He didn’t see Ushna or the Damadzus again for almost three months—three very busy months. Master Tuzinani’s reading lessons, at the obviously discounted rate of two silvers a month, ate up an enormous amount of his free time; he’d had no notion how complicated it was to turn script into sounds. But Master Tu was a skilled and patient tutor, with kindlings of experience, and was willing to lend Ram a scroll or two for practice back at barracks, while his countenance got him into the library at the acolytes’ school east of the Temple. At the end of two months, Ram was somewhat thinner from regularly missing lunch, but could at least read moderately complex writing, and even write a little, if you weren’t picky about legibility.
He would have liked to branch out into other subjects as well, only his finances didn’t allow it. Two gold didn’t earn interest all that quickly, and he needed to send most of his income back home. The best he could do was ask Master Tu if he could practice reading on more informative texts than his aging set of primers. After a bit of back-and-forth, they settled on introductory works of geography, so Ram could learn how the pyres were laid out. He’d have preferred something about money or politics, but nobody wrote works like that for Ram’s reading level.
His comrades in the militia were puzzled by his new pastime, but didn’t hold it against him. He was getting to like their company a little better, though he didn’t think he’d ever trust them. Even Busu—who was in the service after too many indiscretions with other men’s wives and daughters—had his rare decent moments. None of them were his friends, but as more and more recruits flooded in, Ram inevitably became part of the inner circle of veterans. He was one of them now; it wasn’t a feeling he was used to, and he couldn’t say he didn’t like it, though he knew it was doomed to end.
The Damadzus seemed very far away now. Kamenrag continued to leave him alone, to the extent that Ram went whole days at a time without thinking of him. Even the burning memory of Darun meant less and less; there were plenty of young women about the pyre—shopkeepers’ girls, or the younger daughters of petty overseers with no prospects for a better marriage—who had an eye for soldiers, if you knew where to look. Ram didn’t have the time or the money to chase them like the others did, but he kept himself in shape, and he got enough attention not to feel nearly as pathetic as he had at the hearth. If he could keep learning, he thought, and apply himself, he might very well become an officer in a couple of blooms. Marriage would be simple after that.
Or would have been, anyway, if it weren’t for his promise to Ushna.
His cousin made an abrupt reappearance in his life just as spring was beginning in earnest. Field work had resumed, but there were enough raw recruits that Ram only needed to provide a couple of crossbow lessons. Veterans did street patrol bloom-round. He was in the middle of one with Busu, trying to steer the conversation away from his last night out, when a familiar figure in a delver-skin coat fell into step beside them. Busu took one look at his elaborate black cravat and remembered something he needed to do elsewhere.
“Hello, Ushna,” Ram said, trying to stay calm. He’d barely been a soldier six months. He didn’t owe his cousin anything yet.
“Rammash. A pleasure as always. You seem to be doing quite well for yourself these days. I’m glad to see it.”
“Thank you. What do you want, Ushna?”
“As ever, you go directly to the point. Not my own preference, but I can see the advantages of it. Simply put, the Damadzus have need of your services tonight.”
Ram stopped, turned to his cousin, and started ticking off on his fingers: “One, it’s not time yet. Per our agreement. Two, I’m on duty for the rest of the day. Three, even if I were part of your gang, I’d need to be individually countenanced by the pyre as a member to legally do anything here, and they’d object because of my militia commitment. Four, inducement to dereliction of duty is a crime and leads to forfeiture of count—“
“Rammash, please. I can see you’ve been educating yourself a bit.”
“Yes. Yes, I have.” He decided not to tell Ushna he had his daughter to thank for that.
“As it happens, however, everything you’ve said is beside the point, because we require your services as a member of the Dul Karagi militia.”
Ram took him by the elbow and pulled him aside into an alley. They didn’t need to have this conversation in public. “Explain.”
“It’s a complicated and delicate situation, you see. To put it briefly, we need the assistance of a Karagene militiaman in serving a warrant from another pyre, and you’re the natural choice, given our history and personal connection.”
“Okay. What’s the long version? Since when do you serve warrants?” That was sometimes blackbands’ work, but it was far from prestigious. And he’d be a fool to trust anything Ushna put briefly.
“Since we became the injured party for the case in question. Albeit indirectly. We conducted a complex and significant transaction last month with a prominent individual from Dul Natati—a transaction involving multiple third parties. One of whom reneged on his end of the agreement, absconding with the merchandise without performing the services specified by contract.”
“And came to Dul Karagi?” No, he was not going to ask what the ‘services specified’ were.
“He’s almost certainly staying with family here—old man Lashantu. Don’t know if you’ve heard of him.”
“Of course I have. And you’re signed on because … “
“Because our own reputation is partially implicated in the matter, of course. There’s always an unfortunate suspicion of collusion where my profession is concerned. I imagine you can fill in the rest: we need to make an abrupt but discreet visit to the Lashantu residence tonight, and convince them of the error of their kinsman’s ways.”
“You got the warrant?” Ushna promptly pulled a crumpled paper out of his coat. “Thank you. Let’s see.” It was full of fancy words he couldn’t make out yet, but he knew roughly what he was looking for. “Looks legit. Except it doesn’t specify the nature of the goods to be recovered. Irregular.” He might not be able to read those words, but he sure knew how to sling them around now.
“For reasons which I hope should be obvious.”
“Naturally. Circumspection, and all that. But you know, irregularities do have to be accounted for.” He held out an open hand with a smile.
Ushna raised his eyebrows. “My, my. Depraved by the ways of pyre life after less than a bloom? Whatever happened to my morally upright young cousin Rammash?”
“He bought his commander Perikalla a little bit of dinner and a lot of beer two months back. Best copper he ever spent. Come on, Ushna, this isn’t treason, it’s petty corruption; it happens all the time, and if it didn’t exist you’d be out of work. You only picked me for this because you thought I wouldn’t ask. What kind of skeezy junk are you expecting me to report as wine jars, or linen, or whatever?”
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“About three silvers’ worth, from your perspective.”
“Any of it actually dangerous?”
“Well, that depends on what they decide to do with it, if you follow me. A child’s marbles can kill a man, should he be so foolish as to attempt to swallow them.”
“Mm-hmm. Four. Four silver. And that’s family rates—Peri’d ask for six.”
“Yes, generally speaking your officers don’t come cheap. But I’d say that’s acceptable. I’ll expect you in the alley at the northwest corner of the house at dinnertime.”
“You want me to miss dinner for this crap? I should have said five.”
“Alas, it is too late. And dinner is the best time—it’s when he’s likeliest to be there. Unless of course you want to get special authorization for a night raid. No? Then I leave you to your regular patrol, and your pusillanimous companion’s delightful storytelling.”
“Always a pleasure,” Ram muttered as he eased himself back onto the main road. One good thing about the interlude was that it made Busu forget his bragging; he reappeared at Ram’s side a few moments later, and said little for the rest of their walk.
It gave Ram time to think things over. Old Lashantu and his large family were powerful around the pyre; they were tied to the Lugal by marriage, and had produced something like thirty currently living flamekeepers, acolytes, and handmaidens. Even Kamenrag was supposed to be a relative—a favored bastard of the old man’s second son, given a posh job for his bonded mother’s sake. It might have been better to decline the job.
On the other hand, a warrant was a warrant—he knew at least three soldiers who’d served them, and nothing bad had happened to them. Four silver was good pay for what amounted to an hour’s work watching Ushna negotiate. At the end of the night they’d walk away with either the stolen goods or a generous handful of face-saving cash, or both, and nothing more would come of it. If nothing else, it wouldn’t hurt to tag along with his eyes open. It would be another kind of education.
On balance, he felt pretty good about the deal by the time his patrol ended. He stopped for some fried shrimp dumplings at a stall, since he’d be missing dinner, and gave himself plenty of time to meander up to the north end of the pyre. Master Tu’s neighborhood by the river was fashionable and well-heeled, the preserve of prosperous overseer families, but the real masters of the pyre dwelt a short ways north of the Temple, in sheltered family compounds taking up a whole block apiece.
It was the kind of neighborhood where they didn’t even have flamekeepers walk the streets; there were no shops and little traffic, only a warren of tall and faceless walls marking off the various estates, and any man who dared to pass through those walls without permission would never come back out alive. Each house was virtually a pyre to itself, proud and independent. Men came in with food and messages; men went out with trash and commands. The inhabitants could spend their whole lives inside, if they pleased.
Ushna was already waiting with Bal in the alley. For once, he got right to business. “The warrant,” he said, handing Ram a slip of paper. “As the legal representative of the pyre, you’ll be the one actually serving it. The house has three entrances; you’ll go in the front, Bal and I will watch to intercept anyone who tries to duck out the other two. We’ll give you a quarter-hour, then come in after. Clear? Good.”
Their front gate was only slightly less imposing than that of Dul Karagi itself; a long train of beasts in bronze tiles came marching along the walls on either side, terminating in a pair of rampant lions with their claws against the doorposts. Two ten-foot-tall doors stood between them; Ram knocked as loudly as he dared, waited a few moments, then simply pushed one open, holding the warrant high. There was no sign of a lock.
It opened onto a pebbled pathway flanked by date palms, with a long canopy of spangled fabric stretched between their trunks over its whole length. The little garden it passed through was immaculately kept, with a decorative pool full of fish and a life-sized statue of a nude woman with wings. The path ended at a door in a square-sided tower of brilliantly glazed bricks in multiple hues, at least five stories tall. Multiple shorter—but still imposing—buildings connected to it, sprawling out to divide the area between the walls into a series of intimate gardens like the one he was in.
He found the tower door likewise unlocked; the base of the tower was double-high, with a staircase wrapping around its interior and a dulsphere hanging in a chain lantern from the ceiling. A doorway in the opposite wall led to a large sitting room, with seven richly upholstered chairs arranged around an equally beautiful table; there were several large windows, opening towards the Temple. There was nobody in either room, but he could hear conversation in the distance—Lashantu’s family seemed to be eating upstairs. They probably wouldn’t care to be interrupted.
And Ram was in no hurry to interrupt them. He ventured out into the sitting room; to the left was the entrance to a long pillared walkway through another garden, while two more doorways led to smaller rooms on the right. It was all perfectly clean, silent, and empty. He suspected he could poke around the place all night and never come close to finding the contraband, and probably get lost to boot. Idly, he sniffed at the air, trying to guess what the ludicrously wealthy ate for dinner—and paused.
He smelled something, but it wasn’t dinner. At least, he devoutly hoped not. It wasn’t a very strong odor, but it was familiar enough. He sniffed around the sitting room, following his nose through one of the adjoining rooms—a small pantry—along a hallway, and down a half flight of stairs to a basement, dimly lit by a set of high, small windows.
This room was far less richly furnished than the others; a broad, tall table of rough wood took up most of the floor space. A brazier off to one side, still warm, gave off a faint aromatic smoke. But not enough to cover the stink from the table. It was draped with multiple layers of cloth, all soaked through with fluids in various shades of red and brown. Despite his expectations, there were bazu artifacts laid out on top in clear view: eight small crystals gleamed with the familiar blue light, next to a black-and-silver scepter and an Eye of Nidriz identical to the one they’d pulled off the abizu’s head. They shared the space with a variety of more prosaic human tools; a saw, knives, augers, picks and probes, several small ceramic dishes, and a file, all soiled and caked with rust-colored matter, jostled for room on the crowded surface. Dozens of flies buzzed over it all.
In the middle of the table lay what remained of a human body, a girl about ten or eleven blooms old. One arm and much of the opposite leg had been removed, the abdomen opened, most of its contents extracted or dissected. Her face was mostly intact, except for one eye. The scalp had been shaved and peeled back to access the skull. One tool—something bazu, a thin wand of banded black and gold—was still embedded in the brain. A fly settled on the end of it, and rubbed its arms with anticipation.