101 – in which I do not have the farts

I would have been happier to pay Erilas the entirety beforehand, just to get it out of my mattress before Skorsas, ever assiduous in housekeeping, found it while dusting under the bed or the like, but I knew Mana would think I was a hare-brained idiot, probably rightly.

The Mezem was indeed visited by the strong-armed minions of the Ministry of Internal Serenity. They asked far fewer questions of Mezem people than Skorsas had feared, though, having decided the thieves had been from outside, as we’d planned. After training, I slipped out with the first payment, walking past Iska’s desk with three-hundred gold chains in the knapsack under the cloak, and met Erilas in the woods.

He had not actually been sure whether to take us seriously, no surprise; the glistening of gold soon changed his mind. “Oh, bless you, bless you, honoured young barbarian,” he said. “This one—er, curse me, curse me!—I, I should say… shall start on what is necessary right away; let us plan tentatively to do it the 9th… that’s the day after the next fight day. Are you matched?”

I was, for my seventh, but Mana was not. “If you should get killed, I will still take the other honoured fighting barbarian; but I don’t expect you will. I hope you will not get wounded, however, as you’ll be uncomfortable enough as it is.” I hadn’t thought he followed the Mezem; perhaps he did. We agreed to meet next on the evening of the fight-day, to make sure all was in order.

Mana and I paid who we had to. “I’m glad you’re going out often now,” Skorsas said chirpily to me. “It’s not good for your spirits to stay cooped up in your room—you see how you’ve become happier?” Best I not look too happy, though; the crime unsolved and the gold unrecovered, the Director was miserable and wanted everyone else to feel the same, so Iska and the boys all walked with their heads ducked and faces grim.

Still, as I was always taught in the Sinere Circus, the show must go on. In my seventh, I won unscathed; my heart was lighter, knowing this might well be the last time, and perhaps I somehow imparted that to the crowd, for they chalked my opponent to be spared with their white kerchiefs.

That evening, with Erilas, we went over the last details. Had his unchanging eye shown any change, I’d have worried; it hadn’t, but I noticed he took more katzeriks, the smoke wreathing around his tendriled head. Well, who could blame him? I was, in truth, a little nervous myself. It’s because we’re entrusting ourselves to someone else, not doing it ourselves, I thought. Our part would be to stay absolutely still and silent, when both of us were far better at moving.

“Be at Srobas”—another dive—“absolutely unseen, by early afternoon, twelfth bead or so, honourable fighting barbarians; from there I will take you by an invisible way to a certain undertaker’s. Bring the second payment, and—what else do want to take with you, other than what you’re wearing?” Our swords, a knapsack with the remaining gold and one more change of clothes apiece was all we needed, I told him. The other most valuable thing to me was my dictionary, but I wouldn’t need that at home.

“Good; the less the better. The carriage is built but for the last bit, into which we are going to build two blessed young foreigners—oh yes, of course, dovetailed joints, sanded and polished to gleaming, everything. That will take two or three beads, while going through the Gate will be but moments—and you will not be able to make a sound throughout. Make sure you both take a good piss and shen before you’re in. And no farting.”

That night I packed, then lay awake for a long time before I slept, hoping it was not pricing the unborn lamb to be planning our route outside the city. Best, to my mind, was the fastest horses we could buy to the port of Fispur, then find a quick Yeoli merchanter, or better still, a cormarenc, to run us to Erealanai and then upriver. The further away we were by the time they noticed we were missing, the better.

Next morning I spent diligently studying more advanced Arkan with Skorsas and my dictionary. I had a good piss and shen after the noon meal, then went out with cloak and gold-stuffed pack, telling Skorsas not to expect me back before dinner. I’ll be galloping to Fispur by then… I’d write him, Iska and Koree to make a proper goodbye and thank them for everything once I was off Arkan soil. Minis too, though that seemed more dangerous, to him; perhaps I’d sign a false name but refer to something only he and I shared, as I had done writing home.

At Srobas, I didn’t know Erilas at first, though you’d think he’d be unmistakable. His hair was tied back into a neat small club; he wore darkened spectacles that concealed the missing eye (how did he see out through them?) and face-paint hiding his scar.

He led us through a way that was in part sunken alleyways and in part underground tunnels in the bowels of Old Arko, the blocks of the City that had been there the longest, and so were an agglomeration of today’s buildings perched atop layer upon layer of ruins of old ones. Ancient streets run below new, sometimes in the same direction, sometimes different, still open enough in places to allow a man to walk through without crouching.

Here, the water of every eight-day did not much cleanse. Lizards skittered away from the light of our torches; spiders and centipedes crept along dank walls; once when I put my foot out to step, a heavy but fast creature ran over it that I realized later had to have been a rat. If the Earthsphere’s womb were urban, it smelled like this.

We went into the undertaker’s through a cellar door; tendrils of mist came out the moment we opened it, and we were in cold like winter once inside. The corpses were kept down here, on ice fetched from the mountains. “No one who works here will see you, honoured young fighters,” he said. “That’s part of the agreement. Pardon me, stay here, I’ll be back.” We wrapped our cloaks around ourselves tightly, leaned close together, and tried not to smell anything.

When Erilas came back, we almost didn’t know him again; he was all in spotless black satin instead of his usual taupish robe-like garment, with a black and white inverted-pyramid hat that I gathered was the sigil of those Arkans who handle the dead. “Come, come!” He rushed us upstairs; suddenly everything was gloomily elegant, like the house of some melancholy-minded Aitzas, except there was no sign of any particular person living here. Simple-hearted barbarians that we are, we Yeolis are very plain with our funerals and wakes, generally holding them out on the mountain or in the house of the family, since death is part of life anyway; trust Arkans to separate it out, shutting it into a special place.

“Hurry, honoured young barbarians,” Erilas urged in a whisper. The staff had been sent out of the room the vehicle was in; we’d be hidden in it before they returned to finish the work. “In, bless you, in!” It was a splendidly elegant thing, lacquered shining black with gold leaf on each edge and corner and spiraling gold strands around each spoke of its wheels; a shame, when it would only ever have two passengers who’d appreciate the style in which they were being conveyed. It smelled heavily of some flowery scent; they used scented oils, I gathered, to cover any smell of putrefaction there might be.

The floor and the walls a little up from the floor all around alone were bare wood. I stared amazed; we’d fit in that? He just hurried us, so we climbed in and lay down, arranging ourselves and what we had, all crammed together, until we were as flat as possible, my arm around Mana’s neck, our swords by our legs, and the gold, including the second payment, packed in around our feet. A vial appeared in Erilas’s hand, and he quickly dabbed something from it on and around us—the same flowery oil. He’d thought of everything.

“See you outside Arko, honoured young barbarian fighters,” he said with a gleeful gap-toothed grin. While he was wearing the spectacles, I couldn’t see whether his eye smiled too. “You must be still and silent, now.” He laid, and then pushed, a board as big as the floor down over us, shutting us into darkness, then fastened it down with four screws.

It pressed against my chest and thighs; I couldn’t even turn my head straight, or my feet, my nose and toes hitting wood. How would we breathe? As my eyes tuned themselves to the dark, I saw the faintest light; feeling silently with my fingers I felt a tiny draft along the edge: slots, cunningly placed all along. Still, it was stifling hot in a moment, the perfume choking; I hoped my cloak would soak up my sweat enough that we wouldn’t be betrayed by its dripping. Voices other than Erilas’s came into the room; the carriage bobbed and creaked on its springs as more people climbed onto it.

I followed the work as best I could by my ears and my nose, as Mana must be doing as well. Now and then I patted or caressed his shoulder with the slightest of movements, and he answered by doing the same to my knee, or vice-versa. The false floor was bolted in with many more screws, then sanded diligently around the edges for a long while—to match a surface it had already been given, I gathered—then lacquered, then left to dry while other fittings and so forth were attached.

They spoke as they worked, all equal-to-equal, and I gathered that Erilas had told the undertaker, whose name was Sikrias, that he was delivering something forbidden at the behest of a deceased relative—gaining his sympathy to gain his diligence, or for a discount in price? I also noticed that Sikrias called him Korlias, not Erilas, making me wonder which was his real name, if either.

There was silence for a time; then the springs creaked with something heavy being loaded on. Bodies. Four, I gathered. I remembered what Erilas had said about them sometimes seeping; my mouth was already closed.

How like my life, I thought; one foot on the pyre from childhood, and so journeying with the dead. Except that this is Arko, where instead of freeing the body to fly by giving it to flame, they lock it in a tiny box and sink it into the earth. No wonder they imagined that Hayel, the place a soul goes who has been bad in life, is the moment of desperation when you are smothering, stretched out to all eternity and in utter darkness. So here am I, already in my box... It seemed inevitable that next I’d hear clods of earth being thrown onto the wood above my nose, but just then Mana patted me. ‘I don’t know what I would do without you,’ I wanted to tell him.

By my guess, two and a half beads had passed by the time I smelled horses, heard them being hitched on, and then felt the carriage lurch into motion. My neck and ankles yearned to shift, my chest and thighs to not be pressed against and my soul for a katzerik. Erilas—I’d go on knowing him by the first name I’d been given—was driving, as far as I could tell. The faint light brightened, and indoor smells changed to street smells. With the grinding of wheels, creaking of springs, clopping of hooves and jingle of tack, I guessed it was safe to whisper to Mana, “We’re outside.” He signed chalk against my knee.

“I forgot to ask beforehand whether you had the farts,” he whispered. “I’m very relieved to find you don’t.”

“For the love of All-Spirit, Mana-lai Chereda, if you try to make me laugh again I’ll pinch you within a finger-width of your life.”

Towards the Gate, the streets grow steeper, and it was easier to feel the incline lying down than it would have been sitting. It was as if my spirits rose with the land, and in rising, showed to me just how low they had been. I tried my hardest not to forget who I was, but I can feel now that I did some anyway, I thought. The katzerik-yearning faded; they were a thing of Arko after all. And yet, if you can believe it, I knew there were some parts I would miss; Skorsas sprang to mind, as did Minis. I had been here for a little under two moons, but I knew it would all be indelible on my memory for life, much more so than either of my times in Laka.

“Have you been thinking about which way to go, too?” I asked him, and laid my idea out.

“Very similar,” he whispered back. “A cormarenc, I agree, but I don’t even know what they look like; I guess we ask around.”

“I saw them in Brahvniki,” I breathed. “We’ll figure it out… we’d better shut up, now.” The street-noise had faded; the light grew fainter again, and all the sounds became echoing, as if we were in a great hall. We must be in the tunnel of the Great Gate. I decided to count the pairs of guards we passed; it was twenty by the time Erilas said the Arkan word for “whoa,” and we lurched still. Someone asked Erilas for something, papers, I imagined—it was harder to understand because it was one-down—and he obsequiously assented.

Shit, I wanted to say to Mana. One in twenty times is today. About ten paces to our right and ahead was a Mahid kit, the dart-tube and little knife and garrotte-wire and so forth, on a person who stood stock-still.

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