Nicci stepped to the middle of the room. “Who is it?”
“Nicci, it’s me, Kamil.”
The urgency in his voice made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
“I’m decent. Come in.”
The young man burst in, panting. His face was white, as were his knuckles around the doorknob. Tears stained his cheeks.
“They’ve arrested Richard. Last night. They have him.”
Nicci was only dimly aware of the eggs hitting the floor.
Chapter 55
With Kamil at her side, Nicci ascended the dozen stone steps up into the city guard barracks. It was a huge fortress, its high walls stretching off down the entire block. Nicci hadn’t asked Kamil to go with her. She doubted that anything short of death would have stopped him. She couldn’t really decipher precisely how Richard managed to inspire such reactions in people.
As they had left, Nicci was in a state of frantic shock, but she had noticed that the entire building of people seemed tense and alert. Faces peered from windows as she and Kamil had rushed out the building and down the road. People had come out of other buildings to watch her go. They all wore grim expressions.
What was it that made people care so much about this one man?
What was it that made her care?
The inside of the filthy barracks was crowded with people. Hollow-cheeked, unshaven, old men stood as if in a daze, staring off at nothing. Plump-cheeked women with scarves covering their heads wept as wailing children clung to their skirts. Other women stood around without expression, as if they were expecting to buy bread or millet. One small child, with only a shirt and nothing from the waist down, stood forlorn, his tiny fists at his mouth as he bawled.
The room felt like a death watch.
City guards, mostly large young men with indifferent expressions, pushed through the throng as they passed on into dark halls guarded by their fellows. A short, roughly constructed wooden wall held back all the people, confining the pandemonium to half the room. Beyond the short wall, more of the guards casually talked among themselves. Others brought reports to men at a simple table, joked, or picked up orders on their way through.
Nicci cut right through the crowd, forcing her way to the short wall where cowering women pressed close, hoping to be called, hoping for word, hoping for the miracle of intercession by the Creator Himself. Pressing up against the rough boards, they received splinters, instead.
Nicci seized the sleeve of a passing guard. He halted in midstride. His glare rose from her hand to her eyes. She reminded herself that she was without her power and released his sleeve.
“May I ask, please, who is in charge?”
He looked her up and down, a woman he appeared to judge was about to be without a husband and available. His face slid into an affected smile. He gestured.
“There. At the table. People’s Protector Muksin.”
The older man sat ensconced behind his sovereign stacks of papers. Beneath a chin that sank down toward his chest, his spreading body looked as if it were melting in the summer heat. His loose white shirt bore big dark rings of sweat, adding its bit of stink to the stench of the sultry room.
Guards leaned down to speak into his ear while his dull gaze roamed, never settling. Others behind the table to either side of him were busily engaged in work at stacks of their own papers, or speaking among themselves, or dealing with the other stream of officials and guards that was ebbing and flowing through the room.
Protector Muksin, the shiny top of his head concealed about as well as an aged turtle napping beneath a few blades of grass, watched the room. His dark eyes never stopped moving, gliding past the guards, the officials, the milling crowd. When they glided over Nicci’s face, they registered no more interest than in any of the other people. All were citizens of the Order, equal pieces, each unimportant in and of itself.
“Could I see him?” Nicci asked. “It’s important.”
The guard’s smile turned to mockery. “I’m sure it is.” He waved a finger at the clump of people to the side. “End of the line. Wait your turn.”
Nicci and Kamil had no choice but to wait. Nicci knew enough about such petty officials to know better than to make a scene. They lived for the times when someone made a scene. She leaned her shoulder against the plastered wall dark with oily stains of countless other shoulders. Kamil took up station behind her.
The line wasn’t moving because the officials weren’t seeing anyone. Nicci didn’t know if they only saw citizens at certain times. There was no choice but to keep their place in the line. The morning dragged on without the line in front of her changing. It grew more crowded in back.
“Kamil,” she said in a low voice after several hours, “you don’t need to wait with me. You can go home.”
His eyes were red and swollen. “I wish to wait.” He sounded surprisingly distrustful. “I care about Richard,” he added in a tone that sounded like an accusation.
“I care about him, too. Why do you think I’m here?”
“I only came to get you because I was so afraid for Richard, and I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else was off to work, or to buy bread.” Kamil turned and leaned his back against the wall. “I don’t believe that you care for him, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
Nicci swiped a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead. “You don’t like me, do you?”
Still he didn’t look at her. “No.”
“Might I ask why?”
Kamil’s gaze snuck a glance around to see if anyone was listening. They were all concerned with their own problems.
“You are Richard’s wife, yet you betrayed him. You took Gadi to your room. You are a whore.”
Nicci blinked in surprise at his words. Kamil glanced around again before he went on.
“We don’t know why a man like Richard would be with you. Every woman without a husband in the house, and the other houses nearby, told me she would be his wife and never lie with another man as long as she lived. They all say they don’t understand why you would do that to Richard. Everyone was sad for him, but he would not listen to us tell him.”
Nicci turned away. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the shame of looking at a young man who had just called her a vile name, and had been right.
“You don’t understand the situation,” she whispered.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Kamil shrug. “You are right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how anyone could do such a hurtful thing to a husband like Richard, who works hard and takes such good care of you. To do such a thing, you must be a bad person who does not care about your husband.”
She felt tears join the sweat on her face. “I care about Richard more than you could ever know.”
He didn’t answer. She turned to look at him. He was bouncing his shoulders gently against the wall. He was too ashamed of her, or angry at her, to look her in the eye.
“Kamil, do you remember when we first came to live in the room in your building?”
He nodded, still not looking at her.
“Do you remember how cruel you and Nabbi treated Richard, all the mean things you said to him? All the hurtful names you called him? How you threatened him with your knives?”
“I made a mistake,” he said, and sounded as if he meant it.
“Kamil, I made a mistake, too.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her tears—half the women in the room were weeping. “I can’t explain it to you, but Richard and I were having an argument. I was angry with him. I wanted to hurt him. I was wrong. It was a foolish thing for me to do. I made a terrible mistake.”
She sniffled and dabbed her nose on a small handkerchief. Kamil watched her from the corner of his eye.
“I admit it’s not the same kind of mistake that you and Nabbi made when you were acting tough when you first met Richard, but it was a mistake. I was acting tough, too.”
“You don’t desire Gadi?”
“Gadi turns my stomach. I only used him becaus
e I was angry with Richard.”
“And you are sorry?”
Nicci’s chin trembled. “Of course I’m sorry.”
“You are not going to get angry and do it again? With some other man?”
“No. I told Richard I made a mistake, I was sorry, and I would never do such a thing to him again. I meant what I said.”
Kamil thought it over as he watched a woman shake a child by the arm. The child wouldn’t stop crying, because it wanted to be picked up. She said something under her breath and the child leaned against her leg and pouted, but didn’t cry anymore.
“If Richard can forgive you, then I should not be angry at you. He is your husband. It is for the two of you to settle, not for me.” He touched her arm. “You made a foolish mistake. It is over. Don’t cry for that anymore? There are more important things, now.”
Nicci smiled through her tears and nodded.
He smiled a little bit. “Nabbi and I told Gadi we were going to cut off—we told him we would cut him for what he had done to Richard. Gadi showed us his knife, so we would let him pass. Gadi loves his knife. He has cut men with it, before. Cut them bad. He told us to let him pass to go to join the army, that he was going to use his knife to slice the guts out of the enemy, to be a war hero, and to have many women better than Richard’s wife.”
“I’m sure I will not be the only woman to be sorry they ever met Gadi.”
In the late afternoon, People’s Protector Muksin began seeing people. Nicci’s back ached, but it was nothing to compare to her fear for Richard. The people were taken one at a time by a pair of guards to stand before Protector Muksin.
The line moved fairly rapidly because the Protector tolerated no long conversations. At most, he would riffle through some of his papers before telling the supplicant something. What with all the wailing and weeping in the room, Nicci couldn’t hear any of it.
When it was her turn, one of the guards shoved Kamil back. “Only one citizen may speak with the Protector.”
Nicci tilted her head to signal Kamil to stand back and not make a scene. The guards each grabbed an arm and fairly carried her to the spot in front of the Protector. Nicci was indignant at being treated so roughly—like some common…citizen.
She had always enjoyed a kind of authority, sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken, and had never really given it much thought. She wanted to have Richard see what it was like to live as the common working people. Richard seemed to flourish.
The two guards stood close at her shoulders, in case she caused any trouble. They must have seen it enough. She felt her face flushing at her treatment.
“Protector Muksin, my husband was—”
“Name.” His dark-eyed gaze was skipping over the people remaining in line, no doubt measuring how far off dinner was.
“Richard.”
He looked up sharply. “Full name.”
“His name is Richard Cypher. He was taken in last evening.”
Nicci didn’t want to say the word “arrested,” fearing to lend weight to a serious charge.
He shuffled through papers, not at all seeming to be interested in looking at her. Nicci found it slightly confounding when the man didn’t look at her in that calculating way men had of measuring her dimensions in their mind, imagining what they couldn’t see, as if she didn’t know what they were doing. The two guards, though, were looking down the front of her dress.
“Ah.” Protector Muksin waved a paper. “You are lucky.”
“He has been released, then?”
He looked up as if she were daft. “We have him. His name is on this paper. There are many places people are taken. The Protectors of the people can’t be expected to know where they all are.”
“Thank you,” Nicci said without knowing what she was thanking him for. “Why is he being held? What are the charges?”
The man frowned. “How would we know the charges. He has not yet confessed.”
Nicci felt dizzy. A number of the other women fainted when they spoke to the Protector. The guard’s hands on her arms tightened. The Protector’s hand started to lift to signal them to remove her. Before he could, Nicci spoke in as calm a voice as she could muster.
“Please, Protector Muksin, my husband is no troublemaker. He never does anything but work. He never speaks ill of anyone. He is a good man. He always does as he is told.”
For one fraction of a second, as she watched sweat roll down the man’s cheeks, he seemed to be considering something.
“Has he a skill?”
“He is a good laborer for the Order. He loads wagons.”
She knew the answer was a mistake before she had completed it. The hand lifted, flicked, dismissing her like a gnat. With a mighty jerk, the guards lifted her from her feet and whisked her from the important man’s presence.
“But my husband is a good man! Please, Protector Muksin! Richard did not cause any of the trouble! He was home!”
Her words were sincere, and much the same as those spoken by the women before her. She was furious that she could not convince him that she was different—that Richard was different. The others, she knew now, had all tried to do the same.
Kamil ran behind as the guards carried her down a short, dark hall to a side door out of the stone fortress. Evening light stole in when they opened the door. They shoved her. Nicci stumbled down the steps. Kamil was shoved out right behind her. He fell facedown in the dirt. Nicci knelt to help him up.
From her knees, she looked up to the doorway. “What about my husband?” she pressed.
“You can come back another day,” one guard said. “When he confesses, the Protector can tell you the charges.”
Nicci knew he would never confess. He would die, first.
That was not a problem, as far as these men were concerned.
“Can I see him?” Nicci folded her hands prayerfully as she knelt beside Kamil. “Please, can I at least see him?”
One of the guards whispered to the other.
“Have you any money?” he asked her.
“No,” she said in a mournful cry.
They started to go back in.
“Wait!” Kamil cried out.
When they paused, he ran up the steps. He lifted his pant leg and pulled off a boot. Upending it, a coin fell into his palm. Without reservation, he handed the silver coin to the guard.
The man made a sour face when he looked at the coin. “This isn’t enough for a visit.”
Kamil seized the big man’s wrist as he started to turn. “I have another at home. Please, let me go get it. I can run. I can be back in an hour.”
The man shook his head. “Not tonight. Visits for those who can pay the fee are the day after tomorrow, at sunset. But only one visitor is allowed.”
Kamil waved his hand at Nicci. “His wife. She will visit him.”
The guard swept an appraising look over Nicci, smirking, as if to consider what more she might have to give to see her husband.
“Just be sure to bring the fee.”
The door slammed shut.
Kamil raced down the steps and seized her arm, his big eyes brimming with tears. “What are we going to do? That’s two more days they will have him. Two more days!”
He was starting to choke on his panic. He hadn’t said it, but she knew what he meant. That was two more days to torture a confession out of him. Then they would bury Richard in the sky.
Nicci took a firm grip on the boy’s arm and walked him away. “Kamil, listen to me. Richard is strong. He will be all right. He’s been through a lot before. He’s strong. You know he’s strong?”
Kamil was nodding as he bit his lower lip and wept, reduced to a child by his fear for his friend.
Nicci stared at the ceiling the entire night. The next day, she went to stand in line for bread. She realized, as she stood with the other women, that she must have the same hollow look as they. She was in a daze. She didn’t know what to do. Everything seemed to be disintegrating.
That night, she s
lept only a few hours. She was in a state of restless anxiety, counting the minutes until the sun would come up. When it did, she sat at the table, clutching the loaf of bread she would take to Richard, waiting the eternity it took for the day to drag by. The neighbor lady, Mrs. Sha’Rim, brought Nicci a bowl of cabbage soup. She stood over Nicci, smiling sympathetically, while she waited to make sure Nicci ate the soup. Nicci thanked Mrs. Sha’Rim, and said the soup was delicious. She had no idea what the soup tasted like.
In the early afternoon, Nicci decided to go wait at the stronghold until she was allowed in. She didn’t want to be late. Kamil was sitting on the steps, waiting for her. A small crowd of people milled about.
Kamil shot to his feet. “I have the silver mark.”
Nicci wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to pay it, that she would, but she didn’t have a silver mark. She had only a few silver pennies.
“Thank you, Kamil. I will find the money to pay you back.”
“I don’t want it back. It is for Richard. It is what I choose to do for Richard. It is worth it to me.”
Nicci nodded. She knew she would rot before anyone came up with a penny for her, yet she had devoted her entire life to helping others. Her mother told her once that it was wrong to expect thanks, that she owed help to those people because she was able to give it.
As Nicci walked down the steps, people came up and offered their best wishes. They asked her to tell Richard to be strong, and not to give in. They asked her to tell them if there was anything they could do, or if she needed money.
They’d had Richard for days. Nicci didn’t even know if he was still alive. The silent walk to the prison stronghold was terror. She feared to find he had been put to death, or to see him, and know he would die a lingering, suffering agony from his questioning. Nicci knew very well how the Order questioned people.
At the side door, a half-dozen other women along with a few older men stood in the sweltering sun. All the women had sacks of food. None of the people spoke. They were all bent under the weight of the same dread.
Nicci stared at the door as the sun slowly sank. In the gathering dusk, Kamil hung his waterskin on Nicci’s shoulder.