Rift (30 page)

They emerged into the glaring daylight of the great dock, where Reeve once again felt the loss of comforting walls. Dante’s tattoo-headed jinn conducted trade all down the wharf, in a din of haggling, bartering, and outright argument. To Reeve, it seemed that the jinn merely exchanged one pile of junk for another, but they executed their trades with enthusiasm, and their suppliers departed the dock with canoe and barge piled with booty. Here were the remains of civilization relegated to scrap and musty treasure, dug from the rubble of the colonies. It was both pathetic and ingenious, a testimony to the clavers’ ability to thrive even on such leavings.

A crisp breeze swept off the Inland Sea. Winter was coming, he remembered, whatever that would mean on this world of weather and storms. He and Loon strolled hand in hand to the very end of the dock, where they stood looking up toward the mouth of the Tallstory. Reeve sat on an antique trunk with Loon crouched beside him. For a while she pointed at objects and things in the landscape, giving Reeve the hand signs for them and correcting his attempts to mimic her. When they tired of sign practice, she spoke: “No family,” she said, looking out.

“Who is your family, Loon?”

“Dead,” she answered. “Like Reeve’s.”

He turned away from her, into the breeze.

“You are sad?” she asked, turning to search his face.

“Yes.” Reeve put his arm around her shoulder. “But I’m glad I’m here. It’s strange to be happy and unhappy at the same time.” He hadn’t known he was happy until this moment, and he wasn’t sure why he was, but his heart seemed to fill with the wind off the water. He was alive; he was here, on Lithia, the place of dreams and tall stories.

She was watching his face intently. Amid the commotion of the dock, they were alone. He drew her face toward him, very slowly, allowing her time to draw away. She didn’t. He kissed her lightly, and the taste of her filled him with longing.

He felt a violent jerk at his shoulder. In an instant he was flat on his back on the dock, looking up at Spar.

“Stand up, boyo,” Spar growled. He unbuckled his scabbard and waited.

“Come on, Spar. Leave it be.” Reeve was in no mood for another fight, one that might be in earnest.

A savage kick in the side was Spar’s answer.

Reeve sprang to his feet, anger surging. “Time for you to learn some Station manners, claver.” Then, remembering Kalid’s lesson, he circled around the older man, feinting a couple times.

“Ain’t scared, are ya?” Spar’s snaggle-grin was hard. “Or you like those easy pickin’s’?” he said, glancing at Loon.

“Do not fight,” she said, alarmed.

Spar shook his head. “Got to. Boy’s got himself a big dose of bad manners.” Spar struck out, missing as Reeve evaded, then staggering as Reeve jabbed at his knee with a kick.

Jinn had started to walk toward the fight, leaving the two combatants a rectangle at the end of the pier. “Quixote!” someone cried.

Spar landed a slap on Reeve’s head, reminding Reeve to fend off hands, but Spar jabbed fast, connecting with a flurry of blows. A shout went up as Reeve recovered and circled around Spar once more. As Spar threw a long punch, Reeve intercepted the swing, sweeping it aside and slicing a fist up to Spar’s chin, driving it home with a satisfying crunch. As Spar crashed backward, Reeve leapt on him, but not before Spar’s feet came up to vault Reeve over him and into the water.

He felt the wind go out of him as he belly-flopped onto the hard blue surface of the sea. When he got his wits he saw a line of jinn roaring with laughter and pointing at him as he flailed. Gulping saltwater, he found himself sinking more the harder he thrashed. Then someone splashed into the water beside him and a jinn was grabbing him under the armpits and dragging him to the dock.

Once pulled, puking and flopping, onto dry land, he struggled for breath, only to find himself slammed down on his back with Spar’s knee on his chest.

The old fool grinned, his teeth alternately yellow, brown, and missing. “Stay away from Mam, I say.”

Reeve glared up at Spar, wanting to pound him, but helpless under his knee. Coughing and spitting, Reeve said, “Let her choose. Or do you think she’s not as smart as you’ve always said?”

Spar cocked his head to one side, eyeballing him with his left eye, and raised his fist to smack Reeve. But he let his hand fall when Loon came to stand by his side. He didn’t give her a chance to speak. With a sneer, he eased off of Reeve and looked from one to the other of them, finally grabbing his sword and scabbard and stalking off.

Now aching in every joint of his body, Reeve watched Spar retreating down the pier. “Talk to him, Loon. Tell him … you like me. If you do.”

“He protects me,” she responded.

“Yes. But is that what you want?”

She didn’t answer, but pulled a long coat from a pile on the wharf and draped it around Reeve’s shoulders as he shivered in the breeze. The jinn with a proprietary interest in the coat nodded a begrudging permission.

All Reeve wanted now was a warm bath and a moment’s peace. But it was not to be. They heard a commotion from inside the dome as they approached the
entrance. Distant shouts, and then a bellowing, “Spaceman!” It could be only one man.

Making their way toward the noise, they came upon an assembly of jinn, milling well back from Dante, who stood bellowing like a stuck bull. Isis stood by him calmly, as though she had seen such displays before.

“Only a guilty man flees! Only a coward runs from jinn justice!” Spittle flew from his mouth and his sequined cape billowed out behind him as he paced before his entourage. When he spied the two of them he cried, “So! You still obey a summons from Dante?”

Reeve bowed low. “What would you have, my lord?”

Standing beside Dante, Kalid smirked at this obsequiousness. But when in the dome, one learned to grovel.

“I would have the murderer!” Dante shrieked. “Do you mock me?”

“Who has been murdered?” Reeve asked.

“My guest!” roared Dante.

“Who would dare to harm a guest of Dante?” asked Marie, who stood at Dante’s side.

“Who indeed,” Dante said, his voice now menacingly soft. “Perhaps one who thinks himself above our rules. Who breaks the rules.”

Isis cocked her head in amazement. “Breakth the ruleth?”

“Who is dead?” Reeve asked.

“Pimarinun!” thundered Dante. “Pimarinun is dead!” He swirled and dove into the crowd, grabbing a man by his collar and hauling his face close. “And where were my guards? Asleep? Whoring?”

The man stammered his denial, and Dante thrust him back toward his companions, rushing to another. “You will find the man who did this!” When the jinn stared at him in terror, Dante shrieked, “Find him!” He shoved the jinn savagely backward and swirled to face his attendants. “Find him. All of you!”

At this the group dispersed, jinn on the run in all directions.

Dante turned to Kalid, ignoring Reeve for the moment. “He was killed by a blow to the head, Kalid. Who would have thought the monster could be killed in such a way?” Dante touched the back of his head near the base of his skull. “Right here. The murderer struck him right here.” He looked at Kalid, his face collapsing into dismay. “My thong is dead, Kalid.”

“Then we shall catch you another monster,” Kalid replied.

Dante brightened. “We shall?”

“Yes, my lord.” He bowed.

“Well then,” Dante sniffed. He frowned at Reeve. “But the murderer does not go free.”

“No, my lord.”

Still in a pout, Dante repeated, “Murderers do not go free.”

Unless their name is Dante
, Reeve thought.

The rant having left him, and devoid now of his large audience, Dante turned mild. “The Spaceman is too weak to kill an orthong,” he muttered. “The blow was struck hard.” He looked back at Reeve suspiciously. “I hope he is up to our journey.”

“Journey?” Kalid asked with no small surprise.

Marie caught Reeve’s eye and smiled a quick, knowing smile.

“Yes, my captain of ships.” He threw his arms wide, and his voice became triumphant. “A great journey. To trade for the science of the dome.”

“And where is such science, my lord?”

Dante turned a stunning smile on Marie. “The Rift, Kalid. The Rift!” He clapped the astonished man on the shoulder. “Medea has revealed how we may find readers aplenty.”

Reeve turned to look at Marie in confusion, and she made her way toward him, saying, “I told Lord Dante
that you and I had our limits, but that Captain Bonhert could fix the dome home.”

Dante nodded at this summation, then turned to Kalid. “Come, we have preparations to make!” He linked arms with Isis and set off toward his apartments. Kalid followed.

Reeve looked at Marie, stupefied.

“We’ll use one of Dante’s big ships, Reeve,” she said; then, pausing for effect: “We’ll all travel to the Rift. Together.”

It took him a moment to process what Marie by ingenuity and bravado had accomplished: the reversal of their fortunes. A ship would take them to the Rift, in the company of armed men. To the Rift. He looked at Marie with undisguised awe.

She smiled in a self-deprecating manner, saying, “It’ll be a great improvement on the raft, don’t you think?”

4

They had been traveling north for a week, finally leaving behind the high desert and entering a land of dying trees. At first stunted and sparse, the remains of the great northern forest soon compacted into a true bone-yard of conifers.

As Nerys stepped onto a fallen trunk, her foot collapsed into the interior of the tree, releasing a small cloud of dust. Their orthong guide easily strode over the downed tree trunks but moved slowly, allowing the women to keep up without too much strain. Galen, weakened by indigo and incessant coughing, was no match for Nerys’ robust build and health. The two women remained cool to one another, despite Galen’s attempts to pry into Nerys’ past. When it came out that Nerys had lost her daughter, Galen remarked bitterly that they had all lost loved ones, which Nerys let pass, thinking,
But not in the way I lost my Anar. Not
that way
. The thought was never far from her as she rolled it round and round to make up a skein of hate reserved for the Stationer whose choice had poisoned her heart.

Galen had been acquired by Bitamalar just two weeks prior to Nerys, and attempted to lord it over the newcomer, parceling out tidbits of information about the orthong when it suited her, though Nerys doubted Bitamalar revealed much to Galen. Nerys learned that the creature was male, as were most wandering orthong, and that his purpose had been to scout for women like themselves as well as precious rocks and stones. Indeed he did carry a sack of rocks, bearing it with apparent ease. Galen carried her own backpack, filled with the needs of her journey, which included many warm clothes that Bitamalar ordered her to share with Nerys. Frost had covered the ground the last two mornings.

Galen claimed that the sudden cold was the wind off the high glacier not too far north, and Nerys thought it might be so, from what geography she knew.

Perhaps it was the same glacial winds, Nerys reflected, that allowed the dead and dying trees here to resist rotting, though they seemed to have succumbed to drought, so brittle were their needles, twigs, and bark. Nerys hadn’t known that such a place existed, this vast wasteland of toppled trees. Perhaps a volcanic eruption had blasted the trees flat; yet no ash lay on the ground, nor any sign of fire. Even so, the undulating valleys bore a gray shroud pierced by the bones of an occasional upright tree. Without Bitamalar’s handouts, this land would have meant sure starvation, devoid as it was of animals and even bugs. It was just as well. The desolation reflected Nerys’ grief in a way she found oddly satisfying. She stepped over the corpses of the forest with a peace she could not have felt in a more vibrant world.

Every noon and evening Bitamalar doled out their
meals, retrieving from his sack packets of dried meat and seemingly endless coils of dry, gelatinous rope that tasted of nuts and honey. They sat together in a parody of a family meal and he fed them, a piece at a time, seeming to take pleasure in their feeding, watching them chew and swallow and urging choice morsels on Galen, and sometimes on Nerys if she had been good. But he did not help them in other ways. As the nights grew colder, he watched as they struggled to fashion a lean-to against the wind. And twice he ordered them to dig for water. He never asked Nerys to bring him a drink, a forbearance that surprised her but did little to allay her hunch that he could be vicious should she defy him openly. That he could easily hurt her was obvious from his size, and was vividly demonstrated early in their journey when he spied a white hare, outrunning it and slaughtering it with his hands before bringing it back for the women. At Bitamalar’s indulgence, Nerys and Galen had immediately built a fire to cook this rare meal of fresh meat, a kindness which Galen took as having some significance of friendship.