Before he finished the question, the door opened. Their guard blinked, then slid from his chair, sprawling in an insensate heap on the floor. A man stood in the doorway, a stunner in his hand. “Listen,” he said. Interlingue. Posa Ala’s eyes gleamed. “The three of you are worth about seven thousand gelders to me the day I set you down on Helvetia. You coming?”
Posa Ala shook the chain. “You blind?”
“No.” The man grinned at them. “Just wanting no argument if one of you’s not inclined to trust me.”
Otsut shivered; Posa Ala touched her arm. “Leave this to me, sweet one. Trust isn’t in it. Give us a name. I think I know you. Make me sure of it.”
The man raised a brow, not the one touched by the scar. “Quale. Ship Slancy Orza.”
Posa Ala grinned. “Yah so. Five years back. The Swart Allee, University. You had a friend with funny fur.”
“That was a busy night. I don’t remember a Kakeran in the mix.”
“I was on the bottom of the pile when you showed up; by the time I worked loose you and your friend were kiting out with half a dozen Proctors on your tail. I heard later you led them on a pretty chase and lost them in the Maze. But reminiscences, however pleasant, can wait for a more propitious place and time. I presume you’ve got a cutter on you that can handle this steel.” Once again he shook the chain.
“Better than that.” Quale dipped into his pouch, tossed an autopick to Posa. “We’re parked on the roof. A skip. You know this place better than I do; we couldn’t do much groundwork because we didn’t know you’d be here until yesterday morning. Any guard checks due soon?”
“No. They airship us over, lock us in with some cretin like that fool there and forget us till morning.” Posa Ala examined the pick, smiled as if he’d found something good to eat and clicked it home. When his collar was off, he turned to Otsut. “Not just us, eh?”
“Right.”
“Seven thousand gelders, you say?”
“More or less. Delivered on Helvetia, if that bothers you.”
“Nice.” As he moved over to Hanu, Otsut pulled off the collar and flung it away from her. “Who’s offering?”
“For you, seven wives and some frazzled male relatives. “
Posa Ala grinned. He watched Hanu remove his collar, wipe his fingertips on his tunic. “That’s finished. Let’s go.”
“Pick first.”
“You’re a cautious man. I wouldn’t have thought it.”
“I never saw a deader who looked like he was having much fun. Move it, will you, I’ve got another stop to make tonight.”
4. LEDA ZAG.
Place: Raz EFKLARA MARKAT at the southern edge of the Grass, the western lobe of the Duzzulkas.
Headprice: 7000 gelders.
A hand clamped down hard on her mouth; close to her ear, a male voice whispered, “Listen.” Interlingue. She relaxed and moved her head slightly to let the intruder know she’d heard. The hand came off. “One Nameless wants you back. You want to come?”
She sat up cautiously. Enough moonlight filtered through the slats to show her the man beside her, him who thought he was her master; he was lying with his eyes cracked, his mouth sagging half open. She poked at the soft flesh of his upper arm. He didn’t change expression or move. “Stunned?”
“Yes. Well?”
“You really need an answer?” She threw the covers off her legs, slid from the bed. “Let me get dressed.”
She was tiny, maybe a hand taller than Pels; her breasts were suggestions, her pubic hair a few silky threads. She looked about twelve, but he knew from the data provided by ti Vnok that she was over a hundred; her genes had been scrambled to keep her a pedophile’s darling. She moved quickly about the room, selecting what she wanted to wear, shoving jewelry and bibelots into a sack, not a wasted movement. She was back in moments, her eyes glittering, the loot bag slung over her shoulder; she was dressed in a loose robe that swayed about her ankles; it had long sleeves cuffed at the wrist and a high neck; she’d pulled on soft boots, her feet made no sound on the floor. “Let’s go.”
Altogether I collected twenty-seven slaves from the Duzzulkas and three transfer stations. Then I began on the cities of the Kuzeywhiyker Littorals.
Night after night, explaining who I was and what I was doing and why I was doing it, packing individuals of assorted shapes, sizes and dispositions into the skip and keeping them happy until I decanted them at the Base. In the shelters Kumari stocked and policed, the numbers increased in drips and spurts. It was coin piling up for us, but it was also hard labor, boring, sometimes dangerous, mostly sitting in an overloaded skip, freezing my tail and wishing for a coat of fur like Pels and sorry I ever got into the rescue scam. It was coping with Adelaar who was fretting about her business and what was happening to it without her, it was soothing the Hanifa, who got more nervous and mistrustful as each day slid past. Blessed Kumari, she kept them both off my neck as much as she could. The days did pass. Day by interminable day, they passed. Never again. Never ever again. I was not in love with pain. Or sweat work. But I’d given my word and I meant to keep to it.
5. ILVININ TAIVAS, SUKSI ICHIGO, SHNOURO, SLEED TOK and others not on the list.
Place: AYLA GUL SAMLIKKAN, eastern Littoral.
Headprice: ILVININ TAIVAS: 5000 gelders; SUKSI ICHIGO:1500 gelders; SHNOURO: 2500 gelders; SLEED TOK: 1000 gelders.
The city was burning when I brought the skip down low over the rooftops and tiptoed around clots of trouble until I managed to slip onto the roof of the pen at the textile factory. The streets were thick with homegrown guards and Tassalgans shooting sprays of pellets at the yizzies whining overhead and scrambling away from gouts of fire as the inklins retaliated. Gangs of youngers were screaming words that didn’t exist in the vocab I learned from, darting across housetops and through alleys behind the men in the streets, running dangerously close to count coup on them, scrambling yip-yip-yip away around corners or leaping from roof to roof, waving the paint guns they’d modified to squirt acid drained from eksasjhi veins, the eksasjhi being a lethargic crustacean that lived in the shallows all along the east coast. It left a knotty purple scar that marked the head coup for all to see and silently gloat over, it was briefly agonizing and did not do much for the target’s eyesight if it happened to spatter into his eyes. A hit on the head and the yell was yipyip ya TEN. A hit on a torso was yipyip ya ONE. No scar, at least none visible. A leg was five, a hand six. Houses were burning, men were burning, inklins shot out of the sky were screaming as their firetanks burst over them and they burned or lay with shattered bodies among the bodies of the men they fought, children fell from roofs or squirmed and screamed in the hands of men who beat on them with limber gray prods.
While Pels drifted about the cluttered roof, checking the shadows, making sure no guards or homeless grasslanders were sleeping up there, we didn’t want some local waking up at the wrong time and yelling, I crouched by the trap, set the pick working on the lock, then I settled on my heels and looked around. No yizzies buzzing over this quarter; the nearest noise was half a dozen streets away and moving off toward the bayshore, but there was nothing to keep the inklins away. If they took a notion to fire this place, they could be here in seconds. Nothing clears the sinuses like knowing you’re not just a fool, you’re a damnfool.