The Burning Ground

3. The search

Zot grinned and came trotting over when Yseyl beckoned to her. “Missed you,” she said. “The incomers the past week have been mostly real boring.”

Yseyl led Zot around a corner to get away from the ears of the guidepack overseer, handed her half a dozen coppers. “Pay off your whip, hm? Tell her you’ve got a client for the next three, four days.”

“Four days? Akamagali!” She rubbed the elastic tip of her nose, stared at the ground. “You know I got to be back in Hall by an hour after sundown? I stay out all night, I lose my place in the pack.”

“No problem.”

Zot’s grin flashed again, then she whipped around the corner, was back in half a breath. “She wanted to know who and what I was gonna do, I said it was a Pilgrim I took to the Grand Yeson a couple days ago, now she wants to pray at all the shrines.”

“Zot, if I was the kind to worry, I’d fuss myself about how fast and easy you lie.”

Zot giggled. “Vumah vumay, you aren’t, so you won’t.”

“True. Had breakfast?”

“Yeh. They shovel us outta bed round sunup and feed us. Usual slop.”

“So you could eat some more.”

“I can always eat.”

“That teashop’s open?”

“Yeah. And they make graaaand womsi buns, and it’s still early enough they’ll be hot from the oven.”

Yseyl watched Zot devouring the big soft bun, a dot of the white icing on the tip of her nose. A powerful wave of affection for the femlit rolled over her, something she couldn’t remember ever feeling before.

Zot pushed in the last bite, looked up; her cheeks distended like a yeph at nut-fall. “Good stuff,” she said, the words muffled by the bread in her mouth. She gave the mouthful another few chews, washed it down with a gulp of tea, then sat waiting for Yseyl to tell her why she was here.

Yseyl shifted around so she was leaning against the wall, one knee crooked and resting on the booth seat; she lifted the tea bowl, took a sip, cradled it against her chest. “I’ve been up in the mountains for the past week. Anything interesting happen?”

“Funny you should ask. Yeh. There’s a huge hoohaw going on. This femlit, s’posed to come from way over in Khokuhl, least that’s what she says, me, I think she’s got futhus eating her brain, anyway, she says a Messenger of God brought her here with her anya, anya’s kinda sick, xe was in egg and the anyalit that hatched out, it bit her wrong and she almost went off, but the femlit says the Messenger of God saved her anya, anyway something did, but that’s not what’s got ol’ Humble Haf running to talk to her, and the Venerable Whosit the Prophet Speaker and even ol’ Noxabo went squinnying around to get the tale from the jomayl’s teeth and the Anyas of Mercy are lighting candles and just about everybody’s talking like they got the runs of the mouth. No, it’s ’cause the femlit she says the Messenger of God told her the Fence is corning down. Before the moon is new again, she says, the Fence will be gone. All gone.”

“Folks believe her?”

“For sure. Lots of ’em. Well, most of this lot would believe anything just about. Long as someone said God said it anyway. And them that don’t want it to happen, even they gettin’ nervous.”

“That is interesting.”

“You sound like you think it’s maybe true. I know. You saw something out in the mountains, din’t you. Tell me, huh?”

“Zot…”

“No. Tell me, or I’m going back right now.” She pushed along the seat until she was perched at the very edge, her hands flat on the table, that absurd dot of icing falling away as she glared at Yseyl.

Yseyl was briefly angry, then amused. “T’k, young Zot, try that on someone who doesn’t know you. I’ll say this much. I think I met your femlit’s Messenger Not from God.”

Zot’s grin threatened to split her face in half. She slid back along the bench, leaned across the table and whispered, “You gonna do it, aren’t you. You gonna take down the Fence.”

“Think what you want.”

Zot straightened, snatched the last bun and broke off a big piece. “So. What you want me to do?”

“I need some people with guns who know how to use them. Not crazies and not types who’ll use them on me.”

“Yeep, that’s not gonna be easy. How many?”

“Five maybe six.”

“Hm. There’s One-Eye Baluk, he’s got a stable of face-breakers he rents out when one of the merchants wants to collect a debt or a coaster captain is after a sailor who went for a walk and forgot to come back.” She scratched alongside her nose, shook her head. “They’re all dumber’n rocks. ‘Sides, I think Baluk don’t want things to change, and he’d be apt to bop you on the head if he thought you could really do something about the Fence. Nah, you want fighters, you not gonna find them inside Linojin.” She chewed on the bun, her brows drawn down, her eyes focused on air.

Yseyl leaned against the wall feeling peculiar. She’d been alone since Crazy Delelan disappeared. Whenever she was with other people, she didn’t connect with them, only used them. She was using Zot, that was the same, but how she felt about the child, that was different. Like the femlit was hatched from her egg, learned from her hand. It made her queasy, as if she’d picked up some kind of disease.

Another thought struck her suddenly and curdled the tea in her upper stomach. If she messed up Zot’s life, she’d have to do something to make up for that. She couldn’t just walk off and say tough and forget about it as she’d done before. Vumah vumay, she could, but she’d feel like the stuff you scrape off your foot if she did.

Zot straightened, wriggled her nose. “I think maybe hohekil who just got here would be the best place to look. Whyn’t you let me go talk to a couple people I know. How soon you need the shooters?”

Yseyl pushed away from the wall. “Keep it easy, Zot. No hurry.” She slid along the seat, got to her feet. “No hurry at all.”

The next several days while Zot ferreted about, Yseyl did her own looking and listening.

Pilgrims swarmed about Mercy House, waiting to see the femlit. Slipping around the edges of the crowd, Yseyl heard them calling for the Holy Child, heard excited, incoherent chatter about miracles. Fem, mal, or anya, it didn’t matter; tone, sign and fervor were the same.

Each day the excitement built. The Pilgrims walked the streets between the House where they waited for the Anyas to bring out the Child and the wharves where they stared at the golden flickers of the Fence wondering aloud if they were going to be among the blessed who got to see the Fence come down.

In the market the merchants were ambivalent. If the Fence vanished, none of them could figure how it would affect them. Life in Linojin hadn’t changed in generations, and they wanted it to stay like that. Maybe they grumbled about irritations and inconveniences and the idiocies of the Council of Religious who ran the place, but these were familiar irritations. Moving from the familiar to the unknown frightened many of them.

Along the wharves there was a similar mix of feeling with a spicing of wary skepticism and a lot of tentative preparations. The captains of the coastal steamers kept an eye on the Fence and each other and sent their navigators to the Yeson’s library for any information they could scrounge about the world beyond the Fence. These mats and ferns knew what Yseyl had picked up from the hohekil who came into the city to listen to the Child. In the villages along the coast there was impatience, irritation, a pent up need for space that was going to explode soon, whether the Fence came down or not. Zot was wiser than me. I should have thought of the villages before. Hm. Don’t need to worry about getting the word out. Soon as the Fence goes down, the coast is going to look like a futhu nest somebody’s kicked. She contemplated the thought with considerable satisfaction. It made her dealings with the offworlder easier to swallow.

She certainly didn’t regret giving up on the Arbiter. He drew his power from the hohekil running from the war. This was their last hope and he controlled access to it. Let the Fence be removed, and there was no more reason for anyone to listen to him. I was really stupid, she thought, I didn’t think it through. Even Cerex knew I couldn’t get anyone actually to use the disruptor, no one important, anyway. Politics, pah! I’m a thief and I fall on my face every time I forget that.

Yseyl came back to her room on the fourth day to find Zot sitting on the bed, her biggest grin blooming as the door opened.

Zot bounced on the mattress, so full of herself she almost took flight as she slid off it and came running toward Yseyl. “Kumba did it,” she said. She caught hold of Yseyl’s hand, tugged her through the door. “He’s this mallit I knew before he got in trouble because he sorta stole things, I mean he could wiggle into places you wouldn’t even think was places…” She broke off as she reached the stairs, clattered down them and stood waiting impatiently in the foyer for Yseyl to join her.

When they were in the street, Zot kept her voice low, but her excitement was such the words seemed to burst from her. “… but this mal who used to buy what he got, he was cheating him, and when he got smart enough to know what was happening, he wouldn’t bring him stuff anymore, and the mal sent a whisper round, and Kumba got booted out from the Hall.” She gulped in a breath, looking round to make sure no one was paying attention to them. “Anyway, we stayed friends and sometimes he banks his stuff with me till he can find a buyer, so I thought about him, but it took a while to find him. I told him what you wanted and why, don’t get mad, he had to know so he’d know what to look for, but I din’t tell him who. Anyway he says there this Pixa ixis or what’s left of it, there’s one old fern and her bond anya, xe’s got joint problems and don’t get around too good, two femlitsone of ’em kinda sick, she’s in the Mercy hospital with the old anya-three young ferns, and two anyas. The bunch of ’em went hohekil and just got here and already they got trouble.”

She tapped Yseyl’s arm, and they turned into a narrow alley between two large hostels. “Over one of the anyas, well, you know anyas are kinda sparse on the ground these days, free anyas anyway, and even the Anyas of Mercy they got to watch themselves. This mal he started hanging round the anya, xe’s living outside the wall in Fishtown, things get kinda wild there sometimes. That’s where we’re going now, I wanna show ’em to you. Vumah vumay, he wouldn’t leave xe alone, kept offering money and other stuff and paying xe no mind when xe say back off. The mal he tried grabbing xe and xe’s fembond she beat the thuv outta him, but he’s kin to one of the Arbiter’s guard, so he goes and gets himself some bigtime help…” She grinned at the guard lolling beside the small archway, tossed him a coin and darted through, then stood dancing from foot to foot, once again waiting for Yseyl.

“… but the rest of the ixis, even the old ’un, the Heka, they land on those fugheads so hard they crying for Main and Baba.” An unpaved path led from the arch toward a clutch of small dark structures built on stilts just beyond the dune line of the bay shore. There were a number of fishboats in various states of repair drawn up on the sand and clutches of old Trials seated near them repairing nets. Other mals and ferns and some children walked slowly along the shore, digging out shellfish and picking up drift the tide had left behind. The path itself was empty for the moment and tot plunged ahead, still riding the high of an excitement that was beginning to bother Yseyl. If the child had set her hopes on coming along…

“Anyway, I figure, first, these ferns and anyas they’re tough and they fight good, second, they jezin sure know they better be somewhere else for a while, third, from what Kumba tells me they really really hate the Fence, he says Luca, she’s the fern stomped that mal, she goes out and stares at the Fence like she wants to stomp it worse’n that mal. They got a tent on the far side of that lot there.” Zot’ pointed.

The Pixa hohekils lived in a series of ragged tents pitched in the woods that grew outside Linojin’s southern wall, a stretch of brushy wasteland separating them from the village.

Yseyl dropped her hand on Zot’s shoulder. “You did good, sounds exactly what I want. Did you set up a meeting?”

“No. I figured you’d want to take a look at them first.”

Yseyl smiled at her. “How did you get to be so smart? Just born that way, I suppose. Never mind.” She dropped to a squat beside the path, patted a tuft of grass beside her. “Sit yourself and tell me the rest of what you found out about them. The more I know, the better the bargain I can make.”

Zot settled on the grass, legs crossed, hands slapping on her knees to emphasize the points she thought were important. “Ah-huh, so. They call themselves the Remnant of Shishim, all their mals are dead, even the little ones. There’s the Heka, her name is Wintshikan, her anya’s called Zell. Zell’s the one in the Mercy hospital with the femlit, she’s called Zaro. They aren’t real sick, but traveling here was hard on ’em. Then there’s a fern called Xaca who mostly takes care of them and the other femlit, her name’s Kanilli. Then there’s two sets of fernanya bonds, they’re kinda wild. There’s Luca and Wann, Wann’s the one the mal tried to go off with, and there’s Nyen and Hidan. The others were settling down well enough, but those four, they don’t really fit in the villages and there’s for sure no place for them inside Linojin.” She took a deep breath. “Kumba picked up a lot of gossip about them, thing is they got here with a good store of coin and a bunch of jomayls, got more coin selling all but a couple of the jomayls, made people curious, you know, ’cause Pixas mostly don’t get here, with much but the clothes on their backs and maybe a gun or two Well, you know, femlits talk, even Pixa femlits, so word gets out. Seems there was this band of robbers on the Peddler’s Trace, they’d done a lot of Pilgrims and peddlers and hohekil coming over Kakotin Pass, but the Remnant did them this time and got all their stuff. Vumah vumay, Luca and the rest of the younger ones, they kinda make folk nervous and when you put the gossip with what happened to the mal, well, like I said, better they find somewhere else to be for a while.” Zot twitched her mouth and wrinkled her nose. “That’s about it.”

“Hm.” Yseyl got to her feet. The child seemed calmer now; time to try easing her away. “Zot, I want you to point out their tent, then stay out of sight. Hush! I’ve got a reason. I don’t want them connecting you with me: Depending on what happens when we talk, I might want you watching them. Understand?”

Zot’s face lost the last of its glow and settled into its usual tough, alleyrat cynicism. “I hear you,” she said and jumped up. “You want me to go ahead now so the others don’t see us together.”

To Yseyl those words read I know what you’re doing, it’s what everybody does, use me, then shove me away like a dirty snotrag. A fist closed round her heart and she knew, whatever it cost, she couldn’t do that to the child. Zot was in this till the Fence came down. If she was hurt or killed, well, better that than another shove down the road Yseyl herself had taken. fish! What’s happening to me? Can’t even make a plan and stick to it. I don’t want this… I can’t deal with… that femlit… under my skin… why did I take her out of that pack… I know well enough… something about her reminded me of me… I just wish she’d let it go… let me go… I’m the worst choice she could have made. Until the Fence is down… what about after? No, I can’t… there’s no… I’ll have to get away from here. Cerex? I could give him that call.

Or Digby? There’s no time to think about it now I don’t want to think about it. God!

She turned her shoulder to Zot and scowled at the scrubby trees, hacked about till they were half dead because of the campers’ need for firewood. The tents were mostly old, patched sails passed on by coasters as part of their inkohel duty to the Yeson, turned a yellowish-gray by salt, sun, and age. Children played in the dirt outside a number of these tents, chals fought or slept by them, old ferns and a very few old mals dozed or worked on this and that, leather crafts or repairing shirts and trousers that had already been repaired so often they had more darns than cloth. The breeze that wandered past was bitter with the stench of urine and hopelessness.

“Don’t be silly,” Yseyl said, an edge of irritation on the words. “Looking from their direction, guiding me is one thing, sitting in on the conversations is another. You take me to the camp, then you find Kumba and see if he’s come up with some more possibles. I need one, preferably two more for this phela. And don’t go getting ideas that I’m leaving you out. You’re not a fighter, femlit, but you’re small, which could be useful, and clever and God knows we do need brains somewhere.”

Zot stared at her a moment longer, then she grinned and with an absurd little skipping hop, she started off along the dim footpath that went around the outside of the tent city.

The tent was set apart from the others, two jomayls beside it in a corral improvised from braided leather ropes; a femlit was in the corral with them, going over the smallest jomayl with a stiff-bristled brush. A radio sat in the dust near a fern braiding leather thongs into what looked to be a short whip. An anya was curled on a blanket beside her, reading a small, battered book. Another anya sat at xe’s-feet, carving, a piece of wood; what xe was making Yseyl couldn’t say.

She stood watching the scene, suddenly back sitting at the feet of Crazy Delelan, smelling the sweet bite of sida wood as the anya carved wheels for her toy wagon. They weren’t all bad, those days; it was just that she found it too painful before this to remember the good times.

Zot’s whisper broke through her rememberings, brought her back to the needs of the moment. “That one with the thongs, that’s Luca. The anya with the book is Wann and the one carving is Hidan. Go get ’em.” A soft giggle and a scrape of leaves, then Zot was gone, following instructions.

Yseyl swallowed, no matter how successful a thief she was, no matter how many arms dealers she’d stalked and killed, trying to persuade people to do things made her feel inadequate. She straightened her shoulders and strolled over to stand in front of Luca. “My name is Yseyl. I’ve got a proposition for you.”