A bored soldier beckoned to Nekkar, a gesture meaning You next.
The farmer didn't budge. 'I've children waiting in the alleys. I have to get them.'
'You should have thought of that before you left your gods-rotted village.' The sergeant nodded, and soldiers grabbed the man by either arm. As he'd done numerous times before, seen by everyone standing in line, the sergeant sliced three shallow cuts into the man's left forearm. 'We cleanse those who sneak back into the city after they've been marked.'
'But they'll starve!' The man's voice rose shrilly as his desperation mounted and the pain of the cuts stung into tears. 'Their mother is dead. We lost track of our clan-'
The soldiers dragged him out by a different door. Aui! The refugees who had flooded into Toskala over the last year had put a strain on the resources of the city and caused a great deal of hard feeling, but to separate a man from his children in such a way was beyond cruel. Yet none dared protest. Soldiers lined the main room; an inn called the Thirsty Saw had been cleared of
customers and set aside for their use. Many more folk besides him waited in line, some wringing their hands or rubbing unmarked forearms, others weeping. Most stood in silent, bitter dread. Eight days ago, on the cusp between the days of Wakened Ox and Transcendent Snake, their good city had been overthrown by treachery and fallen into the hands of thieves and criminals.
The bored soldier's voice sharpened. 'I said, You next.''
Nekkar limped forward.
The sergeant looked him up and down without smile or frown. 'What's your name?'
'I'm called Nekkar.'
'What's your clan?'
'I'm temple-sworn.' As any tupping idiot could see by his blue cloak with its white stripe sewn over each shoulder! Those who wore the blue cloak marking them as servants of Ilu the Herald, patron of travelers and bringer of news, became accustomed to being addressed as 'Holy One.' That the sergeant had not used the customary honorific was a deliberate slight. He swallowed angry words as he glanced uneasily around the chamber. The other detainees, swept up like so much detritus by the soldiers now patrolling Toskala's streets, stared, trying to gauge what questions they might be asked and what answers would serve them best.
'What clan in Toskala marks your kinfolk?' The sergeant's impatience edged his tone. He wore a silver chain from which hung an eight-pointed tin star, a cheap medallion compared with the finely wrought chain likely obtained in the first frenzy of looting.
'Why, no clan in Toskala!' he replied, surprised. 'Why should it? I was sent to Fifth Quarter's temple at sixteen as an apprentice and transferred five years later as an envoy to Stone Quarter's temple. I have lived here in the city the last thirty years, and never regretted one moment of it.' Until today. 'My kin are hill people from the Liya Pass, if you must know, a day's walk from the town of Stragglewood on the Ili Cutoff.'
'I know the place. Go on.'
Faced with the soldier's unrelenting gaze, he cleared his throat nervously and went on. 'Most of my people follow the carters' or woodsmen's trade. Easy to work together, then, you see, cousin hauling logs for cousin. Never had a badge, like they do here in the city. Honest country folk don't.' The sergeant didn't blink at that jab, nor rise to the bait, nor touch his own ugly star badge, if
that was what it was. 'I haven't been back there for over twenty years. My life is here in the city now.'
'What clan?' the sergeant repeated.
He wiped sweat from his brow with a hand made grimy when the soldiers who had cornered him had shoved him to the ground. His wrist hurt, and his twisted ankle was swelling. 'Tumble Creek lands, mostly. Some granddaughter branches that range the roads and paths, as carters do. We're a daughter branch long split from the Green Sun, call ourselves Tumble Sun, if you must know.'
The sergeant blinked, as if the names meant something to him.
Dread opened its maw and swallowed Nekkar in one gulp. He had the horrible feeling he had just betrayed his entire clan, who had never done one wrong thing to him even for all he had been thrilled to leave the quiet hills for the glories of the finest city in all the Hundred.
The sergeant pointed to the white trim on his cloak. 'You're wearing an ostiary's stripes.'
'Yes, I'm ostiary over the temple of Ilu that's located here in Stone Quarter. We're well known as the most minor of the five temples dedicated to Ilu in Toskala.'
'An ambitious person raised to a high position might feel slighted to be called "minor." Maybe you were hoping for a better place.'
He was very irritating, and Nekkar was anxious about his charges and sick of seeing unoffending refugees cut like debt slaves and dragged away. Standing in line half the day with hands and ankle throbbing and without food or drink had made him light-headed enough to kick him into incautious speech, that sarcastic way he had of lecturing youth when they were being idiots. 'I'm perfectly happy with an orderly, unambitious existence. Keeping to my place and serving the gods as I am sworn, and leaving others to go about their lawful business. In peace.'
The soldier's hand flicked up. A gasp voiced behind was his only warning. A blow cracked him across the shoulders and he dropped to his knees, too stunned to cry out. His gaze hazed; lights danced. He sobbed, then caught a tangle of prayer and chanted under his breath to take his mind off the pain blossoming across his back and the fear sparking in his mind.
'Hold him for questioning.' The sergeant's voice faded.
They dragged him out to the back and dumped him on the ground. Pain paralyzed him. He tried to imagine what Vassa
might be cooking for dinner tonight, but his parched mouth tasted only of sand. It was easier to let go and close his eyes.
He came to with a start, his back throbbing as if a herd of dray beasts had stampeded over his body. Voices staggered back and forth, fading, growing louder, and fading in a slide that made him dizzy although he was flat on his stomach and sucking in dust with each nauseated breath.
'Just these two outlanders in the last eight days?' a woman asked. 'That's all you've rounded up, Sergeant Tomash?'
'My apologies, Holy One. I have been searching according to the orders given out by the Lord Commander Radas and Commander Hetti, Holy One. Every household and guild is required to open their compound to my soldiers and present a census of their household members and their wealth. These two slaves are the only outlanders I've found in Stone Quarter.'
Someone was weeping, desperate and afraid.
'Release them, or kill them, as you wish. They are useless to me.'
'My apologies, Holy One.' The sergeant, whose contemptuous tone inside the inn had made folk cringe, sounded as near to tears as a whining boy dumped by uncaring relatives on the auction block. 'I've been diligent. I am interviewing compound by compound throughout this quarter, just as I was ordered. Anyone unlawfully on the streets is brought before me. These folk I had dragged out here all need further examination, Holy One.'
'Look at me!'
The sergeant whimpered.
Nekkar opened the eye that wasn't jammed up against the ground. At first he thought his vision was ruined; his open eye scratched as if scoured by sand, and when he blinked, it hurt to open and close. Then he realized that actually it was dusk, and also that a few paces from his head floated a cloak of rippling fabric like the night sky speckled by stars.
A person in travel-worn sandals wrapped over dusty feet was standing not three steps from his nose; it was this person who wore the cloak.
'You've spoken the truth about the outlanders,' said the cloak.
The sergeant sobbed with a gasp of relief. 'Yes, Holy One.'
'You've done as well as anyone could.'
'My thanks, Holy One.'
'Bring the prisoners before me one at a time.' She moved away to a trellis.