Why?

I want the truth, Susannah repeated, and then fell silent, refusing to respond to any more of Mia’s questions. And when yet another grinning little man approached her with yet another flash-thing, Mia’s nerve broke. Right now just getting across the hotel lobby looked like more than she could manage on her own; how was she supposed to get all the way to this Dixie Pig place? After so many years in

(Fedic)

(Discordia)

(the Castle on the Abyss)

to be among so many people made her feel like screaming. And after all, why not tell the dark-skinned woman what little she knew? She—Mia, daughter of none, mother of one—was firmly in charge. What harm in a little truth-telling?

All right, she said. I’ll do as you ask, Susannah or Odetta or whoever you are. Just help me. Get me out of here.

Susannah Dean came forward.

EIGHT

There was a women’s restroom adjacent to the hotel bar, around the corner from the piano player. Two of the yellow-skinned, black-haired ladies with the tipped eyes were at the basins, one washing her hands, the other fixing her hair, both of them twittering in their birdy-lingo. Neither paid any attention to the kokujin lady who went past them and to the stalls. A moment later they left her in blessed silence except for the faint music drifting down from the overhead speakers.

Mia saw how the latch worked and engaged it. She was about to sit down on the toilet seat when Susannah said: Turn it inside out.

What?

The shirt, woman. Turn it inside out, for your father’s sake!

For a moment Mia didn’t. She was too stunned.

The shirt was a rough-woven callum-ka, the sort of simple pullover favored by both sexes in the rice-growing country during cooler weather. It had what Odetta Holmes would have called a boatneck. No buttons, so yes, it could very easily be turned inside out, but—

Susannah, clearly impatient: Are you going to stand there commala-moon all day? Turn it inside out! And tuck it into your jeans this time.

W … Why?

It’ll give you a different look, Susannah replied promptly, but that wasn’t the reason. What she wanted was a look at herself below the waist. If her legs were Mia’s then they were quite probably white legs. She was fascinated (and a little sickened) by the idea that she had become a kind of tu-tone halfbreed.

Mia paused a moment longer, fingertips rubbing the rough weave of the shirt above the worst of the bloodstains, which was over her left breast. Over her heart. Turn it inside out! In the lobby, a dozen half-baked ideas had gone through her head (using the scrimshaw turtle to fascinate the people in the shop had probably been the only one even close to workable), but simply turning the damned thing inside out hadn’t been one of them. Which only showed, she supposed, how close to total panic she had been. But now …