Hart's Hope (11 page)

How the Little King entered the city first through Piss Gate, with a pauper's pass, no one guessing who he was.

A
MONG
T
HIEVES

The nearest portman tied their line to a post at the slip, and Orem was all for jumping ashore: But Glasin glared at him and ordered him to stay. They waited, and soon several men in gaudy southern trousers came to eye them and their raft.

“A weaky ship,” said one.

Glasin turned away from that man, and faced another. “All oak,” he said defiantly.

“Bound with spit and catgut?” the man retorted.

“Good only for lumber,” said a third. “And three days' drying to boot. A cart in trade.”

“Cart and twenty coppers,” said another.

Glasin snorted and turned his back.

“Cart and donkey,” said the man who had called it a weaky ship.

Glasin turned around with a frown. “That and four silvers gives you raft and tent.”

“Silvers! And what do I want with a tent?”

Glasin shrugged.

Another man nodded. The third turned away, shaking his head. The first man, who had the eye of a hawk, staring open always even when the other was closed, he raised his hands. “God sends thieves downriver disguised in grocers' shirts,” he said. “Two silvers, a donkey and cart, but by God you keep the tent.”

Glasin glanced at the other bidder, but he was through. The sale was set then.

Or almost set. Hawkeye looked at Orem. “Boy for sale?” he asked.

For sale?
Orem was appalled—how could anyone take him for a slave? He had no rings in his face, had he? He had no branding! But there was the man asking, and the grocer not saying no, but standing, thinking.

“I'm a freeman,” Orem said hotly, but Hawkeye made no sign of having heard, just kept watching Glasin. The grocer at last shook his head. “I'm a God's man, and this boy is free.”

The buyer said nothing more, just tossed two gleaming coins to Glasin, who caught them deftly so they didn't slip down between the logs to get lost in the river. The buyer waved, and four men came up, one leading a sad-looking donkey and cart while the others quickly unloaded the raft and put all that would fit into the cart, piling the rest on the dock. When all was done, the portman nodded, drove a red nail into the post, and walked away.

Orem mounted the dock and stood near the pile of the grocer's goods. Not that the grocer had asked him to; indeed, Glasin might have forgotten Orem was there, for all the notice he paid to him. Orem simply did not know where to go or what to do. The wide space fronting the river was crowded with carts and men and some women, shouting and cursing; other rafts were being unloaded at other slips, and Orem had only been ashore a few moments when Hawkeye's men had the empty raft free of the slip and were poling it out into the river.

“They takes it to Boat Island,” said the grocer. “They trims it into boards and builds sea ships with it. From Boat Island on out to the sea, the big ships comes and goes. Half my profits is from the raft—the donkey alone would bring me twice that lumber in the north, and the cart is worth all my cargo when I'm buying at the country markets. Now, boy, what is our business?”

Orem didn't understand.

“If you stays and watches my things, if you doesn't let anything get taken whatever they offers you, I give you five coppers when I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the market, to get a stall. If I go now, while all the other morning grocers is loading their carts, I get a better place, see. But can I trust you?”

Orem only looked at him angrily. Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult.

“All right then,” said the grocer. “I'll be back. You talks to no man.”

Orem nodded, and immediately the grocer was off, trotting heavily among the crowd.

Around him Orem watched the other grocers as they quarreled and traded and disparaged each other's goods. Here and there were portmen standing guard as Orem stood; he suspected that
they
were being paid a good deal more than a few coppers. It didn't matter. He had learned the abstract values of coins at the House of God, but never in his life had he been forced to learn just how much living could be done on how much money. And even if he
had
learned, at Inwit all values were changed. Six coppers would keep a good-sized family for a month at Banningside. It was different here.

There were other differences. Orem was not so naive he didn't know what was happening when a golden-trousered man gave a small heavy bag to a man standing guard. The guard turned his back as two wagons were drawn to the absent grocer's pile and the goods were loaded on. Orem listened for the cry of thief to arise, waited to see the crowd giving alarm; but there was no sound. Neither did Orem make a sound, for he was afraid to raise the cry of thief in a place where a crime could be committed in the open. He guessed that the bribe was only half the transaction. There was a hint of violence in the rough-looking men who did the loading; he wondered if the man who resisted might end up swimming for his life.

Soon enough a red-trousered man with golden bracelets stood at his side.

“I have a bag of coppers here,” the man said softly, “which I'll pay to a boy with a wandering eye who stands and watches the river. Twenty coppers have I, my boy.”

Orem did not know what to say. It was a fine offer indeed, and gave him some notion of how ungenerous Glasin had been in his payment. It occurred to him that Glasin trusted him rather much—or else was convinced that Orem was a fool who had no notion of money.

The man drew conclusions from Orem's silence. “I'll go to fifty coppers, then. Fifty coppers, but I tell you, boy, the fishes of the river can be hungry, and we try to keep them fed on stubborn flesh.”

There it was—the bribe and the threat, and he only a boy of fifteen. The rough-looking loaders, there they were waiting at the empty wagons. What chance would Orem have if they threw him into the river? They'd have the grocer's goods whether he wanted them to or not; so why not have the coppers in the bargain?

But there was no poem in a hundred coppers, none at all, and no name or place in that, either.

“What, are you deaf? Well, do you know what
this
means?” And there was a dagger in the man's hands. For a moment Orem was tempted to try a trick the sergeant had taught him long ago; but no, it was too long ago, when he was little, and Orem did not know if he had the strength or quickness to do it against such a man as this. Who could say what a man with trousers might do? But there was an idea in the man's words about deafness.

“Oh you are generous sir!” Orem bellowed. “Oh you are kind and wise!” He hadn't the lungs of old Yizzer at the gate of the House of God, but his voice was strong enough from his years of canting at the prayers. “Oh your face is a kind one sir, and God knows your inmost hidden name. God and I know your inmost names and we shall name them!” And with that Orem reached out his hand and drew his palm lightly across the dagger's point. It drew his blood and hurt with a sharp sting, but Orem knew from the magics observed on his father's farm what such a thing would mean. He held up his hand and let the blood trickle down his arm into his sleeve. “I will name your names!”

It was enough, oh, yes, see the man run, hear the hissing of his trousers as his legs brush against each other. Orem did not know, however, whether he had done right; it was a terrible thing to pretend to have magic. A terrible thing to spill blood without purpose, to pay a price without petition; but it was all that he had thought of at the moment, and there, the man was leaving, he was glaring back at Orem sure enough, but he and his rough servants were fleeing. It was enlightening to Orem. Yes, he said to himself again and again, Yes, this is a deep and high place, but they are still afraid of magics here, in Queen Beauty's own city they cannot tell a deaf wizard from a desperate wandering boy.

More than the would-be thief had been frightened, too; the other grocers eyed him suspiciously. Only the nearest portman seemed to understand—he winked and drew a circle on his trousers. But was the circle to congratulate him or to fend his pretended power? Orem guessed the first; and also realized that the portmen must charge high fees indeed, for no thief bothered to approach the ones of
them
that stood on guard. A hundred coppers wouldn't tempt them, and with hundreds of the green-bloused men around, Orem guessed that even the most desperate men wouldn't dare to drop one in the river, punctured or not. Life in Inwit was more openly criminal, but there were protections, and a good one was the protection of being in a company of loyal men. Orem wondered vaguely how he would look in the portmen's green.

It was near noon when Glasin returned, smiling broadly. “Got a place in the Great Market,” he said, “and I don't have to give the pick to anybody.” Orem could smell beer on his breath. The grocer had trusted him indeed, to have paused before coming back to his goods on the wharf. “And now I have too much to fit in one load of the cart. You waits another hour for three more coppers.” The grocer looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

By now Orem had come to understand how much the grocer was gaining by his services. Glasin had not had to pay a portman, nor had he had to give pick of stall in the Great Market to some other grocer for watching his goods on the wharf. And it occurred to Orem that Glasin had considered claiming that he was a slave and selling him. Glasin might have been the Corthy Price, but he was too shrewd by half. What if he only left behind on the dock the things he didn't need to sell? What if Orem waited all day for him to come back, and he never came?

“First my five coppers,” said Orem.

It was a calculated risk; an honest man might have dismissed him on the spot, for sheer rage. But Glasin only laughed. “Six coppers, then, for waiting again.”

So he did mean to cheat him. “First the five I earned.”

It was only now that Glasin's eyes went narrow. “What, so I can return and find you gone with my five coppers and my goods as well? I pay you only when your work is done.”

Orem could not bear the accusation of thief when he had taken risk already to save Glasin's goods. “A man offered me fifty coppers and would have killed me! I frightened him off for you, and all for five coppers!”

Glasin plainly didn't believe him. “What sort of man could
you
frighten off? You won't cheat me by such a silly lie as that!”

By habit Orem turned to the nearby guards and grocers for confirmation of his tale. “I did, you saw me!” he called out. But no one gave a sign of hearing.

“Why should anyone witness for
you
?” Glasin asked. “What could you possibly pay them?”

“I could pay them my five coppers,” Orem said.

“Off with you, then! I have no use for you! Trying to cheat me! After I let such a useless boy as you ride my boat for free! Here's the five coppers, which you didn't earn. Now away, before I call the guards and name you a thief! Off! You gets away!”

And now, to Orem's surprise, the other grocers began to take notice. “Is the boy cheating you?” one called. “Into the river with him,” cried another. “Get rid of a boy like that!”

What could he do, then, but leave? He was furious at the unfairness of it, but it was plain enough that just as portmen found safety with each other's company, so the grocers were a band together, and they'd stand up for another grocer however much the right might be with a wandering boy like Orem. It was a weakish, undependable company, for they had said and done nothing when a thief took the goods of one of their number—but it was a company, all the same. Where was Orem's company? Who would protect
him?
It was the House of God again, and his enemies able to throw him into the fire because he had no friends.

He fled from the grocer then, holding his few coppers in his hand. But fear or not, he had to know for sure; so he stayed and watched, and sure enough, Glasin was able to put all his load of goods into the single cart, saving only the rotted stuff. To protect rotten foodstuff Orem would have waited all day, and had no payment at all. There was no honor in Inwit, none at all, and it made him more afraid than even the thief's dagger pointed at his belly. A dagger has only a single point, but a traitor cuts from anywhere, that's what they said, and only now did Orem understand that it was true.

O
REM
S
EES THE
F
ORBIDDEN
G
ATE

Where now? In all his talk on the downriver trip, Glasin had said much about ways into the city. Now Orem felt little desire to follow Glasin's advice—but in this place what other guide did he have? Glasin would have had little to gain by lying to him in his tales of the city. Orem had no choice but to trust his hints. What had Glasin said? Piss Gate, of course, and three days to find work before they thrust him out. Well, nowhere to go but there, for the ways into the Hole were dangerous, Glasin had said; and what would those dangers be, if the open dock was full of such traps?

“Don't buy anything outside the gate,” the grocer had said. “And don't buy anything from anyone who offers to sell. They'll spot you as a farmer from the first second, and they'll up their price by tens.” It was all the wisdom Orem had right now; it was his only armor as he found himself on Butcher Street, where four great lines of carts and animals and men waited to get past the guards at Swine Gate.

The guards wore skirts of plated metal, and breastplates of brass; plainly they were not the soldiers who defended the city, for Palicrovol's men wore steel mail shirts and carried swords that would bite such brass as a candle bit through paper. And though the walls of the city were high, the huge wooden gates stout, Orem wondered why it was that King Palicrovol, with an army that they said was the strongest ever known in all the world, had never been able to mine or breach the walls, or even, they said, slay a single one of Queen Beauty's soldiers. Surely the Queen had some terrible army hidden away, and these antiquely costumed guards were all for show.