Restoration (23 page)

“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 saddle 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.

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.

“Tosya,” he whispered, heedless of the imperial guards who stood watch at either end of the dreadful display to assure that no one would succor the dying. “And Jov and Laurent... oh, holy Athos . . .” Aleksander turned to me, his stricken face yellow in the sickly torchlight. “If ever you would do me a service, Seyonne ... With whatever sorcery you can work, I beg you finish them. They are honorable men, noble warriors whose only crime was to serve me.”

“Ah, my lord, don't ask—” It was not the Ezzarian way to hasten a death.

He gripped my shoulder with fingers of iron. “You listened to Fessa and Gaspar, staying with them through their ordeal in the only way you could. I can do no less for my warriors. I will not leave them like this.”

My whole being wanted to refuse him. To intervene, even in such horror, was to rob a man of his last breath, his last thought, his last hope, no matter how impossible. Yet I could not dismiss Aleksander's threat to stay. Alone in the deserted part of the marketplace and gaping like nasty urchins, the two of us stood out like silk on a beggar. My oath ... my desire... my hopes demanded that I keep Aleksander safe.

“They crave death, Seyonne. They hunger for it. It is our way.”

A wretched, despicable way to ease suffering—murder. Yet, I had no skill to heal the dying Derzhi, nor any sorcery that could ease their pain, and no one was going to save them. Of all the deaths held to my account, these few... surely their tally would be very light. “Gods forgive me,” I whispered, and gathered my melydda.

 

“The dennissar said you are to come through the postern gate and wait in the olive grove until someone comes to meet you.” Sovari kept his eyes cast down as he reported on his foray into the walled estate of the Mardek heged.

“The postern? Wait outside? You told them this was their sovereign and not some churl of an envoy?”

We had been waiting at the lower end of a steep, twisting roadway for most of an hour while Sovari informed the Mardek that their Prince had come to speak with First Lord Vassile. With admirable diplomacy the captain had persuaded Aleksander that it would be wise to give the lord some warning.

“Truly, my lord,” said the captain, “it took some doing even to get a message sent in so late in the evening. I thought the steward might swallow his tongue when I said I brought word from the rightful Emperor.”

After what we had seen in the marketplace, I was not surprised.

“But he did take the message and then someone more responsible came to speak with you?” said Aleksander.

“Aye, my lord.”

“I suppose I must be grateful I wasn't left entirely to the steward.” Aleksander knew he faced an humiliating interview, yet, after the sight of Edik's handiwork and my unholy completion of it, he had held his temper grimly in check. He had spent the wait reviewing every detail of the Mardek position in the Empire, their holdings and history, down to the jewelry and perfumes preferred by the sixth lord's favorite mistress. His memory for such details was astonishing. “A nervous junior dennissar played intermediary, I would guess.”

Sovari nodded. “He, too, was very frightened. My lord, I think it is a measure of success that you are received at all.”

Aleksander snorted and nudged his thick-necked mount. “Well, then, let's see if sufficient groveling can increase the spoils of our victory. After such a day as this, my expectations can only improve.” Though his words were light, they were devoid of humor.

Aleksander might be forced to slink through a postern gate, but he would not arrive in disguise. He had rebraided his hair, replaced his signet ring, and removed his haffai, exposing his sword hilt and his damaged limb. “They'll see I'm being honest with them,” he said when Sovari tried to persuade him to keep his injury hidden. “And that nothing will hinder me.” There was nothing to be done about his bruised chin, the mediocre horse, his sweat-stained shirt, or the breeches cut raggedly to accommodate the boot, but no one who gave him more than a casual glance would mistake him for a mere envoy.

We left Malver at the foot of the roadway and Sovari to stand watch at the narrow back gate that had been left unguarded for the hour. “They consider me no more than an old toothless dog to be allowed in and out at will,” said Aleksander as we rode between the twisted trees to the crossing path where he had been instructed to wait. The olive grove was scented with summer blooming, the perfumed clusters of white blossoms scarcely visible under the dark leaves. Through the branches we could see lamplight from a stone house that sprawled across the ridge above the city, where the breezes could cool its courtyards.

The wait seemed interminable, but with no apparent effort, the Prince held his mount perfectly still. With a great deal more trouble, I kept mine from bolting. I had never claimed to be a horseman, and the beast seemed to have smelled something he liked better than olive trees.

At last a few of the lights about the house began to move our way. “I'll be nearby,” I said, ready to withdraw into the trees. “Shall I listen?”

“I've nothing to hide from you.”

His gibe stung, but I told myself not to dwell on it. At the city gates, in the fetid alleys, and in the cursed marketplace, I had indeed felt the familiar rage rising within me—stirred by human cruelty that drew my hand to violence and murder, threatening to corrupt my gifts. I could not speak such darkness as I felt that night, for, of course, Denas's anger and Nyel's disgust were mine, too. But my head remained clear and my hand under control. I knew what I was doing now.