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JAMAILLIA SLAVERS

T HERE WAS A SONG he had learned as a child, about the white streets of Jamaillia shining in the sun.

Wintrow found himself humming it as he hurried down a debris-strewn alley.

To either side of him, tall wooden buildings blocked the sun and channelled the sea wind.

Despite his efforts, the saltwater had reached his priest’s robe.

The damp bure slapped and chafed against him as he walked.

The winter day was unusually mild, even for Jamaillia.

He was not, he told himself, very cold at all.

As soon as his skin and robe dried completely, he’d be fine.

His feet had become so calloused from his days on shipboard that even the broken crockery and splintered bits of wood that littered the alley did not bother him much.

These were things he should remember, he counselled himself.

Forget the growling of his empty belly, and be grateful that he was not overly cold.

And that he was free.

He had not realized how his confinement on the ship had oppressed him until he waded ashore.

Even before he had dashed the water from his skin and donned his robe, his heart had soared.

Free. He was many days from his monastery, and he had no idea how he would make his way there, but he was determined he would.

His life was his own again. To know he had accepted the challenge made his heart sing.

He might fail, he might be recaptured or fall to some other evil along the way, but he had accepted Sa’s strength and acted.

No matter what happened to him after this, he had that to hold to. He was not a coward.

He had finally proved that to himself.

Jamaillia was bigger by far than any city he had ever visited.

The size of it daunted him. From the ship, he had focused on the gleaming white towers and domes and spires of the Satrap’s Court in the higher reaches of the city.

The steaming of the Warm River was an eternal backdrop of billowing silk to these marvels.

But he was in the lower part of the city now.

The waterfront was as dingy and miserable as Cress had been, and more extensive.

It was dirtier and more wretched than anything he had ever seen in Bingtown.

Dockside were the warehouses and ship-outfitters, but above them was a section of town that seemed to consist exclusively of brothels, taverns, druggeries and run-down boarding houses.

The only permanent residents were the curled beggars who slept on doorsteps and within scavenged hovels propped up between buildings.

The streets were near as filthy as the alleys.

Perhaps the gutters and drains had once channelled dirty water away; now they overflowed in stagnant pools, green and brown and treacherous underfoot.

It was only too obvious that nightsoil from chamberpots was dumped there as well.

A warmer day would probably have produced an even stronger smell and swarms of flies.

So there, he reminded himself as he skirted a wider puddle, was yet another thing to be grateful for.

It was early dawn, and this part of the city slept on.

Perhaps there was little that folk in this quarter of town deemed worth rising for.

Wintrow supposed that night would tell a different story on these streets.

But for now, they were deserted and dead, windows shuttered and doors barred.

He glanced up at the lightening sky and hastened his steps.

It would not be too much longer before his absence from the ship would be noticed.

He wanted to be well away from the waterfront before then.

He wondered how energetic his father would be in the search for him.

Probably very little on his own account; he only valued Wintrow as a way to keep the ship content.

Vivacia.

Even to think the name was like a fist to his heart.

How could he have left her? He’d had to, he couldn’t go on like that.

But how could he have left her? He felt torn, divided against himself.

Even as he savoured his liberty, he tasted loneliness, extreme loneliness.

He could not say if it were his, or hers.

If there had been some way for him to take the ship and run away, he would have.

Foolish as that sounded, he would have. He had to be free.

She knew that. She must understand that he had to go.

But he had left her in the trap.

He walked on, torn within. She was not his wife or his child or his beloved. She was not even human. The bond they shared had been imposed upon them both, by circumstance and his father’s will. No more than that. She would understand, and she would forgive him.

In the moment of that thought, he realized that he meant to go back to her.

Not today, nor tomorrow, but some day. There would come a time, in some undecided future, perhaps when his father had given up and restored Althea to the ship, when it would be safe for him to return.

He would be a priest and she would be content with another Vestrit, Althea or perhaps even Selden or Malta.

They would each have a full and separate life, and when they came together of their own independent wills, how sweet their reunion would be.

She would admit, then, that his choice had been wise. They would both be wiser by then.

His conscience suddenly niggled at him. Did he hold the intent to return as the only way to assuage his conscience?

Did that mean, perhaps, that he suspected what he did today was wrong?

How could it be? He was going back to his priesthood, to keep the promises made years ago.

How could that be wrong? He shook his head, mystified at himself, and trudged on.

He decided he would not venture into the upper reaches of the city.

His father would expect him to go there, to seek sanctuary and aid from Sa’s priests in the Satrap’s Temple.

It would be the first place his father would look for him.

He longed to go there, for he was certain the priests would not turn him away.

They might even be able to aid him to return to his own monastery, though that was a great deal to ask.

But he would not ask them, he would not bring his father banging on their doors demanding his return.

At one time, the sanctuary of Sa’s temple would have protected even a murderer.

But if the outer circles of Jamaillia had degraded to this degree, he somehow doubted that the sanctity of Sa’s temple would be respected as it once was.

Better to avoid causing them trouble. There was really no sense to pausing in the city at all.

He would begin his long trek across the satrapy of Jamaillia to reach his monastery and home.

He should have felt daunted at the thought of that long journey. Instead he felt elated that, at long last, it was finally begun.

He had never thought that Jamaillia City might have slums, let alone that they would comprise such a large part of the capital city.

He passed through one area that a fire had devastated.

He estimated that fifteen buildings had burned to the ground, and many others nearby showed scorching and smoke.

None of the rubble had been cleared away; the damp ashes gave off a terrible smell.

The street became a footpath beaten through debris and ash.

It was disheartening, and he reluctantly gave more credence to all the stories he had heard about the current Satrap.

If his idle luxury and sybaritic ways were as decadent as Wintrow had heard, that might explain the overflowing drains and rubbish-strewn streets.

Money could only be spent once. Perhaps taxes that should have repaired the drains and hired street watchmen had been spent instead on the Satrap’s pleasures.

That would account for the sprawling wasteland of tottering buildings, and the general neglect he had seen down in the harbour.

The galleys and galleasses of Jamaillia’s patrol fleet were tied there.

Seaweed and mussels clung to their hulls, and the bright white paint that had once proclaimed they protected the interests of the Satrap was flaking away from their planks.

No wonder pirates now plied the inner waterways freely.

Jamaillia City, the greatest city in the world, the heart and light of all civilization, was rotting at the edges.

All his life he had heard legends of this city, of its wondrous architecture and gardens, its grand promenades and temples and baths.

Not just the Satrap’s palace, but many of the public buildings had been plumbed for water and drains.

He shook his head as he reluctantly waded past yet another overflowing gutter.

If the water was standing and clogged here below, how much better could things be in the upper parts of the city?

Well, perhaps things were much better along the main thoroughfares, but he’d never know.

Not if he wanted to elude his father and whatever searchers he sent after him.

Gradually the circumstances of the city improved.

He began to see early vendors offering buns and smoked fish and cheese, the scents of which made his mouth water.

Doors began to be opened, people came out to take the shutters down from the windows and once more display their wares.

As carts and foot-traffic began to crowd the streets, Wintrow’s heart soared.

Surely, in a city of this size, with all these people milling about, his father would never find him.