The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [5]
By midmorning, the city streets and markets were filled with activity. Jaldi padded through the edges of the crowd, his fast, youthful reflexes directing him through the jostling throngs like a fish through a hard current. He could feel the movements of the crowd. His years spent as an urchin had taught him to sense the mood of the people and therewith the source and probable cause of any rippling disturbance. Sometimes it was danger, as when the Mulhorandi army first marched across the River of Swords and attacked his village, but occasionally it was entertainment, as when some criminal was dragged forth and pilloried to the amusement of the public.
Usually, though, the mood of the crowd warned him when a whip of constables was approaching, looking for little thieves like him… and receiving that warning had often kept him in possession of his hands. Untheric justice was as creative as it was cruel and thus served Jaldi both as a diversion and as a goad to excellence, for he determined that he would never be caught at his work. In his few years, he had seen tortures the like of which were unknown outside the Old Empires, punishments that the public and accused alike not only bore without comment, but prided themselves upon withstanding with great solemnity. It was the firm belief of all Untherites that the mark of a high culture was to promote at once high arts and ruthless punishment, and to appreciate both with equal aplomb.
In that hour, however, the mood of the crowd spoke of hope. And since the Mulhorandi invasion a year and a half ago, the hope of the crowd meant one thing: food.
Jaldi vividly remembered seeing the Green Lands get churned into mud by the armies of Mulhorand and Unther during the opening months of the campaign, when he had been pressed into service as a camp slave for his people's army. His left triceps still bore the scar of the slave branding. When the Mulhorandi army emerged victorious, Unther lost not only its field army, but also the crops that were meant to feed the majority of its populace.
The enemy forces had besieged and taken Unthalass, capitol of Unther, during which time Jaldi had made his escape from military duties. Since then, the Mulhorandi had driven a swarm of refugees before them. He, like many others, had fled north, pursued by the invaders until the River of Metals and Messemprar itself were all that stood between Mulhorand and the complete conquest of Unther.
Thus Messemprar was the last refuge of the Untheri, a city bloated to thrice its natural size by the influx of fearful peasants, wounded soldiers, and desperate officials. The city's stocks of food had run out quickly, causing everyone to feel the pangs of hunger. The raw, gnawing feeling of empty stomachs turned society's solid foundations into greasy, treacherous slopes, and he had seen just how fast the most noble of people could fall to barbarism over a scrap of food. The hands of justice were swift these days, swift and brutal, lest defiance breed upon defiance, and all order be lost.
These were interesting days for the young thief. Everyone was suspect, for a change, for hunger made a thief out of even the wealthiest noble, yet whereas before he might have faced a flogging for his petty theft, in these hard days he would surely be killed for stealing food.
He glided through the crowd toward the docks, where his instinct told him the source of the crowd's hope could be found. Most likely a merchant ship had slipped past the Mulhorandi navy and arrived with a cargo of precious foodstuffs. Though such journeys risked annihilation by the Mulhorandi, the cargo sold for exorbitant prices, purchased with Untheric iron, cloth goods, slaves, and priceless antique art. It was a seller's market for food.
Good living for a thief… if he could survive it.
A throng milled at the quay that jutted out into the Alamber Sea, where a deep-drafted merchant vessel had moored just