After a tense, moment the door opened, swung out. Impossible to see who or what stood there, impossible to guess whether it was good fortune or bad for them. Rane spoke. Tuli saw her lips move, but the words came down the hall as muffled broken sounds, nothing more. Rane canted her head to one side, a habit she had when listening. She spoke again, more loudly. “Gesda, I’ve got a young friend with me.” Tuli heard the key name, pushed the door open and stepped into the hall. Rane saw her hesitate, grinned and beckoned to her.
Roveda Gesda was a wiry little man, smaller than Tuli, his age indeterminate. His wrinkled face was constantly in motion, his eyes restless, seldom looking directly at the person he was speaking to, his mouth was never still, the wrinkles about it shifting in a play of light and shadow. A face impossible to read. It seemed never the same for two consecutive moments. His hands, small even for him, were always touching things, lifting small objects, caressing them, setting them down. Sometimes the objects seemed to flicker, vanish momentarily, appearing again as he set them down.
Tuli settled herself on a cushion by Rane’s feet and endured the sly assessment of the little man’s glittering black eyes. She said nothing, only listened as Rane questioned him about the conditions in the city.
“Grain especially, but all food is controlled by the Aglis of each district and the garrison settled on us. We got to line up each day at distribution points and some…” the tip of his tongue flickered out, flicked from corner to corner of his wide mobile mouth, “some pinch-head fool of a Follower measures out our day’s rations.” He snorted. “Stand in line for hours. And we got to pay for the privilege. No handouts. Fifteen tersets a day. You don’t got the coin or its equivalent in metal, too bad. Unless you wearing Follower black and stick a token from the right Agli under the airhead’s nose.”
“Carthise put up with that?”
“What can we do? Supplies was low anyway.” He glared down at his hands. “What with storms and Floarin sending half the Guard, Malenx himself heading ’em, to strip the city and the tars north of here-grain, fruit, hauhaus, you name it, she scooped it up. Needs meat for her army, she does. Once a tenday we get meat now, soon enough won’t have any. Stinkin’ Followers butchered all the macain and oadats and even pets, anything that ate manfood or could make manfood. Smoked it or salted it down. Sent a lot out in the tithe wagons. With the snow now that will stop but folk won’t be able to get out and hunt in the hills, a pain in the butt even getting out to fish and having to give half what you catch as a thank offering. What I mean, this city’s lower’n a snake’s navel.” After a minute his wrinkles shifted and he looked fraudulently wise and sincerely sly. “Some ha’ been getting out, those that know how. Awhile back we had us a nice little underground market going. Snow shut down on that some, but some a the miner families are out there trapping vachhai and karhursin; better we pay them than those foreigners and sucking twits. Tell you something too, not a day passes but some Follower he goes floating out face down in shit. Even the aglis, they beginning to twitch and look over their shoulders. Trying to keep a tight hand on us, they are, but I tell you, Rane good friend, the tighter they squeeze the slippier we get.” He grinned, his eyes almost disappearing in webs of wrinkles, then he shook his head, suddenly sobered. “Folk getting restless. I can feel the pressure building. Going to be an explosion one a these days and blood in the streets. One thing you say about Hern, you pay your tithes, keep quiet, he let you go your way and don’t wring you dry. Where is he, you know? What’s he doing? He weren’t much but he keep the lice off our backs. Rumor says no Sesshel Fair come spring. That happen, this city burns.”
He shifted around in his chair, sat with his elbow on the chairarm, his hand masking his mouth. “Always been folk here who want to stick fingers in other folks’ lives, tell ’em how to think, how to talk, tell ’em how to hold mouth, wiggle little finger, you know; they the ones that got the say now, and by-damn do they say.” He shifted again. “What’s the Biserica doing? Do we get any kind a help? Say a few meien to kick out the Guards. Maybe a few swords and crossbows. The Followers, they aren’t much as fighters, no better armed than we used to be. Course we had to turn in our arms. ’Nother damn edict. I wouldn’t say there aren’t a few little knives and you name it cached here and there, owners forgetting the hell out of ’em. Still, some bows and a good supply of bolts wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t have to get them inside the walls, me and my friends could see to that.
“Got five norits in the Citadel, they sticking noses everywhere. Maiden knows what they looking for, how much they see. One thing, they caught Naum peddling black-market meat. Whipped him bloody in the market square, took him to the House of Repentance. Lot of folk smirking like they something, watching all that. Well, he not easy to be around, but they don’t need to enjoy it that much. I ain’t seen him since. Me, I been lucky, you might say.” He fidgeted nervously, One foot tapping at the reed mat on the floor, the shallow animal eyes turning and turning as if he sought the cobwebs of Nor longsight in the corners of the room. “It’s hoping they won’t sniff you out.”
Rane shifted in her chair, her leg rubbing against Tuli’s arm. Tuli glanced up but could read nothing in the ex-meie’s face. “Any chance of that?” Rane held up a hand, pinched thumb and forefinger together, then widened the gap between them, raised an eyebrow.
Fingers smoothing along his thigh, Gesda shrugged. “Don’t know how their longsight works. Can’t judge the odds they light on us. Here. Now.”
“A lottery?”
“Might say.”
“The artisans’ guilds?”
“Disbanded. Plotting and stirring up trouble, the pontifex, he say. Head Agli here, what he calls himself. Me, I’m a silversmith. We don’t think we disbanded, not at all. No. Followers like lice in guild halls but we keep the signs and the rules, we do. Friend of mine, Munah the weaver, he… hmmm… had some doings with me last passage. From things he say, weavers same as silversmiths. Guilds be here before the Heslins, yeah, even before the Biserica, ain’t no pinchhead twit going to break ’em. They went secret before, can be secret again.”
“Followers in the guild halls, how bad is that? Do they report on you to the Aglim?”
Tuli listened to the voices droning on and on. The raspy, husky whisper of Gesda, the quicker, flatter voice of Rane with its questions like fingers probing the wounds in Sel-ma-Carth. Talk and talk, that was all this adventure was. That and riding cold and hungry from camp to camp. Especially hungry. She stopped listening, leaned against the chair and dozed off, the voices still droning in her ears.
Some time later Rane shook her awake. Gesda was nowhere in sight and Rane had a rep-sack filled with food that plumped its sides and made the muscles in her neck go stringy as she slid the strap onto her shoulder. Tuli blinked, then got stiffly to her feet. “We going? What time is it?”
“Late.” Rane crossed the room to the door. “Shake yourself together, Moth.” She put her hand on the latch, hesitated. “You have your sling with you?”
Tuli rubbed at her eyes, wiggled her shoulders and arms. “Yah,” she said. “And some stones.” She pushed her hand into her jacket pocket, pulled out the sling. “Didn’t know what might be waiting for us.”
“Good. Keep it handy. Let me go first. You keep a turn behind me on the stairs, watch me down the halls. Hear?” Tuli nodded. As Rane opened the door and stepped out, she found a good pebble, pinched it into the pocket of the sling. She peered past the edge of the door. Rane was vanishing into the stairwell. Tuli went down the hall, head turning, eyes wide, nervous as a lappet on a bright night.