Hart's Hope (14 page)

“No.”

“That is why they pay so much to have us.”

The one with the eye opened a small chest beside her. It was filled with jewels that glistened in the torchlight like a thousand tiny fires.

And the one whose face was as featureless as fog, she stood and made a single motion with her hand. Abruptly she was naked, and her face glowed like the sun itself; there was no hair on her body, and her skin was deep as amber, and she was so beautiful that Orem could not keep his eyes from flowing with tears so he could no longer see.

“It is as I thought,” said the one who could speak. “His eyes cannot be closed except by his own weeping and his own trust.”

The blank-faced woman was sitting again, as suddenly as she had stood; how could she have clothed herself so quickly?

“Hunnnnnnng,” she moaned. “Ngiiiiiunh.”

“Four coppers, says my sister, and a kiss.”

It was not for the coppers that he kissed them, but for fear of them. He kissed their mouths, such as they were, and the coppers fell into his hand, and he fled the room.

As he ran along Whore Street he could hear for the first time in his life the song that his mother had loved best: the steady hissing of the sap up the trees, the song of capillarity, ah, it was beautiful, and he wept until the spittle of the fog-faced woman's mouth had dried upon his lips.

A cot at the Spade and Grave cost only a copper for two nights, not as expensive as he had feared. He lay for some time with both hands pressed between his legs, because of the great ache at the base of his belly. He could hear the sap flowing also in himself. Why have I come to Inwit? he cried to himself. But he knew that the question itself was a lie. He had not come at all. He was shoved.

That is why Orem was a virgin when Beauty needed him.

How Orem learned what life was worth in Beauty's city.

T
HE
S
ONG IN THE
C
ISTERN

Orem awoke on the top bunk of the backmost bed in the Spade and Grave. The ceiling was inches from his face, but after the cramped cells of the House of God he had no fear of such small places. He slid carefully to the edge of the splintery board and clambered down the seven tiers of beds. The reek of vomit was strong. Each of his steps bowed the board of some other sleeper; some moaned; one cursed and slapped out at him.

As he passed the innmaster the fellow tossed him a chit. Orem looked at it. “I don't want to carry this all day.”

The innmaster shrugged. “As you like. But I warn you, I'll cheat you if you let me.”

Orem put the chit in his bag. “Thanks. Will every thief in Inwit be so thoughtful as to warn me?”

The innmaster regarded him calmly. “I'm a Godsman. I only cheat them as want to be cheated.”

Nothing in Orem's life had prepared him for the daytime streets of Inwit. The flow of the crowds led him to the Great Market, and for some time he was swept back and forth in the eddies of the buying and selling. In all his life before he had never seen so many people as were in the marketplace that day, rags and velvets, uniforms and livery, all bumping together in the battle to get much for little. Orem gawked, and so marked himself as an easy target for thieves.

A boy brushed up against him and a small hand reached under his shirt, and as fast as Orem could realize what was happening his coppers were out of his wrap. Without a thought Orem swung out and caught the child a blow on the chin. The boy fell soundlessly, and as silently scrambled to his feet—but Orem had learned to be quick in the House of God. He had the boy by an ankle before he was fairly afoot. The child kicked viciously at Orem's face. Was the battle worth an eye? Orem's few coins were his life and hope here, and so he struggled on despite the blows.

No one seemed to notice the cruel battle going on in the street, except to leave a space for them to roll in the sand. At last Orem got the thief in a coward's hold, legs bent painfully and Orem's hand firmly tucked into the boy's crotch, ready to inflict that irresistible pain.

“I want the coppers, little bastard,” Orem said.

“Coppers!”

“Or in Sister's name I'll have your balls off.”

“God's name, I haven't got your money!” The boy's wail was loud and pitiful. Now that the fighting was done, people began to take notice.

“Leave be,” said a voice in the crowd. “It's a coward who takes down a little child.”

The little swine was winning sympathy. Orem leaned down and whispered in the boy's ear. “I'm a farmer, boy, and I've made bulls into steers with my bare hands before.” It was enough. The boy's eyes went wide and he spat four coppers into the dust.

Orem released the boy and quickly grabbed up the coins. From the corner of his eye he saw the thief moving in a way that he feared might be an attack—what, a kick? Yes. Orem dodged out of the way just in time, then leaped to his feet to prepare for the next onslaught.

There wasn't one. The child looked at him with eyes all innocent and laughed.

“Don't you know all pissers keep them in the same place? And half of them have soil in their wraps, it's filthy work to put them in my mouth.”

“If you don't like it,” Orem said, holding his coppers tightly, “find another line of work.”

“
You
hire me as soon as
you
find work.”

It stung Orem that the boy assumed that he would fail. “I will hire you,” Orem said disdainfully. “I'll have a job in days, and take you on.”

“Oh, yes, and the Queen wears a codpiece.” The boy whirled around and flipped up his shirt to show his buttocks to Orem for a moment. Then he was gone in the crowd.

Orem wandered north, where the Great Market empties into Queen's Road. He marveled at the great houses, he gaped at the spider-wheeled carriages, he stared at ladies as naked as they could decently be above the waist and gentlemen as naked as fashion required below it. And he stood at the base of the hundred-stepped pyramid that led upward to Faces Hall, where Palicrovol had stood and ravished the little daughter of Nasilee, spilt her inmost blood and so became her husband and so became the King and then cast her away. The start of all the woes of the world, there at Faces Hall.

“Damn your liver to be eaten by the eagles!” A guard had him by the shoulder, shaking him. “Didn't they tell you at the gate to stay off Queen's Road? The Stone Road? Are you deaf? Have you the brain of a pudding?” More kicks and blows as the guard took him down an alley, bashing him against one wall and then another, until Orem gratefully fell on his face in the dust of a back street. “And don't come back on Queen's Road or I'll have you hung by your ears till they tear!” Orem lay in the street listening to the footsteps as the guard left. He hurt everywhere, yet he was not so much angry as glad that it had stopped. Even glad that it hadn't been worse. He winced and gingerly got to his feet.

“Gentle, an't they?”

Orem turned painfully to meet the face that went with the voice. It was the child who had robbed him, smiling cocky as you please, hands on hips, legs spread, like God astride the world.

“You look pretty poor, you know.” The boy smiled at him maliciously. “Had me by the balls and you were rich and fine.”

“You were taking all I had,” Orem said dully. He winced at the pain of breathing in.

“And you took all
I
had.”

“But it was mine.”

“Not while
I
had it.”

It was an argument that would get nowhere, Orem could see. “Where am I?”

“What's it worth to you to know?”

“Nothing.” Orem looked around. All he could see were the backs of common buildings on one hand and on the other the high garden walls of the great houses, with their cruel spear-topped iron ridges. Except for the alley to Stone Road, there was only one way to go, so Orem set out along the dirt street. The thief padded behind him.

“Get away from me,” Orem said.

“I followed you all this way.”

“You'll never get my coppers.”

“You said you'd hire me.”

“
If
I get a job.” But suddenly the boy was not so neatly catalogued as a clever thief. “You believed me?”

“You look too stupid to lie.”

“Then what makes you think I'll get a job?”

“Because you wouldn't let me go when I kicked your face.” The boy giggled. “You're a bad fighter, you know. A girl could beat you.”

Orem felt himself flush with anger, but he said nothing. The road was widening, and now there were some sleazy shops fronting on the street. In the middle of the road was a short round wall like a well housing, made of crumbly bricks. Orem made to go around it, but heard a sound. Like singing, coming from the well. He stopped.

“It's the cistern,” said the boy. “All the time singing. Means nothing. Cistern's empty.”

“Why? Drought?”

“They're for a siege. There's never a siege of Inwit. Besides, you'd drown the voices.”

Orem stepped to the cistern rim and leaned over to listen. Along with the sound he was greeted by a smell so fetid that he reeled backward and gasped and choked.

“Since it's empty,” said the boy, “everybody dumps their slops in. And shits quite direct.” As if to demonstrate, the boy jumped up and sat perilously on the wall, his backside leaning far over the edge. Unceremoniously he defecated, then waited with his head cocked. “Hear the splash? It must be half a mile down.”

“What about the voices?”

“Probably a choir of rats. They live fine on manure. Aren't you a farmer? Don't you know about the magical properties of manure?” While he talked, the boy wiped himself with his left hand, then spat on it and rubbed it in the dirt till it was dry. “Here,” he said, gesturing at Orem's bag. “Let us have a little water.”

Orem shook his head.

“Oh, won't share even water, is that it?”

“It's from my father's spring. For the fountain at Little Temple.”

“What are you, a pilgrim? You have a priest's face. Like a hungry rat.”

“I studied with priests.”

“That's it, then.” The boy nodded wisely. “I knew you could read. I can read a little. Taught myself.”

“The voices from the cistern. How long have they been going on?”

The boy shrugged. “All
my
life.”

Orem recited the Seventh Warning of Prester Zenzil: “Do not learn the songs of voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.”

The boy looked at him quizzically. “You can't learn them. They got no words. An't no one understands them, anyway.”

Orem pulled his wrap halfway down and hoisted himself to the lip of the cistern to empty himself. The voices came more clearly, an echo of wails and high singing that suddenly filled him with fear. Why should I be afraid? he wondered. Then he looked at the young thief and thought he saw murder in his eyes. Yes, murder, and what better time than now, with Orem helplessly over a pit that went deep into the earth where no one would find the corpse even if anyone bothered to look for a scrawny young man with a pauper's pass. The boy could just run up and push him and he'd be dead. And there—yes, the boy was poised, wasn't he? And leaning in! “Stay back, or by God—” And then his bowels opened and emptied and he sprang from the cistern wall and backed away from the thief.

“Just a fancy,” the boy said, smiling. “Didn't mean nothing. Meant just to put a scare in you.”

Orem did as the boy had done, wiped himself and then his hand in the dirt. Then he pulled up his wrap. He was trembling. Not just because the child had thought to kill him, but because the voice in the cistern had seemed to warn him so. Was this, perhaps, a touch of true magic? For the first time in his life had a spell touched him?

“I'm sorry,” said the boy, watching Orem's face. “It was a joke.”

Orem said nothing, just walked from the cistern and out into the road. Only a few steps and he knew where he was, Piss Road, with Piss Gate at the western end of it.

“Don't leave me,” said the boy.

Orem faced him angrily. “Don't you know when you're not wanted?”

“My name is Flea Buzz.”

“I don't want your name.”

“I'm telling you anyway. It was the name my mother gave me. She's from Brack, it's ever so far to the east, she was stolen by sea pirates and eventually ended up here as a pisser. She got a pass. They give names like Flea Buzz there, because it was the first thing she saw and first thing she heard after I was born. Her husband is dead at the bottom of the sea. He has pearls instead of eyes.”

“What makes you think I care?”

“You're listening, aren't you? Anyway, it's all lies. My father, he's alive enough. He calls me Pin Prick, and worse things when he's angry. He's got no pass, so he has to hide in the Swamp when the guards come. I get no pass until my mother marries another pass man. So I steal. I do all right. I'll steal for you, if you like.”

“I don't want you to steal for me.”

“The truth is my father's dead. My mother killed him when he went at her with a club. We buried him in the garden. He'll be flowers all over if the dogs don't open him up. Only last night.”

“It's a lie.”

“Only partly. Let me come with you.”

“Why? What do I have that you want? If you think I'll give you a copper to leave me alone you're going to weep at the tale I have to tell.”

“My mother's gone, pass and all.”

“What's that to me?”

“Her lover took her away after they killed my dad.”

Lover. It was a strange word. What part had love in Inwit? Yet the boy looked afraid, his eyes looked weak and he was ready to spring, ready to run at a word. Was this true, then? Had he no parents?

“I've got nothing,” Orem said. “Little enough for me, nothing for you.”

“I know the city. I'll be useful.”

“I'll find my own way.”

“If the guard catches me I can be your brother, and then I won't lose an ear for having no pass.”

It hadn't occurred to Orem. That they'd take an ear from a child.

“They wouldn't.”

“God's name they would.”

What did he need with a boy along? Make it look like he was trying to feed a family, like he wasn't free, get in his way, keep him from a job most likely. Go away. “Come on then.”

Flea Buzz grinned, and suddenly all the pathos was gone. Was he a fraud, after all? Orem cursed himself for a fool. Yet he did not send him away, even so.

“What's your name,” asked the boy.

“They call me Scanthips.”

“By God, a name that's worse than mine.”

“I'll call you Flea. That's not a bad name.”

“And I'll call you Scant.”

“You'll call me Sir.”

“Like hell. Come on, them as I've heard was hired was hired on Shop Street.” And they plunged into the crowd on Piss Road.

Flea was a companion such as Orem had never had before. He was so jaunty that even the coldness of the shopkeepers was cause for laughter. Flea would bow and elaborately compliment the shopkeepers that they met—those that didn't drive them out immediately. And when they had been sent away, Flea would parody and mock. “Oh, I love you like a son, but if I had a son I'd have to send him away without work, lads, you must understand, times is so hard that if it goes on like this another twenty years I'll waste away and die myself, die myself!”

Orem laughed often because of Flea, and covered far more ground because Flea knew his way through Inwit, but by late afternoon it was clear there'd be no work for him on Shop Street. He needed to rest, and Flea led him into the huge cemetery. The trees were a haven to Orem, like a touch of home, even if there was no underbrush and the trees were cropped and tame. A touch of home, only there were no birds. Orem noticed it and said so.