“I see.” Penhari ran the tip of her finger round the cup’s rim. “The Kassian Kurai and the maids-has anything been done with the bodies?”
Desantro looked uneasy. “Nobody tells me aught… I hear… I don’t know if it’s a true thing…”
“Tell me.”
“They say General left word Chambermassal sh’d kick out the house every one he knows…” Her eyelids fluttered. “That… that had the Honey taint on them. Clean house, he, say. Sweep the… the bodies into street, shut door on them. Anyone wants them can come get them. Chambermassal he send word Ombbura Beehouse to clean street, din’t want dogs and disease he say. While you sleeping, I did floor.” She spread her hands, shook her head. “Not much good at cleaning. Did m’ best.”
“It doesn’t matter, Desantro. May your gods bless you for what you tried. Take the tray and help me down. I’ll sleep a while now.”
Chapter 15. The Purge Goes On And On
Faharmoy walked down Verakay Lane, angry eyes sweeping from side to side.
He stopped across the Lane from Utsapisha and her frycart, glared at her for several moments, then swung round and strode off.
The old woman wrinkled her nose, lifted her veil, and spat.
“Zazil” Her granddaughter looked nervously around, wiped her sleeve across her face.
“Twiddlepoop. Couldn’t find his ass if he had the runs.”
“Za-zeeee.’
‘
Most of Utsapisha’s vast family had packed up and moved across the Bridge, but she grumbled she was too old to shift her bones from the house her children and grandchildren had been born in and too mean to be driven out. Besides, who’d pick on a pore ol’ woman like her? She tied a rag across her face in a mockery of a veil, had a granddaughter sew huge floppy sleeves on her shirts and went marching along the lane swinging her arms and body like some superannuated clown. Giggling but nervous, one or another of her granddaughters followed her, pushing the frycart with the chair tilted over the oilpot.
Utsapisha enjoyed these processions enormously, bowed all round when she reached the deserted shop where she had established her claim on the boardwalk, settled herself with a whoomph and a wiggle and after that traded insults with her customers. She was an institution on Verakay, selling pies and kebabs to anyone who had the money, mostly the sailors that ambled the lane hunting for whores, drink, and food.
› › ‹ ‹
chu ma vay yal chu ma vay yal
The noise whispered down the Lane along with the ominous rumble of a STRIKER band’s tramping feet.
Utsapisha lifted her head, swore vigorously. “You better duck,” she told the sailor who’d just handed her a copper shabo for a pie. She tucked the coin into a sleeve pocket, jerked a long bony thumb at the bend in the land. “Hear that? Them jeggers is trouble.”
chu ma vay yal chu ma vay yal
The short blond sailor licked juice off the side of his hand, shrugged. “None a my business.”
“Up to you, bavv. They feel like trompin you, they gon’ do it.”
“Huh?”
“Might. Don’ like fora-ners, that’s you, bavv.”
He blinked at her, listened to the SOUND getting louder, coming closer. “Ahsan, Ma.” He flipped a finger at his brow and went trotting off, vanishing down the wynd between a tenement and the boarded-up shop behind her.
“Pemmie, scoot. Get home. Now.”
“Zazi, you…”
“I mean it. Move y’ tail, hon. Or I’m gon’ whip it off when I get ahold a you.”
CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL Pemmie scowled unhappily at her grandmother, then at the bend in the lane. “Vema, vema, but you take care, you hear?”
“Scat.”
Pemmie walked away, dragging her feet and repeatedly looking over her shoulder.
Utsapisha kept an eye on her until she turned into a wynd, then settled herself more solidly in her chair, smoothed the rag of veil over her broad face.
CHU MA VAY YAL CM MA VAY YAL The STRIKER band came stomping and chanting around the bend, the Prophet a pace in front of them.
Faharmoy stopped when he came even with Utsapisha, stood in the center of the lane staring at her. “Woman,” he called. “Come here.”
Utsapisha sniffed, but she’d lived long enough to learn a little prudence. She bowed her head, tucked her hands in her sleeves, spoke as sweetly and softly as she could manage. “I am an old woman, heshim Prophet, walk-in’s hard, standin’s worse.” She didn’t move.
He grunted and crossed the Lane to her. “Why do you expose yourself in a public street, woman? Why are you not in your house where you belong?”
Jeggin Mal, what the Jann you know about how folks live? Utsapisha sucked in a breath, wriggled her nose under the veil. “I’m a poor woman, heshim. I earn my living makin’ food for hungry folk. It’s honest work.”
“It is not a woman’s place to earn.”
“I am a widow, heshim Prophet. What am I to do, starve?”
“A contumacious and contentious woman. I have seen you fouling your mouth and your sex by the filth that comes out of you. Obscene and froward, forcing your daughters before the eyes of drunkards and foreigners.”
Utsapisha shivered, frightened; he was glaring at her, but she didn’t think he really saw her. What he WAS seeing, she didn’t know and didn’t, want to know.
The Prophet gestured and two of the Cheoshim ran forward, started rocking the frycart, splashing her with oil from the pot. She squealed with outrage as she slapped at the smoldering drops, gathered folds of cloth, crushing them between her hands to smother the small fires, yelled as the cart crashed onto its side, spewing oil over the boardwalk, dumping the coals in the firepan over the oil. The walk began to burn about her feet. She struggled to get up-yelled again as another two Cheoshim grabbed her arms, lifted her onto her feet and hurried her out into the Lane.
“The flogging posts,” the Prophet said. “Let her learn the cost of her acts.”
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CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL “This is how you treat you Ma, you jeggin potzheads?” She snorted, tried to wrench her arms free. “You Granma?”
CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL “Hai! Prophet! Be damn to your god for a rat’s ass! You Ma a poxy treez. You Pa got the Itch, been rid by every jeggin Hero in jeezin ro-yal guard…” She went on and on, with every step digging up more invective from a life lived hard and colorfully. The Cheoshim holding her tightened their grip and began breathing heavily, but the Prophet walked in a cell of silence and nothing she said reached him.
CHU MA VAY YAL CHU MA VAY YAL
In the center of the Sok Circle, with the few merchants left and fewer buyers watching silently, the Cheoshim tied her hands to the iron circle of the flogging post, wound another rope about her waist and a third about her ankles. They cut open the back of her blouse and flogged her with the five-tailed flagellum. The Cheoshim doing it would have cut the flesh from her bones because she yelled curses on him with every blow, her voice a hoarse whisper at the last of them, but Faharmoy stopped him at seven. “Enough,” he said. “More would be the death of her. We must always give time for repentance.” He walked around so Utsapisha could see him. “Old woman, contemplate your sins and repent your frowardness. Think on the loving care of the Iron Father.”
He snapped thumb against finger and went pacing off, the STRIKER band following him.