But Jed and Brock had never faced what they had done to him, never admitted their own responsibility. Did they feel sorry at all?
He approached Oron’s mansion, which was connected to a long outbuilding where the skinners’ guild conducted their operations. He drew on all the strength he had developed since leaving Chiriya, since joining Nicci and Nathan on their long journey. Though Bannon didn’t know what he expected from Jed and Brock, he needed to do this for himself.
No one answered when he rang the small brass gong outside the mansion’s entry. Hearing activity inside, he tentatively pushed open the door and was surprised to see several servants lounging in comfortable chairs and sprawled on a divan. “Excuse me. Didn’t you hear me knock?”
The servants sneered at Bannon. A middle-aged man propped himself up on an elbow on the divan. He wore a slave shirt of drab rough-spun cloth, but he had piled silken sheets, fur-lined cloaks, and scavenged jewels around himself. “Keeper’s crotch! Lord Oron can answer his own damned door. Why should we do anything to help you?”
Bannon was unsettled by their attitude. “Because I fought beside you during the revolt. I escaped from the combat pits and helped stop the great bloodletting at the pyramid.”
“Then, what do you need with Oron?” one man grumbled.
“Are you here to kill him?” said another slave, sounding hopeful. “If so, maybe we will help.”
“No, I’m not here to kill him. He is a powerful wizard,” Bannon said in disbelief. “Ildakar will need his gift to fight General Utros.” He frowned at them. “And we’ll need your help, too. Every fighter, to defend the city.”
“We’ve given enough to Ildakar,” said the man on the divan, resting his feet on the fine fabric. “Now, it’s time the city gave back to us.”
Exasperated, Bannon didn’t want to continue the argument. “I’m just here to speak to Oron’s son, Brock.”
The slave on the divan gestured toward the rear of the mansion. “Out back. They’re in the animal buildings. Since many of the slaves refuse to do skinning anymore, Oron has to do it himself.”
The slave in the chair chuckled. “It’s about time he got his hands bloody in a real way. He’s making Brock and that other boy Jed pitch in. Beware if you go there, since he might press you into service, too. Those pelts won’t take care of themselves, and a lot of skinning needs to be done or else the animals will collapse under their own fur.”
“I … I’ll keep that in mind.” He swallowed hard. Sweet Sea Mother!
As he headed toward the kitchens in the rear of the mansion, one of the slaves called, “If you’re hungry, there’s plenty of food in the pantries. Eat it before some gifted noble does.”
“I’m not hungry,” He hurried through the kitchens, where the ovens were cold and the cabinets were open, ransacked for food. Spilled flour and half-eaten fruit lay discarded on the floor and the counters. One matronly woman had curled up in a corner, snoring loudly in the company of two empty bottles of bloodwine.
Bannon passed through a breezeway outside, following a path of crushed sparkling stone that led to a large low structure with shallowly sloped roofs and propped-open windows. Sounds wafted out, stirring, rattling, grunting, along with bone-chilling wails of animal pain. He paused, having second thoughts; then he remembered how Amos and his friends had laughed at him when the Norukai captains beat him senseless at the yaxen slaughterhouse. Bruised and broken, he had barely survived that attack, and then he’d been given over to Adessa so she could train him to die in the arena. His supposed friends had promised they would help him. They never did, and he would have died.
Pushing open the door, Bannon entered a giant outbuilding crowded with penned animals, the source of all the fine furs worn by the gifted nobles. The stench hit him first, coppery blood, pungent feces, the foul musk of terror exuded by dying animals. Two aisles of cages ran the length of the building, with more cages along the outer walls. Long, flat worktables had shallow gutters that led to drains in the floor. Eight harried, blood-spattered workers toiled at the skinning tables.
Oron was there, his face and his chest flecked with red. He wore a blood-smeared apron over a silken shirt that was now ruined. His long faded-yellow hair was matted, tied back and smeared with gore. He barked orders at the workers, whom Bannon realized were minor nobles. “If we don’t skin these animals now, the fur will stop growing. Our guild depends on this! If the lazy slaves won’t do their duty, we nobles have to pick up the slack … as always.” He sounded weary and disgusted.
Oron walked down the line of tables and cages. “Now that I am a duma member, my obligations have increased tenfold. I need to count on other guild members.” He turned to a queasy-looking young man. “And you too, son. Your life has been far too easy. It’s time to get your hands bloody.”
Bannon hadn’t at first recognized Brock, because the young man’s face was smeared with blood, his short, dark hair crusty, his hands covered with red up to his elbows. “I always did what I could,” Brock said in a whining tone.
Bannon finally saw what they were actually doing and stumbled backward in shock. The skinners would open one of the cages, reach in, and grasp the ruff of a squealing animal. The unnatural creatures had broad, squat bodies with stubby heads and stumplike, useless legs that flailed as the workers dragged them out. The animals looked like swollen, living pillows made of fur. Their heads were small, like a turtle’s, and the entire body was covered with a rich, thick pelt, some spotted, others streaked with ash gray. These were not normal animals, Bannon realized, but creatures shaped by fleshmancers, made for a terrible painful purpose.
No one noticed Bannon as he stood speechless inside the door. He watched as another reticent young man—Jed, he realized—grabbed an animal with rusty fur. He dropped the flailing, squeaking creature on the skinning table in front of him. He had a short, razor-sharp knife.
“We’re doing what we can, sir,” Jed said defensively. He pushed the struggling creature down and held it by the back of the neck as he jabbed with the point of the knife, slicing its shoulder. He cut across its short forelegs and all the way around its body. The creature mewled and screeched in pain. Jed dug with the knife, grabbed the edge of the pelt, and ripped it up. He pulled off a wide swatch of fur and set it aside for scraping while the whimpering creature twitched and bled. Though skinned alive, it was not dead, but naked, its pelt torn off.
“How long until this grows back?” Jed asked as he tossed the skinned animal back into the cage.
Oron said, “The ones that survive will have a fresh new pelt in three weeks, ready for harvesting again.”
The skinners worked one cage at a time, grabbing the animals, stripping them of their pelts, and returning them to their cages.
Bannon’s stomach clenched with nausea. There were hundreds of trapped animals. “This is horrible. You’re all horrible!” The others looked up, startled by his arrival. The young man shook his head, trembling. “This whole city is horrible.”
Oron barked at him, “Good, we could use more help. There’s a lot of work to do and too many lazy people refusing to do it.”
“You’re torturing those poor things,” Bannon groaned. He had always loved animals.
Oron let out an impatient snort. “Where do you think fur comes from? There’s always a dark underside to what society needs. Do you eat meat? You can’t have a yaxen steak without killing the yaxen. Or maybe you’d rather live naked and eat plants.”