Wild Magic

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Ma’teesee banged on the back door. “Mum” she called, keeping her voice low, “come on, open up.”

Faan’s mouth thinned as she heard the undercurrent of pleading in her friend’s voice; it was the same every time. Though she came on the same day each week, almost the same hour, half the time Ogadeyl forgot her daughter was due; she was fond enough of Ma’teesee, but the girl was simply not important to her.

“Teesee.” Ogadeyl’s high sweet voice floated into the dusk as the door swung inward and the lanterns of the kitchen painted a yellow rectangle on the rutted wynd. She was a pretty woman, small-boned, skin like amber velvet, more charm than Maleesee would ever have.

“Loa, Mum.” Ma’teesee moved quickly inside, turned and waved to Faan before she pulled the door shut. “See y’

‘n a hour.”

Faan heard the music blare out and the singing begin before she reached Verakay Lane; she shook her head, irritated by the bubble people that flitted about her. “Flies around a carcass,” she said to Ailiki; the mahsar reared on her hindlegs, snapped her teeth at a floating mote. Faan laughed, shook her head again. To the Wildings she said: You’d better go back to your sisters, little ones. I appreciate the warding, but I’ll be safer on the Lane if I’m not noticed.Nay nay, they chorused in tiny whining voices, canna canna do. SHE say hanga with you. True true.

Faan sighed. So tuck yourself in under the cloak and keep out of sight. What SHE says, we do, but we don’t have to flaunt it.There were three or four bonfires burning in the middle of the Lane, fueled by wood torn from abandoned houses. On the boardwalk the Taverners and Mulemen had set up planks on barrels as temporary bars. There was a curfew of sorts in the Edge, decreed by the Prophet and enforced by the STRIKER bands. All businesses had to be closed at sundown or they’d be burned out and their owners flogged. The drinksellers and the pimps got around this by moving their stock outside. None of them liked it, but the dark was their time and they weren’t about to let the profits go.

Mama Kubaza and Mutri Maship were out with their musicians and dancers, slave women who doubled as habatrizes between sets, taking their customers into one or another of the burnt-out buildings.

The customers were sailors bored by the tame nightlife in the SouthEdge, slaves and tied-workers from the Maulapam Sirmalas, young Biasharim and Cheoshimsome of whom were in the STRIKER bands by day, drawn to the violence then as they were to the vice after dark. No real crowds, but enough custom to let the Edgers keep existing.

Ailiki gliding behind her, Faan slipped into the Lane, her cloak pulled close about her, the basket beneath it, out of sight. Verakay was dangerous for a girl alone, but the wynds and ways around it were worse; at least there was some light here and people about.

Dressed in gold tissue trousers and vest, Mutri Ma-ship stood on an upended barrel, swaying to make the sequins glitter on his vest and along his arms, singing Kalele style while his drummers tapped and brushed and the daround player’s fingers crabbed across the strings so fast the blurred. OU SING ZUUL, Maship sang, almost shouting to break through the noise of voices and Mama’s Band, though he kept an icing of lyric tone, NA GID A MEE YUN. DU SING ZUUL GIDDA MEEYIN.

Three young women in studded dresses danced in front of the musicians, two of them moving with lazy twists and turns to show off their bodies to the men gathering around. The third was different. She was lost in the music and happy inside her skin, enjoying the play of her muscles, bare feet stamping, kicking high, body wheeling through flips where no part of her touched the rutted dirt; a film of sweat spread over her face and arms and she seemed to glow with pleasure.

Faan stopped to watch her, smiling for the first time since she crossed the Bridge. Then a Cheoshim youth more than half drunk bumped into her, grabbed at her. Ailiki hissed a warning, raked her teeth along his leg, slicing through cloth into muscle. Faan hurried on, keeping close to the buildings, flitting from shadow to shadow, reminded that this was no longer her home-place.

When she reached Bamampah the Woodman’s abandoned compound, she ran round the back, touched the gate and plunged in as soon as it flew open, Ailiki trotting beside her, tail high, a satisfied grin on her small flat face.

Reyna, Dawa and several other Salagaum had moved into the Woodhouse when Bamampah packed up his lathes and benches and everything else he could stuff in handcarts and trundled his household and business across the Wood Bridge into SouthEdge. Woodhouse was a big place with a tall brick wall around it and heavy gates of ironbound hapuawood, reasonably safe from the Prophet’s torchmen and from Shindate persecution, though the Shinda Prefecture was too weak and disrupted these days to make a serious nuisance of itself.

During the day this back yard was a busy place. Using the Salagaum as his labor force, Reyna ran an infirmary from the larder next the kitchen, got sacks of-food to Edge families and anyone else who needed it, and-through a web of abosoa kassos as poor as their neighbors-issued forged silver coins to buy the little water that came down the aqueducts into cisterns of;the Shinda Prefecture.

Faan hauled the heavy gate shut again and slapped her hand against the wood, willing the bars into place. She didn’t wait to see them chunk home, but moved quickly past the supply sheds to the kitchen door.

Thammir and Raxzin were sitting at the kitchen table sharing a pot of tea and waiting for the wash water to boil-wash water because Faan could see jugs standing beside the sink with stained cloths draped over the wide mouths. Like the rest of the Edge, Woodhouse Salagaum used River water for everything but drinking and like them strained and boiled it first; with all the aban-

doned and half-charred houses about, firewood was cheaper than good water.

Thammir looked up, grinned. He was a little Salagaum with hair like copper fuzz and the yellow eyes of a cat; here in the house he wore Salagaum dress again, a long white robe with a wide red leather belt cinched tight about a narrow waist. The apron he had ready for the washing up was bunched on the table beside his cup. “How’s it goin, Fa?” His voice was a basso rumble, so deep it sounded as if he were growling.

Faan waggled her hand at him. “So so,” she said. “Reyna in?” Ailiki trotted off, sniffing at sacks and cupboards, rearing up to peer into the water crock.

“Emergency came up. One of Mama Kubaza’s women, a kid really, she ran into a pain freak.”

“Already? They’re just getting set up out there.”

“Didn’t take this shrat long to get going.”

• Raxzin snorted. He was Fundarim like Rey, with a thin bony face and eyebrows like inverted vees, his long black hair gathered in a tail tied with a leather thong. “You always leave everything out, Thamm. Fa, this kid, her name’s Zembee, she went to see her Mum on the sly, Mum being a slave in one of the Sirmalas, and she was coming back to Mama’s House when this shrat jumped her and hauled her off into one of the Greens, though you can’t call it green, the way things are these days, I hear they cut off Fountain water even to the Biasharim. Well, this shrat wouldda killed her but this STRIKER band comes stomping by. As usual, they don’t know what’s happening, they so into that poop they do, but the shrat he don’t know that and he takes off. Zembee’s tough, she gets on her feet and buzzits back to Mama. Tore up pretty good, from what the boy said when he came for Rey, but not gonna die. Want a cup while you waiting?” He lifted his, raised a peaky brow.

“Ahsan, Rax, not now.” Faan scratched at her arm, frowned at the door into the front of the house. “About how long, do you think?”

Thammir rubbed at his nose. “‘Bout an hour ago he left. Shouldn’t be long. You said Mama Kubaza was out on the lane?”

“Diyo.”

“Then he’s probably on his way back now.” He nodded at the basket. “What you got good?”

Faan set the basket on the table. “Fresh greens and some medicums Tai sent along.” She settled on a stool. “So what else has been happening?”