Restoration (22 page)

“Must I, too, carry a goat? Perhaps I could take it to Mardek as a bribe.”

“Though the goat would add a certain charm,” I said, unable to control a grin at the thought of it, “your crutches will be enough to manage. Hunch over them, as if your back were twisted, too. And remember to keep your eyes down. Never look a Derzhi in the eye, especially when he challenges you. Keep your hand away from your weapons, as Malver told you. Remember our story, and let me talk.”

“Is my education quite complete now?” The Prince jammed the crosspieces of his crutches under his arms.

I picked up our two grimy cloth packs from the ground and dropped their rope ties around his neck, tied an old rag of Sarya's about his head to mute the telltale of his red hair, and yanked on the folds of his filthy haffai to make sure its long folds covered the unusual boot. Then I motioned him toward the gate, mumbling to myself. “I don't think we've even begun.”

The girl was no more than seven or eight, a thin, leggy sprite with sparkling eyes, brown curls, and bare feet, a dirty, ragged, dancing child lost in her own fancy. She was with the man just in front of Aleksander and me—a gaunt Manganar dragging a two-wheeled cart to the gates while herding five small girls and three goats alongside it. The long-handled cart was crammed with two emaciated pigs, a flour barrel, an iron pot, and a pile of dingy bundles, one of which was producing a thready wailing.

“I've naught for such a fee, your honor,” the man said to the burly Derzhi tax collector who was inspecting his pitiful cargo. “The childer's mam died birthing, and I've brung them to her folk. Her kin won't take the childer without the goats to feed ‘em. My pigs are most dead, but if you'd take one for the fee ...”

Two imperial officials were collecting entry tribute on any carts or livestock passing the gates, assessing the value of the goods and requiring a proportional fee or a share of the merchandise. This was profitable duty for a tax collector, but with Karn‘Hegeth's other nine gates locked against the threat of bandits, and more and more stragglers trying to get into the city before the gates were closed for the night, the two Derzhi were harried and short of temper.

I cursed my timing. Sovari and Malver had moved straight through the gates, but the Prince and I had gotten snarled in the hot, stinking crowd, crammed between the poor Manganar and the agitated horses of a Fontezhi baron's traveling party. After a tedious hour's delay while a massive caravan was assessed and its gonaj argued every zenar of his taxes, we were only now getting close to the gates. The annoyed baron's servant pushed forward to have a word with the gate guards, and soon the party was let through without stopping for the tax collectors.

“A Fontezhi sixth-degree,” murmured Aleksander, keeping his head down and his voice low. “Likely a half-wit. The Fontezhi are so inbred they can see up their own asses. They're afraid to lose a bit of their property as bride gifts, so they marry their own sisters.”

The baron's place was quickly taken by a prosperous-looking and very impatient Suzaini rider and a pair of Kuvai lute players on donkeys, who decided to while away the time teaching themselves some annoyingly repetitive passage of a popular saga. For a while I thought the lute players were most likely to get us in trouble, as Aleksander began muttering something about smashing their instruments and inserting various small pieces into the musicians' ears, noses, and other bodily openings. But that was before the burly tax collector began eyeing the little girl.

His neck was as wide as his head, and a hairy bulge of belly hung out below his embroidered vest and imperial sash. He wore no braid. “What do you think, Vallot?” he called to his fellow, a soft, moonfaced man who was inspecting the bundles on the Manganar's cart. “We could have one of the brats and sell her. This one might be pleasing if she was fattened up. Better than a half-dead pig.” The big man caught the arm of the spinning child and drew her close, running a thick finger along her shoulder. Though smudged and grimy, the child's tanned skin was not yet coarsened by relentless sun and poverty. The little girl frowned and tried to pull away.

Aleksander raised his head to see. I edged in front of him.

The father shook his head, his weariness like another companion standing beside his bent shoulders. “Take her if you will, your honors. I'd sell her myself, but I'm told she's too young to be of much use. A year or two and she'll fetch a good price ... if she lives so long. You'll have to feed her until then.” He held out a single silver coin that he had carefully unwrapped from a bit of rag. “I've no more than this bit to pay. Is it worth more than a hungry child?”

The second tax collector, the younger, moonfaced Vallot, had just allowed the Suzaini rider to pass after pocketing a well-stuffed purse. He glanced at the restive crowd, noisy and pressing in the failing light. “I think we've more profitable prospects for our Emperor than a knob-kneed starveling. From the look of this beggar and his cart, she'll have the crabs already.” He snatched the Manganar's coin. “Get on with you.” He tossed the coin to a sallow-faced assistant who was standing just behind the two, jotting the official tally of the collections—not to be mistaken for the actual sum—in a cloth-bound ledger. Vallot motioned Aleksander and me forward.

All might have ended well enough, save the brutish official shrugged, licked his lips, and reached his hand under the girl's tunic. The child grabbed his other hand and bit him. He roared and shoved her away, shaking his bleeding finger.

“Stupid girl!” The distraught father slapped the child to the ground just as the injured Derzhi recovered enough to raise his fist. With the girl out of reach, the vicious blow felled the father, and the tax collector's heavy boot kicked over the cart, scattering pots and bundles and crying children from hither to yon.

It was over quickly. The moonfaced Vallot shoved the wailing children aside and motioned the rest of us forward impatiently. “See to your proper business, Felics. I've supper waiting.”

I had a silver piece ready to slip into the Derzhi's hand. Having sent our horses with Malver, we had no goods or livestock, but that never stopped a tax collector from assessing a fee. “Name's Arago,” I said, ducking my head respectfully. “Smith's man come from Avenkhar to find work in the mines. This be my cousin Wat.”

The moonfaced official gave us only a cursory look. We were dirty, shabby, and had contrived to appear unarmed. Sovari had bound the Prince's sword to his back under the loose haffai, and I had done the same with mine. Not unheard of among desert people, but Vallot had no time to undress us. “Lame is he?” Vallot jerked his head at Aleksander.

“Fell into a shaft as a boy,” I said, sensing the hundred unfortunate retorts boiling inside Aleksander.

To our left I saw the bleeding father right his cart, silently urging the little ones to gather their bags and bundles quickly. The furious Felics flexed his bitten hand and cast sidelong glances at the family, while bellowing at the lute players and threatening to close the gates entirely if people didn't stop crowding too close.

“Can Wat not speak for himself?” said Vallot, his small eyes glaring at the Prince suspiciously, as if he, too, felt Aleksander's hostility.

“Fell on his head,” I said, trying to keep my mind on our business as well as the looming disaster. “Tell him your name, Wat.”

“Name's Wat,” growled Aleksander. He was rigid under his shabby haffai.

“Being impudent with me, cripple?” The Derzhi poked a fleshy finger at Aleksander's chest, requiring the Prince to shift his crutch to keep from falling over.

“Not a bit,” I said. “Are you, Wat?”

Aleksander leaned slightly away from me. As I was on his right, that meant he was leaning onto his good leg. I feared he was bracing himself to deliver a blow.

I grabbed his arm as if to steady his clumsiness, but I held on so tight that he would have had to break his own limb to get it loose. “My cousin has only the highest respect for the Emperor's men, doing the Emperor's work as they're sworn to do. Aye, Wat? Answer his honor and speak respectful, now. He's just thick in the head, your lordships.” I moved aside and jostled Aleksander forward, as if to make him speak for himself, leaving me standing directly in between the brutish Felics and the scrambling Manganar. In the process, I dropped ten silver coins into the dirt.

“Aye, only the highest respect for the land's true Emperor and his loyal servants,” said the Prince, jerking his head in what might be construed as a measure of respect—or a dry imitation of spitting.

“Are these yours, sir?” I leaned toward Felics, pointing at the silver, pretending a whisper, though just loud enough that my own interrogator might hear. “I didn't see who dropped them.” The big man tore his gaze from the Manganar, shifting it slowly from me to the ground.

Before he could grab the coins, a noisy party of young Derzhi noblemen rode up beside us, laughing and joking about an evening horse race. They were well into their wine, and impatient with the tax collectors and gate guards. “My lord Mardek will have your teeth for these delays!” cried a blond youth with a newly sprouted beard. “He had a wager on this race and is waiting to hear of his luck. Move these oafs aside.” The prancing horses crowded the tax collectors to the side, and the Prince and me also, until we were stumbling over each other. The tail of the young lord's horse flicked into Aleksander's face. Behind the riding party was a large caravan, chastous bellowing and straining at their traces as if they had smelled the water inside the walls. Drovers screamed and cracked their whips to keep the unruly beasts in check.

“May we go, sir?” I said.

Vallot motioned us forward impatiently. “Be off and teach the cripple more respect, or I'll throw him down a shaft that has no bottom.” With a quick eye and a quicker hand, he elbowed his dull-witted partner aside, scooped up my dropped silver for himself, and attended to the urgent—and presumably profitable—business of the young noble. His broad face red and swollen, the bullish Felics backed away, bumping into the sallow-faced clerk and his ledger. Felics mumbled something to the clerk and jerked his head toward the gateway.

Without releasing my grip on his arm or slowing my pace to accommodate his injury, I dragged Aleksander into the passage under the gate towers. At last glimpse the two tax collectors were arguing with each other.

“Bloody, insolent vermin!” muttered the Prince, trying to wrest his arm from my hand, but succeeding only in stumbling awkwardly and painfully over something in the road. It was difficult to see anything in the deep shadows under the gate towers. I caught Aleksander before he fell, only to have to shove him against the brick wall when the Derzhi noble's party came tearing through the arched gateway. The pale-haired young lord threw an empty wineskin at us, splattering us with the musty dregs.

“Gods of earth and sky!” Aleksander was shaking.

“Get your balance,” I growled into his ear, not knowing who might be lurking in the darkness. “And keep silent. We need to get away from here.”

“I'll kill them for this.”

I didn't know which “this” he was talking about, or, to be sure, which “them.” “It will have to be later,” I said. “We need to get moving.”

“Unless you plan to break my arm,” said Aleksander through clenched teeth, “I would appreciate your letting go of it.”

My fingers were clamped almost to his bone. “Sorry.” I was no more settled than he.

We had to wait while a wagon rumbled past, and after it two riders in striped robes, prodding a group of three slaves dragging a sledge loaded with cut blocks of stone. Before us, through an archway illuminated by lingering dusk, was the city. Behind us, where the ironbound wooden gates stood open, slaves were setting torches in high sconces. As my eyes adjusted to the shadows, I picked up what had tripped the Prince—one of the bundles from the Manganar's cart, a leather apron wrapped around a pick, a small saw, a steel-headed hammer, and a few chisels of various sizes. A man's livelihood. I rewrapped the bundle and hooked its rope tie over my shoulder. “Let's move,” I said.

We hurried as fast as Aleksander could manage into the outer ring of Karn‘Hegeth, a cramped street of stables, warehouses, and slave quarters grown up between the inner and outer ramparts. Beggars waylaid every traveler who passed the gates, and slack-mouthed children with dead eyes shuffled here and there in the crowds, begging bowls raised. A skeletal woman of indeterminate age, shrunken breasts hanging out of a loosely tied bodice, smiled and rubbed a bony hip against my side. “Two coppers, traveler, and I'll do the cripple for naught extra.” I pushed her away, and we made our way through the inner gates and into the cobbled streets.

Sovari and Malver were nowhere to be seen. It was not a worry; we had agreed to meet in the marketplace as soon as we were sure we'd not been followed. But just ahead of us, disappearing into an alley, was the two-wheeled cart, and sidling through the crowds watching its progress was the sallow-faced clerk from the gates. Petty vengeance was the most dangerous sort.

“Come on,” I said. “We need to get these back to the Manganar. He'll likely starve without.”

Aleksander swung himself forward on the crutches. “Let the cowardly villain starve.” He spat on the dusty pavement. “He was going to sell the girl ... his own child... or kill her. Even animals protect their young. Weaklings deserve what they get.”

“And the Derzhi who started it?”

“Even brutes have their duties.” He could not yet see the whole of matters, nor how the brute planned to carry out his “duties.”