Part 11 (2/2)
”It takes a lot of gold to keep an army moving and happy,” Garam answered, too busy looking around at the working guardsmen to notice Ijarin's reaction. ”But no, we're not selling everyone as slaves. Those who are healthy and strong have been chosen, those with soft lives or formerly good businesses. We first relieve them of whatever gold and silver they have, and then we collect a price for them. I'll bet the girl's not too unhappy about all this, considering what they did to her.”
”You really were a slave here, then,” the barbarian said, turning to look at me. ”I thought I might have been mistaken, that you'd only been pretending - It doesn't bother you that others are having done to them what was forced on you? Just as unwillingly and just as completely?”
”'Bother' is the wrong word to use,” I answered with a shrug, watching the stumbling, moaning line of men who were being prodded out of their city and their former lives forever. ”I wasmade a slave because most of those people allowed it. They liked the idea of slavery because they weren't bright enough to understand that it might be someone else being collared today, but who knows about tomorrow? As long as slavery is possible, tomorrow it could be you wearing the chains. No matter how safe you feel, no matter how convinced you are that it could never happen, as long as it can be done to others it could also happen to you. With some people, it's a lesson that has to be learned the hard way.”
”I think they've learned it,” Ijarin muttered, also staring at the coffle. ”Does it help if you learn a lesson too late for it to do you any good?”
”It helps us,” Garam put in with a grin. ”What else are we supposed to worry about? Let's get moving again, we're almost there.”
He headed off to the left and I followed, leaving the barbarian to join us or not as he pleased.
Ijarin had sounded really ... bothered by what was happening to the people around him, as though he was used to being able to do something to help. It was nice to want to help people, at least it was nice for those doing the helping. For those being helped, it would do more good if they were taught to help themselves. Dignity and satisfaction come from helping yourself, but idealists seem incapable of understanding that.
Another two streets brought us to an area of middling-good houses, most of which no longer had doors. I could feel hidden eyes on me as we walked, adding to the discomfort of the growing heat of the day. The trail would lead me deeper into the heart of the city, something I'd known from the very first. It would be worse there, more eyes and even more fear, especially when I found the man...
”There they are,” Garam said, pointing to two guardsmen standing in front of one of the undamaged houses. ”Those are my men, and it looks like they found what they were sent for.”
”Make sure,” I told him, keeping my voice low. ”If what they found doesn't belong to our quarry, or was handled by them or others... It could turn out worse than simply wasting our time.”
”Why?” he demanded, stopping to turn and look at me. ”What do you intend to do that will make it worse? We need the man alive, remember, and able to talk to us. Tell me what you'll be doing.”
”I didn't ask why you want the man, so you don't get to ask how I'll find him,” I retorted, noticing that the two guardsmen were coming to us rather than waiting. ”Make sure they did what you told them to, and then I can get to it.”
”If it's that important, then you make sure,” he said, stepping back a little to give me a better view of the men who had reached us. ”If you don't need me to help do the finding, you also shouldn't need me for the questioning.”
There was a hard gleam of satisfaction in his eyes, the result of what he'd done to ease his feelings of insult. The men were his, and he hadn't told them anything about taking orders from me or answering my questions. When I got nowhere with them then he would take over, but not before he made me tell him what he wanted to know. It was a typical Garam strategy, but he hadn't seen what I'd just noticed. Good and bad aren't always two sides of a coin; if you spin the coin fast enough the two sides become the same.
”Come closer,” I told the two men very softly, the two who had stopped as far from me as they possibly could. Their faces held no expression, but their eyes said they'd heard things... They glanced at each other when they realized what I'd said, then came slowly, cautiously, just a little, closer.
”Tell me how you know the article of clothing belongs to the man we're after,” I said, still speaking softly but looking directly at them. ”If you're convinced of it, I want you to convince me.”
They glanced at each other again, their faces paling just a bit, then one of them cleared his throat.
”We - ah - used the house slave,” he offered, forcing himself to return my stare. ”The boyhates his master, and can't wait until we catch him. He did real bad to that boy - When we freed him he couldn't stop thanking us - He swears the tunic belongs to Brangol, and he didn't wash it because he wasn't a slave anymore.”
”We have no choice but to a.s.sume the boy was telling the truth,” I said, not happy about needing to accept the word of a slave. Some of them, especially the younger ones, grew to like what was done to them... ”And he also convinced you that no one else had been touching the tunic, not even him?”
”The thing was flung into a corner, by Brangol himself, so the boy said,” the guardsman answered with a nod. ”He came racing in after the main attack, threw things around looking for what he wanted, then ran out again. The boy hasn't seen him since.”
”And you two made sure not to touch it yourselves,” I said, needing to hammer home the point.
”If you did, all I need is for you to show me where.”
”By all the G.o.ds, lady, didn't neither of us touch it,” the second man said fervently, his voice trembling very faintly. ”Not when we knowed it was you who wanted it.”
”They never disobey anybody who's good with a sword,” Garam put in, his expression neutral and his gaze calmer than I'd expected it to be. ”Do you have everything you need now?”
”I hope so,” I muttered, putting a hand out for the bundle the second guardsman still clutched.
He edged closer to give it to me before backing away again, then flinched when he saw the scowl Garam was sending. It took me a moment to understand that scowl, and when I did I couldn't wait to get away from them all.
”I need to be alone for the first part of this,” I said without looking at any of them. ”Wait here, and when we're ready to go I'll call you.”
It wasn't necessary to wait for any agreements, so I didn't. There was an alley between Brangol's house and the next one to it that I'd already decided on, so I strode toward it without another word. Garam had been angry with his men, but not for the reason I'd expected. He'd known they'd answer me, hadn't been expecting anything else as I'd thought at first, but he'd gotten angry over the fear they'd shown. As though he knew what sight of that fear did to me.
His comment about swords, trying to excuse their behavior that way... Garam had been arrogant and insensitive; why couldn't he have stayed that way?
I reached the alley and continued on into it, trying to understand why I had such trouble when people were nice to me. It wasn't easy when they hated and despised me, but somehow it was easier to cope with. If, a few days earlier, someone had told me Garam would end up trying to protect my feelings I would have laughed right in their face...
”All right, let's get on with this,” I muttered, stopping amid a scattering of garbage and other refuse. Alleys like this weren't used by the people of the neighborhood very often, so public slaves weren't sent in to clean them up any more often than every now and then. The smell wasn't too bad either, nothing like what it was in the alleys around the market place. I cleared a piece of ground with my booted foot, crouched down and scattered some of the looted food I carried, then straightened up again.
”I bring a gift of food, brothers and sisters,” I said softly in the language of rats. ”Come and take it, for I would speak with you.”
I had to step back just a little before even the scout would show himself, but once I did he came scurrying over with nose and whiskers twitching. He grabbed a mouthful of my offering without taking his eyes from me, his ears swiveling even while he chewed, and then he sounded the all-clear. Half a dozen other rats appeared instantly then, more hanging back in the shadows, and it didn't take long before the food was eaten. Only then did the others come out, to lick up crumbs and droplets of what had been there, while those who had eaten stood looking at me.
”You have more,” one of the rats said in the squeaking hiss of their language, a rat larger than the rest. ”Give it to me.”
”In time,” I answered, feeling all the rest of the eyes joining his pair. ”I have a trade to offer.”
”We can take the food,” he answered, gathering himself without moving a muscle. ”Togetherwe can take that food and the flesh of your bones as well.”
”You know better than that,” I replied, letting him see and feel my amus.e.m.e.nt. ”I am not like the others, and none of you would ever eat again.”
”No, you speak to us as the others do not,” the rat grudged, his whiskers quivering as he realized there was no fear smell on me. ”What trade do you offer?”
”I seek one of my own kind,” I said, letting myself feel nothing but total a.s.surance. ”He nested in this dwelling beside us, but has left it. I will have his current nesting place, and you will have the food I guard. I will trade for no other thing.”
”There is much metal buried not far from here,” the rat tried, his voice taking on the least coaxing quality. ”It is many-times-touched metal, the sort your foolish kind desires even above food. I will show you where it is.”
”I seek the one of my kind who nested here,” I repeated, pretending I hadn't heard him just the way he'd done with me. ”I will have his current nesting place and you will have the food I guard. I will trade for no other thing.”
”What if the one you seek has gone to feed those about him?” the rat asked, his tail moving with frustrated swings. ”What, then, will you trade for?”
”Nothing,” I answered, making the word very flat and final. ”I will take the food I guard and return to the others of my kind.”
The rat paused to think about that, his black, beady eyes staring while his nose and ears twitched. If I'd given them the choice of doing something easier than searching for one of those they hated and feared, they would have lied and told me Brangol was dead. Now they knew they had to find him in order to get the food I ”guarded,” and were wondering if they could take the food without needing to trade. I let the least, distant thought of the beast trickle into my mind, and suddenly all of the rats were quivering.
”Indeed are you unlike the others of your kind,” the leader said, held in place only by his overwhelming desire for the food I carried. ”We will seek the nesting place of the one you would have.”
”Good,” I said, clearing my mind in order to calm my small allies. ”I have a thing belonging to the one I seek, so you can know his scent. Take only the strongest scent, even should there be others.”
I opened out the tunic in the cloth it was wrapped in without touching the tunic itself, and put it down where I'd put the food. Once I stepped back again the rats all came to examine it with their noses and tongues, and once they had what they needed their leader sent them off. All but the core group disappeared, and the leader looked up at me again.
”I, too, will seek the one you would have,” he said. ”We will return when we have found it.”
”I may well be on this very spot,” I answered, s.h.i.+fting my hold on the sack of food. ”If I am not, I will not return.”
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