scout the gate or why, when he learned that it was the 160th day of the Descending Sun, he approached the inspector.
“The boy and me want to work, great one,” he said, meeting Bukke’s eyes, putting Oelus’s assumptions to their hardest test.
Bukke seized Pavek’s arm, giving it a brutal wrench. Pavek dropped to his knees. “Big, strong man like you—why haven’t I seen you before? Why don’t I know your name? Don’t you know what happens to runaways, scum?”
“No runaway, great one—just down on my luck, a bit. Heard you could always get work with a strong back loading and unloading at the gates. That’s all, great one.” Pavek hung his head ’til his beard brushed his chest and let his fear show as well.
His medallion was stowed in the bolt-hole beside the weapon, nothing else could give away, unless Bukke made an association between the crude, weathered drawing on the wall and the man kneeling in the dust at his feet. Actually, the gate inspectors wouldn’t care whether a man was free, slave, or runaway, so long as he could stand the pace, which on the appropriate market day could be brutal. Bukke gave his arm a final twist, then released it.
“What’s your name, scum?”
“Oelus, great one.” It was a common enough name in Urik.
“Well, Oelus, you’re too late for today, but come back at dawn, and we’ll put you to work.”
He rose slowly to his feet, draping his hands over Zvain’s shoulders, grateful that the boy had kept quiet. The disparity in their sizes and coloring was great.
“My boy, great one? He can run water, great one. I’m a bit down on my luck, great one.”
Bukke laughed coarsely. “More than a bit down, if he’s the best you’ve got, scum. What’s your name, little scum?”
“Inas, great one. Can I run water, great one?” Zvain asked with a quavering voice. “Please—O great one?”
He pinched the narrow shoulders hard; no good could come from overdoing things. Bukke laughed at them both but entered their names on the roll for the morning, Inas at one-quarter wages. Zvain remained docile and obedient until they were out of sight and earshot of the gate, then he kicked Pavek’s ankle and would have punched him in the groin again—if he hadn’t been expecting the move.
Chapter Six
“What’s it going to be today, Pavek? Some more groveling and toe-kissing at the west gate—or are we going to do something worthwhile?”
Pavek had been dreaming about sleep when Zvain’s whine awakened him. He lay still, giving nothing away. Veterans of the templarate orphanage learned to lie still with their eyes closed until other senses had measured the moment.
“Sun’s already up, Pavek. If you don’t hurry, you won’t be the first belly-crawling, toe-kissing, yellow-loving groveler on the west gate sand. Yes, great one; no, great one; kick me again, great one… I thought you were a man, Pavek. Some man. Some forty-gold-piece fugitive. You can’t do anything ’cept lick dust from yellow-scum feet—”
With his eyes closed and his muscles lax from dreaming, Pavek swung futilely at his early morning nemesis. “Quiet, boy!” he snarled, knowing it would serve no purpose.
“That yellow-scum Bukke-o wouldn’t believe me if I told him who you truly were.”
Pavek didn’t need his eyes to see Zvain’s face shrivel into a sour pout.
If the boy were right about that one last point… If neither Bukke nor any other templar could recognize him through his laborer’s sweat and grime… If he could have convinced himself of that, then he could have confided in his young companion.
But Pavek couldn’t, and so he told the boy nothing about his plans and endured the abuse that only youth and innocence could generate.
Zvain wasn’t the most irritating man-child to raise his breaking voice within Urik’s walls. Pavek remembered himself too well for that sweeping judgement. The mul taskmaster at the orphanage had taught him the errors of orneriness with daily demonstrations. His jaw still ached when the wind blew low from the northeast. An urge to teach Zvain the same lesson the same way stiffened the muscles of his right arm.
This time there’d be no missing. He would clamp his hand around that scrawny neck and pound that noisy head into the wall until it had a damn good reason to whine. But he wasn’t cut from the same cloth as the old taskmaster. In his mind’s eye he saw Zvain’s anger, his faith, and his tears.
He couldn’t savor breaking a boy’s skull or his spirit—