we had received at Arcamand, which were adequate for that life, not for this one. Our gang boss, Cot, was a man whose only qualifications were great strength and indifference to pain. Cot's chief, Haster's assistant for this division of the slaves, was Hoby.
Hoby was the first person I saw when I came to the civic barrack. He had grown powerfully muscular. His head was shaven, which made his likeness to the Father and Torm less apparent. But there was the scar that split his eyebrow, and his old truculent look. I was about to speak to him when he looked at me directly, a stare of contemptuous hatred, and turned away.
He never spoke to me for the two months I lived in the civic barrack. It was he who put me on the rock gang, as we were called. He made my life hard in other ways, which he had the power to do. The other men saw that, and some mistreated me in order to curry favor with Hoby, while others did what they could to protect me from him. They asked me what "the Chief" had against me, and I answered that I didn't know, except that he blamed me for his scar.
Haster demanded that we bank any money we had with him, for there were men in the barrack who'd kill you for a penny if they knew you had it. I hated to part with the ten bronze eagles in the leather purse, Sotur's gift, and the only money of my own I had ever had. Haster was honest, by his lights, keeping a fifth of whatever he held for you, but doling out the rest in small change on demand. There was a thriving black market in food, which I'd known nothing about at Arcamand, and I soon learned where to go to get cracked grain or dried meat to fill my empty belly, and which extortioner gave you the best value for your pennies.
My money gave out before my time was up, and the last half month on the rock gang was the worst. I don't remember it very clearly, partly because hunger and exhaustion put me in a condition where the visions, the rememberings, came on me more and more often, so that sometimes I went from one to another, from the place of the silky blue waters to a stinking bed where I lay gazing up at a roof of dark rock just above my face, then I was standing at a window looking at a white mountain across a shining strait, and then all at once I was back straining to hoist or haul great stones in the summer heat. It was often the fiery sting of Cot's whip on my ribs that brought me back. "Wake up, you staring fool!" he'd shout, and I'd try to understand where I was and what I should be doing, while my workmates cursed me for slacking, letting them down, sometimes putting them in danger. I learned later that Cot had asked Hoby to take me off his crew weeks before. Hoby refused. At last Cot went over his head to Haster, who said, "He's useless, send him home."
When I was released, it took me an hour to cross the city. I had to sit down at every corner and in every square to catch my breath and gather strength and try to push away the rememberings, the voices and strange lights and faces that filled my head. Through the branches of a forest I saw the fountain and the broad facade of Arcamand across the sunlit square. Through the darkness of a reeking cave I crossed the square, and went round to the slaves' door, and knocked. Ennumer opened the door. "We haven't anything to give you," she said sharply. I couldn't speak. She recognised me and burst into tears.
I was taken to the infirmary and put to bed. Old Remen rubbed comfrey salve on my whip cuts and gave me catnip tea; my sister came to hug me, stroke my hair, croon and cry and tease me and sit beside the bed. I remembered how the Mother had come when I was there before, and the memory was so clear it was like the rememberings. I spoke to her, thanking her. "I'm so glad to be home!" I said.
"Of course you are. Now go to sleep," Sallo said in her husky soft voice. "And when you wake up you'll still be