11 - The Donors

As they neared the river landing in the district of Fiddlewood, a light breeze and the muddy, familiar scent of the water drifted up the avenues to meet them. The walking lanes there were narrow and winding, the buildings close together, built on top of each other before any of the major streets had come to be. It was a labyrinthine stretch of brick shops and residences that went on for a few blocks before opening to the wider streets of Glass Avenue proper and the dockyards beyond.

The river itself was a ghost of what it had been two years ago. It seemed now to the boys to trickle rather than flow, a whisper where once there had been a roar. Brittle weeds and shrubs clung desperately to the dry soil of its banks, the water receding like the gums of a mummy.

The rudimentary waste system there did nothing to spare them from the stench of urine baked into the streets. From the academic districts within the perimeter of and surrounding the five towers and on northward there existed a system of gates and sluices that would wash waste into an organization of tunnels below the city, but there on Glass Avenue where the populace was entirely lowborn and lower, the outhouses, pits and ditches which had been dug reeked, and swarming flies had assimilated the breathable air. The bricks that paved the street were crumbled in places, and the boys, who now walked rather than ran, had to watch their footing so as not to risk twisted ankles. To their south the residences degraded further to slums and tent cities.

Huddled forms sat or slept shoeless on the ground, their backs to the brick walls. Some asked for copper bits, but most wouldn't meet the eyes of the passerby. The beggars of the academic districts and north of the academy would often perform talents for coin- dance, songs or juggling, but there in southern Yartha the men and women were sullen, defeated and angry. The guards were different as well. Northern guards seemed polite and refined, while southern ones were sometimes only a degree removed from the thieves and grifters, even murderers, which they supposedly stood against.

Yartha had always been two cities, the old-timers would often tell them; three if you were to count the more scantily occupied and historically later industrial districts east of the river and the communities that had formed around the mines, quarry and metalsmithing districts. The old-timers who were old enough to have lived under the tyrant’s rule said to them that the infrastructure of Yartha’s southwest quarter, Tabby Square and Fiddlewood especially, had been falling apart since before the two were born. The coin collected from the taxation of every citizen, craftsperson, and merchant went to the academy and governors, the Towers. They were supposed to use the money to pay city laborers- the common folk- to maintain streets and the like, but in recent years what little that had been done to mend the southwest quarter was done so by teams of apprentice laborers- free work from students of the various crafts, who were inadvertently paying them to obtain licenses to operate in the city.

It seemed like a racket to Syatt and Pox, who were essentially children, and neither were most adults they knew swayed by their false promises of wealth and prosperity, even safety. The boys were aware that before they’d been born, citizens had actually fought against the Yarthanguard over the law requiring mandatory craft licenses, physically, and the boys were always eager, if not admittedly frightened, to hear the older folk reminisce about the battles of this-or-that street, intrigued that their home had once been a battleground over something that seemed to Syatt to be overtly mundane.

He didn’t like violence. The two of them were no strangers to it, but in their experience it had always been random, scattershot. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would bring him to participate in it, and counted it as a blessing that such things weren’t expected of everyone. He supposed there were those times when it was unavoidable, however, and he wondered how normally peaceful folk navigated those unfrequented places, or if sometimes they simply had no choice in the matter.

They arrived at a row of brick storefronts on Chatter Street and convened about directions beneath upper level balconies with the busy pedestrians all around them. A stranger told them that the alley they sought was in between a leather tannery and bookbinders shop, and the two had known immediately where, as they'd walked past it many times. The alley was L-shape, and wrapped around a set of large brick dwellings that faced the true riverfront and Glass Avenue. From there it exited on Meander Street, which was used primarily by foreign merchants and those working on the river.

They found the place easily enough. There were more than one of the tell-tale acolytes loudly proclaiming the absurd promise they were peddling- a silver coin in exchange for one’s hair. Bald, brown-robed figures stood in front of a small crowd and recited what sounded like ancient scripture with the unsettling cheerfulness often adopted by those touched by gods. The words they recited sounded as if they were of Hyne of Earth, but they weren't talking about anything Syatt had learned at the orphanage. Two blocks away, at the mouth of the alley where the line began, were more of them; men and women of all ages, a few children, all with their heads and faces shaved as they milled about in identical robes.

Pox leaned to Syatt. "They’re really going for it," he said, still observing them. "You ever notice how this sort of thing happens like church bells? At least twice a year. A beggar, or sometimes a big head up there at the academy will get it in their mind that they've been touched by magic, but nothing ever happens. This time it's real, they always say. It makes you wonder."

"If it was ever real," Syatt said.

"Yeah, and these are the grown-ups. I don't think they know shit about shit, Sy."

Just last summer, a man, sober as he could be, had stepped off the roof of a two-story building in Tabby Square in an attempt to showcase his believed gift of magical levitation. He’d shouted his desperate incantations the entire way down to the street below. The boys had pushed through the crowd to see the aftermath. He’d lay there busted up, two broken legs, cursing the crowd for spoiling his concentration. The image was burned into Syatt's mind. It was one of sheer madness.

They walked on to find a line that stretched down Glass Avenue, formed long ago according to the miserable and anxious faces of the women and men who made it. It was composed almost entirely of the poor, the men bare-chested and the women wearing little beneath the unrelenting sun. They took their place at its tail.

After a short while there, Pox struck up a conversation with the woman ahead of them, who seemed to be in her late twenties or early thirties. She was dressed in a sleeveless tunic and loose breeches. Her broad shoulders were sun-burned and her hair was long, dark and tangled. When their conversation caught Syatt's attention, she was saying "Got my teeth busted out by some fella's shield over in Endstown.” She laughed loudly. She was tall, her arms and legs toned with muscle. Syatt saw she was drunk.

"These here are wooden. Can't even tell, can you?" she said, and opened her mouth wide. Syatt could tell. They were passable but something was not quite right about them.

Pox looked at her mouth. "Ah, I don't know. You're puttin' me in a fix, here," he said, then motioned toward the destination of the line. "You know anything about what’s going on up there?"

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"You can tell me the truth, now. Won't hurt my feelin's," she said, "and I ain't gonna hit you hard." She delivered to Pox a solid punch in his shoulder, and he rubbed his arm and shot Syatt an amused glance as she went on. "Yes, I do, as a matter of fact, know anything about what’s going on here. That happens to be my old pal Varn at the end of that alleyway. If there's anything left of him, that is. You see, the thing is… is that it is him, but it really ain't him. She tilted her face up to the sun and squinted. "I don't know if he's possessed by a spirit, or devil, or what. I just want to see the old bastard. If he wants to eat my hair like these bald-headed sons of bitches are saying, then I suppose that's alright with me, and if that brings rain, well, all the better, but if you ask me it sounds like a load of shit. You'll excuse me if I'm skeptical."

She swayed as she pointed a finger at Pox and Syatt noticed her demeanor change, "Yeah, I used to not believe in magic, too," she slurred, and shook her head from side to side, mouth downturned. “Just like you. I heard it all before. Well, the way I see it now, is that there is no 'natural.' There is no 'normal.' Everything is magic. The only thing normal is the colorless void from which creation sprang, and it ain't normal because it ain't nothin'. There’s things in this world we’ll never know. I don’t care how much schooling you’ve had. There’s things we was never meant to know."

When she lifted her head she looked at them both for a long time, and she had either teared up or her eyes were rheumy from the alcohol. The line hadn't moved at all. Syatt looked down at his threadbare shoes, unsure of what, if anything, to say. Pox was busy swatting at a horsefly that had been hovering around them the entire time. She was lost in thought for a moment, then suddenly stuck her hand out. "Alma Bryde," she said, addressing them both and giving their hands each a firm pull. "What're your names, boys?"

Syatt and Pox introduced themselves, and for the next forty-five minutes or so, Alma Bryde shared her many thoughts and beliefs about magic and creation and everything in between as the line inched forward. Pox engaged in conversation with her eagerly, always more talkative with strangers than Syatt, but he still listened with genuine interest. They continued to talk while he shifted forward and craned his neck to see over the crowd for anyone emerging from the alleyway. They were still at least fifty or sixty feet away. He wiped his eyes of sweat. The heat was unbearable. Some in the line had with them cloth or paper fans, and he envied them.

"I don't know about that," Pox said to Alma. "How?"

"Yes sir,” she replied. “Every single star in the night sky is a sun. Some bigger'n ten of ours, I’d say." she sputtered after a long pull from her waterskin, which they had learned was filled with whiskey.

"Okay," Pox said. "Then why can't we see what's around 'em? The other worlds they're lighting up? And why ain't they yellow?"

"It's too far away," she said, "and they ain't any color. It's like river water. Some days it looks blue and some days it looks brown, but when you cup it in your hands it ain't really any color."

Pox considered it. "Yellow is a color. You can't say yellow ain't a color."

"But the sun ain't always yellow, is it? In fact, I would go as far to say that you probably shouldn't be tryin' to figure out what color the sun is."

"You know what I mean," Pox said.

"Slybbon the Wise Fish of the Godswyne River sees colors unseeable," she said. "Color isn't real, just the leftover memory from a dream of hers, floating away."

Pox seemed to take a hint and gave up his protest, whatever it had been about. There were so many religions in Yartha that it was hard to keep them straight. One of the key things that made Yartha a free city was its freedom of worship. The various territories around them all had at least some restrictions on what you could and could not pray to and what customs you could and could not follow. The citizens of Yartha were free to worship a variety of different gods, goddesses, ideas, and things, but Slybbon the River Goddess was one of the more prevalent ones. She was sometimes a fish and sometimes a woman with the lower half of a fish, and sometimes just an old woman who lived by the river. It was complicated, like all of the religions of the city. Many worshiped Slybbon, but some still followed the old mountain gods of Yartha's ancestors. Nothing had such a hold so that many religions and cults rose up and died off just as fast, and no religion had remained in anything close to its original form since the cities' founding.

For some, it was nothing more than a changing fashion, the more bizarre the costume, the better, or that was how it sometimes seemed to him, but to all, the freedom to pray how you liked was an invaluable privilege, whether they knew so or not, Millie would say. Thankfully for law and order, most of the religions in the city centered morally around some form of the golden rule or another, but there were a few reclusive churches that could be considered "evil", and many more which were just plain strange.

"Maybe I'm just messin' with you," Alma said to Pox with a grin. "Can't rule that out, now." She took another slug of the whiskey. "I'm a follower of Slybbon, but I figure we're more than likely all worshiping the same thing in the end, and I'll put up with any of your customs, maybe even follow a few if I feel so inclined, as long as you ain't sacrificing babies or the like."

Pox shook his head and looked at Syatt. "I think this is about the weirdest lady I ever met," he said.

Alma laughed. "Hell, there's plenty weirder. You sure you boys are from Yartha?" She wiped her brow and took yet another swallow from the skin, "I'd offer y'all a nip, but I won't give hard liquor to a child," she said, caught her breath and took another quick drink. Syatt eyed her with mild concern.

He noticed as the line moved forward that the acolytes had been rotating their positions in and out of the alleyway. A group of them would enter, stay for ten to fifteen minutes, and then they would exit, looking pale and exhausted. A new group would go in, and the cycle would repeat.

"Sy, she thinks she thinks she can get us some work," Pox said to him. "Temporary, at least."

Alma nodded. “I gave your pal directions. Get yourselves across the river and come by Crow’s Tavern this evenin’ if you’re interested, and I’ll see what I can do if I ain't passed out or in a jail cell by then. It’s hard to tell. Depends on how this goes.” She nodded at their destination.

The afternoon was well underway when it was Alma Bryde's turn to be led forward into the alleyway by one of the acolytes. Syatt could see a sort of enclosure that had been erected down at the corner of the L-shaped alley, a beige canopy and curtain hanging there where the wide channel turned.

It was Alma's turn to be led by one of the short-haired, sickly-looking men as he approached her. "Here goes," she said under her breath, and then to them, "Good to meet ya, boys. Pox and Syatt. Quiet Syatt. Nothin' worth saying, right?" She gave him a clap on the shoulder, and the robed man took her down the alley and past the curtain where she disappeared.

Pox turned to Syatt. "You want to go first?"

Syatt was taken aback. Pox was usually the first at everything they did- he was the first of them to jump from the tall cliffs at the quarry, the first to shoplift from any new shop in the city to "test the waters," and unlike Syatt, Pox had kissed a girl. For whatever reason, though, he was demurring on this. Syatt didn't mind. He was certainly the less brave of them- that was a fact he would readily admit to, but getting a haircut from some odd people was not jumping off a cliff or kissing a girl to him, and he felt a pride in his fearlessness. Let's see how fearless I am when I'm in there, he thought, but shook his hands at his sides as if readying himself for a feat of agility, and casually remarked to Pox, "That's all right by me."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

They stood there at the mouth of the alley for a long while, and Syatt listened for sounds coming from the makeshift shrine at its end, but the noise of the city street washed everything out. Then they heard clearly a commotion, like things being thrown around inside, yelling, before all was quiet again. Moments later one of the acolytes slipped past the entry curtain and composed herself, then began to walk down the alleyway toward Syatt, smiling with a face that looked alien to him, bald head reflecting the sun. The air shook with heat. He turned to Pox.

“Who knows?” Pox said. “She was pretty shit-faced by the time she went in. Wait for me on the other side, alright?”

“Alright,” Syatt said, suddenly very nervous.