Warreven nodded, appeased. It had never occurred to 3im that the Concord Worlds must have once faced the same issues, the same questions, what was and wasn’t human, but it was reassuring to hear it said and to know what their decision had been. “Thanks. Yes, I’d like—I’d be grateful if you’d drive me. I just have to get some things.”
Ȝe pushed past Tatian into the hall and went into the kitchen to get more doutfire. Ȝer hands were clumsy on the lid, and it took 3im several seconds to shake loose another curl of the bark. Ȝe pocketed the rest of the box and turned back toward the door. The bathroom door was open, and 3e caught a glimpse of 3imself in the mirror above the tub: a thin person—herm—in black, one eye hidden by the black bandage. It was Agede’s image, Agede the Doorkeeper, and 3e lifted a fresh bottle of sweetrum in salute. Agede looked back at 3im, Agede with his bottle and his cane, and Warreven smiled fiercely, knowing what 3e was going to do. Ȝe collected a walking stick from the bedroom—red, not black, but it would do—and went back to the main room, lifted 3er bottle to 3er reflection as 3e passed. Tatian, blond hair and beard golden in the light from the media center, looked at 3im uncertainly, and Warreven grinned.
“I’m ready when you are.”
Tatian steered the rover through the darkened streets, empty except for the occasional—very occasional—hurrying figure. They ducked into doorways or side streets as the rover passed, and Tatian shook his head.
“I don’t like this. Are you sure—” He broke off then, shook away whatever else he would have said, but Warreven gave a rueful smile.
“Am I sure it’s smart, or am I sure I know what I’m doing?”
“Either.” Tatian negotiated the turn onto a narrow street, easing the rover around a shay drawn up to shield someone’s main doorway.
“I know what I’m doing,” Warreven answered, and hoped it was true. At least, he thought, I know what I’m planning.
Tatian nodded. “I don’t want to try to get too close to the Harbor Market. Is there someplace we can stash the rover— someplace we can get to, and get away from, fast, if we have to?”
Warreven frowned, then nodded. “Take the next left.”
Tatian turned obediently, and the rover slid down a suddenly brightly lit street between rows of brick-fronted warehouses. The heavy doors—ironwood, rather than true steel, but strong enough to keep out all but the most determined looters—were barred, security lights flickering their warning above the lock plates. At the end of the street, however, a space opened abruptly, shallow, but wide enough to keep the rover off the main traffic way. A pair of shays, one with company marks, the other without, were already parked there, and Warreven nodded to them.
“Good enough?” 3e asked.
“How far are we from the Market?” Tatian asked; but he was already easing the rover into the space between the shays.
“There’s a stair-street right there,” Warreven answered. “It leads down directly to the Market, comes out behind the auction platform—where the stage is now. Now a lot of people use it.”
Tatian nodded again. “All right. If we get separated, or if there’s trouble, we get away and meet back here. With any luck, everybody will take other streets.” He popped the rover’s doors and levered himself out of the compartment.
“You sound like you’ve done this before,” Warreven said, and followed.
Tatian sighed. “I got caught in a riot on Hermione when I was just starting out. It’s not something I particularly want to repeat.”
“Who does?” Warreven said, pleased with the lightness of 3er voice, and led the way down the half-lit stairway.
There was a shantytown at its foot, a cluster of maybe half a dozen shacks built with the cast-off wood of shipping crates and the occasional bright-blue sheet of plastic, tucked into the dubious shelter of a disused factory outbuilding. Warreven hesitated, but there was no easier way—and no time to turn back, 3e told 3imself, not if 3e wanted to get to the Market in time to deal with Temelathe. Behind 3im, 3e heard Tatian mutter a curse and ignored him, kept walking, setting an easy pace, down the last steps and out onto the paving.
A low fire was burning on the patch of bare ground between two of the huts. The sound of the drums came clearly from the Market, and someone, no more than a slim shape behind the fire, was tapping out a counterpoint on a hand drum. Another figure—male, or maybe mem—stood silhouetted against the flames, bottle in hand. Warreven ignored them and kept walking, aware of Tatian at 3er back, all the muscles in 3er back and sides protesting the sudden knotted tension. Ȝe was expecting catcalls, or worse, but heard nothing except the stutter of the drum, and then even that fell away, so that 3e was moving in step to the drums at the Market alone. At the edge of the Market, 3e could stand it no longer and looked back, to see the shanty folk standing silent, the man and the drummer joined now by a woman, child on hip, and then another and another, gender blurred by the shadows. Not knowing certainly why 3e did it, Warreven lifted 3er bottle in salute and turned back to the Market. The murmur of a name followed, not his own, and 3e heard Tatian swear again.
The Harbor Market was bright and abruptly crowded, light and shadow jagged against a sky black and emptied of stars. The crowd in front of the band platform was mixed, looked like a holiday crowd more than a protest, sailors and dockers in rough work trousers, wrap-shirts thrown on against the cool night air, dancing with ordinary people in rough-spun silks and shads. There were people from the wrangwys houses in a mix of ordinary and off-world clothes, and even a few genuine off-worlders, caught between curiosity and fear. Maybe a third of them—and every one of the odd-bodied, Warreven realized with a thrill of pleasure—wore the ranas’ multicolored ribbons, every color, any shade of every color, but not black or white. The air was thick with smoke, smelled of charcoal and feelgood and spilled liquertie; at the foot of the Gran’quai, in front of the barricade, a bonfire was lit. The smoke of it rolled off toward Ferryhead, carried by the fitful wind, almost white against the dark sky.
The band was drumming on the makeshift stage, playing a cheerful rhythm, a song 3e had danced to in the wrangwys houses. It still sounded festive, more of a celebration, Midsummer or Springtide rather than a rana protest, but then 3e saw the line of people between the bonfire and the barricade. They stood shoulder to shoulder across the end of the Gran’quai, and even at this distance 3e could see the firelight reflecting from metal—more metal than he had imagined the docks might possess, metal in chains, in bars, maybe even in the barrels of guns. The dull sheen reminded 3im of the ghost ranas, emphasized the defiant solidity of their stance, and 3e shivered, suddenly afraid again.
“Are you all right?” Tatian asked quietly, and Warreven nodded.
“Give me a minute,” 3e said, and sank down on the nearest of the fused-stone bollards that marked the first ring of stalls. Ȝer eye was aching again, streaks of light searing 3er sight; 3er neck throbbed, a dull pain that promised worse to come, and the cut was burning where 3er clothes had rubbed the bandage. Ȝe grimaced, tugging at the waist of 3er trousers, and lifted the sweetrum bottle to 3er lips. It was almost empty already, and 3e caught a crazed glimpse of the sky, a single pinpoint of light—a pharmaceutical satellite, almost certainly, not a star—blazing in a rainbow halo before 3e lowered the bottle. There was a flower lying at 3er feet.
Ȝe looked at it, startled, and looked up to see a woman standing a meter or so away, two fingers to her lips in conventional acknowledgment of the spirits. For an instant, the gesture was shocking—3e had meant it, had courted that identification, but it had been a long time, a decade, maybe two since 3e had worn the mask of any spirit—and then training reasserted itself. Ȝe lifted the bottle in salute, and another flower, this one blue with a gold heart, landed beside the first. Ȝe nodded to that giver as well—a pot-bellied, well-dressed man in company badges, who should probably have known better—and pushed 3imself to 3er feet.