‘This, of course! Foolish Iskaral – keep it simple! Simpler, even! Listen, dear middling bard, when all this is done, eke out the eel – no, wait – er, seek out the eel. Seal? Damn, I had the message memorized and everything! Peek at – eat an eel – seek and peek the bleak earl – perk the veal, deal the prick – oh, Hood’s breath! What was it again? And I had the gall to call him brilliant! He should’ve sent Sordiko Qualm, yes, so I could’ve followed the glorious rocking ship of her sweet hips—’ and he wagged his head side to side, side to side, eyes glazing, ‘slib-slab, slib-slab, oh!’
‘Thank you,’ Fisher said as the man began muttering under his breath and pausing every now and then to lick his lips, ‘for, er, the message. I assure you, I understand.’
‘Of course you do – you’re a man, aren’t you? Gods, that a simple casual stride could so reduce one to gibbering worship – why, who needs gods and goddesses when we have arses like that?’
‘Indeed, who? Now, since you have successfully delivered your message from your master, may I proceed on my way?’
‘What? Naturally. Go away. You’re a damned distraction, is what you are.’
A tilt of the head, and the bard was indeed on his way once more.
The mob outside the newly consecrated Temple of the Fallen One, or the Crippled God, or indeed the name by which most knew it – the Temple of Chains – was thick and strangely rank. More than natural sweat as might be squeezed out by the midmorning sun, this was the human rendering of desperation, made even sicklier with obsequious anticipation.
Yet the door to the narrow-fronted temple remained shut, evidently barred from within. Offerings were heaped up against it – copper and tin coins as well as links of chain and the odd clasp and cheap jewellery.
Bedek on his cart and Myrla standing before him, gripping the handles, found themselves in the midst of trembling alcoholics, the pock-scarred, the lame and the deformed. Milky eyes stared, as if cataracts were punishment for having seen too much – all other eyes were filled with beseeching need, the hunger for blessing, for even the passing brush of a twisted hand if it belonged to the Prophet. Misshapen faces lifted up, held fixedly upon that door. Within the press the stink became unbearable. The breath of rotting teeth and consumptive dissolution. From his low perch, Bedek could see nothing but shoulders and the backs of heads. Whimpering, he plucked at his wife’s tunic.
‘Myrla. Myrla!’
The look she turned on him was both savage and . . . small, and with a shock Bedek suddenly saw her – and himself – as meaningless, insignificant, worthless. They were, he realized, no better than anyone else here. Each of them, seeking to be singled out, to be guided out, to be raised up from all the others. Each dreaming of coming into glorious focus in the eyes of a god – eyes brimming with pity and knowledge, eyes that understood injustice and the unfairness of existence. A god, yes, to make them right. To make us all – each and every one of us – right. Whole.
But Bedek had held no such notions. They were not why he was here. He and Myrla were different. From all of these people. They, you see, had lost a child.
The door would remain locked, they learned, until at least midday. Sometimes even later. And even then, the Prophet might not emerge. If he was communing with his own pain, they were told, he might not be seen for days.
Yes, but did he bless people? Did he help people?
Oh, yes. Why, I saw a man in terrible pain, and the Prophet took it all away.
He healed the man?
No, he smothered him. Delivered his spirit – now at peace – into the hands of the Fallen One. If you are in pain, this is where you can end your life – only here, do you understand, can you be sure your soul will find a home. There, in the loving heart of the Fallen One. Don’t you want to find your legs again? Other side of life, that’s where you’ll find them.
And so Bedek came to understand that, perhaps, this Crippled God could not help them. Not with finding Harllo. And all at once he wanted to go home.
But Myrla would have none of that. The yearning was unabated in her eyes, but it had been transformed, and what she sought now had nothing to do with Harllo. Bedek did not know what that new thing might be, but he was frightened down to the core of his soul.
Snell struggled to form a sling to take the runts, both of whom were lying senseless on the floor. He had checked to see they were both breathing, since he’d heard that making them black out could sometimes kill them – if he’d held them tight for too long – though he’d been careful. He was always careful when doing that, though if one of them did die, why, he would say it went to sleep and just never woke up and that happened, didn’t it, with the little ones? And then he’d cry because that was expected.
Poor thing, but it’d always been weak, hadn’t it? So many children were weak. Only the strong ones, the smart ones, survived. It’s what the world was like, after all, and the world can’t be changed, not one bit.
There was a man in the Daru High Market who always dressed well and had plenty of coin, and it was well known he’d take little ones. Ten, twenty silver councils, boy or girl, it didn’t matter which. He knew people, rich people – he was just the middleman, but you dealt with him if you didn’t want no one to find out anything, and if there were any small bodies left over, well, they never ever showed up to start people asking questions.
It would be a bit of a walk, especially with both Mew and Hinty, and that’s why he needed to work out a sling of some sort, like the ones the Rhivi mothers used. Only, how did they do that?
The door opened behind him and Snell whirled in sudden terror.
The man standing on the threshold was familiar – he’d been with Stonny Menackis the last time she’d visited – and Snell could see at once that dear Snell was in trouble. Ice cold fear, a mouth impossibly dry, a pounding heart.
‘They’re just sleeping!’
The man stared. ‘What have you done to them, Snell?’
‘Nothing! Go away. Da and Ma aren’t here. They went to the Chains Temple. Come back later.’
Instead, the man stepped inside. One gloved hand casually flung Snell back, away from the motionless girls on the floor. The blow rocked Snell, and as if a stopper had been jarred loose fear poured through him. As the man knelt and drew off a glove to set a palm against Mew’s forehead, Snell scrabbled to the back wall.
‘I’m gonna call the guards – I’m gonna scream—’
‘Shut your damned face or I’ll do it for you.’ A quick, heavy look. ‘I’ve not yet started with you, Snell. Everything comes back to you. On the day Harllo went missing, on that day, Snell . . .’ He lifted his hand and straightened. ‘Are they drugged? Tell me how you did this.’
He meant to keep lying, but all at once he thought that maybe if he told the truth about this, the man might believe the lies he used afterwards, on the other stuff. ‘I just squeeze ‘em, when they cry too much, that’s all. It don’t hurt them none, honest.’
The man had glanced at the stretch of burlap lying beside Mew. Maybe he was putting things together, but nothing could be proved, could it? It would be all right. It would be—
Two quick strides and those hands – one gloved and the other bare and scarred – snagged the front of Snell’s tunic. He was lifted into the air until his eyes were level with the man’s. And Snell saw in those deadly eyes something dark, a lifeless whisper that could flatten out at any moment, and all thoughts of lying whimpered away.
‘On that day,’ the man said, ‘you came back with a load of sun-dried dung. Something you’d never done before, and have never done since. No, your mother said it was Harllo who did such things. Harllo, who at five fucking years old did more to help this family than you ever have. Who collected that dung, Snell?’
Snell had widened his eyes as wide as they could go. He made his chin tremble. ‘Harllo,’ he whispered, ‘but I never hurt him – I swear it!’ Oh, he hadn’t wanted to lie. It just came out.
‘Past Worrytown or T
wo-Ox Gate?’
‘The gate. Two-Ox.’
‘Did you go with him or did you follow him? What happened out there, Snell?’
And Snell’s eyes betrayed him then, a flicker too instinctive to stop in time – down to where Mew and Hinty were lying.
The man’s eyes flattened just as Snell had feared they might.
‘I never killed him! He was breathing when I left him! If you kill me they’ll find out – they’ll arrest you – you’ll go to the gallows – you can’t kill me – don’t!’
‘You knocked him out and left him there, after stealing the dung he’d collected. The hills beyond Two-Ox Gate.’
‘And I went back, a couple of days – the day after – and he was gone! He’s just run off, that’s all—’
‘A five-year-old boy doing everything he could to help his family just ran off, did he? Or did you drive him off, Snell?’
‘I never did – he was just gone – and that’s not my fault, is it? Someone maybe found him, maybe even adopted him.’
‘You are going to tell your parents everything, Snell,’ the man said. ‘I will be back tonight, probably late, but I will be back. Don’t even think of running—’
‘He won’t,’ said a voice from the door.
The man turned. ‘Bellam – what—’
‘Master Murillio, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the fucker. And when his parents show up, well, he’ll spill it all out. Go on, Master, you don’t need to worry about anything happening back here.’
The man – Murillio – was silent for a time, seeming to study the rangy boy who stood, arms folded, leaning against the doorway’s frame.
And then he set Snell down and stepped back. ‘I won’t forget this, Bellam.’
‘It’ll be fine, Master. I won’t beat the bones out of him, much as I’d like to, and much as he obviously deserves it. No, he’s going to sit and play with his little sisters – soon as they come round—’
‘A splash of water should do it.’
‘After a splash, then. And not only is Snell going to play with them, but he’s going to make a point of losing every game, every argument. If they want him to stand on his head while picking his arsehole, why, that’s what Snell will do. Right, Snell?’
Snell had met older boys just like this one. They had calm eyes but that was just to fix you good when you weren’t expecting nothing. He was more frightened of this Bellam than he’d been of Murillio. ‘You hurt me and I’ll get my friends after you,’ he hissed. ‘My street friends—’
‘And when they hear the name Bellam Nom they’ll cut you loose faster than you can blink.’
Murillio had found a clay bowl into which he now poured some water.
‘Master,’ said Bellam, ‘I can do that. You got what you needed from him – at least a trail, a place to start.’
‘Very well. Until tonight then, Bellam, and thank you.’
After he’d left, Bellam shut the door and advanced on Snell, who once more cringed against the back wall.
‘You said—’
‘We do that, don’t we, when it comes to grown-ups.’
‘Don’t touch me!’
‘No grown-ups anywhere close, Snell – what do you like to do when they’re not around? Oh, yes, that’s right. You like to torment everyone smaller than you. That sounds a fun game. I think I’ll play, and look, you’re smaller than me. Now, what torment shall we do first?’
In leaving them for the time being, all grim concern regarding anything unduly cruel can be thankfully dispensed with. Bellam Nom, being cleverer than most, knew that true terror belonged not to what did occur, but to what might occur. He was content to encourage Snell’s own imagination into the myriad possibilities, which was a delicate and precise form of torture. Especially useful in that it left no bruises.
Bullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures. The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domain where propriety and vengeance become confused, almost indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the bully’s soul remains unchanged.
It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved down the throat.
If only it could.
*
Moths were flattened against the walls of the narrow passageway, waiting for something, probably night. As it was a little used route to and from the Vidikas estate, frequented twice a day at specific times by deliveries to the kitchen, Challice had taken to using it with all the furtive grace of the insouciant adulteress that she had become. The last thing she expected was to almost run into her husband there in the shadows midway through.
Even more disconcerting, it was clear that he had been awaiting her. One hand holding his duelling gloves as if about to slap them across her cheek, yet there was an odd smile on his face. ‘Darling,’ he said.
She halted before him, momentarily struck dumb. It was one thing to play out the game at breakfast, a table between them cluttered with all the false icons of a perfect and perfectly normal marriage. Their language then was such a smooth navigation round all those deadly shoals that it seemed the present was but a template of the future, of years and years of this; not a single wound stung to life, no tragic floundering on the jagged shallows, sailors drowning in the foam.
He stood before her now, tall with a thousand sharp edges, entirely blocking her path, his eyes glittering like wrecker fires on a promontory. ‘So pleased I found you,’ he said. ‘I must head out to the mining camp – no doubt you can hear the carriage being readied behind you.’
Casual words, yet she was startled, like a bird; flash of fluttering, panicked wings in the gloom as she half turned to register the snort of horses and the rustle of traces from the forecourt behind her. ‘Oh,’ she managed, then faced him once more. Her heart’s rapid beat began slowing down.
‘Even here,’ Gorlas said, ‘there is a sweet flush to your cheeks, dear. Most becoming.’
She could almost feel the brush of fingertips to grant benediction to the compliment. A moth, startled awake by the clash of currents in the dusty air, wings dry as talc as it fluttered against her face. She flinched back. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
This was just another game, of course. She realized that now. He did not want things to get messy, not here, not any time soon. She told herself this with certainty, and hoped it was true. But then, why not an explosive shattering? Freeing him, freeing her – wouldn’t that be healthier in the end? Unless his idea of freeing himself is to kill me. Such things happen, don’t they?
‘I do not expect to be back for at least three days. Two nights.’
‘I see. Be well on your journey, Gorlas.’
‘Thank you, darling.’ And then, without warning, he stepped close, his free hand grasping her right breast. ‘I don’t like the thought of strangers doing this,’ he said, his voice low, that odd smile still there. ‘I need to picture the face, one I know well. I need a sense of the bastard behind it.’
She stared into his eyes and saw only a stranger, calculating, as clinical and cold as a dresser of the dead – like the one who’d come to do what was needed with the corpse of her mother, once the thin veil of sympathy was tossed aside like a soiled cloth and the man set to work.
‘When I get back,’ he continued, ‘we’ll have a talk. One with details. I want to know all about him, Challice.’
She knew that what she said at this precise moment would echo in her husband’s mind for virtually every spare moment in the course of the next three days and two nights, and by the time he returned her words would have done their work in transforming him – into a broken thing, or into a monster. She could say All right, as if she was being forced, cornered, and whatever immediate satisfaction he felt would soon twist into something dark, unpleasant, and she would find herself across f
rom a vengeful creature in three days’ time. She might say If you like, and he would hear that as defiance and cruel indifference – as if for her his needs were irrelevant, as if she would oblige out of pity and not much else. No, in truth she had few choices in what she might utter at this moment. In an instant, as he awaited her response, she decided on what she would say and when it came out it was calm and assured (but not too much so). ‘Until then, husband.’
He nodded, and she saw the pupils of his eyes dilate. She caught his quickened breathing, and knew her choice had been the right one. Now, the next three days and two nights, Gorlas would be as one on fire. With anticipation, with his imagination unleashed and playing out scenarios, each one a variation on a single theme.
Yes, Gorlas, we are not done with each other yet, after all.
His hand withdrew from her breast and, with a courtly bow, he stepped to one side to permit her to pass.
She did so.
Murillio hired a horse for the day; with tack included, the rental amounted to three silver councils along with a twenty-council deposit. Of that, the animal was worth perhaps five, certainly not much more. Slope-backed, at least ten years old, worn out, beaten down, the misery in the beast’s eyes stung Murillio to sympathy and he was of half a mind to forgo the deposit and leave the animal in the hands of a kindly farmer with plenty of spare pasture.
He rode at a slow, plodding walk through the crowded streets, until he reached Two-Ox Gate. Passing through the archway’s shadow, he collected the horse into a steady trot on the cobbled road, passing laden wagons and carts and the occasional Gadrobi peasant struggling beneath baskets filled with salted fish, flasks of oil, candles and whatever else they needed to make bearable living in a squalid hut along the roadside.
Once beyond the leper colony, he began scanning the lands to either side, seeking the nearest active pasture. A short distance on he spied sheep and goats wandering the slope of a hillside to his right. A lone shepherd hobbled along the ridge, waving a switch to keep the flies off. Murillio pulled his mount off the road and rode towards him.