The Vastness Read online

  The great crowd gathered along Gatehouse Road hummed with excitement as a column of 301 Hemari made their way through to my spot near the gates. Their leader was too short and too clean. His breastplate did not fit as well as it should and a snarl disturbed his plain face. The priest with him had dressed down to a simple yellow robe but had all his vestments on underneath. I giggled at Rahan and Avin. Their disguises had not been their idea.

  “I know it’s you with my eyes open,” I said, but this was not news to either of them.

  “Where is Blathebed now?” Rahan asked and offered me my map. It was a bit crumpled and the ink had smeared from the sweat on his hands.

  I blinked my eyes to compare then and now. Half of the Warrens was gathered with us along Gatehouse Road. The ball of them blazed. The girls of Yellow Row had made it as well, and their threads were knitted so tight to mine and to each other I could not tell them apart. Each girl had found a pry bar or satchels, and had already decided which looms and spools of thread they would carry back and which they would leave to burn. Half of them had found a man to hold hands with. Not all of the men’s threads were so tightly woven into the pattern. They would be asked to carry a great deal.

  “Where?” Rahan asked a second time. “Please, Emi.”

  “Sorry. I get drawn in by what I see,” I said and tried to focus on the river. The turmoil we’d caused had changed the picture a great deal. I put my finger on the spot where the ships had stooped and studied the quality and quantity of the souls packed between the soft curve of the river and the high palace wall. “They went ashore right there.”

  “On purpose? Are you sure?” Rahan asked, and when I nodded he let out something close to shriek.

  “They seem sincere,” I said. “All the ships are right there, and I count more of our boys on the road and wall at the moment than theirs.”

  “Look further south. Are the divisions moving north against them,” he said, and I had to wipe his spit from my cheek.

  “Oh no,” I said, “Its—its all of them. Moving toward the Palace—164,400 of them. I think it is Evand that went ashore. He is up on the wall.”

  He took my head gently in his hands. “My brother is a damned fool.”

  I did not like his anger. It was unfair. “Fool or not, he seems in command so far. Here, let me draw it—you’ll see.”

  It was a simple sketch. The freeman with Evand had blocked the road and wall, and the Hurdu were rushing into the palace a thousand at a time. The space where the fighting was happening was very narrow.

  “By all the—” he said. “That is the palace wall, right now?”

  Rahan turned to Avin. “Worth the risk? If they Hurdu turn back, it would be a slaughter.”

  “We must,” was all he said, and I got the feeling Avin wasn’t thinking about the tools.

  “Then we go,” he said and gave the order. Ready men pulled away the last layer of stones built up behind the gates and it took fifty-eight men to pull them open. The rest happened without any fuss. Rahan and his men searched for things to worry about, but the people of the Warrens had made the long walk across the bridge too many times to think much of it. A few gave small voices to what we were thinking.

  “Can’t wait to get those lathe blades in hand,” one man said.

  “Hope they haven’t rusted.”

  “I’ll not mind a little rust. You can’t wish a board smooth.”

  The soldiers on the far side of the bridge laughed when they first saw us. They called archers to the wooden towers above their thin wall and line of pickets.

  “Going to enjoy this,” one called down and threw a stone, but that was the last of their cat calls. They were only 312 men upon the wall and in the towers. A few arrows were fired before a hundred ropes were thrown over and the teams got in line to start pulling. When the boys gave a first good tug the wall groaned and the arrows stopped coming. When it collapsed, the place was deserted. The broken remains were tossed into the river.

  We flowed south onto River Road and into the Merchants’ Quarter. The people there yelled at us, but they fled faster than the soldiers. A few stubborn men came out with canes and whips but they were left bloody in the street.

  It was a quick walk—the same 921 steps along Ash Row to Copper Road and 252 from there to the mill. I caught myself looking down at my feet. Rahan gave me a questioning look.

  “I don’t like remembering.”

  “You should, from time to time,” Rahan replied. “There is a great deal to be learned from our yesterdays.”

  “When have your yesterdays ever included tin cups and counting steps?” I asked and marched on.

  “Here’s the gate,” I said, but had to turn to find him. He’d stopped and was watching the flow of people along Copper Road and over the hill. Most had their heads down from the habit of it. Rahan shook his head and started crying. Avin stood silent beside him.

  “Feeling sad for us now won’t help,” I said.

  This startled him and he looked up at me. I didn’t want to hear that he was sorry, and I turned back to the entrance of the mill. We were almost the last to move inside. The nails that secured the looms to the old planking had already been torn up and one of them was already moving out into the courtyard, twenty people to a side. Further down, the warehouse doors had been bashed open and the giant spools were being marched out, two or three on each shoulder depending on the strength of the man.

  “This way,” I said, and Rahan caught up to me at my pattern table. The rods and teeth I’d last worked where I’d left them.

  “Take that book,” I said to Rahan, while I swept the teeth into a bag. “Avin, gather up the rods, and be careful not to bang them together. They catch on the wool if they get chipped.

  At the front end, the best dozen looms from our building were up and on the move. I swept the last armful of teeth into my satchel and followed them out. Rahan’s guards looked pleased for the first time as the great flow of people stared heading back the way we’d come.

  “Time to set the rest on fire?” one of the freemen asked from the center of the courtyard.

  “No,” I said. “No fire until everyone is on the bridge.”

  The man frowned and was slow to join a crew carrying a heavy loom.

  “You know you will own what you take, right?” I said to him.

  He blinked at me. “How do you mean?”

  “Everything we are taking. It belongs to those who take it. Carrying a loom means you own part of it.”

  “The hell it does. No Exaltier would ever let a slave own anything.”

  Rahan took off his helmet. “I am, actually. We did the same in Enhedu. The people who power each enterprise will own shares of it. I’d be quick if I were you. You’ll want to be remembered for doing an equal part of the work.”

  The man stood up straight. It took him much longer than it should have to believe what he had seen and heard, but when he got himself around to it, he hurried to help shoulder the weight.

  We joined the procession and were treated to a marvelous parade. The looms were not the only heavy pieces being carried off. Every kind of contraption and tool was on the move.

  “How are we doing?” Rahan asked, and I had to remember to close my eyes.

  “Good. Most are headed back. None of Yarik’s men are moving against us yet.”

  “Blathebed and Sewin?”

  I had to focus on the spot. The bodies between the river and the wall were packed tight.

  “They have built a wall across the road,” I said. “As tall as a man. Yarik’s men are jammed up against it. They are dying a dozen at a time.”

  “The freemen are dying?”

  “No. Yarik’s men. Along the road. The ships are clustered around the spot. They must be firing down on them.”

  “And above?”

  “Seventy men left above. They are fighting a much larger group. There must be a doorway they are defending.”

  “How do we signal them to retreat?” Rahan asked
and after a strangled growl answered his own question. “We never agreed how we’d tell them they should withdraw.”

  Smoke started wafting down the street. To our right a group of freemen were preparing torches. In other places a few small fires had already been lit.

  “The tithe tower,” Avin said, and pointed back up the hill. “If we set it on fire, the flames would be high enough for Sewin to see.”

  Rahan asked me if the way was clear and I closed my eyes again. “There are a few people coming across the park beneath the tower, now that the freemen are withdrawing. Farther into the quarter a men are forming up by the hundred, but they aren’t moving our way.”

  “Let’s go, quick as we can,” he said, and handed the pattern book to one of his officer. He pointed other Hemari and me and Avin. I reluctantly handed over my satchel. Avin was happy to shed his load.

  “You three stay with the looms,” he said to the officer. “They aren’t worth anything without all of this, so you treat it all gently. Get word to the gates that I will not be coming across the bridge. They are to restack the stone blocks as soon as everyone is through.”

  “Sir, you cannot mean to go yourself to do this. Allow me to do it.”

  He took the officer by the arm, “The lives of all the men of our division are being spent forcing the faint against the Ribbon. I will leave it to no man to relieve them. Go.”

  The officer relented, but Rahan’s words did not explain why Avin was staying with us. They were up to something.

  Rahan led us back up the road and turned left, up Copper Road toward the tower. The crowd of freemen got thinner as we went, and soon we were the only ones moving further into the quarter. The tithe tower and its plaza came into view.

  I’d always wanted to walk in the park beneath the tower, but this was not the way I had envisioned it.

  “A crowd of a 115 is gathering in the park,” I said, but they were as visible as their swords and spears they carried. Their threads wavered but were slowing coalescing.

  “They are growing slowly braver,” I said.

  Rahan asked for a bow and fired an arrow at them. It struck the largest man in the group and their threads were tossed about as if by an angry wind. They broke and ran.

  “Anyone inside the tower?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, and Rahan’s men kicked in the doors.

  The stone interior was scorched, and I recalled the previous winter when all of the city’s tower had been robbed and burned.

  “Twice in less than a year,” Avin remarked while the men hurried every bit of wood and flask of lamp oil they could find onto the stairs at the back of the room. The fire was set and we withdrew into the park. Rahan kept us there until the tower sprouted bright flames and black smoke poured high above it.

  “Have they seen it?” he asked.

  This was a much harder question to answer, and I searched the angry mass of threads upon the river. Yarik’s men were still dying in droves upon the road in an effort to get over Evand’s wall.

  “No sign ...” I said. “Wait. The last of them is coming down off the wall.”

  Rahan cheered for a moment at the top of his lungs. His men did not join in. They clutched their weapons and searched the darkened streets.

  “The groups are growing larger and headed this way,” I said to Rahan. “You said we were going to find another way across?”

  “Do you know Glass Road?”

  “My owner’s family had bookkeepers there. I’ve never been. Down in the southwest corner of the quarter, if I recall the maps correctly.”

  “That’s right. It runs diagonally down to the tower that guards the east side of the river. I need you to get us there.”

  “Six hundred and forty-one of Yarik men are in that tower at the moment. They seem happy to be inside for now, but they’ll be moving again once they know the freemen have withdrawn.”

  Rahan grinned at me. “And between there and here, you can find us a clear route?”

  “What is it that you are up to?”

  His guards wanted to know the answer as well, but he did not reply.

  “Come, we should hurry. This way to start?” he said, and when I nodded he led us away. “Just keep us on a clear path.”

  That was easier said than done. I could not see the streets because the buildings were so deserted. It did not help that the road slanted up a hill and tried to trip me when I had my eyes closed, or that every time I had my eyes open I would try to turn around and get a glimpse of the growing fires that had been lit behind us.

  Several streets later a man came out of one of the tall thin houses at the top of the hill and stopped us at an intersection as though we were his to command.

  “Have you rounded up those damned churls?” he asked.

  “They have stolen everything,” Avin said. “Yarik failed to stop a single one of them. Everything from the bridge to Copper Road is on fire.”

  “Damn those fool princes,” the man said and then pointed at me. “What are you doing arresting children? Theft and flames and you bother with a little girl. You Hemari, you are as bad as the Yentif that made you.”

  Rahan looked up and down the street and frowned. It was solid with homes and I kept my eyes open long enough to get a sense of the place. It was filthy. Every stoop and alley was filled with garbage. The barefoot man before us was thin and wore an embroidered silk robe. On his belt he wore a braided whip.

  They had no one left to clean their streets, cook their meals, or make their shoes. Without us, they had not lasted half a season. The quarter was deserted.

  I spit at him and for a long moment wanted to be as tall and strong as one of the soldiers. I would have killed him where he stood.

  “You little fiend,” the man said and waggled his knife at me. I closed my eyes, focused on the threads of his soul, and tried by force of will to pull them apart.

  Nothing at all happened except my grunting.

  “Bayen above,” the man said. “I see now why you have hold of her. What is she, one of those Bermish witches?”

  Rahan was still frowning up and down the street, his concerns far away from the man’s plight or mine.

  “I pray the fire does not make it to your house, sir,” Avin said to the man with the same desperate sincerity as every other sentence he spoke. I scoffed at it, but this went unnoticed as the man hurried inside and yelled at his wife to gather the silver.

  I expected Avin to drop the act when the man went inside but he did not. Our Exaltier took two full steps toward the man’s home as if he meant to help him gather his belongings. Then he turned and moved to the center of the intersection.

  “That’s Glass Road there,” I said. “A lot more people moving about. Perhaps we should be moving.”

  He wasn’t listening.

  Avin asked me, “Has the tower garrison moved?”

  “Not yet. The return of the freemen must have them terrified. No promises on how much longer that will last.”

  Avin took Rahan by the arm. “Seen enough? Will it work?”

  Rahan crouched low and looked down the slope of the hill toward the burning tithe tower. “I think so. Just high enough.”

  “Good. Then it’s my turn. Let’s see if any of them are left.”

  They loved their mysteries. I could not figure out what they were doing with my eyes open or closed. I exchanged glances with the Hemari. They were as confused as I was.

  Avin was nervous but once we’d made it to Glass Road he marched us down to within a stone’s throw of the corner tower. Once there, he came to a halt and started mumbling a short song I could not catch.

  Our escort was desperate to be moving. They looked to me again.

  I did not like that I had more authority than they did to speak to an Exaltier and the Sten. Being a nameless scout seemed a better life.

  “People are starting to notice us,” I said.

  This earned some grunts of agreement from the men.

  Rahan’s spun on us, “Q
uiet now, all of you.”

  Three men can into view up the darkened turn of Glass Road. They considered us and whispered back and forth.

  “They are singers,” I said, and The Hemari stepped behind me. Perhaps being me was better. I knew everything I needed to about the trio with a single blink of my eyes.

  I whispered to Avin, “They have each seen someone die, and are close friends. They have no connection to any of Yarik’s men and are strangers to everyone on Glass Road. They are very alone here.”

  “Who are you to be out with Hemari?” the first said to Avin, while the other two looked at me.

  “You were with the Conservancy?” Avin asked, and then added, “Don’t run. We are not here to kill you.”

  “Pardon, sir,” the first said. “But it is hard to trust a man who is wearing so poor a disguise. You are not a simple priest.”

  Avin stepped toward them and opened the yellow robe he wore to reveal the fine layers beneath. “I am Avinda Dooma, Sten of Zoviya and this is Exaltier Rahan Yentif. We are in need of your services. A Preservatory this time instead of Conservancy. From Enhedu to Berm.”

  “Find them to kill them?”

  “No. To teach them.”

  “You will share your words with us as well?”

  “Yes.”

  The pair looking at me had not stopped. The third was slow to respond to Avin. “We are all that is left. Yarik’s Sten is a politician not a priest. He is working to destroy everything Sikhek built.”

  Rahan liked these words. Avin had other concerns. “Are there any weeping children in the city?”

  The trio did not like the question.

  “What are weeping children?” I asked.

  The third man noticed me then, and the trio eyed me the way a starving man covets a squawker of meat.

  Rahan stepped between us. “Try any magic this close to her and you would burst into flame.”

  “Yellow dress and all,” one of them remarked. “The rumors are true.”

  “Answer my question,” I said. “Who are the weeping children?”

  Their leader crouched down as though he could be my friend. “Children who are touched by the spirits and can hear their whispers. It hurts and they can’t stop crying. I don’t know what Sikhek did with them. You’ll have to ask your Sten here what he means to do with the ones he finds.”