Then a woman screamed, angry male voices rumbled, more torches with oily flames poured into the room. Behind them came a man half naked, carrying a small package. He thrust it at Paola, almost threw it at her. Its shrill wails brought back the pain in her breasts. She pulled up her smock at once and put the babe to suck. The crying stopped and ripples of joy flowed through her. Not little Stav, but someone to love, to live for, to take her milk. Boy or girl? She had not thought to look.
She looked up and saw the woman in the doorway, staring. She was a Florengian, with milk-swollen breasts visible through a badly ripped dress. One side of her face was red and puffed; eye swelling, lips bruised, hair torn. The man barked something impatiently. He had bloody scratches near his eyes. She started forward, he caught her arm. Was she the mother or just another wet nurse now wanted for other duties?
The girl lifted her smock to let the woman see the babe sucking, and smiled to say that she would love and cherish it, be it boy or girl. For a moment they stared at each other, and then the woman's spirit seemed to crumble. She nodded resignedly. The man snarled and thrust her out the door ahead of him, impatient to do what he wanted; she went in silence, resisting no more. All that mattered was that the ice devils had given Paola a child to feed, so they would have to feed her also.
Praise the Old One, who had answered her prayer!
seventeen
BENARD CELEBRE
was already hammering marble when the priests began their morning psalms. That was the last possible moment he could leave if he was to reach the palace at sunrise; keeping a Werist waiting was a sure road to unhappiness. Reluctantly he tossed maul and chisel into the shed, exchanged his smock for the new secondhand loincloth he had purchased with the copper Ingeld had given him, absentmindedly wiped his hands on it, weighted down the drape with the chunks of rock he used for that purpose, and set off at a trot.
In Benard's absence, Thod was supposed to help Sugthar the potter, which meant he would mostly ogle his adored Thilia.
Satrap Horold's orders that Benard visit the Whiterim quarry had seemed like deliverance from certain death at the time, but there had been no signs of Cutrath since then, so the matter no longer felt urgent. In fact, the trip was unnecessary. He could tell the priests what he needed and they would send word to the quarry master to cut the block and deliver it on the next spring flood.
Furthermore, Benard had started work on the third block of marble. If it could not be holy Weru, it must serve for another god. No sooner thought than realized—he had hardly begun to consider the matter when holy Anziel flooded him with inspiration. Never had he felt Her divine fire so strongly, as if the stone had become transparent and he saw the goddess Herself standing inside it, looking just as he had seen Hiddi that night at the temple. Without models or sketches or even guidelines on the block, he started cutting away everything that was not Hiddi to expose his statue of Anziel. Already he had the rough shape outlined. To leave it like that was agony; he was going to be thoroughly miserable every minute he was away from his work.
♦
Having gone around the long way rather than cut through the palace, he arrived breathless at the stable yard. Even there he kept a wary eye open for Werists, for they would not consider mere toe-tramping or sucker-punching covered by Horold's edict against violence.
A car and team stood ready, with the onagers being comforted by a young Nastrarian; their eyes were closed and the long ears drooped in bliss. The standard, workaday chariot was merely a battered wicker box on two wheels, lacking the fancy trimmings and webbed floor of vehicles driven by people like Ingeld. Benard had been taken on four chariot trips in his life and been sick to his stomach on all of them. The inside was already crowded with somebody's personal bindle and two plump wineskins. Wine could only mean that his driver and custodian was to be Flankleader Guthlagson, who seemed an odd choice, but would be more pleasant company than any other Werist. Being no admirer of the satrap's son, he had practically congratulated Benard on humiliating the lout so epochally.
Benard climbed in and sat on the bindle to think about Hiddi—Hiddi the statue, not the flesh-and-blood one, whom he had not seen since their first meeting. He had decided to show her with her chin a little higher than she had held it when she posed for him at the temple. This would produce minor changes in her neck, and...
Old Guthlag came hobbling across the yard, his pall already rumpled. Beside him trudged a hulking Werist cadet carrying a leather bag. Benard stood up. The hunk said "Here!" and swung the bag up to him, but the artist's eye had noted how far the titan had been tilted as he walked and how much effort was needed to lob that load. Benard caught it with both hands and against his thighs instead of where it had been aimed, so he did not drop it and it did not disable him. The chariot rocked, provoking snorts of protests from both onagers and Nastrarian. The Werist had the grace to look impressed as well as disappointed.
Benard lowered the bag to the floor. It chinked. What in the world did they need so much gold for?
Guthlag said, "Ready?"
"Ready, lord."
"No baggage?"
Benard just shook his head. He gave the old man a surreptitious hand up, gripping his wrist and not his arthritic fingers. He was surprised to find himself on the left side.
"You expect me to drive? Lady Ingeld used to say it would be easier to teach onagers to paint. The only time she ever let me try by myself, I nearly tipped the car over. Wow! You 're going to let me drive?"
"Boy, it's time you grew up!" The growl came in a gale of beer fumes. Beer was the old man's usual tipple, but beer could not be transported in chariots. Neither the beer itself nor the crocks would stand the bouncing. It was a surprise that Guthlag thought he could.
"Yes, lord. Right away." Benard unwound the reins, remembered to check that the brake was up (handle down, remember!), took a firm grip on the rail, and yelled "Ready!" at the Nastrarian. Reluctantly the youth returned to the world of people and stepped aside, withdrawing both himself and his god's blessing. The long ears shot up. With angry brays, the brutes lurched forward against the neck straps. The chariot hurtled along the yard, heading straight for the far wall, where each brainless ass would inevitably try to turn outward and create complete disaster. A pull on the right-hand onager's reins—a stronger pull—brought the car around in a death-defying U-turn. As it settled back on both wheels, Benard aimed the team at the gate and resisted an urge to close his eyes.
Out in the alley, he could do little more than hang on as they careered down the long, winding slope to the river, through crowds, carts, wagons, and carrying chairs. Guthlag blew long warning yodels on the bull's horn. Pedestrians and livestock leaped aside, howling curses and choking in the roiling clouds of red dust.
"Which way?" Benard yelled.
Guthlag stopped bugling long enough to snap, "Left!"
Left it was. They veered madly around an oxcart, and after that life became a little simpler. True, it was there, where land and water met, that the main business of the city was conducted. Being both quay and road, the levee teemed with people buying and selling, loading and unloading, coming and going. Porters toiled like ants under seemingly impossible burdens; wagons rumbled between high piles of wares and gaudy market stalls. The wealthy rode by in carrying chairs or chariots, whose drivers screamed and cracked whips at the mob, yet went no faster because of it. But at least there was space enough to dodge and no wall for an incompetent driver to butter bystanders against.