Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress Page A

critical words, all would be reported to the king almost before he finished uttering them—she jumped up and clutched at something inside her tunic.
    “Sorry, Aveo, I have to—” She pulled out a small black box. He tensed, thinking it might be the mysterious weapon that had killed Cul Escio and the Chief of the Royal Guard, but it was not. Cam put it to her lips and said, “Soledad?”
    The rest of her words made no sense, being in her own language. Her eyes grew wide. Her voice rose in pitch.
    Had he underestimated her? If this was a performance for their unseen watchers, it was a good choice. Talking to demons through a magic box . . . Had she somehow discerned how superstitious Uldunu Four was? Nothing else could have been so calculated to impress him, or to make him cautious in the face of her gross insults. Perhaps she even understood that Aveo did not believe in demons or magic and thus her performance was a signal to him, too—a signal that she could weave the threads of deception if necessary, could play kulith like a master. Perhaps even her dismal kulith performance so far had been part of the deception.
    Aveo caught the word “Lucca” several times. Cam paced the room, expressions chasing each other across her face, urgency in her voice. She presented this urgency from every possible angle, catching all spyholes. No one rushed in to arrest her, to kill her. Aveo was impressed.
    Eventually she put the box back in her tunic and said, “Sorry. A friend is . . . is ill. In his nose.”
    “Yes.” He nodded, looking as if he knew this imaginary friend with the ill nose, as if he had had as much converse with “demons” as she did, and so was as dangerous. But the false conversation had accomplished one thing; she had accumulated enough kulith points to ascend unmolested to her egg on the roof.
    Aveo made the
belon
to her, the gesture of acknowledgment of amasterly game move. She pretended to ignore his gesture—which was also masterly.
    His hopes for survival rose.
     
    THE HOPES WERE DASHED AGAIN inside her ship.
    Cam closed the door of the tiny space and flung open the cabinet door. Aveo had already caught the stench of Obu’s night soil, but the girl was in a better way than he’d dared to expect. She was not dead, not unconscious, not mad. Released from her prison, she again huddled in a terrified ball in a corner, but Cam cleaned her with water from the egg and fed her as tenderly as if she were her own babe and not a slave. It was a stupid kulith move, but there was nobody but Aveo to see. What kind of city had she come from, where slaves were treated as
rem
and kulith was not played and the king would send such a confusing emissary across the wide sea?
    Cam said, “Okay, this is what we’re going to do.”
    “Isn’t that for me to say?” Aveo said, as mildly as he could. He outranked her in kulith so much it was laughable.
    “You? Well, if you have anything to add— Of course, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, and then you tell me. I think I should offer Uldunu some other trade goods—from Pular, if you want to say that—in exchange for letting me sort of hang around with him for a few days. As an observer. That way, I stand a better chance of seeing whatever the . . . the people who sent me here want me to witness. Look, here’s what I can offer him.”
    She opened another metal cabinet and took out three or four boxes. Aveo, despite himself, gasped.
    Jewels in colors never found anywhere on this side of the world. Cloth so soft and bright that it must have been woven by spiders he could not imagine. Small bottles of thin colored glass, or something like glass. She unstoppered one and waved it in the air. The scent of strange and unknown flowers drifted on the air, rousing even Obu. But then she opened the fourth box, and Aveo forgot all else.
    Daggers. Short and mid-length, curved and straight, some with decorated hilts and some plain, and all with a