Guburus turned and left the cave, going out again into the cool, starry-domed night.
And Thameron sat where he was, wondering, imagining, promising himself.…
It is a door that, once opened, cannot be closed.
It is a door.…
A door.…
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The day, as silent as gold, drowned brilliantly at the edge of the sea, taking Assia’s heart with it. From the rail of the ship, she watched the beauty of it, sky and sun and sea, the end of the day so proud in its simplicity. All her days she had lived by the ocean and had ignored it. All her years she had felt her heart within her breast and not known it. Was it possible that a few brief moments of pastel beauty could open doors to some sublime mystery? Or was she being merely sentimental? Did the poignancy of those moments lie to her? Was she searching for some mock thing, some whisper, shadow, some childhood fantasy lost, until now, in the gold of a dying sun, in the waves of a moving tide?
She was, after all, only a lonely, ill young woman, too much aware of her body and her life of poverty.
It was, after all, only a few moments in the endless rotation of sun and day, moon and night, twilight and dawn. Secrets there?
Then there must be secrets, too, in the hissing burn of oil lamps, in the sweat of grunting men, in the cool shadows and the cool coins of hot taverns, hot tongues.
And she knew that there were not.…
* * * *
Elpet was a white city on a stretch of brown rock. As the sun died and as the merchanter was pushed on by the tide and low winds, the white became orange and the brown, dark purple. The city looked to be quite small; as the ship came nearer, seeming to move more and more quickly, Assia discerned people moving on the docks.
Her father stood beside her at the rail. His stance was protective. Assia had not coughed for the past three days; they had been sailing for five.
Tentatively she asked Tyrus, “Have you ever been to this city before?”
Tentatively he answered, “Yes, many times.”
Daughter and father, strangers. Was there love between them? Of a strange kind, perhaps. But love is made up of patience and habit; small concerns; incompletenesses; shared failures; unresolved, diaphanous turns of thought, visitations, and memories. It is a conscious bond; it is intermittent difficulties despite a host of strengths. Was there love between them? Could love grow between them? Simply because one was parent and the other, child?
Assia knew that other fathers loved their daughters; she knew that other fathers didn’t always sell their daughters to men for money. But she did not know what it would feel like to be that kind of daughter. Now, in a moment’s freedom of imagination, warmed by a sunset, she wondered.
And gradually, as the sun died, as the gold went, as the night became any other night, she wanted to cry. A great hatred welled up within her and, wanting to cry, she wanted to kill her father, dismiss him, or refuse in some powerful way the fact of his existence.
Then a moment of joy gripped her; she coughed slightly; she wondered who she was. She remembered Thameron and knew that she would never see him again, and she became very frightened—very frightened—of being a stranger in an unfamiliar city, and thus a new kind of stranger to her father.
Tyrus said to her, “You don’t seem to be coughing as much.”
“I’m feeling…better.” She did not discern any real concern or love in his voice.
Perhaps he hoped that she could earn money in Elpet to reimburse him for the trouble he had gone to in saving her life, in keeping her from dying.
* * * *
They joined the caravan of passengers that crowded onto the docks and wended their way into the noisy city. Here and there, in the smoky, lamplit darkness, voices called out to offer the use of palanquins or carriages for money. Most, however, who had disembarked walked, trudging up the long wooden docks, up the stone paths, into the muddy or cobbled streets. Mounted soldiers in Athadian regalia pranced their horses along the way, farther ahead in the main square. Beggars called out for coin. Thieves slipped and slid like shadows within shadows, at home. Prostitutes teased sailors and businessmen. On past the warehouses and the portside offices Tyrus and Assia walked. Traders offered their wares from stalls or mats: skins of wine, loaves of bread, finely honed knives, newly made boots, vests, skirts, warm cloaks.
Tyrus carried their belongings in a sack slung over one shoulder. He guided Assia with his free hand, holding her arm and pushing her in one direction, then pulling her in another, so that they could get through the press as quickly as possible. He was silent until the two of them were in the square and past the last of the beggars and barterers.
“We have enough to get a room for tonight.”
“And after that?” she asked.
“We’ll see.”
There were cheap hostels just inside the square, but Tyrus walked past them. Far away from the lights and noise of the docks, the square branched into three stony avenues, all dark and silent save for torches and occasional grunts and squeals of life. It was as if a curtain had suddenly dropped between this area and the one they had just left. A wind came from behind them, from the sea, and Assia hugged herself to stay warm. It was nearly autumn, and the night was chilly.
At last, Tyrus found the door of a small place around a corner. Assia wondered if he had stayed here regularly during his years as a sailor, but she didn’t ask. Tyrus paid for their room—a single bed and a meal in the morning—and helped Assia upstairs, never releasing his hold on her arm.
She did not like the bed. She was used to sleeping on a wooden frame cushioned with straw and having cloth pillows; this one was made of strung rope, like a hammock. When she lay down beside her father, they were pulled together in the center.
Tyrus fell asleep immediately, but it took Assia a long while to relax. She listened to her father snore; she stared at the light of the torch outside her window; she listened to the dim sounds of customers in the tavern below. Her stomach growled; a heavy ache formed in her chest until, forced to cough it out, she wheezed. The ache remained, dry and hot. She was chilly, and there was only one blanket, which her father, rolling around in troublous slumber, stole from her periodically during the night.
She finally fell asleep in the gray twilight before dawn, with memories thick around her: the long voyage, Thameron, the thousand and one men she had clung to in Erusabad, her father—not cruel now to her. That was certainly a mystery. As Assia began to slumber, she had a curious dream. Thameron was in it, and he and Assia were laughing as they sat at a wooden table. There was a large, fresh loaf of bread on the table, steaming hot. And they were laughing like street fools.
Assia awoke a short time later when she felt something in her hair. She murmured and realized that it was her father’s hand on her head. He was stroking her hair. She wondered what it meant. But then she fell asleep again and did not dream of Thameron or of warm loaves of bread. She dreamed that she walked on bloody feet, with rags wrapped around her shins—walked on gravel, in an endless twilight, walked and walked. It was important to her, in the dream, to remain alive while she walked.
* * * *
The following morning, they ate breakfast in the tavern; then Tyrus told Assia to return to their room and occupy herself, take care of herself, while he went into the city.
But Assia did not want to lie down. After a while, she went out to explore. She did not stray far—she wanted to be in the room when her father returned—but she walked the few streets nearest the tavern. Elpet was a small city, nowhere near the immense size of Erusabad, which could not be crossed in a long day of walking. Assia knew, too (because she had heard men talking on the ship), that while it was ostensibly part of the Athadian Empire, Elpet was historically and commonly taken to be a city of the province of Omeria.
She watched the haggling and bartering that went on, listened to the public prayers of priests at a temple, happened to witness a swift fight in an alley betwe
en a soldier and a well-dressed young man that ended with blood coming down the young man’s arm. When she came upon a man who made puppets dance in a little curtained stall, she laughed at the show. Assia actually laughed—laughed out loud in her hoarse, girlish voice as she watched the puppets argue and pantomime and contort. The story had something to do with a cuckolded husband and his wife’s affair with a giant bear, some folktale or fable, and the giant bear was secretly a magician.…
When she returned to the tavern, Assia found her father and another man sitting at a table in the public room, eating a meal and sharing a bottle of wine. She joined them. A dismal mood came upon her as she listened to the man and her father talk boisterously about the old days they had shared together on board ships. Occasionally, her father’s companion, an overweight and slovenly man, eyed Assia with obvious lust. A chill curled in her bowels. Feigning illness, she coughed and excused herself and went up to their room. She lay down and slept.
When she awoke a short time later, Assia saw the fat man sitting in a chair opposite the bed. He was staring at her; his teeth showed in a faint, arrogant smile. The bed creaked as Assia sat up.
“Where’s my father?”
The fat man said not a word but pointed a finger toward the door.
Assia turned and looked; no one was there. Jumping from the bed, she hurried out onto the landing, then scurried down stairs. She found her father still at the table he and the fat sailor had shared, drinking.
“What are you doing?” she spat at him, standing in front of him.
“Keep your voice down!” Tyrus warned her. “He’s an old friend! He can help us.”
“What are you doing to me? I didn’t come here—”
He slid one hand across the table, clutched his daughter’s forearm, and gripped it painfully hard. “He can help us. Now I’ve got gold in my purse, girl. Money!”
Assia looked at him; he was as cold as ever. What had she done to herself? Why had she ever let herself believe that there was anything else?
Why had she dared to look at beautiful sunsets? Sunsets!
“Now you get up there,” Tyrus commanded her. “Make him happy. He can help us, you’ll see. You’re not sick. Get up there! And don’t let anyone know what’s going on.”
Assia thought about running to the door, but how far could she get? She never considered asking anyone else there for help. Why? They were all in the same position she was, in one way or another, everyone in that room, in that city.
Finally, she turned and walked to the stairs.
The fat man had undressed and was standing by the window. He was covered with hair; his belly gave him the appearance of being a barrel supported by doughy legs. It was as though he were an animal, perhaps a bear, changed for a while into a man.
He smiled at Assia. “Close the door. That’s it. Go ahead. Take your clothes off. Yes, yes, that’s it.… Come over here. That’s right. Oh, you are a beautiful little thing! Look at you! Yes, take them off, yes. Think you can handle him? Think you can? Come on, that’s it. You’re beautiful. Stop crying! I won’t let him hurt you! See? He likes you. He wants to be your friend. You can be his friend.…”
CHAPTER THIRTY
He had been in Sulos a little over a month, now, and Adred was beginning to feel restless. Mantho recognized his symptoms. “You want to return to the capital, don’t you?”
But Adred wasn’t certain he wished to do that. He knew Orain now seemed content to remain in Sulos and leave Athad where it was, as the capital, with everything that had happened there. As for himself, “I feel I must do something,” Adred told his friend. “But I don’t want to go back, not yet. I need to travel.”
“Go hike in the uplands,” Mantho recommended. “They’re at their most pleasant this time of year. It gets chilly up there—but the pretty girls will help keep you warm. And you’ll be listening to people complain all day about the crops and the weather. Not a peep about Elad.”
This sounded splendid to Adred. He was becoming preoccupied with news that came from the capital, news that deeply disturbed him. He and Orain had been receiving letters twice a week from Abgarthis, detailing how the traitors who had been involved with Cyrodian in the attempted coup had been beheaded, from Umothet on down to a single rider in Captain Uvars’s squadron of escort. The fate of Prince Cyrodian himself, however, remained unknown. Units dispatched immediately upon the discovery of the plot had met Uvars’s men on their return from the Bithiran border, but a thorough search of the hills and villages in the wide vicinity of those borderlands had yielded not one clue of the renegade. If any of the farmers or shepherds in the region had heard or seen aught of him, they refused to admit it. Uvars and his men, with the units sent by King Elad, returned to the capital with no one in manacles.
This failure had incensed Elad, but wisely, he had made a political move in reaction to it rather than one of brute force. To a gathering of army leaders invited to the palace, Elad had made an address and had discussed openly (or as openly as he dared) the situation with Cyrodian. It was never my intention, he told the imperial army, to make enemies of you; I believe that that condition was artificially created by my brother. Now that the matter is clarified, I would like to acknowledge my feelings toward the army by making a gesture of good faith: a bonus for every commander, every officer, and every sword in the imperial service who has remained loyal to this throne through a difficult time. You will find these bonuses in your pay allotments at the end of the month.
As Cyrodian himself had said, Elad was beginning to learn.
Abgarthis made it clear in his letters to Adred and Orain that this spontaneous intention to buy the loyalty of the army would dangerously deplete the royal treasury. Advised of this, Elad had ordered additional coin minted. This meant the buying of surplus gold held in reserve in the mines of allied provinces and cheapening it with copper and silver into an alloy. The expenditure could prove to be disastrous. To make certain that the treasury would not be wholly emptied by this bonus pay to the army, Elad had ordered a policy of limited withdrawals from the banks throughout the empire. At the same time, the government was borrowing funds from several agencies and businesses friendly to the throne—at a very high rate of interest, of course. This pleased the bankers who were on friendly terms with Elad but, as Abgarthis reported, the plan had caused an uproar with others in the High Council. How could the king dare to limit available funds, simply to buy the affection of an army that mistrusted him in the first place, and to do it by improving the fortunes of bankers, whose only loyalty was to their record books?
But Elad had held firm. New coin was hurriedly minted from surplus stock even as additional shipments of bullion were ordered from the gold mines of northeast Galsia and southern Herulia. And the extra bonuses had indeed appeared in the pay allotments given to the army at the end of Hutt, the Month of the Horse—just in time for the soldiers to spend in celebration of the Feast of the Ascension, Athadia’s most religious holiday.
* * * *
On the day before the Feast of the Ascension (held to observe the rising of the Prophet Bithitu into the Hall of the Gods, following his death), Adred went to a banking house in Sulos where he kept an account. The bank was crowded, which was typical for a day before a national holiday, with merchants making large deposits and the wealthy withdrawing funds for private festivities. But today, the crowd in the bank was restive because of King Elad’s order to limit the amount that could be withdrawn. Adred had intended to take out ten in long gold, not an exorbitant sum, but it came to more than four percent of what the bank held for him—the limit now permitted by the crown.
“We can give you nine in long and three in short, Count Adred. You can withdraw more after the holiday, but for now—”
“This is ridiculous! It’s my money!”
“Sir, we’ve heard this complaint all day, and we’re sorry. It’s the crown. Complain to the king. We’re waiting for further word from the treasury—”
Adred
angrily swore, as did everyone else, but no one could do more, particularly because the number of city guards at all money houses had been increased to prevent outbursts of violence. Jakovas, the military governor in Kendia, had been ordered to do so by Elad himself—at the throne’s expense, of course.
Adred withdrew what he could and walked all the way back to Mantho’s apartment, mentally drawing up a letter of complaint against Elad. But he was confronted by a further surprise when he returned.
That same morning, Orain and Galvus had gone out to shop. Adred now found the princess and her son being tended to by Mantho’s servants, and Mantho, at his most bellicose, cursing the king in three languages.
“What happened?” Adred asked in alarm.
Orain had been cut on the head and her skirt torn—a whole side ripped away from ankle to hip. Galvus’s shirt was in tatters, and he had a number of bad bruises and cuts on his arms.
“A riot!” Mantho told him tempestuously.
“Where?”
Orain winced as a servant woman applied some kind of oil to her cut forehead, but she told Adred, “In the Shemtu Square. Galvus and I—ouch!—we were in a little glass shop when a whole squad of soldiers rode down the street. We ran out to see what was happening. There was a large crowd—very large crowd of— All right, it’s stopped bleeding now. Please! Thank you, thank you.”
“A large crowd.” Galvus faced Adred. “Governor Jakovas’s headquarters are at the end of the square; his mansion is there. The people lined up—”
“A mob!” Mantho interjected furiously. “A mob of Osonites!”
Osonite was a common term to describe them; Oson had been an anarchist of the previous generation, a hot-tempered rebel whose arguments made on behalf of the deprived within the empire had led to his assassination and death.
“The people,” Galvus insisted, “lined up in front of the governor’s mansion. Some of them started throwing bricks and rocks. That’s what we were told. Jakovas called in the swords, and they drew their weapons on them.”
The West Is Dying Page 19
