Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (11 page)

He reached into the
bottom of the carryall, scrabbling through the disks and folders
until he found the box of keys. He pulled it out, thumb already on
the selector button, and set it against the plate. The door clicked
twice and sagged open, and Warreven went on into the warm dark. He
had left the house system shut down to avoid having to reset
everything if there was another power surge, and he didn't bother
to flick on the lights until he reached the bedroom. He still had to
bathe and change--Temelathe would be satisfied with nothing less
than proper dress, and besides, he himself needed the reassurance of
wealth and status--and then arrange for a car to get him across town
to Ferryhead where the Most Important Man kept house. The last was
something he should have done before he left the office. He sighed,
and went back out into the main room, shedding clothes as he went,
stopping only to turn both bath taps full on. The hire office was at
least used to him, and Stiller had a standing contract for the
Important Men and Women; he was able to order the car and driver for
the full night, with only a nominal surcharge for the late notice. If
everything went really well, he thought, stripping off the last of
his clothes as he headed for the bath, he could maybe get together
with Chauntclere, or Shan Reiss if Clere wasn't ashore, and tour
the harborside clubs with him. It had been a while since he'd been
out.

He stepped into the
tepid water, sliding down until the ripples touched his chin. He had
shaved two days ago, wouldn't need to do it again for another few
days, but his hair was a mess, matted and sweaty. He ducked his head
under the nearer tap, then shutoff both before he overfilled the
generous tub. Soap stood in a jar beside the bath, and he reached for
it, freed the stopper, and dug his fingers into the soft cream. Its
heavy scent filled the air--sweetmusk mingling with the sharper note
of the witch's-broom--and he was tempted for an instant to rub it
between his legs, over cock and balls and into his cunt, and ride the
drug's bright euphoria into the next morning. But it was easy
enough to lose an encounter with Temelathe, even without the broom's
overconfidence, and he rubbed it into his hair instead, working the
soap into a heady lather. Even so, when he reluctantly hauled himself
out of the now-cold water, he could feel the broom singing in his
blood.

As he worked a comb
through his tangled hair, he caught a glimpse of himself in the
larger mirror, and stopped for a moment to stare, thinking of 'Aukai.
He was still slim, was if anything going stringy, the old curves
resolving into wiry muscle, breasts too small to sag, but a little
incongruous above the bony rib cage. The boyish penis was just as
incongruous, and he looked back at the smaller mirror, concentrating
on his hair. Whatever 'Aukai had thought, he was certainly too old
now to play trade--though it had never been his looks that worried
her--but not, he thought, too old to run the harborside clubs.

He went back into the
bedroom and began to pull clothes out of the chest, tossing the
discards onto the piled quilts that made up the bed. He settled at
least for an ivory tunic-and-trousers suit, the slubbed silk cool
against his skin, and rummaged through the smaller box until he found
the vest he wanted. Folhare had made it for him, from the scraps left
over from making the topmost bed quilt: she had liked the colors
against his skin, and said she knew she wouldn't get the chance to
see him displayed against the quilt itself. The closely stitched
fabric glowed like sunset in the narrow room, and he wondered if
Folhare would be at this party. She was a Stane, but of the Black
Watch; this was probably just a White Stane event, he decided, and
emptied his jewel box onto the bed. He sorted through the heap of
bracelets and earrings and chains, metal, glass, and carved wood,
pulling out the pieces that had been forged from the wreck of the
colony ship that had brought his ancestors to Hara. He slid the
bracelets onto his wrists, circles of twisted iron that still carried
the marks of the hammer and the off-world shipbuilder's tools,
fastened his collar with a square of plastic from the engine room.
There was only one earring left--the other sliver of gold-washed
circuit board had descended in a different branch of the
mesnie
--and
he paired it with a plain, heavy gold hoop. This was a night for
status. He smiled at his reflection, the angular, broad-boned face
not yet too worn by the sun, eyes blacker than ever from the broom,
and was pleased with the result.

The coupelet was
waiting by the time he'd finished dressing, the driver leaning on
the steering bar with an expression of infinite patience on his
sun-wrinkled face. The destination was already set; as soon as
Warreven closed the door behind him, the driver eased the heavy
vehicle into motion. They turned south, onto the harbor road,
sounding the coupelet's whistle almost constantly as he worked his
way into the slow-moving stream of traffic. This was a bad time to
try to get through the harbor district--the market there was still
open, the day-boats would just be docking, and the shopkeepers and
brokers and the occasional pharmaceutical's factor would be
crowding the quay to inspect the day's take--and Warreven leaned
forward to flip the intercom switch.

"Why aren't we
taking Stanehope Street?"

The driver looked up,
fixing the younger man's face in his mirror. "Sorry, mir, but
there's been some trouble at the Souk, rana dancers. The
baas
told me to come this way."

Warreven nodded, and
leaned back in his seat, resigning himself to a long, slow ride. The
rana groups were always active around the Midsummer holiday, their
riot presaging the overthrow of the year; lately, the radical
political groups, Modernists like himself and the fringe groups even
further to the left, had taken over the ranas' tactics, and staged
their own protests with dance and drumming. Not that the ranas had
ever really been apolitical, of course, but the Modernists had honed
and focused the protests, trying to say new things in an old voice.
The Centennial Meeting would begin at Midwinter, and the Modernists
had already announced that they wanted to put the question of Hara's
joining the Concord to an open vote. That meant bringing a lot of
other issues into the Meeting--the question of the pharmaceutical
contracts, of Temelathe's control of the government, and the
existence of trade and the whole question of gender law--and
Tendlathe and the Traditionalists vehemently opposed the idea. A
number of the old-style ranas supported their position, and there had
already been fights between the two groups.

Traffic slowed around
them, and the couplelet's engine moaned as the driver geared down
yet again. Warreven leaned sideways, trying to see around the
driver's head and the shays and runabouts that hemmed them in.
Ahead, Consign Wharf jutted into the main harbor, and there was a
crowd gathered at its foot, spilling out into the roadway, completely
blocking one of the four lanes.

"Someone's made a
good haul," he said, but even before he heard the driver's
noncommittal grunt, he realized that he was wrong: There were too
many runabouts in the knotted traffic, not enough shays and
three-ups--too many people altogether, he thought, to be a buying
crowd. The coupelet lurched forward, gained another fifty meters
before it ground to a halt, and he could hear the noise of drums and
the shrill note of a dancer's whistle even through the coupelet's
heavy shell. Three people--ordinary people, sailors and dockworkers
by their clothes, without the usual tattered ribbons that marked a
rana group--were standing on a platform balanced precariously on a
cluster of fuel drums, arms around one another's shoulders,
chanting and swaying to the drums. He couldn't hear the words yet,
or much more than the dull rhythm, but he could see the defiance in
their faces, and the tension in the movements of the listening crowd.
The driver reached across his pod to flip a security switch, locking
the coupelet's doors.

They inched forward,
into the fringes of the crowd, and Warreven leaned back in the seat,
making himself as unobtrusive as possible. Most of the attention was
directed toward the people--two women and a man--on the platform,
but there was no point in attracting trouble. And trouble was already
present: to the left of the car, on the edge of the concrete mole
that marked the end of the buyers' lot, a man in a traditional vest
and docker's trousers banged an ironwood wrench against a wooden
pot. His hand rose and fell in an insistent counter beat, but any
sound was drowned in the noise from the platform. He knew it as well
as anyone, turned his fierce scowl on the people around him,
exhorting them to join in disrupting the singers' chant. He had
painted red-and-white flames, the mark of the Captain, the spirit
that Tendlathe was trying to make the Traditionalists' patron,
across each cheek. Most of them ignored him, or stood open-mouthed
and undecided, looking at him and then back to the singers. Then at
last a stocky man jumped up on the wall beside him, clapping his
hands and calling to the others. The coupelet slid past before
Warreven could see what happened.

They were almost
abreast the platform now, and a woman's clear voice--the voice of
a sea chanter, someone trained to make herself heard over a full gale
and the chaos of a sinking ship--soared over the insistent drums.

"
Shineo
was the Captain's daughter
," she began, and most of
the people answered automatically, conditioned by years of sailing.

"
Way-hey,
Shineo
."

"
I
love her a little bit more than I oughter
," the chanter
sang, and the response faltered, some voices dropping out, others
coming in full and triumphant.

"
Way-hey,
Shineo
!"

"
Oh,
Captain, Captain, I love your daughter
." The chanter's
voice was full of mocking challenge, not just of the Traditionalist
with his painted face, but of everything he and the Captain stood
for. The same note was in the crowd's answer--as if, Warreven
thought, they were all twelve again, and just learning there were
real words, strong words, names for all the things they weren't
supposed to do, or be.

"
I'll
carry her across the deep blue water--
"

The driver gunned the
engine, and the coupelet lurched for-ward into a gap in the traffic,
but the sudden rumble couldn't drown either the crowd's gleeful
response or the driver's curse.

"
Garce
bitch."

Warreven lifted his
head, and the driver met his eyes in the mirror, the half of his
expression that Warreven could see caught between embarrassment and
mulish conviction. Everyone knew Warreven was a
halving
,
wry-abed, and a Modernist to boot, but this, the face seemed to say,
was too much. Warreven lifted an eyebrow, and the driver's stare
faltered.

"Sorry, mir," he
muttered.

Warreven nodded, and
looked away. A couple of Temelathe's militia--the
mosstaas
,
mustaches, technically members of the city patrol association, were
standing on the edge of the crowd, heads turned toward the chanter.
One rested his hand on his ironwood truncheon, but they stood
otherwise passive, without noticeable expression, watching the crowd
and the singer. There would be trouble later, Warreven thought, and
wondered if Chauntclere was safe at sea.

Traffic eased as they
swung away from the harbor, moving into one of the new mixed-use
districts, where old warehouses and crumbling factories had been
reclaimed for the workers in the newer plants south of the Goods
Yard. Few people were visible in the streets, but here and there the
wide doors were open to the evening, and Warreven caught a quick
glimpse of a group of women, traditionally skirted, breasts pushed up
and out by the tight traditional bodices, gathered around an open
stove. A few children, most in ragged hand-me-downs, played on the
cracked paving, under what had been a loading dock. They stopped
their game to stare at the coupelet, and as it passed, the tallest
threw a stone. It fell short, but Warreven saw the driver's eyes in
the mirror, watching them, and heard him mutter something indecent
under his breath before he looked away.

The sun was well down
by the time the coupelet drew up in front of the compound that
surrounded Temelathe's house, the cool twilight thickening toward
dark. Lamps were lit on either side of the gate, and the taller of
the
mosstaas
on
duty there waved them through without hesitation. The driver
maneuvered the coupelet between the pillars and slid it neatly to a
stop outside the main entrance. The house itself was bigger than the
clan house over by the Terminus, was easily as large as the White
Watch House, and was rumored to have cost several years' of
Template's disposable income. Even if that weren't true, Warreven
thought--and knowing Temelathe, he doubted it--it was still an
impressive sight, a mute statement of all the ways that Stane
out-stripped its neighbors. Lights blazed through the open doors and
windows, and a woman in full traditional regalia, tiered and beaded
skirts and tight bodice, crown of shells and flowers on her braided
hair, came hurrying to open the door.

"Makado will show you
where to put the car," the woman said, to the driver. She had the
high, breathless voice of the old-fashioned high-housekeepers, but
only off-worlders failed to recognize its authority within its own
sphere. A dark man in off-world clothes loomed silently out of the
shadows, beckoning, and Warreven let the coupelet's door fall shut
behind him. The heavy vehicle slid away toward the sheds at the far
side of the compound.

"Mir Stane is
waiting," the housekeeper said.