The Totem-Maker (part eight)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Two

Jealousy

(part eight)

Each quarter of the town—I will give it a name: Monsecchers—was governed with some independence from its sisters, under rule of its own militia. The militias were the Emperor’s, whose army obeyed his mercenary Prince. But matters of justice belonged to the Houses; Lady Nyma, Cime’s mother, sat as judge above the Marshal.

The villas were built to face the four directions, and shared a courtyard, where supplicants waited their summoning. This dull chore of meeting whomever held stewardship over household treasuries (there were lords who disputed the hundredth part of a single tree’s fruit), was not Cime’s.

 It was the deputy’s place to cool his heels.

Walking or riding we went down from the Decima villa to the merchants’ square, to the stable of Mumas; for here he waited…punctilious in duty….

One might think. But he arranged this excuse not to have me cross his threshold.

“I have a trick in mind,” Cime said, one particular day. I gave answers he found clever, and so we spoke nearly as friends. “You understand the tax collector’s share is sheared by all he can’t pry loose. Blame your lady…”

“Thank her, rather?”

“For liking me out of the house?”

I chanced it. “A bench under Lord Sente’s olive tree for your servant. But I believe I’ve seen you climb his porch and enter.”

Pytta had told me…Cime was saying this… It was very possible she had, and if her husband guessed, he would not, might not, break her confidence…

The humor had its elaboration, its diction, due to the mischief involved.

We turned onto the street where Mumas kept his house, and Cime’s laughter, his hand on my shoulder, were heard and seen by Mumas idling at his stable gate.

He crowded me aside, walked next to Cime and began his complaint. Yesterday, a third day, Sente had refused us. Sente’s dispute with the Emperor’s taxes would redound on Lord Cime, whose deputy had—for three days—performed no other task.

“You have clients I should have carried your assessments to. Two days more, and the month ends. They will split hairs on it…”

“Yes, they’ll feel entitled to start the bargaining afresh.”

By no sign did the import, that he could be disgraced in office, trouble Cime.

“For Sente I have a plan. You needn’t fear the wasting of your time, Mumas. Two days will do for the others. To hang between the poise and the fall ought to sharpen their wits…and if they balk, what serves Sente will serve them, too. You read and write? You do not require the company of a scribe?”

Mumas, silent, shook his head.

“Go.”

Cime turned his back, leaving Mumas to stand, to step away, to linger…

To decide, finally, to stride up the street, shoulders set.

“And you,” Cime said to me, “will waylay one of Sente’s servants, ply him with your arts. Find the lady in his fortune, make a peril and a glory of it. Sente is a superstitious man.”

9

Jealousy

The Totem-Maker (part nine)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)