DANNY: Get rid of Amortis first, then sure. Otherwise, with the smother getting heavier as we get closer to the hills, just breathing is going to make me sweat.
BRANN: Then you’d better busy yourself deciding what you can do now. Yaro, what about you and Jay? How many could you stun how fast?
YARIL: Jay and I working together, um, couple dozen a minute. Listen, that won’t work, same reason it wouldn’t work going round them. With that many sitting on those hills, there’s bound to be one or two we miss who’ lets out a yell and there we are, nose-deep in landfolk. Another thing you better think about, you can’t get through them without riding up to them somewhere, announcing your interest as ’twere, and once that’s done, guess what else is going to happen. Bramble, Jay and I, we went round and round on this. Remember how the Chained God shifted you and Danny’s sires poppop back and forth across that ship? We thought about that, we thought about it so much we just about overheated our brains. We figured Amortis could do the same if she took a notion to, so you and Danny have to cross the line without getting close to it. We figured we could gnaw on that idea till we went to stone without getting anywhere. We figured we can fly across with no difficulty, it’s you and Danny here who have the problem, so it’s you and Danny who have to come up with the answer.
DANNY Roll back a sec, stun them? since when and how?
YARIL: Um, Jay took a look at your stunner, remember? He figured a way to repattern a part of his body to produce the same effect, he powered it from his internal energy stores, tested it on those baby assassins. You saw the results.
DANNY: So I did. Repatterning… mmm.
While Brann and Yaril chewed over the problem of acting without being seen to act, Danny Blue withdrew into himself to track down a wisp of an idea. Once upon a time when Daniel Akamarino was very new among the stars and still feeling around for what and who he was, he signed onto a scruffy free trader called the Herring Finn and promptly learned the-vast difference between a well-financed, superbly run passenger line and the bucket for whose engines he was suddenly responsible. And not only the engines. He was called on to repair, rebuild or construct from whatever came to hand everything the ship needed of a propulsive nature. One of those projects was a lift sled for loading cargo in places so remote they not only didn’t have starports, they very often didn’t have wheels. He’d rebuilt that thing so many times it was engraved into his brain. And with a little prodding Danny Blue found he could retrieve the patterns. From his other progenitor he culled the memory of his lessons in Reshaping, one of the earliest skills a Sorceror’s apprentice had to master. Hour on hour of practice, until he could shut his eyes and make the shape without error perceptible to the closest scrutiny which he got because Settsimaksimin was a good teacher whatever other failings he might have. There was still the problem of power. He decided to worry about that after he knew whether or not he could shape a sled. I need something to work on, he thought, something solid enough to hold Brann and me, but not too heavy.
He got to his feet and wandere-d through the house. The beds were too clumsy, besides they were mainly frame and rope with a straw paillasse for a mattress and billowing quilts. He fingered a quilt, thinking about the nip in the air once the sun went down, shook his head and wandered on. Everything that caught his eye had too many problems with it until he reached the kitchen and inspected the hard-used worktable backed into an alcove around the corner from the cooking hearth. The tabletop was a tough ivory wood scarred with thousands of shallow knifecuts, scrubbed and rubbed to a surface that felt like satin; it was around twelve centimeters thick, two meters wide and three long (from the positioning of the cuts at least eight women gathered about it when they were making meals or doing whatever else they did there). He fetched a candle, dropped into a squat and peered at the underside. Looks solid, he thought, have to test it. Hmm, those legs… if they don’t add to much weight, they might be useful, some sort of windscreen… mmm, the front four anyway, whichever end I call front… how’m I going to get this thing out where I can see what I’m doing? Ah! talking about seeing, I’m going to have to set up a shield. If I can. He rose from the squat, set the candle on the table and hitched a hip beside it, unwrapped and began to finger his anger, his resentment of the constraints laid on him, his frustration. Daniel Akamarino went where he wanted when he wanted, Ahzurdan was constrained only by his internal confusions, whatever he wanted or needed he had the power to take if some fool tried to deny him. Danny Blue was too young an entity to know much about who and what he was, but he resonated sufficiently with his progenitors to feel a bitter anger at the Chains the god had put on him. He felt the compulsion clamp down on his head when he tried to give voice to that anger; he could not do, say or even think anything that might (might!) work against the god. He knew, though he had deliberately refrained from thinking about it, that he suffered the smother without trying to fight it because it offered-or seemed to offer-an escape for him, a way he could thwart the god without having to fight the compulsion. After the landfolk shut down their ambushes, he’d ridden relaxed under it exerting himself just enough to keep from being crushed, smiling out of vague general satisfaction as the weight of the smother increased and the possibility of action diminished. He carried that satisfaction into dinner and beyond, but somewhere in the middle of the discussion, he lost it. The Hand of the God came down on him harder than the smother, find the answer, find it, no more dawdling, I’ll have no more excuses for failure, failure will not be permitted. Get through that line however you can, stomp the landfolk like ants if you have to, do whatever you have to, but bring me BinYAHtii.
He wiped the sweat off his face, beat his fist on the tabletop until it boomed, working off some of the rage that threatened to explode out of the cramping grip of the god and blow the fragile psyche of Danny Blue into dust. He might be young and wobbly on his feet, but he had a ferocious will to survive. Not as Ahzurdan, not as Daniel Akamarino. As Danny Blue the New.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
He looked up. Brann was standing in the arch of the alcove looking worried. He opened his mouth to explain but his tongue wouldn’t move and his throat closed on him. It was forbidden to think, do or say anything against the god. His face went hot and congested as he wrestled with the ban; he felt as if he were strangling on the words that wouldn’t come out She came to him, put her hand on his arm. “Never mind,” she said, “I know.”
He slammed fist against table one last time, sighed and stood up. “Help me turn this thing over.”
Brann pushed her
“You wouldn’t understand. Why turn the table over?”
“Don’t want to talk about it, you know why.”
“Ah. Can the changers help?”
“No. You take that end, I’ll take this. Watch the legs. -
“Better move the candle first, unless you’re planning to burn the house down. If you want light, why not touch on the wall lamps?”
“Lamps?” He looked up. There were ten glass and copper bracket lamps with resevoirs full of oil spaced along the walls of the alcove two meters and a half above the floor; he hadn’t noticed them because he hadn’t bothered to look higher than his head. “Do you know how irritating a woman is when she’s always right? Here.” He thrust the candle at, her. “Light the ones on your side.”
When the table was inverted and lay with its legs in the air, Danny Blue knelt on it and thumped at various portions of it to make sure the wood was solid; finished with that, he sat on his heels and looked thoughtfully at Brann. “You fed Ahzurdan, you think you can do that for me?”