Shadowplay

Chapter 24. Boom!

Shadith let the reach fade. Even Sassa was too far off to answer her call, driven away like all the other beasts and birds by the turmoil in the crater.

She was shaking with fatigue; her strength was gone, her mind was mush.

All she could see was fire.

All she could think about was fire.

Their voices deep, burring, near subsonic, the choir was chanting: Ma Ma Ma…

The lug-ikes picked up the sound, transmitted it to the pilgrims along with the Longhorn bellows and the beats of the god-Mimes' feet on the great Drums.

The cameras at the front of the Bubble sent images dark and bright of the choir, the Gospah and the god-Mimes out to those thousand screens scattered about the crater, showed the pilgrims their shadowforms circling through the ancient dance of the gods.

The back of the Bubble was dark and quiet, the cameras there were turned off until it was time for the Fire; there was no lug-ikes close enough to pick up the screams of the burning Avatars. That would be aesthetically unpleasing.

The ropes were wound round and round Shadith, knees to neck, were jerked so tight they dug grooves in her flesh. She fought against them until her arms and legs were numb and swollen and she couldn't move them anymore.

Finally she rested her head against the pole, closed her eyes.

Out on the crater floor, new trance-nodes were forming about ghost dancers and chanting rebels.

Men were calling for the Avatars, they were calling for the Three to come back, they were cursing Priests, Pliciks, and the Nistam.

Women, children, and grandparents moved into enlarging knots and began pushing toward the edges of the crater.

Rage built across that floor, rage against the Priests and the Pliciks and the Nistam himself, Tanak and Maka blaming him and his followers for the dead, blaming him for the vanishing of the demigods-the pilgrims' demigods, not the priests', not the Pliciks', most of all, not the Nistam's.

It was unifying them again, that rage, pulling them together almost as strongly as Shadith had.

The sticks were heavy on Shadith's feet and the stench of the oils that saturated them crawled up her nose. She wanted to sneeze, but she was too tired.

Her eyes burned with the sweat dripping down her face.

There were Na-priests out among the pilgrims, exhorting them, threatening them. Ayawit had given the orders.

They moved in a fog of rage, untouched by it, arrogant in their reliance on the terror their black vizards produced in everyone who saw them.

The pilgrims moved back from them, muttering inaudibly, not yet worked up enough to overcome their fear and attack these symbols of the sacred AUTHORITY.

A row of Na-priests were crouching across the front of the stage. They weren't watching the captives any more, they were watching the pilgrims.

Like the pilgrims they had dropped out of the celebration; like the pilgrims they paid no attention to the ritual, they no longer felt its compulsion. They were too afraid, too angry.

Serene in his conviction that he was right and would prevail, the Gospah chanted his litanies and moved through a choreography of worship so old it antedated the arrival of the Kiskaids on Kiskai.

Shadith was so tired. So very tired. Maybe it was time to accept the inevitable. She'd lived long, she'd known more worlds than most people knew cities, it was a strange life but a good one-in many ways though not all. She didn't want to die. Not now. But there was no way, no way…

The Pyres were cubic piles of seasoned hardwood, each piece of wood carved and saturated with sacred oils, raised two meters high about the center post. The top of each pile was relatively flat, two meters by two meters square.

Tethered to that center post by short lengths of rope, Miowee and Kayataki lay on the wood by Shadith's feet, more cursorily bound than she was, hands tied behind their backs, Kayataki's ankles also bound. The child was gagged (presumably because the celebrants didn't fancy listening to the screams of a little girl), but they hadn't bothered with the woman.

Miowee had forced her body around until her back was pressed against Kayataki's.

She was cursing and struggling with the rope on her daughter's wrists, her fingers bleeding as she tried to solve knots she couldn't see so her child could wriggle loose.

A SOUND came from the Maka and the Tanak, a low growl, not loud enough yet to overcome the volume of the chant pouring through the speakers, but it was growing, a wordless, shapeless SOUND, as the men began pressing toward the Bubble and the portable Crystal Palace where the Nistam sat.

Shadith heard that SOUND and she savored it; she wouldn't be going into the dark alone-the men who murdered her would be just as dead.

It wasn't much of a comfort, but it was something.

She managed a wry smile as she remembered telling Miowee: if you're set on dying, take him with you (him being Makwahkik)

What with one thing and another, Makwahkik was the one that went, not Miowee, not Shadith.

The Nistam would go this time. Probably. The Gospah. The Na-priests.

She wouldn't see it. Sun was almost down.

For sure, not much comfort.

The Gospah finished his supplication and began turning in stately circles while the choir slid into another litany of praises.

He was pressing on to the end despite all distractions.

A moment ago, when he moved offstage for a change of paraphernalia, the Ni-ot Pipondihek (chief of the Nistam's Personal Guard, ex-liwa to Kati Mola), brought orders to cut the ceremony short and light the fires so they could get the hell out of there before the place exploded.

He nodded politely, acknowledging the command. And ignored it thereafter.

The Nistam's wishes were not important now.

There were things that must be done if the Sacrifice was to be acceptable.

That was more important than the Nistam's life, more important than his own.

Miowee was whining with frustration, an odd little sound, rather like the noise an exhausted and angry puppy might make; her fingers were strong and agile but she couldn't see what she was doing and the knot had been pulled tight by a Na-priest with long experience in the unnatural strength of people pushed beyond their limits.

Shadith blinked the sweat out of her eyes, twisted her neck around so she could look down at the singer.

"Mee." It was more of a groan than a word, but her voice was beginning to come back to her. This body was resilient as hard rubber, recovering with a speed that still managed to astonish her. It was too bad…

She, shrugged off regret, tried again. "Mee! Listen!"

"What?" Miowee didn't look up, just kept on clawing at the knot.

"If you can reach my left boot, there's a knife in it, but be careful, don't get near Kaya with it, you'd cut her in half before you knew what was happening."

"What good is it, then?"

"Cut the tethers. Roll her off the Prye. At least she won't burn."

"Ah." Her eyes closed, her mouth working, Miowee slumped for a moment against Kayataki's back, then she shuddered, collected herself and began working her body back around until she could reach the boot top, listening as she moved to Shadith's explanation of how to get into the sheath.

The Nistam was in a rage almost as great as the pilgrims', a fury he intended to exorcise by ridding himself of that idiot Ayawit after this stupidity was over with and he was back safe behind the Kiceota walls.

Until the ceremony was completed, until the Culmination was enacted, he couldn't leave. He had to perch on this ugly uncomfortable throne and put his neck on the line. His OWN neck.

Elementary precautions were one thing, running from' a gaggle of Maka clods was something else. His legitimacy and the power it conferred on him came from family tradition and the reputation of his ancestors. Running now would destroy that-and him.

There were dozens of other Pliciks and Plicik clans with ambitions to replace him and his, half of them sitting around him now, watching him.

In the cavern behind the portable Palace, the Ni-ot Pipondihek was calling in reinforcements from the city and the countryside, every Plicik capable of bearing arms.

It was a desperate throw, the landlords and their forces might prove more dangerous to him, than the pilgrims, but they were a greedy lot with delusions of competence, feuding with their neighbors, trusting no one and far easier to manipulate than the bloody fanatics out there now.

Divide and buy. His ancestors had done it before and won.

In smaller ways he had kept himself intact and in power buying and dividing. He could do it again-and win.

The Nistam sat impassively behind glass and steel and watched the not developing around him.

Miowee drew the crystal knife from the sheath in the boot, but her hands were clumsy because she couldn't see them and she didn't fully understand the danger of the blade; as she pulled it out, it sliced through ropes and cloth and pared away skin and muscle from Shadith's leg.

Until she felt the warm gush on her hands and twisted around to see what was happening, Miowee wasn't aware of what she'd done. She sucked in a breath as she saw the red flood. "Shadow…"

"Yeh, I know." Shadith managed a creaky laugh. "Told you."

"Death to the Pliciks! Death to the Godkillers!"

Dencipim came out of the crowd, leaped the rope, and buried the pistol in the belly of the nearest Royal Guard. As he pulled the trigger, he snatched off the Guard's gilded helmet, threw it to the men following him over the rope. "Death to the Pliciks. Death to the Godkillers!"

Darkness flowed across the crater; the shadows at the back of the. Bubble thickened. Shadith froze, but the rite went droning on and the sun came out again. Cloud or what?,

Maka and Tana began throwing themselves at the Guards and the portable Palace, coming at it in waves, individual men dying and dying and dying, the waves never dying. "Death to the Pliciks! Death to the God-killers!"

Miowee shifted cautiously, located the tether that bound Kayataki to the pole. "Kaya."

"Mmmmphmm." It was a small sound, but as much noise as the girl could make around the gag. It was just audible above the chanting of the choir, the groan of the Longhorns, the doomdoom of the Drums.

"Child of mine, you know how to fall, soon as you're loose, go over the edge, then scoot for the back, find a hole and crawl in, you hear me?"

"Mmmooohminm!" The sound rose in protest. The child shook her head.

"Do it. I'm coming soon as I'm loose, but I swear, baby, I won't move till you're out of sight."

"Mmnimm." It was a falling sound this time, acquiescence. Shivering and icy pale, Kayataki hunched forward, pushed her head against her mother's side, then pulled back, stretching the tether taut so it'd be easier to cut.

Miowee handled the knife more awkwardly than she intended, applying too much force despite her care. The blade went through both ropes, hers and Kaya's, without noticing them and kept on going, missing her buttock by a hair and sinking into one of the oily sticks. She let go of the hilt as if she'd closed her hand about a snake.

A redheaded woman came riding through the Cicipi Gate, sitting in an arslibre howda mounted on the arching back of an immense and ugly warbot like the worst possible cross between a spider and a lobster. Two more paced alongside and a third followed behind. They shot gouts of steam through spiracles along their sides, opening a path for themselves through the surging throng of Kiskaids, walking with ominous, sinuous inevitability through the self-created clouds of steam.

The pilgrims scrambled to get away from the things, frantic with terror, seeing them as demons from hell's cellar.

Maka and Tanak were swarming over the glass palace, stomping on it, kicking at it, shooting at it with guns they'd brought with them or taken from dead guards; the glass was chipped and webbed with cracks but would not break, the cage groaned from the weight it was carrying but refused to collapse.

Men died, their bodies piling up against the glass. Inside the portable Palace, the Nistam stared grimly at grotesque dead faces staring sightlessly back at him.

Loyal Guards fired into the mob, killing hundreds, but a half a million men were coming at them, they couldn't kill them all. There wasn't enough room for aiming or even for using their rifles effectively. One by one they were falling.

About half the Guardforce deserted and slid into the crowd the moment they got a chance to tear off their uniforms.

By will and the force of the discipline he'd imposed on Aspirants all the long years he'd been Gospah, Ayawit was holding the rite together despite the chaos out on the floor of the crater.

Though he was gradually losing some of his priests, the core held. The Longhorners played their bassnotes, the choir sang, the god-Mimes danced-and the Na-priests crouched in the guardline between the Gospah and the people.

One by one the weaker souls slipped away, throwing off their robes and cassocks, stealing clothing off the dead, melting into the mob outside. But the core held.

As Miowee went over the edge and landed with a thump on the planks behind the Pyres, Shadith sagged against the ropes.

They gave a little. She could move her hands, her arms.

After a moment, she understood why.

Getting the knife out, Miowee had cut through several loops of the coil that bound her to the pole and that coil was beginning to unwind.

Her leg burned a little, but she still wasn't feeling much pain, the crystal cut too clean.

She flexed her knee, gasped at the sudden agony, felt sick when her foot sloshed in the blood that was filling the boot; the knife hadn't touched an artery, but she was leaking like a holey pot.

I'm going to bleed to death, she thought. No!

She rocked her body. The rope unwound faster and faster.

Fire. She was fire.

The Gospah was coming toward her, his eyes glazed with the intensity of his concentration.

He didn't see the loosened rope.

She had the feeling he saw nothing but whatever it was inside his head.

His arms were outstretched and empty, but three Kam priests behind him held torches.

He stopped in front of her. He chanted something. A Kam priest gave him a torch. His voice rising to a shriek, Ayawit looped it onto her Pyre.

It landed by her feet; the sticks caught, exploded into a sheet of flame.

Shadith closed her eyes, stopped breathing. She shut down everything but that rough pressure against her body and the slow, agonizing dance that kept the rope uncoiling until she tore the last loops off her neck and shoulders.

She dropped to her knees, reached through fire and grabbed the knife, ignoring the pain as the hot hilt burned into her palm, then she flung herself off the back of the Pyre, her bleeding leg giving way as she landed on the planks beside Miowee.

"Your wrists, push them away from you."

Not daring to cut all the way through (she didn't have time to take care not to slice into Miowee's arms), she nicked the rope round her wrists deeply enough (she hoped) to let the singer break free, then started crawling toward Kikun's Pyre which was burning now as the Gospah marched away with the last torch, crossing to Rohant.

She heard shouts, shooting, ignored them as she stabbed the knife into a stick near the top, then concentrated on pulling herself up the back of the Pyre.

The choir's chant faltered, stopped, the Kam priests shouted and began pushing and jumping, trying to get away from something that was more terrifying than the Gospah's anger.

The Longhorns went silent, the Drums stopped sounding. There was a rattle of high-pitched pings so close together they produced an almost continuous whine that improbably filled the whole of the broken Bubble.

Shadith levered herself over the edge of the pile, retrieved the knife and cut cautiously at the coil of rope binding Kikun to the center pole.

He woke from his trance and began helping her peel the rope away. His face was blistered from the heat of the flames, he was coughing as a few tendrils of oily smoke blew into his nostrils.

The Fire quit.

One minute it was there, the next gone, leaving behind a foul stench and a sudden chill as if whatever had snuffed it had not only killed the flames but sucked the heat out of the fuel that fed them, out of the air itself.

Steadying herself as her leg threatened to give way again, Shadith grabbed at the center post and gaped at the devastation in the Bubble, bodies sprawled everywhere, piled on top of each other, stunned not dead (they were still breathing), the new arrival sitting calmly in the middle of all this on a huge warbot of worldclass ugliness, three smaller clones of the thing standing guard behind it.

Aleytys grinned at her. "Eh, Shadow, Dea ex Machina reporting for duty."

"Eh, Lee." Shadith closed her eyes, popped them open again as she remembered… "You better machinate some more or all we'll be is smears on rubble." She eased the blade into the center post, above Kikun's head. She didn't trust herself with it, not any more. "I suppose you didn't see any ship in orbit?"

"Someone was skittering for the Limit. Thought I'd better collect you first. Machinate how-and why?"

"That someone probably left us a little present. Planetkiller. Think you can locate it, say it's there?"

"Lovely friends you have. Here, before you bleed to death and waste my worry." Aleytys tossed a medpac to Shadith, then snapped a command to the warbot she was riding. It twisted its long jointed neck up and around, bringing its head close to hers; she began talking rapidly and inaudibly into its shielded sensors.

Leaving Kikun to finish freeing himself, Shadith eased down onto the quenched and blackened sticks, maneuvering her wounded leg around so she could see the cut. Not much point in cleaning it up now, leave that to Lee's Autodoc. Better stop the bleeding though. Sar! I've lost enough blood on this jauza world to feed a vampire for a year. Come on, come on, Lee, move it! We die now, I swear I'll haunt you… hey, I wonder if one ghost can haunt another? Sheehl Pm getting giddy…

She broke the seal, brought out the canned bandage and sprayed a thick layer of foam over the cut. The foam solidified into resilient fauxskin-that hurt! Pressure on the damaged nerve ends. Knowing what was doing it didn't help at all. Hands shaking, she dug out a painpopper, checked the dials, her eyes blurring unreliably, then managed to get a pop into her leg and shut off the agony.

Cool dry fingertips touched her face. "All right?"

"Right enough."

Kikun straightened, looked around. "Useful friend."

"Yeh."

"I had better cut the Ciocan loose, don't you think?"

"Cool him down first. Um. You know about the knife?"

"I know. Cuts anything."

"Not a great exaggeration, my friend."

"Wa." He gazed across the backs of the warbots, shook his head at the bloody screaming war going on out in the crater. "Wa weh."

Shadith grimaced as he jumped down, the knife held loosely in his left hand; he was surefooted but given the properties of the crystal, prancing about with it like that came absurdly close to suicide. She'd done the same thing a minute ago, but she hadn't been tracking very well just then.

Aleytys was still talking to that bot. Shadith's stomach knotted and she swallowed hastily to keep her dinner down. That ship of hers… Tigatri, she calls it… Daughter. I don't know. Maybe it… she… can handle the Banger. Be the baddest joke in the universe if Lee rescued us just in time we all get blown to nada… got here faster than I expected. Maybe… depends on Ginny. Double-knotter. If I read him right, he'll want to be insplitting before the Banger goes. If… Gives us some hours working time… maybe… I don't know, I don't know…

She hitched painfully over to the center pole, leaned against it and shut her eyes.

Its chelae absurdly gentle, the warbot plucked Shadith off the Pyre and deposited her beside Aleytys who was leaning back but keeping a wary eye on the readouts spread across the front of the howda.

Shadith forced herself erect. "Lee…"

"Relax. Tigatri's got the Banger located, she's slapped a stasis field around it. That's the good news. Bad news is there's no way of shutting it down and the field eats power like it's cotton candy on a stick. She's in the process of hauling the thing up and carting it to the next world out, that's an iceworld, barren, better it goes than this one. That'll shake up the system some, but Kiskai and these people, they'll survive." She glanced over her shoulder at the war outside the Bubble. "If they don't kill each other off first."

"How long before we can get out of here?"

"About an hour."

"Oh." Shadith hauled her leg up, rested her ankle on the front of the howda. "Well, I lasted this long…" She inspected Aleytys. "Had the baby, hmm?"

"Two months ago. Daughter." Aleytys' eyes went fond and sappy (Shadith's assessment), she smiled down at her hands. "Her name's Lilai. You'll meet her when we go onboard Tigatri. She's beautiful, Shadow, she's a little firehair, got angelcurls redder than mine. Grey's gaga over her. He didn't want me to bring her, but I'm not leaving her like I did my son. No. Never. Where I go, she goes."

Rohant was squatting on his Pyre, scowling. Abruptly his face relaxed. He got to his feet. "Shadow! I'm calling Sassa in, tell your friend to let him through, right?"

Aleytys raised a brow. "Sassa?"

"Hawk."

"Ah." She lay back, closed her eyes. "Bird. Raptor. Admit."

Shadith-eased back, the tension dropping out of her; for the first time in months she was safe, she didn't have to fight any more, she didn't have to scramble or run; she could lie there and let the minutes drift past.

She enjoyed it for about a minute and a half, then her eyes popped open and she sat up again. "Miowee," she said "Kikun…" She broke off, then burst out laughing as the little lacertine came stumping between the pyres, Miowee on his back and Kayataki following behind. "Kikun, if you can't read minds, you do a good imitation."

Kikun wiggled his pointed ears. He deposited Miowee on Rohant's bench and went trotting into the darkness behind the pyres. A minute later he was back with the Paleka Kitskew and her harp. He set them by the bench and dropped into a squat beside them.

Shadith took hold of her leg and shifted it down, caught hold of the; top of the console and pressed herself forward until she could see the singer better. "Looks like your revolution's kicked off to a good start, Mee. What about you? What are you going to do?"

Miowee passed her hand over her tumbled tangled hair. "Wait," she said after a while. "I've got people out there. When the fighting's over… it will be over soon, it can't last… Kaya and I, we'll go back to Aina'iril and see what we can do to help pull things together."

"Asteplikota's going to be looking for who killed his brother."

"I'll face that when… if… I have to."

"Come with us. I'll get you into a place where you can regrow your legs, fix your eye. Starfolk klem, you know."

Miowee covered her face with both hands, hunched her shoulders. For a long time she said nothing, then she shook her head. "No," she said. "No."

"Be reasonable, Mee. The next months are going to be hell and a half, by the time you get back things will've settled down some."

"Reasonable!" The word exploded out of her; she glared up at Shadith. "If I'd been reasonable, I'd be dead. Reasonable snuffs out the light. I never have been reasonable and I'm not going to change now. Look at me. I can make you look at me. I can make you SEE me. I can make you listen. You listen out of pity and horror, but you do listen. And you HEAR!" She sighed. "You're a nice child, Shadow, and you mean to be kind, but you don't understand."

"Maybe not, but…"

"I am who I am, Shadow; I am what I've made myself, and it's something to take pride in. I won't take gifts, I won't unmake ME."

There was a soft, almost subliminal chime. Aleytys sat up, frowned at the console. "There's a swarm of flits coming this way."

Miowee heard her, laughed, not a nice sound. "One gift," she cried. "I'll take one gift. Will your friend open the glass for us, crack the oyset so we can get at the putrid pearl inside? Nistam, the Nistam! Let us have him if we die for it."

Shadith nodded. "Yes. I owe that lot something, too. Lee?"

"If you mean that hill out there, look at the thing, Shadow. It's five deep with stomping locals. I doubt you want me to punch holes through them."

"Kaya, bring the kitskew." Miowee pushed off the bench, crawled rapidly toward the front of the Bubble, humping over the stunned sacerdOtes scattered about the planks, ignoring them, wriggling through the jointed warbot legs, ignoring them. At the outer edge of the stage, she settled herself on the back of a recumbent Na-priest, took the Paleka Kitskew from her daughter, tuned it, and began playing. Improbably, the sound cut through the noise. She'd collected a lug-ike sometime during her crawl; Shadith hadn't seen her do it but was amused, it was so like the woman, practical and outrageous at once.

"Harrowee darrowee yarrowee HOO!" she sang. "Hear ye oh heed ye oh dearie my LOO! I am Miowee, you know me, you DO!"

At first it seemed absurd, singing a song (and a nonsense-song at that) to a war-in-progress, but one, then another, another, and another called out: Miowee. Miowee. Miowee. It's Miowee. Listen. The name went, skittering across and across the crater and those who could did stop to listen.

"The landlords are coming, be ready, my dears. The landlords are swarming in flits to this place." She stopped her chant and played the kitskew for a moment to give them a chance to absorb her warning. "You on the glass, get down for a while, we'll break open the oyset and you pluck the pearl."

Almost before she was finished the men on the portable Palace were jumping down, clearing a space around it. There were no Royal Guards left alive outside the glass, only bodies kicked to jelly. The glass was still intact though opaque from cracks and smears of blood and other body fluids, the people inside invisible.

Aleytys hesitated. "This is what you want, Shadow?"

"It's what I want. You don't know, Lee, you just don't know."

"All right." She tapped a sensor, spoke quietly into the warbot's 'ear'. A second later one of the clones was spitting a cutter at the dome, slicing neatly through the glass, opening an oval hole near the bottom of the dome.

There was a roar from the spectators as the remnant of the Guard came charging through the hole, laying down a hail of pellets as they tried to get the Nistam and the court out and into the housecavern behind.

The Maka and the Tanak died and fell, fell and died, but the mantide rolled irresistibly over the Pliciks and the Guards.

Aleytys moved her shoulders and looked grim. Shadith felt sick, but she wasn't sorry she'd asked. Miowee was lying flat behind a pile of Na-priests, Kayataki hugged against her.

Rohant sat on his bench, Sassa perched uneasily beside him.

Kikun was leaning against a warbot leg, sunk in one of his enigmatic reveries, mostly not-there.

"Lee, how close are the flits?"

"Ten minutes at most."

"Don't you think we better get out of here?"

"No. There are enough people dying. I don't want to have to kill more."

"Yeh, well, nice. But tell you true, I'd rather them than me."

"Tigatri's on her way back. In a hurry. She'll lay down a stunfield, flatten everyone, we walk out taking our time."

"I thought you said an hour."

"It's almost that now, Shadow."

"Already?"

"Already. You were too tied up to notice." Aleytys patted her arm, chuckled. "Tell you something, my girl, this time I'm delivering you myself to University, make sure you get there."

"No, Lee. I don't think so. I think we've got unfinished business. The three of us." She straightened. "Rohant. Kikun. Come over here."

"It's a practical matter," she said. She eased her throbbing leg. Her foot moved in the blood in her boot; it was a sticky gel now, disgusting but she ignored that. Wouldn't be long before she could take the boot off. "Get him before he gets us."

Rohant bared his teeth. "It's personal. Very personal."

"Personal, practical, a difference with no difference. We go after him."

"Yes." Rohant held his hands out, palms up, claws showing. "What I have, I give. Blood, body, and gold."

"Yes." Kikun straightened. "His dead want him. So be it."

"So be it."