“Can we just talk?” asked Sam.
“Why?” grunted Phaed.
“The thing is,” said Sam to his father. “The thing is, Dad, I want to talk to you.”
“What do you want to say?” asked Phaed.
“I want to tell you this chaining me up is foolishness. I came here all the way from Hobbs Land, of my own free will, to see you.”
“Well, and now you’re here. Where you should be. Learning what you should have learned long since.”
“Well, you could have come to me, Dad.”
“Why would I have done that? What are women or brats to go running after them. A man can get another woman. A man can get other sons. There’s no trick to it. You’ve done it yourself. That brat Jep was yours.”
“You can get another son, but it wouldn’t be me. You can get another wife, but she wouldn’t be Maire. Surely you’ve remembered Maire, thought of Maire.”
Phaed sniggered. “Well, of course, boy. She’s my wife. Mother of my children. I always think of her as a sample of what a man should try to avoid.”
“Don’t you love her still?”
“I’ve taught you what love is, Sam. Love is the obedience to God. I wanted Maire. That’s a different thing. Men who take the chance of death in the service of the Cause are entitled to have what they want.”
“Dad.”
“Yes …”
“I need you to explain something. About when Maechy died.”
“He died, that’s all.”
“Mam said you didn’t grieve. She said you just cursed the man for not shooting straight.”
The huddled figure shook with laughter “Oh, I grieved, Sam. By the Almighty, I grieved. Our one chance at that bastard from Ahabar, and we missed it. All we managed to do in was one infant child, and him one of us …” He laughed, his jowls jiggling in the half light.
“We? Then they were your men who killed him?”
“My men? Of course they were my men. They’re always my men if they’re men of the Cause. Your mam knew that well enough, that they were my men. …”
Sam turned away, too hardened and weary for tears. Maire had known what Phaed was. When he really came to it, Maire had always known, and there was nothing left here of legends. There was no father-king. No hero. Only what Maire had said was here, stones of hate, heavy, heavy.
“The prophets are leaving Sarby,” Phaed said suddenly. “Going to Cloud, they say. The Awateh needs them, they say.”
Sam swallowed bile. “Did the Awateh send for them?”
Phaed squinted at the sky, his mouth twisted tight. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Nobody knows. I have to go there, find out.”
“Well, if the prophets are going, you can let me loose,” said Sam. “There’ll be no one here to capture me for the Awateh if the prophets are going.”
Phaed had a crafty look. “I’m not sure that’s wise.”
“What about Mugal Pye, and Preu Flandry? Where are they?”
“They haven’t been back since they went lookin’ for your mam.” Phaed chewed his lip and said in a distracted voice, “If they’d found her, they’d have come back to gloat, so I think they never found her. They may be hidin’ out.”
“So let me go. I’ll wait here for you.” And he would. If he could not admire the old man, he could at least forgive him. He was no worse than the others.
“Somebody might know who you are. I’ll leave you here with plenty of food. Until I come back.”
“Before you go, Dad, talk to me.”
“I’ve talked to you until I’ve turned blue, boy. What do you want to know now?”
“Aren’t there any among the Voorstoders who are different? Any of the men, I mean? Aren’t there any who argue against all this whipping and killing?”
“Now and again.”
“Do you ever listen to them?”
“Before we light the fire under ’em, sometimes. A little. For the laugh.”
Sam shook his head, and his father patted his shoulder, almost kindly. “Don’t you understand yet, boy. Once you’ve been given the answers, there’s no questions anymore. Once your father speaks and tells you what God wants, you don’t need to worry about it. That’s the trouble with all you poor fools on Ahabar and Hobbs Land and Phansure. All the time thinking, a servant to your doubts, a slave to your worries. We’re free men, we of Voorstod. Free, don’t you see?”
“What do you want sons for?” Sam whispered.
“To be like us, boy. To be just like us.”
He went away, leaving Sam to lie on his bed and stare at the faceless night.
The day Phaed left was the same day the prophets left, with their wives and children, and it was also the fourth day there had been no blood shed in Sarby, though no one had taken overt notice of that fact. It was almost as though the people of Sarby had agreed not to notice it. From the roof, Sam had noticed there were no dead at the whipping posts, though he didn’t know whether it was true elsewhere in the city as well.
On the eighth day, several Gharm slipped up the stairs in the old building and told Sam they’d been directed by Nils and Pirva to keep an eye on him, which they’d been doing. By now they were pretty sure, so they said, that Phaed wouldn’t return, so it was time to cut him loose. One of them had brought a cutter for the chain. They turned Sam free, suggesting that, since he had no money to take him to Green Hurrah and it was a long hungry walk, they’d heard there was a job available for a temporary manager at a farm east of town.
“No slaves there?” Sam asked, wonderingly.
“No slaves around Sarby. Not anymore.”
“How long?”
They looked at one another, tallying up. “Eight days,” they said, wonder on their faces.
There had been no whippings or bloodshed for all those eight days, said the Gharm,
