by Kearney Paul
The Steps were not for the likes of Kurun. He padded quickly through the serried manifold maze of alleyways and mud-brick streets that congregated along the base of the High City like the breakers of a brilliantly coloured sea. In this babel of shouting, haggling, gesticulation and barter, the small merchants and traders of the city traditionally had their stalls, their carts, their shops and lean-tos. They sold small animals for sacrifice, sweet incense, flowers, bolts of cloth to be draped and cut upon the wearer in the street, sandals of plaited reeds, trinkets of every base metal and some precious ones, bright pebbles from the river polished to brilliance, and cuttings touted as sprigs from the gardens of the Great King himself.
One man, Arozian the gardener, had a stall covered with miniature trees which he kept small through constant pruning. They always drew an open-mouthed crowd from the provinces, and his stall was well known as a honeypot for pickpockets. Kurun pressed his fist to the belly of his sash as he passed, flashing a wave to the blue-faced old Juthan. There were few of his race left in Asuria. Most Juthans, slaves and free, had left or run away over the years to join their kin in Jutha under the rebel king Proxanon. Those that were left had become something of a curiosity, and one that was viewed with a certain suspicion. But here in the Long Bazaar Arozian was a fixture, and he liked to boast that the High Priest himself had made purchase from him.
A dark gateway loomed, many times Kurun’s height, wide enough for two wagons to enter abreast. It looked like a door to the underworld, and in many ways it was. This was the Slave Gate, one of the entrances to the dark intestines of the High City. The traffic passing in and out was watched over by more of the royal Honai, but these warriors were not the gleaming legendary figures who stood at the foot of the King’s Steps. They wore true battle-armour, and short stabbing spears with butts of iron which doubled as maces. Like their brothers, resplendent at the foot of the King’s Steps, they were incorruptible – unlike almost every other gate-guard in the city – and were as quick with a blow as a query. Kurun bowed his head as he shuffled past them, as did the rest of the crowd, and the hubbub of the street was dimmed, so that it seemed the Slave Gate was witness to pulsing trains of penitents intent on their sins and the dust on their sandals.
The heat and light of the sun was blocked out, and at once the smell of the Slave-City engulfed Kurun. Thousands of bodies, sweating and ill-washed and packed together. Animal ordure, soot, woodsmoke, and here and there the half-sick fragrance of perfume on a slave-girl.
Massive hanging lamps of clay added to the heat within. It was always lamplit night here, in the base of the tell. Higher up within the massive structure, stone-lined shafts were cut into the mound and admitted the light of Bel, but this was a subterranean labyrinth. No Honai here; the Great King’s elite did not soil themselves with the streaming stink of the Slave-City, but instead hufsan guards in leather cuirasses stood in pairs at intervals, bronze scimitars on their hips and steel-flecked whips in their hands. In these worn, endless corridors of flagged stone, tens of thousands toiled unceasingly in the Great King’s service, living out their lives and breeding and dying in the flame-flickered world that had been constructed by their own forbears millennia before.
Once, Kurun had feared the bottom tiers of the Slave City. This was where he had been introduced to servitude, and he vividly remembered the first time he had seen the sun cut off, and had felt his young head fill with the reek of the place. A world of caverns, it had seemed to him; a succession of nightmares. But he had been very lucky, sold up-city almost at once. He had not remained down here long enough to shun sunlight, as many slaves did. Hundreds of the Slave City’s inhabitants could no longer bear the light of Bel in their eyes. They had been made into creatures of the dark, and needed no lamp to see their way within it.
But it was not a place to wander aimlessly. There were forgotten tunnels here, old antechambers and ancient passageways which had been bricked up and forgotten as the daily concourse changed its routes, like a river shifting its bed over centuries. Parts of the Slave City had been neglected and disused for generations, and it was said that renegade slaves had made a warped life in these abandoned districts, renouncing their servitude, and they preyed upon the unwary with bestial, unimaginable appetites.
So the kitchen slaves liked to say, gathered in their quarters with the day’s work done, or drunk on palm wine in times of festival. One of the Undercooks who was Kurun’s friend, fat, lubricious Borr, liked to tell of the time he had become lost in the lower levels as a youngster, and had seen them, the dark-dwellers. They had skin white as maggots, he said, and eyes as large as eggs.
An immensely wide passage ascended ahead, the incline steep, one half stepped, the other a ramp which slaves pushed handcarts up, sweat streaming off their backs. They toiled naked, hufsan from the highlands who bore the mark of the King, not as a tattoo on their shoulders but as a brand upon their faces. At their rear, one of their own race flicked a tongue of leather at their calves, and barked at them in common Asurian, the gutter-language of the Empire, leavening the tirade with some hufsan profanity from his own mountains. The slaves strained harder. In the handcart were baskets of Oskus clams, as big as Kurun’s fist, and the massive silver sheen of river catfish, their mouths still opening and closing as they struggled, drowning in the fetid air.
Beside them was the flip side of the coin; gangs of more hufsan, rolling empty carts on the down-road before them, tugging on ropes to slow the clanking vehicles and keep them within bounds. They winked and nodded and exchanged ribaldries with their colleagues who were still ascending, and the guards raised whips at one another in salute.
Kurun felt inside his sash for the tiny, oilcloth-wrapped parcel that had occasioned his foray into the sun. Auroc the kitchen-master had entrusted him with the errand, only the second time he had ever done so, and it would not do to lose the thing now, so close to home.
Up, up, always up, the steep passageway becoming a sinuous thing, an immense hollow coil of stone within the ziggurat with passageways opening off on both sides, people joining and leaving it as they went their way about the Slave-City. This was the Silima, the Serpent Road, the main artery in the body of the ziggurat. It held the various levels together, and was the one concourse wide enough for vehicles which ran through every height of the immense structure. Many pasangs long, it was also meticulously maintained by gangs of road-slaves who cleared the detritus of passage day and night, and overseers who saw to it that traffic went smoothly.
When there were heavy crowds on the Silima, one could stand on a stone floor in the kitchens of the upper city far above, and feel the entire tell vibrate minutely under one’s feet, like some gargantuan organism, a great animal whose insides were swarming with minute parasites.
THE KITCHEN LEVELS were close to the top of the ziggurat. Here, the shafts opening out on the sunlit sides of the tell made the wide pillared chambers within seem dazzlingly bright after the sweating lamplight of the Slave-City. There were pullied platforms upon which entire banquets were hoisted up to the summit above, cold rooms stacked high with ice brought all the way from the Magron, corridors lined with wine-jars a man could drown in, and cages of live birds singing their hearts out in the patchworked sunlight, heedless of the filleter’s block that stood beside them.
Every possible foodstuff from across the Empire was represented here, when it was in season. Currently, woven baskets stood everywhere alive with the croaking of frogs, and such was the glut that the cooks paid no mind to thieving spit-turners who would snatch one from above the coals when they thought they were unobserved. Kurun had once been one of these grimy youngsters, and he remembered well the unending work, day and night, the furtive snatched meals, the fights, the rancid loincloths which were their only clothing, and the wit-stretching struggle to catch the eye of the cooks, to gain favour, to climb the ladder. It had taken him two years, he thought – he was not quite sure. He had seen boys kill one another for a comfortable place to sleep, thei
r corpses tossed out in the morning without comment by the cooks, just more rubbish from the kitchens to be dropped down the garbage pits. Two years. It had marked him as deeply as war.
He touched the purple stripe on his chiton as if for reassurance. It marked him as a slave with a difference. The guards of the slave-city could not raise their whips at him, and he was spared the casual abuse meted out to the young in the lower levels. Not only that, but those who wore the stripe were marked for better things, the possibility of advancement. Not freedom, never that – even Auroc was a slave, bound to service in the ziggurat for his lifetime – but there were degrees of servitude. Kurun had even been allowed to accompany his superiors to the world under the sun above, when they were short-handed on feast-days, or sometimes simply as a forgotten afterthought. To breathe the same air as the Great King himself on the sacred summit of the ziggurat. For such moments he had strained and connived and laboured all his short life.
AUROC SAW HIM, raised a hand and barked at one of his assistants to mind the fish. Smoke hung in the air here, but not enough to sting the eye or taint the food. Ventilation shafts led out to the slopes of the ziggurat, and on still days the spit turners would be set to cranking on the massive wooden ceiling fans that hung below them, greasing their axles with olive oil that they licked from their fingers.
The heat was shattering, a shimmering vice that sucked the water from men’s bodies. It rose from charcoal grills, radiated from the bread ovens, and seemed to be soaked deep into the very stone of the floor. Auroc raised a dripping gourd from one of the water-jars that were stationed everywhere and drained it dry. ‘Kurun, you little brown-faced shit – you took your time. Follow me, boy.’ A knowing look. Kurun nodded and patted his sash. Auroc closed one eye for a moment.
There were bakers of bread, butchers and fishcutters and poulterers, pastrymen, wine-mixers, choppers, slicers, kneaders, charcoal-lighters, and all manner of specialists strewn across the kitchens of the ziggurat. Each had apprentices, scullions, and every shade and shape of other underlings below them, as officers led men in an army. It was a caste system, based not so much on race or class but on expertise, and at the apex of this enclosed, stratified world were the cooks, men who received their orders direct from the chamberlains of the world above, in that rarefied fiefdom which was the Court itself.
Auroc was true Kefren, as tall and pale as a mountain birch, with the violet eyes and raptor’s nose of his kind. He was lord and overseer of the kitchens, and on occasion had even been summoned above to be complimented on his work by the Great King himself. On especially important state occasions he needed the discipline and level-headedness of a general at war, and he demanded the same of those under him. Anyone who failed him was shipped with bewildering speed to the Slave-City, and a lifetime of toil in the dark.
He had taken a liking to the slim, otter-quick hufsan boy that was Kurun, noting his good looks, his quick mind, and the streak of ruthlessness in his nature which had made him leader of the spit-turners in two short years. Kurun had become something of an anomaly in the kitchen under Auroc’s wing. He came and went largely as he chose, but worked hard, was good-humoured, and well-liked for the many small acts of kindness he performed for both high and low. Most importantly, perhaps, he had the capacity to keep his head even in the most pressured panics, when the bulbs in the sand-clocks were running empty and the Great King himself was waiting to be served.
‘What did he charge you?’ Auroc asked, holding out one long-fingered hand.
‘Two silver surics, master. But I beat him down.’ Kurun handed over the oilskin packet, and then added to it a clinking stack of coinage. ‘It is all there. But I gave a copper to a beggar I know down near the Sacred Way.’
Auroc studied his palm, and then the taut face of the boy before him.
‘You are very free with my money, Kurun.’
‘You promised it to me for running the errand, plus I saved you more than that with my haggling.’
Auroc tilted his head to one side, like some huge predatory bird, a golden vulture with a shrewd eye.
‘Your logic is sound. That works with me – but it will not do with everyone. To some it will seem presumptuous. Even the money you save does not belong to you. Your wages do not belong to you, unless I say so. Do you understand me, boy?’
Kurun lowered his head. ‘I do, master.’ He did not see the smile that flitted across the tall Kefre’s face.
‘Very good – another lesson learned. Now I have a further errand for you.’
‘Yes, master?’
‘Go to Ramesh the linen-master, and tell him you are to be clothed in something suitable for the Palace.’
Kurun’s face snapped up, eyes shining. The questions danced on his tongue like bubbles of gold, but he said nothing, merely nodded. He bowed deeply to Auroc, then turned and dashed away as though afraid his master’s mind would change. Auroc chuckled.
Fat Borr wiped his hands and paddled over to the Kitchen-Master. ‘He’s a likely sort, little Kurun,’ he said. ‘You spoil him, chief.’
‘Maybe,’ Auroc said. ‘But mark me, Borr; in ten years that boy will stand where I stand now, or even higher. He has it in him.’
Borr snorted. ‘He’s hufsan.’
‘He will not let that hold him down. I think it may be time to let him see a little more of the sun.’
Borr shrugged, his bald pate gleaming with sweat, his quivering jowls ashine with it. He had a pale, porcine face with surprisingly kind eyes. ‘As you think best. But be careful, chief. Even this place has not yet taught him deference, and the folk above do not care for wit and spirit in a slave. I know.’
Auroc set a hand on the fat man’s round shoulder. ‘He who has not felt the flame does not fear the fire. I cannot watch over him always, Borr, but if he learns a little humility in the world above, it will be no bad thing. It will round out his education.’
THE KITCHENS GEARED themselves up for the daily frenzy of the evening meal. The Under-Steward had sent down a menu, and after looking it over, Auroc had hissed between his teeth and cursed softly. As the undercooks gathered about him he snapped out orders, then up-tilted the shortest sandclock and clapped his hands. Striding about the kitchens like a warlord inspecting his front line, he made the undercooks break into a storm of activity, and in turn those below them were shouted at and cuffed as they kneaded, chopped, stirred and seasoned at their stations. When the kitchens had broken into a purposeful cacophony, Auroc took his place beside the pulley platforms, reached into his sash, and broke open the oilskin package Kurun had brought him from the Lower City. He balanced some poppy-red powder on one thumbnail for a second and then sniffed it up, blinking, eyes tearing over.
Kurun appeared, now dressed in a snow-white chiton with a purple stripe of pure silk, his hair greased down and shining. Auroc looked him over.
‘Ask Yashnar for some kohl – she’ll put it on for you – and carmine for your lips. Lose your sandals; you will go barefoot above. Make sure your toenails are clean.’ Auroc stared up at the sandclock. ‘Be quick, Kurun. I will send you up with the first course.’
The boy swallowed, as nervous as Auroc had ever seen him. ‘What shall I do up there, master?’
‘Make sure no dishes get left behind. Stand still and keep your mouth shut. Do not meet anyone’s eye. Be decorative, Kurun, like a footstool no-one uses. Do not stray from the platform, and count the dishes back in; we were short two platters yesterday. Those bastards above think I can’t count. Do you mind me now?’
The boy swallowed again. ‘Yes, master.’ He raised his head and looked Auroc in the eye. ‘Thank you for this.’
‘Don’t thank me just yet. And make sure you piss before you go up. It’s going to be a long night.’
THE PULLEYS TURNED noiselessly, lubricated by fine oil that would command an absurd price in the Lower City. Kurun felt himself rising, leaving behind the world he knew, the steaming, sweaty, expanse of the kitchens, the firelight, the black cauldro
ns and long hardwood tables with slaves bent over them. Auroc caught his eye and nodded, and then was gone. Kurun was in a darkened shaft, the platform quivering under his scrubbed toes, a vast array of covered dishes and platters all about him. He rose higher, the smooth stone passing his nose. Looking up, he saw light above, the gold of the evening sun.
He stared at it for a long moment as it grew above him. Then, deliberately, he bent and lifted the heavy silver cover from one of the dishes beside him. From the fragrant, steaming interior he drew forth a black olive, dripping with a sweet red sauce. He ate it, chewing thoughtfully, tasting food fit for a King.
Then the light grew around him, the brightness of the sun flooding his eyes, and he could hear the sound of wind passing through the limbs of great trees, the trill of birds, and the silver music of many fountains.
TWO
THE GARDENS IN BLOOM
‘SUCH A DRAB little bird,’ Roshana said. ‘And yet he sings as though he were the lord of all winged things.’
‘In Artan’s day they had them gilded while still alive,’ Rakhsar said. ‘Few survived the process, and those that did never sang again. The King was so angry that he strangled the survivors with his bare hands, and then poured molten gold down the throat of the man who had promised him he could make nightingales look as beautiful as their song.’
Roshana turned away from the cage and stared at her companion. ‘I believe you make up these stories to vex me, brother.’
