While Golting was marvelling at Mrs Copson's memory for honest landlords, Morran was trying to catch up to Zesheyek. Her friend was already on the fringes of the market and heading back into the street of Jakks Way. "Zesh, don't let her get to you," Morran called out. "She's just a silly old cow."
"I know, I know. But-"
"She weren't even laying into Notrufans that time. Give her that much."
"She meant us though," Zesheyek insisted. "You know she did."
"Well, yeah-" Morran began.
"It was like what she said the other day. 'All come crawling here from Notruf and Gesund and the rest of the Provinces and you know they're only after one thing.' As if she's any idea why I moved here."
"Well, in fairness, you've never told her."
"What's it got to do with her? She isn't anybody, is she? She's just some nasty old busybody."
"Aye, OK. So don't-"
Zesheyek stopped walking abruptly, her face twisting with pain. Morran caught her arm and studied her carefully. "Don't get worked up, I were about to say," she continued gently. "Here, sit down for a sec. Breath deep."
"No, it's…" Zesheyek gave a weak smile. "I'm fine. He was just kicking again, that's all."
Morran noted again how Zesheyek always assumed the gender of her unborn child. "Aye, I remember that. First time it's magic. Hundred and fiftieth time it's, all right you little bugger, give it a rest."
Zesheyek managed a more convincing smile this time though didn't start walking again immediately. By chance they had stopped between their two tenement blocks, facing Morran's. Morran scanned the windows, eyes flitting across her own for a second, wondering which held the latest arrivals. "Mind you, that old cow could be right about the new couple being trouble. If Delpess says they are. 'Cause there's a bloke who knows what trouble smells like. An' goes out drinking with it half the time." After a pause Morran announced, "Maybe I'll know on their door myself some time soon. Give 'em a bit of a look over."
"Hell, is that sensible? If they really might be dangerous-"
"I know every person in my building, at least by sight. It's my home. I don't go hiding behind my door for anyone." At that moment Morran's composure was shattered by a trio of boys who ran past shrieking. One of them caught her elbow and almost knocked her over. "'Ey, you little bugger!" she called after them.
One of the boys stopped and whirled around. "Fuck off you fat old bat," he shouted, making his two companions scream with laughter.
"You what?" Morran bellowed back, apparently enraged beyond all measure. "You come back here an' say that, you little sod." She began a helpless pursuit of the boys as they scampered away again. "I know who you are, Tomas Morric. I'm coming to your house tonight an' I'm getting your dad to kick your arse for you. Same for you, Ses Wetteran. An' as for you, whoever you are, you better not show your face round here again. Get your bloody arses back here now…"
Zesheyek waved a farewell to her friend and slipped quietly into her own building. Morran, she knew, was enjoying the confrontation almost as much as the boys. Their trips out together tended to involve a high-volume argument with somebody. Afterwards the older woman would be energised, eyes shining and face glowing happily. Zesheyek was still a stranger to the Triple Cities, however. There were many local ways she could not understand and one was the apparent pleasure in making a spectacle of yourself in the middle of a public byway.
Though they faced one another, Zesheyek and Morran's apartment blocks were very different. Morran's was almost as good as the owner of most of its flats, Mr Delpess, claimed. It was barely a decade old, built in 1323; and its freshness was not important simply because it meant the fixtures hadn't had time to start rotting. By the 1320's, in the Cities at least, the idea had spread that even poor housing should not be laughably unstable, inflammable, unhygienic or generally unliveable. It was a notion which germinated hesitantly. For most of the history of the Cities, its rulers were content for many poor houses to fall down regularly, others to catch fire almost as often; for the inhabitants to be periodically wiped out by plagues and the survivors to do something called, for want of a better word, living in lightless, damp boxes. The residents themselves grew a little weary of this, however. Eventually they expressed their displeasure enough times to the politicians through ballot boxes and to the landlords by more informal means. Improvements were slow to emerge, of course, always held back by greed and indolence. But by 1334 there existed structures which were palaces by the standards of the old working class districts. In the new tenement blocks, apartments like the one Yaxi and Radav had just rented were top of the range. A family like Morran's, though, with approximately one and a half reasonable incomes earned by various means, could afford a flat reasonably spacious, warm, dry and safe.
The old monstrosities were not cleared, however. It was assumed, logically enough, that they would eventually all fall or burn down and could be replaced then. In the meantime they were dumping grounds for couples like Zesheyek and Kriyas. Their block was one of the old mansion houses. Belonging to the idealism of the first years of the Triple Cities, which fled north-west with the aristocracy and left their old houses to be covered in grime externally and partitioned up a hundredfold internally. Zesheyek had been told that her tiny third story flat had probably once been part of the master bedroom. Where she and her husband now lived was perhaps previously occupied by one of Christoté's founding fathers. Maybe; but the damp, the lice, the bare stone walls and the mouldering roof beams only ever inspired images of the meanest servants' quarters.
There was a range of sorts to cook on, Zesheyek told herself. And there was just enough room for a tiny dining table at one end of the room, a bed at the other. They could live there for now. When the baby came… But she thrust that worry to the back of her mind, along with all the other travails which would accompany the birth of her first son. For the moment, she would have to make do. Zesheyek was used to making do. While the memories of her old home were becoming more roseate every day, the reality was a tiny, odiferous cottage, itself only two steps from collapse and springing a dozen leaks whenever the rains came. She was from a peasant family in Notruf, the Christotan Province which treated peasants the worst of all; and one shackled to a baron who perhaps treated his tenants the least equitably in all Notruf. There had been several reasons for them to leave home and one was that home itself.
But she had been able to look out of the window, she remembered wistfully, and see the fields. Undulating gently until they rose to the line of quietly beautiful hills on the horizon. She had been able to steal half hours to walk the lanes, moments to immerse herself in the undemanding chorus of nature and to feel truly free. Here it seemed impossible to escape the harsh blare and glare of the Cities, however far she walked or gazed. Her old cottage had a proper range; a source of comfort in the winter, a focal point for the whole household. A place where true cooking could be managed too, not the thing she had now which was essentially just a hole in the wall. And they had a tiny patch of land at home, grew pumpkins and potatoes and swedes in it. Everything had to be bought in the Cities; everything dragged down their flimsy rope of fortune which rested permanently just above disaster. They made constant sacrifices just for produce which always seemed battered, tasteless, somehow lifeless. Zesheyek tried as hard as she could but saw the disappointment in her husband's eyes with every meal she put on his table. She was failing him. She was waiting for him to say so and wondered if she would have the courage for the rebuttal: this is your fault.
The dinner, another stew heavily spiced to try and hide the deadness, was just coming to the boil when Kriyas arrived home. The timing was rarely so fortuitous. He could often be late, sometimes not returning until midnight, so she had to find meals which could be left to simmer. Zesheyek didn't know what delayed him or even what his job in Forgar actually was. She never asked him. It brought wages and that was enough for her. Kriyas kissed her dutifully, pulled off his boots and sat at the table. Although on time, he looked as exhausted as always. She ladled the stew into a metal tureen, replaced the lid and put it in the middle of the table. She cut them both a piece of bread. Kriyas murmured the Ode To Evening. They both ate a single mouthful of bread. Afterwards Kriyas spoke the Ode To The Spirits, sprinkling a circle of dust around the tureen as he did so. Finally they both recited the Ode Of Thanksgiving, alternating between its six verses. Only then was Zesheyek permitted to remove the tureen lid and spoon out the stew.
All were prayers to the God Garrath. The Garran faith was followed by nearly half the Triple Cities. Yet the only ones who performed the same dinner rituals, the night rituals, the morning rituals, were also from Notruf. Many 'worshippers' did nothing at all, of course, but the pious locals performed rites which Zesheyek had never previously heard of. She was still trying to adjust to the alien services held at her local Garran chapel. She felt she belonged to an entirely different church, just as the whole notion of Notruf being in the same country as the Cities appeared a fallacy. Maybe this was, as Morran kept assuring her, merely a period of adjustment. And maybe she would come to appreciate the supposed compensations of Cities living over time – the freedom to say what she wanted to abuse her betters to their faces, to visit libraries of books which she couldn't read and theatres performing plays which she couldn't understand. Maybe, as both she and Kriyas had tentatively suggested before their journey began, they would wanted to stay permanently after their mission was completed. Maybe: but right now Zesheyek wanted to run home as soon as she could and spend the rest of her life trying to expunge memories of this inferno.
The stew was disgusting. Zesheyek didn't think she had cooked a good meal since coming to the Cities. She watched revulsion crease her husband's face as he ate. He always seemed on the boundary of making that complaint. Would he ever find the valour, she wondered. And would she for the riposte. The meals, the rotting vegetables and the stale meat and the inadequate hearth – it's not me. This is your fault.
When she calmed again, however, she reminded herself that timidity alone wasn't stopping the complaint. Kriyas could make do as well. He was polite and stoical and considerate; the three qualities which she always boasted about to others. He rarely said anything during a meal either, and neither did she. They were ill-suited as a couple, really, because they were too alike rather than too dissimilar. Both introverted, both quiet, both shy. And they hadn't known each other especially well before the wedding and seemed unable, for all the trials they had shared, to move closer together. Only when he was wiping up the dregs of his stew with his stale bread did he say,
"I saw the Morran woman outside. She mentioned you'd been to the market together again."
Zesheyek nodded. "She's a help when I go shopping. She stops me getting cheated."
"You see a lot of her, don't you?"
There was a rebuke there, Zesheyek decided, but Kriyas hadn't been able to get the tone quite right. Somewhat defensively, she replied, "She's been a good friend to me. I think she's a good woman."
"I'm sure she is," Kriyas frowned. He's young too, Zesheyek reminded herself, and just as inexperienced. A farm boy and a farm girl. And he was just as bewildered by the Cities as she was. They had first met Morran the day they arrived. The elder woman had been bawling across the street, requesting somebody to "Tell your damn Baron of Dorlaf to shove his legislation up a dark, warm passage." Then Morran spotted them and, with pause to change gears, greeted them with a cheerful "Always nice to meet new faces." Women in Notruf were not all, despite the stereotype, meek and subdued. They did not shout in the street, however, and certainly did not shout political statements. Not the ones who were 'good' at least. Searching for a safe comment, Kriyas finally managed,
"Maybe we should have her here for a meal some time. With her family, of course."
"We should probably go to hers first. If you like. I told you that she asked."
"Is that the custom here? The newcomers visit the hosts?"
"I don't know. I think it just depends who asks first."
"All right," Kriyas nodded. Zesheyek cleared the table and washed the utensils as best she could in a barrel of grimy water. Kriyas sat back and lit his pipe. Fed, at leisure, smoke ghosting out of his nostrils and his woman working around him, he almost looked like a proper head of a household. He almost looked grown up. He seemed to sense the façade and draw strength from it. His next comment was, "I'm glad you've found a friend. But you shouldn't get too close to her."
"I won't."
"Remember, these aren't our people."
"I know."
"And no-one must know why we're here. Not till the time comes. You've remembered that, haven't you?"
"Yes. Of course," Zesheyek said. She hoped the meekness in her tone would mask the guilt. One secret begat another begat another. And now the very best conversations, the only ones she could hope for, were like the last exchange. With questions phrased so that she could avoid answering with a direct lie.
"I know, I know. But-"
"She weren't even laying into Notrufans that time. Give her that much."
"She meant us though," Zesheyek insisted. "You know she did."
"Well, yeah-" Morran began.
"It was like what she said the other day. 'All come crawling here from Notruf and Gesund and the rest of the Provinces and you know they're only after one thing.' As if she's any idea why I moved here."
"Well, in fairness, you've never told her."
"What's it got to do with her? She isn't anybody, is she? She's just some nasty old busybody."
"Aye, OK. So don't-"
Zesheyek stopped walking abruptly, her face twisting with pain. Morran caught her arm and studied her carefully. "Don't get worked up, I were about to say," she continued gently. "Here, sit down for a sec. Breath deep."
"No, it's…" Zesheyek gave a weak smile. "I'm fine. He was just kicking again, that's all."
Morran noted again how Zesheyek always assumed the gender of her unborn child. "Aye, I remember that. First time it's magic. Hundred and fiftieth time it's, all right you little bugger, give it a rest."
Zesheyek managed a more convincing smile this time though didn't start walking again immediately. By chance they had stopped between their two tenement blocks, facing Morran's. Morran scanned the windows, eyes flitting across her own for a second, wondering which held the latest arrivals. "Mind you, that old cow could be right about the new couple being trouble. If Delpess says they are. 'Cause there's a bloke who knows what trouble smells like. An' goes out drinking with it half the time." After a pause Morran announced, "Maybe I'll know on their door myself some time soon. Give 'em a bit of a look over."
"Hell, is that sensible? If they really might be dangerous-"
"I know every person in my building, at least by sight. It's my home. I don't go hiding behind my door for anyone." At that moment Morran's composure was shattered by a trio of boys who ran past shrieking. One of them caught her elbow and almost knocked her over. "'Ey, you little bugger!" she called after them.
One of the boys stopped and whirled around. "Fuck off you fat old bat," he shouted, making his two companions scream with laughter.
"You what?" Morran bellowed back, apparently enraged beyond all measure. "You come back here an' say that, you little sod." She began a helpless pursuit of the boys as they scampered away again. "I know who you are, Tomas Morric. I'm coming to your house tonight an' I'm getting your dad to kick your arse for you. Same for you, Ses Wetteran. An' as for you, whoever you are, you better not show your face round here again. Get your bloody arses back here now…"
Zesheyek waved a farewell to her friend and slipped quietly into her own building. Morran, she knew, was enjoying the confrontation almost as much as the boys. Their trips out together tended to involve a high-volume argument with somebody. Afterwards the older woman would be energised, eyes shining and face glowing happily. Zesheyek was still a stranger to the Triple Cities, however. There were many local ways she could not understand and one was the apparent pleasure in making a spectacle of yourself in the middle of a public byway.
Though they faced one another, Zesheyek and Morran's apartment blocks were very different. Morran's was almost as good as the owner of most of its flats, Mr Delpess, claimed. It was barely a decade old, built in 1323; and its freshness was not important simply because it meant the fixtures hadn't had time to start rotting. By the 1320's, in the Cities at least, the idea had spread that even poor housing should not be laughably unstable, inflammable, unhygienic or generally unliveable. It was a notion which germinated hesitantly. For most of the history of the Cities, its rulers were content for many poor houses to fall down regularly, others to catch fire almost as often; for the inhabitants to be periodically wiped out by plagues and the survivors to do something called, for want of a better word, living in lightless, damp boxes. The residents themselves grew a little weary of this, however. Eventually they expressed their displeasure enough times to the politicians through ballot boxes and to the landlords by more informal means. Improvements were slow to emerge, of course, always held back by greed and indolence. But by 1334 there existed structures which were palaces by the standards of the old working class districts. In the new tenement blocks, apartments like the one Yaxi and Radav had just rented were top of the range. A family like Morran's, though, with approximately one and a half reasonable incomes earned by various means, could afford a flat reasonably spacious, warm, dry and safe.
The old monstrosities were not cleared, however. It was assumed, logically enough, that they would eventually all fall or burn down and could be replaced then. In the meantime they were dumping grounds for couples like Zesheyek and Kriyas. Their block was one of the old mansion houses. Belonging to the idealism of the first years of the Triple Cities, which fled north-west with the aristocracy and left their old houses to be covered in grime externally and partitioned up a hundredfold internally. Zesheyek had been told that her tiny third story flat had probably once been part of the master bedroom. Where she and her husband now lived was perhaps previously occupied by one of Christoté's founding fathers. Maybe; but the damp, the lice, the bare stone walls and the mouldering roof beams only ever inspired images of the meanest servants' quarters.
There was a range of sorts to cook on, Zesheyek told herself. And there was just enough room for a tiny dining table at one end of the room, a bed at the other. They could live there for now. When the baby came… But she thrust that worry to the back of her mind, along with all the other travails which would accompany the birth of her first son. For the moment, she would have to make do. Zesheyek was used to making do. While the memories of her old home were becoming more roseate every day, the reality was a tiny, odiferous cottage, itself only two steps from collapse and springing a dozen leaks whenever the rains came. She was from a peasant family in Notruf, the Christotan Province which treated peasants the worst of all; and one shackled to a baron who perhaps treated his tenants the least equitably in all Notruf. There had been several reasons for them to leave home and one was that home itself.
But she had been able to look out of the window, she remembered wistfully, and see the fields. Undulating gently until they rose to the line of quietly beautiful hills on the horizon. She had been able to steal half hours to walk the lanes, moments to immerse herself in the undemanding chorus of nature and to feel truly free. Here it seemed impossible to escape the harsh blare and glare of the Cities, however far she walked or gazed. Her old cottage had a proper range; a source of comfort in the winter, a focal point for the whole household. A place where true cooking could be managed too, not the thing she had now which was essentially just a hole in the wall. And they had a tiny patch of land at home, grew pumpkins and potatoes and swedes in it. Everything had to be bought in the Cities; everything dragged down their flimsy rope of fortune which rested permanently just above disaster. They made constant sacrifices just for produce which always seemed battered, tasteless, somehow lifeless. Zesheyek tried as hard as she could but saw the disappointment in her husband's eyes with every meal she put on his table. She was failing him. She was waiting for him to say so and wondered if she would have the courage for the rebuttal: this is your fault.
The dinner, another stew heavily spiced to try and hide the deadness, was just coming to the boil when Kriyas arrived home. The timing was rarely so fortuitous. He could often be late, sometimes not returning until midnight, so she had to find meals which could be left to simmer. Zesheyek didn't know what delayed him or even what his job in Forgar actually was. She never asked him. It brought wages and that was enough for her. Kriyas kissed her dutifully, pulled off his boots and sat at the table. Although on time, he looked as exhausted as always. She ladled the stew into a metal tureen, replaced the lid and put it in the middle of the table. She cut them both a piece of bread. Kriyas murmured the Ode To Evening. They both ate a single mouthful of bread. Afterwards Kriyas spoke the Ode To The Spirits, sprinkling a circle of dust around the tureen as he did so. Finally they both recited the Ode Of Thanksgiving, alternating between its six verses. Only then was Zesheyek permitted to remove the tureen lid and spoon out the stew.
All were prayers to the God Garrath. The Garran faith was followed by nearly half the Triple Cities. Yet the only ones who performed the same dinner rituals, the night rituals, the morning rituals, were also from Notruf. Many 'worshippers' did nothing at all, of course, but the pious locals performed rites which Zesheyek had never previously heard of. She was still trying to adjust to the alien services held at her local Garran chapel. She felt she belonged to an entirely different church, just as the whole notion of Notruf being in the same country as the Cities appeared a fallacy. Maybe this was, as Morran kept assuring her, merely a period of adjustment. And maybe she would come to appreciate the supposed compensations of Cities living over time – the freedom to say what she wanted to abuse her betters to their faces, to visit libraries of books which she couldn't read and theatres performing plays which she couldn't understand. Maybe, as both she and Kriyas had tentatively suggested before their journey began, they would wanted to stay permanently after their mission was completed. Maybe: but right now Zesheyek wanted to run home as soon as she could and spend the rest of her life trying to expunge memories of this inferno.
The stew was disgusting. Zesheyek didn't think she had cooked a good meal since coming to the Cities. She watched revulsion crease her husband's face as he ate. He always seemed on the boundary of making that complaint. Would he ever find the valour, she wondered. And would she for the riposte. The meals, the rotting vegetables and the stale meat and the inadequate hearth – it's not me. This is your fault.
When she calmed again, however, she reminded herself that timidity alone wasn't stopping the complaint. Kriyas could make do as well. He was polite and stoical and considerate; the three qualities which she always boasted about to others. He rarely said anything during a meal either, and neither did she. They were ill-suited as a couple, really, because they were too alike rather than too dissimilar. Both introverted, both quiet, both shy. And they hadn't known each other especially well before the wedding and seemed unable, for all the trials they had shared, to move closer together. Only when he was wiping up the dregs of his stew with his stale bread did he say,
"I saw the Morran woman outside. She mentioned you'd been to the market together again."
Zesheyek nodded. "She's a help when I go shopping. She stops me getting cheated."
"You see a lot of her, don't you?"
There was a rebuke there, Zesheyek decided, but Kriyas hadn't been able to get the tone quite right. Somewhat defensively, she replied, "She's been a good friend to me. I think she's a good woman."
"I'm sure she is," Kriyas frowned. He's young too, Zesheyek reminded herself, and just as inexperienced. A farm boy and a farm girl. And he was just as bewildered by the Cities as she was. They had first met Morran the day they arrived. The elder woman had been bawling across the street, requesting somebody to "Tell your damn Baron of Dorlaf to shove his legislation up a dark, warm passage." Then Morran spotted them and, with pause to change gears, greeted them with a cheerful "Always nice to meet new faces." Women in Notruf were not all, despite the stereotype, meek and subdued. They did not shout in the street, however, and certainly did not shout political statements. Not the ones who were 'good' at least. Searching for a safe comment, Kriyas finally managed,
"Maybe we should have her here for a meal some time. With her family, of course."
"We should probably go to hers first. If you like. I told you that she asked."
"Is that the custom here? The newcomers visit the hosts?"
"I don't know. I think it just depends who asks first."
"All right," Kriyas nodded. Zesheyek cleared the table and washed the utensils as best she could in a barrel of grimy water. Kriyas sat back and lit his pipe. Fed, at leisure, smoke ghosting out of his nostrils and his woman working around him, he almost looked like a proper head of a household. He almost looked grown up. He seemed to sense the façade and draw strength from it. His next comment was, "I'm glad you've found a friend. But you shouldn't get too close to her."
"I won't."
"Remember, these aren't our people."
"I know."
"And no-one must know why we're here. Not till the time comes. You've remembered that, haven't you?"
"Yes. Of course," Zesheyek said. She hoped the meekness in her tone would mask the guilt. One secret begat another begat another. And now the very best conversations, the only ones she could hope for, were like the last exchange. With questions phrased so that she could avoid answering with a direct lie.
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