Nebula Awards Showcase 2010 (38 page)

I paused in the posture of one trapped by a single thread of obligation, a good pose for getting people to open up.

“You have been nothing but kind to me. I am frightened, though, and don’t know where to trust.”

“I understand. You’re not the only one who’s run from danger. You are right to be suspicious of strangers.”

“If you would help me . . .” She twisted one hand in the other, reached up to fasten her veil across her lower face, hiding the flower on her cheek. “Why would you help me?”

“That is one of my callings.” I thought of the tapestry of my and Alanna’s past, woven to include a number of people we had rescued. The tapestry of the one who had rescued us intersected with our early history. He had moved on, leaving us with the charge of helping others, which meant threads of his life were woven with ours as ours continued. “If I do it correctly, it becomes your calling, too. Will you accept my help?”

She looked toward the curtain, with the wide world outside that she was a stranger to. She looked at me. I kept my face still.

“I will,” she said. “Thank you.”

I closed my eyes to let Alanna tell me what she thought. She thought,
Good
.

“The first thing I must do is give you a sigil,” I said.

“A sign on my hood?”

“An affiliation. Will you join my household?”

“What obligations does such a choice give me?”

I frowned. “At this point, it is nothing more than a mark on your clothing. You can choose Kinnowar, my mistress’s husband’s clan name, or you can join the houseless—that’s a spiral sign and means you are without affiliation. Little protection in that, but recognized status. Or you can go unveiled and uncovered in public, and proclaim your status as a country worker. Not a comfortable existence.”

“I will accept your mark,” she said.

I took four of the berries from her basket and made the mark of Gwelf ’s house on her hood in juice. It would wash out if she changed her mind.

This was just a disguise, but after I lifted my hand, I felt a kinship shadow between us. She raised her head and stared into my eyes, and even though her face was veiled, I knew she, too, sensed that something had changed.

She tucked her berry basket into the sleeve of her robe and followed me out of the tea house. She walked a step behind me as I finished shopping for the evening and morning meals. Then she came with me in our pod up to the mansion. We paused in the purification room to let scented smoke wash away the accretion of pollution we had picked up in our encounter with the outside world, and then moved toward the arch into the house.

Alanna waited there.

Milla saw her and hid behind me, clutching a fold of my robe. “Who is that?” she whispered.

“This is my mistress, Alanna Brigid Kinnowar. She will help you, too.”

“How do you know?”

“We are good friends,” I said.

Ha!
thought Alanna. She smiled wide and held out her hands. “Ser, how may I help you?”

Milla collected herself and stepped forward. She bowed to Alanna. “Ser,” she said in a low voice. “Thank you for having me here.”

“I welcome you, Ser,” said Alanna.

“Thank you,” Milla said again.

“Come into the kitchen,” I said. “I’ve a meal to prepare.” I led the way, Milla following, and Alanna after.

“I’ve put the name of your husband into search,” Alanna said as the two of them sat in the breakfast cozy. I stored everything I had bought at the market in the proper places, cold, dry, damp, warm, what each thing needed, and assembled ingredients for the night’s meal on the center table.

“You what?”

“Ylva and I have a link, so I know your story, Ser,” Alanna said. “I apologize for this violation of your privacy.” She put a projector on the cozy’s table. “What I’ve discovered disturbs me. This husband of yours is an important person on Linkan. He has two hundred fifty five wives already, and you are to make up the perfect four times four times four times four, two hundred fi fty six. This is the most wives anyone on the planet has. I think he’s the king. I need to do some more checking. He has already started a massive search for you. His minions are in the marketplace now, and people are telling them things.” She tapped the projector on. It showed an overview of the marketplace, people moving among the stalls, those searching for Milla tagged with red. An impressive mobilization of diverse forces. “Did your parent get much money for your sale?”

“I—I—” Milla clutched her hooded head. “She didn’t say. I thought not. Just enough to send my brother to university and keep my mother in food until she can find a career.”

“She sold you cheap, then,” said Alanna. “What’s special about you? Ah, the music.”

“The music?” she said faintly. “What do you know about that?”

“You left tracks on the net,” said Alanna, “and we followed them back to your home on Challis.”

“How could you? Challis is dead!”

“Everything gets recorded by someone. Your planet still exists in the netmem. So does your home. Your younger self, playing some keyboard on a wall. I prefer manufactured music, but Ylva was much moved by yours.”

“What?” Milla whispered.

Alanna coded instructions on the projector, and it produced a 3-D image of that view through Milla’s gold-gauze-shrouded window, Milla with her back to us, her fingers working over the stacked triple keyboards; black metal flower speakers sprouted from the pale gold wall. An older woman stood against the back wall, watching Milla play, her face blank.

Music spilled from the projector. I realized this was a different view than the one Alanna and I had studied earlier. This music was not about mysteries and promises. It was about being trapped in a box.

I stood by my worktable, my arms frozen at my sides, and tears flowed.

Alanna glanced at me. “Ticka!” she cursed, and tapped the pause button on the projector. “What happened, Ylva?”

I shuddered and broke loose of the residue of the music’s spell. “That was a different piece,” I said. Milla reached toward the image of herself, her eyes wide. She tapped the button to start the projection moving again, and I ran from the room, closing my link to Alanna so I wouldn’t hear any more of the song.

“What’s this?” Gwelf said from the entry. “I don’t smell my supper, and you look distressed.” He slipped off his shoes in the purification room, shed his outer robe, walked through sandalwood smoke on the men’s side, pulled a fresh robe from the rack near the arch into the apartment, and slid it on over his undergarments.

“We have a visitor,” I said.

“Another rescue?”

“In process. Alanna’s showing her her own memories.”

“And this distresses you?”

“I’m sorry, Ser. I expect you’re hungry. I’ll get you your supper.”

He frowned, grunted, then said, “I’ll be in my workroom.”

I returned to the kitchen. The projector was off, and Milla was crying.

I worked to trim and peel vegetables I had just bought, set a pan over heat, added oil, and fried food quickly for Gwelf. He always appreciated a freshly made meal. No matter how well I programmed the homecooker, he could tell the difference. Besides, I liked to cook for him. He had given me a home.

“Gwelf?” Alanna said as the hot oil hissed and bubbled and engulfed everything I fed it.

“In his workroom.” I added spices and flavors I knew Gwelf liked. He enjoyed things that burned the tongue, but only a little. “I’ll fix supper for us when I’m finished with this.”

“Milla said the song she was playing that froze you was her box song,” Alanna said. She widened her eyes at me, and I opened my connection to her again. I always missed her when we separated, but sometimes we did it anyway, especially when she wanted to be private with her husbands.

Reconnecting with her was like sinking into the comfort of my favorite couch, something that supported and cushioned me. I smiled at her.

I stirred Gwelf ’s supper one last time through the singing oil, then spilled it onto a plate, set the plate with utensils and cleansing cloth and a bowl of hot, lemon-scented water on a tray. I poured a glass of cool tea for him as well.

“My box song was the song I wrote when my mother first mentioned selling me,” said Milla. “Even before the planet died, she had that plan, and she wouldn’t listen to no.”

“I understand.” Before Alanna and I shared bondfruit, I had been in a box, no hope in my future, little comfort in my present, and very few memories of light in my past. Alanna and our rescuer opened the door to my box, and nothing had been as bad afterward, not even living in a bubble and being gaped at by toads.

I didn’t want to hear the box song again, ever.

“I’ll be back.” I took the meal to Gwelf. He cleared space for it on his workbench, moving aside tools and sculptures-in-progress. Sometimes Alanna said his hobby was his true love. He built small, fantastic dwellings, and carved the creatures that might live in them. Here, too, he disdained the use of instant manufacture, preferring to craft things by hand.

“Thank you, Sif,” Gwelf said.

“You’re welcome, Ser. Again, I apologize for my lateness.”

“No matter. The rescue, why does it trouble you?”

He never asked questions about these things. We managed them without troubling him with details; we needed to use his funds for some of our arrangements, but he was generous that way and never denied us. I wasn’t sure what to tell him. “I am not troubled by her rescue, only by her talent. She’s a musician—”

“Oh, no. Not the Ruggluff bride?”

“Ser?”

“There’s a planetwide alert for her. I should have known.”

“Why would a toad want a musician wife? How is she to play inside a bubble?”

“He’s an innovator, and wants to turn over the old order on Linkan. To that effect, he’s ordered a bubble big enough for the bride and her instrument. No one else’s wives perform for company, but he took the notion after watching too many netcasts from other cultures. It was supposed to be a bold political move and cement his popularity for the next election, but it falls flat if the bride escapes. The Federation of Fair Traders was in favor of the change, as perhaps it would lead toward more freedom for the Linkan brides.”

“But Ser, the girl—”

“Whoever aids the Ruggluff bride will have to pay a price.” He set down his food sticks and picked up a half-polished lump of wood. He frowned.

“How high is the price, Ser?”

His gaze rose, and his brows lowered. “Such an act could damage me politically,” he said. For the first time I saw the power of his actual profession, fair trader and financier, on his face, and knew that the person he had always been toward me—a slightly bumbling, pleasant, undemanding, often absent master—was perhaps a construct, not his true character.

“Must we return her?” I asked/Alanna asked. He had never interfered in a rescue before; but we had never rescued anyone politically important before.

“Do they know you have her yet?” he asked.

In the kitchen, Alanna projected the marketplace over the table again, with the searchers marked. They were spread wider through the place, though most of the shops were closed for the evening. A concentration of red-tagged searchers had collected around Kalenki’s Tea House.

Alanna zoomed the spy-eye closer and turned up audio. Kalenki himself stood at the door, talking to six of these men. He offered them tea. “A woman in an unmarked robe?” he said. “No one like that left here. Ask at Sook’s, across the square. He caters more to the transient trade.” He pointed.

“Sif?” Gwelf touched the back of my hand.

“Alanna is searching,” I said. “So far, they don’t know who has her, but they’re getting closer.”

In the kitchen, Alanna rose from the table, and gestured for Milla to follow her into the living room.

“I can’t decide whether I should meet her or ignore her,” Gwelf muttered.

Music sounded from the living room. Alanna had unlocked the keyboard that was in the house when we bought it. Neither of us played, so we usually hid it in the wall. Now Milla sat at it and ran her fingers over the keys, waking answering sounds.

Gwelf groaned and rose from his workbench. “I guess I’ll have to meet her.” He glanced toward his half-eaten supper. “Next time, call me when you’re hosting one of these rescues, and I’ll stay out until you’ve sent her on her way. I can deny knowledge.”

“Alanna can hack the house records and make it so you were never here,” I said.

“Of course she can,” he said, and sighed. He snapped the code that dimmed the lights in the room and left, with me on his heels. We went to the living room, where Gwelf often entertained with Alanna at his side and me handling refreshments.

Milla was playing a third song now, an interleaving of hopes and fears. I wavered, afraid of the fears the song showed me, bonds and lashes, and the hopes that were hardly better, images of clawing through tearable sky to something Milla couldn’t imagine but only hoped would be better. Ribbons of loneliness wove through the song.

“Come, Sif,” said Gwelf; he stepped over the threshold into the living room, paused to look back at me. I was frozen, trapped in the living lace of the music. Alanna, inside my head, was intrigued by how I heard it, and able to resist its call.

At Gwelf’s voice, Milla’s hands stilled on the keys and she turned, her face panicked. She lifted a hand to raise her veil, fumbled it so it hung half across her mouth.

“Child, you’re wearing my sign; you may as well be unveiled before me, at least until we straighten out the question of who you are.”

“Gwelf,” said Alanna, “why are you here?”

He glanced at me. Alanna and I had never known how aware of our bond Gwelf was; we had found it prudent not to ask. But now I knew he knew, had perhaps always known.

Perhaps that explained why he slept with other women. Alanna had betrayed him first, by our bond, even though it wasn’t physical. My heart softened toward him.