The Burning Ground

2. Itchy feet, itchy mind

The ottotel was a wart at the edge of the Marratorium, Marrat’s version of a Pit Stop. Their rooms were standard nonluxe, what they’d find anywhere along the tradelanes. Shadith sat on the bed in her room, staring at the door, feeling that peculiar disorientation that plunging into a new place seemed to be bringing her these days-maybe this time because her harp was sealed in the ship and she’d nothing to do with her hands and her head was empty of words, so making a song or a poem was not possible. Or maybe it was because she was working to another person’s rhythms. Autumn Rose was calling this one as long as they were here at Marrat’s, Digby had made that quite clear. I trust your skills, but not your instincts, he said.

Her skin itched. Her brain itched. She wanted to be out and doing. But Rose said let it lay, so there it was, a corpse stretched out beneath her feet. The cleaner’s the key. I’m sure of that. She passed the probe. Contract labor with barely sufficient intelligence to manage a dust mop. But the only one who could wander unchallenged anywhere once she’s in. So if it isn’t her it’s someone who fooled the kephalos. And the Blurdslang. overseer. How to get in, though? How to take her place? I… The musical chime of the announcer broke into her thoughts.

She got to her feet and sauntered across to the door, expecting another chime, but it didn’t come. She tapped the announcer alive, saw Autumn Rose standing in the hall, her face calm, her hands still. She’s not one to fidget, no, not our Rose. That would be a weakness. She opened the door and stepped back.

Autumn Rose nodded at her, walked to the small round table in the middle of the room, and flipped on the block. She beckoned, and Shadith joined her.

“Did you get anything definite or was that tour mostly for irritating Prehanet?”

Shadith rubbed her thumb across her chin, frowned at the wall. “Mostly I kept remembering Kikun.”

“That noseeum of his wouldn’t pass a template test or mask him from the kephalos.”

“I know. But if you believe prettyface Prehanet, either there’s someone who can beat a probe, or there’s a ghost who can walk through walls. As it were.”

“Hm. Assume a ghost and let him worry about how it got in. Find the ship it arrived on and trace that. There’s a lot of traffic through here, but we should be able to eliminate some of it once we get the flakes.”

“If we get them.”

“I think it’s likely. Sunflower really wants its gadget back.”

“Wonder what it is.” Shadith wrinkled her nose. “Very tightmouthed, our client. I think that lot stole it themselves and they don’t want word getting out.”

“Probably. Marrat’s is definitely Gray Market. Prehanet just sent this over by messenger.” Rose tossed a flake case on the table. “It’s a list with visuals of all those who went in and out of the building on the night in question. Including your pet, the cleaning lady. Run this through a few times tonight, Shadow; Prettyface-apt name, by the way-he was snickering under his breath when he called to tell me the flake was coming. I suspect he’s run the two lists through the kephalos and come up blank. Be interesting if you can tease out something he missed.” She got to her feet. “We’ve an appointment with OverSec an hour after noon tomorrow. I’m going to find a game. Want to come along?”

“Thanks, but the circles you game in are so rarified I’d lose my breath before I started. I might see if there’s any interesting music about.”

Autumn Rose smiled, an urchin’s grin that abolished her usual dignity. “And I’d be snoring before two notes were played. Enjoy, young Shadow. I won’t play Mama and issue any warnings. From what Digby said, they’d be entirely misplaced.”

Shadith blinked as the door closed. “Well, that was a surprise. Maybe we can cobble a team out of the pair of us.”

She set the flake reader down, rubbing at her eyes. “Enough! Swarda was right. Better to play a little and let the overheated brain have a rest.” Quale. Still hard to think of Swardheld by the name he’d adopted. A dozen years or so in the body didn’t weigh very heavily against the millennia they’d spent together as concatenations of forces within the diadem.

I’ve got my house, he said. I’ve got my crew. I’ve got my ship. I’m happy with all that, Shadow. But there are times when life goes flat and the sun turns black on me and I don’t know whether breathing is worth the effort it takes.

And then he looked around and smiled. He was building chairs now There was one on the bench, lovely in the sunlight, its wood glowing with the rubbing he’d given it, taking in the light and sucking it deep down so it almost seemed to breathe with the air that blew across it.

You found the right world, she told him, with all this wood about.

Your music isn’t enough? he asked her then answered himself No. It isn’t, is it? It’s a grace, but it doesn’t fill the days. You’re right to go with Digby. For a while, anyway. But don’t let your songs and your playing slide. You need both.

“And that’s the truth.” She got to her feet, ran a comb through her curls, then went out to find herself some song and maybe a pinch of trouble to make the long night pass.

The Marratorium was crowded: ship’s crews, servants, and aides of the Meat Market patrons; labor from the factories; off duty guards; buyers and sellers; shimmers; players of all kinds; gamblers; scammers; thieves; smugglers; gun runners; druggies and druggers. Everyone who had occasion to visit a gray market and had a bit of credit to spare was out in the ‘Torium hunting for pleasure. Cousins of every sort; Bawangs stilting along, their heads high over everyone else; Blurdslangs trundling about in their nutrient dishes; Clovel Matriarchs and their cloned attendants, little herds of chattering Jajes; Caan smugglers with their velvety fur and the minimal leather strapping they used for clothes; leathery Pa’ao Teely with eyes like ice and half their merchandise on their bodies, those weapons peace-sealed, a gesture to the peace of mind of the rest of the swirling mix; Ptica-Pterri mostly in molt though several had their mating plumage in full glory; Xenagoa acrobats; gauze-wrapped Nayids, arachnoid Menaviddans dressed mainly in stiff black hair and loops of the shimmering monofilament that was their chief wealth. A small group of Dyslaera moved into view, but she didn’t know them, and they passed her without a glance.

She let a surge of strollers carry her into the casino, eased free of them and drifted past glitter-chitter games with dancing colors programmed to lure and half-hypnotize the watcher into playing, past games so ancient they might have been born rules and all with the universe itself, past dealers and shills, lingering a moment to listen to a flowerlike creature singing an eerie croon, moving on when the song was done. Autumn Rose was there somewhere, but she didn’t see her. Probably in a private room away from this chaos, settled down with serious players.

This was the outer room where riff rubbed against raff, where the games were glitz and small change, the service by ‘droid and ‘bot, the music, such as it was, riffing off a dendron in the vast kephalos that ran the whole Marratorium. Where mezzanines were cantilevered from the walls and tables floated free with seatbelts and catchment basins for those who couldn’t hold their drinks. Where hired men whispered suggestions to anybeing remotely mammalian, and hired women fluttered their lashes and suggested much the same without words, and hired others did what others did.

Shadith watched the avid faces of the assortment of life-forms crowded about the games, curiously alike despite the variety of species. It was one way of walking the edge, but losing money didn’t thrill her much and winning would mean even less. No meaning to it, nothing to engage her beyond a moment’s zazz.

The continual ripple and tremble of lights, the saturated color, and the tension in the gamblers started her head aching and she moved on, following wisps of music that drifted in whenever someone pushed through the silver membrane that slashed the whole length of one wall from ground level to the ceiling ten stories up. The casino’s chief extravagance was the throwaway space. On their collection of enclosed asteroids such expansiveness was a luxury most structures didn’t have.

Shadith shook her head at a man and pushed a woman’s hand away, then followed the bits of music through the membrane.

The room on the other side was nearly as immense, a ballroom of sorts with tables in floating bubbles that drifted dreamily in and out of shadow, spiraling to a ceiling lost in smoke and mist, drifting down again. There were dance platforms that floated among the tables, flat ovals in their own environments that clicked home in sockets in the wall when the tiket-time was exhausted. All round the base floor, there were dressing rooms with costumes for rent if that was to your taste, costumes for every species and culture that came through the Marratorium.

The band on the main floor was an eclectic mix of acoustic instruments, a two-necked guitar from Komugit, a sha-horn from Soncheren, an eight-string banjjer from Hikkerie, two fiddles from Somewhere Else, and an assortment of drums assembled from half a dozen worlds. The music they played was filled with an energy that invaded her body and set her feet to fidgeting.

A man’s hand on her arm, a man’s voice in her ear, “Dance, ‘Spinnerie?”

Shadith started to pull away, then thought watth’hell, I want to MOVE! With caution’s last dregs, she said, “What’s your price?”

He chuckled. She felt it more as warm breath tickling her ear than as sound. “A gelder an hour, fifty the night, a la carte for the rest. First dance is free, just for the pleasure of it.”

Her words breathless and fast, she said, “Convince me, hired man. Dance, and we’ll see how you read me and go on from there.”

He was a small man, a trifle shorter than her with a sharp face, pointed ears, and laughter in his black eyes as he swept her into the swirl of dancers.

At first his dancing was competent, even exciting, but there was an impersonal quality to it that muted her enjoyment, her extra senses reading his detachment, cooling her down to match his chill. Then-change. His pale face flushed as he opened himself more deeply into the music and the moving, reading her body as if his nerves were joined to hers. By the time the set was done and the danc, ing stopped, she knew she wanted this to go on.

She leaned against him, watched while the band fiddled with some minor retuning. “Tell me what I want.”

“Music. Dancing. Talk. Danger. Sex.”

“Then let’s go find them.”