Skyblaze (4 page)

The weather had been
unrelenting, windy and cold, for the past seven-day now, and the
forecast for the morrow was much the same. The night winds would
move over the seacoast, pushing moisture into the swamp-regions,
where it would gather energy from the barely frozen rivers, then
push to and over the bowl of the city as the winds changed with the
morning -- and it would snow. The local at the bakery -- Granita --
promised Vertu that it had been a warm year so far, and that
when
real
winter
arrived, she'd wear her hood, sight loss or no, lessen she got
herself some working blizzer goggles to hold on her
face.

The street was not empty, but it being the
dark of morning rather than the dark of night it was much safer
than it might have been a quarter spin before. The doors of the
open bars were far fewer, and the doors of the day businesses shone
with the white blue of guide lights.

The door she wanted was across the street,
and she looked both ways for traffic of vehicles, and then for
people within intercept distance, and crossed to Brickoff
Flourpower, where the door recognized her and whined open as she
approached.

Behind the counter, Granita looked up with a
grin. ''There you are, more on time than I'd guess!''

Vertu bowed in her direction wordlessly,
letting the warmth comfort her as she read the words to be a
welcome. It was good to expected and greeted, and she found it
happened more often on Surebleak than it had in Low Port, and more
often in Low Port than many of the Higher places she'd frequented
in Solcintra. Who expected the ragged to recall one's usual time of
arrival?

''Why so, mother of baking?'' Vertu
ventured, pulling her hat off and checking the room in the same
motion. The Hooper sat in his corner, hands cupped around his mug
of 'toot . . . she knew it was 'toot because he asked for it by
name, and sometimes she was here before he was. He got '''toot and
crackers'' most mornings, the ''crackers'' being yesterday's
flatbread covered in a pasty flour-sauce with soy crumbles.

Granita extended a hand with two fingers
straight up, which meant, here, ''hold that thought'' and rushed to
the back to do something in response to a quick-triple beat beeping
noise. The ticking wall clock chimed about then -- it did count the
quarters -- and Vertu wondered if the clock-count was part of
Granita's secret to good service . . .

Vertu's usual morning dish of Ronian Cheese
was warming, it being a port-staple at all hours, and a proper-size
cup sat on the counter side among a triple dozen of other
unmatching and mostly oversized cups, the one waiting on Vertu, as
had become a custom at the Flourpower these last seventy-seven
mornings.

The Hooper said little to anyone, save
Granita. In respect of his station, and also in acknowledgment of a
service done her, Vertu accorded him a nod, and a half-raised hand,
which was considered a ''good-morning'' here.

Chatter overheard from
others of Flourpower's reggers taught Vertu that The Hooper was an
''organeer'' -- a musician, so she gathered, though the precise
instrument eluded her understanding. Still, it would seem that any
life event of importance -- births, deaths, trothings -- was made
moreso by the presence of The Hooper and the blessing of his art.
There were such on Liad --
galan'ranubiet
they were called:
Treasures of the House.

True enough that The Hooper little looked
like a Treasure. His clothes in winter-come were the same as in
winter-coming -- a brown hat with a brim all around and a small
crown festooned with tiny green and white feathers -- and a coatlet
half as thick as hers, which he took off without fail upon
entering, to reveal a vest with two dozen vari-size pockets, each
pocket showing the tip of something metallic. He rarely took off
his hat, which covered a half-bald spot in a head of otherwise
bushy colorless hair, and when he did it was to neaten the thick
sideburns of the same no-color that stopped abruptly in a razor
sharp line, giving way some days to a light stubble and others to a
face as smooth as hers.

Vertu had thought him an elder when first
she had seen him; an impression that persisted. Others of the
reggers called him Old Fellow, and others his proper name -- and
none with anything but respect.

Some mornings, The Hooper bent over his mug
as if hoarding it, sipping his 'toot with no crackers, and those
mornings his hands moved restlessly over his pockets, as if he
counted, as if the contents were pets that required gentling. On
other mornings, he sat relaxed with his 'toot and crackers, and a
side of morning beans, and even engaged in an odd kind of
conversation with others of the reggers, though never with Vertu
herself.

Quite outside his obvious
status as a Treasure, Vertu acknowledged a debt to The Hooper. Her
first morning world-side, cold beyond any previous experience,
disoriented and
lost,
she had someway stumbled after The Hooper, who had walked as
a man who knew his street and also his destination, entered
Flourpower in his wake, and stood behind him at the counter. He had
ordered his meal, and she, tired and ragged-minded, uncomprehending
the menu scrawled upon the pale blue wipe-board, had scarcely
managed a whisper -- ''What he is having, I will have.''

That was the second from the last time she
had willfully ordered 'toot, though of a day she might yet ask for
crackers, and now that she was acknowledged regger, she owed him
too for the information that, ''Dems reggers that brin thanown cup,
dems saves a cup of fife!''

The fifth filled cup was free if you had
your own cup, brought to the counter and offered, that stayed on
the premises. Both Granita and her late-help Bets knew each cup by
its owner, and knew, too, what went into each without fail.

Vertu's beverage might be the oddest of all,
for into her cup now went a measured haspoon of the local Yellobud
tea, which was acceptable if brewed half as long as the locals did,
the boiled water tempered by a cube before it was poured.

By now, besides The Hooper, she probably
knew most of the reggers by face, and could tell if they'd been in,
as they'd know if she had. If her cup wasn't on the counter and she
wasn't at one of the two back tables she favored, then she'd
comin-gawn, because usually dishwa happened once per day at
close.

The reggers sometimes talked about the years
with numbers of the local calendar, and it had been those
discussions -- forwarded perhaps for her edification, who knew? --
that had convinced her of the good boots. They had told over people
she saw sometimes daily, walking with a gait they'd ''picked up on
'66 and they'd lost the little toe for burnfrost,'' or ''backta
'59'' when the rains came for a week in mid-winter and toes and
feet had mildewed or molded along with the clothes, until the thaw
died.

Granita returned from the kitchen, her
skinny face coming back to a smile from its work-a-day lines, as
she answered Vertu's question.

''Huh, girl. You come in here wif snow in
your curls and boots, and down inside the collar. That's a day with
wind, and newfuns sometimes takeaback when the real weather gets
in. Still, you're a worker, I can tell, and bet you don't let no
boss down timewise.''

The bow fell from her
shoulders along with the nod --
here
at least no one was annoyed if
she might have Liaden habits, nor asked. Here was reggers, locals,
strangers, or flights, and reggers might share a confidence, or
might never. She'd seen some of the reggers in the wider world,
where they'd sometimes think to raise left hand to left eyebrow in
recognition, but else reggers mostly left reggers be, if not
invited to converse.

''Not my best sun, this morning,'' she said,
using one of the common phrases, ''but bright enough to get
in!''

Granita's smile got broad, and she pointed
toward the warming tray.

''Got's some starcheese just in to spice our
Ronian Cheese if you want some, or the crackers haven't been hardly
dredged yet 'cept for The Hooper, if you want something
ribstickers.''

Vertu blinked, considering. She'd be early
in line if the snow slowed folks down: early in and as likely early
out.

''Ronian Cheese, that be fine.''

The bow came to her shoulders again, but the
woman was already fetching the cube for her cup, and missed it.

*

Her ears burned, and not from the wind and
snow.

Vertu held herself at her
fullest height, glad for a new reason that her collar was high and
her coat voluminous. She continued to look ahead as well she could
while the man behind her muttered to the man behind
him
in a Terran so odd
even that one had requested a sayagain.

There were things on Surebleak of which she
was still unsure and finding answers was not always as easy as
asking the person in line behind you, nor reading an
infoscreen.

''
Hworked treedays, mysel, liddle miz, donya haz to hwork toady
yuwon booznrazzle. Payada ferya, feedsya an feelya fine. Gotz heat,
gotz smokes, gotz dembigbed, yez, no bliz tashov, no
dreamslong
.''

That was as clear as she'd made it out after
he'd tapped her diffidently on the shoulder -- he'd apparently been
repeating something she hadn't understood was directed at her.

She shouldn't have asked for a sayagain, for
it came with a wide gap-toothed grin and the clear odor of alcohol
and smoke and rampant decay.

The hurt of it was that his face was comely
with mouth closed, and his person elsewise no more unkempt than any
of the seven in line behind him.

She'd managed a ''Nothangya,'' accented as
well as she might recall from bakery talk, holding back the bow as
much as it hurt her nerves to do so, for the bow would have brought
her closer to the lips with their near-blue inner smoke stains.

For the first time
this day
she doubted her
decision to leave Liad and then shook herself with a derisive inner
laughter in recognition that the choice had barely been
hers.

Still, of the outcomes she'd considered,
public solicitation for prostitution was proof that she'd erred
--

NO!

She stamped her foot, the act stinging for
her and unremarked by others here -- who knew when one needed to
rid the boot of snow or ice or mud, after all?

Well, at least the foot
was warm, if still tingling from her anger. She bowed a tiny bow to
herself, permission to admit error. That was a trick her only
social mentor taught her a bare day before she was off to be
Contract-wifed:
sometimes the only real
person in the room is yourself, but manners must be served even
so.

In fact she was being unfair to herself, for
she'd had such offers from travelers and drunks from the time she'd
first driven for her clan, in fact since her second fare. Well she
recalled that, and moreso since that person was seated yet on Liad,
comfortable and honored on the Council of Clans, while she, Ring
stripped from her finger, stood in danger of -- but, again, no. She
would not permit herself to believe that this banishment, this
mercy from her daughter the delm, might yet end in the death for
which the Council had sued.

The line moved, with the work-pair who'd
stood in front of her moving now together toward a table to the
left while four other tables with work supplicants in place were
revealed to her. A very short line; apparently the weather was
expected, indeed, to ''turn bad.''

The man behind shuffled close and whispered
toward her, and she glanced at him, hard, pushing the lingo through
her teeth, near as she could.

''Nothangya, heerit?''

He mumbled and backed away a half-step, lips
tight.

Compared to the offer from
a clan head to pet her face with tongue and tumescence, this man's
offer was downright honorable: ''
I've
worked three days myself, little miss. You don't have to work today
if you want to booze and wrestle. Payday for you, food for you,
feels fine for you. Got heat, got smokes, got a damn big bed. Yes,
I say no blizzard to shovel, no dreaming alone.''

Her delm had been unimpressed by her outrage
-- a lesson well learned, that. A Lower House could hardly bring
such a complaint against one of the High without evidence -- and
such evidence, were there any, would hardly survive the
impoundment.

Here, the offer was a passing of the time of
day. Practical and even, perhaps honorable. That she had living
funds for less than a Standard more in this place weighed on her,
but work was in fact available at times . . . and she was in noways
desperate, this day.

The table to the right cleared, a man of
middle height and middle years smiling and hurrying off with a
bright blue chit in hand -- going to do something for the street
association, she'd figured out over time. That would be day-pay and
not long-term, she'd heard in the bakery, but day-pay was day-pay,
after all.

She took the vacant spot with alacrity.

''Heavy manual labor?''

The man behind the table was familiar; his
voice was brusque and impartial as ever. She raised her head in
consideration, and made a counteroffer, staring at the seven bright
blue tubs behind him, each mostly empty, and the brown one, with
scraps in the bottom.

''Mechanics, systems, detail work,
Trade-writing, Liaden-writing, light stock and inventory,
driving.''

The man pursed his lips.

''Picked up anything new overnight? This
ain't being a busy day.''

''Translation? Garden design?''