The Braided World (28 page)

Maypong and Anton huddled together, amid the confusion of guards rushing about and uldia gathering in the square. No one noticed as Bailey wound her way into the plaza.

From the first, clear joy of the notes, Gilar knew that song was a form of sarif She sang with her whole body trembling with the power of it, knowing that it touched people in intimate ways. The music was strange, and that was part of its allure. It was Erth music, the music she was born to sing. You could no more silence it than you could forbid sarif, the love that bound Dassa to Dassa and hoda to hoda. It was more than sarif. It could enthrall a whole compound, touch many at once, Dassa as well as hoda.

So she sang, full-throated and with abandon, even as the thuds of people climbing the roof came to her ears. It was the commotion of the lower world. It couldn't touch her here. Not before she sang for Captain Anton.

Though the rain threw down a gray curtain, Bailey had a clear view of the child. She was bound to the lightning rod, on the rooftop. Singing.

They would kill her now. Suddenly, she couldn't breathe. She pulled in a breath, but it didn't help; she was suffocating. A nearby viven said, “Bailey, are you well?” He took her arm as though she were about to fall, but she pulled away. “I killed her,” she said, to the nobleman's consternation. Then, in her own tongue she repeated, “I killed her.” The girl. For her voice.

The voice … Gilar's song hovered over the crowd. Soldiers were running up the ramp, climbing from three directions. They seemed not to hear the remarkable voice, the voice of a natural soprano, doing theme and variation on a ten-thousand-year-old song from a different world. No, they couldn't hear it. All they heard was defiance.

Bailey looked toward the king, standing with his retinue. He was conferring with Romang, his war chief, and then Romang was rushing across the plaza as the uldia gave way before him, even Oleel, who stood in the center of the square, looking up.

A head popped up over the edge of the roof. The lower world was here, after all. Gilar saw the soldier's grim expression, his eagerness to lay hands on her. She renewed her song, that small and strange melody that she took for hers, that gift of Erth.

Gilar looked up to the sky, hoping for a brief moment that lightning would come to the metal pole, and take her
away to its realm. She would rather that Captain Anton come to rescue her. But if not, lightning might do.

Then the soldier had her by the leg, hoisting himself up at her expense, hauling dreadfully on her, until he too stood at the roof peak, balancing beside her. He would throw her down now. She saw how he looked to the plaza, where massed many soldiers, and, among them, the big woman.

The singing stopped. Instead of Mozart, there was only the patter of rain. Bailey waited for the girl to cry out, waited for it to be over. There was nothing she could do; these people would extract their horrible punishment—one from among their considerable repertoire.

On the second-story roof, she saw movement. Soldiers. They were bringing the girl down. They tossed Gilar off the roof of the first-floor gallery, a drop of a few meters, and then other soldiers caught her like a duffel bag. Romang was there, arguing with the uldia. The women appeared to win the argument, because the girl was given over to them. They brought her forward to face Oleel.

Bailey looked back toward the king, toward Anton and Maypong, and saw them milling there, under cover, out of the rain, out of the conflict. She didn't blame them for being safe and dry. There was nothing to be done. Gilar's fate was as inevitable as the direction of the Puldar. All downhill.

She could walk away, but wasn't that what she had done last time? It would be more comfortable just to not watch, and Bailey had always chosen comfort. She was a selfish old woman, and she had been a selfish young one.

Deliberately, she moved toward the center of the plaza, pushing past uldia, and proper Dassa, and soldiers. They parted for her—even the grim soldiers, even the unbending uldia. Now, with a front-row position, Bailey watched one of Oleel's minions bend her ear toward her leader.

Gilar tried to walk independently, but the soldiers yanked her along, hardly letting her feet touch the ground. The rain had washed her clean of fear. Back in the lower world again, she found she cared less than she'd thought about her fate here.

Yet she looked to the place where the king stood, because at his side might be Captain Anton. But there was a great crowd there, and all she could see was…

Bailey.

The old woman stood at the edge of the clearing, opposite Oleel. The old woman was watching her. Her posture was stiff. Her eyes said,
See how brave you can be. Be an Erth woman.

And so she would.

They pulled her down until she was on hands and knees.

She saw the knife. They were going to take something.

Ah. Her hand.

Bailey was the only human in the circle.

It was none of her business. It was her business. Things twisted together, and could not be sorted logically She must stay and watch, be present. It was necessary to be present, and not say that because she wasn't there she wasn't responsible.

I am monstrous
, came the thought.
I am not forgiven.

The uldia splayed Gilar's fingers on the stone paving. Gilar remembered that if they took her whole hand, she would be cast into the river. But if they took only three fingers, she could still be an effective slave.
Take the hand
, she urged them.

The pain, when it came, was like a slap, nothing more. It jolted her arm; her body flinched. Around her, the world cooled.

Then the stumps of her three vanished fingers seemed to curl in pain.

Bailey saw the blade stab toward the ground. She saw the blood swirl into the rain-soaked stone, in rosy pools.

Rosy pools.

There was a commotion around her. The rain fell in gentle needles, running down her neck and face. People were moving, vacating the plaza. Show over.

Rosy pools. The blood drained north, toward the king's rooms, toward the compass point of the lightning rod. It all meant something. There were omens in entrails. She staggered forward, staring at the crimson eddies.

Only one other person remained in the circle. The uldia Oleel. She eyed Bailey with curiosity, and for a moment her nostrils flared, as though smelling the telltale stench of history.

Then she turned away.

Bailey said, loud enough for her to hear: “You forgot the fingers, Oleel. They're yours now. They'll always be your work.”

Oleel stopped cold, her body bulked into a sodden wave of gown and bun. “I bequeath them to you, old hoda,” she said, not turning around.

As the uldia departed, Bailey found herself saying, “If you ever decide to get a decent seamstress, do let me know. Those shapeless robes are really quite dreadful.”

But Oleel merely retreated from the plaza, leaving Bailey with the blood and entrails.

Then Anton was at her side. He had a blanket, and laid it across her shoulders, saying gently, “Let's go home, Bailey.”

“My fault,” she whispered.

“No, no, Bailey. We couldn't stop them.”

He thought she was talking about Gilar. But didn't he know she was talking about Remy? She looked at Anton. “It doesn't help not to sing. That's not the atonement.”

But she knew what was.

Anton's boat slipped into the Puldar two hours before
dawn, in silence, without lights. Maypong insisted on the precautions. Their craft was only slightly larger than ordinary, to accommodate food and gear and the travelers: Anton, Maypong, and a hoda to paddle.

There was a tension between Anton and Maypong, because of what happened yesterday to Gilar. If he hadn't pleaded with Vidori, the girl would be dead. But now Maypong's cool detachment troubled him. It was the same look he'd seen in his father's eyes when he'd sent Anton's mother outside the compound: cold, walled-up.
She's contaminated, boy. You want to die?
Yes, was the answer. At the time, he would rather have died than say good-bye …

As they loaded the skiff, Nick had been strangely silent. “You're in charge, Lieutenant,” Anton had said, “if anything happens to me.”

Nick's face was dark. He was still sick, and Anton was worried he had poisoned himself more severely than they'd thought. His tests had come back negative for the virus, and besides, his symptoms didn't match. Zhen had tested for a
wide range of infections, and found nothing wrong with him. “Take care of yourself, Nick,” he said. “I need you.”

“Do you?”

Anton couldn't risk losing both officers at once, and as ever, he feared leaving Zhen alone.

“I've said I need you, Nick. Stand by me, man.” But he knew the two men's solidarity was long over.

“For as long as I can, Captain.”

The words trailed after Anton as they entered the Puldar.
For as long as I can.
And just how long was that?

Now, in the black waters near the shore, they skimmed along, the hoda paddling softly, expertly, under Maypong's instruction to make no sound.

She was a big woman, this hoda named Reen, apparently chosen by Maypong for her strength, to help carry supplies when they left the rivers and began to climb. They'd be gone three days—half the time allotted by the ship's crew. The shuttle would have saved time … but Anton had decided against risking the craft in the rugged uplands, and leaving it unguarded and subject to ransacking from Voi— or, Anton thought, uldia.

For it was clear now that Oleel meant to use their mission as ammunition against Vidori. And though Anton was no admirer of the king, he thought Oleel a worse alternative for the Olagong. She would tip the balance, erase the king's power. Become the One Power. But to accomplish that goal she needed the populace on her side, needed the Dassa to hate what the humans were, and the
threat
of what they were: free beings, born to bear. Some of the Dassa needed no prodding.

Now, as they turned out onto the River Sodesh, with its clearer view of the night sky, Anton could see one bright star rising just ahead of the sun, the morning star called Quadi's Lantern. They paddled toward it, trying to get far past the Amalang tributary—Oleel's tributary—before first light. In the profound night, the river's presence was sound alone: the rush of river over stone and branch, the rustle of
paddle on water. Under the weight of their skiff, they cut a vanishing passage through the water's ink.

Alert for enemies, Anton thought he would relish a meeting with Oleel; a chance to take her down, on a dark river, without politics and tradition to protect her. Without ten thousand Dassa standing behind her, as she mutilated young girls.

In the tepid light of the approaching dawn, Anton saw Maypong in the prow, her back straight and still. One of the ten thousand Dassa who supported Oleel.

Maypong and Reen had spent an hour camouflaging the boat, until it looked like a knot of tangled branches from the last flood.

Anton distributed the gear into three packs. It was slow going, a noisy, crashing effort of finding passage through undergrowth and, worse, over the tumultuous roots of the shallow-rooted jungle trees that, having given up on soil, grew from the sides of the trees downward to whatever nutrients they could find. Away from the cultivated islets of the Dassa, the jungle reverted to its indigenous ways, with wild vines and thickets, the foliage heavy with flowers, dripping colorful sap. Amid the rank plant growth were the ubiquitous gourds large and small, the birthing pouches of the planet's fauna, or quasi-fauna. Part vegetable, part animal … the distinctions were not the same as on earth, Zhen said. They grew from the soil on viny umbilical cords, the seams that would split at maturity evident from the petal-shaped scars. But the gourds were as hard as rock.
They sofien
, Maypong had told him,
when it is time.

Under Maypong's lead, they traveled north, away from the river to the hills. His ears were stuffed with the unceasing jungle clatter, the chirps and scuttling, and the background chitter of insects. It was like the static of the radio when, early that morning, he'd tried to pick out Sergeant Webb's voice, tried to make out the words and the man underneath
the words. He didn't know if Webb could speak frankly if there were others with him on the bridge. Anton tried not to take the threatened mutiny as a colossal failure on his part. It could easily have been Captain Darrow in the same position. Couldn't it?

Ahead, he heard Reen splashing through a stream, one of many that had been keeping their boots thoroughly wet. Approaching the stream, Maypong kicked a large branch into the water, using it for a bridge. This action disrupted the nearby jungle growth, setting up a squalling of monkeys, who hurled something at them, pods the size of lemons. Anton saw one creature peering at him from among the tangled roots of a banyan tree. Its face was alight with a vicious intelligence; its ears drooped like mud flaps. A not-quite-monkey A variety of monkey, brought to this planet the same as the Dassa—imperfectly.

He heard Maypong's voice from up the trail. “I know why you are so quiet, Anton. You are thinking that I am a bad chancellor.” As she disappeared down into a gully, he heard her add: ‘And a bad mother.”