by Larry Niven
"No, what I did was let the Bull Fizzles get past me, then go back to the Fizzle streets," Pelzed said. "With our leathers on. Struck a bargain with the kinless there. Kraemar and Roupend got to burn some old houses and stores, the rest of us gathered all this, and the Bull Fizzles never came back. I may even have a new street for Serpent's Walk."
"Lord-was Chief Wulltid killed, then, Lord?"
"No, you know what he's like; he didn't go with his men. He stayed to take his pleasures in his own houses." Pelzed laughed. "I hope he enjoyed himself. He won't like my new arrangements." The grin was wider. "But the Lords will. Bull Fizzle isn't very popular with the Lords right now."
Whandall sipped tea and listened. He tried to imagine himself as Lord Whandall of Serpent's Walk. It was a good picture, and the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. It was a big job and he didn't know how to do it, but he could watch Pelzed and learn.
Wess had moved all his things into the big northeast room. Resalet's clothes were gone. His other things, bronze mirror, drinking cup, were laid out for Whandall's approval.
Wess was wearing a short wool skirt and a thin blouse that opened down to her navel.
Where did you get that? He knew he shouldn't ask. From Vinspel? His hands were on her shoulders. "Nice," he said, and repeated himself: "Nice. Wess, you're beautiful." She must have used the mirror, he thought, and he reached out for the magical thing and looked into it.
There was no trace, now, of that ring-shaped scar. The serpent tattoo was magnificent... alien.
"What did I look like?" he asked. "I stayed clear of you while I was healing." He'd let her see him once. The look in her eyes.
"That scar. I never thought it would heal."
"I found magic," he said. "Wess, I've got to talk to the rest of the house, but first, what have you got done?"
The children were being taken care of.
There was food. This evening's dinner would be huge: they were cooking everything that wouldn't keep. They'd eat as much as they could'. Tomorrow, who knew?
Stashes of rocks were on the roof, and children on guard. Invaders would expect rocks. There should be something else too. Something to startle a gathering band. Boiling water? Too complicated; too much work, and where would they get water? Think of something. Fire would burn on a roof.
The Placehold was nearly empty. Was there some way the place could look busier? All that showed from the street was a blank wall and a wide gate. What men he had, he could move them through that gate more often. "And I couldn't think of anything else," she said. "You?" "I've got Pelzed's protection. The only idea I had. Dark Man's Cup will do us some good, I think. Pelzed killed some friends for not keeping his promises there."
Chapter 25
Whandall was busier than he had ever been in his life. He'd forgotten that everyone went hungry following the Burning. There wasn't enough food outside: too many gatherers and not enough to gather. Hunger, then feasts when anyone could gather food. They fought over the dishes, and everything tasted so good, he remembered that. Now he knew why: they were starving.
Whandall's elder half sister Sharlatta came home with Chapoka. Chapoka was an adult male, and there was no more to be said for him. He never gathered except from a friend, he complained about everything, and he never shut up. Whandall knew him well enough to throw him out.
Chapoka wouldn't be thrown, and Whandall was harassed and hungry. He decided his household of children could use entertainment. The fight in the courtyard left Chapoka with scars he would have to explain for the rest of his life. The gaudiest were on his back.
Afterward the Placehold's survivors treated Whandall like a Lord. During this time, lack of respect was one complaint he never had.
He hadn't realized-he had to leaf back through his memories to understand that everyone always complained to a Lord all the time.
Even Wess. Loving Wess was wonderful, and she held the Placehold together as much as anyone. But... living with a woman took new skills at accommodation and ate time he didn't have. It wasn't like living with a roomful of brothers, and he hadn't liked that very much.
He saw his former life as a long dream of idleness. He came to understand why lathers disappeared. Maybe he wouldn't have stayed with it. Hut he knew... .
He knew where the men had gone. Whatever befell the Placehold now was his doing.
Whandall's mother brought Freethspat home four weeks after the Burning. Everyone was astonished. He was a heavily scarred man around thirty years old, from so far across town that nobody knew anything of his clan. "Sea Cliffs," he said, and he showed a finely tattooed sea gull in flight.
When Whandall came home that afternoon, Freethspat and Mother had the northeast room. Whandall's things were in the north room that Shastern had taken because no one wanted to move Elriss from the southeast room she had shared with Wanshig.
Wess moved in with Elriss. She was avoiding him again. Once they met on the stair, and Wess spoke rapidly, before he could open his mouth.
"You could have asked me to stay."
"What if I asked now?"
"Stay where? Whandall, I would have followed you. You never said anything. It's like I came with the northeast room, or with your being the oldest man!"
"I wasn't sure," Whandall said. She'd left him once before. She had come to him when his status changed, and it might change again. For those reasons and one other, he'd dithered.
That other reason ... "Wess, if I had you and the Placehold to take care of, that would be my life. Guard you and the rest of them until I am dead. I know how to do that. Be Pelzed's right hand. When Pelzed wants to slack off a little, years from now, I'd be Lord Pelzed. Lord Whandall," he tasted the name, "except when Lords or Lordsmen can hear me. I..."
She waited for him to go on, but he didn't know how to say it. He hadn't even tried until now. I don't want to be Pelzed! Pelzed bows and scrapes and flatters, and sets his people against each other, and lies, and kills, and tells other people to kill friends. And with all that lives not a half as well as the real Lords in Lord's Town. What I want, it isn't here-
Wess brushed past him and was gone.
Coals still burned.
The killing of firelighters had got up the kinless's noses. Now they wanted to carry knives.
For months after the Burning, the talk was of little else. There was no fundamental disagreement among the Lordkin. How could a conquered people be permitted weapons? Of course the firefighters shouldn't have been killed... not killed. But fire was Yangin-Atep's. Wait, now, Yangin-Atep suppressed fire too! So it wasn't blasphemy. Yes it was, but they could have been driven off... taught an unforgettable lesson, scarred or maimed, then driven off... but they'd soaked those blankets to smother the fires-that was drinking water... .
In the street-corner gatherings, Whandall tried to stay out of the arguments. They could get you killed. A teller from Begridseth was beaten for asking the wrong questions, and again Whandall didn't participate.
At home the women were in quiet mourning, but Mother's Mother left no doubt about how she felt. The Lordkin had become no better than animals.
The kinless couldn't see reason. They had been attacked while rescuing horses-yes, and fighting a fire too. Attacked and murdered. The kinless wanted the killers' heads. Hah! No hope of that, of course, even without the protection of their street-brothers. You'd have thought half the city had watched the firefighters die; they were willing to describe what they thought had happened in minute detail, but nobody could remember a face.
But the kinless wanted to carry knives or clubs, to fight back next time!
Many Lordkin would have offered them the chance, for amusement. A bad precedent, though, a reversal of ancient law.
But nothing was being built.
Lords and kinless were holding talks; Lordkin spoke at every intersection; and every mouth was dry. The Deerpiss carried water an uncertain distance and then stopped, because smashed aqueducts were still smashed.
Garbage wasn't moving. The Lordkin began to see that it would not move itself. Rats and other scavengers were growing numerous. Ash pits that had been stores and restaurants now began to serve the Lordkin as garbage dumps.
Mother's Day came and went. Nothing was distributed in Peacegiven Square because there was nothing to distribute. Scant food was coming into the city; too much was disappearing on the way. Great fire, would the Lordkin have to take up driving wagons themselves?
That, Whandall decided, was an interesting notion.
Now Freethspat and Whandall and Shastern were the only men in the Placehold. Freethspat fit in well enough. He didn't often beat the younger children and never seemed to beat the women at all. He was respectful to Pelzed and spoke well of Serpent's Walk. Mother never yelled at him, which was unusual.
A week after his arrival, Freethspat was gone all night. Whandall wondered if he'd disappeared. Mother had no doubts, and in the morning he brought home a pushcart full of food, some of it fresh. There was enough food to last a week and no one mentioned the blood on the cart.
Freethspat was a provider.
Freethspat might have had a little Lords' blood in him too. Over the next three weeks, rooms nobody would walk in barefoot became jarringly clean, and the Placehold girls smiled proudly when Freethspat praised them. Six Placehold boys who had been old enough to gather in the Burning, but too young for anything so serious as robbing a wizard, now brought home gold rings and wallets from looker pockets and produce from kinless markets. And Whandall-
"Now it's your turn," Freethspat said.
They were in the courtyard, gathered for dinner. Heads turned as Freethspat spoke. They'd heard this conversation before.
Whandall asked, "Mean what?"
"Mean it's time you earned your keep, Whandall," Freethspat said. "Sure, I can get more to eat, but what happens to your mother if they get me? And your sisters? Your turn."
"I don't know where to get food."
"I can show you, but your mother says you know a lot," Freethspat said. "You've been to Lordshills. Take me there."
Whandall shook his head. "The Lordsmen will kill us both. Me for sure. Lord Samorty told them last time I was there. Here, look at my arm-it grew back crooked." Whandall pulled off his shirt. "Here-"
"Then somewhere else. You know the forest, but there's nothing to be had there, is there? No. Then somewhere you went with your brother- what was his name?"
"Wanshig," Elriss said, glaring. She was nursing Wanshig's son.
"Wanshig," Freethspat said. "They tell me you hung around with him a lot, Whandall. He must have showed you something. They say Wanshig was smart."
"He was," Elriss said.
"So show me."
Whandall could have liked Freethspat. But the man was just an inch taller and just an inch wider than Whandall, just a little too obtrusive in his strength. He called him Whandall, as a brother would. He lived in Whandall's room.
There had been no need for Whandall's gathering skills in the time since the Burning. (Eleven weeks? That long?) There was no need now.
But Whandall was getting restless, and Wess was unobtrusively following the exchange, and it wouldn't take much of a coup to shut Freethspat
up. "I did have a notion," Whandall said. "I just couldn't see a way to make it work. Freethspat, what do you know about wine?"
Well back from the road and screened by growths of touch-me vine, Whandall and Freethspat watched the vineyard. The noon sun was making the workers torpid. Their patient drudgery hadn't changed since he and Wanshig had watched them nearly a year ago. The grapevines were glossy green; the buildings behind them showed no sign of scorching. The Burning of two months back simply hadn't happened here.
The Lordkin guards did seem more alert. A youth passed Whandall walking upright and noisily, far from the comforts offered by that big house. Woodsman's leathers made him clumsy, and still he avoided the morningstar bushes and beds of touch-me, steering wide of the hiding place Wanshig had found for them.
Whandall had been surprised to see how much Freethspat knew about leathers and the chaparral. Freethspat knew about a lot of things.
And here came a pony, a local pony with a fleck of white bone on its forehead, pulling a wagon with a single driver.
"That one," Freethspat said. "No. It's empty."
"Wait," Whandall whispered. He watched the wagon go by. Just watched this time.
He was not bored. In Serpent's Walk, there he'd been bored. The same limp justifications-"What do the kinless want of us? When Yangin-Atep takes us, we do these things! It's not us; it's the rage!"-until they believed it themselves.
It was hard to believe in that empty wagon. Wasn't the bed a little high? Easy to picture a false floor with flasks of wine under the boards. The kin-less driver tugged at his yellow silk noose. A little besotted, was he, rolling a little with the wagon's motion? A big one, he was, with shoulders like boulders; maybe you needed that to control a pony. It hardly mattered. A kinless wouldn't fight.
The guard was a Lordkin, Whandall's age, fifteen or sixteen. Older men had sent him out, and stayed to drink in comfort, no doubt. In armor he'd be helpless. Whandall could take him.
Then the wagon, much closer now-have to sprint to catch it-and the driver. Arms like a wrestler. The big hat shadowed his face, but the nose was flat. Hard to believe in him too. He was still tugging at the yellow silk tied loosely around his thick neck. He wasn't used to it.
Damn! The hat shadowed his nose and ears, but-
"That driver is Lordkin," Freethspat said. His voice was filled with disgust. "Working like a kinless!"
"You're right."
"What could you pay a Lordkin to make him work like a kinless? What could he gain that another Lordkin couldn't take away from him?"
Whandall thought about it while the wagon receded. "Wine, maybe, if he drank it right away. Secrets, things nobody else knows. This isn't going to be so easy, is it? We may have to kill the driver."
"Have to kill the guard anyway. Your turn, Whandall."
Chapter 26
The next wagon didn't appear until near sunset. The same guard had been out there for all that time, pushing through branches, wearing a path, sweating into his leathers, and bored into a stupor. The wagon distracted him.
"Now," Freethspat said without turning.
It was Whandall's scheme. All it needed for completion was some way to avoid killing. Freethspat was a skillful gatherer. He knew things. He had brains.
Freethspat turned to look at Whandall. "He's too far now. When he comes back, take him."
"I brought you here," Whandall protested. His voice never rose above the sound of the breeze in leaves. "Isn't that enough?"
Freethspat studied Whandall with interest. "You're not scared?" he whispered.
"No."
"I understand. But Whandall, this is what we are. This is what a Lord-kin is. Here and now. Right now. With me watching."
Whandall took in a deep breath. The guard was coming toward him again. His forearm and wrist brushed a morningstar. He grunted in pain and shied back, and then Whandall slammed into his back. And cut his throat.
It was his first kill, and it went much better than he'd expected. Whandall had several seconds to get into place before the wagon arrived. He didn't look back at the corpse.
He thumped into the wagon bed while the wagoneer was scanning the trees for the guard. The wagoneer half stood, turning, slicing blind with his long knife in a move he must have practiced for years. Whandall blocked the blade with his own and threw with his other hand.
Pebbles spattered the pony's head and ears. The pony screamed and surged forward. The wagoneer stumbled, tried to stab out anyway, and was cursing as Whandall's blade slid in under his armpit.
The road curved wide around, down to the streambed. The turns weren't sharp and the pony knew the way. Whandall had time to put on the hat and coat-and figure out how to move the complicated knot to get the noose off the corpse and onto
his own neck-before the gatehouse came in view. Bile was rising in his throat. He let the pony slow. It wouldn't do to be seen vomiting over the side.
He heard Freethspat climbing in behind him. There was a rustle as he hid under the tarp. "Well done," came the whisper. "Couldn't have done it better myself. Whandall, I'm proud of you."
Whandall didn't care to speak.
Freethspat examined the dead man, then cursed softly.
"What?"
"He's a Toronexti," Freethspat said. "So was the other one. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you what?" Whandall demanded. Suddenly he remembered Wanshig's words: Alferth had hired Toronexti to guard the vineyards.
Freethspat sighed. "You have a lot to learn, boy. You don't gather from the Toronexti. Ever."
Whandall pointed to the dead man. "They're not so tough-"
"No, they're not. But there are a lot of them. You kill one, others come looking for you, and you won't know who they are."
"So what do we do?"
"We get out of here with this stuff." Freethspat frowned. "We get rid of it as quick as we can. Maybe they gathered the wagon. No Toronexti marks on that."
"What do they look like?"
"Never you mind."
It was tempting to think in terms of secrets: of hiding. The wine under the false bed was in little flasks. Those could be hidden. It was what you did with wine. But how would you hide a wagon?
They discussed it after they'd cleared the gatehouse. They reached home in a stony silence.
Whandall began moving garbage.
Friends offered suggestions: get shovels, line the wagon with hay. Some of the Serpent's Walk men helped him do that. Others helped move garbage away from where they lived, until they got bored. Freethspat stayed with it. If any part of the scheme had collapsed, Freethspat would have gotten Whandall out alive and then never let him forget it. But he became good with the shovel, and he stayed with it.
Four more were good enough at it, and stayed long enough, that Whandall and Freethspat shared wine with them. They stayed as a core, to gather other men.