Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 28

I stepped from the portal into a barren courtyard: pounded red dirt surrounded on all sides by buildings of dark stone or red mud-brick. Gray wisps of night lingered in the dim colonnade that marked the east side of the yard, while the rising sun had already heated the broad square. Despite the heat, I crowded together with the other drab, silent bodies, all of us shapeless in our brown tunics and black skirts or baggy trousers.

The guard handed his list to a tall Zhid woman who announced herself to be Kargetha, a supervisor of uncollared servants in the fortress. Kargetha clearly did not relish being saddled with twenty dull, sleepy Drudges, and dispatched us to our duties as quickly as possible. Some were sent to the kitchens, others to the stables or the smithy, herded along by Zhid assistants.

I was the last on the list, and by that time, Kargetha had no subordinates left to show me the way, so with an ungracious poke of a sticklike finger, she pointed me toward a set of worn stone steps on the north side of the courtyard. Down the steps and to the right was a low-ceilinged, windowless room with pallets laid out on the floor-a dormitory where twenty or thirty people could sleep. The room was stifling and smelled as if it had been neither cleaned nor aired since this part of the fortress was built, long before the Catastrophe.

“This is your sleeping place. Leave your things.” I dropped the small bundle that Gernald had provided me next to the grimy pallet Kargetha indicated. Then I followed her back up the steps and across the courtyard toward the long mud-brick building backed up against a high wall. She led me through one of the many open doorways into a crowded, wood-floored room. In the front of the room stood a broad table, piled high with rolls of brown and gray cloth and stacks of flat, cut pieces of the same. Two women dressed like me stood next to the table stitching the pieces into garments. At another table, three more women were hemming a huge square of raw linen. Without any introductions, I was assigned the fourth side of the square. “Do as they do.”

I picked up a needle from those stuck into the wood frame of the table, threaded it with cotton from a large wooden roll, and began to fold the edge and stitch as the others were doing. Kargetha spent the rest of the morning at my shoulder, ripping out stitches that she judged too large or too uneven or too crooked. She was very particular and demonstrated her displeasure by rapping a short stick across my knuckles.

As the morning passed, the sewing room grew hot and stank with the sweat of the women. Kargetha decided she’d seen enough. “You’re slow and incompetent,” she said with a snort. “I don’t know how you’ve survived this long. You’d best improve your skills or you’ll be sent into the desert for hunting practice. Here”-she nudged me toward another of the women-“that’s Zoe. Do as she says.”

Zoe was an older woman with broken yellow teeth and mottled skin. She and the other Drudges wore the faces of brutalized women everywhere: old beyond their years, worn and battered by filth and poor food, eyes holding little intelligence and no hope. Once Kargetha had gone, the women began to talk quietly as they worked, mostly about the heat, and the dullness of the needles, and the coarseness of the thread with which they were expected to do decent work. Unlike the Dar’Nethi slaves, Drudges were permitted to speak without asking permission.

Zoe, being in charge of the group, took it on herself to question me about how I had come to be sent to Zhev’Na. She nodded sagely as I finished my story. “Aye, there’s a deal of us here as have lost a mate or three in the camps.” Zoe pointed her needle at a younger, slack-lipped woman.

“Dia’s whole village was hit and burned for a testing. She was gone to midwife a cousin and come back to her village to find everyone dead, her mate and offspring and all. So it goes.”

“How awful,” I said, horrified. “Your children… all of them?”

The slack-mouthed girl shrugged. “Aye. There was five, six of ‘em… I don’t know. Who ever knows how many there are? I’ll get more if the Worships say it.”

Several of the women had similar stories. No one seemed particularly bothered, even about losing their children. My strong reaction seemed to unsettle them far more than their own horrific tales. I took the warning, and from then on did my best to keep my feelings controlled and my expression like theirs. I let them ask all the questions they wanted, which were not very many, but for the time, I asked no more of my own except about the work.

In the middle of the day a blank-faced girl carried in a tin pail and a cloth bag. Each of us took a wooden bowl from a stack of them in the corner and filled it with dark brown ale from the pail. Then we each took a piece of bread from the bag. In scarcely time enough to cram the bread down, gulp down the tepid ale, and throw the wooden bowl back on the stack, we were back at work. I thought we might stop when the light faded, but lamps were lit, and we sewed for two hours more. By the time Kargetha returned to review our day’s work, my fingers were sore, my feet throbbing, and my eyes blurry. We filled our wooden bowls from a pail of thin soup. I did as the others, swabbing out my bowl with my hunk of bread, and then refilling it with ale from a second pail set by the door. While we ate and drank and stacked our bowls back in the corner, the Zhid woman inspected every piece of our work. Only after she gave her approval were we dismissed to the dormitory.

The women mostly fell on their pallets still dressed, joining others whose snoring rattled the low roof beams like a thunderstorm. There was no outer door to be locked, and in two hours of heavy-eyed observation, no guard or other watcher came to check on us.

One more venture before I slept, I thought. I wanted to get my bearings. I crept between the rows of sleeping women, through the open doorway, and up the steps to the courtyard. The night was cold, the sky hazy with smoke and dust. No stars visible. No moon. A single yellow torch burned in each corner of the yard, allowing a limited view of what lay beyond the enclosing walls.

Directly across the courtyard, to the south as I remembered from the morning light, was the plain building of two stories that held the sewing rooms and other such shops and workrooms. Behind me, above the dormitory, thin, angular towers of dark stonework rose into the night like spikes against the sky, pierced by many tall windows that shone dark blue or green. I judged this massive structure to be the fortress keep, as it extended well beyond the open colonnade that formed the eastern boundary of this courtyard-the Workers’ Court, I’d heard my new home called. The L-shaped keep wrapped around the far corner to my left, forming the eastern boundary of the fortress.

The colonnade separated the workers’ compound from another courtyard, formed by the keep, its eastern wing, and another towered stone building. Facing the keep across the courtyard, that building appeared somewhat less imposing than the keep, but certainly more grand than the workrooms. It also showed a few lights.

To the west-my right as I stood on the dormitory steps-were a series of low brick structures that might be guard barracks, more workshops, or perhaps dormitories for male servants. Something else lay in the dark, even farther beyond, something that smelled foul, like stables poorly maintained.

“What are you doing?”

I whirled about and faced Kargetha’s empty stare. Quickly I dipped my knee and cast down my eyes. “The latrine, your Worship. No one told me where such was to be found.”

“You should have taken care of that earlier. Wandering about in the dark is not permitted.” She pointed to a corner of the courtyard. “You’ll find what you want there. Return to your sleeping room immediately after.”

I dipped my knee again and hurried to the dark corner to which she had directed me. She didn’t come to check that I had obeyed her, which was a great relief. I didn’t want to attract further notice. I hurried back to my pallet, pulled a thread from the hem of my skirt, and laid it carefully under the corner of my bed. One day gone.

Fourteen days. So much to learn. I couldn’t ask everything at once, yet I couldn’t put off my investigations until I was more settled here either.

Our dormitory was indeed part of the keep cellars. The Lords themselves lived above us, so I was told, though none of the women had ever seen them. They had heard all manner of tales about the Lords: that they were gods or giants, or creatures of spirit, rather than flesh. They all agreed that the Lords could read your soul, assuming you had one. The Zhid claimed that Drudges had no souls because we had no “true talents”-no power for sorcery. All of the women believed that it was only right that we serve such powerful masters in whatever way we were commanded. Such was clearly how the world was meant to be, and whatever else was there to do?

I asked Dia, the woman who had been a midwife, if many children lived in Zhev’Na. She looked puzzled. “No breeding is allowed in the fortress. How could there be offspring?”

“I just thought I heard a child’s voice last night. That’s all,” I said. “When Zoe sent me to get the scraps of leather at the tanner’s.”

“Well, children’s voices… that’s different,” said Dia. “I thought you meant new-birthed offspring. There’s child slaves brought in from time to time, though they can’t speak but when they’re told. And sometimes there’s young ones among the Worships”-Worship was the Drudge title for the Zhid-“ones they train to become Worships, too.”

“I thought all the Worships were grown,” I said. “Not many warriors ever came to our camp. Didn’t know Worships could be young ones.”

Dia glanced over her shoulder and gave a shudder. “They’re not nice young ones.”

I dropped the subject, so as not to seem too interested. But on that afternoon I made sure to stand by Zoe while we attacked the mountain of plain brown fabric that was being turned into underdrawers for the Zhid soldiers. “Dia says the Lords breed offspring. Is that true, Zoe? We never heard that in my work camp.”

“Pshaw! Dia would stitch her fingers to a sheet if you didn’t tell her not. The Lords are Worships, and Worships don’t breed.”

“But she said they made a boy that lives here like a prince, so he must be a child of the Lords.”

Zoe wrinkled her pale dirty face and licked her fingers as she threaded her needle. “There is a boy what lives in the Gray House and is favored of the Lords. Gam saw him when she was called to take new towels there. She said he has the mark of the Lords on him, so she was ever so careful and respectful.”

“The mark of the Lords? I don’t know of that. I’m so ignorant, being new here at the fortress.”

Zoe leaned close, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening into desert crags. “The jewels, you know.” She laid her finger on her ear tag. “It means whatever you do or say, the Lords will know it. The boy could kill you with a look if he took a mind to. You go careful if you see the mark of the Lords, Eda.”

Gar’Dena had warned me repeatedly not to reveal myself to Gerick no matter what-not until the signal came. A wise warning, it appeared.

The Gray House was the structure that faced the keep across the courtyard beyond the colonnade. On the fourth night of my stay in Zhev’Na, I decided to venture a bit farther afield and see what I could learn about it.

We had worked a bit later than usual, for Kargetha had been displeased with our day’s stitching and made us rip out half of it and do it over again. By the time my companions fell snoring onto their pallets, the compound was quiet and empty. I waited perhaps an hour, then slipped through the darkness to the colonnade, crossing into the next courtyard by way of the opening closest to the corner next to the keep.

As I stood in the dark corner, shivering in the cold air, I longed for a cloak, longed to be anywhere but this awful place. The courtyard between the Gray House and the keep-the Lords’ Court, the women called it-was much larger than the Workers’ Court, and was paved with large squares of stone that were carved with all manner of devices and symbols. Rather than trees or plants, statues of fantastical birds and beasts were set in ordered rows across the barren enclosure. The entrance to the keep was a columned portico at least six stories in height, flanked by gigantic carvings of warriors and beasts, and lit by great bowls of flame mounted above the portico. The bowl torches were so immense and so high, no servant could possibly reach them to set them alight or refresh their fuel. I shuddered, feeling quite small and alone.

The Gray House that faced this portico across the courtyard was more modestly proportioned, but of the same severe, angular construction. No elaborate entry, but only an iron gate opened onto its interior courtyard. Despite four torches that flanked the Gray House gate, I couldn’t see into the darkness beyond it. Few lights were visible in the house, but I tried to note where they were: ground level, just to the right of the gate, second level, just above the gate, and third level, to the rear.

No guards were anywhere in evidence, and I thought perhaps I’d run quickly across the courtyard and peek through the iron gate of the Gray House. Only my uncertainty as to how to proceed made me hesitate long enough to hear the quiet sneeze not twenty paces from me. Despite the chill of the night, I broke into a sweat, while attempting the difficult task of shrinking further into the shadows without moving at all.

Moments dragged past as I huddled in my dark corner, scarcely daring to breathe. At last a man stepped from the corner of the courtyard at each end of the colonnade, just as two guards emerged from the keep. The four met briefly in the middle of the courtyard. Then, while the two who had been on watch strolled back toward the keep, the other two began a circuit of the dark peripheries of the courtyard. Their path would leave them right at the posts so recently vacated. Heart pounding, I retreated into the workers’ compound before they completed their rounds. I would need to go again to learn how often the guard was changed, and how long it took the two to make the circuit. Tomorrow.

Timing would be critical, yet time was very difficult to estimate in Zhev’Na. There seemed to be no clocks, no bells, no criers, no drumbeats, no time signals at all. The sewing women had no concept of time and no interest in it. What difference would it make, they responded, when I asked how they could tell how long it took them to complete a slave tunic or when it was time to eat. They started work at dawn and ended when Kargetha said they’d done enough. They ate when food was given them and slept until wakened. Yet, someone in the fortress had to know the time. The guards knew when to go on duty, and the kitchen servant arrived at what seemed to be the exact same hour every day. Someone dispatched that servant, so someone had to know. It seemed too precise to be guesswork.

Near the end of my first week, when Kargetha spent the morning teaching us to fashion a new style of legging, I finally came to understand it. Late in the morning, the Zhid woman popped up her head and said, “Blast. The last morning hour has struck, and your log brains have not even begun to comprehend what I require. One hour more, and anyone who’s failed to complete one set will go hungry for the rest of the day. Your stomachs are all you care for.” I watched closely, and even with no external signal, Kargetha knew exactly when an hour had passed. Her head came up. Less than a moment later, the kitchen servant arrived with our midday bread.

The signal was inside the Zhid somehow. We who had no “true talent” were excluded from even so basic an amenity as knowing the time of day. The realization made me inordinately angry.

So, I would have to devise my own way of timekeeping. For half a day I fumbled about, trying various schemes. None were successful until I began to count. After four long days in the sewing room, stitching had become as regular as my pulse. The interval of one stitch became one count.

Once I worked at it a while, I could approximate fifty counts quite accurately. I would begin a row of stitches, then sew without counting-not a simple matter when I was so preoccupied with it-and then count my stitches when I believed I had done fifty. I was always within one or two. It took me two hundred counts to walk to the cistern in the corner of the compound, seventy-five counts to walk from the dormitory to the sewing room. We were allowed six hundred counts to eat. I started estimating longer times, and though I was less accurate at first, by the end of two days I could estimate three thousand counts to within twenty stitches. I called three thousand counts an hour. Then, all I needed was a reference, so sunset became nineteenth hour.

At sunset on my sixth day, I began to count. I ignored the women’s conversation. Our talk was so pointless, so lacking in substance, no one noticed who participated and who did not. We sewed ten thousand stitches more-three hours and a quarter, more or less.

By the time we ate our soup, and the dormitory had been quiet long enough that I felt relatively safe, it had been an hour and a half more. I hurried through the dark colonnade into the Lords’ Court and took up my watch from behind a column. By my reckoning, it was first hour when the guards changed. I waited, stitching in my head until my fingers ached with the intensity of it.

Two hours until the guards changed again, and just under a quarter of an hour for them to walk the periphery of the court. Two hours later, the same. By the third guard change, the edge of the world was a deep vermilion, and I hurried back to the dormitory where the women were stirring.

All day I fought to stay awake. Zoe yelled at me several times, accusing me of slacking. My hands kept falling still, though my bleary eyes were open and my mind was counting stitches.

“I’m sorry, Zoe. Didn’t sleep well. I’ll try harder,” I said.

“If you can’t stay awake, then maybe you’d best do something else. Her Worship Kargetha wants these leggings delivered to the guardroom at the Gray House. You’ll have to do it.”

My spirit quickened with excitement, but I dared not allow it to show. “I’ll try not to be so slow ever again, Zoe. Don’t make me.”

Though one would expect that they would delight in a break of the monotony, my coworkers very much disliked being sent on errands. I didn’t know whether they were afraid of doing something wrong and being punished, or if thinking had just become too difficult.

“You’ll go.”

“If you say so, Zoe.”

“And you’re to speak to the chamberlain. Some draperies have rotted from the sun and must be replaced. He’ll give them to you to bring back here.”

“Yes, Zoe.”

I couldn’t believe my good luck. Though I would do almost anything to set down my needle, I had not dared volunteer for such duty, grumbling like the others when given a mission upstairs to the threadmaker’s or next door to the tannery. I had not yet come up with a scheme to get into the Gray House. Now the opportunity had fallen in my lap.

Zoe told me how to get to the servants’ door at the Gray House and where to find the guardroom-just to the right of the front gate, where I had seen the lights so late. As I walked slowly through the archway to the Lords’ Court with my bundle of leggings, I noted carefully the exact position of the Zhid at the corner watchpost. He looked right through me.

The Gray House was larger inside than one might expect. From the back passage where Zoe had directed me to go, I glimpsed immense, sparsely furnished rooms. All rooms in the house opened onto small courtyards by way of arched doorways, but each courtyard was as dry and barren as the rest of the Zhev’Na. A sterile house.

A dark-eyed slave girl, no more than a bony child, was carrying a basket of linens down the stairs. When I asked her which way to the lower guardroom, she cringed, shook her head, and hurried away. I came upon another slave polishing the tile floor with a rag and asked him the same. The man pointed down a side passage, then angled his hand to the left and held up two fingers. Being a slave, the man was not allowed to speak. Being a Drudge and therefore nothing, I could not give him permission, even by asking a question.

“The second turning to the left?” I asked.

He nodded wearily, then went back to his work. Dreadful scars covered his shoulders. I had never been close enough to a slave to see the collar. The strip of black metal, etched with letters and symbols in brighter metal, extended all the way from collarbone to jaw. I remembered the screams I had heard the night of my arrival, and I swallowed hard.

I delivered the leggings to the guardroom, noting that two guards were awake and two sleeping on pallets in the next room. Keeping my eyes down as I had been taught, I asked the guards where I might find the chamberlain. The Zhid directed me up the stairs.

Halfway up the tight staircase, I heard shouting and the unmistakable clash of weapons from outside, beyond a sheltered balcony that opened off the stair landing. Seeing no one to observe me, I stepped onto the balcony, staying to one side where I would be shielded from view by a column that supported the roof.

In the center of a dusty courtyard, two boys were engaged in a fierce fight, circling, weaving, swords flashing in the sunlight. One boy wore boots and padded leather armor, while the other-taller by a head-was barefoot and wearing only a slave tunic and collar. I caught my breath. The boy in leather was Gerick, his face fierce and shining with sweat as he beat off a quick blow and swiveled to attack. The speed and accuracy of his movements had no relation to the awkward ten-year-old I’d watched at Comigor.

The slave parried, and the two boys circled again. The slave was proud and unafraid, and though his left arm dangled useless and bleeding at his side, he advanced on Gerick with cool and deadly precision. What could a slave hope to accomplish by attacking the favored guest of the Lords?

I backed toward the stair ready to run for help, but a glint of sunlight on steel at the edge of the yard stopped me. A Zhid warrior stood watching from the shadowed corner. Gerick moved to attack again. The Zhid shouted something, and the slave shifted his defensive stance before Gerick struck. Earth and sky! This was practice.

Gerick missed an easy opening, and the Zhid stepped out and stopped the match, castigating Gerick thoroughly. While the warrior made Gerick repeat the required move ten times over, the slave boy walked over to a water barrel by the wall and scooped out a drink, holding his wounded arm tightly. The swordmaster completed his instruction, then stepped back and raised his hand. The boys took their positions, and when the Zhid lowered his hand, they went at it again.

As I watched them close and strike out at each other again, I decided I’d been wrong to judge this combat mere practice. In truth, it was war, both boys the casualties. When the opening came again, Gerick did not miss. His sword caught the slave youth just below the ribs, and a red stain blossomed on the youth’s gray tunic. Gerick stepped back, sword raised. The slave was bent over, his sword arm clasped over his middle.

Yield, I begged silently. Someone end this.

The youth, not more than fifteen or sixteen, straightened, and lifted his sword. He was pale. The two engaged once more, and after only a few moments, Gerick knocked his opponent’s sword away. The slave sank to his knees on the red dirt. Gerick touched the point of his sword to the boy’s neck, then sheathed his weapon and turned his back. He walked over to the water barrel, scooped a dipper of water, and drank deep. The swordmaster talked to Gerick for a while, demonstrating another movement and making him practice it ten or fifteen times. Then the two of them moved off toward a shadowed doorway. The gasping slave knelt in the broiling sun, trying to keep his life from leaking away into the red dirt.

Voices from the lower level of the house set me moving again. I could think of nothing to do for the youth. Any deviation from my orders would see us both dead. Certainly my tears could do nothing for him or others like him, nor could they open Gerick’s eyes to see what lessons his masters were teaching.

Quickly I slipped back onto the landing and hurried up the stairs to the second level of the Gray House. A sideways glance told me that the lights I had seen above the main gate were indeed from another guardroom. Next to it was the storage room where I was to find one Sefaro, the person who ran the household. To my astonishment, Sefaro was a slave.

“You’re the chamberlain?” I asked the slight middle-aged man who appeared to be taking inventory of the pottery, linens, and myriad other items on the shelves that lined the large, windowless storage room.

The slave nodded and gestured to himself, then raised his open palms in inquiry. How were we to do our business if he could not speak?

“I am Eda, a sewing woman. Her Worship Kargetha sent me.”

A smile blossomed on his face, the first I’d seen on any face in Zhev’Na. Setting down his pen and paper, he gestured me to follow. Up another winding stair and through a doorway, we came to an immense set of apartments that covered the entire third level.

The sleeping and sitting areas each opened directly onto a balcony that ran the entire length and width of the house. Filmy beige draperies, hung across the south windows of the sitting room, were showing signs of sun rot. Sefaro brought in tall stools and helped me take them down. When the load of fabric made me wobble, he gave me a hand down from my stool and bowed cheerfully at my thanks.

“I was told to find out how soon we must have them done,” I said.

He considered carefully, then raised three fingers.

“Three days?”

He nodded, and opened his hands as if asking if that was reasonable.

“Three days should be fine,” I said.

He smiled again so kindly that I decided to take a great risk. In a much quieter voice than before, I said, “Are you really in charge of this house?”

He cocked his head, surprised at the question.

“I’m new here,” I said. “Don’t know the ways. Nobody told me that such as you… a slave, that is… could be in charge of anything.”

He chuckled and waved his hand about the room, then settled it on his shoulder as if it weighed like stone. Then his fingers touched his collar, and he shook his head with a rueful smile.

“You bear the responsibilities of the house, but, being a slave, you’ve little power to see them done.”

He agreed readily, his eyes appreciative.

I knelt and began to roll up the rotting draperies, motioning him to kneel beside me. He did so, and began to smooth the wide fabric. With my head bent over the folds, I whispered, “Do your responsibilities include checking on the fencing yard, just in case there is anything that needs to be seen to there-something left that might be damaged?”

He paused for a moment, staring at me, and then ducked his head.

“Then, I think I can finish this task alone and find my way out.”

He laid a hand gently on mine, and then he bolted from the room.

At the same time that I finished rolling the fabric, voices sounded on the stair. Heart racing, I patted the red scarf to make sure it covered all my hair and bowed my head as would be expected.

“I told Calador that I wanted better partners.” It was Gerick. “The younger boys don’t last long enough any more.”

“And what did he say to your request?” Curse the devil forevermore… Darzid.

“That he’d see to it.”

The two walked slowly into the apartment. Weapons clanked and rattled as Gerick tossed his sword belt onto a low bench.

“I’m happy to see how you’re improving. Your enemies will not expect such prowess from one of your age. Don’t concern yourself with slaves. Their lives are to serve you.” Raging inside, appalled as I considered the lasting effects of such vile mentoring on a child, I hefted the unwieldy rolls on my shoulder, dipped my knee, and moved slowly toward the stair. Neither of them gave me a second glance. I could not get back to the servants’ compound fast enough. Six more hours of sewing, then to bed. Another thread in my little bundle under the pallet. Six more days, and we’d have Gerick out of this wretched place.