into Leno’s side, all his weight behind it, and when Leno dropped to the sand struck him again in the same way between the shoulder blades. Merkhiz sagged down slack on his face. Saba sprang up to his feet and backed away, his head turning from Leno to Ymma. Blood streamed along his face. The cheering rolled out deafening from the men watching.
Paula elbowed and shoved a way through the slaves to the stair. Machou was on his feet. Everybody was watching him. The Prima turned on his heel and walked up the ledges, through the rail past Paula, and went out of the Chamber. Ketac and Sril went into the pit with Saba. His son gave him a towel.
Paula went down the ledges, stretching her legs from step to step. Saba had seen her. He came up to meet her, took her by the hands, and bent and kissed her.
The uproar died abruptly. Behind her a man swore. Her tongue tasted of copper.
“Take her back,” Saba said. Ketac stood one step below him. Paula’s head whirled in a sudden giddy rush, and she staggered. Ketac took her by the arm.
“Are you hurt?”
She leaned on him. She had lost her voice. Her throat was numb and her sight darkened. At the top of the steps Ketac lifted her up in his arms.
“Open this door.”
He carried her along the hall, through the glitter of the Gold Wall, and out onto the plain. Someone shouted. She rested her head on Ketac’s shoulder, exhausted.
“Saba just took Leno and Ymma both in thirty-two seconds!”
A raw-throated cheer grated in her ears. Ketac stopped in a circle of other men. He was talking but she was too tired to make out the words. She felt him walking down the stairs. A cold dark fell over her; he had brought her into the arcade.
She said, hoarse, “Tanuojin.” She opened her eyes.
“He’s asleep, Paula.”
“Let me in there.”
When he set her on her feet she nearly fell.
She went through Tanuojin’s empty office to the back room. Her strength was seeping away. A cold weakness crept like death along her backbone, freezing her mind numb. She sat down on the edge of the bed. Fresh blood was pooled on the floor under it.
In her mind, his voice murmured, “Make sure it’s still alive.”
She put one hand over the body’s mouth. His faint breath cooled her palm. She bent over him and kissed him. Her tongue and lower lip tingled. His mouth was cold. The life woke in her muscles. She ran her tongue over his lips and down his mouth and into his throat.
He pushed at her with one hand, feeble. She held him, her weight on him, kissing him deep against his will until he rolled weakly over onto his stomach. She straightened. He lay face down on the bed.
“You bitch, Paula.”
“You do talk. What if your body had been dead? You were set to take mine. You’d have killed me.”
He turned his face to the wall. She opened the door and left him alone.
MATUKO
The Krita Festival
“Why did you wear that coat?” Illy said. “That color makes you look like a little old woman.”
Paula glared at her across the covered chair. “If you claw at me, I’ll get out and walk.”
Illy smirked. She wore pink and orange paint on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were like black moons. “You can’t. You don’t have the right clothes on.”
“I can do anything I damn well please.”
The chair swayed and tipped to one side. Paula grabbed the frame. Jingling with little silver bells, Boltiko threw back the curtain and squeezed into the front bench of the chair, next to Paula. When she sat, the whole box sagged.
“I wouldn’t go out looking like that,” Illy said. “Not for help if I were dying.”
Boltiko squirmed herself comfortable on the seat. She looked down at Paula and patted her knee. The bells on her sleeve rang.
“Where shall we go first?” Illy said. “To the kundra to have our fortunes read?”
The chair swung up into the air. Wedged between Boltiko and the side of the box, Paula rocked with it, surrounded by the clamor of bells. Everybody in Matuko wore bells during the Krita Festival. The chair-slaves bore them along. The curtains were drawn closed and she could not see where they were going. She reached out to draw the curtain back, and Boltiko slapped her hand down.
“Don’t you do that when we aren’t covered.”
Paula sat back.
“Oh, what a miserable watch I had, last watch,” Boltiko said. “I didn’t sleep above thirty minutes.” She knocked on the side of the chair with her knuckles, and their speed increased to a brisk trot.
Illy giggled. “I could tell you a couple of remedies for that.” She smiled at Paula.
“Sometimes I think if it weren’t for the children,” Boltiko said, “I’d go somewhere and die. And then see who would miss me.”
The chair sped down a slope. Outside the muffling curtains, bells rang, and music sounded, among laughter and voices. Illy was staring at Paula.
“Tell her how awful she looks in that coat, Tiko.”
Paula leaned forward, reaching for the curtain. “Put this thing down.” Boltiko struck at her fingers, but the slaves heard her and the chair stopped.
“Oh, Paula,” Illy called. “Just come to the kundra’s—”
Paula jumped down out of the chair to the street. The slaves lifted it again. She heard, above the two arguing voices of the wives, the sharp bang of Boltiko’s fist on the box. The chair swept off, swaying, its curved roof streaming ribbons in its wake.
She was in the street near the lake market. The passing crowd pressed by her on either side. Ahead, in the market, gaudy tents replaced the merchants’ stalls. She wandered through the little carnival, going from tent to tent. Some sold pala-cakes or liquor, and others offered entertainments. She stopped behind a wall of Styth backs to watch a girl in a demure long dress dance on a platform to the music of a ulugong. Inside, Paula supposed, she took it off. In the open front of the next tent, surrounded by the upturned faces of children, a red bird climbed up a rope and rang the bell at the top.
A huge paper-and-paste mask swayed toward her, held up on a long stick above the heads of the crowd, the face painted white and the leering open mouth blood-red. There were other masks up and down the street, and prizes later for the best. The false faces symbolized the Moon-people, the first colonists of Uranus, who according to the legends had been driven out or massacred by the hero Krita. The bells were part of that myth, too: Krita’s bell had brought the colonists to their deaths. She walked along among the crowd, enjoying the circus feeling. The colonists had abandoned Uranus when the Three Planets Empire broke up, not because of Krita’s bell and knife, but the Styths would never believe that. It was part of their lives, their faith. Although Saba was of another house entirely from the ancient hero, one of his titles was Kritona. She stopped at a stall to buy a pala-cake and went on, looking for David.
“Hold these.” David took the white grass garlands off over his head and stuffed them into her arms. Ducking under the rope, he trotted down the street to the starting line of the race. The people around her were eating pala-cakes and making bets. Paula stuck her frozen hands in her sleeves. David grinned at her from the starting line. He was missing three front teeth and his smile was like a tunnel through his face. Something brushed down her back.
“Paula. What are you doing here?”
It was Ketac. She looked up at him behind her. A broad braided ribbon hung around his neck.
