Jo Clayton - Hallah's Choice.pdf - Jo Clayton - margozap

Hallah’s Choice

By: Jo Clayton

* * * *

From the Drytowns to Leigh Brackett Hamilton’s Mars, mercenaries and assassins

stride or skulk through exotic desert towns. They are violent and sinister, and, no

doubt, each one of them has a history that we would wonder at—when we’re not

taking cover.

Hallah, Jo Clayton’s protagonist, has a history more painful than most. Is she

bent on revenge? Yes, but this is one assassin you can imagine singing a lullaby.

* * * *

Into the web

Languorous late afternoon.

Heatwaves and a haze of yellow dust.

The Shiza’heyh of Yaanosin ride to the Betrothal Feast and Fealty Jubilee with

their guards and dependents, their wives and daughters and their eldest sons, their

equerries and orderlies and grooms, their harriers and farriers, their agents and their

clerks, their stooges and their sycophants, their bath girls and bed-warmers, their

tailors, their valets, their wardrobemasters, their cooks and their cupbearers, their

food tasters and wine tasters, their scullions and slaveys.

The Shiza’heyh Kihyayti’an rides to the Betrothal Feast and Fealty Jubilee

with all this and his unmatched pair of matchless assassins.

Zisgade Neisser the Shadowsnake, unfeeling as the polished ivory blades he

wears up each sleeve—he is a thin gray man, yellow with dust, riding at his master’s

side.

Hallah Myur, with no epithet allowed—such things are a foolishness she is

content to live without—a thin gray woman riding near the tail of the procession, a

little woman yellow with the rolling dust, dark eyes narrowed to cracks. Sweat

runnels cut through the dust plastered on her brow, baring streaks of lined light

brown skin. Wisps of hair straggle from under her loosely wound headbands. She

rides easily, slumped in the saddle of a dust-yellowed gelding, a long-legged,

rough-gaited, slab-sided beast with enough energy and humor left to white his eyes at

clots in the dust and shy at skittering shadows.

She is tired, hot, and bored, with no end of boredom in sight. For the next

week or so she’ll be nothing more than an attendant, a body to dress up the

Shiza’heyh’s entourage. Katiang the Boar-rider and the other cursemen deal hardly

with folk who break the Curse Truce, with the hand and the one-behind who hires

the hand. Even Shiza’heyh Kihyayti’an in his maddest moods would not chance

bringing the Curse on his head.

She expects to sleep a lot. She detests crowds, is bored by tumblers, street

mimes, magicians, and their like. She seldom gambles, doesn’t trust luck, only skill.

Clothes are to cover her body, food is for fueling it. She prefers the tablewipe she

buys for herself in hedge taverns to the delicate vintages the Shiza’heyh provides for

his favored hirelings. Beyond the highs of her work—which are fewer with every

year that passes—her only real pleasure is a hard-fought game of stonechess. Since

Atwarima is a busy riverport and the Jubilee/Betrothal should bring a flood of

visitors from many realms, she hopes to locate an adequate opponent.

The first shock

In the Bath of the Toyaytay GuestHouse Hallah Myur stripped and stretched,

sucking in the steamy air. She shook her head, her hair tumbling loose, fine long hair

kinking into frizzy curls. Her body was limber as a child’s but terribly scarred,

nodules of keloid with streaks of white and pink running through the soft brown skin

where her breasts had been; her back was laced with whip marks.

She sat on damp sacking bound over the bench beside the tub and combed

the tangles and dust from her hair, singing softly to herself, clicking her tongue at

how gray she was getting. When she was finished, she set the comb aside, twisted

her hair into a knot atop her head, and slid with a soft purr of pleasure into the water.

Clean and relaxed, she pulled on her second-best tunic and trousers, tied on

the gray silk formveil that masked her face eye to chin, bound her hair with gray silk

bands, covering it completely. She gathered her dusty riding gear, paid the attendant,

left the Bath and strolled toward the rooms assigned to the Shiza’heyh Kihyayti’an’s

entourage, humming a song she’d picked up somewhere, enjoying the warmth of her

body, the easy shift of her muscles.

Though sunset was still half an hour off, in that maze of corridors and galleries

within the massive walls of the GuestHouse, alabaster lamps were already lit, and

their painted oils spread perfume on the drafts that coiled about her shoulders. She

turned a corner.

lamp.

A man walked toward her; his face and shoulders leapt at her as he passed a

She stopped walking. Stopped breathing.

His eyes passed over her, dismissed her. Under the Curse Truce, assassin’s

fangs were pulled. She was nothing to interest him. Nothing.

His footsteps faded.

Shudder after shudder passed along her body; she hunched over, beat her

fists against her thighs, sucked in air in sharp, broken gasps. Shell twenty years thick

shattered in that instant, twenty years of discipline gone.

But twenty years do have weight and reach.

After a moment she straightened her back, quieted her breathing. Almost

running, drowning in memory, she hurried for the small private cubicle assigned to

her.

Rosalie Zivan, fourteen years of mischief, spoiled by a doting father, her

mother dead three years ago birthing Garro Zivan’s last son, the spring moon like

laughter in her blood, slipped into the Home-wood of Roka Membruda to gather

herbs for her Auntee Rosamunda’s simples and specifics: Mutes’ tongue,

love-at-ease, moonspurge, sowthistle, hop-over, bruisewort, poorfolks pepper, bee

thumb, sucklings tit, wet-a-bed, shut-your-ear, flickwhittle, whistling fleabane,

smartberry, creeping ninny, wart-weed, stinking willy.

Delighted by the edge of danger in her solitary windings through the wood,

she prowled along the deer paths and in the scattered glades, grubbing in the thick

black earth under the trees and along the noisy creek, knife flickering through the

greens, the tubers, the brambles, the grasses growing on the banks and in the water,

filling the gather sack she carried slung over her shoulder.

She ended her search when she reached the rowan pool in the heart of the

wood, where the water ran deep and silent through ancient twisted trees, a place

fragrant with the eddying sweetness of night-blooming jasmine and the acrid bite of

riveroak, a place where it seemed to her the dreefolk must dance on their

dreadnights.

She eased the sack onto rowan roots, careful to keep it from the damp dark

earth, stripped off her blouse, her skirt, and her camisole, hung them on a rowan

tree, then slipped into the water. The moon was a hair past full and directly

overhead, turning the water to tarnished silver. She sculled dreamily about, watching

the clouds swim by.

A young man came from the trees, blond hair blowing in an aureole about a

beautiful lean face. She knew him. She’d seen him in the village, Membruda’s

Youngest Son. They said his name was Traccoar. “Rowan flower,” he said to her,

his voice like a wind in the trees. “Come bless me.”

When she reached her room, she paced back and forth, back and forth, wall

to door, around the end of the bed and back, shivering with reaction. After she’d

calmed enough so she could stay still awhile, she stripped off her clothes, braided

her hair, tied the ends, and slipped into bed.

Sleep came hard, and when she did at last drop off, the dreams came back,

the ones she thought she’d left with her name.

Rosalie Zivan lay with hands clenched into fists as Traccoar’s body moved

on hers, as he whispered that she was the loveliest, the most magical being he’d ever

known. Most women, he told her between grunts and other noises, are greedy

whores, selling themselves for money and power. You’re different, he told her,

you’re like the earth, rich and powerful, warm and giving.

She was only fourteen, and virgin, but she knew lies when she heard them.

She lay like a stone, gathering herself to run when he rolled off her, before he

remembered that he had to kill her so she couldn’t put a Hammar Curse on

him—that was what they believed, those beasts in the Rokas.

The Hammar of clan Gyoker-Zivan had no curses, only wise women and

fast-fingered men.

He groaned, rolled over, and lay panting beside her.

She scrambled up, ran around a rowan tree when he leapt to his feet and

lunged for her. “Dirty pig,” she shouted at him. “May you never get it up again.” She

ran into the shadows and left him stumbling clumsily after her, cursing her.

Hallah Myur stirred in her sleep, ground her teeth, and whined like an angry

cat; her hands moved up her body to touch the places where her breasts had been.

Tears gathered in her sleeping eyes and leaked from beneath her lids.

The second shock

The Oath Hall was a vast domed cavity with eight sides and hanging galleries

above a forest of arches. The walls shimmered with color, patterned tiles in red,

blue, green. The dome itself was white and gold; it rested on scrolled, open arches,

the morning sunlight streaming through them, gilded with dancing dust motes.

Polished gold stairs rose to a two-level dais at the western wall; a plain, heavy chair

sat on the highest level, made from what rumor said was dragon bones—the

Alayjiyah’s Throne. In front of the dais was a square twenty feet wide of ivory tiles

in a golden matrix. On the north side of that square were three backless ivory chairs

with cushions of cloth of gold; on the south side of the square were three more—set

there for the Six Shiza’heyh of Yaanosin.

Formveil hiding her impatience, Hallah Myur stood behind the Shiza’heyh

Kihyayti’an, Zisgade Neisser the Shadowsnake at her left—which meant she was the

favored one today. She wondered vaguely what Zisgade had done to annoy

Kihyayti’an this time. Quick work, but he was always doing it, eating his feet. She

didn’t care about favor, it was just a job and a tedious one at that—standing around

and posing, reminding Kihyayti’an’s hopeful heirs of the sting in the tail of ambition.

Her indifference jabbed at Zisgade; he’d do anything he could to make trouble for

her. She wasn’t worried; if she couldn’t outthink that twynt, she deserved to go

down. Besides, the Guild had uncomfortable ways of dealing with treachery.

Except… She shifted uneasily. Groensacker gets wasps in his cod when he thinks

about me. Could be he’s hoping I’ll get so antsy with this stint, I’ll walk out on it.

Then he could fine me some serious gelt and mark me unreliable. Viper.

She watched Zisgade a moment. He stood with his hands clasped behind him,

walking the muscles in his arms and torso, his tunic shivering with their twitch. She

suppressed a yawn, fingered the stonebox in her pouch. Get on with it, blump! This

is boring. Kihyayti’an had promised his assassins a free day once the rites were

done, and she wanted a game, wanted it badly.

She glanced idly up at the northern gallery, which was filling with the guests

come for the Betrothal. She scowled as she saw Traccoar standing on the edge of a

cluster of men; their voices came down to her in a muted grumble, the words lost in

the echoes.

!Maytre! he’s gone to seed for sure. Look at the goat-son wag his tail and grin

like a fool.

A newcomer pushed through them and stopped beside Traccoar, a tall, faded

blonde whose hair had migrated from his head to a twin-tailed beard. Big brother,

looks like. So Old Goatface is finally dead. Yes, of course. He would be. It’s been

more than twenty years, and he was older than the hills then. This one was… She

dredged through memory. Ah yes, Ardamoar the Eldest.

Naked except for a leather clout and a pectoral of seh’ki claws threaded on

strands of kihgut, their oiled bodies glistening in the sunlight streaming through the

dome-arches, the Ghost Drummers came clattering in, hauling their tall drums on

their backs.

They set the drums by the golden stairs, climbed on the stone stools, and

began beating out a heart rhythm; the boombahms filled the chamber.

In the gallery, the clot of men was breaking apart as the guests sought their

seats; behind them their dependents scurried about like startled waterbugs,

negotiating places to stand.

As Ardamoar lowered his long bony body into a chair, a woman emerged

from the throng and joined Traccoar, who was standing directly behind his brother.

Hair like new-minted copper.

Auntee Rosamunda’s face on a long Lamenoor body.

Hallah swayed, clamped her teeth on her tongue.

Garro Zivan wept when Rosalie told him, warned her to say nothing to the

other Hammar. With a little luck, he said, naught will come of this and we’ll be as we

were. That was how her father was, never a man to swallow bitters to keep a fever

off. But as the Gyoker-Zivan Hammar moved their wagons across Membruda’s

Jo Clayton - Hallah's Choice.pdf

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