She made a gesture to avert malign spirits. 'There are fires, it is true, but I have not seen corpses placed on fire with my own eyes. If it is done, it is being done at night.'
'What of the living?'
'Those able to work I am not allowed to speak to. The weak, ill, and dying are dragged out of the way. Not even under shelter, mind you. Left out in the sun.' She swallowed several times, squeezed shut her eyes, and at length found enough breath to go
on. 'I got some honey water down the throats of three dying ones, enough to make their passage a little sweeter. I bound scrapes and cuts, and fed a strengthening tea to seventeen other children, although what good will come of that? All I have done is allow the poor things to be released to toil again.'
'Better than dying.'
'Is it?'
He bent his head, the sun already hot on his neck. They were entering the season of Furnace Sky, when the heat would become brutal and the suffering more intense.
'Yes, it is,' he said at last. 'We resist by living.'
She touched his hand. 'Thank you, Holy One. I had forgotten.'
Her fatigue was evident in her drooping shoulders and in the creased lines alongside her mouth. 'Never think you have forgotten, because every day you walk out to treat those who are ill is a day you have remembered.'
'Heya!' shouted the soldiers. 'You old folk! Get on, or go home.'
They parted, she to her tasks and he to his. First, he made his way toward the market, pausing by Astarda's Arch. When the streets in either direction lay empty, he slipped into the old nook where, according to temple history, there had once stood an age-blackened statue of Kotaru the Thunderer. Five months ago he had arranged for a new statue to be placed there, crudely carved but with a compartment cunningly concealed in the Thunderer's right palm in the hinge where the god grasped his lightning's spear. He twisted open the compartment and fished out three rations chits, each one with three marks burned into the wood as a message: Nine provision wagons had entered Stone Quarter at dusk last night. There was something else rolling at the base of the hole: three glass beads and a single copper vey. The vey was new; he had no idea how to interpret it.
He held still in the nook as men passed, none glancing his way, then slipped out and fell into step behind them. The market, too, had changed in the last six months. The lack of chatter and laughter always struck him first, and after that the absence of the much-loved smells of oily slip-fry stands and steaming noodle water. The only foodstuffs for sale were dry goods and garden produce being sold out of four permanent stalls guarded by soldiers and presided over by well-fed men who spoke too boisterously.
The other merchants seated cross-legged on blankets or on
stools under canvas awnings were older folk, mostly men but also some elderly aunties and grandmothers. They offered goods for sale, but few were buying. He paced down the lane of ornament sellers, who had combs and ribbons and such luxuries that no one could afford any longer, until he marked a shallow basket heaped with glass beads like those he held cupped in a hand. The woman was, like him, of middle age, with her hair bound in cloth. She had a scar on one cheek and her left arm in a sling.
'I'm selling beads, not buying them, — Holy One,' she said in a pleasant voice.
He pressed the copper vey down beside the three beads.
She bent forward as if to examine the vey. 'Last week,' she murmured, 'a work gang from Stone Quarter was sent out to fell trees. Now we hear the entire gang was pressed onto a barge and sent downriver to Nessumara.'
'Who did you hear this from?'
'One lad jumped into the river and pretended to drown, but he was a strong swimmer. He's in hiding. Clerks made a list of every man in that gang, so if they find him, they'll cleanse him.'
He rose. 'Neh, verea, I can't afford that today. My apologies.'
She lifted a hand in the merchant's gesture of acquiesence. 'Tomorrow, then,' she said in the typical way of the marketplace. 'Go well with the Herald, Holy One.'
There were lines at the four stalls selling rice and nai, and as Nekkar approached the nearest one he watched as an old man made his slow retreat with a covered basket so small it was difficult to believe he was buying for anyone other than himself.
'Ver, if you please, a word,' said Nekkar to the old fellow, but when the man looked at him with a frightened expression, Nekkar waved him on.
Instead, he walked to the head of the line where a woman with her head and torso swathed in a shawl was trying to bargain with the bored merchant.
'Ver, maybe if you would take this bolt of wedding silk in trade-'
'For a tey of rice?'
'One tey?' Her shock registered in her drawn and weary face.
Nekkar stepped up beside her as the silent folk waiting in the lines pretended not to watch. 'A fine piece of wedding silk, verea.' He smiled at the merchant. 'A tey of rice, ver. That would feed me today. This bolt of silk is worth twenty leya, surely.'
'It's worth what I'll pay for it,' retorted the merchant, adding, after a pause, 'Holy One. Rice and nai are expensive. Those who can't afford to buy must wait for their rations chit like everyone else.'
'You have a good supply of provisions today, ver.' Nekkar indicated the sacks of rice and nai piled on wooden pallets. 'Where are you purchasing?'
'Same as always. What's it to you?'
'Some have plenty, while others starve. If you bring those sacks as an offering down to the temple, I'll make sure to distribute them among the compounds.'
'Tss! You'll just sell it yourself and pocket the profit.'
But he faltered as Nekkar caught his gaze and stared him down.
'Think you so, ver? If you think so, say it louder to all these folk waiting here so I can be sure I'm being accused in public, and not in whispers.'
But the man could not speak such a lie out loud. Maybe it was Nekkar's steady gaze, or the simmering anger of people forced to buy at outrageous prices; maybe it was the restless presence of soldiers loaned him by the sergeant in charge, big burly lads recruited from out of town.
'Give the woman twenty tey of rice for the silk, ver, and I'll go on.'
'You'll go on,' said the merchant, rising belligerently, 'because otherwise I'll have these fellows escort you to the well and toss you in.'
The murmur that spilled outward from this threat flowed quickly through the crowd, but quieted when the soldiers spun their staffs, looking for a bit of excitement.
'The gods judge, ver,' replied Nekkar. 'If you cheat others to enrich yourself, then you are already dead.'
Yet words did not feed starving people. He walked with a heavy heart down Lumber Avenue to the rations warehouse on Terta Square, for his morning cup of tea with the sergeant in charge of Stone Quarter. This ritual took place on the porch, in full sight of the square. Laborers were adding on to the barracks yet again, hammering on the roof and sawing planks. A pair of older men hoisted buckets from the public well, while several anxious lads brought ladles of water around for the thirsty workers. In another time — how long ago it seemed now! — the well would have been surrounded by chatting women, and handsome
girls would have commanded the ladles with a smile and a tart word, but they were all gone now, hiding in their compounds.
A young woman wrapped tightly in a best-quality silk taloos brought cups of steaming tea to the sergeant, who slapped her on her well-rounded bottom. Three other young women peeped at him from inside the sergeant's quarters. One he knew by sight, a girl from the masons' courts who had been forced weeping into the sergeant's rooms.
'We had some trouble over in the masons' courts last night, uncle,' said the sergeant, smiling. The day looked good to him, and in truth he was easier to deal with than the last sergeant had been. For one thing, he pretended to a modicum of respect for Nekkar's authority. 'Three young criminals throwing rocks at the patrol. If not reined in, these hotheads will disturb every peaceful night with their violence.'