Cinnabar Shadows (16 page)

"Because there's another passage to the cavern... in Codesh," Pavek concluded.

Zvain raised his head. "No," he pleaded. "Not Codesh. I don't want to go to Codesh. I don't want to go
anywhere."

"Don't worry. Codesh can wait until morning," Pavek assured the boy. He'd had enough adventure for
one day himself. His ankle throbbed when he took an aching step toward the distant ramp to Urik. The
sprain wasn't as serious as it was painful. "Food," he said to himself and his companions. "A good night's
sleep. That's what we all need. We'll worry about Codesh—about Hamanu—in the morning."

Ruari, Mahtra and Zvain fell in step behind him.

Civil bureau administrators were waiting outside the door of House Escrissar when Pavek, still hobbling
on a game ankle, led his companions through the templar quarter a bit before sunset. The administrators
were drowsy with boredom and leaning against the loaded hand-cart Manip had dragged up from the gate.
Exercising his high templar privileges, Pavek rewarded Manip and sent him on his way before he said a
word to the higher ranking administrators.

With proper deference, one of the administrators gave him a key ring large enough to hang a man. The
other handed him a pristine seal, carved from porphyry and bearing his exalted rank, his common name, and
his inherited house. He tried to give Pavek a gold medallion, too, but Pavek refused, saying his old ceramic
medallion was sufficient. That confused the administrator, giving Pavek a momentary sense of triumph
before he etched his name— Just-Plain Pavek—through the smooth, white clay surface of the deed,
revealing the coarse obsidian beneath it.

The administrators wrapped the deedstone in parchment that was duly secured with the Lion-King's
sulphurous wax by them and by Pavek, using his porphyry seal for the first time. The administrators
departed, and Pavek tried five keys before he found the one that worked in the door. He dragged the
hand-cart over the threshold himself.

House Escrissar had been sealed quinths ago. It was quiet as a tomb beneath a thick blanket of yellow
dust. Otherwise both Zvain and Mahtra assured its new master that the house was precisely as they
remembered it—which sent a chill down Pavek's spine. There was nothing in the simple furniture, the floor
mosaics, or the wall frescoes to proclaim that a monster had lived here. He'd expected obscenity, torture,
and cruelty of all kinds, but with their depictions of bright gardens and green forests, the frescoes could
have been commissioned by a druid... by Akashia herself.

"It was like this," Zvain repeated when curiosity drove Pavek to touch a painted orange flower. "That
was the worst—"

The boy's words stopped abruptly. Pavek turned around. They'd been joined by the oldest, most frail
half-elf he'd ever seen, a woman whose crinkled skin hung loose from every bone and whose back was so
crippled by age that she gazed most naturally at her own feet. She raised her head with evident discomfort
and difficulty. Her cheeks were scarred with black lines in a pattern Pavek promised himself would, never
be cut into flesh again.

"Who has come?" she asked with a trembling voice.

Pavek caught Zvain and Mahtra exchanging anxious glances before they shied away from the old
woman's shadow. Ruari was transfixed by the sight of what he, himself, might become. Pavek swallowed
hard and jangled the key ring he held in his weapon hand.

"I've come," he said. "Pavek. Just-Plain Pavek. I am—I am the master here, now." He couldn't help
but notice the way she stared at the key ring.
Her name, she said, was Initri. She had chosen to remain inside the house with her husband after all
the other slaves were dispersed and the administrators had come to lock the doors for the last time. Her
husband tended the house gardens.

"He doesn't hear anymore," Initri explained and made her way with small, halting steps along the
cobbled garden path.

Initri got her husband's attention with a gentle touch. He read silent words from her lips, then set aside
his tools with the slow precision of the venerably aged before he took her hand. While Pavek and his
companions watched from the atrium arch, the old man took his wife's arm, for balance, as he stood. They
both tottered as he rose from his knees. Pavek strode toward them, but they leaned against each other and
were steady again without his help. Pavek expected scars and saw them before he saw the metal collar
around the gardener's neck and the stone-link chain descending from it. Each link was as thick as the
half-elf's thigh. The chain had to weigh as much as the old man did himself.

They stood side-by-side in the twilight, the loyal gardener and his loyal wife, she with one hand on his
flank, the other clutching the chain. No wonder Initri had stared so intently at the keys he held in his
hand—keys that the administrators had kept secure under magical wards in King Hamanu's palace.
Overcome by shame and awe, Pavek looked away, looked at the flowers in their profuse blooming.

If ever a man had the right to destroy the life of Athas, this old man had had that right, but he'd
nurtured life instead.

"How?" Pavek stammered, forcing himself to face the couple again. "How have you survived? The
house was locked."

Initri met his gaze and held it. "The larders were full," she said without a trace of emotion. "Some nights
the watch threw us their crusts and scraps. It depended on who had the duty." She indicated the crenelated
platform visible above the garden's rear wall.

Pavek whispered, "Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy."

He heard long-striding footfalls behind him: Ruari disappearing. Ruari making certain Pavek knew he
was angry about something; the half-elf didn't have to make noise when he ran. Zvain and Mahtra showed
no more emotion than Initri did. Compassion was a wasted virtue in Urik; Pavek knew they were better off
without it, but he sympathized more with Ruari. The elderly couple said nothing. They stared at him, the
new high templar master of House Escrissar—their new master—without reproach or expectation on their
faces.

The keys.

One of the keys must belong to the lock that bound the chain and collar together. Pavek fumbled with
the ring, dropping it twice. He tried the first two keys he touched; neither fit the lock, much less opened it.
Locks were nothing a man without property had ever needed to understand. Pavek resolved to work his
way around the ring, a key at a time, and had tried two more when Initri's withered fingers reached toward
him. Her motion stopped before their hands touched; the fears and habits of slavery were not easily shed.

"Which one?" Pavek asked her gently. "Do you know which one?"

She pointed toward a metal key that had been shaped to resemble a thighbone. Pavek slipped it into the
socket and twisted it. The mechanism was stiff; he was afraid to apply his full strength. The key might
break and Pavek had no notion where he'd find a smith after sunset—though he knew he wouldn't be able
to rest until he had.

Once again, Initri came to Pavek's rescue, her parchment fingers resting lightly over his, guiding them
through tiny jerks and jiggles. The lock's innards released themselves with an audible click. The thick shaft
pulled loose, then the first link of the chain. Finally Pavek could take the ends of the metal collar and force
the sweat-rusted hinge to yield.

The gardener examined the collar after Pavek had removed it. His hands trembled. Tears fell from his
eyes to the corroded metal. Initri showed no such sentiment.

"Lord Pavek, your larder holds dried beans, a cask of flour, and some sausage a jozhal wouldn't steal,"
she said in a slave's habitual monotone. "Does that please my lord for his supper?"

Pavek twisted the collar until the hinge broke. He would have hurled it at the wall, but it would have
struck the vines and loosened a few leaves, which seemed a poor way to acknowledge the gardener's
extraordinary devotion to his plants. So, he let the pieces fall atop the stone links and raked his stiff, filthy
hair. He wanted a steam bath, and a hot supper, and could have gotten both, if he'd gone to a city inn
instead of coming here, instead of coming home.

Pavek's own gut growled, reminding him that he, too, was hungry and that on occasion he could eat
more than his two younger friends combined.

Except for a quinth or two before he left Urik, throughout Pavek's life, whether in the orphanage, the
barracks, or Quraite, he hadn't had to worry about his next hot meal. That had all changed. Whatever else
he'd done, Elabon Escrissar had at least kept his larder filled with beans, flour, and vile sausage. The larder
was Pavek's responsibility now, along with who-knew-what-else, except that it would all require gold and
silver coins in greater quantities than he possessed.

"A treasury?" he inquired. "Is there a treasury in the house?"

Initri shook her head. "Gone, Lord Pavek. Gone before the administrators came. Gone while Lord
Elabon still lived. Will beans serve, my lord?"

The deaf gardener picked up the metal pieces Pavek had dropped and slowly carried them out of his
domain, as if they were no more significant than wind-fallen branches, as if he'd been able to leave
whenever he chose. Pavek watched until the man and his shadow had disappeared through a side archway.

"Lord Pavek—will beans serve for your supper?"

Pavek's hand went to the familiar medallion hanging from his neck. He needed money. Not the pittance
of ceramic bits and silver that had sufficed in his regulator's past, nor the plump belt-pouch he'd worn out of
Quraite; he needed gold, by the handful.

Leaping through the bureau ranks as he had, he'd missed all the intervening opportunities to enrich
himself. He needed a prebend, that regular gift from Lord Hamanu himself that kept high templars loyal to
the throne. A gift Pavek imagined the Lion-King would grant him in an instant, once he made the request.
Why else had he been brought back to Urik? But he'd give up any claim to freedom once he accepted it.
Once he asked Lord Hamanu for money, he might as well pick up the gardener's chain and fasten it around
his own neck.

That slave's fate, however, was tomorrow's worry. Tonight's worry was beans, and they would not
serve.

"Zvain, unload our baggage and take our food to the kitchen. Initri, follow him—no, wait for him in the
kitchen. See what you can make up for all of us."

"Yes, Lord Pavek," she said, as passionless as before. She obediently started for the door, where Zvain
stood between Mahtra and Ruari, who had crept out of the shadows. The half-elf wouldn't meet his eyes, a
sure sign of anger waiting to erupt.

"Mahtra you go with Zvain. Help him unload the baggage. Wait in the kitchen."

Two of them went. Ruari sulked silently for about two heartbeats, then the eruption began.

"Initri, make my dinner. Unpack my baggage! Go to the kitchen! Wind and fire! You should have freed
them, Lord Pavek. Or doesn't owning your parents' parents bother you?"

Pavek should have known not merely that Ruari was angry, but why. There weren't any slaves in
Quraite, certainly no half-elven ones. He should have had an explanation sitting on his tongue, but he didn't.
At that moment, with Ruari glaring at him, Pavek didn't know himself why he hadn't freed the old couple
immediately, and he expressed shame or embarrassment with no better grace than Ruari expressed his
anger or confusion.

"They aren't my kin or yours," Pavek replied, adopting Ruari's outraged sarcasm for himself. "They're
just two people who've lived here a long time."

"Slaved here, you mean. Lord Pavek, your templar blood is showing. You should have set them free.
Those were the words that should have come out of your mouth, not orders to cook your supper!"

"Set them free and then what? Turned them out of this house? Where would they go? Would you send
them across the wastes to Quraite? Would you send every slave in Urik to Quraite? How many would die
on the Fist? How many could Quraite feed before everyone was starving?"

Ruari pulled his head back. His chin jutted defiantly, but Pavek knew those questions struck the half-elf
solidly. "I didn't say that," Ru insisted. "I didn't say send them across the Fist to Quraite. They could stay
here in Urik. There're free folk in Urik. Zvain's free. Mahtra is. You—when we met you."

"He could work for someone else, tending their garden."

"No one hires gardeners, Ru. They buy them. Besides— this is his garden. Didn't you understand that?
He was chained here, but he didn't have to make this place bloom. He's a veritable druid. Should I banish
him from his grove?"

"Free him, then hire him yourself."

"Make him a slave to coins instead of men? Is that such an improvement? What if he gets sick? He's
old, it could happen. If he's a slave, I'm obligated to take care of him, whether he can garden or not, but if
I'm paying him to tend my garden, what's to stop me from simply hiring another man. Why should I care?
He doesn't belong to me anymore."

"Slavery's wrong, Pavek. It's just plain wrong."

"I didn't say it was right."

"You didn't free them!"

"Because that wouldn't be right, either!" Pavek's voice rose to a shout. "Life's not simple, not my life,
anyway. I wouldn't want to be a slave—I think I'd kill myself first. Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, I swear
I'll never buy a slave, but by the wheels of fate's chariot, that is a small mercy. There's not enough gold in
all Urik for both freedom and food."

"You'll keep slaves, but you won't buy them," Ruari shouted back. "What a convenient conscience you
have, Lord Pavek."

Lord Pavek kicked the stone links coiled at his feet and jammed his toe. "All right," he snarled, grinding
his teeth against a fool's pain. "Whatever you say, Ruari: I've got a convenient conscience. I'm not a good
man; never pretended that I was. I've never known a thoroughly good man, woman, or child and, yes, that
includes you, Kashi, and Telhami. I don't have good answers. Slavery's a mistake, a terrible mistake, but I
can't fix a mistake by setting it free and tossing it out to the streets. Once a mistake's made, it stays made
and someone's got to be responsible for it."

"There's got to be a better way."

That was Ruari's way of ending their arguments and making peace, but Pavek's toe still throbbed and
the half-elf had scratched too many scars for a truce.

"If you're so sure, go out and find it. We'll both become better men. But until you do have something
better to offer, get out of my sight."

"I only said—"

"Get!"