Hart's Hope (13 page)

No sooner was he in line than the queue was a hundred people long behind him. The guards had let the grocers in three or four abreast, but here the guards were in no such rush. The huge gates did not stand open. Only a narrow door in the gate served for the paupers to pass. Yet the people themselves had the same sense of urgency that the grocers and butchers had. The belief was strong that if you could just get through the line ahead of someone, then you would get the job that
that
man might have had. Within that gate was the answer to everything, if you could just get through and ask your questions first. A job; a workingman's pass; the right to stay within the city; this was the gate of heaven and the angels in their bronze breastplates held the chains of salvation. Orem could not help seeing the world as the priests saw it; he also could not help being amused at the thought of these foul-faced soldiers being angels. Are these the silver bridge and the golden gate and the chains of steel? Try that for doctrine, Halfpriest Dobbick.

“First time?”

It was the man ahead of him, who bore three thin scars on his cheek, two of them old and white, the other just a little pink. He did not look friendly, but at least he had spoken.

“Yes,” Orem said.

“Well, take a word. Accept no jobs from the men just inside the gate.”

“I want a job.”

The man's mouth twisted. “They promise to take you for a year, but in three days they turn you over to the Guard without your permanent pass. How's that? And they don't pay you, either. They just get three days' work out of you for free and turn you out. The real jobs are farther in.”

“Where?”

“If I knew, would I be in this line again?”

And at last, with the sun hot and red through the door in the gate, they were at the questioning guards. The man who had spoken to Orem sullenly answered the questions: Name, business, citizenship. Rainer Carpenter, woodworker looking for a job, citizen of Cresting. The guard took Rainer by the chin and turned his face, so he could see the scarred cheek. It was the pink one that made the guard's eyes go small and angry.

“Still red, Rainer, dammit, are you blind?”

“Got no mirror,” Rainer answered. “Woman told me it was white.”

“Like I thought, only a blind woman would have
you
. Get out and come back when the time's done.”

And now Orem was at the front of the line, only vaguely aware that Rainer Carpenter was still standing nearby.

“Name?”

“Orem.”

The guard waited, then said impatiently, “Your whole name!”

Orem remembered the laughter at the Hole over his patronymic. Rainer had used his trade as a surname, as Glasin had. Well, Orem had no trade. Why had they laughed? Perhaps they didn't admit their fathers' names here. “Don't have more. Just Orem.”

The guard was amused. “From a village so small, eh?” He looked at Orem's body and his smirk grew. Orem cursed his thinness and lack of height. “We'll just put you down as Orem Scanthips, eh? Scanthips!” He said it loudly, and the other guards laughed. “Business?”

“Looking for work.”

“What kind of work?”

“Any kind, I guess.”

“Any kind? No one hires a man who can't do anything. What, do you think there's farms in there needing another ass to bear dead burdens?”

Wouldn't they let him in without a trade? What did he know? I can say all the open prayers by heart. I can name the letters capital, the letters corporal, the letters spiritual, the numbers real, the numbers whole, the numbers variable. “I can read and write.”

The guard made a face of mock surprise. “A scholar, eh?” But the amusement was over. The guard reached out and took away Orem's bag and opened it. A flask of water, a lump of bread, and a dagger with a little blood still clinging to it. Not the safe little dinner knife Orem wore at his waist—that was for slicing cheese. This was obviously a killing knife, long and sharp pointed. The guard held it up. “Read and write. Oh, I've heard
that
before. And what is this, your pen?”

Orem didn't know what to say. The dagger had seemed desirable as he walked through Beggarstown; now it might be what blocked him from the city, or worse than that.

But then Rainer Carpenter spoke from nearby. “It's mine,” he said.

“Yours!” said the guard.

“Last time in here I was robbed and I damn well wasn't going to do it again. I didn't think you'd look at the boy's bag. He didn't know it was in there.”

The guard looked back and forth between Orem and Rainer. The look of bewilderment on Orem's face was sincere enough, and nothing could be read in Rainer's eyes. Finally the guard shrugged. “Rainer, you're a fool. You know we'd have you whipped with a glass pipe for that, if you once got it inside.”

“Glass pipe or a crackhead's leaden rod, tell me the difference,” said Rainer. And the guard wrote again on Orem's pass. “Citizenship?”

“Banningside, in High Waterswatch.”

The guard looked at him suspiciously again. Again Orem was forced to claim that he ran from the pressmen of Palicrovol's army. Again his body was laughed at, and he wanted to strike out at the guards and break their brittle, mocking smiles. But at least he would get inside, at least he held the pass in his hand; and all thanks to Rainer Carpenter, a man he didn't know. Just when Orem had concluded there was no kindness in this place, a stranger lied to let him into the city. Orem dared not turn and thank him—that would undo it all. But part of his name and poem would be repayment of such debts. Rainer would find it was not unprofitable to help Orem ap Avonap.

He was guided into the gate by the careless, efficient hands of the guards. And they were not through with him once he had passed inside. There was a guard with a short razor, and before Orem could be sure what was happening, two guards had seized him. They held his head still while the cutter sliced his cheek. The cut was thin and not deep, but still the blood dripped quickly from the stinging wound and stained his shirt.

A mouth spoke at his ear. “Mind you, we know from experience when this wound is healed enough that you ought to be back outside. Any guard who sees this scar will check your pass, and if you're overstayed he'll have your ear. Understand? Get caught twice, and it's your balls. You have three days. Sundown, clear? And once you're out, the scar has to be plain white before we let you in again. And stay off Stone Road. Go on.” With a push at his back, Orem stumbled forward into Inwit.

This is the tale of how Orem, called Scanthips, called Banningside, went to Whore Street and left unsatisfied.

T
HE
W
HORE AND THE
V
IRGIN

When you come into Inwit on Piss Road, on the left is the miserable shantytown of the Swamps, and on the right are the gaudy taverns, and ahead in the distance looms the Old Castle. It is not a hard choice for newcomers to make. Orem turned right, into the Taverns, and wandered along the street in the gathering darkness, wondering how much food and lodging his five coppers would buy.

In the Taverns, all roads lead to Whore Street, and by not knowing where he was going, Orem soon ended up there. He did not know it was Whore Street at first. It looked, to him, like the richest town he had ever seen, for here the buildings were high and clean, and there were trees in the middle of the road, many trees and bushes, so it was like walking in an open wood. The houses were simple and graceful and well-proportioned, and more than one of them was made to look very much like a House of God.

The nature of the place was revealed when a half-drunk, giggling bunch of masked boys stopped two women and handed them each a coin. It took only a few minutes for all the boys to be satisfied, whooping as they leaned the women against trees and slobbered drunken kisses on them and lifted their skirts high while they discussed which was better. The intercourse was like little boys urinating, giggling as they compared each other's equipment and loudly counted to see how quickly each was through. Orem was not ignorant—he had lived on a farm. But he had never seen it done by a man and a woman before, and he could not take his eyes off the scene. Only when it was over did he look at the whores' faces. He saw them just as the boys were leaving, just as the women's smiles were fading and they sighed and rearranged their clothing and pooled their money. They picked up an interrupted conversation in midstream; the interlude with the boys had meant nothing to them. As Orem told me of this night, he was still awed that a man could dip in the Sisters' fountain and the woman would not rue it.

An hour later, Orem leaned against a tree, watching one of the more elegant orgies, where the men and women held forth on philosophical topics for an hour or so among the trees before the coupling began. He did not know the woman had come near him until she touched his arm.

“Unless you have more money than you look to have,” she said, “you might as well go home. The deeper you go into Whore Street, the more expensive it gets.”

She was all breast and teeth—at least to Orem she was, for all he could see when he looked at her face was the way both rows of teeth were visible when she smiled, and when he didn't look at her face all he could see was the way her breasts hung provocatively within her blouse.

Perhaps she was one of those few whores who haven't lost their taste for beauty or for love. Not that Orem was beautiful. But he had a kind of gangling grace, like a colt first running, and he could look at once childlike and dangerous. (Perhaps only I saw the danger in his face; Beauty would have prospered better if she had seen it sooner.) Whatever her reason, she accepted an offer he did not make. He was so trusting that when she asked, he told her he had but five coppers. She had a conscience—she only charged him four.

His new-engaged whore brought him past the fierce guard at the door of a nearby house, announced in loud tones to all who cared to hear that she had found a virgin stalk to reap, and pushed him toward the stair. She walked behind him, and twice reached under his tunic and pulled his wrapping cloth down below his buttocks. Each time he jumped in surprise; each time she giggled.

At the head of the stairs he made as if to walk down the wide carpeted hall, but she pulled back on his shirt.

“That costs a silver, no bargaining, that's what the house charges and I got no choice.” Off they went up another flight. This time the carpet ended at the turn of the stairs, the moment the steps weren't visible from the carpeted hall. “It's like a hundred houses in one,” she said, “depending on what you pay.” The next flight creaked. And the fourth flight of stairs wobbled underfoot. “It's the cheap rooms, forgive the fleas, but four coppers ain't exactly money.”

They walked carefully down a dark corridor, lit only by a torch at each end. Orem glanced into the rooms that were open. Just glanced, until what he saw made him stop and stare.

They sat side by side. Two women, just sitting, still as trees. They were dressed like any other whores, and had bodies perhaps more lovely than other whores. But their faces: which was more terrible? The one with a single eye, and a mouth that opened only on the side, and a nose skewed around so the nostril pointed more up than down? Or the one with no face at all?—neither brows nor eyes nor nose nor lips, just a circumference of hair and a blank of flesh interrupted only by a thin slit that could not be called a mouth, for there were no lips and it hung open in a limp O that dripped a steady stream of saliva down on her open bosom.

“Twins of the flesh, they were,” said Orem's whore in a whisper, and she drew him away. Though he could not bear to look at the women, he hung back; she pulled harder and he drew away from the door. “Twins of the flesh. Born of a noble house, it's said, and they got the finest physicians and the finest wizards, not to mention priests, who blessed them till they damn near sprouted wings. Then they cut them apart. Twins of the flesh, joined at the face, except that the one was looking away from the other just a little, so she had an eye and half a mouth and half a nose, but the other nothing at all but a tiny hole that was letting air in from the other's mouth. They widened the hole. The blessings worked, for they lived. And the spells worked, for they grew flesh over their bloody wounds. But what was there for them? And which is worse cursed, do you think? The one who cannot see? Or the one who knows mirrors? We call them the Sweet Sisters. Kind of a joke, you know.”

Orem had never known a woman in his life who would joke about the Sweet Sisters.

His whore opened a small door and ducked to go in. Orem also ducked, but still banged his head. “Low roof,” she said.

His whore pulled her blouse from her shoulders; her breasts pulled up and then jogged back down when she lowered her arms. Orem saw, but all he could think of was the slack face with the hole that drooled. The whore undressed him, but all he could think of was the face with the single eye and the canted nose and the half-mouth. His whore stroked him and kissed him but it did no good; he lay trembling and unable and cold on the thin rug on the floor. Whatever he may or may not have wanted as he came up the stairs, the whore had nothing of him, because he had seen the twins of the flesh who had once been joined at the face and could think of nothing else.

“Fifteen,” his whore said contemptuously. “Might as well be five. What did you plan to stick there, your knee? God knows it's skinny enough to fit. You got the balls of a mouse and the cod of a flea, that's what you got, so don't go telling me it's my fault, I'm still pretty enough, I didn't hear you telling me I was ugly down there on the street, did I?” She dressed quickly, then stooped and took four coppers from where they lay on the floor. “You pay for my time—it's not my fault you didn't use it. You're damn lucky I don't take the other one, for the insult.” She spat on his loin wrap where it lay pathetic and empty on the floor, then stepped on it. “That and piss is all you'll ever find in
your
wrap in the morning. Find your own way out, dingle. When you turn ten come back and we'll see what we can do.” And she was gone.

J
OINED AT THE
F
ACE

Ashamed, Orem tried to wipe her spittle from the wrap by dabbing with his shirt. Was this how his poem would begin?

He dressed and ducked back into the cluttered, shadowy hall. At once he saw the wall of light from the door where the monsters called the Sweet Sisters waited for him to pass. He was at once drawn to them and terrified. He stepped carefully, he trembled at the knee, he stumbled, he lurched against a wall. He was all the noisier for his efforts at silence.

“Who is there?” said a thin, high, wavering voice.

He kept his silence, kneeling on the floor of the dark hall. Don't come out and see me. Stay where you are, go to sleep, die. Let me pass.

“Answer. You know it makes my sister angry when you don't answer.”

The last thing Orem wanted was to make a sister angry. In the name of God, Orem said silently, don't be angry at me. “I fell,” he said.

“The voice of a child, yes? The voice of a clumsy child, yes? The voice of a boy who was charged four coppers and given nothing. But think, but think, she took nothing from you either. For the price of just four coppers, you're still a lake undrained by any stream.” And then a slight laugh that angered him. His whore had been too loud; they knew his failure.

“Come in,” said the voice.

No.

“Must I come get you?” He got to his feet and walked weakly forward, turned at their door. The single eye of the one face was looking at him, but if he looked away, the only place for his gaze was the other, the blank flesh, the steady trickle of drool. He forced himself to look about the room. There was a single chair besides the ones they sat in, old and frail and ready to break. There was a small loom, with a cloth half-finished in it, a ragged cloth which was also rotting, and the loom was so strung and clotted with webs and dust that it was plain it had not been used in years. And then the rug on the floor, just like the rug where he had lain helplessly with his whore: only this rug glowed in the light, and Orem realized it was woven with gold thread.

“Sit down.”

He did not try the chair, but sat on the floor.

“Four coppers. Was the sight of sagging teats worth the price?” Was that a smile on her deformed face? “She's an old gom of a rutter—you must be fresh in the city not to have known.” The one-eyed woman looked at her placid sister. “How old do you think he is?”

To Orem's horror the lipless mouth tried to answer. A moan, a modulated moan like a song of pain, and the one-eyed sister nodded. “Yes, fifteen, but scrawny of body. My sister says your will is stone—you may crumble under the hammer, but long after the hammer has rusted away, you will remain. Isn't that pretty? What's your name?”

“Orem.” He still had not learned to lie.

“Orem. Do you want your four coppers back?”

It had not occurred to him that it was possible. “Yes.”

“Then you must entertain us.”

“How?”

“Tell us a tale of two sisters, who were both twins of the flesh, joined at the face, and who by magic and prayers and surgery were separated, the one with a single eye, and the other with no face at all except a mouthhole that drools constantly and leaves a trail of spittle between her breasts down to her belly.”

“I—I don't—I can't tell you that tale—”

“Oh, we won't
believe
it, mind you. Such a thing could not be. Tell us what these pathetic women are doing in a whorehouse.”

“They—sit. In a room upstairs.”

“And what do these women do while they sit?”

“They—listen.”

“And what do you think they hear?'

“The sounds of—of—”

“Love?”

Orem nodded. The one-eyed sister shook her head.

“Not love,” Orem said.

“What then?”

“The sound of—of birds.”

“Yes, birds. And above the birds, what?”

What was above the birds? What was this tale supposed to mean? “The sound of wind across the roof of the house.”

The blank one moaned, and the other hooted with laughter. “Yes, he knows, he knows, he has many many ears inside his head, yes, and what else do they hear?”

He understood now. It was a game, like the riddles and puzzles of the manuscripts. “The sound of the sun rising and falling. The sound of the stars as they pass overhead. The sound of God closing his eyes upon the world. The sound of the Hart as it shakes its head and tosses the planets.”

The one eye opened wide; the hole of the mouth emphatically stopped drooling for a moment, so that the mucous spittle broke in midstring, and the top of the thread was drawn up into her mouth like the body of a dangling spider.

“The mouth opens and it speaks,” said the one-eyed sister.

“Nnnnnnng,” said the other.

“We are bound about with magic,” said the one-eyed woman, “yet he speaks with our tongues. Beauty has silenced us, yet our own gifts come from the boy's mouth. Ah, Hart, you have more wit than we.”

“What does it mean?” Orem asked.

“Nothing to you, forget, forget, tell no one what you have seen, for it is no favor, you are
just an ordinary boy
.”

His stomach clenched with fear at the force of her words.

“We are whores, too, did you know that? We left our father's house and came here because we knew that without faces we had only our bodies. Do you know what it costs to take us? A thousand of gold or a hundred acres of farmland. For a single night. And we are busy twenty nights a year. Oh, we are rich, we twins of the flesh, we sisters of beauty. We are blessed. And not all who come to us are men. There are women who come and spend the night exploring us, trying to discover what makes us so beautiful. They cannot guess. But
you
know, don't you?”

“No. I don't.”

“That's right. You cannot know if you think that you know. We hear another thing, we listen to another thing, not just the stars. Not just the heartbeat of the great thousand-horned Hart who holds the worlds on the points of his horns. Not just the great eruption of the sun that ejaculates its gusts of light to inseminate the world. We hear this also:”

And she stopped.

And after a long, long silence, in which Orem heard nothing but his own heavy breathing, she said, “Did you hear it, too?”