Hellspark (5 page)

Alfvaen said, “Your cloak was damaged? Perhaps you’d allow me to replace it.”

“You couldn’t. There’s only one like this on Sheveschke; customs insists. Don’t worry, it’ll grow back.” With a critical eye, Tocohl spread it in the torchlight. “In fact, it’s due for a trimming.”

“Grow back? Trimming?”

“It’s a moss cloak. Not moss, to tell the truth, but an epiphyte, a real plant. If I don’t trim it regularly, one day it will burst into spectacular bloom, seed, and die.” She swirled it across her shoulders, clasped it, then pointed the direction Maggy indicated. “That way—and go on with your tale. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Alfvaen continued as they walked, “I s-short-hopped my way here, taking whatever transport I could find when I could find it. While I was on Jannisett, waiting for someone headed this way”—she grinned with embarrassment—“would you believe somebody s-stole my boots and I was arrested for indecent exposure?”

Tocohl laughed. “I believe it. A Jannisetti friend of mine once invited me to her private club, where all the members went barefoot and thought themselves very wicked!”

“Yes,” said Alfvaen with a smile, then more seriously, “but if Judge Darragh hadn’t happened along, I’d still be in jail.”

They came to a broad avenue, lined with torches and bustling with people. The air was smoky and pungent; pottery shards crunched beneath their feet at each step.

They pushed through a knot of people, past a woman in the uniform of the local police, and Alfvaen shivered. “Perhaps you could explain something?” she said, over the noise. “I did read the standard tourist guide before I got here—and the captain of my last survey was Sheveschkem, so I was chamfered for Sheveschke, as well.” It was a chamfer’s job to teach one the basics of someone else’s culture, to avoid any embarrassing or potentially fatal incidents.

“He must not have done a very good job: I honestly thought theft was legal during the festival.”

“In a way. If you’re caught, you have to return what you’ve taken. But there’s no punishment, aside from the razzing for clumsiness your friends hand you for the next six months.—Of course, taking more than someone can afford to lose is considered bad form.”

“Then why did the police—” Unable to express her distaste, Alfvaen finished with a gesture.

“You’re confused by a mistranslation,” Tocohl said. “Veschke protects those who steal by verbal artistry or legerdemain. Skill is all. Anyone who uses brute force—violence or the threat of violence—is no thief by Sheveschkem standards.”

“So those three weren’t under Veschke’s protection? I see, dastagh

”—now that she had sobered, she came remarkably close to duplicating the Sheveschkem word—“means something like ‘thug’?”

Page 17

“No, the woman who attacked you was beaten for being an Inheritor of God. Among other things, they believe that their god gave them dominance over all the other species, and that they’re entitled to use them, even wipe them out, as they choose. As a philosophy, it’s enough to give an ecologist high-gold fever.

Dastagh is the current derogatory word for a member of the sect; it means ‘waster’.”

The avenue opened onto a great hexagonal plaza, edged with torches and ablaze with the light of a dozen ritual fires, each attended by a glory-robed priest and her acolytes. Alfvaen stopped short and gave a wordless exclamation of delight.

(Wait here,) said Maggy, (Geremy’s coming.)

Tocohl was content to wait and, like Alfvaen, drink in the scene. Although she often attended the Festival of Ste. Veschke, the solemn joy around the fires in Veschke Plaza still elated her.

Despite the crowd’s chatter and the crunch of broken pottery, here it was always quiet enough to speak in a normal tone of voice, so the traders, both Sheveschkem and Hellspark, gathered to exchange tales and songs.

A ripple of Apsanti water-music drifted through the smoky air and the laughter, to be picked up by someone around another fire and tossed back as dolphin song. A black-haired priest threw a double handful of keshri bark into the central fire and the air grew pungent.

A handful of Sheveschkem youngsters watched Tocohl and Alfvaen for a moment. After much giggling and gesturing, the smallest of them was urged forward to, shyly, offer Alfvaen a circlet of braided fair-sea-blues. Alfvaen glanced at Tocohl, who responded, “If you’ll wear it and if you have some small

off-world token you can give in return, you’ll make it a festival they’ll talk about for the rest of their lives.”

Alfvaen lowered her head to accept the gift, and catching the child’s arm before he could dart away, she said, “All I have is a brass coin from Jannisett. That’s not very—”

“It’ll do fine.”

Alfvaen looked at Tocohl dubiously, then dipped into an overpocket for the coin. Tocohl stepped an inch closer to the child, familiar distance here in the south, and said in that language,

“She offers you the

Jannisetti truth-coin. The people of that world believe that while one holds this under the tongue, one cannot lie.”

The child looked from Tocohl to Alfvaen, his eyes very bright and very wide. “Is it true?” he asked.

Tocohl shrugged, Sheveschkem fashion. “At any rate,” she smiled, “one will learn that even truth can be bitter in the mouth.”

“Oh!” said the child. He took the coin, kissed Alfvaen’s hand, and dashed back to his friends, who huddled excitedly about to see what he’d been given.

“What did you tell him?” asked Alfvaen. Tocohl translated. When she’d finished, Alfvaen said,

“But won’t they be disappointed when they learn there is no such thing?”

Tocohl grinned. “Being conned by a trader at festival is more an honor than a disappointment.—And don’t be surprised if, the next time you’re here for festival, someone tries the line on you. The

Sheveschkemen never let a good con go to waste.”

The oldest of the three children waved an arm at Tocohl and called, “In Veschke’s honor, Hellspark!”

Tocohl smiled and bowed to the child. Then she translated for Tinling Alfvaen, adding, “That is the polite way of saying she doesn’t believe a word of it, but, since this is festival, she’ll let it pass.”

A thin, wiry man with woeful eyes pushed through the edges of the crowd. He grabbed Tocohl
Page 18

and swung her around in an enormous hug. “

Geremy

!” She thumped him joyfully on the shoulders, then shoved him out at arm’s length for a better look.

He was, as always, a walking work of art. The stylized waves of a darkened sea surged rhythmically around his 2nd skin to break and spray at the unchanging bulk of his equipment pouch; a handful of sparks blew past, trailing their reflections in the dark waters. The design was locally generated by a microprocessor in the suit itself.

“Very nice,” said Tocohl, turning him around to follow the course of the sparks as they blew beneath his baldric and reappeared on the other side. “Very nice indeed.”

(I could do that with your 2nd skin, if you like,) Maggy said.

(I’d like, but Geremy wouldn’t. I promise, I’ll explain later.) Aloud Tocohl said to Geremy, “Is that really a Ribeiro?”

“It is, and when Ribeiro took the commission, she said she’d been thinking about the subject for a long time.” He folded his arms (along them stylized waves crashed soundlessly) and eyed her with suspicion. “Maggy said you needed a doctor, but you look disgustingly healthy to me.”

“For the Siveyn here.” Tocohl drew Geremy around the two large merrymakers who hid Alfvaen from his view, but before she could begin a formal introduction, Geremy said,

“Alfvaen? What happened?”

“She took a very nasty beating,” Tocohl said.

Geremy backed off a pace and looked with hurt astonishment at Tocohl. “You?” he said, once more in Hellspark. “Listen, Tocohl, about that judgment—”

“She knows no more about it than I do,” said Tocohl, then caught the import of his first reaction.

“Geremy, don’t be stupid. I haven’t changed that much since the last time we worked together!”

She gestured at Alfvaen: “Please, look her over.”

Chastened, Geremy shifted back to Siveyn to offer his professional services.

“Your pardon, Geremy, but I’ve already been s-seen to by a doctor,” said Alfvaen.

“I know. Maggy told me he was a quack—honestly, Tocohl, I don’t know where she picks up these words!”

(Any good dictionary has them,) Maggy said.

Tocohl laughed and repeated that for Geremy’s benefit. Then she added, “I’d feel more comfortable if Geremy assured me of your health, Alfvaen—then we’ll see to finding Judge Darragh.”

While Geremy went professional, Tocohl excused herself to approach the festival fire. All the curious events of the past few hours vanished from her mind, pushed away by heat and flame and the sound of shattering pottery…

The priest’s glory robe was orange velvet—the highest of her sect—and she wore the firecrown of her office with surpassing dignity. Tocohl dropped to one knee before her, spread her arms wide, and spoke the ritual words: “I come for fire.”

“For Veschke’s fire, one must shed blood,” responded the priest.

“As it must be, let it be.”

The priest sketched Veschke’s sign in the smoky air above her head. “Rise then, and choose.”

An acolyte held a tray of pins before Tocohl. Each bore a different emblem at its head: the pin of remembrance, the pin of dreams-come-true, the pin of smooth tongues…

On impulse, Tocohl chose the pin of high-change: its emblem was a face in flame. She dropped a coin in its place. The remaining pins jangled suddenly. Tocohl’s hand shot out to steady the tray and she looked into the acolyte’s startled eyes and gave a reassuring sign.

Page 19

The youngster was unaccustomed to the Hellspark penchant for risk—a glance at the priest’s face confirmed this. The priest drew the girl away to speak quietly to her.

And Tocohl stood alone before the fire. As she held her right hand high, the 2nd skin fell back into a cuff. She lifted the pin of high-change—it flashed as if of its own accord—and a great drop of blood welled from her fingertip. She shook the drop onto the broad circle of cast iron in the center of the fire, where it spat a moment, then was gone.

“Veschke’s fire,” she said softly, “taste my blood that you might hunger for it, that you might seek it out and devour it. Burn me to the bone and lift my living ashes into the sailing wind to light the way for those who come behind. As Veschke’s sparks fly with the wind, let me follow.”

T

OCOHL MADE VESCHKE’S sign, turned, and walked away from the fire, her hands and face still burning from the blistering heat. Only then did she realize that Maggy had recited the ritual words with her.

(So,) said Tocohl, (we share the pin of high-change.) She used the Hellspark tight-we

, the pronoun reserved for two or more acting as one.

(Did I do wrong?)

(No. We share our fortune, as usual.) Tocohl laced the pin of high-change into a tuft of her cloak.

A second acolyte gestured her to the cauldron of stew, where she turned away a bowl, having eaten earlier, and accepted a ritual cup. The stew was thick and savory, and she finished quickly, then dashed the red clay cup to the ground. It shattered with a satisfying crash. By the end of festival week, the cobblestones of the town would be grouted with the rough red dust of a hundred thousand such cups and bowls. Like the other captains, she’d carry the dust aboard her ship and count it Veschke’s blessing.

Though luck had little to do with it, she thought. The soles of her 2nd skin were still covered with it—Maggy had been reading up on her subject indeed, or she would have cleaned them.

(Well done, Maggy,) she said, pleased.

(Thank you,) came the reply, then: (Geremy and Alfvaen are twenty paces from your right elbow.

Thirty if you walk around the cooking fire.)

Tocohl turned her head to line her sight with her right elbow. As the crowd eddied, she saw Geremy and Alfvaen and a third Hellspark beyond one of the small cooking fires. She strode to join them.

“Well?” she demanded of Geremy.

“She’s fine,” he responded, “aside from a case of Cana’s disease: that leaves her—”

“Slightly tipsy at the worst possible times; I saw. Though in this crowd nobody will notice.”

Tocohl pointed, “Pass the flagon and we’ll all catch up.”

The woman holding the flagon offered it with a smile.

She was old, thought Tocohl, with admiration. She had a face worn into comfortableness, seamed and tanned; her hair was fine and white. There was a mischievous look about her brilliant blue eyes to which Tocohl took an immediate liking. She smiled back and accepted the flagon, to find the woman had exceptional taste in dOrnano wine as well.

Alfvaen lifted her hands in the Siveyn formal gesture, fringe trickling from her arms, and said with affection, “Tocohl, this is Judge Darragh Nevelen.—Judge, this is Susumo Tocohl, the woman I was telling you about.”

Page 20

(Geremy,) Tocohl said, for Maggy alone. Her glance swept from Geremy to Darragh and back again. (Alfvaen had nothing to do with those charges. It was Geremy

! I’m going to have him for breakfast—)

Maggy interjected, (Cannibalism—)

(Right after I’m done with the judge here,) Tocohl went on, overriding Maggy’s attempt to warn her of the illegalities of cannibalism.

“Your pardon, Alfvaen,” said Tocohl aloud. “Do you understand the language of Dusty Sunday?”

“No,” said Alfvaen, and Tocohl continued, “May I speak it in your presence without giving offense?”

Puzzled, Alfvaen nevertheless granted her permission, and Tocohl shifted her stance to the language.

So did Nevelen Darragh—the woman was good, thought Tocohl.

Judge Darragh slid her spectacles into her hair. Tocohl did not follow suit. On Dusty Sunday, wearing one’s spectacles in conversation was a deliberate insult. It said plainly that one would rather be listening to someone else, watching someone else. Nevelen Darragh flushed a vivid scarlet.