The Burning City Read Free Page B

woodsmen were looking at him like… like an enemy. Kreeg wouldn’t look at him at all.

C HAPTER
2

    The world had moved on, and Whandall had hardly noticed.
    His brothers and cousins all seemed to have disappeared. Mostly the girls and women stayed home, but on Mother’s Day each month the women went to the corner squares where the Lordsmen gave out food and clothing and shells, presents from the Lords. There were always men around that day and the next. Later, they might be around or they might be gone.
    But boys appeared only for meals and sleep, and not always then. Where did they go?
    He followed a cluster of cousins one afternoon. As in the forest, he took pride in being unseen. He got four blocks before four younger men challenged him. They’d beaten him half senseless before Shastern turned around, saw what was happening, and came running.
    Shastern showed the tattoos on his hands and arms. Whandall had once asked about those, but Shastern had put off answering. They blended in with the terrible scars Shastern carried from the forest, but many of his cousins had them too. He never asked that kind of question of his cousins. Now Whandall did not quite hear what Shastern and his cousins said to them, but the strangers turned him loose and his cousins carried him home.
    He woke hurting. Shastern woke around noon and sought him out. Shastern was barred from speaking certain secrets, but some things he could say…
    Serpent’s Walk wasn’t just this region of the city.
    Serpent’s Walk was the young men who held it. These streets belongedto Serpent’s Walk. Other streets, other bands. The region grew or shrank, streets changed hands, with the power of the bands. They put up signs on walls and other places.
    Whandall had been able to read them for years. Serpent’s Walk had a squiggle sign, easy to draw. Dirty Birds was a falcon drawn wild and sloppy. Shastern showed him a boundary, a wall with the Serpent’s Walk squiggle at one end and a long thin phallus to mark Bull Pizzle territory at the other. Unmarked, one did not walk in Serpent’s Walk, or in Bull Pizzle or Dirty Bird either, if one did not belong. As a child Whandall had wandered the streets without hindrance, but a ten-year-old was no longer a child.
    â€œBut there are places with no signs at all,” Whandall protested.
    â€œThat’s Lord territory. You can go there until one of the Lordsmen tells you not to. Then you leave.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause everyone is scared of the Lordsmen.”
    â€œWhy? Are they so strong?”
    â€œWell, they’re big, and they’re mean, and they wear that armor.”
    â€œThey walk in pairs too,” Whandall said, remembering.
    â€œRight. And if you hurt one of them, a lot more will come looking for you.”
    â€œWhat if they don’t know who did it?”
    Shastern shrugged expressively. “Then a bunch of them come and beat up on everybody they can find until someone confesses. Or we kill someone and say he confessed before we killed him. You stay away from Lordsmen, Whandall. Only good they do is when they bring in the presents on Mother’s Day.”
    Whandall found it strange to have his one-year-younger brother behaving as his elder.
    He must have spoken to Wanshig too. Wanshig was Whandall’s eldest brother. Wanshig had the tattoos, a snake in the web of his left thumb, a rattlesnake that ran up his right arm from the index finger to the elbow, a small snake’s eye at the edge of his left eye. The next night Wanshig took him into the streets. In a ruin that stank of old smoke, he introduced his younger brother to men who carried knives and never smiled.
    â€œHe needs protection,” Wanshig said. The men just looked at him. Finally one asked, “Who speaks for him?”
    Whandall knew some of these faces. Shastern was there too, and he said, “I will.” Shastern did not speak to his brothers, but