As soon as I recovered—and rest and food, though the food was in woefully short supply by now, were all I needed—I went back to the schoolroom and took up my duties with Everra as if I'd never been away.
When in August I was called to another civic work crew, Everra was so distressed that he went to the Father and protested. He came back to me and said, "The House of Arca is blessed indeed, Gavir. It cares for its children even in the days of war and famine. The Father explained to me that you won't be under Haster's command, nor live in that barrack. The men you'll work with are all educated slaves. The task is to move the sacred prophecies and annals of the Ancients from the old repository under the west wall to the vaults of the Shrine of the Forefathers, where they'll be safe from fire and water and can be hidden in case of invasion. The College of Priests of the Shrine needs literate and intelligent slaves for the task, which must be done with due precaution and in accordance with the rituals of the Ancestors. It will take care, but will not be heavy work. It is an honor to our House that you've been chosen." He clearly took it as an honor to himself, too, and was, I think, a little envious of me, longing to see those ancient documents with his own eyes.
I was glad enough to quit my schoolroom duties for a while, though apprehensive, especially about food. By now we all thought all the time about food. Arcamand had no hoarded supplies, and the city supply of everything but grain was now almost exhausted. The Father and Mother set an example of patient abstinence, and by rigorous supervision of the kitchens whatever food the household got was at least shared out with justice among us all. I dreaded going back to favoritism, unfairness, and bitter rivalry over rations, the cheating and sharp dealing of the black marketeers. But I went as ordered to the slave quarters of the College of the Priests of the Forefathers' Shrine, and when the first meal I had there was a rich chicken broth with succulent barley, such as I hadn't tasted for months, I knew I was in luck.
The half dozen slaves of the Shrine were all older men, so the priests had asked for assistants from Houses such as Arca, Erre, and Bel, where some slaves were educated. Mimen, Everra's friend from Belmand, was there, and I was very glad to see him. He had brought three younger men with him, his students. The men from Erremand, both in their forties, were called Tadder and Ienter. I had heard Everra speak of them with grudging, suspicious admiration—"very learned men," he said, "very learned, but not sound, not sound." I knew he meant they read "the moderns"—books written in the last century or two. I was right. When we went to the dormitory that night—and it was crowded, with thirteen men sleeping where six had slept, but warm, well lighted, and as comfortable as one could hope—the first thing I saw by one bedside was a copy of the Cosmologies of Orrec Caspro. Everra had spoken of this poem once or twice the way a doctor might speak of a ghastly, deadly, infectious disease.
Tadder, a dry-faced man with keen eyes under heavy black brows, saw my glance. "Have you read it, laddy?" he asked. He had a northern accent, and some unfamiliar turns of speech.
I shook my head.
"Take it then," said Tadder, and held it out to me. "Have a look!"
I didn't know what to do. I couldn't help glancing at Mimen, as if he might report me to Everra for even looking at the book.
"Everra hasn't let him read the new poets, you know," Mimen said to Tadder. "Or anybody since Trudec. Is Caspro a bit much to start with?"
"Not at all," said the northerner. "What are you, laddy, fourteen, fifteen? The very age to follow Caspro to glory. Here, d'ye know his song, then?" And he sang out in a fine, pure tenor, "As in the dark of winter night—'"
"Hey, hey there," said the other man from Erremand, Ienter, "don't get us in hot water the first night, brother!"
"Is that Caspro's hymn, then?" asked the priests' senior slave, a soft-spoken old man with an unassuming air of authority. "I have never heard