Restoration

by Carol Berg

  His neck was as wide as his head, and a hairy bulge of belly hung out below his embroidered vest and imperial sash. He wore no braid. “What do you think, Vallot?” he called to his fellow, a soft, moonfaced man who was inspecting the bundles on the Manganar’s cart. “We could have one of the brats and sell her. This one might be pleasing if she was fattened up. Better than a half-dead pig.” The big man caught the arm of the spinning child and drew her close, running a thick finger along her shoulder. Though smudged and grimy, the child’s tanned skin was not yet coarsened by relentless sun and poverty. The little girl frowned and tried to pull away.

  Aleksander raised his head to see. I edged in front of him.

  The father shook his head, his weariness like another companion standing beside his bent shoulders. “Take her if you will, your honors. I’d sell her myself, but I’m told she’s too young to be of much use. A year or two and she’ll fetch a good price ... if she lives so long. You’ll have to feed her until then.” He held out a single silver coin that he had carefully unwrapped from a bit of rag. “I’ve no more than this bit to pay. Is it worth more than a hungry child?”

  The second tax collector, the younger, moonfaced Vallot, had just allowed the Suzaini rider to pass after pocketing a well-stuffed purse. He glanced at the restive crowd, noisy and pressing in the failing light. “I think we’ve more profitable prospects for our Emperor than a knob-kneed starveling. From the look of this beggar and his cart, she’ll have the crabs already.” He snatched the Manganar’s coin. “Get on with you.” He tossed the coin to a sallow-faced assistant who was standing just behind the two, jotting the official tally of the collections—not to be mistaken for the actual sum—in a cloth-bound ledger. Vallot motioned Aleksander and me forward.

  All might have ended well enough, save the brutish official shrugged, licked his lips, and reached his hand under the girl’s tunic. The child grabbed his other hand and bit him. He roared and shoved her away, shaking his bleeding finger.

  “Stupid girl!” The distraught father slapped the child to the ground just as the injured Derzhi recovered enough to raise his fist. With the girl out of reach, the vicious blow felled the father, and the tax collector’s heavy boot kicked over the cart, scattering pots and bundles and crying children from hither to yon.

  It was over quickly. The moonfaced Vallot shoved the wailing children aside and motioned the rest of us forward impatiently. “See to your proper business, Felics. I’ve supper waiting.”

  I had a silver piece ready to slip into the Derzhi’s hand. Having sent our horses with Malver, we had no goods or livestock, but that never stopped a tax collector from assessing a fee. “Name’s Arago,” I said, ducking my head respectfully. “Smith’s man come from Avenkhar to find work in the mines. This be my cousin Wat.”

  The moonfaced official gave us only a cursory look. We were dirty, shabby, and had contrived to appear unarmed. Sovari had bound the Prince’s sword to his back under the loose haffai, and I had done the same with mine. Not unheard of among desert people, but Vallot had no time to undress us. “Lame is he?” Vallot jerked his head at Aleksander.

  “Fell into a shaft as a boy,” I said, sensing the hundred unfortunate retorts boiling inside Aleksander.

  To our left I saw the bleeding father right his cart, silently urging the little ones to gather their bags and bundles quickly. The furious Felics flexed his bitten hand and cast sidelong glances at the family, while bellowing at the lute players and threatening to close the gates entirely if people didn’t stop crowding too close.

  “Can Wat not speak for himself?” said Vallot, his small eyes glaring at the Prince suspiciously, as if he, too, felt Aleksander’s hostility.

  “Fell on his head,” I said, trying to keep my mind on our business as well as the looming disaster. “Tell him your name, Wat.”

  “Name’s Wat,” growled Aleksander. He was rigid under his shabby haffai.

  “Being impudent with me, cripple?” The Derzhi poked a fleshy finger at Aleksander’s chest, requiring the Prince to shift his crutch to keep from falling over.

  “Not a bit,” I said. “Are you, Wat?”

  Aleksander leaned slightly away from me. As I was on his right, that meant he was leaning onto his good leg. I feared he was bracing himself to deliver a blow.

  I grabbed his arm as if to steady his clumsiness, but I held on so tight that he would have had to break his own limb to get it loose. “My cousin has only the highest respect for the Emperor’s men, doing the Emperor’s work as they’re sworn to do. Aye, Wat? Answer his honor and speak respectful, now. He’s just thick in the head, your lordships.” I moved aside and jostled Aleksander forward, as if to make him speak for himself, leaving me standing directly in between the brutish Felics and the scrambling Manganar. In the process, I dropped ten silver coins into the dirt.

  “Aye, only the highest respect for the land’s true Emperor and his loyal servants,” said the Prince, jerking his head in what might be construed as a measure of respect—or a dry imitation of spitting.

  “Are these yours, sir?” I leaned toward Felics, pointing at the silver, pretending a whisper, though just loud enough that my own interrogator might hear. “I didn’t see who dropped them.” The big man tore his gaze from the Manganar, shifting it slowly from me to the ground.

  Before he could grab the coins, a noisy party of young Derzhi noblemen rode up beside us, laughing and joking about an evening horse race. They were well into their wine, and impatient with the tax collectors and gate guards. “My lord Mardek will have your teeth for these delays!” cried a blond youth with a newly sprouted beard. “He had a wager on this race and is waiting to hear of his luck. Move these oafs aside.” The prancing horses crowded the tax collectors to the side, and the Prince and me also, until we were stumbling over each other. The tail of the young lord’s horse flicked into Aleksander’s face. Behind the riding party was a large caravan, chastous bellowing and straining at their traces as if they had smelled the water inside the walls. Drovers screamed and cracked their whips to keep the unruly beasts in check.

  “May we go, sir?” I said.

  Vallot motioned us forward impatiently. “Be off and teach the cripple more respect, or I’ll throw him down a shaft that has no bottom.” With a quick eye and a quicker hand, he elbowed his dull-witted partner aside, scooped up my dropped silver for himself, and attended to the urgent—and presumably profitable—business of the young noble. His broad face red and swollen, the bullish Felics backed away, bumping into the sallow-faced clerk and his ledger. Felics mumbled something to the clerk and jerked his head toward the gateway.

  Without releasing my grip on his arm or slowing my pace to accommodate his injury, I dragged Aleksander into the passage under the gate towers. At last glimpse the two tax collectors were arguing with each other.

  “Bloody, insolent vermin!” muttered the Prince, trying to wrest his arm from my hand, but succeeding only in stumbling awkwardly and painfully over something in the road. It was difficult to see anything in the deep shadows under the gate towers. I caught Aleksander before he fell, only to have to shove him against the brick wall when the Derzhi noble’s party came tearing through the arched gateway. The pale-haired young lord threw an empty wineskin at us, splattering us with the musty dregs.

  “Gods of earth and sky!” Aleksander was shaking.

  “Get your balance,” I growled into his ear, not knowing who might be lurking in the darkness. “And keep silent. We need to get away from here.”

  “I’ll kill them for this.”

  I didn’t know which “this” he was talking about, or, to be sure, which “them.” “It will have to be later,” I said. “We need to get moving.”

  “Unless you plan to break my arm,” said Aleksander through clenched teeth, “I would appreciate your letting go of it.”

  My fingers were clamped almost to his bone. “Sorry.” I was no more settled than he.

  We had to wait while a wagon rumbled pa
st, and after it two riders in striped robes, prodding a group of three slaves dragging a sledge loaded with cut blocks of stone. Before us, through an archway illuminated by lingering dusk, was the city. Behind us, where the ironbound wooden gates stood open, slaves were setting torches in high sconces. As my eyes adjusted to the shadows, I picked up what had tripped the Prince—one of the bundles from the Manganar’s cart, a leather apron wrapped around a pick, a small saw, a steel-headed hammer, and a few chisels of various sizes. A man’s livelihood. I rewrapped the bundle and hooked its rope tie over my shoulder. “Let’s move,” I said.

  We hurried as fast as Aleksander could manage into the outer ring of Karn‘Hegeth, a cramped street of stables, warehouses, and slave quarters grown up between the inner and outer ramparts. Beggars waylaid every traveler who passed the gates, and slack-mouthed children with dead eyes shuffled here and there in the crowds, begging bowls raised. A skeletal woman of indeterminate age, shrunken breasts hanging out of a loosely tied bodice, smiled and rubbed a bony hip against my side. “Two coppers, traveler, and I’ll do the cripple for naught extra.” I pushed her away, and we made our way through the inner gates and into the cobbled streets.

  Sovari and Malver were nowhere to be seen. It was not a worry; we had agreed to meet in the marketplace as soon as we were sure we’d not been followed. But just ahead of us, disappearing into an alley, was the two-wheeled cart, and sidling through the crowds watching its progress was the sallow-faced clerk from the gates. Petty vengeance was the most dangerous sort.

  “Come on,” I said. “We need to get these back to the Manganar. He’ll likely starve without.”

  Aleksander swung himself forward on the crutches. “Let the cowardly villain starve.” He spat on the dusty pavement. “He was going to sell the girl ... his own child... or kill her. Even animals protect their young. Weaklings deserve what they get.”

  “And the Derzhi who started it?”

  “Even brutes have their duties.” He could not yet see the whole of matters, nor how the brute planned to carry out his “duties.”

  “Is it duty has brought the clerk away from the gates just now?” I said, drawing Aleksander into the dark alleyway. “Or does good Felics think to get the tithe he wanted all along?” I stopped just far enough inside the turning that we could not be seen from the street and pointed out the man pushing his way through the stream of traffic.

  Aleksander remained skeptical until the clerk hurried into the alley. “Bastard!” Before I could take care of matters, Aleksander slammed a crutch into the clerk’s middle, knocking the sallow-faced man into me. “Stealing children is against the law of the Empire, you misbegotten jackal!”

  What I had not noticed in the street was that the sneaking fellow had brought a friend with him, a big, efficient, but otherwise unremarkable thug. The brawny fellow rammed a fist into Aleksander’s jaw, and then kicked the other crutch out from under him. The flailing Prince toppled into the dirt. Before the thug’s massive boot could connect with Aleksander’s head, I shoved the clerk to the ground and tackled his big friend. Aleksander retained enough wit to cover his head and roll toward the wall, releasing a stream of curses and epithets entirely appropriate to the occasion.

  The thug was easily dealt with. I left him sprawled in a pile of offal with such a knot on his head that he would not remember how he came to be there. Unfortunately, the clerk scuttled away before I could teach him any similar lesson.

  “Damnable, cursed blight of a world ...” The strength of Aleksander’s diatribe relieved my concerns as to his physical well-being.

  I retrieved his crutches and helped him to a wobbly stance. “I think our stay in Karn‘Hegeth has just been cut short,” I said. “Someone is going to be looking for us.”

  The Prince rubbed the bleeding split on his jaw and wiped his fingers on his soiled haffai. “I won’t run away. But I’ve no mind to stay longer than to see to my business.”

  We picked our way down the fetid alley. Night had already arrived there, long before it reached the wider streets. A beggar with only half a face and no tongue grunted and pawed at my feet as I stepped around a yellow-faced woman slumped against the mud-brick wall, her skirts pulled up around her waist. Aleksander coughed and spat, and I pulled the scarf of my haffai across my nose. The stink of yaretha—the mind-numbing weed that left such women dead by age twenty—and its companion scents of excrement and vomit was overpowering. A little further on, sitting next to a pile of refuse that included a bloated mound which had once been a cat, we found the Manganar and his children.

  The bony man sat against the wall cradling his little daughter, muffling her sobs against his ragged shirt and dabbing at the small bruise on her forehead. “It’ll pass, child. It’ll pass. Only a little ways to go, now we’ve rested a bit.” His battered, bleeding face looked fifty, though he was likely not more than twenty-five. While the goats bleated weakly and nosed about in the refuse, the other children huddled next to the man, eyes wide and frightened in their thin faces. One of the girls clutched a gray bundle almost as large as she. She kept staring at it and jiggling it with tiny shakes. The father glanced at her, his expression an artwork of pain. “It’s no use, Daggi,” he said softly. “Leave him be till we find Potters’ Lane. He ... sleeps.”

  I could not fathom how the man could find strength to spare for grieving. “Good day, sir,” I called out. “You left this behind at the gates.”

  The man jumped to his feet and shoved the children behind him, fumbling about to produce a large, old-fashioned knife that he waved about inexpertly. “Who’s there?”

  “We found this at the city gate. Thought you might need it.” I tossed the tool bundle at his feet, while keeping a respectful distance. I didn’t need to grind his nose in the dirt.

  He stared at the bundle as if it had walked back to him of itself, and then shifted his astonishment back to me, squinting into the darkness and craning his head to see Aleksander, who was leaning heavily on the wall. “A kindness on a day with none else, save ... I wondered... you dropped the coins that snatched the villain’s eye from us.”

  “A loose knot in my purse,” I said.

  “May Panfeya bless you with healthy children, goodman.”

  “And Dolgar grant you sturdy walls,” I said. The Manganar low gods provided useful gifts for their petitioners. “And you might need them. You were followed from the gates. The scrawny one with the yellow face was given a commission... you understand?”

  The Manganar sheathed his knife and lifted his daughter again, gently pulling her head onto his shoulder. “I’ll watch, then. If I had ought to repay you... Tell me how you are called, so I can at least name you in my prayers.”

  “Arago out of Avenkhar, and this is my cousin Wat. If luck holds, we’ll have no need of your repayment.”

  “I’m Vanko of Eleuthra, soon to be of Potters’ Lane with my brother-in-law Borian. My hand is ever at your service, Arago, and those of all my family.”

  I bowed. “Dolgar guard you, sir, and comfort your child.”

  The man bowed in return and proceeded to gather his children and his goats, and take up the long handles of his cart.

  Aleksander and I headed back the way we’d come. Torches soaked with octar—the tarry seepage found among desert rocks—were already filling the streets with stinking yellow smoke. We saw no sign of the sallow-faced man.

  “We’ll have no need of this Vanko or any other peasant,” said Aleksander as we made our slow way through the streets. His movements were becoming increasingly jerky, and he could only take a few steps at a time without stopping. “My uncle gave the Mardek their house here and at least two silver mines. And my local dennissar Tosya and I spent three weeks opening up the silver trade routes from Karn‘Hegeth when your friend, the Yvor Lukash, had the place strangled two years ago. Tosya will harbor us if Mardek is too cowardly.” We stopped again, and Aleksander leaned heavily on his crutches, grimacing. “Druya’s horns, it will be fine to get in the sa
ddle again. I’ll apologize to that wretched horse for everything I said about it.”

  “I wouldn’t count on anyone’s loyalties,” I said. I wasn’t so confident that Mardek’s gratitude would extend to a man with a price on his head. “Vanko might be the more useful friend.”

  I kept my eye moving over the throngs in the streets, watching for any gaze that rested on Aleksander for more than an instant. He wasn’t likely to be recognized by just anyone; few commoners ever caught a glimpse of royalty. But the Derzhi tax collector would not be happy that his nasty little plan had been foiled by a man on crutches.

  “Are your slave’s ears deaf? The child-beating coward talked of selling the girl. He would probably have worked a deal for her right there in that alley.”

  I pressed the Prince into a dark doorway and stuffed myself in on top of him while two mounted Derzhi rode past, peering closely at the passersby. “Your head is grown thick, Wat,” I whispered, “and your eyes dim. He saved her life with the only weapons he had. The bruise on her face likely pains him far more than the blood on his own.” And though I did not say it, I knew that the child’s bruised face hurt Aleksander as well. He had not forgotten Nyamot.

  CHAPTER 15

  Any doubt Aleksander might have borne as to the Emperor’s intentions vanished when we came to the grand marketplace of Karn‘Hegeth. At first we couldn’t understand why the evening’s activities of eating, drinking, buying, and selling seemed to be confined to the eastern half of the paved expanse... not until we moved to the edge of the crowds to watch for Sovari and Malver and saw the bodies.

  From a succession of gibbets that lined the western boundary of the marketplace hung at least twenty men. Three of them were rough-looking fellows—branded, flogged, and hanged by the neck as thieves. But the rest were Derzhi, some dressed in fine clothes as if dragged from feasting or temple rites, and all of them hung by their feet, with lips and noses cut off and their braids shorn and tied to their swollen tongues in mockery—a traitor’s punishment. Most were dead. Hungry rats had already found their way down the chains. But as Aleksander moved awkwardly down the row, drawn to the gruesome display in a horrified fascination that my nervous cautions could not deter, we heard piteous moans from a few of the blackened faces, even as the rats fed on them.