The Burning City (4 page)

“The fire wakes Yangin-Atep,” the boy surmised. “Then Yangin-Atep takes the fire for himself? So it goes out…” But instead of confirming, Kreeg only smiled indulgently. Whandall heard snickering.

The other loggers didn't believe, but… “Kreeg, don't you believe in Yangin-Atep either?”

“Not really,” Kreeg said. “Some magic works, out here in the woods, but in town? Gods and magic, you hear a lot about them, but you see damn little.”

“A magician killed Pothefit!”

Kreeg Miller shrugged.

Whandall was near tears. Pothefit had vanished during the Burning, just ten weeks ago. Pothefit was his father! But you didn't say that outside the family. Whandall cast about for better arguments. “You
bow
to the redwood before you cut it. I've seen you. Isn't that magic?”

“Yeah, well… why take chances? Why do the morningstars and laurel whips and touch-me and creepy-julia all protect the redwoods?”

“Like house guards,” Whandall said, remembering that there were always men and boys on guard at Placehold.

“Maybe. Like the plants made some kind of bargain,” Kreeg said, and laughed.

Mother's Mother had told him. Yangin-Atep led Whandall's ancestors to the Lords, and the Lords had led Whandall's ancestors through the forest to the Valley of Smokes where they defeated the kinless and built Tep's Town. Redwood seeds and firewands didn't sprout unless fire had passed through. Surely these woods belonged to the fire god!

But Kreeg Miller just couldn't see it.

They worked half the morning, hacking at the base of a vast redwood, ignoring the smoke that still rose northeast of them. Whandall carried water to them from a nearby stream. The other loggers were almost used to him now. They called him Candlestub.

When the sun was overhead, they broke for lunch.

Kreeg Miller had taken to sharing lunch with him. Whandall had managed to gather some cheese from the Placehold kitchen. Kreeg had a smoked rabbit from yesterday.

Whandall asked, “How many trees does it take to build the city back?”

Two loggers overheard and laughed. “They never burn the whole city,” Kreeg told him. “Nobody could live through that, Whandall. Twenty or
thirty stores and houses, a few blocks solid and some other places scattered, then they break off.”

The Placehold men said that they'd burned down the whole city, and all of the children believed them.

A logger said, “We'll cut another tree after this one. We wouldn't need all four if Lord Qirinty didn't want a wing on his palace. Boy, do you remember your first Burning?”

“Some. I was only two years old.” Whandall cast back in his mind. “The men were acting funny. They'd lash out if any children got too close. They yelled a lot, and the women yelled back. The women tried to keep the men away from us.

“Then one afternoon it all got very scary and confusing. There was shouting and whooping and heat and smoke and light. The women all huddled with us on the second floor. There were smells—not just smoke, but stuff that made you gag, like an alchemist's shop. The men came in with things they'd gathered. Blankets, furniture, heaps of shells, stacks of cups and plates, odd things to eat.

“And afterward everyone seemed to calm down.” Whandall's voice trailed off. The other woodsmen were looking at him like… like an enemy. Kreeg wouldn't look at him at all.

The world had moved on, and Whandall had hardly noticed.

His brothers and cousins all seemed to have disappeared. Mostly the girls and women stayed home, but on Mother's Day each month the women went to the corner squares where the Lordsmen gave out food and clothing and shells, presents from the Lords. There were always men around that day and the next. Later, they might be around or they might be gone.

But boys appeared only for meals and sleep, and not always then. Where did they go?

He followed a cluster of cousins one afternoon. As in the forest, he took pride in being unseen. He got four blocks before four younger men challenged him. They'd beaten him half senseless before Shastern turned around, saw what was happening, and came running.

Shastern showed the tattoos on his hands and arms. Whandall had once asked about those, but Shastern had put off answering. They blended in with the terrible scars Shastern carried from the forest, but many of his cousins had them too. He never asked that kind of question of his cousins. Now Whandall did not quite hear what Shastern and his cousins said to them, but the strangers turned him loose and his cousins carried him home.

He woke hurting. Shastern woke around noon and sought him out. Shastern was barred from speaking certain secrets, but some things he could say…

Serpent's Walk wasn't just this region of the city.

Serpent's Walk was the young men who held it. These streets belonged
to Serpent's Walk. Other streets, other bands. The region grew or shrank, streets changed hands, with the power of the bands. They put up signs on walls and other places.

Whandall had been able to read them for years. Serpent's Walk had a squiggle sign, easy to draw. Dirty Birds was a falcon drawn wild and sloppy. Shastern showed him a boundary, a wall with the Serpent's Walk squiggle at one end and a long thin phallus to mark Bull Pizzle territory at the other. Unmarked, one did not walk in Serpent's Walk, or in Bull Pizzle or Dirty Bird either, if one did not belong. As a child Whandall had wandered the streets without hindrance, but a ten-year-old was no longer a child.

“But there are places with no signs at all,” Whandall protested.

“That's Lord territory. You can go there until one of the Lordsmen tells you not to. Then you leave.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone is scared of the Lordsmen.”

“Why? Are they so strong?”

“Well, they're big, and they're mean, and they wear that armor.”

“They walk in pairs too,” Whandall said, remembering.

“Right. And if you hurt one of them, a lot more will come looking for you.”

“What if they don't know who did it?”

Shastern shrugged expressively. “Then a bunch of them come and beat up on everybody they can find until someone confesses. Or we kill someone and say he confessed before we killed him. You stay away from Lordsmen, Whandall. Only good they do is when they bring in the presents on Mother's Day.”

Whandall found it strange to have his one-year-younger brother behaving as his elder.

He must have spoken to Wanshig too. Wanshig was Whandall's eldest brother. Wanshig had the tattoos, a snake in the web of his left thumb, a rattlesnake that ran up his right arm from the index finger to the elbow, a small snake's eye at the edge of his left eye. The next night Wanshig took him into the streets. In a ruin that stank of old smoke, he introduced his younger brother to men who carried knives and never smiled.

“He needs protection,” Wanshig said. The men just looked at him. Finally one asked, “Who speaks for him?”

Whandall knew some of these faces. Shastern was there too, and he said, “I will.” Shastern did not speak to his brothers, but he spoke of Whandall in glowing terms. When the rest fled the forest in terror, Whandall had stayed to help Shastern. If he'd learned little of the customs of Serpent's Walk, it was because he was otherwise occupied. When none of the boys would return to the wood but took to the streets instead, Whandall Placehold continued to brave the killer plants, to spy on the woodsmen.

The room was big enough to hold fifty people or more. It was dark outside now, and the only light in the room came from the moon shining through holes in the roof, and from torches. The torches were outside, stuck into holes in the windowsills. Yangin-Atep wouldn't allow fires inside, except during a Burning. You could build an outside cookfire under a lean-to shelter, but never inside, and if you tried to enclose a fire with walls, the fire went out. Whandall couldn't remember anyone telling him this. He just knew it, as he knew that cats had sharp claws and that boys should stay away from men when they were drinking beer.

There was a big chair on a low platform at one end of the room. The chair was wooden, with arms and a high back, and it was carved with serpents and birds. Some kinless must have worked hard to make that chair, but Whandall didn't think it would be very comfortable, not like the big ponyhair-stuffed chair Mother's Mother liked.

A tall man with no smile sat in that chair. Three other men stood in front of him holding their long Lordkin knives across their chests. Whandall knew him. Pelzed lived in a two-story stone house at the end of a block of well-kept kinless houses. Pelzed's house had a fenced-in garden and there were always kinless working in it.

“Bring him,” Pelzed said.

His brothers took Whandall by the arms and pulled him to just in front of Pelzed's chair, then forced him down on his knees.

“What good are you?” Pelzed demanded.

Shastern began to speak, but Pelzed held up a hand. “I heard you. I want to hear him. What did you learn from the woodsmen?”

“Say something,” Wanshig whispered. There was fear in his voice.

Whandall thought furiously. “Poisons. I know the poisons of the forest. Needles. Blades. Whips.”

Pelzed gestured. One of the men standing in front of Pelzed's chair raised his big knife and struck Whandall hard across the left shoulder.

It stung, but he had used the flat of the blade. “Call him Lord,” the man said. His bared chest was a maze of scars; one ran right up his cheek into his hair. Whandall found him scary as hell.

“Lord,” Whandall said. He had never seen a Lord. “Yes, Lord.”

“Good. You can walk in the forest?”

“Much of it, Lord. Places where the woodsmen have been.”

“Good. What do you know of the Wedge?”

“The meadow at the top of the Deerpiss River?” What did Pelzed
want
to hear? “Woodsmen don't go there, Lord. I've never seen it. It is said to be guarded.”

Pause. Then, “Can you bring us poisons?”

“Yes, Lord, in the right season.”

“Can we use them against the enemies of Serpent's Walk?”

Whandall had no idea who the enemies of Serpent's Walk might be, but he was afraid to ask. “If they're fresh, Lord.”

“What happens if they aren't fresh?”

“After a day they only make you itch. The nettles stop reaching out for anyone who passes.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.” The man raised his knife. “Lord.”

“You're a sneak and a spy.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Will you spy for us?”

Whandall hesitated. “Of course he will, Lord,” Shastern said.

“Take him out, Shastern. Wait with him.”

Shastern led him through a door into a room with no other doors and only a small dark window that let in a little moonlight. He waited until they were closed in before letting go of Whandall's arm.

“This is dangerous, isn't it?” Whandall asked.

Shastern nodded.

“So what's going to happen?”

“They'll let you in. Maybe.”

“If they don't?”

Shastern shook his head. “They will. Lord Pelzed doesn't want a blood feud with the Placehold family.”

Blood feuds meant blood. “Is he really a Lord—”

“He is here,” Shastern said. “And don't forget it.”

When they brought him back in, the room was dark except for a few candles near Pelzed's chair. Shastern whispered, “I knew they'd let you in. Now whatever happens, don't cry. It's going to hurt.”

They made him kneel in front of Pelzed again. Two men took turns asking him questions and hitting him.

“We are your father and your mother,” Pelzed said.

Someone hit him.

“Who is your father?” a voice asked from behind.

“You are—”

Someone hit him harder.

“Serpent's Walk,” Whandall guessed.

“Who is your mother?”

“Serpent's Walk.”

“Who is your Lord?”

“Pelzed…. Argh. Lord Pelzed. Aagh! Serpent's Walk?”

“Who is Lord of Serpent's Walk?”

“Lord Pelzed.”

It went on a long time. Usually they didn't hit him if he guessed the right answer, but sometimes they hit him anyway. “To make sure you remember,” they said.

Finally that was over. “You can't fight,” Pelzed said. “So you won't be a full member. But we'll take care of you. Give him the mark.”

They stretched his left hand out and tattooed a small serpent on the web of his thumb. He held his arm rigid against the pain. Then everyone said nice things about him.

After that it was easier. Whandall was safe outside the house as long as he was in territory friendly to Serpent's Walk. Wanshig warned him not to carry a knife until he knew how to fight. It would be taken as a challenge.

He didn't know the rules. But one could keep silent, watch, and learn.