Neveryona (7 page)

And Pryn thought: How handsome he is!

The young man’s eyes, blinking between blond lashes, looked startlingly blue. But his skin was as dark as Pryn’s or the giant’s beside her, so that she was not sure, really, if he were barbarian or citizen. He wore only a loincloth, with the thinnest blade at his chain belt. His arms were brown and lithe. ‘You don’t need her!’ he continued his complaint, ‘I do! Come on, now. Give her to me!’ On his extended hand he wore many, many rings, two, three, or more on a finger – even two on his thumb. (The fist by his hip was bare.) Stones and metal flashed in the sun, so that it took Pryn moments to register the hands themselves: the skin was gritty and gray. Below the jeweled freight, his nails, overlong at the ends of long, long fingers, were fouled spikes, as if he’d been down playing like a child in the clotted river’s sludge.

Arms still folded, the giant turned his head a little more –

The handsome young man with the beautiful rings and filthy fingers actually jumped. Then he scowled, spat on the flags, turned, and stalked off along the bridge, where a number of loungers and loiterers were still laughing over the camel.

Pryn looked up as the giant turned back to her. In surprise, she swallowed.

Around the giant’s tree-trunk of a neck was a hinged iron collar.

Pryn had always regarded slavers with fear. Perhaps that fear had spread to the notion of slaves themselves.

She knew great families sometimes had them. She had seen slaves in the Ellamon market and more recently on the road. But she had never talked to one, nor had she ever heard of anyone who had. To be standing in a strange city, facing one directly – and such a big one! It was quite as frightening as if
she
were being appraised by a slaver herself!

‘What are you doing here, mountain girl?’ the great man asked in a voice that, for all its roughness, bore a city accent.

‘Looking … for someone –’ Pryn stammered. It seemed she
must
answer something. ‘A friend of mine. A woman.’ Later she would think that it was only after she’d started to speak that the image of the tale-teller’s Raven, with her mask and her double blade, leapt into her mind like a protective demon. ‘But she’s not here, and I …’ She looked at the people about the bridge. ‘I was with some men, before; they were looking for someone called the Liberator … a man named Gorgik.’

The big man leaned his head to the side. ‘Were they, now?’ Shaggy brows drew down.

‘They were going to keep me with them at first, because they thought I was a spy. For the Empress. Then they realized how silly that was, and how difficult it would be trying to keep track of me in the city. So they turned me loose.’ She took a breath. ‘But now I don’t know
where
to go!’ The next thought struck the same way the memory of Raven had a moment back. ‘But I’ve ridden on a dragon! My name is Pryn – I can write it, too. I read, and I’ve flown on a dragon’s back above the Faltha mountains!’

The giant grinned. A third of one front tooth had broken off, but the rest were whole enough. ‘You’ve flown on a dragon above the Falthas, over the narrow
minded, provincial Hold of fabled Ellamon …?’ He unfolded gauntleted arms.

Each callused finger, Pryn saw, was thicker than three of hers bunched together. She nodded, more because of his grin and his recognition of her home than for his judgment of it.

‘And did you bring dried dragonfruit to the market and try to sell it there to unwary tourists as eggs of the fabled beasts themselves, you dragon-riding scamp?’ The grin softened to a smile. ‘You see, I
have
been through your town.’

‘Oh, no!’ Pryn exclaimed. ‘I’d never do that!’ Though she knew of girls and boys who had, she also knew it was precisely these – at least the girls – who ended up imprisoned as grooms in Ellamon’s fabled corrals, ‘If my aunt ever heard I’d done a thing like that, she’d beat me!’

The man laughed. ‘Come with me, mountain girl.’

‘What are
you
doing here?’ Pryn blurted. Talking had turned out to be easy enough; but the notion of going with the slave frightened her all over again.

The shaggy eyebrows raised, ‘I, too, was looking for … a friend.’

Pryn found herself staring at the collar. Did slaves, she wondered,
have
friends? Did this slave want to make friends with her?

The man said: ‘But since I’ve found you instead, I’ll put such friendships off for a while.’

‘Are you going to take me to your master?’ Pryn asked.

The giant looked a little surprised. ‘No.’ Then surprise dissolved back into the scarred smile. ‘No, I wasn’t going to do that. I thought we might walk to the other end of the bridge. Then, if there were someplace you wanted to go, I’d take you there. After that, I’ll leave.’

Pryn looked down at the slave’s feet: horny, dirty, cracked at the edge, barred with ligaments under tangled
veins, the ankle’s hock blocky beneath the bronze greave. Above bronze, calf hair curled over the chased rim. That’s not a foot, Pryn thought. That’s a ham someone’s halved and flung down on the street! She looked at his chest. On the copper chain hung a bronze disk the size of her palm – really it was several disks, bolted one on top of the other, with much cut away from the forward one, so that there were little shapes all over it with holes at their points; and some kind of etching on the disk beneath … Around the rim were markings in some abstract design. She looked at his belly. It was muscular, hairy, with a lot behind it pushing muscle and hair forward. He wore five or six loose belts, a thick one and a thin one of leather, one of braided rope, one of flattened silver links, and one of ordinary chain. They slanted his hips at different angles. From one hung a wide, shaggy sheath; from another, some kind of purse; attached to another was a net of mail that went between his legs (a few links had broken) to pouch the rougher and darker genital flesh. She looked again at his face.

He had raised his hand to gnaw a thumbnail.

Pryn thought: Is this how people have looked at him when they purchased him at some auction …? Her cheeks and knees suddenly heated.

The scarred face moved toward some question, but he dropped his hand and smiled. ‘Come. Let’s walk.’

And somehow she
was
walking with him along the bridge.

‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.

‘In the city?’ She looked up. ‘Since this morning.’

‘I thought it couldn’t be longer.’ He chuckled. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘You mean in Kolhari?’

‘Do you know
where
in Kolhari you are?’

Pryn looked at the men and women loafing and leaning on the bridge’s low wall. She shook her head.

He pointed with a thick thumb over the side. ‘That muddy ditch there is the Khora Spur. Three-quarters of a mile up, it runs off the Big Khora. Both go down to the sea, to make this neighborhood in front of us into an island in the middle of town. It’s also called the Spur – the oldest, poorest section of the city. Right now it’s mostly inhabited by barbarians, recently from the south. But it tends to house whoever is poor, new, or down on luck.’

‘Do you and … and your master live there?’

The big man considered a moment. ‘You
might
say I do,’ which struck Pryn as a complex answer for a simple question. ‘This street here, running across the bridge, is the upper end of New Pavē. It runs back up into the commercial part of the city, crosses Black Avenue, and finally turns along the sea to become part of the Kolhari waterfront. Here, at this end, it’s called Old Pavē. The bridge itself? We call it the Bridge of Lost Desire, though it had another name, officially, thirty years ago, when all of Kolhari was known as Neveryóna; but I don’t remember what it was. The Bridge of Lost Desire is the current name. On it, you’ll find working most of the city’s –’

Ahead, a man shrieked.

Pryn looked at her companion – who hadn’t looked at all.

When she looked back, though most people had only moved a step or turned by no more than a small angle, the shriek had created a center:

At it, the handsome young man buried bare fingers in brown braids to shake the heavy young woman’s head – a red wooden bead broke from its chain, fell to the flags, and rolled.

‘What do you
mean
…!’ the young man shouted,
shaking his jeweled fist about his shoulder, ‘I don’t want to hear that from you! He didn’t give you
enough?
No, not from
you!
What do you mean! Tell me! No, I don’t want to hear it …!’ As he shook, the woman seemed intent on keeping her face blank, her arms limp, and her large feet under her.

Suddenly the young man threw her head away, stepping back. ‘You don’t think I’ll
do
anything to you? You don’t?’ He struck his dirty, ringed fist back against his own chest, grinding. ‘Look –’ He shoved his hand on past his shoulder; the beautiful features grimaced – ‘if I do that to myself –’ Points and edges had caught the smooth skin as though it were rough fabric, to tear a two-inch cut, from which blood ran, turning aside at his nipple to dribble down his flank – ‘what do you think I’ll do to
you?
Look –’ Suddenly turning, he struck his ringed fist on the arm of the nearest bystander, a boy whose made-up eyes widened as he backed away, blood welling through his fingers where he clutched his arm (someone grabbed the boy and called, ‘Hey, now! What are you doing, now – ! Come on …!’) – ‘if I do that to
him
– and I don’t even know the little faggot – what do you think I’ll do to you!’ Working himself up, dancing about, the handsome young man suddenly lunged, ringed hand open and falling toward her face –

The woman flinched.

Then something very complicated happened.

The hand stopped.

One thing making it complicated was that, unlike you and me, Pryn had been watching the woman (who was about Pryn’s age and Pryn’s size). What had first seemed a kind of apathetic paralysis in her, Pryn saw, was actually an intense concentration – and Pryn remembered a moment when, bridling her dragon, the wings had suddenly flapped among the bushes, and for a moment she’d
thought she would completely lose control of it; and all she could do was hang on as hard as possible and look as calm as possible, trying to keep her feet from being jerked off the mossy rocks; for Pryn it had worked …

Another thing making it complicated was that Pryn had
not
been watching the man she was with.

And he had not been watching the encounter.

We’ve spoken of a center the encounter had created. The big man’s course took them within a meter of it. He had not stopped walking; and because Pryn had not been watching him, she had not stopped walking either.

As they came within the handsome young man’s ken, his hand had halted.

His head jerked about, his face for a moment truly, excitingly ugly. ‘All right!’ he demanded. (Now they did stop.) ‘What is it, then? You want to be the Liberator of every piece of camel dung on this overground sewer?’

The woman with the beaded hair did not look at Pryn’s companion, but suddenly stalked off, arms folded across her breasts in what might have been anger, might have been embarrassment. Five other women, waiting outside the circles within circles, closed about her, one holding her shoulder, one leaping to see over the others’ if she were all right – as though they had not seen them either.

The handsome young man took a step after them, then glanced back at the giant, as if unsure whether he had permission to follow. Apparently he didn’t, for he spat again and, making a bright fist by one hip and a soiled one by the other, turned his bleeding breast away and walked off in the other direction.

People looked away, turned away, walked away; and there were three, half a dozen, a dozen, and then no centers to the crowd. Pryn looked at her companion.

Examining his knuckles, the giant moved his gnawing on to another nail. Once more they began to walk.

As they passed more onlookers, Pryn demanded, ‘Who
was
he …’

‘Nynx …’ the giant said pensively, ‘I
think
someone told me that was his name.’ He put his hand to his belly, scratching the hair there with broad nubs. ‘He manages – or, better, terrorizes – some of the younger women too frightened to work here by themselves

‘You must have beaten him up in a fight, once!’ Pryn declared; she had heard of such encounters between men in her town. ‘You beat him up, and now he’s afraid you might beat him up again …?’

‘No’ The giant sighed. ‘I’ve never touched him. Oh, I suppose if it came to a fight, though he’s less than half my age, I’d probably kill him. But I think he’s been able to figure that out too.’ He gave a snort that ended in the scarred, broken-toothed smile. ‘Myself, I go my way and do what I want. Nynx – if that
is
his name – reads my passings as he will. But from the way he reads them, I suspect I will not
have
to kill him. Someone else will do it for me, and within the year I’ll wager. I’ve seen too many of him.’ He gave another snort. ‘Such readings are among the finer things civilized life teaches. You say you can read and write. You’ll learn such readings soon enough if you stay around here.’

‘What did he want with me, before?’ Pryn asked.

‘Probably the same thing he wanted from the girl. There used to be a prostitutes’ guild when I was a youngster – lasted up until a few years ago, in fact. It retained its own physicians, set prices, kept a few strong-armed fellows under employment for instant arbitration. They rented out rooms in half a dozen inns around here at cheap, hourly rates – today they charge double for an afternoon’s hour what they charge you to spend the night alone. With all the new young folk in from the country, you see, the old guild has moved out to Neveryóna, and
its established members have all become successful hetaeras and courtesans. The new lot struggle for themselves, now, here on the bridge with no protection at all.’ The giant went on rubbing his stomach. ‘Beer,’ he remarked pensively after a moment, ‘I hear it was invented not more than seventy-five years back by barbarians in the south. Whoever brought its fermentation up to the cities has doomed us to a thousand years of such bellies as mine –’ He glanced at Pryn – ‘and yours!’ He laughed.