Court of Fives (Page 58)

By easing back a step I fade into the shadows along the wall. I have to keep going.

The stable gate is closed and barred. Pressing my ear against it, I listen for the guards but hear nothing.

I crack open the pedestrian door set into the large gates. The guards lean against the porch pillars, dozing, a crock of spicy plum wine open at their feet. They too have partaken of the funeral toasts to a dead lord no one liked or respected.

I creep past them, scarcely breathing until I am out of sight of Garon Palace.

Father told us a hundred times that girls like us must never go out alone at night. When he was gone to the wars I often sneaked home at dusk from Anise’s stable, but I have never in my life been out alone at night. The dregs of funeral feasts spill here and there into the streets. Men reel along in clots of singing and laughter. Three Commoners, wearing the white ribbons of people willing to take coin in exchange for sex, chat about a poetry contest that they plan to attend on the next full moon. A woman pushes past with a cart for selling toasted shrimp. Her bucket is empty, a good night for her, and she is singing an old Commoner song about the young woman who slept with the incarnated moon. She looks unthreatening so I pace along behind her.

My thoughts careen all over everywhere. For once in my life I can only stumble forward into darkness, blinded by a mask that no longer fits. The laws of the gods are good and true. That’s what I was taught. But this is wrong.

The shrimp-seller stops so suddenly that I bump into the cart and leap back with an apology.

She is my mother’s age and as mean-looking as a dog about to do battle with a razorbird. “You mean to steal my coin, you’ll do better to make your move before we get into the warrens.”

My mouth drops open at her ugly tone. “I meant no harm. I’m just out walking.”

“Where do you dwell?” she demands.

“I’m an adversary in training.”

She cuts me off with a rude gesture. “You think if you wear the mask of their speech and their customs they will accept you as one of them, but they never will. Move off my shadow, mule. I don’t want your kind thinking you can shade me.”

I stagger past her and, driven frantic by fear, break into a run even though I know this will draw attention.

The Avenue of Triumphs is scattered with smears of fruit, sprays of vomit and urine, and sweet-smelling wreaths of flowers hanging from the stone statues of the heroes and gods who line the avenue. A night-soil wagon creaks as it trundles down a side street. The eerie lament of a night-chat warbling in a nearby garden heralds the coming dawn. I hurry across the grand Square of the Moon and the Sun. Seen from this side, the temple looks like a fortress, its long windowless wall guarding the City of the Dead.

Eternity Gate stands open to accommodate the last of Ottonor’s mourners.

As fortune has it, a file of soldiers comes walking behind a captain wearing the two-horned mare badge of the Kusom lordly house. Head bowed, I slide into the end of the line of attendants. The gate-wardens grasp ebony-wood staffs that gleam with priestly magic. They let me pass because they think I am with the soldiers, the girl who does their washing.

Lit lamps mark the open tomb on the dark hill. All of Lord Ottonor’s kinsmen and household have spent the night prostrate on the ground outside, watched over by a cohort of wardens, the men who patrol and supervise the City of the Dead. The bricklayers are starting to set out their tools and mortar by lamplight.

As I approach the porch I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get inside.

But it doesn’t matter. Before I reach the steps a tomb-warden lowers a staff to cut me off.

“You are not wearing the badge of Clan Kusom. Who is your master?”

I hesitate, trying to think of an excuse he will believe without having to show my badge.

“Hoping to steal from the offering cups, no doubt! You can tell your lies to the chief warden. Come with me.”

I skip sideways to avoid him, and he whacks me so hard on my left leg with his warden’s staff that I grunt and drop to one knee.

A man grabs me from behind. I brace to rip myself from his grip, but when he speaks his familiar voice makes me pause.

“Jessamy! I told you to wait beside the path.” Junior House Steward Polodos uses the harsh tone of an angry master, although I’ve never heard him speak harshly to our servants. “My pardon, Warden. I wondered where my servant had gone.”

The tomb-warden, seeing a Patron man like himself, returns to his guard duty.

Polodos tugs me away out of the lamplight. My leg throbs.

“Doma Jessamy, what are you doing here?”