“Mig zidan! Mig zidan!”
The shouting was slurred, but the panic was clear.
“Shut up,” groaned someone else. Others grunted in limp agreement.
Thrashing and slapping sounds. “Mig zidan!”
“Aye!” Another voice, angrier. “Leave off!”
Manadan listened from an impossible distance as the panicked young Galt kept crying for someone to ‘Get it off!’ From the pitch of his voice, he was probably barely of age. Too young to be experimenting with the champa alchemical burn he was probably suffering from right now. Of course, one was never too young to be a slave.
On his distant peak of darkened awareness, Manadan imagined what the young man looked like. His skin would still be a deep sky blue at that age and his hair white, or perhaps a light grey. Lean, with slightly longer arms than seemed appropriate, he was probably close to six feet tall, with a few inches still to go. His last growth spurt would bring the rest of his limbs and body to match the proportions of his arms. In his homeland, on the shores of the Elid Sea, he would be dressed in a plain, loose-fitting toga or breeches as he prepared his family’s boat for a morning’s fishing.
Unfortunately, he was not on those shores, nor would he ever be again. He and Manadan and the rest of the drug-hazed occupants here in Vish’s underhouse were in the Chawl, the prison slums of the One-King. The Galt probably still wore the same dun-colored tunic he’d been assigned in the Ovens. Likely, his family was dead, or as good as. If he had fought against the One-King’s armies, he’d been unfortunate enough to survive. Perhaps he had not fought, though. His age seemed close. His people had limits on bloodshed and violence, and children were exempt from warfare.
A commendable ideal, but a useless reality, Manadan knew. The One-King held no such restrictions for his own armies, nor for his slaves.
A prickle of sensation ruffled the back of his neck again. It passed quickly, but it was enough. His own alchemical burn, the panea mixture, was fading, the numbing detachment seeping away like water through a sieve.
Vish’s alchemist had some skill with the narcotics, though that was to be expected. Where burns in the outside world varied widely in quality and accessibility — the proper blend of metals, oils and more exotic ingredients was an exacting task that was also banned in many countries — the alchemists of the Chawl had honed their craft almost unhindered over hundreds of years.
The proper application of a burn was a small science of its own, but Manadan had been a devoted student long before he had arrived here. He could do it blindfolded, as the saying went, though a blindfold was hardly necessary.
The panea was ebbing quickly now, though, bringing his mundane senses back in sharp relief. All except his sight.
The Galt was still causing a commotion on the far side of the underhouse and others were yelling now, some confused, some angry, all making noise, ruining Manadan’s fragile peace.
The trap door slapped open above them, followed by the quick stomp of heavy boots down the wooden stairs. The jangle of bracelets nearly covered the muted rustle of the mail vest beneath the tunic of Shaba, Vish’s bouncer, a burly Umohan who made his entrance with characteristic finesse.
“Hey!” he roared.
“Mig!” The Galt’s panicked cries continued. “Mig zidan! Acken!”
“Hey!” The big man stomped across the rough cellar floor.
“Ach!” the Galt cried, louder still. “Mig zidan!”
“Hey!” Shaba yelled again.
“Mig zi-” The cry choked off, but Manadan could hear the muffled words pushing against Shaba’s meaty fist, and the thump of the Galt’s arms or legs as they flailed uselessly against the bouncer’s brute force.
“Hey!” Shaba’s shout filled the room.
The panea was all but gone and Manadan’s skull felt like one of the great domed bells of Threnia, with Shaba’s single-minded shout the monstrous clangor. The burn’s after-effects magnified everything, a quality often touted as a draw by the alchemists, but, like the rest of life on this doomed world, the truth was far worse than any claims made about it.
“Hey!”
Manadan groaned in pain, echoed from pallets around the cellar. He pressed his hands to his temples. Where was Vish?
Hazhi hissed slightly in his ear, the sikwa’s pronged wingtips digging into his shoulder. Even this tiny pain, normally unnoticeable, was horribly amplified by the departing panea. Manadan clenched his jaw against it.
“Shaba! No! Hush!”
The trap door banged shut and Vish’s slippered feet hissed quickly across the dugout floor. “Hush! Let me see.”
The Galt’s muffled cries continued.
“Sir,” Vish asked in a loud voice. “Can you hear me? Sir? Everything is okay, yes? Sir, please.”
The man continued to flail and yell into Shaba’s grip.
“No more shouting, yes?” Vish’s voice sped up. “Please quiet, yes? Sir?”
“He’s a Galt,” Manadan snapped irritably, still trying to hold his skull together. “He doesn’t understand you.”
“Can you talk?” Vish slid a step toward Manadan. “He needs to quiet. People hear upstairs. Not good.”
Manadan squeezed harder. He didn’t need this. He just wanted to be left alone.
The Galt still strained and gasped like a drowning man. This was more than just a bad reaction.
Hazhi’s tail flicked across Manadan’s back tensely. Manadan shook his head, though he immediately regretted the motion. The Galt had nothing to do with him.
“Can you talk,” Vish repeated.
“He wouldn’t understand his own mother anymore,” Manadan said, holding himself as still as possible. “Either kill him or throw him out, but do it quickly, for all our sakes.”
Vish hesitated, then shifted. “Shaba, upstairs! Wait! I go first!” Slippered feet on the stairs. “Wait.” The trap door opened.
The rest of the dismal underhouse was quiet, as if they all understood, even in their various drugged states. Whatever the Galt’s problem, it was not infectious. A faded smattering of voices reached them from the tavern above, the sound of Vish’s daughter Ziana scratching out a drinking song, the clunk of stoneware mugs and bowls, stools shifting, and all of it echoing in Manadan’s fragile skull.
“Come,” Vish hissed.
Shaba clumped up the stairs, the trapdoor thumped shut, and there was peace once again.
“About time,” griped the voice from the corner.
Manadan pressed the heels of his hands to his useless eye sockets and tried not to think. Hazhi shifted, stretched his wings partway, then settled down again. Eventually, when Ziana’s noise had stopped scratching at the insides of his mind and the other sounds had receded back to their normal levels, Manadan slept.
#
“Iya, Manadan,” Vish said brightly as Manadan entered the front room of the small tavern.
Manadan contemplated ignoring the publican’s address and simply walking out. He had slept, but very poorly. The episode with the Galt had wreaked havoc on his routine. Coming down from the panea was never pleasant, but usually manageable. This time, though, the noise had spiraled the experience, and Manadan was still carrying some of the effects. He was still weak, however, and needed a cup of cho.
The main room of the pub felt mostly empty, with only a few voices here and there. Manadan estimated it to be close to noon on Arbala by now, though his poor sleep made it impossible to accurately judge the day or the time. Not that either mattered a great deal to a blind man doomed to the prison slums while the world rushed to a fiery death.
He used his cane to reach a small table toward the side and took a seat on an upturned barrel. “Cho,” he said, adjusting his hat. “Black.”
“Aye,” Vish replied from the bar.
Manadan let his ears wander as a mug clunked on the bar counter and Vish gathered the dried leaves and herbs from various stoneware pots. Hazhi cleaned himself under the brim of Mandan’s hat with that steady licking of his. Nearby, a man complained to his companion about his work in the mines.
“Well you ain’t been stuck on Loring’s ruttin’ crew, like me.”
Manadan guessed the speaker was Rennish, or perhaps Uradi, with the distinctive rasping drawl and coarse slang of the abattoirs, sewer-cleaners and dockyards that these strong but simplistic peoples were generally employed in.
“Eh,” grunted the second man, giving Manadan little to deduce from.
“No lie!” the first continued. “That filthy half-breed is more than half-crazy, I tell you what. I swear he likes it down there, the bleeder. It’s not right!”
“Eh,” grunted the other man.
“What about when old Burgi sees your crew master out hanging by nothing but his line and a prayer, eh? What then? And him swinging his pick like a man possessed, just to reach a bleedin’ quarter-inch vein a-ways over on the far side of a shaft? I’ll tell you what then. Then that bastard Kurgi decides the rest of you gotta be doing the same, by Bima’s saggy tits.”
The other man laughed.
“Hain’t funny,” grumbled the first. “You know the last time we got fresh line? I had to re-twine mine ‘least half a dozen times since Hangman’s Day.”
“Least you know it’s good, then.”
The first man snorted. “I worked a slaughterhouse ‘fore they dragged me into this pit. My line’s got more ruttin’ knots than straight bits.”
“Well,” said the second man, swallowing a drink, “it’s been great knowing you.”
Not for the first time, Manadan wondered at the willingness of the Chawl’s inhabitants to continue to work the One-King’s mines, even with the end of the world coming. The Chawl had been hell on earth for more than eight hundred years. It was the teeming, filthy dustbin into which the One-King’s armies swept any who displeased their ruler, whatever the reason; conquered warriors that survived a battle, peaceful settlers living on precious ore deposits, nobles sacrificed by their scheming counterparts. The One-King had countless laws to break, but only one punishment.
The Chawl had been designed by Opri Chavram, The Grand Architect, at the One-King’s request. Opri had had an enormous notch carved from the top edge of the Paresi cliffs like a giant missing tooth. Three sides were four hundred feet of hand-smoothed stone, the fourth side was empty air that faced the barren Sea of Sand, and the top was open to the sky and the burning heat of the three-day sun, which baked the tenements built in absolute precision. Precisely four miles across its perfectly flat base, it abided by the official Madha religion, the corners aligning with the sacred cardinal points, though there was nothing approaching sacred in this place.
For hundreds of years, all Chawl prisoners had worked as slaves. All who were able, worked the mines. All who weren’t, tended the few services necessary to keep a slave population alive: digestible food, basic clothing — where Manadan was employed, washing and folding tunic after threadbare tunic for hours without end in what passed for the cleanest water in the Chawl — and the cleaning of the eternally clogged bathhouses. Over it all, the One-King’s most brutal soldiers, the Penitents, had been the law, albeit a perversion of the idea.
Though the Last War had turned the streets into literal rivers of blood — when even the feared Penitents had been overrun — the Chawl itself could not be escaped, except perhaps into the Sea of Sand, which was not escape but suicide. The Grand Architect had done his job to perfection. The One-King had rewarded him with it as his tomb for proof.
Still, Manadan supposed that a routine, however unpleasant, was as close a thing to a life as this rabble would ever get, and as likely as far as their little minds would ever reach.
Near the front door, a mug clunked sloppily, splashing a few drops onto the sand-scoured wood, and Vish’ daughter giggled too hard.
Ziana was always trying too hard, Manadan reflected, though never at the proper things. Her voice, for example. It was not terrible, but when she sang she invariably tried to reach too high, resulting in a harsh falsetto, whether for the laments of the Boli or the traditional Madha drinking songs.
She did not try too hard with his cho, however, and he was grateful Vish was behind the bar, though the publican was taking his time with the drink.
Ziana giggled too hard again, pushing her flirting straight into the realm of the ludicrous. The object of her attacks belched sharply and she giggled even louder.
In the corner behind him, Manadan heard a short, raspy grumble. Ullar, Vish’s day bouncer, was clearly not pleased with Ziana’s performance either, though for a different reason.
Vish’s slippers whisked toward Manadan’s table and Hazhi lifted silently from Manadan’s shoulder.
“One black cho,” he said brightly, “and a few snacks for the little one.” He placed the mug in front of Manadan and what Manadan knew to be a small bowl of brew-dazed centipedes for Hazhi.
Manadan nodded. Though sikwa were generally regarded as little more than flying rats by most people, Vish had taken to providing the bowl of ‘snacks’ on Manadan’s third visit, though Manadan was aware that Vish was no altruist. The publican and underhouse manager knew that Manadan preferred panea, one of the more expensive burns in the alchemist’s trade, and a bowlful of bugs was quite likely the easiest way imaginable to curry a customer’s favor.
“Still there is no new food,” Vish said apologetically, “but I have dried sowna. You would like?”
“No.” Manadan wrinkled his nose at the thought. His appetite was never great, but poorly cured sowna meat invariably killed it.
Because the Chawl was barren rock and sand, the One-King generally supplied the Chawl with bulk shipments of food on a monthly basis — dead slaves were poor miners — and though these were usually a random collection of the least appetizing scraps, they were generally considered preferable to no food at all. Of course, Manadan had been here just over three months and he had heard the arrival of only one shipment. Sowna meat was the only thing in plenty, here.
He lifted the cho and breathed in the spicy aroma. It was still too hot to drink, but even the smell was a comfort. “What time is it?”
“Almost two,” Vish said. “Arbala morning.”
So he hadn’t slept as long as he’d thought. This was just as well, though, since the Galt’s interruption had made that little sleep so profitless.
“Did Shaba kill him?” he asked. He hadn’t heard the big bouncer’s wheeze or bracelets jangling since he’d come upstairs.
“Kill?” Vish swallowed quickly. “Eh?”
“It does not matter to me, Vish. Only I noticed that it’s not yet two in the morning, and Shaba is not here while Ullar sulks in the corner.” He sipped carefully at his drink. It was good, despite the fine grit of sand that permeated nearly everything in the Chawl. “It does not seem wise to call him in early, especially with Ziana carrying on as she is, unless there is a reason.”
“Ah,” Vish laughed softly, but tightly. “You miss nothing, Manadan. Yes, Shaba help our friend. Shaba bring him to quiet place. To relax.”
“To relax. Of course.”
“Yes, yes,” Vish said through a smile so wide Manadan could hear it’s taught lines.
“He’s dead, then.”
“Eh? No, no, no. Not dead. Sleeping. Everything okay.”
“As I said,” Manadan sighed, letting the strong spices of the cho soothe his innards, “it makes no difference to me. You have a business to run. Besides, this is the Chawl. Whatever mistake your alchemist may have made with the Galt’s champa is no business of mine, so long as my panea is good.” He took another sip. “And if not, well, I will likely be beyond caring.”
It was true that he did not care about the Galt’s demise. It was hypocrisy to claim some kind of indignation or disgust at such things. If the boy had fought against the One-King, he had accepted — whether knowingly or unknowingly — the only truth of war: death.
Manadan had heard all the rationales, but none of them included the whole truth. If one agrees that it is acceptable to take another’s life, then one must also agree that it is acceptable to lose one’s own. The rationales did not matter, in the final analysis. If the boy had fought in self-defense, opposition to tyranny, or any other of a thousand excuses, it changed nothing. Once a person opened that door, there was no shutting it. It was easy to fill the gap with justifications, but these blew away in the clear wind of logic and truth.
If, on the other hand, the boy had not fought, then he had simply been unlucky, just as he had been with the champa, and no purpose was served in bemoaning that fact. On balance, in fact, the youth was in a better position as things stood, having now escaped the Chawl.
“No mistake,” Vish was saying. “Champa was good. Panea was good also, yes? Very good?”
“It was fine,” Manadan replied, already tired of the conversation. He drank some more. On the table beside him, Hazhi’s tongue flicked softly at the bowl.
“Good,” Vish said. “Yes. Everything good. Nobody problem. Yes.” There was a fear in Vish’s voice, beyond any simple anxiety over a botched burn or bad reaction.
“This is not about the Galt or your alchemist, is it, Vish?”
Vish was silent and Manadan cursed his need to know. It was not his business.
Vish lowered his voice. “No.”
He knew it was too late, but Manadan still tried to distract himself with the cho, letting the drink fill his mouth with its spicy warmth. Perhaps Vish would simply leave.
Vish pulled out a stool and settled onto it.
Manadan swallowed slowly. “The Ruuk, I presume.”
“You hear?” Vish leaned forward, genuinely nervous.
Manadan waved a hand between them, bored already and angry with himself for not resisting the urge.
“Who said this?” Vish pressed. “What you hear?”
“Relax. If the Ruuk truly are spreading their wings, I doubt your little hovel is a concern. There are enough larger underhouses for the bird-women to fight over.”
Manadan had never seen a Ruuk alive, though before he’d lost his sight he had examined the specimens maintained in the Academy laboratories of Tahri. Manadan had also gleaned a fair amount from the countless rumors here in the Chawl, where a clutch of them held a small area against the far wall now called the Feathered District.
More bird than human, they were as fragile as they were strong, though their capricious violence was often aimed as much at each other as their enemies. A streak of cunning and brutality had apparently enabled them to hold the Feathered District against all the Warders’ attempts, despite the clipping of their wings. Excessively proud, doubly vicious, yet never seen outside their section of lawless tenements, they had gained a near-mythic status within the Chawl.
“What you hear?” Vish pressed.
“This little enterprise of yours is hardly a concern for them.” The Ruuk were dangerous and cruel and certainly powerful, but Vish’s pathetic underhouse was miles from their strength, and a stretch of this distance hardly made sense, particularly for so little return.
“But they come,” Vish hissed, leaning forward again, the heavy smell of fried sowna fat on his breath. “They come to me!”
“The Ruuk?” Manadan raised an eyebrow doubtfully. He had frequented Vish’s business for more than a month and the publican was no more honest than the rest of the Chawl, but he was also not prone to outright fabrications.
“Not Ruuk,” Vish said. “The man, with, with, how you say — with ear-hooks!”
“Earrings?”
“Earrings! Yes! Many earrings!”
“A Pranti,” Manadan said, bored once again. The men of the Prant prairies had developed elaborate and excessive methods of indicating social status based primarily on physical accoutrements, including earrings, nose rings, hair extensions, necklaces, and such. In most societies, this kind of behavior by males was viewed as embarrassing at best, but the Pranti had rebuffed more than one invader while their neighbors fell around them. Until the One-King’s armies had come.
In the Chawl, the Ruuk had taken an immediate liking to these proud warriors, covered with their shiny baubles, and the Pranti seemed satisfied in their role as Ruuk enforcers.
“Yes,” Vish whispered hurriedly. “He come! He telled me Ruuk own this place. He telled me I leave or I pay.”
Manadan took another drink. It was helping, but he would still need the bathhouse soon.
“Well?” Vish’s thick breath pressed close.
Manadan frowned. “Well what?”
“What I do?”
“About what?”
“Ruuk!” Vish hissed. “Man with earrings! What I do?”
Manadan shrugged. “Pay him, I suppose. Or leave.”
“What? But is so much!”
Manadan gave his remaining cho a sardonic smile. “Of course. If only this Pranti had demanded less money, something more reasonable, then you would pay it, yes?”
“No,” Vish said quickly. “No, no.”
Manadan wondered why he hadn’t simply kept his silence from the start. “It is your business, Vish, not mine.”
He actually liked the publican and his small establishment, but that meant little in the Chawl, and Manadan knew that attachment was a weakness. He had allowed himself a routine, here, and that was dangerous. It was probably best that he find another underhouse, in either case.
“But the Ruuk!”
Manadan took a long breath. Hazhi’s wings fluttered, his tiny talons gripping his shoulder as his snaking tail rested against Manadan’s back.
“As I said before,” Manadan said tiredly, “I doubt the Ruuk have a care about you or your little shop. The man who approached you was almost certainly some local thug. It is a dangerous ploy, but neither intelligence nor wisdom are in abundance here, are they?”
“But he is real,” Vish hissed. “He show me! Thirteen earrings. Say each for ten people. He say I no pay, I no leave, I make fourteen!”
The first bubble pushed slowly through Manadan’s system as if covered in barbs. It was time for the bathhouse. He took a breath and pushed the cup toward the publican. When he tried to stand, though, Vish grabbed his wrist.
“He left mark!” The publican’s voice was a genuine whisper now, his lips close to Manadan’s ear.
Manadan smelled the man’s fear under the onions and hops and the stale spills and odors of the room. He told himself to pull his arm free and walk away. Some idiot was playing a stupid, if dangerous, game, and if Vish could not see the truth, then he deserved to lose his money.
“When,” he said instead.
“Eh?”
“When did this man leave the mark!” Manadan snapped, angrier at himself for staying than he was at the dense publican.
“Sunrise. Just this sunrise.”
Two full days ago. Manadan worked his hand free of Vish’s sweaty grip. He wasn’t actually surprised at the answer, but it annoyed him still.
“Eh?” Vish’s voice raised in concern. “What bad?”
“I presume this so-called Pranti said he would return at sunset, correct?”
“Yes!”
“Of course he did.” Manadan stood up with care, leaning slightly on his cane as his bowels increased their activity. “You have Ullar, and Shaba too, if need be. You should be fine, unless this thug has friends, which I would doubt. Now-”
“But the mark!” Vish caught his forearm again. “On back door! Come!”
“Any fool can carve a sign on a wall, Vish, just as any fool can dress in jewelry and blackmail a gullible barkeep.”
“But if-”
Manadan jerked his arm free. His innards suddenly felt as if he’d swallowed a small desert cactus. He grit his teeth. The pain passed as quickly as it had come, and Manadan breathed again, but there would be more soon enough. It was still a wonder to him how something as innocuous as air could be so painful.
“Manadan?”
“If the Ruuk truly want such a pathetic hovel as this,” he said loudly, finished with the useless conversation he should have avoided from the start, “then you will pay and you may live, but if you let a common thug steal from you, you deserve the loss.”
He turned and made his way to the front wall and then along toward the door. The room had gone quiet at his outburst and he could feel the eyes on him. Even the ignorant Ziana had left off her flirting to stare. Manadan ignored them. He needed to get to the bathhouse out back. Vish’s concerns were not his problem.
A pointed bubble of gas stopped him as he reached for the door, drawing him up short with a sharp intake of breath. They were all watching him now, seeing him winded by his own weakness, a pathetic little husk of a man.
He ground his jaw tighter against the pain, but Hazhi lifted from his shoulder suddenly, just as the door snapped inward, slamming Manadan backward off his feet.
Ullar’s wiry arms caught him easily, but the bouncer dropped him just as quickly as he moved past Manadan.
“Hey!” yelled another voice, thin and wheedling amid the sounds of a struggle. “Get off!”
“Out!” Vish yelled. “You, out!”
Manadan grabbed the nearest table to stay upright. The shock had knocked his inner pain aside for the moment, but his shoulder and hip throbbed from the impact.
“Vish!” the thin voice shouted, still struggling. “Vish, it’s me! It’s Rigg! They’re coming for the underhouse!”
Manadan’s senses focused as he recognized the weaselly cry, and the likely source of Vish’s blackmail. Rigg was a third-rate swindler and thief, the kind who spent such effort contriving schemes of easy riches that inevitably failed, that honest work could not but be seen as an easier life. The very kind of fool who would consider it brilliant to dress as a Pranti and threaten a shopkeeper into blackmail, entirely ignorant of the danger.
“Ullar,” Vish hissed tightly.
“There’s no time!” Rigg yelled. “The underhouse! Hide it!”
Through the open door, Manadan heard the rapid thump of boots approaching in the street outside. Warders.
This felt wrong, somehow; the suddenness, the shouting, the Warders. Subtlety was not one of Rigg’s strengths, but neither was collusion.
“Vish,” Manadan said sharply. “You do not know anything. Ullar, do not let that weasel out of your hands.”
“What?”
“Step back!”
The barked command came with the arrival of a pack of heavy-breathing, lead-footed, excited-sounding Warders. By their noise, Manadan guessed there were a half-dozen or so, all solidly built and probably carrying at least two steel blades each.
“The underhouse, Vish!” Rigg yelled. “Hide it!”
“Quiet!”
The hard, flat voice of Baius, the local Warder Lieutenant, was unmistakable, and the room fell silent immediately. Her cold brutality was well-known, even to a newcomer like Manadan.
Manadan lowered himself onto a stool, pulled his hat back down into place and listened. Hazhi returned quietly, though Manadan moved the sikwa to his good shoulder with a wince.
“What is wrong,” Vish asked anxiously. “What-”
“Everybody out,” Baius ordered. “You don’t work here, you leave. Now.”
Stools scraped and footsteps moved quickly out.
“You,” Baius said, stepping toward Manadan. “Old man. You deaf? Get out.”
“Sorry,” apologized a deep, out-of-breath voice from the doorway. “I was–”
“Shut up, Gupti,” Baius snapped.
“What is wrong,” Vish asked again. “This my pub-”
“Everybody needs to keep their mouths shut,” Baius said flatly. “You, scarecrow, let him go.”
Before Ullar could respond, new voices pushed into the room, turning from lively to cautious. “Hey, make some room!” “Six mugs here and keep ‘em filled!” “Move over, there!” “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Get them out,” Baius ordered.
“Hey,” shouted one of the new voices. “Hands off, badge-babies! This is our pub. What’s going on? Where’s Vish?”
“Warders’ business,” the Lieutenant said coldly. “Now get out.”
“Warders’ business,” echoed the voice. “Sounds interesting, eh lads?” Low grunts and grumbling laughter. “I think we’ll just stick around if it’s all the same to you.” A stool scraped the floor, then others. “As law-abiding slaves, of course.”
The room was quiet a moment.
“Shut that damn door, Gupti,” Baius snarled finally. “The rest of you, just sit there and don’t interfere.”
“You got it, boss lady.”
There was rough laughter among the newcomers, but three quick steps ended in a throaty grunt. Stools scraped the floor and the Warders drew their blades with that singular ring of unsheathed metal. Manadan guessed some of the new arrivals had a contraband weapon or two, most in the Chawl did, but a fully-armed patrol was rarely bested.
“Don’t push me, fat man,” Baius growled.
A strangled noise was the only response, then the fat man wheezed and gasped, and the stool creaked under his weight.
“All of you,” Baius said darkly. “Sit down and shut up.”
After a moment came the sounds of the other men taking their seats again.
Baius grunted and walked back toward Ullar. “I told you to let that man go, scarecrow.”
Ullar shifted slightly. Rigg grunted and struggled.
“Are you all deaf?” Baius said. “Mannik and Bern, help him understand.”
“So Rigg is a Warder, now?” Manadan asked loudly.
The Lieutenant’s steps stopped, and Manadan could feel the press of all their eyes.
“What is wrong with you people?” Baius said. “I said leave.”
“You did,” Manadan nodded agreeably, “but you also said anyone who works here should stay. A bit of a conundrum, you see.”
“You work here?”
Manadan blinked his sightless eyes pleasantly. “I serve the tables. Is Rigg a Warder?”
The floorboards gave slightly under his feet as Baius stepped in front of him, and Manadan relaxed his body in preparation for a strike while his mind tried to put these new pieces together.
Rigg was obviously a ruse, an excuse for the Warders to be here, but Manadan did not understand why. If Rigg was working for the Warders, then Vish had been approached by a genuine Pranti.
If that was so, however, Manadan still could not see the purpose in it. This place truly was of no import, not by Chawl standards. The smallest of the Jaczeni underhouses only a few blocks away were easily twice as large and busy at almost all hours.
And then there was the question of these Warders? Were Baius and her brutes here to stop the Ruuk encroachment? By threatening the locals? None of this made sense.
“What’s with the flying rat?” Baius grunted. “Stupid thing for a pet.”
Hazhi hissed at her.
“This is a sikwa,” Manadan said stiffly. “Though even rats are surprisingly intelligent, especially when compared to most people,” he added.
Hazhi hissed again as a gloved hand gripped Manadan’s chin and lifted it firmly. The leather was chapped and rough and smelled of dirt and sweat, but Manadan also detected a faint hint of something much lighter, a perfume of some sort. Was it vellux flower?
“What’s your name, old man?” There was nothing flowery in Baius’ voice.
“Graxis,” Manadan replied, feeling confident Vish would not reveal the lie. It might have been a risk, using the name of the One-King’s first Grand General, but it seemed perversely appropriate — as a child, Manadan, had memorized the lineage of the great ruler through his most important advisors, including the one who had helped seat the young ruler in the first place — and Baius did not strike Manadan as a master of historic minutiae.
“Really.”
Manadan felt the air shift past his face. “Yes,” he said. “And yes, I am blind.”
“Graxis what?”
“Hematorus.”
“Hematorus, eh? You don’t look Innish.”
“I was adopted. Isn’t Baius traditionally a male name?”
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