city proper, the buffer between the Yelen and the racks, licensed trade and underhanded dealing.
Heat radiated from the sand-colored city walls, shimmering the air over the crush of stalls, people and donkeys. Some of the more prestigious stalls were built of driftwood and silk, attached to the walls, but most were hastily arranged awnings on the vast plain of the plaza, some mere blankets laid on the ground.
As the day cooled and a fine dusk breeze sprang up to dry sweaty brows, more people squashed into the plaza until there was hardly a place to put your feet without stepping on something—feet bare or booted, tinkling with Forn’s bells or plain and silent. Trinkets for sale, herbs drying on blankets—a pungent bunch for every ailment from wart-eye to brewer’s droop. A stray orange, a child’s lost toy, or a water-raptor emboldened by hunger.
Van Gast insinuated his way through the heaving crowd and came to the dark entrance to the city—a narrow covered alley filled with traders, beggars, hawkers and guards. The farther in he got, the higher the quality and value of the goods on display, and the more guards.
Finally, the alley’s crowds spat him out into the Godsquare, the pulsing heart of the city full to bursting as the evening’s trading got underway now the heat of the day waned. Surrounded on all sides by temples, filled with not just traders but priests of all the gods. Oku’s men praying for justice, who Van Gast avoided like they were catching, because he’d never been too big a fan of justice. Kyr’s mummers acting out a mercy play, to beg for compassion for those who needed it. Van Gast dropped a couple of copper fish-heads into the bowl. Mercy he was quite fond of, especially when it was directed his way.
He pushed toward the temples and the busiest crush of the square. A glance up at the walls made him stop in his tracks and he let the crowds wash round him as he stared.
Oku’s temple stood like a sentinel over the heaving square. The temple’s façade was blank of ornament, the windows dark and unforgiving, the lines of the building simple and stark. Oku, god of justice and oaths. The Yelen were displaying their brand of justice rather more prominently than they had in the past.
On either side of the arched door at the top of a broad set of steps, the walls were studded with people. Racks on one side, their gaudy clothes clotted with blood, each with one hand nailed to the wall above their head. On the other side Remorians, their bond scars livid in the searing late sunlight, nailed through that scar in each case, hanging from it just enough so their toes touched the steps. All their bells were silent now, except one. Only one was still alive—a Remorian, his copper-bronze skin shiny with sweat, blood running down his arm, over his shoulder, pooling at his feet. He writhed and twisted against the grip of the nail, frothed and foamed at the mouth, spouting incoherent babblings that seemed all too familiar to Van Gast.
He turned away, all the thrill curdling in his stomach like bad wine. In the heart of the city was no place to be right now, and he wouldn’t find what he was looking for at this temple.
He worked his way round the edge of the square, past the bodyguard pen full of big men with bigger swords waiting for someone to come and hire them, for a job, a day, a week. Past stalls selling steaming pastries and tart little oranges or strange dried meats. He approached Herjan’s temple cautiously just as the sun dipped to the horizon out there beyond the walls. Boys hurried round with torches to light lamps in the gathering gloom, making the whole square flicker in dusk-orange and torch-red, turning faces into angular shadows, oddly unreal. As a rule Van Gast loved this time of day in the markets—dim enough that people didn’t see your hand unless they concentrated, light enough that he could see what he was stealing.
Not today though. He let his gaze flick casually over Herjan’s priests standing at the top of the steps, dispensing wisdom, settling disagreements among traders and others who gathered to hear their advice. His little-magics flared, but not enough to have him running, not yet, not when Josie might be so close. Over to the corner where the trader Haban habitually kept his tent—and a secret exit