Neveryona by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online

across bare shoulders; a strap ran down between abrupt, small breasts. She carried several knives at her belt and walked the hot stones barefoot. Pryn saw beyond the scarred shoulder she clung to that another woman servant had despaired of shadingthis sunken-eyed, cream-haired creature. (Was she yet eighteen? Certainly she was no more than twenty.) She stepped away here, then off there, now looking into a basket of nuts some porter carried by her, now turning to answer the older woman with the combs. A woman at least forty, the servant frowned at her and finally let the parasol shaft fall back on her own shoulder.
    Pryn had assumed Fox, Badger, and Wolf had seen them too – but the horses, grown skittish at the traffic, must have distracted them. And the women’s course veered closer than even Pryn had expected –
    One of the servants gave a small shriek.
    The horses reared.
    The white-haired woman turned in startled anger. She stepped back, hands down in blowing blue. The woman with the red scarf at her waist took the older woman’s shoulder and gave a wordless shout of her own. Servants scrambled. One dropped a parasol. The woman with the scarf turned from the older to grab it up.
    The horses reared again.
    Pryn clutched the Fox and clamped her knees to keep astride. Forehooves clattered to the street. The manservant shouted: ‘Country ruffians! What’s wrong with you! Out of the street, now! Out of the street! Don’t you know enough to let a woman of Madame Keyne’s standing in this city have the right of way? Rein your horses back! Rein them, I say –!’ The Fox’s horse started to rear again, but jarred, stopping.
    Pryn felt it ankle to jaw. It was as if a dragon in airborne career had suddenly smashed rock. What had happened was that the small, cream-haired woman had grasped the horse’s bridle and, with a jerk, brought the beast up short.
    The little woman’s gray eyes were sudden centers where lines of effort and anger met. The horse jerked againsther grip three times, then stilled. ‘
Stupid –!
’ the woman got out between tight teeth. The angry eyes swept up by the Fox to meet Pryn’s. The horse quivered between Pryn’s legs. Under Pryn’s hands, the Fox’s scarred shoulder flexed and flexed as he tried to rein his animal from her.
    Suddenly the little woman released the bridle and stalked off after the others, who had collected themselves to hurry on, again deep in their conversation. Servants hurried behind them, parasols waving.
    The horses moved about one another. Fox, Badger, and Wolf were all cursing: the women, the city, the sun above them, the people around them. Swaying at the Fox’s back, Pryn tried to look after the vanishing group. Now and again, across the crowd, she thought she caught sight of the cream-haired woman behind the party, off in some alley with sea at its end.
    ‘Get down!’
    Pryn looked back at the dirty headdress, scarred shoulder right, unscarred left.
    ‘Go on, girl!’ the Fox demanded; the horse stilled. ‘We brought you to the city, where you wanted to go. Get down now! Be on your way!’
    Confused, Pryn slid her foot back, up, and over, then dropped to the cobbles, with the sore knees and tingling buttocks of a novice rider – dragons notwithstanding. She stepped back from the moving legs, looking up.
    The three above her, on their stepping horses, looked down.
    The Badger, with his red beard, seemed about to ask something, and Pryn found her own lips halting on a question: What of the Blue Heron and Liberator? Despite her anger, her impressment had at least provided a form for her arrival. Aside from roving hands, she’d believedtheir high-sounding purpose. But as she ducked back (someone else was shouting for them to move), she realized they were, the three of them, country men, as confused and discommoded by this urban hubbub as she was.
    ‘Are you going to kill her now?’ the Badger blurted, looking upset.
    ‘She’s no spy!’ The Western Wolf