by Kate Elliott
“Commander wants you right now,” said the first, a slender, nimble fellow as mean as a crate of starving snakes. He grinned mockingly at the young woman, who gave him a scowl in reply. “Not as handsome as him, am I?” he asked her. “Even though he is old enough to be your dad.”
She flushed. “There are Devouring girls at the temple who make it a special holy duty to service men made ugly by the gods’ mercy. Or like you, by spite.” She tipped back her pretty chin and sashayed back to the bar.
Joss watched her hips sway as she walked away. The hells! He’d just spent the better part of the afternoon coaxing her away from the attentions of a much younger suitor. He downed the rest of his cup and slammed it down. “The Commander can stick it up—”
The barmaid glanced back at him, winked with a further, suggestive twitch of her ass, and turned to set her empty tray on the bar. There came the younger suitor, gods curse him, sidling up to her with a smile on his callow face.
Joss glared at the two reeves. “I agreed to work the entire festival in exchange for the first four days of the new year off. Ghost Festival ended three days ago. That means I’m still off duty for two more days. Free and clear. That was the agreement.”
“She won’t be free, a merchant like her, doing it for coin,” said the Snake, nodding toward the bar. “But I hear Sadit has a thing for you and will give you a roll for nothing whenever her husband’s not around.”
“Shut up,” said Joss, coming up off the bench with an arm cocked.
“You’re drunk,” said Peddo mildly as he pushed the other two men apart. He was by many years the youngest, broadest across the chest, and as placid as a well-fed lion. “Begging your pardon, Legate Joss. Commander’s noticed that you’ve been drinking more lately. So have some of us others.”
“I hear he has nightmares,” said the Snake. “Most likely it’s some lilu haunting him, for I swear to you that man cannot keep his cock from wandering into every henhouse. I hear he calls out a woman’s name in his dreams—”
Joss shook off Peddo’s hand and slugged the Snake. The backward stumble, the smash against the bench, the crash: those were good sounds. Peddo sighed, the barmaid laughed, and the Snake spat blood to the floor. Joss tossed a handful of coins on the table to cover the damage and staggered outside into the glare of the awful sun, which had it in for him today. From the direction of the playing field, the crowd roared appreciatively.
There was a neighborhood well in the middle of the humble square. He got his bearings, made it halfway before he realized he was veering off course, corrected three more times to avoid men bent under yoked baskets, and finally closed the gap and grabbed the lip of the well to stop himself falling over.
“Can I help you, ver?” The speaker was a remarkably handsome woman of middle years who had come with three children and eight sturdy wooden buckets slung two by two over stout poles. She had a hierodule’s amorous eye and no doubt had served the Devourer in her youth. You could tell it by the way she looked him over with his reeve leathers and whatever else she saw, including the tattoos that circled his wrists and marked him as a child of the Fire Mother.
“Just water,” he said hoarsely, noting the line of scalloped waves tattooed down the length of her right arm, marking her as a child of the Water Mother. With his best smile he added, “I thank you, verea.”
“Oh, it sure is nothing,” she said with amusement as she winched up a full bucket for him.
He upended it over his head. The cold water was better than a slap. She jumped back laughing as the children shrieked with delight and began to ask, clamoring, if they could do the same.
Peddo strode out of the tavern, rubbing his forehead as though to wipe away a headache, and stopped short when he saw Joss dripping. “Does it help any?”
“The hells! Does that sun have to be so bright?”
“Do you come here often?” the matron asked.
She had a pleasing figure, ample in all the right places and suggested to good effect in the worn but carefully mended taloos wrapped around her curves. The fabric was a soothing sea-green silk that did not hurt his eyes.
“Often enough,” he said.
Peddo caught him by the elbow, made his courtesies, and dragged him off. Because he was still drunk, there was no point in resisting.
“Can you never stop flirting?” demanded Peddo.
It was a stupid question, which Joss did not bother to answer. Anyway, a khaif seller had set up his cart where the afternoon shadows gave the man some respite against the cruel sun. The fellow had a brisk business going, despite the heat. Joss made Peddo stop, and he downed two mugfuls before the buzz hit and he could begin to shake off the wine.
“It’s healthier for a man to visit the temple when the Devouring urge takes him,” said Peddo.
“Won’t.”
Peddo coughed, looking uncomfortable for the first time. “Yeh. Er. So I had heard. Sorry.”
Nothing to do with those dreams, thought Joss sourly as the mud cleared and his sight and thoughts clarified. Neh, it’s everything to do with them. Nineteen years of bad luck, and dreams to remind him of how one rash act in youth could destroy what you cherished most and scar your life forever.
They started off again through the tidy streets of Flag Quarter.
“What in the hells does the Commander want from me, if you don’t mind my asking? Considering the Commander was the one who made the agreement that I would get these days off.”
“Don’t know,” admitted Peddo cheerfully.
Despite the heat and the hour and the crowd gathered at the playing ground, the streets of Toskala were not at all quiet, not as they had been a few days ago during the festival, the ghost days that separated the ashes-end of the dead year from the moonrise that marked the beginning of the new. Everyone was out, eager to get on with their business after the restrictions of the ghost days. There were, indeed, more people than usual in the streets because over the last many months a steady trickle of refugees had filtered in from neighboring regions: mostly northeastern Haldia, the Haya Gap, north and west Farhal, and these days a handful from the Aua Gap and regions around the town of Horn. Come to think of it, that handsome matron at the well had spoken with a western lilt. Maybe she, too, was a refugee, fled from the plague of lawlessness that had engulfed the north.
And yet she had smiled and laughed. How could anyone smile and laugh who had seen the terrible things he had himself seen, or heard about? How could anyone smile and laugh who knew what was coming, everything his nightmares warned him of? Getting drunk gave him a moment’s peace, but that was all.
Aui! The hells! Why shouldn’t she laugh, if she wanted to? If it made her day easier? Folk would go about their lives once they had a measure of peace, even if they guessed that peace might only be temporary.
“Busy today,” remarked Peddo, surveying the scene as they walked.
People stepped up onto the covered porches of shops, took off their sandals, and brushed past the hanging banners whose ideograms and painted representations advertised the nature of the shop within: bakery; sandals; bed nets; savory pies; candies; apothecary; milled and unmilled grains. A pair of peddlers trundled past pushing handcarts piled high with dried fish. The pungent smell hit Joss hard between the eyes like a kick to the head, but they were already gone beyond, turning down an alley. A young woman sauntered past. Over her right shoulder she balanced a pole from which hung unpainted round fans. Her twilight-blue silk taloos was wrapped tightly around exceedingly shapely breasts.
“Are you still that drunk,” asked Peddo, “or do you just never stop?”
“What?” Joss demanded.
Peddo shook his head as they negotiated a path around the clot of servants and slaves that had gathered around an oil seller set up at the corner. Squeezing past, the two reeves swung out onto the main thoroughfare and headed toward the distant towers that marked Justice Square. Banner Street was lined with prosperous shops that wove, painted, and sold banners and
flags of all kinds. Various side streets advertised dye merchants, paint merchants, ink merchants, paper makers, and fan makers and painters. Business was brisk. Walkways were crowded with customers ducking in and out of shops. Carts rolled past laden with bags of rice being brought in from the wholesale markets in outlying Fifth Quarter. Ideograms were stamped on the burlap: first-quality white; new-milled; on the stalk; ordinary yellow; first-quality yellow; old rice. A pair of surly chairmen pushed through, their customer concealed by strips of tinkling bells whose muted chiming alerted the people ahead to make way.
A pack of children wearing the undyed tabards common to youngsters attending one of the Lantern’s schools sang in unison one of those tiresome learning songs as they padded down the avenue under the supervision of three elderly matrons. These are the seven treasures! Virtue! Conviction! Listening! Compassion! The silver-haired woman in the lead had a face to die for, much lived in, lined, and weathered; she possessed an astonishing grace and dignity. She must have stopped traffic in her youth and was doing a pretty good job of it today, too.
Generosity! Discernment! Conscience!
She caught him staring—women who had lived that long didn’t miss much—and smiled with reciprocal admiration. She knew how to flatter a man with a look alone.
“By the Lantern!” swore Peddo. “That’s my grandmother!”
Hearing Peddo’s voice, she shifted her gaze. “Peddo!” she called with cheerful surprise, raising a hand to mark that she had seen him, but she did not leave the head of the line. The children’s piercing voices—they were very young—cut off any other greeting she might have thrown their way. These are the eight children: the dragonlings, the firelings, the delvings, the wildings, the lendings . . .
“That was my grandmother you were ogling!” said Peddo, elbowing him to get his attention back as the children marched away down the avenue toward wherever the hells they were going.
Joss laughed. The headache was wavering; perhaps it wouldn’t hammer home after all. Banner Street gave onto Battle Square, where about fifty refugees stood in line at one of the city’s rice warehouses for their weekly allotment. Youths wearing the badge of the street sweepers’ guild worked the margins with their brooms. There were a fair number of militia standing at guard. Joss gave the square a brief and comprehensive sweep with his gaze.
“Pretty calm,” said Peddo, who had done the same thing. It was reflexive to do so. No reeve survived long who couldn’t size up a situation fast.
Not unless the situation was a perfect ambush, impossible to predict or protect against, especially if you had gone in alone, without anyone to back you up.
“You okay?” Peddo asked. “Got a headache?”
“Just the sun,” said Joss, blinking back the resurgent pain as they headed up Silk Street.
They passed weavers’ workshops and drapers and a dozen side streets advertising fine netting, coarse netting, kites, festival streamers, ribbons and tassels, and there a pair of competing bathhouses on opposite corners. A lad was selling hot savory pies from a deep tray steadied by a strap slung around his neck. Next to him a man peddled still-slithering eels out of a pair of wooden buckets.
A line of firefighters tramped out from a side street on their rounds, their commander riding at the rear on a street-smart bay gelding. The men had their fire hooks and pikes resting on their left shoulders. They were sweating in fitted leather coats and brimmed leather helmets.
Now, after all, Peddo gave a couple of the younger, good-looking ones the once-over. “Whoop,” he muttered under his breath.
“Can’t you ever stop?” Joss asked.
Peddo had a sweet grin that gave him a mischievous look at odds with his normally sober expression. “You’re the one with the reputation.”
Silk Street dead-ended into Canal Street, the widest avenue in the city. The canal side of the street was cluttered with quays and modest piers, and there was more traffic on the water than on the paved avenues to either side. At the Silk Street gate, the two reeves cut across to the brick-paved walkway reserved for official business. Here they were able to stride along briskly. Joss had nothing to say; the headache had slaughtered his words. Peddo pulled the brim of his cap down to shade his eyes against the sun. Across the canal lay Bell Quarter. Orchid Square was visible, swollen with folk decked out in bright silks and cottons. There was some kind of singsong festival going on there, most likely prayers for rain. It was impossible to make out words over the noise of rumbling carts, tramping feet, shouting vendors, arguing shopkeepers, barking dogs, and the nerve-shattering whine of knives being sharpened on a spinning whetstone at the nearest corner.
Nausea engulfed Joss’s stomach and throat, suddenly and overwhelmingly. He lurched off the brick path, ducked under the separation rail, shoved rudely through the traffic, and made it to the sewage channel before he was sick.
After he was finished, Peddo handed him a scrap of cloth to wipe his mouth. Folk had paused to point and stare, seeing him in his reeve’s leathers, but Peddo had a pleasant way of smiling that caused them to disperse rapidly. Joss eased to his feet, tested his balance, and groaned.
“Better?” asked Peddo.
“I suppose.”
“There are those among us who just never do seem to learn that wine and khaif do not mix.”
“We’re always hopeful,” said Joss with a faint smile, “that this time will be different.”
There was, after all, a water seller just a few paces away. Joss pulled a pair of vey off his string of cash and got two dipperfuls of water to cleanse his mouth.
“Come on,” said Peddo. “The Commander didn’t just ask for you. The Commander’s waiting on you.”
That didn’t sound good. It didn’t look any better when they reached Guardian Bridge at the base of the rocky promontory that marked the confluence of the Istri and its tributary. The approach to the bridge lay in the open space where Bell Quarter, Flag Quarter, and the canal running between them ended at the locks. Guardian Bridge spanned the central spillway pool and the deeply cut locks. As usual, there was a crowd waiting to get on the bridge, but reeves had free passage along a separate narrow corridor roped off over the high arch of the bridge. They could move quickly while everyone else waited.
Out on the spur, they climbed steps carved into the rock to the north-northwest corner entrance onto the wide-open ground of Justice Square, the largest open space within the five official quarters of Toskala. From here you couldn’t see the river to either side because the view was blocked by four built-up complexes. Past Assizes Tower and the militia barracks to the southeast could be glimpsed the high prow of the promontory with its bright banners and the humble thatched-roof shelter that shielded Law Rock from the elements. When you were standing out there on that prow of high rock, ready to lift, it was like sailing, with the two rivers joining in a swirl of currents below.
Peddo turned left and entered through the gate into Clan Hall with its skeletal watchtowers, two vast lofts, and parade ground within. The reeve standing watch had a broken arm dressed up in a sling. Seeing the pair, he grinned, displaying a missing tooth.
“Commander is waiting for you, Legate Joss. I’m thinking you’re in up to your neck.”
“What’s changed, then?” asked Joss, getting a chuckle from the other man.
Peddo shook his head with a frown.
These days Clan Hall stood mostly empty, with the overburdened and thin-stretched forces of reeves out on constant patrol of the beleaguered countryside. There was only one reeve and his eagle on watch up in White Tower, but when Joss shaded his eyes and stared up he saw an eagle spiraling in the updraft far above the promontory.
A young and quite attractive reeve was having trouble with her bating eagle out in the parade ground. Joss would have paused to help, but the hall loft master, standing back to advise with arms crossed and an amused expression, seemed to have the situation in hand. The young one wore long leather gloves wrapped up past her elbows, but she was
wearing her sleeveless leather vest with no shirt beneath, laced up tightly over a slender but muscular frame. She glanced their way, tracking their movement until the squawk of her flustered eagle yanked her attention back.
“They do it on purpose to get you to look at them,” said Peddo as they hurried past. “I don’t mean ‘you’ as in men in general. I mean you in particular.”
“Upset their eagles?”
“No, no! Dress like that.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m the one they talk to,” he said innocently. “You should hear the things they say.”
“You won’t get me to fall for that one.”
The garden court was quiet except for the chatter of the fountain. The doors to the commander’s cote stood open. An old reeve, retired from flying duty, sat at his ease cross-legged on the porch studying a half-finished game of kot. He looked up, saw them, and shook his head in wry warning.
They stepped up to the porch, tugged off their boots, and stepped up and over the threshold onto the polished wood floor of the audience chamber.
The Snake had gotten there before them. He was lounging on a padded bench, slouched back with legs stretched out and ankles crossed and resting on a single heel, arms folded over his chest, and a sneering grin on his ugly face. His lip was bruised, and swelling. Joss opened his mouth to comment, but when he saw the commander’s grim look, he thought better of it.
The commander nodded at them from behind her low table. Her crutch had been set on the floor parallel to the pillow she sat on, which meant she expected not to get up any time soon. Definitely, yes, she was annoyed at someone, and when she indicated that Peddo was to sit, Joss guessed that Peddo was not the target.
“So nice of you to join us, Legate Joss,” she said so kindly that he winced. “I’ve had a complaint.”