and ordinances immediately began to govern our lives. Strict control of food went into effect: supplies were gathered from all households into the great market warehouses and shared out with ritual punctuality and exactness; hoarders were hanged in the square before the Shrine of the Forefathers. All male citizens over twelve and under eighty years of age were conscripted into defense forces commanded by the city guard. As for slaves, when the siege began, many houses locked up all their male slaves again. The Father of Arcamand merely restricted us to the house and its grounds at night, keeping a strict curfew; and the same policy was soon ordered by the Dictator. Obviously male slaves were needed to do the work of the city, and were worse than useless if shut up like calves being fattened. Bahar decreed that though slaves remained their masters' property, they were also at the disposal of the City of Etra during the emergency. He and the other Senators could order work parties from any house to join the civic workforce in the city barrack. A slave ordered to a work party lived there for the duration of the job, under the command of the veteran General Haster.
I was sent there for the first time in June, about two months into the siege. I was glad to go, to be of use to my city, my people. The schoolroom seemed to me shameful in its peaceable detachment from daily fears and concerns. I longed to get away from the little children and join the men. I was in high spirits, as were most of us at Arcamand and in the city as a whole. We had survived the first shock and terror and found we could live under stern conditions, on a minimum of food, among endless alarms, trapped by an enemy bent on destroying us by sword or fire or starvation. We could not only live, we could live well, in hope and comradeship.
Sallo came to see me the evening before I left for the civic barrack. She was several months pregnant, her eyes bright, her brown skin radiant, almost luminous. Though of course we had received no word of Yaven, she had made up her mind that if he came to any harm she would know it. She was certain that all was well with him. "You remember things," she said to me, smiling, hugging me as we sat side by side on the school bench, as we had when we were children. "You remembered the start of this war, the first raid, didn't you? You saw it. I don't see things. But I know things. And I know I know them. Like Gammy always said: We Marsh people, we have our powers..." She laughed and rocked me sideways, bumping me with her hip.
"Oh, Sal," I said, "did you ever think you'd like to go there, to the Marshes, to see where we came from?"
"No," she said, laughing again. "I just want to be here, with Yaven-dí home, and no siege, and lots to eat! ... But you, maybe they'll let you travel, when the siege is over, when you're a scholar—they'll let you go buy books, like Mimen did, he went to Pagadi, didn't he? You can travel all over the Western Shore, you can go to the Marshes ... And everybody there will have a big nose just like yours." She stroked my nose. "Like storks. My Beaky. You'll see!"
Sotur also came by before I left. I was tongue-tied with her. She put a small leather purse in my hand: "It might be useful. We'll be free soon, Gavir!" she said, smiling.
The freeing of the city meant freedom to all of us in Arcamand, even if we were slaves.
I found a different mood in the civic barrack. I found a very different life there. I soon understood how childishly foolish my eagerness to go there had been. Nothing in my life in Arcamand had prepared me for the heavy work and the brutal life of a civic slave. The gang I was put in had the job of taking down an old storage building and carrying the building stones to the West Gate for use in repairs to the tower and wall. The stones were massive, weighing a half ton or so. The work required skills which nobody in the group had and tools which we had to improvise. We worked from dawn till night. We lived on the same rations