A Passage of Stars

  “If it’s broken, at least it hasn’t shifted,” she said as she wrapped the arm immobile in gauze. “I don’t think they broke anything else.” The glazed, withdrawn cast had retreated from his eyes, and he followed her with his gaze as she moved about him. “You’re going to have some ugly bruises, and they’ll hurt like the Void. I’m going to wash—this will sting.”

  “What’s your name?” he said suddenly.

  “Ransome,” she said without thinking. “Well,” she added more slowly. “People here call me Lily Heredes. What’s your name?”

  “I be called Pinto.” He still regarded her steadily, as if she and the bowl of water formed some fascinating composition of form and angle. In the other room, Bach hummed at the terminal. “Why did you do it?” he asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” said Lily.

  “It can’t be worse than what I’m thinking,” he said, mocking her.

  “You know, you sound much better when you’re not faking the accent,” she said, hoping to distract him. “I watched you play. You must be a good pilot.”

  “Sure and glory,” he answered in his broadest accent, “Is that what you be wanting? Or be you thinking to get the credits, like the others do.” He laughed, a harsh sound that made her wonder how long it had been since he had laughed for the pure joy of laughing, or because he was happy. “Or mayhap just a wee tattooed tumble i’ ya bed?”

  “You won’t give up, will you?” She stood up. “Hoy, you’re stubborn. I knew a Ridani girl once. You reminded me of her. That’s why. Now go to sleep.” She left without waiting for his response, shut the door behind her.

  In the morning she was making breakfast when the door into Pero’s bedroom opened. It was apparent immediately when Pinto stepped blinking into the burgeoning light of midmorning that he shared another trait with Paisley besides that quick fluidity of movement and grace: he had the beauty that only people who are entirely innocent of their own handsomeness can have, untouched in a curiously immediate way. Even with the cut, puffy lip and swollen eye, his face and the stark patterns illuminating it caught her gaze.

  He had strapped his broken arm against his chest. He wore a tunic and trousers of blue that Kyosti had sewn for Pero some months ago. On the Ridani the garments hung loose, and the trouser legs, rolled up, revealed both one swollen ankle and the geometric pattern marking his feet and toes.

  “I found these clothes,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll clean them. Mine aren’t fit to be worn right now.”

  “The owner’s not coming back any time soon.”

  An uneasy silence settled.

  “You said I would ache like the Mother’s own wounds,” he said at last. “I do.”

  “Then sit down.”

  “It’s not fitting.”

  She turned from the counter. “What’s not fitting?”

  The stark, three-toned pattern on his face seemed to delineate the obstinacy of his expression. “By kinnas, I owe you my service. You cannot then serve me instead. It is dishonorable.”

  “Hoy.” Lily brought a tray of food and juice to the table. “To you or to me?” When his expression did not change, she laughed, a certain echo of his mockery last evening. “I thought as much. Would you sit down? I don’t know what you mean by kinnas, so how can it affect me?”

  “Of course you don’t know what it means, ya jaidin torkyo—”

  “Sit down,” she repeated.

  There was a pause. He limped over to the couch and sank down beside her with obvious relief.

  “Have some juice?”

  He accepted it, grudgingly.

  “Tell me what kinnas is.”

  He ate all his food first. She let him eat all hers, without letting him guess it was hers, because he was obviously starving.

  “You won’t understand,” he said finally. “Kinnas is honor. Acceptance of duty. The pattern you’re marked with—fate. It’s knowing self-control. It’s integrity, humility. It’s defiance. Do you get the idea?”

  “The kinnas wheel,” Lily said reflectively, caught in trying to remember Kyosti’s words. She did not notice the surprise on Pinto’s face. “The wheel of the night. The … the honor that—” Her gaze fixed on the window, seeing past the tops of the park trees to a more distant scene of trees and moonlight. “The honor that patterns you. But also, the promise of love.” Her gaze dropped suddenly. A blush crept up her skin to feed rose across her cheeks.

  Amazingly, Pinto laughed. Not derisive, not mocking, just softly amused. “I’ve used that line myself,” he said in a companionable voice. “It always works. But that doesn’t mean”—he added hastily, facing the sudden hostility of Lily’s gaze and the hot flush of anger on her pale complexion—“that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” He smiled, a smile of astounding sweetness that transformed his face. “Because it is true.”

  “Who is that man,” Kyosti said before anything else, “the one I talked to yesterday while you were out?” His face was marked by lines of exhaustion, more pronounced than usual, and the apricot blush of his lips had a hard set that the faint static of the terminal’s picture could not conceal.

  “What—Pinto?” She glanced back over her shoulder. Pinto, reading on her com-screen as he lay on the couch, looked up at the sound of his name. “A refugee,” she finished. “You look tired, Kyosti.”

  “Do you suppose I got any sleep at all last night?”

  Lily stared at the screen. Behind her, a slight cough signaled Pinto’s rise from the couch, his slow limp into Pero’s bedroom that stretched into an infinity of unspoken words. “You are tired,” Lily said at last as the bedroom door shut with a soft but final sound.

  “Has the beauty left in a tactful manner?” Although Kyosti’s expression had not changed, she felt an undercurrent rising in his tone like the telltale sparking harshness in an overheating mineshaft engine.

  “Oh yes,” replied Lily. “He’s back in the bedroom with the other ten men I’ve invited to move in with me since you’ve been gone. Don’t be ridiculous. Have you heard anything of Robbie? I hear his speeches, but he’s disappeared as thoroughly as Joshua.”

  It could just have been the inconstancy of the terminal’s picture; the blue of Kyosti’s eyes seemed only a veil masking sparks of green deep in his wide irises. She realized he was not listening to her. “I’m coming home.”

  “Don’t bother. Not if that’s your only reason.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Lily.”

  “Threaten you? Do you think I’m going to change the locks?”

  “You’re mine, Lily. Don’t you understand that yet?”

  A shrill whine shattered her anger. Behind Pero’s desk Bach switched appendages and now welded new supports onto the carriage that supported him when he went out with Lily. The whine faded, replaced by a soft spitting growl.

  “Kyosti,” said Lily in a quieter voice. “Listen to me. I think you’d better come home so you can rest. You must be exhausted.

  For a moment she thought he would acquiesce. “He’ll be gone, won’t he?” he asked.

  “I told you he was a refugee, and a hypersensitive bastard, too. But I saved him from being beaten up, Kyosti. I can’t just throw him back on the street, not the way things are now. Not with people blaming Ridanis for the state of emergency. You of all people should know that.”

  “If you’ve touched him, I’ll have to kill him, you know,” he replied in a perfectly calm voice.

  “Hoy. Why don’t you just kill me and then all our problems will be solved.”

  Bach’s welding sputtered and gave out and he sang a brief question.

  On the screen, Kyosti’s expression changed. Now he looked horrified. “Don’t be offensive!” That undercurrent had risen entirely to the surface—shaken and hoarse and wild. “Never say that to me again!”

  “Never tell me how to conduct my life.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “If I don’t, whose fault is that?”

  He said nothing, o
nly stared, at his screen, of the image he must have of her: tight-mouthed, flushed with anger, hurt. “I’m sorry, Lily,” he said, a certain incoherency still intense in his voice. “Don’t hate me.”

  “Kyosti, you are becoming irrational.”

  “No, I’m not. That’s the frightening part.”

  “I can’t stand this! Are you going to come home or not?”

  There was a long silence. Bach winked at her from Pero’s desk, but she ignored him.

  “Kyosti?” she asked, suddenly afraid, because his expression had changed yet again. The wildness had drained from his face, but the bleak resignation that had replaced it was somehow more ominous.

  “No,” he said. “Forgive me, Lily. I should never have slept with you. You have no idea—” He flinched, as if at some terrible decision. “It will be better for you if I never see you again. Believe me, Lily. I’m sorry.”

  “Kyosti—”

  But the picture snapped into obliteration, and Lily was left with static. She stared at the blank terminal, turned it off. The silence expanded toward infinity.

  Eventually a door clicked and opened.

  “Be it he don’t care for ya tattooed company,” said Pinto from the doorway.

  Lily stood up so quickly her chair tipped over, clattering onto the floor. “Do you think the whole planet revolves around whether or not you’re tattooed? Don’t you have anything better to do than feel sorry for yourself?”

  “You didn’t have to bring me here.”

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  For a long moment he did not move. Finally he limped to the couch and, sitting, raised a tattooed arm to cover his eyes as if from a bright light. “I’ve got no where else to go,” he said at last in a soft voice.

  “Void help us,” breathed Lily. Outside she could see the clouds lowering grey over the park, and rain began, chasing a pair of Security officers under the incomplete shelter of a tree. The fine mist veiled the scenery beyond. She ached. Like Pinto’s bruises, that after two days still violated the patterns of his face and body, but her hurt was fresh and did not mark her physically. She sighed, willed herself not to remember her last glimpse of Kyosti’s face, and flicked on the terminal again. Its noise would at least obliterate her thoughts.

  Senators Isaiah, Feng, and Metoessa flickered into view on the screen.

  “Damn this,” said Lily as the camera focused in on Senator Isaiah’s high-boned, thin face. She reached to switch the channel.

  “Turn it up!” said Pinto urgently. He had lowered his arm.

  “Hoy,” muttered Lily. But she glared at the screen, very willing to have another victim to vent her frustration on.

  “—doctrines such as those Pero preaches lead to every sort of crime and encourage every sort of criminal to embrace such sentiments in order to indulge in an orgy of felonious villainy. Shall we let murderers and thieves and whores rule us? Shall we hand the controls of our ship to illiterates, to common tattoos, to wreckers and rioters? Where then shall our cargo, our people, our children, end up? Lost in a window? This is what agitators such as Pero wish for you, citizens. This is—”

  “Must we listen to this idiot?” Lily cried, punching off the volume.

  Pinto did not seem to be listening. His lips had a grim, set look to them, and his gaze, although focused on the Senator’s face, seemed, instead, to be fixed on a scene beyond the screen. He looked up when she switched to a weather channel. “Don’t tell me that offends you,” he said. “‘Shall we hand the controls of our ship to common tattoos?’ What eloquence!” For an instant he looked about to cry, but the expression passed into a sneer.

  “Where were you educated?” asked Lily suddenly. “Pilot and all?”

  “Not downtrodden and ignorant enough for you?” he asked sarcastically. “And here I was thinking you must be a Jehanist sympathizer. That irresistible desire to help the oppressed. So noble.”

  Lily was too astonished at his sustained belligerence and too drained by her argument with Kyosti to respond with anger. At first she just stared at him, and he shifted his good arm as if to protect himself.

  “Hoy,” she said finally.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Bach’s sudden sung phrase caused them both to start. Lily turned quickly.

  “What’s he saying?” asked Pinto.

  With one hand resting on Bach’s surface, Lily leaned forward to examine the writing that now scrolled up on the terminal. It was in code; she could not decipher it.

  Who is this from, Bach? she asked.

  Classified message. Request meeting. Information transfer. Highest secrecy. Location: Tachtau Overrun, paternity. Imperative: twenty hundred hours.

  “But who is it from? When?”

  There beeth no signing, patroness, but the code beeth identical to that used by Pero’s transmissions. It requesteth, I surmise, a rendezvous for tonight since no date is given. All contained herein supposeth the greatest need for action.

  “But where the Void is Tachtau Overrun? What is it?”

  She realized abruptly that Pinto stood at her shoulder, careful not to touch her, but peering, around her to read the screen. She began to shift, to hide it from him.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a Jehanist,” he said. “I know where Tachtau Overrun is.”

  “Can I get there by twenty hundred hours?”

  “You’d have to leave within the hour to get there by twenty hundred hours. It’ll take at least eight hours to get there, more with the rail delays.”

  “Can you show me how to get there?” she asked, no longer bothering to conceal the screen.

  “You are a Jehanist, aren’t you,” he said suddenly. “I’ll take you. I know shortcuts that I couldn’t explain to you.

  “Why? How can I trust you? Why do you want to help me?”

  “Tables turned, aren’t they?” he said, suddenly gleeful. “You’d never believe me. Just remember, you hold my kinnas. I can’t break that. ‘Whither thou goest, I shall go.’ Something like that.”

  “Do you mean I’ll always hold your kinnas? Forever?”

  “No. Only until it’s returned. And if I’m lucky tonight, I’ll save your life, or your dearest one’s life, and be free of you.”

  Lily knelt, let her cheek lie against Bach’s cool curve, feeling the smoothing vibration of his soft singing hum. “Are you lucky, Pinto?” she asked.

  “I’m tired. And I hurt.”

  They left within the hour, leaving Bach to monitor.

  Pinto knew shortcuts. Lily wondered where he had learned them, because several of them involved sections of rail reserved for government use. They arrived at Tachtau Overrun at twenty oh five hours.

  It was simply an interchange of rail lines. Despite the state of emergency it was crowded, travelers changing trains to a myriad of destinations: Muir, Esau, Abba Gate; Security manned the entrances to the trains to Tchelik-in-Central, Khafaje Center, Subadar.

  “Hoy.” Lily paused along a wall to survey that shifting mass of color and movement.

  “Who are you meeting?” asked Pinto. “What does she look like?”

  “Paternity,” said Lily. “Is there a destination called Paternity?”

  Pinto blinked. “Is that what it said? Nothing I’ve ever—wait.” He grinned slightly, almost engaging. “What about Abba Gate? It used to be a big joke with us—” He broke off suddenly, looking upset about some memory. “‘Abba’ means father in some ancient language.”

  “Might as well try it,” said Lily. “Otherwise we’ll never find him. He’s very dark,” she continued as they walked. “Good-natured face.” Shook her head. “You just watch out for Security. I’ll look for him.”

  “Goodness,” said Pinto mockingly. “In deep company, I be. There it is.”

  The crowds sifted past them, a constant flow that ebbed and lulled in spurts. Busy, intent on their own purposes, these were people linked to Central, she thought, and happy enough with the current government—she glanced at Pinto
beside her, at two women in construction worker’s coveralls, and at a single tattooed man sweeping the floor—not all.

  The stream of people swept past her. In the gaps between them she saw a trickle of arrivals coming through the turnstile one by one, as if presenting themselves to her, and then blending into the crowd.

  All but one.

  She stopped so suddenly that Pinto ran into her and they both staggered forward two steps before she pulled up.

  “Hoy,” she breathed. “Abba Gate.”

  The man had halted just beyond the turnstile, put a hand in his jacket pockets as any traveler might fumbling for some remembered item. But his eyes swept the crowd twice unobtrusively. She noticed it because on the first circuit they met hers. He smiled.

  She walked forward as if she were blind, wove her way through the press of traffic by instinct and was standing in front of him before she realized that she might be attracting attention.

  But he still smiled. “Well, Lily,” Heredes said. “I was hoping you would be the one to meet me here.”

  19 Heir

  “YES, MY WORK IS finished,” said Heredes. “There is just one last appointment I must keep, the one I’m going to now.” The clack-clack of the wheels serenaded his words. “I know what I need to know, and I have something to give to you, Lily—a final gem of information for our friend.” He glanced at Pinto, sitting stiff and reserved beside Lily.

  Lily also looked at Pinto.

  “I can get off at the next stop,” said Pinto.

  Heredes smiled and said something in a language Lily did not recognize. Pinto looked surprised, then suspicious. But his reply, in the same language, was brief.

  “Ah,” said Heredes. “If she has your kinnas then I see we can trust you.” Pinto spoke again, a rush of words this time, but Heredes waved him to stop with a laugh. “I don’t know the language that well, and in a much different dialect.”