CHAPTER 16
The scream echoed through the rustling herbs and tree limbs, bouncing off the paper-thin walls of the master’s house and the glass of the greenhouse. It pierced the moonlight glistening on the ground like a skinner’s knife through the belly of a fish.
Like a lookout, Jallin’s eyes instinctively ‘checked the doors,’ what Stasser had trained him to do when they were burglarizing a place. First, the toolshed at the back of the greenhouse, then the master’s bedroom door, then Shi-Feo’s door, then the hut where Auntie Hurga lived. No one.
They were used to it. They were used to the coughing, too, which always followed the squeals. Even so, Jallin felt exposed and very near trouble escorting his sister to the latrine, at least once every night. How much would the master tolerate of the three of them, Auntie Hurga, Eja, and him? The fight earlier probably made things difficult. How long had Auntie Hurga worked for him?
Another scream. Another check of the doors. Another fit of coughing. Jallin’s eyes hovered at the greenhouse. Nothing. No one. Quiet. The moon slid behind the drifting clouds. Somewhere, someone laughed, in some inn or seated at some table in a tavern. No one in the Noshó household was awake, except the two children.
“Jallin,” came the little voice from the latrine. “We went to see Counselor Dursus this morning, and he told me about the medicine.”
“He told you? What did he tell you?”
“He told me I’m special. He said Trochaya has a plan for me…and you. He said the medicine, the blue stuff, is part of that plan. It’s supposed to…um….”
“Supposed to what?”
“Supposed to purtrify me.”
“Purtrify you? What’s that mean?”
“That’s not the word. I can’t remember the word. It was a word like that, though. Putrify? No. I don’t remember, but he told me it would make me better and make me part of Trochaya’s plans.”
“Did he tell you what the plans were? What does Trochaya want with you?”
“He just explained that the world needs to be…made that word I can’t remember…and I would be part of that. He said you would be, too.”
“I don’t care about Trochaya’s plans. You know that medicine is making you sick all the time, don’t you?”
“He told me I would have to be patient. He said I would have to be a patient patient, and then I would be better. Doesn’t that sound good?”
Jallin shrugged, knowing she couldn’t see him do it.
“I think we should tell Master Noshó about Counselor Dursus, Eja.”
“No, no you mustn’t. We can’t, Jallin. He said that would be really bad. No one must know about Trochaya’s plans, or he won’t do them. The world will never get better if people get in Trochaya’s way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Eja? If his plans are so good, why do they have to be secret? I think Trochaya’s bad. I think we need to do something to get away from Counselor Dursus.”
“He’s so nice, though. He takes care of all those sick people, and he feeds them. Why would he do that if Trochaya’s evil?”
“He let Mama die.”
“He told me she’s with Trochaya now, and she’s not sick anymore. She’s in the Undying Lands, where it’s always sunshiny and the water’s pure and no one’s sick and no one gets old and no one dies. It sounds like such a nice place, and I really hope Mama’s there, because she should be somewhere nice like that, don’t you think?”
Jallin had trouble swallowing, and he didn’t say anything.
“You know it’s illegal to worship Trochaya, Eja? We’re breaking the law. Did Counselor Dursus say anything about that?”
“Well, you stole food and clothes and things for Mama and me. That’s against the law, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but that’s different. I had to do that. I kept you two alive doing it.”
Eja groaned a little, coughed some more. Checking the doors. Another laugh, a thin wan note from some stringed instrument, flitting between buildings in the night like a raig scavenging for food.
“Well, maybe worshipping Trochaya is illegal, but maybe that’s keeping Mama alive now. So, maybe it’s not always bad to do things that are illegal.”
“Eja, don’t talk about things you don’t understand. Trochaya is…Mama’s in a good place, but it’s not because of Trochaya. Trochaya’s bad.”
“Then what happened to Mama if Trochaya’s bad? She believed in him. She believed he was good and that he had a plan for her. If Trochaya’s bad, does that mean she went to the Qwadro? Is she in hell?”
“No, Eja. No, no, calm down. It’s just that I don’t believe in Trochaya. I don’t believe in a god who makes people get sick and who has to do everything in secret all the time. I don’t believe in the god who made Mama die.”
Eja came out from the bathroom. Her face shone in the moonlight; little droplets of sweat were all over her face.
Jallin put his hand on her forehead. The skin was oily and wet. He rubbed the sweat between his fingers.
“How do you feel?” Jallin asked her.
“Alright now. I’m going to get better. Counselor Dursus says I’m going to get better. He and Counselor Yubrin agree about that. They said Mama was much worse off than me. They said I’m getting better.”
“What do they know about it?”
“They know what I’ve got. It’s the bloodlung cough, isn’t it? That’s what Mama had, so that’s what I’ve got. But they say I haven’t been as bad as Mama with it. They say I’m not as sick as she was, and I’ll get better.”
“I know you’ll get better. I don't need Trochaya to tell me that.”
She was a cute little girl, he thought. He hardly ever got a chance to really look at her, except in the night time like this. But she looked like their mother. She had the same brown hair and the same big, blue eyes. She wasn’t as sick as Mama had been, but then again, she hadn’t been coughing as long. Her face looked like Mama when she was healthy: high cheekbones, but full cheeks, and a little nose.
Jallin shook his head and tried to wipe away the image of his mother just before she died, her skeleton face with the sunken cheeks and the dark circles around the eyes, the pale skin. He couldn’t stand to see Eja like that in his mind. He wouldn’t stand around and let those idiots in the Trochayabite hospital tell him why she was dying. He couldn’t stand it.
But what could he do.
“You’re all right now, right? No more stomach ache?” he asked her.
Eja nodded. She wiped her head with her hand.
“Then, I want you to go to the hut, okay.”
“What are you doing, Jallin?”
“Just go to the hut and watch out here. Watch and see if anyone comes out. If you see anyone, I want you to groan like you’re having a nightmare or having more stomach aches, okay?”
“What? What are you going to do? Are you going to go and steal?”
“No. Not really. I have to do something. But you have to help me.”
“Jallin, don’t,” Eja whined.
“If you don’t help me, I’ll get in big trouble and who knows what will happen. We might get sent away and then where would we be?”
“Away?”
Jallin laughed and gently swatted the side of her head. Just to get her attention.
“No, I’m serious. Look, you can’t take that medicine anymore, Eja.”
“Why not? I’m supposed to take it.”
“You can’t. It’s bad for you. You have to trust me on this. It’s bad for you. You heard what Master Noshó said. It’s for slaves, not little girls.”
Eja’s brow furrowed. “Why would I take something that’s for slaves?”
“Because Auntie Hurga doesn’t know everything, and neither does Counselor Dursus or Counselor Yubrin.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“I can’t tell you. Please, just do this this one time, alright? Trust me.”
Jallin waited until Eja was inside the hut and a little dark hole appeared at the side of the curtain. Then, he walked, casually, to the greenhouse. He glanced everywhere around him. ‘Don’t look at your victim,’ Stasser said in his head. ‘Check your doors, find your guards. The vickytim isn’t going anywhere until you go after him.’
The greenhouse would stay where it was. No one had set any traps for him. The greenhouse held no danger for him; it was the people sleeping elsewhere, or the narg guard walking by outside, or the ears and noses of the kinto-shah. It was Auntie Hurga wondering where they went. The greenhouse didn’t see him coming; it wasn’t looking at him.
The door of the greenhouse was locked with a chain and padlock. The key hung on a ring on a bolt in Kir-Tuko’s shed, on the wall behind Kir-Tuko’s bed. He’d smell Jallin before he heard him, and he’d hear him before Jallin got round the corner. He’d have to pick the lock. Maybe.
Or, if he could get one of the glass panels off the side.
He knelt in the mud just to the left of the door and put his hand to one of the glass panels. His fingers, like the sticky-tipped fingers of a glurkle, splayed across the glass. He shifted his hand back and forth, but the glass only gave in any direction a tiny amount.
Kir-Tuko had given a hundred opportunities a day to get at the inavé before and would again tomorrow and the next day. Somewhere in his mind, a wise and small voice told him to wait.
But tomorrow morning, he would see the blue swirl in Eja’s food, like a swirl of blue piss polluting everything, and tomorrow night, he’d be standing outside the latrine, flinching, checking the doors, waiting for her to stop groaning and coughing so he could go back to sleep.
He stood. Around the back, near Kir-Tuko’s shed, boxes were stacked in the corner of the wall for shipping. Stacking some of those, he might reach the roof of the greenhouse, or at least the place where the greenhouse came nearest the wall. Maybe, he could get in through a skylight on top.
To any common thief, the obvious answer was to simply go between the greenhouse and the wall, break out a panel in such a way that it might later be replaced, and crawl in that way. If it had only been Auntie Hurga who told him not to walk in the little flowerbed without flowers, he would have gone in instantly. His answer would have been immediate and sure. But Kir-Tuko had told him, too. Once, while Kir-Tuko was answering the gate for a client, he told Jallin to go fetch a box by the door to his shed. When Jallin nearly stepped in the flowerbed between wall and glass, Kir-Tuko shrieked for him to stop, the closest thing to a whistle a kinto-shah had, and gestured for him to go around the greenhouse.
Jallin obliged him and wondered for a little while about the strange garden. He assumed they were growing something underground and brushed it out of his mind like Shi-Feo brushes leaves off the porches. Now, standing over the dark soil, he couldn’t see anything above or under the ground which might not be repaired. Even an onion or underground bulb didn’t mind a little pressure on top of it, did it?
Of course, he’d leave footprints, but how often would someone check that? He’d never seen anyone look for footprints in this dirt, neither Kir-Tuko nor Auntie Hurga. And they could be brushed away. So what was it? Where was the danger? What was the harm? It would be a while before anyone discovered the hole. The breezes didn’t come this way, and the sun didn’t shine here, and a table lined the north wall of the greenhouse. Jallin remembered pots and bags of dirt and all manner of equipment nearby as well.
His foot hovered for a moment over the dark soil, and just before it landed, he pulled back.
This is Sarkoshia, he thought. His eyes drifted instinctively to the little pillars in the garden, constantly shifting the wind about like a troop of jugglers. Master Noshó didn’t run a guild, and made money well enough from some of the nearby markets and apothecaries, and he did have the wind pillars, but Jallin hadn’t noticed many other magical devices usually found in Sarkoshia. In Triumph Square, near the Palace of Justice and the Lord Emperor’s Palace, Jallin had heard of a fountain that purified water of all disease. Stasser said once that some of the statues and gargoyles could hear people talking, which is why some of the Aethren were seen to have strange-looking candles and lamps at tables, or sparkling silver necklaces around their necks. Some streets in Sarkoshia bore peculiar, often beautiful, shapes and patterns and designs, and again Stasser said these were to prevent certain magic spells from happening.
A few of these places, Stasser wouldn’t even go near for fear Sarkoshian putrights had invented a spell to prevent pickpocketing or even looking for it. Not many Sarkoshians abided mindreading, when it could be adequately protested, so Jallin didn’t think like Stasser did. Then again, Stasser had been right about the Mercelians.
So what was this dirt? What was so peculiar about it? Why couldn’t he walk on it?
He knelt down by the edge of the flowerbed. Around the soil were what at first appeared to be simple boards of wood. Jallin dragged his finger along the surface of the wood. Simple boards of wood. He almost got a splinter. Typically, a trace of metal, or stone, or maybe the tell-tale slick-sheen of mystroskus was necessary for any spell to stay. Jallin knew that much from Stasser.
He held his hand close, maybe within a foot or so, to the lumpy trith[1]. It felt a little warm, but so did any disturbed dirt. The garden was no different. He brought his hand a little lower, maybe half the distance. Did something shift? Did the dirt move? No. What was it?
He sighed, turned to see if Eja was still watching and couldn’t tell.
The voice, the little voice all thieves have when a plan doesn’t line up, was yelling at him now, yelling as loud as it could. A thief’s mind always has at least two voices, the one figuring and calculating, the other begging for food and screaming ‘you’ll starve, you’ll starve, you’ll starve.’ This was the same voice telling him he deserved whatever it was he was about to steal, or he deserved to live at some place better than he had been. Its sister liked to remind him the law hadn’t caught him yet, and was not likely to catch him now. These kept caution in a stranglehold.
Eja coughed, and the sound echoed like a bell through the compound.
Jallin stepped into the flowerbed and stood like a prince waiting to be introduced to a crowd. Nothing. He picked up first his right foot, then his left, each in turn. Nothing. The dirt seemed to be rather sticky, moist like the innards of a cake. Of course, it was in a patch of shadow.
There were bulbs under the ground, he thought. They’d sleep. He wouldn’t disturb them.
He decided it would be best to get in somewhere in the middle of the greenhouse, not so close to the door as to be readily visible, not so close to Kir-Tuko’s shed as to be heard. He knelt near the glass and put his hand on it, as though checking for a heartbeat. He’d have to break the glass, and break it as low as possible. With any luck, a good sharp strike would send a crack down the middle, and he could pull out the two pieces; with better luck, he could even put the pieces back almost like he found them.
He raised his fist and brought it down, but stopped within an inch of the glass pane. Perhaps, if he just pushed against the glass, rather than hitting it, he could break it without as much sound.
On his knees, resting on his left hand, he pressed his right thumb, and the knuckles of his first two fingers against the glass. When it didn’t break, he pressed a bit harder, and then a bit more. Soon, it was a battle between his knuckles and the glass. Which would give first?
A cracking sound later and Jallin wondered if his finger had broken first. But a hairline mark appeared across the glass’ surface and the glass yielded as though bending a little. Like poking a friend to get a laugh at a joke, Jallin nudged the pane, forcing the glass to wobble back and forth along the break. The glass squeaked as though in pain, like a tiny riggin calling for its mama. The topmost half, a sharp, skin-cutting corner of the panel, fell like a head chopper at Jallin’s wrist, then lay out in the dirt, no longer able to protect its charge. The other piece came out of the frame easily, but Jallin was careful not to put his palm against the break and risk leaving a blood trail. He put that half to his other side.
Warm comfortable air greeted him and came to envelop him, and Jallin didn’t keep it waiting at the entrance for him. Checking the frame for any bits of glass, Jallin crawled on all fours into the greenhouse. Stacked pots and bags leaning against one another like drunks, and a few boxes surrounded him on all sides. With the exception of the spring air coming in behind him, he was alone and completely hidden.
Very carefully now, he pulled at the pots until they made room for him to pass. He was almost to the walkway between the center table and the one by the wall when something caught his eye.
At first, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d seen anything, except maybe a shadow or a random tendril from one of the potted plants overhead reaching down to the ground. His eyes searched for it again, and found it: a mark on one of the pots, as black as ink, darker than any of the surrounding shadows.
He leaned in close and looked at it, the streak of black across the clay surface of the pot. He rubbed at it with a finger, hoping he could smell it or scrape it off; instead, he made several marks just like it. The palm of his right hand was like looking down a dark hole, completely and utterly blacked. His other hand was the same. He rubbed them both against his pants, and made black marks across his thighs, as though he were rubbing his legs out of existence and leaving nothing but starless night in their place.
What was this?
He slapped the nearest bag of soil, and left big black handprints. He touched each forearm with the opposing hand, and again, left black marks.
What was this? He rubbed the shirt Kir-Tuko gave him, and now, the darkness was spreading across his body like a disease, as though he were wallowing in ink or paint or some sinister mold.
A trail followed him into the greenhouse from the entry he’d made. It was even on the glass pieces lying on their side. It was everywhere. He thrashed like an animal in a trap, and the stains appeared all around him. He was closing himself in it, more and more, and more.
His heart beat fiercely, and he was sure he was going to warn every kinto-shah around him within miles with his panicking breaths. He pushed his way out into the walkway and put black stains on the table, up one leg and onto the top of it. Inky black footsteps marked everywhere he stepped. If he bumped his stained shirt against something, it was stained. What was this nasty stuff?
Without thinking, he put his hand to his face. He pulled his hand back and stared at it, as though it were something other, like some strange insect had just landed on his face and he’d squashed it.
By the time he reached the workspace, and stood where Kir-Tuko normally stood, he was covered on every part of him he could see with the stain, and had left a legacy of his intrusion. No matter how lightly he touched something, drawing his hand back as though every surface were hot, the stain remained behind.
The bottle was where Kir-Tuko left it, just as exposed as Kir-Tuko had left it, and yet no way permitted him to reach it without staining at least three other containers, the table where Kir-Tuko worked, and several inches of the shelf.
“I’m in it now,” Jallin whispered, shaking his head. “I’m damned, no matter what. Might as well do what I damned myself to do.”
He took the bottle of blue medicine and watched the label disappear under the black stain as he rolled it back and forth in the palm of his hand. Then, he pocketed it and crept back outside, more night than night.
[1] Trith: Since Trithofar is completely ignorant of Earth, or any word related to it, the word for the bare substance under most people’s feet is ‘trith’ instead.
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