This Crooked Way (20 page)

I looked at Morlock for an explanation, then decided it would be too much trouble to drag it out of him and turned to Thend.

“You remember those gold pieces Morlock gave the bullyboy in the whorehouse?” Thend asked. “They were ensorcelled. Those gold bits tell us where each one of those gold pieces are right now.”

Well, I'd worked in a cathouse. I thought I could follow the reasoning. The Sandboys probably had their little sand-paws into every business on that street. The bullyboy had probably passed along what he knew, along with part of his loot. “So who's who?” I asked.

“If I had to guess,” Roble said, “I'd guess the coin heading south is in the pocket of your friend from the cathouse. The one still near the cathouse is in the strongbox of the house's pimp or the Sandboys.” He crouched down and tapped the gold fleck at the citadel. “This is the interesting one.”

“I see,” I said. “Someone in the Guards is slurping money from the Sandboys.”

“The commander is my guess,” Morlock said. “That immunity was the perfect bait to bring me into the city where the Sandboys are strongest. They're connected, somehow.”

“But just because the commander's doing business with the water-gangs doesn't mean he's a traitor,” Naeli objected. “The Sandboys wouldn't want a foreign conqueror in the city.”

“Hard to say,” Morlock replied. “They might be hoping for a better deal with the new rulers. Or maybe the commander is the agent of a foreign power, corrupting the local gangs. We'll go and find out.”

“How?” I wondered.

Morlock shrugged, and I knew that was as much as he was going to say about it. He rolled up the map and stuck it under his arm. He and Roble spoke apart with Naeli for a few moments and then they were gone.

Then it was time to go back to bed, past time…but no one did. Bann went off to stand watch, and Naeli paced around in the entryway on the first floor, and Stador and Thend were playing a knife-throwing game in the map room. I was sitting on my bedroll, rocking back and forth, wondering why my gut hurt so much. I was wondering about that, and also wondering why Charis was standing just outside my doorway (as I could tell from his shadow on the floor).

“If you're waiting for me to put the light out,” I called to him finally, “I'm not going to.”

He appeared in the doorway then. “I'm sorry if I alarmed you,” he said. “I'm in a bit of a quandary.”

“And you think I can help?”

“I hope not. That is—you've done enough. Too much, I'd say. I owe you a very great debt and I don't see how I can repay it.”

“It's on the house.”

“Nothing is ‘on the house,’ if I understand what you mean. Everyone keeps track of these things, and debts have to be paid. Those are the principles by which I have lived my life.”

“I can see you've made a big thing of it.” This was a little icy, I admit, but my belly hurt and I didn't like the game he was playing (to the extent that I understood it).

His face twisted. “I was doing well enough—until I did business with Morlock.”

“You shouldn't have tried to cheat him.”

Charis sighed. “My troubles only really began when I stopped trying to ‘cheat' him, as you put it.”

“How would you put it?”

“I would say that no bargain justifies putting a man in danger of his life. No one can be fairly asked to trade away his life, because there is nothing of equal value he can receive for it. A bargain that puts my existence at stake is void.” His voice was getting almost hysterical and he broke off, looking a little embarrassed.

“Then you shouldn't have struck the bargain in the first place.”

Charis sighed. “That's true, of course. But I wanted what Morlock had to offer me. Now I've lost that, and nearly everything else as well, and I've contracted a new debt to you. You see my problem.”

“Well, I didn't do it for you, if that helps any.”

“It does, a little,” he said, stepping into the room. “But—”

“That's close enough,” I said. I wanted to have time to call out if he tried anything.

He stopped short, apparently not resenting my suspicion. “But I can't be sure,” he said, “that you wouldn't have saved my life, even if others you cared about hadn't been in danger. I've learned a little bit about you, I think. And then there is the undoubted fact that you did save my life, at terrible risk to your own.”

“I was saving my own life, too. I was in there in that room with the rest of you.”

“Oh, no!” Charis said, shaking his head wisely. “Tell that to the others, if you like; I think it's safer for you that way, blunting the sharp edge of their gratitude. Gratitude can be a terrible burden to live with, day after day, and you're wise to give them the illusion that their debt is less than it really is. But
I saw you.
You looked at the window and knew you could escape with your life. Then you did the other thing.”

For the first time I was sort of impressed by Charis. He did understand people a little bit. I thought about how I felt about Naeli and all that she'd done for me, and I knew he was right about gratitude, too, although I hoped there was more to it than Charis understood.

What had Morlock said?
It's not a business relationship.
Was there a way to live your life like that, not totalling up a balance sheet of benefits and obligations but instead…What? Morlock hadn't said what it was; he'd just said what it wasn't. Maybe Charis was right after all.

My head hurt, and not only my head. My stomach hurt, deep inside. I bent over myself gasping. My legs and the bedroll were all wet with blood. Glancing up I saw Charis was closer to me now.

“Get away from me!” I shrieked. I didn't want him cancelling his debts by getting rid of me.

Charis leaped back to the door. Stador and Thend rushed in, with Naeli and Bann only a few steps behind them.

My brothers pinned Charis to the wall while Naeli came over to me.

“I did nothing to her, Madam Naeli,” Charis was babbling. “We were talking and she expressed pain. I'm afraid she is hurt from—”

“Don't call me ‘madam,’” Naeli snapped. “I'm not some Coranian bimbo-herder.” She bent over me and investigated briefly. “It's nothing to worry about, baby,” she told me after a moment. “Just Aunt Ruby paying a visit.”

“What?” asked Bann stupidly.

“Fasra will be flying the red flag for a few days, that's all.”

“Huh?” said Thend.

“It's her time.”

“Time for what?” Stador asked.

“Time for her period, you clowns. Will you get the hell out of here so I can take care of her?”

The boys herded Charis out of the room, and I started to sob.

“Look,” Naeli said after we dealt with some of the practical issues, “it's nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“I'm not embarrassed,” I said, lying a little. I hadn't liked that horrified look all the males had given me before dragging their nonbleeding carcasses out of the room. “But it
hurts.
Is it always like this?”

“Um. Yes and no.”

“Death and Justice, I hate it when people say that!”

“Calm down, honey. It won't usually be this bad, and your first one is hardly ever this bad. It's just that…”

“Mama, are you going to tell me about this or what?”

I hardly ever called Naeli “Mama,” and it seemed to steady her a little.

“All right,” she said. “Back in the Bargainer village, girls were always sealed to the service of the God in the Ground when they reached their menarche.”

“Sure. But—Oh. You did something.”

“Yes. There's a spell you can use to delay a girl's menarche.”

“I didn't know you knew any magic.”

“I don't know much. But every woman in that village knew this one. We all wanted our daughters free as long as possible. I always hoped I'd find a way to get you out before you were sealed to the Boneless One—and that's how it worked out, thanks to your uncle Roble.”

“And Morlock.”

“Yes. Him.” I got the feeling Naeli wasn't so pleased with Morlock tonight. “Anyway, after we were freed, I stopped renewing the spell. I didn't realize that it would make your first period so severe, but that must be what's happening. I'm sorry, baby: I'm not much of a witch.”

“Oh, you're all right, I guess.” This was the point to say something mushy, and I was grateful to her. In a way, that was the problem. Did my pain at the moment pay for what she had done? Or had she paid some price I knew nothing of? Probably the latter. So my debt to her was increased by who-knows how much. That depressed me even further.

At some point, in spite of the depression and the pain, I slept. But not nearly long enough.

“Fasra, get up,” Stador was saying.

I replied in the negative. That was the gist of it, anyway.

“This isn't a joke. The house is surrounded.”

You know all those times you wonder whether you want to go on living? If something actually threatens you during one of those moments, you make your mind up in a hurry.

I sat up, told him to get out so I could change my rags, and got up before he was out of the door.

All the others were down on the first floor. I didn't get there much after Stador, with my pack on my back.

“Who's outside?” I asked Naeli.

“Imperial troops,” she said. “They seem to be waiting for something, but they're all around the house.”

“They're waiting for reinforcements,” Charis guessed. “They're expecting Morlock to be in here. And they have glass lizards. Glass lizards from Kaen. They're the best tracking animals in the world. We can never get away.”

“So where do we go?” I asked.

“Exactly where they'll expect,” Naeli said. “Down through the sewers.”

“Why go where they expect us to go?”

“What's the alternative?” Naeli replied, and I had to admit she had a point.

We went down into the basement. I'd never been down there before; it was sort of creepy. But not so creepy as the big black hole Naeli uncovered, gesturing that we should go down in.

Thend obviously felt the same way as I did. “How far can we get in the sewer?” he grumbled. “If it's Charis they're after, I say we give him to them.”

Charis jumped like a rabbit at that, and he didn't look very reassured when Naeli said, “We'll hold that in reserve. If we can get away clean, that's our first choice.”

“Clean!” said Bann and gulped.

I growled and shouldered past all three of my big brothers. There were grips for hands and feet leading down into the dark pit. I jumped onto them and began climbing downward.

“Well?” said Naeli coldly, and the guys started to follow me, grumbling a little.

It wasn't really so bad. I mean, don't kid yourself, it wasn't like taking a walk in the hills after a spring rain. But I'd kind of expected it to niff like an outhouse that's been used by a hundred thousand people, and it wasn't anything like that.

When I got down to the bottom of the climbing grips, I was standing in a tunnel on a pretty wide ledge—wider than any sidewalk I remember in Four Castles. In the middle of the tunnel ran a stream of dark water several times as wide as the ledge, and on the far side of the tunnel there was another ledge. I could see all this because of a luminous green mold that grew in patches on the walls.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever in both directions. Other tunnels joined up with it at intervals, and the whole thing seemed to tilt slightly—so that everything could roll downhill, I realized, just like the proverb said.

“It's like a whole city under the city!” said Stador, when we were all down on the ledge.

“Yes,” Charis said, with a certain amount of hometown pride, I thought. “The Old Ontilians built it, in ancient days. When Ambrosia rebuilt the city in the days of Uthar the Great, she could do nothing to better the sewers.”

“Who's Ambrosia?” I asked.

Charis looked at me, his face slack with amazement—as if I'd asked, “What is the sun?” or “What is water?”

“Morlock's sister,” Naeli answered. “Among other things, I gather.”

“Other things,” said Charis, as if he'd been punched, and shook his head.

“Go north,” Naeli directed us. “Upstream. That's where Roble and Morlock will be looking for us, if we're not in the house. If need be, we go all the way to the Kirach Kund.”

“Do the sewers reach all that way?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” Naeli replied, and winked at me just before I exploded.

I turned around and started walking upstream.

We went as fast as we could; all too soon the clash of metal came echoing up the tunnel behind us. The Imperials were in the sewers.

“Quick and quiet,” whispered Naeli, who led us up a tunnel leading northwest.

“They'll have glass lizards,” Charis said. “They scent…they'll scent us.”

He looked at me as he was speaking, and then away. All of a sudden I realized he meant,
They'll scent Fasra.

I was furious. He didn't smell so delightfully fresh himself. And I'd saved his stupid life! Catch me making
that
mistake again.

I fell a little further behind, walking beside Thend at the back of the group. I was steamed at first, too mad to talk even if talking hadn't been too dangerous. But pretty soon I cooled off and, as I did, I realized something.

Charis, damn him, was right. If the imperial troops had hunting beasts, and if they had caught a scent in the house that they were trailing in the sewer, it was probably mine. Plus, I was shorter than everyone else. If it had been a matter of a short sprint, I probably could have left them all behind, but on a long walk I was inevitably going to slow the group down, even if I weren't feeling sick, which I was: the cramping had started again, as bad as ever.

I thought and thought and all my thinking came to one conclusion. I probably couldn't get away. But if I led the hunters astray, the others probably could.

It wasn't my first choice, believe me. I was going to bull my way to the front of the pack and argue with Naeli that now was the time to trade Charis for our lives and freedom. The trouble was, I soon realized what Naeli probably had realized back at the house: it wouldn't work.

Why were they after Charis, anyway? Because he knew something, or they thought he did. Probably the Khroic agent wanted him captured, because he was passing information on about the Khroi. Or maybe the Imperials wanted him because they thought he knew something about the Khroic agent. Either way, the trouble is, we had been traveling with Charis and protecting him—and knowledge is contagious. If the Imperials caught us they would take us all prisoner, and the Strange Gods only knew if we'd ever see the light of day again.