Maeve (17 page)

Gwynnor closed his eyes, the loss hurting more than he cared to acknowledge even to himself. Treforis left him in peace to deal with the shock in his own way, showing a sensitivity that he usually kept well-hidden behind a brusque, blunt exterior.

“How many raids since then?”

“We don't keep count. At first they were after the maranhedd. They kept hitting traders' pack trains. Like the time they nearly got you. So the traders stopped coming. Then they broke the shrine. After that they began going into the houses looking for it.”

“Breudwedda?”

“Killed her with the shrine. Burned the place to the ground. No telling who was what. Killed them all. Even little Eveh, the youngest dysqwera. She used to run after you and athro Micangl. You remember.”

“I remember. Holy Maeve, Treforis.”

The big man shrugged. “After there was no more maranhedd on the maes and no Breudwedda to dream with it in any village, we started to lift our heads a little, thinking there would be no more raids. Some of the lads went on kaffan to the other villages. That's how we knew. Then we thought the Company men were finished with us.”

“Thought?”

“Ay. We were wrong. We had one month free, just enough to start cleaning up the mess. Then they came back.”

“For what?” He leaned forward, feeling intense curiosity.

“People. Young healthy lads and lasses. Taken alive.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? We can't ask Breudwydda. She's ash. I thought maybe you might know more than I, having been with Dylaw and seeing more than us of the starmen.”

Gwynnor frowned, swirling the golden wine around the bowl of his glass. “I don't know …” He tilted his head and stared blindly at the ceiling. “If she's right … damn … she said something … there was something … a wrongness … about the Director … the starmen have changed in the past year … she said …”

“She?” Treforis grinned. “I thought you'd taken up with that Amersit. So you're on the woman track now.”

Gwynnor lowered his head and grinned back. “I had a stormtime you never saw the like of, Tref. She was a starwitch with hair the color of fire. She'd frizzle your ears, brother.”

“Starwitch?” He scowled. “Starwitch!”

“Forget it. That's over. What about Catlin?”

“Our sister took up with Meurig Rhisiartson. They're trying to get the smithy going again, working at night, doing a little bit at a time.”

“What happened there?”

“One of the first snatch raids. Company men tried for Rhisiart's daughter. You remember Sioned?”

Gwynnor nodded, remembering the small, eager face of the girl who refused to accept women's roles and got her way through the intensity of her perseverance. Rhisiart had even begun to teach her metalworking. “They got her?”

“No. You know what a bull old Rhisiart was. He came roaring at them, held them long enough for her to get to the fields. They made the mistake of crowding around him, and by the time they managed a clear shot at him, he'd kicked in a couple of heads and Sioned had gone to ground. Meurig was over here courting Catlin. We all heard the noise and came to do what we could, but by the time we got there, Rhisiart was burnt meat and Modlen dying after skewering the shooter with a kitchen knife. The Company men were gone, leaving their dead abandoned in the road.”

“Sioned?”

“She hides out somewhere. We don't ask. Comes into town at night, sometimes, to have a jug of wine in Morgha's tavern and listen to the freemen talk. She gets food from one farm or another. The women keep her in clean clothes. Not a good life but, at least, the Company men can't get their damn hands on her. We all stay in the house in daylight. With ax and sword close to hand. Dartguns when we have them. It's been a week since they've tried to take anyone. More than a few of the bastards went home bloody last time. Ha!”

“They don't come at night?”

“Not so far.” He shifted in his chair, drained his glass and slammed it down on the tray. “It's a poor homecoming, lad.”

Gwynnor held out his glass. Treforis refilled it, then emptied the bottle in his own. The brothers raised their wine in a wordless toast then settled into a companionable silence, sipping at the fragrant liquid and watching the coals glow crimson and blue.

The wine warmed the tiredness and depression out of Gwynnor. He looked up. “What about the farm?”

“Growing weeds. Who's going to take a chance working out in the fields by day? And what the hell can you do at night?” He shook his head despondently.

Gwynnor ran his eyes over the solid figure in the chair across from him. The low flickering light emphasized the touch of russet in his brother's short silky fur and in the tight-wound curls between his pointed ears. A quick surge of affection warmed him. “What's the cut-off point?”

“Um. We can still salvage something if we get at the land by the end of the month.” He moved a hand impatiently. “After that … well, it won't be an easy winter.”

“Breudwydda's out but what about the village council?”

“Dithering.” Treforis snorted. “Boundary disputes and market spaces. Birth lists. Death records. Kaffon pedigrees. That's all they're good for. They sit around with mouths moving but nothing comes out.” He drained the glass and set it on the table. “Worthless.”

“Anyone at all trying to do something about the raids?”

“Yeah. I told you. Defending the holds.”

“Anything else?”

Treforis rested his hands on his massive thighs. He shook his head. “Like I said, a bunch of freemen without the responsibilities of farm and family meet at Morgha's tavern to trade lies about the great things they'd do, given the chance. I don't get to the village that often, don't like to leave Esyllt and the kids alone.” He chuckled at Gwynnor's inquiring eyebrow. “Five of them now and another come spring.” He slapped his large hands on his thighs. “Dammit, Gwyn, if I don't work the fields, how many of them will be alive come spring?”

Gwynnor set the glass beside the chair, too sick at heart to relish the wine any longer. “And no one's doing anything but talk.”

Treforis moved his shoulders impatiently. “No one knows a damn thing anyone can do. Enough of this nonsense. How's your life gone since last we spoke?”

Chapter II

Aleytys watched the sail bloom as the small boat began moving upstream. She waved one last time, then stepped away from the railing, ducking her head to slip off the tump strap, a nuisance now she was walking on a level.

A brisk breeze stirred the thin layer of grit on the stone and sent the pulleys hanging out over the precipice on the ends of massive towers creaking with irritating irregularity. As she walked past the empty tables and deserted booths of the silent market, Aleytys frowned and looked to her right where the sculpted hill rose brilliant green and white against the pale blue of the sky. Hedges. Trees. Patches of lawn. Rings of houses, sterile and silent. Silent. Empty.

She trudged up the road, sand creaking loudly under her boots, the whine of the wind shrill and petulant in her ears.

Behind a row of trees with clusters of dusty green leaves thin as needles planted in a shallow curve, she saw a double row of small sandstone houses, their orderly gardens drying up for lack of tending hands, doors kicked in, gaping windows. A desolation where a neat pleasant village had been. As she stared at the houses, a pale cerdd face appeared briefly in one of the broken windows but the old male jerked out of sight when he saw her watching. She got the impression of hate and madness and threw up her shields.

Growing more troubled as she walked on, Aleytys moved back to the main road and trudged around the edge of the steeply sloping hill. The grassy slant beside her climbed several meters, then leveled out at the first terrace. White plasticrete boxes crowded one against the other, with meager walks and an occasional window box with greenery or native flowers adding a timid patch of color against the white. On the next terrace small, individual houses sat in thin green strips of lawn. Painfully neat, painfully regimented, each one almost like every other one with only minor differences, like those slight variations the friction of living imposes on identical twins. Regimented people living regimented lives in regimented houses. So Arel had said. She shivered, thinking about it. For a moment she wondered how the smuggler captain was doing. For a moment she wished with a gentle nostalgia that she was back with the three of them, hopping from world to world, using ingenuity, guess, and luck to pick up cargoes worth enough to pay ship costs and give the crew some pleasant nights ashore.

The third terrace was where the technicians lived, the engineers and doctors and minor administrators who kept the city alive and moving smoothly through its endless repetition of days. And accountants and chemists and courtesans and entertainers who dreamed they were freer than the servants, looking down on the white boxes of the lower levels with delicate scorn. Their houses were, on the surface, more individual, but they shared a subtle sameness that indicated their owners' acceptance of an insidiously imposed servitude. That level made Aleytys feel uneasy. She shifted her eyes further up.

On the fourth terrace, the landscaping was extensive and pushed to a heteromorphism so extravagant that it merged, at times, with the grotesque—an extravagance that, by its deliberate protest, affirmed the attitude of mind existing on the lower levels. She caught glimpses of ivory towers with convoluted complications visible even at this distance; the dream palaces where those with sufficient pedigree and sufficient credit could enjoy the unique dream sensations of maranhedd.

And at the very top of the edge of the eastern cliffs, looking out over the sea, the Director's citadel, with a glass-walled turret rising high and massive over the veil of greenery. And to one side, the twin towers of the monorail.

The monorail. It slashed up the hill twenty meters above the soil and rock. As she walked the road she could see the towers and the silver, gleaming streak of the rail. A three-car train flashed overhead, stopping briefly at the tech level before finally ending its journey at the palazzos. As she watched, three figures, diminished by distance stepped from the forward car and moved quickly out of sight.

Aleytys turned her back on them and looked thoughtfully along the rail. Eyes searching for the far end, she moved into shadow then came out the other side. In the distance, lower and to her left, she could see distance-blued buildings and the sun-shimmered noses of several starships.

Excitement rising in her, she closed her eyes and murmured, “Hey, everyone. There's where we have to get. Think we can make it?”

Three sets of eyes blinked open. Three faces came out of darkness at the back of her head.

“Just how much do you want us to massage your ego, young Aleytys?” Harskari sniffed, her amber eyes narrowed. “Don't talk. Do. Then we can admire.”

“Hey, isn't that a little rough?” Shadith frowned in her turn. “So she needs a little reassurance. Don't we all?”

Swardheld chuckled. “Ignore them, freyka. They're sour because Harskari's been reaming our singer about talking too much to the cerdd.”

“Still?” Aleytys rubbed her nose. “At least they were quiet about it. Madar! If the three of you started brangling aloud, my poor head would shatter.” She sighed. “Anyway, Star Street, here we come. I wonder if that poor innocent enclave is ready for the likes of us.”

As she came around the continuous curve she saw a red sandstone wall joined solidly to the suddenly sheer cliff as if a part of the mountain had been sliced away to make room for the enclave. Ahead, the road vanished through a pointed arch semiobscured by the flickering film of a force field. When she reached the arch, Aleytys poked a finger at the screen, the rubbery invisibility resisting the intrusion, then letting the finger through. “One-way iris. Once in, I'm stuck.” She glanced over her shoulder at the carefully landscaped mountain and the slope on the other side bluing into the distant plain. Gwynnor's loved Maes. She could see the thin line of the river winding in long curves toward the rising sun. Gwynnor. He'd be on that river somewhere … and out there … on the plain … a simple life tied to the earth and the seasons … a good life … for a moment she was tempted to turn around, to let the complicated threads of her life fall loose. The sea breeze sneaked around the mountain, blowing wisps of hair across her face, carrying the sea's pungent salt smells and the crisp green odor from the trees and the fresh-mowed lawns. The sand under her boots crackled as she shifted her feet. The russet sun just clearing the dim eastern horizon shone with increasing warmth on her skin. A good life …

Then the monorail car squealed past, sliding down the rail toward the distant starport, kicking up a swirl of sand that stung her out of her dream. And it was only a dream. There was no place for her here. She squared her shoulders and stepped through the membrane.

The red sandstone walls rose high and solid around the enclave. On her left, the cliff hung precariously over the mountain side of the street, its shadow lying deep and frigid on the pavement. There was a fringe of green at the top, the only living green visible on Star Street. On her right, an equally massive wall rose high and daunting over squalid buildings.

She looked around as she moved with hesitant, slow steps down the street toward the center of the enclave. On the cliff-side ugly, blocky buildings backed onto the rock, plasticrete-blown on a prefab form, painted garish colors. Heavy steel shutters rolled down over the lower floor windows. Doors closed, locked up in this place that began coming alive only about sundown. The sea breeze swooping down over the walls blew fragments of paper down the narrow plasticrete street. Sludgy water in the gutters. Thick. Black. With greenish scum around the edges and a faintly sour smell. On the wallside, narrow alleys crept back into stinking shadow, little more than shoulder-wide cracks between the structures fronting the street, leading to the other crazy buildings growing like starlings' nests glued to the outer wall.