Pedasen’s elbow slammed into her ribs. “Don’t ask questions.” To the others, he said, “She’s fresh, she still talks too much.”
Saba was coming closer, his men strung out behind him. His son Dakkar was among them. The slaves moved away from the bilyobio tree, hurrying in their quick stride, bending to search in the trash. Paula drifted over toward the Styths. She circled them once, coming within five feet of Saba. He kicked at the ground and black char flew in a spray. He looked straight at her without seeing her. She went slowly back toward the street, casting around on the ground for salvage, met Pedasen, and they started home.
She reached the compound, left her slave clothes with Pedasen in the slaves’ room of the Manhus, and retrieved David from Boltiko. When she went in the kitchen door of her house she could hear the sawing of the swing chains in the front room. She went down the hall to the archway. Saba was sprawled on the couch, her flute in his hands. He was trying to play it, but as hard as he blew over the mouthpiece he could not draw a note from it. Seeing her, he put the flute down.
“You’re lucky I don’t lose my temper easily.”
She laid the baby on the floor by the Capricornus cabinet and tucked his blanket around him. “This seems to be the only way I can get your attention.”
“I’ve been busy.” He took a strip of green recording tape out of his sleeve, and she went to the foot of the swing. “This came from the Earth while you were out running around like a whore.”
She took the tape and sat down on the swing with it in her hand. “Have you had it transcribed?”
“I’ve listened to it. There are about fifty questions on details and they’re complaining about something in the bond clause.”
She wound the tape into a coil. That was why he was keeping his belt on. She said, “You never come near me any more.”
He stirred. His eyes shifted away from her. “I don’t want to get you pregnant again.” He fussed with his mustaches. In her imagination she heard something stop, like a song stopping. She made herself admit that she had lost him. She looked quickly away before he saw it in her face.
“What are you going to do about that?” he said.
She put the tape on the couch. “I can’t tell until I read it. There’s no sense in worrying about it anyway before you stifle this street action against the treaty.”
“That’s not your business.”
“It is my business. If you can’t put this treaty over here, I might as well go back to the Earth. Do you know who’s doing it?”
He scowled at her. She faced him, expressionless. “Is it Tssa?”
On the floor by the cabinet the baby squealed. She went to look. He had wakened; he seemed happy enough staring at the shining cabinet door.
“What do you know about Tssa?” his father said.
“Not me. The slaves. The slaves see everything that happens. None of you ever notices them, but they’re everywhere.”
“What do they say about Tssa?”
“His men were there in the Tulan, before you saw the ruin. Is this attack on you or just the treaty?”
“Me. Do you know how I received my call?”
She shook her head. He stood. Relieved of his weight the couch swayed off in a parabola. She went to catch her flute before it fell.
“I had two older brothers. They murdered my father. I and Tanuojin came after them and killed them.” His back was to her. Soot powdered his sleeves. “It was the hardest time in my life. We were outlaws here, nobody could help us. For forty watches, whenever one of us slept, the other had to be standing guard. That was when I knew I was called to follow my father. To be the Akellar.”
“Why did they kill him?”
“With Yekaka there was always some reason.”
She looked down at the flute in her hands.
“Anyway, my oldest brother left two sons, both young, very young, and like a fool I let them stay in Matuko. Tssa is the elder. I’m almost sure he’s engineering the trouble, but if I take him on suspicion and I’m wrong, it will only make the thing worse, and I can’t get a grip on him. He’s too cautious.” He made an impatient gesture. “Or he’s innocent.”
She took the flute apart. The box was on the table under the window. “I look like a slave. I could go right into Tssa’s house. Find out whatever you have to know.”
“Don’t be a fool. I need you for this other work, and he’d catch you. He’s not stupid.”
She took the buckle out of her sleeve and held it out to him. “I saw you there, last watch, in the Tulan. Did you see me?”
His mouth opened. He took the buckle and turned it over. She snapped the lid of the flute’s box closed. Finally he tossed the buckle down on the couch.
“Not his house. You’ll have to follow him.”
“I’ll need Pedasen,” she said.
Tssa lived in the Tulan. For six watches she and Pedasen followed him wherever he went. He went nowhere interesting. Saba had set Bakan to spy on his nephew as well; Bakan stayed away from Paula. In the seventh watch, the low watch, Tssa came out of his rambling walled house, started off along the street, and lost all three of them.
Paula circled through the narrow grassy lanes of the Tulan and found him again, with three other men, in an alleyway watching the street. She guessed he was looking out for Bakan, who was there to be dodged. When Bakan did not appear, Tssa and his men went away at top speed into the Varyhus District.
Paula and the eunuch stayed about a hundred yards behind them. They took her around the factory, squat and stinking behind its high mesh fence, to a long house blackened with grime. The building was one story for most of its length but a narrow second-story annex was stacked up along the right side, with a stair running up the outer wall to its door. rUlugongon and drums pounded inside the windows of the ground floor. From the corner of the lane Paula watched the last of Tssa’s men go into the upper annex.
“Stay here,” she said to Pedasen. She went down the street to the stairs and climbed them. The stairs were worn sway-backed in the middle. On the landing at the door, a black and white kusin hissed at her, its long whiskers bristling, and jumped to the roof and ran away over the peak. She looked behind her. Pedasen was sitting on the ground at the corner watching her. She went into the building.
In the dark hallway she was blind a moment. The music boomed up from below, making the floor vibrate. She struggled with her fear. In the white slave clothes she felt conspicuous. Her eyes began to see in the gloom and she went down the hallway. Through an open door on the right she saw an empty room, a table, a window scummed opaque with dirt. The next door was shut. She put her ear against it but heard nothing except the pounding tuneless music. Under the banging another sound reached her, growing louder: feet coming up the stairs. She went into the empty room.
The footsteps passed her and stopped before the next door, and a knock rattled on it. She went across the little room to listen. The music drowned the words of the two voices. The plank wall between the room was so thin that it yielded when she touched it, but she could hear nothing but a loud laugh in the room beyond.
She had found Tssa’s meeting place, or one such, and she tried to convince herself that was enough. Saba would not think it was worth very much. She searched along the wall for a chink or a hole she could see through.
A voice bellowed in the hall. “Is there a nigger up here?”
She ran out the door. A big man leaned out of the next room: Tssa’s man. “Bring us a tank, and hop.” He ducked back inside and slammed the door.
She dashed down the outer stairs to the street. Pedasen stood up when he saw her, but she waved him down again and ran around to the front of the building and in the door.
The whole long ground floor was one room. In a corner six men played the deafening music. A few others sat around on the floor. Apparently it was the off-watch. There were no tables or chairs. On one side wall, beside a
