The Way Into Chaos (58 page)

After the gang moved away, they headed toward the back of the line to get the serving they were due. The old fellow hung his head low and wept. “I’m sorry,” he said in a cracked voice. Luckily, there were no overseers close enough to hear him.
 

Shame flowed through Tejohn. Was this the empire he had served? He wanted to believe the Finstels were running amok now that the Italgas no longer stood guard over them, but he didn’t believe it. Conditions might have changed somewhat in the days since the Festival, but they couldn’t have become
this
terrible. This was a long-standing practice, or long-standing prejudice given free rein.
 

And Tejohn had fought to preserve it.
 

Without even thinking about it, Tejohn swallowed the rest of his gruel and disposed of his wooden bowl. He walked empty-handed back toward the food line, meeting the leader and his little gang. Their bowls were full almost to the brim; was that because they were bullies, or did the end of the line get larger portions?
 

“Boys,” Tejohn said, his voice hoarse and thin from disuse, “you should repay those elders for the food you borrowed.”

The leader of the gang smiled nastily, showing his gray teeth. “Who’s going to make us, old ma—”

Tejohn punched him in the throat with all the speed and power he had left in his good right hand. With his left, he gently cradled the bowl of gruel. The leader collapsed in the dust, writhing and making choking noises. Tejohn gestured toward the old man they’d cut out of the line. He approached hesitantly and accepted the bowl of gruel warily.
 

Tejohn looked at the other gang members. They were just boys, but he had killed boys before. He’d killed them in uncountable numbers.
 

Luckily, that wasn’t going to happen today. The boys turned toward him, their shoulders slumped, as though accepting him as their new leader. “Pay back those elders.”
 

One chubby-faced boy--he must have been as new as Tejohn--spoke up. “I gave it to my mother.”
 

As he spoke, a haggard-looking woman rushed toward them. “He didn’t steal for himself,” she said, breathless from the exertion. “He was worried about me. He stole for me.”
 

Tejohn suddenly recognized her as one of the ferry folk. It had been her husband who had taken a spear to his belly. The boy’s voice was dull. “I gave the food to my mother.”
 

“I’m sorry,” the mother said, her face flushed. “Quildin told us”--she gestured toward the gang leader who had stopped thrashing but was not yet dead—”this was the only way we’d survive. Great Way, I’m ashamed of what has become of our family’s good name.”

Tejohn turned toward the boy. “What a good lad you are to give your daily ration to your mother. Now return the food you stole.”

The elders they’d robbed had already come close, and they held out their empty hands. The shortest of the boys bowed as he offered the bowl to an old woman, then he turned to Tejohn. “What will you have of us, sir? You’re the leader now.”
 

Tejohn realized the old fellow, his face carefully blank, had lingered nearby to eavesdrop. “No, I’m not,” Tejohn said. “She is.” He pointed at the ferry woman.
 

“What?” she looked stunned. “I can not—”
 

“These boys don’t need a leader skilled at killing. They need someone with a desire to do better. You, woman, will organize things for everyone here as best you can. You ran a business once, yes?”
 

“The sturdiest, fastest ferry in the northern Waterlands.”
 

“Find out how to make things better for the other servants, then make it happen. But if I find out you are stealing again”--he pointed at Quildin, who had finally died--“no one will come to your aid, either.”
 

The old fellow chuckled. “You’re forming a rival cupboard.”
 

Tejohn looked down at him. “I don’t know what that is.”
 

The fellow turned toward the ferry woman. “Your name is Beshier, isn’t it? Follow me to my section, and I’ll tell you what you need to—”
 

“What’s this!” a man shouted, startling them all. One of the overseers had come up to them from behind. His two guards, truncheons in hand, stood over Quildin. “What happened to this man?”
 

“He collapsed, sir,” Beshier said. She didn’t look the overseer in the face, but they all knew she was risking a beating by answering the man’s question. “Just collapsed.”

The overseer snorted and walked away.
 

That night, Tejohn slept under a blanket again. The next day, he discovered a piece of mutton and an apricot in the bottom of his gruel.
 

The work that was killing them all seemed to be busywork. They broke rock to dig pits and hauled the stones to the riverside. Every fourth day, three-quarters of the servants were taken down to the water to move the stones onto barges. That was a prized detail, because servants would occasionally contrive to step or fall into the Shelsiccan to clean themselves.
 

Tejohn never volunteered for that detail. They were downstream of Splashtown itself--
Ussmajil,
he had to remember not to use Peradaini names here--which meant the river was full of sewage. Some of the workers who worked the barges died later from diarrhea or infections.
 

Presumably, the broken stone was for the city’s walls, which had been in poor repair for a generation. Even those tyrs most favored by the Italgas were not going to get scholar-built walls around their cities. Forts in the passes, yes. Around their ancestral homes and lands? Never.
 

But why quarry the rock as though digging one shallow well after another? Tejohn wasn’t entirely certain, but he thought they were working on the old parade grounds where local athletic contests had been held and green troops practiced skirmishes and drills. He couldn’t be certain, though, not only because it had been so many years since he’d marched on those grounds--and it had only been the once, when the Gerrits brought the Witt and Bendertuk banners to Splashtown in tribute to their losses in victory--but because he couldn’t see any landmarks of any note, not even the Southern Barrier.
 

The twelfth day was another day of barge duty, and the pit workers once again found themselves lightly guarded. The most vicious of the overseers and the majority of the guards stood close watch over the waterways to prevent escape attempts. Tejohn worked down in a pit that day, a duty he hated because the air could be stifling, and was surprised to hear a human voice speak to him in a measured tone.
 

“You’re the one who did right by old Padenwo.”

Tejohn was so surprised, he dropped the stone he was lifting. The woman who had spoken to him smiled weakly; she knew the effect a human voice could have.
 

She was withered and lean, like anyone who had been a servant for a long time. Her face was dark from the sun and her hair streaked with gray, but Tejohn suspected that she was a few years younger than him.

“I guess I am,” Tejohn said, “for what that’s worth.”
 

They did not stop working. “It’s worth some extra rations, if you haven’t noticed.”

“I have. Are you the one I should thank? Or can you pass my thanks on to the correct person? I have been afraid to speak my gratitude aloud, to be honest.”
 

“Today, we can risk careful speech. And you can thank the cupboard. It’s off-limits to most of the refugee servants, but it’s been opened to you now.”
 

There was that word again. “What treasures can I take from this cupboard?”
 

“It is the meanest cupboard in the empire. You can only take what treasures a slave might have.”
 

Tejohn loaded a few more stones, taking care to work slightly faster than his companion but not too fast. “Information, then. I would like information.”
 

She smiled at him again, but by the time he realized he should smile back, she had turned away. “Very wise, soldier. What do you want to ask?”
 

Something about her tone made him cautious. This “cupboard,” which was presumably a secret, illegal organization of servants, would not look kindly on prying from someone so new. In fact, if he were part of such an organization, he would arrange an interview just like this to test him, to see if he was a mole or informant.
 

“What are we creating here? And why?”
 

“Have you not seen the—” One of the ropes holding a basket wiggled like a worm and she fell silent. Tejohn followed her example and loaded a basket in sullen silence. A few breaths later, he saw the shadow of an overseer pass over them.
 

When the rope wiggled again, she resumed her answer. “Have you not seen the blockhouse they are building upriver?”
 

“I can barely make out the features of the people standing over this pit.”
 

“Ah, I understand. The pits we’re making are one of Shunzik Finstel’s big plans. There are other servants following behind us, building prison houses over these pits.”
 

“Is it true that Tyr Finstel rescued someone from Peradain? Someone important?”
 

“’Captured’ would be a better term for it. The prisoner is being held in one of the first pits, under guard every minute of the day. And you would do well to remember that he is King Shunzik now. He has renounced the title of Tyr, rejected the very concepts of chieftains and tyrants, and crowned himself.”
 

For a moment, Tejohn wondered if the man planned to claim the entire empire or just his own lands. But the answer was obvious: He would be king of whatever he could take and hold.
 

“Is the captive Ellifer Italga?”
 

“No,” the woman answered. “There are no servants here who would have recognized him, but we would have heard talk from guards or commanders. Someone would have recognized an Italga and talked. This is someone that no one recognizes.”

Someone that no one recognizes? Tejohn had no idea who that could be. Quallis, the king’s valet? Kellin Pendell, the commander of the guard? Kolbi Arriya, Ellifer’s shield bearer? Even Sincl, the Festival performance master? Great Way, it could be anyone.

“And what of you?”
 

Tejohn sighed. He didn’t want to do this, but it would have been dishonorable to lie. “What I’m about to tell you could get me hanged.” She didn’t respond. “My name is Tejohn Treygar.”

“I know that name,” she said. “I would not have expected to find you here.”

Tejohn only grunted in response. The basket was full. He waved to the blurry shape at the top of the pit and started to fill the one beside it. “I lived in Peradain, inside the Palace of Song and Morning, for over twenty years. If anyone will recognize the prisoner in the pit, it will be me.”

Chapter 29

The next day, Tejohn found himself assigned to a new work duty. He had no idea who made the change. A servant told him to turn left at the entrance to his barracks rather than right. Beside him stood a forlorn-looking young man with a crooked nose and scratch marks on his neck. He, apparently, was taking Tejohn’s place.
 

The woman he’d spoken to in the pit led him to his new duties, but before he could ask her name, she looked over her shoulder and said, “My name is Weshka Stokes. Everything else around here is getting its old Finshto names back, but not servants. We’re not worth the bother.”
 

She led him into a large wooden building. A stone hearth had been built in the center below the smoke hole. Tejohn couldn’t help but cough slightly as he entered. There were servants everywhere, some feeding the fire, some stirring the content of bowls with wooden spoons, some slicing at butchered pigs or chickens.
 

The smell of roasting meat made Tejohn moan slightly; Weshka glanced at him again.
 

“Just be sure you understand the rules here. You never touch anything unless you’ve been given explicit permission, and that goes triple for the women, the children, and the food. Stealing food might get someone’s aunt or mother whipped, and for that, you’d be stabbed in your sleep. As for the women and children, touch them and you’ll wish you’d been killed in bed.”
 

“The fellow with the crooked nose who took my place?”
 

Weshka nodded. “He thought he was so well liked that we would wag our fingers at him.”
 

Tejohn was given a cup of grass tea. It was cold, but the young man who poured it filled the cup four more times.
Small sips, my tyr. That’s safest.
Tejohn’s dull, unyielding headache eased.
 

He was led to a group of young men and given a largish bun stuffed with roasted onion and boiled greens. He ate half. It wasn’t enough, but he tried to slip it inside his ragged shirt for later.