“Time. You know how long it took me to check the full length of all four rings, maybe twenty minutes; this’ll go a lot faster. I’d say, ten minutes at most to do the ring sweeps, then we’d better go over the streets along the way to the hostel, zapping everything both sides in case sneaks are ambushed inside the houses. Say another five minutes, it’s not all that far from here.”
Brann threaded her fingers through her hair, cupped her hand about the nape of her neck and scowled at the floor. Ahzurdan cleared his throat, but shut up as she waved her other hand at him. A waiting silence. Daniel rubbed his shoulders against the wall, yawned. She lifted her head. “Go, kids, get it done as fast as you can, we’ll wait five minutes, then follow.”
Ahzurdan at point spreading his confusion over half Silagamatys, the four of them moved at a trot through the stygian foggy tag-end of the night, past bodies crumpled in doorways and under trees; through a silence as profound as that in any city of the dead. Halfway to the hostel the children came back, horned owls with crystal eyes and human hands instead of talons. One of the owls swooped low over Daniel, hooted, dropped the stunner into his hands and slanted up to circle in wide loops over them. They swept past the hostel and Kori slipped away. Daniel Akamarino watched her vanish into the shrubbery and spent the next few minutes worrying about her, when the building continued dark and silent, no disturbance, he relaxed and stopped looking over his shoulder.
8. Kori Piyolss Runs Into A Quiet Storm In The Shape Of Auntnurse.
SCENE: Quiet shadowy halls, doorless cells on both sides, snores, sighs, groans, farts, whimpers, creak of beds, slide of bodies on sheets, a melding of sleepsotmds into a general background hum, a sense of swimming in life momentarily turned low.
After a last look at Daniel Akamarino, Kori slid into the shrubbery of the Hostel garden, worked her way to the ancient wittli vine that was her ladder in and out of the sleeping rooms on the second floor. She tucked up the skirt, kicked off her sandals and tied them to her belt, set her foot in the lowest crotch and began climbing. The shredded papery bark coming to threads under her tight quick grip, the dustgray leaves shedding their powder over her, the thinskinned purple berries that she avoided when she could since they burst at a breath and left a stain it took several scrubbings to get rid of, the highpitched groans of the stalk, the secret insinuating whispers the leaves made as they rubbed together, these never changed, year on year they never changed, since the first year she came (filled with excitement and resentment) and crept out to spend a secret hour wandering about the gardens. Year on year, as she grew bolder, slipping slyly through the dangerous streets, only.a vague notion of the danger to give the adventure spice and edge, they never changed, only she changed. Now there was no excitement, no game, only a deep brooding anxiety that tied her insides into knots.
She reached out and pushed cautiously at the shutters to the small window of the linenroom, lost a little of her tension as they moved easily silently inward. One hand clamped around a creaking secondary vine, she twisted her body about until head, shoulders and one arm were through the window, then she let go of the vine and waved her feet until she tumbled headfirst at the floor; she broke her fall with her hands, rolled over and got to her feet feeling a little dizzy, one wrist hurting because she’d hit the stone awkwardly. She untied the sandals, set them on a shelf, stripped off the maid’s clothing, used the blouse to wipe her hands and feet, thinking ruefully about Daniel Akamarino’s comment; it was true then and doubly true now, no one would wear those rags. She dug three silvers out of her pouch, the last she had left of the hoard from the cave, rolled them up in the clothing, telling herself she would have done it anyway, Daniel didn’t have to stick his long nose in her business. She pulled her sleeping shift over her head, smoothed it down, eased the door open a crack and looked along the hall. Silence filled with sleeping-noises. Shadows. She edged her head out, looked the other way. Silence. Shadows. She slipped through the crack, managed to close the door with no more than a tiny click as the latch dropped home, ran on her toes to the room at the west end where the maids slept. No time to be slow and careful; dawn had to be close and the maids rose with the sun; she flitted inside, put the rolled clothing where she’d got it, on the shelf behind a curtain, and sped out, her heart thudding in her throat as one of the girls muttered in her sleep and moved restlessly on her narrow bed.
Struggling to catch her breath, she slowed as soon as she was clear of the room and crept along past the door-less arches of the sleeping cubicles; her own cubicle where she slept alone was near the east end of the Great Refectory. She was exhausted, her arms and legs were heavy, as if the god’s chains had been transferred to them, the old worn sandals dragged like lead at her fingers.
Sighing with relief, scraping her hand across her face, she turned through the arch.
And stopped, appalled.
AuntNurse sat on the bed, her face grave. “Sit down, Kori. There.” she pointed at the end of the bed.
Kori looked at the sandals she carried. She bent, set them on the floor, straightening slowly. Head swimming she sat on the bed, as far as she could get from her aunt.
“Don’t bother telling me you’ve just gone to the lavatory, Kori. I’ve been sitting here for nearly three hours.”
Kori rubbed at the back of her right hand, bruises were beginning to purple there, fingermarks. She didn’t know what to say, she couldn’t tell anyone, even AuntNurse, about the Drinker of Souls and the rest of them, but she couldn’t lie either, AuntNurse knew the minute she tried it. She chewed on her lip, said nothing.
“Are, you a maid still?”
Kori looked up, startled. “What? Yes. Of course. It wasn’t that.”
“May I ask what it was?”
Twisting her hands together, moving her legs and feet restlessly, Kori struggled to decide what she should do. Ahzurdan’s fog was still over this sector but it wouldn’t be there much longer. “You mustn’t say anything about it after,” she whispered. “Not to me, not to anyone. Right now HE can’t hear us, but that won’t last. Tres the next Priest. I’ve been trying to do something to keep him from being killed. Don’t make me say what, it’s better you don’t know.”
“I see. I beg your pardon, Kori. That is quite a heavy burden for your shoulders, why didn’t you share it?” Kori looked quickly at her, looked away. She didn’t have an answer except that she’d always hated having things done for her; since she could toddle, she’d worked hard at learning what she was supposed to know so she could do for herself. And mostly, people were stupid, they said silly things that Kori knew were silly before she could read or write and she learned those skills when she was just a bit over three. They took so long to understand things that she got terribly impatient (though she soon learned not to show it); the other children, even many of the adults, didn’t understood her jokes and her joys, when she played with words she got blank stares unless the result was some ghastly pun that even a mule wouldn’t miss. Not AuntNurse, no one would ever call AuntNurse silly or stupid, but she was so stiff it was like she wouldn’t let herself have fun. Without exactly understanding why, Kori knew that she couldn’t say any of this, that all the reasons she might make up for doing what she wanted to and keeping Tres trouble a secret, all those fine and specious justifications would crumble like tissuepaper under AuntNurse’s cool penetrant gaze.
“I suppose I really don’t need an answer.” Aunt-Nurse sighed. “Listen to me, Kori. You’re brighter than most and that’s always a problem. You’re arrogant and you think more of your ability than is justified. There’s so much you simply do not understand. I wonder if you’ll ever be willing to learn? I know you, child, I was you once. If you want to live in Owlyn Vale, if you want to be content, you’ll learn your limits and stay in them. It’s discipline, Kori. There are parts of you that you’ll have to forget; it will feel like you’re cutting away live flesh, but you’ll learn to find other ways of being happy. More than anything you need friends, Kori, women friends; you’ll find them if you want to and if you work at it, you’ll need them, Kori, you’ll need them desperately as the years pass. I was planning to talk to you when we got back.” She lifted a hand, touched her brow, let it drop back in her lap. “I’d still like to have that talk, Kori, but I’ll let you come if you want, when you want. One last thing, do you have any idea what your life would be like if you had to leave us?”