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He shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting up. “They was big men, bigger than you or me or anybody in this boat, a head taller than Trason. Anyway, they were gone in a moment, just like the galleass. That was the only other craft I saw till the mist lifted. But...”
I said, “But you saw something else. Or heard something.”
He nodded. “I thought maybe you and your people here was out because of them. Yes, I saw and I heard things. There was things in this river I never saw before. Maxellindis, when she woke up and I told her about it, said it was Ac manatees. They’re pale in moonlight and look human enough if you don’t come too close. But I’ve seen ‘em since I was a boy and never been fooled once. And there was women’s voices, not loud but big. And something else. I couldn’t understand what any of ‘em was sayin’, but I could hear the tone of it. You know how it is when you’re listenin’ to people over the water?
They would say so-and-so-and so, Then the deeper voice—I can’t call it a man’s because I don’t think it was one—the deeper voice’d say go-and-do-that-andthis-and-that I heard the women’s voices three times and the other voice twice. You won’t believe it, optimates, but sometimes it sounded like the voices was coming up out of the river.”
With that he fell silent, looking out over the nenuphars. We were well above that part of Gyoll opposite the Citadel, but they were still packed more densely than wildflowers in any meadow this side of paradise.
The Citadel itself was visible now as a whole, and for all its vastness seemed a glittering flock fluttering upon the hill, its thousand metal towers ready to leap into the air at a word. Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled white and green. I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of faint disgust of the “unhealthy” growth of the lawns and trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is actually anything unhealthy about it. Green things die that men may live, and men die that green things may live, even that ignorant and i
The Sanguinary Field stands far from the river. We four drew strange looks as we journeyed there, but no one halted us. The I
I had never really looked at him on that afternoon when he had carried in a tray for Dorcas, Agia, and me. I did so now. He was a balding man about as tall as Drotte, thin and somehow pinched looking; his eyes were deep blue, and there was a delicacy to the moulding of his eyes and mouth that I recognized at once.
“Do you know who we are?” I asked him.
Slowly, he shook his head.
“Have you never had a torturer to serve?”
“Once this spring, sieur,” he said. “And I know these two men in black are torturers. But you’re no torturer, sieur, though you’re dressed like one.”
I let that pass. “You have never seen me?”
“No, sieur.”
“Very well, perhaps you have not.” (How strange it was to realize that I had changed so much.)
“Ouen, since you do not know me, it might be well if I knew you. Tell me where you were born and who your parents were, and how you came to be employed at this i
“My father was a shopkeeper, sieur. We lived in Oldgate, on the west bank. When I was ten or so, I think, he sent me to an i
“Your father was a shopkeeper. What of your mother?”
Ouen’s face still held a waiter’s deference, but his eyes were puzzled, “I never knew her, sieur. Cas they called her, but she died when I was young. In childbirth, my father said.’
“But you know what she looked like.”
He nodded. “My father had a locket with her likeness. Once when I was twenty or so I came to see him and found out he’d pledged it I’d come into a bit of money then helping a certain optimate with his affairs—carrying messages to the ladies and standing watch outside doors and so on, and I went to the pawnbroker’s and paid the pledge and took it. I still wear it, sieur. In a place like ours, where there’s so many in ‘n out all the time, it’s best to keep your valuables about you.”
He leached into his shirt and drew out a locket of cloiso
“You say you became a potboy at ten, Ouen. But you can read and write.”
“A bit, sieur.” He looked embarrassed. “I’ve asked people, various times, what writing said. I don’t forget much.”
“You wrote something when the torturer was here this spring,” I told him. “Do you recall what you wrote?”
Frightened, he shook his head. “Only a note to warn the girl.”
“I do. It was. The woman with you has been here before. Do not trust her. Trudo says the man is a torturer. You are my mother come again.’ “ Ouen tucked his locket under his shirt. “It was only that she was so much like her, sieur. When I was a younger man, I used to think that someday I’d find such a woman. I told myself, you know, that I was a better man than my father, and he had, after all.—But I never did, and now I’m not so sure I’m a better man.”
“At that time, you did not know what a torturer’s habit looked like,” I said. “But your friend Trudo, the ostler, knew. He knew a good deal more about torturers than you, and that was why he ran away.”
“Yes, sieur. When he heard the torturer was asking for him, he did.”
“But you saw the i
“If you say it, sieur.”
“Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her.”
The fat i
I am afraid I turned to stare at him.
“No offense intended, sieur, but it’s true. He’s a bit older, but when you were talking I saw both your faces from the side, and there isn’t a patch of difference.”
I studied Ouen again. His hair and eyes were not dark like mine, but with that colouring aside, his face might almost have been my own.
“You said you never found a woman like Dorcas-like that one in your locket. Still you found a woman, I think.”
His eyes would not meet mine. “Several, sieur.”
“And fathered a child.”
“No, sieur!” He was startled. “Never, sieur!”
“How interesting. Were you ever in difficulties with the law?”
“Several times, sieur.”
“It is well to keep your voice low, but it need not be so low as that. And look at me when you speak to me. A woman you loved—or perhaps only one who loved you—a dark womanwas taken once?”
“Once, sieur,” he said. “Yes, sieur. Catherine was her name. Its sin old-fashioned name, they tell me.” He paused and shrugged. “There was trouble, as you say, sieur. She’d run off from some order of monials. The law got her, and I never saw her again.”
He did not want to come, but we brought him with us when we returned to the lugger.
When I had come upriver by night on the Samru, the line between the living and the dead city had been like that between the dark curve of the world and the celestial dome with its stars. Now, when there was so much more light, it had vanished. Half-ruinous structures lined the banks, but whether they were the homes of the most wretched of our citizens or mere deserted shells I could not determine until I saw a string on which three rags flapped.