Chapter Seven

[cityofthehand]

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CHAPTER SEVEN


When Maira slept that night, she dreamed Naran’s life from the moment she closed her eyes at sundown until the dawning of the day when she woke, dried out and wretchedly sore. When she sat up, the hard jolts and bruises settled into her bones and her stiff muscles. Her hands itched fiercely, but the pain didn’t come until she moved them. She sat on the end of her bed for a long time, empty and numb until her stomach growled. She sighed and forced herself to rise despite the keen objections of every part of her body.

Once, hunger stayed with her, as ordinary as the clouds in the sky or dirt at her feet. A lifetime ago, growling from a half day’s hunger would have marked her as weak, unseasoned. Say you were hungry even after a day or two or three and watch the rest of the workhouse children laugh at you.

Compared to those days, she lived as a queen. The first time she stepped into the apartment Mama Gigendi rented to her, she thought, I live in a palace now. Surely they’ll come and take this from me. She feared the old workhouse bosses more than death itself in those days. She dreaded that they would return to drag her back to that disgusting place of filth, misery, and sickness - the place of constant dirtiness, always picking bugs and vermin off herself. She knew then how to swat a rat or a roach off herself and roll over without waking up fully. Everything itched and stung.

People thought her fastidiously neat. In truth, she simply wanted to keep pests far away. The sight of bugs still evoked a sweaty, anxious feeling in her that made her sick all over. Something in her saw even the hint of one and screamed, no, not back there, not back there, not back there.

She bathed daily, sometimes twice a day. The luxury of waking up clean and going to bed clean, scrubbed of sweat and dirt and smelling like soap and herbs remained one of her greatest pleasures. She spent more on soap and scrub stones than most. After a lifetime of a dirty rag bed against a wall amongst dozens of others, lined up and chained to a wall for the night with all the other children, cleanliness had a value beyond worth. Even now she refused not to have her entire body under a blanket even if she got hot and stuffy from it. Sleeping exposed reminded her too
much of those old, terrible days.

Now she laughed. What were any of those small tyrants compared to what she faced now? She’d feared a boy named Amon in those days. He towered like a giant over her, pale as the moon in skin and hair. Even now, he’d still be taller (if he hadn’t long since died), but he would not be the same fearful monster.

He’d been the one to force her to escape. After he killed his girlfriend accidentally during he needed another one. The last one left him with a squalling baby he didn’t like or know how to care for. The bosses, of course, let him have his pick. He oversaw the work and took any girl he wanted as his pay, dragging her into that tiny room above the work floor, the one he called his ‘house’. Some girls tried to get his attentions. That tiny room was a mansion to them.

His eye fell on her and she knew she would either escape that night or die. Or worse yet, become a monster worthy of Amon himself. The ugly violence, the cold depth of ‘I don’t care’ and ‘so long as I get mine’ had grown, crept upon her soul like a chain sore. She wanted neither to die nor live as a monster in Amon’s house.

So she fled and found the Tayeland and the wonders of living in a place that, more than any else, understood recover. Like her, the Tayeland bore deep scars. Like her, it didn’t boast extravagant wealth but it had come a thousand miles from where it had been.

Not that she would live to enjoy it if she didn’t get herself in order. She survived Amon, the workhouse. She wasn’t sure how, but somehow she’d figure out how to survive a Tract lord and the prefects and a sorcerer’s dying wish. She hadn’t gone through that hell to have anyone steal from her what she had fought for.

If all went well, if the Elements allowed it, Naran would be the friend and help she needed. She smiled at the thought without realizing it. She knew him to be strong. More than strong, powerful. She’d never experienced that feeling for herself, she’d never had anything close to power. He did.

He’d earned it as surely as she’d earned her freedom.

She remembered her dreams, remembered Naran’s long path to become a sorcerer. His pains were willing, but they were pains. He pushed himself through grueling trials of body, mind, and will power. All the lessons - muscle memory of being struck so hard the world went gray as a demon, of magic done wrong that burned his bones inside - remained etched in him and now in her.

As she pulled on her stocks and watched her brown feet slide into the clean stocking, another memory bubbled up. She laughed at it. Once, one of Naran’s instructors taunted him after a brutal running drill and laughed that he’d barely survived the merciless cold.

The remark offended his pride so much that he turned to another student, hefted the pack of stones back onto his shoulders and said to zie, a guiless smile on his face, “You know, it’s such a nice day. I feel like going for a run, see you later.”

Not that he’d impressed the instructor. He lost meal privileges for that stunt and earned a beating when they thought he’d lose toes to frostbite. Even as he hugged the whipping pole with both arms, embracing it like a scared child clinging to a protector, he refused to admit any wrong or apologize.

“Look at your foot, Naran! You might lose the whole thing!” the instructor yelled, cracking his leather strap in the air. “See where your pride has taken you.”

Naran pulled himself to standing, shaking pitifully. “My pride took me twice as far as you thought I could go. I can live without a foot, I’m nothing without pride. If I don’t demand respect for myself, who will?”

The instructor gave him five more lashes for talking without permission and left him there to contemplate his error.

Maira stopped with her hand on the bottom buckle of her boot. More memory came. He met the professor that day. Decaran, not yet Naran’s teacher, came with a bowl of lukewarm water, herbs good for circulation, and medicine. He worked the young man’s feet in his hands, pouring careful, gentle magic into the skin.

“You did the right thing. It may not feel like it,” Decaran warmed. “But the right thing will often feel like a punishment.”

Yes, it does, Maira agreed as she carried on buckling up her boots. She might have liked the professor, in another time and place.

She left her dirty, bloodied clothes to soak in a laundry bucket before she left her apartment and locked the door behind her, putting the key in her pocket and went to face the world. She probably looked only marginally less ragged than the day before. She hadn’t been able to properly manage her hair because of her hands, so she’d settled for oiling it a little and binding it back with several ties.

Tayeland in daylight startled her. She’d been on nights so long she’d forgotten the last time she’d seen a truly busy street here. The world wasn’t cooling off, scattering to bed. No, the neighborhood had only begun to get to it’s peak. Everyone rushed around. Children going in groups to school, people with laundry or baskets on their heads, some pulling carts, vendors calling out for customers, shopkeepers opening doors and window. Had the day always been so bright? The morning light blinded her, reflecting off every white cloth and metal pot in sight, even off the glass in the windows. She winced all the way to Haringe’s shop, a walk that took twice as long for the sense of unease and the dire soreness of her entire body.

She passed through the swinging double doors of the shop feeling like a stranger because this was not her time to be here, not her place yet. Mornings were a foreign land.

She approached the beaten, old clerk’s desk in the corner where gray haired Haringe sat zirself, in zir usual loose linen pants and light grass-green jacket buttoned to the throat. Zir foot pumped the pedal for the big fan to blow tepid air around and rustle the pages held down with rocks on the desk. Zie busily jotted things down and called out orders over zir shoulder. Zie must have been rearranging the run sheets and account left over from last night. Maira frowned tightly. Maybe she ought to have waited.

Zie looked up and put zir charcoal stick down atop the piece of paper and crossed zir arms.

“Honor, boss,” she said.

“Respect. Damn. Motswa wasn’t lying none,” zie said, reaching up to scratch underneath a thick braid with zir index finger before patting it down again. “Thought she was telling me some kind of story. You one lucky woman, Aialah,” zie said and appraised Maira up and down with harsh eyes and no sign of pity. Maira looked away to cool her rage. Four years working for zie and it didn’t buy even an “are you all right?”. If Haringe had come in looking wrecked, Maira would have at least asked the question.

“I’ll pay to replace the messages and packages that were in my bag last night. I don’t know how much it costs -”

“Hah! Pfft. That bag more valuable than you. You couldn’t pay that back. Cost of refunding all those deliveries, paying for all the damaged things? Take you years. Like I said, you lucky. Motswa paid it off. Put some nice pretty gold right in my little hand. We all even up, book’s square. So go on.”

“So you want me to come back tonight?”

“Nope. Go. We balanced.”

“Please, Haringe -”

“Motswa explained what happened, but she don’t have to work to get hers like the rest of us do. I can’t risk you going out with another bag and getting set on. Motswa ain’t gonna pay for that again. You got no security, and that means I got no trust. You really telling me this all over, won’t nobody bother none? For sure? Don’t lie. Not nobody been able to lie to me successfully in twenty years.”

For a split second, Maira wondered who’d gotten lucky twenty years ago, but put the thought aside.

She plunged her stiff hands into her jacket pockets with a sigh. Haringe had a point. Not one she liked, not one that would pay for food and rent, but that didn’t make it less true. She staggered back a step. “It wasn’t my fault.”

“You the one put your nose in somebody else’s business. Now it’s your business. I don’t want it in none of mine. So sorry for you, but I got to do for me, for the others here. You think we all don’t have families. I got the four of us and the children. This place got to keep going.”

Maira let out a breath. More valid points. Haringe did good business, but on a narrow margin. One lost bag, without repayment, would put people out of food and shoes and clothes. Maira knew zir spouses and children. The older kids helped with run sheets to practice writing. The spouses brought food and good company. Maira liked them all. They’d go without if Haringe took on the cost of a lost bag again.

“I understand. I’m sorry. A man was dying, I didn’t know what to do.” She turned her back to trudge out the door, back into the bright, bewildering morning.

Haringe called out. “Eh, Aialah.” Maira turned. Haringe opened a drawer and took out zir leather coin purse. Zie fished out five small copper coins - Domain currency, not Palm - and put them down on the desk. “You be all right. You strong. You Taye in your heart. You find other things, better things. I won’t talk no bad about you.”

Maira swept the coins into her palm and then into her pocket. She inclined her head low, not quite a bow, but a show of gratitude. “Honor, Haringe.”

“Deep respect, Maira. Now go on, I got business.”

Zie didn’t smile when zie said it, but the kindness of those coins and the promise of no bad talk behind her back sufficed. If Haringe didn’t smile or pat her head, fair enough. It would have been unacceptable pity anyway.

Maira made her way home slow to walk off the soreness and clear her mind. She strolled down Blue Garden Avenue rather than shortcutting between buildings, under hanging laundry lines. She looked longingly at the shops, vendors, schools, and temples. Even at the apartment buildings and strange, aged remnants of the few houses left from before Motswa’s reign. Most Taye lived in the hosing Motswa had build to keep them out of shanty camps where their homes consisted of scraps of sturdy garbage and wood.

The First Taye still hated storms fiercely, for good reason. The older ones remembered how every strong wind or deluge of rain wrecked their fragile existence and sent them scrambling to rebuild.

Another difference between them. Maira feared neither storms nor darkness. Death, dirtiness, captivity, pain and starvation, certainly. But not storms. Not darkness.

She passed the little children’s school and twitched her nose at the square building that looked like the lunch tins they gave the students. Maybe I should be a teacher, she thought. She knew reading, writing, and her numbers quite well. Numbers she understood very, very well. She also spoke enough of a few languages to teach, at least the phrases a child would need to know, ‘I am lost’ or ‘where do you find this building’ or ‘thank you’.

Though perhaps they might not wanting her teaching what she really knew in Dhatan or Asna - the curse words and harsh warnings that got people out of the way. That thought, of children repeating the words for ‘spineless shithead’ and ‘fuck seventeen generations of your ancestors, on both sides’ in various languages made her laugh to herself quietly.

Maybe not a teacher, but once her hands healed she’d be good for other word. Serving food, maybe, baking if someone bothered to teach her. Maybe a nightwatcher. The Taye didn’t have many of those, both because most people couldn’t afford it and few needed it, but still some shop owners retained their wary paranoia from the bad old days.

Listing these possibilities eased the tension in her body. It wouldn’t be the same as getting to run, alone, for long periods and see all the city - Tracts included. She loved that part of being a messenger. Marveling at the glamour and beauty in the Tracts, bought by nothing less than wealth as incalculable as the starts in the sky. Nothing compared to the first moment she’d beheld the domed temples and intricate patterns in marble in the human tract, or the tower behemoths in the Asna’isi Tract, so tall they could be seen from tall roof in the Palm.

All right, she told herself, I’ll be all right. I’ll survive. I’ll serve fish soup or bake bread or mind children. I’ll live.

Less sore for having walked through her pain, Maira turned off Blue Garden and onto her own street. She looked up and realized she’d stared at her feet most of the journey home. When she spotted her building from behind, she immediately noted the open kitchen window. She had not left it open. The stone she used for that had been removed.

A shadowy figure crossed in front of the window. Maira’s heart clenched. She back stepped off the street and in between two buildings. With her shoulders to a sun warmed clay wall, she peeked around the corner and hoped she’d been mistaken.

No such luck. A person - human - leaned out of her kitchen window and shouted to two others on the ground below. They wore plain clothes of brown and dull blue. At a distance their features lent them enough camouflage to walk in the Tayeland without drawing attention. A longer look revealed they were not first Taye, they didn’t even pass as well as she did, but that took some looking. Off hand, they could walk past easily.

One of them pulled a brown jacket back. A speck sized silver glint told Maira all she needed to know. They’d come armed. She touched her chest as a reflex. She could not feel the device with her fingers or beneath her breastbone, but knew it had not been removed. The folded piece of paper with instructions for removal remained tucked under her left breast, under her binder. She scanned around for Motswa’s people. None walked the area as they said they would.

A sick dread passed through her. Perhaps they’d been killed or hurt. These intruders looked professional enough to get the drop on Iyemi and the others. She hoped that the Elements would spare them because she could not seek them out to give warning. These intruders would search for her now. They would seek Haringe’s, the market, anywhere she’d ever been seen. Motswa’s people were supposed to be watching out for her, why weren’t they here?

Another quick look revealed them to be preoccupied still. She took the opportunity to go down an alley and cross the next street to a very tall building that held a shoemaker’s shop and several apartments. At six stories, it ranked as the tallest building around. Sturdy ladders surrounded the building, fastened tight to the walls so people could get out easily in a fire. The rooftop made a great spot for hiding. Most of the local children used it for that purposes. She couldn’t count how many times the call had gone out to search for a missing child who’d been found sulking, hiding, or just asleep in the corner of that roof, hidden by the huge metal braces that hooked over the roof ledge.

Such a place offered a perfect, hidden look out spot. She circled around to the south side of the building and braced for pain as she wrapped arms around a rung at nose height with her. Climbing any higher required her to use her hands. They stung as if pricked by heated needles. Blisters on her palm popped sending pain all the way up to her shoulder and down her spine. She held on relentlessly until she reached the top, hissing and breathing funny.

Once at the top, she rolled over the ledge and onto her back, resting until the hurt faded away. With a groan and a long breath, she picked her sore body up clumsily and went to the corner of the roof. She crouched low to avoid being seen over the stone ledge. The intruders carried on, walking around and calling up occasionally to the one at the kitchen window.

If not for a walk taken on a whim, she would have been home when they came. She would have been dead. A tiny nothing of a decision had been life or death. She tensed tightly all over as a chill shiver passed through her that had nothing to do with it being a cool morning.