Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

Vendurro overheard and replied, “Good thing to be worried, when you’re an emperor. Guessing the blades remind him to take care and not sit easy. And as to the likelihood,” he thumbed a leather cord that was looped over the pommel and hilt of his sword. “Like to be inspired from tribes like Cap’s over there, but we got the peace cords on. Now, they only slow you down a short bit if you got intent to draw and slaughter somebody, but someone with a cooler head will work some sense into you as you struggle to unknot the plaguing thing. Course, there’s a way to tie the lash so it looks like the weapon is snug and secure, only it takes a quick flick to actually release the thing.”

Mulldoos added, “Course, anyone sees you using a false knot on that string, especially if it’s two or more someones to your one, well, you won’t be worrying about tying anything anymore.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

Mulldoos wiggled his fingers. “On account of you needing these to tie anything. Or hold a sword. Or a spoon. You see any poor bastard with a club hand and no fingers to speak of, it’s a good bet he got caught using a false string.”

Vendurro said, “I always wondered why Lloi’s folk left her with the nubs at the bottom there. No better than no fingers at all.”

“Crueler, truth be told,” Mulldoos replied. “Taunts you into remembering the fingers you once had. Better to have nothing left at all.”

“You thinking that’s why they didn’t chop them off in the entirety?”

“How should I know?” Mulldoos replied. “I’m not a plaguing pagan savage who wipes his ass with grass.”

Vendurro nodded, and then asked, “Do they do that? Wipe their asses with grass?”

Mulldoos looked at the younger man, shook his head, and said, “You sure do ask some queer questions sometimes, boy.”

We continued walking, most of Jackal Tower quiet. The other Towers walking before or behind, keeping a respectful distance in each case, were equally somber. Tense. You might have thought we were attending a funeral or an execution. Though I supposed it was possible we were, peace strings or no. The tale Braylar told about his father being murdered did nothing to quiet those fears.

Even with each Tower limited in the number of men going to the Caucus, with so many filing out into the streets, it was still a sizable group heading through the city. Some chose to walk away from the Avenue and its massive wall, but most Tower Syldoon hugged the rim of the city, careful to allow plenty of distance between them.

As we walked, I moved to catch up to Hewspear and his long legs, wondering if his visit had gone any better than Vendurro’s. I was almost reluctant to ask, but as ever, my need to know overrode other considerations.

“So,” I said, “Did your grandson appreciate the flute you brought him?”

Hewspear looked down at me, his namesake spear left behind at the Tower, his flanged mace hanging on his hip. It also had a peace string, though knotted differently. “He did. Though I did not have much opportunity to see him enjoy it.” He sounded melancholy enough that I instantly regretted prying. No wonder Vendurro and I got on fairly well-neither one of us seemed to know when to keep our mouths shut.

“His mother?” I asked, knowing the answer, but compelled by the inevitability of it all.

Hewspear nodded. “I had hoped… well, it doesn’t much matter what I hoped. An old man’s hopes don’t matter a tremendous amount.” Then he stood taller, and there was steel in his voice. “And yet. My grandchild is my last link to my son, and I won’t have it severed by the likes of her.”

That was unexpected, and although I suddenly felt like continuing this exchange could only end with me being saddened, disappointed, or horrified, I proceeded just the same. “What are you going to do?”

Hewspear kept his gaze ahead, steady, stern, suddenly not very grand-fatherly at all. “She will allow me to see my blood, and not poison him against me, or she will find herself driven from the city, never to return, leaving behind her child, her sister, her mother, and all that she holds dear. She will decide her own fate. I’d hoped to be less severe with her, but I have few enough years left, and my patience is not what is once was.”

After passing twenty or so of the prime Towers and all the barracks and granaries and stables between them, we left the wall and headed west, through residential districts, and then past Tanner’s Lane, with its overpowering stench of urine, feces, and decaying flesh, and I saw several children out already carrying bags, looking for shit in the streets and alleys. While tanners were often relegated to the outskirts of the cities because of the terrible smell and filth, with the Towers girding the entirety of Sunwrack, the best they could do was position them in the poorest district. A few blocks later we were free of the stench.

Everything had looked so orderly from high up in Jackal Tower, but on the ground it was chaos. The moneychanger’s lodge was full of people shouting and holding different currencies. Livestock was everywhere-oxen pulling cairns, goats with peculiar wavy horns, foraging pigs. Criers with staffs lined with bells marched among the Thurvacians, calling out something about this market or that bazaar. Girls and boys in simple shrifts carried trays and boxes of peaches, dates, and oranges to be had for pennies.

We crossed another plaza and round fountain, pigeons bursting up into the air at our approach and settling back to the ground after we passed. Some temporary tents and stalls sold merchandise, but the main attraction here was the halls where cloth and spices were sold, and the plaza was even more thick with colorful Thurvacians than pigeons, only they scattered more slowly.

Several streets later, we eventually emerged into a more open space where the buildings gave way, across a plaza from a massive structure larger than any castle or citadel. Straight ahead of us, up several stone steps, was the rounded frontage to an immense building that looked to be much longer on two sides. It was a dozen or more stories tall, the bottom level replete with hundreds of columns, the middle with arched spaces between still more columns, and the upper level with thinner columns still.

“What is this place?” I asked.

Hewspear answered, “This, my young scholar, is the Imperial Hippodrome. There are a few smaller hippodromes on the outskirts of Sunwrack, one of them Jackal, but none remotely approaching the size and grandeur of this one.”

It was an extraordinary sight, I had to admit. There were two towering freestanding columns in the plaza in front of the Imperial Hippodrome that were impossible to miss, rising nearly as high as the hippodrome itself. As we got closer, I saw that both columns were carved with elaborate bas reliefs from top to bottom. Starting at the base and spiraling up, the frieze on each column told a different story of some military campaign, with incredibly detailed images of Syldoon warriors, some mounted and charging their way across a plain, others in tight infantry formation marching toward Anjurians in some epic battle, astoundingly ornate. There had to be thousands of figures on each one-soldiers primarily, but also Memoridons, sailors, engineers, builders, camp followers, and on and on.

The left column had a statue of a golden sun flaring at the top, while the one on the right had a golden statue of a leopard roaring.

When I asked about that, Braylar replied, “The statue on the left is dedicated to the imperial seat itself, with the sigil of the blazing sun; the one on the right is replaced each time a new emperor claims the throne, in this case bearing Cynead’s emblem, as he hails from the Leopard Tower.”

Imperial guards flanked the main entrance to the hippodrome, splendid in their alternating obsidian and gold enameled scale corselets and gleaming helms, crowned with the black horsehair plumes, each with the finely worked quiver and bow at their hips, long embattled shields at their sides, and spears with oddly spiraling spearheads on top.