Upon Senlin’s insistence, Tarrou left him leaning against the roughly chiseled wall and went to stand in line for a drink from the sputtering fountain. After a few minutes, he returned, and once they had staggered some distance from the watering hole, he said, “They were talking about somebody I think you might know. A man named Thomas Mudd Senlin. Apparently, he’s captain of a pirate crew.”
“Sounds like a rotten fellow,” Senlin said, his heart rising into his throat. He thought of Marat. Someone must’ve exposed him to the leader of the zealot clan. He wondered who. “What else did they say?”
“Only that Marat would give the hod who delivered old Tom Mudd to him one hundred minas, not in debt, but in coin. I’m afraid your warrant is blasting all over the tattle post.”
“That’s a lot of money,” Senlin said. “I’m surprised the zealots have so much.”
“Well, they may be nitwits, but they still know money motivates more reliably than ideology. Lucky for Mudd, Marat is asking for the pirate captain to be delivered alive.”
“Well, I’m very glad my name is Cyril Pinfield.”
“I don’t think I’d be very glad if that were my name,” Tarrou said.
On they went, lurching side to side like a couple of drunks carrying each other home from the pub. Senlin persisted in his inquires, asking questions to keep Tarrou talking and to keep himself from spiraling deeper into the dark of his blinder. What did the native insects look like? How wide were the tunnels? What was the difference between gatehouses where hods were ejected and the trading stations where goods were received? And what happened to the corpses, to the men and women who died on the trail from exhaustion, malnourishment, or old age? What was done with their bodies?
After many hours and many answers, Tarrou reached his limit at last and cried out, “Have mercy, Headmaster! I’m not as observant as you, and I don’t want to die in the classroom!”
Understanding that it was better to save John’s breath for directing their steps, Senlin gave himself up to the silence and the abyss and the devils within. The blinder was at least diverse in its torments. In addition to the swirling faces of the men and women he’d wronged, Senlin found the darkness a perfect theater for reenacting his bungled reunion with Marya.
The memory of her expressions, her mannerisms, and how she had looked at him inside that rattling mine cart were all crystalline. It took a little longer for him to recall exactly what she had said, but as her words came back to him, they seemed to ring with a different meaning now.
One of the first things she’d said was “I thought you’d gone home.” He’d taken it as a vague gibe, her way of expressing surprise that he’d not been chased home by the overcrowded and treacherous Tower. But no, what she had meant was that she thought he had deserted her. She felt abandoned. When she had told him, “This isn’t about us, Tom. This is about the lives and hearts of others,” she had been alluding to Olivet, though at the time he’d thought she meant the duke and had taken it as an indication that she did not love him anymore.
But then, he had made so much of their reunion about himself. He had gone to her like a confessional, so she had absolved him. What else could she have done? In parting, when she had announced she wouldn’t trust him to manage a cart full of socks, he’d been too self-absorbed to recognize the reference. He did now, and with crushing disappointment. Once upon a time, he’d told her he would wait for her beside a pushcart full of socks and stockings. She had not forgotten his promise, though he had.
Perhaps she had felt compelled to speak obliquely. Her fear of Wilhelm or her uncertainty about the intentions of her prodigal husband might have made it necessary for her to talk around the truth. Yes, she had spoken to him in code, and he had deciphered nothing.
Tarrou’s loss of blood and exhaustion turned his skin as clammy as unbaked dough. Senlin’s thirst left him so parched it hurt to speak. The hours were stretched by their silence and the incessant bark of the tattle post. Tarrou nudged them left and right, and Senlin let his toes search out the gaps and ridges that Tarrou no longer had the strength to describe.
Tarrou’s cold sweat gave way to trembling. At last, he collapsed upon an outcropping of stone, dragging Senlin down with him. They lay panting upon the slab for some minutes until Tarrou had caught his breath enough to announce that they had arrived at the edge of the zealot camp.
“I’m sure they’ll want some sort of appeasement,” Senlin said at a volume he hoped only Tarrou could hear. “We should do whatever they ask of us. As soon as you’re strong enough and I’m free of this tin can, we’ll strike out on our own again. I think our best bet will be to work our way down, outside, and then through the market. I have friends with a ship. A big one. We’ll need to devise some method for getting their attention. Maybe we can walk out into the desert a little way and light a signal fire or write a message in the sand. Then we can go back to Pelphia. We could be there in a week or two with a little luck.”
“Tom—” Tarrou said, then cleared his throat, remembering the bounty on Senlin’s head. “I mean, Cyril, that’s not a plan; that’s a fantasy. Taking for granted all the miracles that would have to line up to make such a trek possible, why on earth are you so eager to return to Pelphia?”
“I have my reasons.”
“And I have my doubts!” Tarrou croaked. “Once we go inside, once we put it all on the line and ask the zealots for help, once we convert, there isn’t any going back. You can’t just cross your fingers with these fellows. Marat’s clan are a lot of things, but forgiving is not one of them.”
“Then we’ll just do our best to be forgettable.”
“All right then,” Tarrou replied with a sarcastic lilt. “After you, Sir Bucket.”
Upon entering the camp, Senlin hardly understood what was happening. There was a lot of commotion, and it lasted for several minutes. He heard snatches of conversation, some of which included Tarrou’s voice and the rabbling of hoddish. He tried not to flinch when hands touched his bare back and hooked around his arm. He allowed himself to be led to a stool, where he was pushed down by leathery hands. At last a clear voice distinguished itself from the muddle. The voice was rough with age and seemed very near to his ear when it said, “Do you swear to never raise a hand against a fellow hod? Do you renounce all devotion to the lies of the old tongue, both as it is spoken and written down? Do you promise to do all that is in your power to throw the Tower at the feet of the Hod King? Do you swear this upon your blood, upon the blood of your mother and father, and the blood of your sons and daughters?”
The gory vow reminded Senlin of the oaths his students used to exchange in the schoolyard, where every promise came with a catalog of consequences, each increasingly dire. Whoever broke their word would have to eat a worm, and sit on a blackberry bramble, and leap into the sea with rocks in their pockets. His students would pile more and more horrors onto their oaths, then seal the bargain by spitting into their hands and shaking.
Senlin had told them more than once that an honest word did not require italics to be true, and that no amount of underlining could reform a lie. It was strange to think there had been a time when he had been honest as a matter of course, as a matter of honor. But if the Tower had taught him anything, it was that honor was a whipping post and honesty a flail. He could tell the truth and die with a bucket on his head, forsaking his wife and child in the name of honor, or he could lie.
Marshalling all the strength he had left, he shouted his answer: “Yes, I swear it!”
“Then welcome, hodder.” Senlin felt the scrape of metal on metal as something probed the pin in his collar. “Now, this will be loud. You should prepare yourself for a little banging.”
When at last Senlin was freed from the blinder, his head felt like the clapper of a bell. He cupped his hands over his ears, though it didn’t help, and squinted at the blue glare that seemed to shine from everywhere at once. A bowl of cloudy water appeared under his nose, and he drank it down nearly as quickl
y as he vomited it back up. His second attempt fared better, and as he sipped, the glare of the gloamine that grew in patches upon the ceiling and walls dimmed. He wept and couldn’t say whether it was from relief or acclimation to the light.
Despite Tarrou’s best attempts to describe it all, his surroundings were still strange to him. The chamber didn’t have the natural features of a cave. Though he wasn’t sure why he’d pictured it that way, he was nonetheless a little surprised that there were no horns of minerals dripping from the ceiling nor jutting up from the ground. Tarrou had said that the trail resembled a mine, though that did not seem quite right either. The chamber they sat in possessed none of the straight lines or support beams of a mine. The black trail, or at least this branch of it, seemed to share more in common with an anthill or a warren. There was no wasted space, no architectural flourishes. The ceiling was low and the corners rounded. The stone floor here appeared to have been rubbed smooth by the passage of generations of bare feet.
The zealot camp was not especially large, though it was quite full: Perhaps a hundred hods were pressed together inside the chamber. Some slept on mats of ashen straw, some sat with legs akimbo upon the floor, many with books open in their laps. Sticks of charcoal blackened their fingers as they worked to erase profane words from impious pages. The sentries were distinguished by their rifles, which looked a little odd strapped to their bare chests. Though obviously antique, the guns appeared freshly oiled and well cared for. A fountain bubbled at the center of the camp, and the hods who congregated there all ate from a common pot full of some colorless, cold stew. The fug of human bodies was thicker here, but the smell of decay was not as oppressive.
Senlin noticed that many of the hods were free of their iron collars and bondlets. They had made themselves permanent residents of the trail. He didn’t know whether that resolve was inspiring or frightening.
A few paces removed, Tarrou stood with his hands on his hips and his head down. He was enduring a sermon from a hod about half his size. His lecturer was dark skinned, and his jaw bristled with gray hairs that stood out as distinctly as his ribs. He still wore a band about his neck. A wax-dipped bondlet dangled from it like the tag of a dog collar. He might have seemed frail had it not been for his gaze, which looked sufficient to stall a charging bull. That stare certainly appeared to have been affective on the Iron Bear.
The diminutive hod was saying, “If you came here hoping for wine, you’ll be disappointed, Hodder John. You held out when you could’ve been of real use to us. Now you’re just another mouth to feed. Yes, we’ll take you in, but I won’t pretend you don’t have something to prove. You can’t say no a hundred times and then say yes once and expect us all to believe you.”
John said, “I know, I know, Hodder Sodiq, and I am sorry. I came to you before as a hod in progress.” Senlin was relieved to see Tarrou’s wound had been cleaned and bandaged. His scalp and chin had both been shaved since the last time he’d seen him in the arena. He looked so different, Senlin might’ve taken him for a close relation of the man himself. “My head was turned by the whole spectacle. And you have to understand, I went straight from the lap of luxury in the Baths to the harsh reality of the trail, and when the Colosseum gave me a little taste of ease again—a warm cot, regular meals, and wine when I won—I was charmed, I was seduced. What can I say? I was weak! But I am in earnest now. Hail the Hod King!”
“Come the Hod King,” Sodiq corrected. He sighed in such a way as to signal that their conversation was not nearly finished, but only deferred for the moment. He glanced at the man who’d recently been freed of his head-snare.
Senlin’s chin dripped water over his empty bowl.
Sodiq twitched in surprised. “You!” he said.
Even without the whitewash, Senlin would never have forgotten that face. He blinked and saw again the hod standing in the alley over two corpses in the poisonous rain.
Sodiq raised his hand no higher than the peak of his skull. He looked like a shy student wishing to be called upon. Senlin almost gave the elder permission to speak before he realized the hand had not been lifted for him. The subtle gesture summoned the attention of the camp. Hods rose from their mats and set aside their bowls. They pressed in from the edges of the chamber, their faces and bare shoulders painted a ghostly blue by the gloamine. When all had gathered, Sodiq’s low, rumbling voice filled the silence. He gestured at Senlin, and his listeners gasped. He beat upon his bony chest and jabbed the air with the horny knuckles of a weathered fist. His voice leapt and ebbed with passion. It seemed a rousing speech.
Unfortunately, Senlin did not understand a word of it.
To his ear, the hoddish language sounded like a gregarious infant. Mercifully, Sodiq concluded his declaration in the common tongue, giving Senlin at least a sense of what he had missed. “This is the man who came to my defense,” Sodiq cried. “This is the man who saved my life.”
Senlin waved at the silently gaping crowd. “Hello.”
“What is your name, hodder?” Sodiq asked.
“Cyril Pinfield,” Senlin said.
“Wait a moment—you’re the same man who tried to stop the execution.” Sodiq squinted and shook his head in disbelief. “But why? Why come to my aid, why to theirs? You weren’t a hod, at least not yet.”
“I still had a conscience. I still recognized injustice when I saw it.” Senlin saw the creases of suspicion tighten at the corners of Sodiq’s eyes. Speaking almost without thinking, Senlin twisted General Eigengrau’s scorn for the hods into praise. “And are we not all born hods, even if it takes us some years to discover it? Is not every man a hod at heart?” Senlin tried to project a confidence he did not necessarily feel. This was not a time for subtlety. Whether he liked it or not, wanted it or not, it was time for him to accept a new persona. He’d heard enough of Luc Marat’s sermonizing to have a sense of the zealot’s philosophy, and he used that knowledge now. “Yes, I saved your life. Yes, I tried to save the lives of eleven other hods. I set myself on fire trying to save them.” He raised his arms, as if offering himself to the sky. His fingertips brushed the stone ceiling as he did. “But I am Cyril Pinfield no longer. That man is dead, if he ever was alive. I am Hodder Cyril.”
Senlin turned to survey the effect his words were having. The crowd appeared uncertain. Tarrou seemed to be gauging how far away the exit lay.
“I am a slayer of engines!” Senlin boomed. “I am a bloody cog who refuses to turn anymore in service of this beastly Tower. I stand in defiance of its kings and nobles who’d like to see us all put against the wall and shot. Shot, not because of what we’ve done, but because of what has been done to us.” At this, several of the hods cheered in agreement. “All I ask is that you free me to continue to fight on your behalf, on behalf of Luc Marat!” Senlin clasped his hands together and shook them, shouting, “Come the Hod King!”
A chorus echoed back his words, once, twice, then on the third volley, the cheer switched to hoddish. He quickly learned to parrot the phrase. To his ear, it sounded like the nonsense syllables of a song—so many tra-la-las and hey-nonny-nonnies. But he repeated the new words as best he could and raised his fist with each cry. And as he cheered the Hod King, a man who’d once tried to murder him and his friends, he pictured his return to Pelphia aboard the Sphinx’s pearl-bright warship. He imagined the duke’s face when he knocked upon his door and shot him in his dressing gown. He would see Marya again. He would hold Olivet in his arms. He would not let his failings curdle into self-loathing. He would redeem himself yet!
As the cheer dwindled and he turned to ask if Sodiq wouldn’t be able to spare some provisions for their mission, Senlin heard a slow, methodical clap bounce about the chamber.
At first, he couldn’t find the source. But as the clapping drew nearer and hods shuffled to make way, Senlin began to feel like a man crossing a frozen lake on a warm spring day. The unreasonable optimism he had felt a moment before now turned to dread.
When the last hod stepped asi
de and revealed the man behind the droll applause, Senlin felt as if he had been plunged into icy water.
“Pinfield. Mudd. Senlin. You have more names than the village mutt, don’t you?” Finn Goll said, polishing one small palm upon the other. Senlin’s former employer smiled like a sickle and said, “Ah, but you’ll always be good old Tom to me.”
Part II
The Leaping Lady
Chapter One
If you want to read her future, don’t peer at a young lady’s tea leaves or probe the lumps on her head. No, look to her table manners. I can observe a girl eat a fig, and afterward, tell you whether she will grow up to be a marchioness or a mudlark.
—Lady Graverly’s Table: Rare Graces and Common Shames
The State of Art wed the luxury of a pleasure cruiser with the claustrophobia of a cattle car. For all its plush and polish, there wasn’t enough fresh air or natural light to keep a plant alive, much less sustain a person—or such was Voleta’s opinion. The Sphinx’s home had been secluded and the air a little stale, but what it lacked in sunlight it more than made up for in immensity.
The State of Art, grand a vessel as it was, could still be exhaustively explored in less than an hour. The ship had three decks, sixteen cabins, four state rooms, a ballroom, a dining room, a conservatory, and one single porthole. This lonesome window to the outside world was inconveniently located in the passage across from the main hatch and placed at such a height that Voleta had to stand on her tiptoes to see through it. Her face filled that small aperture, the glass of which was so thick it shrank the sky and warped the horizon until the whole world looked like a painted plate. Whenever she had a moment to herself, Voleta dragged a stool from one of the empty cabins, unscrewed the latches, pushed her face as far through the porthole as she could, and let the wind whip some color back into her cheeks.
The Hod King Page 17