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Hell's Messenger 2

TOUR

Dusk Peterson

The year 400, the third month.
 

"I can conceive no more terribly disintegrating moral experience than that of being a keeper over convicts. However much I pity the prisoners, I think that spiritually their position is far preferable to that of their guards."

—Thomas Mott Osborne: Within Prison Walls (1914)

CHAPTER ONE

Seven years of living in poverty-stricken anonymity with his family. Eleven years of being the member of a street tribe for boys in Mip's capital – being a dirty little rat that nobody except other tribe members took notice of. One year as a drug-hazed thief, cutting victims' throats. That brought him unwelcome notice from the authorities who, after three years of court wrangles, tossed him into Mercy Life Prison, where he again faded into anonymity, surviving, as best he could, harsh treatment by his guards for the next five years. Then fifteen years spent with the spotlight of fame upon him, as he and his fellow prisoner Merrick sought to change conditions at Mercy.

And now he was back to being unnoticed.

On reflection, thought Tyrrell, as he looked round at the prisoners walking back and forth in the single, enormous cell of Compassion Life Prison, he was glad for the change. He had never liked being the center of attention at Mercy; being noticed at a life prison always brought the wrong sort of attention. With any luck, here at Compassion he could fade back into anonymity and live a quiet life.

And damnation to hell to Tom Keeper, who wanted him to help change conditions at Compassion Prison.

He looked back over his shoulder, but Compassion's Keeper – Tom Keeper, whom Tyrrell had first met fifteen years before, when Keeper was a young guard visiting Mercy – had disappeared from the balcony of the outbuildings overlooking Compassion Prison. He had already seen the important part of the proceedings: Tyrrell's claiming of his manhood, and the trial he underwent to prove his manhood to the other prisoners.

So now Tyrrell was a man, rather than a so-called "lad" – that is, a prisoner who must serve another prisoner. Tyrrell had had enough of serving guards in bed for twenty years; it was a relief to know that he would not have to serve any prisoners here. The only question, he thought, as he looked again at the prisoners ignoring him, was what he should do with his newfound manhood.

Though thunderclouds continued to loom above, with occasional lightning brightening the sky, the prison was now filled with dim light falling through the glass dome four storeys above, part of the roof that sheltered the outbuildings surrounding Compassion Prison. The light shone through where the prison's roof and ceilings had once been, unimpeded by anything except two crossbars spanning the dome. Tyrrell still could not understand why this prison was roofless, and he ran a professional eye over the wall nearest him. Climbing three storeys was a trick he did not relish, but he thought he could do it here: stonework jutted out or was broken in, providing hand-holds. Three storeys up, and then three storeys down, and it would be easy enough to sneak past the guards, since they appeared to stay clustered in front of the prison entrance, under the gunners' post that stood between the prison and the closest of the outbuildings. Then all he need do was sneak into Keeper's office and pull down the lever that opened the riot doors between the outbuildings and the outside world—

No, smash that thought; he had no desire to come within range of Keeper's skilled whip. A better plan would be to investigate the electrical hatch in the healer's surgery and see whether he could manipulate the wires there that he suspected would open the riot doors.

Unfortunately, the surgery was far too close to the gunners' post. He frowned, trying to figure out the best way to get onto the balcony outside the surgery.

"Sir. . . . Sir."

It took him a moment to notice the voice; then he slowly turned round. Near him, standing still amidst the hustle and bustle of prisoners going to and fro, was a prisoner who was perhaps a decade older than Tyrrell, about fifty. He had the olive-brown skin and accent of an eastern Vovimian, which could mean that he was a recent immigrant, or could mean that his family had lived in the Magisterial Republic of Mip for centuries. Mip, now an independent nation, still bore the mark of its past, when it had been tugged back and forth by the Kingdom of Vovim and the Queendom of Yclau, like a bone being fought over.

The prisoner wore a shirt and trousers, which made him better dressed than Tyrrell, who remained shirtless, but around the prisoner's left wrist was the band of cloth that Tyrrell had learned to associate with this prison's lads. Tyrrell tried to see what color it was – he had a growing theory that the color of a lad's band showed which man he served – but at that moment, the prisoner moved his left arm, placing it behind his back as he locked his left hand behind his right elbow, as servants do before their betters. He looked Tyrrell straight in the eye.

Tyrrell resisted an impulse to look over his shoulder to see who was standing behind him. "Were you talking to me?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes, sir. My man, Hosobuchi, wishes to speak with you. Will you be coming?"

He spoke excellent Mippite, that tongue which had served as a trade language for many centuries between Yclau and Vovim. Tyrrell, who was bilingual, thought he could detect the faint shadow of another tongue behind the Mippite. This fact was less important than the lad's gesture, which was toward a sallow-skinned man sitting on an upended pail near the wall to the east of the prison gate. The man was facing the gate, in Tyrrell's direction; Tyrrell recognized him as the prisoner who had been conversing shortly before with Ahiga, one of the four "true men" who served as a leader among the prisoners. From where he stood, Tyrrell could see, white against the grey vest of his prison uniform, Hosobuchi's necklet, which Tyrrell had come to associate with prisoners who claimed to be "men."

Or was it? One of the challengers whom Tyrrell had faced upon his arrival had worn both a necklet and a wristlet. Confused, Tyrrell simply nodded in response to the lad's question and followed the lad back to where Hosobuchi sat on his pail. In a prison that appeared to hold no furniture, he looked like a king on his throne.

As Tyrrell came closer, he saw that Hosobuchi was not alone. Sitting cross-legged on the floor at his left side was a young prisoner whom Tyrrell had last seen servicing Ahiga with his mouth. Hosobuchi had his arm round the lad's shoulders, though he removed it as Tyrrell and his escort came forward.

"Sir, I bring you the new man." The older lad's voice was deferential.

"Thank you, Pickens." Hosobuchi gestured with his hand, and the lad, Pickens, seated himself to the right of the man, not so close to Hosobuchi as the other lad was.

This left Tyrrell standing awkwardly in front of Hosobuchi, wondering what he should say and do. Hosobuchi rescued him by saying, "Welcome, stranger. We are glad to make your acquaintance."

Tyrrell hoped that the "we" was not intended to be a royal "we." He took another look at the necklet. All the true men had worn colored necklets; was Hosobuchi's white necklet intended to indicate lesser or greater rank? He took a chance and said, "Glad to meet you as well. I feel a bit lost at the moment."

Hosobuchi smiled. He was about half the age of Pickens, in his mid-twenties, and except for his skin, he looked much like Tyrrell's second challenger: broad-chested, with muscles that showed up even under his shirt-sleeves. Tyrrell had yet to see any prisoner wearing his jacket, other than the true men.

"I can well imagine," Hosobuchi replied. His grammar was cultured, and his accent matched his skin, being that of Vovim's northwest province. The lad to his left appeared, from his skin color and the shape of his eyes, to be from the same province, an impression that was confirmed in the same moment as Hosobuchi turned to him and spoke briefly in a Vovimian provincial dialect, too rapidly for Tyrrell to follow. The lad rose quickly to his feet and scampered off; a minute later, he was back, holding a small crate, which he upended and placed carefully behind Tyrrell. Tyrrell, taking the hint, sat down, and then wondered whether he should have awaited Hosobuchi's permission to do so.

The man did not seem offended, though. "If you have any questions about life here," he said, "I would be glad to try to answer them."

Tyrrell chewed on his lip, trying to think where to start. As he did so, he glanced round the parts of the prison he could see from where he sat: the area behind Hosobuchi, leading to the back of the prison, and the area to the right of him, leading to the west wall. Both walls were far away in this enormous building.

There was more room for prisoners here than he had initially thought; the crowd around him at the gate had evidently been just that – a crowd gathered to see the newcomer. Now the prisoners had spread out, and plenty of room lay between them and Hosobuchi's small gathering. The empty floor between was made of bullet-riddled wooden planks, Tyrrell noticed. He wondered what he would see if he lifted one of those planks. A concrete foundation? A locked cellar? Or dirt that could be burrowed through?

Above them, the lightning continued to roar and crack, like an angry guard with his whip. As far as Tyrrell could tell, the light from the sky supplied the only illumination in this place. There were no light fixtures, no fire-pits, no places to sit other than the odd bucket or crate, and certainly none of the sleeping cells that Keeper had promised. Perhaps they were further on in the prison, beyond view?

Frowning, Tyrrell returned his mind to Hobobuchi's offer. Finally he said, "When the golden man – Ahiga – called me a little man, what did he mean?"

Hosobuchi smiled, as a schoolmaster smiles when his pupil asks the right question. "He was addressing you by the title of your rank. You are a little man, a man who has not yet claimed a lad. When you claim a lad or two" – his hands went out to rest on the shoulders of the lads at his sides – "you will become a greater man."

Tyrrell frowned again. Despite the nature of his trial, the idea of caring for a lad had not occurred to him. Seeking to avoid that subject, he said, "Claim . . . I've heard that word several times. It means . . . to take a lad?" He used the polite euphemism, though he knew the gutter terms – the Yclau term and the Vovimian term and many, many Mippite terms – if Hosobuchi should need a translation. Where gutter language was concerned, Tyrrell was trilingual.

Hosobuchi seemed to understand him, though. He said, "That will be a matter for you to decide. A claiming is not the same thing as a taking – it is merely an exchanged promise between man and lad of protection and service. If you wish to have the lad serve you in your bed, he will. If you do not, he will not."

The younger lad said something softly in his native dialect that made Hosobuchi smile. The greater man added, "Shuji reminds me that the lad may make his preference known at the time that you claim him . . . but the decision will be yours." His left hand – perhaps by accident, perhaps not – began to stroke the side of Shuji's neck.

Tyrrell felt a momentary wave of sickness, and then sternly reminded himself not to make assumptions. He knew nothing of what lay between Hosobuchi and his lads; for all he knew, the lads might have been panting to serve the greater man in his bed. Certainly Hosobuchi had the sort of looks that could attract that sort of yearning.

"And unclaimed lads?" Tyrrell said. "Are there many of them here?"

Shuji fell into a peel of laughter, which he quickly controlled as Hosobuchi sent him a warning look. Pickens, who was sitting passively under his man's hand, covered his mouth with his hand.

Hosobuchi, more polite, simply said as he lifted his hands from his lads' shoulders, "They are the greatest group among us; there are far more lads than men here."

"And men only take one or two lads?"

"If they are wise. A greater man is greater in rank than a lesser man because it takes more strength to care for a lad. One lad is hard, two lads are harder. I've known some men to try to take three or four lads, but they didn't last long. Only a true man has the strength to care for many lads."

"And a true man is . . . ?" Tyrrell eyed Hosobuchi, feeling uneasy. Apparently, this prison was as stratified as Vovimian society was said to be. Unclaimed lads, and then claimed lads, and then lesser men, and then greater men, and the greater men themselves were divided into those who took one lad or two lads. Which meant, Tyrrell realized, that this man with the schoolmaster's voice was very high in rank indeed. Tyrrell wondered at what point he would be expected to offer the proper grovelling.

"Hosobuchi."

The voice came out of nowhere. Before Tyrrell had time to turn to the right and identify the speaker, Hosobuchi – with a swiftness that would have done credit to an Ammippian hound on the hunt – had slid off the pail and fallen to his knees.

The man he knelt before – Ahiga of the golden tattoos – simply looked down at him. Close up, it could be seen that Ahiga was about the same age as Hosobuchi; he was easily the youngest of the true men. He was dressed as he had been before, in a groin-cloth and yellow necklet, but hanging round his neck now was a leather strap holding a sheathed dagger. Tyrrell, in an automatic manner, glanced back toward the gate to see whether the guards had noticed this flagrant violation of life-prison rules, but the other prisoners screened his view of the guards.

He returned his attention to the scene before him. Hosobuchi had not stirred so much as a finger since kneeling; his head was bowed. His left arm was behind his back, allowing his left hand to grip his right arm. His left sleeve, creeping up, revealed a hidden wristlet, yellow in color . . . and in that moment, Tyrrell finally understood the meaning of the necklet-wristlet combination.

Ahiga said, "Introduce."

Hosobuchi raised his head then and half-turned his torso to gesture toward Tyrrell. "Sir, this is the new man. I am sorry, I do not yet know his name or previous home."

"I gave you little time in which to question him," Ahiga replied judiciously. "Sit."

"Thank you, sir." Hosobuchi retreated. Tyrrell would not have been surprised to see him sit at Ahiga's feet, but the greater man simply returned to the pail where he had been sitting before.

Pickens, Tyrrell noticed, had not moved throughout this exchange, but Shuji had subtly nudged himself over so that he was exactly halfway between Ahiga and his man.

Ahiga paid attention to none of them. He had turned his scrutiny to Tyrrell and was looking him up and down, like a butcher measuring the quality of a slab of beef. Without moving his gaze from Tyrrell, he asked, "What talk have you had, Hobosuchi?"

"We've been discussing rank," the greater man replied. "I was just about to explain to him what a true man is."

Ahiga gave a soft snort, a response that early Mippite settlers had adopted from the Amippian tribal folk – it meant something between "Ah" and "Well, well." After another moment, he said, "A true man is as you see, new man. He is a man to whom another man has pledged his service. Hosobuchi is my claimed man – he is lad to me and man to everyone else. And must be treated as such."

His voice was stern. Tyrrell, who was used to dealing with paranoid guards who assumed that he would knife them at any given opportunity, simply said, "And to other men you are . . . ? I mean, am I required to call you sir?"

Ahiga gave him a look then like a butcher about to cut into his beef. "No," he said, "it is not required. It is considered of courtesy, though, to show appropriate respect." His gaze travelled slowly down the length of Tyrrell, ending at the crate on which he sat.

After a moment, Tyrrell heard the hint and rose to his feet, moving away from the crate. Ahiga, without a word, took his place, stretching out his legs. He gave another snort, and without looking Tyrrell's way, he said, "That is good. I have been on my feet most of the night."

"Did this week's night watch-hounds have trouble they couldn't handle, sir?" asked Hosobuchi.

"Trouble, yes, and it was a matter for me alone to deal with. —Casey was raped last night." With the final sentence, he switched suddenly, effortlessly, to the King's tongue – the common language of Vovim's provinces.

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," Hosobuchi said in the same language, frowning. "There was no punishment or announcement of a challenge this morning – did you kill the offender last night?" His voice was casual, as though discussing the contents of a newspaper's social column.

Ahiga's voice turned soft. "It was not possible for me to do so."

There was a long pause while Shuji and Pickens exchanged looks. Then Hosobuchi said, equally softly, "Ah."

Ahiga shrugged. "We talked to him, the three of us – we reminded him of what could happen to the tribe if he forced one of us to challenge him. He could see the danger as well as we could; I think he will not trouble any of our lads from this day forth. For if one true man kills another—"

"Sir!" Perkins's voice was sharp as he spoke in the King's tongue. "The new man is knowing Vovimian!"

Ahiga's gaze moved, swift as an Ammippian arrow, over to Tyrrell, who had been doing his best, throughout this conversation, to keep his expression bland. "You know that tongue?"

Tyrrell hesitated before nodding.

"Black-skinned men often do, sir," Hosobuchi murmured.

"Do they?" said Ahiga. "I had not realized."

Tyrrell glanced over at Hosobuchi to see how he would take this clearly sarcastic reply; if there was one thing every Mippite knew, it was that dark brown skin meant southern Vovimian ancestry. But the greater man seemed not to be disturbed by Ahiga's response. Ahiga said sharply, "Look at me, new man. You are not to tell anyone of what I said. This is not a gossip."

Tyrrell had found, over the years, that his stubbornness tended to surface at the wrong moments. Perhaps it surfaced at this moment because he was tiring of Ahiga's harshness. He looked back at the true man and asked, "Do you have the right to give orders to unclaimed men?"

"Yes." It was Hosobuchi who replied. "Not in any matter between you and a lad you claim – no other man will interfere with you there. But in matters that affect the tribe as a whole, Ahiga may give orders."

Tyrrell was also tired of being made to look foolish. "Fine," he said to Ahiga. "I follow your orders not to gossip, I give up my seat to you, and I spare your tender ego by acknowledging your highly exalted position here by calling you sir. Is there any other custom I should know about, O Mighty One?"

He waited, with pounding heart, to see whether Ahiga would draw his dagger.

Ahiga fell off the crate, screaming with laughter.

It was an unearthly noise, like an Ammippian's war hooping; all of the prisoners nearby, who had showed no interest in the conversation till now, stopped to stare. Hosobuchi, smiling broadly, simply helped his man back onto the crate as Ahiga continued to scream with laughter.

When he had finally managed to wipe away his laughter and had dimmed his expression to a small smile, Ahiga said to Tyrrell, "You will be entertainment. You will be drama. You will not be dull."

"So I've been told in the past," Tyrrell said dryly, but he could not keep from smiling. The watching prisoners were also smiling.

"Spirits be kind to me, you must have been a handful to your past masters – no wonder you were sent to life prison," Ahiga continued, wiping away the tears that laughter had brung. "What name have you, and where do you come from?"

"Our capital, originally," Tyrrell replied, "but I've spent the past two decades in Mercy Life Prison. My name is Tyrrell."

Ahiga's smile disappeared.

Tyrrell glanced again at the others present. Hosobuchi and his lads were exchanging looks. The other prisoners who were listening exchanged looks too. Tyrrell cleared his throat before saying, "Word has reached here of me, then?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," murmured Hasobuchi.

"The guards have talked of little else for the past fifteen years," inserted Perkins. "They've been taking wagers on how long it would be before you were transferred here."

"So you guessed that I would be coming." Tyrrell looked back at Ahiga.

"It has been discussed." Ahiga had wiped his face clean of all expression. After another minute, he said, "I told in error some time back. It is not simply the claiming of another man that makes one a true man. The other true men must agree that he is a man who is worthy to be raised to that rank. If he is not considered such . . . Well, he is a threat. And it is not good to be considered a threat to true men."

"Oh?" Tyrrell tried to sound suitably impressed, though he wondered why Ahiga felt the need to go to such lengths to establish that he had been judged worthy of his rank. He suspected that Ahiga must be one of those men who had received high rank so early in life that they forever after felt the need to defend their qualifications.

"Yes." Ahiga stared at him, apparently waiting for a more appropriate response. After half a minute of silence had passed, Hosobuchi coughed and said, "Perhaps, sir, the new man – Tyrrell is the name you wish to use here? – would like to know more about the appropriate ways in which to rise in rank."

"Or perhaps he simply wishes to know more about true men." There was a challenge in Ahiga's voice that Tyrrell could not interpret.

Tyrrell hesitated, trying to figure out which path Hosobuchi was seeking to guide him onto, and then gave in to curiosity. "Well, I'm still a bit confused about what it means to be a true man. You've claimed Hosobuchi – does that mean that his lads are your lads as well?"

Ahiga immediately turned his gaze toward Pickens. "Lad, bring me water," he said.

Pickens made no response; he simply looked at Hosobuchi. Hosobuchi told him, "No." Then he said to Ahiga, "Sir, if you're thirsty, I'll be glad to fetch you water."

"You see?" With both hands, Ahiga gestured toward the greater man and his lad. "Unless it is a matter that affects the whole tribe, I cannot give orders to Pickens."

"Nor to Shuji?" Tyrrell had his eye on the younger lad, whose gaze had scarcely wavered from Ahiga from the moment he first arrived.

"Shuji." Ahiga looked down at the lad. At his word, Shuji scooted over and rested his forearm on the true man's lap. Ahiga ran his hand down the lad's back, saying, "Shuji is . . ."

"A complication," Hosobuchi suggested with a smile.

"Yes. That is the word I hunted. Shuji is a complication." He withdrew his hand and gestured the lad back to his previous place. "It is best to leave him aside. He is a special case. In most cases, neither I nor the other true men can give orders to our claimed men's lads. Nor can we give orders to our claimed men on how to treat their lads."

"I often seek your guidance, though, sir," Hosobuchi reminded him.

Ahiga's small smile returned to his face. "And I yours. I need your advice on matters relating to this conversation. It is a private talk."

At this pointed remark, the prisoners who had been eavesdropping began to withdraw. Shuji did not move from his place. Pickens, though, rose to his feet, saying to Hosobuchi, "Sir, shall I be showing the new man the rest of the prison?"

"A good thought." Hosobuchi nodded in approval. "Tyrrell, is there any place you would especially like to see?"

Tyrrell thought a moment, and then asked, "Where do I take a piss?"

Shuji spluttered into his hand. Ahiga merely looked puzzled, as though he did not understand what Tyrrell had said. Hosobuchi, smiling, said something in a tongue that Tyrrell did not recognize. Ahiga snorted.

"So," the true man said to Tyrrell, "this is your – what do they call it – your number one concern?"

"I've been on the road half the night," Tyrrell said, regretting the defensiveness of his words even as he spoke. "None of the guards here thought to give me a chance to relieve myself – not even Keeper."

Ahiga's brows arched. "He would not. His mind's thoughts are too high for sordid matters of the flesh. Well, go." He waved Tyrrell away, like a man waving away a pestering fly.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Dismissed from the true man's presence, Tyrrell turned uncertainly toward Pickens, who said, "If you will come this way, sir . . ." He gestured with his right hand. His words were polite, and his left arm was once more behind his back in servant fashion, but his tone somehow lacked the degree of deference that he had shown toward Hosobuchi.

Tyrrell stepped forward in the direction of that Pickens had indicated. They had been conversing against the eastern wall, near the gate at the northeastern end of the prison; Compassion was so filled with prisoners that Tyrrell could only see the western and southern walls by tilting his head. The view was unbroken between himself and those walls. If any sleeping cells existed in this place, he concluded, they must be far away.

With a keener eye for rank than he had possessed before his conversation with Hosobuchi and Ahiga, he saw that most of the prisoners passing him were lads, with no wristlets to indicate that a man had claimed them, though all of these lads seemed to have a narrow strip of white cloth hanging from their waistband. These lads were bare-footed and were stripped down to their drawers; Ahiga's costume, it seemed, was a matter of eccentric preference rather than rank.

The claimed lads were dressed in trousers and shirt, and all had wristlets of green or orange or yellow or black or white or a combination of white and another color. When Tyrrell asked Pickens about this, the lad said, "If they have only a white wristlet, it shows that their man is unclaimed, sir. A lad wears the same color wristlet as his man's necklet; if his man is claimed by a true man, then the lad wears both a white wristlet and the color of his man's man."

Tyrrell had been forced to twist round to ask Pickens this question; the lad was trailing behind Tyrrell. Now Tyrrell turned to look again at the lads passing him. Most of them, he noticed, had colors showing that their men were claimed.

"There aren't many unclaimed men here?" He looked back over his shoulder at Pickens.

Pickens was silent a moment, as though assessing the meaning of Tyrrell's question, and then said, "The difference between claimed and unclaimed is not great for a man, sir. Unless a man serves as First Lad to a true man – as my man does to Ahiga – the true man will not normally require him to serve in matters where a lad would do. Usually, to be a claimed man means simply that you serve the tribe within the division of tribal work that your true man supervises. If you are an unclaimed man, you make your choice where to serve from day to day, but most men find that they prefer to fix their service— Sir, watch out!"

The warning came to late; Tyrrell tripped and fell sprawling over a man and lad who were lying on the ground, under one blanket.

Tyrrell barely managed to take in their rank before the man was on his feet, bawling curses and swinging his fist. Tyrrell, scrambling to his feet, ducked the swing, but in the next moment found himself trapped within the grip of the lad. The man pulled back his fist again.

"Wirsing!" shouted Pickens at the top of his lungs.

Tyrrell's assailant hesitated. Before Tyrrell had time to decipher the meaning of Pickens's call, a small prisoner – smaller even than Tyrrell – had appeared at the lad's side.

"I'm not on duty this morning," he said, frowning up at Pickens.

"I'm sorry, sir; I couldn't remember which men and lads had watch-hound duty this morning. Shall I fetch Ahiga?"

The small man – he wore a white necklet and yellow wristlet – shook his head. "And risk getting my ears torn off for bothering him with trivial matters? Thank you, but no. —What's the problem here?" He turned his attention to Tyrrell's assailant.

The assailant explained rapidly, his lad supporting his word at appropriate intervals. Wirsling listened patiently, and then turned his attention to Tyrrell. "Well?"

Tyrrell hesitated, but the assailant's account had been essentially correct, if a bit exaggerated about the amount of harm he had undergone. "He's right. I wasn't looking where I was going, and I fell on top of them."

"It's my fault, sir," added Pickens. "I distracted him from looking where he was going."

Wirsling sighed. "You do like to complicate things, Pickens. Hell's balls." He put his fingers to his forehead, as though his head hurt.

The assailant's lad whispered something into his man's ear. The man slowly nodded before saying to Wirsling, "Nobody's at fault. I withdraw my complaint."

"Thank the gods that they granted a small amount of wisdom to mankind." Wirsling addressed this remark toward the dome. "Very well, I rule that nobody is at fault. But you" – he pointed at the assailant – "call for a watch-hound's judgment next time. Your lad wasn't in danger, so it was a matter for the hounds. You" – he pointed at Tyrrell – "keep your eye on where you're going. Stepping on top of someone can earn you a lashing from the watch-hounds . . . and you won't endear yourself to Ahiga if you let his First Lad's lad take a lashing on your behalf."

Tyrrell looked over at Pickens. Pickens avoided his eye. Tyrrell said to Wirsling, "I didn't mean to let him—"

"Save your speeches," said the small man. "Just follow our customs, and you won't encounter any of Ahiga's watch-hounds again. —Lad, let's go find this morning's hounds and learn why they're slacking. They should have heard Pickens yelling and been here by now."

"Yes, sir." A prisoner who looked as though he could have been a strongman in a circus stepped aside to let Wirsling pass, pausing only to give Tyrrell and his assailant warning glares. Tyrrell looked hesitantly over at his assailant, but the other man had already turned away and was giving orders to his lad to pick up the blanket on the ground. The lad, Tyrrell noticed with curiosity, had no wristlet.

"Unclaimed," Pickens said when Tyrrell asked in an undertone. "Judging from his behavior there, I'd guess that he's trying to convince Delgado to claim him. He has a good chance; Delgado has been searching for a Second Lad. —Watch your step, sir; quite a few folks here sleep in till meal-break, if they don't have early-morning duties."

Tyrrell had to twist once more to look at him. Pickens was speaking in a matter-of-fact manner, as though he had not just risked a beating in order to defend a stranger. Tyrrell tried to think of a way to thank him, but every speech of thanks he thought of was that of a man thanking someone's servant for service well rendered. And he suddenly knew that this was not a speech he wished to give – not to Pickens, at any rate.

He stopped at mid-pace. The paths of the other prisoners flowed fluidly around him, as though he were a rock in a stream. The conversations around him were taking place in a dozen different languages: Mippite, as well as Yclau, various dialects of Vovimian, and other foreign tongues. The voices were casual, like clerks getting a bank ready in the morning before it opened to the public.

Tyrrell tried to sound equally casual as he spoke. "Ahiga told me that I don't need to call him sir."

"Yes, sir?" Pickens, upon pausing, had placed his arm servant-wise behind his back.

"And what about you? Does Hosobuchi require you to call other men sir?"

A pause, and then, "No, sir."

"Then why, for all of Hell's fingers and toes and tongues, are you calling me sir?"

Another pause, long enough to make Tyrrell regret having cursed. He well remembered what it was like to have a guard ask him a question that he was not sure whether to answer honestly. Pickens must be choosing his words carefully now.

Finally the lad said, "Out of respect for your manhood, sir. Some men appreciate being addressed so . . . especially if they are new to their manhood."

Tyrrell sighed heavily. "Look," he said, "I've just come from a prison where there are no ranks. Do you understand? The guards rank us according to the danger they think we pose to them, but otherwise we're all fellow men – no lads, no claimed or unclaimed, nothing to make us different from each other. Even our ranks in the outside world don't count. Now, I don't doubt," he said rapidly as Pickens began to speak, "that I'll grow used to your customs in time. But just now, I don't need anyone sirring me. I'm in need of— Well, I don't have any mates in this place."

He had a moment of uncertainty, wondering whether he had gone too far. How in Hell's name did one make a proposal of friendship to a servant, anyway? He'd never had a servant. But that moment passed as a smile slowly entered Pickens's face. The lad offered his arm.

Sighing audibly with relief, Tyrrell shook his arm. "I'm Tyrrell," he reintroduced himself.

"Dick Pickens," the lad replied as he released Tyrrell's arm, "but you can just call me Pickens. Everyone here uses last names, except for folks like Shuji, whose last names are unpronounceable to anyone who doesn't speak their tongue. And of course Ahiga – he doesn't have a last name, only a lineage. Would you rather be addressed by your first name or your last?"

"My first," Tyrrell said quickly. Then, as Pickens raised his eyebrows, he added in an undertone, "My career name is Cutter."

"Ah." Pickens smiled again. "Well, we have a few prisoners here with names like Bandit and Scuttler – but yes, I can see why you'd prefer to leave your name in the past. My own dear, departed parents were gracious enough to leave me with a harmless east Vovimian name. —But you'll be knowing that, I have mind?"

He switched, in the final sentence, to the Riverbend dialect of the Vovimian tongue – a dialect that had its origins in the area south of the Vovimian capital. In the past decade, that area, which had traditionally been farmland, had become the site of manufactories and had been incorporated into the capital. Increasingly, commoners flocked there in search of work at the new manufactories, since the old farms were being driven out of business by Yclau's superior farming technology. At the same time, aristocrats who had lived in Riverbend for generations had moved away, so that the Riverbend dialect was increasingly regarded as a commoner dialect.

Tyrrell had heard as much from new prisoners arriving at Mercy, and once or twice had met an olive-skinned east Vovimian who was familiar with the dialect, having lived in Vovim's capital. Tyrrell had always pretended to be ignorant of any dialect of Vovim, though. He did not want to call people's attention to the fact that his parents were from that land.

But here, where he was surrounded by men speaking a dozen tongues and wearing a hundred shades of skin color, it seemed safe enough to confess to his linguistic origins . . . which, as it happened, were that of Riverbend. His parents, who were commoners, had moved from Riverbend when it was still a rural distract and had no stigma attached to it , and so they had not bothered to alter their mode of speech when they started their lives anew in Mip. Tyrrell had grown up fluent in the Riverbend dialect.

"Aye," he replied, feeling self-conscious as he spoke Vovimian for the first time in many years. "My barbaric birth is written all over my skin, I fear."

Pickens gave an easy laugh. "Best not to be saying that around Valdis; he'll yield you a long speech about how Vovim wouldn't exist if his people from the south hadn't been bringing the glories of civilization as a giving to the neighboring tribes and tamed them into something worth saving. . . . Emigrant, aye?"

"My parents were," Tyrrell replied. "I grew up in Mip's capital, as I gave tale to Ahiga."

Pickens nodded. "I too. Butchers' District. And you?"

"Sewer District. My parents were aiming to move out to the countryside as soon as they could find a farm to work on, but . . . Well, my dad died when I was four, and my mam when I was seven."

"Any older bros or sisses to be caring for you?" Pickens's expression was sober now.

"Nay; I was the first-birthed. I had a younger sis, of age three. I tried to care for her myself, but . . ." He took a deep breath, feeling the warm air fill his throat, which was now tight with memory. "After, I came to know I'd die too if I didn't go and find some folk to care for me. So I went and joined a street tribe."

Pickens, who had been swinging his arms slightly during this recital, suddenly went very still. "Sewer District. You were of the Rat-tail Tribe?"

"Aye," replied Tyrrell slowly. Then, taking in what Pickens had said before: "Where did you say you come from?"

Pickens raised his chin, pride written across his face. "The Butchers' District. I was initiated into the Gutterway Tribe thirty-five years past."

Tyrrell felt the blood beat across his skin. He stifled a wild impulse to yelp for help from Ahiga's watch-hounds. No doubt they would laugh in his face; tribal rivalries were a matter of youth against youth, and any man who chose to retain loyalty to his tribe in later years could expect to fight bitter battles.

But not with the Gutterway Tribe – not if they hoped to live to the end of their natural lives. Gods help him. His eye automatically flicked over Pickens's body, trying to see whether he was carrying a hidden revolver.

Suddenly Pickens laughed and placed his hand upon Tyrrell's shoulder. "If we'd met each other on the streets of the capital, for sure we'd be trying to stab each other's heart – but here, thank the gods, we're all one tribe, and Ahiga would have our flesh for feasting if we tried to have battle for old times' sake. —Come, we still have some ways to go."

Fairly gasping with relief, Tyrrell allowed himself to be steered through the crowd, which was thicker than before; more prisoners, it appeared, had risen from their beds in the intervening time. "No tribal scuttling here, then?"

"Nay, none." Pickens's voice was flat. "We can't afford to have battle at each other; we've a worse rival to battle." He pointed with his thumb toward the gate.

Tyrrell nodded, but could not forebear saying, "I've met guards who were on our side."

"Oh, aye?" Pickens's voice was politely disbelieving. "Well, there are guards who are better than others, for sure. If I was to go and plead for supplies to keep from dying, I'd hope that Medinger was around. But even he would likely pay no mind to my pleas."

It would be safest, Tyrrell decided, to move on to another subject. It had taken him and Merrick a long, hard struggle to persuade Mercy's prisoners to trust the guards who were their allies – and Tyrrell was not sure whether the prisoners here had any allies. Even Tom Keeper remained an uncertainty.

So instead he said, keeping to the safe subject of origins, "You're from east Vovim originally?"

"My great-grandparents were, aye. I spent, oh, about five years of my childhood living with kin in Vovim's capital, which is why I speak as I do. My parents went and made sure I had knowing of every detail of my heritage; I think they were waiting the day that Vovim would gain again power over Mip." He grinned at Tyrrell. "After a fifteen-year of catching tale of what a glorious heritage I was upholding, I got sick of it all and went and joined my local street tribe, so as I could be among the underdogs." He shrugged. "Learned sacks of good lessons there about sticking with your mates, being loyal no matter what . . . but got arrested for gunrunning when I was seventeen, and for armed robbery when I was twenty-eight. Served at holding prisons twice; third time I got arrested, the magistrate stuck me in here, to learn me a higher lesson."

"Sounds fair," Tyrrell said cautiously.

"Oh, aye, 'twas fair enough; I was a career criminal. Trouble is, the third offence wasn't intended by me. . . . But that's not worth being on about." He shook his body, like a dog shaking off unpleasant water. "Some fellows here, they don't deserve to be in prison. Shuji, for one."

"He's a northwesterner?" said Tyrrell, curving his path round a group of claimed lads who were sitting on the floor, playing with what appeared to be home-made dice, carved out of bone.

"Aye, him and Hosobuchi. When Shuji first came here, he knew not a word of Mippite, and his provincial accent was so thick that not even the Vovimians here could understand him. Hosobuchi was the only one who could give speech with him."

Tyrrell looked curiously over at Pickens, who was striding side by side with him. "How did he give tale at his trial, then? Through counsel?"

Pickens's mouth thinned. "Give tale? What makes you think the magistrates cared about his side of the tale?"

Tyrrell felt a familiar weight in his chest. "Grand magistracy? No presence of the defender?"

"Aye. He was convicted without ever having knowing of what his crime was or who his accusers were – or maybe the guards gave tale of that to him; he wouldn't be knowing. First thing he had knowing about all this was when he was dragged out of his bed by the local patrol soldiers. He lived with his parents; they urged him to go with the soldiers, quiet-like. His parents were great folks for following the law. So he did as the soldiers ordered, and spent a month in a holding prison, and then was sent here. He near-like burst into tears when he learned that Hosobuchi had knowing of his tongue. First thing he went and asked was when he would get a chance to be seeing his family again. Hosobuchi, he was the one who had to break the news to Shuji that he'd never be seeing his family again – that he was in prison here for life."

"That was the moment for tears, I'd figure," Tyrrell said quietly. The familiar ache continued. Even taking into account the natural tendency of criminals to deny their guilt, he had known far too many prisoners at Mercy who had been jailed for crimes they had committed through no fault of their own, or who were innocent of their accused crime. This tale, though, was the worst he had heard yet.

Pickens shook his head. "Not Shuji. Not he. He grew all pale at first, like as though he would faint. I was wondering what he would say – I had enough knowing of Hosobuchi's tongue by then to follow the tale. Then he was saying, in a voice very breathless, "I thank you, sir, for the great kindness you have shown in explaining this to me. If I may be of service to you in any way, I hope that you will let me know."

Tyrrell gave a swift look at Pickens. "Did he understand what he was offering?"

"Nay. He's a northwesterner; politeness was bred into him when he was in his cradle. Beyond that, he is gentle by nature; he craves ever to help others. . . . Hosobuchi claimed him on the spot. He gave tale to me in private that he wasn't going to let a sweet lad like that abide a single night unclaimed. He felt great love for the lad, from the very start."

Tyrrell tried to read Pickens's face; the lad was staring straight ahead in his path, not watching Tyrrell. "You're fond of Shuji too, I have mind."

"A bit too fond, it may be." Before Tyrrell could ask him what he meant, he pointed to an upcoming step. "Mark this. Here lies the boundary 'tween the unclaimed lads' space and the little men's space."

Tyrrell paused to look, scanning with his eye all the ground that he could see. The wooden floor stopped shortly before the boundary; the boundary-step was made of stone, and it appeared to run the full length of the prison, from one wall to the other. Oddly enough, the step went down into the flagstoned little men's territory, rather than up. "What did this signify, originally?" he asked.

"The divider 'tween the space for the unclaimed lads and the space for the little men," Pickens repeatedly patiently. Then, seeing Tyrrell stare, he added with a a laugh, "Our customs here are centuries old, man. Those customs, they've long since been accepted by the guards. When this prison was designed over, in 385, it was designed to divide the ranks. The guards," he added dryly, "had their own reasons for craving that."

Tyrrell's mind was preoccupied with other matters. "You mean I shouldn't be walking in this area near the gate at all?"

"Oh, it's safe for you to go into a lower-ranked space. And during the day, most times, no watch-hound will harm you if you enter a higher-ranked space. But come nightfall, you'd best stay out of higher-ranked spaces till morn, if you don't want trouble to fall. Even the gate area can be a danger at dusk."

Tyrrell frowned. "What about claimed lads? Where is their place?"

"Why, back there." Pickens pointed toward the back of the prison. "In the area 'tween the little men's space and the true men's space. We share the same area as the greater men."

Tyrrell stared at Pickens. "You're in a higher ranked area than the little men?"

Pickens smiled at him. "A claimed lad has been claimed," he said softly. "He has shown that some folk craves him here. A little man has no lad – he has not yet shown that he is craved here by any folk."

Tyrrell was silent a moment before saying, "It may be that I should have been the one asking if it was all right not to call you sir."

Pickens laughed and clapped his arm round Tyrrell, steering him toward the western wall as they followed the line of the step. "Nay, I have enough Mippite blood in me that I some days find all this ranking business to be wearisome. I'm glad to be meeting a man who cares not what my rank is. As for the other claimed lads . . . Well, you're still a man and deserving of respect for that reason. If any lad be ever insolent to you, just ask him if he craves his words said again to his man. That will sober him quick-like. —There's our goal."

Tyrrell, who had been about to ask what deeds a man did to deserve such respect, looked where Pickens pointed.

Quite a few minutes later, they reached their goal: a roofed structure. It was not much higher than Pickens, who was of average height, which was why Tyrrell had not sighted it before. It was rough-boarded, with cylindrical wooden rods sticking off the edges of the roof. As Tyrrell approached the structures, he saw that the boards were actually divided from one another in rectangles and that letters were stencilled onto each rectangle.

He stared at Pickens. "Food crates? Like the ones wholesalers use?"

Pickens nodded. "We stacked them, one on top the other, to shape the walls. The beams, they're just there to hold up the roofing material."

"Where did you get the beams?"

"Cell bars."

"What?"

Pickens laughed at his expression. "The cell bars of the old prison, before the designing over – they were so old that they were made of wood. That's one reason the prison was designed over; the guards, they tired of prisoners boring and sawing their way out of the cells."

Shaking his head at the thought of wooden cell bars, Tyrrell squinted as he looked at the material atop the bars, which was hanging off the eaves. "Straw?"

"Came with the crates, as packing material. We don't often get straw, and some of the fellows, they wanted to use it to make straw mattresses. But Farnam said, Nay, we couldn't afford the loss of that many blankets to make the mattresses. 'Sides, the stench at this end of the prison was something awful back then."

Tyrrell could well imagine. Even with walls and a roof, the area around the privy smelled like his cell had on one week when a vengeful guard had taken away the lid to the pit he used to relieve himself. "You've got no separate sleeping cells here, then? No places where the prisoners could be relieving themselves in private?"

"Used to," replied Pickens laconically. Then, as Tyrrell looked his way, he added, "We tore down the sleeping cells, winter last. Their walls were shaped of wood."

It took Tyrrell a minute to understand; then he said, in as light a voice as he could manage, "Gets a bit cold here during the winter, aye?"

"It does when we've no working furnace." For the first time, there was a darker note to Pickens's voice. "Under these flagstones are the wonders of modern technology: tubes that are figured on working like an old-fashioned hypocaust, making heat come up through the floor to the prisoners. They worked, most times, till winter last. Then they broke down, round the time of the Commoners' Autumn Festival."

Tyrrell had a moment to wonder how the prisoners celebrated an Yclau festival that required the use of frost; then he understood and shivered. "Gods above and below," he murmured.

Pickens shrugged. "Winter, it's always a bad season; this year just made more plain who the survivors would be. We're lucky we're next to the sea; that stayed the temperatures milder than they would be if we were up north. As it was, around a third of the tribe died 'fore spring."

Tyrrell was silent, thinking of the ledger book in Tom Keeper's office, with its numbers that did not add up. Finally he said, "Did you tell the guards? Tom Keeper might have been willing to listen to you."

"Keeper?" Pickens's voice grew darker still. "You've seen how much mind Keeper pays to what we give tale. Farnam's lad Davidson slung a human skull at Keeper this morn – he'll draw punishment from Farnam for that, but 'twas his desperate try to make Keeper see what is happening. And did Keeper or the other guards care? The skull is still out there; they pay it no mind. —See now, this is a nasty subject. Let's get you past the others here."

He pointed, and Tyrrell noticed for the first time that a queue of prisoners was waiting to use the privy – two queues to two doors, one at the end of the privy in the area of the unclaimed lads and one at the end of the privy in the area of the little men. The queue for the little men was considerably shorter than that of the unclaimed lads – only a couple of dozen men – but Pickens, stepping down into that area, ignored all these men. He went straight to the front of the queue, where a big, brawny prisoner was standing in front of a door, his arms folded. He wore a yellow wristlet.

He looked at Tyrrell without moving. Pickens said in Mippite, "New man, just arrived; hasn't had a chance to use a pot for a while. Hosobuchi told me to bring him here."

The brawny man stepped aside, saying only, "Number eleven."

Pickens took hold of the door – it was leaning against the crates, unhinged – and pulled it back wide enough to allow Tyrrell and himself entrance.

The smell inside nearly made Tyrrell wretch, and it was not as though he was unfamiliar with nasty smells. His family had lived next to a garbage dump when he was young. This room smelt like the inside of a dump, though. He glanced round as his eyes adjusted to the dim interior, lit only by cracks of light falling through the straw. He thought there were shapes in the darkness, but they were too faint for him to see clearly. The sounds around him, though, told him that this was a communal privy.

Pickens, taking firm hold of his arm, began walking down the wall of the privy, muttering numbers under his breath as they passed each indistinct shape. Tyrrell ran his hand along the right side as they went, discovering that the crates had had their tops removed before they were used as building material, so that what had once been their sides now stuck out like shelves against the wall.

Finally Pickens paused and fumbled his way toward the west wall.

"Ow!" came a voice from directly in front of them. "I'm not through!"

"Is this number eleven?" Pickens asked.

"I don't know," the voice replied, sulky. "I took the first one that was free."

Pickens sighed. "How have you managed to live this long without being batted over the head by one of Ahiga's watch-hounds? You're one of the lads, aren't you? Who's your man?"

A silence, and then, in a considerably subdued manner: "I don't have one."

"Name?" Pickens's voice was brisk.

A much longer pause, and then, in a very small voice: "Brown, sir. Pete Brown."

"I'm not a man; I'm Hosobuchi's lad, and if I find you taking someone else's spot again, I'll tell my man. You've made a man wait his proper turn."

"I'm sorry." The voice had turned from subdued to fearful. "It won't happen again, I promise. It's all yours now—"

A figure started to stumble past Tyrrell; Pickens reached out and grabbed him. The lad stood still at once. Tyrrell could hear his breath clearly; it was half-sobbing.

"Be sure to clean yourself before you leave." Pickens's voice was no longer stern. "You don't want to take any chances."

"Yes. Thank you. Yes." The lad, released, sped away.

"Regrets for that," Pickens said to Tyrrell, switching back to Vovimian. "I'm a watch-hound; I have to pay mind to these things. Now, then, if you'll slide your foot forward-like, you'll be finding a crate. . . ."

Tyrrell, following Pickens's instructions, located the crate, stood on it, located the barrel in front of it with his hand, and relieved himself into it. It was odd, doing this blind, but he could tell from the nearby tinkle that he had hit his target. Judging from the sound, the barrel was close to being full.

"You need to squat?" Pickens enquired. "There's another barrel next to this one for that sort of thing. A couple of boards are on top of the barrel – smooth-planed, so there's no worry about splinters. Just sit with the gap in the middle."

Tyrrell, upon reflection, decided that he did indeed need to sit. He spent the time looking round him. His eyes had adjusted enough to see that there was a long line of barrels and prisoners in this privy. A few prisoners glanced his way, but most kept their attention centered on their own business. He could guess, from what he knew of Mercy's prisoners, that many of the prisoners here found this communal experience to be highly humiliating.

Tyrrell had spent most of his childhood with no privy but the gutter; he had found the covered pit in his Mercy cells to be luxurious by comparison. Having boards to sit on was like being handed the keys to the water closet used by the magisterial seats.

He said as much to Pickens, who chuckled. "You're well suited to survive here. Commoners are, most times. It's the prisoners who used to be living a mid-class life, like Farnam, that find it hardest to make the change. —Hoi, Nava'i, we crave paper here." This was spoken in the Riverbend dialect to a prisoner walking down the privy slowly. A crack of light falling on his hand revealed his wristlet to be dark green, the same color that the true man Farnam wore.

"See now, we're short," the lad replied in the same tongue.

"We're ever short. You drawing miser learning from Farnam?"

The prisoner snorted, handed something to Pickens, and continued on.

"Here you go," Pickens said, holding out the objects he had been handed. "Genuine, Compassion toilet-paper. I'll wager you don't get anything this fancy at Mercy."

Tyrrell took the strips of paper from him and fingered them. "Strips of newsie?" he guessed.

"Aye. No newsprint on them, though – the guards don't want to go and chance us having knowing of what happens in the world. The paper, it's used as packing material for the crates."

"I have mind you'd want to use them for writing," Tyrrell said as he stood up and wiped himself.

"Oh, for sure, it's like a blow of the belt to Farnam to have to give them up for such low uses. But he gives tale he'd rather see writing paper go to waste than chance another epidemic."

Tyrrell, who was in the midst of tossing the dirtied paper into the barrel, went still. "Have many of those?"

"Used to have one or two a year, till Farnam came along. His wife, she worked in a hospital as a nurse before marrying; he had all sorts of notions for keeping sickness from spreading here. In the old days, we used corn cobs over and over to wipe ourselves; Farnam took one look at that custom and near-like screeched. Gave tale it was a sure way to spread sickness from one fellow to the next. So now we follow his rules, and we most times never have sickness spread. I'm figuring it's different at Mercy. Do you have many sicknesses there?"

As he spoke, Pickens adjusted the boards of the barrel. Tyrrell, having wiped his hands clean on one of the newspapers, paused from buckling his belt. He could not see Pickens's face in the dark; the lad's tone had been casual. After a minute, Tyrrell said, "'Tis not bad there. Any folk with consumption or some other sickness that could be caught is placed alone. Isolated," he said, using the Mippite word so as to be clear. "Worst problem we've had is with sex sicknesses. I have the dose . . . but the healer here, she gives tale I'm past where I could be passing it to any other folk."

"Ah." The relief in Pickens's voice was clear as he took hold of Tyrrell and steered him toward the second entrance.

Tyrrell waited until they had reached that entrance – where the door was wide open, allowing light to shine in – before he turned to look at Pickens. "You're Ahiga's watch-hound."

Pickens's face twisted into a grim sort of smile. "Regrets for that," he said softly. "My first loyalties, they're to Hosobuchi and Shuji and the tribe. You've got to understand that."

"Right. I do. What would have happened to me if you'd gone and learned I had a bad sickness that could be caught?"

Pickens did not say a word; he simply drew his finger across his throat.

Tyrrell swallowed hard. "I had mind Mercy Prison was a tough place, but we don't kill invalids there."

Pickens shrugged. "It's a matter of kill, or die ourselves. Sickness runs quick-like in a prison with one cell. I'll give tale to Farnam about you having the dose, but he won't do more than make a kind question about how much pain you're in. A sickness that won't spread isn't a threat to the tribe."

As he spoke, he gestured Tyrrell toward Farnam's lad, who was standing by the doorway. The lad told Tyrrell in Mippite, "Please hold your hands here, sir."

Tyrrell obediently placed his hands over a pail, filled with dirty water, that was sitting on an upended crate. Taking a pitcher, the lad poured a brown, foul-smelling liquid into Tyrrell's hands. Then, with a second pitcher, the lad carefully poured a bit of lukewarm water onto Tyrrell's hands. "Lather up, sir."

Tyrrell did so vigorously, though the soap bit into his hands, being grainy. "The guards give us soap?" he said to Pickens.

The serving lad bowed over in laughter, nearly dropping his pitcher. Pickens, grinning, said, "It's home-made. All it takes to make soap is wood ashes and fat. We're yet using up the ashes from last winter."

Tyrrell thought about this as the lad poured another bit of water over his hands to wash away the lather. Fat implied meat; so did the bone dice that the claimed lads had been playing with earlier. If the prisoners here were allowed meat, could that explain the meat-scented smoke that the guards had noticed? Perhaps the prisoners cooked the meat further in order to extract drippings of fat from it.

"More luxuries," Tyrrell commented, as he wiped his hands dry on his trousers and followed Pickens outside to where the unclaimed lads were waiting their turn, some shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

"More necessities," Pickens corrected him. "It's part of Farnam's plan to cut back on sickness. There was sacks of fighting over his notion for hand-washing, back when he first gave notion to it; the other true men gave tale we couldn't spare the water."

Tyrrell's head jerked round to look at Pickens. "You're short of water here, sometimes?"

He could hear the strain in his voice as he asked his question. One of the few good things that could be said about Mercy was that its prisoners never went short of water. The Yclau engineers who had built the prison had diverted water from a local stream, pumped it up to the highest level of the prison, and then allowed the water to stream down, in a small trickle, along the back wall of every cell. The water system was so well fashioned that it had never broken down.

But it did not extend as far as the punishment cells. Prisoners in the punishment cells were only allowed one gill of water every twenty-four hours. By the end of the single month that Tyrrell had spent there, in his final days at Mercy, he had thought that he would go mad from the lack of water.

"Not to worry," Pickens said, placing his hand on Tyrrell's back, as he changed their path to go south. "We're by the sea here; we draw rainfall every few days. —But giving tale of sicknesses, we should have that scratch seen to." He pointed to Tyrrell's left arm.

Tyrrell forgot the question he had been about to ask – what the sea had to do with drinking water – and looked down at his arm. A long scratch, black with dried blood, went halfway up his forearm. He had not noticed it before; the dull throbbing of pain was something he was used to.

"Medical kit," Pickens said succinctly. "Iodine, and then a clean bandage. If that cut gets infected, it could turn into something ugly that could kill you."

Tyrrell knew that, of course, and could name three prisoners who had died that way at Mercy. The only wonder here was that Pickens thought there might be a remedy.

"Must have happened in the challenge," Tyrrell said as he turned to follow Pickens through the crowd, toward the back of the prison. "I'm glad that's all over with, anyhow."

Pickens laughed. "Well, 'tis over 'less another man has mind to challenge you for your lad . . . but that kind of event doesn't fall very much. The men have more than enough lads to claim."

Tyrrell thought about this as they wound their way round an unclaimed man who was kneeling to carefully fold a blanket. "Shuji . . . he was claimed by Hosobuchi. But Ahiga seems to— Well, he treats Shuji like as though he owns the lad."

"Oh, Shuji is a complication," Pickens said cheerfully. "Hosobuchi claimed him, but Ahiga, he craved Shuji too. So Hosobuchi shares him with Ahiga."

Tyrrell felt an unpleasant lurching in his stomach. "Is that usual?"

"For two men to go and share a lad? It falls now and then, when two men crave the same lad but they don't want to give battle to each other. What complicated matters here was that Hosobuchi is Ahiga's claimed man. That means that Hosobuchi and Shuji are fellow lads to Ahiga, as well as being man and lad to each other. 'Tisn't supposed to work that way. There were sacks of words 'tween Ahiga and Hosobuchi, and sacks of arguments 'tween the true men, 'fore Ahiga claimed Shuji and took him to his bed."

"And coming among all these arguments," Tyrrell said, "did anyone have mind to ask Shuji what he craved?"

He was not surprised that Pickens halted and turned to stare. Tyrrell could hear the anger in his own voice. Twenty years he had been imprisoned at Mercy, and still he had never been able to make himself accept certain aspects of life prison that other prisoners had grown to consider normal. Merrick was one of the few prisoners who understood why Tyrrell considered it so terribly important to remain angry over the rapes. If Tyrrell ever let himself become dulled to what was happening, as Merrick had at one point . . . If he ever accepted that other men had the right to take someone unwilling . . .

"This isn't a small matter to me," he said to Pickens, seeking to wipe away the look of puzzlement on the lad's face. "I was sent here to Compassion because I have mind that it's wrong to take any folk unwilling. I gave battle against the rapists at Mercy for fifteen years. If lads like Shuji are taken unwilling here, I'll give battle against their rapists as well."

Pickens did not reply for a moment. Under the shadow of the thunder-clouds, his olive-brown skin was almost grey, his brown hair almost black. Finally he said, "Ahiga is right. You should learn our customs 'fore you issue challenges."

Tyrrell felt the rebuke like a blow of the hand on the cheek. Before he could think of what to say, Pickens had taken him by the arm again and was guiding him toward the back of the prison.

"I can't promise that you'll be liking everything you find here," the lad said. "There's sacks I dislike here. But I can promise you that matters at Compassion are more complicated than they are seeming at the surface. You need to dive deep into our world, Tyrrell. Then you'll be knowing enough that you can give tale to us what we're doing wrong."
 

CHAPTER THREE

The back of the prison was much like the front, except for the lack of a gate. Where the gate would have been was instead what Tyrrell had been seeking: sleeping cells.

It was Pickens who explained what they were. He had passed beyond the awkwardness of their earlier confrontation by simply pretending that it had not occurred, instead pointing out the sights as though he were a guide for a Mippite doing the Grand Tour of Vovim and Yclau.

"Over there," he said, switching to the Mippite tongue and taking on the tones of a haughty guide, "is the second latrine area. Note the beautiful pattern of the packing-crate woodwork. This privy is for the exclusive use of the greater men and their lads, and so naturally it has inside it chandeliers and valuable rugs and all such amenities as one might expect for the elite members of this prison."

"More barrels?" said Tyrrell, looking at the privy, which appeared no different from the one that straddled the areas for the little men and the unclaimed lads.

"More barrels," confirmed Pickens. Then, returning to his tour: "Mind the step up, dear gentleman; we are now entering the greater men's area. See the fine Vovimian carvings, the exquisite Yclau architecture, the comfortable sleeping cells."

Tyrrell glanced around and saw only the sleeping cells. The cells were against the south wall of the prison, a few yards west of the east wall, and the entrance to them must have been from the side, for only a featureless wall faced north, toward the far-off prison gate. The wall was made of wood.

"I had mind you gave tale these were all torn down," Tyrrell said.

Pickens shrugged. "All but the true men's cells. They would have been burned too if we hadn't gone and found another fuel supply. As it is" – he swept his arm around, switching back to Mippite – "see what enchanting cottages we have built to replace our old cells."

Tyrrell looked round wordlessly. The greater men's area, unlike that of the rest of the prison, was scattered with little shelters: tiny huts made of packing crates, with roofs no higher than a man's waist; tents built with more of the wooden bars, covered by leather; other tents fashioned out of rags so thin that they could be seen through.

"Good thing it never rains here," said Tyrrell, looking dubiously at one tent they were passing, which was stitched together roughly with what looked like string.

Pickens grinned as though he had made a joke. "The skin tents are waterproof, most times – but nay, I wouldn't be wanting to shelter in any of them when rain was falling. Lying on moist ground, that's bad enough. —Here we are," he added, before Tyrrell could ask him what we meant. "We have now come, gentleman, to the surgery of Compassion's healer. Please wipe your boots on the mat and take your place in the healer's elegant waiting room."

In fact, there was nobody waiting to use the medical kit, unless one counted the watch-hound. Tyrrell had no doubts as to what the lad was; he was holding upright a spear fashioned out of one of the old cell-door bars; the top of the bar had been whittled to a wicked-looking point. The hound looked Tyrrell over carefully, but did not try to stop either him or Pickens as they approached the kit.

A neckletted man was sitting on a three-legged stool beside the kit, darning a sock with a white-boned needle. He was leaning his back against the east wall, but as he caught sight of them approaching, he put down the sock and rose to his feet.

"Good morning," he said to both of them.

"Good morning," Pickens replied in Mippite. "Ngugi, this new man has gotten cut in a challenge. Can he tend himself with your supplies?"

Ngugi – who appeared from his mild-brown skin to have ancestors from one of the small southwestern provinces of Vovim – gave a derisive sniff as Tyrrell showed him his arm. "I've had to turn away three greater men this morning who wanted medicine for their ill lads, and you expect first aid for a little scratch like that?"

His remark was aimed at Tyrrell, but Pickens was the one who said, "No supplies left?"

"See for yourself." Ngugi waved his hand at the coffin-sized crate beside him. Leaning over, Tyrrell could see nothing more than a few scattered tins, empty.

"Ah, well," said Pickens. "It will be filled soon, I hope. Keeper promised Farnam a new kit this morning."

Ngugi – who wore a green wristlet showing that he was Farnam's claimed man – sniffed again. "I'll believe that when it appears."

"Thank you anyway," Pickens replied.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you, sir." Ngugi did not look Tyrrell's way as he spoke; his attention remained focussed on Pickens.

Pickens nodded. "I hope all is well with you and your lad?"

"Quite well, sir; thank you for asking." Nugugi waited until Pickens had stepped away, and then he sat down again, picking up the needle and sock from where he had laid them.

They had walked several yards away, in the direction of the back of the prison, before Tyrrell found his voice again. "He's a man, and you're a lad. So why does he call you 'sir'?"

Pickens flicked a glance at him briefly before turning his gaze toward their path. "Out of courtesy. He was once my Second Lad."

Tyrrell did not realize he had stopped until Pickens turned to look at him. The lad remained silent, waiting.

Tyrrell could think of nothing to say but the obvious. "You were a man once?"

Pickens nodded.

"How . . . ?" The word escaped Tyrrell before he could call it back, and he could have cursed himself. It was one of the strictest customs among life prisoners: you never asked a man what he had done that had caused him to be punished. A prisoner might volunteer such information, as Pickens had done earlier when he spoke of his crimes, but you never quizzed a man about why he had been imprisoned, beaten, thrown into a punishment cell, had his prison status lowered, or undergone any other type of penalty.

The tendons in Pickens's neck stood out, but he answered in a level voice, "I murdered my First Lad."

Tyrrell was still a moment before saying, "I'm figuring it was manslaughter, not murder."

Pickens gave one of his grim little smiles. "It may be. Comes to the same thing in the end."

"Not in the eyes of the gods," Tyrrell said firmly. And then, as Pickens tried to speak, Tyrrell added quickly, "None of my business. I shouldn't have asked."

Pickens sighed, and the tendons in his neck relaxed. He put his arm round Tyrrell's back and began to guide him forward slowly. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Any folk here could tell you, and they will, in time. I'd sooner tell you myself."

Dick Pickens had been accepted into the Tribe of Compassion Prison without any trouble – had in fact been the prisoner who had first suggested that the loose alliance that was forming between Compassion's prisoners be named a tribe. The name helped to shape and coalesce the alliance, which until that time had been shaped only by the personality of Valdis.

Valdis was the first true man – the first man to gain the loyal service of other prisoners who claimed to be men. He had gained this status by the simple of act of being the only man in Compassion Prison to survive the Riot of 385. He, and a couple dozen lads who now served him, were the only prisoners who remembered the time-honored customs of Compassion Prison and could therefore pass those customs on to newcomers who were seeking some sort of solidity to brace them against their change of fortune. The custom of man and lad provided them with that solidity, and Valdis was successful in persuading the new prisoners that his status as a "true man," as he coined the term, was simply an extension of the older ways.

For three years, Valdis was the only true man. Though he discovered, from hard experience, that he could not claim every man and lad who entered the prison, he did at least gain the cooperation of the unclaimed men and their lads, since it was clear that Valdis was the only prisoner there who possessed the knowledge they needed in order to survive Compassion's harsh conditions.

In 388, however, Valdis tired of being the man in charge of a certain prison custom and sought to find someone to replace him. Unfortunately, the only man willing to take on these duties was Walker, a taciturn, pious prisoner who had no intention of allowing Valdis to claim him.

Strenuous negotiations followed; at the end of them, Valdis declared Walker his fellow true man, with separate duties from his own. The two true men would make decisions together on any matter that affected both their duties.

This was the situation as it stood in 389, when Pickens entered Compassion Prison.

His life, until that time, had been one of little merit. At age fifteen, he had discovered that he had "battle madness," a condition which early Vovimian settlers had noted in Ammippians: the tribesmen would use ritual and sweetweed to whip themselves into such a state of frenzy that they were deadly to their enemies. Afterwards, the tribesmen would have no memory of the deeds they had committed while in their madness; it would come as a pleasant surprise to them to learn how many of their enemy they had slaughtered.

In Pickens's case, no ritual or drugs were needed; on the occasions on which he fought, battle madness almost invariably overcame him. His street tribe was pleased to see how well he fought . . . until the day at age seventeen when he and a fellow tribesman quarrelled.

His fellow tribesboy – a sixteen-year-old – ended up crippled. Pickens was unceremoniously thrown out of the tribe. Bitter at his tribe for turning on him so abruptly, he took revenge by stealing the rifles in their latest shipment and selling the rifles himself.

Unfortunately, this brought him under the notice of the local patrol soldiers, who were prepared to wink an eye at gunrunning by the street tribe that paid them bribes, but were not prepared to allow an individual boy to commit such a crime. Pickens was sent to the magistrates and sentenced to holding prison for five years.

In those days, the Silent System still held sway in some of the holding prisons; Pickens was locked away in a separate cell at night and forbidden from conversing with the prisoners that he worked with during the daytime. The system prevented Pickens from entering into fights with the other prisoners; it did not prevent him receiving valuable information from them – through whispers and sign-language and coded messages tapped on walls – on how to be successful on the next occasion he committed a crime.

The advice was good; upon being released, Pickens launched into his new profession, that of a burglar, and was so successful for the next six years that he gained a name for himself in the crime world of Mip City, the capital of the republic.

Then came a second arrest. This time his sentence was for ten years. By then, the Silent System had been lifted in most holding prisons. Pickens took full advantage of that fact and quizzed every prisoner he could on their successes and failures as criminals. Unlike the other prisoners, he had no interest in wasting his time by bemoaning the harsh prison conditions, much less getting into fights with guards and prisoners. He considered his time in holding prison to be an educational opportunity. He was determined that, when he was released from prison, he would be the best burglar in the world, one who went entirely undetected. When he was finally released, in 388, he entered the world with a heart singing with joy.

So skilled had he become at his chosen profession that he might indeed have accomplished his high goals, if he had not met one day the former leader of his old tribe, who mocked him for his arrests.

By the time the battle madness lifted from Pickens, the other man was dead and Pickens was under arrest once more. The magistrate who judged him took one look at his record and declared that he had committed premeditated murder. The sentence for premeditated murder, as every Mippite child knew, was life imprisonment.

There was a delay of two months before Pickens was sent to Compassion Prison – a delay arranged by the gods, Pickens decided later, for the chaplain at his holding prison, unlike the previous chaplains Pickens had known, was a man of sincere devotion to the Yclau doctrine of transformation and rebirth, and had also educated himself in the beliefs of the prisoners he tended who were of Vovimian extract. Every day he visited Pickens, seeking to prepare the prisoner's soul for his new life. Pickens, who had spurned the Vovimian faith on the same day that he spurned his Vovimian parents, simply tolerated the chaplain's visits at first, reading the sacred plays that the chaplain left in his cell only because he had nothing else to do.

He had long-ago memories of the plays as lessons from his parents to do good and live up to his Vovimian heritage. He found that his memories were wrong; Vovim's sacred plays were not centered on well-behaved gods, but on Hell, a god who stole and kidnapped and murdered and even entered into what Pickens immediately recognized as battle madness. Hell justified his deeds with the same bitter words of revenge that Pickens had justified his misdeeds with; he boasted of the harm he had caused to others. The sacred playwrights, with subtle ingenuity, made clear the falseness of Hell's claim to greatness, portraying him as a mean, lowly creature who only occasionally rose above his misdeeds to become a mighty deity.

One day, reading the play in which Hell tried to kill his sister Mercy and found himself unable, through pity, to complete the act, Pickens dissolved into tears. By the time the chaplain arrived, six hours later, Pickens was ready to listen to what the man had to say about how his life might be renewed.

The chaplain girded him with spiritual armor that was heavier than Pickens actually needed. Compassion Prison, by 389, was a very different place than it had been before the riots, or even during the weeks immediately following the riots. Partly this was due to the influence of the guard who had taken temporary charge of the prison while Compassion's Keeper was supervising the renovation; partly also it was due to Valdis's determination not to let a second riot occur. He and Walker kept as tight a control over the other prisoners as Compassion's customs allowed them. They did not interfere with the relations between man and lad, but they made sure that each new prisoner understood that the prisoners' unified survival was what mattered most.

Pickens, fresh with determination to make a better life for himself, fit well into this regime. Within a week, he had lads clamoring to serve him. He waited three months before picking his First Lad, and then waited another two months before picking his Second Lad. In the meantime, he made himself useful by offering suggestions for improvements to the prison: that a careful count should be kept on supplies so that prisoners would not be caught short; that valuable items, such as the medical kit, should be placed under the care of trusted prisoners; and that a formal trial of strength should be instituted for new prisoners claiming to be men, similar to the trial of strength that his street tribe had required of anyone wishing to join the tribe. This would prevent lads from pledging themselves to prisoners who did not have the strength to defend them.

Pickens himself did not undergo a trial upon his arrival, and he was so well liked that he faced no challenges from other men. In retrospect, he would recognize the fatal significance of this.

Years passed. Valdis, growing bored of counting and divvying the supplies, assigned the task to one of his claimed men, Farnam, and raised Farnam's rank accordingly. An unclaimed greater man, Ahiga, began to attract attention for his talent in settling quarrels between other prisoners without bloodshed; in due time, Valdis would take advantage of this talent in order to hand over to Ahiga all matters related to discipline. Valdis himself would jealously guard the remaining task, the one he considered most vital: giving the prisoners enough opportunity to fight each other that they would never again be tempted to fight the guards in a useless riot.

Seven years before Ahiga rose in rank, though, Pickens's own life took a turn for the worse.

It started in such a simple manner one day in 992: a quarrel between himself and his First Lad over where they should sleep at night. Pickens's First Lad, Rios, favored a position that was over a flagstone that was particularly warm on winter nights; Pickens preferred a more isolated location. He ordered Rios to move the blankets; Rios refused. Pickens, in a decision that would forever after give him anguish, decided not to punish Rios for his insubordination; instead, Pickens tried to reason with his lad.

Their voices were soon raised high enough to draw attention from onlookers. Nobody interfered with the verbal battle, though. There were no watch-hounds in those days, and even if there had been, they could not have interfered. There had been questions, at the time that Compassion Prison had been renovated, over how much power men should have over the lads – questions raised by the guard who had charge over the prison. Valdis himself had no doubts on the matter. A man's job was to give orders; a lad's job was to obey. Valdis had declared, and the other true men had confirmed, that a man might treat his own lad, or unclaimed lads, in any fashion he wished, short of abuse that would leave the lad crippled or dead.

The last, offhand caveat had been inserted with reason; Valdis still remembered the old days, when murders had been common among prisoners, and he had no intention of allowing valuable lads to be arbitrarily disposed of. Pickens had no such memories. To him, the caveat was simply common sense, not worth thinking about. Perhaps it was his lack of awareness of such a possibility that explained what happened next. Pickens himself only knew that his final memory was of Ngugi crying, "Sir, no!" as Pickens flicked open his pocket knife.

In those days, greater men and little men were allowed to carry any weapons they had smuggled into the prison, without seeking formal permission from the true men. The custom was changed as the result of what happened that day.

The true men's judgment was swift. Pickens, stunned by what he had done, offered no defense, but Ngugi, who knew of his past, explained about the battle madness and swore, amidst his tears, that Pickens had never treated either of his lads harshly until that day. The true men accordingly ruled that the killing had been unintentional . . . but this made no difference to their sentence. Pickens had crippled a fellow tribesboy in his youth, had shot dead a former member of his tribe, and had now stabbed to death his own lad. With his uncontrollable battle madness, Pickens was a danger to the tribe. He must be executed.

It was at this moment, as Valdis was drawing from his back the weapon of execution, that Hosobuchi stepped forward.

Pickens knew him only distantly. Having offered a few words of advice to Hosobuchi upon the little man's arrival at the prison, Pickens had found the little man to be properly deferential when speaking to a man of greater rank. Pickens had given him no further thought, except to note that Hosobuchi seemed to be exceedingly picky when it came to choosing lads; after a full year at the prison, he was still ranked as a little man.

Now Hosobuchi offered a proposal. If the problem lay in Pickens being a man who lacked control, then there was a simple answer: give him over to someone who would control him. Hosobuchi would strip Pickens of his manhood, take him as his lad, and ensure that Pickens never again endangered another tribeslad or tribesman. If Hosobuchi failed to exert proper control, so that Pickens crippled or killed any tribesfellow, Hosobuchi himself was willing to pay the penalty of death.

The three true men, Valdis and Walker and Farnam, did not take long to make their decision. None of them actually wanted Pickens dead; he was too valuable for that. They gave permission for the arrangement, provided that Hosobuchi was indeed willing to pay the penalty if Pickens misbehaved again.

It was left to Pickens himself to decide whether he preferred death or the stripping of his manhood.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

"A necklet," said Pickens to the lad sitting cross-legged on the platform. "And cloth for a bandage, if you can spare it."

The lad – a middle-aged prisoner with the cream-white complexion of an Yclau – did not look up from his work of carefully undoing the seam of a tattered pair of trousers. "What color wristlet?"

"No wristlet. He's just arrived."

"So? He'll probably be claimed by the end of the day. I'm tired of having to issue clothing twice over." As he spoke, the lad wound the thread he had unseamed onto a long, thin bone.

Pickens hesitated and glanced at Tyrrell. Tyrrell said firmly, "No."

At the sound of his voice, the lad looked up. He did not look at Tyrrell, though; he stared into the space between Pickens and Tyrrell. "No offense, sir. It's just that we get one or more prisoners arriving each day. It makes for a lot of work."

Tyrrell hesitated, uncertain to whom the remark was addressed, but Pickens was looking at him, so he replied, "Sorry about the extra burden on you."

The lad flashed him a smile then, turning his face toward Tyrrell – yet still his eyes did not seem to quite focus on Tyrrell. "A man who apologizes to lads – now that's a creature I rarely meet. You'll be able to take your pick of unclaimed lads, I'm guessing. Just wait a minute, sir, and I'll get you your supplies." He laid aside the trousers and placed the awl carefully atop it, then rose to his feet with the aid of what looked like a barrel hoop. Skidding it lightly across the ground, he turned and made his way toward the back of the platform, where stacks of cloth lay, guarded by several watch-hounds.

"Blind?" murmured Tyrrell to Pickens as soon as the lad was out of earshot.

Pickens nodded. "One of the guards yielded him the Damnation – a slow case, so Walker wasn't craving to claim him. Farnam claimed him instead; he doesn't take any of his lads in bedplay, 'cause he still feels bound by his marriage vow. He was quite stubborn about refusing to be taken at the time he was a claimed man – I think that's the reason Valdis was liking him enough to raise him to the rank of true man. Valdis, he's a man who respects anyone who stays to his oaths, even under suffering."

Tyrrell did not like to think about what suffering Farnam had been forced to undergo at Valdis's hands to protect his marriage vow. Instead he said, "So there wasn't any question of this lad being executed, though he has a sex sickness that could be passed on?"

"Nay, not if one of the men was willing to claim him. A lad, see, is under the rule of his man. If he goes and brings danger to the tribe, and it is shown that the danger could have been avoided if his man had acted proper-like, then it is the man who is punished, not the lad."

Tyrrell was silent a minute, eyeing the large, semi-circular platform that was filled with various objects and workers. Most of the workers were sitting, which was why he had not noticed the platform from afar. Ringing the platform, though, was a veritable army of spear-laden watch-hounds, keeping most prisoners at a healthy distance from the platform.

Pickens had sailed them past this barrier with no more than a word, just as he had easily bypassed the queue at the privy. "There are advantages to being the First Lad of Ahiga's First Lad," he had said when Tyrrell asked.

Now Tyrrell said, "No wonder you went and defended Hosobuchi when I spoke bad against him 'fore."

Pickens nodded as he watched two prisoners carefully cut cloth with what looked like a home-made knife, made out of a battered tin. "He has risked his life for me every day for the past eight years – and he has done more than that. I thought, when he claimed me, that he would simply stay me from having battle, but he said that the day might come when I needed to have battle, so he would ready me for that."

"Is that why you're a watch-hound?" Tyrrell asked as he stepped back to let pass a group prisoners who were carrying a rolled-up piece of leather, about half a dozen feet long.

Pickens nodded again. "Ahiga started the watch-hounds three years past; he was still a greater man then, but the battles 'tween prisoners over food, they were drawing out of control, and so the true men gave him permission to start a patrol that would have the power to halt any activities that threatened the tribe. Hosobuchi, he applied right away for the three of us – him and me and Shuji – to be watch-hounds together. Every now and then, that means we must use our fists to stop a fight . . . but I'm only allowed to do that when Hosobuchi is there, keeping eye on me."

"That's why you didn't interfere when that other prisoner attacked me 'fore," Tyrrell suggested.

"Aye. Hosobuchi would have my tailside raw if I battled without him at my side. The moment he sees me start the first act of entering my battle madness, he draws me out of the battle – and that's danger in itself for him, as you'd be knowing if you'd seen me in my madness. But ever I've managed to obey his orders, and little by little, I've grown stronger. My battle madness most times never falls these days." Pickens voice grew lower, so that Tyrrell had to lean toward him to hear. "Hosobuchi says that, when I am ready, he will yield back to me my manhood. The true men have already agreed to let that, if my man judges I am cured."

Tyrrell looked over at him, frowning. "Eight years you've been his lad, you were giving tale?"

"Aye." Pickens seemed hesitant suddenly. "If I was the judge, I'd have mind I was ready – but it is for Hosobuchi to judge, and he says it should be more time. It will be soon, he promises."

Tyrrell had a moment to wonder how long Hosobuchi had been promising that Pickens would be released "soon"; then the blind lad was back, holding over his left arm a pile of cloth that Pickens hastily took from him.

"Here you are," the blind lad said. "One necklet, a cloth for bandaging – we'll want that back when you're through with it – and a blanket, but we'll keep the blanket for you till evening. What are your initials, so I can sew them on your blanket?"

Tyrrell told him, running his eye over the blanket as he did so. It was not as fine as the thick blankets he had been issued at Mercy Prison; in fact, it looked as though it were made of rags sewn together.

"No real blankets here?" he said to Pickens, speaking in Mippite out of courtesy to the blind lad standing nearby.

Pickens shrugged. "At the time that the prison renovation was finished, we were given eight hundred – two for each prisoner, with plenty of spares left over. Most of the original blankets have worn out or been made into cloaks for the winter. The ones that remain go to the true men or the greater men."

Or their lads, Tyrrell thought, but had sense enough not to say so aloud. The blind lad asked Pickens, "What is he wearing?"

"What he should be," Pickens replied. "Shuji delivered his extra clothing to one of the other tailors earlier."

Tyrrell turned toward Pickens, breathless with astonishment. "Shuji was the one who stole my clothes after the trial?"

"Requisitioned them," the blind lad corrected. "All clothing belongs to the tribe; Farnam issues it out in accordance with rank. You're a little man, so you're entitled to underclothing, boots, and trousers. When you rise to the rank of greater man, you'll get a shirt and vest as well."

Tyrrell, eyeing the lad's shirt, thought that nothing could have made clearer his lesser status in relation to the claimed lads. "And what about in winter?"

"Ah, well, that's the question, ain't it?" A note of dryness entered into the lad's voice. "Farnam is determined that every man and his lads should have cloaks next winter – but how he's going to manage this, with new prisoners arriving every day, I don't know."

"The guards should supply us with clothing we need," Tyrrell said.

"Of course they should. They should also supply us with a working heater. But prison regulations say that prisoners don't need overcoats, because the prisoners here never go outside, and everyone knows that the prison is well heated, see? So the prisoners don't need overcoats."

"Of course," said Tyrrell solemnly. "The logic is inescapable. This place being so well-heated, they'll probably take our clothes from us before long. Why should they waste their budget on items for the prisoners? The money could be put to far better use elsewhere."

The lad burst into laughter. Pickens grinned, saying, "You're a quick learner; not many new prisoners figure out so swiftly the contorted logic of the guards."

"They would if they'd ever dealt with Mercy's Keeper." Tyrrell sighed. "Well, having no shirt isn't going to be a problem for me on a day like this."

"It'll be a bit chillier at night, but yes, you'll be comfortable enough during the spring days," Pickens replied. "Fact is, come summer, some of the greater men will strip down till they're nearly as naked as Ahiga; it can be stifling in here, round about the time of Mercy's Feast. —Thank you, Les, and here's the blanket for you to initial. Here's the bandage, Tyrrell – but no, don't put it on yet. We should sterilize it first. Come over this way."

He beckoned, and Tyrrell followed him along the platform, weaving his way amidst prisoners – all wearing the green wristlet that marked them as Farnam's men and lads – who were sitting and kneeling as they cut and sewed cloth. He and Pickens were quite close still to the true men's sleeping cells, which lay along the same southern wall as the platform. As Tyrrell glanced back toward the cells, he saw Ahiga and Hosobuchi disappear behind the cells, into the area between the cells and the eastern wall.

"Ahiga . . ." Tyrrell said reflectively to Pickens, switching back to the Riverbend dialect. "Pickens, you're from eastern Vovim; Hosobuchi and Shuji are from northwestern Vovim. Is Ahiga from one of the countries to the northwest of us? I can't figure his accent."

Pickens paused and stared at Tyrrell. "You mean you're not knowing?"

"How should I be knowing? He didn't give tale as to where he was from."

"And you couldn't figure from his clothing? His tattoos? His naming of the patrol as watch-hounds? The fact that he didn't come to know from your appearance that you were Vovimian?" Then, as Tyrrell stared blankly at him, Pickens added gently, "He is Ammippian."

Tyrrell's heart dropped into his stomach.

He spun round on his heel, staring at where Ahiga had been a moment before. Ammippian. Tyrrell had met an Ammippian, and he had not known it. Gods help him, he had even insulted the man.

He swallowed the hardness in his throat. "Do you think," he said in a small voice, "that if I crawled on my belly to him, he might forgive me?"

Pickens laughed in an easy manner as he placed his hand on Tyrrell's shoulder. "Don't worry. That was the moment, I have mind, when he began to be liking you in truth. You saw how he laughed."

"He's proud," Tyrrell said, still in his smallest voice. "He must be. Ammippians always are."

"Oh, aye, he's proud. So would you be if half the people you lived with called you a dirty, barbaric— Well, the prisoners here drop the rest of the usual phrase, but you see how it is for him."

"'Dirty, barbaric cannibal,' murmured Tyrrell. "Would anyone here call him that?"

"Oh, aye. You and I and the other past street-tribe lads – we revere the Ammippians, 'cause we patterned our tribes after the Ammippian tribe. But to the average Mippite, the Ammippians are just uncouth natives who tried to slaughter the early settlers and remain yet half-civilized."

"We drew from them their land," said Tyrrell, frowning. "All of Mip, it was theirs 'fore we came."

Pickens shrugged. "You can argue till your breath is gone with some folk whose notion of the Ammippians comes from dime-novel tales of heartless warriors slaughtering innocent kiddies in their beds. Ahiga, he's had a hard time of it from the start of the first act. Valdis stood by him from the time he arrived – Valdis, he's used to being called a barbarian too – but few others would. Even Hosobuchi confesses that it took him time to see Ahiga's better side. Now Ahiga is respected well . . . but ever there is some idiot whispering 'hind his back that he doesn't deserve his rank. It makes him touchy when he has mind that some folk doesn't respect what he's done."

Tyrrell managed to tear his gaze away from the true men's sleeping cells. "So why did he laugh when I made mock at him?"

Pickens smiled. "'Cause you were more amusing than you had knowing. That 'Mighty One,' who protects his 'highly exalted position' for the sake of his 'tender ego' . . . he was an unclaimed lad for nine years."

Tyrrell was still a moment, and then let out his breath slowly. "Nine years."

"Aye. He survived longer as an unclaimed lad than any folk else I know of. Most times the lads who survive long are claimed, and the gods are knowing that Ahiga had offers enough after the first four or six years, when it became plain how strong of will and body he was. But he . . . Well, have you ever met a life prisoner who has mind he deserves more punishment than he has drawn from the magistrates?"

Tyrrell nodded slowly. Merrick was that way, he suspected; Merrick had always skidded away from the topic of his own life at Mercy, even as he worked ceaselessly to improve the lives of other prisoners. "Ahiga's crime was a bad one, then?" he said to Pickens.

Pickens shrugged again. "Hosobuchi and Shuji may have knowing. I don't. Oh, there are prisoners here who give tale they know – who say they read about his trial in the newsies. But I won't know they give tale for sure 'less I hear the words from Ahiga himself." He turned away abruptly. "A sterile bandage first. I crave to introduce you to the water-steward anyhow."

The water-steward turned out to be another of Farnam's claimed men, sitting on a crate next to a dozen barrels. He screwed up his face as he saw Pickens and Tyrrell approaching. "Nothing," he said.

"Are you sure?" Pickens said as he tapped one of the barrels lightly.

"It's been five days. What do you expect?"

"Oh, well," said Pickens, giving up on the barrel. "We'll have more this morning, no doubt." He glanced up at the dome, where the lightning and thunder had given away to the soft pitter-pat of rain, as though a cluster of kittens were playing on the roof.

The water-steward sniffed derisively. "The guards won't remember."

"Keeper will remind them. He always does. He's probably planning meal delivery first."

"There won't be any water left by then," said the water-steward, who seemed determined to predict the worst.

Pickens ignored him. He had reached over to pick up from the ground something that looked at first like a balloon. When it was raised, though, Tyrrell saw that it was in fact a filled bladder – a pig's bladder, he supposed. He was no country dweller, but as a boy, he had watched the city butchers at their work whenever they didn't chase him away.

"That for you or for him?" the water-steward asked suspiciously.

"Him," Pickens replied.

The water-steward gave a high whistle, and a moment later, swift as a swallow, a watch-hound was at his side. "Trouble?" he said, looking down at the water-steward.

"Probably not," the water-steward replied. He reached out his hand. "Give it back. If it was for you, I'd let it pass, but I'm not letting a little man have the true men's supply."

Pickens did not reply; he was holding the bladder up toward the dome, examining it closely. The watch-hound's hand shifted on his spear as he scrutinized Pickens. Tyrrell said, "Er . . . Pickens, maybe you should give back the water."

"Just a minute." Pickens finished his inspection and looked down at the water-steward. "Who filled these bladders? You? They're at least two gills short of the top. Where has the extra water been going?"

The water-steward blanched. The hound's hand shifted on the spear again; now he was scrutinizing the water-steward.

"Evaporation," suggested the water-steward.

"In a bladder tied shut? I think not." Pickens said to the hound, "Hold him. Farnam needs to hear of this. —Tyrrell, will you come with me?"

"Of course," said Tyrrell. He had no desire to stay around the water-steward, who now had an anguished look on his face. Trotting beside Pickens as the lad made his way swiftly across the platform, Tyrrell said in an undertone, "Would he be drinking the water himself? Or yielding it to other folk, for a bribe?"

Pickens shook his head. "Probably just being careless-like when he fills the bladders – but Farnam is an exacting man, and he hates carelessness. Hold here."

Tyrrell waited as instructed, watching Pickens approach Farnam, who was standing in front of what appeared to be a large, clay oven, built in a semi-circle like one of the mid-century train stations. A prisoner was on his hands and knees, carefully sweeping a copious amount of ashes out of the oven onto a pan made of a white material that Tyrrell supposed must be more of this prison's ubiquitous bones. Whatever else might be said of the prison guards, Tyrrell thought to himself, it could not be said that they were stinting in their supply of meat.

From all appearances, Farnam seemed to be taking Pickens's report with calmness. He said a few words and then returned his attention to the prisoner who was cleaning the oven. Pickens strode back to Tyrrell.

"No serious result," he reported. "Farnam, he agreed that it was probably carelessness. We'll let go the water-steward from his misery."

By the time they returned to the water-barrels, the water-steward was standing stiffly beside them, his face drained of blood. Pickens said briefly, "Ten lashes, and you'll have a chance to defend yourself first. But Farnam can't be bothered with that now. He says he very much hopes that nobody will be bothering him for the rest of the day with reports of water mismeasurements."

The water-steward licked his lips. "They won't," he said briefly. And then, unexpectedly, "Thank you for taking this to Farnam rather than to Ahiga."

Pickens nodded and walked past him as the hound wandered away. Tyrrell, trying hard to keep up with him, asked, "What was he meaning?"

"Reporting him to Ahiga would have meant I was accusing him of stealing the water," Pickens explained, slowing his pace to match Tyrrell's. "The penalty for stealing water is a high one."

"And that was a light penalty?" Tyrrell said, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh, aye. As light as a man could expect. If he was one of the lads, mind, he'd get a swot or three on the backside, 'less it was for a very serious thing, like attacking a man." Pickens gave him a smile. "We lads have it better than you men, when it comes to punishments. . . . Well, that's over with anyhow. Let's go and get your bandage washed. Farnam gave tale I could stay this, as a reward." He held up the bladder.

Tyrrell eyed him for a moment before saying, "Do you do that sort of thing sacks?"

"Turn stoolie so that I can be rewarded with supplies?" Pickens responded cheerfully. "Nay, almost never – you get a name for being a stool-pigeon here, and folks are like to tear you into such tiny pieces that even a rat wouldn't crave to munch you. But carelessness by a water-steward is a serious thing that must be reported anyhow. So, two targets with one arrow. Here we are."

Tyrrell was left musing on two thoughts as they approached a couple of lads scrubbing the inside of an iron pot. One was that it was odd to be in a place where a stool-pigeon was a prisoner who gave information to a higher-ranked prisoner. The other was that, if anyone here learned that Compassion's Keeper had assigned Tyrrell the task of being a stool-pigeon in the traditional sense – reporting to the Keeper on the prisoners' secrets – his life was not likely to last long.

And really, he thought, there was nothing to report. He had seen no signs so far that, as Keeper thought, the prisoners were gleefully killing each other in such quantities that their absence would be noticeable. Quite the opposite; this was the most orderly prison he had ever seen, and the prisoners here were the most fair-minded folk he had ever met. Leaving aside the matter of the missing overcoats – which might very well be resolved if the heater was fixed before the next winter – it appeared to him that he had a much better chance of surviving here than he had possessed in some of the holding prisons he had been unfortunate enough to dwell in.

None of this fit with Compassion's reputation as the worst prison in Mip. It was all very puzzling.

A few minutes later, Pickens used a pair of home-made tongs – constructed, for once, out of metal rather than bone – to carefully lift the linen bandaging material out of the water in which he had boiled it. "Germs all scared away, I hope," he said. "Now, let it just cool a minute in this relatively germ-free air – at least we aren't near the privies – and the bandage will be up for use."

The air was in fact far less stifling than any air that Tyrrell had breathed at Mercy; he supposed that must be due to the rooflessness of the prison, as well as the size of the courtyard surrounding it. "Pickens," he said, "how did this prison lose its roof? Was it made of wood also?"

"Oh, we've had no roof since the renovation," Pickens replied. "The renovators, they tore off the roof, and they tore out the second and third storeys where the guards used to live. But they left us a nice, handy staircase to the top of the prison, just in case we were wanting to explore it."

"Fried meat, that's the best kind." One of the youthful lads tending the iron pot spoke in the Riverbend dialect. His unexpected remark caused both him and his friend to burst into laughter.

Pickens screwed up his face in disgust. "If you have mind such things are for making mock, you can go and serve Walker."

This sobered the lads quickly. Tyrrell, glancing up again at the walls of the prison, said, "You can't get past the barbed wire there?"

"Oh, the barbed wire is no problem. Just clip it, and you're through." Pickens waved the cloth in the air for a moment. "First prisoner who tried that – it was one of Valdis's lads, following his man's orders – died screaming. It's electric wire. Some of the other prisoners craved to figure a way to cut the wire and scramble down the three-storey wall, but Valdis gave tale the guards had no doubt laid more electric traps at the bottom of the prison walls. He had the staircase drawn down so that no folk would try to escape that way."

"What about digging under the floor?" Tyrrell asked. His interest was more than idle; he and Merrick had spent long hours trying to figure out a way to escape from Mercy, though their own motive had not been to escape recapture but somehow to alert the world to the atrocities taking place within the prison.

"Hold back." Pickens carefully wrapped the bandage around Tyrrell's forearm, as though he had been trained as a Boy Seeker. "There you go; that should yield your gash a chance to heal. Come over to the edge of the platform now."

Tyrrell followed Pickens to the curved edge of the semi-circular platform, jumped down when he did, and watched as Pickens carefully looked over the floor. The lad finally found a flagstone that suited him, knelt down, and began prying it up.

A few of the passing prisoners glanced his way, but nobody seemed to take any special notice of an activity that, if it had occurred in Mercy, would have had every guard in the place rushing forward to capture the escaping prisoner. The guards here were nowhere in sight. The gate to the courtyard where they stood guard was far away, at the northeastern end of the prison, well out of sight of the platform. At best, the guards might have been able to see the true men's cells at this end of the prison, but the gate was really too far away to allow for that. All that the guards could see were the prisoners who stood closest to the gate, in the unclaimed lads' area.

Tyrrell, who had spent twenty years doing everything from defecation to whacking his whammer in the full view of Mercy's guards, was feeling extreme pleasure at being out of sight of Compassion's guards. True, everything he did here would be witnessed by other prisoners – including Ahiga's watch-hounds – but that was a very different thing from being watched by a guard who might decide that Tyrrell needed "help" in his whacking session.

Pickens pulled the flagstone back with a grunt, and Tyrrell reached forward to help him lay the heavy stone back on the floor. Then they both peered into the hole.

The light from the dome had brightened; glancing up, Tyrrell could see a rainbow forming from the sunlight shining through the soft rain. What lay in the hole was clear in the light, for the hole went down no more than half a foot before it hit a barrier. Crammed into that space was a maze of metal tubes. Tyrrell began to reach out to touch one, and then hesitated, remembering Pickens's earlier tale of the barbed wire.

"They're safe to touch," Pickens assured him, reaching out to stroke the metal. "They're part of the heating system – red hot when the heating is working, but cold now. As for the floor beneath it—" He reached down and rapped his knuckles on it. "Solid rock. That's the foundation on which Compassion is built. With the proper tools we might be able to cut our way past the heating tubes and blast through the rock, but even Valdis, clever as he is, hasn't yet found a way to do that. The gods know that enough prisoners have tried to figure a way over the years." He carefully laid the flagstone back in its place. "Just one more task now – getting you assigned your meal rations – and then we'll be through here."

The meal rations, it turned out, were assigned by Farnam's Second Lad, Magnus, who called over two of his own lads to inspect and memorize Tyrrell's face. Tyrrell, feeling uncomfortable under the scrutiny, asked, "Do you have the faces of every prisoner memorized?"

"Every greater man and little man and claimed lad," responded the rationer, waving his lads away as he carefully noted Tyrrell's name on a piece of blank newspaper with a bit of charcoal. "Anyone we don't recognize must be an unclaimed lad. You should put on your necklet," he added. "My lads don't take note of such things – it would be easy enough for a claimed lad to loan his wristlet to an unclaimed lad so that the lad could steal rations that didn't belong to him – but sometimes the water-steward will stop prisoners from collecting water if they're not properly marked."

Tyrrell looked down at the white necklet he was still holding in his hand. It appeared to be made of old drawers that had been cut into a long strip, and then twisted to form a thin string. The string was not yet knotted to form a circle.

"Is there a special way to do this?" he asked Pickens, remembering his days of initiation with his street tribe.

"You, you're an unclaimed man, so it's for you to decide," Pickens responded, switching back to the Riverbend dialect and pulling him aside from the meal-rationer, who had gone back to his work of counting a group of sacks. "You can put it on yourself, if you crave. Some unclaimed men ask a true man to don them; others ask a mate or their sponsor."

"Sponsor?" said Tyrrell.

"For your initiation ceremony. You've been accepted as a man, but you have to be initiated yet into the tribe. That will fall . . . Oh, the next time we have a banquet. Franklin," he said turning to a lad of about sixty who was carefully scrubbing a metal skillet, "when do we hold our next banquet?"

"You making me an offer?" the lad replied as Tyrrell winced; he had caught the sexual pun at the same moment the lad did.

"Don't be coarse. When will the tribe be holding its next banquet?"

"Walker delivered Wendell's clothes to the tailors today." The lad did not look up as he replied. "Maybe tomorrow or the next day? You'd have to ask Walker."

There was a long silence, during which Tyrrell glanced to the space beyond the west end of the platform. Milling around in that space were a number of prisoners, mostly older prisoners, who wore the black necklet marking them as Walker's claimed men and lads. Every now and then Tyrrell had caught a glimpse of Walker himself – an old man with a grim expression and a stiff carriage – but the true man never seemed to emerge from the midst of his tight band of followers.

"Tyrrell, I need to give tale to Walker," murmured Pickens. "Nay, abide here," he added, motioning Tyrrell back with his hand. "Walker, he isn't liking any folk to enter his territory without necessity."

Tyrrell watched as Pickens walked the remaining yards to Walker's "territory." The lad was challenged at the edge of that area, not by a watch-hound, but by one of Walker's men. The challenge took far longer than it had when Pickens had approached the heavily guarded platform where the tribe's supplies were kept, but in the end he was allowed through. He disappeared into the midst of Walker's men and lads.

Tyrrell turned his attention back to the rest of the prison. Nearly everyone on the platform seemed to be wearing a green wristlet. So Farnam's men and lads were here, Walker's men and lads were in the southwest corner of the prison, and Ahiga's men and lads were scattered about, keeping patrol over the prisoners. That left the fourth true man, Valdis, whom Tyrrell hadn't seen since his own challenge at the prison gates. He supposed the true man must be in his sleeping cell, continuing to drill the lad who had seemed so unhappy to share his bed. Tyrrell grimaced.

Pickens returned several minutes later. "Regrets," he said. "I craved to have a chance to say goodbye to Wendell. He's close on dying now."

"A mate of yours?" Tyrrell said quietly.

Pickens shook his head. "One of Walker's lads – just arrived a fortnight ago. He tried to claim manhood, made the mistake of challenging Valdis, and ended up as an unclaimed lad with a broken leg. Ngugi splinted the leg as best he could – despite all his chatter of ranks, he mends unclaimed lads when the injury is serious – but there was damage inside he couldn't repair. Gangrene set in."

Tyrrell winced. "No chance of getting Healer FitzGerald to look at him? That's what she's hired for, supposed-like."

Pickens shook his head as he guided Tyrrell away from the platform. "There've been— Oh, it may be a dozen cases where the guards let an ill prisoner be yielded over to FitzGerald. They were all lads of the true men; the true men have a certain bit of influence with the guards. It may be a greater man would have a chance in persuading the guards to open the gates. But an unclaimed lad . . . Nay, unclaimed lads are released temporary-like from this prison for just one reason, and a deadly wound isn't that reason."

"But he's Walker's lad now, you gave tale. Couldn't Walker intervene for him?"

Pickens glanced over at Tyrrell, and then away. "Walker is knowing only one way to help a dying lad. You'll understand better when you are getting to know him. —Come now, let's go and find Hosobuchi. He'll be wondering why I've been gone for so long, and you'll crave to be in the little men's area when meal delivery starts."
 

¶ Remainder of Part Two

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