Brann rose with the dawn and went to eat at the Sid-day Lir, escaping before Ahzurdan crawled out of bed and came to bend her ear again. After living, so long as a solitary, she found it difficult to control her growing irritation with the man; she was getting useful information about the training a sorceror required, his powers and their limitations, but she had to seine those items out of a flood of rambling discourse. A sleepy waiter brought her a pot of tea and a plate of mooncakes, went off to find some berries and cream.
Yaril came drifting along and settled beside her at the table. “He went out last night. Late. Bought two ounces dreamdust.”
“Smoke any?”
“No.”
Brann waited until the waiter set the bowl of berries and the cream pot before her and went away. “Hmp. Idiot man. Why now?” She poured a dollop of cream over the dark purple mound, lifted her spoon. “What do you think?”
“He’ll crumble at a look. Drop him, Bramble.”
“Hmm.” For several minutes she spooned up berries, savoring the dark sweet-tart taste and the cool fresh breeze blowing in off the water, then she wiped her mouth and frowned at Yaril. “I don’t think so. Not yet. Wait till we get to Bandrabahr, then we’ll see.”
Yaril shrugged. “You asked.”
“So I did. Yaro, ever think about Jal Virri?”
“Not much. Boring place.”
“But it was beautiful, Yaro.”
“So? Lots of places are pretty enough. I like places where things happen.”
Brann broke a mooncake in half. “Was your home like that, a place where things happen?”
“We’ve been away a long time, Bramble. Think about Arth Slya. What do you remember? The good times, eh? Same with us.”
“I see.” Like always, she thought, they won’t talk about their home world, slip slide away. Did they love it, did they hate it, what did they think? Though she thought she knew them almost as well as she knew herself, at times like this she was jarred into a feeling that they were essentially unknowable. Too many referents that just weren’t there. “Yaro…” she looked down over the warehouses and the wharves, out to the ships moored in the bay, “I’d like you and Jay to fly a sweep to the north and see if you can sight Zatikay’s ship. Ahzurdan swears he’ll be here any day now, but time’s getting short on us. Theriste first is day after tomorrow, I want to be out of here by then, we have to be in Silagamatys by the seventeenth, I want some room for maneuvering in case of snags. You know nothing ever goes exactly as it’s planned.”
“Ahzurdan’s a…”
“Don’t say it, Yaro, I’m tired of that onenote song.” She finished the berries, emptied the teabowl and tapped against it with her spoon. When the waiter came, she paid him, then began strolling up the still deserted Ihman Katt, passing the ancient streetsweepers as they brushed away the debris from last night’s business, stopping a moment to exchange a word with a M’darjin woman so old her skin had turned ashy and her hair white as crimped snow. “Ma amm, Zazi Koko, how many diamonds today?”
Zazi Koko leaned on her broom and grinned at Brann, showing teeth as strong as they’d been when she was running the grassy hills of her homeland, though a lot yellower. “More than you, Embamba zimb, more than you.”
“True, oh true.” Brann laughed and ambled on. The brightening day was clear and cool; behind the facades she passed she could feel a slow torpid struggle against weariness left over from last night, lepidopter stirring in her chrysalis. She turned into the flowery winding lane that led uphill to the Pearly Dawn, walking slower still, reluctance to return to the Inn and Ahzurdan gathering like a lump under her ribs. She broke a green orchid from a spray that brushed her head, showering her with delicate perfume, tucked it into an empty buttonhole, then broke off another and eased it into the fine blond hair over Yaril’s ear. Smiling affectionately at the startled girl, she patted her shoulder and ambled on.
Heavy-eyed and morose, Ahzurdan met her on the stairs and followed her into her room. As soon as the door shut behind him and before he could start talking, Brann said, “If Zatikay isn’t here by tonight, I’m going to hire transport to Haven on Cheonea. Yes, yes, I know none of the Captains in the harbor would shift his schedule for any price, but there are ships not too deep in the Myk’tat Tukery with more flexible masters.”
“Bloody cannibals, more likely to carve us up and eat us than waste time on open water.”
“Unless they’ve changed since I ran into them, they won’t bother me or the children. And I suspect you’d find it easy enough to convince them that you’re no tasty morsel. I didn’t say I liked the idea. But time’s…” she broke off, frowned. There was suddenly a faint odd smell in the room, a creaky droning, like a doorhinge down a deep well. “What the…”
Tall, thin, brown and ivory, like a lightning-blasted tree, an eerie ugly creature solidified in front of Brann and reached for her.
Alerted by the sound and the smell, Brann dropped to a squat, then sprang to one side, slapping against the floor and rolling onto her feet. The treeish thing looked stiff and clumsy, but it wasn’t; it was fast and flexible and frighteningly strong. One of its hands raised a wind over her head, but her hair was too short for any kind of grip and she dropped too quickly. When she kicked out of the squat, rough knotty fingers got half a grip on her leg but slipped off as she twisted away. She bounced onto her feet, gasped with sudden fear as a second set of hard woody arms closed about her and started to squeeze.
Yaril shifted to a fireball and flung herself at the treeish demon, meaning to burn it, but it wasn’t what it seemed and all she did was char it a little, releasing an appalling stench into the room. It loosened its grip on Brann, held her with one hard ropy arm and swung at Yaril with the other.
Jaril came whipping through the wall and slammed into the first Treeish, charring it and stinging it enough to drive it back.
Another Treeish solidified from air and stench. And another.
Brann slapped her hands against her captor and began drawing its life into her; she screamed (voice hoarse with agony) as that corrosive firestuff poured into a body not meant to contain demon energies, but she didn’t stop the draw.
Yaril flew to her, sucked away as much of the energy as she could and redirected it into a blast of liquid fire at the other three Treeish.
Jaril was a thick worm of fire, winding about the short stubby legs of the Treeish, toppling them one by one as they tried to move at Brann.
The Treeish holding Brann screamed, a deep hooming sound that cut off abruptly as the demon shivered suddenly to flakes of something like dried mushroom. Brann leaped at a second Treeish, one rocking onto its feet after Jaril tripped it; avoiding the arms that whipped snake quick at her, she got it from behind and flattened her hands against its sides, holding onto it through all its gyrations as she drained the life out of it, screaming and screaming at the agony of what she was doing, but going on and on.
While Brann scrambled desperately to survive and the children fought with her, Ahzurdan stood by the door, frozen, all his ambivalences aroused. He watched Brann struggle, he listened to her scream, he wanted to see her humiliated, hurt; he loathed this in himself, despaired when he had to acknowledge it. But he couldn’t make himself act.
Minutes passed. The second Treeish died. For a breath or two, Brann stood trembling, unable to make herself endure that agony again, then she sank her teeth into her lip until she drew blood and threw herself at the third.
Yaril deflected a snatch of fire from the fight and spat it at Ahzurdan; it missed, being meant to miss, but it singed his ear and burnt away the ends of a wide swatch of his hair.
Startled out of his self-absorption, he roused will and memory, took a quick guess at the essence of the demons, assembled his shout, his hand gestures, and in a burst like a storm striking drove the demons from this reality.