The guard turned his head to look in my direction. I caught his eyes. I turned and ran.
I headed for the first alley I saw, my thin shoes slipping on the light layer of snow that covered the ground. I heard his heavy boots pounding behind me as I turned into a second alley branching off from the first.
My breath was burning in my chest as I looked for somewhere to go, somewhere to hide. But I didn’t know this part of the city. There were no piles of trash to worm into, no burned-out buildings to climb through. I felt sharp frozen gravel slice through the thin sole of one of my shoes. Pain tore through my foot as I forced myself to keep running.
I ran into a dead end after my third turning. I was halfway up one of the walls when I felt a hand close around my ankle and pull me to the ground.
My head hit the cobblestones and the world spun dizzily as the guard lifted me off the ground, holding me by one wrist and my hair. “Clever boy, aren’t you?” he panted, his breath hot on my face. He smelled like leather and sweat. “You’re old enough, you should know not to run by now.” He shook me angrily and twisted my hair. I cried out as the alley tilted around me.
He pressed me roughly against a wall. “You should know enough not to be coming Hillside either.” He shook me. “You dumb, boy?”
“No,” I said muzzily as I felt for the cool wall with my free hand. “No.”
My answer seemed to infuriate him. “No?” he bit off the word. “You got me in trouble, boy. I might get written up. If you aren’t dumb, then you must need a lesson.” He spun me around and threw me down. I slid in the greasy alley snow. My elbow struck the ground and my arm went numb. The hand clutching a month of food, warm blankets, and dry shoes came open. Something precious flew away and landed without even a clink as it hit the ground.
I hardly noticed. The air hummed before his club cracked against my leg. He snarled at me, “Don’t come Hillside, understand?” The club caught me again, this time across the shoulder blades. “Everything past Fallow Street is off limits to you little whore’s sons. Understand?” he backhanded me across the face and I tasted blood as my head careened off the snow-covered cobbles.
I curled into a ball as he hissed down at me. “And Mill Street and Mill Market is where I work, so you never. Come. Back. Here. Again.” He punctuated each word with a blow from his stick. “Understand?”
I lay there shaking in the churned-up snow, hoping it was over. Hoping he would just go away. “Understand?” He kicked me in the stomach and I felt something tear inside of me.
I cried out and must have babbled something. He kicked me again when I didn’t get up, then went away.
I think I passed out or lay in a daze. When I finally came to my senses again, it was dusk. I was cold to the very center of my bones. I crawled around in the muddy snow and wet garbage, searching for the silver penny with fingers so numb with cold they would barely work.
One of my eyes was swelled shut and I could taste blood, but I searched until the last scrap of evening’s light was gone. Even after the alley had gone black as tar I kept sifting the snow with my hands, though I knew in my heart of hearts that my fingers were too numb to feel the coin even if I chanced across it.
I used the wall to get to my feet and started to walk. My wounded foot made progress slow. Pain stabbed up my leg with each step, and I tried to use the wall as a crutch to keep some weight off it.
I moved into Waterside, the part of the city that was more a home to me than anywhere else. My foot grew numb and wooden from the cold, and while that worried some rational piece of me, my practical side was just glad there was one less part of me that hurt.
It was miles back to my secret place, and my limping progress was slow. At some point I must have fallen. I don’t remember it, but I do remember lying in the snow and realizing how delightfully comfortable it was. I felt sleep drawing itself over me like a thick blanket, like death.
I closed my eyes. I remember the deep silence of the deserted street around me. I was too numb and tired to be properly afraid. In my delirium, I imagined death in the form of a great bird with wings of fire and shadow. It hovered above, watching patiently, waiting for me… .
I slept, and the great bird settled its burning wings around me. I imagined a delicious warmth. Then its claws were in me, tearing me open—
No, it was just the pain of my torn ribs as someone rolled me onto my back.
Blearily, I opened an eye and saw a demon standing over me. In my confused and credulous state, the sight of the man in the demon mask startled me into wakefulness, the seductive warmth I had felt a moment ago vanished, leaving my body limp and leaden.
“It is. I told you. There’s a kid lying in the snow here!” The demon lifted me to my feet.
Now awake, I noticed his mask was sheer black. This was Encanis, Lord of Demons. He set me unsteadily onto my feet and began to brush away the snow that covered me.
Through my good eye I saw a figure in a livid green mask standing nearby. “Come on …” the other demon said urgently, her voice sounding hollowly from behind the rows of pointed teeth.
Encanis ignored her. “Are you okay?”
I couldn’t think of a response, so I concentrated on keeping my balance as the man continued to brush the snow away with the sleeve of his dark robe. I heard the sound of distant horns.
The other demon looked nervously down the road. “If we don’t keep ahead of them we’ll be up to our shins in it,” she hissed nervously.
Encanis brushed the snow out of my hair with his dark gloved fingers, then paused and leaned in closer to look at my face. His dark mask loomed oddly in my blurry vision.
“God’s body, Holly, someone’s beaten hell out of this kid. On Midwinter’s Day, too.”
“Guard,” I managed to croak. I tasted blood when I said the word.
“You’re freezing,” Encanis said and began to chafe my arms and legs with his hands, trying to get my blood flowing again. “You’ll have to come with us.”
The horns sounded again, closer. They were mixed with the dim sounds of a crowd.
“Don’t be stupid,” the other demon said. “He’s in no shape to go running through the city.”
“He’s in no shape to stay here,” Encanis snapped. He continued to massage my arms and legs roughly. Some feeling was slowly returning to them, mostly a stinging, prickly heat that was like a painful mockery of the soothing warmth I had felt a minute ago when I was drifting off to sleep. Pain jabbed at me each time he went over a bruise, but my body was too tired to flinch away.
The green-masked demon came close and laid a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “We have to go now, Gerrek! Someone else will take care of him.” She tried to pull her friend away and met with no success. “If they find us here with him they’ll assume we did it.”
The man behind the black mask swore, then nodded and began to rummage around underneath his robe. “Don’t lie down again,” he said to me in urgent tones. “And get inside. Somewhere you can warm up.” The crowd sounds were close enough for me to hear individual voices mixed with the noise of horses’ hooves and creaking wooden wheels. The man in the black mask held out his hand.
It took me a moment to focus on what he held. A silver talent, thicker and heavier than the penny I had lost. So much money I could hardly think of it. “Go on, take it.”
He was a form of darkness, black hooded cloak, black mask, black gloves. Encanis stood in front of me holding out a bright bit of silver that caught the moonlight. I was reminded of the scene from Daeonica where Tarsus sells his soul.
I took the talent, but my hand was so numb I couldn’t feel it. I had to look down to make sure my fingers were gripping it. I imagined I could feel warmth radiating up my arm, I felt stronger. I grinned at the man in the black mask.
“Take my gloves too.” He pulled them off and pushed them against my chest. Then the woman in the green demon mask pulled my benefactor away before I could give him any word of thanks. I watched the two of them g
o. Their dark robes made them look like pieces of retreating shadow against the charcoal colors of Tarbean’s moonlit streets.
Not even a minute passed before I saw the pageantry’s torchlight come around the corner toward me. The voices of a hundred men and women singing and shouting crashed over me like waves. I moved away until I felt my back press up against a wall, then I slid weakly sideways until I found a recessed doorway.
I watched the pageantry from my vantage there. People poured by, shouting and laughing. Tehlu stood tall and proud in the back of a wagon drawn by four white horses. His silver mask gleamed in the torchlight. His white robes were immaculate and lined with fur at the cuff and collar. Grey-robed priests followed along beside the wagon, ringing bells and chanting. Many of them wore the heavy iron chains of penitent priests. The sound of the voices and the bells, the chanting and the chains mingled to make a sort of music. All eyes were for Tehlu. No one saw me standing in the shadows of the doorway.
It took nearly ten minutes for all of them to pass, only then did I emerge and begin to make my careful way home. It was slow going, but I felt fortified by the coin I held. I checked the talent every dozen steps or so to reassure myself that my numb hand was still gripping it tightly. I wanted to put on the gloves I had been given, but I feared to drop the coin and lose it in the snow.
I don’t know how long it took for me to get back. The walking warmed me slightly, though my feet still felt wooden and numb. When I looked back over my shoulder, my trail was marked by a smear of blood in every other footprint. It reassured me in an odd way. A foot that bleeds is better than one that is frozen solid.
I stopped at the first inn I recognized, the Laughing Man. It was full of music, singing, and celebration. I avoided the front door and went around to the back alley. There were a pair of young girls chatting in the kitchen doorway, avoiding their work.
I limped up to them, using the wall as a crutch. They didn’t notice me until I was nearly on top of them. The younger one looked up at me and gasped.
I took a step closer. “Could one of you bring me food and a blanket? I can pay.” I held out my hand and was frightened by how much it shook. It was smeared with blood from when I had touched the side of my face. The inside of my mouth felt raw. It hurt to talk. “Please?”
They looked at me for a moment in stunned silence. Then they looked at each other and the older of the two motioned the other inside. The young girl disappeared through the door without a word. The older girl, who might have been sixteen, came closer to me and held out her hand.
I gave her the coin and let my arm fall heavily to my side. She looked at it and disappeared inside after a second long glance at me.
Through the open doorway I heard the warm, bustling sounds of a busy inn: the low murmur of conversation, punctuated with laughter, the bright clink of bottle glass, and the dull thump of wooden tankards on tabletops.
And, threading gently through it all, a lute played in the background. It was faint, almost drowned by the other noise, but I heard it the same way a mother can mark her child crying from a dozen rooms away. The music was like a memory of family, of friendship and warm belonging. It made my gut twist and my teeth ache. For a moment my hands stopped aching from the cold, and instead longed for the familiar feel of music running through them.
I took a slow, shuffling step. Slowly, sliding along the wall, I moved back away from the doorway until I couldn’t hear the music anymore. Then I took another step, until my hands hurt with the cold again and the ache in my chest came from nothing more than broken ribs. They were simpler pains, easier to endure.
I don’t know how long it was before the two girls came back. The younger one held out a blanket wrapped around something. I hugged it to my aching chest. It seemed disproportionately heavy for its size, but my arms were trembling slightly under their own weight, so it was hard to tell. The older girl held out a small, solid purse. I took it as well, clutching it so tightly my frostburned fingers ached.
She looked at me. “You can have a corner by the fire in here if you want it.”
The younger girl nodded quickly. “Nattie won’t mind.” She took a step and reached out to take my arm.
I jerked away from her, almost falling. “No!” I meant to shout but it came out as a weak croak, “Don’t touch me.” My voice was shaking, though I couldn’t tell if I was angry or afraid. I staggered away against the wall. My voice was blurry in my ears. “I’ll be fine.”
The younger girl started to cry, her hands hanging useless at her sides.
“I’ve got somewhere to go.” My voice cracked and I turned away. I hurried off as fast as I could. I wasn’t sure what I was running from, unless it was people. That was another lesson I had learned perhaps too well: people meant pain. I heard a few muffled sobs behind me. It seemed a long while before I made it to the corner.
I made it to my hidden place, where the roofs of two buildings met underneath the overhang of a third. I don’t know how I managed to climb up there.
Inside the blanket was a whole flask of spiced wine and a loaf of fresh bread nestled next to a turkey breast bigger than both my balled fists. I wrapped myself in the blanket and moved out of the wind as the snow turned to sleet. The brick of the chimney behind me was warm and wonderful.
The first swallow of wine burned my mouth like fire where it was cut. But the second didn’t sting nearly so much. The bread was soft and the turkey was still warm.
I woke at midnight when all the bells in the city started ringing. People ran and shouted in the streets. The seven days of High Mourning were behind us. Midwinter was past. A new year had begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Burning Wheel
I stayed tucked into my secret place all that night and woke late the next day to find my body had stiffened into a tight knot of pain. Since I still had food and a little wine I stayed where I was rather than risk falling when I tried to climb down to the street.
It was a sunless day with a damp wind that never seemed to stop. Sleet gusted under the protection of the overhanging roof. The chimney was warm behind me, but it wasn’t enough to actually dry out my blanket or drive away the chilly damp that soaked my clothes.
I finished the wine and the bread early on, and after that I spent most of my time gnawing at the turkey bones and trying to warm up snow in the empty wine flask so I could drink it. Neither proved very productive, and I ended up eating mouthfuls of slushy snow that left me shivering with the taste of tar in my mouth.
Despite my injuries I dropped off to sleep in the afternoon and woke late at night filled with the most wonderful warmth. I pushed away my blanket and rolled away from the now too-hot chimney only to wake near dawn, shivering and soaked through to the skin. I felt strange, dizzy and fuddled. I huddled back against the chimney and spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of a restless, fevered sleep.
I have no memory of how I made it off the rooftop, delirious with fever and nearly crippled. I don’t remember making my way the three-quarters of a mile through Tallows and the Crates. I only remember falling down the stairs that led to Trapis’ basement, my purse of money clutched tight in my hand. As I lay there shivering and sweating I heard the faint slapping of his bare feet on the stone.
“What what,” he said gently as he picked me up. “Hush hush.” Trapis nursed me through the long days of my fever. He wrapped me in blankets, fed me, and when my fever showed no signs of breaking on its own, he used the money I’d brought to buy a bittersweet medicine. He kept my face and hands wet and cool while murmuring his patient, gentle, “What what. Hush hush,” while I cried out from endless fever dreams of my dead parents, the Chandrian, and a man with empty eyes.
I woke clear-headed and cool.
“Oooohreeee,” Tanee said loudly from where he was tied to his cot.
“What what. Hush hush, Tanee.” Trapis said as he put down one of the babies and picked up the other. It looked around owlishly with wide, dark eyes, but seemed
unable to support its own head. It was quiet in the room.
“Ooooooohreeee,” Tanee said again.
I coughed, trying to clear my throat.
“There’s a cup on the floor next to you,” Trapis said, brushing a hand along the head of the baby he held.
“OOOOOH OOHRRRREE EEEEEEHHAA!” Tanee bellowed, strange half-gasps punctuating his cry. The noise agitated several of the others who moved restlessly in their cots. The older boy sitting in the corner raised his hands to the sides of his head and began to moan. He started rocking back and forth, gently at first, but then more and more violently so that when he came forward his head knocked against the bare stone of the wall.
Trapis was at his side before the boy could do himself any real harm. He put his arms around the rocking boy. “Hush hush, Loni. Hush hush.” The boy’s rocking slowed but did not entirely subside. “Tanee, you know better than to make all that noise.” His voice was serious, but not stern. “Why are you making trouble? Loni could hurt himself.”
“Oorrahee,” Tanee said softly. I thought I could detect a note of remorse in his voice.
“I think he wants a story,” I said, surprising myself by speaking.
“Aaaa,” Tanee said.
“Is that what you want, Tanee?”
“Aaaa.”
There was a quiet moment. “I don’t know any stories,” he said.
Tanee remained stubbornly silent.
Everyone knows one story, I thought. Everyone knows at least one.
“Ooooooree!”
Trapis looked around at the quiet room, as if looking for an excuse. “Well,” he said reluctantly. “It has been a while since we had a story, hasn’t it?” He looked down at the boy in his arms. “Would you like a story, Loni?”
Loni nodded a violent affirmation, nearly battering Trapis’ cheek with the back of his head.
“Will you be good and sit by yourself, so I can tell a story?”
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