flight of stairs, was a big barrel with a tap faucet in the bottom and a row of jugs on a shelf beside it. The floor was deep in sand. She crossed to the barrel and took down the biggest jug on the shelf. Opening the tap, she filled the jug with the thick yellow beer.
“Hey!”
She nearly dropped the tank. A fat man in a smock blocked her way. He held out one huge hand. “Pay.”
“It’s for Tssa,” she said. “Upstairs.”
“Just the same, you pay now.”
She gave him the jug to hold and took the string of credit from her neck. The fat man said, “So now he’s bringing his own slaves. He won’t escape paying me that way.” The jug tucked under his arm, he snatched the string away from her. “He can pay what he owes me, too.” The credit jangled. He counted off more than half. Paula glanced around. A man near the door was watching and she looked hastily away from him. It was Mikka, Saba’s blood-stauncher brother. She took the jug and the raped credit string and hurried up the stairs.
Mikka had recognized her. She wondered if he worked for Tssa. The stair took her out at the end of the annex. She knocked on the closed door and it sprang open.
Tssa sat at a table under the window, counting out credit into stacks. Of her age, he was slightly built, with Saba’s marked sensual features. She put the jug down on the table. The room was crowded with men. She backed up to the wall, trying to memorize their faces. They ignored her. She was trembling, not from cold.
“Here comes Kolinakin,” said a man by the window. He nodded down into the street.
Tssa was drinking beer. He put the cup down and beckoned to another man. “Go make sure nobody is following him.” The man left. Saba’s nephew frowned at Paula. “What’s that doing here?”
“I’m supposed—” Her dry voice squeaked, and she coughed. “I’m supposed to ask to be paid.”
“Paid!” Tssa looked around at his men. “He thinks I’m a street vendor. Or that this slop is worth money; which is it?” The other men laughed. There were cups on the shelf beside the door, and the Styths took them down and passed the tank around. Tssa stretched his back, his hands behind his head. “Go,” he said to her.
“Please. He’ll beat me.” She was ruining her usefulness; he would certainly recognize her after this, but she wanted to see the man he was here to meet: Kolinakin.
“Maybe he likes beating you,” Tssa said, amiably.
The door banged open. A huge man stamped into the room. He walked flat-footed, his toes out, his knees bent; he was the tallest Styth she had ever seen, inches taller than Tanuojin. Tssa stood and they shook hands.
“That’s what I came for,” the giant said. He flicked one finger at the credit piled on the table.
Tssa sat down again. “You’d better be careful. My uncle is having us all watched.” He put his elbows on the table on either side of the money.
Kolinakin snapped his fingers with a crack that made Paula start. Quickly a man took a cup from the shelf and blew into it to blow away the dust and poured him beer. The giant said, “I know every man in Saba’s crew. He doesn’t even suspect I’m in this. I’m having him watched. You aristocrats.” He took the beer. “You think with your blood instead of your brains.” The cup vanished into his enormous hand.
Tssa’s eyes were half-closed. He studied Kolinakin. Paula licked her lips. Whoever the big man was, he was pushing Tssa, and not the other way; he was the master. Tssa said, “Girl.” When she looked up he tossed her a small credit. “That’s yours, for the whipping. Tell the slop-tender he can wait for his.”
She went to the door, glad to be leaving. Just as she reached it, the door flew open. Mikka stumbled into the room. She shrank back, her heart jumping into her throat. The air was suddenly charged with metallic heat. Behind Mikka came Saba.
Tssa stood. Kolinakin turned, and someone swore in a choked voice.
“Now, look who’s here,” Saba said. He faced Kolinakin. Behind him, his crew jammed the hall. “The Akellar of the Varyhus.”
Kolinakin lunged for the door. Paula reached it a step ahead of him. Saba’s men charged in. They ran her off her feet and carried her deep into the room, and the brawl broke out around her. She scrambled toward the door. Two men backed into her from opposite directions. She squeezed out of the press of bodies. On hands and knees she crawled between men thrashing and fighting and curled up underneath the table, as close to the wall as she could get, her arms over her head, while the annex rocked and the walls broke all around her.
She kept the heat in her house low, for David’s sake. While she was bathing him, Pedasen came into the steamroom behind her.
“The Akellar wants you in the Manhus.”
She glanced at him. David yawned; the inside of his mouth was pink as a cat’s. She wrapped him in a towel.
“What I’d like to know is why you let him go in there when I was still in the middle of it,” she said to Pedasen.
“I didn’t do anything. He just came. I think he was following us, on top of all the rest. Here, I’ll take him.” He reached for the baby.
Pedasen could dress David and put him to bed. She crossed the yard to the Manhus. During the brawl she had been stepped on twice and fallen on once and her ribs still hurt. Sril was standing just outside the maproom door, in the hall of the Manhus.
“Mendoz’,” he said. “You got us all blood-pay. I’ll buy you a cup sometime.” He opened the door for her.
The oval room beyond was lined with maps, set in frames along the wall like windows, green maps of Uranus and blue and white maps of the solar system. Saba sat on a pedestal chair in the middle of the room. He waved to her to stay where she was. The two men before him had their backs to her, but she recognized Tssa and Mikka.
“There is such a thing as family loyalty,” Saba said. “Honor, and regard for your own blood. Although anybody who would put his head together with a thug like Kolinakin—”
Kolinakin was dead. They had dragged him into the street and broken his neck. She put her hand to her sore ribs. Neither of the two bound men noticed her. Saba made a gesture with his left hand. A plastic glove sheathed his right to the elbow; he had broken three fingers in the fight. Sril brought him a pair of shears.
“I’m giving you a choice,” he said to Tssa. He nodded at the broad-bladed shears in the gunner’s hand.
Under his shirt Tssa’s shoulders were rigidly straight. “You never gave my father any choices. What are you trying to pay for, uncle?”
Saba nodded at her, where she stood in the doorway. “Look over there, Tssa.”
His nephew’s head turned. When he saw Paula his round eyes narrowed. Saba said, “That’s how I caught you. That slavewoman caught you for me. Your father was stupid but he would never have let a nigger trap him, and a woman at that.”
The younger man’s gaze fell. Mikka was staring at the far wall. Saba swiveled his chair back and forth in tiny rhythmic squeaks. “Take your choice. It makes no difference to me.”
Tssa’s head was bowed. The room was silent a long moment while he thought. At last he reached for the shears in Sril’s hand. He hacked off his own hair, just above the club, and dropped the knot of hair and the shears on the floor. His eyes looked blind. He came toward Paula, long-striding, and she moved out of the doorway and he brushed by her without looking at her. The door shut.
Saba tapped Sril’s arm. “Make sure he leaves Matuko.”
“Yes, Akellar.” Sril hurried out after Tssa.
Saba turned to Mikka. “Now, what about you?”
His brother took a step toward him. “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Ask her. I was just there having a jar.” He put his hand out to Paula. “Tell him. I saved your life, didn’t I?”
She looked from him to Saba. “He was Tssa’s lookout. He saw me, but he was too drunk to come upstairs.”
“I saved your life!”
Saba pushed at the hair knot on the floor with his foot. “Go get drunk in somebody else’s city.”
“I don’t have any money.” Mikka wiped his hand over his mouth. “Tssa owed everybody.” He tramped out of the room, grumbling.
Saba rotated the chair back and forth. Paula said, “I’m not a slave.”
