Water Witch, Page 2

  He swept out of the room, and as he started down the stairs, he heard, barely audible from the receiving room behind him and still tinged with the coolness that had marked the entire interview, “Goodbye, Radi.” He did not slow his steps. Harubiki followed behind him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Deza waded gingerly into the water. Her skirts were tucked up into the narrow copper girdle so she wouldn’t trip on them. The beach was treacherous here. Even before the sea had cut into this little inlet there had been water here, a mineral spring heavy with dissolved silica and calcium. The spring had poured out into a stream that flowed over sandstone in terraced steps down to the sea, leaving a smooth, polished layer of travertine on the wide steps. With the coming of the sea, the waves had deposited a layer of sand over the travertine beach, but underneath it was as slippery as glass. Deza placed each foot carefully, made sure of her footing before she took another.

  The waves moved slowly, overlapping one another at the shore. Deza walked steadily into them until she was nearly waist-deep in the mineral-laden salt water, then stopped. She rubbed her fingers thoughtfully along the line of her cheeks.

  —You’re not far enough out for fish, daughter.—

  Deza turned and glared at the figure back on the shore, on a step high above the water. —I can’t go any deeper and you know that,—she shot back. —My father would know it.—

  —I am perfectly aware of your sensitivity to water, although I am not at all convinced it is the handicap you make it out to be. You are also, besides being too close to land, making much too much noise to have any hope of catching a …—

  Deza cut him off. The fish slid slowly through the greenish water toward her, a large fish with oversized silvery scales. She netted her fingers together and bent over, her hands just under the water like a narrow channel for the fish to swim through. The fish touched her thumbs. She clamped down hard and yanked the fish high out of the water. —Too much noise, hey father?—

  Her hands were suddenly full of flying feathers. She gasped and choked on a silver feather. The fish struggled wildly, like a wet and hysterical bird, only there were no firm legs or beak to hold onto. The tail was slippery. Deza tried to hug the fish against her chest and bring up her skirt to net it at the same time. That was even worse. The feathered fins beat wildly against her and flew into her face. Deza took the bottom of her skirt firmly in one hand and stepped forward to pull it over the fish.

  Her heel dug through grains of sand, then skidded along slick brown travertine and went out from under her. The fish swam smoothly away, the treacherous silver feathers once more flat against its sides, as Deza went down. She slammed her arms down hard to break the fall, but the water blunted her effort. She went under.

  Deza could swim. Her father had seen to that by pitching her mercilessly into the Agate Pools at Sindra, time and time again. She had cried. She had sworn to kill him. She had whined, “It hurts! The water hurts!” None of it had done any good. He had nearly drowned her, but she had finally known the mechanics of what to do, when she didn’t panic.

  She panicked now. The tight pain in her cheekbones became a slow throb that matched the rhythm of the waves. She felt overwhelmed by the power of the water, carried away by its dark, throbbing strength.

  —Deza, come out of there this instant!—her father said.

  She opened her mouth to answer. Water poured in. She choked on the bitter taste and spat, not wanting to swallow it. Her arms flailed as wildly as the fish’s fins, and she went under again, still coughing.—I can’t… swim.—

  —Then stand up!—

  She did.

  —Marvellous,—her father said.—You have at least saved me the humiliation of telling people my daughter drowned in three feet of water.—

  Deza waded carefully back to the shore, holding up her drenched skirt. —That would be a little difficult, wouldn’t it, father? If you are father. I didn’t think mbuzim could talk. Or swim either.—

  She came out of the water, hands on her hips, and stood beside the short black animal with the elongated goat’s face and soft cat’s body. It was lying down. It was always lying down, Deza thought, when it wasn’t being carried by her with its stubby tri-cloven hooves banging limply against her collarbone. She had carried it for six days now, ever since her father died. She supposed she would go on carrying it until the bruises on her shoulder somehow cancelled out the bruises inside.

  You know it’s your imagination, she thought sadly, sitting down beside the mbuzi. Poor little thing, though, father or not, we’re still stuck with each other.

  The mbuzi and its mother had been in the stolen hovercraft with Deza and her father when it crashed. The beasts had been a gift from Edvar. She had accepted them because there was no time to refuse. Her father had insisted they be off. It had made no sense at the time; everything was going beautifully with the swindle. Edvar, the Tycoon’s son, was enamoured of her, though still controllable. His foreigner parents had been suitably impressed by her father’s claims, then suspicious, finally consumed with greed, all according to plan. Yet all at once her father had said, “We’re leaving.” And when she had tried to explain about Edvar and the gift of the mbuzim, he had said, “Now, Deza!” And then, almost before she was over being angry with him for his highhanded treatment of her, the hovercraft was down in this forsaken place and her father lay beside her with his neck broken. And she, Deza, in her beautiful brocade skirt and copper girdle with its gembone buckle, she, Deza, the princess of the City in the Red Cave, complete with fake birthmarks and cheek-insets to prove it, was stuck in this stupid little coastal village where the inhabitants were too stupid even to know what a princess was. They were the wildest kind of nomads, settled down in the barren cove for no good reason at all. They ate some horrible mess of worms and grass that turned Deza’s stomach. They would not eat ocean fish. Those were holy messengers from the moon or something, whose flesh had been poisoned deliberately by some nameless divinity. It was obvious to Deza that they were not smart enough to cut out the heavy-metal gall and discard it, the deadly mercury and lead along with it. She had gone hungry for six dreary days while the winds out of the gritty mountains lashed the shore and whipped up huge, muddy waves. It looked like she would continue to be hungry. And wet. And miserable.

  “Oh, poor father,” she said aloud. “Why did you have to die?”

  The mbuzi looked at her with his yellow, pupilless eyes.—Are you asking for a philosophical answer about the ways of time and fate, or do you want a practical answer? The practical answer is that there is, as I have always suspected, a basic animosity that machines feel for people and which they manifest when they are sufficiently far from civilization to get away with it.—

  It sounded just like her father. The mbuzi’s thoughts, if that’s what they were and not just her own grief-stricken imagination, always sounded exactly like her father. So far she had found no satisfactory way to prove it one way or the other to herself.

  —Would you feel more comfortable if I had taken refuge in one of those dreadful little petrified bones people hang around their necks?—her father said.

  —I don’t know. Maybe.—Although she had always been amused at the conversations people had with the “souls” of dear departed relatives who had supposedly taken up residence in the gemmified bone of a dead mbuzi, she’d recently learned that even well-educated foreigners, like the Tycoon and his family, seemed respectful of the living dead. At least the Tycoon allowed the mbuzim to graze freely inside his compound and paid his tithes to the priest from the Red City.—I don’t know. Why did it have to be an mbuzi? It’s so… stupid.—

  —My very dear daughter, it was all that was available. We crashed very far from anything. Not even a worm-eating nomad could have inhabited that place. My soul was departing at an alarming rate for the far lands. I had to latch on to something. Be glad I didn’t choose the mother. She weighed a good seventy pounds and had a very unpleasant aroma.—

  It all so
unded so like her father. And he knew things only her father could possibly know. Her father and she could know, she corrected. That was the catch. If he really was her father, he ought to know things she didn’t, but if that were the case, how would she be able to test him about things she didn’t know herself? Her lonely imagination could just make up something, anything, couldn’t it?

  —Why did we leave the foreigners’ compound so abruptly?—she asked suddenly.

  —There was danger there,—he answered promptly. —What kind of danger?—

  He seemed to hesitate in her mind, then said, —The usual. There comes a point in any good swindle when the chances of being found out slightly overbalance the chances of success, and it is wisest to give up and try somewhere else.—

  But that hadn’t happened. Everything had been going perfectly. —What kind of danger?—Deza repeated.

  —If you are going to catch any fish, you had better do it now. The moon is already up, and you’re going to have to eat your catch here or the nomads will have your head for devouring one of their “heavenly messengers.” And since I have no desire to be out here on these slippery rocks after dark…—

  Avoiding the issue was extremely like her father, too. And he, or her own subconscious, was right. She gave up on the problem and stood up. She unfastened the heavy brocade skirt at the waist and stepped out of it. Under it was a shorter muslin half-skirt that came just to her knees. She draped the longer one over a wide step of travertine to dry, then waded purposefully out into the water again.

  She stopped when the water was barely past her ankles. She put her hands up to her face and frowned. —Father,—she said,—there’s something wrong. Something on the water.—

  —A cretin?—

  —No. On the water. On the top of the water.—She pressed her hands hard against the bone in front of her ears, feeling a definite vibration. —Yes, a boat.—

  —A foreign boat?—

  —No. It’s a majini. There’s something wrong!—

  —Come out of the water, Deza.—

  She didn’t move. She stood, her legs slowly and dreamily splashed by the even waves, her hands still pressed to the bone on either side of her face. There was no motion of an approaching wake in the water. The green, graceful moon rose above the slow sea. The sky was blue and dark as lapis lazuli. Deza stood very still. She deliberately slowed her breathing and tried to sort out the sensations she was receiving.

  —The rhythm is wrong,—she said at last, lifting her head.—It’s going too fast.—

  —The motor?—

  —The motor. And the majini. Both of them too fast.—She squinted into the distance, trying to see to the far edge of the horizon.—Too fast.—

  Deza stood in the water while the moon rose higher and lost its greenish color. Lumpy shadows formed in the placid swells, and swirls of moonsheen rippled around the snouts of jagged rocks. Lamps came on in the tent village out around the little headland. At last Deza came out of the water to sit on the brown travertine step. She lifted the mbuzi into her lap and held it against her. “They will crash,” she said aloud. “It is too fast.”

  The little animal looked up at at her but before it could answer Deza saw the spray of water from the majini as it rounded an outcropping of land and headed into the inlet. The body of the boat was dark-colored, as if its makers intended it to be invisible on moonless nights.

  “Poor things,” Deza said.

  —Pay attention,—her father said.—You are letting yourself be hypnotized by the water. It’s only a boat.—

  —But it will crash.—

  —Of course it will. The submerged wings are badly stressed and it won’t get much farther.—

  —There isn’t a proper channel,—she thought, absently pushing the mbuzi from her lap.

  —No, but there’s you. And you wouldn’t recognize good luck if it smacked you in the face.—

  —Good luck?—

  —You won’t eat worms and you can’t catch fish, but you can at least be first at the wreckage if you stop dreaming here. Perhaps the majini is carrying truffles to the foreigners or pokes of gembone fragments. Maybe even some gorgeous treasure smuggled out of the City in the Red Cave. Maybe you can even save the life of a fat and very grateful merchant who can carry you safely out of here.—

  Deza gathered the mbuzi under one arm, snatched the damp brocade skirt with the other, and leaped to her feet. The majini was past her, veering away from the village headland, as she ran along the travertine steps. She had to have gold in hand when the caravans of barges came up the coast. Gold, gembone, even a ream of fiddler’s lace would buy a seat on a sack of goods in one of the barges. Or maybe it would be the grateful merchant who bought her a seat and a pretty new dress when they got to one of the compounds upshore. Let the nomads have their glass beads and tin pots to tinker with over the cold winter while the grass and driftwood fires filled their tents with smoke. She would be in a solid walled house that didn’t billow and shake in the wind, one with heat from pipes and running water. All she needed was to get there. Her wit would provide everything else.

  Clear of the travertine, she ran across a ledge of fossilized sand dune, leaped down to the beach, then raced to the cove where the gentle waves would carry the debris.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Radi was not used to the majini. He usually rode in corsairs’ barks or, if he wished to travel unobtrusively, hitched a ride in a caravan of merchant barges. Both the corsairs and the merchants owed their allegiance to the Red City, so there was not much need for the City to build ships of its own.

  All that had changed with the coming of the foreigners from Kalmar. The wars that had cut Mahali off from the other civilized planets had been over for generations, and now Kalmar was ready to colonize again. At first they had expected to return as welcome countrymen. They didn’t seem to realize that the City had reigned supreme in their absence, but now they were getting the sense of it. But they didn’t give in easily. The Kalmarrans had tired rapidly of having their goods stolen by clever native pirates, yet instead of appealing to the City for help, they had imported hydrofoils from other worlds and mercenaries to run them, and they patrolled the shores themselves. The hydrofoils were much faster than the native barks and were independent of the wind. Even Sheria’s now-dead father, a man more interested in computer programs that would convince surface natives and Kalmarrans alike of the City’s power over all of Mahali had been alarmed by the foreigners’ power over the coasts. He’d poured a great deal of the City’s resources into developing the majini, an adaptation of the foreign craft with submerged wings pushing the hull out of the water to skim above the slow waves on an even keel. The City now had a small navy of the little barks on wings. They were faster than the foreigners’ patrol boats, one of which they’d just outrun, and quicker to respond to the helmsman’s commands in the treacherous shoals. The foreigners’ crafts were designed for heavier seas on other worlds, and lacked many refinements in style. Their equipment, the motors and gyrocompasses, however, were more reliable than the native versions. Still, it was satisfying to know that they were placing orders for the majini with the native crafters, orders that were not likely to be filled now. The Tycoon had been showing far too much arrogance to the Red City lately. They would be fools to give him even more power.

  Radi sat in the tiny cabin at the how of the majini, taking a turn at steering the craft over the green waters. The moon was on the rise, climbing into the lapis lazuli sky like one of the foreigners’ shiny ships, and he could see the distant shoreline in the moonlight. He headed closer to the shore. Out of sight of land, he felt uneasy, even though he knew the desert beacons and the predictable paths of the silverfish, as the nomads called the constellations and planets. Even the fat greenish moon would show them the way back to the shoreline. Radi and his people were not seafarers. They had gaffs aboard, but unlike the corsairs or even the crews of the caravan barges, they were unskilled in their use. Radi would have given a lo
t to have the big harpoons that the foreigners were reputed to use when seeking the big sea-cretins. He did not feel comfortable with the swift majini. It seemed to be going almost too fast, skimming the easy waves with a speed that was almost reckless.

  A shudder passed through the majini. Timbers creaked and planking rubbed noisily. Then as quickly as it started, the sounds stopped. Radi looked at Chappa, the young marine who had piloted the majini past the patrol boat and into these calm waters and then abandoned the command to Radi at Harubiki ‘s request for music. Chappa was far more at ease than Radi. He was sitting tailor fashion by Harubiki’s feet, just across the deck. His flute music barely skipped a beat as he shrugged. Harubiki smiled easily up at him, her feet tapping the deck silently in time to Chappa’s music. Radi was glad to see her relaxed; she had seemed even more uneasy than Radi about the majini, insisting on wearing a flotation ring under her muslin blouse and hugging her water-message unit, pretending to listen for news from the Red City, but with such intentness that Radi suspected she was trying to shut out the reality of the majini.

  There was nothing now. Pelono frowned, but he was a priest and at least partially a water witch and could be frowning about a distant rain squall. Radi leaned against the wheel, shoulders relaxing as he stared across the water to the shimmering beaches. They were travelling swiftly, making up time lost when they’d evaded the patrol. The Tycoon would know they were coming. The patrol would advise him on the airwaves. They’d also advise the Tycoon that the craft flying the City’s red banner had refused to acknowledge both command and request to state their business in the Tycoon’s waters. Entirely too highhanded. It was definitely time to show the Tycoon whose waters these were, whose world this was. He could not toss aside the priest from the City in the Red Cave as if he were a simple native shaman, nor could he command Radi’s majini. He hoped there wouldn’t be a foreign armada to deal with by the time he and the marines were ready to leave Sindra for the Tycoon’s compound.