“Spears had a hand in that, says the Water,” said the man.
“Pashta sold his soul to the sultanate, the Earth agrees,” replied the woman as Serenthel looked between the two in a failing attempt to keep up with their quickly spoken words and odd phrases. She sighed with a shake of the head. “At least they let Adibe live.”
The man grunted. “If you call being exiled and confined to his sister’s washhouse, living.”
A silversmith living in a washhouse? Serenthel thought it seemed odd but as promising a lead as he may receive. His question as to where this washhouse may be was interrupted by the long bellowing of a horn. A relieved sigh echoed over the line of people as they began picking up their baskets and readying their carts to finally begin moving. Loud, repeating kathunks came next as the massive gate split down the middle, each half pulled into the wall on the left and right by some mechanism Serenthel could not ascertain.
“Merciful Gods,” the man muttered and made his way back to the front of his ox cart. “I might actually get home before dark tonight.”
The woman placed her hand back on Serenthel’s upper arm. “You seem to have a strong back. Mine’s not what it used to be. You help me carry this basket to the Looms, and I’ll show you the way to Adibe.”
Serenthel looked from the woman’s kind but clever eyes then down to the large basket of flax fibers and its shoulder straps. Forfolyn nudged Serenthel’s side, and Serenthel figured it was a fair trade. With a single nod, he accepted her offer then hefted the basket onto his back. It was heavier than it looked, and Forfolyn snorted in amusement as Serenthel stumbled a bit.
The woman held up a hand to cover the smile most likely on her lips. “I am called Farrah, by the way.”
“Serenthel,” he grunted with the weight of the basket before finding his balance. “And this is Forfolyn.” With a deep breath and a gaze up the long line now beginning to flow into the city gate, he bowed as best he could with the basket on his back and held his arm out toward the gate. “Please, lead the way, lady Farrah.”
The woman tittered and managed a halfway decent curtsy before stepping the front to follow the ox cart ahead. As he followed her in the line’s slow march, the basket gave him an understanding as to the term Brokenbacks. Who the Spears were remained a mystery, as too the Earth and the Water, but he looked forward to discovering more about the guilds and whatever surprisingly complex mechanisms must work the gate. He just hoped that wherever Farrah led him would provide some much needed answers instead of more questions.
36
Children of Water and Earth
Another sweltering day in Ka’veshi had chased Naomi off her roof well before noon. She found little solace in the shadows between the buildings, and the heat roiling off the cobblestones along the sunbaked streets threatened to burn her bare feet, calloused as her soles may be. Naomi had no desire to linger long in the streets anyway, and stuck to the shadows after snatching a half-eaten apple tossed from a passing cart. Too late, she discovered on her first bite the reason for the apple’s discard. Worms. She spit out the bite on a gag and dropped the apple back onto the cobblestones. Even her hunger had its limits.
With a disparaged sigh and an inhale of wet, sticky air, she left the streets behind with the intention of returning back to her own alleyway. The roof would be too hot as afternoon hung high overhead, but perhaps Adibe would be up for a game of Ur to help pass the hours and take her mind off her hunger. He’d probably attempt to feed her again, despite her failings lately to get him even the smallest pinch of tobacco for his pipe. Pride made her often decline the old man’s generosity, but her pride, too, had its limits.
Men lingered in doorways as she passed, but they paid her little mind as they spoke in hushed tones about souring trades and delays at the gates. Not a single one snatched for her, even though her crudely hand-drawn mark had long ago been smeared by droplets of sweat rolling down her cheek. The heat had set an uneasy calm among the guilds, a truce drawn due to dying of heat exhaustion being a less honorable fate than dying over unsettled paradunes. Glancing up at the sun between buildings, Naomi wondered if Retgar was attempting to bake the paradunes into some form of permanence, or slowly boil Ka’veshi’s populace into heat-driven madness.
“Not even high summer yet,” complained one woman to another as Naomi entered the Washerwoman’s district. “How am I to stoop over the tubs all day in this heat?”
“A sign of things to come,” the older of the two warned, her aged eyes seeing memories drifting off the hot stones between the heat waves. “Best mind your well. There’ll be a shortage soon.”
“A shortage?” The younger woman fanned herself with a flat wooden paddle used to beat the dirt out of soapy laundry. “The wells haven’t run low in a hundred years.”
“Low?” The old woman shook her head and looked less bothered by the heat than by the younger woman’s ignorance. “Water says the wells will run dry by Haden, if not sooner.”
“Dry? Less than a month from now?” The younger woman fanned herself faster, as if it could ward off such dire news. “Surely, the rains will come, as they do every year.”
The old woman glanced back up at the sky then to Naomi as she attempted to pass
