The cities of the Senorech had been built half a million years ago when
their primates first modelled clay from mud and water. As the years
piled knowledge on their shoulders, their buildings grew and expanded,
but they still showed the heterogeneous planning the first Senn had
put into them. A man could lose himself in the slum quarter, where
the dragon police rarely came, for the High Mor was content to close
his eyes to the manner of a man's profit, providing he paid a good
tax at the end of the year. Under the creaking signs and iron grille
balconies, in the dark street shadows, even a naked man could run free
and unmolested.
He came to a square of light and an open door under a carven tycat.
Carefully he crept closer listening to the song a hundred throats were
bellowing through the smoke and the wine fumes. He came inside on
soundless feet and stood sheltered by a solid oak railing.
Flaith was a breath in a man's throat and a catch at his guts, lovely
in bronze moire, her amber shoulders bared to the curve of her breasts,
the moire slashed teasingly down a naked side to the swell of a white
hip. She leaned on the wooden tabletop, and her slant eyes were clear,
and her crimson hair a flame caught in the blaze of a wall torch.
The McCanahan let his eyes linger on her loveliness, but it was the
little dark man, with the scar across half his face and a full foaming
tankard at his mouth, that he had come to see.
He drew back his arm and threw the pebble he held.
Ars Maasen felt the sting of the rock on his forehead. He lowered his
mug and swore by a dozen gods at the ill manners of men who would toss
rocks in the middle of such a song. And then he felt Flaith's white
fingers, and the dig of her long red nails in his forearm.
"It's Kael!" she whispered. "He's naked and alone!"
"For shame! A fine boy like that and--"
"Hssst, you byblow fool!" she warned. "Go to him and see what he needs!"
She pressed the key to her dressing room into his hand, and when he had
slipped through the men and women toward the door, she stood so the
others could see her. On tiny golden feet she climbed from chair to
tabletop, and her bare arms were amber serpents writhing in the crimson
half-light.
"The Snakes of Slaamsheel," she called to the players, and a roar of
delight went up, for this was an old ballad, and the flame-like Flaith
dancing with skirt to mid-thighs across the tabletops, set the blood
bubbling in a man's veins.
The McCanahan caught the fire of her throaty singing just as Ars
Maasen whipped the cloak off his shoulders and flung it about his chest.
"A full belly, is it?" the dark little man asked. "Wine or Puban ale or
maybe both?"
"I'm sober as the snakes Flaith sings of, and as mean!"
Ars Maasen caught the madness in his voice, and grunted, "Come quickly,
then. This way, across the sill and through the alley to her doorway!"
When they were moving into the shadows of the alley, Kael told him of
his father's death, and of the orders of the High Mor that made him
lower than a Tuuran-peddler. And as the words came through his teeth,
the raw fury that twisted him showed in his eyes. "They blasted him
without a chance for a fight--the way they tried to blast me! Now
they're hunting me for a reason only the Shee fairies could know!"
"Easy, boy. Easy! Talk as you want--it helps ease the pain under your
navel. But don't let the hate shake you so. It blinds a man."
The little trader turned the key in the lock and the stout wooden door
opened inward to a tiny room where an oil lamp cast a dim yellow glare
on a dressing table and stool. Costumes hung from a peg-rack on the
wall above a tycat-skin couch.
"Flaith's room," he muttered. "Only she comes here."
The McCanahan sat on the couch, and with elbows on knees he looked at
the floor and began to swear. He cursed in low Martian, and in fluent
English, in high Centauran and sibilant Antaranese. "May the foul
fiends of Mars' ten hells gnaw his belly! May the imps of Iseen claw
his eyes from now 'til Doomsday! If only Hobgob himself were alive, and
here to fly away over Cureeng with his mean little soul!"
* * * * *
Ars Maasen chuckled, and Kael McCanahan bit down on his tongue and
glared hard at him. The little man moved to the dressing table and
lifted a golden carafe. He went to pour the fiery liquid it held, then
turned to glance at the McCanahan. He shook his head and went across
the room and gave him the carafe.
"There are times when a man can't quench a thirst, no matter how much
he drinks. Take it all."
Kael tilted the carafe and let the smokey quistl slide into his mouth.
After a long while he tossed the carafe aside, and drew air into his
lungs. He came to his feet and walked up and down.
"I'll need clothes. Some sort of disguise. I can talk their language
well enough. I'll make out until the heat ebbs away and I can come back
for him. The High Mor! A god and a priest to a god to these heathen
Senn! But he's a man, and man can die, slowly and in great pain, when
he's hated!"
Ars shook his head. "Go away, yes. But forget this vengeance for a long
time. Maybe forever. You'll live longer that way."
Kael put out his hand and lifted the dark man off the floor and shook
him. "He murdered my father! Burned him while he slept, with a Thorn
blaster on a tensor beam! No way to strike back! No chance to fight for
the life he loved!"
He put the little man down and patted his arm. Ars rubbed his chest
where his jerkin had pinched his flesh. "You're a strong man, Kael
McCanahan. But not strong enough to buck the High Mor on Senorech! I
tell you--"
The door came open and Flaith slid in, away from the reek of winey air
and the sound of roaring voices. She closed and locked the door and set
her back to it.
She was a woman to stir the pulse of a man, in her bronze gown with its
slits and deep neck, and the tight fit of its cloth to the swell of her
haunches. Her slant eyes with the long curving lashes, the red fullness
of a moist mouth and the smooth forehead low under the flaming hair had
made her the darling of the quarter. She looked at Kael with her anger
bright in her green eyes, and her lips thinned to a tense line.
"Before you speak, Flaith," said Ars Maasen suddenly, "let me tell you
he isn't drunk, except with hate for the men that killed his father."
When Ars was done with the story she was in front of Kael whispering
softly, "Kael, forgive me! A woman can be a fool! I was one just now,
with the thoughts I had of you."
"It doesn't matter. Nothing matters any more except the man I'm going
to kill some day! They won't let me leave on the _Eclipse_. They're
going to keep me here and hunt me down. And I don't know why!"
Flaith whirled and went to her dressing table. She fumbled at a jar,
lifting the lid and dipping her fingers into jet cream. She said, "I'll
change the look of your face, Kael honey. Wipe away its hardness and
its pain. And somewhere here in all these clothes will be something to
fit you. Ars, look among them!"
For an hour the McCanahan sat while they worked on him, and when the
hour was done, he stared at himself in the mirror and swore by the eye
of Balor himself that no man on all Senorech would know him.
"You're as big and as strong," Ars grinned, studying him. "But you look
like a traveling singer, with those short curls and the shadows under
your eyes. A man who sings to a woman and loves her, and runs with the
dawn!"
Kael snorted, but Flaith nodded.
"A singer or a player of music. Can you use those fingers to coax a
tune from anything but a pretty girl?"
Kael laughed. "And what would a man whose family came from Galway be
playing? I remember a night I sang of love to a woman on a balcony over
the canals of Shar Lir before I put the harp aside and coaxed music
from her flesh."
Flaith flushed and scowled, then bubbled laughter.
"You used a harp, that night, you faithless rheenog! A harp that I
bought and put aside with my tears, like a moonstruck schoolgirl!"
She fumbled in a chest and drew it out. The lamplight caught its thirty
strings and made them glitter. Her fingers stroked it, and her eyes
were tender as she lifted them to his face.
Flaith shrugged her shoulders. "I'm crazy. I'm moonstruck and as mad as
the ghouls that haunt the rim of Braloom! But--I'm going with you!"
And when Kael would have argued, she put her fingers across his lips
and shoved him toward the door.
"Wait outside! Neither you nor Ars nor any man we meet will know Flaith
for the shameless little gypsy she's going to turn into! Do you think I
want those fingers coaxing music from that harp for anybody but me?"