Hart's Hope Part 8

"I'm looking for p.i.s.s Gate."

The man nodded. "They all are, boy, they all are. Well, when you're done with p.i.s.s Gate, you find old Braisy here, and he'll get you through. He'll get you into Inwit for the very small fee of five coppers and a favor, he will." And then Braisy was gone, and because he was so short, Orem quickly lost him in the sea of heads moving in every direction on Butcher Street.

Unfriendly as the city might be, Orem had to find his way. He asked questions, and among the surly replies was information enough to get him to s.h.i.t Street, which led between the reeking stockyards and north into Beggarstown. "You'll find the towers of p.i.s.s Gate easy enough, if you just look up and keep the wall on your right," said a man with a b.l.o.o.d.y butcher's ap.r.o.n. But s.h.i.t Street quickly became narrow and kept turning away from the main path of traffic. There were fewer and fewer signs the farther he went; who could read, after all, in such a place as this? For Beggarstown was made up of people who had not found work on their pauper's pa.s.ses and could not stay inside the city walls; it was a poor place, with seedy wooden shops gradually making way for boarded-up buildings that were lived in despite their sag and filth, and even these began to look fine as hovels sprouted up in every s.p.a.ce the rickety old structures left between them. The shacks grew out into the road; the people squatting in the shadows of the east side of the street looked hungry; Orem began to be afraid of thieves, for in this place even five pennies might be worth taking another man's life.

Soon he was lost. Only the wall remained constant, high and grey, looming over the filthy town that was already three times as large as all of Banningside. Orem dared not ask directions of any of the people along the way. He kept as far as possible from the buildings. And the farther he walked, the fewer people he saw, until there was no one about when he spotted the twin high towers of a gate.

The streets were utterly empty near the gate. The buildings were boarded up or, even more haunting, left to hang open, roofless and shutterless, as if they were half-completed. Not a person was in sight; there was not even the banging of an open door to break the silence. He knew that this could not be p.i.s.s Gate, where paupers pa.s.sed into the city of Inwit. But that did not deter him, for he knew then what this gate must be, and he wanted all the more to see it.

He stood at the foot of the gate towers, looking up. The street had widened to a plaza and then disappeared. Where the vast wooden gates should have stood open, houses rose steeply to lean against the towers, covering the s.p.a.ce where only at the top was there any of the lumber of the gate visible. There was an odd shifting of the view: at one moment it seemed the gate was holding up the buildings; at the next it seemed the buildings were holding up the walls, keeping them from falling outward to crush Orem where he stood and looked.

"Ho, boy!"

Orem was startled, for he had thought he was alone.

"Ho, what are you doing here?"

There, in the shade of one of the boarded-up buildings, two guards. Their bronze looked less polished than the breastplates of the guards at Swine Gate. But it served to make them more menacing, not less. Without thinking, Orem decided that this was certainly the time to seem to be what in fact he was-a farmer's boy lost in the slums of the city.

"I'm looking for p.i.s.s Gate," Orem said. "I'm here for the first time. Have they closed the gate, then?"

The guards glanced at each other, then smiled. There was derision in their mirth, and Orem felt uncomfortable.

"Not p.i.s.s Gate, that's sure, you can tell p.i.s.s Gate by the stink of thieves and farmers who come down the river hoping to get rich in the city." The guards approached him, and now Orem saw that there were more than a dozen of them; they had been concealed in shadows or, he suspected, inside the sh.e.l.ls of the buildings that were not totally boarded up.

"I'm not hoping to get rich," Orem said, trying to sound frightened and succeeding better than he had expected.

"Where you from, boy?"

"A farm. My father's farm. Upriver, near Banningside."

Now the guards were more alert, and Orem noticed that hands were on hilts and fingers had closed around ax-hafts. "An illegal person is near Banningside," said a guard.

"Illegal person?" The King, of course. And for a terrible moment Orem feared they would suppose him a spy. Spies, he knew, were skinned alive and forced to eat their own hearts. Should he pretend that he didn't know Palicrovol had been in the area? No, they'd never believe it. It was impossible not to know when that vast army came foraging in a countryside. "All I know is the sergeants were out pressing soldiers. I didn't want to go in the army."

The guard who seemed to be in command looked him up and down pointedly, then laughed. "If you were in danger of pressing then the rebels must be more desperate than anyone thought."

At the laughter, Orem tried a smile, hoping to join in the camaraderie. His mirth offended them. The commander did not take him by the shirt; he took him painfully by the skin at his waist, a crushing grip that brought an unwilling cry from Orem. "Do you know how close you are to death?"

"No, sir."

A guard had opened Orem's bag. In it was only his flask, still full of his father's spring water, and the last bit of bread that now was like rock. His coppers were in a better place.

"A rich one, that's plain," said the guard as he tossed the bag back to Orem.

Orem dared to ask a question. "Why is this gate closed?" he asked.

"You're better off if you never learn the answer to that question."

A guard with white hair who looked like he had committed all sins and was still unsatisfied spoke softly. "He's a country fool. It's broad daylight."

"I say question him," said another.

The white-haired guard spoke even more softly. "I say eat s.h.i.t. The spies all know their way into the city, and it isn't the Hole in midafternoon."

The commander pushed Orem from him, hurting his side again even as he released him. "Get away from here, boy, and don't come back. If you want p.i.s.s Gate, follow the north wall and stay close to the wall always."

"Or go home," said the white-haired guard. "There's nothing in Inwit for you. Don't you know this city devours children and flays strong men alive?"

Orem smiled uncomprehendingly and backed away from them. "Thank you, sirs. Good day to you. I'll never come here again."

"Your name, boy!" called the commander. "And don't lie!"

"Orem ap Avonap!"

The white-haired guard laughed aloud. "What a name! Only a farmer would think of that!"

The other guards nudged each other and laughed also. But they watched him out of sight all the same, and he suspected that one was following him much of his way north.

It made Orem angry that they laughed at him, but what made him angriest was that he had earned their laughter. A fool, that's what he had been, and it had not been a pose, no, not half.

The Beggars' Way of Death in Life The farther north he got, the less dead the place appeared; a child played in the street, and then a beggar sprawled in sleep, and at last litter began appearing at the sides of the road and the sewer down the middle of the street began to be fetid with decomposing filth. Beggarstown was alive again, now that he was away from the Hole, and the faces that had seemed frightening to him before were a welcome sight now. Orem began to see, not their strangeness, not their darkness and filth, but their weakness and grief. They wore elegant clothes, most of them, but so tattered and soiled that the color that had once been bright was now a dull brown or grey. There was a dullness in the eyes, too, as if something in Beggarstown took the mind out of the head, as if the people could go through their days without ever quite awakening.

Orem began to pity them, and almost lost his fear, until a man with just such an empty face walked up to a man near Orem and calmly stabbed him deep in the eye with a dagger. His victim fell without a sound, blood pouring up and out of his face onto the road. Orem felt more anguish than fear, for if a man with such a dead face could kill, when the dead could reach out and drag the living into their graves, then what chance had he to hold onto his life here?

On the dock a thief had been left alone by the witnesses of his crime, but here there was another code. While the murderer was stripping his victim, five or six men calmly gathered around and began throwing stones at the thief. The thief dodged desultorily and finally gave up trying to get the dying man's shirt. As he stumbled away from his victim, the men caught him, kicked him, threw him to the ground, beat him silently, wordlessly. The thief at first tried to cover himself, but at last lay open to the blows. He was not unconscious, Orem saw; nor were the men who kicked him driven by hate. They simply kicked and stamped on him, until a man leapt into the air and landed with both feet on the murderer's neck and head. The neck broke; the mouth went slack as the jaw crumbled; yet the eyes looked no deader than before. The men who had killed the murderer left him to lie on the street by his victim. The rats were already gathering, and no one moved to cover the bodies. Orem felt that he had seen all there was of the whole wheel of life in this place. There was no birth here; only death, only the rats gnawing.

The knife stood upright from the victim's eye. On impulse Orem strode to the body and reached down to take the knife; at that same moment a long thin hand also reached to the corpse. For a moment Orem thought someone was challenging him for possession of the weapon, but no; it was an old woman, and she was holding a cup, catching the last of the flowing blood. A witch, then, who could make use even of unearned blood. Orem wondered what sort of filthy magic could be made of found death even as he backed off and let her take what she wanted.

She finished. She looked up and smiled at him. She bent and kissed the knife. For a moment Orem thought not to take it after all; who knew what the kiss might mean? But then he thought better of it. Even a boy trained as a priest could make use of a dagger if need were, and in this place he had no intention of pa.s.sively submitting to what the walking corpses might decide for him. So he stepped forward again and drew the knife upward, drawing one last bubble from the man's eye. He cleaned the knife, for lack of a better place, on the man's clothing; then he put the knife in his bag.

The woman spoke, her voice hissing like the last breath of a butchered sow. "There are three things in nature that know no moderation, in goodness or in foulness." She c.o.c.ked her head and waited.

Orem shuddered. He knew the litany, and knew as well that it could not be left incomplete. If she chose to stop and wait, he had to go on for her. "When they are governed by goodness," he said softly, "they are most excellent in virtue."

"The tongue," said the woman. "And a priestly man."

"But when they are corrupted, there is no bottom to stay their h.e.l.lward plunge." Is that enough, or must I name the third name?

"And a woman." She smiled and nodded wisely at him, as if they had shared something lovely; then she took her cup of cooling blood and carried it away.

Orem felt the knife in his bag like a small fire, burning his skin though it could not touch him directly. What had she meant by making him chant the Ambivalence? Was she warning him to curb his own evil desires? But I have no truly unspeakable desires, he thought, and besides, I'm not a priestly man anymore. Why should I worry about the warnings of a woman already so corrupt as to use found blood? Yet still he shuddered. Still the knife burned his back. Still the knife froze his back until he had walked far enough and thought enough of other things and inwardly sung songs enough that the litany of the three boundless friends and enemies of G.o.d fled his mind and he forgot even the knife he carried.

How Orem Came to Be Called Scanthips p.i.s.s Gate at last. From a distance it looked like Swine Gate and the Hole; close up it had a character all its own. This place did not belong to the permanent residents. It was not silent and despairing. The line was long and jostled rudely, and only the presence of many guards kept quarrels from erupting into fights. As for the guards, they were grim and busy, and six of them were ahorse, patrolling up and down the line. There were no dead looks among the people in the line. They might be angry or stupid or frightened or awestruck or jocular, but they were not dead. Orem recognized himself in many places along the line, at once ashamed at the plain naivete of the others his age and relieved that it was indeed possible to stay hopeful here. People from the farms; people with dreams of finding some treasure in the city; Orem took his place in the line and felt smaller-but safer than he had in the streets of Beggarstown.

No sooner was he in line than the queue was a hundred people long behind him. The guards had let the grocers in three or four abreast, but here the guards were in no such rush. The huge gates did not stand open. Only a narrow door in the gate served for the paupers to pa.s.s. Yet the people themselves had the same sense of urgency that the grocers and butchers had. The belief was strong that if you could just get through the line ahead of someone, then you would get the job that that that man might have had. Within that gate was the answer to everything, if you could just get through and ask your questions first. A job; a workingman's pa.s.s; the right to stay within the city; this was the gate of heaven and the angels in their bronze breastplates held the chains of salvation. Orem could not help seeing the world as the priests saw it; he also could not help being amused at the thought of these foul-faced soldiers being angels. Are these the silver bridge and the golden gate and the chains of steel? Try that for doctrine, Halfpriest Dobbick. man might have had. Within that gate was the answer to everything, if you could just get through and ask your questions first. A job; a workingman's pa.s.s; the right to stay within the city; this was the gate of heaven and the angels in their bronze breastplates held the chains of salvation. Orem could not help seeing the world as the priests saw it; he also could not help being amused at the thought of these foul-faced soldiers being angels. Are these the silver bridge and the golden gate and the chains of steel? Try that for doctrine, Halfpriest Dobbick.

"First time?"

It was the man ahead of him, who bore three thin scars on his cheek, two of them old and white, the other just a little pink. He did not look friendly, but at least he had spoken.

"Yes," Orem said.

"Well, take a word. Accept no jobs from the men just inside the gate."

"I want a job."

The man's mouth twisted. "They promise to take you for a year, but in three days they turn you over to the Guard without your permanent pa.s.s. How's that? And they don't pay you, either. They just get three days' work out of you for free and turn you out. The real jobs are farther in."

"Where?"

"If I knew, would I be in this line again?"

And at last, with the sun hot and red through the door in the gate, they were at the questioning guards. The man who had spoken to Orem sullenly answered the questions: Name, business, citizenship. Rainer Carpenter, woodworker looking for a job, citizen of Cresting. The guard took Rainer by the chin and turned his face, so he could see the scarred cheek. It was the pink one that made the guard's eyes go small and angry.

"Still red, Rainer, dammit, are you blind?"

"Got no mirror," Rainer answered. "Woman told me it was white."

"Like I thought, only a blind woman would have you. you. Get out and come back when the time's done." Get out and come back when the time's done."

And now Orem was at the front of the line, only vaguely aware that Rainer Carpenter was still standing nearby. "Name?"

"Orem."

The guard waited, then said impatiently, "Your whole name!"

Orem remembered the laughter at the Hole over his patronymic. Rainer had used his trade as a surname, as Glasin had. Well, Orem had no trade. Why had they laughed? Perhaps they didn't admit their fathers' names here. "Don't have more. Just Orem."

The guard was amused. "From a village so small, eh?" He looked at Orem's body and his smirk grew. Orem cursed his thinness and lack of height. "We'll just put you down as Orem Scanthips, eh? Scanthips!" He said it loudly, and the other guards laughed. "Business?"

"Looking for work."

"What kind of work?"

"Any kind, I guess."

"Any kind? No one hires a man who can't do anything. What, do you think there's farms in there needing another a.s.s to bear dead burdens?"

Wouldn't they let him in without a trade? What did he know? I can say all the open prayers by heart. I can name the letters capital, the letters corporal, the letters spiritual, the numbers real, the numbers whole, the numbers variable. "I can read and write."

The guard made a face of mock surprise. "A scholar, eh?" But the amus.e.m.e.nt was over. The guard reached out and took away Orem's bag and opened it. A flask of water, a lump of bread, and a dagger with a little blood still clinging to it. Not the safe little dinner knife Orem wore at his waist-that was for slicing cheese. This was obviously a killing knife, long and sharp pointed. The guard held it up. "Read and write. Oh, I've heard that that before. And what is this, your pen?" before. And what is this, your pen?"

Orem didn't know what to say. The dagger had seemed desirable as he walked through Beggarstown; now it might be what blocked him from the city, or worse than that.

But then Rainer Carpenter spoke from nearby. "It's mine," he said.

"Yours!" said the guard.

"Last time in here I was robbed and I d.a.m.n well wasn't going to do it again. I didn't think you'd look at the boy's bag. He didn't know it was in there."

The guard looked back and forth between Orem and Rainer. The look of bewilderment on Orem's face was sincere enough, and nothing could be read in Rainer's eyes. Finally the guard shrugged. "Rainer, you're a fool. You know we'd have you whipped with a gla.s.s pipe for that, if you once got it inside."

"Gla.s.s pipe or a crackhead's leaden rod, tell me the difference," said Rainer. And the guard wrote again on Orem's pa.s.s. "Citizenship?"

"Banningside, in High Waterswatch."

The guard looked at him suspiciously again. Again Orem was forced to claim that he ran from the pressmen of Palicrovol's army. Again his body was laughed at, and he wanted to strike out at the guards and break their brittle, mocking smiles. But at least he would get inside, at least he held the pa.s.s in his hand; and all thanks to Rainer Carpenter, a man he didn't know. Just when Orem had concluded there was no kindness in this place, a stranger lied to let him into the city. Orem dared not turn and thank him-that would undo it all. But part of his name and poem would be repayment of such debts. Rainer would find it was not unprofitable to help Orem ap Avonap.

He was guided into the gate by the careless, efficient hands of the guards. And they were not through with him once he had pa.s.sed inside. There was a guard with a short razor, and before Orem could be sure what was happening, two guards had seized him. They held his head still while the cutter sliced his cheek. The cut was thin and not deep, but still the blood dripped quickly from the stinging wound and stained his shirt.

A mouth spoke at his ear. "Mind you, we know from experience when this wound is healed enough that you ought to be back outside. Any guard who sees this scar will check your pa.s.s, and if you're overstayed he'll have your ear. Understand? Get caught twice, and it's your b.a.l.l.s. You have three days. Sundown, clear? And once you're out, the scar has to be plain white before we let you in again. And stay off Stone Road. Go on." With a push at his back, Orem stumbled forward into Inwit.

12.

The Sweet Sisters This is the tale of how Orem, called Scanthips, called Banningside, went to Wh.o.r.e Street and left unsatisfied.

The Wh.o.r.e and the Virgin When you come into Inwit on p.i.s.s Road, on the left is the miserable shantytown of the Swamps, and on the right are the gaudy taverns, and ahead in the distance looms the Old Castle. It is not a hard choice for newcomers to make. Orem turned right, into the Taverns, and wandered along the street in the gathering darkness, wondering how much food and lodging his five coppers would buy.

In the Taverns, all roads lead to Wh.o.r.e Street, and by not knowing where he was going, Orem soon ended up there. He did not know it was Wh.o.r.e Street at first. It looked, to him, like the richest town he had ever seen, for here the buildings were high and clean, and there were trees in the middle of the road, many trees and bushes, so it was like walking in an open wood. The houses were simple and graceful and well-proportioned, and more than one of them was made to look very much like a House of G.o.d.

The nature of the place was revealed when a half-drunk, giggling bunch of masked boys stopped two women and handed them each a coin. It took only a few minutes for all the boys to be satisfied, whooping as they leaned the women against trees and s...o...b..red drunken kisses on them and lifted their skirts high while they discussed which was better. The intercourse was like little boys urinating, giggling as they compared each other's equipment and loudly counted to see how quickly each was through. Orem was not ignorant-he had lived on a farm. But he had never seen it done by a man and a woman before, and he could not take his eyes off the scene. Only when it was over did he look at the wh.o.r.es' faces. He saw them just as the boys were leaving, just as the women's smiles were fading and they sighed and rearranged their clothing and pooled their money. They picked up an interrupted conversation in midstream; the interlude with the boys had meant nothing to them. As Orem told me of this night, he was still awed that a man could dip in the Sisters' fountain and the woman would not rue it.

An hour later, Orem leaned against a tree, watching one of the more elegant orgies, where the men and women held forth on philosophical topics for an hour or so among the trees before the coupling began. He did not know the woman had come near him until she touched his arm.

"Unless you have more money than you look to have," she said, "you might as well go home. The deeper you go into Wh.o.r.e Street, the more expensive it gets."

She was all breast and teeth-at least to Orem she was, for all he could see when he looked at her face was the way both rows of teeth were visible when she smiled, and when he didn't look at her face all he could see was the way her b.r.e.a.s.t.s hung provocatively within her blouse.

Perhaps she was one of those few wh.o.r.es who haven't lost their taste for beauty or for love. Not that Orem was beautiful. But he had a kind of gangling grace, like a colt first running, and he could look at once childlike and dangerous. (Perhaps only I saw the danger in his face; Beauty would have prospered better if she had seen it sooner.) Whatever her reason, she accepted an offer he did not make. He was so trusting that when she asked, he told her he had but five coppers. She had a conscience-she only charged him four.

His new-engaged wh.o.r.e brought him past the fierce guard at the door of a nearby house, announced in loud tones to all who cared to hear that she had found a virgin stalk to reap, and pushed him toward the stair. She walked behind him, and twice reached under his tunic and pulled his wrapping cloth down below his b.u.t.tocks. Each time he jumped in surprise; each time she giggled.

At the head of the stairs he made as if to walk down the wide carpeted hall, but she pulled back on his shirt.

"That costs a silver, no bargaining, that's what the house charges and I got no choice." Off they went up another flight. This time the carpet ended at the turn of the stairs, the moment the steps weren't visible from the carpeted hall. "It's like a hundred houses in one," she said, "depending on what you pay." The next flight creaked. And the fourth flight of stairs wobbled underfoot. "It's the cheap rooms, forgive the fleas, but four coppers ain't exactly money."

They walked carefully down a dark corridor, lit only by a torch at each end. Orem glanced into the rooms that were open. Just glanced, until what he saw made him stop and stare.

They sat side by side. Two women, just sitting, still as trees. They were dressed like any other wh.o.r.es, and had bodies perhaps more lovely than other wh.o.r.es. But their faces: which was more terrible? The one with a single eye, and a mouth that opened only on the side, and a nose skewed around so the nostril pointed more up than down? Or the one with no face at all?-neither brows nor eyes nor nose nor lips, just a circ.u.mference of hair and a blank of flesh interrupted only by a thin slit that could not be called a mouth, for there were no lips and it hung open in a limp O O that dripped a steady stream of saliva down on her open bosom. that dripped a steady stream of saliva down on her open bosom.