THE WIND THAT COMES FROM A BARREL
1563 4D
Ezzar called his name. Very far away, near the ceiling in a tall room, she hung from a pipe by one hand. “Help me, Andrew,” she said. He tried to move but his hands weighed on his arms like boulders. He looked down. He had sunk up to his waist in stone, and he dropped further in. His arms ended at his buried wrists.
Struggling, he dropped lower, to where the stone squeezed his chest so hard he couldn’t breathe. A chirping sound rose to fill the air, and tiny birds with razor-sharp beaks dived at him and lacerated his face. As they flew close he made out Grant‘s dark cold eyes in their feathered heads. He tried to call out, but the birds perched on his face and voided themselves. He shook his head back and forth, choking.
Grendel, his face in a worried frown, held him down on the floor. “Andrew,” he rumbled, “Wake up, it’s all right.” Janny stood nearby, watching Andrew suspiciously. Ezzar leaned over him.
“You were dreaming,” she said. “Janny came and woke me up when you started thrashing around.” Ezzar looked at the lights in the corridor outside the room. “We’ve got about another hour.” They ate the last of the food they had brought, and returned to the stairwell landing.
They found no one, and turned to go back to the liftway door.
“The dust is getting too thick,” came a woman’s voice from behind them. They turned around. A woman with near-blue-black skin, in a brown coverall, leaned against the wall. She aimed a huge-barreled toxgun at them.
Andrew closed his eyes. The blast of fog from this thing would melt his skin away, if he was lucky.
“It needs the wind that comes from a barrel.” Ezzar replied. Both women looked surprised.
“Raffina?”
“Come with me. Oh, but who are these?” Raffina looked Andrew and Grendel over, and then bent to look at Janny, who hid behind Andrew‘s leg. “She’s got deep-street doings on. Look at that hair! And the rat charms! But those clothes – you’re dressed upcity. What’s going on? Never mind, we’ll talk later. What’ve you got for me?”
“A good load, arms, medicine, some food, if it hasn’t left again or been found. In the ore train that–“
“Yes. 107964. We found that, about one step ahead of ArCorp‘s muscle. Where’s Elvin?”
“He tried to screw us,” Ezzar said.
“That’s nothing new. So what?”
Ezzar explained.
“So you’re why the other lift here isn’t running?” Raffina frowned at Andrew. He nodded, and she added, “Well, Elvin was no loss to me.”
“Come on, Raffina,” Ezzar said. “Get us out of here, and then you can fill us in. I want to know how you got into this.”
“And I want to know the same about you,” Raffina said. “We’re tight in here. Things are about to break, and Torre‘s going to want to know who you are. If I hadn’t recognized Ezzar of Harridium, I would have killed all of you back there. The way Torre is right now, he still might.”
