Government in the Dominion of Man takes a very rudimentary form; given the absolute necessity of keeping the fires burning, the ensis and lugals have no fear of rivals or rebels, and therefore need make no concessions. There are no restrictions on the power of either beyond the willingness of their servants to obey a given order. The informal system of countenance acts as a check against outright anarchy and murder in the streets, but offers little protection for the less prominent citizens. A man without protection who offends his betters has no right of appeal; if he cannot flee the community, he can only plead for mercy, knowing very well that it is unlikely to be given.
Where was he running to, he wondered? Where could he go, and have a prayer of safety? This was too big to hide from behind militia countenance. Possibly the Ensi would protect him—but possibly not. Kamenrag hadn’t seemed impressed by his last threat. At any rate, he couldn’t get to the Temple without passing right by the Lugal’s palace. He might as well kill himself now, and save the effort.
Which left him one desperate hope. Luckily, it wasn’t far away … he turned right at the next corner, and headed south. A few passersby looked at him curiously, but nobody tried to stop him. He suspected that wouldn’t last long. There would be fresh flamekeepers on the scene even now, trying to make sense of a score of terrified onlooker accounts, barking out orders to call for help, sending out whole companies of men to find Ram and kill him.
He was panting hard when he finally tramped his way up a flight of stairs under a mural of a dancing girl with a bright red flute. He slipped his way inside just to get out of sight, then took a moment to catch his breath. All conversation in the common room stopped abruptly; there were only five blackband customers and a pair of servers in the room, but all seven turned to stare.
“I’m looking for the Damadzus,” he wheezed.
“You’re a bit late there. Their countenance was revoked ages back … sir,” one of the blackbands said, staring at Ram’s side.
Ram looked down and realized he was still holding Kamenrag’s sword, with its sheath, in his right hand. Why the hell was he still carrying it? He couldn’t have made himself more conspicuous if he’d stripped naked. Come to think of it, why had he stopped for the sheath? He should have thrown the thing away at once. He ought to throw it away now. Only, now that the idea came to him, he didn’t think he’d feel quite right about it if he tried it. It would be wrong, somehow. He should hold on to the sword. It would seem almost impolite, to toss it away like common trash after everything it had—
There was no time for this. He forced the mad thoughts out of his head, and said, “Look, I’m not a flamekeeper.” That won him a mixture of smirks, sneers, and plain bewilderment. “Okay, fine, I am a flamekeeper. Think whatever you want, I don’t care. I know the Damadzus still hang out here. I don’t give a damn about their countenance, I just need to see them, urgently. Are any of them staying?”
“A lot of people stay here, sir,” the elder of the two servers said. She was about twenty-five, and solidly built. “We don’t keep track of all of them.” She looked at her younger colleague—a boy younger than Ram, who might have been her brother or her son—and he scampered off up the stairs at the back of the room. “But we’ll check for you, if you like.”
An obvious lie; businesses always recognized their regulars. Did that mean some of the Damadzus were upstairs, and the boy had gone off to warn them? That was good, if they came down to see him; bad, if they ran out the back exit as soon as they heard “flamekeeper looking for you.”
In the meantime, all five blackbands stared at him hard enough to burn a hole through his forehead. He looked down at the sword; it still felt warm in his hand, but pleasantly so. It occurred to him, as he ran his eye over it, that none of the other people in this room were armed, and the situation was dire. If he wanted to force his way upstairs to find help, he’d be justified, even if he had to cut down a few who got in his way—
And then the whole building, including the Damadzus, would turn against him, and they all had weapons in their rooms, for sure. Lots of razor-sharp, non-indwelt blades, and they’d have every right to use them. What the hell was he thinking? He carefully set the sword down on the nearest table. No, he wouldn’t leave it behind, but it seemed like a good idea to not be holding it at the moment.
A shapely pair of legs came languidly down the stairs, flickering beneath a diaphanous saffron dressing-gown; they were followed by a bright green mantle, tossed on in a halfhearted concession to modesty, and finally a familiar, charming face framed in long brown hair. “Oh, it’s just Ram,” Darun said, stifling a yawn, before turning up the stairs and shouting, “We’re good!” Then, turning back to Ram: “Damn, it’s early. What’s going on?”
He dearly wished he knew. He settled for picking the sword back up by the handle, holding it high so his bare hand was plain to see, and saying, “It’s kind of complicated.”
“Really,” she said, after peering at his hand for a few seconds. She sidled over to the counter, where the woman had already poured her a drink. She took a sip and said, “What’s the short version?”
“The Lugal wants me dead. I just killed five flamekeepers he sent after me.” Eyebrows raised all around the room—but they’d know it soon enough anyway. He considered trying to explain what had happened with the swords, decided nobody would believe it. “Something really weird’s going on. Shazru said I could come with you, if I wanted to disappear. If the offer’s still open, I’d be glad to help you out with your Lashantu problem.”
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“Mm-hmm.” She took another sip. “If the Lugal’s after you, though, sheltering you just gives us another problem. Sounds like a worse one, even.”
“Can I talk with Shazru about it? Is he here?”
“Nah. He’s off with Imbri right now, it’s just Bal and me. I don’t know if we’re really ‘the Damadzus’ anymore.” She said it as though it didn’t much matter to her either way. “We’ve been trying to get countenance as a new outfit, just the two of us.”
“Oh.” How much time did he have to stand here and talk? They had to have raised the general alarm by now; there might be someone like Shennai on her way here, or just ten men with normal weapons. “If you’re separate groups now, could you maybe … escort me to Shazru and Imbri, let me be their problem?”
“Could? Yeah. But it doesn’t seem worth the trouble or the risk, for the amount of money you’ve got to offer,” she pointed out. The rest of the room nodded along; they seemed to be treating the conversation like a mildly interesting stage play.
“Even if it means getting revenge for Ushna? I know who killed him.”
Darun shrugged. “Might be interesting to Imbri, I guess. The boss and I weren’t really that close.”
Hell. He didn’t have time for this—but he was unlikely to get out of the pyre without her help, and almost certain to die in the desert if he did. Darun had no reason to care what happened to him, didn’t even seem very curious about what had happened already. So what did Darun want that he could give her?
One thing came to mind. “Ushna died more than a month ago. How long have you been trying to get countenance back?” She gave him a dirty look, but didn’t answer. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Your biggest customer is dead, and the rest of them don’t want to deal with you without knowing what happened to him, right? Probably business dried up at some of the other pyres, too, once word got around. And do you know who ordered your countenance revoked?”
“It doesn’t matter now. What are you offering, Ram?”
“Leverage. I don’t know why the Lugal wants me dead, but it seems pretty important to him. If it’s important, you could make it profitable. Somehow.”
“Somehow.” She turned around to lean against the counter on one elbow, gesturing with her drink. “This isn’t the best pitch I’ve ever heard, Ram. You need practice.”
“No, I need to be alive at the end of the day. And you need income. You have to be running short on cash, and getting bored, too.” This time the look she gave him was more thoughtful, but she said nothing. “Oh, and they’re probably on their way right now, so you might want to decide quickly. Things are going to get really messy if they find me here.”
The woman at the counter crossed her arms and scowled. But Darun smiled, stretched, and slapped her empty glass back on the counter behind her. “You couldn’t have waited for a yellow day to do this, Ram?”
“It wasn’t exactly my idea,” he said, breathing a little easier.
“Well, that’s your story.” She yanked the cloth off the nearest table and tossed it to him; he barely caught it. “Bundle that thing up, would you? It kind of stands out. Nusabai, we’ll be needing the tunnel.” The serving-woman bowed and hurried off through a doorway next to the fireplace. “Ram, follow her; we don’t need flamekeepers coming in here and busting up the common room when they see you. I’ll just need a moment to pack up.” And she trotted lightly up the stairs.
Several seconds later, the server Nusabai poked her head back into the room, and Ram collected himself enough to wrap the sword up as instructed and follow her into a dim and cluttered pantry. He had to duck his head repeatedly to avoid dangling fowl and sides of meat, and nearly tripped on jars and sacks underfoot, but eventually found his way to the far side of the room. There, in the furthest and darkest corner of the room, he helped her move a colossal jar of beer aside, exposing a trap-door.
He didn’t need to be told what to do. As soon as she opened it, he climbed down, and she dropped the door back down as soon as there was room to, long before he could think to turn around and say thanks. He was left in a low tunnel, completely unlit but thankfully clean; there was no smell of vermin. He supposed that a blackbands’ haunt would need to use something like this fairly regularly.
Darun kept him waiting for a long time, long enough for him to start to worry. But he had no notion where the tunnel led—for all he knew, it might have several exits—so he leaned against the wall and concentrated on taking nice, deep breaths.
Something had happened at the bloom after all. He couldn’t guess what, but he’d been struck with the hilt of the same sword he was holding, back on his very first day in the pyre. It would never have allowed itself to be used for that today. Something had changed. Had the man in the Temple ever meant for him to become a flamekeeper in the first place? Possibly not.
But Ram could have used better directions; if this was how the big plan was supposed to go, he didn’t think much of it. All he knew was that he had to go somewhere far from the pyre. Well, that much was obvious anyway. Then what?
The door creaked open overhead, and Darun came down the ladder with practiced ease. “Budge over there, Ram.” A pair of heavy bags came crashing down, followed by the massive form of Balnibduka. “Sorry about the wait,” Darun murmured in his ear. “Half a dozen boys in bronze showed up a couple minutes back, and Nusabai had to get rid of them. Now let’s go.”
She led the way down the tunnel; it sloped sharply downhill after a short interval. Ram followed the sound of her footsteps, uncomfortably aware of Bal treading close behind him. It came to him, too late, that they could easily stab him or snap his neck in the darkness, and use his corpse to buy their countenance back.
“I’m sorry I had to spring this on you all of a sudden,” he said, to distract himself.
“Why? I’m not. It saved me like four gold, and a whole lot of awkwardness.”
“What do you mean?”
“We ran out of cash a couple of tetrads back. We’ve been calling in favors and borrowing ever since. Watch out, we’re turning right here.”
“So, what, you’re skipping out on your bill?”
“A bunch of bills, actually. And Nusabai totally knew it, I could tell. She just wrote off the loss so she wouldn’t have a sword fight in her common room, you know?”
“Right. Are you going to help me, once we’re out of this tunnel, or was that just an excuse?”
“It’s not like we have a lot else scheduled. Our old business died with Ushna, I can’t manage this mess. Left!”
“Where does this tunnel go, anyway?”
“A couple of different places. I’m taking us to Pazim’s—you know it?”
“The place by the docks?”
“Right. I figure we can call in a few more favors, resupply at South Gate, then lay low for the night and hitch a ride as soon as the yellow sun rises. We can meet up with Imbri and Shazru, and work out the rest from there. Sound good?”
“Yeah, sure—no. Not yet.” A horrible thought had just come to him.
“What, you’ve got a better idea?”
“No, but there’s something else I have to do first. How fast can you get us to Urapu hearth?”