"It's true," said the clerk with a kind of dazed fascination, watching the exchange. "Sapanasu's law supports Master Feden's claim against you, on both counts."
"You cheating dog," said Keshad softly. "Nine leya is an outrage. As is three leya a day for costs."
"Not in my house. I do not run a roadside shelter offering a plank floor to sleep on and nai porridge for supper. Do not think I gloat over your mistake, Keshad. I am a man of business. I must protect myself and my house."
"You want me back. But I'm no longer your slave."
"Do you expect me to believe you have any coin left after that trip? Have you paid up that southern driver? All your expenses? And yet you cast your throw so carelessly. I trained you better than that."
Kesh let Feden keep talking. Indeed, he savored it, for the man did love to talk and did always believe himself to know more than others could.
"Sign on with me, and the stabling charge will be placed on your first accounts book as a junior partner. I'll still throw in the girl. For nothing. As a gesture of good faith. Otherwise, I fear me, Keshad, you'll be falling behind again. And if I choose not to allow you another trading venture, I am not one bit sure how you will overcome the debt."
Kesh smiled. For the first time, Feden faltered, mouth pursing with doubt. Kesh slid a hand into the pouch sewn into his sleeve, careful to hide how much coin he had on his strings. He drew off nine precious leya, weighed them in his hand, and placed them each, individually, with a snap on the table. Feden's eyes widened.
"One night, two waterings, hay and grain," Kesh said politely to the clerk. It was hard not to gloat, even if he was furious at himself for losing these leya through carelessness. He had better uses for the money. "I'd like to get this settled. I have other business to attend to."
"Where did you get that?" demanded the outraged merchant.
Kesh waited a few breaths, letting the other man stew. In his head, he tallied up the coin he owed Tebedir, a goodly amount. Everything now hinged on the treasure.
"Well?" Feden looked ready to burst.
With an exaggerated sigh, Kesh bent to close the chests, then straightened, fussing with his sleeves. "This is not the only merchandise I brought out of the south. You didn't bother to look into my accounts book because you were in such haste to cheat me. But we have already sealed that these items settle my debt price."
The clerk stared at the coins, which Feden had not touched.
Feden laughed. "Twice cursed, you are," he said to Kesh. "None of your aunts or uncles made the least effort to hold you after the death of your parents. Did I ever tell you that? They were eager to take the money and sell you flat, whatever they could get for a boy of twelve. They couldn't even be bothered to pay the temple for a legitimate debt mark, but only that botched tattoo from a back-alley vendor. That scar can never be altered, the mark of their dislike for you. What makes you think they'll want you back?"
"What makes you think I'm going back to them?"
"But you must!" The stout man looked genuinely alarmed. "Every man must cleave to his family and his clan. So the gods have set down."
"Settle the stabling debt," said Kesh to the clerk.
She did not look to Feden for permission. Kesh was a free man, now. She acted at his orders. She wrote; Feden fumed; Kesh wiped his brow, thinking that he ought to be sweating but he was cool, collected, wrung dry. He was free.
As soon as she was done writing, and marks made and seal set, she handed him the accounts book, the mark of his freedom. He tucked it into the lining of a sleeve, offered her a half leya as a tithe, which she took. Then he twisted the bronze slave bracelets off his wrists. Their weight, in his palm, seemed so heavy that he did not comprehend how he had borne it all these years. Deliberately, looking directly at Feden, meeting his gaze, Kesh placed the bracelets on the table. Feden turned away.
It was done.
Kesh left by the customers' door, which he had never once used in all the twelve years he had lived in this house. He did not look back.
" WHERE WE GO?" Tebedir asked as they rolled out into the plaza. The heat made the beasts slow, and Kesh's throat was already parched. "Here, we roast, like fowl in the oven."
One slave trudged across the plaza, wearing sandals to protect his feet against the hot stones. He wasn't carrying anything visible, but his shoulders were bowed nonetheless. Gates were closed and awnings furled along the long porches of the clearinghouses. Beyond the flat plain of Merchants' Walk rose the inner city on its rocky bed, buildings pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. Tile roofs and white walls baked; heat shimmered off them. The sun made the air a furnace. Only a wisp of pale cloud floated off above the eastern high plains, where, in the Lending, the grassland herders might have hope of a spatter of cooling rain.
Kesh was sweating, and dizzy. I'm free. But she isn't.
"We'll go now to Crow's Gate Field. I'll pay off the remainder of your contract."
"As agreed, the remainder, it is one hundred, eighty, and seven of leya. As agreed, in addition, my costs to stable at the hiring ground, for five days. There I seek hire for journey back to empire."
"That's right," said Kesh absently, because his thoughts were already plunging ahead. "I'll ask around and see who is hiring to go south before the end of the year and the rains. There'll be a caravan south within the week, I would wager. There's a particular chit I can see you get, so merchants know you're an honest and loyal hire. I can never thank you enough for standing beside me at Dast Korumbos…"
Tebedir nodded. "The Shining One rewards his faithful worshipers. Do not despair unless your heart is dishonest. Do not despair unless you have broken the vows you make in the name of the King of King and Lord of Lords."
Kesh barely heard him. Whatever calm had sustained him in Feden's house evaporated out here under the sun. His ears roared with the tumult inside him; sweat dripped from his fingers as his heart raced. Do not despair. He had stumbled onto the two Mariha girls in a frontier town and purchased them for a desperately cheap price, and for a while he had played the numbers in his head: Should he hire a drover and two donkeys to convey them with the other, smaller goods? Should he let them walk the entire months-long road to the Hundred, carrying the chests themselves, knowing that the journey might kill them but that he would save coin? Alone, they could not gain him what he wished, and indeed, they had brought him a greater profit than he had expected, enough to more than cover the expense of hiring a driver and wagon for the long haul once he had stumbled upon the treasure. They had enabled him to travel in what was, for him, relative comfort with his chests of carefully chosen luxury goods.
He had made his choices. He had bought his own freedom.
That night he slept on the hiring ground, under the wagon, with his strings of leya tucked against his chest.
In the morning, he bespoke a pair of bearers and their covered litter, nothing fancy but its cloth walls opaque and tied tight. Once he concluded his business and his contract with Tebedir and paid him the bonus he had promised, he had cleared all of his debts.
Only one thing remained: It was time to cast his last and most desperate throw.
27
The path out to the village of Dast Olo led along a raised stone causeway that ran first through grain fields, then through the pond-like dari fields, and finally into the tangle of reed flats and minnow channels that marked the edge of the navigable delta waters. Kesh walked briskly, but for all his travels he had trouble keeping pace with the two bearers who carried the curtained litter.