerful little word, home.’

Warkannan waited, smiling.

‘Damn you, Idres,’ Jezro said. ‘Let’s play. You can take white, just out of the goodness of my heart.’

They played chess all that evening by the dim glow of the light-wand. The next morning, when sunlight came through the windows, they laid the stick in one patch of light to recharge and continued playing near the other. The difficulty of moving one rushi piece without brushing others off the board was irritating, but nowhere near as irritating as sitting around trying to speak in whispers. Twice the lavender female appeared with food, some of which they simply could not eat because of the grease and the foul taste. The guards at the windows, however, were glad to take it off their hands.

The patches of light moved across the glittering floor and eventually disappeared. They sprawled on the floor at either side of their game board like children, talked little, and studied every move. Warkannan was considering castling when the floor suddenly lurched, fluttering the rushi pieces on the board.

‘Shaitan!’ Jezro muttered. ‘A quake!’

They managed to get to their knees, but by then the building was swaying too hard for them to stand. The walls groaned like a drunken cavalryman about to vomit. Warkannan mentally counted the seconds; at forty-one, the noise stopped, the sway turned to a tremble, and slowly, all too slowly, the building and the earth settled down.

‘The horses!’ Warkannan clambered to his feet and ran for the window.

Jezro followed, swearing under his breath. The guards had run
off, but Warkannan could only get his head and one shoulder out of the narrow unglazed window. Jezro did the same at the other. They could see a long stretch of purple grass and the distant hills, but no sign of horse or ChaMeech. Jezro pulled his head back inside and trotted over to the front door. He pushed it, pulled it, slammed against it with his shoulder, but it stayed shut.

‘Try talking to it,’ Warkannan said.

‘Right you are.’ Jezro cleared his throat and spoke in Vranz several different words, pausing between each, then tried Hirl-Onglay. ‘Open. Slide back. Open up. Exit.’

Nothing happened.

‘So much for that,’ Jezro said. ‘It must respond to some command in ChaMeech. But then how come we never hear Miss Lavender opening it?’

‘She keeps her voice pitched too low for our hearing,’ Warkannan said. ‘I was hoping it would work in more than one language.’

‘Damn!’ Jezro returned to his window. ‘Here they come, anyway.’

The four ChaMeech guards were loping across the grass, leading the trotting horses back to pasture. The little female came hurrying around the corner of the building, then stopped to boom at them. From the way she raised her head up high and waved her pseudo-hands, Warkannan could tell that she was furious. The guards stopped and lowered their heads almost to the ground. Finally she ended her harangue and took over the horses. Warkannan hung part-way out the window and watched her tethering them until one of the guards trotted up, shaking his spear, and chased him back inside. Jezro was already sitting down by the chessboard.

‘Well, that was a nice break in the routine,’ Jezro said. ‘What next? Another game? You do know you were going to win that last one, don’t you?’

‘I had hopes that way, yes.’ With a sigh Warkannan joined him. ‘I wonder when they’re going to take us out of here?’