“Give it back!” A balding baker was yelling at Arvis, who cowered, retreating with a loaf of bread. She held the small round to her chest, clutching it like a baby.
“It’s mine!” Arvis shouted back with a fury so intense that spittle flew from her lips.
“What’s going on?” Sephryn stepped between them, which took a bit of courage given that the baker was menacingly holding a rolling pin.
The baker’s wife had a worried look on her face as she stood behind the table of baked goods with one arm on her young daughter’s shoulder.
With Sephryn’s arrival, the baker’s demeanor changed. His shoulders dropped, his face lengthened, and he took a long breath of—well, not relief. He didn’t look happy to see her. He appeared . . . what? Sephryn wasn’t certain.
“What’s going on?” she asked again.
“She stole that.”
“It’s mine,” Arvis snapped. “I paid for it.”
That caught Sephryn’s attention. “Arvis? How did you get the money?”
The woman opened her mouth and wiped the underside of her tongue over her lower lip, her eyes shifting left and right in countermeasure.
“Arvis?” Sephryn took a step nearer. “Where’d the money come from?”
“I . . . I don’t . . .”
“She never gave us any money,” Rodney declared. “She walked up and grabbed it. Took it right off my table.” He gestured to a handful of onlookers who had paused to watch the shouting. “They all saw her do it. Didn’t you?”
Sephryn saw most of them nod.
“Grabbed it without so much as a good morning and just walked off with it,” said a woman who stood a little too straight while holding a big basket in front of her. “Bold as could be. Didn’t hide it. Didn’t care that people saw.”
Sephryn turned back to Arvis. “Is that true?”
Arvis was still letting her eyes and tongue glide back and forth. “I—I did take it, but . . . but it was promised to me. They said I could have it.”
“We said no such thing.” The baker emphasized his exasperation by throwing his hands up. “That woman isn’t right in the head. Everyone knows she’s got a crack in that pot of hers.”
“Arvis,” Sephryn said softly, gently, “why would they give you a loaf of bread?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t remember.” Arvis frequently had difficulty recalling things. “But I know it’s mine. I’m sure they promised me. You believe me, don’t you?”
Sephryn sighed. She honestly didn’t believe Arvis. The baker was right. Everyone knew Arvis Dyer’s pot was cracked. The woman was disturbed in a number of ways. She lived on the street, never washed, shouted at and sometimes spat on people. Everyone except Sephryn avoided her when they could. And because Sephryn treated her like a human being, talked to her like a person, Arvis awarded Sephryn the title of Best Friend—a dubious honor since she was most certainly Arvis’s only friend.
The relationship did nothing for Sephryn’s reputation. In fact, it hampered her efforts to enact changes. Sephryn’s political enemies used Arvis and a few other undesirables as proof that Sephryn was unfit for leadership based on those she associated with. Fellow members of the board pressed her to publicly denounce these social anchors, but Sephryn could no more shun the disregarded than she could kick a stray dog that came begging. They suffered so much and asked for so little. People like Arvis Dyer just wanted to be acknowledged, to be seen and heard, to be a part of the world without having to dodge rocks and sticks.
“I’ll pay for it.” Sephryn reached down for her purse, which was a habitual part of her attire, but she’d been too preoccupied to tie it on. “Damn.”
She saw the look in Arvis’s eyes that revealed little hope of prying the bread away. In Sephryn’s head, she saw the two of them wrestling for it in the street and cringed.
“Allow me,” said a thin man in a simple off-white tunic and a tattered hood. He had been one of those in the thickening crowd, and he didn’t look the type to have money to spare. Yet without needing to ask the amount, he produced the proper number of coins and held them out.
“She’ll just steal another tomorrow,” the baker said.
“Everyone must deal with the future when it comes,” the man replied, holding out the coins, but his sight was focused on the baker’s wife and daughter. “And what joy can be purchased with but the price of a loaf of bread.”
The baker didn’t appear to like the way the man looked at his family. He sneered, snatched the coins, then turned back to his wife, who now clutched her child in much the same way that Arvis held onto the bread.
“Thank you,” Sephryn told the man, whom she had never seen before. He was neither old nor young. His simple tunic and cloak revealed no clue as to who he might be. Although Sephryn’s impression of him may have been the result of his unlikely generosity, she felt he had a compassionate face. “That was extremely kind.”
“I only wish I could do more,” he said. Then looking at Arvis as the woman and her bread began walking away, he added, “But I fear that would take a miracle.”
“Please excuse me,” Sephryn told the man as Arvis disappeared into the crowd.
She raced after Arvis. Catching her by the arm, Sephryn dragged the woman into a nearby alley. Arvis’s jaw was clenched, her eyes hard. She was braced and ready for a verbal beating.
“Arvis,” Sephryn began. “I need your help.”
The woman stared back, looking like a terrified turtle. Her shoulders were up, her head down, her eyes squinting despite the shadows.
“Did you hear me? I need your help.”
Slowly, the words seemed to seep in. “I don’t understand. The bread—I . . .”
“I don’t care about that, okay? I’m desperate.”
Arvis began nodding. “You need my help?”
“Yes.” Talking to Arvis was like yelling through a closed door.
“Okay.” Arvis blinked and emerged from her turtle’s shell.
“Will you do something for me?”
“I’ll do anything.”
Except give up a stolen loaf of bread, apparently.
“I’m serious, Arvis. This could be dangerous.”
The woman laughed so hard she nearly dropped her beloved bread. “Do you think I care about danger?” Arvis said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Every morning that I crawl out from under the butcher’s stairs is dangerous.” She paused, thought, then shook her head. “Actually, I was bitten by something last night, too. My whole life is filled with peril.” Arvis looked down at the bread. “And I was speaking the truth.” She held the loaf out to Sephryn. “I’d do anything for you.”
“I don’t want the bread, Arvis.”
“You don’t? Then neither do I. I don’t deserve it. I can’t take care of it.”
How much care does a loaf of bread require?
Sephryn pushed the loaf back into the woman’s arms. “Arvis, pay attention. Focus. Do you know any thieves?”
“Sure, lots.”
“I’m not talking about common cutpurses or highwaymen. I need a . . .” Sephryn didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. “A very good thief. One who can open a really difficult locked box.”
“You want Errol.”
“I do?”
Arvis nodded. “He’s the best.”
“Okay. Where do I find him?”
Arvis’s scraggily brows rose in objection. “You don’t. I’ll tell him you want a meeting.”
Sephryn shook her head. Centuries had taught her not to rely on anyone for something she could do herself. Most people were frustratingly incapable, giving up at the first sign of difficulty.
Surrender was a concept Sephryn didn’t understand. Literal centuries of fighting to defeat an unfair system, chip by meager chip, proved that. “There’s always a better way,” Bran used to say, a favorite declaration of his mother, but given Sephryn’s struggles against an unmovable and often indifferent ruler, she had changed it to “There’s always
another way.” When finding an obstacle, she went around it if possible and right over the top if necessary.
That was how she’d created the Imperial Council. When petitions were repeatedly ignored, she led protests. When three protesters were killed by imperial soldiers, she organized a citywide shutdown. For a week, there were no carts on the streets, no food in the markets, no workers on the docks, and perhaps most distressing of all to the emperor, no servants—even in the palace. That had been a tense standoff. People were terrified of starvation or imperial retribution. Sephryn couldn’t recall sleeping that week. She had to be everywhere, reassuring everyone that her plan would work. And only she could do that. The more crucial the outcome and the less time allowed, the more Sephryn felt compelled to take matters into her own hands. That counted triple with someone like Arvis. “I have to go. This is too important.”
Arvis shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way.”
“Fine. We’ll go together.”
“No,” Arvis said. “You can’t.”
“Of course I can. Is this place secret? I don’t care. Blindfold me, spin me around, knock me out and drag me.”
“No,” Arvis insisted.
Time was wasting, and Sephryn didn’t know how much sand was in her hourglass. She feared the Voice in her head, saying, Sorry. You took too long. Your boy is dead. So is the monk. All because you couldn’t—
“You don’t understand what’s at stake.” Sephryn lowered her voice to a no-nonsense level. “I’m not leaving this to you, Arvis. I can’t. You—for the empyre’s sake! You forget things all the time! You can’t even remember why you thought you were promised that bread!”
Arvis shrank, the turtle’s shell rising again. Sunlight bouncing into the alley glinted in her eyes, exposing a well of tears. Still, she didn’t give in. Arvis sucked in a short breath. “No,” she repeated softly.
“Why not?”
“It isn’t a nice place.”
“I don’t care if—”
“I won’t let you go there. It’s not for people like you.” Arvis wiped an eye clear. “They can’t burn ash or topple a fallen tree. Don’t you see? I can’t be hurt any more than I am. But you can. You’re still whole, still breakable. And you’re a good person, pure and decent. I don’t care what you say. I won’t let them hurt you.” She wiped the other eye. “I’ll find Errol. Tell him you want to hire him.” Arvis began to move away, slipping deeper into the alley.
“Let him know I’ll pay any price!” Sephryn shouted to Arvis as she began to run.
“Okay. I’ll say that you’ll sleep with him.”
“What? No. Wait, Arvis?”
But the woman had turned a corner and was gone.
By the time Seymour returned home, darkness had fallen, and Sephryn had snapped a sandal strap from pacing the floor. She hadn’t bothered to light a lamp or start the fire, and the room was dark and growing chilly. She’d lived in that house in the little square for centuries, but for the first time, she noticed how dark it could get—dark and frightening.
Yesterday, long before this same time, someone or perhaps something had entered this place, murdered Mica, and painted on the wall with her blood.
Sephryn had never lived alone. For ages, she’d been with her parents. After moving to Percepliquis, she had been a renter, then a landlord, then a shelter for an army of the needy, but always there was at least one other person.
An empty house is a lonely place, an oversized coffin with furniture and windows.
She was relieved when Seymour entered, giving her more to look at than the dark, more to hear than her heartbeat, and more to meditate on than her own horrific thoughts that returned to her son no matter what she tried to focus on.
Seymour crept in, peering around the edge of the door. Without a lamp burning, he must have expected to find another gory scene, one that starred her, or at least her foot, or a hand, or a severed head, but the bloody message would be for him:
YOUR TURN, SEYMOUR—DON’T FAIL ME LIKE SEPHRYN DID.
REMEMBER, DON’T TELL ANYONE!
“Find anything?” she asked even before he cleared the door.
The monk jumped. “Oh! Ah, no.” He drew back his hood and caught his breath. “Sorry. I didn’t. To be honest, there’s a lot down there. Boxes and boxes stuffed full of scrolls, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of containers. It will take me weeks, perhaps months. And that’s if there is some sort of order, which from what I’ve seen so far is doubtful. Quite frankly, it’s a mess. The parchments are dry and cracking. Some are too far gone to read. Others I think have turned to dust. Those were the ones near this gutter in the back where water seeped in through the foundation. And there isn’t any light. They don’t allow lanterns or candles for obvious reasons.”
“No light?” She looked at the black glass of the window. “It’s been dark for hours. What were you doing all this time?”
Seymour hung his head. “I got lost on the way back. I missed the little street with the mask shop.”
“Ebonydale.”
“Right, that one. I ended up wandering past the palace again. That’s when I knew I was way off course. I doubled back three times, but in the dark, everything looks so different. This city is a maze.” He looked at the hearth, then at the pile of wood beside it. “Why no fire? Getting cold, don’t you think?” He rubbed his arms briskly.
Sephryn shrugged.
“May I?” He pointed at the hearth.
“I couldn’t care less.”
Kneeling down, Seymour began brushing the ash out and loading new logs. “How about you? Find any help?”
“I don’t know.” She watched him methodically prepare the fire. Something about the orderly manner of the operation made her feel better.
The whole world isn’t lost in chaos, just my little corner of it.
“I talked to Arvis. She said she would ask a thief named Errol to contact me. Said he was the best—as if Arvis Dyer, professional beggar and all-around lunatic, could tell the difference.”
“You didn’t have her take you to this person?”
She glared at the monk.
“Just asking.” He quickly returned to the task of fire building.
“She refused!” Sephryn exploded. Throwing up both hands, she began pacing. “I spoke to her around noon—right after I dropped you off at the records office. What is it now?” She slapped the window frame. “Midnight?”
“It’s not that late. I don’t think.”
“It’s been hours! Hours!”
Seymour cringed at her raised voice.
“And I don’t know if she’s even talked to anyone. I’ve been sitting here waiting—and for what? I have no idea!”
Seymour spotted her broken sandal. “You haven’t actually been sitting, I suspect.”
She looked at the broken strap, just now noticing it for the first time. “By the Unholy Twins!”
“Unholy Twins?”
She waved a hand at him. “It’s something my mother used to say. And that’s another thing.” She stomped her heel on the floor, making the row of ceramic spice bowls on the meal table chirp. “On top of it all, I’m becoming my mother!”
Seymour looked up at the bow above the mantel. “Moya was a legendary hero. There are worse things to—”
“My mother was a bitch!” Sephryn also looked at the bow as if Moya herself sat there grinning. “She treated everyone like crap. My father is the nicest person you will ever meet. He’s Fhrey—a full-blooded Instarya warrior.”
“Yes, I know all about Tekchin of the Galantians. He’s featured in The Book of Brin.”
“Right, well, he doesn’t age much. At least he doesn’t look like it. I’m almost eight hundred and fifty, and I look like his older sister. He’s over seventeen hundred. He’ll probably live another thousand years. My mother . . .” She paused and shook her head. “Moya was in her seventies when she died. She had been beautiful in her day, but like everyone, she got old. Near the end she was wrinkled
like a shriveled prune, and her white hair was so thin that you could see her scalp. Still, my father . . . I mean, you’re right. He’s a hero. Everyone knows it, and he looks the part, too. His bronze armor still fits. The guy is as dashing as the day he met her.” She shook her head. “Not once did he consider leaving, even though she treated him so horribly. Screamed, threw things, but he never once . . .” She paused. “I think she resented that he was still young, still handsome, while she had lost all her beauty. Or maybe . . . oh, I don’t know. They were never formally married, not like people do now. One day she told him to leave. She was drunk, of course, but the tone was so cruel. My father shrugged it off. So she asked him flat out why he was still with her.”
Seymour had paused in his construction to look up. “What did he say?”
“That she was still beautiful to him. He reminded her that he had died for her once and would do so again. That’s the sort of person he is. Later he made excuses for her. Tried to convince me that she didn’t mean the terrible things she said and did. He explained that my mother hated herself, not him, and despised being a burden. Moya was a great hero of a forgotten age, and by then she was too weak to draw Audrey. After a while, she became too feeble to get out of bed. Maybe anyone would be bitter, but I hate how she treated him near the end. You know, it has been hundreds of years now, but my father is still alone. He keeps busy teaching young Instarya how to sword fight. I told him he should find someone new, that being alone wasn’t healthy. But he won’t even consider replacing Moya. He told me, ‘There isn’t anyone else, and there never will be.’ Then he laughed and said, ‘After I die, I don’t want to explain myself to a woman who can shoot a bow the way your mother could.’ He was so good to her, and she was a horror to him. So maybe you can see why I’d rather not become her. Everyone has to pay, but heroes—I think, they have a higher price than everyone else. And maybe they never erase their debts.”
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