Skeen's Leap by Jo Clayton Read Free Book Online Page B

bricks was a thick quilted pad, on top of the pad, layer on layer of fleeces, on the fleeces two quilts made from some silky material that gave back rich glows where the globes’ light touched the folds. She shook out the top quilt, inspected it with a sigh of appreciation. Birdshape, probably mythical, thunderbolts in one talon, a branch with green leaves in the other. All hand work, tiny even stiches; she coveted it mightily though it was old and faded, patched in two spots. Djabo bless, she told herself, I’ve got to come back when I haven’t got this load on my mind.
    She went into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, filled a ceramic mug she found there, then stretched out on the bed waiting for the food to arrive.

SKEEN IS HIRED WITH SOME CONSIDERABLE CEREMONY. I’M IMPRESSED, OH YES, WHEN DO YOU BRING ON THE ACROBATS?
    Morning. Early. Light coming through an irregular opening above the broad end of the bed, a diffuse creamy glow through a skin scraped until it was translucent, then allowed to dry and harden on a frame. She could hear voices, laughter, the braying and blatting of beasts. Wonder if those are citizens or food? And how do they keep it straight? Skeen grinned, then she stretched and yawned, feeling rested and filled with renewed energy. The firamay, a bovine little creature, had brought her a tray filled with cold meats, cheeses, slices of a sweet yellow fruit in a tart sauce, crusty rolls, and a large goblet of cider. To think of hiprots paste in the same breath was blasphemy.
    She wriggled between the quilts, enjoying the soft give of the fleeces under her. She was clean again, head to toe, and she’d have clean underwear, really clean this time, having washed undershirt and pants along with herself and hung them up to dry while she slept. She luxuriated a moment longer in that pleasure, then swung off the bed before it went stale on her.
    She exercised vigorously for a while to work the knots out of her muscles, then padded into the washroom where she’d hung up her clothing.
    She frowned at the skirt and blouse hung where her tunic and trousers had been. Came in while I was sleeping, maybe that cider was drugged, shit, I’m really past it if some idiot serving maid can creep in here and do all this without waking me. She went poking about, found her tunic and trousers neatly folded on shelves, her boots next to them. The boots had been cleaned and rubbed to a finer gloss than they’d seen in years.
    She jerked the blouse and skirt off their pegs and threw them into the other room. Not fuckin’ likely! I don’t care if you have twenty fits, I’m not wearing that junk. She stomped back to the washbasin, pulled out the tap handles, and began splashing hot water over her face. Hot water had surprised her last night, but the taste, a faint hint of sulphur, explained its presence. Now she scrubbed at her eyes, splashed water along her arms and shook it off again, shaking off with it most of her anger at Telka’s attempt to manipulate her. She was willing to hire out her services, but not her … well, call it soul; she’d stopped selling that a long time ago and wasn’t about to start again. If they couldn’t take her the way she was, too damn bad; there were other ways of getting hold of sellables, especially now she had a useful language and enough information to go on with. She dressed, stamped her feet into her boots, checked her hideout knife and the other bits she had tucked in hidden pockets. All there. She straightened Idiot! and strode into the other room.
    Her backpack was in a heap by one end of the bed, close enough to where she’d dropped it, but not how she’d dropped it, the folds were different. She had a special small gift, the ability to recognize patterns once glimpsed, and the ability to extrapolate from these memories to recognize similarities in other patterns. She went through the pack. Everything was still