Skeen’s Return

JUST ABOUT EVERYONE WHO TALKS TO ASPIRING WRITERS SAYS SHOW, DON’T TELL; GOOD ENOUGH ADVICE, BUT YOU DON’T WANT TO LOOK ON IT AS HOLY WRIT. AS SKEEN MIGHT SAY, HAVING A RULE IS SUFFICIENT EXCUSE FOR BREAKING IT. NOW AND THEN THOUGH, THERE’S A LOVELY, COMFORTABLE DELIGHT IN CONFORMING TO TRITE OLD RULES; YOU CAN FEEL VIRTUOUS AND ENJOY THE HELL OUT OF YOURSELF AT THE SAME TIME.

Skeen says: Now I do not guarantee the truth of this tale. The man who told it to me was not one to confine himself to thus and so; he’d got a skinful, too, and oiled his throat so the words came sliding out like silky ribbons. Oh, it was glorious to hear and I am far from his equal, but I’ll give it to you nonetheless.

Vitrivin was a snatch artist, so they say, the slickest fox who ever slid a chick away under a guard’s long nose. Some slavers went roaring in, scooped up everything lively enough to walk about and went roaring out again, waiting until they were clear of chasers before they sorted out their catch. That wasn’t Vitrivin’s way. He was a cautious man. He was a careful man. He spied and spied before he went in; he would know the tongue and how folk greeted each other, he would know the proper clothes and the way to wear them. He would know where he could hide and when it was safe to come out. And when it was safe to come out, he would go into a place as a trading man and the things he would sell were tiny sweet machines that could do wonders without half trying and what he would buy was whatever things took his fancy; he bought them mostly because folk would wonder about him if he did not. The treasures he sought were not such trifles, but the folk that swirled about him, laughing and loving, buying and selling, the living treasures. From these, he made his choices and marked his choices with metal burrs smaller than a dinka seed, metal burrs with silent voices that would cry out to the meatmen who followed him and swept the marked ones in the terrible black maw of the meatwagon. He chose the most charming of young children, though not too many of these (children clogged the auction halls). He chose singers, musicians, sculptors, swordsmiths and any other artisans with special gifts, as long as they were young and healthy. Three places he went, no more, then away to his ship to wait the return of the meatwagon and the sleepers stacked inside. Oh, yes, he was a cautious man, a careful man. And tasteful. A businessman who knew his markets and never wasted a snatch.

What did he look like, this excellent and dedicated slave maker? Like everyone and no one, a shadow man, a gray man, a man no man would notice in a crowd of two. His nose sat meekly in the middle of his face. His eyes were eye-colored, neither dull nor sharp. His mouth was neither small nor large, neither pale nor bright. His voice flowed along like stagnant water. He was a dim little shadow flitting past you, not dim enough or odd enough to catch your eye. And after he passed, one-two-a dozen-twenty vanished, swiftly, silently, forever, as if they had never existed. Mothers wept, fathers cursed, lovers searched, but the gone never returned and no trace of them could be found and the emptiness they left behind healed over like any wound. And Vitrivin laid up mountains of sweet gold, but no mountain was high enough to quench his thirst for more, so he took his ship and his meatmen and went out again and again and again, making slaves with no end to the making.

Until he came to a Lostworld that called itself Three-legged Crow. Which is an odd thing to call a world but the Flingers who settled worlds like that, worlds away and away from the empires and the commanderies and the commensalities, away away from the traderoads and the sweeplines, those Flingers were without doubt the oddest folk a sun ever shone on.

He crept up to TLC as was his custom, tucked himself behind one of the five moons and studied the folk below.

Spirals were what he saw where the population was thickest on the ground, ovals where there were fewer folk, the fields spread round in webs. Folk went about in huge wheeled carts pulled by pairs of horned beasts, but a larger web joined the smaller places to the spiral centers, monorails with light slipping along them like silver sparks. The two things didn’t belong together; that sent a little chill crawling up his spine. He thought about leaving and trying elsewhere until he saw the images his spy eyes gathered for him.

The folk of Three-legged Crow were tall and handsome, gold-skinned blonds with eyes as green as the mammoth forests tucked round the fields and villages. They took joy in making things by hand and making each thing a wonder in itself, be it such a simple thing as a waterbowl for one of the small fuzzy beasts they kept as pets. Even the elders were handsome and vigorous. And the children were elfin charmers. His mouth watered at the thought of merchandising a shipload of these Crowmese. He told himself you’re foolish old man, what can these backwoods know-nothings do against you? So he made his preparations and took his ship down. He couldn’t sneak in this time; he was too short and too different and the villages were too small for him fade into, so he was just a wandering trader looking for someone who’d buy his machines and sell him local things he could sell somewhere else. A commonplace little gray man who wouldn’t scare the spookiest child.

He walked away from his ship with his sample cases and started into one of the spiral cities. It was as easy as that. The folk gathered around him, chattering like tuneful birds, bright and beautiful, open and friendly; he was nearly overwhelmed by the wealth of choice about him; he could have taken them all and profited from them so he marked none. Not yet, no, wait until you see more, he said to himself. Around the next corner there will be women more beautiful, there will be artisans more skilled.

In this spiral city on the coast he found a woman who played waterpipes with a poignance that brought tears to his eye-colored eyes. He found children who danced in strange circles whose meaning hovered just beyond his understanding. He found an ivory carver and a clipclap singer and a weaver and five beautiful women ranging from one joyous creature who’d just become a woman to the mother of five children who was radiantly female in so powerful a way that it reached even him though he didn’t like women at all. He marked these and some others and took the monorail inland to a deep woodland village where he marked a pair of twins in their fifth year of life, and two woodcarvers and a viol maker and a blind herbalist who made wonderful perfumes, and three more women all very young, just emerging from their baby fat. All this he did in a single day and in the dark he took the monorail again to a steep walled cleft high in the mountains where miners and metalworkers lived. Tinkle’s Thwart it was called.

He slept on the journey and had bad dreams, dreams of choking, of flying and falling, of endless pursuit by something he never quite saw. He woke in the gray light of dawn as the train slowed for the station at Tinkle’s Thwart. He was sweating and more tired on waking that he was when he sank into that heavy sleep. He was afraid. As he hauled his sample cases onto the station platform and programmed them to walk beside him, he wanted terribly to get back on the train and race to the coast; he wanted to leap into his ship and get away from here. He hesitated too long, the train slipped away; he thought of the heaps and heaps of gold his cargo would bring in and told himself he was a superstitious fool to take dream warnings seriously. They probably were born in something he ate; though he was careful about his food and tested everything before he ate it whenever he was in a strange place, there was always the chance something sly slipped through. Only something I ate, he said to himself. Still, there was an oddness about the way these Crowmese looked at him after they’d been round him a while; their smiles retreated to the tips of their teeth. Ah, well, I am a stranger and they’ve had few of those round here. This has happened to me before. Forget it, old man, you’re not going to be here long enough for that feeling to cause trouble.

Tinkle’s Thwart was one of the oval settlements, a ring of houses and shops, a broad brick roadway, a central common; this was a carefully tended garden with velveteen lawns, clumps of lace trees, splashes of primary colors from the flower beds and a small noisy stream meandering through the middle of it all, singing its way over several short drops. A pleasant place just coming to life, high enough to be cold in the early morning in spite of the bright summer weather. There was a cook shop next to the platform and he ate his breakfast amid a bustle of young Thwarters going to work in the village food fields in a valley lower down; they were catching a last hot meal before the fieldwork began. He paid for his meal with a handful of local coins, then herded his sample cases out of the shop, ignoring the laughter that followed him as the Thwarters noted for the first time the hippity-hoppity progress of the cases on their dozens of short skinny legs and stubby feet.

A tall girl danced a silent circle about him, her hair hanging loose, so pale it was almost white, the ends frizzed and shifting in the slow breeze; she was all length and awkward elasticity, but her too-visible bones had a promise of everlasting elegance. Her eyes held a touch of blue, huge bright eyes that judged him coolly and found him wanting. “Hello,” he said. “Lady, I thank you for your greeting.” He bowed.

Her lips parted in an enigmatic smile, baring small chisel teeth and canines that dropped lower into dagger points. She said nothing but continued to stare at him for a long uncomfortable moment, then she darted away.

He wiped the sweat off his face, promised himself he’d mark her the moment he got a chance; let her learn lessons of humility from better teachers than him. He tucked his kerchief away and stepped onto the bricks of the ringroad, heading for the first of the shops.

He bought and sold, sold and bought, moving slowly along the curve of the oval; the sun rose and shadows shortened and children came from everywhere to dance in rings about him, the rings changing each time he returned to the brick paving. They clapped their hands and chanted magic syllables at him; it was charming and annoying. He managed to ignore them and went patiently from shop to shop. By noon he’d finished two-thirds of the circuit, had tagged a dozen Thwarters and was near perishing of hunger.

He stepped from a silversmith’s shop and stood irresolute, looking about for the nearest eating place. A long line of children wove toward him, dancing hand in hand. They swung about him, closed the circle and chanted:

then they danced a high energy circle about him and chanted again:

the circle whizzed about him a second time and they chanted a third time:

and a third time the circle wheeled, but this time, as soon as the circuit was complete, they broke apart and darted away in a dozen directions like drops of split mercury, high wild silvery giggles bubbling out of them.

One child remained at his side, a young boy, shy and lovely as a faun, his crystalline eyes the pale green frozen into pure ice. Vitrivin knew he should get on with his rounds and finish his tagging, ignoring all this nonsense. Kid games, nothing more, he told himself, forget it. His intuit alarms were throbbing but he ignored those. It was almost done, he was almost on his way back to the ship; his meatmen were out and working by now, he’d soon be gone from this spooky world. He took a step, then turned to gaze down at the boy, a forced smile stretching his lips.

The boy watched him with grave and disconcerting interest.

“What was all that about?” he said.

“Oh, it’s just a game we play,” the boy said.

“Ah, well, that’s fine. What is the purpose of the game?” he said.

“We catching you,” the boy said.

“Oh.” Vitrivin thought about pushing it further, but decided not to. “Where is a good place for the noon meal that’s close by so I won’t waste time?”

“Memo Julso sells sammitches and salads. They good, um um.” The boy rubbed his belly and made a large gesture of licking his lips. He caught Vitrivin’s wrist and tugged. “Down along two steps. You buy me a bratta, huh huh?”

“What would your mum say to that, eh, boy? You shouldn’t take things from strangers.” He spoke with heavy jocularity, a distilled essence of adults talking down to children, adults who had forgotten how to be children, adults who had forgotten childhood so completely they couldn’t remember how to be alive.

“Memo IS ma mum,” the boy said. He grinned at Vitrivin, patted his wrist. “Come, come, one sniff will tell you I’ve said true, even if it is my mum.”

Vitrivin let the boy pull him along into a half-walled garden that opened onto the brick roadway and looked across it at a tree-framed section of lawn and a small tumble of water.

About halfway through his sammitch he heard bells and looked up. That skinny girl was back. She came dancing onto the grass, carrying strings of silver bells that rang when they bumped together, and dropped lightly on the center of the patch of grass, facing west, and began unthreading the bells from their carry cord. He chewed stolidly and watched with greedy interest as she set the bells about her knees.

She lifted the largest, rang it briskly, chanted: An draa po disss tis a a a koo ayyy ye an drup o diss ti yess hem oh hem all a gay.… There was more, much more of that and winding through it the singing of the bells.

The sound itched at him, lovely as it was. He hurried up his chewing and when he finished, wiped his lips with the napkin Memo Julso gave him and put it neatly by his plate. The boy sat off a bit, chewing on his bratta. Vitrivin beckoned him over. “Her,” he said and pointed. “Who is she?”

“Oh, her. She is the Corbi and she’s tolling.”

“It is a strange but charming performance,” he said, with the same heavy artifice he’d used before. He was not certain he should venture further, but a mix of fear and curiosity dissolved his prudence. “Why is the Corbi doing that?”

“Because that’s one of the things Corbis do.”

Before he could ask what tolling was, Memo Julso came out and called her son to her. Vitrivin’s prudence congealed again. He got to his feet, gave the Julso a ponderous bow and a clumsy compliment and before he was half finished, she was smiling and relaxed. The boy leaned against her thigh and put his hand on the hand she laid on his shoulder and then he smiled lazily at Vitrivin, his ice crystal eyes shutting to slits. With a chill in his gut though he didn’t show it, Vitrivin chirked his sample cases into a hasty shuffle and herded them out. The tolling bells and the Corbi’s chant followed him eerily as he went back to his selling rounds.

Children came from nowhere and danced around him.

Over and over they chanted that, over and over till they broke and ran and other children came to dance round and round him.

He continued to ignore them and moved from shop to forge to shop, his gut in a gelid knot. He didn’t hurry, but he didn’t linger either; he no longer tagged anyone, he simply wanted to get out of here and let the meatmen begin their harvest.

Day oh say, sko ah nair—so the children sang.

Air ka par ah Corbi-me, air ka, air ka, tris an dris—so the Corbi sang and mingled magic syllables with the tintinnabulation of her singing silver bells.

He walked slower and slower; his feet seemed to stick to the bricks and pulling them loose took more and more of his energy. His thoughts moved slower and slower, but the chill, driving terror in his gut snapped them loose and the beast that lived within went round and round struggling to escape.

The children danced round and round him, chanting at him.

Somewhere behind him, the Corbi rang her bells, chanting with them.

And he finally understood what they were saying, from the first of the circle chants; he understood what they were doing to him.

His body stopped completely and stood like stone on the bricks. He felt more than saw a shadow pass overhead, heard the whine of the meatwagon. He knew then what the Corbi tolled because the meatmen weren’t due until he left and signaled them. The beast within shouted in fury and frustration, trapped inside stony flesh where no one and nothing could hear him.

The whine groaned down to a subsonic growl. The bells rang louder, the rhythms more jangled, the sound reaching deep and deep, stirring things in him he didn’t want stirred up; he fought but the music was far stronger than him, he was meshed in a web from which he couldn’t break loose. Other voices joined the chant, mature voices, deep and rich. Over these he heard a dull steady shuffle.

The chanting came closer. The bells rang louder. The Corbi danced around where he could see her. Her face and her eyes glowed with a wild and burning light. The beast within that was the real him quivered with a terror like that his victims must have felt, something he’d never expected to know. He was a careful man, he was a cautious man, he was too good at his work. He had fooled a thousand tracers, ten thousand guards; he’d dipped in and out of worlds no other slave maker managed to penetrate and left no proof behind that he’d ever been there; empires had mobilized to catch him and he’d laughed at them. Yet here, now, a lanky half-grown child had trapped him, prepubescent babies had bound him fast. Had done it as easily as if he were a brain-burned phlux head. Children! He would have ground his teeth together if he could have moved his jaw. The beast within raged at the Corbi and she smiled back, glowing with triumph, arms, hands, body moving effortlessly through the sacred dance.

His meatmen tramped around where he could see them. They wore purple paper chains wound about and about them and bowed under the imagined weight of these ephemeral bindings; their jaws bulged as they strained against that weight while the gentle breeze sent paper edges scraping lightly against their arms.

Slave maker, the Corbi sang at him. Slave maker shadow man, the children sang at him. They knew. They all knew. From the seaside spiral to this tiny mountain village, they’d touched and tasted him; when he thought he was fooling them, they were laughing at him for he was the fool.

Corbi danced before him and rang her silver bells; the children wheeled round and round him, chanting, swung round and round the line of meatmen, chanting. The adults of the village made three sparse rings about them all, two rings moving one way, the ring in the center opposing them; they boomed along in their deepest tones, mate and female alike, while several sopranos and high falsettos performed elaborate descants, weaving in and out of the song of Corbi and the children.

Coldness crept up his legs and up his arms, his eyes grew dim and dull, the sounds wheeling about him went far away and when the light was gone out of his eyes and the sound gone out of his ears, the beast within that was him lay down and died.

The adults of Tinkle’s Thwart levered the stone statues from the middle of the road and took them down to the station platform and left them standing there looking away along the slick silvery rail. As the years slid past, new batches of children replaced the paper chains with flower ropes, winding them around and over the gray chalk figures until these finally wore away to shapeless pillars and everyone forgot what they had once been.

A drunken Pallah leaned against her, patted her shoulder; the fumes of the quatsch he was drinking mingled with her ale and made her head swim. “Lu like th tha story. Goo good stuff.” He sniffed juicily, slapped at the bar, his hand hitting it obliquely and sliding. His elbow crashed down and he grunted, the knock on the funnybone breaking through the anesthesia of the quatsch, not enough to hurt, though it did get his attention away from her a while.

A pair of elderly Aggitj nodded and sighed. “Lurvlee,” one managed. “Like Tilimai uss used to tell b b back.…” His voice trailed off; he lowered his head onto the bar and went to sleep. The other continued to nod a while, then brooded at a pool of spilled brandy gradually fuming dry. He cleared his throat, spoke slowly and with great care, his eyes fixed on that splotch. “I know uhhhm I know some un here. Like that slaver st stink. You know un.…” He nudged his sleeping companion, eliciting a breathy snore but no further response; he went on as if he’d got a coherent answer. “Uh huh, you know un, Gresh Gresh Gredgi. Stinkin snot. Hah! Nochsyon Tod. Got our Hixli. Li like to have that Corbi h h here, yes I would. Turn ol’ Toad into chal chalk. Hoptoad chalk.” He started giggling. “Chalk Toad. P p pizz ul on im. M melt im in to mud. Dir ty mud. Mud. Mud.” Lost in giggles, he slapped his companion on his back; the other Aggitj struggled upright and joined in though he had no idea what the laughter was about.

Skeen gulped down more ale, coughed and sprayed half of it out again as a rising giggle caught her in the throat.

The Pallah roared with laughter. “Piss on un. Melt un down. Do it, yah, me, I’d do it. Do it. Yah.” He quieted after a while and glowered at the barrels piled up behind the bar. He produced some guttural mutters that finally surfaced into audibility. “… dirty sodding renegade smearing shit on all us Pallahs … somebody gonna get him.…” He clenched his fist about his glass, opened his eyes wide because he’d forgotten he was holding it; he gulped down the quatsch left in it, made a soft gargling sound and slid bonelessly off his stool, curled up on the floor and started snoring.

Skeen blinked down at him, shrugged and banged her glass on the bar, calling for a refill. She turned to the Aggitj. “What uh what happen to what’s his name, urn, Hizli?”

Heavy clank, metal sliding jerkily over wood, acting on her head like a dentist’s drill, worrying her out of a stuffy, nightmare-ridden sleep.

Skeen started to lift her head, lowered it with extreme care as first her stomach then her whole body protested. She cracked gritty eyes enough to register the painfully bright morning light filling the room, snapped them shut and tried to swallow. She was hideously thirsty; her mouth and throat demanded gallons of anything wet, but her stomach felt delicate and stirred with a pre-nausea that was more a warning than an upheaval. There was a stink in the room she didn’t really want to think about. The sounds continued, adding the slosh of water and the scratch-scrutch of a scrub brush. There was something she should remember, but her head wasn’t working too well. So she worked her mouth. Djabo, I’m dry. Gahh, if my mouth smells like it tastes, I could lay out a dreegh. Another clank. Bucket, brush dropped into it. Skritching sound like a finger drawn across a slate. She shuddered. I’m going to have to stop this cruising the bars. Must be something in the ale. She took a long breath, spat it out. Sweet sour stench of vomit. Djabo bless. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and tried to think. Oh, Djabo, Djabo, I am not going to do this again. I am not going to do this again. Not, not … ah, Djabo, once an addictive personality, always … I am not getting into that. Oh, fuck, I haven’t vomited on myself since I was … I’m too old for this.…

The longer she lay breathing in the vomit stink and the harsh fumes of the lye soap someone was using to clean up after her, the worse she felt. She started remembering things she’d done; that didn’t help. On hands and knees, crawling along some street, slapping grumpily and ineffectively at small hands tickling over her body like lice. She didn’t need to check her belt pouch; whatever was in it left in those hands. Feeling her way along walls until she crashed into the night wicket, pounding on it until the porter came out cursing her. He booted her inside, slammed the wicket, put the boot in a couple more times, then went grumbling back to bed. She could remember being dimly surprised as she crawled painfully toward the stairs. He hadn’t raped her; she wasn’t particularly appetizing at the moment, but that hadn’t stopped men before. Angelsin looming large and pale in her chair at the end of the bar. Does she ever move from there? Groaning onto her feet, feeling a stabbing pain somewhere around her ribs. Nausea threatening. Angelsin would kill her if she messed in the taproom. Throw her out, anyway. Lurching up the stairs, falling too many times, cracking her knees, her shins, her elbows, struggling to reach her room before voiding the burden hanging at the end of her throat.

Head threatening to break off and roll away, gasping with the effort, she untangled herself from the blanket and sat up. She clutched at herself, groaned.

Timka raised her head, a cold anger on her face, then she went back to scrubbing the floor.

Skeen smoothed her hands down her body. She was clean, even her hair. Naked but clean. She lifted her head. Her eddersil trousers and tunic were fluttering by the window, the morning breeze whipping out the last of the stink. The hooked rug was rolled up against the wall under the window. Doesn’t look damp, maybe I missed that. She rubbed at her nose, watched Timka scrubbing angrily at the planks, and winced as snatches of last night came back to her, humiliating fragments of memory. Small strong hands wrestling her around, holding her, as she vomited. Angry whispers as Ti stripped off her soiled clothing. Towel’s corner soggy with cold water dragged across her face, the roughness of a mother at the end of her patience with a fractious child. Hefted into bed over a narrow shoulder. Covers pulled up. A sigh. A small hand drawn softly along her face. A door shutting.

Skeen shook off those memories. She’d learned early on that thinking too much about the immediate past guaranteed a sour head to match the sour stomach she already had.

Timka dropped the brush in the bucket, sat on her heels, drew her arm across her face, pushing straggles of hair out of her eyes. She turned her head slowly, her arm still up, the soft black hair falling over it, and scowled at Skeen. “How many more times are you coming back like that?”

Skeen ran her fingers through tangled oily hair and couldn’t remember the last time she’d washed it. “No more,” she said absently. “I’ve decided which one to touch.” She pulled her fingers loose and passed her hand from brow to nape. Timka gazed at her, saying nothing, her skepticism tangible. Skeen took a corner of the blanket and scrubbed it across her eyes. “I know what I’m talking about, Ti.” She dropped the blanket across her knees. “I’ve been here before,” she muttered, went on rather more hastily than she meant, “and I’ve pried myself loose before, it just sneaked up on me this time …” she dropped the blanket across her legs, touched her hair, grimaced, “… for a lot of reasons you don’t want to hear about.” She poked at the blanket, began twisting an edge, her hands working until it threatened to tear. “This fuckin’ stupid world, run your legs off to your crack and get no place. Ahhhh, Tibo, WHY!” She started crying, hiccuping, swaying back and forth, clutching at the blanket, her head aching, her stomach cramping, her mind in confusion saying I don’t do this kind of thing, I don’t do this, I don’t cry, not even when I’m drunk, I used up my tears twenty years ago, I don’t … I don’t.…

Timka sat watching, cool and distant, only half-believing what she saw and heard. She’d seen this remorse too many times before, with Skeen and the Poet both, not crying but near enough; she’d heard both mutter promises it wouldn’t happen again. And it always did. And there were always reasons and the reasons were always different and always meant the same thing. She waited until Skeen’s spasm was over and the lanky woman had control of herself again. “Lipitero and I, we finished the night in with the others. I doubt anyone got much sleep but you.”

Skeen dabbed at her face with the back of her hand. “Sorry, I don’t usually.…” She slid off the bed and dug out clean underthings from the pack hanging from a wall peg. “Enough said on both sides. I got the name locked.” She leaned against the wall, working up the energy to lift her leg. “We can stop marking time and start really working now.” She pulled her underpants on, cursing and wincing as she had to bend to straighten a twist: “Nochsyon Tod the slaver. If you agree, you can start the overflights tomorrow as soon as it’s dark. If there aren’t any strange Min about. Right? Right.” She held out the undershirt and blinked at it, felt about the neck to find the front, then jerked it down over her head. And clutched at her temples. “Dja bo! Never again. Never.…” She opened her eyes and pulled the corners of her mouth down into a painful, inverted grin when she saw Timka’s disbelief. She pushed away from the wall, headed for the window and the rest of her clothes. “Considering the coin I got through last night, today better be a good one.” She unpinned the tunic from the curtain, turned to frown at Timka. “You look tired. Want to catch some sleep? The Boy and I can manage alone for once.” Again the inverted grin. “Though you’re the one that loosens the purse strings.”

Timka got to her feet. “Let me get rid of this slop and wash up. I’ll be down by the time you’ve eaten.”

“You’re saying I’ve got enough already without adding interest? You could be right.”

The House of Nochsyon Tod was a rambling walled compound near the South Cusp of the meniscus that was Lowport. It lay a jump and a half from the river and was the last structure of any note on the Sukkar’s Skak, that broad and busy thoroughfare that arched through the town from north to south. Though it was mostly surrounded by warehouses and traders’ dens deserted come sundown for the livelier center, there was one great advantage to its position. It lay across the Skak from the Armory Guardhouse where the Funor guards and the mercenaries had their barracks. Gathering like fleas about the Armory were taverns and brothels, cookshops and tailors, knife sharpeners, armorers and metalsmiths of assorted skills; indeed, there were dozens of small establishments there to cater to any need the Guards might dream of feeling. Along there the street was never dark or deserted, or even quiet.

The outer walls of Tod’s compound were eight meters tall and proportionately broad, made from field-stone, clay and timbers with a rubble fill; a crumbly sandy plaster was pasted over the outside and whitewashed every month or so, more often in the rainy season. The whitewash flaked off at a touch and even under guttering torchlight, a sentry walking along street or alley could instantly spot the marks of any thief ignorant or stupid enough to go after a man who sent barrels of ale across the Skak every minor feast day and donated prime female slaves at the Spring Sarmot for the entertainment of the Guards.

The walls enclosed a space roughly a square and were, very roughly, a hundred meters to a side—they bulged and buckled like a green plank abandoned to rain and sun. A squat watch tower rose at each of the corners and there was a smaller one by the northside Gate where all but the most favored buyers came to inspect Tod’s stock. Cressets burned all night, set in a ring about each of the towers and the guard on watch there had little to do but keep them burning. One sentry paced along each section of the wall, moving through the towers and along the ramparts from gate to gate. Three men sufficed for this since there were only three gates. By tacit agreement, they reduced their legwork to one circuit each watch, spending the rest of the time in the towers, taking turns sleeping on pallets they kept there or passing around jugs of homebrew. Having set up the system and considering it admirably efficient, Nochsyon Tod left it to run on its own and was at present quite unaware it had long since begun to run down. There was nothing to provide the tension it took to keep watchers alert when they knew full well their master was peacefully asleep.

Weave weave the binding ring,	That the children sang.
About him thrice, three times around.
Slave maker, listen, slave maker hear us.	That the Corbi sang.
Shadow man, shadow man	That the children sang.
Baby eater
I know who you are, gray man, I know why you’re here.
I will trap you, shadow man, I will trick
You, I will so.
Gray man shadow man, I am binding you
Weave weave the binding ring
About him thrice, three times around
I am binding you	That the children sang.
Come to Corbi, come, come	That the Corbi sang.
Come oh come, you tear making men