Neveryóna: Or, the Tale of Signs and Cities

  Pryn walked away along the wall.

  She heard Juni come up behind her, stopped when Juni put her hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t go back there…’

  Pryn glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do. I mean there was nothing you could have done, even if they’d found you—since they didn’t wait. They’ll cut her loose when everyone comes back this evening—’

  Pryn walked again.

  ‘Well, don’t stay there too long, then!’ Juni called. ‘I’m going to get in the wagon…I wish you’d come, too; and tell me all the wonderful things that happened last night at his Lordship’s…’

  Pryn turned the back corner of the hall.

  There were some barrels on the eating hall’s back porch. That’s all. It didn’t feel particularly like morning. She looked across the stone benches stretching to the forest.

  She’d expected a stake driven into the ground somewhere and the old woman dangling, chained to it.

  She saw nothing.

  Out in front she heard another wagon pull up. Someone was shouting for someone else to hurry, hurry up! Someone else was laughing very hard about it—or something else entirely.

  Pryn walked out between the benches.

  Reaching the aisle, she crossed over dandelions and sedge. Weeds tufted gravel and fallen leaves. She walked between the next seats. The tarred staples left rusted halos on the stone. In various chipped indentations, water had gathered. A third of the staples had broken off. Many were only nubs.

  At the bench’s end, Pryn walked around the weedy dirt piled against it.

  Five, or six, or seven benches away, a rope was tied round one of the staples. It went over the stone’s edge and down.

  It was moving.

  Pryn frowned.

  She climbed up to stand on the bench nearest. With a long step and a jump, she got to the next; and the next; and the next—

  The woman lay on her side, face against the rock. The vine was lashed half a dozen times around her bony forearms, from her wrists halfway up to her elbows, which were pressed together. The skin above the rope was red. Her dress had been stripped to her waist. She was breathing very quietly.

  As Pryn stood looking down, Bruka opened her eyes. She didn’t look particularly surprised. But after a few moments, she closed her eyes again and shifted her bound arms. The vine rope slid an inch along the stone.

  The first thing Pryn thought was that it wasn’t as horrible as she’d expected.

  It was only rope, not chain; and only along two of the welts on her back had the skin broken enough to bleed—though as Pryn climbed down, she saw a splatter of red on the weeds. And there was a brown smear on the bench’s side.

  Pryn squatted, looking about. There was no one—though later she told herself it wouldn’t have mattered if there were. She would have done the same. She took the knife from her sash under the fold, grabbed one of the lengths of vine rope tied to the staple, and began to saw at it. Getting through it took about two minutes—it was much better rope than she’d been able to make for her dragon bridle.

  She was halfway through the second when Bruka opened her eyes again and said, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Cutting you free.’

  ‘Did he send you? Is the sun down?’

  Pryn shook her head and kept sawing.

  ‘You’re freeing me…!’ Bruka struggled to sit up.

  Pryn grunted; the rope was jerked from her hand. She pulled it back and kept sawing.

  ‘The indignity…!’ Bruka whispered. ‘They wouldn’t do it out front, where people could see. No. They hid me away here in the back—pretending it wasn’t happening! Why do it, then? But they know, now: people won’t tolerate it—not the free ones! Then why do it, I said. Who’s it to be an example to, I asked. Not an old woman like me, an old slave…there won’t be any more slaves, soon. They won’t put up with it…You’re freeing me? You’re mad!’ The old woman narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re mad, you know. You know what they’ll do to you—a lot worse than this! It’s a crime what you’re doing—’

  Pryn stopped sawing. ‘Do you want me to leave you here?’

  With her fingers on the bench edge, Bruka dragged herself up. ‘No…!’

  Pryn grasped the rope and sawed at it some more.

  ‘But you’re mad—!’

  ‘Me and Queen Olin,’ Pryn said. ‘Since I got you into this mess with that useless astrolabe—it’s gone now, by the way, so don’t worry—this seems the least I can do.’ On least the rope parted. ‘Let me see your arms.’

  Bruka thrust them forward.

  Pryn pulled at the rope, but it was knotted at both ends of the lashing. Bruka’s fingers and hands were puffy.

  ‘Here…’ Pryn moved around beside her, so that she could get the bound arms under one of hers to steady them. ‘Hold still, or I might cut you…’ It was hard sawing; and Pryn still didn’t feel all that well. In the middle of picking and cutting at the knot, her forehead broke out in beaded water, and her sawing arm began to slip against her side. ‘What are you going to do when you get free?’ She cut more.

  ‘Oh, they think I don’t know, because I’m an old woman. But I do! There are ways for a slave to get north to Kolhari and not once step on the main road. There’re the little trails and paths the smugglers use. There’re the little roads. I know…’

  ‘You’re going to Kolhari?’ Pryn glanced back at her. ‘Me too. Perhaps I’ll see you there.’ She went back to her cutting.

  ‘They don’t have slaves in Kolhari,’ Bruka said. ‘Only free men and women.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Pryn said. She pushed away the image of an old woman alone in those crowded streets.

  ‘There’s a Court of Eagles,’ Bruka said. ‘Where everything is decided fairly. With real eagles, too. I talked to a man who went to Kolhari once, and he said he saw no eagles. But I said there must a real eagle there, someplace. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, there is,’ Pryn said. ‘It’s huge. Its wingspan would block the sunlight away from this whole brewery. Its feathers are gold and iron. Its beak and claws are clotted with gems. And it guards the city and keeps its markets and businesses running quite smoothly, thank you. But they keep it hidden. You’ll be in Kolhari quite a while before you ever get a look at its glittering face. They’re vicious birds, you know—eagles. Mountain birds; and I come from the mountains. Dirty, too. Really, they’re just a kind of vulture—’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Bruka said.

  The rope came free. ‘There…’

  Pryn put the knife up on the stone and unwrapped Bruka’s bound arms. The grain of the vine had printed itself on the yellow flesh—and of course there was another place, Pryn saw as she unwrapped more lashing, where the rope was again knotted about her forearm. But that only took a half-minute to untie.

  ‘It happened to my father, too,’ Bruka said. ‘The same way. I wish I’d known him, at least long enough for him to tell me—but it wouldn’t have done any good. They always said I was a headstrong girl.’ The last of the rope came away, and Bruka suddenly grinned. ‘Like you, eh?’

  Pryn waited for the old woman to flex her swollen hands. But she only stretched her arms out; sitting up tall, she looked over the bench tops.

  Pryn looked too.

  There was still no one.

  ‘You’re sure you can get north to Kolhari…?’ Pryn asked.

  The swollen hands on the marked and raddled forearms came back to Bruka’s neck. The old slave grimaced, slipping two fingers of each hand under the iron collar at each side. She pulled.

  The lock separated, and the collar came open on its hinge. Pryn had an impression of incredible strength, a strength that, if it could tear open such a collar, could easily have broken the ropes!

  Bruka looked at her, then frowned at what was certainly an odd expression on Pryn’s face. ‘But I never wear it locked,’ she explained. ‘In the day it’s all right, I guess. But at night it chokes me…someone got a key here, yea
rs ago. Old Rorkar never knew. But I think the lock’s broken by now, anyway. The hinge is tight, so it holds…’ She took the collar from her neck and put it on the bench. Once more she frowned at Pryn. ‘I’m not too old, you know. I’ve always wanted to go. I can. I know how. I’ve always known. Thank you for freeing me.’ Bruka reached forward, touched Pryn’s knee. ‘Thank you, my Lady…’Then she scrambled awkwardly to her wide feet, pulled her dress up over her dark-aureoled breasts, stuck her yellow arms through the ragged holes, turned and hurried toward the trees. Bent nearly double, she was among them; was within them; was gone.

  Pryn stood.

  She wiped her forehead with her fingers and shook them. Drops darkened the stone. She picked up the knife, lifted the blousing, stuck it in her sash, and let green cloth fall.

  She picked up the collar, holding an iron semi-circle in each fist. The metal loop to attach the neck-chain separated the second and third fingers of her right hand. She brought its double tenon into the groove: a click.

  She pulled.

  Another click—it came open again, though the hinge was indeed firm enough to hold it at whatever position, opened or closed.

  Pryn raised it to her neck.

  The iron was a neutral temperature against her skin. Holding it with both fists, though, she couldn’t close it all the way; so she took it off again and stuck it around her sash, closed there, pulling enough cloth through to cover it.

  Pryn walked back among the benches toward the building corner. She felt as though she’d been here an hour—though, really, it was probably no more than ten minutes. When she came around the hall, they were only just starting the wagon. Horses clomped forward. Then, at the wagon’s edge, Juni hollered at the driver to stop, stop, please, stop, just once more, and everybody groaned or laughed as though this had happened two or three times already.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ Juni waved at Pryn.

  Because the wagon was going north on the road, Pryn went over to it. Juni and someone else helped her climb up over the side. (One of the things they’d apparently had to stop for already was for Juni to take off her apron and bring it back into the hall. She wasn’t wearing it now.) ‘All right, all right!’ Juni called to the driver when Pryn was still half over the rail. ‘We can go!’

  The wagon started.

  Everyone cheered.

  As Pryn settled on the straw, Juni leaned close to her. ‘I hope you’re satisfied! I told you not to go back there—oh, don’t look so sullen and suspicious!’ She slapped Pryn’s knee playfully. ‘Try to remember that it’s a holiday. I want to hear all about what it’s like to dine at his Lordship’s. What did you eat? Was it marvelous…? I know it was, because I’ve heard rumors among the slaves—’

  ‘Juni,’ Pryn said, ‘why would they do that to that poor woman? She’s all tied up back there. She’s been whipped. She’s just lying there, like she’s half dead. I mean, just because she read my—well, she didn’t read it. She only recognized it.’

  Juni made a disgusted face as though she were not going to discuss it. Then her hands flopped together in her lap and she sat back. ‘It is sad. But slaves are not supposed to drink. Bruka knows that. And from the earl’s own mug…? It was just spiteful breaking of the rules. Even Rorkar agreed it was the kind of thing that couldn’t just be let pass…And Bruka’s half mad anyway. It’s the kind of thing she’d do!’

  Pryn was frowning again.

  ‘Well, they said you saw it!’ Juni declared. ‘The earl was in the back, talking to you that day. He put his mug down on a bench—you know, the fancy one he carries whenever he comes to visit here? Bruka just picked it up and drained it. He said you were right there.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ Astonishment worked its way through the numbness that had enclosed the morning. ‘But her father had—’

  ‘—drunk out of the same mug?’ Juni closed her eyes and raised her chin. ‘That’s what she was shouting and screaming when they dragged her in the back.’ She looked at Pryn again. ‘Then his little Lordship boomed out—he’s got quite a voice when he’s riled—yes, her father had put his foul lips to that mug, and he too had been strung up and whipped for it. Then Bruka screamed she didn’t know about that part. Nobody had ever told her that part before—which I have to admit I didn’t believe, because slaves, you know, remember everything. But by then, of course, they’d got her tied up in the back. And Tetya had returned with the whip—’

  ‘Juni—’ Bewilderment joined astonishment—‘that can’t be the reason…I heard him tell her to—’ But she did not want to draw more of Juni’s thoughts to her real reasons for outrage. ‘I mean, why didn’t his Lordship say something about it yesterday—two days ago, when it happened?’

  ‘Cyka said it to me.’ Juni looked dour. ‘Rorkar said it to his Lordship. It’s what anyone would have thought. But his Lordship said that when it happened he’d thought to let it pass, because, after all, she was just a crazy old slavewoman who had belonged to his father and who still had a malicious streak. But he had forgotten about the Labor Festival. And in his father’s day, this was the holiday when good slaves were rewarded for their obediences and bad slaves punished for their defiances. Precisely because it was the morning of this particular day, he’d felt obliged to come by and say something. After all, rules are rules. And even Old Rorkar said, yes, that was true.’ She blinked at Pryn. The wagon jounced. The workers on the other side had started a song. ‘She didn’t deny it, you know. Still, after two days, and with a crazy old woman…’ Juni shook her head. ‘You know, it’s just like his Lordship to do something like that. Nobody around here trusts him.’ She gave a small humph. ‘Not know it was the Labor Festival, indeed! It happens every year, and always on the same day. Myself, I don’t believe it any more than I believe Bruka.’ She glanced up. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain again.’

  Of course Pryn had not known it was the Labor Festival either. The why was simple. The area’s most important holiday of the summer and held on the longest day of the year, it was an occasion every local knew about and assumed everyone else knew, too. No one had thought to mention it directly to Pryn any more than anyone had thought to mention, ‘There’s sky overhead,’ or, ‘There’s earth underfoot.’ What references she’d overheard were all oblique enough so that, without knowing what they referred to, she’d had no way to interpret them and so hadn’t really heard them at all.

  Pryn tried to reassess the morning in terms of what she’d seen and heard last night, what she’d seen behind the eating hall, what she’d just heard from Juni. No doubt you have put together a more or less coherent explanation for what occurred at the inlet under the moon. Because it was a long time ago, and because the fashions in such explanations change, Pryn had put together a possibly very different one—though no less coherent to her. No matter how different the explanations, however, she had reached some conclusions from it that should be understandable to you and me. Either the greater explanation she was seeking was too complex for what was merely simple and ugly; or that greater explanation which would encompass all these jumbled details was of a complexity beyond any she could presently conceive. In either case, she did not like it here. She was glad she’d freed the old woman, and hoped she got to Kolhari—though to think it was to doubt it.

  She was glad to be leaving herself.

  Which is when the wagon turned from the north highway onto a narrow road. Trees lowered over.

  Pryn seized the wagon’s side.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Juni said. ‘You look like you’re about to jump out!’

  ‘Where are we going—?’

  ‘To the Labor Festival. Down at the beach…?’

  Will Rorkar and Tetya be there? And Yrnik?’ But she had seen Yrnik that morning; nothing had happened. ‘Will his Lordship and his family come?’

  ‘Oh, Tetya and Yrnik will wander by about two or three. Rorkar will arrive at four—though I wouldn’t be surprised if Tetya didn’t show up this year. When he left the hall thi
s morning, he didn’t look like a young man ready for a party. I don’t think he has much of a stomach for slave whipping.’

  ‘Tetya did the actual whipping?’ Broken welts, smeared stone, splattered weeds…

  ‘Oh his Lordship was very insistent about that! The younger generation and all.’ Juni put on a pompous voice and a practically death’s-head leer. “If your nephew isn’t up to it, my man, I can always call in my son. Inige is waiting for me in the carriage…?” She brushed straw from her lap. ‘Drinking. It’s so stupid—for Bruka, I mean. Today she could have drunk herself silly if she’d wanted—on Festival day, everyone’s allowed. Oh, even some of these good people around us now will behave quite disgracefully before the day’s over. That’s why I go home early. I mean when everybody’s sick and falling all over the beach, I can tell you I’m ready to leave! I’ll stay for the first three fights. After that, I’m gone—though I’m always back an hour later!’ She giggled. ‘You asked when the earl will come? His Lordship and his lady will drive by for a bit, just at sunset—to gloat over the remains and watch the torches reflected in the water. That’s pretty, as long as it’s too dark to see what a mess everyone’s made on the sand. The earl’s children may come earlier—they like this sort of thing. Did you meet them last night?’

  Pryn nodded.

  ‘I think Jenta’s as handsome as they make a man—though I hear he’s quite strange.’ Juni raised an eyebrow. ‘The daughter’s supposed to be a bit of a character, too. I heard something about her having a baby…?’ Sighing, she reached over to pat Pryn’s knee. ‘But don’t worry. It’ll be fine this morning. Oh! Stop the horses!’ And she was half up, waving at the driver. ‘Come on, stop! Stop, up there! Just once more? Please!’ Steadying herself first on this man’s shoulder, then on that woman’s, Juni made her way across to the other side of the wagon.