The knife stood upright from the victim’s eye. On impulse Orem strode to the body and reached down to take the knife; at that same moment a long thin hand also reached to the corpse. For a moment Orem thought someone was challenging him for possession of the weapon, but no; it was an old woman, and she was holding a cup, catching the last of the flowing blood. A witch, then, who could make use even of unearned blood. Orem wondered what sort of filthy magic could be made of found death even as he backed off and let her take what she wanted.
She finished. She looked up and smiled at him. She bent and kissed the knife. For a moment Orem thought not to take it after all; who knew what the kiss might mean? But then he thought better of it. Even a boy trained as a priest could make use of a dagger if need were, and in this place he had no intention of passively submitting to what the walking corpses might decide for him. So he stepped forward again and drew the knife upward, drawing one last bubble from the man’s eye. He cleaned the knife, for lack of a better place, on the man’s clothing; then he put the knife in his bag.
The woman spoke, her voice hissing like the last breath of a butchered sow. “There are three things in nature that know no moderation, in goodness or in foulness.” She cocked her head and waited.
Orem shuddered. He knew the litany, and knew as well that it could not be left incomplete. If she chose to stop and wait, he had to go on for her. “When they are governed by goodness,” he said softly, “they are most excellent in virtue.”
“The tongue,” said the woman. “And a priestly man.”
“But when they are corrupted, there is no bottom to stay their hellward plunge.” Is that enough, or must I name the third name?
“And a woman.” She smiled and nodded wisely at him, as if they had shared something lovely; then she took her cup of cooling blood and carried it away.
Orem felt the knife in his bag like a small fire, burning his skin though it could not touch him directly. What had she meant by making him chant the Ambivalence? Was she warning him to curb his own evil desires? But I have no truly unspeakable desires, he thought, and besides, I’m not a priestly man anymore. Why should I worry about the warnings of a woman already so corrupt as to use found blood? Yet still he shuddered. Still the knife burned his back. Still the knife froze his back until he had walked far enough and thought enough of other things and inwardly sung songs enough that the litany of the three boundless friends and enemies of God fled his mind and he forgot even the knife he carried.
HOW OREM CAME TO BE CALLED SCANTHIPS
Piss Gate at last. From a distance it looked like Swine Gate and the Hole; close up it had a character all its own. This place did not belong to the permanent residents. It was not silent and despairing. The line was long and jostled rudely, and only the presence of many guards kept quarrels from erupting into fights. As for the guards, they were grim and busy, and six of them were ahorse, patrolling up and down the line. There were no dead looks among the people in the line. They might be angry or stupid or frightened or awestruck or jocular, but they were not dead. Orem recognized himself in many places along the line, at once ashamed at the plain naivete of the others his age and relieved that it was indeed possible to stay hopeful here. People from the farms; people with dreams of finding some treasure in the city; Orem took his place in the line and felt smaller—but safer than he had in the streets of Beggarstown.
No sooner was he in line than the queue was a hundred people long behind him. The guards had let the grocers in three or four abreast, but here the guards were in no such rush. The huge gates did not stand open. Only a narrow door in the gate served for the paupers to pass. Yet the people themselves had the same sense of urgency that the grocers and butchers had. The belief was strong that if you could just get through the line ahead of someone, then you would get the job that that man might have had. Within that gate was the answer to everything, if you could just get through and ask your questions first. A job; a workingman’s pass; the right to stay within the city; this was the gate of heaven and the angels in their bronze breastplates held the chains of salvation. Orem could not help seeing the world as the priests saw it; he also could not help being amused at the thought of these foul-faced soldiers being angels. Are these the silver bridge and the golden gate and the chains of steel? Try that for doctrine, Halfpriest Dobbick.
“First time?”
It was the man ahead of him, who bore three thin scars on his cheek, two of them old and white, the other just a little pink. He did not look friendly, but at least he had spoken.
“Yes,” Orem said.
“Well, take a word. Accept no jobs from the men just inside the gate.”
“I want a job.”
The man’s mouth twisted. “They promise to take you for a year, but in three days they turn you over to the Guard without your permanent pass. How’s that? And they don’t pay you, either. They just get three days’ work out of you for free and turn you out. The real jobs are farther in.”
“Where?”
“If I knew, would I be in this line again?”
And at last, with the sun hot and red through the door in the gate, they were at the questioning guards. The man who had spoken to Orem sullenly answered the questions: Name, business, citizenship. Rainer Carpenter, woodworker looking for a job, citizen of Cresting. The guard took Rainer by the chin and turned his face, so he could see the scarred cheek. It was the pink one that made the guard’s eyes go small and angry.
“Still red, Rainer, dammit, are you blind?”
“Got no mirror,” Rainer answered. “Woman told me it was white.”
“Like I thought, only a blind woman would have you. Get out and come back when the time’s done.”
And now Orem was at the front of the line, only vaguely aware that Rainer Carpenter was still standing nearby.
“Name?”
“Orem.”
The guard waited, then said impatiently, “Your whole name!”
Orem remembered the laughter at the Hole over his patronymic. Rainer had used his trade as a surname, as Glasin had. Well, Orem had no trade. Why had they laughed? Perhaps they didn’t admit their fathers’ names here. “Don’t have more. Just Orem.”
The guard was amused. “From a village so small, eh?” He looked at Orem’s body and his smirk grew. Orem cursed his thinness and lack of height. “We’ll just put you down as Orem Scanthips, eh? Scanthips!” He said it loudly, and the other guards laughed. “Business?”
“Looking for work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Any kind, I guess.”
“Any kind? No one hires a man who can’t do anything. What, do you think there’s farms in there needing another ass to bear dead burdens?”
Wouldn’t they let him in without a trade? What did he know? I can say all the open prayers by heart. I can name the letters capital, the letters corporal, the letters spiritual, the numbers real, the numbers whole, the numbers variable. “I can read and write.”
The guard made a face of mock surprise. “A scholar, eh?” But the amusement was over. The guard reached out and took away Orem’s bag and opened it. A flask of water, a lump of bread, and a dagger with a little blood still clinging to it. Not the safe little dinner knife Orem wore at his waist—that was for slicing cheese. This was obviously a killing knife, long and sharp pointed. The guard held it up. “Read and write. Oh, I’ve heard that before. And what is this, your pen?”
Orem didn’t know what to say. The dagger had seemed desirable as he walked through Beggarstown; now it might be what blocked him from the city, or worse than that.
But then Rainer Carpenter spoke from nearby. “It’s mine,” he said.
“Yours!” said the guard.
“Last time in here I was robbed and I damn well wasn’t going to do it again. I didn’t think you’d look at the boy’s bag. He didn’t know it was in there.”
The guard looked back and forth between Orem and Rainer. The look of bewilderment on Orem’s fac
e was sincere enough, and nothing could be read in Rainer’s eyes. Finally the guard shrugged. “Rainer, you’re a fool. You know we’d have you whipped with a glass pipe for that, if you once got it inside.”
“Glass pipe or a crackhead’s leaden rod, tell me the difference,” said Rainer. And the guard wrote again on Orem’s pass. “Citizenship?”
“Banningside, in High Waterswatch.”
The guard looked at him suspiciously again. Again Orem was forced to claim that he ran from the pressmen of Palicrovol’s army. Again his body was laughed at, and he wanted to strike out at the guards and break their brittle, mocking smiles. But at least he would get inside, at least he held the pass in his hand; and all thanks to Rainer Carpenter, a man he didn’t know. Just when Orem had concluded there was no kindness in this place, a stranger lied to let him into the city. Orem dared not turn and thank him—that would undo it all. But part of his name and poem would be repayment of such debts. Rainer would find it was not unprofitable to help Orem ap Avonap.
He was guided into the gate by the careless, efficient hands of the guards. And they were not through with him once he had passed inside. There was a guard with a short razor, and before Orem could be sure what was happening, two guards had seized him. They held his head still while the cutter sliced his cheek. The cut was thin and not deep, but still the blood dripped quickly from the stinging wound and stained his shirt.
A mouth spoke at his ear. “Mind you, we know from experience when this wound is healed enough that you ought to be back outside. Any guard who sees this scar will check your pass, and if you’re overstayed he’ll have your ear. Understand? Get caught twice, and it’s your balls. You have three days. Sundown, clear? And once you’re out, the scar has to be plain white before we let you in again. And stay off Stone Road. Go on.” With a push at his back, Orem stumbled forward into Inwit.
12
The Sweet Sisters
This is the tale of how Orem, called Scanthips, called Banningside, went to Whore Street and left unsatisfied.
THE WHORE AND THE VIRGIN
When you come into Inwit on Piss Road, on the left is the miserable shantytown of the Swamps, and on the right are the gaudy taverns, and ahead in the distance looms the Old Castle. It is not a hard choice for newcomers to make. Orem turned right, into the Taverns, and wandered along the street in the gathering darkness, wondering how much food and lodging his five coppers would buy.
In the Taverns, all roads lead to Whore Street, and by not knowing where he was going, Orem soon ended up there. He did not know it was Whore Street at first. It looked, to him, like the richest town he had ever seen, for here the buildings were high and clean, and there were trees in the middle of the road, many trees and bushes, so it was like walking in an open wood. The houses were simple and graceful and well-proportioned, and more than one of them was made to look very much like a House of God.
The nature of the place was revealed when a half-drunk, giggling bunch of masked boys stopped two women and handed them each a coin. It took only a few minutes for all the boys to be satisfied, whooping as they leaned the women against trees and slobbered drunken kisses on them and lifted their skirts high while they discussed which was better. The intercourse was like little boys urinating, giggling as they compared each other’s equipment and loudly counted to see how quickly each was through. Orem was not ignorant—he had lived on a farm. But he had never seen it done by a man and a woman before, and he could not take his eyes off the scene. Only when it was over did he look at the whores’ faces. He saw them just as the boys were leaving, just as the women’s smiles were fading and they sighed and rearranged their clothing and pooled their money. They picked up an interrupted conversation in midstream; the interlude with the boys had meant nothing to them. As Orem told me of this night, he was still awed that a man could dip in the Sisters’ fountain and the woman would not rue it.
An hour later, Orem leaned against a tree, watching one of the more elegant orgies, where the men and women held forth on philosophical topics for an hour or so among the trees before the coupling began. He did not know the woman had come near him until she touched his arm.
“Unless you have more money than you look to have,” she said, “you might as well go home. The deeper you go into Whore Street, the more expensive it gets.”
She was all breast and teeth—at least to Orem she was, for all he could see when he looked at her face was the way both rows of teeth were visible when she smiled, and when he didn’t look at her face all he could see was the way her breasts hung provocatively within her blouse.
Perhaps she was one of those few whores who haven’t lost their taste for beauty or for love. Not that Orem was beautiful. But he had a kind of gangling grace, like a colt first running, and he could look at once childlike and dangerous. (Perhaps only I saw the danger in his face; Beauty would have prospered better if she had seen it sooner.) Whatever her reason, she accepted an offer he did not make. He was so trusting that when she asked, he told her he had but five coppers. She had a conscience—she only charged him four.
His new-engaged whore brought him past the fierce guard at the door of a nearby house, announced in loud tones to all who cared to hear that she had found a virgin stalk to reap, and pushed him toward the stair. She walked behind him, and twice reached under his tunic and pulled his wrapping cloth down below his buttocks. Each time he jumped in surprise; each time she giggled.
At the head of the stairs he made as if to walk down the wide carpeted hall, but she pulled back on his shirt.
“That costs a silver, no bargaining, that’s what the house charges and I got no choice.” Off they went up another flight. This time the carpet ended at the turn of the stairs, the moment the steps weren’t visible from the carpeted hall. “It’s like a hundred houses in one,” she said, “depending on what you pay.” The next flight creaked. And the fourth flight of stairs wobbled underfoot. “It’s the cheap rooms, forgive the fleas, but four coppers ain’t exactly money.”
They walked carefully down a dark corridor, lit only by a torch at each end. Orem glanced into the rooms that were open. Just glanced, until what he saw made him stop and stare.
They sat side by side. Two women, just sitting, still as trees. They were dressed like any other whores, and had bodies perhaps more lovely than other whores. But their faces: which was more terrible? The one with a single eye, and a mouth that opened only on the side, and a nose skewed around so the nostril pointed more up than down? Or the one with no face at all?—neither brows nor eyes nor nose nor lips, just a circumference of hair and a blank of flesh interrupted only by a thin slit that could not be called a mouth, for there were no lips and it hung open in a limp O that dripped a steady stream of saliva down on her open bosom.
“Twins of the flesh, they were,” said Orem’s whore in a whisper, and she drew him away. Though he could not bear to look at the women, he hung back; she pulled harder and he drew away from the door. “Twins of the flesh. Born of a noble house, it’s said, and they got the finest physicians and the finest wizards, not to mention priests, who blessed them till they damn near sprouted wings. Then they cut them apart. Twins of the flesh, joined at the face, except that the one was looking away from the other just a little, so she had an eye and half a mouth and half a nose, but the other nothing at all but a tiny hole that was letting air in from the other’s mouth. They widened the hole. The blessings worked, for they lived. And the spells worked, for they grew flesh over their bloody wounds. But what was there for them? And which is worse cursed, do you think? The one who cannot see? Or the one who knows mirrors? We call them the Sweet Sisters. Kind of a joke, you know.”
Orem had never known a woman in his life who would joke about the Sweet Sisters.
His whore opened a small door and ducked to go in. Orem also ducked, but still banged his head. “Low roof,” she said.
His whore pulled her blouse from her shoulders; her breasts pulled up and then jogged back down when sh
e lowered her arms. Orem saw, but all he could think of was the slack face with the hole that drooled. The whore undressed him, but all he could think of was the face with the single eye and the canted nose and the half-mouth. His whore stroked him and kissed him but it did no good; he lay trembling and unable and cold on the thin rug on the floor. Whatever he may or may not have wanted as he came up the stairs, the whore had nothing of him, because he had seen the twins of the flesh who had once been joined at the face and could think of nothing else.
“Fifteen,” his whore said contemptuously. “Might as well be five. What did you plan to stick there, your knee? God knows it’s skinny enough to fit. You got the balls of a mouse and the cod of a flea, that’s what you got, so don’t go telling me it’s my fault, I’m still pretty enough, I didn’t hear you telling me I was ugly down there on the street, did I?” She dressed quickly, then stooped and took four coppers from where they lay on the floor. “You pay for my time—it’s not my fault you didn’t use it. You’re damn lucky I don’t take the other one, for the insult.” She spat on his loin wrap where it lay pathetic and empty on the floor, then stepped on it. “That and piss is all you’ll ever find in your wrap in the morning. Find your own way out, dingle. When you turn ten come back and we’ll see what we can do.” And she was gone.
JOINED AT THE FACE
Ashamed, Orem tried to wipe her spittle from the wrap by dabbing with his shirt. Was this how his poem would begin?
He dressed and ducked back into the cluttered, shadowy hall. At once he saw the wall of light from the door where the monsters called the Sweet Sisters waited for him to pass. He was at once drawn to them and terrified. He stepped carefully, he trembled at the knee, he stumbled, he lurched against a wall. He was all the noisier for his efforts at silence.