“They won’t go for Fat Slick,” says one of the blue boys to one with yellow feet and ankles, yellow dots beside his eyes and down his jawline. “Fat’s for the chop, the flop, the drop, the long hang down. Fat’s for the pit, the spit.” And giggles then, hysterical giggles, for there’s scarcely a Murrey in the palace, male or female, who hasn’t been handled by Fat Slick in one way or another, none of them nice.
“Ten on sunset,” breathes a green boy to a blue, the keeper of the last breath pools. Ten derbecki that Old Man Daddy will draw his last breath as the sun falls. “Ten more on sunrise!” Ten derbecki that Fat Slick will draw his last at dawn, on the gibbet. Those in power don’t like Fat Slick. Though Fat Slick is stupid—and ordinarily the priests and hounds would prefer somebody not quite bright—for some reason they’ve taken against him. Whisper says Chimi-ahm himself has taken against him! So, money flows like water, up and down in the Palace, everybody betting. Betting makes it more real, more actual, more sure. Oh, to see either one of them dead! Oh, to see both of them dead in the space of one day!
Others of the Murrey, even some of the High Houm, the aristocracy, consider ways of getting out of Houmfon for a time until things settle down. It isn’t only Old Man Daddy dying, it isn’t only the election, it’s other things too. It’s Chimi-ahm manifesting himself all the time lately, it’s people going to a dabbo-dam and never coming back. So, the Houm think of going off to take care of a sick relative in the country, maybe. Or they think of going down sick themselves, maybe, in some well-fortified back room, and staying in there until well after election: out of sight, out of mind. No point just going to another town. The other towns are no better than Houmfon. If one goes anywhere, one has to get clean away, out into the forests. The only thing sure about Old Man Daddy’s dying is that someone will be set up in his place. So, there’ll be one man going and maybe more than one coming, and the dabbo-dam eating people like chug-nuts, forces coming together like the stones of a mill, and who but the zur-Murrey and the jan-Murrey and ver-Murrey caught between those stones? Blue boys, yellow boys, green boys, no matter, the streets and the altars will run bloody when tenancy changes in the Palace. That’s how the old saying goes. All rou-Murrey when the topman goes. All red-boys when Old Man dies.
Not that the little people don’t run red other times too, whenever the chimi-hounds get aggravated at something!
So, even now, before Old Man Daddy is properly dead, there are people headed upstream or down. It is mostly flatland along the Ti’il, until one gets to the roots of the river where the country rises up into mountains, into forests, into a thousand little knobs and swales and chasms where one can find a scatter of huts set in garden patches, and maybe even a milk animal or two, or a flock of gimmers for meat and hides. Not that the chimi-hounds couldn’t come there; they could and sometimes do; but usually, they don’t bother. Why go so far to kill a few when you can stay in town and knock off dozens?
Downriver is Du-you, the port at the confluence of the Ti’il and the Fohm. Du-you is no good. Chimi-hounds run Du-you, from the docks to the farms along the delta. But along the low banks of the Fohm, east and west, lie miles of reed beds where anyone can disappear. Reappearing is sometimes a problem, what with the blood-birds and the monster chaffers and the gavers that sit on their piled nests of rotting reeds, but those you can look out for. There are islands among the reeds, and people living on the islands. Some of the people have been careful for so long that the chimi-hounds don’t even know they exist.
It is one of these islands the refugee couple almost happens upon, he and she, well into middle age, found lying in sodden exhaustion, surrounded by a circle of patient blood-birds, some little distance from a nameless village. Such places have sentries well out, and the sentries find them.
“Out along the reed canal,” the sentry tells the headman, Ghatoun. “Lying up in the reeds, half-dead.”
They are not half-dead. A quarter, maybe, from being sucked by chaffers and scratched by swamp briar and covered with bites from stingers, cuffer-noses, and swutches, none of which is usually lethal.
“Who are you?” Ghatoun wants to know. He knows already they aren’t chimi-hounds. A chimi-hound wouldn’t have a woman along.
“Latibor Luze,” says he.
“Cafferty Luze,” says she.
Both are gray at the temples and wrinkled a bit around the eyes. Both have open faces and shining, open eyes, like those of children too young to know about Chimi-ahm, though there is something watchful there, as well. And something sad, but then, in Derbeck, that’s the usual thing.
“And where from?”
“Houmfon, most recently,” the man sighs.
Most recently? And where before that? The headman looks Latibor Luze in the eyes and wonders if he really wants to ask.
“From Beanfields before that,” says Latibor softly, giving Ghatoun a straight look. “Some years. And before that, all over. For a long time.” It’s a risk to tell this to Ghatoun, but not a large risk. Ghatoun’s people wouldn’t be out here, living among the reeds, if they were in sympathy with what goes on in Derbeck.
“Chaffer spit,” Ghatoun mutters to himself. He doesn’t want to hear it. Border crossers! Maybe even agitators, maybe with Council Enforcers after them, and if not Council Enforcers, then surely chimi-hounds, eager to kill off nonbelievers. The very kind of thing that was most dangerous!
“Who knows you’re here?”
