When the call stopped, he slipped through the gate, seeing no one at all. No Mahahmbi. No malghaste. The house the Havenites had occupied was at the south wall, so he needed to traverse the entire length of the city. The cellars there might provide a connection to whatever warren or system of tunnels the malghaste occupied, and if they had all departed, the cellars would at least serve as a temporary base of operations.
He walked slowly, head bowed, along the swerving alleyways. All the alleyways were alike, hard-packed earth; all the walls along them were alike, mud-brick, windowless, high and thick, with deeply inset doors made of heavy timbers. Aside from the occasional symbols painted on the brick, the small variation among hinges or lanterns, the sporadic use of tiles to outline entries or mark corners, one place looked like every other place. When he judged himself to be halfway through the city, he heard the first footsteps. More than one person, and approaching. He stepped into an angled cul-de-sac, stopping just out of sight of the street to let them pass, which they did not do. Instead the two walkers stopped at the mouth of the narrow way, stepping just inside it to lean against the wall.
“So, he kills the ones out at the refuge,” said one, in an angry whisper. “Then what happens to the ritual?”
The other said, “He’s not thinking about the ritual.”
“He’d damn well better. Without the ritual, Mahahm is going to starve to death in short order. When our people get hungry, they get mean, and when they get mean, the Shah’s the first one they think of, Effulgence or no Effulgence.”
“Keep shut,” said the other. “Someone will hear you! Talking of it to anyone is forbidden, and people who do talk lose any chance of further elevation.”
“You think there’ll be any further elevations for either of us without the ritual? Without the Shah’s blessing, the stuff won’t work. I mean, we’ve seen what it does without the blessing! Old Gazar. He tried it without the blessing, and we know how he ended. A statue of himself, that’s how!”
“I’m telling you, you offend the Shah and there’ll be no blessing!”
“But it’s such a damn silly idea! Taking thousands of men out into the desert to kill a few holed-up escapees. The refuge is malghaste. You can’t get at escapees without hurting malghaste. And we hurt malghaste, what’ll they do? They’ll do what they did last time.”
“That was most three hundred years ago.”
“We haven’t forgotten! What makes you think they have?” The two fell silent, moving off down the street and leaving Aufors very puzzled behind them.
A little later he came to a place he recognized: a seven-sided polygon with alleyways radiating from the corners, a tiled doorway set into a blue-painted wall with a prayer tower spearing the sky at one corner. He and the Prince and the Marshal had come this way on their tour of the marketplace. The Prince had remarked that the blue wall signified a house of worship. Aufors closed his eyes and visualized how he had first seen it—from across the plaza. He went there, and from the next corner he saw the city wall, and from the one after that, the gate. If there were guards at the gate, he could not see them.
He could see the house door, to the right of the gate, its splintered slabs lying across the entrance. Though debris littered the area, the entrance wasn’t blocked. He stepped cautiously around the wreckage and went several paces inside and around a corner before using his light. The hallway was empty, the kitchen courtyard was full of broken mud-brick, blown out of the com-room along with tangles of wire and twisted chunks of metal. The kitchen was empty, everything had been taken. The hallway through to the large courtyard was empty, as was the courtyard itself. The well seal had been broken, and it seeped water onto the soil. The growing plants were gone, pots and all. Angrily, he hoped someone had tried to eat the greenery, for though colorful and sweet-scented, it was poisonous.