Then he was gone, retreating into the night.
They relieved themselves quickly in one of the stinking pits filled with dung and water, and paused after to look up at the strangely clear sky, so hard a darkness above them that the stars were almost painful to look upon. They heard the dogs again and Matthias shoved Anna onto the ladder. She scrambled back up, and he came up behind her and closed the trap. After a hesitation, but without speaking, they devoured the rest of the cheese and bread—and waited for tomorrow.
2
THE next night, long after sunset, the man came again and tapped on the door softly and said, “I am your friend.”
Cautiously, Matthias opened the trap and peered down. After a moment he climbed down. Anna followed him. The man gave them bread and watched silently as they ate. She could see him a bit more clearly tonight—the moon was waxing, and its quarter face slowly swelled, bubbling toward the full. Not particularly tall, he had the broad shoulders of a farmer and a moon-shaped face.
“What are you called?” he asked finally, hesitantly.
“I am called Matthias, and this is Anna, which is short for Johanna. Our ma named us after the disciplas of the blessed Daisan.”
The man nodded, as if he had known this all along or perhaps only to show he understood. “I am called Otto. I am sorry the bread was all I could bring. We are not fed well, and I dare not ask the others for a share of their portion. I don’t know if I can trust them, for they’re no kin of mine. Any one of them might tell the Eika in return for some reward, more bread perhaps.”
“It is very kind of you to help us,” said Anna brightly, for she remembered that their ma had always told her to be polite and to be thankful for the gifts she received.
The man caught in a sob, then hesitantly touched her hair. As abruptly, he backed away from her. “Or perhaps, like me, the others would gladly help, if only it meant finding a way to see two more brought free of the savages. It isn’t as if the Eika play favorites. I’ve never seen them seek to turn their slaves against each other by handing out special treatment. They despise us all. All are treated the same. Work or die.”
“Is it only here,” asked Matthias, “in the tanneries, that they’ve brought slaves?”
“They’ve opened up the smithies, too, though they’ve no one trained here in blacksmith’s work. But we’re slaves and expendable.” His voice was hard. “It’s fortune’s chance I was sent here to the tanneries, though it stinks like nothing I’ve smelled before. It’s whispered that at the forge men are burned every day and the Eika as likely to slit a burned man’s throat as to let that man heal if he can’t get up and keep working. I saw those Eika. I saw one pushed into a fire. It didn’t burn. The heat left no scar on its body. They don’t have skin, not like us. It’s some kind of hide, like a snake’s scales but harder and thicker. Dragon’s get.” He hawked and spat, as if to get the taste of the word out of his mouth. “The spawn of dragons and human women, that’s what they say, but I don’t see how such an unnatural congress could take place. But we should not speak of this in front of the child.”
“I’ve seen nothing she hasn’t seen also,” said Matthias softly, but Anna felt at once that the man’s simple statement, protecting her, confiding in the boy, had won over her brother’s trust.
She finished her bread and wished there were more, but she knew better than to ask. Perhaps he had given them his entire ration. It would be rude to demand more.
“Fortune’s chance,” the man whispered bitterly. “Fortune had smiled more sweetly on me had she let me die with my children. But no.” He shook his head, shifting, casting a glance back over his shoulder nervously, for surely he had reason to be nervous, as did they all. “For everything, a reason. I was spared so that I might find you.” He took a step forward, clasped Matthias by the hand and with his other hand touched Anna’s hair gently. “I will find a way for you to escape here, I swear it. Now I must go. I tell them I use the privies each night at this hour, so I must get back. The Eika are strange creatures. Savages they are, surely, but they are fastidious; but perhaps that only goes to show that ‘the path of the Enemy is paved neatly with well-washed stones, for the waters cleansing them are the tears of the wicked.’ We may make soil only in one place, no pissing even except where they tell us to or on the new skins. That is why we may come out for a few moments’ freedom in this way, even at night, for they cannot bear the stink of our human bodies near their own. But I dare not stay longer.”