The Braided World (23 page)

He followed her to the dock, where her servants waited to help her into the boat.

Standing on the wooden platform in the dusk, Nick wondered about her comment, that something was coming which she couldn't prevent. “What is coming, rahi?”

She looked past his shoulder to the huts they had built, and it seemed to Nick that rather than contempt, her eyes held melancholy. “I can help you,” he said, not knowing if he could, but meaning to try if she'd let him.

A spark of ridicule came back to her voice. “But of course, the damage has been done.”

“Let me help,” he repeated.

She raised her chin, and her face became queenly again, strong and dark and impervious. Turning to step into the canoe, she said, “Perhaps all that can be done is to look at things with new eyes.” Her servant handed her down to her seat. “It is a fine saying. One that Anton taught me.”

The hoda paddlers sent the boat gliding into the Puldar, setting up a gentle wake that rocked their skiffs, tied up nearby. The musk of the river ran strong, with the Puldar's deep juices enriched by animal carcasses from the storm.

From behind him he saw that Zhen had joined him on the dock.

“You toady,” she said. “That was a sweet little conversation with the palace slut.”

He looked at her with loathing. “Is eavesdropping the best you can do for company these days, Zhen?”

She smirked. “Yes. Science is a lonely calling.”

They watched the canoe disappear into a soft mist feathering off the river.

“This immunity you're so interested in, Venning. I don't think the langva are the whole answer.”

She could switch moods faster than Anton could go through walls. The wake of Joon's boat was just visible, a slash on the river, from which the last of the sun welled up.

“A big factor is the profound diversity of their genomes. It's why the Dassa aren't really at risk for our viruses. The Dassa are descended from at least forty genetically significant human populations of Earth. They might have naive immune systems, from the standpoint of human disease, but they're equipped to handle them.”

“I'm not worried about the Dassa. They're strong as oxen.”

Zhen snorted. “Glad to hear you're not worried. That means a lot. Howwwwever,” she said, stretching out the word, winding up, “a big question is why their immune responses would be strong. When you look at historical plagues of high virulence—the American Indians with measles and smallpox, for instance—you can see that their small gene pool is what allowed sixty million of them to die in the western hemisphere. The microbes were able to adapt swiftly to the very narrow set of homogeneous barriers before them. The Dassa, though, present a maze of genomes for any virus to negotiate.” She shrugged. “So, though the langva have some immune-boosting properties, it's not what's going on here, in the main.”

Nick wasn't listening. “Just keep looking, that's all.”

Zhen muttered, “Pedaling as fast as I can, Lieutenant. It would help if there were a few more hands to pitch in. Next time we'll bring scientists on the ground mission instead of cultural types.” As she turned to go, she said, “You still drawing little pictures in your notepad?”

Unconsciously, his hand was resting on his side arm. He moved his hand, lest he be tempted to put her out of her misery

“Yes,” he said. “Still drawing little pictures.”

Gilar's hands were white and puffy from handling the chemistries. She had learned by smell which vials held the worst corrosives, but her hands were shredding. Little hunks of skin hung from her fingers, tormenting every movement.

Everything in Oleel's pavilion was hard-edged and bright. Gilar had never been in a stone house. Her feet ached from the unforgiving floor, and her eyes from the awful whiteness of the place. After two days as Oleel's slave, she thought she had fallen as far as one could. But remembering what hung from the trees along the river that day she reflected that perhaps she had not.

Mim worked at her side, signing, Pay attention. You may drop the vial, and have punishment. < From the scars on her face, she was one who'd had
punishments.
They were alone in the scullery, but Mim didn't speak in song, only in hand sign. Oleel favored quiet.

At Aramee's compound, the uldia had come for Gilar without warning. One moment she was working on a burst water pipe, and the next everyone was staring at the pier, where Aramee was standing, welcoming a barge of uldia.

Then someone was walking toward them. It was Nuan.

Stand up, Gilar,

When Gilar did so, she saw that Aramee, across the yard, was gazing at her. She was in the company of several uldia.

Nuan looked stricken, and Gilar guessed that she had broken yet another rule. Although why Nuan should care what happened to the compound's chief troublemaker, Gilar had no idea.

Now you will have reason to believe in Aramee's goodness < was all she signed.

Bahn came running up, alarm in her face.

It was over within moments. Aramee had coins in her hand, and the uldia commanded Gilar to enter their barge.

Aramee had sold her to the uldia. Now, however, the mistress looked doubtful, even worried. But didn't they know no one could hurt her anymore? Didn't they know that—despite Bailey's rejection—somehow she was going to Erth?

She passed a hoda who signed, Oh Gilar, our sister. <

And then Bahn: The river bears you, my friend. Remember the river bears you.<

And, indeed, the river had borne her to a place of implacable stone. In the pavilion of the big woman, Gilar had lost every outward trace of herself. She was bald and ugly now, and like every other hoda, she no longer had to shave her head. One morning she had awakened and the stubble from her recent growth of hair lay in the hammock like a secret code of lines. But inside herself, nothing had changed.

Sometimes Oleel looked at her sideways, intently, as though she knew Gilar's secret hopes, and meant to ruin them.

Now, Gilar found herself alone in the scullery, with Mim on some errand. She let the cool water spill over her hands, cleansing what was left of them. In a faint voice, she hummed a tiny length of melody, the Bailey song. To her amazement, the sound was larger here in the rock palace. She piped out a high note, and another. Truly, stone made for very good sounds.

That was when she discovered that she had not yet fallen very far.

A thumping noise came from nearby Someone was running up the stone steps. Several uldia appeared in the doorway.

The women hurried her downstairs, not gently, and marched her forward to the very middle of the courtyard, where the large woman sat among her senior uldia.

She looked like a lumpish statue carved right from granite.
Her robes covered massive thighs, but her sandals peeked out at the hem, sandals as large as any man ever wore. Gilar was staring at the woman's feet, reluctant to engage her eyes.

The voice came loud, though the large woman didn't shout. Her voice was naturally robust, and could always be distinguished from other uldias', even at a distance.

“Did you bring a vulgar sound to my home?” Oleel asked.

No, but I sang,< Gilar saw herself sign to the woman with life-and-death power over her. It came out naturally. She'd never learned the things Bahn hoped she would, like how to cower in front of proper Dassa.

Gilar braced herself for the blow. But it was a long time coming, if it was going to. Oleel nodded at one of her attendants, who left, then returned with a small plate.

The uldia with the plate commanded Gilar to open her mouth.

Oh, not my mouth
, Gilar thought.
I don't open my mouth.

But she did open it, because the uldia could force her to. The uldia took a small round ball from the plate. As she brought it close to Gilar, Gilar could smell something foul. With shock, she realized it was excrement.

“Open,” the uldia commanded again.

Mother of rivers
, Gilar thought, falling deep inside herself.
No, no.

And then the uldia placed the ball of excrement just behind her teeth, in that part of her mouth where her tongue … where her tongue …

“Now close your mouth,” the uldia said.

Saliva came flooding into Gilar's mouth, in an attempt to fend off the invasion, but in fact it made the ball taste worse. Gilar's stomach rolled and jumped.

“If she spits it away, take out her eyes,” Oleel said. Then she turned from the girl, the plate, the horror, and continued her conversation with the other women.

Gilar watched her turn. With the revolting morsel in her mouth, Gilar watched the large woman, and she saw how it would be. She and this woman were like fire and water, like flood and drought.

One of them would have to die.

Approaching Samwan's compound, Bailey could see a
great barge pulled up, and a flurry of action on the dock. She stopped paddling long enough to scout the situation.

Dozens of judipon were crawling around the barge and dock, carrying baskets, lockers, and bales into the yard. It was tithe-day then. It was beyond her why they chose the hottest part of the day to haul goods.

Patting her hat on more firmly, she resumed her progress toward the shore, wary of any hodas in skiffs who might accost her and expect a song. There would be no more singing, by anyone. How swift the retribution had come, for that one small song in the forest. Anton tried to soften it, saying that Oleel would have found some other pretense to clamp down on the hoda, but still, Bailey knew it was retribution for her lapse. How many more girls would die because of her? None, she resolved. Never again.

Samwan's hoda rushed down to the water's edge to help Bailey debark. They handed her up from her skiff onto the dock. She could hardly meet their eyes, both for her own lapse and Anton's, that he had allegedly killed a pregnant
slave on the king's big hunt, and got a nice piece of land in exchange—despite the fact that he
hadn't
killed her, thank God.

Onto the pier ran a pack of children, shouting her name and chanting the Dassa word for singing, while the hoda hushed them, sharply. God in heaven, had everyone heard about one song offered up in the depths of the jungle?

Across the yard, Samwan waved at her, having learned that waving could be a proper greeting, and now using it to her advantage, because she had a dockful of judipon and piles of hemp, animal kill, dried fruit, and langva tubers lying about and needing disposition, and no time to play hostess to Bailey. Her sisters rushed about, giving directions, looking over the records with the judipon, who crouched on stools, sharing out the record plates. Bailey didn't know the word for the judipon accounting system, but physically they were stacks of circular papers collected on tall spindles, with raised bumps denoting the indecipherable numbering system, tallying the convoluted dole.

It wasn't all festive. The huts were hung with fresh palm leaves, the custom in honoring the dead, needful these last weeks because the compound had lost a ten-year-old boy in the big storm, and he was presumed dead.

Bailey had paid her condolences to Samwan's sister Irran, but the woman seemed inconsolable and was taking grief potions from her uldia. Bailey would like to know what magic potion
that
might be. Perhaps Nick was right to give some of it a try, though lately he was barely dragging himself out of bed, having made himself ill with the local concoctions. There was apparently no end to the foolishness of twenty-four-year-olds.

She sat down on a stool, feeling tired herself. She had been here late last night, taking a meal with Samwan's household—a sprawling, lengthy affair that seemed to never end, not even providing her a proper moment to slip out.

As she sat watching the happy mayhem of tithe-day she noticed a wallishen, the dramatic folk art of the compounds.
Bailey scanned it, hoping it had no green-draped figures. No, this one wasn't about humans.

It was about Irran. Bailey felt inordinately pleased—she actually thought she had this one figured out. Someone was pulling a child from the river, and someone else was pulling palm fronds off huts … which would mean that Irran's boy had been found alive. Ah. A nice wallishen, for once.

Bailey looked beyond the wallishen to Samwan's engine hut—only half completed, and without the new river engine the mistress had been expecting. With an inner wince, Bailey remembered that this was Samwan's punishment for allowing Bailey to sing in front of the hoda, though Samwan didn't know about it until afterward.

A shrill voice broke her reverie. Looking up, Bailey saw Samwan in deep dispute with a judipon. He was an old man, but his voice matched Samwan's in volume. In keeping with the judipon vow of river hands, he was dressed in a plain tunic and leggings. As they argued over the tithe, some of the paper rounds slipped, scattering on the ground. The judipon scrambled to respindle his precious records, but at that moment, shouts from near the river caught everyone's attention.

Samwan turned from the judipon, hurrying toward the dock, with Bailey in close pursuit.