The Burning City (67 page)

“There is no suitable accommodation for all of you there,” Quintana said. “We can offer lodging for you and the Sage in Lord's Town, but there is no place for all of you, and I am certain you would prefer to remain together.”

“Oh, yes.” Get separated,
here?

“So. Welcome back to Tep's Town,” Quintana said.

Morth chuckled.

“You are amused, Sage?”

“Mildly so,” Morth said. “And curious as to why the chief witness would come personally to greet a trader.”

Quintana's expression didn't change. “We are not often visited by wealthy caravans.”

“Even so, I would wager this is the first one you have met.”

“It is also the first I have seen, as you must know. And I grow old; I grow bored.” Quintana said. He stood abruptly. “I grow frail. Master Peacevoice Waterman will escort you to a suitable camping ground. Perhaps I may visit you there. Welcome to Tep's Town.”

Whandall invited Waterman to ride on the wagon with him.

“Don't mind if I do, sir,” Waterman said. “Not getting any younger.”

“Beaten up any boys lately?” Whandall asked conversationally.

“A few,” Waterman said. “Comes with the job. Didn't fancy you'd have forgotten. Sir.”

“Truth is,” Whandall said, “that was nicely judged. Here.” He pulled the sleeve from his left arm. “I can't forget, no, but I can still pick things up. I wonder if you've seen the teller Tras Preetror lately?”

“Not for ten years. He doesn't come to Lord's Town, of course, but I keep track. Why?”

Whandall told the tale as they drove. “So I've been on both sides of that fence, Master Peacevoice.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes. “There was something Lord Quintana wasn't saying,” Whandall said.

“Yes, sir, there was,” Waterman said readily enough. “You're still not welcome in Lordshills.”

“But—Lord Samorty's dead?”

“Oh, yes.”

Waterman—Quintana—the Lords were keeping a promise made to a dead man. Because he was dead, the order could never be changed. Lords were strange. Whandall had not guessed how strange.

“Them Toronexti,” Waterman said.

Huh?
“What about them?”

Waterman said nothing. Why had he brought up the subject at all? “Do you work for the Toronexti?” Whandall prompted.

Waterman sucked air through his teeth, an ugly sound. “Why ask that?”

“Not to offend. The Toronexti had to send you a runner,” Whandall said. “He must have waited just long enough to see”—he brushed his tattooed cheek—
“me
, and then run like the wind. And you came. With Lord Quintana and most of your army.”

“Not most,” Waterman said. “Some. As to the Toronexti, what you think you know about them is likely wrong.”

“Please do go on. We like to trade stories.”

“And it's my turn?” Waterman grinned. “Most Lordkin think they're just another band. A few think they work for the Lords.”

“Don't they?”

“Used to,” Waterman said. “Used to collect taxes, and keep some, of course. They kept the kinless from running away, looked after trade stuff for the Lords. But my father's father told me trade stopped coming through the woods, and then there were
more
Toronexti, and they kept more of what they took.” Waterman spat over the side. He said, “Gathered. I guess maybe they still keep to some of their tasks. Some goods get through from the forest. They did send a runner to tell us about your wagons. But mostly they work for themselves now.”

“We never knew where they lived, how they lived, what they did with all that wealth. Who their neighbors were. If they were Lordkin, where's their turf? If they're kinless… are they kinless?”

“I know how they started,” the Master Peacevoice said. “Our forebears burned their way through the forest and took Tep's Town. You know that. But Lords and Lordkin didn't want to live together. When things had settled
down, there were… I'm told… exactly sixty boys and girls who had a Lord for a father and a Lordkin for a mother.”

“Never the other way around?”

“No.”

Silence could often be the essence of tact.

Waterman said, “A place had to be found for them. They were set to guard the way through the forest. Kinless must not escape, you see; they might bring allies. But the tax men lived on site and built their homes along the Deerpiss. It was their duty.”

“No homes there now,” Whandall remembered. “Just that guardhouse and the barrier. That big center section is stone; must have been built by kinless. The wings are crude work, more recent. They
didn't
become kinless.”

Waterman said nothing.

Whandall asked, “What do you wonder, when you wonder about the Toronexti?”

They'd passed the edge of town and were moving through Flower Market territory. The streets looked empty until Whandall's mind adjusted. Then… here was the snapdragon sign crudely painted on a crumbling wall. Motion along a roof: a clumsy lurker… a whole line of them. Motion in window slits. An audience was watching the parade.

Waterman hadn't answered.

Whandall asked, “Why tell me?”

Waterman stared straight ahead.

They rolled along in a silence that might have been companionable. Whandall waited. Some secrets must be hidden, but some may be traded….

The caravan skirted the edge of Serpent's Walk, along the road between Serpent's Walk and Flower Market. Whandall remembered the road. Lordkin came out of houses to stare at them. No one was going to try gathering from wagons escorted by marching Lordsmen.

Over there was an empty lot. A large square building must have covered that, and another behind it, now both gone. Ahead was a ruined wall, remains of a burned out building, and ahead of that—

A field, once paved with cobblestones. Grass and mustard stalks grew among the stones. All the walls around the field were ruins, buildings long burned out.

A fountain stood in the center. Water trickled from it—

“But this is Peacegiven Square!” Whandall shouted.

Waterman nodded, his expression unreadable, amused? Wry? Whandall couldn't tell. “That is it. Sir. It's where Lord Quintana said you was to make camp. Good roads from here, room to set up a market, not much water but more than most places. He thought it would be a good place.”

Whandall stared at the ruins. “All right, he has a point. This will do. Master Peacevoice, it strikes me that you could have told me about
this.
Where we're to set up our market, and why, and what happened here in the twenty-two years I've been gone. But you decided to talk about the Toronexti. Was
I
supposed to know something? I never came anywhere near the Deerpiss until—”

Until Wanshig got involved in making wine.

There's a question; he's waiting for it.
Whandall asked, “Did Lord Quintana ask you to mention Toronexti?”

“Wouldn't say yes; wouldn't say no,” Waterman said.

“What would the Lords do if the Toronexti just… disappeared one day?”

“Find someone to take their place,” Waterman said. “Someone more reasonable, and a lot fewer. I think me and ten men could do their job.”

“Sons? Nephews?”

“There's a notion.”

Whandall raised his hand above his head and brought his arm around in a wide circle. “Circle the wagons,” but with only four they made a square.

There were wagons—small flatbeds, with no roofs, in the kinless style—at the far end of the square. Waterman went over to them. Whandall was just unhitching the bison when Waterman returned leading a young man. He was shaven clean, no tattoos, and no more than twenty, perhaps less. It was difficult to tell his age because of his clothing. He wore a dark robe and a close-fitting cap that came down over his forehead and was low enough to cover his ears.

“Witness Clerk Sandry,” Waterman said. “I present you to Wagonmaster Whandall Feathersnake. Wagonmaster, Clerk Sandry is here to assist you. Any questions you may have, any requests, he'll help you.”

“Thank you, Master Peacevoice.” As Waterman went back to his troops, Whandall inspected the younger man. He was taller than Whandall remembered any Witness Clerk as being, and of course Whandall had been younger and shorter then. Most of his body was hidden by the loose robe, but where his arms showed they were more muscular than any clerk's. His cap wasn't new, but it didn't fit him very well. Whandall's expression didn't change. “Welcome, Clerk Sandry.”

“Just Sandry will do, sir.”

“Very well. I presume you can read.”

“Yes, sir, I can read and calculate.”

“Good. Find us a place to corral the bison. Then find where we can buy
fodder for them. Bison eat a lot, Clerk Sandry. More than you would expect. We'll want a full wagonload of hay or straw.”

“As you wish, sir,” Sandry said. He inspected the trickle of water from the fountain. “Might I also suggest a water wagon? Sir.”

“What will that cost us?”

“I'll find out, sir. But not so much if it's river water. Only for animals, of course.”

Whandall remembered the stinking water of the rivers in Tep's Town. He'd been glad enough of it at one time. Now he was used to better, and the memory of that water choked him. The fountain water wasn't good, but it had to be better than river water.

“Please arrange it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Green Stone came up to watch Sandry walking across the square. Whandall explained.

“Who do you think he is, Father?” Green Stone asked.

Whandall shook his head. “I never knew that much about the Lords and Witnesses and their clerks. He may be just what he says he is, but I doubt it. Remember that he can read. Don't leave anything around he shouldn't see.

“I never do,” Stone said.

“Of course you don't.”

“Handsome boy,” Burning Tower said from behind him.

“Too old for you, Blazes,” Green Stone said.

“Well, maybe,” Burning Tower said. “And maybe not.”

“Don't you two have work to do?” Whandall Placehold Feathersnake asked.

At the far end of the square kinless workmen set up a camp for Waterman and his Lordsmen guards. One of the kinless, a boy about fifteen, came over to Whandall. He took off his cap and shuffled from one foot to the other. Whandall stared in confusion, then embarrassing memories returned. A kinless who wanted to speak to a Lordkin but was afraid.

“Talk to me.”

“Master Peacevoice Waterman said I was to ask if you need workers to help setting up camp.”

“No, thank you. We're used to doing it ourselves.”

The kinless boy watched as Whandall's people unloaded wagon boxes. He seemed astonished.

Of course. There was Green Stone, with a Lordkin's ears, carrying a box with one of the Miller boys. The Millers all looked kinless, except for those who looked like Bison tribesmen, and Mother Quail, daughter to a Bison man and the younger Miller girl, an exotic mix whose beauty edged
the supernatural. Burning Tower looked like a slim young Lordkin girl. And they all worked together.

“Firewood,” Whandall said. “We'll pay for firewood.”

The kinless boy nodded. “We can get you some.” He seemed hesitant.

“Spit it out, lad,” Whandall said.

The boy flinched.

“Come on—what is it?”

“My name is Adz Weaver.”

“Weaver. Ah. You'll be kin to my wife, then?”

“It's true? You
married
Willow Ropewalker?”

“More than twenty years now,” Whandall said. “Stone,” he called. “Green Stone is our second son. Stone, this is Adz Weaver. He'll be some kind of cousin.”

Stone held up his hand in greeting. Whandall nodded approval. It was a Hemp Road gesture not used in Tep's Town, but then in Tep's Town there wasn't any gesture a Lordkin would use to greet a kinless.

Adz Weaver glanced around, obviously aware that a knot of Lordkin were watching from the Serpent's Walk side of Peacegiven Square. “You're welcome here,” Whandall said. “But it might be best if you come back after we have the walls up. No sense in gathering Lordkins' attention. And we do need firewood.”

“Yes, sir,” Weaver said. Whandall smiled to himself. Adz Weaver had used the tone that kinless used when addressing an older relative, not the more obsequious falling tone used to address Lordkin.

Progress.

Well before the Lordsmen guards' camp was up, the wagon boxes had been offloaded, carpets unrolled, awnings erected, and the bison corralled in a nearby vacant lot. Sandry appeared with kinless driving a wagonload of hay and another wagon with a water tank. Whandall recognized one of the fire prevention wagons kinless used. More kinless brought firewood. When Stone offered a kinless the smallest fleck of gold they had for a heap of wood, it was obvious that they'd paid far too much. Whandall negotiated for shells and was pleased: they bought several bags of shells, too many to count, for one gold nugget.