Larry Niven - The Burning City

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Larry Niven
TALES OF KNOWN SPACE
THE INTEGRAL TREES
WORLD OF PTAVVS
RINGWORLD
PROTECTOR
THE SMOKE RING
N-SPACE
PLAYGROUNDS OF THE MIND
CRASHLANDER
FLATLANDER
THE RINGWORLD THRONE
DESTINY'S ROAD
RAINBOW MARS
Jerry Pournelle
JANISSARIES
HIGH JUSTICE
KING DAVID'S SPACESHIP
EX I LES TO GLORY
RED HEROIN
PRINCE OF MERCENARIES
FALKENBERG'S LEGION
STARSWARM
Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
INFERNO
OATH OF FEALTY
THE MOTH IN GOD'S EYE
LUCIFER'S HAMMER
FOOTFALL
THE GRIPPING HAND
THE BURNING CITY
Larry Niven & Steven Barnes
DREAM PARK
THE BARSOOM PROJECT
THE CALIFORNIA VOODOO GAME
DESCENT OF ANANSI ACHILLES' CHOICE SATURN'S RACE
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Steven Barnes
LEGACY OF HEOROT BEOWULF'S CHILDREN
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle & Michael Flynn
FALLEN ANGELS
Jerry Pournelle & Roland Green
TRAN
Jerry Pournelle & S. M. Stirling
GO TELL THE SPARTANS PRINCE OF SPARTA
Jerry Pournelle & Charles Sheffield
HIGHER EDUCATION
LARRY NIVEN & JERRY POURNELLE
The Burning City
POCKET BOOKS
New York London Toronto Sydney Singapore
This hook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the
authors' imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Copyright (c) 2000 by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
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All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form
whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 0-671-03660-2
First Pocket Books hardcover printing March 2000
10 987654321
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Maps by Paul Pugliese Printed in the U.S.A.
For Roberta and Marilyn
"It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to
the dogs. It's us. Only us."
From Watchmen by Alan Moore
PREFACE
There was fire on Earth before the fire god came. There has always been fire. What Yangin-Atep
gave to humankind was madness. Yangin-Atep's children will play with fire even after they burn
their fingers.
It was only Yangin-Atep's joke, then and for unmeasured time after. But a greater god called down
the great cold, and Yangin-Atep's joke came into its own. In the icy north people could not
survive unless the fire god favored one of their number.
Cautious men and women never burned themselves twice; but their people died of the cold. Someone
must tend the fire during the terrible winters. Twelve thousand years before the birth of Christ,
when most of the gods had gone mythical and magic was fading from the world, Yangin-Atep's gift
remained.
Book One
Whandall Placehold
PART ONE
CHILDHOOD
Chapter 1
They burned the city when Whandall Placehold was two years old, and again when he was seven. At
seven he saw and understood more. The women waited with the children in the courtyard through a
day and a night and another day. The day sky was black and red. The night sky glowed red and
orange, dazzling and strange. Across the street a granary burned like a huge torch. Strangers
trying to fight the fire made shadow pictures.
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The Placehold men came home with what they'd gathered: shells, clothing, cookware, furniture,
jewelry, magical items, a cauldron that would heat up by itself. The excitement was infectious.
Men and women paired off and fought over the pairings.
And Pothefit went out again with Resalet, but only Resalet came back. Afterward Whandall went with
the other boys to watch the loggers cut-ling redwoods for the rebuilding.
The forest cupped Tep's Town like a hand. There were stories, but nobody could tell Whandall what
was beyond the forest where redwoods were pillars big enough to support the sky, big enough to
replace a dozen houses. The great trees stood well apart, each guarding its turf. Lesser
vegetation gathered around the base of each redwood like a malevolent army.
The army had many weapons. Some plants bristled with daggers; some had burrs to anchor seeds in
hair or flesh; some secreted poison; some would whip a child across the face with their branches.
Loggers carried axes, and long pole with blades at the ends. Leather armor and wooden masks made
them hard to recognize as men. With the poles they could reach out and under to cut the roots of
the spiked or poisoned lesser plants and push them aside, until one tall redwood was left
defenseless.
Then they bowed to it.
Then they chopped at the base until, in tremendous majesty and with a sound like the end of the
world, it fell.
They never seemed to notice that they were being watched from cover by a swarm of children. The
forest had dangers for city children, but being caught was not one of them. If you were caught
spying in town you would be lucky to escape without broken bones. It was safer to spy on the
loggers.
One morning Bansh and Ilther brushed a vine.
Bansh began scratching, and then Ilther; then thousands of bumps sprouted over Ether's arm, and
almost suddenly it was bigger than his leg. Bansh's hand and the ear he'd scratched were swelling
like nightmares, and Ilther was on the ground, swelling everywhere and fighting hard to breathe.
Shastern wailed and ran before Whandall could catch him. He brushed past leaves like a bouquet of
blades and was several paces beyond before he slowed, stopped, and turned to look at Whandall.
What should I do now? His leathers were cut to ribbons across his chest and left arm, the blood
spilling scarlet through the slashes.
The forest was not impenetrable. There were thorns and poison plants, but also open spaces. Stick
with those, you could get through ... it looked like you could get through without touching
anything ... almost. And the
children were doing that, scattering, finding their own paths out.
But Whandall caught the screaming Shastern by his bloody wrist and towed him toward the loggers,
because Shastern was his younger brother, because the loggers were close, because somebody would
help a screaming child.
The woodsmen saw them-saw them and turned away. But one dropped his ax and jogged toward the child
in zigzag fashion, avoiding . . . what? Armory plants, a wildflower bed-
Shastern went quiet under the woodsman's intense gaze. The woodsman pulled the leather armor away
and wrapped Shastern's wounds in strips of clean cloth, pulling it tight. Whandall was trying to
tell him about the other children.
The woodsman looked up. "Who are you, boy?"
"I'm Whandall of Serpent's Walk." Nobody gave his family name.
"I'm Kreeg Miller. How many-"
Whandall barely hesitated. "Two tens of us."
"Have they all got"-he patted Shastern's armor-"leathers?"
"Some."
Kreeg picked up cloth, a leather bottle, some other things. Now one of the others was shouting
angrily while trying not to look at the children. "Kreeg, what do you want with those candlestubs?
We've got work to do!" Kreeg ignored him and followed the path as Whandall pointed it out.
There were hurt children, widely scattered. Kreeg dealt with them. Whandall didn't understand,
until a long time later, why other loggers wouldn't help.
Whandall took Shastern home through Dirty Birds to avoid Bull Piz-zles. In Dirty Birds a pair of
adolescent Lordkin would not let them pass.
Whandall showed them three gaudy white blossoms bound up in a scrap of cloth. Careful not to touch
them himself, he gave one to each of I ho hoys and put the third away.
The boys sniffed the womanflowers' deep fragrance. "Way nice. What else have you got?"
"Nothing, Falcon brother." Dirty Birds liked to be called Falcons, so you did that. "Now go and
wash your hands and face. Wash hard or you'll swell up like melons. We have to go."
The Falcons affected to be amused, but they went off toward the fountain. Whandall and Shastern
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ran through Dirty Birds into Serpent's Walk. Marks and signs showed when you passed from another
district to Serpent's Walk, but Whandall would have known Serpent's Walk without them. There
weren't as many trash piles, and burned-out houses were rebuilt faster.
The Placehold stood alone in its block, three stories of gray stone. Two older boys played with
knives just outside the door. Inside, Uncle Totto lay asleep in the corridor where you had to step
over him to get in. Whandall tried to creep past him.
"Huh? Whandall, my lad. What's going on here?" He looked at Shastern, saw bloody bandages, and
shook his head. "Bad business. What's going on?"
"Shastern needs help!"
"I see that. What happened?"
Whandall tried to get past, but it was no use. Uncle Totto wanted to hear the whole story, and
Shastern had been bleeding too long. Whandall started screaming. Totto raised his fist. Whandall
pulled his brother upstairs. A sister was washing vegetables for dinner, and she shouted too.
Women came yelling. Totto cursed and retreated.
Mother wasn't home that night. Mother's Mother-Dargramnet, if you were speaking to strangers-sent
Wanshig to tell Bansh's family. She put Shastern in Mother's room and sat with him until he fell
asleep. Then she came into the big second-floor Placehold room and sat in her big chair. Often
that room was full of Placehold men, usually playful, but sometimes they shouted and fought.
Children learned to hide in the smaller rooms,
cling to women's skirts, or find errands in do Tonight Dargramnet asked the men in help with the
injured children, and they all left so that she was alone with Whandall. She held Whandall in her
lap.
"They wouldn't help," he sobbed. "Only the one. Kreeg Miller. We could have saved Ilther-it was
too late for Bansh, but we could have saved Ilther, only they wouldn't help."
Mother's Mother nodded and petted him. "No, of course they wouldn't," she said. "Not now. When I
was a girl, we helped each other. Not just kin, not just Lordkin." She had a faint smile, as if
she saw things Whandall would never see, and liked them. "Men stayed home. Mothers taught girls
and men taught boys, and there wasn't all this fighting."
"Not even in the Burnings?"
"Bonfires. We made bonfires for Yangin-Atep, and he helped us. Houses of ill luck, places of
illness or murder, we burned those too. We knew how to serve Yangin-Atep then. When I was a girl
there were wizards, real wizards."
"A wizard killed Pothefit," Whandall said gravely.
"Hush," Mother's mother said. "What's done is done. It won't do to think about Burnings."
"The fire god," Whandall said.
"Yangin-Atep sleeps," Mother's Mother said. "The fire god was stronger when I was a girl. In those
days there were real wizards in Lord's Town, and they did real magic."
"Is that where Lords live?"
"No, Lords don't live there. Lords live in Lordshills. Over the hills, past the Black Pit, nearly
all the way to the sea," Mother's Mother said, and smiled again. "And yes, it's beautiful. We used
to go there sometimes."
He thought about the prettiest places he had seen. Peacegiven Square, when the kinless had swept
it clean and set up their tents. The Flower Market, which he wasn't supposed to go to. Most of the
town was dirty, with winding streets, houses falling down, and big houses that had been well built
but were going to ruin. Not like Placehold. Placehold was stone, big, orderly, with roof gardens.
Dargramnet made the women and children work to keep it clean, even bullied the men until they
fixed the roof or broken stairs. Placehold was orderly, and that made it pretty to Whandall.
He tried to imagine another place of order, bigger than Placehold. It would have to be a long way,
he thought. "Didn't that take a long time?"
"No, we'd go in a wagon in the morning. We'd be home that same night. Or sometimes the Lords came
to our city. They'd come and sit in Peacegiven Square and listen to us."
"What's a Lord, Mother's Mother?"
"You always were the curious one. Brave too," she said, and petted him again. "The Lords showed us
how to come here when my grandfather's lather was young. Before that, our people were wanderers.
My grandfather (old me stories about living in wagons, always moving on."
"Grandfather?" Whandall asked.
"Your mother's father."
"But -how could she know?" Whandall demanded. He thought that I'othefit had been his father, but
he was never sure. Not sure the way Mother's Mother seemed to be.
Mother's Mother looked angry for a moment, but then her expression softened. "She knows because I
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know," Mother's Mother said. "Your grandfather and I were together a long time, years and years,
until he was killed, and he was the father of all my children."
Whandall wanted to ask how she knew that, but he'd seen her angry look, and he was afraid. There
were many things you didn't talk about. He asked, "Did he live in a wagon?"
"Maybe," Mother's Mother said. "Or maybe it was his grandfather. I've forgotten most of those
stories now. I told them to your mother, but she didn't listen."
"I'll listen, Mother's Mother," Whandall said.
She brushed her fingers through his freshly washed hair. She'd used three days' water to wash
Whandall and Shastern, and when Resalet said something about it she had shouted at him until he
ran out of the Place-hold. "Good," she said. "Someone ought to remember."
"What do Lords do?"
"They show us things, give us things, tell us what the law is," Mother's Mother said. "You don't
see them much anymore. They used to come to Top's Town. I remember when we were both young-they
chose your grand-lather to talk to the Lords for the Placehold. I was so proud. And the Lords
brought wizards with them, and made rain, and put a spell on our roof gardens so everything grew
better." The dreamy smile came back. "Everything grew better; everyone helped each other. I'm so
proud of you, Whandall; you didn't run and leave your brother-you stayed to help." She stroked
him, letting him the way his sisters petted the cat. Whandall almost purred.
She dozed off soon after. He thought about her stories and wondered how much was true. He couldn't
remember when anyone helped anyone who wasn't close kin. Why would it have been different when
Mother's Mother was young? And could it be that way again?
But he was seven, and the cat was playing with a ball of string. Whandall climbed off Mother's
Mother's lap to watch.
Bansh and Ilther died. Shastern lived, hut he kept the scars. In later years they passed for
lighting scars.
Whandall watched them rebuild the city after the Burning. Stores and offices rose again, cheap
wooden structures on winding streets. The kin-less never seemed to work hard on rebuilding.
Smashed water courses were rebuilt. The places where people died- kicked to death or burned or cut
down with the long Lordkin knives- remained empty for a time. Everybody was hungry until the Lords
and the kinless could get food flowing in again.
None of the other children would return to the forest. They took to spying on strangers, ready to
risk broken bones rather than the terrible plants. But the forest fascinated Whandall. He returned
again and again. Mother didn't want him to go, but Mother wasn't there much. Mother's Mother only
told him to be careful.
Old Resalet heard her. Now he laughed every time Whandall left the Placehold with leathers and
mask.
Whandall went alone. He always followed the path of the logging, and that protected him a little.
The forest became less dangerous as Kreeg Miller taught him more.
All the chaparral was dangerous, but the scrub that gathered round the redwoods was actively
malevolent. Kreeg's father had told him that it was worse in his day: the generations had tamed
these plants. There were blade-covered morningstars and armory plants, and lordkin's-kiss, and
lordkiss with longer blades, and harmless-looking vines and flower beds and bushes all called
touch-me and marked by five-bladed red or red-and-green leaves.
Poison plants came in other forms than touch-me. Any plant might take a whim to cover itself with
daggers and poison them too. Nettles covered their leaves with thousands of needles that would
burrow into flesh. Loggers cut under the morningstar bushes and touch-me flower beds with the
bladed poles they called severs. Against lordwhips the only defense was a mask.
The foresters knew fruit trees the children hadn't found. "These yellow apples want to be eaten,"
Kreeg said, "seeds and all, so in a day or two the seeds are somewhere else, making more plants.
If you don't eat the core, at least throw it as far as you can. But these red death bushes you
stay away from-far away-because if you get close you'll eat the berries."
"Magic?"
"Right. And they're poison. They want their seeds in your belly when you die, for fertilizer."
One wet morning after a lightning storm, loggers saw smoke reaching into the sky.
"Is that the city?" Whandall asked.
"No, that's part of the forest. Over by Wolverine territory. It'll go out," Kreeg assured the boy.
"They always do. You find black patches here and there, big as a city block."
"The fire wakes Yangin-Atep," the boy surmised. "Then Yangin-Atep takes the fire for himself? So
it goes out. . ." But instead of confirming, Kreeg only smiled indulgently. Whandall heard
snickering.
The other loggers didn't believe, but. . . "Kreeg, don't you believe in Yangin-Atep either?"
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"Not really," Kreeg said. "Some magic works, out here in the woods, but in town? Gods and magic,
you hear a lot about them, but you see damn little."
"A magician killed Pothefit!"
Kreeg Miller shrugged.
Whandall was near tears. Pothefit had vanished during the Burning, just ten weeks ago. Pothefit
was his father! But you didn't say that outside the family. Whandall cast about for better
arguments. "You bow to the redwood before you cut it. I've seen you. Isn't that magic?"
"Yeah, well... why take chances? Why do the morningstars and laurel whips and touch-me and creepy-
julia all protect the redwoods?"
"Like house guards," Whandall said, remembering that there were always men and boys on guard at
Placehold.
"Maybe. Like the plants made some kind of bargain," Kreeg said, and laughed.
Mother's Mother had told him. Yangin-Atep led Whandall's ancestors to the Lords, and the Lords had
led Whandall's ancestors through the forest to the Valley of Smokes where they defeated the
kinless and built Tep's Town. Redwood seeds and firewands didn't sprout unless fire had passed
through. Surely these woods belonged to the fire god!
But Kreeg Miller just couldn't see it.
They worked half the morning, hacking at the base of a vast redwood, ignoring the smoke that still
rose northeast of them. Whandall carried water to them from a nearby stream. The other loggers
were almost used to him now. They called him Candlestub.
When the sun was overhead, they broke for lunch.
Kreeg Miller had taken to sharing lunch with him. Whandall had managed to gather some cheese from
the Placehold kitchen. Kreeg had a smoked rabbit from yesterday.
Whandall asked, "How many trees does it take to build the city back?"
Two loggers overheard and laughed. "They never burn the whole city," Kreeg told him. "Nobody could
live through that, Whandall. Twenty or thirty stores and houses, a few blocks solid and Dome other
places scattered, then they break off."
The Placehold men said that they'd burned down the whole city, and all of the children believed
them.
A logger said, "We'll cut another tree after this one. We wouldn't need all four if Lord Qirinty
didn't want a wing on his palace. Boy, do you remember your first Burning?"
"Some. I was only two years old." Whandall cast back in his mind. "The men were acting funny.
They'd lash out if any children got too close. They yelled a lot, and the women yelled back. The
women tried to keep the men away from us.
"Then one afternoon it all got very scary and confusing. There was shouting and whooping and heat
and smoke and light. The women all huddled with us on the second floor. There were smells-not just
smoke, but stuff that made you gag, like an alchemist's shop. The men came in with things they'd
gathered. Blankets, furniture, heaps of shells, stacks of cups and plates, odd things to eat.
"And afterward everyone seemed to calm down." Whandall's voice trailed off. The other woodsmen
were looking at him like . . . like an enemy. Kreeg wouldn't look at him at all.
Chapter 2
The world had moved on, and Whandall had hardly noticed. His brothers and cousins all seemed to
have disappeared. Mostly the girls and women stayed home, but on Mother's Day each month the women
went to the corner squares where the Lordsmen gave out food and clothing and shells, presents from
the Lords. There were always men around that day and the next. Later, they might be around or they
might be gone.
But boys appeared only for meals and sleep, and not always then. Where did they go?
He followed a cluster of cousins one afternoon. As in the forest, he took pride in being unseen.
He got four blocks before four younger men challenged him. They'd beaten him half senseless before
Shastern turned around, saw what was happening, and came running.
Shastern showed the tattoos on his hands and arms. Whandall had once asked about those, but
Shastern had put off answering. They blended in with the terrible scars Shastern carried from the
forest, but many of his cousins had them too. He never asked that kind of question of his cousins.
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Now Whandall did not quite hear what Shastern and his cousins said to them, but the strangers
turned him loose and his cousins carried him home.
He woke hurting. Shastern woke around noon and sought him out. Shastern was barred from speaking
certain secrets, but some things he could say ... . ,
Serpent's Walk wasn't just this region of the city.
Serpent's Walk was the young men who held it. These streets belonged to Serpent's Walk. Other
streets, other hands. The region grew or shrank, streets changed hands, with the power of the
hands. They put up signs on walls and other places.
Whandall had been able to read them for years. Serpent's Walk had a squiggle sign, easy to draw.
Dirty Birds was a falcon drawn wild and sloppy. Shastern showed him a boundary, a wall with the
Serpent's Walk squiggle at one end and a long thin phallus to mark Bull Fizzle territory at the
other. Unmarked, one did not walk in Serpent's Walk, or in Bull Fizzle or Dirty Bird either, if
one did not belong. As a child Whandall had wandered the streets without hindrance, but a ten-year-
old was no longer a child.
"But there are places with no signs at all," Whandall protested.
"That's Lord territory. You can go there until one of the Lordsmen tells you not to. Then you
leave."
"Why?"
"Because everyone is scared of the Lordsmen."
"Why? Are they so strong?"
"Well, they're big, and they're mean, and they wear that armor."
"They walk in pairs too," Whandall said, remembering.
"Right. And if you hurt one of them, a lot more will come looking for you."
"What if they don't know who did it?"
Shastern shrugged expressively. "Then a bunch of them come and beat up on everybody they can find
until someone confesses. Or we kill someone and say he confessed before we killed him. You stay
away from Lordsmen, Whandall. Only good they do is when they bring in the presents on Mother's
Day."
Whandall found it strange to have his one-year-younger brother behaving as his elder.
He must have spoken to Wanshig too. Wanshig was Whandall's eldest brother. Wanshig had the
tattoos, a snake in the web of his left thumb, a rattlesnake that ran up his right arm from the
index finger to the elbow, a small snake's eye at the edge of his left eye. The next night Wanshig
took him into the streets. In a ruin that stank of old smoke, he introduced his younger brother to
men who carried knives and never smiled.
"He needs protection," Wanshig said. The men just looked at him. Finally one asked, "Who speaks
for him?"
Whandall knew some of these faces. Shastern was there too, and he said, "I will." Shastern did not
speak to his brothers, but he spoke of Whandall in glowing terms. When the rest fled the forest in
terror, Whandall had stayed to help Shastern. If he'd learned little of the customs of Serpent's
Walk, it was because he was otherwise occupied. When none of the boys would return to the wood but
took to the streets instead, Whandall Placehold continued to brave the killer plants, to spy on
the woodsmen.
The room was big enough to hold fifty people or more. It was dark out-side now, and the only light
in the room came from the moon shining through holes in the roof, and from torches. The torches
were outside, snick into holes in the windowsills. Yangin-Atep wouldn't allow fires inside, except
during a Burning. You could build an outside cookfire under it lean-to shelter, but never inside,
and if you tried to enclose a fire with walls, the fire went out. Whandall couldn't remember
anyone telling him this. He just knew it, as he knew that cats had sharp claws and that boys
should stay away from men when they were drinking beer.
There was a big chair on a low platform at one end of the room. The chair was wooden, with arms
and a high back, and it was carved with serpents and birds. Some kinless must have worked hard to
make that chair, hut Whandall didn't think it would be very comfortable, not like the big pony
hair-stuffed chair Mother's Mother liked.
A tall man with no smile sat in that chair. Three other men stood in front of him holding their
long Lordkin knives across their chests. Whandall knew him. Pelzed lived in a two-story stone
house at the end of a block of well-kept kinless houses. Pelzed's house had a fenced-in garden and
there were always kinless working in it.
"Bring him," Pelzed said.
His brothers took Whandall by the arms and pulled him to just in front of Pelzed's chair, then
forced him down on his knees.
"What good are you?" Pelzed demanded.
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Shastern began to speak, but Pelzed held up a hand. "I heard you. I want to hear him. What did you
learn from the woodsmen?"
"Say something," Wanshig whispered. There was fear in his voice.
Whandall thought furiously. "Poisons. I know the poisons of the forest. Needles. Blades. Whips."
Pelzed gestured. One of the men standing in front of Pelzed's chair raised his big knife and
struck Whandall hard across the left shoulder.
It stung, but he had used the flat of the blade. "Call him Lord," the man said. His bared chest
was a maze of scars; one ran right up his cheek into his hair. Whandall found him scary as hell.
"Lord," Whandall said. He had never seen a Lord. "Yes, Lord."
"Good. You can walk in the forest?"
"Much of it, Lord. Places where the woodsmen have been."
"Good. What do you know of the Wedge?"
"The meadow at the top of the Deerpiss River?" What did Pelzed want to hear? "Woodsmen don't go
there, Lord. I've never seen it. It is said to be guarded."
Pause. Then, "Can you bring us poisons?"
"Yes, lord, in the right season."
"Can we use them against the enemies of Serpent's Walk?"
Whandall had no idea who the enemies of Serpent's Walk might be, but he was afraid to ask. "If
they're fresh. Lord."
"What happens if they aren't fresh?"
"After a day they only make you itch. The nettles stop reaching out for anyone who passes."
"Why?"
"I don't know." The man raised his knife. "Lord."
"You're a sneak and a spy."
"Yes, Lord."
"Will you spy for us?"
Whandall hesitated. "Of course he will, Lord," Shastern said.
"Take him out, Shastern. Wait with him."
Shastern led him through a door into a room with no other doors and only a small dark window that
let in a little moonlight. He waited until they were closed in before letting go of Whandall's
arm.
"This is dangerous, isn't it?" Whandall asked.
Shastern nodded.
"So what's going to happen?"
"They'll let you in. Maybe."
"If they don't?"
Shastern shook his head. "They will. Lord Pelzed doesn't want a blood feud with the Placehold
family."
Blood feuds meant blood. "Is he really a Lord-"
"He is here," Shastern said. "And don't forget it."
When they brought him back in, the room was dark except for a few candles near Pelzed's chair.
Shastern whispered, "I knew they'd let you in. Now whatever happens, don't cry. It's going to
hurt."
They made him kneel in front of Pelzed again. Two men took turns asking him questions and hitting
him.
"We are your father and your mother," Pelzed said.
Someone hit him.
"Who is your father?" a voice asked from behind.
"You are-"
Someone hit him harder.
"Serpent's Walk," Whandall guessed.
"Who is your mother?"
"Serpent's Walk."
"Who is your Lord?"
"Pelzed. ... Argh. Lord Pelzed. Aagh! Serpent's Walk?"
"Who is Lord of Serpent's Walk?"
"Lord Pelzed."
It went on a long time. Usually they didn't hit him if he guessed the right answer, but sometimes
they hit him anyway. "To make sure you remember," they said.
Finally that was over. "You can't fight," Pelzed said. "So you won't be a lull member. But we'll
take care of you. Give him the mark."
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They stretched his left hand out and tattooed a small serpent on the web of his thumb. He held his
arm rigid against the pain. Then everyone said nice things about him.
After that it was easier. Whandall was safe outside the house as long as he was in territory
friendly to Serpent's Walk. Wanshig warned him not to tarry a knife until he knew how to fight. It
would be taken as a challenge.
He didn't know the rules. But one could keep silent, watch, and learn.
Here he remembered a line of black skeletons of buildings. The charred remains had come down and
been carried away. Whandall and others watched from cover, from the basement of a house that
hadn't been replaced yet. Kinless were at work raising redwood beams into skeletons of new
buildings. Four new stores stood already, sharing common walls.
You knew the kinless by their skin tone, or their rounder ears and pointed noses, but that was
chancy; a boy could make mistakes. Better to judge by clothing or by name.
Kinless were not allowed to wear Lordkin's hair styles or vivid colors. On formal occasions the
kinless men wore a noose as token of their servitude. They were named for things or for skills,
and they spoke their family names, where a Lordkin never would.
There were unspoken rules for gathering. There were times when you could ask a kinless for food or
money. A man and woman together might accept that. Others would not. Kinless men working to
replace blackened ruins with new buildings did not look with favor on Lordkin men or boys. Lordkin
at their gatherings must be wary of the kinless who kept shops or sold from carts. The kinless had
no rights, but the Lords had rights to what the kinless made.
The kinless did the work. They made clothing, grew food, made and used tools, transported it all.
They made rope for export. They harvested rope fibers from the hemp that grew in vacant lots and
anywhere near the sluggish streams that served as storm drains and sewers alike. They built. They
saw to it that streets were repaired, that water flowed, that garbage reached the dumps. They took
the blame if things went wrong. Only the kinless paid taxes, and taxes were whatever a Lordkin
wanted, unless a Lord said otherwise. Hut you had lo learn what you could take. The kin-less only
had so much to give, Mother's Mother said.
Suddenly it was all so obvious, so embarrassing. Loggers were kinless! Of course they wouldn't
help a Lordkin child. The loggers thought Kreeg Miller was strange, as the Placehold thought
Whandall was strange, each to be found in the other's company.
Whandall had been letting a kinless teach him! He had carried water for them, working like a
kinless!
Whandall stopped visiting the forest.
The Serpent's Walk men spent their time in the streets. So did the boys of the Placehold, but
their fathers and uncles spent most of their time at home.
Why?
Whandall went to old Resalet. One could ask.
Resalet listened and nodded, then summoned all the boys and led them outside. He pointed to the
house, the old stone three-story house with its enclosed courtyard. He explained that it had been
built by kinless for themselves, two hundred years ago. Lordkin had taken it from them.
It was a roomy dwelling desired by many. The kinless no longer built houses to last centuries. Why
should they, when a Lordkin family would claim it? Other Lordkin had claimed this place
repeatedly, until it fell to the Placehold family. It would change hands again unless the men kept
guard.
The boys found the lecture irritating, and they let Whandall know that afterward.
Mother never had time for him. There was always a new baby, new men to see and bring home, new
places to go, never time for the older boys. Men hung out together. They chewed hemp and made
plans or went off at night, but they never wanted boys around them, and most of the boys were
afraid of the men. With reason.
Whandall saw his city without understanding. The other boys hardly realized there was anything to
understand and didn't care to know more. It was safe to ask Mother's Mother, but her answers were
strange.
"Everything has changed. When I was a girl the kinless didn't hate us. They were happy to do the
work. Gathering was easy. They gave us things."
"Why?"
"We served Yangin-Atep. Tep woke often and protected us."
"But didn't the kinless hate the Burnings?"
"Yes, but it was different then," Mother's Mother said. "It was arranged. A house or building
nobody could use, or a bridge ready to fall down.
We'd bring things to burn. Kinless, Lordkin. everyone would bring something for Yangin-Atep.
Mathoms, we called them. The Lords came, too, with their wizards. Now it's all different, and I
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don't understand it at all."
One could keep silence, watch, and learn.
Barbarians were the odd ones. Their skins were of many shades, their noses of many shapes; even
their eye color varied. They sounded odd, lien they could talk at all.
Some belonged in the city, wherever they had come from. They traded, taught, doctored, cooked, or
sold to kinless and Lordkin alike. They were in be treated as kinless who didn't understand the
rules. Their speech could generally be understood. They might travel with guards of their own race
or give tribute to Lordkin to protect their shops. A few had the protection of Lords. You could
tell that by the symbols displayed outside their shops and homes.
Most barbarians avoided places where violence had fallen. But lookers sought those places out. The
violence of the Burning lured them across the sea to Tep's Town.
Hoys who gave up the forest had taken to spying on lookers instead. Whandall would do as they did:
watch the watchers. But they were far ahead of him at that game, and Whandall had some catching up
to do.
Watch, listen. From under a walk, from behind a wall. Lookers took refuge in the parts of the city
where kinless lived, or in the harbor areas where the Lords ruled. Lordkin children could
sometimes get in those places. Lookers spoke in rapid gibberish that some of the older boys
claimed to understand.
At first they looked merely strange. Later Whandall saw how many kinds of lookers there were. You
could judge by their skins or their features or their clothing. These pale ones were Torovan, from
the east. These others were from the south, from Condigeo. These with noses like an eagle's beak
came from farther yet: Atlantean refugees. Each spoke his own tongue, and each mangled the Lordkin
speech in a different fashion. And others, from places Whandall had never heard of.
Serpent's Walk watched, and met afterward in the shells of burned buildings. They asked themselves
and each other, What does this one have that would be worth gathering? But Whandall sometimes
wondered, Does that one come from a more interesting place than here? or more exciting? or better
ruled? or seeking a ruler?
Chapter 3
When he was eleven years old, Whandall asked Wanshig, "Where can I find a Lord?" "You know where
Pelzed lives-"
"A real Lord."
"Don't talk like that," Wanshig said, but he grinned. "Do you remember when those people came to
the park? And made speeches? Last fall."
"Sure. You gathered some money in the crowd and bought meat for dinner."
"That was a Lord. I forgot his name."
"Which one? There were a lot of people-"
"Guards, mostly. And lookers, and storytellers. The one that stood on the wagon and talked about
the new aqueduct they're building."
"Oh."
"The Lords live on the other side of the valley, in the Lordshills mostly. It's a long way. You
can't go there."
"Do they have a band?"
"Sort of. They have guards, big Lordsmen. And there's a wall."
"I'd like to see one. Up close."
"Sometimes Lords go to the docks. But you don't want to go there alone," Wanshig said.
"Why not?"
"It's Water Devils territory. The Lords say anyone can go there, and the Devils have to put up
with that, but they don't like it. If they catch you
alone with no one to come back and tell what happened, they may throw you in the harbor."
"Hut Water Devils don't go into the Lordshills, do they?"
"I don't know. Never needed to find out."
I low do you know what you need to find out until you know it? Whandall wondered, but he didn't
say anything. "Is there a safe way to the harbor?"
Wanshig nodded. "Stay on Sanvin Street until you get past those hills." lie pointed northwest.
"After that there aren't any bands until you get to the harbor. Didn't used to be. Now, who
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