Surviving the Streets
Living with Zvain is a special kind of torture.
Every morning starts the same way. Pavek is trying to sleep, and Zvain is running his mouth. “What’s it going to be today, Pavek? Some more groveling and toe-kissing at the west gate?” The kid has perfected the art of the early morning insult. He calls Pavek a belly-crawler, a yellow-lover, a dust-licker. He questions his manhood, his courage, his pride. All before breakfast.
Pavek has been working as a day laborer at the west gate for six weeks. He gave a fake name, “Oelus,” after the cleric who healed him. Every day he loads and unloads carts, eats insults from templars and merchants, and pockets whatever pittance they pay. Zvain was supposed to run water at quarter wages, but the kid mouthed off to the gate inspector Bukke on day one and nearly got himself killed. Now he just hangs around being useless and expensive.
Here is the thing Zvain does not know: Pavek is not there for the money. He is counting days. Sixty days since the druid Akashia brought zarneeka to the customhouse. Today is Modekan’s Day, the day she should be coming back. Everything Pavek has endured, every insult, every backbreaking hour, has been about positioning himself at that gate when she walks through it.
But he cannot tell Zvain any of this. The kid cannot keep quiet. He cannot be trusted with a secret that could get them both killed.
This morning, Zvain goes too far. He dumps the slops jar on Pavek while he is still lying down. Pavek swings without thinking and catches the boy between ear and chin, knocking him off his feet and into the far wall. Blood pours from Zvain’s nose and lip.
It is an ugly moment. Pavek wants to comfort him but cannot bring himself to do it. His own childhood in the templar orphanage taught him that crying gets you killed. Victims who showed weakness were swarmed by the other orphans. Some of them died. Some just disappeared. The only reason Pavek survived was because his mother Sian taught him not to cry before she left him there.
So instead of apologizing, he throws the wet linen into Zvain’s lap and says, “Next time, don’t start what you can’t finish.”
What follows is genuinely chilling. The fear leaves Zvain’s eyes and something older and colder takes its place. Pavek watches the boy make calculations, pick targets. He knows Zvain will come for him eventually. Not today, not tomorrow, but the seventh time when Pavek is not expecting it.
When Pavek reaches for his templar medallion on the high shelf, the gladiator weapon is already gone. Zvain moved it. Neither of them mentions this.
They head to the gate in tense silence. Pavek stops at a fruit seller and buys cabra melons with his dwindling coins. Zvain tears into his, then flinches when the juice stings his busted lip. He hands it back. Pavek feels something nameless ache in his chest.
At the gate, Pavek gives Zvain his last two ceramic bits and asks if the boy believes in anything. It is an incredibly personal question in Urik, where King Hamanu is the official deity but actual belief is a private matter. Zvain says “sometimes.” Pavek says he believes in the round wheel of fate, but only after a good day.
“I’ll pray for you, Pavek,” Zvain says.
I was not ready for that line. This kid who was dumping slops on Pavek’s head an hour ago and calculating how to murder him in his sleep is now offering to pray for him. These two are such a mess.
The day drags on. Pavek hauls bricks, gets whacked with Bukke’s illegal iron prod, and scans every cart that rolls through the gate. Smoking Crown volcano belches ash into the sky. The air goes foul. Everyone gets jumpy.
An older laborer with a leather cap and no teeth takes a liking to Pavek. He asks who Pavek is looking for. Pavek describes Akashia without mentioning her companions. The old man assumes she is a woman who left Pavek for someone else and offers fatherly advice about moving on. He calls Pavek “son.” It might be the first time anyone has ever called Pavek that, and Pavek is not sure how he feels about it.
Then Zvain vanishes. He was napping behind some rubble, and now he is gone. Nobody saw him leave.
The old laborer spots the druids before Pavek does. A dwarf, a half-elf, and an uncommonly beautiful human woman. Pavek leaves six ceramic bits with the veteran to pass along to Zvain with a message: he should have stayed close, and Pavek is sorry.
He approaches the trio. “Woman,” he whispers, “hire me to haul your cart through the city. Your zarneeka’s being turned to poison, and you need my help.”
What happens next is fast and brutal. Pain like a thousand fiery needles pierces through his skin. His mind goes white. Akashia just scanned him with druid spellcraft, right there at the gate, in front of the templars. She must have believed what she found, because when inspector Bukke comes sniffing around, she smooth-talks him into letting Pavek haul their cart.
The dwarf Yohan grabs Pavek’s wrist hard enough to crush bone. “Whatever happens, your life belongs to me.” The half-elf Ruari glowers murder.
They pass through the gate. Pavek looks everywhere for Zvain. He catches a dark, fleeting shadow in the corner of his eye, but it disappears.
Once they are deep in the cloth market, screened by hanging fabrics, Yohan beats him to the ground. Ruari puts his staff against Pavek’s throat. They find his templar medallion. They know exactly who he is.
Pavek makes his case from the cobblestones, a staff crushing his windpipe, telling them about Laq while Ruari twists and presses. He does not mention names or details. He does not mention Zvain. He trades only what he has to.
“I thought a druid would care,” he says.
Akashia pushes the staff aside. She tells him her name. She listens. She asks questions. She is hard and passionless, but she is listening. They argue about trust, about the bounty on his head, about whether a templar can have a conscience.
Then Akashia makes a decision. She gives Yohan a feminine little flutter of her fingers that Pavek does not read correctly until the dwarf’s fist slams into his gut and Ruari’s staff cracks against the base of his skull.
Darkness. Oblivion.
The last thing Pavek was thinking about, before they knocked him out, was the empty patch of shade where Zvain should have been.
Book: The Brazen Gambit by Lynn Abbey Series: Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas, Book One ISBN: 1-56076-872-X
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