Pyrebound - 1.5

Chapter 1.5 – Pyrebound
Five days later, a little after noon, a sunbarque came gliding down the river and moored itself at the landing. Ram hurried down to the riverside as soon as he heard. Not that he needed to; they’d be about their business for most of the day, and leave in the evening. He only wanted to get it all over with. He’d spent the past three days dealing with nosy questions from a hundred Urapans, all of whom wanted to know if he was really leaving the hearth. It would have been less annoying if any of them had seemed upset about it.

The landing was a cleared stretch of sandy bank where they could haul up the hearth’s small fleet of fishing boats at night. The assessors’ barque took up most of the space they had; the next visit, when they came for the harvest dues with a far larger ship, they’d have to moor farther out and commandeer every boat Urapu had to move acolytes out and jars of grain in.

Ram arrived just in time to see them lower the gangplank, and the party come tromping down. First the three flamekeepers, resplendent in their scaly bronze coats, each with a matching bronze buckler dangling over the long sword at his hip. Then came the three acolytes who would do the actual assessment, in immaculate white robes with brilliant red mantles, but far too plump and silly-looking to be impressive. Last of all was the lone handmaiden who drove the ship. This was always the same woman, an old crone who had family in Urapu but was far too respectable to be wasted on assignment there. A fringe of real gold ornaments dangled from her yellow mantle.

Enbisu stepped forward to greet his counterparts from the pyre; he was far older than they, but just as fat, and his red cape had faded to a pinkish shade. Nonetheless, the three assessors embraced him like a brother, and they wandered off chattering in low tones. The handmaiden was right behind them—she only came so she could visit with her family. That left the three flamekeepers, who dawdled against the boathouse wall, accepting the three mugs of beer they were speedily offered but plainly thinking little of the brew.

They had no real reason to be here; nobody in Urapu was going to attack anyone, and the boat was small enough to manage without them. Ram suspected these three had been assigned escort duty after irritating their commander. Certainly they had no reason to volunteer for a trip to a place like Urapu. They’d be bored and bad-tempered. Nevertheless, the flamekeepers were technically in command of the expedition, so they were the ones he had to talk to.

There was already a small crowd of gawkers gathering: a mixture of excited children, malingering bondservants, and Councilmen who felt they ought to be present for the occasion but found they had nothing useful to do. All three types kept their distance, and stared at the flamekeepers for lack of anyone else to stare at. The flamekeepers paid them no mind; no doubt they got a similar reception everywhere else they went.

Ram hesitated only a moment to check himself over. Father and Mother had agreed that, if he was going to Dul Karagi, he would have to arrange his own transport. If he couldn’t manage that, he’d have no chance of finding employment when he arrived. He’d prepared for the occasion by dressing in his shabbiest outfit, leaving both his Heart of Tegnem and his new shoes at home. If there was one thing fourteen blooms of life at Urapu had taught him, it was how to efficiently manage people who knew they were better than him. The trick, he knew, would be to make them think they were getting it their own way. They had no reason to be charitable.

So he shuffled up to the trio, who studiously ignored him until he got so close as to leave them no alternative. Then the nearest of them looked up, putting a hand to his sword. “Bug off, kid.”

It seemed like good advice; the blade was three feet long, made of murrush-worked steel and indwelt with a burning haranu spirit. It could easily cut him in half. Sadly, leaving was not an option. Instead he looked the flamekeeper right in the eye and said, as guilelessly as possible: “I want to come with you.”

All three of them blinked, then exchanged glances. If Ram had been the normal size for his age, they might have suspected he was up to something, perhaps plotting a theft. But he was big and clumsy-looking, with a deep voice; they probably thought he was some kind of halfwit. So the one he’d spoken to settled for kicking lazily at his shin—Ram stood there and took it—and returning to his conversation with the other two. Mostly rude remarks about Urapu.

But Ram didn’t leave. He only stood there, with his mouth hanging slightly open, staring at the three of them. At length, the soldier in the middle burst out, “Beat it, you little bastard!”

Ram let his mouth drop open just a little wider before he protested, “But … I want to come with you!”

The man scowled, and reached for his buckler, which was incised with a ring of graceful flame patterns around its gleaming rim. Ram probably seemed a touch too pathetic to actually slice open, but that wouldn’t stop them from slapping him around to teach him manners. So he backed up out of arm’s reach, and added, “I’m a real good worker! I help my daddy every day! I can help you!”

The third flamekeeper hadn’t spoken yet. He looked younger than the other two, about eighteen—a slender fellow with a clever look on his thinly bearded face. That was probably a good thing. In Ram’s experience, clever was another word for someone who put too much effort into being lazy. Now he put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll take you for five coppers, boy.”

Of course, the boy Ram was pretending to be wouldn’t have that much. It was a little more than half the value of the silver he did have, and Ram might have talked him down, but he wasn’t stupid enough to let them know he had any money at all. If he did, every bit of it would disappear on the trip back to the pyre, and it would be his word against theirs when they arrived.

Instead he exclaimed, “I can clean fish, and I can juggle sometimes, and I know twenty-three different kinds of rock!” All true, as it happened. But was he overplaying the stupid? Probably not.

Clever-face smirked. The other two only rolled their eyes. Excellent. Now for the clincher: “I done killed a resh just the other day, with my daddy’s sword. I killed it dead. And I cleaned the sword after, cleaned it good with extra polish to make it shiny. And then I fetched the water, and dumped the chamber-pots in the seep, and—“

“Shut up,” said the first one.

“We’ll take you,” said clever-face, immediately after. The other two shot him an incredulous look. “On a couple of conditions,” he added. “First is that you shut your fool mouth unless you’re spoken to. Agreed?”

Ram beamed, and nodded furiously. That suited him fine; it would be easier than pretending to be a dullard for the whole trip back up the river.

“The second is that you work your passage, like you said. We tell you to do something, you do it sharp, you hear?”

Another nod. Ram already knew that would mean polishing three sets of bronze equipment, to keep them from tarnishing in the damp river air. The other two just hadn’t thought of that yet. Thank Haranduluz for clever men.

“Excellent. Now go pack, and leave us the hell alone.”

He didn’t need to be told twice, but scampered off. Free passage to the pyre! Maybe he had a chance after all.

Mother didn’t need to be told the good news when he got home; she looked at his face, and smiled with relief. Relief, and a bit of regret. Best not to look at her face too closely. He hurried into his room and tossed the entire contents of his chest into a sack, making sure to keep the silver tanbir buried in his underpants. He didn’t think any of the Karagenes would stoop to rifling through his pack, but there was no sense taking chances. His shoes and the Heart of Tegnem went in the bottom as well, with a bit of bread he’d begged off the kitchen last night, and a mug. There was nothing else to pack.

“So,” came Father’s voice from the doorway behind him, “you’re off to the pyre now, are you?”

Ram turned and bowed. Father had improved quickly; he’d insisted on doing wall duty beside Ram yesterday, and seemed to bear it better than his son had. Maybe Mother had made him strong after all. “Yes, and I’ll try to find good mason wo—“

Father waved down his protest. “Eh. That don’t matter, boy. You do what you have to. Do what you have to. It’s what a man does, isn’t it? And you’re a man now, or close enough. You just don’t let them take your pride, you hear me?”

“Don’t you give me that! I mean it. You know they can take the rest of it, and they will, and there ain’t gonna be a damn thing you can do to stop them. They’ll take your money, your health, your freedom, your life, everything, and they won’t ask, and they sure as hell won’t thank you for it. It’ll happen, you watch. But they can’t take your pride. Not unless you give it up. So don’t.”

“I won’t.” He’d heard similar rants from Father before, often enough that he could almost have recited along with him. He’d never been totally sure who the ‘they’ were; anybody but their immediate family, he guessed. Father wasn’t likely to trust anyone else.

Now Father leaned against the door to size his son up. “Eh. You’re big enough now, boy. You’ll do fine.”

“I hope so,” Ram said, trying not to think about it. Frankly, the idea of setting foot on that boat would have been terrifying even if it hadn’t been packed with flamekeepers. But it was too late for second thoughts. If he lost his nerve now, he’d likely never get another chance this good. So he gave his Father an awkward hug—taking care not to look him in the eye, so as not to crack up—and left.

Mother was more difficult. She tried to cover by handing him Mana’s finished mantle, which he carefully folded and put away with exactly the kind of idle polite patter she’d always tried and failed to teach him. The words got lost in his throat halfway through, when Mother started sobbing on his shoulder. He had a job of it trying to maintain his own composure, and didn’t quite succeed. In the end he got away with gruff promises to send messages with every remittance.

The acolytes would still be busy going over the accounts; each of the three had to check the hearth’s records independently, to ensure accuracy. But Ram couldn’t stand the thought of hanging around in the house any longer. He slipped out the door and made his way down the street, hailed in passing by every man, woman, and child he saw. He knew they’d have had nothing to do with him if he weren’t about to disappear from their lives for good, but it still raised his spirits.

He had time for a walk—a long walk—around the hearth, saying farewell to the little cluster of buildings that had been his whole life for almost fifteen blooms. Only now that he was leaving did he realize how very little of it there was to see; by good light, he could lap the wall in less than ten minutes. Dul Karagi would be ten times as big. Would that be exciting? Or only terrifying?

He was waiting on the boat by the time the assessors came back, and cheerfully loaded what little fresh cargo there was below the deck while the whole party of seven shouted at him. It was rather full down there already; Urapu was the farthest of Dul Karagi’s hearths down the river, and the last stop on this trip. They’d be sailing directly back north, a two- or three-day trip.

When all was ready, he stood beside the flamekeepers with an oar and shoved off from the bank, then did his clumsy best to help turn her about to face upstream. He earned a couple of smacks upside the head for his efforts. It had been eight blooms since he’d set foot in a boat—on his last trip to Dul Karagi, when they’d dedicated Mana. That had been on a common galley, where every grown male passenger pulled an oar for his ticket, but Ram had been far too young to help.

At length Kamenrag, the clever-faced flamekeeper, called Ram a jackass, and told him to leave off helping before he sank the boat. So he retreated to the stern and sat down on the cushions while they hauled the canopy open and drew it back over most of the barque’s length, like a great visor tilted over its face. It took them less than a minute to lash it down at all five points.

Then they came back and shoved him aside to take their own seats (though there was plenty of room, and little difference between one spot and the next) while the handmaiden went to work. Driving a sunbarque took a delicate touch, but the old lady had been doing these runs for kindlings, and it showed. Not ten seconds after she stood up and closed her eyes, a little spot of glowing golden light appeared above the brick platform in the center of the deck.

It didn’t look like much, but Ram could feel the draft the speck of fire created. In moments, the canopy swelled up with hot air, until it was straining at the ropes that bound it to the railings. Slowly, the slanted fabric tugged the barque up and forward against the current. The acceleration was deceptively smooth. Ram took his eyes off the flame to see if they had caught back up with the hearth again, only to find that they had already passed it. He hadn’t even seen his lifelong home go by.