A week later and Ranat’s tin was nearly spent. He’d given Gessa twenty Three-Sides—a lot more than he owed her, but he’d felt some undefinable, probably misplaced guilt, and giving her less hadn’t seemed right.
He’d more or less moved into the nameless bar where he’d met Gessa. What had followed was a blur of long nights, forgotten conversations, and painful mornings, until he’d found himself with enough tin to keep the shakes at bay, but not enough to continue down the spiral he’d started out on.
Ale, ale, ale, he thought. Too expensive. He should have switched to glog long before he did. Always the connoisseur.
And now he was being followed.
He hadn’t been sure. Not at first. He’d even started going to different bars, just to check. The same two straight-backed men, looking uncomfortable in their peasant’s clothes, their messy hair and carefully layered grime unable to mask the air of confidence they exuded towards the poverty around them. An invisible wall of pride. They didn’t look like the Church, but they smelled like it.
Ranat cursed at himself and finished the last swill of glog. Who knows how long they’d been trailing him. It’d been a week since he’d been sober enough to notice anything.
He glanced down to the silk pouch cradled in his lap. Five, maybe six Three-Sides left, a few disks, and a handful of copper balls. Enough to drink solidly for next few days, anyway, if he paced himself, but now he had to deal with these two before he could enjoy it.
He pushed his way into the street and started heading north. He was maybe a span from the Lip and he could lose them there if they tried to follow him that far. He took a roundabout way, always sticking to the most crowded avenues. Blocky, two-story tenements of limestone leered on either side.
It was the tombs, he told himself. It must be. He’d been getting greedy lately. A few years ago he’d found a burial list of some of the old families. Generations of top Church officials. Old money. He’d hit a few, then try to convince himself to wait a while, but the money had been too easy. Easy tin. Easy booze. And every time, he’d think, “This time I’ll stretch it out. This time the haul will last a month, maybe two.”
But his hauls never lasted that long.
Now, he’d pissed off the wrong family. Someone had found their dead grandma’s tin missing and started looking into it. Ranat had always wanted to ask someone: if the highest levels of Heaven were so great that people would pay tens of thousands of Three-Sides in Salvation Taxes to get into one, then why would they need to be buried with so much money? Was there one, final tax once you got there?
He glanced over his shoulder, back down the crowded street. If he didn’t lose the pair following him, he thought he might finally get the chance to find out.
Neither were in sight. It was nearing midday, and the clouds were sinking lower. The drizzle had thinned to fog. He slowed his pace a little.
Something slammed Ranat from the side so hard the wind was out of him before he hit the ground. He had no idea where they’d come from.
The man that had tackled him got to his feet. The other one stood behind, looking down at Ranat, who lay curled on the dingy wet flagstones, gasping for air.
The first one brushed himself off, muttering curses. “Next time you can be the one that jumps into the goddamn mud,” he said to his companion. He was large under the rough, wool peasant garb, with a sand-colored mustache that completely hid his mouth. Ranat, through his painful gasps, suspected he was sneering.
The second man, clean-shaven and black haired, with a face that was oddly forgettable, said, “Stop complaining. It’s not like they’re your clothes. Don’t like getting wet, you should’ve went into a different line of work. Tie him.”
He then turned to address Ranat as his partner roughly rolled him over and bound his hands. Ranat was faintly aware of a hundred sets of eyes on him as people gathered around the unfolding spectacle, slowing their pace as they passed to pretend they weren’t really watching.
“Ranat Trotz,” the second man intoned, eyes bored, as if reading the words off of Ranat’s face. “You have been tried, sentenced and convicted of murder. Your execution will take place by the will of the Grace of Fom. Until such time, you are to be held in the Pit, for public viewing. Have you any statement?”
Ranat craned his neck to look up at the faces of the two men staring pitilessly down on him, and of the mob of onlookers who met his gaze before quickly turning away. The smell of the muddy stone was cool and soothed his lungs, which still burned for air. One word bounced around his head, tightening the knot of panic that was building deep in his stomach. One word that fell out of his mouth before he was aware that he’d uttered it.
“Murder?”