The Vastness Page 5

  “Right,” she said. “We need to find the right row first, and then worry about which lodge she would be in.” She dried her eyes but looked ready to gush tears again.

  “My parents made incense,” she said. “Does that help? The really stinky kind that the priests use. Like the stuff they used downstairs. I hate it. Our place was far upriver. The last time the priests came to buy from my father, they arrested us instead and took everything. Oh, I miss them so much.”

  The tears came even faster this time, and she hugged me.

  I knew vaguely where the foul stuff was made, but had to struggle free of her embrace in order to point south toward the neighborhood.

  “Is that where they make it?” she asked and smiled when I nodded. “Which row?”

  I shrugged, not knowing, but this did not seem to concern her. “But how will we get down? The priests have returned, I think. I have been hearing movement all morning. It’s what woke me up.”

  As if summoned by her foolishness, a thumping of boots began to move up the stairs. I could hear the man spitting his leaf as he came.

  “Oh, Emi. What do we do?”

  I pointed at the chest, and we hurried it out of the way in time for a priest to open the hatch.

  “What are you doing here?” he shouted.

  “Incense,” Pia said.

  “What?”

  “We were sent to find some. By Master Pickesh, Lord Rahan’s man. We work for him.”

  “What? He? Who?” he replied, his anger melting back into a puddle of confusion before it sprang back twice as savage as before. His fat cheeks shook as he yelled. “There is none here. The mob took everything last night. No incense left at all.”

  “Where can—”

  “Oh, shut up, girl. You’ll have to go down to Bent Light Row. That’s where they make it. Now get out of here.”

  He smacked Pia on her bad ear and kicked my shin. “Out, I said.”

  We hurried around him in the tiny space and ran down the stairs. The room was twice as ugly in the daylight. The tables were stained with blood, and the incense had worn off enough that the stink of the place crawled into my nose. Three priests on the near side were arguing around a breakfast of mate and buns.

  “We cannot be seen to be helping Rahan’s men.”

  “Lord Yarik will dig them out of here. We just need them to keep the mob away until then.”

  Pia collided with me and gagged as she got a whiff of the space. The priests all turned and yelled, and we made for the open door.

  Soldiers ringed the park as before, but the crowd had closed in around the tower. We dashed for the nearest group, and the yelling of the priests grew faint as we disappeared into the crowd. When we stopped, we were surrounded by gray-wrapped churls who were straining to hear the cries of Rahan’s men.

  “Look what I got,” Pia said, and showed me the bun in her hand.

  I snatched my hands around it and jammed it into her tunica. She got wise and hid it away. We smiled though, while we caught our breath, for the escape and the thought of the meal we would have.

  Talk of Lord Rahan was everywhere around us.

  “He won a battle at Tin Bridge,” one man said.

  “Who won?”

  “The new Exaltier, of course, who do you think I mean?”

  “Against who?”

  “His brother Yarik, you idiot. Are you even alive, I wonder? Lord Rahan, fought off his brother at Tin Bridge. This morning, they say.”

  “Madness,” a woman said. “Who fights to protect the Warrens?”

  “My Exaltier, that’s who.”

  Some around him cheered. Others grumbled about the length of the line for bread. This had us both looking around, and Pia pointed me to the long lines.

  Master Pickesh had made good on the promise of wagons. The men who had come to join Lord Rahan’s army sat on the far side with hunks of bread and steaming cups of something that had them all smiling. The lines before the wagons were enormous. So were the wagons.

  “Come on,” Pia said. “Let’s get moving down to Bent Light Row and find mother, so we can get back for some bread.”

  She dragged me south as I tried to point back toward our row. It took me a moment to remember her poor plan for finding her mother and the place it would take us. The neighborhood was down in the bowels of the Warrens. Dame Franni would tie us both down and sit on us before she would have let us head down there.

  But as Pia pulled me along, it was odd. No one bothered us and we managed to sneak bites of the bun. Everyone was headed into the plaza. The smell of the bread was probably what did it, but the farther we went, I noticed the lack of chancellery bailiffs and bosses. Had the soldiers managed to run them off entirely?

  We came to an intersection of many streets, and I had no good idea which way we should go.

  Pia tugged a passing overseer by the sleeve before I could stop her. “Which way to Bent Light Row?” she asked.

  I got ready to run from the man, but Pia handed him a piece of the bun. He snatched it, crammed it into his mouth, and pointed down one of the twisted roads. I was glad she started us away before the man could decide he wanted anything else from us.

  Perhaps I was worrying too much. Pia didn’t seem concerned at all. She could be right. It couldn’t be that bad down in the bowels, I supposed. Pia and I were no different than the people down there. They never saw the other side of the river, but we all ate the same wretched food and wore the same wretched clothes.

  We continued on. The streets became narrow and filthy. A body propped against one building looked glued to the alley stones with the dried blood that surrounded it. The rats had been at him, too. Pia gripped my arm.

  The lodges got smaller, and the streets narrower still. There was no sewer and more than one alley and cul-de-sac was filled with shit. A man sitting in the middle of one such alley gave out a weak cough and laid himself down. No one paid him any mind. On Yellow Row, one of the overseers would scoop him up and haul him off.

  This must be where the sick and weak ended up. Here or upon a tithe tower table, perhaps.

  “Oh, Emi,” Pia said. “They throw us away down here. The city uses us up, and we are slowly flushed down to the bottom of the Warrens.”

  We got farther in, and the people looked sicker and slower. Fewer teeth. Yellow eyes. Hunched backs. No hair. The lodges were smashed together and thin. No water troths for bathing down here. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen rows of this hell as we walked. Hundreds of lodges in that spider web of streets—232,641 people who slept surrounded by the promise of death and worked the mean factories along the wall.

  A trio of men came out of one of the alleys. They grabbed us and searched through our clothes before I knew what was going on. Pia protested, and one of them punched her in the stomach. The man found the last crust of the bun in her tunica and jammed it in his mouth.

  The other two took hold if us by the hair and pulled us back toward their alley.

  “I don’t want the dark one,” said the man who had hold of me. “Trade with me.”

  The other shrugged and made to switch before he screamed. Pia had sunk her teeth deep into his forearm and was kicking and scratching him. He yanked his arm away and a circle of flesh tore free. She spit it out at him and charged the one who had hold of me.

  “Come and get me, girl,” he said with a smile as his fellow tumbled back.

  Blood streaked her savage face, and she shrieked like a demon from the ice. He tried to wrap her up but he still had hold of me. I was pressed up against her in his grip when her strong teeth got hold of his jaw line. His flexing arms flailed, and I was shoved away as he struggled to get her off.

  When I looked back, she had let go and he was on his back and scrambling to flee her. She chased all three of them back into the alley. They tumbled into the darkness and she screamed once more at them before she wiped the blood off her face.

  “Come on, Emi,” she said, and I could not have been happier when she grabbed my
hand and started us the other way. She spit several times, and growled once more.

  “Do you have all your teeth?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I only had twenty-eight. I showed her the gap on the left side. I’d been hit in the mouth by the return of a rapier catch my first day on the looms.

  “Better than the rest,” she said, spit one last time, and took hold of my arm. She didn’t say anything else about it after that.

  The narrow street dumped us out onto a wide road that ran parallel to the city’s high wall. A last ribbon of rows and mills crowded the twisted lane.

  The merciless bottom of the Warrens’ dark bowels at last.

  The stink of the incense was close. It wrapped me in burnt leaves and filled my mouth and nose with ginger and charcoal. We found a curved row that ended at the entrance to a trio of gray brick buildings. Their rising chimneys looked at first like cracks in the towering tan wall that rose up behind them, and the first shift workers crowded into the alley looked like a dirty rug of rat hair.

  Pia pulled me in. Benjam must have felt the same dread that crawled through me. I wished I had a sword or all of my teeth.

  I could hardly breathe and did not want to set foot near the black and oily paths that ran from the lodges to the factory entrance. The row was crowded, too, like so many we had passed. The day shift sat upon the blackened stone, waiting to be told what to do.

  I pointed Pia at the lodges, and prayed that she would find the one that was her mother’s size quickly.

  She dragged me along as she edged through the cluster of women. Those nearest were the largest. They were ugly women with hunched backs and no teeth.

  “Excuse me,” Pia said over and over as we walked down the row. The crowd made way for her like we had for Benjam. Pia lost her will and stopped us halfway down. She was shaking.

  “Mother?” she said.

  Dozens looked up, but every hopeful face withered.

  “Mother?”

  “Mother,” she said a third time.

  The crowd stopped looking at her.

  “Maybe she is inside?” Pia asked, and I nodded to help her keep in the tears. She squeezed the blood out of my hand as she pulled me down the black path and into a reeking lodge. We nearly stumbled into a wall of feet. The racks were jammed right up to the entrance, and the thin shelves had no ends.

  Pia could not take the sight, and right there she cried out, “Mother, where are you?”

  We moved down the hallway between the racks. The women lay like thin tarps upon the shelves, their eyes closed tight.

  “Mother, it’s Pia. Mother!”

  “Get out of here,” a loud voice said. I grabbed Pia’s arm and pointed at the sound. Someone was coming.

  “Mother. It’s Pia.”

  I jabbed her in the ribs, but she wouldn’t be quiet. The women began to wake and growl at us.

  A cry from the back of the lodge sounded different, and I yanked Pia toward it and away from whoever pursued us.

  The back of the lodge was pitch-black.

  “Out, out, out, out, out,” came a weak cry from a dark corner, and women tumbled off a high shelf.

  Back at the entrance, I heard the squeak of boards as someone came inside. “Everyone be quiet. Shut your dirty mouths.”

  A last woman crawled off the high shelf as the lodge hushed. She was in bad shape. Half her teeth were gone from a blow that had torn away part of her lower lip, and her left eye was blackened and crusted over.

  “Pia,” she said and her frail body shuddered as she embraced her daughter. Pia took her head gently in her hands and hugged her close, while the displaced women scurried back onto their shelf.

  The man came around the corner. “What’s this?” he said.

  “I’ll have the Hemari after you,” Pia screeched at the man and charged him. She slapped his face and kicked him. The furious little blows shocked the man back and he fled.

  She did not wait for him to gather his wits either, and hurried her mother out of the lodge.

  “There is a new Exaltier,” she said to her mother as she went. “He’s offered work and food to any one from the East. Come mother, we have to find father. We can be free.”

  A few of the women climbed down and followed. The women in the street were all standing and staring at us when we emerged. They’d heard every word, and the man who’d come for us had run off.

  Pia kept moving, telling her mother all about the Exaltier’s offer as she went. She had me by the hand and her arm wrapped around her mother as we emerged from the row and started up the twisted street. A good bit of the crowd followed.

  Men guarded a few of the rows, keeping their churls inside. Many of the rows had emptied, though, and I hoped that the rest would escape to the plazas, too. The sad eyes of those who remained followed us.

  Pia marched on without a care for those around us until we reached the hushed plaza. We paused there at the sight of the calm crowd. Soldiers in groups of fifty guarded the top of the hill, and around the park, 154 wagons served food. The lines were not that long. Lord Rahan’s men were in the crowd and the people gathered around them smiled. A slow stream of people moved west and north.

  The great milling crowd was harder to count. 142,000? I lost count when a group of bosses herded a huge group south off the plaza. Half the place saw them do it and started yelling. The soldiers noticed, too, but it was too late to go after them.

  Pia said to her mother, “See. It’s like I said. We can get some bread and go find father. We must find him.”

  The exhausted woman clutched her daughter and trembled with joy.

  The large group we moved with came to a halt, and I saw the line of bosses that had taken up positions around the entrance we’d come through.

  “Are you sure we can trust this offer?” Pia’s mother asked.

  The bosses had clubs and began to yell and push us back.

  I tugged Pia’s arm and pointed her at a gap between two of the bosses.

  Pia was clueless to it all and started to answer her mother. I poked her in the ribs and she finally recognized our danger. I pointed again and she led us through the jostling crowd. We got loose of them and started through the gap. The bosses missed our move at first, until others started to follow. Then they converged and started swinging their clubs. A man beside us fell, his forehead split open.

  We huddled together in the sudden swirling confusion, and Pia screamed when another man crashed to the ground at our feet. This one was a soldier, and a trio of bosses followed in and tried to club him to death through his thick helmet. They did not see the pair of soldiers move up behind them, and the whack of steel swords was thunder compared to the pattering of their clubs. The bosses died so fast we could hardly breathe a sigh of relief before the soldiers helped up their fellow and charged after more of the bosses. A fresh line of blue arrived, and every man with a club ran for his life.

  Pia helped us up and made for the breadline, while the crowd continued to thrash behind us. The soldiers had lost control of the crowd around a few of the wagons in the center. One had a back wheel torn off, and its load partially dumped onto the field.

  “Go get us something,” Pia said and shoved me toward the melee.

  I stumbled forward, hungry and confused. I could smell the bread. It was fresh and hearty. I counted sixteen large baskets in the wagon. Twenty-four huge loafs stood up out of each. They had brought us 59,136 loaves of bread. That was more than this crowd could eat.

  Those around me did not understand this and mobbed the wounded wagon. Each took as much as they could carry and ran. One man fell and lost half his loot. I grabbed one loaf and edged away. The man lost the rest as others took advantage, and I started back the way I had come.

  Another man grabbed me and tried to take mine.

  “More that way,” Pia said to him, and kicked his ankle. He yelped, got a look at the wagon, and started for it.

  The three of us tore into the thing right there. So did the rest.
Seven hundred and fifty four crows gorging themselves.

  Soldiers came and righted the wagon, but they did not run us off. When they started handing out bread again, we cheered them.

  Water casks were brought up, and Pia sent me to fetch a cup. The crowd did a much better job waiting in lines for it, and the bosses didn’t cause any more trouble. The water proved clean and wonderful, and when I sat back down with them, we drank and ate a bit more of the bread. I could not remember being so full in all my life. We still had a third of the great loaf left. I tucked it away inside my tunica with the cup.

  We were quiet for a time during that warm noon, and I daydreamed about being at my pattern table.

  7

  Emi

  Family

  I was content to sit there. So were the rest.

  While we lounged upon the scrubby grass of the plaza, some in the group began to wonder what work the Exaltier had in mind for those from the East. One man had heard that they were going to tear down the Warrens and rebuild it with all the materials taken at the wharfs. The rest thought him an idiot.

  Others started talking about how they meant to escape the Warrens, and the rest fell to listening. Getting across the river. Getting over the wall. Getting back to the provinces they had come from.

  “There is no freedom for us,” a large man said over the chatter. He had a thick beard and was healthier than most. His deep voice quieted them. “They promise the same to churls before every battle. It is always a lie.”

  “I heard the offer myself,” said another. “Rahan has set us free.”

  “Well good for you. Do you feel free?”

  “Bah. I’ve got no boss today. There is no one here trying to kill or cane me. I have a cup of water and I’ve eaten my fill of bread. I know where to find more tomorrow. What more can I ask?”

  “Fool. They will start herding us together like lost sheep. They’ll carve us into groups and stick us back on our shelves. You’ll see the canes again soon enough.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” a new voice said, and we all turned to see a soldier in a greencoat who had stopped to listen. It was Lieutenant Corwin. He had sword, shield, spear, and bow, and the armor under his green overcoat looked heavier than me.