The Totem-Maker (part thirty-six)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Five

The Mustering Grounds

(part thirty-six)

We were down the steps, into the sunset shadows of tall houses and steep-pitched streets. Down from the hills that overlooked the Sech-apla, a green plain cut by the sea, a crescent of empty terrace where in famine times numbers were made to live. To wait, and be sacrificed. Strange tides rose at times, tides with no moon; the Sech-apla could not be inhabited for these. They were of the hungry sea gods, beings of grasping arms, whose names could not be known but by the drowned. We called these gods the squari.

Cime and I walked ahead, quiet, hearing Sente’s steps fade off.

“I won’t need you for any chore, and Pytta won’t. You were no friend to Stol, I think.”

He put it that way. Had I been too preferential to Lom, or above myself altogether? Stol and his wife could not admire me, I doubted, and Cime was placing me in their hands. I climbed the steps, drew back the curtain, saw in shuttered dark the sleeping porch, the quarters of Cime’s slaves, and alone I sniffed the air of it.

My eyes and throat betrayed a weakness to tears. I had made Lom’s murder my cause. I had played a role befitting some inspiration of the Prince. In spectacle I’d lost my way. I had done nothing for my friend.

The stranger had followed as far as the villa’s gate, speaking once, and courteous: “Stol, Mero, I have heard this, he sold himself to you. He was Caeluvm, he is no longer.”

Cime’s face grew fixed and he answered the Prince’s man no word, would not turn, even, to eye him in reply. The gate closed. I looked back…and nodded to the stranger’s wave. He left untroubled. But I was sad for the snub, embarrassed. Baffled.

I had learned a morsel of Stol’s history. Yes, among the very poor, free men and women old, broken in health, unlearned in any trade, would sell themselves into bondage. They did for tokens, and allowed themselves to be worked to death. But they died under a roof, allotted their daily bread, alms enough to eke the last of their labor.

Lom’s pallet was gone. Mine was laid, and my basket, my clothing, my bag of tiles. My candle was here, but I had no other to light it. When I had been wanted and liked, no fear would have kept me from entering the villa.

You are carrying the death you may soon die, I told myself. Pytta does not wish to see you. For her sake, Cime wishes you unseen.

Along the passage arched windows were shuttered for night, skins of sheep over them. Candles burned on bronze stands down the center,  flames dancing in drafts, but far from touching pillars or hangings. And Stol was lighting the last of them.

I could not properly call him Mero. I bent at the knees, held the posture, allowed him to ignore me.

“Go fetch your pallet. Leave your basket. There is decent light here in the hall, and we will have to start now, at once. The Prince has given you four days, has he not?”

39

To Be and to Choose

The Totem-Maker (part thirty-seven)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)