Moon's eyes swam, refusing to see more. Sickness rose in her, and a murderous hatred. Her hand closed over a heavy cobble, tightening and tightening; she got to her knees. Beside her Silky pulled himself up, climbed to his feet in one abrupt motion, leaning on her shoulder. She heard him speak, not understanding the words, but feeling the deeper wound he had taken to watch his brothers slaughtering his friends. He went forward, staggering a little, before she could follow. He started toward the inhuman being in black and the cluster of Hounds around him.
'Silky—' She struggled to her feet, kicking off her fins, cradling the stone as she started after him.
The man in black barely glanced their way. 'Stop them.' He gestured indifferently, and three of the Hounds left his side to block Silky's advance, surrounding him without hesitation. There was a burst of alien speech, and a muttering; and then she saw them struggle. Tentacles whipped at heads and silvered eyes, she saw a silvery knife bared again' No Silky!' She ran forward. The third Hound broke away and caught at her, fcrew her aside — as she saw the serrated blade sink ki home. She screamed, as though she had taken the blow herself. Silky fell like a stone among the stones. The man hi black turned at her scream, but even as he did she struck the third Hound with all her strength, clubbing him down. The others grabbed her, held her struggling between them as the third staggered, bleeding, to his feet and ripped off the hood of her suit, baring her throat. Her hair spilled loose over her shoulders, tentacles tangled in it, jerking back her head.
'Stop!' Someone shouted the word. But she had no voice and no time at all, only a last kaleidoscope of clouds and sky as the dripping blade bit her throatA shock of violent motion hurled the Hounds away from her, knocked her to the ground. 'Get away from her! What the hell do you think you're doing?' The heavy boots of the man hi black straddled her, sheltering her like a tree in the face of a storm. She looked up and up, seeing only his shadow silhouette against the desolate stone-washed shore. '... Because she's a sibyl, goddamn it, that's why! What are you trying to do, contaminate me? Get the hell away, and throw that knife into the seal' He waved them off, stepped clear of her as they left, and squatted down beside her.
Moon pushed herself up warily, felt a thin warm necklace of blood trickle down over the tattoo hi the hollow of her throat, creep on into the neck of her suit and down between her breasts.
The man in black ... she was sure it was a man now, hidden behind a mask. His eyes were all that she could see of him, and they were gray-green. He stretched an uncertain glove toward her throat. She cringed back, startled, but he wiped the blood from her tattoo with a sudden sweep of his hand. She saw him shudder at the sign of the trefoil; he rubbed his gloved hand convulsively on the stones. 'Gods! Am I going crazy?' He looked away, searching the shore for a denial, an affirmation. 'You aren't real. You can't be! What are you?' His hand rose again, caught her chin to hold her face hi front of him; let it go, slipping across her cheek, along her hair almost like a caress. 'Not her ...' It was almost a plea.
She lifted her own gloved hand to her throat, where pain was spreading from ear to ear, chin to breastbone; shielding her wound, shielding the trefoil from his gaze. 'Moon,' she whispered, not sure why she gave her name, but grateful that she still had a voice left to speak it. 'Sibyl—' her voice roughened, 'yes, I am! And I tell you that you've committed murder. You have no right to hunt these lands. And no man has the right to murder an intelligent being!' She swept a hand toward the carnage on the beach, not following it with her eyes. 'It's murder, murder!'
His eyes followed, came back as green and hard as emeralds. 'Shut up, damn you—' But they stayed on her face, incredulous, demanding, and his hands knotted on his knees. 'Damn you, damn you! What are you doing here? How could you come here, to see me like this? After you left me — I could kill you for this!' He twisted his head, wrenching his eyes away, throwing the words into the wind.
'Yes! Yes! Kill me too, mer slayer, sibyl slayer, coward — and damn yourself!' She bared her throat to him again, grimacing with the motion. 'Spill my blood, and take its curse on you!' She stretched out her bloody fingers, trying to reach him, wound him, infect him But her hand lost its strength, fell from the air forgotten, as she saw at last the symbol that gleamed on his black suit: the circle sign crossed and recrossed, the sign of the Hegemony; the medal that she had seen every day of her life in Summer... Her hand rose again, and he did not stop her from touching it. Slowly, slowly, she lifted her eyes, knowing that in another moment she would' No His fist came at her without warning and crushed her into blackness.
Chapter 31
'Hello, Miroe.' Jerusha climbed out of the patrol craft wearing her uniform and her best imitation smile. The wind clapped its chill hands on her shoulders, tried to jerk her half-sealed coat open for ruder intimacies. Damn this weather! Her smile struggled.
'Jerusha?' Ngenet came striding down the slope from the outbuildings, summoned by field hands who had seen her coming in.
His own widening smile of welcome looked real to her, and hers began to warm. But she read ambivalence in the glance that took hi her uniform before it met her eyes. 'It's been a long time.'
'Yes.' She nodded, an excuse to look down, wondering if time was all that lay behind his hesitation. 'I know. How — how've you been, Miroe?'
'About the same. Everything's about the same.' He pushed his hands into his parka pockets, shrugged. 'It usually is. Is this official business, or strictly a social call?' He peered past her into the empty patrol craft
'A little of both, I guess,' trying to make it sound casual. She saw his mouth tighten ever so slightly, twitching his mustache. 'That is, we had a report on a tech runner downed near here' — fully two or three weeks ago — 'and since I was in the area checking it out...'
'The Commander of Police chasing down strays in the outback? Since when?' amused.
'Well, I was the only one they could spare.' She grinned ruefully, stretching the unused muscles in her cheeks.
Laughter. 'Damn it, Jerusha, you know you don't need an official excuse to come by here. You're welcome any time ... as a friend.'
'Thank you.' She understood the qualification and was grateful for it. 'It's nice to be singled out as a human being for a change, and not as a Blue.' She plucked at her coat, suddenly embarrassed by it. My shield, my armor. What will I do when they take it away from me? 'I... I tried to call you, a couple of weeks ago. But you were gone.' It occurred to her suddenly to wonder why he hadn't returned the call. Gods, who could blame him, when I never returned any of his?
'I'm sorry, I couldn't—' He seemed to reach the same question, without finding an answer either. 'You've been — busy, I suppose.'
'Busy! Oh, hell and devils, it's been ... sheer hell, and devils.' She leaned against the patrol craft pulled down the door and slammed it. 'BZ is gone, Miroe. Dead. Killed by bandits outside the city. And I just can't ... I can't stand it any more.' Her head bowed hi invisible bondage. 'I don't know how I'll be able to stand going back to Carbuncle again. When all I can think of is how much better it would be for everyone, how glad everyone would be, if I never came back at all. How much better it would be if I'd been the one who'd been lost.'
'By all the gods, Jerusha — why didn't you tell me?'
She turned away from his outstretched hand, leaning on the hood, looking desperately out to sea. 'I didn't come here to — to use you for a garbage can, damn it!'
'Of course you did. What are friends for?' She heard his smile.
'I did not!'
'All right. Then why not? Why not?' He pulled at her elbow.
'Don't touch me. Please, Miroe, don't.' She felt his hand release her, felt her arm still tingling with the contact. 'I can handle it. I'll be all right, I can handle it alone.' Her control hung by a thread.
'And you feel like dying is the way to do it?'
'No!' She brought her fist down on the cold metal. 'No. That's why I had to get away ... I had to find some other way.' She turned back, slowly, but with her eyes shut.
He was silent for a moment, waiting. 'Jerusha — I know the kind of screws they've been putting to you, all
