by Pearl North
Po turned away. If he didn’t look at her, he had some hope of controlling his response to her. She didn’t want him. She wanted the things he could provide her with: food, protection, the hope of a better future. With a start he realized that was exactly what he’d hoped to gain from every liaison he’d sought: Selene, Hilloa, Thela herself. Was he ever interested in them beyond what being their consort could provide? Suddenly he felt the very opposite of horny. He felt disgusted—with himself and with Ayma. He blew out the candle and sat down on the floor with his back to the door. “Get some sleep,” he told her. “I won’t let Baris or anyone else bother you, and once we find the bloom, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you come with us to the Libyrinth.”
“I’ve made you angry.”
“No.” But it was a lie.
When he awoke, he was far from the door, wrapped in a blanket, his head on a pillow. He sat up. The bed was empty. Ayma had gone.
There was a knock on the door and Selene said, “Po, if you don’t get downstairs right now, you’re going to miss breakfast.”
Breakfast. And Ayma would be offered food again, if she had none, and then would she give herself to that person, and would they accept? What if it were Baris? Irrational jealousy propelled him from the floor. Why should he care? She was unnatural, to behave as if she were a commodity. Let her do as she wished.
Still, he hastened into his robe and fairly ran downstairs. There he found that two tables had been pushed together and the chorus sat around it. Ayma sat with them, wedged between Selene and Hilloa, chewing on a piece of bread with a shuttered expression on her face. She looked up as Po entered and for a moment their eyes met. Po flushed with shame, and he saw her blush as well. He looked away. Did she think he had meant to buy her, and then had rejected her? And if so, for which act did she hate him more?
Po did not look at her as he took a seat between Jan and Baris. He reached for a roll and some peabea to smear on it. He felt eyes on him and looked up to find the entire table watching him—except for Ayma, who had stopped eating and now stared at the table, clearly mortified.
Hilloa looked at him with reproach. Selene appeared to be unsuccessfully suppressing humor; Siblea tilted his head upward with superiority. Jan appeared to be exasperated—why, he did not know—and Baris, of all things, looked sympathetic.
“We have explained to Ayma that for as long as we are staying here she will eat with us, and that all of us will treat her with honor and respect,” said Siblea.
Po glanced at Baris and Jan. What exactly had they told Siblea? “Of course,” he said, looking at Hilloa, since Ayma would not look at him. He wanted to explain, but he didn’t know where to begin. He did not really understand what had happened himself. “Of course.”
“Since our own food stores are limited, I suggest that our first order of business today be securing more supplies,” said Siblea. He leaned toward Ayma. “Will you accompany us to the market?”
She nodded, though reluctantly. “It is dangerous, and expensive. Some days, there is little there. When there is, there is usually fighting. But you can take some of the beer to trade, if you want.”
“Perhaps we can offer the merchants books,” said Jan. “Since literacy is encouraged now.”
Ayma gave a little shake of her head, caught herself, and then stared at the table again.
“What?” Hilloa said, prodding her gently. “Why is that a bad idea?”
Ayma lifted one shoulder. “If they are the wrong books…”
“The wrong books?” said Selene.
Ayma nodded. “The Lit King only likes certain books. Heart of Darkness, like he read from yesterday in the procession; Peer Gynt; Moby Dick; Roseanne. There are others, but no one knows all of them and sometimes the list changes. He’s…mad.”
They were all silent a moment. Then Siblea said, “What about The Book of the Night? Do you think that would be worth anything to the merchants?”
Ayma’s eyes opened wide. “You have The Book of the Night?”
“Here.” Siblea reached into his satchel and drew out his own copy. “You may have it. We have many copies.”
Ayma stared at the book in her hand as if she held a fragile and dangerous thing. “Many copies? Then…” She smiled. “Then the Redemption is real.”
“Of course,” said Siblea.
“He said it was a false Redemption. We thought we’d been forsaken for nothing. But…this…”
“Siblea,” said Selene, “food is important, I agree, but we need to consider our mission as well. I’m not at all sure that handing out copies of The Book of the Night in the marketplace is going to get us any closer to finding the bloom. In fact, it could draw attention to our presence here in ways we don’t want.”
“She’s right,” said Hilloa. “We should try to make do with what we have for now. Once we get the bloom and turn the plain green with it, there will be food for everyone.”
“If the bloom even exists,” countered Siblea. “Besides, just how do you propose we embark on our search? The citadel is a large place, and since this object was not found at any time during our occupation of it, it must truly be secreted away.”
“Then that’s where we start,” said Selene, “at the places that nobody goes to. We’ve discussed this. The Well of Silence, the old theater, Endymion’s tomb.” She stood up. “Come on, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Siblea remained seated.
“Siblea—look, we have food enough for everyone for another day and a half. If we don’t find the bloom today, we’ll go to the market tomorrow.”
“It should be the other way around,” he insisted. “Ayma said that the market is depleted. We may not successfully provision today. I would rather we tried that first. Then we have tomorrow to figure out something else if we’re unsuccessful.”
“Perhaps some of us can go to the Well of Silence and some of us can go to the market,” suggested Jan.
“No,” said Siblea and Selene in unison.
“Well, at least you agree on one thing,” said Hilloa. “Look, Siblea, you’re not fooling anyone. We know you have no real interest in finding the bloom. You don’t even believe it exists. And since we’ve arrived, it’s obvious that you are upset about the Lit King and want to do something about him. It’s understandable, but he will still be here later. The situation at the Libyrinth is critical. I think you’ve forgotten that.”
Silence hung over the table as Siblea looked at the others. All of them, except for Baris and Ayma, nodded in agreement with what Hilloa had said. “I see,” he said. “Very well; we’ll go to the Well of Silence, then.”
“Wait,” said Ayma.
Shocked that she’d spoken, they all turned to her.
“You’d better not go out dressed like that,” she said, nodding at their robes. “People will think you’re priests, and if any of the Lit King’s mob sees you…” She didn’t need to finish the sentence. “There are some clothes upstairs; they belonged to my father.”
Half an hour later, the Chorus of the Word assembled in the main hall of the tavern, dressed in the clothing of its former proprietor. Po and Baris both wore homespun wool trousers and tunics. The pants strained at Baris’s waistline and stopped about a hand span above Po’s ankles; Hilloa and Selene wore skirts and blouses similar to Ayma’s, all equally worn and stained. Jan wore a spun silverleaf shirt that was probably only worn on special occasions, and a pair of felt drawstring pants. Siblea had presented the greatest difficulty. He was well enough known to be recognized, and on top of that, Ayma’s father was not a tall man like he was. He wore a hooded poncho to help hide his face and a pair of coveralls, their straps extended with rope so they hung low enough to cover his legs.
After showing them the clothes, Ayma had resumed her station behind the bar. Despite the fact that the surface gleamed already, she polished it with her rag, her hand moving in repetitive, slow circles. She had an absent look on her face, as if she had gone somewhere else in her mi
nd.
“Ayma?” said Hilloa.
She started.
“Would you like to come with us?”
She looked dismayed, and directed her gaze to Siblea. “I…must I?”
“Of course not,” he said. “We just thought you might wish to. That you might be safer, with company.”
Her mouth formed a small O, as if the notion that they concerned themselves with her safety was a novel one. “Thank you, Censor. But…I will remain here. I’ll wait for your return.”
As they left the tavern, Po looked over his shoulder. She was still behind the bar, still polishing it.
16
The Marketplace
“What is the Well of Silence, anyway?” Po asked Selene as they made their way down a narrow side street. They were avoiding the main thoroughfares.
Of course, Siblea thought nothing of answering the question, even though it wasn’t directed at him.
“It is the place where the Devouring Silences used to bring their victims.”
Jan paled. “Are there still any left alive?”
“No. Not since Yammon slew the last one.”
“He didn’t slay the last one,” said Selene. “Haly did, last year.”
Siblea shrugged. “Well, we thought they were all dead.”
Selene shook her head. “I don’t think—”
“If you would rather that we went to the market…” said Siblea, grinning at Selene’s reaction. “By virtue of being a shunned place, the well is a perfect hiding place,” he continued. He gave her an insincere smile. “Don’t be afraid, my dear.”
She set her jaw and gave a short nod. “Fine. Lead on.”
As they walked, the buildings became smaller and more decrepit. Apparently no one wanted to live near this place. Po had no difficulty keeping up with Siblea’s long strides, but as usual, Baris did. Po deliberately slackened his pace so as to fall back to where Baris wheezed along. Baris gave him a quizzical glance but said nothing.
After a time, Po said, “Citadel people hate sex, right?”
Baris laughed. “Hardly.”
“But they think it’s wrong.”
Baris tilted his head to one side. “Sort of. It depends. You’re supposed to get married first. But even then, nobody really cares if men do it outside of marriage.”
“But it’s bad for women.”
“Their reputations, you mean? Yeah. They’re whores.”
“And that’s bad?”
Baris snorted. “Yeah. This is about Ayma, isn’t it?”
“She offered herself to me, but she didn’t want me.”
Baris shook his head, laughing openly now. “You crack me up, Po. Of course she did. She wanted what you can offer her—your protection, your food. Besides, she thought you expected it. She was afraid to refuse you.”
“Afraid? Why?”
“Well, it’s generally easier on the woman if she goes along with it. If she doesn’t make the guy force the issue.”
For an instant, the neighborhood of shabby homes and pitted stone dissolved in a fizzle of incandescence. In the blink of an eye he was walking down the street beside Baris once more, but everything was different—the buildings, the shadows, even the paving stones held new menace. Force.
The idea that Ayma thought of him as someone who would—he couldn’t even think of it—made him feel ill—guilty and at the same time furious at the injustice of the charge. “I’d never—”
“I know. So does the rest of the chorus. Look, she just has a different set of expectations. The mistake you’re making is in thinking that it matters what she thinks.”
How could it not matter? Po decided not to ask him.
The buildings dwindled and dwindled, becoming mere hovels before finally falling away entirely before a wide open, circular space with a large cavity in the center. They stood at the edge and looked down into a vast, bowl-shaped crater littered with what appeared at first to be thousands upon thousands of steel masks—faces looking up at them. Po’s heart tightened and he forced himself to breathe. Dead—they were all dead.
There wasn’t a person, Ilysian, Libyrarian, Singer, or Ayorite, who didn’t know about the Devouring Silences. They were the nightmare of the Ancients’ reign, slave takers. They burrowed underground and surfaced in the middle of a town or village in the dead of night and then deployed their “tongues”—tentacles that stunned people and sent them into a deep stupor. They gathered them inside their body and returned with them, here, where the victims were collected by those who served the Ancients, fresh fodder for their games. On the inside of the pit, Po saw the remnants of corrals and tunnels, where the slaves were collected and taken off to serve their new masters. A few of the Devouring Silences had flipped over, showing the ribbed, flexible undercarriage with which they propelled themselves. And here and there, in between the metal carcasses, Po spotted a few human bones as well.
“What makes you think the bloom can be here?” said Jan.
“If you wanted to hide something, this would be a good place,” said Selene. “It’s shunned. Look at how loath we ourselves are to go down there.”
“What if some of them are still alive?” said Baris.
“They’re not. Nothing has moved in this place for generations,” said Siblea.
“Come on,” said Hilloa. “Let’s get it over with.”
A rickety ladder led down into the pit on the southern end. They climbed down. It was difficult to get around. The place was crammed with the carcasses of Devouring Silences, each one roughly eleven feet across and twenty feet long. Po and the others climbed and crawled, all the time alert for any sign of life among the ruins. Most pathetic of all were the bones, in and among the Silences and in the corrals carved into the sides of the pit. Po tried to imagine what it must have been like to go to sleep in your village and wake up in the belly of one of these creatures, condemned to a life of slavery.
They searched the place until the sun was low, to no avail. “Let’s get out of here before it gets dark,” said Selene.
Siblea agreed and they all climbed out of the pit, each of them trying not to appear as anxious to get out of there as they all really were.
The following day it was decided that Selene, Jan, and Baris would continue the search for the bloom, while the others went to the market and tried to get some food.
The marketplace was a large open square filled with booths and tables. On their journey the previous day, the city had appeared all but deserted. But here, people milled about, haggling or hawking their goods. Still, it was a pathetic, bedraggled market compared with what Po had known in Ilysies.
Apparently it had fallen far from its former glory by citadel standards, too, for Siblea shook his head and clucked at the scattered booths and thin crowd of shoppers.
Hilloa and Po were in charge of rolling Ayma’s donated barrel of beer down the street. The tavern keeper had again refused to accompany them. “Why does she polish the bar all the time?” Po wondered aloud as Siblea scouted ahead for a buyer.
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Hilloa. “She’s been traumatized. Her father was killed by that mob. And if she offered you sex in return for food, who knows what she’s been doing in order to survive.”
The whole idea was unimaginable to him. “What kind of man would want a woman on terms like that?”
Hilloa laughed and gave him a sideways hug. “Oh, Po. How can you still be so naive? Have you ever talked to Baris?”
“That’s all bluster.”
“In him, yes. But it’s real for others. Others who live here.”
Po nodded. “I guess I don’t have to understand it to see that it’s real. I just…I don’t want it to be.”
She leaned into him harder. “Of course you don’t. But you’d better be careful around Ayma. I know you mean well, but she’s been through a hard time and the potential for misunderstanding between you two is high.”
He laughed at that. “Yeah.”
Hilloa released him. Her sm
ile dimpled her chin. “Do you like her?”
A confused mix of feelings rose up in him. “I can’t tell.”
She raised one eyebrow, and Po got the impression that Hilloa thought she knew the answer to her question. Just then, they heard shouting up ahead.
An argument had broken out at one of the stalls. Two men were fighting over a sack of barley as the merchant looked on. A crowd gathered around the men and the chorus joined it.
“I paid him!” yelled one man. “It’s mine!”
“He promised it to me!” the other one protested.
Each of them had hold of one end of the sack and were tugging on it. Both were large, muscular men in ragged pants and tunics. The one who claimed to have purchased the grain had dark hair; the other was blond.
“He paid for it!” yelled the merchant.
The blond man glared at him. “You told me you’d save it for me! I have children at home!”
“We all have children at home, Harv,” said the dark-haired man. “You didn’t get here early enough—that’s your misfortune, not mine.”
Harv gave a mighty tug on the sack of grain and it tore. Barley flew in all directions, and the crowd scattered with it. Po, Hilloa, and Siblea looked on in dismay as everywhere people were on their hands and knees, grubbing for a few handfuls of grain.
The dark-haired man confronted the merchant. “Give me my money back.”
The merchant, a thin man nearly as tall as Siblea, said, “You received the goods, Ben. It’s not my fault what happened after that.”
As Ben growled and seized the merchant by the collar, a voice directly behind Po rang out. “Stop!”
It was Siblea. Po turned to see him standing on top of Ayma’s barrel of ale. He had thrown back his hood and he held his hands out to the crowd. Someone murmured, “It’s Censor Siblea!”
The news traveled through the crowd like wildfire. “The Singers are back! They’ve returned to help us!”
Po and Hilloa exchanged dismayed glances. Hilloa tugged at Siblea’s overalls and whispered, “Siblea! What are you doing?”