had passed through, he nodded at the young women. Their expressions were as tight as drums, and they were weary.
'You're the last of the night watch?' he asked them.
'Yes, Holy One. There come our relief now.'
He heard footsteps behind him. 'Kellas did not return last night?'
'Neh, Holy One. Did you expect him so soon?'
'Neh, of course not.' He couldn't expect Kellas back for two days at least. 'I forgot. I shouldn't have mentioned it.'
They wanted to ask where Kellas had gone but knew better than to inquire. Soldiers might come pounding on the gate with any purpose at all in mind, and the cloaks — should you be so unfortunate as to be forced to stand before one — could eat out your heart.
'Walk safely with the Herald, Holy One,' they murmured.
Herald's staff in hand, he passed under the triple-linteled gate marking Ilu's holy precincts. At this time of day, men like his envoys and novices hurried in small groups to their assigned labor gangs, but otherwise the streets were empty. He checked the closed gates of the compounds. No white ribbons hung from any gate posts this morning, to mark a death inside. That was something.
At each gate he rang the bell and waited for a voice to query. 'What news, Holy One?'
'The reeves still fly. Law Rock is still ours. What news inside?'
They might say, 'All are alive, by the gods' mercy,' or
'Grandfather is refusing to eat so the young ones can have his portion,' or 'My cousin never came back from that gang they sent to fell trees, is there news, Holy One?'
Then he would go on.
Today's guards in Lele Square were too busy sucking on the harsh smoke of rolled-up terig leaf to acknowledge him, but they followed his progress with suspicious gazes as he circled the square to check the ribbons hung on gates. On the Red Clover merchant house hung a pair of ribbons, orange twined with white to mark a sickness, maybe a lung fever or a belly cramping; a single white ribbon marked a death in the adjoining compound, a clan of basket weavers. Otherwise, Lele Square had weathered another night.
An old woman draped in the undyed linen robe worn by Atiratu's mendicants limped along the eastern shadows of the square, leaning heavily on a stick.
One of the soldiers broke off from his companions and headed for her, skirting the public well. 'Heya, old woman.'
She halted to look, absorbing the insult.
'I have an itch on my cock. What do you have to cure it? Cursed girls must be wiping something on me, eh?'
Her gaze took in Nekkar's approach but she turned to answer the impatient soldier. 'Truly, my nephew, if your tool is itching, then you must wash it every day with soap and a tincture of cloud-white oil, and you must not let it enter any woman or man's passage for one full turning of the moon. If it still itches afterward, wait another month.'
'The hells! One full month! It doesn't itch that badly!'
'If you do nothing to rest it now it will turn red and develop sores, and then grow green with the Witherer's fungus. After that, I can't help you.'
He yelped. For one sharp intake of breath, Nekkar thought the man meant to hit an elder, but he pushed brusquely past Nekkar and strode back to his fellows, who were laughing as the man's face darkened with embarrassment.
'Is that true?' Nekkar asked softly, careful not to look after the retreating soldier.
'Greetings of the day, Holy One,' she said.
'Greetings of the day, Holy One. There's a sickness in the Red Clover compound.'
'So have I come. There's a flux over in the masons' court alleys.
Four children and one old uncle are dead. I fear their well has become fouled.' She had a dagger's gaze, her mouth growing thin in an expression more like a stab than a smile. 'As for the other, yes, it is true, except for the Witherer's fungus. The itching won't kill him, but if I can scare him into keeping his wick dry for one month, that's one less man sticking it where it isn't wanted, isn't it? I heard there's baskets for sale in Bell Quarter. Need you some?'
This news was unexpected, come sooner than he'd hoped. Kellas had been smuggled across the city in hopes of getting him up to Law Rock via the same route the southern spy Zubaidit had taken months ago, in a basket up a hidden cliff. Despite the strict curfew and restricted movement between quarters, Toskala's priests and clans and guilds had woven a network of communication across the city, although they dared not risk it often.
'No, not today, but I hope to buy a basket on the first day of Wolf Month, eh? What of you, Geerto?' He ostentatiously rubbed his right shoulder, as though he were asking her for advice.
She grasped his arm. 'You've heard the rumor that the great flight of eagles some days ago, all double-laden, means that Clan Hall has abandoned Justice Square and Law Rock.'
'That's why we sent Kellas, to find out-'
'Ah, of course.' She made him raise his right hand high while she kept a hand cupped over his shoulder. 'Anyway, yesterday the sergeant at Stone Quarter's gate told me the reeves had gone for good and that I could now go out to the brickyards.'
'Eiya!' He dropped his hand. He had never stopped thinking of those three small children lost after Toskala's fall. No matter how often he asked, he was never allowed to go outside the city.
'I laid out five dead ones and sang the prayers of departing over their corpses.'
He forced out the words, although they emerged with a vile taste. 'Is it true they're burning the dead?'
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
