Return to Nevèrÿon: The Complete Series

by Samuel R. Delany

  Clodon remembered what the barbarian had said about the shirt.

  ‘You look like a good country lad—the kind I’d need,’ the grain merchant went on—‘if it were another sort of job. Oh, someday, in six months or so, if you’re still around, and I have some honest carts to send out—and sometimes I do—I might consider taking you. For that sort of work, it wouldn’t matter, you see? But—’ He shrugged—‘now I have things I must get to.’ Two loutish young men had come up to linger by the building’s corner, impatient for Clodon to go.

  ‘Oh.’ Clodon nodded. ‘Yeah. I see.’ And without even a curse, he turned and walked back to the bridge.

  Hoisting himself up to sit on the wall beside the walkway, heels against the stone, shoulders forward, elbows on his knees, Clodon watched the women lounging or strolling across from him, while fruit carts and men with baskets of fabric held by straps to their foreheads and a boy dragging a sledge on which were roped a dozen musical instruments went to or from the market. His scars, he now knew, marked him as someone no better than a slave—or a barbarian.

  At which point the barbarian who’d told him about the grain merchant sauntered by on the far side, sucking on a drinking skin bloated with beer.

  Clodon looked away, because he did not want to ask for any, though certainly he wanted some.

  Then the man who’d slowed to a stop beside him said: ‘You’re looking glum.’

  Clodon frowned back. ‘Why should I be?’

  In his thirties, the man wore a green tunic, belted at the waist with metal, which probably meant he was well off. ‘You’d know that better than I. What are you looking for anyway, out here on the bridge?’ The man wore sandals and a metal band on one wrist.

  ‘To make some money.’ Maybe, Clodon thought, I might be able to go with him and snag his purse, before—or, if necessary, after—we get down to anything.

  ‘I wouldn’t think you’d have much trouble doing that, unless you’re particularly squeamish about how you make it.’

  Well, Clodon was; and he knew it. But he said, ‘Ha!’ Did the man, he asked, want to go somewhere and have sex?

  ‘No. At least not now. Maybe another time—’

  Clodon grunted and looked away. ‘People tell me that a lot.’

  The man laughed. ‘I was looking for conversation, actually. There’s a place not far from here we might get a drink. If you come in with me, I don’t think your flogging marks will make any problems.’ (Clodon started to say something. But then, he was not sure what there was to say in such a situation. And the man seemed friendly.) ‘I’ll buy you a drink. Even two or three.’

  ‘What about something to eat?’

  ‘That too, if you’re hungry.’

  ‘And you don’t want to do anything?’

  ‘I’ve answered that once,’ the man said. ‘I bought an evening of sex here with a man last week—usually I’m not interested in boys, except in highly marked circumstances. I may buy another in three or four days. But not this afternoon. What a lot of questions you have for someone sitting out on the bridge. But I’d rather do the asking and listening. Will you be my guest, or not?’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Clodon said. ‘Sure. You just want to talk? I’ll come!’ He jumped from the wall.

  Clodon had been in Kolhari long enough to learn that to walk in it with a new acquaintance was to turn down streets he’d never seen before, to enter neighborhoods he had not known existed, to discover whole new cities enfolded within and around the one in which, till then, he’d been living. It had already happened with the barbarian: he’d assumed their destination was some dirty, tolerant shack where they could get a mug of beer and a bowl of cinnamon-rich stew or a piece of over-hot sausage. But soon they were walking down streets with fine carriages and buildings with yards and trees. Finally, they turned in at a place with carved poles either side the door.

  The antechamber was hung with scarlet and azure tapestries shot through with metallic threads. A man dressed like a nobleman, but who was some sort of waiter, led them into a hall with intricately carved columns, where many men and a few women ate and drank at small tables with little lamps burning on them—though it was the middle of the day. They were taken outside onto an open terrace, with several other tables and great pots of flowers and plants sitting beside a pool with fountains in it and rough statues of beasts half in and half out of the ripples. When they were seated, the man gave his order, the waiter nodded, then, with a sweep of his arm, pulled a cloth divider, hissing on its rings along the wooden pole overhead, to separate them from the others. ‘Now you’ll have your privacy.’ He bowed, backing between the folds of green and blue; and all Clodon could see were yellowing clouds and their ivory reflections between floating froth.

  A minute later another waiter stepped through with one pitcher of beer and another of cider, which he placed, dripping, on the table. A moment on, he was back with an earthenware bowl of sausages, fruits, and breads—which the man explained to Clodon was not part of the promised meal but just something the establishment put out with the drink.

  Clodon should help himself.

  He tried the cider but didn’t like it. Beer, however, was what he’d been hoping for. With a sausage and piece of bread in one hand, his mug in the other, and his mouth full, Clodon said: ‘The curtain …?’ He twisted around in his seat, still chewing, to nod at the hanging drawn behind. ‘That’s so …’ He swallowed and began again. ‘That’s so the others won’t see my—flogging marks, isn’t it?’ In the month he’d borne them, it was the first time Clodon had put a word to his scars.

  The man raised his mug and an eyebrow. ‘So many questions you’ve got. Well, consider this. You come in here, wearing only a rag of leather about your loins and the signs of a country felon on your back. Most of the clientele you see here arrives in tunics, robes, and capes. Perhaps you never asked yourself why. But if, by some whim of the nameless god of count and accounting, all were suddenly struck naked here, you might be surprised who among us was marked and who was not—not to mention the nature of the marks we bear.’ He leaned forward. ‘And I’m sure you’re already aware that the biggest criminals are specifically marked by the fact that they have no marks at all!’

  Trying to picture the people at the tables beyond the curtain carrying scars like his beneath their cloaks, Clodon grinned. ‘Come on—that’s just a story!’ He wasn’t sure if it was the flippant voice the man had said it in or if it was what, indeed, he’d said. But it pleased him.

  ‘It may be. But it has its truth. And I’m sure it’s a story you like. Come. Drink first; eat later. Otherwise you won’t enjoy the beer anywhere near as much as you might—surely you’re old enough to know that. Tell me, how did you get yours—the welts, I mean?’

  By the bottom of another mug, Clodon was telling him, now of the goat, now of the rum (but not about the coins, for he still had a yen for the man’s purse, should the opportunity come), now of the hare-lipped girl, now about his cousin the bailiff and the gawking urchins. Somehow, with enough drink, the urge to eat left. And when, three long and lazy pitchers later, the man finally paid for their fare, Clodon, stretching, yawning, missed it because he was looking from the red clouds smearing the west to the blue over the buildings in the east—so that he still wasn’t sure where about him the man kept his money.

  Clodon saw only a final coin—iron or gold, he wasn’t sure—pressed from the stranger’s hand into the waiter’s.

  ‘Would you like to come to my place?’ The man walked leisurely from the pool’s edge. Inside, the eating hall was almost empty. In summer the sun stays late and fools you as to the time. It’ll be dark in a bit. I can certainly give you a more comfortable place to sleep than you’ll have down against the stones under the bridge.’

  ‘If you want to do anything—’ Walking out, Clodon spoke too loudly, searching for the belligerence he was sure he must feel at the renewed prospect of unwanted intimacy, though its absence seemed to be the most annoying
thing about the situation—‘you still have to give me some money. I mean, I’m not one of those you can get just for a meal and a drink. I don’t like that stuff. So you have to make it worth—’

  ‘Well, we’re going to try and find some things you do like.’ With a hand on Clodon’s shoulder, the man moved him between the poles and into the street, laughing loudly—to cover the bumptious remarks. Outside, breathing a little heavily, he dropped his arm. ‘I live with my family, my mother and my sister—and my father. Also, there are servants, the guards, and the porters downstairs. If I wanted to “do” anything with you, I would not ask you to my home. I may give you a few coins when you leave in the morning—possibly even something more valuable. But I’m speaking of your comfort. If you want to go back to the bridge and sleep in some alley on hard paving, it’s fine with me.’ (The man, Clodon realized, was also drunk.) ‘But if you want a cushion to curl up on for the night—by yourself, believe me—come. Understand, though: nothing obliges you to accept my hospitality now any more than it already has.’

  Somehow, between the moments when they’d gotten up from the table on the terrace and now, as they stood, a bit unsteadily, on the street, the sky between the buildings had slipped into indigo.

  ‘You got anything to drink at your place?’ Clodon’s state was pleasant. It would be nice to maintain it.

  ‘Of a much better quality than they do back there.’ The man nodded over his shoulder toward the place they’d left.

  ‘Let’s go then!’ Clodon started up the street, till laughter made him turn.

  ‘This way.’ The man started down the street.

  At once lost and in a fine humor, Clodon ran back to catch up.

  The trip from the bridge to the eating hall had been a leap to a level of luxury that, till then, Clodon had only suspected existed. And he was quite prepared for the trip from the hall to the man’s house to be a similar leap. A few streets over, though, he wondered whether it was the drink—or just the darkness settling around them—that made the houses here, which were certainly large enough, look more shabby and the streets appear in worse repair than the ones they’d just been walking. The building the man finally nodded toward (‘There, just ahead—’), while it took up most of the block, was, if anything, a twin of the warehouse before which, earlier that day, he’d spoken to the merchant.

  Jamb and lintel were heavy beams set in yellowish stone—gone gray-blue in evening. ‘My family has its business on the ground floor,’ the man responded to Clodon’s questioning glance. ‘We live upstairs. This is the back entrance, of course. But that’s how I always come in. It’s nothing to do with you personally.’ He pushed aside the leather hanging. Clodon ducked after him into a wooden vestibule where several lamps, two burning and three out, stood on a stained wooden shelf. ‘It’s not what anyone could call fashionable. But the living apartments are spacious. Mother has fixed them up quite comfortably.’ On the wall, in red lamplight, set in a ceramic plaque, were three skulls. Disoriented as much by the small space as by the bony grins, Clodon backed into leather. ‘This way.’ The man removed a plank from the wall to reveal a black slab. He leaned the board aside and picked up a lighted lamp. ‘We go down six steps.’ The man walked through.

  Clodon wondered if he should go forward or escape into the street.

  ‘Come.’ From the dark, the man glanced back. ‘You’re not afraid, are you?’

  ‘What is this place?’ Clodon stepped into black—and almost fell, unready for the stairs.

  ‘Watch it.’ The man glanced again. ‘We have a mortuary here. A very successful one, too. It’s been in the family since before I was born.’

  ‘You mean for dead people?’ Clodon steadied himself on the tuniced shoulder a step below—which went down another step. So Clodon did too.

  ‘Oh, it’s very much for the living.’ The man chuckled.

  The echo made the space sound vast.

  Since he could see nothing ahead and down save the light over the man’s arm and the glow edging his ear, Clodon looked up. The ceiling beams were not the rough irregular ones of the warehouses around the market. They crossed back and forth at even intervals. As the man descended and the red light lowered, Clodon could see painted tiles between.

  ‘I keep threatening father to quit and get into something like import-export; or maybe real estate. But then another year goes by, and I’m still here, saying consoling things to stony lipped widows or patting the arms of blubbering uncles. I wish it wasn’t so profitable. It would be easier to leave.

  As they reached the steps’ bottom, the odor that had been bothering him since they’d passed the hanging finally pierced fully through Clodon’s drunkenness. It was incredibly sweet, and rich, and spicy. It cloyed like too many cloves and fruits, crushed for their essence and spread about too thickly. At the same time, something sour and sharp as vinegar cut through: an intensely unpleasant smell had been masked with this most pungent and insistent scent.

  A dozen feet off, blue flame rushed about the surface of a shoulder-high tripod. Some unimaginable distance away in the dark, a second blue flicker must have been another. Clodon could see, around him, what looked like mounds on tables. ‘They’re dead people in here?’ Clodon asked. ‘With us?’

  ‘Some dead,’ the man said, a step ahead. ‘Some very much alive.’

  At which point a shadow moved toward them from the man’s right. Stepping into the red glow, it became a porter, with a gnarled face and a loose cloak around broadly sloped shoulders. The lamp spilled red light on the porter’s barkish features. ‘Oh, it’s you, then.’ The voice was hoarse. ‘That’s good. You’ve brought a friend with you, sir?’ Above Clodon, the lamp’s light pooled under the ceiling beams.

  The man nodded. ‘We’ll be going upstairs in a moment to say hello to Mother.’

  The man started forward. Clodon hurried with him. Overhead, the pool flowed. Shadow pulled across the porter.

  ‘You’ll pardon me for a moment.’ They were passing a table. ‘Hold this for me, will you?’

  Clodon took the clay lamp, warm in the cool—no cold—dark. Flame wavered at the snout.

  It looked as if it were covered with a heap of leaves and berries. But the man brushed some aside. There was a cloth beneath: he lifted it and laid it back.

  For moments, even with all he knew of the place, Clodon thought the woman, with her elaborately coifed hair and gaudy necklace above and below dark lips and sunken eyes, was sleeping. When he remembered she wasn’t, he almost dropped the light. As the red flame waved and wobbled, he tried to tell himself that her jaws were not clenching and clenching below her cheeks, that her eyes were not rolling and rolling under their lids, that her chest was not rising and catching between flat, wrinkled breasts. It was only shaking shadow from his shaking hand—

  ‘Here …’ The man glanced up. ‘I’ll take that.’ With the lamp, he turned to call into the flame-speckled black: ‘Yes, she looks much better now. This will do fine!’

  They moved to another table.

  That, Clodon thought, couldn’t possibly be a person: it was too big. But when the man brushed the leaves away and turned back the cloth, Clodon looked down at a bloated, black face, with some sort of metal band across the forehead. Drool wet the chin. Under the shroud the chest swelled toward the barrel belly.

  ‘There’s not really anything we can do with this sort.’ The man raised his voice to call into the dark: ‘He must be out of here by sun-up tomorrow. Not ten minutes after!’ Turning back, he shook his head. ‘Even with what we do, the fat ones go off much too fast. We just can’t let them stay around a moment more than necessary.’

  Under the assault of the stench, the echoes, and the drink, Clodon saw movement now on all the tables. Shadows shifted and drifted between …

  ‘This way.’ Again the man guided Clodon by the shoulder. ‘No, through here. We can go upstairs now. It astonishes me how much the business has grown, just in my lifetime. When father was your age, he was an ap
prentice to a man who embalmed only for the court and the nobles. Well, when his master passed away, he was sure that was the end of his career! Anyone else who died in this city back then was simply carted off to the potter’s field up at the end of Netmenders’ Row. But some of the merchant families out in Sallese decided they could use the services of a respectable gentleman—even if he had no title—who’d worked at court and knew the embalming craft.’ Clodon’s bare feet crushed fallen leaves. (The man’s stylish sandals made a wholly different sound.) ‘Well, nowadays there’re even barbarians who wouldn’t think of dying unless we’re to be called in to eviscerate the body, pack it with drying salts, tanning ash, and sprinkle it over with herbal aromatics.’

  The smell nauseated. And this shadow before them was another man—a big one, too. Was that a weapon at his side? The guard moved away first one plank, then another for them. At the top of the dim steps Clodon could see light …

  ‘Up you go.’ The man in the tunic gestured with the lamp. ‘Steady there. You’ll feel better when you get out of these vapors. Till you’re used to them, they can get to you.’

  Clodon started, one hand on the wall.

  Behind, the man said: ‘As you see—’ Their shadows wove ahead on the stair—‘we have any number of people here to protect us. Some are living. Some are dead. But all of them are very efficient at their jobs—in case you had any notion of misbehaving.’

  Clodon looked back. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything.’

  The man grimaced demonically. I didn’t for a moment think you were.’ The red light underlit his dark brown face.