The clot of people relaxed, falling to Raoden’s affable proddings. Acclimatizing the nobles was a task he had taken upon himself. It had been obvious on the second day that Sarene had nowhere near as much influence with most aristocrats as she did with Shuden and the others of Raoden’s former circle. If Raoden hadn’t stepped in, that second group would probably still be standing frozen around the cart. Sarene hadn’t thanked him for his efforts, but she had nodded in slight appreciation. Afterward, it had been assumed that Raoden would help each new batch of nobles as he had that second one.
It was odd to him, participating in the event that was singularly destroying everything he had worked to build in Elantris. However, beyond creating an enormous incident, there was little he could do to stop Sarene. In addition, Mareshe and Karata were receiving vital goods for their “cooperation.” Raoden would have to do a great deal of rebuilding after Sarene’s Trial finished, but the setbacks would be worth the effort. Assuming, of course, he survived long enough.
The casual thought brought a sudden awareness of his pains. They were with him as always, burning his flesh and eating at his resolve. He no longer counted them, though each one had its own feeling—an unformed name, a sense of individual agony. As far as he could tell, his pain was accelerating much more quickly than anyone else’s. A scrape on his arm felt like a gash running from shoulder to fingers, and his once-stubbed toe blazed with a fire that ran all the way to his knee. It was as if he had been in Elantris a year, and not a single lonely month.
Or, maybe his pain wasn’t stronger. Maybe he was just weaker than the others. Either way, he wouldn’t be able to endure much longer. A day would soon come, in a month or maybe two, when he would not awaken from his pain, and they would have to lay him in the Hall of the Fallen. There, he could finally give full devotion to his jealous agony.
He pushed such thoughts away, forcing himself to start handing out food. He tried to let the work distract him, and it helped a little. However, the pain still lurked within, like a beast hiding in the shadows, its red eyes watching with intense hunger.
Each Elantrian received a small sack filled with a variety of ready-to-eat items. This day’s portions were much like every other—though, surprisingly, Sarene had found some Jindoeese sourmelons. The fist-sized red fruits glistened in the crate beside Raoden, challenging the fact that they were supposed to be out of season. He dropped one fruit in every bag, followed by some steamed corn, various vegetables, and a small loaf of bread. The Elantrians accepted the offerings thankfully but greedily. Most of them scurried away from the cart as soon as they received their meal, off to eat it in solitude. They still couldn’t believe that no one was going to take it away from them.
As Raoden worked, a familiar face appeared before him. Galladon wore his
Elantris rags, as well as a tattered cloak they had made from dirty Elantris scavangings. The Dula held out his sack, and Raoden carefully switched it for one filled with five times the regular allotment; it was so full it was hard to lift with one weakened Elantrian hand. Galladon received the sack with an extended arm, the side of his cloak obscuring it from casual eyes. Then he was gone, disappearing through the crowd.
Saolin, Mareshe, and Karata would come as well, and each would receive a bag like Galladon’s. They would store what items they could, then give the rest to the Hoed. Some of the fallen were able to recognize food, and Raoden hoped that regular eating would help restore their minds.
So far, it wasn’t working.
The gate thumped as it shut, the sound reminding Raoden of his first day in Elantris. His pain then had only been emotional, and comparatively weak at that. If he had truly understood what he was getting into, he probably would have curled up and joined the Hoed right then and there.
He turned, putting his back to the gate. Mareshe and Galladon stood in the center of the courtyard, looking down at several boxes Sarene had left behind—fulfillment of Karata’s most recent demands.
“Please tell me you’ve figured out a way to transport those,” Raoden said, joining his friends. The last few times, they had ended up carrying the boxes back to New Elantris one at a time, their weakened Elantrian muscles straining at the effort.
“Of course, I have,” Mareshe said with a sniff. “At least, it
should
work.”
The small man retrieved a slim metal sheet from behind a pile of rubble. All four sides curved up slightly, and there were three ropes connected to the front.
“A sled?” Galladon asked.
“Coated with grease on the bottom,” Mareshe explained. “I couldn’t find any wheels in Elantris that weren’t rusted or rotted, but this should work—the slime on these streets will provide lubrication to keep it moving.”
Galladon grunted, obviously biting off some sarcastic comment. No matter how poorly Mareshe’s sled worked, it couldn’t be any worse than walking back and forth between the gate and the chapel a dozen times.
In fact, the sled functioned fairly well. Eventually, the grease rubbed away and the streets grew too narrow to avoid the patches of torn-up cobblestones—and, of course, dragging it along the slime-free streets of New Elantris was even more difficult. On the whole, however, even Galladon had to admit that the sled saved them quite a bit of time.
“He finally did something useful,” the Dula grunted after they had pulled up in front of the chapel.
Mareshe snorted indifferently, but Raoden could see the pleasure in his eyes. Galladon stubbornly refused to acknowledge the little man’s ingenuity; the Dula complained that he didn’t want to further inflate Mareshe’s ego, something Raoden figured was just about impossible.
“Let’s see what the princess decided to send us this time,” Raoden said, prying open the first box.
“Watch out for snakes,” Galladon warned.
Raoden chuckled, dropping the lid to the cobblestones. The box contained several bales of cloth—all of which were a sickeningly bright orange.
Galladon scowled. “Sule, that has to be the most vile color I have ever seen in my life.”
“Agreed,” Raoden said with a smile.
“You don’t seem very disappointed.”
“Oh, I’m thoroughly revolted,” Raoden said. “I just enjoy seeing the ways she finds to spite us.”
Galladon grunted, moving to the second box as Raoden held up an edge of the cloth, studying it with a speculative eye. Galladon was right; it was a particularly garish color. The exchange of demands and goods between Sarene and the “gang leaders” had become something of a game: Mareshe and Karata spent hours deciding how to word their demands, but Sarene always seemed to find a way to turn the orders against them.
“Oh, you’re going to love this,” Galladon said, peering into the second box with a shake of his head.
“What?”
“It’s our steel,” the Dula explained. Last time they had asked for twenty sheets of steel, and Sarene had promptly delivered twenty plates of the metal pounded so thin they almost floated when dropped. This time they had asked for their steel by weight.
Galladon reached into the box and pulled out a handful of nails. Bent nails. “There must be thousands of them in here.”
Raoden laughed. “Well, I’m sure we can find something to do with them.” Fortunately, Eonic the blacksmith had been one of the few Elantrians to remain true to Raoden.
Galladon dropped the nails back into their box with a skeptical shrug. The rest of the supplies weren’t quite as bad. The food was stale, but Karata had stipulated that it had to be edible. The oil gave off a pungent smell when it was burned—Raoden had no idea where the princess had found that particular item—and the knives were sharp, but they had no handles.
“At least she hasn’t figured out why we demand wooden boxes,” Raoden said, inspecting the vessels themselves. The grain was good and strong. They would be able to pry the boxes apart and use the wood for a multitude of purposes.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she left them unsanded just to give us splinters,” Galladon said, sorting through a pile of rope, looking for an end to begin unraveling the mess. “If that woman was your fate, sule, then your Domi blessed you by sending you to this place.”
“She’s not that bad,” Raoden said, standing as Mareshe began to catalogue the acquisitions.
“I think it’s odd, my lord,” Mareshe said. “Why is she going to such lengths to aggravate us? Isn’t she afraid of spoiling our deal?”
“I think she suspects how powerless we really are, Mareshe,” Raoden said with a shake of his head. “She fulfills our demands because she doesn’t want to back out of her promise, but she doesn’t feel the need to keep us happy. She knows we can’t stop the people from accepting her food.”
Mareshe nodded, turning back to his list.
“Come on, Galladon,” Raoden said, picking up the bags of food for the Hoed. “Let’s find Karata.”
New Elantris seemed hollow now. Once, right before Sarene’s arrival, they had collected over a hundred people. Now barely twenty remained, not counting children and Hoed. Most of those who had stayed were newcomers to Elantris, people like Saolin and Mareshe that Raoden had “rescued.” They didn’t know any other life beyond New Elantris, and were hesitant to leave it behind. The others—those who had wandered into New Elantris on their own—had felt only faintly loyalty to Raoden’s cause. They had left as soon as Sarene offered them something “better”; most now lined the streets surrounding the gate, waiting for their next handout.
“Sad. Kolo?” Galladon regarded the now clean, but empty, houses.
“Yes,” Raoden said. “It had potential, if only for a week.”
“We’ll get there again, sule,” Galladon said.
“We worked so hard to help them become human again, and now they’ve abandoned what they learned. They wait with open mouths—I wonder if Sarene realizes that her three-meal bags usually last only a few minutes. The princess is trying to stop hunger, but the people devour her food so fast that they end up feeling sick for a few hours, then starve for the rest of the day. An Elantrian’s body doesn’t work the same way as a regular person’s.”
“You were the one who said it, sule,” Galladon said. “The hunger is psychological. Our bodies don’t need food; the Dor sustains us.”
Raoden nodded. “Well, at least it doesn’t make them explode.” He had worried that eating too much would cause the Elantrians’ stomachs to burst. Fortunately, once an Elantrian’s belly was filled, the digestive system started to work. Like Elantrian muscles, it still responded to stimulus.
They continued to walk, eventually passing Kahar scrubbing complacently at
a wall with a brush they had gotten him in the last shipment. His face was peaceful and unperturbed; he hardly seemed to have noticed that his assistants had left. He did, however, look up at Raoden and Galladon with critical eyes.
“Why hasn’t my lord changed?” he asked pointedly.
Raoden looked down at his Elantris rags. “I haven’t had time yet, Kahar.”
“After all the work Mistress Maare went to sew you a proper outfit, my lord?” Kahar asked critically.
“All right,” Raoden said, smiling. “Have you seen Karata?”
“She’s in the Hall of the Fallen, my lord, with the Hoed.”
Following the elderly cleaner’s direction, Raoden and Galladon changed before continuing on to find Karata. Raoden was instantly glad that they had done so. He had nearly forgotten what it was like to put on fresh, clean clothing—cloth that didn’t smell of muck and refuse, and that wasn’t coated in a layer of brown slime. Of course, the colors left something to be desired—Sarene was rather clever with her selections.
Raoden regarded himself in a small piece of polished steel. His shirt was yellow dyed with blue stripes, his trousers were bright red, and his vest a sickly green. Over all, he looked like some kind of confused tropical bird. His only consolation was that as silly he looked, Galladon was much worse.
The large, dark-skinned Dula looked down at his pink and light green clothing with a resigned expression.
“Don’t look so sour, Galladon,” Raoden said with a laugh. “Aren’t you Dulas supposed to be fond of garish clothing?”
“That’s the aristocracy—the citizens and republicans. I’m a farmer; pink isn’t exactly what I consider a flattering color. Kolo?” Then he looked up at Raoden with narrow eyes. “If you make even one comment about my resembling a kathari fruit, I will take off this tunic and hang you with it.”
Raoden chuckled. “Someday I’m going to find that scholar who told me all Dulas were even-tempered, then force him to spend a week locked in a room with you, my friend.”
Galladon grunted, declining to respond.
“Come on,” Raoden said, leading the way out of the chapel’s back room. They found Karata sitting outside of the Hall of the Fallen, a length of string and a needle held in her hand. Saolin sat in front of her, his sleeve pulled back, exposing a long, deep gash running along his entire arm. There was no flowing blood, but the flesh was dark and slick. Karata was efficiently sewing the gash back together.
“Saolin!” Raoden exclaimed. “What happened?”
The soldier looked down with embarrassment. He didn’t seem pained, though
the cut was so deep a normal man would have fainted long before from pain and blood loss. “I slipped, my lord, and one of them got to me.”
Raoden regarded the wound with dissatisfaction. Saolin’s soldiers had not thinned as badly as the rest of Elantris; they were a stern group, not so quick to abandon newfound responsibility. However, their numbers had never been that great, and they barely had enough men to watch the streets leading from Shaor’s territory to the courtyard. Each day while the rest of Elantris glutted themselves on Sarene’s offerings, Saolin and his men fought a bitter struggle to keep Shaor’s beasts from overrunning the courtyard. Sometimes, howling could be heard in the distance.
“I am sorry, Saolin,” Raoden said as Karata stitched.
“No mind, my lord,” the soldier said bravely. However, this wound was different from previous ones. It was on his sword arm.
“My lord …” he began, looking away from Raoden’s eyes.