were sneering.
Gemmi tumbled over Mischa like a sandfall, but Mischa took the assault without flinching. 'Where are the kids?'
'Gone.'
'Where?'
'Where do you think?'
The blood drained from her face. She had expected him to send them out to steal for him when they were old enough, but she had never believed, never even considered, that he would use them worse than that. Her voice was calm and low with rage. 'You sold them.'
'They're mine.'
'They're not. You had no right.'
He laughed, and the harsh sound echoed around them. 'Did you want them?' Gemmi cringed against his warmth, not realizing it was he whom she feared.
'But why?'
He gestured around him, and she could feel his pent-up envy and hatred. 'For this. For this, instead of crying brats and boredom and stink and pain.'
'You could have—'
'Depended on their gratitude?' He laughed, bitter and ugly. 'They didn't have your talent.' He was enjoying his hold on her. 'Gemmi couldn't touch them. I'd never have got a thing.'
Mischa's eyes burned with tears of anger and guilt that she willed back. 'Where did you send them?'
'Where you're going.'
'You try and make me.'
'You got caught.'
'So what?' Her voice broke, high, angry.
'You can't do anything for me when you're in trouble.'
'I wasn't flogged for stealing.'
He laughed again. 'Sure.' A long drawl of disbelief. 'That's a lot of scars for nothing.' He held Gemmi closer, fondling her absently, in a parody of love. 'Take off your shirt.'
'No.'
He started, flushing, then relaxed and smiled. Contentment did not fit easily on his face. 'You might not be worth much. They like to start you clean.'
Mischa caught her breath involuntarily, for he had just told her, by implication, that her two small brothers and her baby sister had been sold as beggars, to be mutilated at some owner's whim and made into performing animals.
'When?' She backed toward the door, ready to turn and run, do something, anything.
'Long enough,' he said. 'They wouldn't even recognize you now. All they know is that they have to beg.'
Mischa touched her knife.
'Oh, stop it,' he said. 'They didn't mean anything to you. Stop pretending they did.'
'That's a lie.' But it was true she had never tried to take them and raise them as Chris had taken her. None had really been a person to her: though more aware than Gemmi, they had all been of severely limited intelligence. Mischa and Chris had kept them adequately fed, adequately clothed, but now Mischa knew she had had one more responsibility that would never be discharged, because it was too late. They had deserved a chance to have their own lives.
Her uncle thought of pain, and of delight in her humiliation. Gemmi broadcast it. Mischa forced the intrusion away, but her resistance only hurt the little girl, and Gemmi cried through the incomprehensible war. 'Leave her alone,' Mischa said. Her mind crawled and spun. 'I won't do it.'
'I have an investment in you,' he said. 'And I think I should get it back.'
Mischa pulled the bag and the small flat box from inside her jacket. She threw the bag at his feet. 'That's from Chris.' The box followed. 'And that's from me. See if you still think we can do better kinking with some chuckie or crawling in the dirt.'
He picked up the bag first, hefting it. 'Maybe I don't need to call him back after all,' he said. 'But I heard he's sick.'
'He's all right,' Mischa lied.
He tossed the jewels aside. 'He's harder to call than you are. But I will call him if he doesn't do better next time.' Leaning forward, reaching around Gemmi, he picked up the box, slid his fingers across the smoothly pebbled top, and loosed the delicate clasp. Open, the box caught the light in its interior and flung it, even brighter, against the new tapestries. The companion sat languidly up, but even such a small reaction was a serious breach of pose, revealing covetousness. Through her tears, Gemmi saw the reflections and reached for them. The eyes scattered in the sand. Her uncle shoved her off his lap and slapped her. Mischa felt the wrench of muscles and the clacking pain of teeth hitting together; she tasted the salt of blood. She caught herself against the wall. Gemmi lay on the ground, writhing feebly with half-formed crawling motions. Beside her, similarly, their uncle scrabbled in the sand, picking up the shiny bits, and his companion, swaying, moved to help. Mischa stumbled away from the cave. She had not gotten very far when he realized she was gone. Gemmi began to scream. Her insane and stupid mind swirled down around Mischa, suffocating her. She could feel Gemmi being beaten. 'Mischa!' The only name she knew. Mischa turned back. One final blow smashed against her temple, and darkness followed the pain.
Suddenly everything was quiet, everything around her and in her mind. The stone wall was cool against her cheek. She pushed herself away from it and shakily stood without support. Gemmi was gone.
Mischa knew that if she went back to Center now she might be forced to return as soon as her sister was able to call, but she would not stay and wait to be summoned like a slave. For a short time, at least, while her sister was unconscious, no one in the world had any hold over her.
Jan Hikaru's Journal:
Ah, I don't understand. Mischa came, and now she's gone, but I don't know where or why, or even if she's coming back. When she did not return for her lesson, Subtwo called me in, asking where she was, and I gave him some kind of incomprehensible babble about emergencies. I'm worried about her, but I don't even know where to look for her. How can I help if I don't know what's wrong? I thought we had built up some trust... maybe her troubles require more than
trust to solve.
I had to get out of Stone Palace, beyond the arc, the bars, the beggars. Only on top of the hills can one get even a spurious feeling of spaciousness; otherwise, anywhere in Center is like being in a cell.
Late in the morning, Mischa reached the floor of Center and started along the Circle. Gemmi had not called her again.
The cries of hawkers and drunks and parties and beggars closed in around her as she entered the arc. It was like walking through an invisible morass. A twisted child crawled toward her and caught at the back of her jacket. She walked faster. It clutched at her ankle. It mewled at her, and she broke into a run. She could not look at it, even with the sneer with which her peer group usually regarded beggars. Especially with the sneer. She was afraid to look at it, afraid of new mutilations on familiar bodies, afraid of blanked-out memories, afraid of the dull resignation in all the eyes.
She had always forced herself to do the things she thought she feared, but she did not force herself to look at the beggar. She fled it, running faster through the arc until her breath exploded in her throat with every inhalation. She pushed herself between people who grew angry and would have beaten her if they could have caught her. Tears spilled down her cheeks and half-blinded her, but still she ran. The deep sand seemed put there purposely to slow her down. Then, in front of the Palace, ranks on ranks of the beggars confronted her. She stumbled to a stop, and they turned to stare at her. She looked back and forth quickly, almost frantically searching for an alternate route that did not exist. A hand with only the first joints of fingers pawed at her; she shied like one of the caravannaires' ponies. 'Get away—' They came closer, smiling when she looked away. They had two weapons in their trade: guilt and fear. Either was effective. The hunched, ancient children advanced on her; they knew her: the aloof young thief with never a coin nor a sympathetic word, only arrogance. They saw her scared; they smiled, baring rotten teeth. One of them laughed. Its voice was a high stringed instrument, badly bowed. Mischa backed away, until a rough wall barred her, the ramp above just too high to reach. She pressed her hands
