clean with sun-dried orange peel.
'Been dorking the dorgi, have you, Shona dear?' said Beggar Grim. 'Got any left for me?'
Usually Shona ignored such foul-mouthed overtures, for she was too much the warrior woman to waste time on disciplining beggars. But today she had a double handful of slob, a surprise meant for one of the unruly dogs of the neighborhood. On Beggar Grim's provocation, she threw it at him.
'Ya!' shrieked Grim, as the filthy slush slap-sloshed into his face.
His claw-scrabble hands tore at the cold effervescence, accelerating its evanishment.
'Why, Hatch my man,' said Shona, challenging that Frangoni warman. 'You left an age ago. Still here? Still waiting?'
'I'm waiting for Polk,' said Hatch, pretending he was still waiting, and doing his best not to look cheated and downcast, for he was unwilling to expose his vulnerabilities to any woman, even one as staunch and trustworthy as Shona.
'The Cash, is it? That criminal! He'd diddle her own mother on the price of her tits and turds. What's he buying?' In quest of an answer, Shona took Hatch's stuffbag, hefted it, looked in it.
'Your chocolate, is it? Why, it's a fortune!'
'Ten days for my wife,' said Hatch, still pretending such good fortune was still on offer.
'Ten days!' said Shona, who knew all about Hatch's wife and her needs. 'Why, this is worth twenty. There's a regular run on chocolate, didn't you know? The Bralsh is buying the stuff at doubles and triples.'
'The Bralsh!' said Hatch. 'What would the Bralsh want with chocolate?'
Said Shona:
'I know what's under my garter belt, but you won't find the Bralsh down there. All I know is the price. Here, I'll pay you with peace, I have some on me.'
'You carry it with you?' said Hatch.
'Can't leave it at home, can I?' said Shona.
Then from a girdling money belt she dug a half dozen opium balls, each encased in white wax and stamped with the vermilion seal of the Official Purveyor of Peace. They made the exchange on the spot.
'Thank you,' said Hatch.
'It's a pleasure to be pleasing the next instructor,' said Shona. 'I wish you good luck for the evening.'
In the evening, Hatch would be returning to the Combat College, for the competitive examinations in which he was currently engaged were about to enter their practical phase. When next he entered the illusion tanks, he would not be able to lose life or singlefighters for the mere purpose of winning experience.
Instead, his career would be on the line; and his family's fortunes were riding on his career.
'The evening!' said Beggar Grim, unabashed and loud as ever now that he had rid himself of the slob thrown by Shona.
'Fighting, is it? I thought as much.'
'No,' said Zoplin. 'Not fighting but whoring. He's meeting fair Shona tonight.'
'Yes,' said Shona. 'We're interrogating dogs to see which one has the honor of your parentage.'
Then she mocked a kick in Zoplin's direction, so good in her acting that Hatch winced in anticipation of impact. But blind beggar Zoplin never stirred, and the kick fell short, and Shona winked at Hatch and set off for home, taking the chocolate and leaving the Frangoni in the possession of his opium.
'Oh, Shona!' said Hatch, calling her back.
'Yes?' said Shona, turning to see Hatch standing in the road with a knife in his hand.
'Could you give this to Dog Java's mother?' said Hatch. 'Dog lives near you, doesn't he?'
'Yes,' said Shona, accepting the weapon. 'That's no problem.
I'll pass it on.'
'But not to Dog,' said Hatch. 'Give it to his mother. Tell her I'm worried about her son. He's – I think he's in some kind of trouble.'
'I'll talk to him, then,' said Shona. 'If I can find him.
He's often sleeping away from home these days, though I've no idea where.'
With that, Shona again set off down Scuffling Road, which led north from the lockway, passing through the commercial center of Actus Dorum and finishing at Jara Marg, the square in which the Grand Arena stood. Shona did not dare the full length of the road, but instead took the first turn to the right and headed east along Zambuk Street.
Hatch watched her till she took that turn, and a long watch it was, but he found himself unready to be moving. He wished the moment could be perpetuated to forever – wished that the harshness of the future could be indefinitely deferred and he left in peace with the beggars. Whom he envied.
Then he sighed.
Shona was gone from sight: and it was time to be going.
'So you'll be on your way now,' said Grim, catching that sigh and divining its import.
'It'd take good gold in payment to keep me here,' said Hatch, who was not yet through with his appointments, for he was scheduled to meet with Sesno Felvus, the ethnarch of the Frangoni of Dalar ken Halvar.
'Gold I have not,' said Grim. 'But I do have a question.'
'Speak,' said Hatch.
'Is it true – '
'True!' said Master Zoplin. 'What's he wanting with truth? A good lie is half the price and three times as worthy.'
'Is it true,' said Lord X'dex, 'that stars become iron in their burning? As much I have said, and I think it a truth.'
'That much is true,' agreed Hatch, who had entirely shed his earlier impatience now that he was in possession of opium, and who still found himself in no great hurry to go to the temple and confront the continuation of his own crisis. 'Iron, sand, dust and bone, the matter of each was made in a star. Grim – your question.'
'Is it true,' said Grim, 'that the Way speaks of brotherhood.'
'The Way?' said Hatch, enjoying the luxury of these moments of folly, these moments of uncommitted idleness stolen out of the day of his commitments. 'I know of no Way.'
'He knows only the Wheel,' said Zoplin. 'Food to be turd then turd to be food, and man born of each and to each returned in turn.'
'Hush down, maggot-bane,' said Grim, scowling at Zoplin, who caught the sense of the scowl in the words and scowled back in blind response.
'The eater be eaten, the banquet his benefit,' said X'dex. 'A dog at it! Where's my forking stick?'
Bursting to a scream, Lord X'dex punched himself, then bit his knuckles and sucked on the bright red blood which started forth from the ruptured skin.
'I'm sorry,' said Hatch, fearing that X'dex was going to throw one of his fits, 'but I must be gone. I have an appointment at the temple.'
But Grim moved, a very snake in his speed, and was over the dust in a slither, striking to clutch, clutching his grime to the purple of Hatch's robes, pulling so hard on the fabric that Hatch was afraid it would tear at the shoulder.
'Temples, yes,' said Grim, starting to babble, venting saliva in a frenzy free from all his customary humor. 'Temples and teachings. Teachings the Way. Beggars be men, men be no beggars.
Beds, holes, whores and a butchering.'
'What are you on about?' said Hatch roughly.
Despite himself, Hatch was frightened by Grim's garbled desperation, by the violent agony of his clutching, his questioning, his hope.
Hope!
In a beggar, that hope was terrifying.
Yet certainly Grim hoped for something, though Hatch had not yet worked out what it was. Grim hoped for it, lusted for it, and was speaking of it still, though his Pang had grown incoherent in its rupturing, and Hatch could not follow the pacing of it.
'Grim,' said Hatch.
The curtness of the address silenced the beggar's babbling.
