by Kate Elliott
He made a circuit of the sentry lines and returned to his own fire to eat nai porridge and smoked meat. The sergeants gave their reports, and afterward he dismissed all except Giyara.
“I’m thinking of that child,” Arras said, as if the thought had just leaped upon him and wrestled him to the ground. “Maybe you could leave a parcel of food and drink out beyond the sentry lines, something the child might stumble upon if indeed it is following us.”
Giyara cocked her head, examining him as if he were crazy. “As you wish, Captain.”
“I just have a feeling,” he repeated, and shook his head, sensing he was overdoing it. “What have you heard about the eighteen new recruits we were saddled with?”
She’d known he would want to hear the gossip, so she had already done her talking with the company subcaptains and cadre sergeants. Her analysis was succinct: Fifteen would likely work out, one had died in the raid through sheer idiocy, and the other two were troublemakers he’d need to deal with soon.
“Just kill them,” he said. “Rid us of the problem immediately rather than let it drag on. You can slot those three new men in, but be sure to split up the cousins.”
He dismissed her, then considered the flames, the pleasant noises of an orderly camp settling down for the night, and the distant scream of a rabbit caught in the dusk by a predator.
“Captain.”
“The hells!” He sprang up, hand on his sword hilt, but it was already too late. A woman cloaked in night walked out of the darkness and captured him, her voice the hook and her eyes the spear. Down he tumbled, his heart and mind laid open to her sight, all his secrets revealed.
He liked Lord Twilight, truth to tell, although he knew a humble soldier like him hadn’t the right to feel any sense of comradeship with a cloak, who was either a holy Guardian or an unholy lilu or some hells-brewed stew of both. Anyway, you couldn’t say no to a cloak, even if—especially if—the cloak’s orders were likely to get you strung up on a pole.
So he would cover his tracks as well as he could. He would play the game of misdirection. He had crushed a nest of bandits. Nothing suspicious in that. Meanwhile, he would send Sergeant Giyara out with parcels of food every night, ostensibly for a child who might be brash enough to follow, although he deemed that particular child unlikely to have the courage. That was the kind of child who stuck it out in a bad situation, too afraid to bolt, and got itself whipped and eventually, when its own people had come to despise it enough, butchered. Rotten, they would call it, and then they’d fling its spiritless flesh into the woods to be scoured by the Lady’s beasts and pretend it had never existed. Every night someone other than him would take out those parcels for a child who probably wasn’t following them, while he would hope that a fugitive outlander seeking safe passage to Nessumara had actually been hiding in the forest within hearing of his voice.
She released him.
He fell forward, barely catching himself on his hands, his nose brushing the dirt. “Do you mean to have me cleansed, Holy One?”
She spoke without anger or sorrow. “Captain Arras, I followed you because I was curious why three companies stumbled onto the very same bandits I did. It seemed unlikely it was a coincidence. Nor was it. I have a better insight into events now. Yet I do not fault you for obeying Lord Twilight’s order. I appreciate your loyalty and your cleverness. You attempt to protect your soldiers as well as yourself. Very commendable.”
“How may I serve you, Holy One?” he said, keeping his head bowed and straining his will to empty his mind. Maybe he had a chance of surviving this.
“Fight well with the army, Captain. When Lord Twilight returns, when he seeks you out, as he will, tell him I have his brother.”
• • •
“GREETINGS OF THE day, verea. Nice the markets are open again, eh?”
Ostiary Nekkar examined a tray of withered caul petals as he crouched on his haunches beside an old woman selling remnants from her garden.
“Generous of you to say so, Holy One. Only from second bell to fourth bell, and then us chased back into our homes.” She was very wrinkled, with many teeth missing, but she had a vigorous heart and was willing to speak her mind.
“Where’s your granddaughter, verea? I miss her cheerful face.”
“As if we’d risk her in the marketplace in days like these.” She indicated two soldiers leaning on their spears and two others strolling as they looked over the merchandise. Usually, one bell after dawn, the main market of Stone Quarter was alive with chatter and gossip and laughter. Nekkar never tired of observing people: the blazing health and innocent beauty of the young, the nagging and hopefully jovial complaints of those who, like him, were mature without being elderly, and the enduring strength of folk like Gazara, twice widowed but a great-grandmother, the pillar of her poor but proud clan of day laborers, men and women who dug ditches, cleared canals, and worked on the road beds.
He nodded. “Is there work for your people? How are you managing?”
She bent over the caul petals to separate the merely withered from the desiccated. “The soldiers pay coin to anyone who brings them information, so I hear.”
“I remember,” said Nekkar carefully, “that your clan took in two families of distant cousins some months ago.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and spoke in a whisper. “They’re with us still, Holy One. We’re keeping it quiet, for fear they’ll get themselves expelled and us hanged.”
“A dreadful thing, truly. Verea, before the main army marched downriver on Nessumara, I was interrogated, because I went out scouting one day while the curfew was still on. This has been my first chance to get out.”
She measured him. “You’ve a few bruises, like fallen fruit.”
“I’m asking around the market for a particular reason.” She looked up, alarmed, but he smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. “When I was roughed up, there was a refugee in the line ahead of me. He was killed later, trying to get back to whatever alley he’d left his children in.”
“Orphans,” she muttered gloomily.
“I’m asking around, if anyone has heard tell of three children being swept up or driven out, or taken in, or glimpsed in the alleys.”
“Those village children were always gawking at the silks and the noodle sellers.” She cracked a reluctant smile, but it fled quickly. “The soldiers have been cleaning out the alleys. They’ve worked through the entire quarter riverside of our compound.”
“And the canal-side neighborhoods over by the temple,” he said.
“I’m sorry to say my lads have been forced to take hire building out that burned merchant’s hall in Terta Square, that one they’re turning into a fortified garrison headquarters. I heard them remark just last evening there are still neighborhoods over by the masons’ courts with refugees hanging on in nooks and crannies. Eiya! It was better when those refugees weren’t here, for they ate up the rations we need now, but it’s a cursed terrible thing the army is doing—”
“Hush, my friend,” he said in a low voice, seeing the soldiers approach from her blind side. He went on loudly. “I can’t pay that ridiculous price, verea. I’m surprised you even suggest it!”
“For shame, Holy One! How can I feed my grandchildren if I can’t sell my produce for a pair of vey, eh?”
The young men sauntered up behind her. “Eh, look at those withered caul petals! My grandmother would have been too proud to demand coin for what she’d feed to her pigs.”
The old woman bent her head to hide the spark of anger.
Nekkar smiled blandly up at them. “Greetings of the day, my nephews. A fine day, eh? The sun is very lively today, good weather ahead.”
“We’ve got our eye on you, uncle,” said the taller soldier. “You can’t trust those cursed envoys of Ilu, that’s what Sergeant Tomash told us before he got reassigned. Always sneaking around, gossiping, getting into the business of others.”
“Where did you serve your apprenticeship,
nephew?”
“Thinks he’s got the right to ask, eh?” said the shorter to the taller, guffawing as at a merry joke. They sauntered over to a woman selling plums and took the nicest off her tray without paying.
“They call that ‘tithing,’ ” muttered Gazara. “Cursed thieves.”
“The young have sharp hearing,” he said mildly.
The soldiers glanced over and gestured as if to say, “Don’t think to escape us.”
“I thank you for the tidings, verea,” he added, knees popping as he straightened.
“Don’t get into trouble, Holy One. We here in Stone Quarter rely on you for your honesty and good temper.”
“I wish there was more I could do. For now, we must keep our heads down and try to survive.”
No matter how much he wanted to go haring off toward the masons’ courts immediately, he loitered in the market, purchasing three honey-sesame cakes and tucking them in his sleeve as he made his way along the main thoroughfare toward the square where he had faced interrogation ten days earlier. The army had swept up ransom and hostages, and departed, and Nekkar was cursed sure that the garrison left behind to guard Toskala were the worst of the lot, bullies and thieves who took whatever they fancied just because they had the power to do so.
A pair of soldiers—likely the same ones by their mismatched height—trailed him at a distance, but he knew the neighborhoods better than they did. Behind Astarda’s Arch, he cut into a nook where, according to temple history, there had once stood an age-blackened statue of Kotaru the Thunderer, a relic of an earlier era. He heard the startled cries of the men tailing him and the patter of their footsteps as they raced down the street in pursuit. He hurried back the way he had come and made his way into the warren of alleys behind the masons’ courts.
He surprised a couple of locals scavenging through canvas shelters still strung from walls. Crude pallets had been cut open. A ripped and muddied doll lay in the street—it seemed there must always be a doll torn from the grip of some poor sobbing child. A dead dog had gone rigid, feet pointing up; at least it did not yet stink. He hurried past, but heard a scrape and turned back. A ragged child had grasped the hind legs of the dog and was dragging it into the shadows.
“Child,” he said softly, holding out the honey-sesame cakes.
The child froze. Its posture, as rigid in its own way as the dog’s, betrayed the intensity of its fear and hunger. For a few breaths, they watched each other. Then Nekkar allowed his gaze to probe the shadows. A half-closed-up drain was tucked away under the two-story building leaning out over the alley. A face wavered in the opening. He could not be sure these were the children of the murdered man whose pleas had gone unheard by all except Nekkar, but truly, it did not matter.
“That’s one very dead dog, neh? Not even the firelings as in the tales could heal it, eh?”
The child quivered but did not let go of the legs.
“You’re right to be cautious. You are protecting the ones hiding in the drain. I’m an ostiary, not one of the soldiers. I’ve come at your father’s request to take you to the temple, where you’ll be safe.”
“We gotta wait ’til he come back,” said the child in a raspy voice. Impossible to say if this filthy scrap was male or female, and it was certainly no more than ten.
“Yes, truly you do, but aren’t the little ones hungry?”
Its gaze flicked toward the shadows and away, fearful of giving up its secrets.
“I tell you what. You come with me now, and we’ll wait at the temple until your father comes.”
The child relinquished its hold on the dog’s legs. It scratched the rash blooming across its exposed neck. “He said to wait.”
“And so you have. But he’s had to go out of the city, and now he needs you to come with me to the temple. How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”
The child answered with a shrug.
“Meanwhile, the little ones are hungry. And need a bath. By the honor of Ilu, child, I promise to care for you.”
Aui! Let the child be not so stubborn!
The sag in its shoulders acknowledged its weary defeat. It turned to face the shadows and called. “Heya! We’re goin’ to the Ilu temple and get fed.”
A smaller child crawled out from the hole, its body smeared with mud, followed by an even smaller child who wore only a scrap of linen tied over one shoulder, like a mockery of a cloak, and was therefore exposed as a boy-child. Both children were little more than sticks with joints that bent and eyes that blinked.
“You sure?” asked the middle one, who was clutching a bundle.
“You wanna eat this dog?” asked the eldest.
“We best hurry,” Nekkar said, “lest soldiers come. They were here before, neh?”
“We hid,” said the eldest.
The middle one raised a hand. “I hear them coming,” it whispered in a voice rubbed raw.
The eldest cocked its head as its eyes flared. “We gotta hide, Holy One.”
Too late Nekkar heard the smack of footfalls and the conversational rise and fall of young male voices fading and growing as they turned an unseen corner that brought them closer.
“Hide,” he said.
He ducked down and slid on his belly through a stinking muck that slopped on his neck. The drain was stone on all sides, damp and fetid. The two little ones scrambled in behind, but the eldest darted back to grab at the dead dog.
Soldiers shouted. The child ran the other way to draw their attention away from the drain. They sprinted past, and their shouts of triumph told the rest of the tale. Then back they came, dragging the child, and the littlest one scrabbled out through the hole after his sibling and the middle one followed as his muddy foot slipped through Nekkar’s grasp.
The hells! He was not so young and so fit as he had once been, and his tunic snagged and he had to rip it loose, gods-rotted nail! By the time he crawled out they were gone around the bend although he heard voices well enough:
“I knew we’d missed a few of these stinking roaches, eh!”
He hurried after them. As he bolted out from the alley into the street he ran straight into the soldiers who had been following him.
“Whew! You stink!” That was Shorter speaking with a cheerful grin. “What, Holy One, you scavenging from what those refugees left behind? Aui! I thought better of an ostiary.”
“Them thinking they’re better than us,” added Taller, grasping Nekkar with a cursed strong hand and towing him away from the direction in which the children had been taken. “Yet they do tax and tithe and claim to be pure as new milk when they’re just gods-rotted thieves without a scrap of shame, thinking it’s owed to them.”
“I—I—”
“Eh? Eh?” They mocked him, his flushed face, his trembling hands, his ragged breathing. “Are those honey-sesame cakes?” They ripped the cakes from his grasp and ate them.
“I need to see the sergent for Stone Quarter. There were some orphans given over to the temple I was meant to take possession of, but because of the curfew I couldn’t get out to leash them in until today—”
“Slave takers, too,” said Shorter, and all at once Nekkar realized the young man had a debt scar scored into his face, by his left eye. “Cursed temples take our labor and work us and then discard us. How I hate them!” Like lightning, he backhanded Nekkar so hard across the face the ostiary stumbled to his knees on the street, so much pain he couldn’t stand at first even as they shoved and then punched and then kicked him until he staggered up half blinded by tears.
“I need to see the sergeant.” His voice sounded like that young child’s, scoured raw.
They hauled him to the inn after all, punctuating the long walk with a running commentary about what the sergeant would do to him, fingers broken, eyes gouged out, toes cut off, cleansed on the pole. They were enjoying the conversation because they knew he could do nothing to stop their chatter. Their talk was like a winding chain, winching them tight and tighter.
The inn
was empty but for three young women serving ale to ten off-duty soldiers. His pair traded jests with their comrades before prodding him upstairs. There he waited in the corridor, pain jabbing in his ribs. After a while, another man, soberly dressed and moving as slowly as if he were recovering from a severe beating, invited him into a long chamber overlooking the square.
The sergeant seated in the chamber had a lass to pour his wine, a couch to lounge on, and a pair of writing desks set against the wall where two shaven-headed clerks hunched over accounts books. As Nekkar entered they glanced up and looked down at once, as if expecting to be hit.
The sergeant had a knife in one hand, coring an apple. “What trouble are you causing? Be quick about it.”
If he talked fast, he didn’t have to imagine what it would feel like to be hanged on the pole.
“Sergeant, I’m Nekkar, ostiary at the Ilu temple here in Stone Quarter. Three orphans were consigned to my care some days ago, and I’ve only just now been able to collect them. But your soldiers took them away. So if I can just fetch them from wherever they’ve been hauled off to, then I’ll take them off your hands and the temple will provide—”
“They’re probably being taken to the brickyards.”
“The brickyards!”
“We’ve a fair lot of building to do. Fire damage to fix. Defensive walls to reinforce. Small hands can work in the brickyards.”
“They’re very young, the smallest not more than four—”
“I’m done with this conversation. You know, ostiary, I might well send soldiers by your temple if I’ve need of your novices’ labor. Best you take care of your own, and be careful you don’t displease me further. Indeed, I’ll thank you to come by every morning after second bell and give me a report on Stone Quarter’s doings. Now, get out!” He popped a slice of apple into his mouth, then offered one to the lass, who glanced at the ostiary before she took it and devoured it.
