"You're come recently from the country, aren't you!"
"No shame in that!"
"Neh, neh, never meant there was. Those Silvers, the women are so ass-ugly that they daren't show their faces in the light of day where others can see. That's what I hear."
"You ever seen one of their faces?"
"Not me! It's a curse if you do, for they've certain tricksy magics, you know. Curses and rots and suchlike. Make your cock fall off if you so much as look at them crosswise. They paint their hands with all manner of spells, did you notice that?"
"I thought she had a skin disease on her fingers."
"Oh, no, those are spells. Not even tattoos. Spells, painted on their hands. It's the only part of them you ever see. Nay, don't mess with them, I tell you."
"Aui! I won't!"
"She's all right, though, that one. She comes through and brings food for the prisoners whose families have no way to feed them. Else they'd starve, you know."
"What would make a person go and do that?" asked Tenor. "If family can't help you, then why would you go and trust a stranger? Probably better to die."
"Don't know why she does it. They're outlanders, you know. Comes of their peculiar customs, I'd wager."
"I did hear one thing," added Tenor cunningly. "That they pay off those who would make trouble for them. That's why they never come to trouble before the law."
"Neh, maybe so, but they do trade fairly, you must give them that. My old uncle needed a medicinal for his son who was sick with the flux, and it happened it was the end of the season and there was none to be found except in the end one of the Silver shops had a last vial. I'll tell you, that merchant could have charged him ten or twenty times over, for Uncle was that desperate, and there are some merchants in this town who would have done so, but that Silver charged him market price, same as anyone. It was fairly done. So I don't mind the girl or her escort."
"Always an escort, those men with her?"
"Always. The Silvers treat their womenfolk like slaves, didn't you know that? Always under guard. Can't walk out on their own, or show their face. Bodies completely covered in those loose robes, which is peculiar, if you think about it."
"The men do look funny," agreed Tenor, "with those pulled eyes and their hair all tied up in cloth like women sometimes do. I hear they have unnatural congress with beasts."
"And horns, under the cloth! That's why they must cover their heads. They're demon-born, back in their old country. It's why they were run out and come here to the Hundred."
The Hundred!
Joss found his memory and his voice.
"Enough!" he croaked. Speaking that word made his head ache worse. "What have the Silvers ever done to you that you should speak of them so cruelly?"
"Eiya!" yelped Tenor. "It speaks!"
Light wavered before the opening, dropped through, but it was as blinding as the darkness, slamming right into his eyes.
"He does stink," said Gravel. "I'll ask Captain if we can wash him up. Whew!"
"He looked harmless enough. Who's been feeding him?"
"That girl brings a ration of rice every day, enough to share out among the destitute. We shove his portion in through the hatch. First day he did take it, but he cast it all back out again a time or two."
"I can smell that! Eh!"
"Then he was sleeping or sick. I'm no healer! I thought him like to die. But Captain Waras came by and said to let him be, and we must obey the captain."
"What day is it?" Joss said in his strange, roughened voice.
"Wakened Crane," said Gravel kindly.
"Council day, isn't it? I have the right to appear before the council."
Gravel snorted. "Even if we could let you out, council bell already rang, so by the time you crawled up to Fortune Square it'd be all over for the week!"
They laughed as if this were the best joke they'd heard that day.
"You're too late for this week!" cried Tenor over Gravel's honking laugh.
The lantern was drawn up, and the hatch shuttered with a slam of wood. Their laughter and footfalls faded away, leaving him in unrelieved night. He groped at his chest, but the bone whistle was gone. Of course. There was a slight movement of air in the dungeon through slits set in the walls or ceiling, but no view of the sky. He grimaced, realizing truly how horribly grimy and disgusting he had become, matted in his own dried vomit and feces and urine. His head pounded, but at least he could think.
Gingerly, he lay flat on his back and stretched out with arms over his head. In this position, he easily touched opposite walls. He was no better than a rat trapped in a hole. His foot nudged the rim of an object: It was the food tray with a lump of cold rice and the bowl half full of warmish water that smelled as if it had not been fouled. There weren't too many bugs. He didn't mind the bugs.
He drank, and he ate, and this time he kept it all down.
37
Captain Waras led them on a long, hot, and sweaty walk up through Olossi Town to a place he called "Fortune Square." Certainly their fortunes would rise or fall depending on the outcome of this council meeting.
At the council hall, she and Anji were allowed to sit on benches in the outer room while Sengel and Toughid took their usual places a few paces to either side of Anji, watching the occasional entrance and exit, and indeed every movement that flickered into being however brief its life, and marking each least scrape, rattle, and word that flew into the air. Priya was watchful, but Sheyshi had her eyes shut fast as she mumbled a singsong prayer in the voice of a woman near to tears with fear. There was no one else there except Captain Waras's guards, and Mai expected that Sengel and Toughid could make short work of these six callow youths who hadn't the posture of men who have been tested.
Anji listened carefully to her account of her conversation with Tannadit. He made no comment until she was done.
"Sixteen 'Greater Houses'? And an untold number of dissatisfied Lesser Houses? 'Silvers'? I wonder what they are. Useful, anyway. You learned more than I did. I mostly heard tales of merchants and traders and peddlers who could not bring their goods into the north, past a town called Horn. If goods come up from the south, and cannot be moved elsewhere, it will hurt the merchants in this city."
"You think you could offer your company as caravan guards on the roads here."
"It seems possible."
"Isn't 'Horn' the name of the town where my uncle's ring was found?"
"Yes."
They suffered an interminable and dreary wait through the afternoon while the air grew more turgid and the heat more stifling. She whispered thanks to the Merciful One that here there was no need to cover her face, as there had been in Sirniaka. She whispered thanks that she was allowed to whisper thanks without fear of being burned alive. At last, the doors slid open, and a steadily increasing stream of women and men flowed into the building through the entry chamber and on into the high-raftered hall where the council met.
She studied them as they passed, marking the most curious faces. A man obsessively fingered a fresh scar on his clean-shaven chin; it looked like someone had clawed him with a nail. An old, bent woman needed assistance to walk, closely tended by a pair of younger relatives, who resembled her about the eyes and jaw. A stout woman of middle years swaggered with the assurance of a Qin officer, a servant skulking like a beaten dog at her heels. Most of these folk had gleaming black and brown-black hair caught up in looped braids. Some of the women wore their hair pinned high, with a horse's-tail fall down their back or a cluster of heavily beaded braids that clacked softly as they walked, like gossips. A pair of men came in with their hair entirely wrapped in cloth whose ends were tucked away to make a turban. The younger was a remarkably handsome young man, despite his pale complexion and strange headdress, and he was dressed in a rich marigold-yellow silk knee-length overcoat. His gaze roamed, as if he were looking for someone, and when he saw her, he smiled winningly, but was pulled on his way immediately by the scowling older man who probably was his father if one judged by looks and dress. No other men wore their hair wrapped away in a turban.