Tamora explained that the water came from the Rim Mountains. “Everyone in the city who can afford it uses mountain water; only beggars and refugees drink from the river.”
“Then they must be the holiest people in Ys, for the water of the Great River is sacred.”
“Grah, holiness does not cleanse the river of all the shit put into it. Most bathe in it only once a year, on the high day celebrated by their bloodline. Otherwise those who can avoid it, which is why water is brought into the city. One of the underground rivers which transports the mountain water passes close by. It’s why we have our hunting grounds here. There are waterholes where animals come to drink and where the hunting is good, and at this place we have hidden machines to heat the water.”
“It is a wonderful place,” Yama said. “Look, a hawk!”
Tamora lifted the thong around Yama’s neck and fingered the coin which hung from it. “What’s this? A keepsake?”
“Someone gave it to me. Before I left Aeolis.”
“You find them everywhere, if you bother to dig for a few minutes. We used to play with them when we were children. This is less worn than most, though. Who gave it to you? A sweetheart, perhaps?”
Derev. This was the second time Yama had betrayed her trust. Although he did not know if he would ever see Derev again, and although he had been drunk, he felt suddenly ashamed that he had allowed Tamora to take him.
Tamora’s breath feathered his cheek. It had a minty tang from the leaf she had plucked from a bush and folded inside her mouth between her teeth and her cheek. She fingered the line of Yama’s jaw and said, “There’s hair coming in here.”
“There is a glass blade in my satchel. I should have brought it to shave. Or perhaps I will grow a beard.”
“It was your first time, wasn’t it? Don’t be ashamed. Everyone must have a first time.”
“No. I mean, no, it was not the first time.”
Telmon’s high, excited voice as he threw open the door of the brothel’s warm, scented, lamp-lit parlor. The women turning to them like exotic orchids unfolding. Yama had gone with Telmon because he had been asked, because he had been curious, because Telmon had been about to leave for the war. Afterwards, he had suspected that Derev had known all about it, and if she had not condoned it, then perhaps at least she had understood. That was why Yama had been so fervent with his promises on the night before he left Aeolis, and yet how easily he had broken them. He felt a sudden desolation. How could he even think of being a hero?
Tamora said, “It was your first time with one of the Fierce People. That should Burn away the memory of all others.” She nipped his shoulder. “You have a soft skin, and it tastes of salt.”
“I sweat everywhere, except the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet.”
“Really? How strange. But I like the taste. That’s why I bit you last night.”
“I heal quickly.”
Tamora said, “Yama, listen to me. It won’t happen again. Not while we’re working together. No, stay still. I can’t clean your back if you turn around. We celebrated together last night, and that was good. But I won’t let it interfere with my work. If you don’t like that, and think yourself used, then find another cateran. There are plenty here, and plenty more at the Water Market. You have enough money to hire the best.”
“I was at least as drunk as you were.”
“Drunker, I’d say. I hope you didn’t fuck me just because you were drunk.”
Yama blushed. “I meant that I lost any inhibitions I might otherwise have had. Tamora—”
“Don’t start on any sweet talk. And don’t tell me about any sweetheart you might have left at home, either, or about how sorry you are. That’s there. This is here. We’re battle companions. We fucked. End of that part of the story.”
“Are all your people so direct?”
“We speak as we find. Not to do so is a weakness. I like you, and I enjoyed last night. We’re lucky, because some bloodlines are only on heat once a year—imagine how miserable they must be—and besides, there’s no danger of us making babies together. That’s what happens when my people fuck, unless the woman is already pregnant. I’m not ready for that, not yet. In a few years I’ll find some men to run with and we’ll raise a family, but not yet. A lot of us choose the metic way for that reason.”
Yama was interested. He said, “Can you not use prophylactics?”
Tamora laughed. “You haven’t seen the cock of one of our men! There are spines to hold it in place. Put a rubber on that? Grah! There’s a herb some women boil into a tea and drink to stop their courses, but it doesn’t work most of the time.”
“Women of your people are stronger than men.”
“It’s generally true of all bloodlines, even when it doesn’t seem so. We’re more honest about it, perhaps. Now you clean my back, and I’ll go use the shittery, and then we’ll find the rat-boy. If we’re lucky, he’s run back to where he belongs.”
As they went back down the hill, along the path that wandered between stands of sage and tall sawgrasses, Yama saw someone dressed in black watching them from the shade at the edge of a grove of live oaks. He thought it might have been Gorgo, but whoever it was stepped back into the shadows and was gone before Yama could point him out to Tamora.
The city was still disturbed by Yama’s drawing down of the feral machine. Magistrates and their attendant clouds of machines were patrolling the streets, and although Yama asked the machines to ignore him and his companions, he was fearful that he would miss one until it was too late, or that Prefect Corin would lunge out of the crowds toward him.
He kept turning this way and that until Tamora told him to stop it, or they’d be arrested for sure. Little groups of soldiers lounged at every major intersection. They were the city militia, armed with fusils and carbines, and dressed in loose red trousers and plastic cuirasses as slick and cloudily transparent as ice. They watched the crowds with hard, insolent eyes, but they did not challenge anyone. They did not dare, Pandaras said, and Yama asked how that could be, if they had the authority of the Preservers.
“There are many more of us than there are of them,” Pandaras said, and made the sign Yama had noticed before, touching his fist to his throat.
The boy did not seem scared of the soldiers, but instead openly displayed a smoldering contempt, and Yama noticed that many of the other people made the same sign when they went by a group of soldiers. Some even spat or shouted a curse, safe in the anonymity of the crowd.
Pandaras said, “With the war downriver, there are even fewer soldiers in the city, and they must keep the peace by terror. That’s why they’re hated. See that cock, there?”
Yama looked up. An officer in gold-tinted body armor stood on a metal disc that floated in the air above the dusty crowns of the ginkgoes which lined one side of the broad, brawling avenue.
“He could level a city block with one shot, if he had a mind to,” Pandaras said. “But he wouldn’t unless he had no other choice, because there’d be riots and even more of the city would be burned. If someone stole a pistol and tried to use it against soldiers or magistrates, then he might do it.”
“It seems an excessive punishment.”
Tamora said, “Energy weapons are prohibited, worse luck. I’d like one right now. Clear a way through these herds of grazers in a blink.”
“One of my uncles on my mother’s side of the family was caught up in a tax protest a few years back,” Pandaras said. “It was in a part of the city a few leagues upriver. A merchant bought up a block and leveled it to make a park, and the legates decided that every tradesman living round about should pay more tax. The park made the area more attractive, neh? The legates said that more people would come because of the open space, and spend more in the shops round about. So the tradesmen got together and declared a tax strike in protest. The legates called up the magistrates, and they came and blockaded the area. Set their machines spinning in the air to make a picket line, so no one could get in or out. It lasted a hundred days, and at the end they said people inside the picket line were eating each other. The food ran out, and there was no way to get more in. A few tried to dig tunnels, but the magistrates sent in machines and killed them.”