He cast one last glance above him.
“It looks a great deal like this inside, by the way.”
“There’s a reason for that,” Rhapsody said sadly. And while the baby drowsed, she told him the story Elynsynos related of the first Ending, and the building of the Vault of the Underworld.
“I am tormented now, wondering what has become of Elynsynos,” she said softly when she had finished the tale. “I don’t know whether Anwyn killed her, or if she is back in her lair, injured. Otherwise she’d be outside right now, trying to free us.”
Achmed sighed. Comfort was not one of his skills.
“Perhaps she’s alive and is outside, but she merely cannot do anything to free us,” he said awkwardly. “Whatever substance is left when formerly living dragonflesh is fired by the release of elemental powers in Ending, it is impervious to all the magic of the demons in the Vault. I can’t imagine that a dragon has the power to open it. The only thing that might is a key like the one that opened Sagia. And that remains hidden back in Ylorc.”
“Even if she’s alive, I’m sure she is distraught to a level no one but a dragon can fully understand. And I ache for Ashe. Sooner or later he will return to collect the baby and me, and he will come upon his father. And, being wyrmkin, it will devastate him.”
“Unfortunate as that may be, it’s the least of our worries now,” Achmed said. “For when he does come upon our stone prison that once was his father, we will have long since run out of air.”
44
The middle day of the week in Jierna’sid was known as Market Day. On that day, the red stone streets were even more crowded than they usually were with every sort of merchant and waremonger, sellers of salted fish and shoes, leather and cloth, spice and rope, cutlery and salt and any other possible type of good that one might want to buy. As a result, a majority of the citizenry was in the streets as well, taking advantage of the abundance to stock up on their stores for the winter, unlike the populace of the outlying areas, that had to set their stores in before the snow began to fall, as they might not have another chance at procurement until Thaw.
Along with the merchants and the townspeople, others were out in force as welclass="underline" ratty children ran through the streets, invigorated by the sense of drama in the air; pickpockets plied their trade, under the increased presence of the emperor’s constabulary; beggars and cripples and all kinds of alms seekers lined the dirty alleyways, hoping to benefit from an increase in traffic, if not generosity. As in all of Sorbold’s twenty-seven provinces, there were soldiers everywhere, their numbers and visibility increasing by the day.
Another sort could also be seen in greater numbers during Market Days—thugs. Sometimes wastrels, sometimes former members of the imperial army, there seemed to be an entire class of them scattered throughout Sorbold, a strata of human beings whose only living purpose seemed to be adding to the misery of other human beings. Generally harmless, but always irritating, these louts prowled the streets of Jierna’sid from the Place of Weight to the farthest reaches of the mercantile district, avoiding the constable and soldiers but harassing passersby, jostling well-dressed men, leering at or sometimes groping women, threatening children, all of which seemed to generate gales of laughter that could be heard for city blocks.
On this Market Day one such thug came by chance upon a group of sleeping beggars huddled beneath a few tattered rags in an alleyway avoiding the bright morning sun, their breath shallow and stinking of sour ale.
What ho! the ruffian thought, pleased with his find. He sauntered over to the sleeping grizzled men and prodded the first with his toe. When the man didn’t stir, the brute kicked him savagely.
“Wake up, you stinkin’ sot! Get off the street and out o’ my sight; it pains me to see the likes of you taking up space on the emperor’s thoroughfare. Move on, or it’ll pain you, too.”
The man, now awake and terrified, turned sightless eyes that reflected the morning light and his fear onto his tormentor.
“Please, please, sir,” he muttered in the throes of dementia. “Please don’t take me ta the army; I’ve lost my sight there once. Don’t want ta do it again.”
The thug laughed out loud. He looked more closely at the other two beggars, both lame, one still asleep, the other waking fitfully, and aimed a kick at the waking one’s head.
“I said get up, you beg—”
His word choked off in midsyllable as the hand of the sleeping beggar shot out like a strike of lightning and grabbed him by the ankle, jerking his calf up high and sharply enough to unbalance him. His balance upended, the ruffian fell backward against the stones of the alleyway, slamming his head against them.
Dazed, the young man tried to rise, only to be gripped by a clutching hand that grasped him around the throat in a clenched fist that seemed to be made of iron.
Before he knew what was happening he found himself being dragged forward on his face over the cold, jagged stones of the alleyway, until he was eye to eye with the beggar. The vagabond’s eyes were unlike any he had seen; Sorbold was a nation of swarthy skin and dark features, where almost all eyes were brown as the earth. But these eyes were an azure blue, and they were burning clearer and hotter than the fires of the streetlamps that lit Jierna’sid by night.
The beggar spat in his face, a mouthful of sour spittle rancid with bad drink and coated teeth.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than to bother the downtrodden, you miscreant?” the ragged man said disdainfully. He slammed the young thug’s head against the wall where the men had been leaning, then, with his other hand, seized the remains of the sour ale in the battered bowl from which they had been drinking, and tossed it down the front of the thug’s trousers. Then he pulled the dazed young man’s ear next to his lips.
“Now, here’s the moment in your life where you will decide to either grow up and be a man worth drawing breath, or where you will sign your own death warrant as a pugnacious fool who owes his mother an apology for being born and will, no doubt, come to an embarrassing end every soon. You can leave this place, go home and change your clothing, and cease from here forward to bother old men who have done you no ill, or you can go round up your fellow reprobates to come back for more. Bear two things in mind if you choose the latter option: First, you will need to explain to them why you pissed yourself. And second, you will not find me here—though rest assured I will come to find you. Unless you wish to earn the wrath of the beggar with the blue eyes, I suggest you choose the former.”