So he opened his bag and took out two sausages.
The grocer eyed them briefly. Orem held out one of them, thin and white and stiff within its casting. The grocer took his knife and reached it out. Orem thrust the sausage onto the point. The grocer grunted—a sound, at least!—and Orem watched him slice the meat so thin that it seemed he would cut the one sausage forever. When the grocer made no effort to reach for the second sausage, Orem put it back in his bag. There would be meat in the soup, then, and Orem had done his part to make the meal. He would stay aboard this ship as long as he wanted now, for it is the custom of the high river country that whoever makes a meal of shared food may not refuse each other’s company.
They ate together in silence, spearing the lumps of carrot and meat with their knives and taking turns drinking the broth from the brass bowl. The meal over, the grocer rinsed the bowl in the river, then dipped his hand to bring water to his mouth.
Orem held out his flask. “From my father’s spring.”
The grocer looked at him sternly and, at last, spoke: “Then you saves it, boy.”
“Is there no water where we’re going?”
“When you gets to the Little Temple, you must pour in the water from your home and take out God’s water.”
“To drink?”
“To pour into your father’s spring. What, is God forgotten on your father’s farm?”
Dobbick had often wanted to tell him the rites of the Great and Little temples of Inwit, but Orem had never said the simple vow. Still, it wouldn’t do to have the man think his family unbelievers. “We pray the five prayers and the two songs.”
“You saves the water. For your life.”
They sat in silence as the wind came up, brightening the coals in the clay firedish. So we are going to Inwit, Orem thought. It was, after all, the likely place for the grocer to be headed; indeed, most downriver traffic was going there, for all waters led to the Queen’s city. “I’m going to Inwit, too,” said Orem.
“Good thing,” said the grocer.
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way the river runs.”
“What’s it like there? At Inwit?”
“That depends, doesn’t it?” the grocer answered.
“On what?”
“Oh which gate you goes through.”
Orem was puzzled. He knew gates—Banningside had a stockade, and there were the walls of the House of God. “But don’t all the gates lead to the same city?”
The grocer shrugged, then chuckled. “They does and they doesn’t. Now, I wonder which gate you’ll go through.”
“The one that’s closest, I expect.”
The grocer laughed aloud. “I expect not, boy. No, indeed. There’s gates and gates, don’t you see. The South Gate, now, that’s the Queen’s own gate, and only the parades and the army and ambassadors uses that gate. And then there’s God’s Gate, but if you goes through there, you gets only a pilgrim’s pass, and if they catches you out of Between Temples, they brands your nose with an O and throws you out, and you never gets in again.”
“I’m not a pilgrim. Which gate do you use?”
“I’m a grocer. Swine Gate, up Butcher’s Road. I get a grocer’s pass, but it’s all I want. It lets me go to the Great Market and the Little Market, to Bloody Town and the Taverns. Aye, the Taverns, and that’s worth the whole trip alone.”
“There’s taverns in Banningside,” Orem said.
“But they doesn’t have Whore Street, does they?” The grocer grinned. “No, there’s no place else in the world has Whore Street. For two coppers there’s ladies’ll do you leaning up against the wall, they ups their skirts and in three minutes you fills them to the eyes. And if you’ve got five coppers there’s ladies’ll take you into the rooms and you gets fifteen minutes, time to do twice if you’re lively, which I am.” The grocer winked. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you, boy?”
Orem looked away. His mother and father never talked that way, and his brothers were swine. Yet this grocer seemed well-meaning enough, though Orem found himself thinking that the trip had been more pleasant before the grocer started talking. “I won’t be for long,” said Orem, “once I’m at Inwit.”
The grocer laughed aloud, and darted a hand under Orem’s long skirt to tweak his thigh perilously near his crotch. “That’s the balls, boy! That’s the balls!” It was a pinch that Orem remembered too well, and it was with a bit of loathing that he heard the grocer regale him with tales of his sexual exploits on Whore Street. Apparently Orem had passed some kind of test, and the grocer regarded him as a friend of sorts, one who would be interested in all he had to say. Orem was relieved when at last the grocer yawned and suddenly stood up, stripped off all his clothing, bundled it into a pillow, and pushed it ahead of him as he crawled into the tent.
Orem caught a glimpse of the inside of the tent as the grocer crawled through, and there wasn’t room for him. The grocer took no further notice of him, so Orem curled up on the deck, nestled against the leeward side of the grocer’s load. It was chilly, especially where Orem’s shirt was still damp from the swim a few hours before, but it could have been worse.
THE CORTHY PRICE
In the morning, the silence reigned again. This time, however, Orem did nothing to interrupt it. He helped in the work of the raft, bringing the grocer water to drink as he manned the pole, and from time to time dipping the oar into the water to help when the work became hard in swift currents or shallow sandy water. Orem shared his own small bread for nooning, which the grocer wordlessly took. But this time when night fell, the grocer beckoned for Orem to cast the anchor stones with him, and the talk began at once when the meal was done. The grocer got merrier and merrier, though he touched no beer, and he told Orem more and more about Inwit.
“There’s Asses Gate, but you’re no merchant. And Back Gate is only for them as lives in High Farms, which you doesn’t and never could, those families being older than the Queen’s own tribe, and near as magical, they says. No, boy, for you there’s only Piss Gate and the Hole. For Piss Gate you gets a three-days’ pauper’s pass, and if you doesn’t find work in those three days, you have to leave again, or they cuts off your ears. Second time they catches you on an old pass, or without one, and you gets a choice. They sells you as a slave or cuts off your balls, and there isn’t as many free eunuchs as there is horny slaves, I can tell you!”
Three days. In three days he’d find plenty of work.
“What’s the hole?”
The grocer suddenly got quiet. “It’s the Hole, boy, not just any hole. That’s closed, and there isn’t passes. Not from the Guard. But there’s ways through the Hole, and ways to get around in the city from there, but I don’t know them. No, I’m a Godsman, I am, and the ways through the Hole are all magical, them as isn’t criminal. No, you takes your chances with Piss Gate and a three days’ pass, and when you doesn’t find work, you goes home. No good comes from the Hole. It’s magical black and God hates it.”
Magical. There it is, thought Orem. They say Queen Beauty is a witch, and magic flies in Inwit, even though the priests do their best to put it down and the laws are all against it. Maybe I’ll see magic, thought Orem, though he knew that God wouldn’t truck with wizards, and there were seven foreign devils to take your soul if a man should do the purchased spells. The clean spells of the Sweet Sisters, the magics the women did on the farms, they were different, of course. But the magics of the Hole would not be that sort, Orem was sure. And he found himself drawn to the idea of passing through the Hole, to find the city that he wanted to see.
“I don’t like the look of your face,” the grocer said. “You’re not thinking witchy thoughts, are you?”
Orem shook his head, at once ashamed of having so betrayed Halfpriest Dobbick in his heart. “I’m on my way to find a place for myself, and make a name. And earn my poem, if I can.”
The grocer relaxed. “There’s poems to be had in Inwit. I met a man there whose poem was as long as his
arm—I mean it true, he had it needled right into his skin, and a fine poem it was.” Suddenly the grocer was shy. “I have a poem, given me by three singers in High Bans. It’s no Inwit poem, but it’s mine.”
Suddenly the mood of the night became solemn. Orem knelt on the hard logs of the raft, and reached out his open hands. “Will you tell me your poem?”
“I’m not much for singing,” said the grocer. But he put his left hand in Orem’s hands, and his right hand on Orem’s head. He sang:
Glasin Grocer, wanders widely,
Rides the river, drifting down,
Turns to north, town of Corth,
Feeds the frightened Holy Hound.
“You,” said Orem, in awe.
Glasin Grocer nodded shyly. “Here on my shoulder,” he said, baring himself so Orem could see the scars. “I was lucky. It was the Hound’s first day, and he took little enough before he went back to the Kennel.”
“Weren’t you afraid?”
“Peed my winders,” Glasin said, chuckling. Orem laughed a little, too. But he thought of how it must be, the huge black Hound coming out of the wood without a sound, and fixing you with the eyes that froze you to your place. And then to kneel and pray as the Hound came and set his teeth in you, and took as much flesh as he wanted, and you hadn’t the power to run or the breath to scream.
“I’m a Godsman,” Glasin Grocer said. “I didn’t scream, and the pain was taken from me, it was. They carried me to the city and the singers gave me my song. Best crop ever, that year.”
“I heard about that year. They said the Hound took an angel.”
Glasin laughed and slapped his thigh. “An angel! I never!”
Whenever Glasin laughed, his breath took the odor of his rotting teeth in foul gusts to Orem’s nose, and Orem would have turned away but for the failure of respect. And Glasin was worth it now—only one bite from the Holy Hound, and a good crop, too. “You were the Corthy Price,” Orem said, shaking his head.
Glasin punched Orem in the shoulder. “An angel. They doesn’t.”
“Oh, they do,” said Orem, and Glasin sang his song again. He sang it many times on the way down the river, the two weeks as Banning turned into Burring, and they passed the great castles of Runs, Gronskeep, Holy Bend, Sturks, and Pry. The souther they got the more the river was crowded with other rafts and other barges and boats, and the fouler the river got from sewer streams of the towns along the way. But the odors and noises and arguments with other boatmen were no damper to the excitement of knowing that Inwit was hourly nearer. The only thing that marred Orem’s days was Glasin himself. There were many times, in fact, that Orem wished devoutly that he and Glasin had not become friends, and he missed the old silence dreadfully. Glasin had a small enough life, after all, to be contained all in only a few nights’ talk, and Orem had to force himself not to say, But your whole song is because by chance the Holy Hound found you, and you were clean. Being clean is just a list of the things you’ve never done. An empty sort of life, and Orem thought, I will have a poem so long and fine that I will never have to sing it myself, but others will sing it to me because they know the words by heart.
One morning Glasin began to talk even as he first poled the raft back out into the current. “I bet you thinks I can’t hold my tongue,” he said, “but you sees how I keep my counsel. Did I tell that today would be Inwit day, and landfall at Farmer’s Port? If I’d said a thing, why, you never would have slept a wink, and today you needs your rest, I said to me, today you needs your sleep. But you looks there, and sees Ainn Woods, and that low hill ahead, that’s Ainn Point, and Ainn Creek is just beyond.” It wasn’t on Glasin’s raft alone that the excitement was high. “Clake Bay!” cried a woman on a nearby boat. “Boat Island!” a man shouted.
And then they fully rounded the bend and there, on the lefthand side of the river, there was Inwit, a high stone wall bright with banners, and below it the docks of Farmer’s Port, and rising high behind it the great walls of King’s Town—no, Queen’s Town then—and the gaunt Old Castle highest of all. Glasin named all the places until he nearly missed his turning, and only made one of the last slips of Farmer’s Port.
11
Piss Gate
How the Little King entered the city first through Piss Gate, with a pauper’s pass, no one guessing who he was.
AMONG THIEVES
The nearest portman tied their line to a post at the slip, and Orem was all for jumping ashore: But Glasin glared at him and ordered him to stay. They waited, and soon several men in gaudy southern trousers came to eye them and their raft.
“A weaky ship,” said one.
Glasin turned away from that man, and faced another. “All oak,” he said defiantly.
“Bound with spit and catgut?” the man retorted.
“Good only for lumber,” said a third. “And three days’ drying to boot. A cart in trade.”
“Cart and twenty coppers,” said another.
Glasin snorted and turned his back.
“Cart and donkey,” said the man who had called it a weaky ship.
Glasin turned around with a frown. “That and four silvers gives you raft and tent.”
“Silvers! And what do I want with a tent?”
Glasin shrugged.
Another man nodded. The third turned away, shaking his head. The first man, who had the eye of a hawk, staring open always even when the other was closed, he raised his hands. “God sends thieves downriver disguised in grocers’ shirts,” he said. “Two silvers, a donkey and cart, but by God you keep the tent.”
Glasin glanced at the other bidder, but he was through. The sale was set then.
Or almost set. Hawkeye looked at Orem. “Boy for sale?” he asked.
For sale? Orem was appalled—how could anyone take him for a slave? He had no rings in his face, had he? He had no branding! But there was the man asking, and the grocer not saying no, but standing, thinking.
“I’m a freeman,” Orem said hotly, but Hawkeye made no sign of having heard, just kept watching Glasin. The grocer at last shook his head. “I’m a God’s man, and this boy is free.”
The buyer said nothing more, just tossed two gleaming coins to Glasin, who caught them deftly so they didn’t slip down between the logs to get lost in the river. The buyer waved, and four men came up, one leading a sad-looking donkey and cart while the others quickly unloaded the raft and put all that would fit into the cart, piling the rest on the dock. When all was done, the portman nodded, drove a red nail into the post, and walked away.
Orem mounted the dock and stood near the pile of the grocer’s goods. Not that the grocer had asked him to; indeed, Glasin might have forgotten Orem was there, for all the notice he paid to him. Orem simply did not know where to go or what to do. The wide space fronting the river was crowded with carts and men and some women, shouting and cursing; other rafts were being unloaded at other slips, and Orem had only been ashore a few moments when Hawkeye’s men had the empty raft free of the slip and were poling it out into the river.
“They takes it to Boat Island,” said the grocer. “They trims it into boards and builds sea ships with it. From Boat Island on out to the sea, the big ships comes and goes. Half my profits is from the raft—the donkey alone would bring me twice that lumber in the north, and the cart is worth all my cargo when I’m buying at the country markets. Now, boy, what is our business?”
Orem didn’t understand.
“If you stays and watches my things, if you doesn’t let anything get taken whatever they offers you, I give you five coppers when I get back.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the market, to get a stall. If I go now, while all the other morning grocers is loading their carts, I get a better place, see. But can I trust you?”
Orem only looked at him angrily. Asking a man if he could be trusted was like asking an unwed girl if she was virgin. The question mattered, but the asking of it was gross insult.
“All right then,” said th
e grocer. “I’ll be back. You talks to no man.”
Orem nodded, and immediately the grocer was off, trotting heavily among the crowd.
Around him Orem watched the other grocers as they quarreled and traded and disparaged each other’s goods. Here and there were portmen standing guard as Orem stood; he suspected that they were being paid a good deal more than a few coppers. It didn’t matter. He had learned the abstract values of coins at the House of God, but never in his life had he been forced to learn just how much living could be done on how much money. And even if he had learned, at Inwit all values were changed. Six coppers would keep a good-sized family for a month at Banningside. It was different here.
There were other differences. Orem was not so naive he didn’t know what was happening when a golden-trousered man gave a small heavy bag to a man standing guard. The guard turned his back as two wagons were drawn to the absent grocer’s pile and the goods were loaded on. Orem listened for the cry of thief to arise, waited to see the crowd giving alarm; but there was no sound. Neither did Orem make a sound, for he was afraid to raise the cry of thief in a place where a crime could be committed in the open. He guessed that the bribe was only half the transaction. There was a hint of violence in the rough-looking men who did the loading; he wondered if the man who resisted might end up swimming for his life.
Soon enough a red-trousered man with golden bracelets stood at his side.
“I have a bag of coppers here,” the man said softly, “which I’ll pay to a boy with a wandering eye who stands and watches the river. Twenty coppers have I, my boy.”
Orem did not know what to say. It was a fine offer indeed, and gave him some notion of how ungenerous Glasin had been in his payment. It occurred to him that Glasin trusted him rather much—or else was convinced that Orem was a fool who had no notion of money.