The Line Between

I went forward. There was nothing else to do. The marshes fell away around me, rapidly giving place to nondescript country, half–ragged, half–way domesticated to give a sort of shoulder to the road. Farmers were already opening their fruit and vegetable stands along that border; merchants' boys from towns further along were bawling their employers' wares to the carters and wagoners; and as I stumbled up, a shukritrainer passed in front of me, holding his arms out, like a scarecrow, for folk to see his sharp–toothed pets scurrying up and down his body, and more of them pouring from each pocket as he strode along. Ragged, scabbed and filthy as I was, not one traveler turned his head as I slipped onto the Queen's Road.

On the one hand, I blessed their unconcern; on the other, that same indifference told me clearly that none of them would raise a finger if they saw me taken, snatched back before their eyes to that place and whatever doom might await me there. Only the collectors at their tollgates might be at all likely to mourn the fate of a potential contributor — and I had nothing for them anyway, which was going to be another problem in a couple of miles. But right then was problem enough for me: friendless on a strange road, utterly vulnerable, utterly without resources, flying — well, trudging — from the only home I had known since the age of nine, and from the small, satisfied assassins it had sent after me. And out of tilgit as well.

The Queen's Road runs straight all the way from Bitava to Fors na' Shachim, but in those days there was a curious sort of elbow: unleveled, ancientry furrowed, a last untamed remnant of the original wagon–road, beginning just before the first tollgate I was to reach. I could see it from a good distance, and made up my mind to dodge away onto it — without any notion of where the path might come out, but with some mad fancy of at once eluding both the killers and the collectors. Sometimes, in those nights when the dreams and memories I cannot always tell apart anymore keep me awake, I try to imagine what my life would have been if I had actually carried my plan through. Different, most likely. Shorter, surely.

Even this early, the road was steadily growing more crowded with traffic, wheeled and afoot, slowing my pace to that of my closest neighbor — which, in this case, happened to be a bullock–cart loaded higher than my head with jejebhai manure. Absolutely the only thing the creatures are good for; we had a pair on the farm where I was a boy — if I ever was, if any of that ever happened. Ignoring the smell, I kept as close to the cart as I could, hoping that it would hide me from the toll–collectors' sight when I struck off onto that odd little bend. My legs were tensing for the first swift, desperate stride, when I heard the voice at my ear, saying only one word, «No.»

A slightly muffled voice, but distinctive — there was a sharpness to it, and a hint of a strange cold amusement, all in a single word. I whirled, saw nothing but the manure cart, determined that I had misheard a driver's grunt, or even a wheel–squeak, and set myself a second time to make my move.

Once again the voice, more insistent now, almost a bark: " No, fool!»

It was not the driver; he never looked at me. I was being addressed — commanded — by the manure pile.

It shifted slightly as I gaped, and I saw the eyes then. They were gray and very bright, with a suggestion of pale yellow far under the grayness. All I could make out of the face in which they were set was a thick white mustache below and brows nearly as heavy above. The man — for it was a human face, I was practically sure — was burrowed as deeply into the jejebhai dung as though he were lolling under the most luxurious of quilts and bolsters on a winter's night. He beckoned me to join him.

I stopped where I was, letting the cart jolt past me. The sharp voice from the manure was clearer this time, and that much more annoyed with me. «Boy, if you have any visions of a life beyond the next five minutes, you will do as I tell you. Now.» The last word was no louder than the others, but it brought me scrambling into that cartload of muck faster than ever I have since lunged into a warm bed, with a woman waiting. The man made room for me with a low, harsh chuckle.

«Lie still, so," he told me. «Lie still, make no smallest row, and we will pass the gate like royalty. And those who follow will watch you pass, and never take your scent. Thank me later — " I had opened my mouth to speak, but he put a rough palm over it, shaking his white head. «Down, down," he whispered, and to my disgust he pushed himself even further into the manure pile, all but vanishing into the darkness and the stench. And I did the same.