Nicci stepped to the middle of the room. “Who is it?”
“Nicci, it’s me, Kamil.”
The urgency in his voice made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.
“I’m decent. Come in.”
The young man burst in, panting. His face was white, as were his knuckles around the doorknob. Tears stained his cheeks.
“They’ve arrested Richard. Last night. They have him.”
Nicci was only dimly aware of the eggs hitting the floor.
Chapter 55
With Kamil at her side, Nicci ascended the dozen stone steps up into the city guard barracks. It was a huge fortress, its high walls stretching off down the entire block. Nicci hadn’t asked Kamil to go with her. She doubted that anything short of death would have stopped him. She couldn’t really decipher precisely how Richard managed to inspire such reactions in people.
As they had left, Nicci was in a state of frantic shock, but she had noticed that the entire building of people seemed tense and alert. Faces peered from windows as she and Kamil had rushed out the building and down the road. People had come out of other buildings to watch her go. They all wore grim expressions.
What was it that made people care so much about this one man?
What was it that made her care?
The inside of the filthy barracks was crowded with people. Hollow-cheeked, unshaven, old men stood as if in a daze, staring off at nothing. Plump-cheeked women with scarves covering their heads wept as wailing children clung to their skirts. Other women stood around without expression, as if they were expecting to buy bread or millet. One small child, with only a shirt and nothing from the waist down, stood forlorn, his tiny fists at his mouth as he bawled.
The room felt like a death watch.
City guards, mostly large young men with indifferent expressions, pushed through the throng as they passed on into dark halls guarded by their fellows. A short, roughly constructed wooden wall held back all the people, confining the pandemonium to half the room. Beyond the short wall, more of the guards casually talked among themselves. Others brought reports to men at a simple table, joked, or picked up orders on their way through.
Nicci cut right through the crowd, forcing her way to the short wall where cowering women pressed close, hoping to be called, hoping for word, hoping for the miracle of intercession by the Creator Himself. Pressing up against the rough boards, they received splinters, instead.
Nicci seized the sleeve of a passing guard. He halted in midstride. His glare rose from her hand to her eyes. She reminded herself that she was without her power and released his sleeve.
“May I ask, please, who is in charge?”
He looked her up and down, a woman he appeared to judge was about to be without a husband and available. His face slid into an affected smile. He gestured.
“There. At the table. People’s Protector Muksin.”
The older man sat ensconced behind his sovereign stacks of papers. Beneath a chin that sank down toward his chest, his spreading body looked as if it were melting in the summer heat. His loose white shirt bore big dark rings of sweat, adding its bit of stink to the stench of the sultry room.
Guards leaned down to speak into his ear while his dull gaze roamed, never settling. Others behind the table to either side of him were busily engaged in work at stacks of their own papers, or speaking among themselves, or dealing with the other stream of officials and guards that was ebbing and flowing through the room.
Protector Muksin, the shiny top of his head concealed about as well as an aged turtle napping beneath a few blades of grass, watched the room. His dark eyes never stopped moving, gliding past the guards, the officials, the milling crowd. When they glided over Nicci’s face, they registered no more interest than in any of the other people. All were citizens of the Order, equal pieces, each unimportant in and of itself.
“Could I see him?” Nicci asked. “It’s important.”
The guard’s smile turned to mockery. “I’m sure it is.” He waved a finger at the clump of people to the side. “End of the line. Wait your turn.”
Nicci and Kamil had no choice but to wait. Nicci knew enough about such petty officials to know better than to make a scene. They lived for the times when someone made a scene. She leaned her shoulder against the plastered wall dark with oily stains of countless other shoulders. Kamil took up station behind her.
The line wasn’t moving because the officials weren’t seeing anyone. Nicci didn’t know if they only saw citizens at certain times. There was no choice but to keep their place in the line. The morning dragged on without the line in front of her changing. It grew more crowded in back.
“Kamil,” she said in a low voice after several hours, “you don’t need to wait with me. You can go home.”
His eyes were red and swollen. “I wish to wait.” He sounded surprisingly distrustful. “I care about Richard,” he added in a tone that sounded like an accusation.
“I care about him, too. Why do you think I’m here?”
“I only came to get you because I was so afraid for Richard, and I didn’t know what else to do. Everyone else was off to work, or to buy bread.” Kamil turned and leaned his back against the wall. “I don’t believe that you care for him, but I didn’t know what else to do.”
Nicci swiped a sweaty strand of hair off her forehead. “You don’t like me, do you?”
Still he didn’t look at her. “No.”
“Might I ask why?”
Kamil’s gaze snuck a glance around to see if anyone was listening. They were all concerned with their own problems.
“You are Richard’s wife, yet you betrayed him. You took Gadi to your room. You are a whore.”
Nicci blinked in surprise at his words. Kamil glanced around again before he went on.
“We don’t know why a man like Richard would be with you. Every woman without a husband in the house, and the other houses nearby, told me she would be his wife and never lie with another man as long as she lived. They all say they don’t understand why you would do that to Richard. Everyone was sad for him, but he would not listen to us tell him.”
Nicci turned away. Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the shame of looking at a young man who had just called her a vile name, and had been right.
“You don’t understand the situation,” she whispered.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Kamil shrug. “You are right. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how anyone could do such a hurtful thing to a husband like Richard, who works hard and takes such good care of you. To do such a thing, you must be a bad person who does not care about your husband.”
She felt tears join the sweat on her face. “I care about Richard more than you could ever know.”
He didn’t answer. She turned to look at him. He was bouncing his shoulders gently against the wall. He was too ashamed of her, or angry at her, to look her in the eye.
“Kamil, do you remember when we first came to live in the room in your building?”
He nodded, still not looking at her.
“Do you remember how cruel you and Nabbi treated Richard, all the mean things you said to him? All the hurtful names you called him? How you threatened him with your knives?”
“I made a mistake,” he said, and sounded as if he meant it.
“Kamil, I made a mistake, too.” She didn’t bother trying to hide her tears—half the women in the room were weeping. “I can’t explain it to you, but Richard and I were having an argument. I was angry with him. I wanted to hurt him. I was wrong. It was a foolish thing for me to do. I made a terrible mistake.”
She sniffled and dabbed her nose on a small handkerchief. Kamil watched her from the corner of his eye.
“I admit it’s not the same kind of mistake that you and Nabbi made when you were acting tough when you first met Richard, but it was a mistake. I was acting tough, too.”
“You don’t desire Gadi?”
“Gadi turns my stomach. I only used him becaus
e I was angry with Richard.”
“And you are sorry?”
Nicci’s chin trembled. “Of course I’m sorry.”
“You are not going to get angry and do it again? With some other man?”
“No. I told Richard I made a mistake, I was sorry, and I would never do such a thing to him again. I meant what I said.”
Kamil thought it over as he watched a woman shake a child by the arm. The child wouldn’t stop crying, because it wanted to be picked up. She said something under her breath and the child leaned against her leg and pouted, but didn’t cry anymore.
“If Richard can forgive you, then I should not be angry at you. He is your husband. It is for the two of you to settle, not for me.” He touched her arm. “You made a foolish mistake. It is over. Don’t cry for that anymore? There are more important things, now.”
Nicci smiled through her tears and nodded.
He smiled a little bit. “Nabbi and I told Gadi we were going to cut off—we told him we would cut him for what he had done to Richard. Gadi showed us his knife, so we would let him pass. Gadi loves his knife. He has cut men with it, before. Cut them bad. He told us to let him pass to go to join the army, that he was going to use his knife to slice the guts out of the enemy, to be a war hero, and to have many women better than Richard’s wife.”
“I’m sure I will not be the only woman to be sorry they ever met Gadi.”
In the late afternoon, People’s Protector Muksin began seeing people. Nicci’s back ached, but it was nothing to compare to her fear for Richard. The people were taken one at a time by a pair of guards to stand before Protector Muksin.