«Free to visit the city whenever we like my foot!»
The guardsman at the gate answered Fyra with a sequence of strange alien sounds.
«Yeah, yeah, I have no idea what you’re saying!»
This seemed to have an effect on the man. He stood quiet for a moment, then he pointed at the closed gate and at the now dark sky, emitting more sounds and giving her the impression he was making an effort to clearly enunciate every “word”.
If there was one single thing Fyra hated, it was being considered stupid, and she felt that was exactly what was happening. And after all the time waiting in line she had endured to just reach the gates, only to see them shut right as she was in front of them, her patience was already strained to its limit.
The only thing preventing her from punching the man in the face was the mikra on his belt: she noticed it was different from the ones used in the Principate, it was bulkier and had a weird shape, with a large, thick and bizarrely triangular barrel.
«I believe he’s trying to tell you the gates are closed at night.»
Fyra jolted up. She hadn’t realized Ark was behind her. He hadn’t managed to surprise her that way in a long time.
«Now you want to tell me you know their language?» Fyra made a small disbelieving laugh.
«No. But I think the gestures and the tone are telling enough.»
It was always like that with Ark: even if you spoke to him angrily or mockingly, it never had any effect. Words washed past him like water.
Which didn’t mean he was unable to bite.
«By the way: did you really mean to attack an armed guard? You’re not in Elis anymore.»
«Why should it matter? He’s the one who started it anyway!»
«Kal has my undivided sympathy.»
«What’s that supposed to mean?»
«Nothing.»
She almost didn’t register the fact that as they spoke they were walking away from the gates. She had realized that chatting with Kal like this was something she had missed. In these recent years, the chances to talk to him this way had grown rarer and rarer. Fyra was glad to see he hadn’t changed all that much.
Some time later, the gates opened again. But though Fyra thought for an instant she could take advantage of that to enter and finally see the city, Ark stopped her.
Out of the doors came a great procession of gray-clad men and women. They carried a huge boiling cauldron a large table with three big metal trays and two wooden casks. They were led by the man who had earlier proclaimed they were free to visit the city.
«People of Antrakhora!» that man said, after the procession halted in front of their camp. «As we already said, the food and water of Istak are yours. Tomorrow flour will be distributed to you, with which to cook your own meals, but for tonight the great Zamoshan offers you this modest banquet, as a sign of respect and friendship!»
The trays were uncovered, revealing dozens and dozens of small round loaves of bread.
«Help yourselves freely to our bogach bread and to our lagia wine, there is enough for all of you. And for each of you there’s also a serving of soup! To those who do not possess a bowl or a cup, one will be given. Eat, drink, and be merry!»
The crowd listening to him didn’t need to hear that twice. Amid laughs and cries of relief, the hungry refugees from Elis rushed to the trays and casks like a pack of animals.
Ark followed them. Fyra however suppressed the need to elbow her way forward and instead joined the line for the bowl of soup, an act that almost surprised even her, considering what had happened only a little time before, but fortunately it seemed the man who had spoken had been right: despite how incredible it seemed, there really was enough for all of them.
After being served by a woman in gray, she made her way to one of the trays and took three of those bread disks. They felt strange to the touch, and looking closer at them she realized they had been fried, not cooked.
As a final stop, she took a cup of wine; then she left the crowd behind, found Ark and sat beside him, to eat in peace. She wouldn’t have disliked the company of more people, maybe Kal’s, but what was important right now was to eat something tasty after weeks of rationed food.
The soup had an unusual taste, but it wasn’t bad. The wine though was terrible, it had been mixed with something she couldn’t recognize but that left a chilling aftertaste in her mouth, completely different from the warm beverage they used to drink at feasts in the Principate. Ark wasn’t in the habit of talking while he ate, but judging from his expression he shared her opinion on the drink.
A bit fearfully, Fyra bit one of the disks of fried flour. They were salty, crunchy at the margins but soft at the center. Much better than she expected. She finished the first one without even noticing.
At this point, suddenly, she became aware that she was being watched. Her instincts, honed in years of training with her father’s help, had never deceived her, so she looked around, watchfully.
She didn’t need to look too hard, though. The little girl didn’t seem very good at hiding. She was looking at her from the shadow of an alley between two houses, crouching behind a corner a few feet away. As Fyra met her gaze, she jumped back and fell on her rear.
Fyra couldn’t help but chuckle, but she immediately stopped when one of the guards barked something at the girl, approaching her and gesturing in a threatening way. He looked like he was trying to chase her away.
«Hey, what’s wrong?» she asked, standing up and getting closer to the scene.
The man gave her a surprised look, then started to tell her something in an unusually respectful tone, but of course she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He pointed repeatedly at the crowd around the table and then at the little girl, who looked terrified.
Now that she saw her up close, Fyra realized she wore grayish clothes, dirty and patched up here and there, clearly too large for her.
Looking back at the table, she finally saw the armed men who had silently formed a circle around the banquet; outside of it, here and there she could now see haggard men and women, dressed in rags and looking sad and hungry.
«I believe he’s telling us his purpose is to stop that child and others like her to “spoil” our merriment tonight.» Ark said, having followed her.
This time Fyra had understood even before the explanation.
«If so,» she said, looking at the guard, «then I’ll take care of it from here. You can go away, got it?»
The guard did not seem convinced.
«I said I don’t need you to “protect” me from this kid. Come on, shoo!»
Even if the man understood her words as much as she understood his, her gesture and tone were enough to get the message across. Shrugging his shoulders, he left, leaving the two of them alone with the girl.
«It’s all right now, he’s gone.» Fyra told her, trying to reassure her. «Come on, you can go home now.»
Now that the tension had lifted, she realized she was still hungry, and couldn’t wait to eat the second fried disk (how did that man call it? “bogach”?), that she was still holding in her hand. She was about to bring it to her mouth when she saw that the little girl hadn’t moved a single step.
She was motionless, looking straight at the disk with her mouth open.
«Oh. You want this.»
This had become a rather embarrassing situation.
«L-Look, little one, I know you’re probably hungry, but I’m hungry too, you know. Ark, come on, help me, tell her I don’t have enough food for her.»
«I told you, I don’t know their…»
The end of his sentence was lost in a loud shriek.
Looking again at the sumptuous feast, Fyra saw that the scream had come from a woman, grabbed by two brawny guards. She did not recognize her, that woman wasn’t a citizen of Elis.
«There, that’s the way to do it! Throw her out!» shouted a voice that Fyra instead, much to her chagrin, immediately recognized.
«Oh, no…» she heard Ark murmur to her left.
But what surprised her was the little girl, who rushed toward the captured woman screaming a word that any human being could understand, no matter the language.
«Mama! Mama!»
The men dragged the woman away from the table and out of the circle of guards, then they threw her in a puddle. The little girl ran to her and threw her arms around her, saying something in a worried tone. The woman sat back up and caressed her reassuringly.
«This is the least you deserve!» cried the same smug voice from before, from inside the circle. And this time Fyra was close enough to see Semna Tritina gloat together with other ten or so people.
Fyra considered Ark a dear friend and cared for him. But his mother was one of those people she just couldn’t stand no matter how much she tried. An arrogant and conceited woman, she never hid the fact that she thought of herself as superior to all those around her, due to the riches and power of her husband. Fyra was convinced she simply was unable to not look down on others, in any situation.
«Just look at that wretch! You can’t even see where the clothes end and the dirt begins!» she said, laughing. And her cohorts laughed together with her. Nervous, insincere laughs, but laughs nonetheless. They didn’t want to risk defying her.
Fyra rushed to the help of the woman before she even realized what she was doing. When she crouched down she almost didn’t realize she had dirtied her pants. She absentmindedly heard Ark ask: «Are you finished, Mother?»
«Artor! Where have you been until now? Did you take your portion? I hope you did, otherwise by now it’s almost certainly been stolen by people like that woman there!»
Inside Fyra, something snapped.
«She was just hungry!» she said, practically roaring, at the woman behind the guards. «Like all of us less than an hour ago! How can you be so… so cruel?»
Semna made a step back, intimidated. But then she bared her teeth in an expression of extreme annoyance.
«Why are you shrieking, you disrespectful brat? This is what happens when children are raised in a lax household! They never learn what respect is!»
The laughs this time were less convincing.
«Hungry like us, you say?» she continued. «And so? This is our banquet, this food is for us! If that woman is starving it is not our problem! You understand this logic, don’t you, Artor?»
«Perfectly, Mother.» he said, in such an icy cold tone that Fyra got scared for a moment.
«Do you really care so much about feeding those two beggars, brat?» Semna resumed. «Do you pity them so much? Then you give them food, from your portion, instead of asking all of us to renounce to part of ours! We’re hungry too, you said so yourself!»
Fyra grit her teeth. She was putting it in a way that really got on her nerves, but she wasn’t wrong.
«But you won’t do that. Because you too are hungry, like everyone else.» Semna snorted. «Typical of youngsters coddled all their life! Always ready to give when the stuff being given is not their-»
She did not finish the sentence.
Fyra no longer cared.
She knew she was acting on impulse, something that many had tried to teach her to not do, and she knew she would regret it.
But she didn’t care.
She took her two remaining disks of fried flour and offered one to the little girl and one to her mother.
«Take them.»
The two didn’t react immediately. The girl looked at her in disbelief, the mother seemed more distrustful. But after one moment, they both accepted the gift and quickly started eating. From the little girl’s expression, Fyra understood she liked the food.
«Ohh, you must be proud of yourself now, huh, brat?» again Semna’s voice. «As you wish. Nobody dare giving her any food! She gave her portion to somebody else, of her own free will. Let her satiate her hunger with her own virtuousness!»
One among the people around her coughed in embarrassment. Another one rolled his eyes, another one still shook his head trying to not be noticed. Semna had some authority, but certainly not enough to impose her will on the whole camp.
A tug at her pants drew Fyra’s attention; they had taken the same dirt-gray color of the little girl’s clothes.
It was the little girl herself who had tugged at her: she smiled at Fyra, and then she said a single word, before running to her mother, who bowed to Fyra and left, disappearing in the night.
«I believe that was a “thank you”.» said Ark, as he silently handed her one of his two remaining bread disks.
«Artor! What did I just say!?» Semna screamed, while Fyra took the disk.
Ark left in the direction of his tent, and as he passed by his mother he told her: «I gave her nothing, Mother. She took it.»
Once the banquet was over, Helena retired to her tent.
The incident with the “thief” had made her lose her appetite, for multiple reasons.
Firstly, it had happened so fast that her watchers had had no time to react, it had been the guards of Istak who took care of everything. It had made them look careless.
Secondly, now that she had seen the poverty of those who lived outside the city walls the whole “feast” looked to her like a joke made in poor taste and the sign of an appalling lack of forethought: making them eat and drink in front of people who were starving would foster resentment, toward Zamoshan and even more toward the refugees themselves. What was the lord thinking?
And finally, yes, inflicting such a treatment on people who were simply looking for something to eat would have been unacceptable in the Principate. At least, in the Principate her father wished for. Come the morning, she would speak to her fellow citizens, especially to the woman who had so much inveighed against the “thief”, and she would remind them what their principles were. This was not to happen again.
But right now she had a more important matter to think about.
Slowly, she took out of her pocket the slip of paper that had occupied a corner of her mind for the entire evening.
She unfolded it and read the characters written on it by someone with a hesitant hand but who nevertheless had perfect mastery of her language.
“Whatever you do, do not accept Lord Zamoshan’s hospitality. Do not move to his palace, you won’t be safe there. Stay in your camp.
We will contact you again.
Until then, trust no one.
Inside these walls, you have no friends.”
After finishing reading, Helena snorted, almost amused. She mentally thanked the anonymous sender, if only for confirming something she already suspected.
She laid down on her cot and closed her eyes.
She would listen to the advice and wait to be contacted again. But she would not spend this time idly.
If I have no friends inside the walls, perhaps I will find some outside of them…
The two small lights in the sky had long gone down, when the door to the cage was opened.
A ringed hand gently caressed his head, then the Master took him out of the cage.
And he knew his time had come.
The Master had bought him and his brothers many months before, in a faraway land.
A good man, the Master. He always made sure he had enough food and water, and his cage was spacious and comfy.
Every once in a while, he had seen the Master take one of his brothers and bring him out of the cage. Sometimes they came back, but only after many days.
And now his turn had come.
The Master tied to his leg a small metal object, then, holding him carefully, he took him to the top of the tower.
The boundless sky, with its clouds dragged on by the wind, filled him with all the excitement his small brain was able to feel. He had realized what was about to happen.
The Master gave him one final pat on the head.
And then he made him take flight.
He spread his wings, black as the night around him, and riding the air currents he headed in the direction the big light set at the end of the day.
It had been a long time, and he had moved far away. But he felt that was the right direction.
He loved the Master. And if the Master would welcome him back he’d gladly take back his place in his cage in the future.
But that night, he was going to go back beyond the plain, beyond the forest and beyond the river, to the place he had hatched in.
Not even the small container tied to his leg had any importance anymore.
That night, he was going back home.
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