Abeyhamal spoke.
“You chase them. I couldn’t light a match.” Abeyhamal spoke.
“This horse won’t go. You want me to get back to the BeeHouse, you figure out a way.”
Sense of impatience.
Faan let her head fall back against a post, closed her eyes and waited. I can be as stubborn as you. It’s easy when it’s the only choice I’ve got. In her lap Ailild was a vibrating warm spot, purring like a dozen cats.
Abeyhamal spoke.
Faan groaned. “You would. Vema, vema, give me a minute. K’laan!” Her feet burned, she was blistered and scraped, stone-bruised and nettle stung-they were dead nettles, but that only meant they broke apart and rode away on her legs. “Off you go, Liki.” Yelping and groaning some more, she gathered in the boots, draped the cloak over her arm, pulled herself up and tottered up the slope until she was standing on the dusty inlay between the first two piers that supported the Bridge. “I’m here. Do it.”
A warm sticky heat flowed through her, honey mead fermenting in her, cadentha honey, the sweet-sweet perfume of cadenthas strong about her. It erased her fatigue, smoothed out her cuts and scrapes, healed her bruises and rashes, filled her with energy-a temporary energy; she had a felling it would burn away fast.
Abeyhamal spoke.
“Verna, vema, on my way.” She started across the Bridge, working up to a fast lope, her bare feet splatting on the wood. Wild Magic came swooping up and whirled about her, thick gray fog sweeping along with her, a slightly darker scrap of mist among the other wisps drifting along the River.
The guards were leaning against the Approach Pillars, caps pulled down over their eyes; they were more than half-asleep, bored with watching a Bridge go nowhere.
Faan slid between the drays and trotted past them, a patch of fog flowing off the Bridge. She darted into the nearest wynd and stood shaking and panting, the Wild Magic swirling around her giggling and niggling at her, a thousand small voices impossible to understand because there were too many of them.
She wiped at her forehead, made a face at the grime on her palm, though it was hard to see the hand through the agitated mist. Ahsan, ahsan, my friends, I’ll see you later, hmm? I have to rest. I can’t go anymore. She made a dismissing gesture she’d learned from the Sibyl.
More moree, sweetee, honey, the Wildings teased at her, tch ‘ikee sweetee, we-ee like thee.
Go home, friendlings, there’ll be more. I said it be-
fore and wasn’t it true? Go rest and be ready. She wiped the sweat from her head as the silver bubbles went swirling away, vanishing like soap bubbles into the hardpan of the wynd.
Without warning or explanation Abeyhamal, too, was gone.
› › ‹ ‹
There were people in the wynds and the byways, trudging to work in the first light. She hurried across Verakay Lane and turned down Vallaree Wynd; it was dark and empty except for the occasional sleeper recovering from a spree in a Mulehouse on Verakay. She relaxed and slowed. “Almost home, Liki. Ooooh, I would love a long hot bath. Well, I’ll have to be satisfied to crawl into bed and sleep a week. “
Ailiki made a sound, another of her almost-words, then pricked up her ears. She scratched into an all-out run, vanished around a bend in the walkway.
“Huh? I do wish you could talk, Aili my Liki.” She rubbed drowsily at her eyes. “Save a lot of-trouble.”
Ailiki came racing back, every hair on her body standing erect. She scrabbled to a stop in front of Faan, reared on her hind legs, pawed the air, dropped to four feet, reared again. “Ne ne ne,” she squealed at Faan. “Ne ne ne.”
“Not something else! Abeyhamal! Hai! God! I need information. You don’t have to DO anything, just tell me what’s going on?”
Nothing.
“Verna, vema, Riverman was right. You can only depend on them for muddle and messing up.” She listened. “I don’t hear anything. Ah well, Liki, we’ll go along slow slow till you start having fits again. Hmm. I suppose I could climb up the back of Emaur’s Mule-house and see what’s happening… you understand what I’m saying?” She chuckled as Ailiki sat up, clapped her delicate black hands together. “I suppose that means you do. Let’s go, my Liki.”
She left Vallaree Wynd, followed Ailiki deeper into the Edge through several shadowy silent ways, then back again until she was behind Emaur’s, stepping cautiously over the sprawled drunks that were as ordinary here as the dead weeds along the back wall. She rested her head a moment against the wall. Tired. So tired. Sighing, she caught hold of a protruding brick, levered herself to a foothold on the sill of a shuttered window.
As she picked her way across the cluttered roof-broken tables, cracked jars, all kinds of debris from the bar, Emaur was a compulsive hoarder, never threw anything away-she was starting to hear an intermittent rhythmic roar; it was far off still, but it made her nervous.
She knelt by the parapet overlooking Verakay Lane, scowling toward the Sokajarua, the rising sun in her eyes. The roar grew louder and more ominous and the morning wind brought her whiffs of burning oil.
Ailiki ran up her body, jumped onto the parapet and stood hissing, her body arched, her tail stiffly straight.
For a moment longer the Lane was full of people, beggars, street singers, Utsapisha and her grandaughters, Louok the Nimble, Mama Kubaza and her band, Muth Maship and his dancers, porters and sweeps, traders from the ships, workers plodding along to the factories on the far side of the Iron Bridge, shopkeepers sweeping dust off their stoops and unlocking their shutters-then they were gone, as if some magus had snapped thumb against finger and banished them.
BURN BURN BURN. There was a flicker of light beyond the bend. faint, nearly lost in the brightness of the sun. BURN BURN BURN. And a thunder of boots beating the hard dry dirt of the Lane. BURST BURN
BURN.
The front lines of a mob of young Cheoshim marched around the bend, torches held high, black boots swinging and hitting the earth in unison. A STRIKER band, much bigger than the one that had chased her.
“Beehouse. I know it.” Faan groaned, pushed away from the wall. “Come on, Liki. We’ve got to warn them.” Cursing the clutter, she stumbled across the roof and climbed down, ran along the wynd to the back door of the Beehouse.
As doors always did when she needed to go through them, the back door sprang open, slammed against the wall. Faan caught it as it bounded back, ran across the kitchen and up the stairs. She kicked at Reyna’s door. “Up, up, there’s a mob coming.” She ran on, banged on Dawa’s door, Areia’s, hammered on the Kassian’s door. “Tai, Tai, they’re coming for us. We have to get out of here.”
She stood panting in the hallway, swaying with fatigue, blinking sweat out of her eyes as the bedroom doors opened.
Tai shouted the others to silence. “What is it, Fa? Where’ve you been?”
“Never mind that, tell you later. There’s a mob, I don’t know how many, Cheoshim, coming down the lane, coming here, I’m sure of it. STRIKER band. Yelling burn, waving torches. We’ve got to get away.”
Tai closed her eyes, grimaced. “Diyo, I can smell it. Areia, fetch Panote, will you? Reyna, you and Dawa collect bedding, clothes, any coin you’ve got stowed away. Fa, I know you’re tired, but get what you can. And be ready, totta, we’re going to need you. SHE has said. All of you, we’ll meet in the kitchen, five minutes, that’s all you’ve got.”
The mass of Cheoshim filled the Lane wall to wall, boot heels hitting the dirt in unison, torches waving. BURN BURN BURN.
A single man walked before them, a tall ebon figure in a torn and ragged robe, gray-streaked hair in a tangle, red eyes glaring over a gray-streaked beard, a staff in one hand, the other held out before him, palm out, fingers pointing to the sky, a bloody sky with a bloody sun just breaking free of the horizon.