The Burning City

by Jerry Pournelle

  Kinless and Lordkin alike cheered.

  “But now there’s a water shortage, and it’s very hard on the horses and oxen,” Samorty was saying. “Delivery is difficult. So next Mother’s Day will be special. There’ll be nine weeks’ rations and some other extras.”

  The Lordkin cheered.

  “And that will have to last for two Mother’s Days,” Samorty was saying. “And you’ll all have to come to Peacegiven Square to get it, because we won’t be able to bring everything to the usual distribution places.”

  Crowd noises were drowning out Samorty. He waved, and three magicians came on the stage. They made things appear and disappear. One called Shanda up on the stage and put her in a box, and when it was opened, she was gone. Whandall looked for her, but he couldn’t see her.

  Wanshig came up behind him. “Lord Pelzed isn’t happy,” he said, but there was a laugh in his voice. “He’s got all of Serpent’s Walk out picking pockets now, but we got the best. Good work.”

  The magicians made a vine grow.

  “I know how to make Pelzed happy,” Whandall said.

  “How?”

  “He can meet the Lords.” “You don’t know any Lords.”

  “I know who they are,” Whandall said. “That was Lord Samorty who made the speech—”

  “Everybody knows that.”

  “And the man over there talking to the magicians is Lord Qirinty. He’s a magician himself, or at least a pickpocket, and the fat one in armor with the Lordsmen, that’s Lord Quintana. The pretty lady serving soup is his wife.”

  “So you know who they are.”

  Whandall hadn’t heard Pelzed come up behind them. “What else do you know?” Pelzed demanded. “Wanshig, you didn’t share. We’ll have to talk about that.”

  Wanshig looked worried.

  “Lord Pelzed, I heard the Lords wanted a Lordkin leader to talk to,” Whandall said.

  Pelzed looked crafty. “Say more.”

  “They want the most powerful leader in this part of the city,” Whandall said. “But I don’t know what they want from him.”

  “That’s me,” Pelzed said. “Go tell them.”

  Whandall hadn’t thought this out far enough. “Uh…”

  “Do this for me and we’ll forget what happened this morning,” Pelzed said. He pointed up on the stage. “See that guy?”

  “Foreigner,” Wanshig said. “I’ve seen him before—”

  “He’s a teller,” Pelzed said. “If I meet the Lords he’ll tell everyone else. Whandall, how sure are you about their wanting to talk to us?”

  Whandall thought about it. They hadn’t wanted to talk to the Lordkin, but they thought they’d have to, only Whandall didn’t dare tell Pelzed that. “I heard them plan it out over dinner,” Whandall said.

  “Whandall’s a great sneak,” Wanshig said.

  “I remember,” Pelzed said. “Well, go tell them I’m here.”

  “No, you come with me, Lord Pelzed,” Whandall said. “Shig, you come too.” He led them back behind the tent. As he’d hoped, Shanda was there. Whandall bowed as he’d seen kinless do. “Lady, this is Pelzed, the leader of Serpent’s Walk.”

  The little girl looked surprised, then smiled. For a moment Whandall was afraid she’d wink or grin, but she just said, “Pleased to meet you. I’ll go tell my father you’re here.”

  She came back with Samorty, who invited Pelzed past the guards. No one invited Whandall and Wanshig, so they went back to watch the show. When Pelzed came out, he had a new burning glass and was very proud. He showed it to everyone. Then he found Whandall.

  “You called me Pelzed. Not Lord Pelzed,” he said.

  Whandall had thought that through. “I thought the Lords might not like hearing you called Lord. They can make you disappear, Lord Pelzed,” he said.

  “You really have been in Lords’ houses.”

  Whandall nodded. He already regretted letting them know.

  “What did they want?” Wanshig asked.

  Pelzed waved his hands. “It was important. Labor peace. How to organize for the new distribution on Mother’s Day. They’re going to let more female hemp plants grow in some of the fields. Important stuff I can’t talk about. There’ll be a meeting tonight. Be there, Wanshig… Whandall. Be there.”

  The meetinghouse had stone walls but no roof. There had been a roof, but it hadn’t been strong enough. One night the men of Serpent’s Walk had climbed onto the roof; no one remembered why. The beams broke. The kinless family who had once lived in the house couldn’t be found, so Serpent’s Walk couldn’t meet there when it rained. It didn’t rain much anyway.

  Whandall and Wanshig had to tell everyone how Lord Pelzed was summoned to meet with the Lords, while no one from Bull Pizzle or any other band had been called. Only Pelzed.

  They spoke of the new Mother’s Day. Everyone would be in one place. They’d need all the women to collect and carry, and all the men to protect the women and their gifts.

  “It’ll be safe in the square,” Pelzed’s advisors said. “Lordsmen will see to that. But outside—”

  “We need two bands,” Pelzed said. “One to protect our stuff. Another to see what we can gather from Bull Pizzle.”

  Bull Pizzle will be doing the same thing, Whandall thought.

  Pelzed appointed leaders. Wanshig would be one of them. Whandall thought he’d be in Wanshig’s band, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t fight yet, so he was afraid he’d be assigned to help the women carry. That would be shameful. But the meeting was over before anyone told him what to do.

  When everyone else was leaving, Pelzed made Whandall and Wanshig stay behind. Pelzed sat at the head of the table, with guards standing behind him. “Sit down,” he invited. “We’ll have some tea.”

  Everyone knew about Pelzed’s tea. It was made with hemp leaves, and enough of it left you babbling. Pelzed sipped at the hot brew. Wanshig gulped his. Whandall sipped, just keeping up with Pelzed. It made his head spin, just a little.

  “So. You have been to Lord’s Town.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Whandall admitted.

  “And you brought back fine clothes. What else is there that we can gather?”

  “Everything,” Whandall said. “But you’ll die of it. They have magic. Lord Pelzed, they have stoves inside their houses! The fires don’t go out. Yangin-Atep…” He didn’t want to say it, not here where Yangin-Atep ruled.

  “I saw the Lordsmen in their armor,” Whandall said. “And big swords, and spears. Every night a Lord puts on armor like that, and so do the Lordsmen, and they go on watch.”

  “Where do they go?” Pelzed demanded.

  “Everywhere. They call it the watch, because they watch for gatherers. Not just in the Lordshills. There’s a village outside the walls, and they watch there too. And they have magicians.” How much could he tell Pelzed? Whandall was trapped between loyalties. He owed Pelzed, he belonged to the Placehold, but the future he longed for might be with the Lords.

  “We saw the magic,” Miracos said. He was the advisor who stood at Pelzed’s right. Sometimes he spoke aloud and sometimes he whispered in Pelzed’s ear. “Vines growing. Fireballs.” “And I saw the Black Pit,” Whandall said.

  Everyone wanted to know about the Pit. Whandall told them as much as he dared. No one believed him.

  “There’s a wall around Lordshills,” Miracos said. “But there’s no wall around those big kinless houses? Lord’s Town?”

  “There is in back.” Whandall tried to explain about the little squares, tables and plants in the middle, houses around them, walls behind the houses. “And the watch is there.”

  “This watch,” Pelzed asked. “Swords. Armor. Kinless?”

  “I think so. It’s hard to tell with those helmets.”

  “Kinless with armor. Weapons,” Miracos said. “Bad.”

  “They never come here,” Pelzed said. “Lords do what Lords do.” He made it sound profound. “But tell us more about those kinless homes. What’s there? What can we g
ather?”

  Whandall described some of what he had seen, shops with pots and beads and cloth, clothing hung on lines, people sitting in the squares drinking from cups and talking.

  “No Lordkin there,” Miracos said. “Maybe we could go live there.”

  “Lords won’t let us,” Pelzed said.

  “Lords always telling us what to do,” one of the guards said. “Like to show them my knife. Right up them.”

  “Lords make the kinless work,” Pelzed said. “If you could do that, if I could, we’d have a roof! Whandall, go back. Take someone with you. Wanshig. Take Wanshig; bring me back something. Go learn the way.”

  “I heard three bands went to the Lordshills together to gather,” Wanshig said. “Three together, and none of them ever came back. Dirty Bird was powerful before that happened.”

  “You scared to go with Whandall?” Pelzed demanded.

  “Yes, Lord. Anybody would be scared. Whandall’s the only one I ever met who went into Lord’s Town and came out. Only one I ever heard of doing it.”

  “Not talking about inside the walls,” Pelzed said. “Lords are Lords. Leave Lords alone. But those kinless houses out there, that’s different. Go look, Whandall. When everyone’s carrying stuff, the way will be clear; you can bring things back. Go see what you can find. I’d like me a shirt like yours…”

  Whandall was glad of being small. His shirt wouldn’t fit Pelzed. But if a little Lord’s girl could keep what was hers, maybe a Lordsman could too.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Serpent’s Walk was coming to know a certain visiting looker. After the carnival, everyone knew his face.

  The boys knew his names: he was Tras Preetror of Condigeo. Tras fascinated them. He spent the whole day in idleness, like a Lordkin. The kinless liked him even when he was with Lordkin, because Tras paid for what he took.

  Not always, though. Sometimes he told stories instead.

  He would walk away from a fight, or run, but sometimes he talked his way out. Wanshig got close enough to see Zatch the Knife accost Tras. He reported that they were presently talking like brothers long separated; that Tras Preetror shared a flask with Zatch. Zatch took nothing else.

  Everything about Tras Preetror was exotic, peculiar. Whandall knew he had to see more.

  The boys of Serpent’s Walk kept getting caught because they went in bands. Bands could hide in the forest, because the forest was roomy. In the city people occupied what space there was. Getting caught got you laughed at. Whandall preferred to lurk alone.

  Others learned that Tras Preetror was staying with a kinless family in the Eastern Arc. The kinless had bought protection from the Bonechewers who owned that area, so the house was nicer than most. It also meant that Whandall risked more than being laughed at if he got caught.

  Three days after the carnival, the morning’s light found eleven-year-old Whandall on the roof, just above Tras’s curtained window. He’d slept there, flattened on the slope of the roof.

  He heard Tras wake, piss, and dress himself, all while singing in the rolling Condigeano tongue. Tras’s footsteps went straight to the curtained window. His arm reached through with something in his hand.

  “Come down, boy,” he said, tormenting the syllables of normal speech. “I’ve got something for you. Talk to me.”

  Whandall flattened against the roof while he thought it over. He hadn’t gathered anything from the room. The teller couldn’t be angry about that. He was singing again…

  Whandall joined in the chorus and swung on in.

  “You sing pretty,” Tras said. “Who are you?” He held out his gift. Whandall tasted orange wedges in honey for the first time.

  “Name Whandall of Serpent’s Walk. Happy meet you, Tras,” he said in Condigeano. He’d practiced the words while he and others eavesdropped on the lookers.

  “Happy meet you, Whandall,” Tras said in bad talk-to-strangers speech. “I talk to other… you call Lordkin?”

  “Lordkin, yes, of Serpent’s Walk.”

  “Tell me how you live.”

  He understood the words how you live, but Whandall couldn’t make sense of them. “How I guard my self? My brothers teach—will teach me how to use a knife. I walk without one until I know.”

  “What you do yesterday?”

  “Hid in the… hid. Watched this house. Can’t see roof. No Lordkin around. Climb house next door, look at roof. Go for blanket, come back, sleep on roof. Wait for you. Tras, speak Condigeo.”

  Tras said in his own speech, “Are a lot of your days like that?”

  “Some.”

  “Maybe…. Tell me how the kinless live.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Mmm.” Disappointed.

  Whandall said, “I know how woodsmen live. Woodsmen are kinless.”

  “Tell me.”

  Whandall began to speak of what he’d learned. The dangerous plants, their names, how to recognize and avoid them. The rite that woodsmen performed before they felled a redwood and cut it up. What they ate. How they talked. Why none but Kreeg Miller would help injured Lordkin children. How they came to accept Whandall.

  Tras listened intently, nodding, smiling. When Whandall ran down he said, “There, now, you’ve told me a lot about yourself. You rescued your brother. Lordkin don’t work, but you carried water when you saw there was need. Lordkin don’t learn about the forest, even the ones who go in as children. Lordkin like to watch without being seen. You gather, but the kinless try to stop you, because what you gather is what they make or sell or use. You don’t worship trees, but you worship Yangin-Atep. You see?”

  “Tras? Show me what you say. Tell me how you live.”

  Tras Preetror talked.

  He had come to watch the Burning, to travel afterward and tell what he’d seen. “If you want to see the world, a teller is what you want to be. Wherever you go, they want to know what it’s like where you came from. Of course you should know the speech. My family could afford a woman of the Incas to teach me and my brothers and sisters and cousins. We learned geometry and numbers and incantations, but I learned Inca speech too….”

  Tras mangled the words and rhythms of normal speech until Whandall’s head hurt. Sometimes he didn’t have the words. Finding them turned into lessons in Condigeano speech.

  “… Rich. If I was rich, I could get my own ship and take it where I wanted.”

  “Tras, someone could take it away and go where he wants.”

  “Pirates? Sure. You have to be better armed than they are or carry a better wizard or somehow persuade a pirate that you do.

  “Once upon a time, two Torovan privateers had us bracketed far from shore. Privateers are pirates, but a government gives them a license to steal—I mean gather. Who has a better right?” Tras laughed and said, “But Wave Walker carried a wizard that trip.

  “We watched. Acrimegus—he was our wizard—sent a beam of orange light from his hand down into the water near one of the other ships. It was just bright enough to see in twilight. He held it there, on and on, while we maneuvered and the two ships countermaneuvered and came closer and closer. Then the water boiled at that one spot. When Acrimegus gave us the signal, we all pulled the sails down and then crowded along the rail. The privateers must have thought we were crazy.

  “A head broke the surface. It was almost the same size as the nearest ship. All of us shrieked and went running below, all but Acrimegus. I stuck my head back out to see the rest. The head was rising and rising on what looked like leagues of neck. It turned toward us. Acrimegus waved and danced and shouted, ‘No, no, you massive great fool,’ until it turned toward the privateer and started to dip—”

  “What was it?”

  “Well, an illusion, of course, but the privateers turned about and ran. What made it work wasn’t just Acrimegus’s light effects, but the details, the way he acted, the way we were acting.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  “I pissed in my kilt. But what a story! I’d travel ag
ain with Acrimegus any day. Now you tell me something.”

  “I’ve seen a Lord.”

  “So have I. Where was your Lord?”

  “At home, in Lordshills. He had a fountain. And a room inside where they can cook. A room to piss in, with running water. And a room where kinless wrote things on paper and put them in jars, but I couldn’t go in there.” Whandall decided not to speak Samorty’s name. He would hold that in reserve.

  “Can you read?”

  “No. I don’t know anyone who can read.” Except the Lords could read. And Shanda.

  “You do now. What did your Lord do?”

  Whandall was still trying to understand what he’d seen on two visits. “He had other Lords to dinner, and a magician. People who weren’t Lords brought the food and took it away, and all the Lords did was talk and ask each other questions. At the end they acted like they’d fixed something broken, only… only it was the next Burning. They think if they can make people talk to each other, they can miss the next Burning. And at the end he put on armor and went out with some other armed men.”

  “Did they… do you think they put off the next Burning?”

  No grown man or woman could answer that question. Whandall didn’t think even Lord Samorty knew that. Whandall said, “No.”

  “Then when will it happen?”

  “Nobody knows,” Whandall said. “There was another Lord who made cups move in a circle. Like this—”

  “Yes, that’s called juggling.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “Years of practice. It isn’t magic, Whandall.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “There was a…” Whandall couldn’t remember the word. “People pretending to be other people. Telling each other a story like they don’t know they’re being watched. Jispomnos, they called it.”

  “I’ve seen Jispomnos. It’s too long for after dinner. It runs on forever! You saw just pieces, I bet. Was there a part where the wife’s parents want blood money?”

  They talked through the morning and deep into afternoon. Whandall practiced his scanty Condigeano from time to time, but usually they were each speaking their own language.