Richard smiled and bowed his head. “I’ll do that, sir.”
Nicci knew that Richard remembered Ishaq’s name, but he was playing like he didn’t for the sake of the driver, whom Richard didn’t trust, after the man had abandoned his fellow the night before. What Richard didn’t understand was that the driver had only done what he was supposed to do. It was not permitted for one man to take the work that belonged to others. That was stealing. The load was the responsibility of the load man, not the driver.
“You go enlist first in the load workers’ group,” Ishaq told Richard. “Pay your dues. They have an office in the same building. Then you go put your name on the list for the job. I’m in the citizen workers’ group that goes before the review assembly to consider new applicants. You just sit tight and wait outside. When we meet, later on, I’ll vouch for you.”
The driver leaned out and spat over the far side of the wagon. “Why you want to go and do that, Ishaq? You don’t even know this fellow.”
Ishaq scowled up at the driver. “Did you see anyone at the hall who was as big as this fellow? We need another loader for the warehouse. We just lost a man and need a replacement. You want me to get stuck with some skinny old man so as I’ll have to do all the work?”
The driver chuckled. “Suppose not.”
Ishaq gestured toward Nicci. “Besides, look at his young wife. She needs some meat on her bones, don’t you think? Looks like a nice young couple.”
The driver spat over the side of the wagon again. “I suppose.”
Ishaq casually flicked a hand at Richard on his way to unlock the door to the warehouse. “You be there.”
“I’ll be there.”
Ishaq paused and turned back. “Almost forgot—what’s your name?”
“Richard Cypher.”
Ishaq gave him a nod and turned back to the door. “I’m Ishaq. See you tonight, Richard Cypher. Don’t you let me down—you hear? You turn out to be lazy and let me down, and I’ll throw your sorry hide in the river with an iron bar tied around your neck.”
“I won’t let you down, Ishaq.” Richard smiled. “I’m a good swimmer, but not that good.”
As they trudged though the muddy streets on their way to find some food before they went to the offices to get on the list for work, Richard asked, “What’s wrong?”
Nicci shook her head in disgust. “Ordinary people don’t have your luck, Richard. Ordinary people suffer and struggle while your luck gets you into a job.”
“If it was luck,” Richard asked, “then how come my back hurts from lugging that load of iron bars into the warehouse?”
Chapter 46
When Richard had finished unloading the last wagon of iron, he leaned forward and placed his hands on the pile, hanging his head as he panted. The muscles in his arms and shoulders throbbed. It was always easier having two men to handle the bars, one in the wagon, and one on the ground, but the man who was supposed to help with the load had quit several days back, saying he hadn’t been treated properly. Richard didn’t really miss him all that much; even when the man got up off his backside, his assistance was more trouble than it was worth.
The light coming in the high windows was fading, leaving the sky in the west a deep purple. Sweat ran down his neck, making trails through the black iron dust. He wished he could jump in a cool mountain lake. That thought, in and of itself, was refreshing. He let his mind go there as he caught his breath.
Ishaq came down the aisle with the lantern. “You work too hard, Richard.”
“I thought I was hired to work.”
Ishaq peered at Richard for a moment, one eye catching the harsh yellow light of the lantern he was holding. “Take my advice. You work too hard, it’s only going to get you into trouble.”
Richard had been working at the warehouse for three weeks, unloading wagons and loading others. He’d come to know a number of the other men. He had a good idea of what Ishaq meant.
“But I’m still worried about trying to swim with an iron bar wrapped around my neck.”
Ishaq gave up on his scowl and grunted a laugh. “I was just spouting for Jori’s sake, that day.”
Jori was the driver who had refused to help unload the wagon when it broke down. Richard yawned. “I know, Ishaq.”
“This isn’t no farm, like where you came from. This is different, living under the ways of the Order. You got to take the needs of others in mind if you hope to get along. It’s just the way the world is.”
Richard caught the thread of caution in Ishaq’s voice, and the meaning of the gentle warning.
“You’re right, Ishaq. Thanks. I’ll try to remember.”
Ishaq gestured with his lantern toward the door. “Workers’ group meeting tonight. Best be on your way.”
Richard groaned. “I don’t know. It’s late and I’m tired. I’d really rather—”
“You don’t want your name to start going around. You don’t want people to start talking that you’re not civic-minded.”
Richard smirked. “I thought the meetings were voluntary.”
Ishaq barked a laugh again. Richard collected his pack from a shelf in the back corner and then ran to the door so Ishaq could lock it.
Outside, in the gathering darkness, Richard could just make out Nicci’s curvaceous form sitting on the wall at the warehouse entrance. Her curves often put him in mind of nothing so much as a snake. They had no room, yet, so she often came by the warehouse after she’d spent much of the day waiting in lines to buy bread and other necessities. They would walk together back to their shelter in a quiet alley about a mile away. Richard had paid a small price to some of the boys there to guard their place and make sure no one else took it. The boys were young enough to be thankful for the small price and old enough to be diligent about their job.
“Get any bread?” Richard asked as he approached.
Nicci hopped down off the wall. “No bread today—they were out. But I got us some cabbage. I’ll make us a soup.”
Richard’s stomach was growling. He’d been hoping for bread so he could eat a piece right then. Soup would take time.
“Where’s your pack? And if you bought cabbage, where is it?”
She smiled and produced something small. She held it out before them as they walked so as to silhouette it against the deep violet of dusk. It was a key.
“A room? We got a place?”
“I checked the lodging office this afternoon. Our name finally came up. They assigned a room to us. Mr. and Mrs. Cypher. We can sleep inside tonight. Good thing, too; it looks like it will rain tonight. I already put my things in our room.”
Richard rubbed his sore shoulders. He felt a wave of revulsion at the sham she was putting him through…putting Kahlan through. There were times when he felt a hint of something profoundly important about her and what she was doing, but most of the time he was merely overwhelmed by the lunacy of it all.
“Where is this room?” He was hoping it wasn’t clear over on the other side of the city.
“It’s one we were at before—not too far from here. The one with the stain on the wall just inside the door.”
“Nicci, they all had stains on the walls.”
“The stain that looked like a horse’s rear end with its tail flicked up. You’ll see it soon.”
Richard was starving. “I have to go to a workers’ group meeting again tonight.”
“Oh,” Nicci said. “Workers’ group meetings are important. They help keep a person’s mind on what’s proper and on everyone’s duty to his fellow man.”
The meetings were torture. Nothing worthwhile ever came about at the meetings. They sometimes lasted hours. There were people, though, who lived for the meetings so they could stand up in front of others and talk about the glory of the Order. It was their shining hour, their time to be somebody, to be important.
Those who didn’t show up for the meetings were used as examples of people who weren’t properly committed to the cause of the Order. If the absen
t person didn’t mend his ways, it was possible he could end up being suspected of subversion. The lack of truth to the suspicion was irrelevant. Stating the charge made some people feel more important in a land where equality was held as the highest ideal.
Subversion seemed to be a dark cloud hovering constantly over the Old World. It wasn’t at all unusual to see the city guard taking people into custody on suspicion of subversion. Torture produced confessions, which proved the veracity of the accuser. The people who spoke at length at the meetings had, by this logic, accurately pointed a finger at a number of insurrectionists, as evidenced by their confessions.
The undercurrent of tension in Altur’Rang left many worried over the constant scourge of insurrection—coming from the New World, it was said. Officials of the Order wasted no time in stamping it out whenever it was discovered. Other people were so consumed with fear that the finger would turn toward them that the speakers at the workers’ group meetings were assured of having a large number of zealous supporters.
In many a public square, as a constant reminder of what would happen should you fall into the wrong company, the bodies of subversives were left to hang from high poles until the birds picked their bones clean. The running joke, if an incautious person said anything that sounded at all out of line, was “You looking to be buried in the sky?”
Richard yawned again as they turned down the street toward the meeting hall. “I don’t remember the stain that looks like a horse’s rear end.”
Rocks crunched beneath their boots as they walked down the side of the dark street. Off ahead of them, in the distance, he could see Ishaq’s lantern swinging as the man hurried to the meeting.
“You were paying attention to something else at the time. It’s the room where those three live.”
“Three what?”
A number of other people, some he knew, most he didn’t, hastened along the street on their way to the meeting.
Richard remembered then. He stopped.
“You mean the place where those three bullies live—the three with the knives?”
He could just barely see her nod in the dim light. “That’s the place.”
“Great.” Richard wiped a hand across his face as they started out again. “Did you ask if we could have a different room?”
“New people in the city are fortunate to get rooms. Rooms are assigned as your name comes up. If you turn it down, you go back to the bottom of the list.”
“Did you have to give the landlord any money, yet?”
She shrugged. “Just what I had.”
Richard ground his teeth as he walked. “That’s all we have for the rest of the week.”
“I can stretch the soup.”
Richard didn’t trust her. She probably somehow saw to it that they got that particular room. He suspected that she wanted to see what he would do about the three young men, now that he was forced into the situation. She was always doing little things, asking odd questions, making bold statements, just to see what his reaction would be, how he would handle matters. He couldn’t imagine what it was she wanted from him.
He began to worry about the three. He remembered quite clearly how Cara’s Agiel had caused Kahlan to suffer the same pain as Nicci. If those three abused Nicci, Kahlan would suffer it, too. That thought made him go cold and sweaty with worry.
At the workers’ group meeting, Richard and Nicci sat on benches at the rear of a smoky room while people up front spoke about the glory of the Order, and how it helped all people to live a moral life. Richard’s mind drifted to the brook behind the house he had built, to the sunlit summer afternoons watching Kahlan dangle her feet in the water. He ached with longing as his mind’s eye traced the curve of her legs. There were speeches about every worker’s duty to their fellow man. Many of the discourses were given in a droning monotone, having been repeated so often that it was clear that the words were meaningless, and that only the act of saying them mattered. Richard recalled Kahlan laughing as he caught the fish he’d put in jars for her. Many of the people, the group leaders, or citizen spokesmen, delivered with passion and fire their praise for the ways of the Order. A few people stood up and talked about those who weren’t there, giving their names, saying what poor attitudes they had toward the welfare of their fellow workers. Whispers passed among the crowd.
After the speeches were given, some of the workers’ wives stood up and explained that they had extra need of late because they had just had new children, or their husbands were laid up, or the relatives they cared for were ill. After each spoke, there was a show of hands. If you agreed to do the right thing and have the group help them, then you raised your hand.
The names of these who didn’t raise their hand were noted. Ishaq had explained to Richard that you were allowed not to raise your hand, if you didn’t agree, but if you did it very often, you were put on a watch list. Richard didn’t know what a watch list was, but it was easy enough to surmise, and Ishaq had told Richard that he didn’t want to be on one, and to see to it that he raised his hand more often than not.
Richard raised it every time. He didn’t really care what happened. He had no interest in taking part, no interest in trying to make things better, and no interest in how well or poorly people’s lives went. Most seemed to want the comfort of the Order running their lives, relieving them of the burden of thinking on their own. Just like Anderith. Nicci seemed surprised, and occasionally even disappointed, to see his hand go up every time, but didn’t object or question.
He was hardly even aware of his hand going up. He was smiling inwardly as he recalled the wonder in Kahlan’s expression, the astonishment in her green eyes, when she saw Spirit for the first time. Richard would have carved a mountain for her, just to see her tearful joy in seeing something she admired, something she cherished, something she valued.
Another man spoke, complaining about the conditions, how unfair they were, and how he had been forced to quit rather than subject himself to such abuse by the transport company. He was the man who had quit and left Richard to handle the loads by himself. Richard raised his hand along with all the others to grant the man full wages for six months in recompense.
After the show of hands, and some whispering and scratching on paper as all the obligations were figured up, the healthy working members were assessed their just share to help those in need. Those who were able, Richard had been told, had a duty to produce with all their effort in order to help those who couldn’t.
When men’s names were called, they stood to hear the share to be taken from their wages the next week. Because he was new, Richard’s name was called last. He stood, staring off across the dimly lit room at the people in moth-eaten coats sitting behind the long table made of two old doors. Ishaq sat at one end, going along with the others in everything. Several of the women still had their heads together. When they finished, they whispered to the chairman and he nodded.
“Richard Cypher, being as you are new, you still have some catching up to do on your duty to your workers’ group. Your next weeks wages are assessed as due in aid.”
Richard stood dumbly for a moment. “How am I to eat—to pay my rent?”
People in the room turned to frown at him. The chairman slapped his hand on the table, calling for silence.
“You should thank the Creator to be blessed with good health so as you can work, young man. Right now, there are those who are not as fortunate in life as you, those with greater need than you. Suffering and need comes before selfish personal enrichment.”
Richard sighed. What did it really matter? After all, he was lucky in life.
“Yes, sir. I see what you mean. I’m happy to volunteer my share toward those with needs.”
He wished Nicci hadn’t given away all their money.
“Well,” he said to Nicci as they shuffled out into the night, “I guess we can ask the landlord for the rent money back. We can stay on where we were staying before, until I can work some more and save up some money.”
“They don’t give rent money back,” she said. “The landlord will understand our need and let our debt build until we can start paying on it. Next meeting, you just have to go up before the review board and explain your hardship. If you present it properly, they will give you a hardship charity to pay your rent.”
Richard was exhausted. He felt like he were having some kind of silly dream.
“Charity? It’s my wages—for the work I do.”
“That’s a selfish way of looking at it, Richard. The job is at the grace of the workers’ group, the company, and the Order.”
He was too tired to argue. Besides, he didn’t expect any justice in anything done in the name of the Order. He just wanted to go to their new room and get some sleep.
When they opened the door, one of the three youths was pawing through Nicci’s pack. Holding some of her underthings in one hand, he aimed a smirk back over his shoulder at them.
“Well, well,” he said as he stood. He still wore no shirt. “Looks like the two drowned rats have found a hole to live in.” His leering gaze slid to Nicci. He wasn’t looking at her face.
Nicci snatched the pack away first, then her things from his other hand. She stuffed her personal clothes back in the pack while he watched, grinning the whole time. Richard feared she might abandon the link to Kahlan in order to use her power, but she only glared at the youth.
The room reeked of mold. The low ceiling made Richard feel uncomfortably hemmed in. The ceiling had once been whitewashed, but was now dark with soot from candles and lamps, making the room feel cavelike. A candle sitting on a rusted bracket by the door provided the only light. A wardrobe stood crookedly in the corner in front of dirty walls spotted with flyblows. The wardrobe was missing a door. Two wooden chairs at a table under one small window on the far wall were the only place to sit, other than the warped and gouged pine floor. The small squares of window glass were opaque under a variety of different-colored layers of paint. Through a small triangle in the corner where the glass was broken out, Richard could see the gray wall of the next building.
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