Hart s Hope Page 0,40

but so tattered and soiled that the color that had once been bright was now a dull brown or grey. There was a dullness in the eyes, too, as if something in Beggarstown took the mind out of the head, as if the people could go through their days without ever quite awakening.

Orem began to pity them, and almost lost his fear, until a man with just such an empty face walked up to a man near Orem and calmly stabbed him deep in the eye with a dagger. His victim fell without a sound, blood pouring up and out of his face onto the road. Orem felt more anguish than fear, for if a man with such a dead face could kill, when the dead could reach out and drag the living into their graves, then what chance had he to hold onto his life here?

The knife stood upright from the victim's eye. On impulse Orem strode to the body and reached down to take the knife; at that same moment a long thin hand also reached to the corpse. For a moment Orem thought someone was challenging him for possession of the weapon, but no; it was an old woman, and she was holding a cup, catching the last of the flowing blood. A witch, then, who could make use even of unearned blood. Orem wondered what sort of filthy magic could be made of found death even as he backed off and let her take what she wanted.

She finished. She looked up and smiled at him. She bent and kissed the knife. For a moment Orem thought not to take it after all; who knew what the kiss might mean? But then he thought better of it. Even a boy trained as a priest could make use of a dagger if need were, and in this place he had no intention of passively submitting to what the walking corpses might decide for him. So he stepped forward again and drew the knife upward, drawing one last bubble from the man's eye. He cleaned the knife, for lack of a better place, on the man's clothing; then he put the knife in his bag.

The woman spoke, her voice hissing like the last breath of a butchered sow. "There are three things in nature that know no moderation, in goodness or in foulness." She cocked her head and waited.

Orem shuddered. He knew the litany, and knew as well that it could not be left incomplete. If she chose to stop and wait, he had to go on for her. "When they are governed by goodness," he said softly, "they are most excellent in virtue."

"The tongue," said the woman. "And a priestly man."

"But when they are corrupted, there is no bottom to stay their hellward plunge." Is that enough, or must I name the third name?

"And a woman." She smiled and nodded wisely at him, as if they had shared something lovely; then she took her cup of cooling blood and carried it away.

Orem felt the knife in his bag like a small fire, burning his skin though it could not touch him directly. What had she meant by making him chant the Ambivalence? Was she warning him to curb his own evil desires? But I have no truly unspeakable desires, he thought, and besides, I'm not a priestly man anymore. Why should I worry about the warnings of a woman already so corrupt as to use found blood? Yet still he shuddered. Still the knife burned his back. Still the knife froze his back until he had walked far enough and thought enough of other things and inwardly sung songs enough that the litany of the three boundless friends and enemies of God fled his mind and he forgot even the knife he carried.

Piss Gate at last. From a distance it looked like Swine Gate and the Hole; close up it had a character all its own. This place did not belong to the permanent residents. It was not silent and despairing. The line was long and jostled rudely, and only the presence of many guards kept quarrels from erupting into fights. As for the guards, they were grim and busy, and six of them were ahorse, patrolling up and down the line. There were no dead looks among the people in the line. They might be angry or stupid or frightened or awestruck or jocular, but they were not dead. Orem recognized himself in many places along the