“They took Elrick-Ann,” the kid cried in a voice that squeaked. “They took the Young Chief’s woman!”
Everybody, sitting around, was up, shouting, everybody asking questions so loudly, no one could hear the answers. Abasio yelled at them, his voice bellowing over theirs: “You all shut up and let me ask the questions!”
“Tha’s right,” piped up TeClar Chingero. “You lissen to Basio.”
“Now,” he said. “One of you go get the medic-hag. One of you go get some hot water from the kitchen. The rest a you sit down and hush.”
There was some toing and froing, then the medic-hag had the worst of the bleeding stopped and was busy setting stitches into the boy’s shoulder while he bit his lips and tried not to yell.
“What happened?” Abasio asked, keeping his voice steady and calm.
“We was doin’ escort duty,” the boy muttered between clenched teeth. “Five of us, takin’ some of the women to the baths. We got to the corner, you know, where the odds-shop is. And these Greens came bustin’ out, ten of ’em, maybe more—”
“You’re positive Greens?” Abasio asked, puzzled. The word was, Old Chief Purple paid off Wally Skins to keep the Greens at a distance until Kerf was old enough to be a good Chief, which meant—so said the smart mouths—never.
“Sure it was Greens!” the boy shouted. “I’m not color bline. They was wearin’ colors, they had green braids, they was yellin’ war cries. There was two of them to ever one of us, and some of ’em grab Elrick-Ann an’ make off down that alley while the rest keep us busy. We was down all over the place, you know, cut up some. I think Little Truck’s dead When we kine of got it together, I tole the others t’go on, and I came back to report.”
Abasio didn’t like the smell of it. “Was Carmina with you?”
Carmina was Soniff’s woman, and she was eight months pregnant. Why take Elrick-Ann when they could have Carmina, who’d bring a big ransom? Pregnant women always did.
Asking the question might not be smart. Abasio looked for Soniff, but he wasn’t around.
“I’ll tell the Young Chief,” he said. “You all wait here.”
Young Chief Purple was asleep. He sat up in his bed, staring bleary-eyed from his smooth round face, not meeting Abasio’s eyes.
“Oh, those rotten Greens,” he said.
His voice was usually petulant and never strong, but to Abasio’s ear it seemed more than usually nervous. Young Chief stroked the few scanty hairs on his upper lip, hiding his mouth.
“I can arrange a rescue,” Abasio offered, somewhat disconcerted by the Young Chief’s manner. Young Chief usually greeted bad news with screams of rage or hysteria. This calm was uncharacteristic.
“We can be there in half an hour,” he continued softly.
“No, no. We wait for the ransom deman’,” Young Chief mumbled, still looking everywhere but at Abasio. “They be makin’ a ransom deman’ No doubt.”
“No doubt,” agreed Abasio, narrow-eyed. “Poor Elrick-Ann.”
“Wha’?” Young Chief asked, with a darting glance at Abasio. “Oh, yeah, yeah Poor Elrick-Ann.” His voice lacked conviction.
Abasio waited, forcing himself to be calm. The ransom demand arrived twelve hours later. Abasio read it before taking it to the, Young Chief. It was for a ridiculous amount—a golden crow. A stupid amount, one that seemed calculated to arouse fury rather than permit payment.
“They crazy, askin’ this,” said Young Chief after he’d glanced at the demand.
“Too much?” asked Abasio, even though he knew it was.
“Too much even for a pregnant woman, and she not pregnant.”
Which was restating the smelly part of the case from Abasio’s point of view. Why had the Greens taken Elrick-Ann at all?
“You want me to negotiate?”
“Nah. Wait till they come down with they ransom. Jus’ wait.”
Abasio had no intention of waiting, though he gave every appearance of doing so. He knew the Greens’ reputation. He could imagine all too clearly what was happening to Elrick-Ann. He rounded up TeClar and CummyNup and swore them to secrecy. “You my men?” he demanded.
TeClar said, “We your men, Basio. Our mama, she say you save us more’n once, so we got to do what you say. An’ Elrick-Ann, she our friend too.”
CummyNup asked, “What we gone do, Basio?”
“We’re going to be audacious,” Abasio told them.
“What that mean?”
“That means we’re going to do something nobody would expect.”
They waited until it got dark, along about suppertime, when all the Greens would probably be downstairs. Abasio strapped every knife he owned to various parts of his anatomy and hung two guns at his waist. TeClar and CummyNup had bags full of smoke bombs and noisemakers. They sneaked into the alley half a block down and across from Green House, and while the Chingeros stirred up a racket that brought the Greens swarming out like hornets from a nest, Abasio shinnied up a drainpipe and got through a back window at Green House. The room he got into was empty, so were the next two, and in the third one he found what was left of Elrick-Ann.
She was still breathing, though he couldn’t imagine why. Looking at her made him so sick, he didn’t try to think about what he was doing. He just wrapped her in a sheet from the bed, slung her over his shoulder, shinnied back down the pipe, and sneaked back to Purple House, picking up the Chingeros en route, as planned. After some confused talk, they decided to leave her on the Purple doorstep for TeClar to find with a convincing display of surprise. TeClar was good at that. Nobody had any idea how she got there, least of all Elrick-Ann herself, who had stayed conveniently unconscious throughout. She was taken upstairs to the women’s quarters while the younger men stood around in chattering clusters, wondering who’d brought her back, and why, and Abasio added spurious conjectures of his own. Strangely, Young Chief was absent from the house and so were most of the older Purples, including Soniff.
The fact that the Greens had been so easily suckered firmed up Abasio’s opinion that they hadn’t expected a rescue attempt. They hadn’t even set a guard on her. And the fact that they’d cut her up meant they hadn’t planned to ransom her, either. Which meant—which meant that somebody, the Young Chief or somebody, had paid the Greens to make off with Elrick-Ann.
Why?
Abasio didn’t have to wonder long. Less than an hour later, the Young Chief came in, smiling all over his fat little face, surrounded by his usual entourage of elders and bringing a new conk he’d just bought from the Bloodrun gang Sybbis, her name was Sybbis, bought not leased. She was younger than Elrick-Ann was by a good bit and certainly more … Abasio groped for a word to describe Sybbis. He didn’t find one. Mostly, he had a feeling, men didn’t try to describe Sybbis. They just looked at her with their mouths open. The minute she got inside the house, she took off the full robes women wore in the streets, and after that, everyone could see just what she was like.
Having seen, everyone was most congratulatory to the Young Chief, including Abasio. Nobody was so tactless as to mention that Elrick-Ann was back, though Soniff eventually found out from Carmina. Once he knew, he should have declared war on the Greens. At the very least, he should have sent a few retaliation teams. Tally teams were sent Out on the least excuse, because that’s how kid-gangers earned their reputations. Soniff didn’t even do that, and the rumor was, the Old Chief told him not to.
“Why Soniff not sendin’ tallies?” TeClar whispered to Abasio. “Why the Old Chief not lettin’ him?”
“You know what’s good for you, you don’t ask,” Abasio whispered back. Everyone knew why, but nobody was saying. Elrick-Ann had been leased from the Cranked-Ups, so much a year for life. If she were dead, the Young Chief wouldn’t have owed another black-penny on her. If the Greens had killed her, it would have been the Greens’ debt to pay, and the Cranked-Ups probably wouldn’t have attacked the Greens because of their reputation. No cost to the Purples, and Young Chief rid of Elrick-Ann
. A smart plan. So smart, the Old Chief had probably thought it up.
Maybe she’d still die. It would be best, all around, if she did. Abasio knew that now. He should have killed her there in that room, killed her to put her out of pain, but he shouldn’t have brought her back. Not the way she was.
It was too late to think about it now. He’d just have to hope that she died, preferably without ever coming to and seeing what it was the Greens had done to her.
“Were you always an Oracle?” Orphan asked.
Oracle stared into the flames and slowly stirred the pot that was sending up aromatic little puffs of steam.
“You mean, was I always called Oracle?”
“Were you somebody else, before?”
Oracle nodded, putting the lid back on the pot and seating herself in her rocking chair.
“Will you tell me about it?”
“It’s a long, dull story, child.”
“The meat isn’t tender yet. And it’s raining. So why not tell me?”
There was no good reason why not. Oracle settled herself in the rocking chair, leaned back her head, and told the story:
“Oracle was a child once,” she said. “Her name was Seraphina.
“She lived far west of here on the hills beside the Faulty Sea, where the ocean had flowed in to fill a great fault in the land. From the hills where Seraphina’s people lived, they could look across to the Caliph Islands, the treasure islands where the Caliph’s gold was buried. Long ago, a great city stood there, but it was all fallen down.
“Inland from Seraphina’s home the mounded hills breasted the horizons, blotched with brush, grown up with grass, sun-scorched and dry for most of every year. Some days the sun glinted from the growth as from burnished metal, like the hot hard light of her father’s forge where he labored at the anvil, hammering red iron into horseshoes or candlesticks or tall, fancy gates. Some nights she dreamed of the forge light, the huff of the bellows, the clangor of the iron, waking with her heart pounding like the blows of the hammer, full of terrible apprehension at that burning, terrible light. She spoke of it to her mother, her father, but they told her hush, hush, it was only a dream.
“Sometimes she dreamed other things. One night she saw where gold was buried in the old city. By morning, she was all in a fever of excitement to go there and find it. She begged and begged, father, uncles, nothing would do but they take her at once. She told them she’d seen gold in the ruins.
“So they went in a boat to the Caliph Islands, and when they set foot upon the shore, she went straight to the place in the tumbled city where the gold was, as she had dreamed it. But there were other things there, things she hadn’t dreamed, skulls that grinned at her when she uncovered them, the eyeholes gleaming with buttery metal, chains and rings and bracelets, uncorroded by the burying earth. And when she saw the skulls, they spoke to her, telling her things she couldn’t bear to hear.
“So she did not speak of gold again, and when the dreams came, she was silent. But her father, who had hushed her often enough, would have none of her silence now. Fool-child, he called her, always screaming and whining. The bones wouldn’t hurt her, the bones wouldn’t kill her—why couldn’t she be good for something? Come now, he commanded, come tell Uncle Netse where gold will be found, for Uncle wants to go digging.
“She was an obedient child. She shut her eyes and summoned the image of gold: A white building, all tumbled down. If you stand on the tallest hill, facing the Faulty Sea, with the bridge across the sea to the left and the broken tower to the right …
“ ‘Not clear enough. Make her go with me!’ Netse demanded.
“And at this she screamed and fell and foamed at the mouth, for she couldn’t bear to go again among the bones. Father and uncles didn’t know what it was like, remembering what all those bones had felt and thought when the world fell, the howls of pain, the maimed bodies, the crushed skulls. Seraphina thrashed and foamed at the mouth and went on howling until they sent Uncle away and let her lie by herself in her room, lulled by the sounds of the waves.”
“Was it beautiful there?” asked Orphan.
“Oh, yes. It was beautiful there,” said Oracle. “It was home.”
“And she … you didn’t see bones all the time!”
“Not all the time, no, but she did see them and she did see other things. Seraphina thought it strange that her father and her uncle believed her dreams of gold but denied her dreams of shaking and fire and death. They wanted to believe in gold. They didn’t want to believe she saw the other things.”
“What did she see?”
“She saw a little fire in the canyon bottom, a thin wraith of smoke in the dusk, a wind that would come with morning, dispersing the smoke so that no one would know it was there, then a larger fire in the dark hours, an earthquake in the night, a holocaust that would come with dawn of the second day, a firestorm driven on a fierce wind that shifted in every direction, up every canyon, down every hill.
“She tried to tell them, but no one would listen but Aunt Lolly, and even she laughed.
“ ‘When will all this happen?’ Aunt Lolly asked.
“Seraphina didn’t know when. Maybe soon. Maybe later. But Father would still be alive, for Seraphina saw him die in the fire. Others in the town would be alive as well, for she saw them burning as well. Then, after that, she saw villages of stilt houses being built over the sea, where the recurrent fires couldn’t get at them. Little houses with bottoms like boats, so they’d float when the earth shook. She had begged her father to build such a house, live in such a fashion.…
“ ‘Nonsense,’ her father had said. ‘There are far too many of us to live like that.’
“And Seraphina knew he was right. There were too many men to live in such a sensible fashion. Men had to live dangerously because they were so many. Lives are cheap when men are many.”
“What happened?” begged Orphan, after a long silence.
“It was not long,” Oracle said, “before people heard about Seraphina’s talent for seeing gold. People outside the family, people outside the town! They came demanding to know where treasure was. They bothered Father at the forge, they woke the family at night, knocking at the windows. Some begged and some threatened. Father said he could do without the gold easier than he could put up with such a fool-child, so he named her Oracle and sent her away, across the sunny hills and the baked desert, over the high mountains to an archetypal village, where distance veiled the images and she seldom dreamed of fire.”
“Did Seraphina’s town really burn down?” asked Orphan.
“Oh, yes,” said Oracle in a distant voice. “Just as she had seen it happening.”
“What happened to the people?”
“Most of those not crushed by the shaking burned in the fire.”
“Her family? Her father and uncles?”
“Gone. All but her aunt Lolly. When she smelled the little smoke, she remembered what Seraphina had said and got out in time It was she who sent word here, to me, to Oracle, telling me what had happened. She needn’t have done. I already knew Just as I knew when they built the first of the little boat-bottomed houses, out over the sea.”
“I’m sorry about your family,” said Orphan.
Oracle smiled a weary smile with sadness in it. “Sorryness has no part in it, child. I did what I could do. My people believed what they wanted to believe. Just as every seeker who comes to me for a prophecy believes what he wants to believe and never one jot else.”
In Purple House, days and days went by, but Elrick-Ann didn’t die. She regained consciousness, and the hags gave her drugs for the pain. When she saw what they’d done to her, she begged for them to kill her, but nobody had the right to lay hands on her but Kerf, he wouldn’t do it; she couldn’t do it by herself. Gradually her wounds healed, leaving hideous scars behind them.
She had no duties any longer. She was not Kerf’s woman any longer. She was not welcome in the house where anyone could see her. She was just the
re, hidden away in the women’s quarters, with nobody going near her for fear of Kerf, imprisoned, virtually alone, and with no other place to go. Abasio fretted over it, waited for a propitious moment when Soniff was relaxed, and suggested the Young Chief award Elrick-Ann a pension, just as he would any disabled gang member.
“Why would he do that?” Soniff asked lazily.
“To save talk,” Abasio answered in a careless voice “Wouldn’t do to have the young ones thinkin’ people disrespect the Purples.”
“Why would people disrespect the Purples?” Soniff sat up, frowning.
“Well,” drawled Abasio, “we didn’t go to war over her. We didn’t send tallies Greens musta disrespected us quite a bit, takin’ her, doin’ that to her. She’s a Crank girl, and they might disrespect us, too, considerin’ all the talk that’s goin’ round.”
Soniff frowned, but he saw the point. A pension was cheaper than any of the alternatives. Soniff sent Abasio to the Cranks to settle them down so far as the Purples were concerned. Though Abasio started out cool enough, his anger ruined his diplomacy. He couldn’t forget what had happened to Elrick-Ann. He found himself saying too much, describing too much, and then he had to blame somebody. He couldn’t come right out and blame Soniff and Little Purp, so he had to lay it on the Greens. When he left the Cranked-Ups’ homeground, it was with the strong feeling the Cranks were going to fight the Greens over Elrick-Ann.
Things took off faster than he expected. That same night when he left Purple House to go to his own place, all the talk on the street was that the Cranks had challenged the Greens for that same night, a war that would be shown on the public amusement screen. Instead of going home, Abasio went to the entertainment district to see what the odds-shops were predicting. They were giving five to one on the Greens, which was more or less the way. Abasio would have called it himself. He decided to stick around and see how it came out.
“Where’s this war gonna be?” he asked the odds-shop man.
The man shrugged. “Out east, toward the bridge.”
It was probably as good a place as any. Plenty of open ground, plenty of wreckage around for cover. Of course, there were some occupied buildings out there, too, but while the war was going on, the inhabitants would bottle themselves up inside Abasio paid a silver mouse for a seat in the screen room and sat himself down among the crowd of bettors who were jabbering and yelling at one another while a Whisper-High commercial filled the screen. Whisper-High was known as a woman’s drug. Men’s drugs were advertised mostly at the arena and in the songhouses.