Sorrowing Vengeance

by David C. Smith

  “All right.”

  He said no more but turned and quickly left the tavern, exiting down the hallway toward the back. His silent young companion followed him.

  It took the young woman a few moments to realize that she, too, no longer had any business there. She whispered to the forger, “And—thank you.…”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She shot a quick look of apprehension at the tavern keeper behind the counter, then hurried down the back hallway.

  Silence.

  “I don’t care what you say,” the lean man sniffed, tapping his fingers on the countertop. “That young buck’s somebody important.”

  “He certainly seems to think so.”

  “No…no. He’s connected.”

  The chair squeaked as the fat man turned toward him. “If you’re so interested, then why don’t you ask some questions? Find out who he is.”

  “I’m happy the way we are right now.” He jangled the coins he’d been given. “I need my little extra. You need yours, too. Ask no questions. That way, you don’t have to worry about the answers.”

  “Gods! You’d think he was the government himself! Passing around money like that!”

  “Like I said—” The lean man drummed his fingers on the wood, then headed into the back room to see about the five crates.

  Outside, a light snow was falling. The young woman nearly slipped as she hurried. A wind was blowing in off the ocean, and the buildings were set far apart, so the streets were covered with ice.

  They were just ahead of her, walking quickly despite all that. She called out—

  “Please! I want to—thank you!”

  They paused and turned.

  “Please.” She breathed clouds of steam as she came up to them. “I truly want to thank you. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there!”

  His eyes were deep and thoughtful, his expression one of sympathetic concern. But he was obviously exhausted.

  “You’ve thanked me already,” he reminded her. “Just be certain that you’re back there tomorrow. And get that started with the social assistance office immediately. They’ll take their time clearing it; it may be a while before you—what? You and your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before you see anything. You’ll have to get by.”

  “I’m sure we can now that we know something’s going to be done.” She was very happy.

  “Just.…” He smiled at her and glanced behind her. “People like him—we’re always going to have them. Weak. If you can’t work with them, work around them. It’s just too bad it has to be done this way in the first place.”

  “I know.” She pulled her thin coat more tightly about her.

  “You’d better get indoors. Get warm.”

  “Yes.” She turned, then waited a moment. “You’re not…revolutionaries, are you?”

  “In a way we are, yes.”

  “But you’re not— I mean—”

  “Suloskai? No. We’re not reds, don’t worry about that. We’re just trying to help.”

  She nodded again and hurried back down the street.

  The two of them continued on, heading down toward the docks and their apartment.

  “Galvus?”

  “Yes.”

  “They always assume that, don’t they?”

  “What do you expect?” He wiped a hand through his hair, brushing away melted snow. “But as long as they don’t know who I am, I’m still the little magic hob, turning straw into honey.”

  When they came to the apartment house, Galvus nearly fell going up the outer steps. There was no rail, and he had to lean on his friend for support. As they made their way in and up the shadowy, cold stairwell to the third floor:

  “Omos, I am so tired. I was up all night—”

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to get some sleep. I want to stay with mother, anyway. Can you go down to the warehouse for me? This afternoon? Just to make certain that the crates haven’t been tampered with.”

  “Certainly, Galvus.”

  “Then, tomorrow, I’ll see about getting them to Dars so he can distribute everything. We did request more wool and cloth this time, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, a crateful of each.”

  “Good, good. Winter’s not over yet, they’ll need to make some clothes.…”

  On the third floor, they quietly opened the door to their apartment and stepped in. They removed their coats, shook the snow from them, and hung them up on pegs in the wall. Galvus stepped to the fire for a moment to warm his hands. The fire was burning well, but from the broken seams around the fireplace, the wind was whistling into the room.

  “Gods, this building must be two hundred years old,” Galvus commented.

  While Omos moved to warm some wine, Galvus crossed the floor and opened the door to his mother’s room. He peeked inside and saw that she was asleep. That was good; she’d been working diligently this past week, sewing clothes for distribution on the north side. And ever since she and Galvus had learned of the assassination attempt on Elad, all she had had was fitful rest, at best.

  Galvus quietly closed the door. He couldn’t blame her. People dealt with serious matters in extremely personal ways. For Orain, it was sleep; and perhaps, when she slept, she actually was able to escape, to dream of how things once had been, or to remove private guilts or resolve conflicts she held within herself.…

  While he himself worked the harder at doing what he felt he must do.

  “Is she all right?” Omos asked him.

  “Sleeping.” Galvus sat at the table in the middle of the room and looked at the sheets of paper on which he had written the night long. Figures…lists of necessary items…maps of Sulos with pockets of the most needy indicated in red ink.…

  Omos poured wine from a ladle into a ceramic cup, walked the cup to Galvus, and set it on the table.

  Galvus, dark-eyed and slumped in his chair, gripped Omos’s hand in thanks, then lifted it to his lips and kissed his friend.

  “Drink your wine,” Omos said, “then get some sleep. Are you expecting anyone today?”

  “Mevus might stop by for some more patched clothes. She’ll just have to wait.”

  Omos fingered the sheets on the table—not only the maps and the writing, but the attempts at a letter. “Be careful, please.”

  “I know, I know.” He sighed, yawned, and sipped his wine.

  Omos returned to the fire to pour for himself, and Galvus stared heavy-eyed at the several attempts he had made last night to write to Elad, to an Elad who might be dead or dying, or on his deathbed, or—

  The rumors that came into Sulos were as yet unsubstan­tiated.

  My dear uncle.…

  My lord, Uncle Elad—I am writing this because I want you to know why and understand why Mother and I have stayed in Sulos with the people. When we heard that an attempt had been made on your life, we were grieved, and now that we are given to understand that our king is recuperating.…

  Lord Abgarthis—I write to you in confidence.…

  His head slipped forward. Galvus closed his eyes and held his hands to his face. He nearly knocked over his wine. He was so very tired, he did not know what to say, and when tears came down his cheeks, he felt that he must hide them—hide his tears from Omos, who loved him, just as he must hide his identity from the people of the streets who relied upon him for their very survival.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Are you going?” Adred asked Rhia.

  “I’m not sure.” She didn’t look at him but stared at the ceiling.

  “It could be dangerous,” he cautioned her.

  “It’s dangerous for all of us now.” She looked at him, tilting her head on the pillow. “You could still get away if you want to.”

  “I know.”

  “They don’t know you.”

  “Rhia.…”

  “You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?”

  He didn’t answer her, so she suspected
that she was right. After a moment, Adred told her, “I don’t want to throw my life away. I don’t mind fighting for things, for the right things. There’s nothing more important than that. But if I just throw my life away, what good does that do?”

  Rhia rolled over onto her side, propped her head on one hand, and ran her other hand over Adred’s chest. She played with the hair around his nipples and said quietly, “You’re very important to me. You know that. But when you’re out there, you’re just another body in the crowd, and right now we need crowds. If we’re going to change…well, everything, then we need crowds of people. Fill the streets with people.”

  “So they can be slaughtered?”

  She stared at him intently. “Is this about the king?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re worried about him.”

  “If Elad dies, then we’re in a civil war. That’s what it means.” He looked at her. “And anything we’ve tried to accomplish—” His voice hardened, betraying his anxiety. “It doesn’t mean that we’ve succeeded; it doesn’t mean that the revolution has done anything. All it means is that some fool with a knife killed the king. Even if he weren’t Suloskai, we’d still be blamed for it. I’m not a murderer, and neither are you. What good does that do? But if we’re blamed for it, then we might as well be a bunch of assassins, not people with, with plans and ideas.”

  “We don’t know that he’s dead.”

  “Even if he’s not, then it’s just as bad. At least before this, we were able to talk to him. I could talk to him. Even if he intended to do nothing, at least I could talk to him. We had time. Now what do we have? You think the massacre in Sulos was bad? What do you think Elad’s going to do now? If he’s alive.” Adred sat up, pulled up his knees, and leaned on his arms. He glanced across the room at the closed window shutters; blue light seeped through. He shivered.

  “You’re a revolutionary,” Rhia reminded him sternly. “Whether you like it or not, you are now.”

  “This isn’t a revolution. It’s an orgy. Where are the thinking people? Where’s the dialogue, the planning, the sub­stance? Maybe Elad’s right about—”

  “Oh, stop it!” Rhia snapped at him angrily. “Elad’s not right and you know it! The government isn’t right! What’s happened to you?”

  Immediately he felt ashamed; he’d betrayed her, betrayed her trust. What was the matter with him? He was anxious; he was doubtful.

  “You know what your problem really is?” Rhia asked him.

  “You tell me.”

  “You think that people are basically rational. You think that the belly in people comes to the surface only once in a while, in the middle of a crisis. But you think that even in irrational situations, most people will still act rationally. And you’re wrong, Adred.”

  “Am I?”

  “Solok felt the same way. Oh, gods!” Rhia tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob. “They haven’t even…executed him yet, and I’m talking about him as if he were dead!”

  Adred reached over and stroked her hair.

  Rhia quickly kissed his hand and told him sadly, “People aren’t rational. Maybe when we have full stomachs and money and when we’re warm and we have our families, we’d like to think so. But now? Yesterday some old woman was killed on the street by three boys. People saw it from their windows; they didn’t try to help her. They just killed her. They ran away. An old woman. And here come three—well, boys—and they murder her.”

  “Then why are you fighting for a revolution anyway if you’re so cynical?” Adred asked her. “If you think people aren’t worth it?”

  “I didn’t say that. People are worth it.” She swallowed a deep breath, looked at him and looked past him at— Shadows. A door. A table. Life. “We have to believe in something,” Rhia whispered. “I do, anyway.” Not saying anything more, she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling some more.

  Adred slid under the covers and moved one arm across her belly. Her skin was warm; he felt her belly pulsing beneath his arm.

  “Rhia,” he asked her in a low voice, “do you think you love me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He was sincere. “I don’t know. But do you?”

  She turned her head, studied his face, his eyes, his beard, his long hair. “No,” she told him. “Does it matter?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You want the truth, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “No, then. I don’t love you.” She grinned slyly, moved one arm under the covers, reached between his legs and held him in her hand as if he were a bag full of coins. “I like you,” she reassured him. “And there are…certain advantages.” She slapped him then on his full bag of coins.

  Adrid fingered her long red hair. “It seems to me that now isn’t the time for people to be deeply in love.”

  “You’re still trying to be rational. I think we need them more than anything, anybody who’s in love. With everything. Those are the people we need.”

  “That’s asking a lot.”

  “You—” she poked a finger in his chest “—wouldn’t know true love if it hit you between the eyes.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Adred has three emotions,” Rhia grinned. “He’s got lust, he’s got worry—”

  “That’s not an emotion.”

  “You’ve got that one real well. Might as well be. And you’ve got—”

  “Lustful worrying.”

  She laughed out loud.

  “Worrying lust?”

  They studied each other’s faces. Tousled hair, glossy skin, damp lips. In bed on a cold late winter morning, while crowds gathered in the streets outside.

  Adred pushed closer and tightened his arms around Rhia’s waist, and she snuggled against him. He lowered his mouth to hers, kissed her, moved his tongue around her open lips. Her legs tangled with his, and the feel of her legs, hidden in the warmth beneath the bed covers (warm like secret hidden thoughts) excited Adred as much as looking into her eyes did, as much as feeling her mouth on his did.

  While crowds gathered in the streets outside.…

  * * * *

  Solok was led to the executioner’s block early in the afternoon, his arms chained behind his back. He was dressed in only a thin pair of cotton trousers and a cotton shirt; both were bloodstained, for they had been worn countless times before by other criminals taken to their deaths, and they would be used again. Solok was made to stand erect upon the stage that had been built in the center of Oru Square; behind him stood his fellow revolutionaries. All of them betrayed wounds and bruises on their faces, arms, and bare feet from the beatings that had taken place in their cells.

  But not one of them had betrayed fellow seditionists.

  Crowds had quickly gathered in the square as soon as the execution platform was erected, and now that Solok and the thirty behind him were made to face the public, the crowds swelled into a noisy and angry mob that was held back from the stage by ropes and a cordon of mounted guards. A few rocks and old vegetables were thrown, taunts and screams rose into the air, and clouds of steam lifted like fog.

  But Lord Uthis, as he watched these crowds from the balcony of his city palace, sensed that their displays were half­hearted, insincere. Some of them were venting rage and frustra­tion, true; but a crowd such as this should be bloodthirsty, should be nearly out of control. And they were not.

  Their sentiments, Uthis realized, were almost entirely with Lord Solok and the revolutionaries.

  He motioned to a soldier on the balcony; the man stepped up quickly and saluted.

  “Order the executions begun immediately,” Uthis told him. “Sound the horn now. I don’t want that crowd turning against us.”

  His man saluted again and pivoted, left the balcony and entered the palace. Just inside, he gave orders to a young corporal, who followed the guard out onto the balcony; the corporal took a stance, sucked in a breath, brought his horn to his mouth, and blew a strident wail.

&nbs
p; The crowd looked up at the palace; a tidal roar of noise lifted.

  Solok, his gray hair and beard moving in the breeze, refused to look at Uthis, however. He held his gaze straight before him, his eyes searching the mob.

  The soldiers on the platform beside him now grabbed Solok roughly and pulled him back, walked him to the executioner’s block, and forced him to kneel. The block was a heavy square of oak with a notch in its center to accommodate the neck. Carved into the wood was the state seal of Athadia; long ago it had become so encrusted with dried gore that now portions of the lion and crown, and half the words, were completely obscured. A pair of large hands gripped Solok’s shoulders and bent him down, forcing his throat into the wide, shallow notch.

  “If you move,” the voice behind the hands promised, “we’ll tie you there. Make it easy on yourself.”

  Solok said nothing. He knew that occasionally, when the throne decided to show leniency to a prisoner, it was customary for the executioner or an assistant to snap the prisoner’s neck before lowering the axe. When done correctly, the neck was neatly broken. Sometimes, however, the neck was not broken but merely twisted; immense pain resulted, and then the prisoner prayed devoutly for the axe to fall, fall, end it.…

  Solok was left to wait. No leniency. The sound of the crowd around him was like the ocean moving toward a shore. He kept his eyes closed, then opened them for a moment. He saw beneath him the wide wooden chest, its boards deeply grained and stained a dark brown. This was where the head dropped.

  How many others, Solok wondered, have stared at those designs in the grain and were wondering about them when the axe took them by surprise?

  Another swell of noise rose from the mob as the axe-man came up the steps to do his duty. His heavy boots rocked the platform; Solok felt it trembling with the executioner’s weight. From farther behind, one of the other prisoners began to sob.

  The heavy boots came close; Solok felt the axe-man’s shadow fall on him. Oddly, the shadow made him feel cold.

  The crowd became quiet.

  He heard more movement behind him as Lord Uthis’s appointee unrolled a scroll and read aloud, “Kale Athadis im Porvo! For the high crime of treason against the empire, for the felonious crimes of aiding, abetting and harboring traitors to the empire, and for the felonious crime of murdering a military officer of this state, you, Lord Solok dos Irur edos Samia of Bessara, a citizen of the Athadian Empire, are hereby condemned to death and ordered executed in the name of the throne! May the gods welcome you and have mercy on you!”