Guardians of the Keep: Book Two of the Bridge of D'Arnath (49 page)

beams like a thunderstorm. There was no outer door to be locked, and in two hours of heavy-eyed

observation, no guard or other watcher came to check on us.

One more venture before I slept, I thought. I wanted to get my bearings. I crept between the rows of

sleeping women, through the open doorway, and up the steps to the courtyard. The night was cold, the

sky hazy with smoke and dust. No stars visible. No moon. A single yellow torch burned in each corner

of the yard, allowing a limited view of what lay beyond the enclosing walls.

Directly across the courtyard, to the south as I remembered from the morning light, was the plain

building of two stories that held the sewing rooms and other such shops and workrooms. Behind me,

above the dormitory, thin, angular towers of dark stonework rose into the night like spikes against the

sky, pierced by many tall windows that shone dark blue or green. I judged this massive structure to be

the fortress keep, as it extended well beyond the open colonnade that formed the eastern boundary of

this courtyard—the Workers’ Court, I’d heard my new home called. The L-shaped keep wrapped

around the far corner to my left, forming the eastern boundary of the fortress.

The colonnade separated the workers’ compound from another courtyard, formed by the keep, its

eastern wing, and another towered stone building. Facing the keep across the courtyard, that building

appeared somewhat less imposing than the keep, but certainly more grand than the workrooms. It also

showed a few lights.

To the west—my right as I stood on the dormitory steps—were a series of low brick structures that

might be guard barracks, more workshops, or perhaps dormitories for male servants. Something else lay

in the dark, even farther beyond, something that smelled foul, like stables poorly maintained.

“What are you doing?”

I whirled about and faced Kargetha’s empty stare. Quickly I dipped my knee and cast down my

eyes. “The latrine, your Worship. No one told me where such was to be found.”

“You should have taken care of that earlier. Wandering about in the dark is not permitted.” She

pointed to a corner of the courtyard. “You’ll find what you want there. Return to your sleeping room

immediately after.”

I dipped my knee again and hurried to the dark corner to which she had directed me. She didn’t

come to check that I had obeyed her, which was a great relief. I didn’t want to attract further notice. I

hurried back to my pallet, pulled a thread from the hem of my skirt, and laid it carefully under the corner

of my bed. One day gone.

Fourteen days. So much to learn. I couldn’t ask everything at once, yet I couldn’t put off my

investigations until I was more settled here either.

Our dormitory was indeed part of the keep cellars. The Lords themselves lived above us, so I was

told, though none of the women had ever seen them. They had heard all manner of tales about the Lords:

that they were gods or giants, or creatures of spirit, rather than flesh. They all agreed that the Lords could

read your soul, assuming you had one. The Zhid claimed that Drudges had no souls because we had no

“true talents”—no power for sorcery. All of the women believed that it was only right that we serve such

powerful masters in whatever way we were commanded. Such was clearly how the world was meant to

be, and whatever else was there to do?

I asked Dia, the woman who had been a midwife, if many children lived in Zhev’Na. She looked

puzzled. “No breeding is allowed in the fortress. How could there be offspring?”

“I just thought I heard a child’s voice last night. That’s all,” I said. “When Zoe sent me to get the

scraps of leather at the tanner’s.”

“Well, children’s
voices . .
. that’s different,” said Dia. “I thought you meant new-birthed offspring.

There’s child slaves brought in from time to time, though they can’t speak but when they’re told. And

sometimes there’s young ones among the Worships”—
Worship
was the Drudge title for the Zhid—“ones

they train to become Worships, too.”

“I thought all the Worships were grown,” I said. “Not many warriors ever came to our camp. Didn’t

know Worships could be young ones.”

Dia glanced over her shoulder and gave a shudder. “They’re not
nice
young ones.”

I dropped the subject, so as not to seem too interested. But on that afternoon I made sure to stand by

Zoe while we attacked the mountain of plain brown fabric that was being turned into underdrawers for

the Zhid soldiers. “Dia says the Lords breed offspring. Is that true, Zoe? We never heard that in my work

camp.”

“Pshaw! Dia would stitch her fingers to a sheet if you didn’t tell her not. The Lords are Worships, and

Worships don’t breed.”

“But she said they made a boy that lives here like a prince, so he must be a child of the Lords.”

Zoe wrinkled her pale dirty face and licked her fingers as she threaded her needle. “There is a boy

what lives in the Gray House and is favored of the Lords. Gam saw him when she was called to take new

towels there. She said he has the mark of the Lords on him, so she was ever so careful and respectful.”

“The mark of the Lords? I don’t know of that. I’m so ignorant, being new here at the fortress.”

Zoe leaned close, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening into desert crags. “The jewels, you

know.” She laid her finger on her ear tag. “It means whatever you do or say, the Lords will know it. The

boy could kill you with a look if he took a mind to. You go careful if you see the mark of the Lords,

Eda.”

Gar’Dena had warned me repeatedly not to reveal myself to Gerick no matter what—not until the

signal came. A wise warning, it appeared.

The Gray House was the structure that faced the keep across the courtyard beyond the colonnade.

On the fourth night of my stay in Zhev’Na, I decided to venture a bit farther afield and see what I could

learn about it.

We had worked a bit later than usual, for Kargetha had been displeased with our day’s stitching and

made us rip out half of it and do it over again. By the time my companions fell snoring onto their pallets,

the compound was quiet and empty. I waited perhaps an hour, then slipped through the darkness to the

colonnade, crossing into the next courtyard by way of the opening closest to the corner next to the keep.

As I stood in the dark corner, shivering in the cold air, I longed for a cloak, longed to be anywhere

but this awful place. The courtyard between the Gray House and the keep—the Lords’ Court, the

women called it—was much larger than the Workers’ Court, and was paved with large squares of stone

that were carved with all manner of devices and symbols. Rather than trees or plants, statues of

fantastical birds and beasts were set in ordered rows across the barren enclosure. The entrance to the

keep was a columned portico at least six stories in height, flanked by gigantic carvings of warriors and

beasts, and lit by great bowls of flame mounted above the portico. The bowl torches were so immense

and so high, no servant could possibly reach them to set them alight or refresh their fuel. I shuddered,

feeling quite small and alone.

The Gray House that faced this portico across the courtyard was more modestly proportioned, but of

the same severe, angular construction. No elaborate entry, but only an iron gate opened onto its interior

courtyard. Despite four torches that flanked the Gray House gate, I couldn’t see into the darkness

beyond it. Few lights were visible in the house, but I tried to note where they were: ground level, just to

the right of the gate, second level, just above the gate, and third level, to the rear.

No guards were anywhere in evidence, and I thought perhaps I’d run quickly across the courtyard

and peek through the iron gate of the Gray House. Only my uncertainty as to how to proceed made me

hesitate long enough to hear the quiet sneeze not twenty paces from me. Despite the chill of the night, I

broke into a sweat, while attempting the difficult task of shrinking further into the shadows without moving

at all.

Moments dragged past as I huddled in my dark corner, scarcely daring to breathe. At last a man

stepped from the corner of the courtyard at each end of the colonnade, just as two guards emerged from

the keep. The four met briefly in the middle of the courtyard. Then, while the two who had been on

watch strolled back toward the keep, the other two began a circuit of the dark peripheries of the

courtyard. Their path would leave them right at the posts so recently vacated. Heart pounding, I retreated

into the workers’ compound before they completed their rounds. I would need to go again to learn how

often the guard was changed, and how long it took the two to make the circuit. Tomorrow.

Timing would be critical, yet time was very difficult to estimate in Zhev’Na. There seemed to be no

clocks, no bells, no criers, no drumbeats, no time signals at all. The sewing women had no concept of

time and no interest in it. What difference would it make, they responded, when I asked how they could

tell how long it took them to complete a slave tunic or when it was time to eat. They started work at

dawn and ended when Kargetha said they’d done enough. They ate when food was given them and slept

until wakened. Yet, someone in the fortress had to know the time. The guards knew when to go on duty,

and the kitchen servant arrived at what seemed to be the exact same hour every day. Someone

dispatched that servant, so someone had to know. It seemed too precise to be guesswork.

Near the end of my first week, when Kargetha spent the morning teaching us to fashion a new style of

legging, I finally came to understand it. Late in the morning, the Zhid woman popped up her head and

said, “Blast. The last morning hour has struck, and your log brains have not even begun to comprehend

what I require. One hour more, and anyone who’s failed to complete one set will go hungry for the rest

of the day. Your stomachs are all you care for.” I watched closely, and even with no external signal,

Kargetha knew exactly when an hour had passed. Her head came up. Less than a moment later, the

kitchen servant arrived with our midday bread.

The signal was
inside
the Zhid somehow. We who had no “true talent” were excluded from even so

basic an amenity as knowing the time of day. The realization made me inordinately angry.

So, I would have to devise my own way of timekeeping. For half a day I fumbled about, trying

various schemes. None were successful until I began to count. After four long days in the sewing room,

stitching had become as regular as my pulse. The interval of one stitch became one count.

Once I worked at it a while, I could approximate fifty counts quite accurately. I would begin a row of

stitches, then sew without counting—not a simple matter when I was so preoccupied with it—and then

count my stitches when I believed I had done fifty. I was always within one or two. It took me two

hundred counts to walk to the cistern in the corner of the compound, seventy-five counts to walk from

the dormitory to the sewing room. We were allowed six hundred counts to eat. I started estimating longer

times, and though I was less accurate at first, by the end of two days I could estimate three thousand

counts to within twenty stitches. I called three thousand counts an hour. Then, all I needed was a

reference, so sunset became nineteenth hour.

At sunset on my sixth day, I began to count. I ignored the women’s conversation. Our talk was so

pointless, so lacking in substance, no one noticed who participated and who did not. We sewed ten

thousand stitches more—three hours and a quarter, more or less.

By the time we ate our soup, and the dormitory had been quiet long enough that I felt relatively safe, it

had been an hour and a half more. I hurried through the dark colonnade into the Lords’ Court and took

up my watch from behind a column. By my reckoning, it was first hour when the guards changed. I

waited, stitching in my head until my fingers ached with the intensity of it.

Two hours until the guards changed again, and just under a quarter of an hour for them to walk the

periphery of the court. Two hours later, the same. By the third guard change, the edge of the world was a

deep vermilion, and I hurried back to the dormitory where the women were stirring.

All day I fought to stay awake. Zoe yelled at me several times, accusing me of slacking. My hands

kept falling still, though my bleary eyes were open and my mind was counting stitches.

“I’m sorry, Zoe. Didn’t sleep well. I’ll try harder,” I said.

“If you can’t stay awake, then maybe you’d best do something else. Her Worship Kargetha wants

these leggings delivered to the guardroom at the Gray House. You’ll have to do it.”

My spirit quickened with excitement, but I dared not allow it to show. “I’ll try not to be so slow ever

again, Zoe. Don’t make me.”

Though one would expect that they would delight in a break of the monotony, my coworkers very

much disliked being sent on errands. I didn’t know whether they were afraid of doing something wrong

and being punished, or if thinking had just become too difficult.

“You’ll go.”

“If you say so, Zoe.”

“And you’re to speak to the chamberlain. Some draperies have rotted from the sun and must be

replaced. He’ll give them to you to bring back here.”