Pyrebound - 1.3

Chapter 1.3 – Pyrebound
Ram’s room was through the doorway to the right, opposite his parents’. Instead of a purple curtain, he had a simple wool blanket to keep out the rain. Inside were his cot, a lamp, a chamber-pot, a little water jar, and a small chest for his three changes of clothes, nothing else. It hardly mattered, since he only used the room for sleeping in. Before the attack, most of his days had been spent working with Father, either on site or in the workshop at the back of the house. And now?

Now, he would do his chores. He just had to get changed first. Fresh tunic, fresh trousers, and his one ornament, the little copper chain with the bronze-and-quartz Heart of Tegnem on it. Father’d got it for him when he started working as a mason. Ram rarely prayed to Tegnem—he was a murrush god, weird and distant—but the pendant said he did his father’s trade, so he wore it anyway. Besides, it looked good. There was nothing else he could do but brush his hair back and wish in vain that he had time to bathe, or money for a mirror. Or shoes, to replace the foul ones he’d just thrown out. That was another expense.

He left his sweaty clothes in the courtyard hamper for the time being, and picked up a jar for water. The cistern in the far corner was running low, after all they’d used up treating Father. Wealthier families paid to have the hearth’s bondservants fetch their water; the very wealthiest, like Mother’s family, had servants in their own names. Mother had always insisted on having Ram do the water. Along with the laundry, and the soil-jar they dumped the chamber-pots into, and anything else that needed doing.

Even with no line at the well, and little to wash—they’d burned a lot of linen last night, soaked with corrupted blood—it was getting on in the day before he hung up the last of the wet laundry on the roof of the house, and went off in search of work. He didn’t think any better of his chances than Mother had, if he was being honest, but he had to try.

The hearth had three other masons, if you used the term generously. Kirishi was little more than a bricklayer, and more than sixty blooms old—too old to bother take on an apprentice, really. But he didn’t have any specific grudge against Father, which made him the likeliest prospect of the three. Ram tracked him down to the run-down tenement house he was repairing; at the moment he got there, the old man was bent over a weed-cracked walkway, griping about back pain under his breath.

“Master Kirishi?” Ram asked, hesitantly.

“I’m working!” Kirishi snapped, without looking up from the walk. He pried a crumbling brick loose, and threw it over his shoulder; it barely missed Ram.

He took a cautious step aside, then said, “I can see that. Do you want help?”

“Do you want help?” Ram all but shouted.

Now Kirishi turned his head. He was bald, with a pointed nose and a thin white beard. “I oughta, by rights, and I done asked. Nothing doing. The Council won’t lend a one of them, to fix their own house. This damn place, I tell you …“ He shook his head, and returned to his work.

Kirishi didn’t react at first, only continued tugging out ruined bricks and weeds and throwing them aside. Ram was on the verge of repeating himself when the old man straightened up, groaning, and said, “And why’d you wanna do that, eh? Ain’t your old man got work for you?”

Had Kirishi really not heard? “Master, my father was injured. When the reshki attacked, they—“

“Oh, the reshki attacked?” Kirishi echoed, arching his brows. “Yes, yes they did, didn’t they? And I wonder why?”

Ram blinked. The old coot had lost him.

“You ever wonder, boy, why they went for your old man?”

“He went for them,” Ram protested. “Even though he wasn’t on duty!”

“I expect he knew his fault,” said Kirishi darkly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, don’t you be acting like you don’t know. You see that tower, and that there fire? Been protecting us all my life, it has, and blooms and blooms before. But then your old man comes by, out of the desert, and marries over his station. Not right. And the God knew it. You should have thrown away that abomination the day she came out, that was your first warning—“

“Mana was accepted as a handmaiden,” Ram cut in. “The God’s own spirits chose her.”

“Did they? A reshmarked girl? For a handmaiden? I don’t think so. ‘Tain’t natural. You had your warning, young man, and it ain’t no fault of Haranduluz you didn’t mind it. I ain’t saying I don’t feel bad for you, but I ain’t getting mixed up in all that. You go along, now. I got problems enough, at my age, without bringing yours down on my head.” And he bent back down to the battered walk.

That was hardly an encouraging start, but Ram wasn’t going to give up. Of the other two masons, Quarrymaster Ganteg was probably the less hostile. Ram hurried out of the hearth, and caught him leading two dozen bondservants and five overseers back from their day’s work. The trail back from the great scar in the sandstone hills was long, but the crew quit early before white day, so everyone could get home before the night of dark dreams started.

Ganteg was barely thirty, and slightly built for a man in his profession. He wasn’t particularly skilled as a mason, either; he’d got his job by being related to the right people, and the paunch around his belt by letting others do that job for him. He’d been on the Council for the last six blooms, and had spent all six trying to get Father kicked off it, if not out of the hearth entirely.

Ram still tried to sound cheery as he hailed him. “Master Ganteg! How’s your day been?”

“Bad,” replied Ganteg. “These lazy buggers barely made quota. And I’m exhausted.”

Yes, especially your whip arm, Ram was careful not to say. How desperate was he? Did he really want to spend his life glaring and shouting at a row of lash-marked backs? Well, if it was a choice between that and being on the receiving end … “Do you need more help, then?”

“That I do,” Ganteg allowed, pushing past him on the dusty path without apology. “Let me know if someone better than you is interested, Rammash im-Belemel.”

Ram trotted after him, taking care to give the rest of the line plenty of space. He wouldn’t put it past some of Ganteg’s boys to give him a taste of their whips, now that the family was clearly on its way down. “I thought you really needed help, Master. Didn’t you lose—“

“Yes, I lost a man to the reshki. I didn’t have an untrained boy in mind for his replacement, or a one-armed ex-bandit. I’m not that hard up just yet.”

“Father was never a bandit!”

Ganteg waved his hand dismissively. “Bandit, mugger, burglar, pimp, whatever the hell he did to avoid honest work. It’s all one to me. Half my pick-men came from the same bastard stock; he must have five cousins on my line.”

“Look, whatever Father was, he’s a master mason now,” Ram said. “And he’s been training me. I’ve been dressing the blocks in Father’s shop for the last two and a half blooms.”

“I’ve got boys on the line who’ve been at it for eight,” Ganteg shot back. “If I want hearthless running my business, I can take one of them out of bond, and have the two of you for his replacements. I bet your master mason of a father can still swing a pickaxe one-handed. And if he can’t, my boys can teach him.”

Ram couldn’t think of anything he could say to persuade the quarrymaster; he’d get everything he’d been longing for for blooms if he just let matters take their course. He resisted the temptation to trip the quarrymaster as he pushed past him again, and jogged back to the hearth.

Master-sculptor Tarnash was his last hope, and a long shot. He was, at least, a proper skilled artisan. Unfortunately, he liked Father even less than Ganteg did, and for good reason; Ram had never got the whole tangled story clear, but he gathered that Father had bribed his first master to take him on with money he’d got off Tarnash. Somehow.

When Ram got back to the hearth, the sculptor was working by lamplight in his shop, chipping the form of a lioness out of an imported marble block with his two sons. It would fetch six or eight silver, when it was finished.

“Master Tarnash,” Ram called, over the noise of hammers and chisels, “are you looking for another apprentice right now?”

“Does it look that way to you?” the master roared back, still tapping away.

“You take plenty of commissions,” Ram said hopefully. “And I’ve learned a lot already!”

“Learned a—“ Tarnash stopped and looked back. “Belemel’s boy? Are you out of your mind?”

“I know you and Father don’t always—“

The master threw down his tools, pointed to his crooked nose. Both his boys stood up from their work on the lioness’s paws. “You see this? Eh? You ever hear how it got this way?”

“That was almost twenty blooms ago,” Ram said, trying for a reasonable tone. “And Father’s … you know what happened to Father?”

“Yeah. Shame I wasn’t the one who got to do it. He should have gone back to whatever thieving hearthless gang he came from, him and that freak sister of yours, and it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Master Tarnash. Please. You’re a master now anyway, and he’s—“ Ram swallowed. “Well, you know. He’s crippled. You’ve won. Can’t you be the bigger man?”

Tarnash flushed. It was a poor choice of words; he wasn’t like Ganteg, but almost everyone was smaller than Father, and it had lost him the fight. “You just tell Belemel, when it all goes down, I’ll be buying his woman.” He bent down to pick up his hammer and chisel, and looked Ram dead in the eye as he straightened up. “I’ll break her in hard, then rent her out an hour at a time, until I make back every bit of the money he took from me, with twenty blooms’ interest. And that’s the only offer I’ll ever make the likes of you.”

Ram clenched his fists—but all three of them had hammers in their hands now. “I’m going to leave now,” Ram told them, his voice shaking. “You know why? Because I’m not stupid enough to start a fight I can’t finish.” And he left. It was nearly dinnertime, and he had nothing to show for his afternoon.

Public dinner that night was uninspiring as usual, beans and onions with flat bread and more weak beer. The whole hearth ate it together in the long dining hall; only the richest could afford to rent out a handmaiden to cook a private meal, and that on special occasions. Ram could see Father’s empty seat up at the council table as he dug his way through his slops, forcing every swallow past a catch in his throat. He’d been tempted to go up and claim the seat for himself, but Mother would have killed him. And anyway, who would he be showing off for?

On the far side of the hall, Ninnara was sitting with her family. Her back was turned, and he could see only the tantalizing sheen of long brown hair. She wouldn’t be with her family much longer, he knew; she’d put on the veil three blooms back. Now she was thirteen. Someone was bound to scoop her up, and Ram felt a dismal certainty that it wouldn’t be him. Not that he’d ever had much hope, as Father’s son and Mana’s brother. But it seemed that whatever prospects he’d had for life as an independent craftsman—the kind of man who could win any wife at all—had been cut off with Father’s arm last night. Now he sat next to an elderly bondsman who stank like a seep, and hoped he wouldn’t be working next to him in a month.

To hell with this. He scraped down the last of his beans—the family had paid good money for the month’s meals�and got a jar each of beans and beer to take back for his parents. He took his time getting home, though it wasn’t far. Tired as he was, he wouldn’t sleep well tonight no matter when he got to sleep; it was the night of dark dreams. The sun would rise white in the morning, and he would be off to take Father’s place in the watch for the first time. The thought of it made him feel exhausted, and he dragged his feet, savoring the light from the tower’s top.

Their tower wasn’t much to look at, a cylinder of mixed bricks and stone fifty feet high, with a staircase winding around its outside. The fire at its top was small now, a compact golden sphere half the size of the moon, and dim enough for him to look at with only minimal discomfort. Just enough to keep the streets safe at night, and light his way home. It wasn’t the brightness that made him drop his gaze at last.

He could hear Father’s voice: “Why can’t your god give some of that light to the hearthless, eh? It’d come in handy. Ain’t the lord of the sun got a little to spare for a few people out in the wild? They got daughters—they got plenty of daughters. More than they need. Why can’t some a them be handmaidens? Maybe it’s all that gold they ain’t got. Yellow gold for your yellow god.”

That was usually as far as Father got, after a cup or two of strong beer, before Mother interrupted and reminded him that they owed his council seat, and their comfortable life, to that yellow god’s generosity. If he wanted to go squat out in the wild with his family for solidarity’s sake, she would say, nobody in Urapu would stop him. That was generally enough to shut him up.

But it was a fair question. Ram always thought so, even if he’d never put it to Mother that way. It was only Mother’s love, and a streak of luck at the last Kindling, that had given Father the life he had now, though he was better with hammer and chisel than anyone else in the hearth. Over the course of a kindling—ten blooms—he’d gone from a migrant teenage bricklayer, only apprenticed for a bribe, to the most versatile craftsman Urapu had. It wouldn’t have made a difference. If he hadn’t caught the eye of a teenage girl on the outs with her wealthy family, he probably would have died in the wild ages ago. Haranduluz might be a kindly god when it pleased him, but you couldn’t call him fair.

And now? Father could bask in the light now, for just as long as the family could pay its dues. If they couldn’t, they had two choices. On the one hand, they could default, and accept bondage, with the likes of Tarnash and Ganteg competing to devour the scraps of their family.

Or they could run away—which meant hooking up with Father’s wild clan or a similar group, and living like reshki, moving from hearth to hearth, taking odd jobs or stealing as the chance came, dodging reshki and militiamen, swearing and fighting and dying young. And there would be no law outside the hearth; they would only be safe for as long as they were useful or acceptable to a sufficiently large and powerful clan. They’d take Mother, and maybe Ram if he didn’t make trouble. Father and the baby would be doomed.

Really, there was very little difference between the two choices. Neither was a choice at all. So Ram set down the jars inside the vestibule of their house—how much longer it would remain theirs, he had no way of knowing—and shuffled reluctantly closer to the tower. The open space around it served as an occasional market and public meeting-place, on occasion; tonight, it was deserted.

There were two other shrines in that central space: one for Tegnem, whose sign he wore around his neck, and the wellspring of Kuara the sea-mother. Neither saw much use, in a hearth with few artisans and no sailors. But Ram visited all three in turn.

First came Tegnem. The murrush god’s altar was little more than a table with an awning on top to keep out the rain. The first work of every master-craftsman in Urapu was laid there, to remain in place as long as he lived: at present there were a belt-buckle and a knife, both rusted, alongside an oak statuette, three dust-coated pots of various sizes, and three pieces of carved stone. The largest was a fine image of a seventeen-bloom-old girl’s face, pretty and proud of it. He could still see a trace of Mother in it.

Ram had hoped to one day lay a stone carving of his own there, in a few blooms. Now he knelt and asked the god to give a master’s skill to his hands, to let him learn a craft quickly, and to look after Father who had stood at this shrine so often.

He had only a fragment of a copper tanbir on him, six eighths of the original hoop. Father would have had a fit to see even that much wasted on deities. But Father wasn’t here, and the shears were handy beside the altar. Ram snipped off a full eighth, on the scored mark, and dropped it into the offering-jar at the head of the table. It gave a hollow clink; there was nothing else in there. Odds were that Gilbazni the potter—as the oldest craftsman in the hearth, he was also caretaker of Tegnem’s shrine—would think to check the jar in a few months, and lose the copper after, if nobody had stolen it in the meantime. But Ram couldn’t help that. Tegnem was a murrush; he would see reason.

Kuara was next. She was a tinap goddess, and they’d somehow conned a full matriarch to flap her slimy wet feet up here sixty blooms ago and dedicate a wellspring for a human community. It was a tiny miracle, an everlasting flow of water from the veins of the earth. But it wasn’t that impressive in a riverside hearth, and inconvenient; you couldn’t fill a good-sized jar in the tiny basin. Pregnant women would visit for a drink and a prayer, and passing merchants would pay their respects. Otherwise, unless there were a drought, this little shrine would stand as deserted as the other. Ram took a drink, remembering Mother, his little sibling inside her, and Father’s recovery. Then he dropped another eighth into the water, praying that it would come bubbling up with the flow for the next person who needed it.

Only the tower remained. Haranduluz had a large jar at the base of his shrine, half a man’s height, and it was never empty, even if there was never enough wealth on hand in this little place to make it properly full. The assessors would help themselves to it in a few days; every bit of metal in that pot would vanish from Urapu forever. Ram didn’t let that stop him from dropping the remaining half-tanbir in.

Father Haranduluz, light my way. Guide me through the dark dreams, and the white dawn tomorrow, and let me see your light again. Give us hope, and strength. Don’t let us be thrown out, and lose the sight of your fire. Forgive my father. Let my little brother or sister grow up in your sight. Don’t let us die in the wilderness.

That sounded about right. Enbisu the acolyte said things like that. But, as he turned away and headed back home in the dark, he couldn’t help feeling that he’d wasted perfectly good copper after all. Plenty of people made the same prayers every day. Few of those prayers were granted.