Hart's Hope (17 page)

Flea grabbed at his shirt, pulled so hard that the fabric cut at his neck. “God's name, Scant, this is it! You don't bargain with passes and two a week!”

“The young one's crude but correct,” the old man said. “I won't bargain. I know I'm being generous.”

“I'm not bargaining,” Orem said.

“Then what?” asked the old man.

“Turning you down.”

“Then you're a fool,” he said contemptuously.

“Yes. No doubt of it.”

“What about me?” Flea asked the old man. “Will you take me without him?”

The old man smiled thinly. “At one a week. This one can read. The two a week was for his sake, because you came together.”

“One or two a week, fine with me.”

“Stay, then, Flea,” Orem said. “Thank you for everything. God's gifts with you.” He nodded and stepped from the porch. His father had been a mere farmer, too poor to give a portion to his seventh son, but he had been a freeman, and his son was also free, and he would not bring children into the world less free than he was.

He was out of the alley, striding on into the darkening, deepening fog when he heard footsteps behind him. He knew the runner. “Flea,” he said.

“You chewer,” said Flea.

“That's as may be.”

“Two meals a day and coppers besides. Why not, in the name of my mother's blood?”

“I came to Inwit for a name and a place and a poem.”

“I thought you came for work.”

“Why work? To keep yourself alive. But then, why live? Not for
that
. Don't blame me. You could have stayed.”

“You chewer. I thought you knew what you were doing. A poem! My father's piss!” And Flea spat on the ground for emphasis.

“Then go back.”

“I will.”

“All right then.”

“Tomorrow.”

They walked on in silence, and stood together at the door of the Spade and Grave. The fog was deep, the night was on them, all but a faint glow above the roofs; the lanterns were lit pathetically, as if they had a chance to cast a light in air so wet. “What sort of poem?” Flea asked softly.

“A true one.”

“Such a poem for you, Scanthips?”

“Why not?”

“Heroes do great things.”

“I mean to do them.”

“My mother's eyes.”

“And there's no hope for a servant of a servant.”

“So what now, Scant? Tomorrow you got no pass.”

“Then I'll go out. And come back in.”

“When your cheek is healed! Months from now!”

“I'll come back in another way.”

Flea shook his head. “I don't know that end of the city. I don't know them as comes in that way.”

“Good night, Flea,” Orem said. “I'm a fool for sure. Go back to that old man and live well.”

“Truest words I ever heard, God help you.” And Flea stepped back away into the fog.

B
ARGAINS

Orem slept well that night, to his own surprise, and the next day he went downstairs and cheerfully told the innmaster to chew himself, though he still didn't know quite what that meant. Then he went to another inn and ate a copper's worth of breakfast, which made his stomach ache but tasted no worse for that. It was his gesture of defiance after nearly fasting for three days for his coppers' sake.

And as he left the inn, bellyheavy and content, he brushed past a small boy who was loitering at the door, not noticing who it was until he was a couple of steps into the street. Then he turned and said, “Flea!”

Flea looked annoyed. “You could have saved some of that food for me.”

They fell into step, heading north toward Piss Road.

“I thought you'd have breakfast with that old man,” said Orem. “I thought you'd given up on me.”

“I should have,” Flea said. “But I'm so damn dumb I believed what you said last night. If you can have a poem, Scant, why not me? I'll be twice your weight when I'm grown. My father hefted an axe for the King, my mother told me. Told me other things, other times, but who knows? Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“Bring me along when you go to earn your song. Promise me.”

“By my hope of a name and a poem, I promise,” Orem said solemnly.

Flea answered nothing. Just silently touched Orem's hand for a moment. And when his touch went, there were three coins in Orem's hand.

“No,” Orem said.

“They aren't mine. You might as well have them.”

“I can't take your coppers.”

“Because I cut purse for them? I'll lie and say I found them if you like.”

“You owe me nothing.”

“You're going to put me in your poem. So let me help you get it started.” And with that Flea ran off into the crowds of Piss Road.

Orem watched him out of sight, and still watched when Flea was utterly lost to him. He was in debt to a thief inside Inwit and to a liar of a carpenter outside. They were the closest thing to honorable men that he had found.

The line at the gate was as great as the line had been coming in, but that was because it was morning; this time the queue moved quickly on. Name, give over the pass, show the livid scar on the cheek, then through the door in the gate. For a moment he almost turned back, almost ran to the servants' alley and took a place with an old man, forgetting his childish dreaming. But then the line moved and they pushed him through, and he was glad.

There was Braisy, the weasely man, leaning against a wall watching the discouraged paupers leaving the gate's mouth. Orem walked boldly to the man.

“Five coppers,” Orem said.

“A cheerful greeting. Five was all you had three days ago. What do you have now?”

“Five.”

Braisy looked at him, eyebrow raised. “Resourceful little chewer, aren't you.”

“Five. I want to go in the other way. If there's work there.”

“I promise nothing. Hell, I don't even promise all the way in. I know the first portals, and the names of them as has names. More than you know, that's all. And it's five coppers to there.”

“Then let's go.”

“Eager little bastard, aren't you.” Braisy licked his lips. “I tell you, maybe you're better to wait out here till your cheek's healed.”

“What, trying to raise the price on me?”

Braisy studied him a moment, then smiled broadly. If he had had more teeth, Orem would have thought his smile menacing. “Well enough, then. Five coppers. Now.”

“One now, one at the first door, the rest when I'm as far as you can take me, if I think it's far enough.”

“Two now, three at the door.”

“One now, two at the door, two at the end.”

“Done. But show them all.”

Orem stepped back and showed the coins from far enough that they could not be snatched away.

“Learned caution, have you?”

“One now.” And he tossed the coin. Braisy caught it deftly, weighed it on a finger, and slipped it inside his shirt, under his arm. Must have a pouch there, Orem thought. I need a pouch, too. For safety. There are thieves who know how to snatch from a man's wrap.

That was why Orem broke the law to come through West Gate instead of choosing safety as a servant's servant. Tell me, Palicrovol, do you imagine that your son could choose otherwise?

How Orem Scanthips was first recognized as he came into Inwit through the Hole.

A S
HADOW
D
OES
N
OT
K
NOW
H
IM

Braisy led him on a twisting journey through Beggarstown that led at last to a tavern far from the twin towers of the Hole. It was not a bright-painted tavern like the Spade and Grave, but a dingy place, decayed outside and filthy and corrupt within. Braisy flashed a coin, and the innmaster nodded. The coin spun through the air. Before the innmaster caught it, Orem noticed that it was silver. Not copper at all. It was then that he became afraid. If Braisy's first bribe was so much greater than the whole fee Orem was paying him, it surely meant that someone else was paying Braisy for Orem's passage.

“I need to piss,” Orem said.

“Not now,” Braisy answered. He would not get out so easily. With a tight and painful grip on his arm Braisy hurried him up the stairs and into an open door.

Only a faint light came in through the cracks of a boarded up window. Someone else was in the room. It was too dark to see more than a looming shadow against the crack of light from the window. Heavy breathing from the shadow, and the stench of a foul mouth.

“Name.” It was a whisper, and still Orem could not guess man or woman, old or young, kind or cruel.

“Orem.”

“Name.”

“They call me Scanthips.”

“Name.”

“Of Banningside. Orem Scanthips of Banningside.”

More breathing. The shadow still did not believe him.

“Name of God it's true,” said Orem.

A sigh like the softest whine of a keener. “I can tell neither truth nor lie.”

“Stick him, then?” asked Braisy.

Orem braced himself to run—he'd not die of a blade in a place like this. But Braisy was strong, stronger than such a small man looked to be. And then the shadow's dry hand, crisp and light as paper, stroked his bare arm. “Safe, safe,” came the whisper. “Safe, safe.” And then a tiny prick on his arm, something edged like a razor or a sharp rock scraping off the blood that surely formed, and the shadow moved away.

“Sweet sweet Sister sister sister,” came the hissing from a corner of the room. “Nothing, nothing.”

“What then?” asked Braisy. His voice sounded like shouting, the room was so still.

“Pass or stay, stay or pass, all one, what can I tell?”

Hesitation.

“I need to piss.”

Braisy's hand squeezed tighter on his arm. “Not now, not now, I'm thinking. What are you, boy?”

I'm scared of dying, that's what I am. You've taken my blood, name of God! Let me go. “Orem ap Avonap,” he said. “Try that name.”

The shadow returned quickly. “The son of Avonap? But that's a lie, a lie, a lie, there's no goldenwheat seed inside of you.”

“Swear to God.”

“There's word,” said the shadow, “of a learned doctor.”

“Would this boy be useful to him?”

“Who can say? Take the low way, low to Segrivaun, and ask for the glass of public death.”

“Shit,” muttered Braisy.

“Or nothing.”

“And I say shit. But yes. Yes, the low way, damn you.”

“And damn you,” came the whisper.

Braisy dragged him now to a far corner of the room, where a deeper black waited in the black of the wall. Braisy stopped there and shoved him in. For a sickening moment he thought he was falling into a pit. Then his foot hit a step. Bad angle. He lurched, he stumbled down three more steps, and when he caught himself his foot was on fire with pain and he was frightened.

“Careful, boy,” said Braisy.

“I can't see.”

A door closed softly above them. Only then did Braisy try to strike a light. Click; spark. Click; spark. Click; light. A little flame in a wad of dry wool. With his bare hands Braisy gently and slowly moved the burning wool to a small lamp. It took. The stairway went down steeply, and didn't bend. The treads were only inches, the risers a foot at least, and it led far deeper into the darkness than ever the house could be. The low way.

And if I
do
escape, what then? Must remember my way back. Up the stairs, out this door however it opens, past the whispering shadow, left in the hall, down the stairs, and out. He made it a thread in his mind, a thread of words that became numbers and numbers that became words. Little mnemonics formed. Stone Road Bone Road. The stairs ended in a dirt tunnel that could not go straight for fifteen feet, with turns here and holes overhead and holes down and streams of filthy water crossing the path.

The dirt walls turned to brick, with gaps every few inches, narrow spaces a quarter of a brick wide. Out of some of them came a thin trickle of fluid. Was it raining above ground? Why did they build this place? Fly dog, sky dog, ice water, under water. The thread of the remembered path grew longer, and Orem wondered if he could hold it all in his mind. And all along the walls, the little slits.

The corridor tipped left and down, and the floor was slick hard mud with a thin skiff of water running over it. Orem's foot skidded. He braced himself against the wall. His longest finger slipped into a gap in the bricks. The water flowed down his arm.

“Name of God,” Braisy said. “Get your hand out.”

Orem retrieved his finger from the slit.

“Look at your arm.”

It was wet. Braisy held the lamp over it, studied where the water had flowed. “Should be black. Should be black, boy. It's where they put the ashes of the dead. They fill up the slits with the ashes of the dead, and if you get the water on you, then you—but you don't turn black, do you? What are you, boy?”

They came to a stairway down. The water cascaded over the steps. They descended, a step at a time. Water began dripping from the arched bricks overhead. Now and then the lamp hissed when a drop struck it. Braisy seemed to wince with each drip that hit him.

“Quiet here,” Braisy said softly. “The guards have tunnels through here, to listen for people like us, trying for the Hole. And if you think to call for help, remember this—everyone who's taken in the paths of the Hole always says they were forced, always claims they were lost in the Tombs. The guard cuts them up anyway, in little pieces, boy. Cuts them up in little pieces. Think of it before you shout for help.”

The stairs stopped, and now it was rock overhead, not masonry. Here and there were posts to shore up the roof of the tunnel. The water ran sluggishly; where would it drain to, after all, at the bottom of the world?

“What are you going to do with me?” Orem whispered.

“Shut up,” Braisy answered.

More twists and turns, and Orem felt the floor of the tunnel begin to incline. They were climbing now, and the water grew shallower and began to run against their path, downward, and finally they were on an upward climbing corkscrew through the rock. When the path had crossed itself three times, the stone walls and steps made way for wood.

“Slowly,” whispered Braisy. “No squeaks, no creaks.”

A step at a time, placing their feet at the edges of the stairs, they crept upward. Suddenly he cracked his head against a ceiling. There was a roof over them, smooth planks from side to side of the wooden stair, and the stair ran right up into it and stopped.

“That's right, knock,” Braisy whispered. “Why not call out a greeting? We'll not pass you for bright, will we?” Braisy clambered awkwardly up beside him and reached with his finger until he found a hole in one of the planks. He waggled his finger around, then held the lamp up against the hole. The flame flattened, then leapt up. For more than a minute he held the lamp there, and then the board flew upward, and the one beside it, and the one beside that, until there was a way to climb out. The boards were subtly hinged and silent.

“Trying to burn us out?” asked an immense fat woman. Her voice was soft but still had an edge to it. “Want to start a flame? Should we roast a rat over the hole? Braisy, you're a rutting hog, that's what you are, come up, come in.”

S
EGRIVAUN

The woman gave them each a hand and pulled them into a room that was lit, to Orem's surprise, by daylight. Wasn't it night? Hadn't he been hours in the dark? Or could it be the next morning already? No, he wasn't
that
tired. There was no open window; just a few cracks in the wooden wall, with a roll of heavy black cloth tied above it, ready to be let down at night to hold candlelight inside. Orem wondered if this woman lived all her life here. Perhaps. It paid: Braisy handed her two silvers.

“Ah,” said the fat woman. Her breasts hung well below her waist, as if she were smuggling grain sacks under her blouse. Her belly wagged to and fro when she walked. Her face, too, was draped with flesh; even her brow hung loosely over her eyes, and she actually lifted her forehead with her hand so she could look up and see Orem's face.

“What is he? Why this way? Surely not for the King, this one!”

“A shadow said to take him to you, Segrivaun, and you'd lead us to the glass of public death.”

Segrivaun looked away, let her brows fall down over her eyes again. “For
him
?”

“Said he was wanting.”

“Oh, yes, wanting. They brought what he wanted here just an hour ago, cloven hoof and two men binding. Only four horns, but enough, enough, a little one but enough. I want nothing of him. Go on, through here.”

She led the way into a cavernous passageway. Forced to bend in the low tunnel, following right behind the woman, Orem couldn't hide from the stench of her; she was foul. But the way was not long. They came to a room with a round hole in the ceiling and two heavy ropes coming down. One rope was taut and tied to a stout iron ring bolted to the floor; the other was also taut but hung free through a hole near the ring, going down deeper into the house.

The fat woman positioned them opposite her and bade them stand away from the ropes, while she fairly enveloped the fastened one in her belly and breasts, holding to the free rope with both hands. She grunted and pulled down on the free rope. The floor rose under them.

Not the whole floor, but a circle of it, and it wobbled madly. They rose past one floor, past another, and finally stopped at the third. Segrivaun lifted them a few inches clear of the floor, then began rocking back and forth. It was a terrifying motion, and Orem couldn't balance fast enough to keep from falling. But when he fell, the platform fell also, and enough to the side of the hole that it stayed as Segrivaun stepped to the caught edge and held it there with her weight.

Braisy quickly took the lamp a few steps away, to where some heavy boards lay on the floor. He took one up, spanned the hole in the floor with it, and shoved it under the edge of the circle of wood. Segrivaun stepped off, and now apparently the need for whispering was through.

“Get up,” Braisy said impatiently.

Orem stood, stepping back quickly from the circle and the hole. Fire searing, lecher leering, number finger, Stone Road, Bone Road. The thread was complete. Orem knew that now was his chance, if he swung into the hole and dropped to the floor below, then climbed down the free rope to the bottom, then retraced all his steps—

Segrivaun's huge hand closed on his arm. Orem tried to pull away.

“There's some tried it,” Segrivaun said. “They're all dead, though. All got lost in the catacombs.”

I won't.

“But Braisy's paid three silvers already, he doesn't want a dead one, does he, doesn't want a lost one. Come on.”

Segrivaun opened a door, and they stepped into a tiny chamber. Braisy closed the door after them and set the lamp on a high shelf. He took a deep breath. “Strip,” he said.

And meant it, for he began taking off all his clothes himself. Orem unbelted his shirt and pulled it over his head, uneasy at not knowing what was going to happen. Segrivaun, too, was undressing; modestly she turned her back to them and pulled acres of cloth over her head. Her buttocks, Orem saw, were as loose as her breasts, and nearly reached the floor.

“Take off your wrap, too,” Braisy said. “And sandals.”

Orem untied the sandals from his calves, let them drop to the ground. Braisy kicked them into a corner. Then, when Orem was too slow with his winder wrap; he yanked on it, pulled it free. The last of Orem's money dropped to the floor, rolled. Braisy had all three coins before they were still. “The last of what you owe me.”

“Never miss a minim, do you?” the fat woman chuckled. She crossed her arms across her chest in a mockery of modesty; the huge black nipples of her dugs hung far below, where her hands could not possibly reach them. “They're ready in there, ready for sure.”

Orem reached down and picked up his clothes, bundled them under his arm. Braisy reached out and knocked them down, then opened the door.

It was bright inside. A round room, with stone walls and no windows. A stairway came up one wall, curving. Candles hung all along the walls, and there was a small fire in a clay pot, which stank with some heavy, sweet smell that burned Orem's nose. The stones of the wall were so huge that Orem knew immediately that this was one of the towers of the Hole. One of the towers, and surely the towers were held by the guards; surely he was betrayed.

Then he saw the four-horned hart in the middle of the floor and he had no thought for walls and soldiers.

T
HE
H
ART IN THE
T
OWER

The hart was alive, its eyes staring in terror. It lay on its back, a helpless and unnatural pose, its four legs tied and stretched off in the four directions, pegged to the floor. At the joint of the hind leg and the belly a cut had been made, and the hart's blood was pumping out in sluggish flows into a low copper pan held by an old man. An old man who was naked but for a deerskin over his shoulders: a doeskin, for the head was hornless where it rested on his grey and tousled hair.