Orson Card - Pathfinder

For a while, passing through a neighborhood market near a six-road crossroads with a well, the noise was so great they couldn’t hear each other, and conversation died. It seemed that every stall competed with every other for how much noise and stink they could raise, and all the mules and oxen and horses and asses could only be controlled by screaming long strings of extraordinarily offensive language. Even the beggars had given up competing with the noise—they jumped up and down in order to attract attention. They looked like ebbecks in tall grass, they jumped so high, and Umbo was tempted to give one of them a ping for his athletic ability. But Loaf clapped a hand on Umbo’s arm to stop him from reaching for it.

Loaf leaned down so his mouth was directly at Umbo’s ear, and shouted, “If you give anything, a boy your size will be rolled, trampled, stripped, and skinned in five seconds.”

It was late in the day when they came to a section of the city with wider paved streets and larger buildings made of better materials, where mounted police kept some kind of order. People were more nicely dressed, and there was far less noise—but this also meant that Loaf’s and Umbo’s clothing marked them as being out of place.

“We don’t belong here,” said Umbo.

“Exactly,” said Loaf. Whereupon he took Umbo by the hand and walked right up to one of the mounted policemen. “Sir,” he said, “my son and I are new in the city and looking for lodging. This is surely not the place where we’ll find what we can afford—can you tell me where we might . . .”

But the policeman, after looking them both slowly up and down, gave his horse some kind of invisible command and the horse clopped on, its iron shoes ringing on the cobblestones.

“I guess he doesn’t like giving directions,” said Umbo.

“Oh, I didn’t expect him to speak to us,” said Loaf. “By asking him directions, I proved that I really was from out of town, and a harmless idiot on top of it. If I was up to no good, I’d never have walked right up to him, especially not with my second-story boy in tow.”

“Second-story boy?”

“That’s what he had to assume we were at first—a burglar, with you as the boy I lift up to balconies or roofs so you can squirm in through some chimney or skylight or vent and then come down and let me into the house.”

“He couldn’t have thought we were father and son?”

“In this neighborhood? Dressed as we are? I think not!”

“Then why are we here?”

“Because this is the kind of neighborhood where they might keep the royals. We have to get near enough to Rigg, if he’s still alive, that he can see our paths. Isn’t that what he does? You said he could see the paths even through walls.”

“I didn’t even think of that,” said Umbo.

“Well, what did you think? That we could ask where they keep the royals and then go and chat with Rigg?”

“I thought that the Revolutionary Council allowed common citizens to go look at the royals and take things away from them and stuff.”

“Yes, yes, but not any common citizen. And not just any old time, either. It’s only when they want to humiliate the royals or make some kind of political point or warning. And we wouldn’t be the ‘common citizens’ they’d send.”

“So it’s all for show.”

“Government is all show, when it isn’t murder in the dark,” said Loaf. “Or soldiers in the open.”

Instead of going back toward safer neighborhoods—safer for poor people, that is—Loaf was leading them through ever richer streets. Now the houses were each as wide as ten buildings in an ordinary part of town, and no windows looked out on the street at all, except perhaps on third stories.

“Do they all live in darkness?” asked Umbo.

“They all have large inner courtyards, and their windows look out into their private garden. They’re like little castles.”

“They don’t look so little to me,” said Umbo.

“That’s because you’ve never seen a castle.”

“And each one of these houses is just one family?” asked Umbo.

“One family, plus their servants and guards and guests, their treasuries and libraries and animals. Each one of these houses contains a hamlet’s-worth of people.”

“A burglar would have a hard time getting his second-story boy up into that window,” said Umbo.

“Even so,” answered Loaf, “please have the wit not to be seen looking up at it.”

Suddenly the road opened up to a park with broad lawns and low flowers and shrubbery, with only a tree here and there. Even the drainage ditch that kept the raised land dry was lined with grass that was kept close-mown by goats. Several huge buildings—not taller than three stories, but broad and finely made, faced with bright white stone—were widely spaced among the gardens.

“Here it is,” said Loaf. “The Great Library of Aressa Sessamo.”

“Which building?”

“All of them,” said Loaf. “If it was just one building it wouldn’t be all that great, would it?”

“Are we going inside?”

“Are you joking?” asked Loaf. “Do we look like scholars? They’d have us run off to an asylum as madmen.”

“I can read!”

“But how recently have you bathed?” asked Loaf. “No, I’m just thinking that if Rigg has any freedom at all, he’ll try to get here so he can learn more about his gift or about the history of the royal family or about contemporary politics—and by walking near here we’ll improve our chances of his noticing our paths.”

“So we’ll get to a place where I can piss pretty soon?” asked Umbo.

“Oh, you can do that here,” said Loaf. “Against any of these walls.”

“Rich people’s houses?”

“You’re pissing on the outside. The street side. They lime it white every six months anyway.” As if Umbo had given him an excellent idea, Loaf was lustily hosing down the base of a stucco wall.

Umbo saw that there were dozens of yellow-stained patches. “I would have thought Aressa Sessamo would be more civilized than this,” said Umbo. “In Fall Ford—”

“In Fall Ford—just like Leaky’s Landing—everybody can easily find a bush or a privy, so they can afford to be fastidious about never doing a bodily function in public. But this is a city in a swamp—every scrap of ground is valuable, and they’re not going to waste it on public toilets just for urine.”

Umbo wondered what women did. He was reasonably sure it did not involve walls, but he preferred not to discuss this question with Loaf, since it would only trigger a long series of jokes that would mortify Umbo, more because of their crudity than because he was the butt of them.

“The only reason this system works,” said Loaf, “is that everybody pretends not to notice what’s going on. You don’t watch, you don’t stare, you don’t talk about it, you try not to even see it.”

“So far I’m not at all impressed with Aressa Sessamo,” said Umbo, looking again at the pattern of urine stains along the wall. The fact that he was making one of the newest ones did not stop him from feeling disdain.

“We’re standing here with our backs to the greatest library in the history of the world,” said Loaf.

“But they won’t let us inside so what do I care?” asked Umbo. The job done, he rearranged his clothing.

“Well, if you want to get inside, we can buy the kind of clothes that will gain us entry,” said Loaf. “But then we’ll have to live in a different part of town—the kind of place where the police and the government spies will notice us and keep track of us.”

“I thought the police would pay more attention to the poorest people.”