its center. There were boys already at work in the laundry. They were different from the boys he’d seen above. A few were cruelly formed, with lumpish backs or twisted limbs, or heads too small for their bodies. Some of them were brutes, too large to be boys except that they were. They had dull faces, childish faces, faces expressing their inability to grasp anything beyond the work they were doing. The rest shuffled about with dirty or wet linens clutched in their arms. They seemed incomplete in some manner, like sleepwalkers, ignoring him and Eskie and everyone else. The ones in the pool plunged bedding and tunics into the water, sponged and squeezed and pounded the cloth, and every bit of their minds must have been focused upon the labor. One of the sleepwalkers noticed Eskie and Diverus, and stopped, gaping. His face looked old and wan; the eyes expressed a veiled panic, as if the source of his fear was inaccessible, and the lips were pulled back in a kind of rictus that drew the skin of his face tight across the bones. Diverus didn’t comprehend what the look meant, but he saw in these boys his old life beneath Vijnagar, and what Bogrevil intended for him if he failed in his other duties.
Because of Eskie, he had other duties.
Across the pool a wide barred gate revealed a view of dark water. He circled the pool and walked up to the gate. His fingers curled around the vertical bars. The padlock securing it was nearly as wide as he was—a giant’s padlock stolen from some other world. He pressed his face into the bars to see as much as possible. Where he stood lay at the very bottom of the span, looking out toward the pier of another tower on the far side of it. A boat with a single sail trolled past through the narrow channel, so close that he could make out the weathered features of the single occupant. If he could have gotten outside the gate, he might have jumped from the narrow ledge into the boat. Overhead he could see nothing save for the hint of an arch curving above the far pier. No platforms had been constructed in that space between the spans.
Eskie had come up behind him. He felt her press against him as she put a hand upon his shoulder. “It’s the way out in emergencies, this gate. If we’re raided. Which has only ever happened once or twice, because some of the magistrates are regular customers and they protect us. They don’t think we know—they come in disguise, most clients do—but Bogrevil has an informative network, and he knows things he’s not supposed to. He takes care of himself, which takes care of us.”
He slid his hand down and fingered the keyhole cover on the padlock…a small keyhole for so large a lock.
She must have noticed, for she said, “Far too big for anyone to remove it alone. Some of the boys were street pickers before ending up here, and they surely know their way around locks. That one—even if they can work it, they can’t get out without two more boys to help lift it.”
He glanced back toward the pool.
She looked at the pool, too, seeing what he implied. “Oh, they’re big enough, but they have no wish to leave. The paidika is the only proper home most of them have ever known. Many were horribly treated where they were before. You could never get them to help. In fact, they would probably stop anyone who tried to get out. Some of them sleep down here, in the corners. Like the demon sentinels of Nechron’s underworld, they are.”
He shifted his gaze, met hers with his brow furled.
“What, you’ve never heard the name of the god of the underworld? No. I suppose you wouldn’t have, would you. Who would have taken the time to educate you? They would have considered it time wasted, but I think you’re cleverer than they know, Diverus. You’ll learn everything here—especially now as you’ll be a server rather than a scrub boy.”
He looked out at the water once more before turning away and accompanying Eskie back up to the higher level. The laundry boys watched him leave as though watching him walk out of their memory.
Eskie left him at the dormitorium after assigning him a pad to sleep on. She told him to sleep as long as he could during the day. Once the paidika