Leaping through the bureau ranks as he had, he'd missed all the intervening opportunities to enrich himself. He needed a prebend, that regular gift from Lord Hamanu himself that kept high templars loyal to the throne. A gift Pavek imagined the Lion-King would grant him in an instant, once he made the request. Why else had he been brought back to Urik? But he'd give up any claim to freedom once he accepted it. Once he asked Lord Hamanu for money, he might as well pick up the gardener's chain and fasten it around his own neck.
That slave's fate, however, was tomorrow's worry. Tonight's worry was beans, and they would not serve.
"Zvain, unload our baggage and take our food to the kitchen. Initri, follow him—no, wait for him in the kitchen. See what you can make up for all of us."
"Yes, Lord Pavek," she said, as passionless as before. She obediently started for the door, where Zvain stood between Mahtra and Ruari, who had crept out of the shadows. The half-elf wouldn't meet his eyes, a sure sign of anger waiting to erupt.
"Mahtra you go with Zvain. Help him unload the baggage. Wait in the kitchen."
Two of them went. Ruari sulked silently for about two heartbeats, then the eruption began.
"Initri, make my dinner. Unpack my baggage! Go to the kitchen! Wind and fire! You should have freed them, Lord Pavek. Or doesn't owning your parents' parents bother you?"
Pavek should have known not merely that Ruari was angry, but why. There weren't any slaves in Quraite, certainly no half-elven ones. He should have had an explanation sitting on his tongue, but he didn't. At that moment, with Ruari glaring at him, Pavek didn't know himself why he hadn't freed the old couple immediately, and he expressed shame or embarrassment with no better grace than Ruari expressed his anger or confusion.
"They aren't my kin or yours," Pavek replied, adopting Ruari's outraged sarcasm for himself. "They're just two people who've lived here a long time."
"Slaved here, you mean. Lord Pavek, your templar blood is showing. You should have set them free. Those were the words that should have come out of your mouth, not orders to cook your supper!"
"Set them free and then what? Turned them out of this house? Where would they go? Would you send them across the wastes to Quraite? Would you send every slave in Urik to Quraite? How many would die on the Fist? How many could Quraite feed before everyone was starving?"
Ruari pulled his head back. His chin jutted defiantly, but Pavek knew those questions struck the half-elf solidly. "I didn't say that," Ru insisted. "I didn't say send them across the Fist to Quraite. They could stay here in Urik. There're free folk in Urik. Zvain's free. Mahtra is. You—when we met you."
"He could work for someone else, tending their garden."
"No one hires gardeners, Ru. They buy them. Besides— this is his garden. Didn't you understand that? He was chained here, but he didn't have to make this place bloom. He's a veritable druid. Should I banish him from his grove?"
"Free him, then hire him yourself."
"Make him a slave to coins instead of men? Is that such an improvement? What if he gets sick? He's old, it could happen. If he's a slave, I'm obligated to take care of him, whether he can garden or not, but if I'm paying him to tend my garden, what's to stop me from simply hiring another man. Why should I care? He doesn't belong to me anymore."
"Slavery's wrong, Pavek. It's just plain wrong."
"I didn't say it was right."
"You didn't free them!"
"Because that wouldn't be right, either!" Pavek's voice rose to a shout. "Life's not simple, not my life, anyway. I wouldn't want to be a slave—I think I'd kill myself first. Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, I swear I'll never buy a slave, but by the wheels of fate's chariot, that is a small mercy. There's not enough gold in all Urik for both freedom and food."
"You'll keep slaves, but you won't buy them," Ruari shouted back. "What a convenient conscience you have, Lord Pavek."
Lord Pavek kicked the stone links coiled at his feet and jammed his toe. "All right," he snarled, grinding his teeth against a fool's pain. "Whatever you say, Ruari: I've got a convenient conscience. I'm not a good man; never pretended that I was. I've never known a thoroughly good man, woman, or child and, yes, that includes you, Kashi, and Telhami. I don't have good answers. Slavery's a mistake, a terrible mistake, but I can't fix a mistake by setting it free and tossing it out to the streets. Once a mistake's made, it stays made and someone's got to be responsible for it."
"There's got to be a better way."
That was Ruari's way of ending their arguments and making peace, but Pavek's toe still throbbed and the half-elf had scratched too many scars for a truce.
"If you're so sure, go out and find it. We'll both become better men. But until you do have something better to offer, get out of my sight."
"I only said—"
"Get!"
Pavek threw a wild punch in the half-elf's direction. It fell short by several handspans, but Ruari got the idea and ran for cover.
Twilight had become an evening that was not as dark as in Quraite. Pavek could see the wall where the gardener lined up his tools: shovel, rake, hoe, and a rock-headed maul. Testing its heft and balance as if it were a weapon, Pavek gave the maul a few practice swings. The knotted muscles in his shoulders crackled. He wasn't the sort of man who handled tension well; he'd rather work himself to exhaustion than think his way out of a puzzle.
One end of the stone-link chain remained where the gardener had dropped it. The other end was fastened to a ring at the center of the garden. Pavek coiled all the links around the ring and started hammering. The links slid against each other; Pavek never hit the same place twice. Stone against shifting stone was as futile labor as Urik had to offer, but Pavek found his rhythm and once he'd broken a sweat, his conscience was clearer—emptier—than it had been in days.
Swinging and striking, he lost track of time and place, or almost lost track. He'd no notion how much time had passed when he became aware that he wasn't alone. Ruari, he thought. Ruari had returned for the final word. He swung the maul with extra vigor, missed the links altogether, but raised sparks from the ring. The gasp he heard next didn't come from a half-elf or a human boy.
"Mahtra?"
He saw her in the doorway, a study in moonlit pallor and seamless shadows. Their eyes met and she receded into the dark. A child, Pavek reminded himself; he'd frightened her with his hammering. He set the maul aside.
She shook her head. The shawl slid down her neck. With the mask dividing her head, it was like looking at two incomplete faces—which was probably not an inaccurate way to describe her.
"Does this place make you uneasy? Do you want to talk to me about it?" He'd already failed miserably with Ruari, but the night was young and filled with opportunity.
"No, I like it here. I remember Akashia, but my own memories are different."
"You used to come to this garden?"
"No, never. No one came here, except Agan. He was always here. Agan and Initri, they were special."
Their conversation was assuming its familiar pattern: Pavek asking what he assumed were simple questions and Mahtra replying with answers he didn't quite understand. "How?" he asked, dreading her answer.
"Sometimes Lord Elabon, he called Agan 'my thrice-damned-father'."
The maul handle stood beside Pavek, in easy reach. He could swing it and imagine the link it struck was Elabon Escrissar's skull. He'd been wise to dread anything Mahtra could tell him about his inherited home. How had Escrissar—even Escrissar—enslaved his own parents? What was he, Just-Plain Pavek, supposed to do to correct that mistake? What could he do?