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dripped the bread into her tea, worried off a bite, and sat chewing at it.
Britt laughed at her, began telling her about the year he spent as a slave on
a Pallah estate some distance north of Dum Besar.
Two more days passed.
Noon the third day; Skeen hauled Britt his midday meal and joined him on the
stone.
The Ykx came spiraling down through the hot gold noon air, wrapped in a
shimmering sphere twisted from the sunlight. He hovered before the stone,
covered in fur like the guide, a short plush shading from a pale amber hardly
darker than day-old cream (over his chest and the fronts of his upper arms) to
a darkish gold-brown about the color of a dark bay horse. His flight skins
draped like a cloak along his sides, cream on the front, bay on the back. He
wore a vee-shaped harness passing from groin to shoulders with horizontal
straps, the leather elaborately inlaid with metal and gemstones, joining the
two slants of the vee. All light and airy and elegant (her fingers twitched
with a quiet greed), yet the mechanism that worked the lift bubble was
concealed there, and probably several weapons that could do disastrous things
to flesh and bone.
He touched down on the stone; the bubble dissolved and he stood looking from
one to the other with deepset amber-crystal eyes.
All doubt flashed away. "Raaal lennn." The word came out in a drawl of vowels
and an en that was a quivering hum.
The Ykx heard her, lost his calm for a fragment of an instant. "What does that
mean to you?" He struggled to keep his voice even, but didn't quite manage it,
a beautiful fluting voice that couldn't help playing with the syllables of
Trade-Min until they were barely comprehensible.
"I am a thief," she said.
"You admit it so casually?"
"You asked me to explain. Will you listen or lecture me?"
Britt stared from one to the other, saw they'd forgotten him. He'd said to
her, what you get depends on what you have to trade. She had something to
trade all right and from the look of it, the Ykx would sell his firstborn to
get it.
"I will listen."
"In the course of playing my trade I had acquired certain objects." She gazed
blankly at the Ykx, memories suddenly vivid. Buzzard's storeroom, wandering
about too restless to sit, still fuming at Duncan; she'd kicked him off
Picarefy to Picarefy's delight, then fought with him half across Revelation.
What am I, garbage dealer? All his fault, that wart, that& It had been a
miserable trip, that one. Low-grade artifacts, her timing off, her nose
half-ruined by a frag with Duncan because he messed up her deal with the
locals, almost getting them both caught. One of those locals was a hulk who
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decided he wanted a hack at a foreign woman and challenged Duncan for her. The
shithead wouldn't let her deal with that walking gonad no, he had to show off
his muscles and his training. "While gold can be spent anywhere, other things
need a specialist to handle them. In the shop where this person did his
business I saw quite by chance a number of objects the dealer had just
acquired. Among them was a plaque with a low-relief carving of a being much
like you; and there are objects with lines and forms much like those on your
harness. I found them interesting and asked about them. Rallen work, the
dealer said. He'd purchased them from a young man only an hour before; that's
why he remembered the name, but he knew nothing of the world where the young
man had acquired the objects, nor did anyone else I spoke to."
"Were they old or perhaps recently made?"
"Recent. It is true. This is my profession. Old things bring higher prices.
Several of the objects were cast in bronze; you know the patina that age
brings to bronze. It can be faked, I don't deny that; there was no question of
faking, that bronze was new, almost raw. Why would a man however young and
inexperienced destroy half the value of such pieces by removing that patina?
To say nothing of the work required. I can't see any reason for that, perhaps
you can."
"Noooo& " The word was a long shivery sigh. "What do you want?"
"To go back. The Gate is closed. Open it for me."
The folds of the Ykx's flight skins shifted and stiffened, dark blood running
in veins that had been pale before. He blinked slowly, made a complex gesture
she couldn't read. "You have been candid, sinsa, let me be equally candid.
This is the last Gather on Mistommerk and it is beginning to die." He went
silent again, battered by a hope he was afraid to host. "What you bring& " he
said finally, "if we can believe& don't be offended, please, we dare not
believe too easily " His hands moved over his harness. "I must, I must confer
You'll wait? Ah, my mind rots. Of course you will wait. I will return.
Tomorrow. Yes. Tomorrow." The glow thickened about him and he rose in a
graceful sweep toward the top of the cliffs, flattening on the air when he was
high enough, soaring swiftly away. Britt frowned at her. "That was real?"
"Yes."
"You're pretty damn sure about those things you saw."
"That's my business and I'm pretty damn good at it."
"So I heard. Also that you're slippery as half-melted ice but you keep your
word once you give it." He slid off the stone "You've bought your Key. They'll
back and fill a bit, but they're hooked. Bona Fortuna kissed you today."
"About time." Skeen strolled beside him toward the camp. "I was getting to
know the dark twin a bit too well."
The sky was thick with dark flakes the moment the sun was high enough to wake
the thermals. Skeen came from her cabin with her bucket of bath water, saw
them, and laughed.
"Word's out." Britt's voice. She looked around, saw him leaning against the
wall of his hut.
"Looks like," she said. "What now?"
"Go sit, both of us. Until they decide to talk."
"Djabo's overbite!"
Shortly after noon the next day three Ykx came drifting down to the bargain
stone.
They questioned Skeen intensively, probing as far as she would let them into
her background (they didn't know the right questions and she could lead them
round and round without appearing to evade whenever she didn't want to
answer), taking her over and over the incident at the Buzzard's, squeezing
everything they could out of her memory, detailed descriptions of the things
she saw, the reasons she connected them to the Ykx, why couldn't she remember
more, who was the youth who sold the things, where did he get them, how could
she possibly find him after seven years with so much room to disappear in? All
that and more, over and over. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]