Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [219]
Even in the early hours, the stink and din was fearful. Pigs squealed, cattle bawled, goats uttered mournful bleats, and all manner of fowl raised a clamor. Everywhere, there was a smell of animals, dung, and feathers. Vendors and shopkeepers haggled with the owners, and a steady stream of animals was led to the slaughterhouses.
And there, in the midst of it, was Master Piero, his hands folded in the sleeves of his robe.
He looked thin and worn, but his eyes were clear and there was a calmness to his face. He waited until we were all assembled—the six who remained—before addressing us.
"Walk with me," he said. "And observe."
Without waiting for our responses, Master Piero plunged into the marketplace. Exchanging glances, we shrugged and followed him.
It was no pleasure-stroll. Since I didn't know what Master Piero wanted us to see, I treated the excursion as one of Phèdre's memory games. I numbered the different livestock, and listened to the cacophany of voices, marking accents and dialects. I marked faces, height and weight, attire. I marked the way their eyes cut toward us and sheered away, taking note of Master Piero's scholar's robe, the gaggle of students in his wake. We were not welcome here, but they endured our presence. How not? They were too busy to do otherwise.
Master Piero led us on a winding course through the market and into the slaughterhouses themselves, paying no heed to the mistrustful glances, but merely looking deeply at all he saw, his face grave and somber.
I'd never visited an abattoir before, and I never need do so again. Burly men bent to their tasks, splashed with blood to the shoulders. Cleavers flashed; animals bellowed and died. Carcasses were hung and drained, and rivers of blood ran in stone channels like it had done in Daršanga. I fought against a wave of sickness.
"Are you all right?" Eamonn asked in a low voice, steadying me with a hand beneath my elbow. I nodded, wordless.
"It's just livestock," Brigitta said irritably.
Lucius, too, looked a bit pale. "'Tis the scale that's daunting, lady."
I said nothing. When all is said and done, there is a great deal of difference between seeing a pig and a woman slaughtered before one's eyes. Still, the blood gushes the same from a slit throat, and I did not care to be reminded. How close had I come to doing it myself when I marked the agitator's neck during the riots? I didn't even want to think on it.
"It is the people I brought you to see," Master Piero said in his mild voice.
And so we looked. Men; it was almost all men. They performed their chores with brutal efficiency. Hoisting carcasses; skinning them, cleaving them into manageable portions. Striding through the slaughterhouse, hunks of meat on their shoulders. Shoveling masses of sawdust soaked with blood, piss, and dung.
Master Piero beckoned. "Come."
We followed.
He led us on a long journey that day; longer than any of us reckoned. From the butchers' market, we went to the wharf, and there we watched barge-men unloading other goods for sale, hopeful merchants and merchants' wives directing them anxiously. At least it smelled better. But the sun was growing high overhead, and my ankle throbbed with pain, an ache echoed by my burned shoulder.
We went to other places, too. We followed a Tiberian noblewoman in her litter, her bearers sweating beneath their burden, their faces stoic. We went to the baths, where we stood and watched the attendants at their labors, and they shot us wary glances. We went to a laundresses' establishment, where flush-faced women stirred massive pots of clothing with long-handled paddles.
I watched the people we saw, and I watched Master Piero, whose expression never changed. I watched my fellow students react with weariness, perplexity, and anger.
"No more!" It was Akil who balked, on the outskirts of the dyers' district. His nostrils flared, although whether at the stench or with outrage, I could not say. "Master,