Neveryona (20 page)

Pryn turned back.

Samo’s face passed by the cart’s edge as he lugged the metal-studded planks a final foot; and they were out on the road.

As the cart rolled down the avenue, the widely spaced estates drew closer together, till at last the walls between them vanished and there were only unwalled houses, sitting one by the other, less and less land between. The cart turned. Beside larger buildings stood smaller, shabbier structures. Other carts joined them in the street – which had broken from its straight, tree-lined directness, to bend and branch as if it had become a tree itself.

Alleys siphoned carts and wagons away from them. Alleys poured porters and pedestrians and more wagons
and carts in among them. Merchants, laborers, children – and more carts – filled the streets with noise.

Once Pryn touched Madame Keyne’s arm. ‘You said we were going to the
New
Market? I only saw the old one yesterday …’

Madame Keyne reined the horse again to angle left of another cart piled with sacks, ‘If you think you saw marvels in the Old Market, believe me, girl, in the New Market you will see wonders beyond imagining! Both locations have their advantages and disadvantages, of course – the Old Market is at the upper end of New Pavē and has the wares that can be purchased on the Bridge of Lost Desire as one of its added attractions. But the New Market is only a street away from the Empress’s public park, which seems to be well on the way to fulfilling the same function – and on a somewhat less vulgar level of commerce. Though I swear – ‘ Madame Keyne wheeled the cart away from some youngsters who ran out into the street – ‘if need be, I’ll have that bridge transported to the New Market stone by stone!’

Pryn laughed at the notion, though she was as unsure just why Madame Keyne had suggested it as she was of any motivation within the Sallese gardens.

Jouncing along in the sun over a route she’d last traveled draped about in the dark, Pryn felt a reckless pleasure that was, after all, the legacy dragon riding ought to leave one with. ‘Madame Keyne, why did your secretary get so upset when she learned I could write and read?’

‘Did she now? Hi, there!
Hi!
‘ which last, with much tugging and pulling, was to get around another cart, piled with bricks of a dirty yellow.

The brick cart was parked before some thatched awning, and the small, ragged woman who was its driver
had climbed down, calling and calling for the shop proprietor to come out and look at the shipment – to no avail.

‘She probably thought I wanted you to replace her in her job – as indeed I should!’ Reins flicked again as they rumbled along the boisterous avenue. ‘Toss the two of them out, the ungrateful minx
and
her odious kitten! That’s what I should do – what I would do if I were some uncivil aristocrat with a host of red-scarfed servants. But I am a poor, hard-working merchant, like my brother and father before me. My red scarves are all, as it were, borrowed from a tradition not mine. And for arcane reasons, which, no doubt, I shall never truly understand, that just doesn’t seem to be the way we do things here. I can’t bring myself to such behavior, nor would I respect anyone who could. So I am used and abused for my sympathies within the walls of my own home, the most helpless victim before the crazed and childish connivances of my inferiors.’ She laughed again, in a way that, for the first time, reminded Pryn of Ini. ‘Has it struck you that way before, girl? I confess, till this minute, it never seemed so to me. Well! Radiant Jade became upset when she learned you could read and write? Imagine! I’ve
never
heard anything more ridiculous!’ She pulled the horses to the right, the smile still on her face as she strained. ‘But I refuse to discuss it further. After all, didn’t I leave the house this morning to get away from such pettiness? We are going to market – to the
New
Market, the wonder of Kolhari! And what is the wonder of Kolhari today will be the wonder of the world tomorrow! Mark it on vellum, my girl. For I am not a woman to speak lightly when …’ Madame Keyne had been pulling the horse this way and that, but here traffic suddenly increased. A bare-breasted barbarian, one water-pitcher balanced on her head and another held on her shoulder, passed practically in front of the horse’s nose – indeed, if the animal hadn’t jerked
up its muzzle it would have knocked at least one of the pitchers to the asphalt. The cart jarred in its traces. Madame Keyne half rose and hauled back on the reins.

From the side of the crowded street, a man rushed forward. He had a short red beard and astonishingly dark eyes, between coppery lashes. He grabbed the horse’s bridle and, with a wild little cry, was lifted from the ground, bare feet waving – on his ankles he wore as many clattering and clinking circlets of silver, ivory, and wood as Madame Keyne wore on her arms.

The horse lowered him, pulling and prancing; the little man finally got the animal calmed, now clucking, now cooing, now patting the great red cheek.

‘Well,’ Madame Keyne said, the reins again tight, looking unperturbed, ‘you’re here, exactly where you said you’d be!’

‘And I see you’ve kept our appointed meeting, just as you said you would.’ The horse, stepping about, quieted. The little man, with his beard and jangling anklets, grinned up at Madame Keyne from sunburned wrinkles fanning about light lashes. ‘Have you considered my plan for liquidating this Liberator, who plagues our city, our nation, our world with his schemes and plots and treasons?’

‘Yes. I’ve reviewed your plan, carefully and in detail. I’ve been impressed by your thoroughness, not to mention the sincerity of your motivation.’ Madame Keyne switched the reins to one hand. With the other, she pulled up a blue bag of more solid cloth from among diaphanous folds and pleats. ‘You outlined the fine points of your expenses, and I completely agree with the rigor of your research and the exactitude of your estimations. You’ve told me – you’ve
convinced
me your plan will require twelve gold coins and five iron ones to purchase the weapons and hire the men that will insure its success.’ She
reached into the purse and drew out some money. ‘Here.’ She thrust coins into the man’s hands – he had to release the bridle to take them, ‘I give you
six
gold coins and
two
iron ones – and we shall see what comes to pass.’ She snapped the reins. The horse started.

‘But Madame – ‘ Clutching the coins, the man danced back with jangling ankles to avoid the cart corner.

‘That is my decision,’ Madame Keyne called back, ‘I can do no more for you at this moment.’ They moved out into the traffic. Traffic moved between them and the confused, would-be assassin.

Astonished at the exchange, Pryn looked at Madame Keyne, who guided their cart through the morning crush. A memory of the cellars under the Spur; an image of that accusing barbarian – what was his name … Sarg? – dead on the underground tiles. Who, Pryn, wondered, had financed
that
attack?

When they had driven a few more minutes, Pryn asked tentatively, ‘You really want to … liquidate the Liberator?’

Madame Keyne shrugged – or possibly it was just some motion in her driving.

I mean … do you think the Liberator’s plan to abolish slavery plagues all Nevèrÿon?’

‘All Nevèrÿon? How can I say? But I would be a very foolish woman if I thought it was going to help
me
.’ Madame Keyne urged the horse through a place where traffic had slowed for street construction. It might have been the place Pryn had been put down yesterday.

The cart pushed on.

‘But if you really wanted to have the Liberator killed, why did you give that man only half of what he needed –
less
than half! Did you think he was asking for too much?’

With lightly closed lids, Madame Keyne raised her eyes a moment to the sky. ‘By no means!’ She blinked at the
avenue again. ‘That man is very good at planning the kind of thing he plans. And he was very anxious that I not think him excessive in his demands. Truly, he has whittled his budget down to the bare minimum for success. We spent several hours a week ago at an inn in the Spur, while he drew maps of underground passages leading from cisterns to cellars. But you see, I’m afraid that if I gave him his full twelve and five, our Liberator
would
be dead – it really
was
a fine plan. But I have not yet decided whether that’s what I want. The little fellow’s terribly well motivated, in that way which only conservative fanatics can be. With six and two, I have no doubt that in desperation he will mount his plan anyway – under-equipped, under-manned. Which means there’s a good chance he will fail. But it will give the Liberator some trouble, which, at this point, is all I am prepared to do. Indeed, if he is any sort of Liberator at all, he should be used to such encounters! But as of now that’s all I’m interested in – at least until I learn more about this Gorgik.’

‘But what do you want to know?’ Though Pryn was not about to admit she had fought through such an encounter herself, she would have admitted to anything else she knew about the Liberator. And Madame Keyne’s equanimity over the probable death of the man with the anklets and the possible death of Gorgik made the self-comparison with Ini no longer seem so fanciful.

Madame Keyne’s attention was ahead of her on the crowds. ‘Girl, this isn’t a pleasant subject. I didn’t intend to bore a new arrival to our city with such tediousness. Besides, did you see that cart full of yellow brick? Myself, I’ve never seen bricks like that before. Very interesting to me, those bricks – ‘

‘But Madame Keyne – ‘

‘Enough, girl. We’re almost at the New Market. What you must do now is prepare your mind for true wonders!’

The street here was clogged with humanity – most of it male. The cart’s movement among them was quite slow. Many men were ragged. A good number were naked. Curly light hair; narrow shoulders; close-set eyes – the overwhelming majority were barbarians. As the cart rolled among the ambling, occasionally boisterous men, Pryn sensed a quality which she wondered how she might notate in written signs. She had seen poor people before – indeed, she’d never had any reason to think her own aunt anything more than on the upper end of poor. Still, poor for her had always meant a ragged woman or three with two to ten dirty children in a littered yard before a ramshackle hovel on the outskirts of Ellamon. This was the first time she had ever seen so
many
poor people, and men at that, amassed at a single center.

Poor men filled the street, building to building; with it and because of it the street seemed filled with poverty itself. (That, Pryn decided, was how she would have written it down.) Holding the cart bench beside her, Pryn leaned toward Madame Keyne. ‘Who
are
these people … ?’

‘These – ‘ Madame Keyne pulled up on the reins again, for they had gone beyond the last building, to approach a sort of railing – ‘are the men who do
not
work in the New Market.’ Madame Keyne halted the horse.

The cart had come to the fence – a single rail supported just above waist-level by pairs of posts driven into the ground in narrow X’s.

On this side barbarians milled.

On the other – a stretch of bare earth – a few people walked.

‘And over there – ‘

‘Madame Keyne!’ The man who sprinted up across the clearing was not a barbarian. ‘There you are!’ He wore a red scarf around his sweat-beaded forehead. ‘We never
know which direction you’re going to be coming from, or who’s going to be driving!’ He laughed, ‘I had my men stationed down at the Old Pavē, waiting for you – ‘

‘ – over there,’ Madame Keyne finished, ‘are the men who do.’ She wrapped the reins about the small post at the side of the driver’s seat. ‘I hope you’ll never find me
that
predictable.’ She stood up as the man ducked under the rail.

He was a tall man, a young man, and very strong. The wide leathers he wore around his wrists were dark at the edges with perspiration. ‘Here, Madame, let me help you down!’

Barbarians moved back from the cart.

Three other men ran up across the field, two of whom also wore scarves. They ducked under the fence. One took Pryn’s hand – his own hot and callused – as she climbed out. Another told the other where to lead the horse.

Madame Keyne swept blowing blue skirts over jangling wrists and, with some jovial remark, ducked under the rail.

Pryn went to the rail, ducked, stood –

The clearing was huge!

From within the crowd, it had looked practically empty. But now, strolling across it, Pryn could see there were as many as thirty or forty men walking or standing about in it. Glancing at the rail, she looked back at the crowd they’d come through. Big as the clearing was, the herds of men on the other side of the railing went almost all the way around it.

Ahead of Pryn, Madame Keyne stopped a moment by another group of three, standing together on the bare dirt and looking over parchment plans one held for the others to see. Now and again a man wheeled a barrow past, filled with stones and earth. Over there a foreman was
pointing something out to a worker. Over there another, walking alone, stopped to squint up at the sun. Many, Pryn saw, wore the red scarf at head or waist – one man had it tied around his leg.

As Pryn walked by, Madame Keyne fell into step beside her. ‘Look at it!’ She put her hand on Pryn’s shoulder. ‘Isn’t it
wonderful!’

‘But what
is
it?’

The New Market, of course!’

‘But …’ Pryn looked about, searching for stalls, porters, counters, vendors displaying the marvels she’d been promised. Suddenly she turned back to Madame Keyne. ‘But you’re still
building
it!’