The Adorned Page 2

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “Dislike it all you want; you still have to obey.”

  The man raised his fist—a guard ahead raised his pistol. The man nodded, almost to himself. He lowered his fist and took his cart through, empty now save a tarp and some dented armor. I watched him vanish into the crowd.

  After that it was our turn. The corn seller’s wares came under cursory inspection; then the guard’s eyes rested on me. “This one with you?”

  He shook his head. “Only catching a ride.”

  “Fine.” He pointed at me. “Boy, what’s your name?”

  I swallowed and met his eyes; they were dark and incurious. “Etan Dairan.”

  “You’re Gaelta?”

  “Half,” I said. “My mother was Keredy.”

  He nodded; my features told that tale clearly enough. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m looking for work.”

  “Have you any money?”

  I nodded and showed him my letter of credit. He snorted a half laugh. “Fifteen ral? That won’t last you long.”

  “I’m here to find work,” I repeated, a sour clench in my belly.

  “All the luck to you, then. You can go.”

  We rolled into the narrow streets. They were a bewildering tangle, crisscrossing every which way. There was a smell to the city, a perfume that I’d caught only a hint of outside its thick walls: stone and sewage, the smoke thrown up by chimneys and temples, the broiling of a hundred cook-pots, acres of sweating skin. A soft hammer was beating on the inside of my skull, and sparkling stars danced on the edges of my vision.

  “You all right, boy?” the corn seller asked over his shoulder.

  I nodded and grew dizzier for a moment. I breathed deep, not caring about the scent; I needed air. My vision cleared and again I nodded. “I’m fine. Can you tell me where the banks are?”

  After I’d cashed my letter of credit, I wandered the streets, purse heavy at my side. Soon enough I was lost; there were streets in the Grey City wider than Lun’s quarry, wider than the river that fed its wells. I tried to keep an eye on the turns and corners, but the crowd around me kept snaring my attention.

  In Lun all had the Lowlander look, save those Gaelta who came to do a summer’s stonework. Here there were dark Southerners, Lowland folk, Northerners, a few pale-haired islanders in their heavy grey robes, and more Gaelta than I had ever seen in Lun. When Kered had swallowed up their lands, two centuries back, they’d followed their stolen stones. The Grey City was half built from their quarries, and by their hands.

  A man passed, tall as I’d ever seen, with hair like gold. He was head to toe in sumptuous robes, with heavy rings worn over silk gloves. Not an inch of his skin could be seen, save on his face and where his high collar rose against an elegant neck. His eyes flickered to me for a moment. At the edge of his collar there was a curl of color on his skin; he tugged at the fabric so once again it lay hidden.

  An Adorned, I thought, a tattooed courtier. Save the nobles of Blood and Sword, they were the only ones allowed to wear tattoos, though they hid them in public. One of them had visited Lun, once, merely passing through; her veils and jewels had drawn everyone’s eyes—including mine. I’d hidden myself in the loft of the inn, trying to catch a glimpse of her ink, but she had been too careful for a boy’s curious eyes. Only the Blooded and their favored few had the privilege of seeing her unclothed; the Adorned were made for them alone.

  The man passed by—I watched him for a moment, unable to stop myself from it. The crowd passed around me as if I were a ghost; then there was a lull in it, and I could see the edges of the buildings once again. They loomed around me like giants.

  “Greeneyes, hey!”

  I turned toward the voice, swift as if whipped. A tall, bony man in a ragged soldier’s uniform half ran up the street to meet me. He grinned, crooked as the scar across his cheek. “Welcome to the Grey City. How about a bit of charity for a veteran, eh?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, ‘How about some charity?’”

  He wasn’t begging, not exactly. I tightened my grip on my bag. Two others, in the same ragged blue, strolled up. There was a woman with them, almost a girl. Her smile was hollowed out; she was missing most of her teeth.

  “These young men deserve some consideration,” she said. “After keeping you safe from the dogeaters.”

  I fished a half ral out of my pocket and held it out to him. “I’m—I’m sorry, I don’t have much.”

  He seized my wrist and wrenched it sideways. I cried out. The crowd around us kept moving.

  “Perhaps you don’t understand me, greeneyes. There’s plenty of us looking for work in the Grey City. Since you come here country-fresh, you must have something already set aside for you. So you can spare some real charity, can’t you?”

  The woman wove behind me. Her hands were quick and hard on me, squeezing at my waist. “Look at him! He’s skinny as a girl.”

  “Well, his purse better be fat,” the soldier said. He brought up his fist hard against my stomach. I doubled over. I heard the woman laugh behind me. Her foot planted against my back, and I fell face down, hard against the stones. Blood gushed out from my nose. I tasted it salt-slick at the back of my throat.

  Someone kneeled on my back, bony fingers against my ribs, feeling up and down until they reached the purse of coins at my belt. “Now that’s a proper tribute to your heroes, greeneyes.”

  A foot lashed out against the side of my head. Sparks flashed behind my eyes and I gasped, breathing in a mouthful of gutter water. I heard shouts, weirdly distorted. For a moment I thought they were echoing in my own skull.

  Suddenly I could breathe again. The knees pressing me down, the hands grabbing my ribs were gone. I rolled onto my side, breathing slowly. Blood trickled onto the stones.

  Two guardsmen in red had unslung their rifles. The barrels were leveled at the men in blue and the broken-toothed woman.

  “You will move along,” one of them said, in clipped tones.

  The woman spat at their feet. “They’re worth a dozen of you!”

  “Bloodguard scum,” a soldier hissed; his lip was split, and his teeth were stained red. “You should be grateful. I was facing dogeater swords while you were playing soldiers here behind the walls.”

  The guardsman motioned to me with the tip of his bayonet. “Yes, he looks like he put up a real fight. A true Surammer menace, this one. Now get off, before I’m tempted to fire.”

  With a last curse spit out, they did.

  “Boy.” He jabbed his rifle at me. “Can you stand?”

  Slowly, I struggled to my feet. The guards offered no help. I swayed; I felt near-drunk. Worse, though, was the look on their faces. Looks like he put up a real fight—I bit my throbbing lip. The pain redoubled, and my shoulders shook.

  “Can you walk?” the guard asked; this time his voice was gentler.

  “They took my purse.” My voice came out thick and nasal. My nose felt three times its size. “That was all I had.”

  “You can make a report if you want,” he said, “but I don’t see it doing good. They’re gone, now.”

  “That was all I had,” I repeated, and I sank back down onto the stones. The guards looked at each other, shrugged and left me there.

  The crowds still moved around me, as if I were a pebble in a river. Slowly, the blood stopped flowing. I touched my nose softly. Was it broken? I could not tell.

  My lip was split along the same line that the soldier’s had been. He’d taken a hit from a rifle’s stock; I’d been kicked against the ground. I clenched my hands into useless fists. They were counting my money out, now. Laughing about the skinny greeneye Lowland boy.

  It’s because they have moss in their brains, they used to say in Lun, and then they’d laugh. Not at me—at the Gaelta stoneworkers who came down from the hills for summers in the quarry. Still, my eyes were as green as theirs.

  Someone collided with me, hard, and I pulled myself upright, swaying
, ready to fight. My eyes were blurred. “What else do you want?” My voice cracked on the last word, like a child’s.

  “Easy there.” This was a new voice, a man’s voice, low and soft. A gloved hand took mine, pulled me away from the crowd with casual strength.

  I blinked away the blur and looked up. The man was large, built tall and broad, with greying dark hair in a braid thick as a sailor’s rope. He was Gaelta, that much I could tell from his green, deep-set eyes, almost the same shade as my own. It was an unsettling familiarity, like looking into a distorted mirror.

  Our eyes were all we had in common, though; he seemed inexpertly hewn from heavy stone, muscles bulging and twisting under his clothes. When he spoke it was in Gaelte; I barely understood him. “Boy, what happened to you?’

  “They took everything,” I responded in Kered. The words came out in a rush; I felt dizzy and blurred. “Everything.”

  A rickshaw had come to a halt beside us on the street, like a rock dropped in the river of the crowd. People moved around it, uncaring. A Keredy man peered down at us from up in the rickshaw, frowning. I realized the Gaelta man had been his driver. “What’s this, Gren?”

  The Gaelta man looked over his shoulder. “There’s a boy. He’s been hurt.” He gazed back at me. “He doesn’t look so good.”

  The Keredy man rolled his eyes and sighed. “Well, get him up here, by the Sun Queen. I’ve business to attend to, and it won’t do to leave him in the street.”

  Gren hefted me up on the rickshaw, beside his employer. Then he took the poles in his great hands and we were moving. I looked back. The stain of my blood on the ground had already been trampled into a brownish smear. Soon nothing of it would remain, scuffed away by a thousand footsteps.

  Chapter Three

  The man in the rickshaw was called Maxen Udred. He was impeccably dressed in a suit of purple silk, with a dark coat. His high collar only half disguised a short, bullish neck; his hair was slicked back from his forehead in a way that made it look almost carved, like a statue’s.

  The rickshaw was old, of Surammer style. War booty, perhaps, though it would have had to have been dragged many miles from the front to the Grey City. The paint was peeling from its left side, but its wheels were sturdy still. Gren pulled it through the streets, muscles straining, not uttering one grunt of complaint at my added weight. The rickshaw was barely large enough to fit us both. I was pressed up chafingly close against Maxen, feeling the heat of him from beneath his thin suit. He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. His smell was sharp, a presence of its own. I didn’t know how he could sweat like that, in the wintry chill of the city.

  He looked at me, at my bruises, with a kind of chilly interest. “So. What happened?”

  I told him as we rattled through the streets. Where we were going, I could not tell. He nodded at the appropriate points, but said nothing, his mouth thin. Finally, he sighed. “Where do you live, then?”

  I half laughed, and pressed the back of my hand to my throbbing mouth to stop it.

  “Nowhere near here, if I am right. Well, have you somewhere to stay?”

  I shook my head. The ral I would have used to purchase my stay, wherever I might have settled for the night, were gone. The rucksack with my clothes, gone. If the nights turned cold—and they would, despite the mildness of the winter weather—I had barely enough on my back to keep myself from freezing.

  Maxen heaved another sigh and tugged at his high collar. “There is a boarding house I have...some small stake in. You may stay there a few days.”

  Charity, I thought. My eyes were hot. “Thank you,” I murmured.

  “After that, mind, you’ll have to find work.” His eyes narrowed. “I don’t suppose you have something arranged in the city?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we’ll get you looked at first. Gren? On to the holding house, please.”

  We wove down the roads, descending on a slow, gentle slope. There was a sharp smell in the air, coating the back of my throat: the tanneries, I thought, below the bulk of the city, downhill and downwind. Dark smoke rose from their chimneys, smelling of meat and lye.

  In between two hulking buildings squatted a low, narrow house. The door was unmarked and the windows were thick and smoke-stained. “Here we are,” Maxen said. He shifted in the seat, and I pressed myself against the edges of the rickshaw.

  Gren cleared his throat. “Shall I wait outside, sir?”

  “Yes, Gren. I’ll take the boy.” He took my shoulder and turned me bodily, getting a long good look at me. His eyes narrowed a little. “There’s a woman here with some skill in medicine. She’ll have a look at your wounds.”

  “Thank you,” I said, in a small voice.

  “Come on, then.”

  He knocked on the door with a heavy hand. A thin-faced woman answered, and her sour look shifted into an obsequious smile when she saw who was knocking. “Mister Udred! Come to see your clients?”

  Clients? I looked up at him, wondering, but he simply smiled.

  “Yes, Alix. If we may?”

  She looked at me, cocking her head. “Who’s this? A new one?”

  He shook his head. “He was robbed and beaten on the street. I thought you might put him up for a day or so, on my account.”

  “You’re so generous, Mister Udred,” she twittered, and she let us in.

  Inside, at a long table, a card game was in progress. There were three men around the table, all Northerners older than myself by at least ten years, and two women.

  One of the women seemed in her forties, with a weary air. She had the hook-shaped brand of a false-witch on her cheek—it was an angry, puckered scar. That same ragged crescent, tattooed on a nobleman’s skin, would be a mark of a priest’s special blessing. The other was a year or two my elder at the oldest, and her hair had the same nut-brown hue as my own.

  “Good afternoon, all,” Maxen called out with a kind of false cheer; the card players looked up at him and stood at once, echoing his greeting.

  Maxen took a small notebook out of his coat and flipped through its thin pages. “Lana Smethan?”

  The false-witch stepped forward. “Yes, sir.”

  “You have done nurse-work, have you not?”

  She bobbed a curtsy. “I have, sir.”

  “Then have a look at this boy. He’s been hurt.” He half shoved me forward, into her hands.

  She took me by the chin and turned me this way and that. Finally, she clucked her tongue. “Come sit with me, young man, and I’ll get you fixed up.”

  While we sat, Maxen circled the other three. He checked his notebook again. “Vanesse Grimsel?”

  The younger woman curtsied to him. “Yes, sir?” Her voice was shaky, nervous.

  “A family in Lower Wing, the Kinsheres, have need for a childminder for their twins. They will send their coachman to fetch you later in the week, so be ready for it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I winced then, as Lana passed a clean rag over my mouth. She fussed at my wounds with long, narrow fingers. “You won’t scar, I think,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Wounds to the face always look worse than they are.”

  “They feel bad enough,” I said.

  She chuckled. “That they will, but give it a few days and you will be back to your old self again.” She looked me over, top to bottom. “Have you come to work for Maxen, then?”

  “Work for—?”

  “He’s a bond broker,” she said. “He can arrange work for you, if you sign his contract. You won’t make money, but at least you’ll have a place to sleep and food to eat.” She shrugged. “When you’ve few other options, it’s better than begging.”

  They were indentured, then, Lana and the others. They would sell their time, in parcels of long years. There were few indentured servants in Lun; it was too small for it. A farmer needing more hands would hire their neighbor’s children; a quarrymaster might lower his apprentice fee. When I was a child, there was an indentured woman at the inn
, brought in when the whistling-plague killed the landlord’s sons. After her term, she had married a quarryman, then died of an ulcer a year later.

  Maxen turned to Lana, then. “How is the boy?”

  “He’ll live,” she said shortly. “Sir.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “That is all I have for today,” he said, louder. He tucked his notebook away. “I will come back when I have assignments for the rest of you. As for you...” He looked down at me. “We can talk when you are feeling better, yes?”

  I nodded to him, then. “Thank you, sir.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “Don’t thank me yet. What’s your name, boy?”

  “Etan. Etan Dairan.”

  “Very well, Etan.” He nodded. “I will see you again soon.”

  Chapter Four

  I was cold when I woke. I had been cold since leaving Lun, but I thought that had been the nights curled up in hay carts, shivering in the cold air. Now, here, under a blanket with a low fire burning in the hearth, I was still cold.

  I’d been nearly a week in the boarding house. The holding house, Maxen had called it, holding his indentured until he found work for them. Like fish in a bowl, I thought, and me floating aimless among them. At least they had not thrown me out on the street yet; Maxen had not been back since dropping me, and the housekeeper, I thought, would be loath to remove me without his say-so. Still, I knew I couldn’t count on staying here much longer. It wasn’t hospitality that had kept me here, I thought, but Maxen’s absent-mindedness.

  I opened my eyes slowly. Rows of narrow beds spanned an oblong room so large it was almost a hall. There were windows, but most had been covered with plywood or sacking. I heard voices and low laughter. I sat up, woolen blanket wrapped around me, then climbed out of the bed. I was still wearing my shoes.

  Lana was with me in the room, and the other man—I’d not learned his name. She smiled at me. “Look who’s awake.”

  “Well, well,” the man said. “The little Gaelta prince graces us with his presence.”