The Burning City Read Online Free Page B

said.
    Suddenly it was all so obvious, so embarrassing. Loggers were kinless!
Of course
they wouldn’t help a Lordkin child. The loggers thought Kreeg Miller was strange, as the Placehold thought Whandall was strange, each to be found in the other’s company.
    Whandall had been letting a kinless teach him! He had carried water for them, working like a kinless!
    Whandall stopped visiting the forest.
    The Serpent’s Walk men spent their time in the streets. So did the boys of the Placehold, but their fathers and uncles spent most of their time at home.
    Why?
    Whandall went to old Resalet. One could ask.
    Resalet listened and nodded, then summoned
all
the boys and led them outside. He pointed to the house, the old stone three-story house with its enclosed courtyard. He explained that it had been built by kinless for themselves, two hundred years ago. Lordkin had taken it from them.
    It was a roomy dwelling desired by many. The kinless no longer built houses to last centuries. Why should they, when a Lordkin family would claim it? Other Lordkin had claimed this place repeatedly, until it fell to the Placehold family. It would change hands again unless the men kept guard.
    The boys found the lecture irritating, and they let Whandall know that afterward.
    Mother never had time for him. There was always a new baby, new men to see and bring home, new places to go, never time for the older boys. Men hung out together. They chewed hemp and made plans or went off at night, but they never wanted boys around them, and most of the boys were afraid of the men. With reason.
    Whandall saw his city without understanding. The other boys hardly realized there was anything to understand and didn’t care to know more. It was safe to ask Mother’s Mother, but her answers were strange.
    â€œEverything has changed. When I was a girl the kinless didn’t hate us. They were happy to do the work. Gathering was easy. They gave us things.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWe served Yangin-Atep. Tep woke often and protected us.”
    â€œBut didn’t the kinless hate the Burnings?”
    â€œYes, but it was different then,” Mother’s Mother said. “It was arranged. A house or building nobody could use, or a bridge ready to fall down.We’d bring things to burn. Kinless, Lordkin, everyone would bring something for Yangin-Atep.
Mathoms
, we called them. The Lords came, too, with their wizards. Now it’s all different, and I don’t understand it at all.”
    One could keep silence, watch, and learn.
    Barbarians were the odd ones. Their skins were of many shades, their noses of many shapes; even their eye color varied. They sounded odd, when they could talk at all.
    Some belonged in the city, wherever they had come from. They traded, taught, doctored, cooked, or sold to kinless and Lordkin alike. They were to be treated as kinless who didn’t understand the rules. Their speech could generally be understood. They might travel with guards of their own race or give tribute to Lordkin to protect their shops. A few had the protection of Lords. You could tell that by the symbols displayed outside their shops and homes.
    Most barbarians avoided places where violence had fallen. But lookers sought those places out. The violence of the Burning lured them across the sea to Tep’s Town.
    Boys who gave up the forest had taken to spying on lookers instead. Whandall would do as they did: watch the watchers. But they were far ahead of him at that game, and Whandall had some catching up to do.
    Watch, listen. From under a walk, from behind a wall. Lookers took refuge in the parts of the city where kinless lived, or in the harbor areas where the Lords ruled. Lordkin children could sometimes get in those places. Lookers spoke in rapid gibberish that some of the older boys claimed to understand.
    At first they looked merely strange. Later Whandall saw how many kinds of lookers there were. You could judge by their