The Margarets

  The most recently circulated rumor was that Dominion Central Authority had recently disappeared from its usual seat on Mars and left no word as to its whereabouts, thus forestalling forcible retaliation by the Combine. Dominion had, at least for the time being, vanished in the smoke.

  “What will we do for fitters?” Lady Ephedra demanded. “All our fitters are Earthian slaves. Tell me, Miss Ongamar! You are Earthian! What will we do for fitters?”

  “I suppose you will have to pay them, madam,” I said, through a mouth full of pins. “There are always Earthians willing to work if the pay is good.”

  “Pay fitters?” Lady Ephedra was shocked into silence. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Pay workers? Not for the next few lifetimes, at any rate,” I heard a K’Famir crew boss telling his friend. “They’re still bringing shiploads of them out from Earth. By the time we’ve used them all up, the Earth colonies will be overpopulating, just as Earthians always do, and we’ll buy up the excess. Just wait and see!”

  I acknowledged to myself that it was selfish to feel so, but I was grateful that Earth had been struck by salvation, despite itself! Not that Earthians appreciated that fact, according to the K’Famir, though that may have been wishful thinking. All this babble continued to feed it, day after day, and thankful as I was, I detected something worrisome in the thing’s appetite, a nervous undercurrent that reminded me of a childhood time when I had stuffed myself with candy, each mouthful creating a need for another mouthful, so that no amount of the sweetness satisfied me. I had been very sick, very sorry, and so the thing in its stone closet seemed almost to sicken as it gorged on the talk about Earth.

  Could one imagine that it felt anxiety? Or, more likely, that the creature or organism that directed the ghyrm and its appetites was feeling anxiety. Something I might turn to my advantage? Now that my contract as a fitter was drawing to a close, was there a way I could escape from it? Though the years on Cantardene were longer than Earth-years, I believed that less than half a year remained before my official enslavement would be over. I could look forward to being taken to one of the colony planets, and I had applied to go to Chottem, with B’yurngrad as a second choice. Even Thairy or Tercis would be acceptable. I had been twelve when I arrived on Cantardene, twenty-two when Adille had died, I was almost thirty-seven now, actually older than that, if one figured in the relative length of the years. If I could leave the planet without the thing, distance would surely attenuate its influence on me, or so I prayed. If I could not escape it, would it expect transport to an Earthian colony? I had not, myself, committed any evil yet, and was determined to avoid doing so.

  I tried not to think of the possibility that I would not be allowed to go at all. My hands busied themselves with a vivilon chemise, setting in a gusset without a moment’s thought while my mind remained caught in its web of anxieties. I knew things about the K’Famir that I should not know. I knew things about the Mercan Combine that I should not know. Creatures of various kinds had talked back and forth over my stooped body, giggling over pillow talk, telling secrets. I knew that the Mercan Combine planned to take over Chottem, that the Omnionts intended to annex Thairy and Tercis. Oh, not right away. Not until all the servants on Earth had been pumped into the system. The thing had sucked up this information with groans of pleasure, but still I had felt its underlying dissatisfaction, its barely sensed agitation.

  This morning I had told it I would not return until late, for I intended to go into the pleasure quarter to hear what other races thought of the news from Earth. It had hissed at me, as it always did, a threat, a certainty of death if I did not return timely. How it would accomplish this, I didn’t know. Adille had simply died of weakness, for it had drained her dry. I felt no weakening as yet. My mirror showed no dissipation of strength or premature aging. The thing didn’t want to weaken me. It wanted to go on using me.

  I bent over to pick up a few spilled pins and once again heard conversation from the neighboring fitting room.

  “I’ll have Miss Ongamar take care of it. I never have any complaints about her work.” It was Lady Ephedra’s voice.

  “She’s been with you quite a while,” said a languorous, uncaring voice. “Not cheating the decree, are we, dear?”

  Shrill squeals of laughter. “Aren’t you dreadful to say such a thing! She’s been with me for a long time because she’s very good. Quite the best I’ve had. A decree is a decree, but I confess I shall hate to turn her over to the males up there on the Hill of Beelshi.”

  I stopped breathing. Lady Ephedra’s voice went on. “I don’t know why they always want humans. They don’t use any of the other slaves as sacrifices, only humans.”

  I gritted my teeth and breathed lightly, lightly, they mustn’t know I was listening. In case someone peeked in, I had to keep my fingers busy, but that voice could only belong to one of the baron’s neuters. Of all the K’Famir, I hated the neuters the worst. At least the others seemed to know they were being cruel, the neuters did not even realize it. They had no minds at all.

  “How much longer does she have?” asked the languorous one.

  “I may be able to stretch it to a year,” said Lady Ephedra. “For some reason, they wanted her dead several years ago. Someone, somewhere ordered it. I misled them then, telling them she had died, and I have lied to them several times since, extending her term of bondage. Very soon, I shall not be able to lie to them anymore.”

  “Do you always obey the decree and let the males kill your fitters?” the neuter asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said the Lady Ephedra. “Stretch it out as one may, one must obey, eventually. One doesn’t know what they may have picked up in the fitting rooms. They always die on the hill, shortly before their terms expire.”

  In the neighboring room, I straightened, my hands still working as I finished the chemise and set it aside, momentarily amazed at how easily I had done the task, created a piece of clothing for a creature more like a spider than a human, a creature with eight extremities, with two mouths, four eyes, no visible ears, and several sets of copulatory organs, some of them used only for pleasure.

  So they did not intend to let me go. Though it was likely Lady Ephedra didn’t know precisely how her fitter was to be killed, she knew it would happen. I was suddenly very warm, almost hot, the fury rising in me like a wave. I would kill them all, I would burn down House Mouselline. I would…

  I would do nothing precipitant, I warned myself. I had been fortunate to overhear. It gave me time to make a plan. Time perhaps to get away. Time certainly to arrange that someone in Dominion would learn of all the things I knew.

  “Are you finished, Miss Ongamar?” asked the Lady Ephedra from the doorway of the little room. “Everything completed.”

  “Oh, yes, Lady Ephedra,” I said, bowing humbly. “Just straightening up before I leave.”

  I Am M’urgi/on B’yurngrad

  Ferni rose early and quietly from the warm bed where I lay, still half asleep. He left the door ajar, and I heard him speaking to B’Oag in the oasthall below.

  “You’re putting a fine polish on that copper,” he said.

  “Been rumblin’ at me,” B’Oag complained. “In the night. D’ja hear it?”

  “Once or twice,” Ferni said. “It didn’t sound like an imminent eruption.”

  “Yah, well, last time it went, it didn’ give any warning atall. Never hurts to check, see all the seams’re tight.”

  “You have a relief valve, don’t you?”

  “Be a fool not to, wun I?”

  “Any chance of getting some breakfast? Do you have a henhouse here?”

  “Oh, sure. Sev’ral nice little vents comin’ off this spring, ’ere. Got one of ’em cased up through the henhouse ’fore it warms the barn. Keep a lantern out there, so eggs we got. Hens won’t lay ’thout light, ’thout heat. I got jibber sausage, too, smoke or plain. The bread’ll be baked another little while. Y’wanna take it up?”

  “Good idea. The
longer she rests, the quicker her job will be.”

  There was silence for a few moments before B’Oag remarked, all too casually, “I heard somethin’ a few days back. Mebbe somebody’s got one a those, like she has.”

  Ferni said, “I’m sorry to hear that. People who happen on those things usually don’t live long after.”

  “Thing is, this person has a fambly person sick, like to die. This person knows the…the thing takes souls to Joy.”

  Ferni made a sound of rude derision. “Oh, again I’m sorry to hear that. That story is put about by the things themselves, so people will let them in, let them near. I’ve met with teachers, wisemen. The creatures don’t take the soul to Joy. They just eat it until nothing’s left. Envoys like her upstairs are sent to stop the soul-eating, to trap the evil thing and see it’s put where it can do no harm.”

  “Y’mean there’s no Joy? No bein’ took up?”

  “Who would say the good are not taken to Joy? They may well be, but not by these things. The person who found this one was worried because his dear one is near to dying?”

  “She,” B’Oag corrected. “Where’s these things come from, then, these evils? Did a man make them?”

  Ferni said, “They’re parasites, Oastkeeper. Like a louse or a flea, only more deadly. We don’t know who makes them, but we will find out!”

  “You’re one a them, then. Them silence people.”

  No sound. Ferni didn’t agree or disagree. Perhaps he only waited, his nose full of the same wonderful smell that had opened my eyes wide. Someone had opened the oven door and filled the oasthouse with the aroma of new-baked bread.

  “I’ll see to breakfast,” said B’Oag. “Ya’ll wait?”

  “I’ll wait,” Ferni said. “No need for you to make the trip upstairs.”

  I dozed, only a moment until I heard the thud of Ferni’s step on the stair, and I grinned when he came in, unable to help it.

  I sat upright, pulling the blanket around my shoulders. “By the Ghost of Joziré, that smells edible.”

  He set it on the foot of the bed, turning a troubled face toward me. “By the Ghost of Joziré? Why’s he a ghost? I thought…I thought he was just hiding out somewhere.”

  I examined his face. “It bothers you to think he might be dead? Did you know him?”

  “Of him, yes. A good man, so I’ve been told.”

  “It’s just something people say, Ferni. What did you bring for breakfast?”

  “Eggs,” he said. “Sausage and fresh bread and tea and what looks like”—he uncapped the small stoneware jar to see what it held—“honey.”

  I made a lap and beckoned for the tray.

  “I have news,” he said.

  “The oastkeeper decided to speak of it, eh? I thought he knew where it was.”

  “Well, he hasn’t told me where, yet, but he’s told me why. Somebody’s on death watch.”

  “Then we’ll hope we’re not too late.”

  “After breakfast,” he agreed. “And, by the by, what’s this oath on King Joziré’s ghost?”

  Spooning honey onto fresh bread, I said, “I’ve seen it, the ghost.”

  His mouth fell open, and it took a moment for him to latch it up again. “Come now.”

  “You’re the one sent me to that shaman, Ferni. What’d you think she’d teach me? How to make tea?”

  Now it was his turn to think. “Quite frankly, I didn’t think about it at all. At the time, I was just told to do it, send you, I mean, and I thought you’d be safe there.”

  “Safe I was for a time. Then safe I wasn’t, but I was less fearful than previously. You say you’ve heard a threat. Well, I’ve seen one. Someone does want me dead.”

  “What did the shaman teach you?”

  “She taught me ways to fly, to escape, to die, if necessary. To see spirits and converse with ghosts. To speak at a distance to someone receptive. Though she seemed to think I knew most of it already. It was in my bones, she said, else all her teaching would have done naught.”

  Ferni asked, “So what did the shade of King Joziré have to say for himself?”

  Around a mouthful of egg, I said, “When I saw him on the night road, he said he was wandering, seeking Wilvia and his children…”

  “His children?” Ferni gaped at me, forehead furrowed.

  “Twins. A boy, a girl.”

  “What makes you think Wilvia and the children died?”

  “I didn’t say they did!” I snorted. “I didn’t say he did.”

  He muttered, “Well then, what you saw wasn’t a ghost. What you saw was a night wanderer, a spirit: alive, asleep, dreaming.”

  This was perfectly possible. “He seemed so familiar to me that I didn’t even wonder. I didn’t think of him being a spirit wanderer, though I do that myself.”

  After we had eaten and put on multiple layers of additional clothing, I put the chitterlain in a cage Ferni had borrowed from the oastmaster, set it in a warm place with food and water inside, and went to retrieve the basket from the lockroom. Then we heard B’Oag’s reluctantly given directions, which concluded with: “She’s only a lass, Envoy. Go easy with her.”

  “Easy as I can,” I replied. “If it’s not too late to go any way at all.”

  The ice storm had given way to frigid calm. The road was only a shadow-edged depression that curved around the snowy hillocks before us. Ice lay beneath the thin layer of new snow, too slippery to traverse until we strapped thorn-feet over our boots. The world was painted in shades of metallic gray, silver where weak light struck it, pewter where shadows fell, iron beneath the cover of ice-laden trees. When we had gone far enough to be out of sight of the oasthouse, I gave Ferni my tool kit to carry before opening the coin-sized window in the basket. It had to be held well away from me as the questing tentacle emerged hesitantly into the cold. It squirmed, then slowly flailed the air, up, down, right, left, suddenly becoming rigid as it pointed in the direction we were traveling.

  We held our breaths as much as possible, for when the ghyrm were not well fed, they stank, sending out their smell to others of their kind, calling a gather of the hungry. Alone, ghyrm were weak, easily crushed, burned, poisoned if one had the right tools, and thus unlikely to survive long treks in dangerous country. A gather of them, on the other hand, stank with a feculent rot that made creatures emerge gasping from burrows or plunge unconscious from the skies. Both of us had seen records of tribal settlements ravaged by ghyrm in which nothing was left alive beneath, upon, or above the soil.

  The tentacle began to swerve slightly to the right of our line of travel. Shortly, we came to the narrower lane that went in that direction, a barely shadowed trail around the breast of the hill. The tendril quivered.

  “When will you basket it?” asked Ferni, observing the questing tentacle with disgust.

  “As soon as I’m sure we have the right place,” I replied.

  The house lay just behind the hill, dug in for more than half its height, small, shuttered windows high upon its walls beneath the deep eaves of the high-pitched roof. The door was set at the inner end of a roofed tunnel that led through the hill to the house wall. The tentacle quivered its eagerness. Before we entered the tunnel, I took my tool kit from Ferni, opened it, and fastened it around my waist, where I could reach it easily. I slipped the killing knife from its sheath and put it near the tentacle, which shrieked as it lashed back into the basket. I shut the opening and set the basket on the snow.

  “What makes them yell like that?” asked Ferni.

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” I retorted. “The Siblinghood doesn’t tell us. I’ve always supposed the blades are poisoned because they make ulcers on our skins if we touch them.”

  The latchstring was out. Ferni released the inside latch, letting us into a long, ice-cold room, ashes on the hearth, an inside door standing ajar. We peered through the crack: a bed, a body lying on it, another beside it, no movement in either. I stepped back.

  “It’s loose in that room,
” I said. “Probably on the girl.”

  We pushed the door open and went to the side of the young woman lying beside the bed, pale as the snow. The woman on the bed was long dead. Ghyrm-kill were often virtually mummified, making it impossible to learn when they had died. We did not see the thing itself.

  The girl’s chest moved in a shallow breath. I said, “She’s still alive, so it’s on her somewhere, under her clothes. They can sometimes move quickly. There are too many hiding places in here, including us. Take the girl’s feet, I’ll take the hands. We want her outside on a nice, empty, hard-packed snowbank.”

  We carried her out through the doors and the tunnel to lay her on the snow some distance from the house. I returned to the basket and opened the porthole once more, carrying the basket near to the girl, watching the tentacle as it quivered, quivered, stretched itself to the maximum length near the girl’s breast. I set the basket a safe distance aside, took my killing knife in one hand and a cutting tool in the other, starting at the girl’s throat and slitting her clothing as far as her waist.

  “There,” whispered Ferni, pointing with the tip of his knife at a pulsing red mole on the girl’s breast, a mole with legs that trembled as it sucked her life into itself.

  “How long does one of them take to kill a person?” he asked.

  “If there’s only one small one, half a day or more. Lend me your knife.”

  He held out the sheath, and I drew forth a twin to my own, a broad, curved blade with a slightly hooked end. With a knife in each hand, I bent forward, catching the thing between them like grist between grindstones, mashing and twisting the flat sides of the blades to pulverize what lay between.