The administrators wrapped the deedstone in parchment that was duly secured with the Lion-King's sulphurous wax by them and by Pavek, using his porphyry seal for the first time. The administrators departed, and Pavek tried five keys before he found the one that worked in the door. He dragged the hand-cart over the threshold himself.
House Escrissar had been sealed quinths ago. It was quiet as a tomb beneath a thick blanket of yellow dust. Otherwise both Zvain and Mahtra assured its new master that the house was precisely as they remembered it—which sent a chill down Pavek's spine. There was nothing in the simple furniture, the floor mosaics, or the wall frescoes to proclaim that a monster had lived here. He'd expected obscenity, torture, and cruelty of all kinds, but with their depictions of bright gardens and green forests, the frescoes could have been commissioned by a druid... by Akashia herself.
"It was like this," Zvain repeated when curiosity drove Pavek to touch a painted orange flower. "That was the worst—"
The boy's words stopped abruptly. Pavek turned around. They'd been joined by the oldest, most frail half-elf he'd ever seen, a woman whose crinkled skin hung loose from every bone and whose back was so crippled by age that she gazed most naturally at her own feet. She raised her head with evident discomfort and difficulty. Her cheeks were scarred with black lines in a pattern Pavek promised himself would, never be cut into flesh again.
"Who has come?" she asked with a trembling voice.
Pavek caught Zvain and Mahtra exchanging anxious glances before they shied away from the old woman's shadow. Ruari was transfixed by the sight of what he, himself, might become. Pavek swallowed hard and jangled the key ring he held in his weapon hand.
"I've come," he said. "Pavek. Just-Plain Pavek. I am—I am the master here, now." He couldn't help but notice the way she stared at the key ring. Her name, she said, was Initri. She had chosen to remain inside the house with her husband after all the other slaves were dispersed and the administrators had come to lock the doors for the last time. Her husband tended the house gardens.
"He doesn't hear anymore," Initri explained and made her way with small, halting steps along the cobbled garden path.
Initri got her husband's attention with a gentle touch. He read silent words from her lips, then set aside his tools with the slow precision of the venerably aged before he took her hand. While Pavek and his companions watched from the atrium arch, the old man took his wife's arm, for balance, as he stood. They both tottered as he rose from his knees. Pavek strode toward them, but they leaned against each other and were steady again without his help. Pavek expected scars and saw them before he saw the metal collar around the gardener's neck and the stone-link chain descending from it. Each link was as thick as the half-elf's thigh. The chain had to weigh as much as the old man did himself.
They stood side-by-side in the twilight, the loyal gardener and his loyal wife, she with one hand on his flank, the other clutching the chain. No wonder Initri had stared so intently at the keys he held in his hand—keys that the administrators had kept secure under magical wards in King Hamanu's palace. Overcome by shame and awe, Pavek looked away, looked at the flowers in their profuse blooming.
If ever a man had the right to destroy the life of Athas, this old man had had that right, but he'd nurtured life instead.
"How?" Pavek stammered, forcing himself to face the couple again. "How have you survived? The house was locked."
Initri met his gaze and held it. "The larders were full," she said without a trace of emotion. "Some nights the watch threw us their crusts and scraps. It depended on who had the duty." She indicated the crenelated platform visible above the garden's rear wall.
Pavek whispered, "Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy."
He heard long-striding footfalls behind him: Ruari disappearing. Ruari making certain Pavek knew he was angry about something; the half-elf didn't have to make noise when he ran. Zvain and Mahtra showed no more emotion than Initri did. Compassion was a wasted virtue in Urik; Pavek knew they were better off without it, but he sympathized more with Ruari. The elderly couple said nothing. They stared at him, the new high templar master of House Escrissar—their new master—without reproach or expectation on their faces.
The keys.
One of the keys must belong to the lock that bound the chain and collar together. Pavek fumbled with the ring, dropping it twice. He tried the first two keys he touched; neither fit the lock, much less opened it. Locks were nothing a man without property had ever needed to understand. Pavek resolved to work his way around the ring, a key at a time, and had tried two more when Initri's withered fingers reached toward him. Her motion stopped before their hands touched; the fears and habits of slavery were not easily shed.
"Which one?" Pavek asked her gently. "Do you know which one?"
She pointed toward a metal key that had been shaped to resemble a thighbone. Pavek slipped it into the socket and twisted it. The mechanism was stiff; he was afraid to apply his full strength. The key might break and Pavek had no notion where he'd find a smith after sunset—though he knew he wouldn't be able to rest until he had.
Once again, Initri came to Pavek's rescue, her parchment fingers resting lightly over his, guiding them through tiny jerks and jiggles. The lock's innards released themselves with an audible click. The thick shaft pulled loose, then the first link of the chain. Finally Pavek could take the ends of the metal collar and force the sweat-rusted hinge to yield.
The gardener examined the collar after Pavek had removed it. His hands trembled. Tears fell from his eyes to the corroded metal. Initri showed no such sentiment.
"Lord Pavek, your larder holds dried beans, a cask of flour, and some sausage a jozhal wouldn't steal," she said in a slave's habitual monotone. "Does that please my lord for his supper?"
Pavek twisted the collar until the hinge broke. He would have hurled it at the wall, but it would have struck the vines and loosened a few leaves, which seemed a poor way to acknowledge the gardener's extraordinary devotion to his plants. So, he let the pieces fall atop the stone links and raked his stiff, filthy hair. He wanted a steam bath, and a hot supper, and could have gotten both, if he'd gone to a city inn instead of coming here, instead of coming home.
Pavek's own gut growled, reminding him that he, too, was hungry and that on occasion he could eat more than his two younger friends combined.
Except for a quinth or two before he left Urik, throughout Pavek's life, whether in the orphanage, the barracks, or Quraite, he hadn't had to worry about his next hot meal. That had all changed. Whatever else he'd done, Elabon Escrissar had at least kept his larder filled with beans, flour, and vile sausage. The larder was Pavek's responsibility now, along with who-knew-what-else, except that it would all require gold and silver coins in greater quantities than he possessed.
"A treasury?" he inquired. "Is there a treasury in the house?"
Initri shook her head. "Gone, Lord Pavek. Gone before the administrators came. Gone while Lord Elabon still lived. Will beans serve, my lord?"
The deaf gardener picked up the metal pieces Pavek had dropped and slowly carried them out of his domain, as if they were no more significant than wind-fallen branches, as if he'd been able to leave whenever he chose. Pavek watched until the man and his shadow had disappeared through a side archway.
"Lord Pavek—will beans serve for your supper?"
Pavek's hand went to the familiar medallion hanging from his neck. He needed money. Not the pittance of ceramic bits and silver that had sufficed in his regulator's past, nor the plump belt-pouch he'd worn out of Quraite; he needed gold, by the handful.