The Burning City

The room was big enough to hold fifty people or more. It was dark out-side now, and the only light in the room came from the moon shining through holes in the roof, and from torches. The torches were outside, snick into holes in the windowsills. Yangin-Atep wouldn't allow fires inside, except during a Burning. You could build an outside cookfire under it lean-to shelter, but never inside, and if you tried to enclose a fire with walls, the fire went out. Whandall couldn't remember anyone telling him this. He just knew it, as he knew that cats had sharp claws and that boys should stay away from men when they were drinking beer.

There was a big chair on a low platform at one end of the room. The chair was wooden, with arms and a high back, and it was carved with serpents and birds. Some kinless must have worked hard to make that chair, hut Whandall didn't think it would be very comfortable, not like the big pony hair-stuffed chair Mother's Mother liked.

A tall man with no smile sat in that chair. Three other men stood in front of him holding their long Lordkin knives across their chests. Whandall knew him. Pelzed lived in a two-story stone house at the end of a block of well-kept kinless houses. Pelzed's house had a fenced-in garden and there were always kinless working in it.

"Bring him," Pelzed said.

His brothers took Whandall by the arms and pulled him to just in front of Pelzed's chair, then forced him down on his knees.

"What good are you?" Pelzed demanded.

Shastern began to speak, but Pelzed held up a hand. "I heard you. I want to hear him. What did you learn from the woodsmen?"

"Say something," Wanshig whispered. There was fear in his voice.

Whandall thought furiously. "Poisons. I know the poisons of the forest. Needles. Blades. Whips."

Pelzed gestured. One of the men standing in front of Pelzed's chair raised his big knife and struck Whandall hard across the left shoulder.

It stung, but he had used the flat of the blade. "Call him Lord," the man said. His bared chest was a maze of scars; one ran right up his cheek into his hair. Whandall found him scary as hell.

"Lord," Whandall said. He had never seen a Lord. "Yes, Lord."

"Good. You can walk in the forest?"

"Much of it, Lord. Places where the woodsmen have been."

"Good. What do you know of the Wedge?"

"The meadow at the top of the Deerpiss River?" What did Pelzed want to hear? "Woodsmen don't go there, Lord. I've never seen it. It is said to be guarded."

Pause. Then, "Can you bring us poisons?"

"Yes, lord, in the right season."

"Can we use them against the enemies of Serpent's Walk?"

Whandall had no idea who the enemies of Serpent's Walk might be, but he was afraid to ask. "If they're fresh. Lord."

"What happens if they aren't fresh?"

"After a day they only make you itch. The nettles stop reaching out for anyone who passes."

"Why?"

"I don't know." The man raised his knife. "Lord."

"You're a sneak and a spy."

"Yes, Lord."

"Will you spy for us?"

Whandall hesitated. "Of course he will, Lord," Shastern said.

"Take him out, Shastern. Wait with him."

Shastern led him through a door into a room with no other doors and only a small dark window that let in a little moonlight. He waited until they were closed in before letting go of Whandall's arm.

"This is dangerous, isn't it?" Whandall asked.

Shastern nodded.

"So what's going to happen?"

"They'll let you in. Maybe."

"If they don't?"

Shastern shook his head. "They will. Lord Pelzed doesn't want a blood feud with the Placehold family."

Blood feuds meant blood. "Is he really a Lord-"

"He is here," Shastern said. "And don't forget it."

When they brought him back in, the room was dark except for a few candles near Pelzed's chair. Shastern whispered, "I knew they'd let you in. Now whatever happens, don't cry. It's going to hurt."

They made him kneel in front of Pelzed again. Two men took turns asking him questions and hitting him.

"We are your father and your mother," Pelzed said.

Someone hit him.

"Who is your father?" a voice asked from behind.

"You are-"

Someone hit him harder.

"Serpent's Walk," Whandall guessed.

"Who is your mother?"

"Serpent's Walk."

"Who is your Lord?"

"Pelzed. ... Argh. Lord Pelzed. Aagh! Serpent's Walk?"

"Who is Lord of Serpent's Walk?"

"Lord Pelzed."

It went on a long time. Usually they didn't hit him if he guessed the right answer, but sometimes they hit him anyway. "To make sure you remember," they said.

Finally that was over. "You can't fight," Pelzed said. "So you won't be a lull member. But we'll take care of you. Give him the mark."

They stretched his left hand out and tattooed a small serpent on the web of his thumb. He held his arm rigid against the pain. Then everyone said nice things about him.

After that it was easier. Whandall was safe outside the house as long as he was in territory friendly to Serpent's Walk. Wanshig warned him not to tarry a knife until he knew how to fight. It would be taken as a challenge.

He didn't know the rules. But one could keep silent, watch, and learn.

Here he remembered a line of black skeletons of buildings. The charred remains had come down and been carried away. Whandall and others watched from cover, from the basement of a house that hadn't been replaced yet. Kinless were at work raising redwood beams into skeletons of new buildings. Four new stores stood already, sharing common walls.

You knew the kinless by their skin tone, or their rounder ears and pointed noses, but that was chancy; a boy could make mistakes. Better to judge by clothing or by name.

Kinless were not allowed to wear Lordkin's hair styles or vivid colors. On formal occasions the kinless men wore a noose as token of their servitude. They were named for things or for skills, and they spoke their family names, where a Lordkin never would.

There were unspoken rules for gathering. There were times when you could ask a kinless for food or money. A man and woman together might accept that. Others would not. Kinless men working to replace blackened ruins with new buildings did not look with favor on Lordkin men or boys. Lordkin at their gatherings must be wary of the kinless who kept shops or sold from carts. The kinless had no rights, but the Lords had rights to what the kinless made.

The kinless did the work. They made clothing, grew food, made and used tools, transported it all. They made rope for export. They harvested rope fibers from the hemp that grew in vacant lots and anywhere near the sluggish streams that served as storm drains and sewers alike. They built. They saw to it that streets were repaired, that water flowed, that garbage reached the dumps. They took the blame if things went wrong. Only the kinless paid taxes, and taxes were whatever a Lordkin wanted, unless a Lord said otherwise. Hut you had lo learn what you could take. The kin-less only had so much to give, Mother's Mother said.

Suddenly it was all so obvious, so embarrassing. Loggers were kinless! Of course they wouldn't help a Lordkin child. The loggers thought Kreeg Miller was strange, as the Placehold thought Whandall was strange, each to be found in the other's company.

Whandall had been letting a kinless teach him! He had carried water for them, working like a kinless!

Whandall stopped visiting the forest.

The Serpent's Walk men spent their time in the streets. So did the boys of the Placehold, but their fathers and uncles spent most of their time at home.

Why?

Whandall went to old Resalet. One could ask.

Resalet listened and nodded, then summoned all the boys and led them outside. He pointed to the house, the old stone three-story house with its enclosed courtyard. He explained that it had been built by kinless for themselves, two hundred years ago. Lordkin had taken it from them.