After Grandfather had recovered, Kadithe had gone outside the shop for the first time, as Grandfather’s eyes and banker. He’d learned the real value of money, had learned how to talk to people and even to bargain, after a fashion. Mostly, he’d learned not to bolt to the nearest shadow at the first hint of bell, footstep, or a voice other than Grandfather’s.
In silence lay safety. If the Hand couldn’t see you, hear you, and didn’t know to look for you, they couldn’t take you.
Anonymity and silence remained their allies. They’d become just another set of ragged inhabitants of a city slowly recovering from as black an era as ever it had suffered. But money had been finite and as their small hoard dwindled, they’d had to move into the Maze, where overnight the tangle of streets and alleyways could change. Now it was Grandfather who stayed at home, while Kadithe dealt with the outside world. Alone.
He didn’t know what he’d have done these last months without Bezul’s repair jobs. It was Grandfather who had suggested he try Bezul earlier that year, after he turned fourteen, old enough, so Grandfather said, for an employer to take him seriously. He had to wonder now if Grandfather hadn’t anticipated that turn of fortune. Curious that there’d been no word of remonstrance for his betrayal of their anonymity. In fact, Grandfather had simply smiled and asked to feel the new blanket.
Bezul had given him a whole new perspective on the value of his little creations. He had a few coins still, possibly even enough for Grandfather’s cheese for a single dinner. On the other hand … he rolled the shield in his hands, watching the light sparkle across its surface, then wrapped it in a scrap of cloth, which in turn he tucked into a ragged drawstring bag … .
With luck—and always he needed luck when it came to bargaining—he would be able to get enough of Grandfather’s favorite cheese to last a week or more.
Rather less than a week, but it was all Mardelith had left by the time he got to the farmers’ market But he got his pick of her castoff vegetables, and a promise for another half-round of the cheese next week.
It was, he thought, dipping his head in thanks, more than generous. He should object, but he’d left pride behind years ago. Instead he thanked Mardelith, tucked his new treasure into the drawstring bag, and headed through the market, the bag slung over his shoulder. The southern sky promised another round of noise and mud-renewal, but not for a time yet. For now, the sun was warm, the ground still wet, and the light … perfect.
For now, the lure of the smells from the neighboring stalls was nothing to the lure of the Prince’s Gate. He slipped through the crowds—all of Sanctuary seemed to be taking frenetic advantage of the momentary lull in the storm—and darted through the Gate, barely avoiding an empty cart, the farmer more bent on getting home before the next squall than in avoiding barefooted obstacles.
But his spot behind the guard station was dry and out of the wind. Grulandi, the on-duty guard, greeted him with an indulgent smile, as he checked the departing farmer off his list.
His stash was safe … but then who was likely to steal a handful of sticks hidden in a box and buried beneath a rock? It wasn’t for fear of theft but rather to salvage every precious moment in this place that he kept the sticks.
Settling crosslegged, his right shoulder to the station wall, he smoothed the damp sand, letting the calm of this place flow up through his fingertips.
Today was the day. He’d put it off too long, wasting his time with textures and perspectives and strangers who passed this busy place. Above the gate was a plaque, a stone carving, two men in profile, facing one another, two crossed swords over a spear … there was an inscription, a dedication Grandfather had said, but he had eyes only for the profile on the left.
Kadakithis.
It was not, according to Grandfather, a particularly good likeness, but he had dim memories of the time before the Hand, of clay busts Grandfather had made, multiple trials to try to catch the prince’s elusive vitality. It was time he began his own search, to set those features in his mind while he still had Grandfather to confirm his vision.
He had a lump of clay in the pile at home, carefully protected by oilcloth, regularly dampened. When the time came, when he tried his hand, Grandfather would be able to tell just by touch, if he’d gotten it right.
His (currently) favorite stick, grown dry with time, shattered on the first stroke. Refusing to accept that accident as some sort of ill omen, he smoothed the area and selected (and tested) a second stick. First the profile, then, assuming the nose was thus, the eyes thus and thus … slowly he began to rotate the head, to make a three-quarter view, then full—
“Not very good, are you?”
The stick jammed into the sand and broke, gouging out Prince Kadakithis’ left eye. He winced, lifted shaking hands to his face and told himself, for the thousandth time, it was all ephemeral. It was the practice that counted. Training the hand to be ready for when the time came and he could actually commit his dreams to parchment, or clay, or …
He turned slowly toward the owner of the rather shrill, young voice. A dark-haired boy with eyes a touch too limpid stared down his small nose at the drawings in the sand.
“Wha’s wrong wid ’m?” he asked, in his outside voice.
“Froggin’ shite, doesn’t look at all like the froggin’ portrait, now does it?”
He smothered a grin. The foul language sat oddly on the boy’s tongue and not just because of his youth—he’d heard far worse from much younger Maze-rats. It was the refined Ilsigi wrappings of the filth that called its verisimilitude into question.
“Froggin’ carvin’ don’t look like no froggin’ prince, neither,” he replied, in his lowest Maze speech, making his own tongue match his clothing as he’d learned to do years ago. “That-there rock-chipper, he made ol’ KittyKat’s face th’ way ’e seed ‘im, I makes ’im th’ way I sees ’im.”
“You never! He’s long gone. Went to live with the fish, he did. Easy life. Left us all to the Hand and the raiders.”
“He did not!” Defense of his hero made Kadithe careless—of his opinions as well as his vowels—and the boy was quick. Suspicion fairly oozed from him, sitting oddly on that heretofore open countenance. Suspicion and (worse) curiosity.
The boy hunkered down beside him, and asked softly, almost … conspiratorially: “If he didn’t go to live with the fish, where is he?”
The unchildlike tone, the sharp-eyed look, made him uneasy. Made him wonder if he was dealing with a boy at all. Some said there were people who could change the way they looked, for real, or just make a person think they looked different. That would be mighty useful for a spy.
Kadithe bit his lip on his desire to defend the long-gone prince, loathe, now, to reveal his stance on that matter, and discovered, to his utter disgust, that he couldn’t hold that suddenly keen gaze, and retreated to his drawing, smoothing the damage and restoring the eye.
Grandfather knew this gate well, he’d complained at length and in specific detail about the differences between that image and the real thing.
“I never saw him, of course,” he said quietly, dropping the pretense of gutter-speak, but returning to the first, far safer, question. “But I … knew someone who did He’s described the man he knew. The stonecarver carved the man he knew, with the tools and in the substance he knew. I’m …” How to put Grandfather’s teaching into words this child could hope to understand? “I try to imagine how that stonecarver’s eyes saw the world as opposed to how I see it, then adjust for the difference, using the first man’s verbal description.”
“That’s … dumb.”