Cinnabar Shadows

by Lynn Abbey

  Mahtra raised her head to. stare wide-eyed at the bowls. It didn't take mind-bending to guess what kind of skin she thought Kakzim had used to make them.

  Mahtra shrieked, "Father!" She took off at a run for the nearest scaffold.

  Ruari grabbed her as she ran past him, and let go just as quickly shouting: "What are you!"

  She fell to the shore with her head tilted so they could see that a milky membrane covered her eyes. The gold patches on her skin gave off bright fumes that smelled a bit of sulphur.

  Zvain dropped to the ground as well. "Don't fight!" he shouted, then curled up with his knees against his forehead. "Don't fight," he repeated, sobbing this time. "She'll blast you if you fight."

  Pavek stood beside Ruari, one hand on his sword, the other on his medallion, waiting for Mahtra to be herself again. The fumes subsided, the membranes withdrew. She sat up slowly, stretching her arms.

  "You want to tell us what that was about?" Pavek demanded.

  "The makers—" Mahtra began, and Pavek rolled his eyes.

  She began to cry—at least that's what Pavek thought she was doing. The sound she made was like nothing he'd heard before, but she was starting to curl up the same way as Zvain. Ignoring his ankle, he squatted down beside her.

  "I didn't mean to frighten you."

  "Father—"

  "I don't know what happened to your father's body, but those aren't his bones. Those are bones from animals. The bowls, too. The bowls are made from animal hides, inix maybe. I was a cruel, dung-skulled fool to say what I did."

  A slaughterhouse. Pavek got to his feet. "Codesh!" The word that had escaped before all the excitement began. "Codesh! Kakzim's in Codesh! He's in the butchers' village—" His enthusiasm faded as quickly as it had arisen.

  "But the passage's in the elven market. Someone would have noticed, not me hides; maybe, but the bones for sure. There's no way to get those bones here without someone noticing."

  Mahtra stood up slowly, using Pavek's arm for balance. "Henthoren sent a runner across the plaza to me that morning. He said he'd let no one into the cavern since sundown, when I left. I think—I think he knew what had happened, and was trying to tell me it wasn't his fault—"

  "Because there's another passage to the cavern... in Codesh," Pavek concluded.

  Zvain raised his head. "No," he pleaded. "Not Codesh. I don't want to go to Codesh. I don't want to go anywhere."

  "Don't worry. Codesh can wait until morning," Pavek assured the boy. He'd had enough adventure for one day himself. His ankle throbbed when he took an aching step toward the distant ramp to Urik. The sprain wasn't as serious as it was painful. "Food," he said to himself and his companions. "A good night's sleep. That's what we all need. We'll worry about Codesh—about Hamanu—in the morning."

  Ruari, Mahtra and Zvain fell in step behind him.

  Chapter Eight

  Civil bureau administrators were waiting outside the door of House Escrissar when Pavek, still hobbling on a game ankle, led his companions through the templar quarter a bit before sunset. The administrators were drowsy with boredom and leaning against the loaded hand-cart Manip had dragged up from the gate. Exercising his high templar privileges, Pavek rewarded Manip and sent him on his way before he said a word to the higher ranking administrators.

  With proper deference, one of the administrators gave him a key ring large enough to hang a man. The other handed him a pristine seal, carved from porphyry and bearing his exalted rank, his common name, and his inherited house. He tried to give Pavek a gold medallion, too, but Pavek refused, saying his old ceramic medallion was sufficient. That confused the administrator, giving Pavek a momentary sense of triumph before he etched his name— Just-Plain Pavek—through the smooth, white clay surface of the deed, revealing the coarse obsidian beneath it.

  The administrators wrapped the deedstone in parchment that was duly secured with the Lion-King's sulphurous wax by them and by Pavek, using his porphyry seal for the first time. The administrators departed, and Pavek tried five keys before he found the one that worked in the door. He dragged the hand-cart over the threshold himself.

  House Escrissar had been sealed quinths ago. It was quiet as a tomb beneath a thick blanket of yellow dust. Otherwise both Zvain and Mahtra assured its new master that the house was precisely as they remembered it—which sent a chill down Pavek's spine. There was nothing in the simple furniture, the floor mosaics, or the wall frescoes to proclaim that a monster had lived here. He'd expected obscenity, torture, and cruelty of all kinds, but with their depictions of bright gardens and green forests, the frescoes could have been commissioned by a druid... by Akashia herself.

  "It was like this," Zvain repeated when curiosity drove Pavek to touch a painted orange flower. "That was the worst—"

  The boy's words stopped abruptly. Pavek turned around. They'd been joined by the oldest, most frail half-elf he'd ever seen, a woman whose crinkled skin hung loose from every bone and whose back was so crippled by age that she gazed most naturally at her own feet. She raised her head with evident discomfort and difficulty. Her cheeks were scarred with black lines in a pattern Pavek promised himself would, never be cut into flesh again.

  "Who has come?" she asked with a trembling voice.

  Pavek caught Zvain and Mahtra exchanging anxious glances before they shied away from the old woman's shadow. Ruari was transfixed by the sight of what he, himself, might become. Pavek swallowed hard and jangled the key ring he held in his weapon hand.

  "I've come," he said. "Pavek. Just-Plain Pavek. I am—I am the master here, now." He couldn't help but notice the way she stared at the key ring. Her name, she said, was Initri. She had chosen to remain inside the house with her husband after all the other slaves were dispersed and the administrators had come to lock the doors for the last time. Her husband tended the house gardens.

  "He doesn't hear anymore," Initri explained and made her way with small, halting steps along the cobbled garden path.

  Initri got her husband's attention with a gentle touch. He read silent words from her lips, then set aside his tools with the slow precision of the venerably aged before he took her hand. While Pavek and his companions watched from the atrium arch, the old man took his wife's arm, for balance, as he stood. They both tottered as he rose from his knees. Pavek strode toward them, but they leaned against each other and were steady again without his help. Pavek expected scars and saw them before he saw the metal collar around the gardener's neck and the stone-link chain descending from it. Each link was as thick as the half-elf's thigh. The chain had to weigh as much as the old man did himself.

  They stood side-by-side in the twilight, the loyal gardener and his loyal wife, she with one hand on his flank, the other clutching the chain. No wonder Initri had stared so intently at the keys he held in his hand—keys that the administrators had kept secure under magical wards in King Hamanu's palace. Overcome by shame and awe, Pavek looked away, looked at the flowers in their profuse blooming.

  If ever a man had the right to destroy the life of Athas, this old man had had that right, but he'd nurtured life instead.

  "How?" Pavek stammered, forcing himself to face the couple again. "How have you survived? The house was locked."

  Initri met his gaze and held it. "The larders were full," she said without a trace of emotion. "Some nights the watch threw us their crusts and scraps. It depended on who had the duty." She indicated the crenelated platform visible above the garden's rear wall.

  Pavek whispered, "Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy."

  He heard long-striding footfalls behind him: Ruari disappearing. Ruari making certain Pavek knew he was angry about something; the half-elf didn't have to make noise when he ran. Zvain and Mahtra showed no more emotion than Initri did. Compassion was a wasted virtue in Urik; Pavek knew they were better off without it, but he sympathized more with Ruari. The elderly couple said nothing. They stared at him, the new high templar master of House Escrissar—their new master—without reproach or e
xpectation on their faces.

  The keys.

  One of the keys must belong to the lock that bound the chain and collar together. Pavek fumbled with the ring, dropping it twice. He tried the first two keys he touched; neither fit the lock, much less opened it. Locks were nothing a man without property had ever needed to understand. Pavek resolved to work his way around the ring, a key at a time, and had tried two more when Initri's withered fingers reached toward him. Her motion stopped before their hands touched; the fears and habits of slavery were not easily shed.

  "Which one?" Pavek asked her gently. "Do you know which one?"

  She pointed toward a metal key that had been shaped to resemble a thighbone. Pavek slipped it into the socket and twisted it. The mechanism was stiff; he was afraid to apply his full strength. The key might break and Pavek had no notion where he'd find a smith after sunset—though he knew he wouldn't be able to rest until he had.

  Once again, Initri came to Pavek's rescue, her parchment fingers resting lightly over his, guiding them through tiny jerks and jiggles. The lock's innards released themselves with an audible click. The thick shaft pulled loose, then the first link of the chain. Finally Pavek could take the ends of the metal collar and force the sweat-rusted hinge to yield.

  The gardener examined the collar after Pavek had removed it. His hands trembled. Tears fell from his eyes to the corroded metal. Initri showed no such sentiment.

  "Lord Pavek, your larder holds dried beans, a cask of flour, and some sausage a jozhal wouldn't steal," she said in a slave's habitual monotone. "Does that please my lord for his supper?"

  Pavek twisted the collar until the hinge broke. He would have hurled it at the wall, but it would have struck the vines and loosened a few leaves, which seemed a poor way to acknowledge the gardener's extraordinary devotion to his plants. So, he let the pieces fall atop the stone links and raked his stiff, filthy hair. He wanted a steam bath, and a hot supper, and could have gotten both, if he'd gone to a city inn instead of coming here, instead of coming home.

  Pavek's own gut growled, reminding him that he, too, was hungry and that on occasion he could eat more than his two younger friends combined.

  Except for a quinth or two before he left Urik, throughout Pavek's life, whether in the orphanage, the barracks, or Quraite, he hadn't had to worry about his next hot meal. That had all changed. Whatever else he'd done, Elabon Escrissar had at least kept his larder filled with beans, flour, and vile sausage. The larder was Pavek's responsibility now, along with who-knew-what-else, except that it would all require gold and silver coins in greater quantities than he possessed.

  "A treasury?" he inquired. "Is there a treasury in the house?"

  Initri shook her head. "Gone, Lord Pavek. Gone before the administrators came. Gone while Lord Elabon still lived. Will beans serve, my lord?"

  The deaf gardener picked up the metal pieces Pavek had dropped and slowly carried them out of his domain, as if they were no more significant than wind-fallen branches, as if he'd been able to leave whenever he chose. Pavek watched until the man and his shadow had disappeared through a side archway.

  "Lord Pavek—will beans serve for your supper?"

  Pavek's hand went to the familiar medallion hanging from his neck. He needed money. Not the pittance of ceramic bits and silver that had sufficed in his regulator's past, nor the plump belt-pouch he'd worn out of Quraite; he needed gold, by the handful.

  Leaping through the bureau ranks as he had, he'd missed all the intervening opportunities to enrich himself. He needed a prebend, that regular gift from Lord Hamanu himself that kept high templars loyal to the throne. A gift Pavek imagined the Lion-King would grant him in an instant, once he made the request. Why else had he been brought back to Urik? But he'd give up any claim to freedom once he accepted it. Once he asked Lord Hamanu for money, he might as well pick up the gardener's chain and fasten it around his own neck.

  That slave's fate, however, was tomorrow's worry. Tonight's worry was beans, and they would not serve.

  "Zvain, unload our baggage and take our food to the kitchen. Initri, follow him—no, wait for him in the kitchen. See what you can make up for all of us."

  "Yes, Lord Pavek," she said, as passionless as before. She obediently started for the door, where Zvain stood between Mahtra and Ruari, who had crept out of the shadows. The half-elf wouldn't meet his eyes, a sure sign of anger waiting to erupt.

  "Mahtra you go with Zvain. Help him unload the baggage. Wait in the kitchen."

  Two of them went. Ruari sulked silently for about two heartbeats, then the eruption began.

  "Initri, make my dinner. Unpack my baggage! Go to the kitchen! Wind and fire! You should have freed them, Lord Pavek. Or doesn't owning your parents' parents bother you?"

  Pavek should have known not merely that Ruari was angry, but why. There weren't any slaves in Quraite, certainly no half-elven ones. He should have had an explanation sitting on his tongue, but he didn't. At that moment, with Ruari glaring at him, Pavek didn't know himself why he hadn't freed the old couple immediately, and he expressed shame or embarrassment with no better grace than Ruari expressed his anger or confusion.

  "They aren't my kin or yours," Pavek replied, adopting Ruari's outraged sarcasm for himself. "They're just two people who've lived here a long time."

  "Slaved here, you mean. Lord Pavek, your templar blood is showing. You should have set them free. Those were the words that should have come out of your mouth, not orders to cook your supper!"

  "Set them free and then what? Turned them out of this house? Where would they go? Would you send them across the wastes to Quraite? Would you send every slave in Urik to Quraite? How many would die on the Fist? How many could Quraite feed before everyone was starving?"

  Ruari pulled his head back. His chin jutted defiantly, but Pavek knew those questions struck the half-elf solidly. "I didn't say that," Ru insisted. "I didn't say send them across the Fist to Quraite. They could stay here in Urik. There're free folk in Urik. Zvain's free. Mahtra is. You—when we met you."

  "He could work for someone else, tending their garden."

  "No one hires gardeners, Ru. They buy them. Besides— this is his garden. Didn't you understand that? He was chained here, but he didn't have to make this place bloom. He's a veritable druid. Should I banish him from his grove?"

  "Free him, then hire him yourself."

  "Make him a slave to coins instead of men? Is that such an improvement? What if he gets sick? He's old, it could happen. If he's a slave, I'm obligated to take care of him, whether he can garden or not, but if I'm paying him to tend my garden, what's to stop me from simply hiring another man. Why should I care? He doesn't belong to me anymore."

  "Slavery's wrong, Pavek. It's just plain wrong."

  "I didn't say it was right."

  "You didn't free them!"

  "Because that wouldn't be right, either!" Pavek's voice rose to a shout. "Life's not simple, not my life, anyway. I wouldn't want to be a slave—I think I'd kill myself first. Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, I swear I'll never buy a slave, but by the wheels of fate's chariot, that is a small mercy. There's not enough gold in all Urik for both freedom and food."

  "You'll keep slaves, but you won't buy them," Ruari shouted back. "What a convenient conscience you have, Lord Pavek."

  Lord Pavek kicked the stone links coiled at his feet and jammed his toe. "All right," he snarled, grinding his teeth against a fool's pain. "Whatever you say, Ruari: I've got a convenient conscience. I'm not a good man; never pretended that I was. I've never known a thoroughly good man, woman, or child and, yes, that includes you, Kashi, and Telhami. I don't have good answers. Slavery's a mistake, a terrible mistake, but I can't fix a mistake by setting it free and tossing it out to the streets. Once a mistake's made, it stays made and someone's got to be responsible for it."

  "There's got to be a better way."

  That was Ruari's way of ending their arguments and making peace, but Pavek's toe still throbbed and
the half-elf had scratched too many scars for a truce.

  "If you're so sure, go out and find it. We'll both become better men. But until you do have something better to offer, get out of my sight."

  "I only said—"

  "Get!"

  Pavek threw a wild punch in the half-elf's direction. It fell short by several handspans, but Ruari got the idea and ran for cover.

  Twilight had become an evening that was not as dark as in Quraite. Pavek could see the wall where the gardener lined up his tools: shovel, rake, hoe, and a rock-headed maul. Testing its heft and balance as if it were a weapon, Pavek gave the maul a few practice swings. The knotted muscles in his shoulders crackled. He wasn't the sort of man who handled tension well; he'd rather work himself to exhaustion than think his way out of a puzzle.

  One end of the stone-link chain remained where the gardener had dropped it. The other end was fastened to a ring at the center of the garden. Pavek coiled all the links around the ring and started hammering. The links slid against each other; Pavek never hit the same place twice. Stone against shifting stone was as futile labor as Urik had to offer, but Pavek found his rhythm and once he'd broken a sweat, his conscience was clearer—emptier—than it had been in days.

  Swinging and striking, he lost track of time and place, or almost lost track. He'd no notion how much time had passed when he became aware that he wasn't alone. Ruari, he thought. Ruari had returned for the final word. He swung the maul with extra vigor, missed the links altogether, but raised sparks from the ring. The gasp he heard next didn't come from a half-elf or a human boy.

  "Mahtra?"

  He saw her in the doorway, a study in moonlit pallor and seamless shadows. Their eyes met and she receded into the dark. A child, Pavek reminded himself; he'd frightened her with his hammering. He set the maul aside.

  She shook her head. The shawl slid down her neck. With the mask dividing her head, it was like looking at two incomplete faces—which was probably not an inaccurate way to describe her.