Pyrebound - 2.5

Chapter 2.5 – Pyrebound
Some time later, Ram walked down another street, feeling every step he’d taken in his new shoes. He was down to three coppers already, after paying for dinner and a few cups of something stronger after to dull the aches of the morning’s beating. There’d been some kind of fish in the dinner, fresh, even if they had overcooked it. He was slightly, pleasantly dizzy, it was a warm evening, and he had almost managed to forget his life. The day had gone well, in spite of everything.

All the same, he kept his hands stuffed firmly in his pockets, one hand wrapped around his three coppers. This street was a long way from South Gate, but even farther from respectability. There were no flowers blooming from the rooftops here, and the place was far from clean. The few other pedestrians out were walking as unsteadily as he was, a few of them singing to themselves. He hadn’t seen a militiaman on patrol for at least five minutes—not a good sign.

When he came across a house with a likely sign—the work was poor, but it looked like a cat’s head wreathed with flowers—he stepped inside. The front half of the first floor was occupied by a pair of rough, low tables with equally shoddy stools. A heavyset lady with no veil sat at the end of one of them, playing a tile game with a pair of still more heavyset men. She glanced up as Ram entered, and said, “Half a copper for the night.” Then she laid down another tile.

“Quarter,” Ram corrected her.

She squinted up at him. “What?”

“Gelibara said a quarter, I’m sure of it,” he said. His memory wasn’t as clear as it had been before dinner, but he knew he had the numbers right. “You always say half first, right? Because you don’t know me. Think I’m new, and I don’t know. But I know. It’s a quarter.” The lady looked somewhat confused. “It’s a quarter, dammit! I know it.”

The innkeeper placidly corrected herself: “A quarter of a copper for the night. And another quarter if you want me to put someone in there with you.”

“Nah, it’s just me,” he assured her as he pulled out a tanbir.

The lady glanced at her men, who were both busily surveying their own tiles and paying no attention to the conversation. Then she looked back up, smiling. “It’s dark dreams tonight, young man. That’s a bad night to sleep alone. I can get you a nice clean bedmate.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ram complained. “First you’re gonna tell me it’s a half, then it’s a quarter, now it’s a half again, plus I’m gonna have to share the bed with some kurtushi punk I don’t even know? What the hell kind of scam are you trying to pull here, lady?”

At that, both men simultaneously set down their tiles and craned their necks to stare at him. The woman buried her face in her hands for a moment, then laid them flat on the table as she enunciated, “A. Nice. Clean. Girl. A girl. Do you want a girl in the bed with you, young man? Do I need to explain myself further?”

“Oh.” Gelibara hadn’t said anything about that. He took a moment—a long moment—to think it over, considering his physical distance from Mother and her opinions, the state of his finances, the condition of the inn, the lingering aches in his ribs, and whether his heart was moved more by wild hope or desperate fear. Nobody here would smell or taste of berries. At last he heard himself say, in a distressingly high-pitched voice, “I’ll sleep alone.”

Whereupon she grunted, took his copper, and snipped off an exact quarter as he watched her closely. Lifting herself from her game with a groan, she led him up two flights of stairs and into a small room, one of four on the floor. It contained a bedroll, a marginally clean chamber pot, a stool of the same remarkably poor craftsmanship as those around the tables below, and the stub of a candle in a rusting iron holder. Ram saw no way of lighting the candle, but the woman pulled the curtain shut behind him as he opened his mouth to ask her about it. Her footsteps thumped back down the stairs.

With nothing else to do, he lowered himself onto the bedroll. There were probably bugs in it. Nothing to be done about that, either. He entertained himself by staring up at the ceiling and watching it grow gradually darker. It was nearly black when he heard the first squeals and laughs from the room above—somebody had paid half a copper. But his ribs and head still hurt, now that the drink was wearing off, and he didn’t need anybody else in the room with his money once he fell asleep. He stuffed his cash in his pack and his pack under his head, turned over, and drifted off.

The night was as hard as ever. He woke sobbing in the small hours, with no clear memory of why. The most prominent figure in the night’s terrors had been a laughing girl with thick brown hair and a bloody knife. Mother and Father had been in it too, somehow, and Mana dancing with her hands aflame. There might have been reshki, too, or Kamenrag. There were so many things to be frightened of.

Now that he was awake, he heard sobbing from the room above, too, a girl’s, mixed with low male grumbles that slowly rose to threats, then shouts, and finally a great crashing noise, punctuated by screams and urgent footsteps on the stairs. It seemed that it was, in fact, better to sleep alone on the night of dark dreams.

When morning came, he felt more tired than he had when he lay down the night before. That was normal; it was white day. You didn’t live on white day, you just kept moving and waited for it to be over. He started by going through his pack and counting his copper once again. Nothing stolen, and he’d only been bitten in three or four different places. Which made now a great time to leave, before anything worse happened.

The white sun was still rising in the east, as cold and small as any star of the night, somehow blotting out the moon and stars without brightening the sky or the earth below. It wasn’t quite so bad, here; the light from the Temple was far stronger than Urapu’s little tower, and provided more relief. Ram could walk straight with a clear head, even if his innards felt cold and sick. Miles away, Father would already be up on the walltop, doing his seventh or eighth staggering circuit of the hearth.

Thankfully the day’s business would take him close to the Temple anyhow, to sign up with the militia. Sober, under the white sun, he wasn’t nearly so calm about enlistment as he’d been yesterday, but it had to be done if he was to have any spare money to send home. The militia were at least supposed to be paid well. They had to be, for the work they did—and the losses they took. He’d asked around at dinner last night; they said that on a good bloom, seven or eight men in ten returned from the winter campaign. It was less clear what exactly they fought out there. Something the bazuu made. Something worse than reshki.

Since no sane man left home on this day without good cause, the streets were clear. In ten minutes, Ram stood at the door of the Lugal’s palace. Not the grand entrance he had seen yesterday, facing on the plaza with a clear line of sight to the Temple staircase; that was for flamekeepers, and acolytes, and important foreigners on state business. There was another entrance, on the opposite side, for dealing with the militia. The backside of the house, you might say. Ugly brick barracks and armories lined the road leading up to it; they didn’t look much nicer than the bondservants’ tenements back home. Only bigger.

Ram stood before that back door for two full minutes, wondering if he really had no other, better options. It was a bad time and a bad place for second thoughts, and in the end he went in.

The doorway led to a surprisingly low and narrow corridor. At its far end was a more spacious sort of room, lit by a single large oil lamp that hung from the ceiling. Underneath that lamp, a man in his fifties sat at a table with a pair of acolytes. The one at his left held an abacus; the one to his right had a sand table for jotting down figures, and a stack of papers to write on. Behind the man an unarmored flamekeeper stood watch, wearing his sword and buckler over a plain red tunic, before a doorway leading to other, no doubt more prestigious, parts of the palace.

The man at the table was speaking as Ram walked in. “And another twenty for the third south river team, they haven’t lost one this month. What have we got so—yes?” He looked peevishly up at Ram. “You have a message?”

Ram noticed that he had a somewhat larger badge on his chest than the usual militia bums. “No, sir,” he said, dry-mouthed. “I’m here to … to enlist.” The man looked at him for a moment, then shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The two acolytes looked disgruntled. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something? Do I need to come back later?” He felt a shameful thrill at the thought, mingled with anxiety for the moment when he would have to come back again after still more time to think it over.

“No. No.” He motioned for the flamekeeper, who stepped forward. The acolyte to his right pulled a fresh sheet out of his stack. “It will keep. Just a few questions. Name and age?”

“Rammash im-Belemel ta-Urapu. Fifteen,” Ram said easily. It would be true in a little over a month, and this man had no real reason to care. Nor any way to find out if he did.

“Rammash im-Belemel, are you entirely free of other bond and obligation, including contract bond, limited penal bond, apprenticeship, sworn service, and protected kinship duties, in this pyre and its dependent hearths, and all other pyres, hearths, and other communities within the Dominion of Man?”

“Yes.” If this wasn’t a kinship duty, he didn’t know what was.

“Do you feel competent to discharge the duties of Lugal Jushur’s armed auxiliary service, and to bear the risks of injury, imprisonment, thralldom, torment, and death?”

“I do,” Ram said quickly, before the words would have a chance to sink in.

““Are you resolved to live among the brethren of the Lugal’s armed auxiliary service, to bear their burdens and to have your burdens born, to fight beside them, to defend them and their interests, and those of the Lugal, of the Ensi, and of the entire pyre community, for a full bloom from this date?”

That sounded a little better, even if the average militiaman was an ex-beggar with nowhere to go, and spent most of his time watching for petty thieves. “I am.”

“Are you aware of the penalties for desertion, sedition, disobedience, insubordination, and treachery?”

“I am.” He wasn’t, but they couldn’t be much worse than what would happen to him if he didn’t join at all.

The man sighed. “Then kneel, if your resolve holds.”

Ram knelt, and the flamekeeper (mercifully, it wasn’t Kamenrag, nor any of his companions from the boat) came around the table to put a hand on his head. As the Lugal’s retainer, he had delegated authority to admit others to the service. “Rammash im-Belemel, you are bound to service for a term of not less than one full bloom from this date, with all attendant rights, privileges, and responsibilities.”

“Witnessed,” said the acolyte with the papers, still sounding irritated.

The flamekeeper lifted his hand. “Rise,” said the man. Ram obeyed. “The first door on your right after you leave is the captain’s. He’ll assign you to a barracks and issue you your equipment. Give him this.” The man took his acolyte’s latest scribbling and handed it to Ram. “You are dismissed.” And he turned back to the figuring Ram had interrupted, without even waiting for his new subordinate to leave the room.

Perversely, Ram felt a deep sense of relief as he meandered back out into the white light. Not only was the moment of decision past, he was going to see a man who would tell him where to go, and what to do, for the next bloom. All the questions that had troubled him for the past two tetrads were no longer his to ask. They would now be posed by some faceless man inside the Lugal’s palace, who could easily answer them by sending him off to die, but would never think of giving him real responsibility. He had become a man by giving up adulthood. From now on, he would be an obedient child with a club.

He could see why Father would be disappointed by the idea. At Ram’s age, he’d been all but independent, taking contracts with hearths all up and down the river. Now his son would be playing enforcer for the same kind of men who’d given him a hard time. A shame he had no better options.

And then there would be the winter campaign—but why worry about that now? It would be a month away, and he might not even get selected to go. Some of the militia had to stay behind and mind the pyre, after all. If militia duty were a guaranteed death sentence, nobody would sign up for it, money or no. And there wouldn’t be any older men in the ranks, like he’d seen for the last two days. There had to be some way to keep your head down, and he had plenty of time to find it—

Who, he wondered abruptly, was he trying to persuade? He’d been standing in front of the captain’s door under white light for a full thirty seconds. Far too long; he’d already made his choice. Now it was time to live it. He pushed the door open, and went in.