A Bait of Dreams Read Free Page A

to lie down. But she turned and went out. She walked carefully, slowly, over the uneven planks, heading aimlessly toward the edge of the nightquarter and a familiar cookshop.
    Gleia strolled out of the cookshop feeling more like herself with two meat pies and a cup of cha warming her middle, a third pie in her hand. She sank her teeth into the pie, tore off a piece and drifted along the street chewing slowly, savoring the blended flavors, watching the people move past her.
    Horli was completely gone in the west with only a stain of red to mark her passing, while the biggest moon Aab was thrusting over the rooflines to the east, her cool pale light cutting through inky shadows. Gleia knew she should get back to her room. There were too many dangers for a woman alone here. Sighing, she began working her way through the noisy crowd toward the slum quarter. She finished the pie, wiped her greasy hands on a bit of paper and dropped the paper in the gutter for the scavengers to pick up in their dawn sweeps through the streets.
    The crowd thinned as she left the commercial area and moved into the slum that held a few decrepit stables and row on row of ancient dwellings converted into boarding houses. Some were empty with staring black windows where the glass was gone—stolen or broken by derelicts who could find no other place to sleep. One by one these abandoned houses burned down, leaving behind fields of weeds and piles of broken, blackened boards.
    Gleia looked up at the gray, weathered front of Miggela’s place. She was tired to the point of giddiness but she felt such a reluctance to go inside that she couldn’t force her foot onto the warped lower step; instead she went past the house and turned into the alley winding back from the side street. Moving quickly, eyes flicking warily about, she trotted past the one-room hovels where the small scurrying scavengers lived anonymous lives and desperate bashers hid out, waiting for sailors to come stumbling back to their ships. She went around the end of a warehouse, the last in the line of those circling the working front where the bay was dredged. The water out here was too shallow to accommodate any but the smallest ships.
    She saw a small neat oceangoer, a chis-makka, one of the independent gypsy ships that went up and down the coast as the winds and their cargoes dictated. The ship was dark, the crew apparently on liberty in one of the taverns whose lights and noise enlivened the waterfront some distance in toward the center. Out here it was quiet, with ravellings of fog beginning to thicken over the water. As the waves slapped regularly at the piles the evening on-shore breeze made the rigging on board the chis-makka creak and groan.
    Gleia edged to the far side of the wharf and kicked off her sandals. Then she ran along the planks, bent over, making no more sound than a shadow. She slid over the end of the wharf and pulled herself onto one of the crossbars nailed from pile to pile under the broad planks. Ignoring the coating of slime and drying seaweed, she sat with her back against a pile, her legs dangling in space, her feet moving back and forth just above the rocking water.
    For a long while she sat there, the sickening emotional mix settling away until she felt calm and at peace again. The fog continued to thicken, sounds coming to her over the water with an eerie clarity.
    Something pushed against her thigh. She remembered the Ranga Eye that had thrown her so disastrously in the morning. As she reached into her pocket, the water broke in a neat splash and a glinting form came out of it, swooping onto the crossbar beside her. In her surprise she nearly toppled off into the agitated water, but the seaborn caught hold of her and steadied her.
    Her face almost nosing into his chest, she saw the water pour from his gill slits and the slits clamp shut. The moonlight struggling through the fog touched his narrow young face and reflected off his pointed