by Greg Keyes
The path he was on intersected a much larger one, and he finally tried to stop someone to ask directions. The person—a man who looked to be about his own age—disdainfully brushed off his inquiring hand and hurried on his way without even pausing. Perkar watched him go, dumbstruck. What manner of people were these? They looked like Ghaj, and Win, and Brother Horse, and yet they had not a smidgen of the same hospitality. He reminded himself that they also resembled the pirates who had tried to kill him, and began to proceed a bit more cautiously.
Two more men and a woman rebuffed him, and so at last he stopped a child.
For an instant, he thought the little girl was the one in his vision; she had the same black eyes and hair framing a heart-shaped face. But then he realized that her nose was a bit too broad, her eyes not as large, other details that he couldn’t quite place but that added up to the wrong person. She stared up at him, half frightened, half curious.
“My mother says not to talk to foreigners,” she said simply.
“Please,” he pleaded, “I only want to know where the docks are, in Southtown.”
She regarded him dubiously, but finally gave him an answer that involved a string of turns and unfamiliar street names.
“I don’t know those streets,” he told her. “Can you be more detailed?”
When she was done, Perkar didn’t know whether he was thoroughly confused or knew where he was going. Thanking her, he followed her directions as best he could.
Not much later, he crossed a canal, a channel that had been lined with cut stones. He stared down from the bridge at it, agape. Boats were moving up and down the waterway—it was wider than the stream back home—poled by men and women. Some held cargo—fish, bundles of cloth—but most seemed to bear only a few passengers. He made out stairs descending at intervals from the street to the canal.
Beyond the canal, he turned where he thought the girl meant for him to, and the path climbed a hill. At the crest of it, he emerged from the early night of the streets onto an open plaza. There he was suddenly gifted with a broader view of the city, still visible in the pale and fading illumination of the sky. A thousand flat rooftops sprawled out below him, rectangular islands in an ink-dark sea. Many of the islands were inhabited; he could make out people tending fires, clothes and rugs hung on lines, flapping vaguely in the wind. A few of the roofs even had tents upon them, and he guessed that people might sleep in them, when the weather was warm. From many of the houses, pits of orange-yellow light gaped at his uphill vantage, interior courtyards cheerily lit from within.
Another hill rose to his right, and the structures clustered there loomed enormous. Massive vaults, sky-reaching towers, and long, unbroken walls of stone were somehow all joined into one, and formed a single building larger than the entire city of Wun. It scarcely looked like something Human Beings could live in, and the hair on his nape prickled at the sight of it. How must it be, in the center of such a thing? Like being in the mountain, in the Belly of the Raven, too far from sky and sunlight. He remembered the creatures who lived in the mountain all too well; spidery things, pale and sinister. Might not such creatures dwell there, in that hilltop edifice?
Was this the “palace” the guards spoke of? He remembered Brother Horse and his talk of the clan that ruled Nhol, men and women with a seeming of godhood upon them. Perhaps they were gods of shadow, of depth.
But there was a height, here, too. The hilltop monstrosity—the palace?—rolled down in blocky waves to the River, surrounded the whole of the way by a formidable stone wall. Where it touched the River, a monumental structure of cut stone reared up against the dying light. Perkar recognized it immediately as a mountain, or something made to resemble a mountain, but angular, like a building, as well. Water spewed from its summit, churning and gray, and poured like miniature rivers down its sloping faces. For an instant, Perkar felt dizzy, on the verge of some fantastic revelation. It was as if he were gazing at the very source of the Changeling, the mountain in the heart of Balat, where the gods lived. Yet it was the mountain not as it was, but as Human Beings might make it, of dressed stone, cornered, regular. He stared on, teased by inspiration but never quite comprehending the importance of what he saw. At last he shook his head, let his gaze stray.
The River was even wider here than at the point where the pirates had attacked him, the other shore obscured by distance and twilight. He saw several more canals—they all seemed to run toward the palace. He also made out, against the dim silver light of the water, a jumble of quays jutting out into the River like short, dark trails. They lay south of him, and so he continued on, sure that these were his destination, the false mountain still riddling at his brain.
He attempted to keep the location of the docks fixed in his senses as he descended the hill and lost sight of them. Despite his best efforts, he was soon confused again. He stopped several children to refine his course, and so at last, by the time night was truly pitch, he found himself near the water’s edge and a strip of dirty, untidy buildings. There he sat down, his back to a wall, and gazed out at the dark River, freckled with the torchlight of a hundred boats. He sighed, his earlier elation gone with the sunlight. He felt very, very far from home.
“Well,” he told the River. “Here I am. You killed my friends, bent my destiny, brought me across the whole world. Now what do you want? Where is this girl?”
His only answer was the sounds of the city, the faint lapping of waves on the quays.
Perkar realized that he had dozed off; someone was nudging him awake with a foot. He gasped and reached for Harka.
“Hey, no, watch that!” a young voice called down. He squinted up but couldn’t make out the face. Whoever it was, though, was dressed much like the soldiers who had met him at the gate; he could see that much in the feeble light of a nearby torch.
“I’m sorry,” Perkar muttered vaguely, still confused.
“Sleeping on the street is a bad idea, barbarian,” the voice informed him.
“I don’t know my way around here,” he explained. “I don’t know where I should stay.”
“Oh. Didn’t your captain tell you?”
“Captain?”
“You came on a boat, didn’t you?”
“Uh, no,” Perkar said, rising to his feet. Someone passed close with a lantern, and he caught a glimpse of the soldier’s face; very young, it seemed, smooth, kind. “No,” he repeated, “I came overland.”
“Overland? Well. The guards at the gate should have told you where to go then.”
“They told me to go to the docks, near Southtown.”
“You’re a bit from there,” the man told him. “Come along, I’m patrolling that way, if you want a guide.”
“Yes!” Perkar agreed, nodding vigorously.
“Come on, then, stay close,” the guard counseled.
After they had gone a few steps, Perkar spoke up again. “My name is Perkar, of the Barku Clan,” he offered.
“Eh? Oh,” the man responded. “Hang, son of Chwen, is mine. Where are you from, barbarian?”
“From the Cattle-Lands, at the edge of Balat,” Perkar answered.
“Is that far away?”
“It took well over a month to get here on the River.”
“I thought you said you came overland,” the man said, a trifle suspiciously.
“From Nyel,” Perkar amended. “I lost my boat at Nyel.”
“Funny,” Hang replied.
“How so?”
“Something I just heard—ah, watch them!” Hang stepped over a couple of men lying facedown in the street. They looked like natives; Perkar wondered why Hang didn’t warn them not to sleep in the street, too, and said so.
Hang snorted. “They should know better, that’s why, but they’re too drunk to have any sense, I imagine. I thought maybe you didn’t know better.”
“That was good of you,” Perkar said.
The man shrugged, glanced slightly back at him as they walked along. “Most people don’t like foreigners,” he admitted. �
��I find them sort of interesting. My mother was a barbarian, you know.”
“She was?”
“She was a Mang captive my father bought and eventually married.”
“Bought?” Perkar asked incredulously, wondering if he had misunderstood.
“Paid a fair price, too, twelve Royals, he used to say. That’s what he called her most of the time, ‘Twelve Royals.’”
Perkar wasn’t sure he was following, precisely, but he remembered his father’s advice about keeping quiet rather than revealing his ignorance.
“I thought I might go trading up-River one day, so I don’t mind meeting strangers, to learn a little about them.”
“I see.”
“What have you come to Nhol for?”
“To see it, I suppose,” Perkar told him, not really knowing what else to say. Then he added, “I was hoping to get a little work for my sword.”
The soldier nodded, and Perkar thought he caught a sidewise look of condescension from him. “You’ll want to stay at the Crab Woman, then. That’s not far, I’ll show you to it and bid you good night.”
They turned off of the street on the River and crossed several more streets inland. At last the soldier knocked on a heavy wooden door.
“This is the place, Perkar-from-faraway. Don’t let them charge you more than a pair of soldiers a night. Remember that!”
“Thank you, I’ll remember it,” Perkar said. He was watching the fellow walk away when the door opened.
A large, rough man stood there, raking a practiced gaze over him.
“Barbarian sell-sword? Well, keep that thing leathered, you hear me? We get trouble from your kind all of the time, and we know how to deal with it You’ve got no clan or brotherhood or tribe or whatever that’ll find out what happened to you down here and avenge you, get that straight, right?”
Perkar frowned when he understood that he was being threatened, but let it pass. Piraku and its code of behavior were plainly not known to any of these people, though they insisted on calling him a barbarian. Best he should mostly watch and listen here, until he understood more about what codes of conduct did apply.
“I just want a bed to sleep in,” he mumbled. “I’ve been walking all day.”
“Four soldiers, here at the door,” the man said gruffly.
At least he understood this. He had never dealt with metal coins before, but he had bargained for cattle often enough.
“A single soldier is all I can afford,” he said.
“Well, then you can’t afford to stay here,” the man snapped. “Though we have a discount for albinos today. Three soldiers.”
They settled on two, as the guardsman had indicated, and after paying he entered into the building’s courtyard. Here, too, was a bit of familiarity. The courtyard was set up much like the hall of a damakuta, with heavy tables and benches. Men and some women sat at these, drinking from heavy clay bowls.
“You can have the room in the corner,” the man indicated. “Beer and wine is a soldier a pint. Tell the serving boy if you want some.”
“Where do I go to look for work?” Perkar asked, hesitantly.
“I knew it,” the man grumbled. He sighed heavily. “Just stay around in here, keep your scabbard out where people can see it. If anyone is looking, they’ll notice you.”
“Thanks,” Perkar said. Worn out and overloaded with sight, sound, and smell, he wound back through the mass of strangers to the door the man had indicated. It opened into a cell that was no larger than a storage shed, but held a pallet and a small lantern. He closed the door and, after a bit of fumbling about in the dark, found a bolt, slid it shut. He sank down to the mat, which stank of sweat and beer and possibly less appetizing things. He was musing on how a city could be so huge and rooms in it so small when, despite the smell and the constant noise of voices from outside, Perkar was soon deeply, mercifully asleep.
VIII
The Rooftop
Ghan was not in the library the next morning, and Hezhi knew what that meant; he was down in the city, planning her “escape.” Her mind was still awhirl with the idea; she had stayed up late into the night, in the courtyard of her rooms, running her fingers upon the little Mang statuette. Somehow, the fierce little horse-woman made the almost unthinkable idea of leaving Nhol—of leaving the palace—seem possible, something she could survive. The little figure could not, however, allay her doubts; there were many of those. What would she do, wherever she went? Certainly she would not be a princess, waited on by servants. That and indexing in the library were all she knew how to do. Where else would her skills with books be useful? The Swamp Kingdoms, perhaps—they might have a few libraries. But the Swamp Kingdoms were too close to the River, still in his domain. Did the Mang have libraries? Probably not.
Hope and fear kept her company all night, and in the end it was knowing her only other choice was the underpalace that allowed hope to be the one that woke up with her. She would not be waited upon there, either, and no book could survive that flooded, terrible place.
Hope told her Ghan would think of something; hope was the statuette, the image of a creature, unfettered, unbindable.
The worst of it was that now that plans were in motion, she was helpless. After years of investigating her own life so that she could understand and control her fate, matters were again in the hands of others. She spent the morning thumbing vacantly through books whose pages she did not even see. Ghan’s place was held by a plump young man from somewhere in the Butterfly Court, where the tax collectors carried out their business. He was pleasant and rather bland, and apparently of no help whatsoever to Yen, who came in about midmorning. Consequently, Yen brought his questions to Hezhi.
Yen was a fast learner, so his queries were no longer simple ones. She welcomed the challenge—it and Yen kept her mind and stomach off of wondering where Ghan and Tsem might be, what they might be doing. But once they had found the necessary texts—Second-Dynasty proscriptions for tertiary water fane drainage—her mind wandered off again into the land of what-will-be. She really couldn’t help thinking that once she fled from Nhol, was exiled from it, she could marry whomever she wanted, even a merchant’s son.
She also considered that, once she was no longer a princess, no one would want to marry her, not even a merchant’s son. And of course, it could never be Yen, who was dedicated to his life here as a Royal Engineer. Still, it was a pleasant, even an entertaining, thought.
He looked up to ask her a question and caught her thoughtful gaze, and she blushed, fearing he could tell exactly what she was thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I’m keeping you from something.”
“No, no,” she corrected, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I’m just distracted today. I have a lot to think about.”
“Well, as I said,” Yen began, making motions to leave.
“No, stay,” she pleaded. “I wanted to ask you about something.”
“Oh. Ask me?” Yen sounded very surprised. “An opinion, I hope, for of real knowledge I have no great supply.”
“You know about this,” she assured him.
He looked at her expectantly.
“It’s just that I’ve never been out of the palace,” she said at last. “The city is a mystery to me, even what I can see of it. Tsem—my servant—he tells me a bit, but of course he’s never lived out there. I just wondered if you could tell me something about it. Anything.”
“You’ve mentioned this before,” Yen said, “and I didn’t tell you before, but it puzzles me. I’ve seen nobles in the city many, many times. Why have you never been out?”
“I’m not old enough,” she confessed, hoping the weight of what that meant to her was not apparent in her voice, on her features.
“Ah. But soon?”
“Yes. I suppose that’s why I ask.”
“Well, I don’t know where to start. It all seems so plain to me, so common. Most people spend their whole lives wondering what the inside of the palace is like, you
know. We don’t think much about fishmongers and scorps, unless we have to.”
“Scorps?”
“Scorpions. Thieves, cutthroats. Some parts of the city are rather dangerous, you know.”
“The merchants’ quarter, where you grew up?”
“No, not really. We have burglars, now and again, people who break into our houses to steal things, but they aren’t really dangerous. They avoid the kind of trouble killing a rich man might bring down on them. They are very stealthy, crafty—but not dangerous. No, the scorps haunt the docks, the warehouse district, Southtown …”
“Would you come with me?” she asked him abruptly.
“What?”
“Just for a few moments, would you come with me?”
“Ah, I suppose. To where?”
“A place I know, where we can see the city, where you can point to things when you talk about them.”
“Will that be all right? Without an escort?”
She had briefly forgotten about that. Tsem was with Ghan.
“Just for a short time. And no one will see us, I promise.”
“If you promise,” he said solemnly, “then I’m bound to believe you.”
“That is my father’s house,” Yen said, pointing. “The one with the red awning, you see?”
Hezhi followed the line of Yen’s finger, out and away from the rooftop garden. “Yes. Why, that’s one of the largest houses there!”
“My father does well enough. Still, the least part of the palace makes it seem like a hovel.”
She frowned. “But what of those houses?” she asked, indicating the thick, tiny huts of Southtown.
“Well, of course, those are real hovels,” Yen told her. “One-room shacks with leaky roofs.”
“What are the people there like?”
Yen shrugged. “I only know what I see—people from the rest of the city rarely venture into Southtown, you know. But the people there are scorps, beggars, cutpurses, prostitutes. The sort without the ambition to better themselves.”
“Do they have a choice about that?” she asked. “Can they better themselves?”