Karrel Goza blinked. “How do you usually think?”
“No.” He jerked his thumb at the sky, the tremble gone out of his hand. “That. There’s whispers. I didn’t believe them before. It is true? Have you and her figured a way to get at it?”
Oversoul’s empty navel, Karrel Goza thought, I talk too much. “Nonsense,” he said aloud. “How could we? I was talking about Family matters.”
Zaraiz grinned. His black eyes glittering, he bounced to his feet, so much energy in him, if someone touched a match to him, he’d explode. “Right,” he said. “All right. I’ll make a deal. The Slimes’ll park our yizzies for now, if so you make us part of it.” He folded his thin arms, hugged himself as if those arms had strength enough to control what burned in him. The wind blew strands of curly hair across his eyes, his mouth; he ignored that and stood there, frozen fire, dangerous to his enemies, nearly as dangerous to his kin. When Karrel Goza failed to answer at once, his excitement blew out and the suspicion and resentment that smoldered under his skin burned hotter in its place. “Or aren’t Memeli worthy? Aren’t we good enough for you?”
Karrel Goza closed his eyes. I do not need this, he thought, Prophet touch my lips or no, anything I say will be wrong. If there was just some way I could drop him in a hole somewhere until… hole? Why not. He smiled. He couldn’t help smiling though he knew Zaraiz Memeli would see and misinterpret it. He opened his eyes, got wearily to his feet. “How much weight will your yizzy lift?”
“You?” Zaraiz was still suspicious but beginning to radiate a tentative triumph.
He’s quick, Karrel Goza thought, good, he might even be useful. “Yes.”
“You and me, no problem.”
“Tomorrow night. I’ll take you out, but you’ll have to make your own pitch. Another thing, you don’t like House discipline, but the worst thing that can happen to you here is divorcement. Act up there and you could find slave steel around your neck. I’ll back you, for what that’s worth; I think you might be useful, a clever boy can get in places a man can’t reach. All I’m saying is, it won’t be easy. Come along.”
Zaraiz followed him down the stairs. Not a word from the boy. The washcourt was empty, a few raindrops were splatting down, making pockmarks on flags whitened by decades of splashes from soap, starch, and bleach. Karrel stopped, turned. “Well?”
He watched Zaraiz Memeli struggle to make up his mind; his impatience was gone, he was too tired to care what the decision was. As the boy shifted from foot to foot, he could almost write the script for what was passing through his cousin’s head. He looked his age at last, vulnerable, wanting desperately for the offer to be real, afraid of trusting it because the whole of his short life had taught him that adults invariably lied to him, broke promises without a qualm, disregarded his ideas and his desires. He kept snatching glances at Karrel Goza as if trying to surprise him into betraying his real intentions. It was no good, of course; either he trusted and said yes, or he rejected the offer and took the consequences. Karrel Goza waited, shoulders slumped, eyes half-closed.
Zaraiz Memeli’s eyes burned black again. He licked his lips, nodded, a short sharp jerk of his head. “When do we go?” he said; his voice cracked again, but this time he ignored it. “Where do we start from?”
“Tonight. The wasteflat out beyond Pervas Gorp’s last warehouse. Hour after midnight. You can manage that?”
Zaraiz snorted, his thin body stiff with scorn. “I go back on punishment?”
“Tubers don’t spade themselves. Use the time to think, eh?” Karrel Goza rubbed at his forehead. Good little boy again? I don’t think so.
“Hunh-eh!” Arms swinging, torso swaying, the boy took himself away from there.
Karrel Goza watched his pass through the washcourt’s wicket. Maybe Elli can handle him, he thought. He yawned. If I’m yizzying to the Mines tonight, I’d better get some sleep.
XI
collecting:
Place. Raz KALAK KAVANY, northeast lobe of the Duzzulkas.
Headprice: 2,500 gelders.
She was tall and thin and bald and she moved with an explosive grace even when loaded with chains and driven about the dance floor by electric lances and glass-pointed longwhips. She danced grimly, knowing she had to please them, refusing to please them by cringing or pleading. Sweat streaked her coppery skin, her yellow slit-pupiled eyes were half-closed, her mouth squared into a snarl. Chunky high-arched feet lifted, leaped, landed without a sound, moving too swiftly for the whip thongs to tangle about them, her limber body flowed and twisted away from the jabbing lance points. The dance went on and on, she sweated more copiously until her skin had a diffuse glow as it reflected the yellow light from the lamps clumped on the walls of the open court, but she showed few other signs of flagging.
The music went ragged and finally broke off. The lances clattered down, the whipmen coiled their whips. She stood in the center of the dance floor, wary and angry, her chest heaving, her arms and legs trembling. She wasn’t a mammal so she hadn’t even vestigial breasts, but she was powerfully female; fear and anger had tagged her sweat with a musky scent that spread like a mist across the court, exciting the men who’d been watching her. The court cleared rapidly and her handler took her away.
A hand came down on her mouth; a beard tickled her face, a whisper her ear. “Listen.” Interlingue. She stopped her instinctive struggle. “Chathat adey Elathay,” the whisper went on, “they sent us for you. You want out?”
She touched the hand. After a hissing, near-silent laugh as soon as her mouth was freed, she pushed up; chains clinked when she held out her arms. Her visitor moved around her; she saw him as a long flickering shadow. An autopick hummed and the cuffs fell away from her wrists.
“Anything you want here?” A low mutter.
“Sss.”
“I take it that means no. Wait there.” Like a walking beam he crossed the room, opened the door a crack and clicked his tongue. A double click answered him. He beckoned to her and slipped outside.
There were two others waiting in the skip. She looked at them, recognized neither but knew from the smell of them they’d been slaves like her. “You’ve had a busy night,” she told the man.
“Might say so. You want to get in? We have a long way to go before dawn.”
She swung up, settled in the space the man and woman made for her. “How much you collecting for us?” She blinked. A short furry type she hadn’t seen before scrambled into the co’s seat up front; it wasn’t talking, so she didn’t comment.
“Works out to about two thousand gelders a head,” the man said, he leaned over the controls; she heard the hum as the skip’s liftfield came on, grunted as the skip kicked out of there.
“How many you plan to snatch?” she said.
“Couple hundred.”
“Not bad.” She laughed, a cat’s purr amplified. “Three tonight. You got a ways to go.”
“So we have.” He turned the skip and sent it racing south over the grass.
“Don’t get caught. Some things I want to do.”
“Bolodo?”
“Ssss.”
He chuckled. “I plan to be old and tired when I die, with plenty of sins to repent.”
She extruded a claw, scratched delicately at the skin behind her ear. “A good plan. I too.”
Place: Raz OSMUR ORTAEL, the westlobe of the Duzzulkas, 300 miles north of Gilisim Gillin.
Headprice: 1700 gelders.
He lifted the stone, eased it into the hollow prepared for it and began pressing the soft gold into place, working quickly but without hurrying, his small hands stronger than they looked. A gooseneck lamp was arched over the pad, giving him the concentrated light he needed; it wobbled as the door slammed open and a short heavy Huvved/Hordar halfbreed rushed over to him. Ukomayile caught the lamp before it tipped over, held it until it stabilized then went back to his work without bothering to look around.