Part 15 (1/2)

There was urgency in her voice, and Tsia hesitated. Was this part of the tension she had felt from the group of meres? Did Striker's lack of past haunt the woman as much as Tsia's demons haunted her?

”I feel a thinness,” she said after a pause. ”A lack of depth. As if you were a child-without history-or an adult without direction.”

Striker's face flushed, and she stared out across the hills. Her narrow chin was sharp and taut. ”I don't know what I believe in. I don't know now who I am.”

Tsia hesitated again. Finally, she motioned at Striker's side where the flexor hung from her belt. ”You used to carry a laze,” she offered.

The other woman looked back sharply.

”It's the way you hang your right hand,” Tsia said quietly. ”You stand as if you had a flexor on your back which you wanted to be able to reach, but you carry your weapon at your side. Only thing short enough to ride on your back and require a down position is a laze. You swear like a s.p.a.cer. And when you're in a skimmer, you move like a s.p.a.cer. A laze is a better weapon skyside than dirtside-known gas ratios to carry the beam. If you had worked more landside, you'd be more used to carrying a flexor.”

Striker stared at her. ”Would not have guessed a guide would know so much about s.p.a.cers.”

Tsia shrugged. ”I've done as many firedances as any other guide. s.p.a.cers always came to watch, even at the trainings.”

”How'd you get to be a line-runner anyway? Guides don't usually learn how to set a web. You're supposed to be too wrapped up in that training to care about anything else.”

Below them, Doetzier, then Bowdie negotiated the switchback, and Tsia watched him as he climbed. ”Learned in the trading cla.s.ses,” she returned.

Striker followed her gaze. ”You wanted to be a trader? And ended up a mere?”

”I wanted to be a guide. Only that.”

”Guides don't waste their time on the trader's guild-not when they can never go skyside. Why did you bother?”

”Had a friend who needed a study partner.”

”The same one with whom you scanned these trails before?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

To her surprise, Striker gave her a sly look. ”Good friends are hard to find. Especially that kind.” A slanting sheet of rain hit them both at the same time, and Striker pulled up her hood. Her eyes were shuttered again; her voice completely casual. The moment of connection was over. ”If you had to learn,” she said, turning back to the trail, ”the trade guild was the best place outside the meres from which to take your training. They've a reputation for detail.”

Tsia stared after the other woman. Detail, she thought bitterly, was the one thing she was good at. The ghosts she sensed-they were made with details that had stayed solid for three decades. If she could build webs that tight, she could build anything for the meres. No longer did they need metric tons of stealth cloth to hide a camp from the scannet. They needed only an artist to ”paint” the virtual images of shrubs and shadows that disguised a mere's location. Just one guide who could create ghosts as detailed and solid as if they were real people and plants, real creatures in real canyons. And Tsia could lay a ghost line so tight that a pack of meres would look like a patch of sand or a cloud that crossed a hill... She could make a tree seem like a shrub and a shrub seem like a blade of gra.s.s, and hide a mere behind all three. Yet for all the details she could s.h.i.+ft, for all the ghosts she could create, she could not find the one ghost she sought more than any other: the traceline of her sister. Her eyes followed Striker as she turned and waited for Tsia to lead on. Lost-like Shjams, she thought with a chill. Lost without family forever.

The thin imaging line to the node began to shred as she climbed past the other woman. Instantly, she tightened her focus. Ruka growled as she drew away, and Tsia stumbled with the sudden sense of double image he forced into her brain. She barely stayed on the traces. There was a moment of mental pus.h.i.+ng- the one challenging the other; then the cougar seemed to meld again with her mind. Without thinking, Tsia added a cat to the street on which her ghost man walked, then cursed herself silently as she had to maintain its ghost image as clearly as the man's. The wrinkling of the man's trousers as he walked; the light lift of his hair in the wind-she called up a library of imagery and from it painted with careful strokes the movements of the ghosts.

Ghosts: her mind traced the webs. Wipes: the image of Striker... Blackjack was here, she thought with a chill as the rain slid down her back. For what-for the breaker? It was maybe worth enough on the grayscale to justify an attack... If they wanted the biochips, they were too early by weeks- Kurvan had pointed that out clearly on the marine platform. She tried to pull back from the biogate to think more clearly, but Ruka growled and tore at her mind. ”Go home,” she snarled back under her breath. ”Go back to the coast. To your family. You don't belong here. You don't belong with me.”

Ruka only snarled in return, and Tsia cursed. ”I can't do both,” she snapped at the cub. ”I can't image through the node and stay open to your mind.”

The cougar lowered its hips even more, and its head seemed to sway back and forth. Tsia found herself dropping down in a crouch, and she had to shake herself to regain her feet. ”Stop it,” she snarled. ”Either help me or stop hindering me. But don't keep interrupting.”

Her biogate went silent. For a moment, she thought Ruka had completely withdrawn, and she could not help the silent cry she projected through the gate. Instantly, the sense of the cat swept back. She found herself crouched again on the rock, her hands clenched to her temples.

A boot sc.r.a.ped stone. Doetzier reached up, and automatically she stretched back her hand, then, as she realized it was a man, not a cat-and maybe blackjack-that she touched, jerked it away just before the other mere grabbed on. He overbalanced and staggered back. The wind whipped his blunter, billowing it out, and his ID disk glinted before he caught his balance and yanked his jacket closed.

”What the h.e.l.l was that for?” he snapped.

Tsia stared at him. The technical rating on the disk surprised her; the intensity of his biofield was almost a burn through her gate. She forced her hand out again. ”Something in my biogate,” she said tersely. ”It startled me. Like... someone walking over my grave.”

” 'The chill hand of the killer,' ” he retorted, ” 'who touches like ice in the night'?” He swung up beside

her. ”You're getting spooky, Feather.”

”Do you blame me?” she asked sourly. ”It's noon, and the sky is as dark as night.” She looked up. ” 'It is a storm for ghosts,' ” she quoted, more to herself than him.

” 'Who roam the Plain of Tears.' ” He shrugged at her expression. ”Just because I come from Alile doesn't mean I know nothing of Risthmus.” He gestured to the other side of the ravine. ”We're close to it? The Plain?”

”The other side of the peak,” she answered shortly.

”You've been there?”

”Yes.” Her voice was a rebuff.

”History grips you, doesn't it?” His voice was so soft, she thought it was her own mind that supplied the

question. ”The fire in the sapgra.s.s that killed your aunts and uncles?”

”Sometimes, I can almost feel the heat-”

She stopped short. Doetzier was gazing at the rain-grayed mountain, as if he didn't notice that she halted,

but his eagerness was a hot brand inside her biogate.

”How did you know?” She managed to keep her voice steady.

”Everyone in this area lost family to the fire. If you lived here long enough to memorize the trails-”

”I only know them somewhat.”

”-you must have lost someone to the flames.” He watched her for a moment.

She studied the ravine as if it was of more interest than his words.

”Where's your family now? Did they stay in this area?” he asked.

She gave him a cold look. ”Does it concern you?”