“The quiet times can be good times, though they’re best when they’re shared.”
“Shared.”
“Mmmh.” Reyna lifted his hand, laid it on the silk that covered his thigh, bowed his head so the supple braids fell gleaming between him and the Mal. “You’re a visitor to Bthrroa Pili?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I haven’t seen you before. I’d remember you. You have a presence, I don’t know, I can’t describe it, but it’s there. Diyo, I’d remember you.”
The Mal fidgeted, flattered but nervous. He didn’t seem accustomed to compliments. “We’ve been on a Punish Raid. Into the Jinocaburs. It just happened that we returned to Fadogur this way.”
“Ah. I’ve heard stories. What is it like? What is it really like?” Reyna straightened, thrust his hand beneath the braids,, lifted them back behind his shoulder, settled them with a flirt of his head. “Hmm?”
The Mal sat stiffly, hands on knees, staring at the dark figures out on the floor, though Reyna had the feeling he wasn’t seeing them. After a few moments of silence he began talking, hesitantly at first as if he had trouble putting words together into coherent phrases.
Control, Reyna thought as he listened with the skill that courting strangers had given him. That’s it. He hasn’t opened himself to anyone for… years… probably. Abey’s Sting, I hate this… blood and pain and death… punishment raid, diyo oh diyo, he’s trying to justify the killing… he knows, surely he knows
… this is a blooding raid for those Cheoshim boys… him, too, I think… virgin in several senses…
As he talked, the Mal relaxed and warmed to Reyna who gentled him along, flattered him with soft exclamations and most of all listened with an intensity that shut the two of them into a small world of their own.
We were working from target to target, he said, along the border between the western flanks of the Jinocaburs and the Land. The last hit, it was on the tenth day we were over there, it was a mountain village, a cluster of stone houses built around a sheep barn. The barn was empty when we got there. It was just on sun-up, though that was hard to tell with all the mist hanging about, we’d been riding since moonset, running on rumor and the claims of our guide.
The men and older boys were gone, the women said they were out with the sheep. But they wouldn’t say where. They were lying, of course. It was a bandit pesthole, what we’d come to get. We put the headman’s wife in one of the houses and threw everything we could find that would burn in with her. Then we lit it. She was an old hag of a woman, had hands like nuts on strings. They still wouldn’t tell us where the men had gone, how we could find them. Stubborn. And stupid. We killed the weak ones and the old and the babies. They were useless. Worthless. Except as a message to the men. Strangled the guide, gutless fool, couldn’t even bring off a betrayal. The healthiest women we fetched back with us, turned them over to the Cheoshim Commander here in Bairroa Pili. Just got in last night.
He was detached, serene as he described it all-as if it had happened to someone else. Reyna murmured and urged him on, this was his profession and he was good at it, though there were times when he let the braids fall between them to hide his face as anger turned sour in his mouth.
› › ‹ ‹
The head drummer cupped his hands and beat a steady, monotonous toom toom toom toom…
Reyna looked up. The room was clearing rapidly. The Sriklcar’s slaves were hauling the last of the drunk and drugged up the stairs to the bedrooms. Dawa was nowhere in sight; likely he’d picked up an all-nighter with someone, even now he usually managed that. Jea was sitting at a table, a melancholy curve over the remnants of a drink, paying no attention to what was happening around him. “They’re closing. I have to go.”
“I want to see you. You haven’t told me your name.”
“Better not. I’m not what you think, young friend. I’m Salagaum not habatrize.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Ah.” Reyna got his feet. “I see. Let me tell you this. Find yourself a young habatrize, a pretty girl more your age. Ask her what a Salagaum is and she’ll tell you. It will come better from her. Easier. No, let me go. I have… enjoyed… listening to you.” He bent, touched the Mal’s shoulder briefly, then straightened. “Quiet shared is a blessing these days. Stay there. Please.” Without looking around, Reyna crossed the room to Jea.
They went out together, moving in weary tandem.
In the changing closet by the front door, Jea unbuckled his belt, curled it up, and dropped it in the cloth shoulderbag. “What was all that with the leatherman? Thlky-talk and no action, hmm?”
“Innocent murderer,” Reyna said. He unlaced his sandals, worked his toes. “What a night. Abey’s Sting, I’ve got enough k’pa in my gullet to… well, never mind. He doesn’t know what a Salagaum is, would you believe? Funny, you wouldn’t think it would be my feet giving me miseries.”
Jea pulled on his trousers, twitched the laces tight. “king it on?”
“I don’t think so.” Reyna shrugged out of his robe, rubbed his hands across his breasts. “Chumvay’s Nuh’m, one of them had more teeth than a waterhog.” He pulled a shirt over his head without bothering to undo the buttons.
“No breastband?”
“Tho sore.”
“How’d the leatherman manage to stay that ignorant?”
“In training for a Hero, I think. Vigils and fasts, you know.” Reyna wiggled his toes again, sighed and pulled on his boots. “I think he started a pash on me. Wish we could afford a chair, the way home gets longer every time.”
“Hmp.” Jea took down his hooded cloak, swung it around his shoulders. “Well, pash or no, I have a feeling the less you see of that one, the better off we’ll all be.”
› › ‹ ‹
The Wounded Moon was gibbous and low in the western sky and the night-torches had burned down to faint red glows when they left Jigambi’s Rendezvous.
Staying in the heavier darkness by the buildings on the west of the Sokajarua so they wouldn’t have to cross the street when they reached the Edge, eyes constantly moving, cloaks pulled tight about their bodies, Reyna and Jea strode rapidly along without speaking until they were off the pavement into the Edge, picking their way over the dirt ruts of Verakay Lane.
Reyna pushed the hood back, scratched vigorously under the pomaded braids behind his left ear. “Aaaah.” He kicked at a dirt clod, lurched as his foot dropped into a rut. “Sicuzi says the chain I ordered ‘s ready, but he’ll have to wait for his coin till next party.” He stepped out onto the high crown of the Lane, his moon-shadow jerking across the hardpan. Over his shoulder he said, “How’s your girlfriend?”
Jea drifted across, walked several minutes beside him before he answered. “Frightened,” he murmured. “She’s pregnant. Told me when I went to read the cards for her yesterday… no, day before, counting from now.” •
Reyna slapped his forehead. “Hoo-ah, my friend, you’ve got more nerve than me. You’re dead if her husband finds out. Cheoshim potzhead.”
“Well, it’s not something we can help, you know.” Reyna closed his hand over Jea’s shoulder, squeezed, then let go. “The baby, it’s yours?”
“She won’t say. Won’t say anything, just cries.”
“You better hope it isn’t. You know what the Cheoshim think of bleach in their bloodlines. What are you going to do if it’s yours and shows it?”
“I don’t know. She won’t leave him. I’ve tried. I’ve said we can go somewhere else. Well, we’d have to, wouldn’t we. She’s afraid.”
“Raised that way, what can you expect?”
“I know.”
They passed the scribbled walls of the school, rounded a bend, and saw a slight shadow gliding in and out of moonlight; it reached the Beehouse and went inside. No yanking on the bellpull, no waiting for Panote.
Neither of them said anything. They both knew who it was. Locks and bars shifted for Faan, shifted so automatically she didn’t even think about it.
› › ‹ ‹
Reyna climbed to his room, stripped and washed himself, everything wiped from his head but Faan and what he was going to do about her. He shrugged into a worn fleecy robe, pulled the belt tight, and sat in a chair staring at his door and trying to think.