'He's being allowed out!'
'Go on,' said the sergeant to Kesh before turning his back on Eliar and lounging against the wall of the guardhouse with every evident intention of flaunting his power.
Keshad hurried out, hearing voices raised behind him as other merchants saw the threshold gap and, then, slam shut in their faces.
He knew the route well and was careful to follow it exactly with the silent young guardsman at his back, a lad with an unpleasant face and look of pinching scorn to make it yet uglier. The truth was, the Sirniakans were not a handsome people, not the men Keshad had seen anyway, and of course except in the most distant and isolated villages on the route to the border with Mariha, he'd not seen women at all. Nothing but men, which was a tedious way to live, and as he walked he noted how this morning every gate was shut,
the compounds whose walls lined the streets closed up as if night's curfew hadn't yet been lifted. Elderly men draped in robes approached the white gates at the edge of the caravan market where all foreigners must bide when in Sarida to trade. A few younger men walked in pairs and fours, murmuring quietly, some glancing curiously at him as he passed. No one spoke to him. It was very quiet, none of the waking market bustle that was normally fiercest at this early hour before the midday heat clobbered everyone.
Of course any city has only one temple, supervised by holy priests. Any believing man must, by the Exalted One's decree, be permitted entry. But that didn't mean that all men entered through the same holy gate or worshiped in the same holy court. Here at the wall of the caravan market, a gate opened into an alley confined by high whitewashed walls. It twisted and turned through the city in a circuitous route, bridged at intervals for the convenience of imperial citizens so they need never set foot where lesser men trod. Believers of a class not permitted free access within the city might approach the holy court, but they would certainly remain separate. Along this narrow way Keshad trudged, and though he listened, he heard no gossip, no news, nothing beyond a few halting discussions of rice crops, a horse race, and fishing.
The city was large, and the alley a long path often sloping uphill or angled with steps, so he was sweating when he reached the humble gate through which they entered single-file. Kesh crossed the threshold and crouched to touch the naked feet of a white-clad priest. The holy man frowned as if suspicious of his looks, but gave him the sign to pass into the earth-floored court packed with worshipers: foreigners, slaves, indentured servants, impoverished laborers, the deformed and disfigured, the beggars and the lame. He paid a coin to have a priest fill his bowl with holy water and then he knelt, palms turned upward to face the heavens, as a priest led the sonorous prayer.
'Rid us of all that is evil. Rid us of demons. Rid us of hate…' He dipped a thumb in the water and traced the sign of Straight Order across his forehead. 'Increase all that is good…' How easy it was to produce the words, but it was like sowing seed in barren ground. Words are only words, because the gods do not listen, no
matter what Zubaidit, or the priests of Beltak, or the Ri Amnrah said. They, who believed, were blind, because they preferred blindness. It was easier than seeing the dispassionate cruelty of the world where those in power closed their hands around the throats of the ones they wished to control. They shut their victims behind locked gates and then prayed to their gods to persuade themselves they were doing right.
'Teach me to hate darkness and battle evil. Teach me the Truth.' Bai would scold him for pretending to pray, but by doing so he had escaped the locked gates of the merchants' compound, hadn't he? 'Peace. Peace. Peace.'
Fine words and noble sentiments. How bright and clean they washed the world. He brushed tears from his cheeks, thinking of Miravia.
Some of the worshipers stood in line for the priest's cleansing, but Kesh sat down on a bench and rubbed his feet. In courts built farther in toward the center of the temple complex, voices still rose in the extended prayer granted to men of higher rank, and trees offered shade to men who preferred to pray out of the blazing sun. It was already hot, the sun's light so strong on the white-washed walls that he had to shade his eyes as he scanned the lingering assembly, wondering if he would see any merchants he recognized from the market, men he might conceivably chat with as they walked back down the alley out of the city. Men who might say too much, or be prone to gossip. Folk did like to gossip. It gave them a sense of power to know what others did not.
'You are a Hundred man.'
Startled, he looked up. Dropped off the bench to his knees. 'Holy one. You honor me.'
The priest from the gate stood before him. He had a beard, and his hair was shorn short and shaved bald at the crown. 'They are stubborn, the Hundred men, praying to demons who mask as gods. But you pray to the Exalted One.'
'Yes, holy one.'
The priest's look was as good as a question.
'I have walked into the empire many times. Thus am I come to the Exalted One, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Shining One Who Rules Alone.'
'A merchant may speak words he does not believe in order to avoid the tax fixed on barbarians.'
'Yes,' agreed Kesh without flinching, his gaze steady. 'So he may.'
'You will be cleansed today?'
'I will. In truth, holy one, I was waiting for the line to shorten. My feet hurt.'
The priest nodded, and turned to leave.
'Holy one,' said Kesh, 'if I may be permitted a question.'
The man turned back as smoothly as if he had expected the words. 'What do you wish, believer?'
'I am a Hundred man, a foreign merchant. Our compound has been locked down, and we are not permitted into the market to trade. All will be as the Exalted One ordains, and I am a patient man, but I admit that I am concerned about my business. Might I be permitted to know if trade will resume today, or another day soon, or if we will be permitted to leave Sarida and return to our homes if the market has been closed indefinitely?'
No wind stirred the air, but men's voices filtered everywhere. Tense murmurs. Choppy gestures. Glances sent close and far as if in fear that some other man, listening, might call them to account for reckless words. And indeed, the prayers still winding from the inner courts had also a tight coil to them, every man clinging to the familiar cycle as a man in a storm huddles under the shelter he knows, the only place he feels safe.
'It is hard to know what will happen next,' said the priest thoughtfully, looking intently at Kesh, as if measuring the sincerity of his heart.
But he didn't scare Kesh. What man could, now that he had been emboldened by Miravia's face and enigmatic smile?
'We wait for word from Dalilasah as to how to proceed. Meanwhile, the regulations and restrictions will be observed fourfold, as is proper.'
'What do you mean, holy one? I am ignorant, truly.'
Men filtered out the gate to vanish down the alley, and in the inner courts, the singing faded and died. A bell rang thrice, and a trumpet blew twice, and then came silence, a vastly populated and crowded city caught in a hush like the world waiting to discover from which way the storm would thunder in upon them.
The priest smiled awkwardly, which was perhaps an attempt to show sympathy and perhaps the curling bite of lofty scorn and perhaps only the man's own anxiety peeping through his stern facade.
'You have not heard, of course. Emperor Farazadihosh is dead, killed in battle by his cousin.'