Kushiel's Scion

Page 67

"Have you ever been in battle?" Eamonn asked. "Any of you?"
Lucius and Vernus shook their heads, and Brigitta, reluctantly. I said nothing. Eamonn knew well enough what I'd witnessed, though I wasn't sure if the massacre at Daršanga could properly be called a battle.
"I stood three sword-challenges to earn the right to come to Tiberium." Akil pushed up his sleeve to reveal the pale welt of a scar on the brown skin of his forearm. He flashed a rare grin. "My father will have my head when he learns I've been studying with mad Master Piero instead of learning to be a Caerdicci diplomat."
"Single challenges?" Eamonn asked. Akil nodded. "It's not the same." He poured wine all around, refilling our cups. "When I was sixteen, there was quarrel between a Dalriadan clan-lord and a clan-lord of the Tarbh Cr€ in the north." He shrugged. "A land dispute, but there is bad blood there, old blood. The Cruarch offered to send his army and mediate, but my mother refused. It is important for the Dalriada to maintain our independence. So we went to war."
I sat quietly while he told the story, having heard it before. Eamonn had killed two men and come through the battle unscathed, but he had watched comrades die, hard and ugly.
"There's glory in it," he acknowledged. "Dagda Mor! It's why I like to fight. When the battle-frenzy fills you, you feel like a god, I think." He paused, remembering. "But then you hear a friend's voice begging you to help, and you see your friend's guts falling out of a hole in his belly, and you can't stop to help, because someone is trying to kill you, so you have to keep going. You tread upon a corpse and realize it's a man who taught you how to hunt when you were ten years old. You see the woman who just got married run through by a spear, falling over her husband's body." The others were hushed, listening. Eamonn shook his head. "And when it's over," he said simply, "they're still dead. Victory doesn't matter to the dead, nor to the living who mourn them."
No one said anything.
"So!" Eamonn took a deep breath. "That is why war is a hurtful subject, even for the victors. And that is why I am here, trying to become wise."
Lucius raised his cup. "Hear, hear."
On the following day, word was released that the University was opening its doors, and Lucius went to see if Master Piero was in attendance. He wasn't, but there was a note pinned to the door of his study, bidding his students to meet him at the butchers' market early in the morning. Lucius passed the word to the rest of us, and I made arrangements with Anna to visit Gilot later in the day.
It was a strange choice of meeting places, and I daresay all of us wondered at it. The butchers' market was not an array of shops like those in the fora, where Tiberian housewives bought their goods, but a vast open-air market, adjacent to the slaughterhouses, where the country herders and farmsteaders brought their livestock for sale. It is not a place one visits for pleasure, and it was hard to imagine what lesson Master Piero wished us to take from it. Still, we went.
Even in the early hours, the stink and din was fearful. Pigs squealed, cattle bawled, goats uttered mournful bleats, and all manner of fowl raised a clamor. Everywhere, there was a smell of animals, dung, and feathers. Vendors and shopkeepers haggled with the owners, and a steady stream of animals was led to the slaughterhouses.
And there, in the midst of it, was Master Piero, his hands folded in the sleeves of his robe.
He looked thin and worn, but his eyes were clear and there was a calmness to his face. He waited until we were all assembled—the six who remained—before addressing us.
"Walk with me," he said. "And observe."
Without waiting for our responses, Master Piero plunged into the marketplace. Exchanging glances, we shrugged and followed him.
It was no pleasure-stroll. Since I didn't know what Master Piero wanted us to see, I treated the excursion as one of Phèdre's memory games. I numbered the different livestock, and listened to the cacophany of voices, marking accents and dialects. I marked faces, height and weight, attire. I marked the way their eyes cut toward us and sheered away, taking note of Master Piero's scholar's robe, the gaggle of students in his wake. We were not welcome here, but they endured our presence. How not? They were too busy to do otherwise.
Master Piero led us on a winding course through the market and into the slaughterhouses themselves, paying no heed to the mistrustful glances, but merely looking deeply at all he saw, his face grave and somber.
I'd never visited an abattoir before, and I never need do so again. Burly men bent to their tasks, splashed with blood to the shoulders. Cleavers flashed; animals bellowed and died. Carcasses were hung and drained, and rivers of blood ran in stone channels like it had done in Daršanga. I fought against a wave of sickness.
"Are you all right?" Eamonn asked in a low voice, steadying me with a hand beneath my elbow. I nodded, wordless.
"It's just livestock," Brigitta said irritably.
Lucius, too, looked a bit pale. "'Tis the scale that's daunting, lady."
I said nothing. When all is said and done, there is a great deal of difference between seeing a pig and a woman slaughtered before one's eyes. Still, the blood gushes the same from a slit throat, and I did not care to be reminded. How close had I come to doing it myself when I marked the agitator's neck during the riots? I didn't even want to think on it.
"It is the people I brought you to see," Master Piero said in his mild voice.
And so we looked. Men; it was almost all men. They performed their chores with brutal efficiency. Hoisting carcasses; skinning them, cleaving them into manageable portions. Striding through the slaughterhouse, hunks of meat on their shoulders. Shoveling masses of sawdust soaked with blood, piss, and dung.
Master Piero beckoned. "Come."
We followed.
He led us on a long journey that day; longer than any of us reckoned. From the butchers' market, we went to the wharf, and there we watched barge-men unloading other goods for sale, hopeful merchants and merchants' wives directing them anxiously. At least it smelled better. But the sun was growing high overhead, and my ankle throbbed with pain, an ache echoed by my burned shoulder.
We went to other places, too. We followed a Tiberian noblewoman in her litter, her bearers sweating beneath their burden, their faces stoic. We went to the baths, where we stood and watched the attendants at their labors, and they shot us wary glances. We went to a laundresses' establishment, where flush-faced women stirred massive pots of clothing with long-handled paddles.
I watched the people we saw, and I watched Master Piero, whose expression never changed. I watched my fellow students react with weariness, perplexity, and anger.
"No more!" It was Akil who balked, on the outskirts of the dyers' district. His nostrils flared, although whether at the stench or with outrage, I could not say. "Master, I demand to know. What is the meaning of this?"
Master Piero regarded him, then turned abruptly. "Come, and I will tell you."
For a mercy, he led us this time to a small park. There was a stele bearing an inscription informing us that it was a gift of his majesty Caius Maximius, the fifth princeps of the city-state of Tiberium. It was simple and unadorned, which made me think well of Caius Maximius. At Master Piero's invitation, we sprawled on the grass beneath a willow that bent its limbs over a small pond.
At least there was shade. I rubbed my aching ankle, suppressing a groan of relief.
"Dagda Mor!" Eamonn whispered. "I'm perishing of hunger."
"Shhh!" Brigitta favored us with a scowl.
Master Piero waited while we settled. "There is something I wanted you to see today," he said at last. "Do you know what it was?"
"Whatever it was, it stank," muttered Akil.
"Yes." Master Piero turned his gaze on him, luminous and tranquil. "It stank. It stank of humanity, of blood and sweat and labor." He stood before us, folding his arms in his sleeves. "I have been fasting," he mused. "Since the rioting. So many students, so angry! Why?"
"Master!" Vernus protested. "The University—"
"The University is a place of brick and stone," he said to Vernus. "Nothing more."
Lucius frowned. "Yes, but… it is, Master. Not the edifice, no, but that which it houses. Knowledge. Wisdom. The freedom to pursue them."
"And will wisdom die without a roof over its head?" Master Piero asked gently.
I thought about Canis; and I thought, too, of Jebe-Barkal and Saba. Of the Covenant of Wisdom that had been broken. "No, my lord," I said aloud. "But it will die if it is not passed on, mouth to ear, generation to generation. That is what the University stands for. It is the institution and not the edifice that matters. I think that is what Lucius was saying," I added, with an apologetic glance in his direction.
Lucius merely nodded.
"Indeed." Master Piero's gaze softened. "And yet, at what cost?" Seeing a belligerent look dawning on Brigitta's face, he raised one hand. "I cast no blame here. I trust you all conducted yourselves in accordance with the principles and virtues which we have agreed to hold dear. And yet there were many, many students angry with the citizen assembly for supporting the proposed decree."
"Shouldn't we be?" Vernus asked in genuine perplexity. "Are you not?"
"No." Master Piero shook his head. "I am disappointed in those in the Senate who call for Restoration at the cost of knowledge, for they should know better. But the citizen assembly is another matter." He gestured at us. "Vernus, your father is an aedile, is he not? And Lucius, all of Tiberium knows your sister is wed to a senator, and your family once ruled Lucca. Eamonn's mother rules his people, and Brigitta, your father is the lord of his steading. Akil, your father is a Sayyed, and holds a position of honor among the Umaiyyati. And Imriel…" He paused. "You were adopted into a noble D'Angeline household."
"What has that to do with anything?" Akil asked.
"And what were we supposed to see?" Brigitta muttered.
"Life." I remembered somewhat Canis had said. "Mankind, dog-rank and stinking. Why the fate of the University doesn't matter to the citizen assembly. And why we have no right to despise them for it; they, who perform the tasks we shun. Am I right, Master?"
Master Piero watched me with a steady gaze. "Do you take pleasure in being right, Imriel nó Montrève? Do you suppose this is merely an exercise?"
"No, Master!" It seemed unfair, this attack. After all, I was aiding him in making his point. I drew myself up, cross-legged, and inclined my head, wrestling my temper into submission. "Forgive me, and give me your counsel."
He sighed, tucking his hands into his sleeves. "I did not bring you here for counsel, merely to think about what you have seen this day. The lives of the hardworking citizens your fellow students treated with such disdain; and the lives, even harder, of those who labor for them, slaves and freedmen alike. It is true, they care little for the University. And why should they, when they have no money to pay the bursar's fee and no time to spend in idle study? Why should they, when they would benefit more from thriving trade than a rabble of young gentry with tight purse strings?"
"Well." Lucius smiled. "Some of us spend freely."
"Oh, indeed." Master Piero didn't quite return his smile, but there was a hint of one hovering about his lips. Clearly, I thought with some annoyance, Lucius was his favorite student. "You do your part, Lucius Tadius."
"But…" Brigitta narrowed her blue eyes. "Master, are you saying you favor closing the University?"
"No, child," he said gently. "You have not been listening. I am saying I favor my students looking deeper into the causes that move men's hearts. I am saying that you are children of wealth and influence." He did smile, then. "You may not have it to wield here and now, but for most of you, it is your birthright. When you do, I want you to do so wisely."
With that, he left us for the day.
We argued over his lesson all the way back to the students' quarter; all of us except Eamonn, who pronounced himself too hungry to think. It hadn't sat well with Akil, and Brigitta was perturbed, unable to see past the threat to the University. Vernus said little, while Lucius argued both sides of the matter. He did it well, though betimes I think he merely did it to revel in his own cleverness.
For my part, I felt the burden of an obscure guilt.
Of course, there was little new in that. Whatever else I'd accomplished, I was still deceiving my friends; lying to Master Piero. Evasion was subtle kin to a lie, he'd said, and I was filled with evasion.
To my unexpected delight, when I returned to the insula, I found Canis struggling with his half-staved barrel. I was so relieved to see him, I nearly embraced him. "Canis! You're alive."
"Should I be otherwise?" he asked mildly.
"No, of course not." I helped him pound the broken slats, held in place by rusting strips of metal, into a semblance of their former shape, covertly studying him as I did. He looked marginally clean; cleaner than I'd seen him. There were fading traces of a bruise on his right cheekbone, and the knuckles of his left hand were scabbed. "Were you in a fight?"
"Weren't we all?" Canis smiled broadly at me, revealing a gap where a molar was missing. "You did try to warn me, Imriel. Thank you."
"Where have you been?" I asked.
He pointed in the direction of the Great Forum. "There is a barber who let me sleep in the baths until it was safe. I swept his floor and he pulled my tooth for free, although he made me bathe first." He looked thoughtful. "It hurt quite a bit."