The Betrayed (12 page)

Religion had never really bothered him much. Sirtai did not believe in gods the same way as continental people. They believed in spirits and forces of nature, in harmony and balance of all things. The continental folks seemed hung up on believing in ultimate powers.

On the other side, a small yet luxurious chariot stopped by the group of constables. A delicate hand wrapped in lace and frill beckoned one of them, possibly a corporal, near. The man listened for a while, eagerly nodding. The chariot pulled away. The corporal clapped his hands and started across the street. His gang followed, hands casually caressing hard oak batons at their flanks.

Seeing the militia approach, the trance of the crowd shattered. People instinctively started to disperse, like a bubble exploding. A few drifted away, a few merely moved out of the way of the armed men, but most stayed, just like the narrator. Armin stayed, too.

“Time to leave, people. Nothing to be seen here. Let’s go,” the corporal shouted, waving his hands.

“Will you not let the people hear the truth?” the priestlike figure asked, his crystal voice shaming the constable’s attempt.

“Get off those steps and head back to your warren, priest,” the corporal warned.

The man in leathers seemed to deliberate. He eyed the five guards carefully. Then, he stepped off his little stage. A murmur spread through the wavering crowd. The knot of focused interest had become a handful of leaves, fluttering in the wind.

“One day, you will regret this,” the priest told the corporal, face-to-face.

“Don’t push your luck, priest. Get lost.”

In the corner of his eye, Armin saw a second group congregate, just behind the corner of the avenue. This pack wore leather, just like the speaker, and seemed far more determined than the casual crowd. Armin saw more of their kind coalesce from other streets, in ones and twos, merging into a solid body of palpable fury.

Scrolling through images engraved in his memory, he realized he had seen quite a lot of their kind in the recent days, but had dismissed the fad for local fashion. Well, apparently, it was not just fashion.

The corporal did not look like a stupid man. Middle-aged, he had the traits of a low-profile criminal who had found employment in the City Watch and now stared down his former allies through the monochrome eyes of petty authority. But he had enough experience to sense the change and back down.

He stepped back and led his squad away, pretending he had never seen the priest.

Just as quickly as they had appeared, the various leather-clad men dispersed, blending back into the crowd. Life resumed its normal course in the streets of Eybalen.

“The Children of the Ways win again,” the priest intoned and was moving away, a few of the spectators trailing after him.

As the crowd started to melt, Armin reached gently, touching one of the participants on the shoulder. “Greetings, citizen. Could you please tell me who this man was?”

The other person eyed him with shock. Noticing his strange robe, the curious accent slowly registering, the man recovered. “You are not from around here?”

“No, I’m from Sirtai.”

“That was a priest of Feor,” the man spoke, reverence clear in his tone.

“Feor?” Armin had never heard of Feor. His ignorance of continental religions bit him again.

This seemed to anger the man. Growling a curse, the man nudged past Armin and strode away hurriedly.

Armin lingered after the last of the onlookers had gone away. He stared at the temple and started to notice alarming signs—broken glass lying at the foot of gaping panes, stones and rotten vegetables littering the patio in front of the large double doors. It did not look like the vibrant, cheerful place of prayer that temples were supposed to be.

Prompted by a strange new passion, Armin abandoned his quest for murderers that afternoon and spent hours patrolling the city, visiting holy places and large squares. He saw another three priests of Feor, delivering speeches very similar to the one he had heard. He found most of the temples closed, with battered facades.

He also suspected the presence of city guards was much heavier than it should be in a relatively peaceful capital city. Then, news of a war in the west reached him, and another tile of understanding fell away, leaving him all the more confused.

He cleared his schedule the next day and decided to do two things: visit a library and read about Feor, and hire himself an informant.

His first task was a very simple one. There were no books about Feor. Whoever this deity was, he or she did not star in the scrolls and annals of Caytorean history. Even the most recent works, written merely a few decades before, were empty of any record of Feor.

Intrigued to the point of madness, he left the vestibules of the large City Library and headed for the City Market.

Just like in the richer parts of the capital, people in the leather clothes were everywhere, only thrice as many. It was obvious that common people liked the priests and their speeches much more than their rich cousins.

He was also shocked to discover that the poor people in Caytor were much poorer than the poor people in Sirtai. And he was absolutely disgusted by their poor hygiene. Despite its magnificence and size, Eybalen had no underwater canals for sewage, save the most luxurious parts, like the one he stayed in. There were tiny gutters at the edge of the roads, which connected to other gutters in other streets, all eventually leading to the sea. But the gutters were open and reeked awfully. People crossed them many times a day, often stepping in their own feces. Rats shared the streets with humans, big, ferocious, and unafraid.

The city slums were even worse. Their gutters were clogged with dead dogs and ancient garbage. The streets were muddy from overspilled crap. But no one seemed bothered.

The market was a chaos of screams, people hawking a thousand goods. Walking in a straight line was impossible. People rubbed into one another like fish in a net, flopping and squirming while gulping for air.

Armin had no clear destination, but he was sure he would know his goal once he saw it. He had taken only a few coins with him and carried them in a closed fist, knowing he would lose his purse the moment he stepped into the market.

After a few minutes of meandering among the city’s finest, he reached an isle of sanity, some empty space around an old, broken spout covered in a thick layer of bird droppings. Cowering in the shade of the debris, several scrawny street urchins were gambling, betting with rat paws and tails.

Armin casually dropped one of the copper coins into their midst.

“You,” he declared, pointing at the fastest urchin.

The boy looked alarmed and poised to flee, but the hairless, smooth-featured face of the stranger stayed him.

“Don’t be afraid. I mean you no harm. The coin is yours. You have earned it.”

“Mine?” the boy repeated, unsure. Such a price was not something he would usually earn without a bitter fight.

“Your money,” Armin said. “And I have more if you are willing to help me.”

The boy grinned. Most of his milk teeth had fallen out, and the new ones had not grown yet, turning his mouth into a grotesque grimace.

Armin stepped away. The boy followed him. So did all of his friends.

“What about my gang?” the boy inquired.

“Oh, you have a gang. Very nice. What’s your name, boy?”

The little thing patted his thin chest. “You can call me Squiggle.”

Armin smiled. Such an apt name. “Well, Squiggle and the gang, I would like to employ your services. I want you to be my eyes and ears and help me around the city.”

The boy merely blinked. “How much you pay us?”

The investigator made a face, pretending to think. “A copper a week for all of you. And if you bring me good and valuable news, another copper.”

Squiggle snorted. “Five coppers.”

Armin shook his head. “Two, plus one for every piece of good news.”

The boys looked at one another. “Done.” Squiggle spat in his palm and extended it.

“Done,” Armin said and patted the boy on the shoulder. “You will meet me every morning near the docks, where I will give instructions for that day. Then, the day after, you will tell me of your success and be paid. Do you understand?”

Squiggle nodded. “When do we start?”

Armin smiled. “Right now.”

Walking back to his mansion, he continued wondering about Feor. The boys had offered him very little useful information on this subject. Moreover, he did not trust their judgment to accurately evaluate the political situation in the city.

Then, an old memory tickled him. He almost missed a step. Chart-maker Nespos, of the scribes’ guild. The scribes and chart-makers were people who wrote recorded history. If anyone could help him, those were surely the members of the scribes’ guild.

One of the people in leathers passed him by, almost colliding with him. Armin frowned at the obvious lack of civility, but said nothing. The man had a saunter typical of young peacocks and drunkards, people who sought trouble for free.

Once you spotted them, your eyes never stopped seeing them, he realized. He was getting more and more sensitive to the sight of priests and their followers, wearing varying degrees of leathers. The cleaner ones looked like clergy or distinguished members of this mysterious religion. Those who wore tatters that resembled leather looked like new converts. But still, they were a complete and utter mystery.

“Hey, you,” someone called, and he knew that they hailed him.

He turned to see a trio approach him. They were dressed in rags and smelled of feces. They looked like fine candidates of the city’s lowest society.

“Greetings,” Armin welcomed. He was unarmed. Inessa was not with him today. She had a very painful menses and could not accompany him.

“I heard you was doin’ business in my part of the city today. And I don’t remember giving you permission to do business in my part of the city.”

“Apologies if you were offended, good sir,” Armin started.

“We hear you has money you give to urchins. But I don’t see you give any money to me.”

Armin realized this little show was an elaborate extortion. Maybe a threat and maybe a message. Local gang leaders, like gang leaders anywhere, did not approve of trespassers in any way. The investigator realized he may have committed a serious error, but he was not sure how this should end. He had no experience dealing with Caytorean criminals. Especially not the poor ones.

“We wants money,” another gang member volunteered in a raspy voice.

He did not have any money about him. And he knew that if he succumbed to their threats and paid, he would forever hinder his work in the city. And yet, he did not feel like bleeding his guts to death in some foreign place.

“I believe we can try to reach some sort of an agreement.” He stalled.

“Deal is, you gives me ten gold now, and we let you go. Then, you gives me another ten every week, and we let you employ the urchins. How about that?”

Armin realized they did not know who they were harassing. Again, it was his own doing. His plain clothing and the choice of transport had undermined his image. Rich people did not walk, nor did they wander into the poor regions of the city.

In Tuba Tuba, things were so different. The word “poor” had a whole other meaning in Caytor. People like his assailants were nothing but nameless slaves in Sirtai. Back home, poor people did not try to attack their superiors. They would either get killed or enslaved for life, a price too steep to pay, especially when one always had food, shelter, and clean streets beneath one’s soles.

Armin did not know what to do. He was not skilled in combat. He knew his valiant stand would end in him getting killed very quickly. If something like this had happened back home, the casual onlookers would attack the assailants and beat them senseless. Crimes in Sirtai had classes, just like the people.

Here, the few people present did their best to pretend nothing was happening. They turned the other way and hastened their pace. There was no City Watch in this part of Eybalen.

As he stood facing his death, he realized his approach had been wrong all along. He had always suspected the deaths of the city’s rich had been carefully planned deeds of their comrades. Now, the options seemed limitless. Anyone could have done it. Anyone with enough money and a solid opportunity. There was nothing stopping people like his nemeses from taking a knife to a throat of some noble for a sufficient sum of gold.