Thieves

How Orem learned what life was worth in Beauty's city. The Song in the Cistern

As he passed the innmaster the fellow tossed him a chit. Orem looked at it. "I don't want to carry this all day."

The innmaster shrugged. "As you like. But I warn you, I'll cheat you if you let me."

Orem put the chit in his bag. "Thanks. Will every thief in Inwit be so thoughtful as to warn me?"

The innmaster regarded him calmly. "I'm a Godsman. I only cheat them as want to be cheated."

Nothing in Orem's life had prepared him for the daytime streets of Inwit. The flow of the crowds led him to the Great Market, and for some time he was swept back and forth in the eddies of the buying and selling. In all his life before he had never seen so many people as were in the marketplace that day, rags and velvets, uniforms and livery, all bumping together in the battle to get much for little. Orem gawked, and so marked himself as an easy target for thieves.

A boy brushed up against him and a small hand reached under his shirt, and as fast as Orem could realize what was happening his coppers were out of his wrap. Without a thought Orem swung out and caught the child a blow on the chin. The boy fell soundlessly, and as silently scrambled to his feet—but Orem had learned to be quick in the House of God. He had the boy by an ankle before he was fairly afoot. The child kicked viciously at Orem's face. Was the battle worth an eye? Orem's few coins were his life and hope here, and so he struggled on despite the blows.

No one seemed to notice the cruel battle going on in the street, except to leave a space for them to roll in the sand. At last Orem got the thief in a coward's hold, legs bent painfully and Orem's hand firmly tucked into the boy's crotch, ready to inflict that irresistible pain. "I want the coppers, little bastard," Orem said.

"Coppers!"

"Or in Sister's name I'll have your balls off."

"God's name, I haven't got your money!" The boy's wail was loud and pitiful. Now that the fighting was done, people began to take notice.

"Leave be," said a voice in the crowd. "It's a coward who takes down a little child."

The little swine was winning sympathy. Orem leaned down and whispered in the boy's ear. "I'm a farmer, boy, and I've made bulls into steers with my bare hands before." It was enough. The boy's eyes went wide and he spat four coppers into the dust. Orem released the boy and quickly grabbed up the coins. From the corner of his eye he saw the thief moving in a way that he feared might be an attack—what, a kick? Yes. Orem dodged out of the way just in time, then leaped to his feet to prepare for the next onslaught.

"Don't you know all pissers keep them in the same place? And half of them have soil in their wraps, it's filthy work to put them in my mouth."

"If you don't like it," Orem said, holding his coppers tightly, "find another line of work."

"You hire me as soon as you find work."

It stung Orem that the boy assumed that he would fail. "I will hire you," Orem said disdainfully. "I'll have a job in days, and take you on."

"Oh, yes, and the Queen wears a codpiece." The boy whirled around and flipped up his shirt to show his buttocks to Orem for a moment. Then he was gone in the crowd.

Orem wandered north, where the Great Market empties into Queen's Road. He marveled at the great houses, he gaped at the spider-wheeled carriages, he stared at ladies as naked as they could decently be above the waist and gentlemen as naked as fashion required below it. And he stood at the base of the hundred-stepped pyramid that led upward to Faces Hall, where Palicrovol had stood and ravished the little daughter of Nasilee, spilt her inmost blood and so became her husband and so became the King and then cast her away. The start of all the woes of the world, there at Faces Hall.

"Damn your liver to be eaten by the eagles!" A guard had him by the shoulder, shaking him. "Didn't they tell you at the gate to stay off Queen's Road? The Stone Road? Are you deaf? Have you the brain of a pudding?" More kicks and blows as the guard took him down an alley, bashing him against one wall and then another, until Orem gratefully fell on his face in the dust of a back street. "And don't come back on Queen's Road or I'll have you hung by your ears till they tear!" Orem lay in the street listening to the footsteps as the guard left. He hurt everywhere, yet he was not so much angry as glad that it had stopped. Even glad that it hadn't been worse. He winced and gingerly got to his feet.

"Gentle, an't they?"

Orem turned painfully to meet the face that went with the voice. It was the child who had robbed him, smiling cocky as you please, hands on hips, legs spread, like God astride the world.

"You look pretty poor, you know." The boy smiled at him maliciously. "Had me by the balls and you were rich and fine."

"You were taking all I had," Orem said dully. He winced at the pain of breathing in.

"And you took all I had."

"But it was mine." "Not while I had it."

"What's it worth to you to know?"

"Nothing." Orem looked around. All he could see were the backs of common buildings on one hand and on the other the high garden walls of the great houses, with their cruel spear-topped iron ridges. Except for the alley to Stone Road, there was only one way to go, so Orem set out along the dirt street. The thief padded behind him.

"Get away from me," Orem said.

"I followed you all this way."

"You'll never get my coppers."

"You said you'd hire me."

"If I get a job." But suddenly the boy was not so neatly catalogued as a clever thief. "You

believed me?"

"You look too stupid to lie."

"Then what makes you think I'll get a job?"

"Because you wouldn't let me go when I kicked your face." The boy giggled. "You're a bad

fighter, you know. A girl could beat you."

Orem felt himself flush with anger, but he said nothing. The road was widening, and now there were some sleazy shops fronting on the street. In the middle of the road was a short round wall like a well housing, made of crumbly bricks. Orem made to go around it, but heard a sound. Like singing,

coming from the well. He stopped.

"It's the cistern," said the boy. "All the time singing. Means nothing. Cistern's empty."

"Why? Drought?"

"They're for a siege. There's never a siege of Inwit. Besides, you'd drown the voices."

Orem stepped to the cistern rim and leaned over to listen. Along with the sound he was greeted

by a smell so fetid that he reeled backward and gasped and choked.

"Since it's empty," said the boy, "everybody dumps their slops in. And shits quite direct." As if to demonstrate, the boy jumped up and sat perilously on the wall, his backside leaning far over the edge. Unceremoniously he defecated, then waited with his head cocked. "Hear the splash? It must be half a mile down."

"What about the voices?" "Probably a choir of rats. They live fine on manure. Aren't you a farmer? Don't you know about the magical properties of manure?" While he talked, the boy wiped himself with his left hand, then spat on it and rubbed it in the dirt till it was dry. "Here," he said, gesturing at Orem's bag. "Let us have a little water." Orem shook his head. "Oh, won't share even water, is that it?"

"What are you, a pilgrim? You have a priest's face. Like a hungry rat."

"I studied with priests."

"That's it, then." The boy nodded wisely. "I knew you could read. I can read a little. Taught myself."

"The voices from the cistern. How long have they been going on?"

The boy shrugged. "All my life."

Orem recited the Seventh Warning of Prester Zenzil: "Do not learn the songs of voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells."