Willow told the tale with hands, feet and body while Amaiki sat primly on one of the boulders. Bodri was dour, resisting her passion and insistence with his own; again and again he said, if we help her, Whisper in the wind, we could wake Old Vryhh to work against us, let her wait, time is coming when we’re ready to go against Old Vryhh, when we win, we’ll get her out, wait, wait, he said, don’t kick up dust for Hyaroll to see, it’s safer when the thing is over, it’s safer and more sure.

  Willow only grew hotter and more determined. In a sense all that they were doing now, the shafts she was fashioning, the bow she’d make later, Bodri’s boiled messes, Sunchild’s erratic poking and prodding and his small but useful thefts, all these things were games they were playing with themselves, busying their hands and minds with what they could do so they could hide from themselves their helplessness and futility. This was different, this was something they could do here and now to frustrate the plans of the man who’d stolen their lives from them for his amusement. She danced all this with body and hands and the oblique allusions of her songs. “Now,” she sang. “It must be now.”

  Sunchild watched the battle unperturbed; he’d seen others, though none so deeply felt. He had several things to say when the time came, but there was no point in saying anything until Bodri stopped arguing, either agreeing to help or refusing to listen to Willow any longer. While the argument raged on, he amused himself trying out the shapes swimming so powerfully in Amaiki’s mind. He felt her distress as he shifted from Keran to Muri to Kimpri to Betaki to Se-Passhi and finally to the infant naish, running them off like beads on a worrystring, but that distress didn’t bother him. His folk made very powerful emotional bonds but also very few. His family was three now and forever. Willow. Bodri. Kephalos. And the deepest, most intimate of those bonds was with the awakening kephalos; in its way it about matched his mind age and shared many of his interests, though its way of thinking was very unlike his. Beyond those three who he loved without reservation and forever, no one existed for him, not in any meaningful way. He could be confused and irritated with them; he would play with them one way or another, but as soon as his interest waned, he’d be gone; he felt no responsibility for them; they were images in dreamland.

  The debate was calming down. Bodri nodded reluctantly, Willow smiled, turned to Amaiki. And saw her distress and saw Sunchild shifting. She gasped. Jumped the short distance to him and slapped her hand through his substance, not hurting him but startling him into cringing away from her, the flare of her anger washing over him, whipping him with its nettle stings. He cried out, a high keening whine like the sound the kimkim flies made late in the evening.

  Her anger died. Willow knelt beside the quivering shapeless lump of light and for the second time that day sang her go-’way-hurt song. She stroked his outline, careful to keep her hand from breaking through the fragile membrane of his surface tension, controlling her own shock and momentary revulsion as he was first Sparrow, then Mouse, then Otter curled up on the ground beside her. She softened the song to a crooning whisper, “Ah-weh, be-be, ah weh.” She gave him a last gentle pat, then got to her feet. “He only teasing,” she told Amaiki. “He don’t understand much about the way mamas feel.” She nudged Sunchild with her toe. “I see you peeking, little sneak. Up. Tell this mama you sorry for fussing her.”

  Sunchild got warily to his feet, his form melting at the edges, caught in the contrary urges pulling from the two women. He sneaked a look at Willow, saw her hands moving in a scold-song, saw her smiling at him in spite of that. He straightened himself out and firmed up, then he did a graceful Conoch’hi bow with Conoch’hi signs expressing shame and repentance, then looked at Amaiki slantwise from those blank beautiful eyes.

  Amaiki had seen Sunchild before as he drifted about the gardens, a butter smear of light half the time shapeless as any cloud; now, for the first time, she saw his beauty and was startled by it. And deeply moved by it, though it came in so strange a form. She saw him grin at her and take on hints of Conoch’hi, just enough to drive home the effect of his grace. Understanding then how little real feeling lay behind his charm, she grinned back. “Well done, kushi-su, I have never seen a more graceful apology.”

  Bodri snorted, then laughed, a papery rustle that sounded like dried leaves rubbing against each other, but he said nothing, only moved back to his fire and began stirring the mixture in the pot, his back turned to them, disassociating himself from what was happening.

  Willow traced the blue lines of a design pricked into the dark brown skin of her side, then spread her hands, fluttering the fingers. “Me, I don’t know nothing about getting out of here. Sunchild, he the one can talk to kepha.” She turned to him. “So what do kepha say?”

  Sunchild sidled up to her, pressed himself against her as hard as his lack of mass would permit. She stroked the golden semblance of her Otter and gave him the affection and acceptance he craved. Satisfied, he retreated a little, keeping close enough to her so his form could stabilize into the single shape. “Kepha knows he’ll die with Hyaroll. He doesn’t want to die, Willow. He’ll do about anything he can to stop that. There’s not a whole lot of things open to him. He can’t do anything that will hurt Hyaroll, not anything. He can fiddle that some, make limits to what hurt means to him. We been working on that. I figure maybe letting this Amaiki get away is something he could decide won’t hurt Old Vryhh; so unless Hyaroll has given him direct orders to keep her and the other Conochi’hi sitting in that village, maybe kepha can open the way for her. And maybe not.” He scowled at Amaiki, showing his resentment at her being the cause of his scolding, but he smoothed out his face when he turned back to Willow. “Now Old Vryhh’s gone, I’d better go have a talk with kepha, find out what he can do and what he’s willing to do. Might not be the same thing.”

  Willow nodded, looked at the sun, then at him. “Good thing if this be drone before Old Vryhh get back. How long he going be gone?”

  “Till he gets back”

  “Hah, you. Not finny.”

  “I don’t know, Willow, and kepha doesn’t either. Nothing like this has happened before.”

  “So go now.” She flapped her hands at him. “Go!”

  He drifted into the air, flowed out of shape into a streak of light, and as a streak of butterlight raced downhill and merged with a wall of the house.

  Willow folded her arms, rocked them. “No big badness in him, he just a baby.”

  Amaiki dipped her head in graceful acknowledgment, but said nothing; she’d felt the bite of Sunchild’s malice and knew what he did, he did for Willow, not her. There was a strong bond of fondness between these disparate beings, almost a mother-child link, and she would put no stain on that. And she would not stain her own being by speaking a lie she knew was a lie.

  Willow sighed. Trying to help this one was like fighting against a haru-wind bringing in a spring storm. Not for you, stranger, ‘s not for you I doing this, not just for you. She snapped thumbs against fingers, looked at her hands. I sticking pins in Old Stone Vryhh, hunh, he won’t feel them, him, but I know they there. I know. Good ‘nough. She said, “Ev’ry time I see Old Vryhh go out, it up there.” She pointed at the top of the dome. “You fly one of those things?”

  Amaiki shivered, then came out of her withdrawal.

  Willow watched her shuck her shell. If she hadn’t seen and felt that outpouring of rage and fear and hate down the hill, she’d have thought Amaiki was as cold and unfeeling as the reptile she vaguely resembled. Not so. Despite the surface, not so. She and Bodri had a lot the same feel to them: neatness of hand and body—Bodri might look clumsy and sound like rocks banging down a hillside, but he got about the garden with a surprising deftness and never bruised a plant or even an insect he wanted to keep alive; precision of thought and motion—Bodri was looser about this than Amaiki, but the effect was the same, the control similar; dislike of fuss in all forms—which was why Willow almost always won arguments with him; she didn’t mind noise and messy emotions and turmoil and tears, she rather liked them. And she had more staying power. She could keep on long after he was exhausted. Like today. He wasn’t really convinced, he just didn’t want to go on arguing.

  “A flier,” Amaiki said thoughtfully, then shook her head. “I can fly one, of course, but two things about taking a flier. One, kephalos might be willing to let me go, but I don’t believe he’d let me take off with Hyaroll’s property. Two, I suspect the controls of those fliers only respond to Hyaroll’s touch. Hmm. Maybe one of the larger skimsleds. That’s property too, but nothing like the cost of an armored flier. I could bypass the level control and hype the drivers to give me enough power for a jump through the dome. Hmm. Tricky. Might turn the sled into junk. If I set in a cut-off switch maybe I could save it … use heavy-duty batteries, switch them for solar … I could travel at night, lay up during the day, let them charge … less power, but a longer range … lot better than going on foot.” She nodded. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ve been packed and ready to go for days. I’ll shift my things to the sled garage.” She stood, pointed downhill at a low blocky structure separated from the house by a thick planting of kadraesh trees. “I’d better be moving, Willow. No matter what answer your friend brings back, it’s as well to be prepared.” She hesitated, then gave an angular, formal bow with graceful hand gestures that Willow watched with interest, liking the fluidity of the movements. “You have fought hard for me, sister-friend, my line is deep in your debt. I shall knot you with pride into my life weave and your story and your kindness will be remembered through all generations that will be.”

  Willow inclined her torso, touched head and heart, straightened. “I have borne and lost, sister-friend. It pleases me to give a mother back to her children.” She flung out her arms, laughed fiercely, smacked fist against palm. “And do Old Stone Vryhh a mischief where it’d hurt if he had any feeling left.”

  With a laugh and a last farewell sign, Amaiki moved through the line of boulders and started down the slope with that deceptively unhurried, gliding stride that took her quickly toward the sled garage.

  “You weren’t just arguing to be arguing.”

  Willow looked over her shoulder. Bodri had taken his mixture from the fire and was prodding at it with a limber twig from a murkka tree, putting a tiny fraction of its paralyzing poison into the mess. He poked at the decoction twice more and threw the twig into the fire. “I thought you were getting restless,” he said. “But it means a lot to you.”

  “Yes, old beetle, it really do.”

  “You don’t talk much about your children.”

  “No.”

  He gazed at her a moment longer, then heaved a huge sigh that set his back-garden swaying. “All right, Willow. Whatever I can do, that’s yours.”

  She smiled and went to squat beside him and scratch up where his stumpy legs joined his body, her fingers working among fold on fold of soft silky skin. He sighed with pleasure, his tentacle arm looped around her shoulders and playing in the springy curls at the nape of her neck.

  Willow was scraping with finicking care on the last of the shafts, Bodri was ladling the cooled decoction into test tubes and sealing them, when Sunchild came back. “This kephalos is almost as old as Old Vryhh,” he said. Hands going still, Willow looked up. “So?”

  “So Hyaroll has been working on it, adding to it, changing it, multiplying its purposes, all that, for a long long time.” He glanced at Willow, saw her scowl. “Like taking, um …” He looked up. Several of the many raptors inside the dome were riding thermals, coiling about each other as if for the game of it and nothing more. “Like taking a vekvem up there and putting more brains in his head, making him smarter and smarter and smarter until maybe he’s smart as a person. Till he is a kind of person. You see?”

  Willow shaded her eyes and looked up at the gliding circling vekvem. “Can’t,” she said.

  “But if you could?”

  “Magic?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So. Kepha smart now and like a person, not a … a … an ironhead know-nothing.”

  “You got it. Different too. You, me, Bodri, we can move around; kepha has to sit where he is—and well, Hyaroll keeps chains on him so he can’t do much except what Old Vryhh wants.”

  “Cut the chains.”

  “Magic chains.”

  “Thump Old Vryhh, make him take ‘em off.”

  “Kepha can’t do that.”

  “Us.”

  “Kepha won’t let us. He can’t.”

  “Magic, hah.” She spat.

  “Way it is.”

  “We can’t do nothing?”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  “Well, say what!”

  “Well, kepha’s getting smarter all the time, doing it to himself now; he was just a baby, but he’s growing up fast and he doesn’t like being a slave.”

  “Ummp. Big surprise.”

  “You the one in the hurry. Listen. I’ve been talking with kepha since we started this.” He waved a hand at the pile of shafts, swung it around to include Bodri and his labors. “I figure what’s the harm, Hyaroll knows what we’re doing anyway. Kepha can’t come right out and tell me what Old Vryhh is planning, but he lets me know when I guess right. So, for sure, it’s a funeral pyre with us all following Old Vryhh down to hell. Kepha is not not not happy with that, but he can’t stop it, not just him. Thing is, he is programmed, umm, he has to do whatever Hyaroll tells him to do. Old Vryhh’s got careless. Doesn’t think much of us either. He just told kepha to make a summary of anything we do he might find interesting. Might find. Hear that? Leaves the choice up to kepha. Lot of things he can do with that. Like what we’re saying now. Or the time I talk with him. He just tells himself it’s all too boring, that Hyaroll wouldn’t be interested in it, so he doesn’t have to report it. He’d stop us hard if we tried to hurt Old Vryhh, but as long as we don’t touch him, we’ll be all right.”

  Willow made a hissing impatient sound.

  “Thought you’d like to know.”

  She leaned closer to him, said very slowly, “He help Amaiki go?”

  “Hurry-hurry. This is what he says. He can’t open the dome when Hyaroll is gone. He can’t open the dome anytime unless Hyaroll orders it.” Sunchild paused a moment, touched her nose with a forefinger, danced back from her, teasing her, his silent laughter pulsing waves of light through his body. “But he can keep the hole open a short while after Hyaroll’s through. Long enough to let the lizard lady hop out. If she can get up there. Kepha says if she waits until he’s almost down on the landing saucer and jumps out fast, he won’t notice anything’s happened. So you go tell her to be ready fast. Old Vryhh’s on his way home, be here in about a half hour.” He bounced away, perched on top a boulder. “I’d better get back to kepha. He’s nervous and lonesome. It’s hard to be nervous and lonesome.”

  Amaiki looked cool as morning, standing erect but relaxed on the skimsled, a heavy dark cloak bound closely around her so it wouldn’t get in her way, her long hands resting lightly on the steering bars. Willow squatted in the shade of a hairy lod-bush watching her, watching the dome.

  A dark dot came darting over the mountains, grew into the flier, which hovered briefly over the dome, then sank through it, dropped for the saucer. The skimsled hummed. The hum rose to an urgent whine. The moment the flier slowed for the last meter before it touched down, Amaiki moved her thumb. The sled shot straight up for a kilometer, then slanted south and passed through the dome. For a breath or two she flew on a level, then arched down and was on the ground again before the flier finished its settling. Willow crouched where she was and watched Hyaroll step down from the lock. Grim-faced, but without hurry, he walked away from the saucer, heading for the house. She tried to read his face, but he looked more or less how he always looked. When he vanished inside, she got to her feet and trudged uphill to her camp.

  Sunchild came drifting down, squatted beside her, watching her cut vanes from stiff feathers. “She got away,” he said.

  “Hmp.”

  “He didn’t notice anything.”

  “Good.” She set the feather down. “I need more glue.”

  “I’ll look about.”

  She reached out, touched his face with her fingertips. “You did good.”

  “Me and Kephalos.”

  “Hmp. All of us.” She grinned at Sunchild. “We whip his tail, Old Stone Vryhh.”

  Borbhal On Sakkor

  Vrithian

  WITNESS [4]

  A SHOPKEEPER IN CRASA DOR

  My name is Tensio alte Nariozh. My mother came from one of the best families in Borbhal, but her father was a gambler and lost most of the estate, so she had to marry beneath her. My father was a good man in his way but he had no polish and used to grate on her nerves with his loudness and his crudeness; he never could learn to appreciate the gracious style of living she found more natural. Though I shouldn’t say it, I know how it sounds, but really just coming into a room he could make me wince. She wanted to send me to Cabozh, to the University at Inchacobesh outside the capital, but my father wouldn’t hear of it, I had to go into the business and learn it from floor to attic, and I do mean floor. He had me pushing a broom with the slaves brought up from Cobarzh. Tempestao, you wouldn’t believe how they stank, those turezh. And lazy, good for nothing …. I won’t have one of them in my shop, not to work and not to buy. It makes me sick to my stomach to think of them putting their filthy hands on my silks and laces and velvets. You see how fine my goods are—look at the light coming through that window and playing on the colors and the delicate textures; you won’t find such goods anywhere else in all of Borbhal. Perhaps across the Fistavey in Cabozh, but nowhere closer. Demons? Ah, you must mean the undying. Please, I must ask you not to use that awful term in my presence. They come in here several times during the year to look at my goods, no I am not boasting, it is true, that’s the noble Algozar’s sign right there, he had it etched in my window. You must have seen his dome on the cliffs across the bay. He knows beautiful things when he sees them, oh yes. He talks to me as if I’m one of the great ones, oh yes. The undying know, you understand, they feel the good blood in my veins. I’ve done all I can to rid myself of my father’s crudeness and pattern myself on my mother’s side of the family, and I flatter myself that I know the courtly ways the undying expect. In my circle they say I could go on very well at court back home. Why don’t I go? There are jealous men, officials at court, who just won’t let any colonials near the King. And my mother’s family, who could intercede for me if they wanted, well, they live off the money I send them, but they won’t acknowledge me. Bitter? No, no, of course not, just a little disappointed. I take comfort in remembering I am the one with the noble mind and heart, the true scion of our ancient line. Listen, the Governor himself comes to my shop when he wants something especially fine. And his wife sends her dressmaker to me. His mistress? I don’t talk about the private affairs of my patrons. I’m sorry you asked, I thought you were another kind. I have said all I want to say. Please leave.