on to the barracks.'
If the sergeant heard Fala's gasp from the shadows, he did not show it by expression or comment.
Nekkar felt his face burn with anger and fear, but he kept his voice calm. 'Fala is from the masons' court. I'd wager you could make those mason clans whose lads are giving you trouble a bargain. Let the girl go back home, and they'll rope in those stone throwers. Keep things quiet there.'
The sergeant scratched the stubble on his head. Like most of the army, he kept his hair trimmed short against lice. 'I'll think on it, but there's been some complaints at the barracks for want of recreation, so I need to shift new hierodules in there.'
For all that Nekkar bound his tongue every gods-rotted day, that he paced out the pattern of his days with deliberate speed so as not to attract unwanted attention, this was too cursed much. 'Hierodules! Hierodules serve the Merciless One of their own will! They are not forced onto men's pallets!'
Anger creased the sergeant's mouth, and he drew the whip he carried from the belt and smacked it so hard against the nearest
pillar that Nekkar flinched. Then the man laughed, and he whistled three short notes, and the girl Fala came hurrying out like a dog called to heel. She crouched, head lowered, shoulders trembling.
'Yes, Master,' she said, the words so soft Nekkar barely heard them. That the sergeant made her address him as slave to master only made it worse.
'You've a hankering to be a hierodule, don't you, lass?' said the sergeant with a grin, gaze flashing to Nekkar.
Hers flashed to the ostiary as well, her eyes black with desperation.
'Look at me!' He pressed the whip against her cheek.
She raised her chin, tears winding down her dark cheeks. 'Yes, ver. I apprenticed to the Witherer, but I always wanted to be a hierodule.'
'Well, then, take your things and get over there, report to the barracks.'
She tried to rise, but her legs would not lift her.
Nekkar rose, cup clenched in his right hand. 'Truly, Sergeant, let the girl go home. She's done enough, surely, served you for three months by my reckoning.'
The sergeant drew his whip along Fala's neck. She was a pretty girl, alas for her in these times; her clan always made the proper offerings; she'd been betrothed to a young man from Flag Quarter, but Nekkar did not know if he still lived.
'Surely I can do that,' said the sergeant with a smile lingering on his arrogant face, 'but I need another girl in the barracks lest my soldiers grow restless. So if you'll send along one of those young novices you keep gated up in the temple, that lass — or lad — can take the place of this one. As soon as you send her, Fala can go home.'
For the space of a breath, for the space of a bell, a day, a year, Nekkar lost sight and hearing, every sensation except the stink of failure and the rotting sweetness of a pain he could not describe or touch but could only taste like vomit on his tongue.
The sergeant laughed heartily, and Nekkar had to squeeze his walking staff with both hands to stop himself from slamming its haft into the man's face. His weak ankle shifted, and he tottered sideways. The poor girl had to steady him.
'Forgive me, Holy One,' she whispered as he swayed.
For what she thought she was apologizing he could not
fathom. As if his distress was her fault! What manner of holy one was he? She had endured for months while he had kept his novices and envoys protected behind the temple walls. And yet how could he throw any one of them to the beasts to be ripped and rended?
'The gods are cursed useless now, aren't they, Holy One?' sneered the sergeant.
Was it true? Had the gods abandoned them? Was this a test?
Neh. It was not true. The people of Toskala were not trapped by the gods' indifference but by human action.
'You speak lightly, Sergeant, because it is not a woman of your clan who will be abused every night by multiple men, none of whom will come to her with the respect and awe due to an acolyte of the Devourer. When Ushara's temples closed their gates to your soldiers, you knew then that the gods did not approve of what you did.'
'And what happened to Ushara's temples, eh? We broke down the gates and took what we wanted. They should not have refused us.'
'What you do is wrong. You know it, and I know it. You present me now with a terrible choice not because you want me to make a choice but because you want me to suffer for having to make the choice. Therefore, it is no choice you offer me. It is not my responsibility, but yours.'
The sergeant's expression had grown tight in a way Nekkar knew presaged danger, but he could not stop speaking. 'Please allow Fala to return to her clan. If the provision wagons have come in, let rations chits be distributed. I ask you, by the agreement made when the army first occupied the city, to remember that the people of Toskala must eat in order to work. Please allow me to take chits representing a fair portion of rice and nai, and I will distribute them to the clans and compounds in Stone Quarter as I've been doing for almost six months now.'
'Get out, before I whip you,' growled the sergeant. 'Fala, get your things and go to the barracks. Neh, leave the silks. You'll not need them there. If you're still here after I've finished my morning meal, I'll whip you.'
'Let her come with me,' said Nekkar.
The whip's snap laid open his cheek.
Fala screamed and stumbled away into the interior. The women who had been watching from within scattered like mice.
Nekkar let the blood drip as he hobbled away, his bad ankle wobbling, while the sergeant shouted angrily at his women and his slaves and his attendants. No whip, no arrow, no spear followed the ostiary to the gate that opened into the courtyard in back, but the cursing, laughing guards refused to let him in to check on the lads imprisoned in the pens.
With such dignity as he could gather, he set off on his usual resting day round, only today he had to tell each compound expecting a rations chit that today there wquld be nothing and that he did not know when the next rations chits would be available. He did not tell them that the sergeant was hoarding all the provisions and handing them out to a few select merchants to sell at inflated prices.
Folk certainly saw his bleeding cheek and marked the whip's slash, but none asked. He was glad of that, because had they asked he would have to tell them the truth: He was whipped because he could not spare a young woman from abuse, a grandfather from' starving, young men from being enslaved to the army or cleansed on the post, rice and nai from being stolen, children from dying in the brickyards.
He walked his round as always. Today, empty-handed.
He returned before the curfew to the temple, and Vassa cleaned the dried blood off the cut but did not ask him how he had come by it. He counted his people, and on this evening every single one came home, all except Kellas. He led the dusk prayers, then sat on his porch as the night bell tolled.
'What humiliations is Fala enduring?' he asked Vassa, who sat cross-legged beside him shaping a basket with her cunning hands. She needed no light to do this work, having woven all her life. If she did not keep her hands busy, she often said, she would go crazy. 'Will Grandfather's spirit pass the gate tonight? What will happen to those sent south?'
'They have come to love cruelty because it feeds them,' she said.
'Must I ask one of mine to go to the barracks and offer herself in place of Fala?'
Her handwork did not cease. 'What makes you think they will honor the bargain? They may just take the other one as well, and then two will suffer.'
'That is a story we tell ourselves. So we can sit here, and eat what we have, and listen to our young ones sleep at peace. Yet if we opened our ears, we would hear nothing but weeping.'
'True, but it doesn't change the truth of what I say,' said Vassa. 'When people see you in the street, they discover their hearts are still strong. Thus they can endure another day.'
Another day. Even another month. For how long before they succumbed to despair and obeyed while telling themselves it was for the best? Yet to voice such thoughts aloud was to start down that terrible path, so he kept
