Part 27 (1/2)
”Mmh, morbid,” Tazmin Duwar said. ”Sounds to me like you need a hot meal and a night's sleep. Let your liver sweeten.”
”How long you been back?”
”I got here yesterday morning. I wasn't ferrying vips about like you, cousin.
One look at the looting there at the Palace and I thought hard times are coming and I better make sure we've got the stuff to ride 'em out, that it didn't walk out in some stranger's pouch.”
”You see Herk?”
”Hard to miss. Wonder who did it?”
Karrel Goza stretched, yawned. ”One thing I know, half Inci's going to claim they were in on it. Any hot water?”
”Started the boilers this morning. Bath?”
”Yeh. I cut the b.a.s.t.a.r.d down, I didn't like seeing him there. Dumped him in the Fekkri Court. I need to wash him off me.”
Tazmin Duwar looked up at the clouds, ignoring another brief flurry of rain.
”Somebody's going to have to do something about him if the wind keeps on in this direction; another day or two and we'll be smelling him.” He moved away from the pillar and followed Karrel Goza around the house. ”What's happening in Gilisim? Did they ever find Old Pittipat or the Grand Sech?”
”Not yet. What's happening?” Karrel Goza stripped off his jacket and began undoing the fastenings on his s.h.i.+rt. ”More of everything you saw before you cut out. More looting, more dead. People wandering around like they're walking in their sleep. We haven't begun to sort out who's what and where they belong, let alone identified the dead. The best guess I heard is as much as a third of us is dead somewhere around Gilisim. It's going to be a job, getting them buried. Elmas Ofka, her isyas and the Council from the Mines, they've got together with vips from the west coast and up from Guneywhiyk. Trying to work out how to organize things now there aren't any more Huvved and the slave techs are gone, most of them. It's a mess, Taz. Every one of them has his own idea how to run things. Bless the Prophet, Elli smoothes them down and getsthem to start making sense. Not that she's any saint herself; we're going to have to watch and make sure she doesn't take up where Tra Yarta left off.” He pulled open the door to the bathhouse, went in.
Tazmin Duwar lit the lamps while Karrel Goza started the water running and finished stripping, then he came back and settled on the towel bench, his feet up on the coping about the tub. ”You figure we going to get any say at all?”
Karrel Goza slid into the water, s.h.i.+vering as the heat closed round him. He settled his head on the neckrack, closed his eyes. ”I've been thinking about that,” he said. ”What we get, we'll have to take. I did some talking with young Hayal Halak, him from gul Brindar. One of that woman's students, he was the one who told me the desolation/peace quote. He went inklin for a while before he came to the Mines, he loves the Great Families about as much as he loves Huvved. He picked up some ideas from that woman that sound good, the Greats won't like 'em, the Ommars either. I think Elli's going to back him; a lot of them off the Sea Farms might too, they don't want to see the Greats getting a stranglehold on trade. Isn't going to be easy. Toss me the soap, eh?”
”Here. Way things are, looks to me like whoever's ready first is the one who's gonna take it. Hay and his bunch got their shots planned?”
Karrel Goza soaped the washcloth, scrubbed at his arm. ”Planned is one thing, doing is something else.” He balanced an ankle on his knee, began was.h.i.+ng his toes. ”We've got numbers on our side. The Greats don't smell very sweet to a lot of people, they kissed too much Huvved a.s.s. We could lose it, though, if Brindars won't talk to Incers and Incers won't talk to Samlikkaners, and n.o.body talks to gra.s.slanders, you know how it goes. You, me, the rest of them who took the Warmaster, we've got credit we're going to have to spend.” He switched feet and stopped talking.
Tazmin Duwar thought that over, then he nodded. ”You'll have to give me the primer version,” he said. ”I was never much good at the books, but I tell you this, I can talk a tickler into giving it away free, sit me in a tavern and let me chat her up. Lot of folk out there need that primer same as me. I can get them to give it a hearing. Can't ask for more.”
Karrel Goza splashed water over his face and hair, then climbed from the tub.
”Throw me one of those towels you're sitting on, eh?” He caught it and began rubbing at his hair. ”I didn't get out much. You see any of ours in Gilisim?”
”Living or dead?”
”Ahhh . . . both.” He wrapped the towel around him. ”Come with me while I get some clean clothes.”
”Why not. I've got to get back to feeding the stock, but they can wait a bit, they're not as hungry as they were.” He picked up one of the lamps. ”Goza Ommar's dead.” He touched Karrel Goza's shoulder, patted it lightly, then pushed the door open. ”Melter, not much of her left but I knew it was her and I told the deadwagon who she was. We'll have to go through the back, I've got the other doors locked. Duwar Ommar next to her, same thing.”
”Prophet!”
”Yeh. Melter. Left her face alone. Told them about her too.” He held the door open for Karrel Goza, went round him and up the back stairs, holding the lamp high to light the dark narrow enclosure, glancing over his shoulder from time to time, talking while he climbed. ”Ollanin, dead, all three, Goza, Duwar, Memeli. Saw my sister Avy and the Memeh' Ommar. Alive.” He waited on the landing, then went along the hallway to the corner room Karrel Goza had lived in from the time he got his license to fly. ”They'd corralled a clutch of youngsters, had them out collecting our folk; I expect most of those still alive will be back here by tomorrow noon.” He stepped aside and let Karrel Goza work the pinlock and open the door, then followed him into the room and set the lamp on a table by the bed. ”Ylazar Falyan showed up at Sirgun Bol yesterday with a couple of pilots from the Mines; like us, Prophet be praised, they missed out on the Surge.” He perched on a ladderback chair, folded his arms on the top splat and rested his chin on them.”He looked around for mechanics, found me settling in here, hired me to go over a couple of the airs.h.i.+ps. Worked on the best till about midnight yesterday. He says he's going to use them ferrying Incers home.”
Karrel Goza looked up from his trouser laces. ”I left Windskimmer at one of Sirgun's masts, I didn't see anyone there.”
”Took off for Gilisim this morning. Must've left before you got here.”
”Ah.” He went poking through his drawers hunting for a clean s.h.i.+rt, found one and shook it out, then loosened the laces and pulled it over his head. ”Big of him.”
”Yeh. He's praying real hard no one senior shows up and in the meantime making points for himself so he can keep his hold even if one does. I expect he'll make it, he had the backbone to get out and over to the Mines when Herk started tightening down.”
”Hard to say.” He padded to the dresser, peered at himself in the mirror.
”Getting old, eh?”
”Twice as old as I look and that's older than time.”
”You and Lirrit Ofka still going to wed?”
”Soon's we get a moment.” He dragged a comb through his hair; the damp had tightened the curls into knots that made him swear as he worked them loose.
”Marrying out or she coming in?”
”I don't know. Who knows anything these days. We decided to see how things shape up before we jump one way or the other.” He looked over his shoulder at Tazmin Duwar. ”Might not be any more marrying in or out.”
”Things going to change that much?”
”You don't sound very happy about it.”
”Well, everyone likes to be comfortable and change is always full of burrs and bites.”
”You really want to go back to the way it was?”
”Nuh. Yeh. I don't know. I want it to be comfortable like it was. I want to know what's going to be happening tomorrow and a week from tomorrow and tomorrow next year. Yeh, I know better, but you'd better remember too, Kar, there's a lot and a lot out there like me in those that're still alive. Don't get too fancy for us, eh?”
Karrel Goza dropped on the bed beside the shoestool, set his foot on it and bent over to put on his sandals. ”You feeding the animals,” he said. ”What else needs doing?”
”Just about everything, I didn't have time yesterday or this morning for much but meals for me and the fourfoots. Looks like our folk dropped whatever they were doing where they were doing it and took off when the impulse hit.”
Karrel Goza switched feet. ”Mess?”
”Could be worse. Left the fires going, the place could've burned down.
Prophet's hand on us, it didn't, they just went out when the coal was gone.”
Karrel Goza stood. He yawned, moved his shoulders, clasped his hands behind his head and stretched; the s.h.i.+rt tail he hadn't bothered tucking in lifted in the cold draft coming through the door. He s.h.i.+vered, found an old sweater and pulled it on. ”Outside first. Starting to feel like snow.”
”Yeh. How long you going to be here?”
”Elli wants me back by tomorrow.” He waited till Tazmin Duwar was outside with the lamp, then he pulled the door shut and reset the lock. ”She says the serious fights should be starting about then and she'll need all the backing she can get.” He let Tazmin Duvvar go ahead with the light. ”You said you thought most of our folk will be here by tomorrow?”
”Laza said he'd bring them, favor to me if I'd work without pay since he's short of coin. You want me along?”
”Yeh. If you're going to be persuading people to back us, you ought to know what you're talking about.”
The room was filled with slow moving shadows from the dying fire and wandering warm drafts mellow with the smell of the mulled cider steaming on the hearth.