Yet the Odims themselves made clear distinctions. Despite their superabundance, they kept each to their own portion of whatever room they occupied, squabbling luxuriously in corners or lounging on clearly defined patches of carpet. Narrow trails were traced out across each crowded chamber, so that any child venturing onto the territory of a rival, even that of a mother’s sister, might expect a clout straight off, no questions asked. At night, brothers slept in perfect and jealously guarded privacy within two feet of their voluptuous sisters-in-law. Their tiny portions of real estate were marked off by ribbons or rugs, or draperies hung from lines of string. Every square yard was guarded with the ferocity normally lavished on kingdoms.
These arrangements Besi viewed with jaundiced eye. She saw how the murals on the walls were becoming besmirched by her master’s vast family; the sheer fattiness of the Odims was steaming the delicate tones from the plaster. The murals depicted lands of plenty, ruled over by two golden suns, where deer sported amid tall green trees, and young men and women lay by bushes full of doves, dallying or blowing suggestively on flutes. Those idylls had been painted two centuries ago, when the house was new; they reflected a bygone world, the vanished valleys of Kuj-Juvec in autumn.
Both the paintings and their pending destruction fed Besi’s mood of discontent; but what she was chiefly seeking was a place where she could enjoy a little privacy away from her master’s eye. As she completed her tour in increasing disgust, she heard the outside door slam and the watchdog give its sharp bark.
She ran to the stairwell and looked down.
Her master, Eedap Mun Odim, was returning from worship, and setting his foot on the lowest stair. She saw his fur hat, his suede coat, the shine of his neat boots, all foreshortened. She caught glimpses of his long nose and his long beard. Unlike all his relations, Eedap Mun Odim was a slender man, a morsel; work and money worries had contained his waistline. The sole pleasures he allowed himself were those of the bedchamber, where—as Besi knew—he kept a cautious mercantile tally of them and entered them in a little book.
Uncertain what to do, she stood where she was. Odim drew level and glanced at her. He nodded and gave a slight smile.
“Don’t disturb me,” he said, as he passed. “I shall not want you tonight.”
“As you please,” she said, employing one of her well-worn phrases. She knew what was worrying him. Eedap Mun Odim was a leading light in the porcelain trade, and the porcelain trade was in difficulties.
Odim climbed to the top of the house and closed his door. His wife had a meal prepared; its aromas filtered through the house and down to those quarters where food was less easily come by.
Besi remained on the landing, in the dusk among the odours of crowded lives, half-listening to the noises all round her. She could hear, too, the sound of military boots outside, as soldiers marched along the Climent Quay. Her fingers, still slender, played a silent tune on the bannister rail.
So it was that she stood concealed from anyone on the floors below her. So it was that she saw the old watchman creep from his lair, look furtively about, and slink out the door. Perhaps he was going to find out what the Oligarch’s soldiery were doing. Although Besi had taken care to befriend him long ago, she knew the watchman would never dare let her out of the house without Odim’s permission.
After a moment, the door opened again. In came a man of military bearing, whose wide bar of moustache neatly divided his face along its horizontal axis. This was the man who had provided the secret motive for Besi’s inspection of her domain. It was Captain Harbin Fashnalgid, their new lodger.
The watchdog came rushing out of the watchman’s lair and began to bark. But Besi was already moving swiftly down the stairs, as nimbly as a plump little doe down a steep cliff.
“Hush, hush!” she called. The dog turned to her, swinging its black jowls around and making a mock charge to the bottom of the stairs. It thrust out a length of tongue and spread saliva across Besi’s hand without in any way relaxing its menacing scowl. “Down,” she said. “Good boy.”
The captain came across the hall and clutched her arm. They stared into each other’s eyes, hers a deep deep brown, his a startling grey. He was tall and slim, a true pure Uskuti, and unlike the proliferating Odims in every way. Thanks to the Oligarch’s troop movements, the captain had been billeted on Odim the previous day, and Odim had reluctantly made room for him among his family on the top floor. When the captain and Besi clapped eyes on each other, Besi—whose survival through a hazardous life had had something to do with her impressionability-had fallen in love with him straight away.
A plan came immediately into her mind.
“Let’s have a walk outside,” she said. “The watchman’s not here.”
He held her even more tightly.
“It’s cold outside.”
All he needed was her slight imperious shake of the head, and then they moved together to the door, looking up furtively into the shadows of the staircase. But Odim was closeted in his room and one woman or another would be playing a binnaduria and singing him songs of forsaken fortresses in Kuj-Juvec, where maidens were betrayed and white gloves, dropped one fateful dimday, were forever treasured.
Captain Fashnalgid put his heavy boot to the chest of the hound— which had shown every sign of following them away from captivity—and whisked Besi Besamitikahl into the outside world. He was a man of decision in the realm of love. Grasping her arm firmly, he led her across the courtyard and out of the gate where the oil lamp burned.
As one they turned to the right, heading up the cobbled street.
“The church,” she said. Neither said another word, for the cold wind blew in their faces, coming from the Circumpolar Mountains with ice on its breath.
In the street, winding upwards with it, went a line of pale dogthrush trees, wan between the two enclosing stone cliffs of houses. Their leaves flapped in the wind. A file of soldiers, muffled, heads down, walked on the other side of the road, their boots setting up echoes. The sky was a sludgy grey which spread to everything beneath it.
In the church, lights burned. A congregation cried its evensong. Since the church had a slightly bohemian reputation, Odim never came here. Outside its walls, tall man-high stones stood in rows, more correct than soldiers, commemorating those whose days beneath the sky were done. The furtive lovers picked their way among the memorials and hid against a shadowy sheltered wall. Besi put her arms round the captain’s neck.
After they whispered to each other for some while, he slid a hand inside her furs and her dress. She gasped at the cold of his touch. When she reciprocated, he grunted at the chill of her hand. Their flesh seemed ice and fire alternately, as they worked closer together. Besi noticed with approval that the captain was enjoying himself and in no great hurry. Loving was so easy, she thought, and whispered in his ear, “It’s so simple…” He only burrowed deeper.
When they were united, he held her firmly against the wall. She let her head roll back against the rough stone and gasped his name, so newly learned.
Afterwards, they leaned together against the wall, and Fashnalgid said matter-of-factly, “It was good. Are you happy with your master?”
“Why ask me that?”
“I hope one day to make something of myself. Maybe I could buy you, once this present trouble’s over.”