by Adam Roberts
He dozed off, the jug in his lap. He was woken by two ruffians, both much taller and bulkier than he, who had jumped on his sleeping body. One was sitting on his legs and the other held back his arms; the one on his legs was running his moist hands through Tighe’s clothes, looking for valuables.
‘You foul drunk,’ he snarled. Tighe, terrified, found himself laughing because there was a stench of liquor on the mugger’s breath. The irony seemed comical. The ruffian behind pulled his arms back and he gasped in pain.
‘I have a jewel!’ Tighe blurted. ‘It is valuable! It you take it, you might leave me in peace!’
‘Foul drunk,’ said the first ruffian, slurring the words a little, ‘where is this jewel?’
‘Free my hand and I’ll reach it out.’
The ruffian seemed to be having difficulty following Tighe’s words he was so inebriated. His head wobbled, perhaps in agreement or perhaps because he was so drunk. His fellow took it for confirmation and loosened his grip on Tighe’s left arm. Tighe snaked his hand down to his boot and pulled out the gun, firing it almost straight away. The noise was enormous and sudden in the quiet evening. The ruffian on his legs fell backwards, shot or startled Tighe couldn’t tell. The other released his grasp and started away, running awkwardly. Tighe stood up, aiming his gun, laughing hysterically; but he had enough self-control not to fire. Instead he hurried away in the opposite direction, leaving the mugger lying on the ledge.
After this incident Tighe decided he needed to act more like a man, less like a child. With some of his jewels he bought a slave, a short, skinny girl. She could, he decided, act as lookout when he was too tired, or drunk, to pay attention to the world around him. She herself was as fluttery as a bird; she slept little, waking at the slightest disturbance. Her eyes were surrounded by sunken, dark skin. Her hair was thin and portions of pink, inflamed-looking scalp showed through. There were yellow dots of infection in the pores of her face. Tighe started buying twice as much food, to make sure that she was fed; but she ate very little. ‘This is why you are so thin,’ he scolded her. But all she would say was ‘Yes, Master.’ She said very little else.
She was, however, a good cook, whenever Tighe felt more extravagant and hired a public oven as well as some ingredients for food. He thought sometimes of using her, since he had not experienced that physical release in many months and she was, after all, his: but the truth was he found her offputting and unattractive. She was so small, so scrawny, she looked as if she might break in use.
Week followed week, with Tighe simply staying in the city and living off the wealth earned by the sale of his antique suit. One day he saw somebody wearing it: a plump, rich man, striding up and down one of the ledges as proud as the sun. Tighe wondered how much he had paid for the thing.
There were hundreds living in the city; perhaps even a thousand. It was an enormous number, but eventually Tighe came to recognise most of the people on the shelves and ledges. It was possible to become familiar even with so large a number of people. As his supply of jewels began to diminish, he began to think that the City of the East was boring to him: the drinking, the endless theatre and preaching. He debated with himself what to do: secreting three of his most exquisite jewels in a twist of leather tucked into his boot, he decided he would make his way through the lands of Otre towards the Meshwood.
He explained his plan to his slave girl, and to his surprise she began to cry. ‘What are you crying about?’ he asked, alarmed.
‘The city is my home,’ she said. ‘I have only known the city.’
‘Are you not curious to see the wonders of the worldwall west of here?’ he said. ‘Come! You must be curious.’
‘No, Master.’
‘Well, perhaps I will sell you to a new master before I go,’ he said, feeling compassionate. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, feeling in a confiding mood, ‘I was a slave myself once. Yes! I know the difficulties of being a commodity. I have been a Prince and a slave, and I have been to the end of the world. I have had such adventures! It is surprising to me that you would not wish to have adventures of your own.’
‘I’m sorry, Master,’ said the slave girl, weeping bitterly and hiding her face in the crook of her elbow. ‘I do not have an adventurer’s soul.’
‘Well,’ said Tighe, embarrassed and trying to comfort her by stroking her hair. ‘Well, don’t worry.’
4
Tighe spent an evening drinking, working through two jugs of fortified water, and then losing a whole jewel to a fellow drinker playing palm-to-palm. He didn’t have the natural dexterity for the game and was hazy about some of the rules; but it was exciting playing, and even the bitterness of losing so much had its thrill.
In the morning Tighe woke with a drinker’s head; his eyes were sore and his head throbbed. He was intensely thirsty and he stumbled unsteadily along ledges and up a stairway to a standing pipe, his slave girl following on behind.
There was an injured man at the pipe, wearing the yellow bandana of slavery. It was a common sight: a slave filling jars with water to carry back to his master’s house – except that this slave had only one leg. Tighe didn’t think he had ever seen a one-legged slave before.
The man balanced on a crutch that fitted under his armpit and was tied round that shoulder with a tether. Tighe barged him out of the way, forcing him to drop his jar and he cried out in terror, fearful that it would break and he would have to explain its loss to his master. But Tighe had a dry mouth and needed the drink.
After he had finished, he turned on the slave. ‘How clumsy you are with your single wobbly leg! You can’t keep your balance, you fool.’
The slave was sitting on the ground, his one good leg and his crutch stretched out before him. The pot was unbroken. Something twitched in Tighe’s memory. He dropped to his haunches and looked carefully at the slave’s face.
‘I’m sorry, Master,’ mumbled the slave, his eyes on the floor.
‘You have a name,’ said Tighe, slowly.
‘No slave has a name, Master,’ said the slave humbly. ‘A slave is only a slave.’
‘You’re Mulvaine, I think,’ said Tighe.
The slave twitched, but kept his eyes on the floor. ‘No slave has a name, Master,’ he said again.
‘Mulvaine!’ said Tighe, his heart tumbling in his chest with joy. ‘Mulvaine – it’s me! Tighe – you remember … the platon? The army? We carried you into the Meshwood – Mulvaine –’ He reached out and touched his severed leg, cut off high up near the hip. ‘I thought you were dead, I truly did. Your leg!’
The slave, tentatively, looked up at Tighe. ‘This is another lifetime, Master,’ he said, in a wobbly voice.
‘A year ago, no more,’ said Tighe. ‘Tighe! You remember.’
Mulvaine, a distant focus coming over his eyes, started trembling. Tears were coming out of his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but only sobs emerged.
‘Why do slaves cry all the time?’ Tighe demanded.
‘Tighe,’ said the slave in a low voice. ‘I can’t bear to think of my life before. It’s too painful.’
‘Come,’ said Tighe, with sudden determination. ‘Come, take me to your master and I’ll buy you. I’ll buy you!’
Mulvaine’s master was a wrinkled man. He had fought in the war in a senior position as an Otre officer, Mulvaine explained to Tighe as he hobbled along, and had been wounded in the foot. Surgeons had removed the foot, and he had taken Mulvaine on as a slave because he did not want a slave who was more whole than he was himself. ‘It flatters his sense of himself, I think,’ said Mulvaine, ‘to order me about. I have less leg than he, for all his missing foot.’
‘My foot is broken too,’ said Tighe, ‘although not missing, for which I am very glad. But I think this man would rather have my two valuable jewels, and perhaps my slave, in exchange for you with your crutch and your ugly face!’
But Mulvaine’s master was a stubborn old man. He lived with two other veterans of the war in a narrow corridor-l
ike room high in the city. The other two old men shared a female slave between them; but Mulvaine’s master was attached to him. ‘But see these jewels!’ said Tighe. ‘See how valuable they are! They’re worth far more than this cripple.’
‘I’m used to him,’ said the old man, scratching his stubbly chin. ‘What good would those jewels do me?’
‘You could buy five slaves with this!’
‘What use would I have for five slaves?’
‘Well, you could buy anything you like. And I’ll give you my own slave in part exchange.’
‘Don’t like the look of her. Diseased look. She’ll not last the winter.’
Tighe became more and more exasperated. ‘Now, don’t be stubborn,’ he warned.
‘You young barbarian,’ said the old man, becoming heated, ‘I commanded a dozen men! I gave my foot to the war! I’ll not have you coming in here, calling me names.’
Tighe himself had taken on a more arrogant manner since coming to the city. He quailed before the anger of the man, before telling himself that he was a man now. ‘But these are unusual, precious jewels,’ he insisted. ‘You’d be a fool to pass this by.’
‘Are you calling me a fool now?’
‘I say what I see,’ said Tighe.
‘Fool! I commanded a dozen men!’ The old man reached up his staff, which he used to lean on when he walked, and made a pass at Tighe’s head. Tighe leant back and the end of the stick swished past. ‘How dare you!’ the old man blustered.
At the far end of the long, narrow room the two other old men cackled at their compatriot’s impotent rage.
‘Only a fool would turn down so excellent an offer,’ said Tighe coolly, encouraged by the mockery from the others.
The old man’s face darkened in pure rage and he struggled to get to his feet, the better to be able to beat Tighe with his stick. Tighe leaned forward and pressed him back into his seat with a firm hand on his shoulder. The old boy struggled like a tantrum-struck baby, gasping and spluttering. There was a loud exhalation and his eyes glazed. He fell back into his chair, his face in a rictus of astonished pain.
Tighe stepped back uncertain what had happened. The other two old men were stumping up from the far end of the room.
‘He’s dead!’ said one.
‘Died of apoplexy!’ said the other.
‘Apoplexy!’ said the first, with a tone almost of glee.
The second old man prodded the corpse with his own walking stick, and then turned to Tighe. ‘You taunted him to death.’
‘Taunted him to death!’ gloated the other.
‘Accidentally,’ said Tighe, hurriedly.
‘Them jewels is ours now,’ said the old man, leering. ‘You can take the cripple in exchange, he’s no use to us.’
‘But leave the girl,’ said the other old man, leeringly. ‘We can use the girl.’
Tighe sucked in his breath. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘The master’s death frees the slave.’
‘Nonsense!’ snarled one old man.
‘Nonsense!’ said the other.
‘What’s his is ours now. We’re his heirs.’
‘He made us his heirs!’
‘Then fetch a magistrate, I’d advise,’ said Tighe, feeling himself gather inside. ‘I dispute it. I think he died without heirs and I’m claiming his slave. You can have his other stuff. Come now, slave,’ he said to Mulvaine.
‘You can’t do that!’ screeched the first old man.
‘Who are you? What’s your name?’
‘You speak Otre with a western accent,’ said the first. ‘You’re a westerner – a dirty westerner. You have no rights here!’
But Tighe walked calmly out through the door, leading Mulvaine and his own slave as he went.
He took Mulvaine down to the lower ledges of the city and bought him some food. Mulvaine ate with gusto.
‘You’re a wealthy man now, Tighe,’ he said, his eyes hesitating upwards and then tumbling back down in his habit of meekness.
‘I thought you were dead, with the others,’ said Tighe, slapping him on the shoulder.
‘The others?’
Tighe coughed. ‘Ati,’ he said. ‘Pelis. Ravielre. You remember them?’
Mulvaine was staring at the ledge in front of him. ‘I assumed’, he said, ‘that the whole platon had been destroyed. I don’t remember very much. I remember running along the ledge with you, Master.’
‘Don’t call me master,’ said Tighe, with a strange twinge inside him. ‘It doesn’t feel right, somehow.’
Mulvaine blushed. ‘No,’ he said, meekly.
‘It’s all right,’ Tighe said.
‘I remember running,’ Mulvaine said shortly. ‘Then the pain in my leg – I was shot. But I don’t remember anything else until I was awake in an Otre fort. My leg was bandaged, missing, and that’s how I’ve been. They put me in a pen with other commodities, but nobody would buy me. I was lucky to find my master, I truly was. He was recovering himself and he fastened on me.’ A tear crawled down the planes of Mulvaine’s face. ‘And now he’s dead. Dead!’
‘Don’t start crying now,’ said Tighe, with distaste. But it was too late; Mulvaine was sobbing, and rubbing his eyes.
‘Why do slaves feel they must cry as much as they do?’ fretted Tighe.
‘Anyway,’ said Mulvaine sniffing hard through his nose, ‘you must have a story, I think, Master. Tighe, I mean. Master Tighe. Oh, the old days! They seem so far away!’
He was shaking his head, looking at the floor.
‘Well,’ said Tighe, settling himself down and staring out at the sky. It was shortly after ninety and the sun was bright, a white hole burnt through the perfect blue. ‘I’ve had some adventures, Mulvaine,’ he said. ‘I can tell you that. I was a slave, too, just as you have been. But I escaped.’ He rubbed his right eye. Since he had started drinking the fortified water for which the City of the East was so famous, he had started experiencing headaches that nibbled at the back of his eyeballs. He was getting streaks of white blankness over his vision, too: sometimes when he opened his eyes he couldn’t see anything but a milky haze until his eyes settled and things came back into view.
‘Escaped!’ said Mulvaine, in a small voice. He was looking nervously around. ‘Runaway slaves are thrown off the wall,’ he whispered. ‘Everybody in the city knows me. I’ve been here a year. I couldn’t escape.’
‘Well,’ said Tighe. ‘I was – shall we say – taken by somebody else. Just as you have been taken, freed, by me.’ He smiled at Mulvaine, but the other’s glance was still downwards. He rubbed his stump through his clothing.
‘Ah, Mulvaine,’ Tighe said, ‘I have travelled further than you could imagine. I have travelled to the end of the world – to the East Pole. I have visited the ice caves there and battled with magicians and monsters. I have flown through the air, swum through the breath of God. When I return to the world of men and women, as I have done, it is hard to feel bound by the smallness of these customs.’ He wrinkled up his eyes. His vision was not as sharp as it once had been.
‘The East Pole?’ said Mulvaine, looking up briefly. ‘I have heard of it. It is not, then, a sort of myth?’
‘No,’ said Tighe, rubbing his eyes again. ‘It is as real a part of the wall as the ledges on which this city is built. The wall is not as we thought it was. I remember, Mulvaine, when we were still in the platon. One day you said to me: you said, is it that the wall is big, or that we are small?’
‘Did I say such a thing?’ mused Mulvaine. ‘It seems a very long time ago, Master.’
Tighe wrinkled his face. ‘Don’t call me so,’ he snapped. Then he made himself regain his composure. ‘Well, there was a kind of truth in that, but it was not as I thought it. I saw us as small and God as big. But now I have travelled and I know who built the wall. I have met with the mangod and he is, they are, as small as you, as small as me. It seems that God and man are exactly the same scale, exactly the same size. It seems that God is a part of our family, a p
art of our village, that he and she live as a single person among us. It seems that he is as overawed by the size of the universe as are we: that he is as likely to bicker with his Lover as we are. I had used to think that God was beyond change; but I have discovered on my travels that it is not so; that God is in love with change. Perhaps that is why he is in thrall to this world, to this worldwall. Change is a potent thing, like liquor perhaps, and has drawn us in.’
‘What a lot you have learned, Master Tighe,’ said Mulvaine, with an undertone of sarcasm. But he was still looking at the floor.
Tighe stood up and walked back and forth a little to stretch his legs. ‘We come from a mighty people, Mulvaine,’ he said. ‘Our people achieved many things. And we will achieve great things again. This I have been promised. So I have pledged to return to my village. You will come with me.’
‘It is hard for me to walk, Master,’ said Mulvaine, in a miserable voice. ‘I have only one leg and my crutch chafes under my armpit.’
Tighe didn’t hear him; or if he heard him, he didn’t really listen to his words. ‘I shall return as Prince to my village,’ he said. ‘It is my right. If my Grandhe still governs, then I shall confront him with the truth. With what I now know about the worldwall itself.’
5
Tighe spent the rest of the day trying to dispose of his female slave. It was harder than he thought it would be; few people were interested in so sickly a creature. She cried every time Tighe took her to a new doorway, a new potential buyer, and she cried when the buyer abused her as diseased and a weakling. ‘You are difficult,’ chided Tighe, ‘you cry at the thought I will sell you, and you cry at the thought that I won’t be able to sell you. Are you sure that you do not wish to come with us?’
‘I do not wish to leave the city, Master,’ she whined.
‘Well, Mulvaine and I will travel west. We will see wonders – do you not wish to see wonders?’
She shook her head miserably.
Eventually Tighe found a baker who was prepared to take her. ‘She’s small enough to climb inside my oven and clean out the corners,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you in bread.’ Tighe cursed inwardly to think that he had wasted two valuable jewels on so hopeless a purchase, but it couldn’t be helped.