I tried to discreetly look over the tables of slaves, wondering if I could spot Burkut. I didn’t see him, but it would have been hard to see him in this crowd. The slaves were damp and muddy but warmly dressed, and the kitchen slaves came around several times with the pots of soup to refill bowls; it wasn’t just the guards who were well fed.
“I heard that Solon was the assistant steward,” I asked during a lull. “Is there someone else who’s actually in charge?”
There was a lot of derisive laughter at that. “Lycurgus is the name of the steward,” someone said. “He’s in charge if you can hang him up and dry him out long enough to get anything sensible out of him. Solon doesn’t usually bother.”
“Solon is wise,” someone else said. “He’d run this place better drunk than Lycurgus did even when he was sober.”
“I’d pay money to see Solon drunk.”
“What do you suppose he’d be like?”
“He’d probably be a cool, responsible drunk. He’d take off his own boots and settle down on his bed before he even started drinking.”
“Well, and Lycurgus does that, doesn’t he?”
“Not ever getting out of bed is not the same thing.”
It didn’t sound like I needed to worry about running into Lycurgus.
“Speaking of beds, where are you sleeping?” Demetrios asked with a leer.
“If I decide I want visitors I’ll be sure to let you know,” I said, which elicited a round of reasonably friendly laughter. “Solon said I should take a pallet out of the bunkroom, though. If someone could show me where that is, I’d appreciate it.”
“Let’s give her Damon’s bed,” someone muttered, inspiring more laughter.
I trailed along with the guards as they escorted the slaves back to the slave bunkhouses. The slaves slept in a single long house; I caught a glimpse of the interior and they were packed tightly, but that seemed to be more for warmth than to save space. I thought I saw Burkut, but when I turned for a better look I realized it was someone else. What if he got sold to another farm? I bit my lip and refused to let myself reflect on that. If he was sold, then somewhere in the financial records it should say where.
The slaves were locked in for the night, and the guards retired to their own bunkhouse. It was warmer and more spacious, and immaculately clean; no doubt it was the responsibility of some of the slaves to clean it, but Solon must have to lean pretty hard on the guards to get them to keep their belongings so orderly.
Demetrios found me an empty bed and let me gather up the bedding. “You’d be welcome to sleep in here,” he said with another leer.
“Solon already warned me that you all snore,” I said, “but thanks ever so much for the offer.” I headed back to the kitchen.
The storage room was easy enough to find and, as Solon had said, quite warm. I made my bed, shoved a barrel in front of the door just in case someone had guessed where I was sleeping and decided to make a late-night visit, and lay down, pulling my coat over myself. It was a warm bed, and though it was harder than my bed at the guesthouse in Daphnia, it was a great deal softer than the ground.
I was bone-weary and my head hurt from trying to decipher Lycurgus’s spidery handwriting all afternoon, but I was too tightly wound to sleep. I kept running through the events of the day, thinking about all the things that could still go wrong. Also, I felt guilty for my deception; Solon had treated me quite fairly and it hurt to poison the cup of his trust.
Kyros betrayed me, and Sophos betrayed me, but Solon has played fair with me, at least so far. I’m the one betraying him.
I couldn’t think about this right now or I was going to mess something up. But my doubts kept eating at me, keeping me wide eyed in my bed. At least I never slept deeply enough that night for Kyros to meddle with my dreams, but Tamar couldn’t visit me, either, even if she was trying.
I woke stiff and sleepy while the kitchen slaves were making breakfast, and picked my way downstairs, yawning. One of the slaves sympathetically waved me to a spot in the corner of the kitchen and gave me some tea and porridge with honey.
I ate my breakfast and watched the farm wake for the day. Solon wandered into the kitchen a short time after I did, his hair damp and neatly combed. One of the slaves loaded up a tray to be taken elsewhere—I suspected that was for Lycurgus. Solon followed the servant with the tray; I wondered if he made a daily report to Lycurgus even if he was still passed out unconscious on his bed. A short time after that, the guards brought in the slaves and everyone else had breakfast.
Since no one had made any attempt to shoo me out of the kitchen I stayed where I was, drinking tea. As they were finishing breakfast, Solon returned and gave the guards their assignments for the day. I could overhear him from the kitchen, and it sounded like everyone was being put to work in the orchard, as the guards had expected. I drained the last of my tea and decided it was time to get to work. I reached the office a few minutes before Solon did. When he arrived, he was clearly pleased to see me already at work.
I was determined this morning not to let my job distract me from my real task. At midmorning, I would ask for permission to go out and survey the farm itself. It was a sunny day; I’d just keep an eye on the angle of the sunshine.
I started to step out just as someone was coming in to Solon’s office. I ducked instinctively back inside and watched cautiously from the shadowed part of the room. Lycurgus. So much for thinking he’d just stay holed up in his bed while I was here.
“—offer you a chair,” Solon was saying. I heard a puff of air as Lycurgus’s unsteady butt landed on the cushion. I held my breath, working quietly in the part of the room that Lycurgus couldn’t see, and trying to overhear whatever I could. Unfortunately, the conversation itself was quiet and difficult to catch, at least until Lycurgus lurched to his feet and bellowed, “I am the steward here! I am. Me! Not you.”
“Of course,” Solon said, completely unruffled. “I’m so sorry not to have discussed this with you previously. Let’s step out and get some fresh air; it would be a nice day for a walk.” Lycurgus grunted. “Well, or I can follow you back to your room, and we can talk there, whatever you prefer.” Another inaudible mutter. “After lunch, then. I look forward to it.”
The door slammed shut.
There was a pause, then Solon called, “Xanthe?” I poked my head out and he gave me an amiable smile. “Were you listening to that?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“No, well, did you overhear anything accidentally?”
“Not really. You were speaking, um, pretty quietly for most of the conversation.”
“Well. Lycurgus heard I’d hired someone to look over the books and took exception to the idea. Don’t worry, I can handle him, but if he sneaks in sometime while I’m out and harasses you, just apologize a lot and delay him until I get back. If he sends you packing, just go wait in the kitchen and I’ll straighten it out later.”
“But if he’s the steward . . .”
“He’s a drunk who keeps his post because he’s well connected,” Solon said with a shrug. “It’s hardly a secret; you must have caught some of that from the guards last night. Anyway, I was put here to keep things from falling apart, and that’s what I’m doing.”
I gave him a hesitant smile. “I was thinking about going out for a look around the farm, if you don’t mind—I think the accounts might make a little more sense if I saw the whole place.”
“Oh, absolutely. It should keep Lycurgus out of your hair, too. I’ll see you this afternoon.”
I went out, feeling guiltier than ever for my deception.
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun was very bright and the air was crisp; I shivered when I stepped out and briefly considered going back for my coat. I could smell wood smoke and the faint whiff of rotten apples in the air, and when I looked around, I saw some of the slaves hauling wheelbarrows loaded with apples into a low-roofed stone building. I wandered over; I would have to duck to go inside. “Xanthe,
” the guard greeted me. “Need something?”
“I’m just trying to get a feel for the farm,” I said.
“This is the cider hut,” he said. “Folks inside are peeling the apples and getting them ready for the press—that’s what we do with the apples that are bruised or bird-pecked. Lucky for us a lot got knocked down in the last storm.” He winked. “The apples that will keep best, those go over in that hut.” He pointed to another low-roofed stone building. “We ship them to Daphnia, and they get sent up to garrisons from there. Say, want one?” He poked through the wheelbarrow that was sitting by the door of the cider hut and turned up an almost unblemished one.
“Thank you.” I took it. “Which way is the orchard?”
He pointed. “Just watch for the wheelbarrows.”
I passed a house with glass windows and a floor of tile mosaic; that was where Lycurgus lived, and I ducked my head and quickened my step going by. Then I was striding through the open fields, picking my way over mud and cut stubble. I bit into my apple; it was tart and crisp, and the juice dripped down and made my fingers sticky. What a beautiful day.
Demetrios spotted me as I approached the orchard and came over to say hello. When I told him that I was giving myself a tour of the farm, to better understand the accounts, he winked and laughed and then insisted on guiding me around the orchard, pointing out guards, varieties of trees, and particularly noteworthy slaves. “That’s Sabir—he has six fingers on his right hand. Hey, Sabir! Show Xanthe your finger.” Sabir grimaced a little and then gamely held up his hand; the sixth finger stuck out at a right angle from the rest of his hand, as immobile as a dead twig. I gave him an apologetic shrug and he shrugged back, then returned to picking apples.
I didn’t see Burkut anywhere. Convinced that I must have missed him, I told Demetrios that I wanted to try to learn the guards’ names and we made another circuit of the orchard, but I still didn’t see him. “Is this really all the slaves from the farm?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like as many as I’d have expected, for a farm this size.”
“Well, we bring in extras during the height of the harvest. There are men who own teams that roam around the Empire; they go up north at the end of the summer and move south, hiring the teams out for the harvest as they go.”
“Even beyond harvest . . . the kitchen slaves aren’t out picking, are they?”
“Oh, that’s what you meant? Of course not, they’re in the kitchen. Oh, also, there’s the work detail that’s making cider with the windfalls. If a slave gets injured they go on light work for a while to recover. There are a couple who got hurt during the harvest, including one clumsy oaf who fell out of a tree he was picking apples in. They’re all in the cider hut. And of course there are the stable hands; they’re in the stable. And the house hands who clean . . . but all the farmhands are out here or in the cider hut today, I think. We run an efficient operation.”
The cider hut. That was certainly worth a try; Burkut actually seemed like the sort of person who might fall out of a tree while picking apples. I thanked Demetrios for his help; he handed me an apple (this one fresh-picked and unblemished) and I walked back to the main farm.
The door to the cider hut was standing open. I knocked on it as I stepped inside. “Are you looking for Nikolaos?” one of the slaves asked. “He went to the privy.”
“I’m just nosing around some more,” I said cheerfully. The slave by the door was peeling an apple in a long spiral; so were two more sitting beside her. Another slave was cutting away bad chunks, and another was cutting fruit away from the core. The fruit was going into one barrel, the waste scraps into another.
“They’ll feed that to the pigs,” the talkative slave said, pointing to the waste barrel. “The good parts will get put through the press.”
I still didn’t see Burkut, until I turned and spotted a slave lying down on a bed in the back of the cabin, sleeping. The talkative slave followed my gaze and shook her head with a cluck of her tongue. “Burkut was sick last week with his stomach. Amazing he didn’t make everyone else sick. Anyway, he’s still weak so we’re letting him take some extra rest.”
I hardly heard what she said; relief was flooding over me, just knowing that he was here. And now I knew where to find him. I just needed to figure out how to get him away.
I thanked them and stepped back outside, greeted the guard who had just returned from the privy, and went back in to my office.
It was clear that the slaves here were not guarded all that closely. They were far enough from the steppe that it would be an arduous trip, and they were treated well enough that most of them were unlikely to consider the risks to be worth it. I could buy us some time, though, if I could come up with a reason that I needed him with me. I could probably request an assistant. Someone who’d be on light duties anyway. I pulled a ledger down and looked at it; that one appeared to be a mix of new and older information. What a mess. I put it in the “new” pile.
“What are you doing?”
I looked up. Lycurgus stood in the doorway, swaying slightly back and forth and steadying himself on the frame. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was puffy, but he looked more alert than I would have liked. “Good afternoon, Steward,” I said, and bowed politely, which not coincidentally gave me the opportunity to duck my head and keep it lowered so that he’d have a harder time seeing my face.
“Who the hell are you and what are you doing?”
“My name is Xanthe—I lost my old job and came here looking for a roof over my head. Solon was kind enough to promise to feed and shelter me if I’d work on sorting through these papers. I’ve done clerk work before.”
“We don’t need any help with those papers. Get out, shoo!”
I sidled out, keeping my eyes on the floor. Delay. That’s what Solon had asked me to do. “Is there some other work I can do here?”
“No. We don’t need any clerks nosing through my papers. I’m the steward here, not Solon!” He grabbed some of the books out of the piles and held them close to his chest. Despite myself, I found myself reevaluating what was probably in them. Those are the books he wants to hide. If I can get them back, I’ll put them somewhere safe until I can go over them and tally every last stray mark.
With his hands occupied with the books, he was having a difficult time keeping his balance. “All right, all right,” I said, making my voice as soothing as I could. “I’m terribly sorry, it’s clear that I should have demanded to see you to ask for a job, and not let them shunt me over to Solon. Let me help you get back to your room; you’re clearly tired from all the stress you’re under.”
To my surprise, he let me put my hand under his arm and steady him on the walk back over to the big house. “You look familiar,” he mumbled as we crossed the mosaic tiles.
My stomach knotted but I thought I hid my fear adequately. “A lot of people say that,” I said. “Almost everyone seems to think I look like their niece, for some reason.”
“Not my niece. You look like someone else.”
“Well, if you think of who I look like, let me know. Maybe it will turn out to be some long-lost kinswoman of mine.”
“Where are you from?”
“Daphnia,” I said. “I used to work for a sorceress there, but then she died.” We walked up the narrow stairs and into Lycurgus’s bedroom. I helped him sit on his bed; he dropped the books beside him on the sheets and reached for his wine cup. “Let me refill that for you,” I said, and fetched the wineskin from a shelf, filling his glass to the top. He drained it in a gulp and then lay back against his pillow, muttering about resting his eyes for just a minute.
When he started snoring, I carefully extracted the books, and flipped through them. Ah. It didn’t take me long to find the pages that made me suspicious. He’d miss the books, but as long as they were by him when he woke up . . . To do this properly I needed a sharp knife. Lycurgus’s room was a terrible mess, a heap of dirty clothing, books, papers, random household items, empty wineskins, and person
al items all jumbled together. I poked through a pile and dislodged some dirty dishes and a live mouse. Lovely. No doubt he thinks anyone cleaning is also usurping his role as steward.
I poked through the personal effects on a table; there, an ornate sheathed knife with semiprecious stones studding the sheath—the sort of thing you might get as a gift from someone like Kyros, if you were a kinsman he didn’t have a whole lot of respect for. I drew it from the sheath and ran my thumb cautiously along the edge; it might be jewelry rather than anything useful, but right now it had a nice sharp edge. I lay the book down on the table and delicately cut out the suspicious pages. I was pretty certain that if Lycurgus went looking through the books and didn’t find what he wanted, he’d think he must have left the books back in my office. Admittedly, that might mean that I’d get another visit from him. I sighed. I’m letting myself get distracted. I’m here to free Burkut, not to find out if Lycurgus is embezzling. But I’d already cut the pages out. I closed the books and quietly slipped them back onto the bed. I put the knife back in its sheath and left it back at the bottom of the pile on his table; I folded the pages I’d removed and put them in my sleeve.
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