Ah, the last filthy bag of manure. I had taken dozens of them from the cart stationed outside through maze of alleyways to the service entrance to the King's garden. His gardeners could take it from here. It was only when I had gotten to the bottom of the cart that I began to suspect the cartman's reason for recruiting me for a task he normally handled himself. He had glossed over the explanation of an "accident" that had left the bottom bags sopping wet. With the putrid moisture soaking my clothes, I realized that he'd handed over the worst part of the job. Even so, he'd told me how generous the King's men were to those who provided service directly to the royal household.
I had never been so close to the palace before, but there wasn't a lot to take in: high walls, the functionary in his fine robes, an old man working on his weaving, and an entrance guard. That last bag cinched my tip. My muscles ached. I partly wished that those heavy wet bags had come first so that the lighter ones could have been later, when I was more tired... Then again, this way my clothes stayed clean for longer. But now, it was time for my payment. I had no idea how generous a royal tip might be. Enough to buy sandals? A good meal?
"That's all of them, sir."
The functionary looked up, tallied the bags, and looked back to his ledger. "Yes, looks like the lot is complete, dung hauler. Took you long enough. Now remove your filth from this entrance. Your presence taints the King's air. One would think even the lowest dregs would learn to approach the Palace with a modicum of… cleanliness. Or at least, less odor."
A snarl flickered across my lip. What kind of gratitude was that? Surely a mistake. "Sir, I carried those bags for hours. The cartman told me I could expect a tip for my service since there was no pay from him."
The functionary scoffed. "A tip? You're asking for a tip for this?" He began chuckling to himself.
My eyes gazed at the ground. I could feel my cheeks flush and I shrank down. That cartman... I didn't even know his name, just some stranger who'd approached me in the marketplace this afternoon with the offer of an afternoon's labor and the promise of a royal tip. Had he lied?
But I needed this. I couldn't let it go. "Please sir, my sister and I are hungry and I spent half my day on this when I could have been earning something from other work."
"Very well, urchin," he said. "I understand your plight. I'll provide payment for your labors." With that, he turned around and went through the gate into the King's garden. He came back out and I gasped as he tossed a small brown lump at my feet. I knelt down and picked it up. It was a fig, partially dry and partially rotten. A worm crawled out onto my hand. I threw the whole thing back into the dried silt that coated the cobblestones.
At this he began to laugh uproariously. "Enjoy the King's munificence and sing his accolades to all who would question his generosity."
I retreated back down the alley to catch my breath, the functionary's laughter echoing behind me. The rotten fig still lay where I'd thrown it. The cartman must have known this would be how the palace treated laborers and made the false promise of royal generosity to trick idiots like myself. Duped by a desperate hope.
The guardsman stood watch with a quiet dignity. I saw the sun glint off his spearhead. His clean uniform. The sense that he was fed. That he commanded respect, just by virtue of his position. No one would call him vermin. He doesn't worry about where his next meal is coming from. He doesn't have to apologize for existing.
"Gleaming spearheads and white tunics," said an elderly man's voice.
I whirled around, and there was the old man sitting on the shadowed stoop quietly weaving a grass mat with calloused fingers.
"The King's Guard. A bright polish is a powerful thing, boy. Catches the eye. That's the point. But what's that shimmer and polish for?"
I stood silent.
"To distract from the rot beneath. Reflection can come with age. But more often, power, real power, prefers the company of fools rather than the honesty of a mirror."
I nodded politely, his fingers never stopped, so nimble for a man of so many years.
"My boy, it's the fresh eyes, unclouded by years of compromise, that can see the cracks beneath the gilt. The important thing isn't just the seeing, but finding the courage to believe your own eyes when the whole world admires the shine."
I startled and gave him a long blink. Right into his eyes. Truth.
"That's right, boy."
It seemed he read my mind. Then I shook my head. Who would ever listen to someone like me? I grimaced. What a joke this talk of "fresh eyes" was! Fresh eyes don't put food in our bellies. Just easy words from an old man with nothing to lose.
The guard continued his duties, unfazed. The life of the city flowed around us. I had to focus on Dalia, not the ramblings of old men about "seeing truth." Fantasy doesn't fix anything. I looked at the guardsman again: real stability; real respect. I wanted to be him. Not this worn-out codger in front of me.
---
The stench of my clothing spurred me towards the Dawn Gate. The old man's hot air wasn't going to scrub the manure tea off of my skin or clothes. The guard, solid and tireless, represented stability and everything else I could yearn for.
By the time I got home to Dalia I didn't want to be reeking like the east end of a westbound donkey. Wishes don't get the grime out from under my fingernails. My steps quickened towards the public baths near the gate. The need to wash away the palace's lingering taint was almost as urgent as the gnawing in my belly.
The normal chatter of the bathhouse greeted me from far away. Today it was off, a discordant clang of metal on stone and angry voices instead of jolly talking. As I rounded the final corner, the sight that met my eyes made me stop short. The familiar, crumbling face of the public latrine and bathhouse was a scene of demolition.
Dust billowed up, whisked away by the wind, occasionally right into my face. Men whose faces I wasn't familiar with were prying up the worn flagstones of the courtyard with crowbars. Guards and a Palace Water Curator were separating a crowd from the workers.
I skirted the edge of the crowd, looking for a working spout or basin. Were they digging up the pipes?
"Where are we supposed to go now?" a woman wailed, clutching a bundle of soiled linen. "The other bathhouse is on the other side of the city."
"Just so the King can see the sunrise from his new terrace?" a burly man, a smith I recognized, roared at one of the workers. "It's outrageous!" The worker ignored him and another stone was thrown onto a growing heap.
I went inside and saw the central cistern had no water in it. They could have at least used some rough lumber to make a temporary trough so we could have had water for another day or two.
The back was the darkest, and there was a secondary basin, full of murky water. Better than nothing. Probably more than I deserved. I knelt, trying to scrub my tunic. Using sand was more effective but the thing already had more holes than cloth.
"Zinia's boy got it too," said the voice of a man, in the shadows of the remaining hot bath.
"Got my aunt last month," another replied.
I paused my scrubbing. I knew about the fever. It came around every so often. The same thing that took Dad when I was eight.
"I heard it was bad water," said the first one.
"Nonsense." Another voice broke in. Ah, it was that bombastic Hakim from the stall adjacent Yusuf's. I allowed myself a flicker of wish that his stall had been the one to collapse. He'd refused all the services I tried to offer him.
"You know that I've dedicated my life to the medical arts and I can say definitively that it's a miasma. Vapors from unclean things spread the ailment. I make a paste made from the horns of a magnificent beast that lives in the far west by the seashore."
"When I was a boy," said a quavering elderly voice, "there used to be a flower. Cured fever. Cured pretty much everything, as I recall. Haven't seen it since."
Well, I'd gotten the worst of it off my skin and clothes, but the water was too foul to do more. The stench of manure still clung to me, overlaid with construction dust.
Noise, shouts, and the clang of the workers' tools faded behind me as I pushed my way out of the chaos, leaving what was left of the bathhouse and passing through the Dawn Gate towards the terraced hills where our barn loft awaited. Now even this tiny comfort was being wrested from us.