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HSIAO CHU:
The Taming Power of the Small

Twenty-One

Robin must have fainted, because she could not remember leaving the cemetery. When at last she regained consciousness, she was lying on something soft that smelled familiar, a warm, reassuring smell, and the bags beneath her were full of something scratchy. She perceived that she was lying on a bag stuffed with hay, and the dusty darkness about her was a cattle shed of some kind. She could see the beasts themselves: horned, matted, with long, ruminative faces.

Someone came through into the stall and the cattle stamped nervously, tapping their hooves against the rough concrete. Someone murmured something. A calm blue gaze shone through the gloom.

"It's you," Robin said. Her victim had come back, free and predatory, and she was aware only of relief.

"I came back," Mhara agreed. The blue eyes were wells in the darkness, the color of the indigo washing powder that spilled across the market stalls.

"What happened to me?" Robin asked. He had bound up her knee, which was stiff and sore.

"I don't know. You were with—people, I think, but the dead. Ghosts." Mhara took her chin in his hand and turned her face to the light from the street that crept in between the slats of the go-down shed.

"Your face is burned. I don't know how it happened."

"It licked me," Robin whispered, remembering. She heaved herself to her elbows and looked at him. "Oh, Mhara," she said, before she could stop herself. "I'm so sorry. For what I did to you."

"I know. It's all right."

"Why did you come back?" she asked in a small voice. "You should kill me, by rights. I tortured you."

"Do you think so? Not as much as you fear, perhaps. You don't know much about me, Robin, the kind of person I am." The predatory hand stroked her hair. "Do you want to rest some more?"

"No . . . I think we should make a move. Paugeng security will be looking for you. And me." She stood and the bound knee gave way. Mhara caught her arm.

"I'm sorry," Robin whispered. "It really hurts. I think you'd better leave me, Mhara." He gave her a long, contemplative look. She amplified: "I can't walk very far. And we can't take a taxi or a tram."

"Then we will take a boat."

"What?"

"We're at the back of the Shaopeng canal. Once we get on the canal, all we have to do is follow it until we reach—that is, until we find a place where I can return to where I belong."

Robin gritted her teeth. She was determined not to ask him to stay. She remained, nursing her knee, as he vanished. He was gone a long time. Robin was hot and every time she moved a burning ache ran along her shin. The stuffed sacking was making her nose run and her eyes itch. She had never known such a week for being ill. The beasts stamped in their stalls. Mhara was coming back, she thought with an uplift of hope, but they refused to settle down and he did not come into view. One of the cows kicked out, and the sound echoed around the stalls like a hammer blow.

"Robin? Where are you?" a soft, familiar voice said. Robin kept still. She could see it flickering against the wall of the shed, like a shadow, no shape or form, just movement. Then it collapsed back into its normal being, the powerful hindquarters swaying against the sacks. Wise, orange eyes looked at her.

"There you are."

"Go away," Robin cried.

"Oh no," the beast said.

Do not look at it, she thought, it is not real, it is not there, a spirit, but she felt her head, suddenly bursting with pressure, turned around to meet its gaze.

"Well," Mhara said softly from the door, "whatever are you?"

The animal looked up at him and whined. It gave a little purring laugh.

"So you're the one," it said. "Have you told her yet? What you are, and what they made you?"

Mhara crouched down on his heels and regarded the beast with some interest. He was smiling his vague smile but Robin saw his fists clench slowly. His spine was taut.

"Not yet, no."

The animal laughed again, and scratched one ear with its heavy, hind foot.

"Better do so then," it said. Mhara growled. His thin, amiable mouth drew back from the long, sharp incisors and narrowed the blue eyes to a slit. The cows, fretful, shuffled in their stalls. The animal bounded forward and Mhara rose and stepped swiftly from its path. It bounded through the door and was gone. He looked after it.

"Found a boat," was all that he said.

He helped Robin through the door and down a small set of steps, strewn with dried grass, onto the street. They were, she saw now, outside a long range of warehouses. From here, the go-downs looked like separate buildings, when in fact they were a single long barn. The derelict lot to the side of the sheds was blowing with grass, a pale golden haze in the darkness, and the night air was filled with pollen and dust. This, presumably, was where the beasts were kept in their city pasture, contravening the zoning regulations.

Holding onto Mhara, Robin hopped the remaining few yards to the bank of the canal. This was not the main Shaopeng canal itself, but a narrow tributary. The boat was roped roughly to a post. It was a small, nondescript craft, barely big enough for two people, a flat raft rising slightly to a squared prow and half-covered by a semicircle of canvas. It was the boat of a poor person. Robin's liberated social conscience protested.

"We can't take this. This must be all someone's got."

"It's all right," Mhara soothed. His eyes were shadows under the single wharf light. "I paid for it. Fifteen hundred dollars in gold."

"How much? Wherever did you get all that?"

"I don't think we should stand here, Robin. We should go."

Robin acquiesced as he jumped from the wharf and turned to lift her down. When he had untied the boat and had started its small inadequate engine, she said, "Who did you take the money from?"

Mhara squinted narrowly ahead. "I did not take it from anyone. I just happened to have it."

"What, you just 'happened to have' fifteen hundred bucks in gold?"

"Yes. When I found the boat, it was roped to another one, and I thought perhaps I shouldn't just take it, so I left the money in exchange. That's what you do, isn't it, with money? I don't understand it very well."

"Yes," Robin said, staring at him. "Basically, that's what you do." She was beginning to wonder whether she had done the right thing, going quietly along with him, her victim, whether she should not try to escape and raise the alarm, perhaps try and get her job back. But then Deveth was there, dead in the corporate morgue. Then she looked at him, the peaceful, oval face, the veiled eyes, a braid of hair tapping between his shoulder blades, and demon or no demon, job or no job, she knew she could do no such thing.

"You should sleep, Robin," Mhara said. "I will drive the boat." So she lay uncomfortably down on the damp slats, and watched the walls of the canal slide by, and the watchful face above her, gazing ahead.

By degrees, they came to the lock that joined the tributary of the canal to the main branch of the Jhenrai. Mhara left Robin in the boat and went to investigate the lock. Robin watched as the demon, moving economically, wound down the lock and then rejoined the little boat as it sailed down to meet the canal. To the east, the sky had taken on a watery tinge with the coming day. The lock opened and the boat slid out into the main channel. Mhara steered to the left, and when Robin looked up she met the yellow eyes of the creature that had been pursuing her, pacing along the wharf.

"You are very persistent," Mhara said, reprovingly.

"I have all the time in the world," it replied, and yawned, displaying jagged, tartar-stained teeth. It chuckled at the demon and trotted off toward the waking city.

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Framed