His eyes were itching, the skin of his face raw. He found he was rubbing at his mouth and forced his hands to drop to his sides. His body felt heavy, the armour he wore hot and awkward hidden under his shirt. The noise and the confusion was almost too much for him, after the long days of silence in the desert sand. He had liked the emptiness, the feeling of it like a pain in his body, fear and yearning and sorrow that cut like great claws. Dragon’s claws, he thought with a bitter laugh. Everything had seemed briefly easier, with nothing between himself and his shadows, nothing to think about but walking onwards in the dust. Calm. Clean. Empty. This clamour and bustle of life made him uneasy, as though he were walking a high tightrope and might easily fall.
But there should be things here … He gazed around the square with nervous interest. Street sellers offered skewers of meat, thin cakes of sweet bread, flowers, drinks of lemon water, sherbet ice. Even this early in the day a few whores touted for business, worn and raddled in the fresh light. Two beggars with withered limbs and running sores jangled alms bowls. A drunk lay slumped against the base of a statue, sleeping in a puddle of vomit beneath rearing stone hooves. Almost nostalgic.
He eyed the whores with wary anticipation. A young woman noticed him staring and teetered towards him. Her legs were bound with tight cords to give her a mincing, hobbled gait; she wore bells at her wrists and ankles that tinkled irritatingly. Curious things, other people’s sexual peccadilloes. Anywhere else, most men would have got bored and walked off by the time she got near. Marith took a half step towards her. So close … But she moved so painfully slowly …
Then Rate noticed the woman and whistled. Marith’s heart sank. Taking risks. Letting things slip. I’m not so desperate, yet, he thought, though he knew that was a lie as he thought it. He shuddered and tried not to rub his eyes.
Tobias was looking at him with a frown. ‘Getting into character are we, My Lord?’ he said scathingly. ‘She’s a bit out of your price range, I’d have thought, unless she’ll give credit. Leave off, girl,’ he shouted to the woman, who had now advanced a good half a yard towards them. ‘He’s not interested.’
The woman flinched, blinking her eyes and rubbing a hand absently across her mouth. A pinched, desperate expression came over her face. Marith shuddered. Pain in his eyes. So close. So close. Turned to Tobias, trying to look embarrassed and relieved. Tobias gave him a look then pointed to one of the streets off the square. ‘I think we should be getting on,’ he said firmly. ‘We need to go that way, I think. We’re lodging at the Five Corners on the Street of the South.’
‘Sounds charming,’ said Rate. ‘Want to bring your new friend, My Lord?’
‘Wouldn’t know what to do with her,’ Emit muttered.
Marith trailed behind them, gazing back at the woman with hungry eyes.
Even equipped with a map, it took them over an hour of wandering before they found the Street of the South. It was a small, neat lane in an unremarkable area of the city that was not particularly rich, not particularly poor. Shoppers and merchants bustled about, engaged in their own honest business, assuming others did likewise. Flower boxes bloomed in many of the upper windows, a small garden square with a dried-up fountain was alive with birds. All bathed in the lovely soft golden desert light. Safe. Safe, and warm, and welcoming. Marith felt his heart rise within him. One could almost pretend, here, that the world was a good place.
The Five Corners itself was equally charming, a homely lodging house with faded yellow walls and honeysuckle growing around the door. From inside came the smell of fresh bread, the sound of a woman singing in a high sweet warbling voice.
It was run by three sisters, each prettier and friendlier than the last. Rate flirted with them shamelessly from the moment he set eyes on them; even Emit grinned at them and called them ‘ladies’ in a cheerful voice. The rooms were small but clean. Again, ‘My Lord Marith’ had his own room, the others shared two between them. He half wondered if the whole set-up was some elaborate joke of Skie’s.
They sat down for lunch in a quiet corner of the house’s common room. It opened onto a small garden with flowering trees in painted pots. The middle sister, Alyet, brought them eggs cooked with chicken, green leaves and spices, fresh bread still warm. To drink there was dry sharp wine mixed with lemon, fragrant and refreshing. Marith sat quietly, looking at the trees, enjoying the taste of the wine in his mouth and the sweet smell of the bread.
‘Gods, we’ve lucked out here,’ said Rate through a mouthful of eggs. ‘The others can’t possibly all have got lodgings as nice as this. Skie must have a solid gold bed or something, if he’s staying somewhere nicer than this.’
Tobias looked up from his plate, glared at Rate. Alyet came over to them smiling with another basket of bread and he said loudly, ‘You’re too kind, miss, too generous indeed. The best bread I’ve ever eaten.’
Alyet laughed sweetly. ‘I’m sure you say that to everyone.’
‘Why of course,’ Rate said. ‘Means it, too. I, on the other hand, would rather praise a lady’s face than her baking. Your smiles are sweeter than the moon, Alyet, and far, far sweeter than this fine bread.’
Alyet laughed again and bustled off to another table.
‘We don’t talk about the rest of them,’ Tobias said angrily. ‘They’re spread out across the city and we don’t know where they are and we don’t run into them, and we don’t look at them if we do. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that.’ He passed the basket to Marith. ‘More bread, My Lord? Another drink?’
After lunch they went out for a look around the city, equipped now with Alyet’s advice on where to go and where to avoid. Marith looked around him in fascination. This was the city that had escaped Amrath’s armies, that had refused to recognize Turnain of Immier as a god on earth. The golden, the eternal, the most beautiful, the first, the last, the undying. The unconquered. The unconquerable. The richest city there had ever been. He had read more about this city than any other place in all the world. Dreamed of seeing it.
In some disappointing ways, it was just a city like any other. The streets weren’t paved with gold, nor did they run with innocent blood. Most of the buildings were just shops and houses filled with ordinary shop and house things. The people out walking were engaged in the same business they would be in any other city. But a sense always of things beneath the surface. Things out of reach. They passed a dark alleyway that gaped like a mouth, in which shadows moved and from which a low noise came, a crying wail that made the skin on Marith’s back crawl. They passed vast gates of ivory and silver, studded with diamonds that flashed in the sun. They passed hollow-eyed children in silks and satins, scrabbling for rubbish blown in the corners of the streets. As long ago as tomorrow, beneath the brazen walls of Sorlost …
They stopped in a large square, grand and ruinous, white marble and peeling gold leaf on the walls. A huge statue of a man dominated it, its face eaten away, a stone hand clutching an object too worn to be recognized.
‘The Court of the Broken Knife,’ Tobias said, consulting his map.