Lakhoni (27 page)

The
thought of actually catching a fish this time made Lakhoni tremble with
anticipation. Days of rare, scavenged food had made his stomach feel like a
massive, empty chasm.

He
ducked behind a huge pile of sailcloth with heavy rope on it to keep the ocean
winds from blowing it away. He had learned the hard way the day before that the
wharf guards were an irritable group. Lakhoni still didn’t understand why the
guard yesterday had been so angry at Lakhoni trying to catch a fish from one of
the pier arms. But the guard who had found him had yelled about trespassing and
stealing. How would it be stealing to catch a fish from the huge ocean? Lakhoni
had been forced to abandon his scavenged fishing line and hunger still gnawed
at him.

A
trio of guards stomped past the pile of sailcloth, one of them carrying a thick
clay bottle. When the guards were past, Lakhoni stayed low and scuttled from
hiding place to hiding place, sticking to the left side of the vast pier and
passing two huge slips, each of which could fit two large ships or multiple
smaller vessels. He glanced at the dark water. There
were
fish in there,
right?

The
wharf was shaped like a vast wooden sea serpent floating on top of the water.
The main pier was the creature’s back and its jaw had clamped onto the eastern
gate of the city. Three long legs extended from each side of the creature’s
body, and an even longer tail protruded far into the bay on the east side of
the city.

Lakhoni
finally reached the pier that jutted farthest into the bay. Scanning his
surroundings carefully, Lakhoni leaned on a half-f cask of water whose top
rim was a head taller than his seated form. He let his line drop into the water
of the bay. He had made sure to tie an extra nail he had scrounged from a pile
of scrap onto the line to help weigh it down. The tiny scrap of shiny red silk
acted as bait.

He
would catch something tonight. Then he would find a fire and cook it
and . . . his stomach rumbled. A week spent eating scrap bread
tossed out by the few inns he had found and drinking straight from the canals
had sapped his energy, making his nightly training sessions harder. He put his
head back, reminding himself he could not go to sleep like last time.

That
first night with Regg felt so long ago, although only two weeks had passed. The
good food, the soft, clean bed. In the morning he had found the courage to tell
Regg that he needed to stay in the city, then had gone to scout the king’s compound.

Lakhoni
had found a place near to a man selling attractive trinkets from the top of
what Lakhoni had taken to calling a rolling table. It wasn’t permitted to sell
things in Victor Plaza, which was the name of the space in front of the temple,
but vendors were allowed to ply their trade on the outskirts. So hundreds of
people set up shop on the edge of the wide streets, each trying to be louder
and gaudier than the others. Most people draped colorful silks and other cloths
from their rolling tables to try to catch the attention of passers-by.

Lakhoni
had simply leaned against a building next to the man with the trinkets and had
acted like he was working on his bag. In truth, he had been watching the gate
on the far side of the plaza, the one through which it appeared anyone who
wanted to enter or leave the compound had to go.

As
the day had passed, Lakhoni had seen that soldiers who wanted to enter the
compound were allowed to pass through uninhibited. Servants performed a strange
gesture, turning their left wrist to the guards on duty. After a few hours,
Lakhoni had decided to get a better look, so he circled around to the north
side of the plaza and strolled through the open space, casually walking near
the gate. As he passed, two girls, wearing what looked like big canvas bags
belted with fraying rope, appeared from the gate and turned south. Each of the
girls carried an empty, tightly-woven basket.

His
heart hammering, Lakhoni had dawdled until the girls came near. “You work for the
king?” Lakhoni had asked.

The
nearest girl shot a surprised glance his way, but then ignored him. The other,
whose hair and skin were darker, gave Lakhoni a longer, more penetrating look.

“I’m
just trying to find out if there is any way I can get work,” Lakhoni had said,
ducking his head to try to allay any fears he had caused in the girls. They
picked up their pace, but Lakhoni matched it. “Please,” he said. “Won’t you at
least talk to me?”

The
darker girl huffed slightly, grabbed the other girl’s basket and stopped,
facing Lakhoni. “Yes, we work for the king. But doesn’t everybody?”

Chewing
on that for a moment, Lakhoni said, “Of course. But I’ve heard it’s good work
there. In the temple.”

“I
don’t know where you heard that,” the darker girl said, the nostrils on her
narrow nose flaring. She was actually quite pretty, despite long, frazzled hair
that was tied, like her dress, with a rope.

“Just
around,” Lakhoni said. In fact, the dark girl’s face reminded him of Simra’s,
with her square chin and strong nose. But she didn’t have Simra’s eyes.
“Please. Can’t you tell me how I can get work in there?”

“Who
are
you,” the other girl chimed in. “How could you think working in the
temple—”

“Be
silent
, Ona,” the dark girl said. “There’s no getting work in the
temple. You must have just come to the city, but you are better off finding
work with a merchant.” She looked Lakhoni up and down, her eyes frankly
assessing him. “Or a blacksmith.”

The
other girl, Ona, giggled.

“Why?”

“You
don’t choose to work in the temple.” The girl turned partly, as if to go. “They
choose you.”

While
she spoke, Lakhoni tried to unobtrusively get a look at her left forearm. He
thought he saw a marking there. “How do they choose?”

“You
have a lot of questions,” the girl said. She bumped Ona with her basket, “Let’s
go.”

Lakhoni
caught up to the girls and matched their swift pace as they hurried south. He
worried that if he was too pushy, they might talk about him, but he had felt
for a moment like he’d made a connection with this girl. “I don’t want to
bother you, but what do you mean?”

“By
what?” Ona asked.

“Hush,”
the other girl said.

“I
can talk if I want to,” Ona said. “You hush, Liya.”

“I
just wondered what you meant that they choose you,” Lakhoni said.

The
dark girl, Liya, huffed a sigh. “Every year we go to the plaza and the priests
make their choices. Then we get our—”

“Brands,”
Ona interjected.

“Our
tattoos,” Liya said, glaring at Ona and tucking her basket between her right
hand and hip and flashing her left wrist at Lakhoni. A dark mark that looked
like two interlocking circles had been tattooed in her skin. “This means that
we work in the temple.”

“Cattle,”
Ona muttered.

Lakhoni
looked from Liya to Ona, then back as understanding dawned. “Oh. So you were
chosen.”

“Yes.”
Liya glared at Ona again. “And we have work to do. Spring flowers don’t gather
themselves.”

“Thank
you for talking to me,” Lakhoni said, letting the girls get ahead of him.
Brands.
She called them brands, like they make the servants property of the king.

They
didn’t respond, but he thought he heard Liya scolding Ona as they hurried down
the street, their bare feet slapping the packed dirt and rock road.

That
was when he had been jumped and beaten, and his bag was stolen. He hadn’t had
time to grab the dagger hidden under his layered clothes. Luckily, his boots
had been laced too tightly for the men to pull off quickly. The fact that
Lakhoni hadn’t died of starvation was due entirely to the last words of advice
Regg had offered.

“Don’t
keep all yer coin in t’bag. Put some in yer boot. You never know what c’n
happen in a city like this.” Lakhoni had listened and had been able to buy a
few more nights in an inn and several days’ worth of food.

Since
the attack, he had continued to watch the compound during the day, having
nothing else to do. It turned out that every servant who worked in the compound
had the same brand as the girls.

A
week spent on the streets, mostly sleeping in alleys between homes near the
temple compound, had helped him gain an understanding of the rhythm of the
place. He had learned quickly that you could not spend any length of time just
wandering the streets of the First Tier of the blagros. Soldiers patrolled
those streets and even the alleys regularly, and they very firmly removed
anyone whose look they didn’t like.

Lakhoni
had the bruises to prove it. Not only did he have bruises, he also had a plan.
And for now, that plan demanded he finally catch a fish and have more to eat
than discarded scraps.

Lakhoni
slouched a little more against the water casket, carefully looking around and
listening for any activity. He was still alone. He bobbed his line up and down
a few times.
Come on, fish. It’s dinner time.
Had the tiny piece of red
silk come loose from his improvised hook?
Fathers, guide a fish to me,
please.

The
seed of his plan had begun to germinate on his third day on the streets, when a
bunch of dogs appeared from the temple. Every day following, the same thing
happened. The dogs burst out of the gate and bedlam ensued, the same three
young men running helter-skelter to try to round the animals up. After several
minutes of chaos, the boys got the dogs pointed in the right direction and the
noisy group disappeared down a street leading toward the south gate. The dogs
were his plan; he just had to be patient.

Patient.
His stomach
had given up rumbling and had settled down to an ache that got worse whenever
he straightened.

Something
bumped his string. He fought the urge to jerk the string up, praying that it
was a fish investigating his hook. He teased the line, then the string jerked.
Lakhoni snapped his wrists up. Minutes of fighting and patience later, the fish
flopped on the boards beneath his feet. Placing a booted foot on the fish, just
behind its head, Lakhoni pulled out his dagger and slid it through the gills,
piercing the brain and instantly killing the fish.

A
week on the streets had taught him well. As he crouched to clean the fish, he
looked around again, praying nobody had heard the splashing of the fish. Though
he waited for at least a minute, Lakhoni saw no movement.

The
fish looked like an adult river panther. He and his father had caught plenty of
them in the wide rivers near the village. Splotched with gray, green, and dark
brown splotches, the fish had a mouth full of teeth.

In
just a few moments, the fish’s gut was sliced open and its organs and waste
floated in the waters of the bay. He cleaned his dagger on the bottom of his
breeches and threaded the string through the mouth of the fish and out through
the gills, tying it off tightly. Then, still crouching behind the water cask,
he spun, checked for activity, and made his way back to the city.

Once
through the east gate, he tucked the fish under his left arm and tried to keep
to the shadows. Most of the city slumbered, but plenty of people still walked
the streets. Guards patrolled; merchants dragged their carts home. Lakhoni
still had trouble fathoming how many people lived in the city.

Lakhoni
had learned to keep his gaze down but constantly moving so that he could be
aware of anything happening around him. As he walked, he snatched up bits of
straw and sticks. Before long, he came to the base of the southeast guard
tower. There were four of the tall towers, two in the north end of the city and
two more in the south end. The southwest tower was in the flovils, which were
the worst parts of the Third Tier. So Lakhoni had made a place for himself at
the base of the southeast tower. He never left anything in his little alcove,
but there was some shelter offered by what must have been older stone work,
because there was something of a ledge about four feet off the ground. The city
wall also offered some shelter.

By
the time he made it to his alcove, the smell of the fish had grown stronger and
he had gathered a goodly sized pile of burnable material. He arranged half of
the sticks and straw in a pile and used the pommel of his dagger and a stone to
start a fire. Lakhoni coaxed life into the small fire, adding sticks until it
was a little bigger and hotter. Then he took his fish, skewered it on his
dagger and, thankful for the leather wrapped around most of the pommel, held
his dinner over the fire.

The
fire burned too quickly to cook the fish completely, but it was enough. Lakhoni
tore skin off the pale flesh of the river panther and had to force himself to
not simply inhale the entire thing.

Long
before his hunger was quieted completely, Lakhoni held only bones in his hands.
He cleaned his dagger again, replaced it, and headed for the nearest canal,
flinging bones into a dark alley corner. He had to wait for a crew of canal
cleaners to move to their next job, then he knelt at the side of the narrow
stream of water which had been built into the streets of the city. He cupped water
and washed his hands off, then drank deeply. The water was the flavor of
mountain snows that had traveled through rock and a warm day.

When
he was done, he dropped the fish bones into the water, letting them get swept
away.
Back home you go.