by Kate Elliott
“It’s true,” muttered Matthias. “All the children are gone, but I don’t know where they went.”
“Where are your parents, then?” asked the man. “Why were you not taken to safety, if the others were?”
Anna shrugged, but she saw her brother hunch down as he always did, because the misery still sank its claws in him although she did not recall their parents well enough to mourn them.
“They’re dead four summers ago,” said Matthias. “Our da drowned when he was out fishing, and our ma died a few months later of a fever. They were good people. Then we went to our uncle. He ran, when the Eika came. He never thought of us. I ran back to the house and got Anna, but by then there was fighting everywhere. You couldn’t even get to the cathedral where most folk fled, so we hid in here. And here we stayed.”
“It’s a miracle,” murmured the man. Out of the night’s silence came sudden noise: dogs barking and a single harsh call, a word neither child understood. The man started noticeably. “They come ’round in the middle night to count us,” he said. “I must go back. I won’t betray you, I swear it on Our Lady’s Hearth. May Our Lord strike me down with His heavenly Sword if I do any such thing. I’ll bring more food tomorrow, if I can.”
Then he was gone, retreating into the night.
They relieved themselves quickly in one of the stinking pits filled with dung and water, and paused after to look up at the strangely clear sky, so hard a darkness above them that the stars were almost painful to look upon. They heard the dogs again and Matthias shoved Anna onto the ladder. She scrambled back up, and he came up behind her and closed the trap. After a hesitation, but without speaking, they devoured the rest of the cheese and bread—and waited for tomorrow.
2
THE next night, long after sunset, the man came again and tapped on the door softly and said, “I am your friend.”
Cautiously, Matthias opened the trap and peered down. After a moment he climbed down. Anna followed him. The man gave them bread and watched silently as they ate. She could see him a bit more clearly tonight—the moon was waxing, and its quarter face slowly swelled, bubbling toward the full. Not particularly tall, he had the broad shoulders of a farmer and a moon-shaped face.
“What are you called?” he asked finally, hesitantly.
“I am called Matthias, and this is Anna, which is short for Johanna. Our ma named us after the disciplas of the blessed Daisan.”
The man nodded, as if he had known this all along or perhaps only to show he understood. “I am called Otto. I am sorry the bread was all I could bring. We are not fed well, and I dare not ask the others for a share of their portion. I don’t know if I can trust them, for they’re no kin of mine. Any one of them might tell the Eika in return for some reward, more bread perhaps.”
“It is very kind of you to help us,” said Anna brightly, for she remembered that their ma had always told her to be polite and to be thankful for the gifts she received.
The man caught in a sob, then hesitantly touched her hair. As abruptly, he backed away from her. “Or perhaps, like me, the others would gladly help, if only it meant finding a way to see two more brought free of the savages. It isn’t as if the Eika play favorites. I’ve never seen them seek to turn their slaves against each other by handing out special treatment. They despise us all. All are treated the same. Work or die.”
“Is it only here,” asked Matthias, “in the tanneries, that they’ve brought slaves?”
“They’ve opened up the smithies, too, though they’ve no one trained here in blacksmith’s work. But we’re slaves and expendable.” His voice was hard. “It’s fortune’s chance I was sent here to the tanneries, though it stinks like nothing I’ve smelled before. It’s whispered that at the forge men are burned every day and the Eika as likely to slit a burned man’s throat as to let that man heal if he can’t get up and keep working. I saw those Eika. I saw one pushed into a fire. It didn’t burn. The heat left no scar on its body. They don’t have skin, not like us. It’s some kind of hide, like a snake’s scales but harder and thicker. Dragon’s get.” He hawked and spat, as if to get the taste of the word out of his mouth. “The spawn of dragons and human women, that’s what they say, but I don’t see how such an unnatural congress could take place. But we should not speak of this in front of the child.”
“I’ve seen nothing she hasn’t seen also,” said Matthias softly, but Anna felt at once that the man’s simple statement, protecting her, confiding in the boy, had won over her brother’s trust.
She finished her bread and wished there were more, but she knew better than to ask. Perhaps he had given them his entire ration. It would be rude to demand more.
“Fortune’s chance,” the man whispered bitterly. “Fortune had smiled more sweetly on me had she let me die with my children. But no.” He shook his head, shifting, casting a glance back over his shoulder nervously, for surely he had reason to be nervous, as did they all. “For everything, a reason. I was spared so that I might find you.” He took a step forward, clasped Matthias by the hand and with his other hand touched Anna’s hair gently. “I will find a way for you to escape here, I swear it. Now I must go. I tell them I use the privies each night at this hour, so I must get back. The Eika are strange creatures. Savages they are, surely, but they are fastidious; but perhaps that only goes to show that ‘the path of the Enemy is paved neatly with well-washed stones, for the waters cleansing them are the tears of the wicked.’ We may make soil only in one place, no pissing even except where they tell us to or on the new skins. That is why we may come out for a few moments’ freedom in this way, even at night, for they cannot bear the stink of our human bodies near their own. But I dare not stay longer.”
He came again the next night, and the next, and the next after that, bringing them pittances of food but enough to stave off starvation. Ale he brought also and once wine in a flagon, for there was little water to be found in and about the tanning pits and all of it foul-tasting.
He quickly discovered that Matthias had more knowledge of the tannery and its workings than any of the slaves set to work here; in three months’ apprenticeship, Matthias had learned the rudiments of currying and tanning, enough to know what went on at each station and with each tool. The boy he treated politely, even kindly, but it was Anna he truly doted on. She sat on his lap and he stroked her hair and once or twice forgot himself and called her “Mariya.”
No one disturbed the hides in their loft. Otto explained that he was in charge of overseeing them, and no slave had time to look into another’s business. After several more nights passed, he began bringing more food.
“The Eika have increased our rations. They brought in more slaves to work the bakeries, but also, my boy, what you have told me and I have told the others is helping us work. They are pleased with us, so they feed us better.” The moon was full, now, and Anna could see his expression, which was, as always, grim. “No good fortune for those taken to the smithies, or so I hear. As many are dragged out dead as walk in alive. Beasts!” He hid his eyes behind a hand, but she could see the anguished line of his mouth. “Soon the hides will be dry and they will be carted off, and then there will be no place for you to hide.”
“They’ll hang up more hides, won’t they?” asked Anna.
“Ah, child.” He pulled her tight against his chest. “That they will, but I can’t hide you here forever. I’ve asked here and there, but I don’t know how to get you out of the city, except—”
“Except what?” demanded Matthias, for he, too, Anna knew, had been talking to her about any possible way for them to escape from the city. Perhaps they could have done it during the spring, had they not been so frightened, but they had been frightened, and the dogs had roamed the city every night. Now, with slaves in the city and all the gates watched—or so he assumed—it would be even harder to escape.
“I don’t know. It’s just a story, and I don’t know whether to believe it.” But he clutched Anna, his lips touching her hair, a f
ather’s kiss. “I’ve heard some say there’s a creature, a daimone, held prisoner in the cathedral. They say the Eika enchanter lured it from the heavens above where such creatures live and imprisoned it in a solid body like to our own. He keeps it chained to his throne.”
Anna shuddered, but she felt safe on Otto’s lap; he was holding her so securely.
“I am thinking,” continued the man slowly, “that the magi say daimones know secrets hidden from human ken. If it is true the saint beloved of this city saved the children, if it is true she led them by hidden ways out from the cathedral to safety, then might not this daimone know of that hidden way? For can daimones not see into both the past and the future, farther than mortal eyes can see? If you offer the creature some gift, and if it hates the Eika as much as we do, might it not tell you of this secret way? It is a small chance, surely, but I can think of no other. The gates are guarded day and night and the dogs roam the streets.” He shuddered, as they all shuddered, at the thought of the dogs. “You are children. The saint will smile on you as she did on the others.”
“You will come, too, won’t you, Papa Otto?” Anna rested her head on his chest.
He wept, but silently, tears streaming down his face. “I dare not,” he said. “I dare not attempt it.”
“You could escape with us,” said Matthias. “God will show you mercy for your kindness to us, who are no kin of yours.”
“God might, but the Eika will not. You don’t know them. They’re savages, but they’re as cunning as weasels. They mark each slave, and if one slave goes missing, then others get staked out in front of the dogs and the dogs let loose on them. That way if any slave tries to escape, he knows what will happen to those left behind. I will not cause the death of those I work beside. I could do nothing to save my family. I will not save myself and by so doing kill these others who are as innocent as my dear children. But you two might escape, if you can find and speak to this daimone.”
“But what could we bring it?” Matthias asked. “We have nothing—” Then he halted and Anna saw by his crafty look that he had thought of something. He reached into his boot and drew out the prize of their extensive collection of knives, secreted here and there about their bodies. This one, looted from the corpse of a stout man richly dressed in the kind of clothes only a wealthy merchant or a noble could afford, had a good blade and a finely wrought hilt molded in the shape of a dragon’s head, studded with emeralds for eyes. By this measure Anna saw Matthias trusted Otto fully; the knife was too valuable to show to anyone who might covet it and easily take it by force from a lad and his young sister.
Otto’s eyes widened, for even by the moonlight the knife’s quality was evident. “That is a handsome piece,” he said. “And a worthy gift, if you can get so far.”
“But how will we get into the cathedral?” asked Matthias. “The Eika chieftain lives there, doesn’t he? Does he ever come out?”
The slow quiet brush of summer’s wind, the night breeze off the river, stirred Otto’s hair as he considered. Anna smelled on its wings the distant tang of iron and the forge, a bare taste under the stench of the tanning pits so near at hand. The man sighed at last, coming to some conclusion.
“It is time to trust others. This information I cannot gain on my own. Let us pray, children, to Our Lady and Lord. Let us pray that we weak mortal folk can join together against our heathen enemies, for now we must trust to others who are no kin of ours except that we are humankind standing together against the savages.”
With this he left them.
The next night he brought a woman, stooped, scarred, and weary. She stared for a long time at the children and said at last, “It is a miracle they could have survived the slaughter. It is a sign from St. Kristine.” She went away again, and he gave them their nightly ration of food.
The next night he brought a young man who had broad shoulders but such a weight on them that he looked as bent with age as a man twice his years. But seeing the children, he lifted up and became a man proud of his youth and strength again. “We’ll show those damned savages,” he said in a low voice. “We’ll never let them have these. We’ll beat them in this. That will lend us strength in the days ahead.”
The next night Otto brought a robust woman who still wore her deacon’s robes though they were now stained, torn, and dirty. But she nodded, seeing the children—not surprised, for surely she had by now heard tell of them. She bent her head over clasped hands.
“Let us pray,” she murmured.
It had been a long time since Anna had prayed. She had forgotten the responses, but she traced around the smooth wood of her Circle of Unity carefully with a finger as the deacon murmured the holy words of God, for that was the prayer she knew best. Otto watched her, as he always watched her: with tears in his eyes.
“This is a sign from God,” the deacon said after her prayer. “So will They judge our worthiness to escape this blight, if we can save these children who are no kin of ours and yet are indeed our children, given into our hands, just as all who live within the Circle of Unity are the children of Our Lady and Lord.”
Otto nodded solemnly.
The deacon rested a hand on Matthias’ shoulder, as if giving a blessing. “Those who get water from the river and bring it here have spoken now with those who get water for the smithies, and of those in the smithies some carry weapons to the cathedral, where the chieftain sits in his chair and oversees all. Other slaves who sweep and clean the cathedral meet at times with those who carry weapons from the smithies, and this information they have given us.”
She paused at a noise, but it was only the wind banging a loose shutter. “The chieftain leaves the cathedral four times each day to take his dogs to the necessarium—”
“The necessarium?” asked Anna.
This question stirred the first faint smile Anna had seen on any of the slaves’ faces, even on Otto’s. “Pits. Holes dug in the ground where such creatures relieve themselves, for even such as they are slaves to their bodies. As are all of us bound to mortal matter. Now hush, child. Though it was a fair question, you must listen carefully to my words. Once each day all Eika leave the cathedral, with their dogs and the few slaves who attend them there. They go to the river to perform their nightly ablutions—” She raised a hand to forestall Anna’s question. “Their bath. At this time, which is the time Vespers would be sung each evening, the cathedral is empty.”
“Except for the daimone,” said Otto.
“If such a creature truly exists. So say the slaves who clean there, but it may be that their minds are disordered by their proximity to the savages, for none has been allowed close to this creature, which is said to be chained with iron to the holy altar. By their description it seems to be more of a dog than a man. One man said it has human speech, but another said it can only yip and howl and bark. To this plan, if the saint grants us a miracle, we must trust. Now do you understand?” She asked this of Matthias and studied him carefully in the moon’s waning light as he nodded, once, to show he understood. Anna nodded also and took Matthias’ hand because she was so frightened.
“Tonight,” said the deacon. She looked at Otto and he nodded, though his hands clenched.
“Tonight?” asked Anna in a whisper. “So soon—?” Impulsively she darted forward and clasped her arms round Otto’s body. His clothes hung on him, a once stout man made thin by privation and grief, yet still he felt sturdy to her. He held her tightly against him, and she felt his tears on her cheeks.
“We must move immediately,” said the deacon. “You might be discovered any day. It is indeed a miracle you have not been found before this.” She frowned, and the moonlight painted her face in stark, suffering lines. “We know not if some fool will betray us all, thinking to gain favor in the eyes of the Eika. But there is no favor to be gained with the savages. They are no kin to us. They have no mercy for their own kind, and less than that for us, and so shall we have no mercy for them. Now. Make your farewells, children. You will not se
e Otto again.”
Anna wept. It was too hard to leave him behind, the only person besides Matthias who had shown her kindness since her parents died.
“Take news,” said Otto. He still held Anna, but she knew he spoke to Matthias. “Take news to others that some are yet alive in this city, that we are made slaves. Tell them the Eika are massing and building their strength, that they are using us to forge weapons and craft armor for them.”
“We’ll come back for you,” said Matthias, his own voice choked with tears. Anna could not speak, could only cling. Otto stank of the puering pits, but they all of them stank of the tannery; it was a good scent to her now, a familiar one that promised safety. Out beyond the tanning pits lay the great wide world which she no longer knew or trusted.
“Ai, Lady,” whispered Otto. He kissed Anna’s hair a final time. “Perhaps it is worse this way: that you have given me hope. I will wait for you, as well as I can. If you live, if I survive, if we are reunited, then I will be as your father.”
“Come, children,” said the deacon, taking their hands after gently prying Anna free from Otto’s grasp.
Anna cried as she was led away. She looked back to see Otto staring after them, hands working at his sides, opening and closing, and then his face was lost to her, hidden by night and distance.
The deacon took them to the edge of the fetid trench where the slaves relieved themselves. “Wait here,” she said. “A man will come for you.”
She left and returned to the building where the slaves slept. Somewhat later, the young man they had met before arrived.
“Come,” he said, hoisting Anna onto his back. “We must run all the way to the forge.” So they ran, hiding once for the man to catch his breath and a second time when they heard the howling of the dogs nearby, but they saw nothing. Only ghosts walked the city at night. It had been so long since Anna had ventured out into the ruined streets that the open spaces and angular shadows, the simple emptiness, made chills crawl like spiders up and down her skin.
