下载掌阅APP，畅读海量书库
立即打开
E VERY SINGLE TIME I return to the Forum, the noise hits me like a wall. In less than a minute, my sandaled feet are covered in dirt and grime. I’m hoping the open air and the sun will help me clear my head and the pepper soup will warm my body. I look at the new lion tattooed into my forearm. It still burns. Prince Haris’s sin is staying with me longer than usual, which, I guess, isn’t surprising considering how big that inisisa was.
The roar of the crowd settles into a muffled quiet, but if I strain, I can pick out a snatch of conversation about someone’s cousins coming to visit or about the rising price of dates. Northern and southern Kosian accents mingle together. Above it all, a crier stands off to the side of the thoroughfare, singing holy verse in a voice that booms out over the crowd.
Farther down, the smells announce the open market. A mix of imported herbs, the syrupy sweetness of deep-fried puff puff, the tingling spiciness of pepper soup with fufu. Stray too far, however, and it all starts to smell like sweet-sour refuse.
Between the jeweler stalls, glinting with crystals and rings too bright and numerous to be real, are the booktraders. They display their forbidden wares over spread cloth, ready to be snatched up at a moment’s notice. The books are mostly different versions of the Word, the holy text that governs our lives. The pages are folded into cylinders, and you put the book to one eye to watch the text spiral and form new words as you read. Some cylinders are simple, tough leather fabric with black ink. Others are more colorful and ornate, displaying flamboyant curving script. I’ve looked through enough of these vessels to know that half of them contain not religious doctrine but secret histories, forbidden alternate tellings of the origins of Kos, of the world, texts proclaiming that sin can’t be bought or sold or Eaten.
I spot a kid twirling one of the books in his hands. He’s got the thing pressed up against his face, burying his nose in it. I lean back a little bit and can see that the insides don’t have words but drawings. I know this book. This booktrader sells adventures: young aki questing to find a magical amulet to purify all their sins or something like that.
Two stalls down, past the herb seller, is a guy who sells stories of princes and princesses who look a lot like the Kayas. They’re never named, but everyone in Kos knows who the prince is that got caught in another lady’s bedchamber in last week’s installment. It was probably Haris. The real people in Kos, the people getting dirty in the Forum, the people trying to make their way through the dozen or so languages being spoken at any time, they know the royal family isn’t pure. We all know. Many of us Eat their sins. We just have to pretend they’re pure as river water so we don’t get strung up by the gates in front of our families, and so I can keep earning ramzi coins to send back to my family.
“Oya, child, buy it or leave. This is not a library.” The bookseller snatches the book out of the kid’s hand, careful not to crush the cylinder. I glare at him and dig into my pocket to find the marker from Izu. I’ll pay for the damn book. Let the kid enjoy his adventures.
But then I pull the marker out and suck my teeth. He shorted me even more than I thought. This is barely enough for me to send back home to my family. For a second, I think about tracking him down and chopping his hand for chopping my coins, but then I’d have no more work because I’d be dead.
Suddenly, the bookseller lets out a low whistle and shoots me a pointed look. Then, he settles into a bored gaze, staring off into the distance, but his hands move fast as a goat-fly trying not to get swatted. I see him sliding some cylinders under others, and then he shoves some of them into his rucksack entirely. I hear more low whistles, and I turn to see another bookseller doing the same furtive shuffling, and farther down another. When I hear the clank of armored boots, I understand.
An Agha glides through the crowd, almost as though she’s not even walking in the mud, leading a phalanx of other guards. She wears the ruby-red double-sash of higher officers. The Palace guards behind her are nothing but foot soldiers behind a general. She’s staring straight ahead, but everyone knows that they’ve been seen. The booksellers stare down at their wares, and the guards continue past the intersection before being swallowed up by the crowd.
The little kid is still sniffling over having his book snatched away by the booktrader. He probably has no idea the booktrader just saved his life. Who knows what the Agha would have done if she had found the kid spiraling through illegal stories?
I ruffle the kid’s hair and duck down an alleyway to make my way home, ignoring the conmen and hucksters that line the shadowy paths: soothsayers promising to read your future for a few ramzi, scammers offering secret cures for those afflicted by physical or spiritual ailments.
Down a side street I overhear a woman pleading with a trader, clutching her shawl close to her chest. “Please, trader, my son, he is beset by sins.” She’s on the verge of tears. “For many years, he has not been able to lift himself from his bed. And he weeps. Always, he weeps, and yet there is no wound on his body.”
I stiffen when I hear this. I should walk away. It’s not my problem. But the more I listen, the angrier I get. I’ve seen this before.
I was much younger. Up to Baba’s knees maybe. I clung to his pant leg as he haggled with a Mage to purchase a cure for Mama. A small flock of children hid in the shadows where Baba spoke with the Mage. I remember the Mage called one of them forward, a tiny girl a little taller than me at the time. Sin-spots ran up and down her arms. And I knew it was for Mama, who had been sick for almost a month, bedridden with a sin that none of us could absolve her of.
Even after all these years, Mama and Baba are still in debt.
I want to help this woman, but I would need a Mage to call forth the sin, and that would mean breaking my contract with Izu.
“It is the guilt that is weighing on his soul,” the woman in the market pleads. “Please, save my son. We cannot afford an aki. My son will die for want of cleansing, his inyo haunting my home.” The poor woman falls to her knees in the mud.
I listen with gritted teeth as the trader promises a cure that will wash away all her doubts and restore her son, rescue him from the guilt that plagues him. I start at the sharp pain in my hand. There’s blood running down my fingers. I’ve been gripping my daga.
The woman pulls out a small purse and slowly counts the ramzi in her palm, then looks at the trader who nudges her on with a lifting of the chin. She hesitates, then pulls out a few more ramzi, counts them. Her purse is nearly empty.
It’s all I can do not to take my daga and carve the greedy look off that trader’s face. The trader hands her a small vial, which the woman cradles in both hands before secreting it up her sleeve. Relief washes over her face, and she hurries away, head bowed.
I watch her go, then whip back and start toward the trader. He smirks at me, all traces of false concern gone from his face now that he’s made his sale. He glances down at my exposed tattoos, and his grin grows wider. He knows there’s nothing I can do, that it would be his word against mine, and who would believe an aki? The trader spits at my feet, sticks a rolled sijara in his mouth, then walks back into the crowd.
I push through the crush of bodies in the thoroughfare and follow him. I make sure to push up my sleeves so that people can see my sin-spots. The crowd parts immediately. Most Forum dwellers avoid touching aki, convinced that the guilt and anguish and weight of the sin could somehow transfer to them. It’s a bunch of lahala, but it’s useful in times like this.
As I get closer to the trader, I try not to choke on the smoke of his sijara billowing behind him.
Now I’m right behind the trader. Leading with my shoulder, I crash right into him. The trader stumbles and falls to the ground. His sijara tumbles into the dust.
“You!” he growls as he picks himself up, angrily brushing off his sleeves.
“Please, sir. My apologies.” I bow, lowering my eyes respectfully as he lets out a string of curses.
I wait till I can hear him walking away before straightening up. The trader’s full sack of money fills my entire palm. The ramzi would feed the woman and her son for a very long time. But she might also get tricked out of it by another trader. Mama and Baba need the ramzi too. I slip the trader’s bulging purse up my sleeve.
I make my way back through the crowd, ignoring the dirty looks of the Forum dwellers who glare at my sin-spots. Their hisses follow me through the winding streets and back alleys until I reach the outskirts of the Forum. Here, the dahia I call my home stretches out before me: a small hill crushed between the outer walls of two neighboring dahia; rusted, falling-apart buildings stacked on top of one another and too many people living in too little space. Intoxicated stone-sniffers sharing alley-space with pickpockets and cutpurses. I cover my nose and mouth with my shawl, then march through the pathways where thieves and cutpurses crouch or wait or idle. My feet avoid the empty vials and glass bottles by instinct. Same with the rivers of waste that flow down the center of these paths. I’ve been following this route home since I was a child. I could find my way back blindfolded.
Eventually, the narrow path leads me up a hill where I get a better view of the mud-colored shanties. The tin roofs glint red in the dying sun. Up the hill the dwellings climb, as far as I can see, and I catch myself smiling. Home.
But first I need to see Nazim the money broker. The ramzi is burning a hole in my pocket, and at least some of it needs to get to Mama and Baba.