Moonrise

Then the sun caught dark blue, the wings of an open greatcoat, and long white hair streaming.

What flew – or Walked-in-air – swerved nearer… nearer… then near, coat billowing in the wind, and Bajazet saw it was the Boston-woman who'd watched him from a tree.

She called something, but the breeze took it away.

'Exile!' Master MacAffee shouted at her. '- Condemned by town council!' And drifted sideways through the air – sliding toward her, first slowly, then faster.

'He'll kill her!' The Made-girl, Nancy, slid her hatchet from her belt – leaned far back, then threw it with a harsh grunt of effort. It spun thrumming, and surprisingly high… but still short and behind the ambassador as he went sailing. 'He'll kill our friend!'

'No use,' Richard said.

The Boston woman – sitting erect, legs crossed – flew to meet the ambassador, her paper-white hair bannering out behind her. She wore black boots, blue trousers, and white blouse beneath her open blue coat – and seemed, from Bajazet's sun-dazzled sight of her, to be smiling. She lifted a slim-bladed scimitar from her lap – and struck MacAffee's stroke clanging aside as they came together.

Then the air sang with sharp steel's music as they turned and turned together like mating hawks, but winged in blue. Tribesmen were running up from the creek, calling to each other as they came – until there was a growing crowd shifting Warm-time yards this way and that, beneath the fighters in the air.

Bajazet, jostled by wiry naked men smelling of smoke, roasted horse meat, and dried blood, still could hear faint grunts of effort above him. The scimitars wove bright ribbons of motion to ring ring ring… while both air-walkers dipped and fell to rise again.

Bajazet saw the woman fought with a two-hand grip, and she spun full around, sometimes – first one way, then the reverse as she struck… Whirled one way again as he watched, began to turn back – then didn't, so MacAffee, anticipating, guarding wrong, was suddenly back-slashed across the belly, flew staggering back and back in the sun's glare, a dark silhouette that seemed to bow… bow deeply… then slowly somersaulted forward.

MacAffee fell from his height… fell in a fat flutter of blue and spattering red… and was caught, as if by arrangement, on the tribesmen's spears.

The Made-boy, Errol, hummed a three-note tune.

* * *

The Boston-woman, her weapon wiped and sheathed, sailed down after the fight – only lightly sliced along her forearm – to leaps and roars of congratulation by the file-toothed men. Dwarfed in their crowding as she retrieved her opponent's fallen sword, then its scabbard, she treated them like noisy children – presenting that slender scimitar in pretend thrusts and blows, so the men danced away in mock terror, laughing. In celebration, the tribesmen then stamped and trampled the dead ambassador into a muddy red mess with one half-open eye.

… When the warriors quieted, began to drift away, the Boston-woman pushed through lingerers the little distance to the Made-peoples' clearing – looked Bajazet up and down, then held out her hand. Though she was small and neatly collected as a girl, she seemed at least in her forties. Her face was marked with a faint web of fine wrinkles, and her hair fell prematurely white past her shoulders. But her eyes seemed of no age, and black as a moonless night… Blood had trickled down her wrist.

'Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley,' she said, gripped his hand surprisingly hard, and noticed him noticing her bleeding. 'Twenty years ago, he couldn't have touched me… So, you're Toghrul's boy – and, I'm sure, his image, though somewhat worn after your long run.' She let his hand go. 'Your First-father and I might have met – did you know that?' An oddly merry smile. 'I believe something of that sort was planned by the Faculty. And if we'd met, I suppose he would have fallen in love with me – since I was very beautiful, and clever…'

The Boston-woman then turned away and called, with copybook obscenities, to a lounging, tall, naked Sparrow with a fine-feathered necklace and an ax… They walked away together, the Boston-woman's wide-brim blue hat hanging down her back on a plaited cord.

Bajazet sat by the fire awkwardly, and with a grunt of discomfort from stone-rasped skin and bruised muscles. 'A 'friend'?' he said to the Made-girl. '- That Boston-woman?'

'She is a friend.' Nancy slightly lisping her is as she watched the Boston-woman go. 'And a Person, made as we were made, only more subtly – you know that Warm-time word, Prince?'

'Yes.'

Richard, sitting beside the fire. 'I consider myself an extremely subtle creation – of juice mainly of a Boston breeder, but partly of a grizzled bear, placed within a certain woman Shrike.'

'Have you Persons on your great river?' The Made-girl cocked her head for Bajazet's answer.

' 'Persons'… such as you?'

'Yes, and others. Moonrisers.'

'Moonrisers…'

'As you are a Sunriser.' Becoming impatient. 'You true-blood humans are called Sunrisers, everywhere.' She'd lisped Sunrisers.

'Not on the River,' Bajazet said.

She stared at him. Yellow eyes and odd pupils… 'In this country, there are many Persons like us. And named Moonrisers,' she reached out and tapped his knee with a narrow black- nailed hand, 'because Sunrisers are plain as day – and we are not.'

'I see…' Bajazet said. 'And also saw three of your 'Persons' killing a tribesman. Eating him.'

'You did not.'

'I said, I did. Three of the big riding things – gone feral, I suppose.'

'Mampies,' Richard said.

'Oh… Mamps.' The girl made a face. 'They're not Persons.'

'They are,' Richard said.

'Well, they're very stupid, and have no souls.'

'They're stupid, Nancy,' Richard said. 'But they have souls.'

… Listening to more on the question of Mampies and their possible souls – a subject that appeared not to interest the boy, Errol – Baj was content to sit quiet at the fire. He stretched gingerly, testing his aching ribs.

* * *

Through the day, and into evening – having polished his sword and dagger blades, then rubbed them against rusting with a tallow-piece from his pack – Bajazet drowsed by the Odd-three's fire. The past days' weariness seemed to have settled into his bones… and he was very hungry.

At nightfall, a battle-injured tribesman came limping, and tossed thick chunks of horse meat to them. – Tossed, it seemed to Bajazet, as one might toss meat to hounds, after a hunt. No other tribesman came near.

… While he ate horse steak, cooked surprisingly well-done, considering his company – chewing, swallowing slowly as he could to keep such richness down a starved belly – Bajazet found himself calm as if he had a future certain, as if all uncertainty had been worn out of him while he'd fled with death trotting at his heels.

Now, there was the strangeness of his met companions – a man, with some part bear; a girl, some part coyote or fox; a silent boy, part… something. Their strangeness, and the suddeness of the traitor king's death, amounting to life for him – at least life enough for a meal of horse meat.

Later, the four of them rested, fire-watching without talk, listening – at least Bajazet listening – to the tribesmen singing down the valley. Sparrows, Thrushes… His Second-father had once mentioned that some western, and all the eastern tribes, had years before quit their tribal names for the names of birds, though no one knew why.

'Perhaps,' King Sam had said, '- since Middle-Kingdom and Boston have sometimes harried and broken them, East from the river, South from the ice, perhaps the tribes renamed to leave their defeats, their losses behind to start again, feathered for a different future.'

The Sparrows, at their many fires along the valley stream, were singing all together a slow, measured anthem, with no harmonies attempted. The music echoed in soft strophes from the hillsides, as if their ancestors sang with them… Listening, Bajazet thought he recognized an ancient Warm-time hymn. 'The Glory In Mine Eyes, is the