Thick as Thieves

by Megan Whalen Turner

  I thought it quite likely the priest spent his day saying the same things over and over, but the Attolian, standing on the lip of the well, was suitably awed. We spent an hour or two standing in line. It was magically cool, even in the hot sun. To me, the priest said, “Your journey will take you farther than you imagine”—a safe prophecy even if my journey had only been across the city. The Attolian looked a little mystified, and I asked what he’d heard. He repeated the words as he’d understood them: “Remember Immakuk. Pay the fastener.” I tried to figure out what the priest had really said and the Attolian had misheard, but I couldn’t puzzle it out.

  Then, as we were climbing out of the well, the Attolian’s sandal strap broke, and he wanted to look for a leatherworker to repair it. We walked through the markets nearby and found a craftsman with a booth and a collection of slaves at work on benches under an awning. The Attolian handed over his shoe, then walked on one bare foot to a wineshop just down the street to wait in the shade while it was fixed. The wineshop was on the opposite side of the street from the leatherworker’s shop, and I could watch the slaves at their labor, my eye on the one who had the Attolian’s sandal.

  He sat at a slightly finer bench, with a cushion underneath him. Usually a head slave like this one has authority over the others, but I wondered if it was a recent promotion that had made the other slaves jealous. They treated him so abominably that I could see it from across the open ground between us. As I watched, they jostled his elbow, pulled his work askew, and, while he was distracted, substituted a broken tool for his awl.

  When he ruefully offered his broken awl up to his master, the man smacked him on the head and regretted aloud the money he had wasted on a trained slave when he could have had an untrained one doing better work by a month’s end. That ended the mystery and should have ended my interest; the slave was new and resented by the others. Still, I liked the look of the new slave and didn’t particularly like the snake-eyed amusement of the most pernicious of his tormentors. When the Attolian went to retrieve his repaired sandal, I exercised my new authority as a free man and pointed out to the leatherworker the drama his slaves were acting out in front of him.

  The leatherworker turned to look ominously over his slaves. The new one threw me a grateful glance before he hunched back down at his bench. The leader of the tormenters was more bold, and he stared at me with a look that would have boiled lead, but when I stared back, he had to drop his eyes.

  It was a trivial thing, and I was used to wielding far more power than this. I had bought and sold slaves for my master and sent miscreants to be punished and had occasionally rewarded those who served my master well. But then, I had been wielding my master’s power for him. This was my first exercise of my own authority as a free man, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the feeling.

  By this time it was too late to be leaving the city. We agreed that we would buy our provisions and find an inn to rent us a room for the night. Thinking no more of the leatherworker, we walked the market stalls, buying up dried meat and fruit and grain that could be stewed quickly in a pot, which we also purchased. The Attolian carried all this, having declined my offer to take the parcels as we made our way down the streets, looking for a likely place to spend the night.

  As we walked through the twilight, we saw stepping out of an inn doorway just ahead of us the slave from the leatherworker’s stall. The Attolian recognized him before I did and stopped in the street. I saw him shift his packages to leave his right hand free, and my heart pounded in my chest. Only then did the leatherworker’s slave come close enough for me to make out his face and then close enough to speak without being overheard. He addressed the Attolian, quickly and quietly. “The Namreen are in the city looking for an escaped slave, a Setran—with a foreigner—they have posted a bill in the judicial square.” He looked at me. “Few would have noticed Bahlum’s tricks, and only another slave or a freedman would have mentioned them to my master.” He ducked his head politely, as if he’d done no more than offer us a greeting in passing. Then he was gone.

  Both the Attolian and I continued walking as if the message were of no particular importance. In unspoken agreement, we passed by the inn where the slave had probably just made inquiries that would draw the landlord’s attention to us if we were to stop in so soon after he left.

  “There are other foreigners in the city,” said the Attolian. That was true. They were quite common. But an Attolian and a Setran were a less common mix. And just because the slave had said “foreigner” didn’t mean the Namreen hadn’t more specifically said “Attolian.”

  “We may still make it through the city gates, and better to try now with the twilight to disguise us,” said the Attolian. “We should try the main gate, though. It will be more crowded.”

  I followed, thinking of the bill the slave had said was posted in the judicial square, where the punishments authorized by the empire’s courts were carried out. We would cross through the square on the shortest route back to the main gate. If the Attolian passed the bill, he would see the printing that declared me a murderer, and then the fat would be in the fire. I would not be able to pass off the official description of my crime as an exaggeration born of rumormongering.

  Though he showed no sign of haste, the Attolian had picked up speed, and I hurried to catch up.

  “We’ll need water,” I said, which was true. We’d left our waterskins with the mules after agreeing that we needn’t buy the higher-priced water inside the city—supposedly blessed by Ne Malia. We’d intended to buy cheaper water out on the road or wait until we reached a public well.

  “We can still get our skins filled at the stable,” said the Attolian.

  “It will be faster to pay for new skins with Ne Malia’s water than refill ours.” If the Namreen were nearby, we wanted to leave as quickly as possible, and crossing the city by way of the water sellers would keep us well away from the judicial square.

  The Attolian didn’t agree, and I had to persist even though I knew I might be arousing his suspicions. We had reached the edge of the square before I convinced him to turn aside toward the street that led to the water sellers, and then, fool that I am, I let my eyes be drawn to the bills pasted on the side of the steps leading down from the governor’s justice building to the plaza. To me, they were incomprehensible blurs, and I immediately pulled my gaze away, but it was too late. The Attolian noticed and turned to look as well.

  “Never mind, Kamet,” he said. “No one but that slave would connect you and me with the notice, and we’ll be outside the gates in no time at all.”

  I nodded my head sharply a few times, thanking the gods he wasn’t calling me a murderer and a liar. “Yes,” I said, “everything will be fine.”

  “I’m sorry we came into the city,” he said, blaming himself for bringing us to see the stepwell instead of blaming me for giving us away. “I thought we were well ahead of any pursuers from Perf. I did not think we would leave a trail in a city this size. I took a stupid risk.”

  I should have apologized—it was my fault as much as his—but I didn’t. I was too busy thinking of the bill, wondering if he could have seen it and not understood its implications. Maybe my bill had been posted on the other side of the stairs and he hadn’t seen it. Maybe he had seen it but couldn’t read it from that distance. Maybe he couldn’t read at all—the bills were read aloud every week because many people couldn’t. Very likely he was as illiterate as most Attolians. I breathed again. He hadn’t yet learned how I had deceived him.

  At the main gate we separated, each of us tagging along in a different crowd. Once we were through, I turned to walk along the city wall, and the Attolian followed. When we reached the stables, I felt him take my elbow and kept walking. I could see the Namreen in their distinctive vests and didn’t need him to explain—the mules and our saddlebags were lost to us. It was a good thing, after all, that we’d bought Ne Malia’s water in fresh skins. We walked on in the growing darkness away from the
city on the road leading west, among the farmers and merchants who had come to the city markets for the day and were on their way home.

  “I can be silent if you can get a place for us,” the Attolian whispered in my ear.

  I started onward, looking for a likely group to approach, but his hand on my arm slowed me. “You must not give us away,” he added. It was said without censure, but his meaning was clear. I had revealed too much in Koadester. My pride wanted to remind him we shouldn’t have gone into the city to begin with, but I swallowed it and instead led the way through the discrete groups of people around us, looking for an opening to join one.

  My problem was a lack of familiarity with ordinary free people. I knew how to be a humble slave around my master and how to be an arrogant slave as I did my master’s work. None of that would help me now to pass as a free man. I thought about how the Attolian treated people, but I didn’t have the bulk to move with his confidence. I thought of the leatherworker dealing affably with the Attolian, but his demeanor came with age. I considered the tailor Gessiret, back in the city, and his long-suffering response when I had retrieved the money I had given him the day Nahuseresh died. The tailor hadn’t complained to me, but I didn’t doubt he had complained to someone that day—his wife or his mistress, or a friend in a wineshop—just as slaves complained to each other. Everyone complained. Complaint was universal.

  I picked a farmer walking beside the horse that was pulling his two-wheeled cart. I assumed it was his wife and daughter traveling with him. Slowing my pace just a little, I fell in next to him and nodded when he briefly looked up. “A good day?” I asked. “Or more money going out in taxes than comes in for profits?”

  As I’d hoped, the prompt was all that was required. We walked together—the silent Attolian, the farmer, trailed by his wife and daughter, and me—while the farmer cataloged his woes and railed against the officials who ran the markets in the city and took away his money as fast as he made it. I only needed to nod my head and say something agreeable as it grew darker and darker around us. Nothing could have been more companionable than all of us traveling down the road until at last the farmer came to a turnoff and we bid him good-night. No one would have guessed that we didn’t share the farmer’s interest in city management. That we had taken every opportunity to glance behind us, checking for the light of torches issuing from the city gates. That our ears perked up at the sound of hoofbeats, no matter how slow moving.

  Once the farmer had left us, we continued only a little farther and then, under the cover of the ever-blacker night, picked our way over the road’s drainage ditch and a low stone wall onto a freshly plowed field. The land around Koadester was green and profitable, not dry like the plateaus farther south or on the road to Perf. Afraid of leaving footprints in the tilled dirt, we walked along the harder ground near the stone walls, moving away from the road until we found a cluster of pomegranate bushes the Attolian thought it was safe to sleep underneath. We crept in, the branches scratching at our exposed skin, until we were confident we wouldn’t be seen as soon as the sun came up. Then we settled down for the night.

  I lay looking up through the branches at the starry sky striped with filmy white clouds like bed-curtains and a few denser clouds like pillows, thinking of the comfortable beds in the inns back at Koadester. I’d been dreaming of them on the road from Traba. I admitted, if just to myself, that the hard ground I slept on was not the Attolian’s fault. I had wanted to go into the city, too.

  We’d seen no sign of the Namreen on the road. Heard no rumors about them from other travelers. They hadn’t set out after us from Perf and must have come up directly from Menle. I should have considered that possibility, but I’d been imagining them following in our tracks, as if I were leaving a line across the landscape behind me like a crack in a china cup. I’d only been looking over my shoulder, not thinking of the emperor’s command as a stone thrown in a puddle, scattering drops in all directions, sending the Namreen east to Perf, north to Koadester. Were they in Zabrisa looking for me now? Were they at Iannis on the Southern Ocean? We were lucky. We could have met them on the road with no warning at all, and if we hadn’t gone into the city, we might have. Better sleeping in a field on the hard ground than in the Namreen’s tender care.

  “They are very determined,” the Attolian said beside me. I knew he was mulling over the same thoughts.

  In the early-morning light we crossed more fields until we came to a narrow footpath that paralleled the road we had left the night before. We hiked all day at our best pace, continuing into mostly uncultivated land. The ground was flat and open all around us, and I felt very exposed. There were no other travelers to hide among. The only comfort was that people on horseback were easy to see from a long distance, and all of them were far away on the main road. Eventually our narrow route curved toward the north, where the land rose as the scrub grew thicker and higher. Ahead were the first of the hills that lay between us and Zaboar, and our path soon joined a wagon track that skirted their southern flank. We stopped there for a rest and to eat.

  “The trade route to the north is behind us now,” said the Attolian, thinking aloud. “And it will be crowded with Namreen. If we continue to go west on this track, there may be some smaller passages over the hills that we can find. It’s a risk, as we might be seen, but we will move faster through the hills if we find a beaten path going north. I don’t think we should go overland unless we have to. What do you think, Kamet?” Flattered that he thought my opinion worthwhile, I agreed. The hills ahead of us looked to be rocky and filled with canyons and chasms, just the sort of place to get lost in. I hoped we would find an easier route, and I still had no idea how we were going to get over the Taymets, which would make these hills look like ripples in a blanket by comparison.

  We hurried, the Attolian keeping an eye out and sending us to cover any time he saw or heard other travelers. The wagon track was for local traffic, and there was very little of that. In the evening he found a hollow and said we could have a small fire, but it must be out before full dark. I asked if we’d continue after we ate, but he said there was no point—we’d likely pass any trail over the hills without seeing it.

  As the grain and dried vegetables were bubbling in our cookpot, the Attolian said, as if it were no more than an idle observation, “My king thinks that the emperor must attack the Little Peninsula or die.”

  “He is dying either way.” That was an open secret. The emperor had hidden the signs of his disease, but the Tethys lesions only worsen over time.

  “His heir, I meant,” said the Attolian. “Once he becomes emperor, my king says he will not live out the year if he cannot conquer the Little Peninsula.”

  I eyed him in some consternation while I considered his words.

  “My king says the empire has absorbed all the little countries like your Setra to the east and is at a standstill in the Unshak Mountains. It cannot expand south beyond the Isthmus—not across the desert—and my king says that if the emperor fails to enlarge his borders, there will be an internal war to replace him. If the expansion can be stopped, even for a very short time, the empire will break apart under its own weight.”

  My king says . . . What a parrot, I thought, feeling worldly-wise. I knew better than the Attolian the reach of the empire.

  “My king,” said the Attolian again—and then he stopped, waiting for me to realize that he knew just what I was thinking. He was amused, not offended, and I wasn’t afraid, but I was a little embarrassed that he read my mind so easily.

  “I am sure your king is a wise man,” I said apologetically, willing to consider that my prejudices had blinded me to his finer points.

  “My king,” said the Attolian, with a very serious expression, “likes to pretend that he doesn’t recognize the Mede ambassador. Whenever they meet, the ambassador has to introduce himself—with all of his diplomatic titles and his qualifications.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” And when I stared, aghast a
t this juvenile and frankly rude behavior in a head of state, he added, “Sometimes twice a day.”

  “You lie,” I said, certain he was mocking me.

  He held up a hand. “My sacred oath.” He didn’t seem the least bit mortified.

  I had been giving the Attolian king’s idea serious attention, but now rejected it. There was always unrest, of course. Fear of the poor and of slave revolts, the occasional corn riot. Demagogues rose and fell, and the empire was always cutting down one or another. It would be possible, I supposed, for an outsider to see disruption and think the empire might collapse, but it was too all encompassing, too well sewn together to come apart. As each smaller nation was absorbed, it was integrated into the whole, enjoying all the benefits of being in the empire. It would be the same with Attolia, I was sure.

  “The Little Peninsula cannot hold off the empire even for a short time,” I said.

  “We have the Greater Powers on our side.”

  He was naive.

  “That only means that one of the Greater Powers of the Continent will control the Peninsula instead.” I shrugged to indicate the unstoppable nature of this process. After time spent with the caravan guards and with the Attolian, I was more aware of the work and of the cost, but I still did not doubt the superiority of the Medes and the inevitability of their success.

  “There are advantages to the empire,” I reassured him. “Stability and peace, an increase in trade, the exchange of art, advances in medicine.” A decent sewer system, I almost added, but bit my tongue in time.

  “Is that how you felt when the king of Setra gave over his country to the empire?” asked the Attolian.

  I had been many years a slave by then. When the empire had put down the raiders who had taken me from my home, I had been happy to hear it. “Look at the Little Peninsula with its constant wars,” I said. “It obstructs the land route between the Continent and the empire. Every time a squabble erupts, it disrupts the trade. Every time a land war flares up, the piracy on sea routes doubles. All the civilized nations want is a reliable trade route. They want something safer in the windy season than sailing. It’s not about conquering, it’s about business and prosperity. Prosperity for everybody.”