The male apprentices had their quarters in a small attic dormitory, but Neeka’s room was close by the master’s suite. The only other resident on the same level was a man who filled two highly exacting niches in the household—major-domo and head cook—and who called himself Koominon. Neeka had quickly noted that the master treated this mere upper servant as an equal, as he did the outwardly disreputable pimp, Iktis.
It was not until many months later that she came to know the reasons for these and many other discrepancies in the behavior of Lokos, for the master was wisely very closemouthed with any save sworn members of the Heritage Society— ee Klirohnolimeea.
Djordj had advised Neeka not to get involved in Lokos’ known radical political activities, but the girl had no choice. Her master, assuming that since the Society had helped her she would welcome a membership, informed her long after the fact that he had sponsored her for and she had finally been accepted in the Society for the Preservation of Our Ehleen Heritage.
“After all, child, you are a kath-ahrohs—which may not mean much in Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya where most folk are, but means very much here, where increasingly few are not to some extent mongrelized with the so-called Kindred and other strains of barbarian. Of the over eight thousand souls listed as permanent residents of Esmithpolisport, only some fourscore are kath-ahrohs, Neeka. I am not, God help me, nor is my dear wife. Indeed, no one in this house is save only you and Koominon.”
“Is Koominon a member?” asked Neeka.
Lokos had smiled and nodded. “Koominon is one of the founders of our chapter in this thoheeksahtohn, and a life member of the advising Council. The poor man has suffered more, and even more unjustly, than have you under the barbarians, Neeka. He has been cruelly bereft of hereditary lands and position, family and… and more.”
Lokos and Koominon led the way to Neeka’s first meeting of ee Klirohnohmeea through a disreputable district of shanties and hovels to a large building of weathered gray granite. Portions of the walls had evidently been knocked down long ago and had been rebuilt in cheap brick. Entrance was effected through a tiny door set into a pair of larger doors. Within, Lokos lit a small lamp he carried and Neeka saw that the building—whatever the purpose for which it may have been built—was now a warehouse.
The first three columns supporting the high, vaulted, soot-encrusted ceiling were roughly fashioned of brick, but the next two, despite the dim, flaring light of the lamp and layer on layer of dirt, could be seen to be of fine, red-veined marble. And the floor beneath their feet, in those places where shifting of heavy cases had scraped away the filth of ages, was of a delicate gray-green stone.
At her questioning look, Lokos spoke. “When the barbarians conquered this city, over two hundred years ago, this was a palace, the seat of the hereditary lords of the city, lands and port. Lord Graikos Pahpahthohpoolos fought the barbarian hordes street by bloody street after the city walls were breached, and he and his brave men made their last stand here. So fiercely did they fight that the barbarians finally brought up siege engines to knock down the walls. The palace, when at long last conquered, all its defenders massacred, was too damaged for habitation, and it sat vacant, tenanted only by ghosts and vermin, for many years; then, as the usurper Esmiths had improved the harbor and trade increased, rough repairs were effected and this noble edifice was converted to a warehouse.”
After that, Neeka was very glad that Lokos walked before her and Koominon behind, for it seemed that each patch of darkness, each shadow cast by the lamp was a skull-faced warrior in antique armor, skeletal hand gripping rusty sword or rotted spearshaft Under her breath, she breathed half-forgotten prayers to Christ, to His Holy Mother and to every other saint she could remember, temporarily forgetting that identical prayers for deliverance had availed her nothing those endless days and nights in that horrible cell in the fortress walls.
Down a flight of worn, stone steps lay a cellar, also stacked with bales and crates, but then what looked to be but a stretch of blank wall pivoted at the touch of Koominon’s hand and swung shut behind them as silently as it had opened. They went a few paces along a narrow corridor, down another, steeper flight of stairs, these set at a right angle to the corridor, then along a wider passage to a bivalve door of verdigris-covered bronze. Koominon drew a dirk from beneath his cloak and tapped sharply with its steel ball-pommel on the green-crusted door in a distinct pattern of raps and pauses.
“Open your mind, child,” Lokos mindspoke Neeka. “Lower your shield that they may be sure who and how many we are.”
Neeka did so and, shortly, one of the high, broad doors swung back. Lokos led the way into another corridor, this one with a down-sloping floor and a clean tang of the sea about it. The ramp curved gradually to the left and, at the foot of it, was another bivalve bronze door. Both halves of the door swung open before them, flooding the sloping corridor with warmth and light from the torches, lamps and braziers within a large, oval chamber.
Out from a knot of soberly garbed men and a few women strode Komees Petros. Taking both of Neeka’s small, cold hands in his large, warm ones, he bent stiffly from the waist and kissed the right one, but retained his hold when he stepped back, straightening.
“Neeka, until we investigated, none of us were aware that you were of noble birth, that your late father was an ahstoonohmos.” He half turned to the group and added, “We have no such title here, not any longer, but we did in ancient times; ahstoonohmos is a hereditary office and its holder is the deputy to the lord of a city or a district, being roughly the equivalent of our vahrohneeskos, though an ahstoonohemos is salaried and does not actually hold land, as does a vahrohneeskos. This poor child’s entire family died in an epidemic of summer fever. Her care and her dead father’s office were both then assumed by his younger brother, her uncle; he gave her in marriage to a lowborn curdog of a priest, who then sold her to a ship captain and put about the word that she had deserted him.”
The nobleman went on, giving a brief account of Neeka’s nearly two years in Esmithpolisport. He was an accomplished raconteur. Consequently, there were few dry eyes amongst the throng when he was done.
Koominon had disappeared during the monologue. When he reappeared, he was cloaked in the vestments of a priest of the Old Ehleen Rite and all those present repaired to a canvas-enclosed section of the room for the religious service which always opened a full meeting of the membership. Then, while some members were preparing precooked food and others were laying boards on trestles and bringing chairs and stools from the enclosed area, a woman and three men—Komees Pehtros, among them—took Neeka aside and began teaching her the complicated hand grasps and signals, the childish-sounding passwords and the significance of the oaths she soon must swear.
The oaths were sworn before dinner. They were designed to be solemn and awe-inspiring to those who were deeply religious, but the nobility of the north could take religion or leave it alone, generally the latter, and Neeka’s firsthand knowledge of the frankly mercenary philosophies of the Church and churchmen, gained from her brief marriage, had rendered her deeply irreligious. So, though she behaved as she assumed she was expected to behave, she actually found the oath-taking ceremony as childishly silly as the secret signs and words.
At dinner she was seated beside the woman who had earlier shared in her instruction, Lady Rohza Ahnthro-poheethees, widow of a former shipping magnate, scioness of a house of the petty nobility and a distant relative of the one-time ruling house of Karaleenos when still it had been an independent kingdom. As big and as powerful looking as Djoy Skriffen—with broad shoulders, slender hips, flat thighs and buttocks, very small breasts and a set of craggy features—Rohza affected masculine garb, right down to jackboots, hanger and dirk. She spoke loudly and often, shouting down the length of the table in her deep contralto, frequently slapping her thigh as she guffawed at her own and at others’ witticisms.
There was something about the middle-aged woman that put Neeka’s little white teeth edge to edge; not even the evil virtually oozing from Djoy Skriffen’s very pores had so afflicted her. It was not that the brawny Rohza was cool or unkind to Neeka; indeed, the very reverse was the case—her attendance was so warm and constant that she seemed to Neeka more like a courting swain than a dinner companion. With almost every word she spoke to the girl, the woman’s big hands were placed lingeringly on shoulder or knee, neck or arm. Such uncomforting familiarity prevented Neeka from truly enjoying her dinner, and, at future dinners, she saw to it that she had other dinner companions.