Radiating fury, Tain hit the nearest with a short, brutal punch to the face, spinning in time to avoid a blow from another. Eliska, with surprising viciousness, kicked that one in the knee and I winced at his scream of pain as he dropped next to his fallen companion. The last two were too quick for Jov, scurrying out of his reach, their eyes wide as they stared at Tain. They hadn’t yet noticed his tattoos, and they saw not our honored leader, but the protective, impulsive young man I had always known. Tain would never suffer a bully. All those times in our youth, when Jov had been the source of mockery and ridicule, Tain had stood up for him.
The two men left standing eyed us dubiously. It had only taken moments, but the odds were in our favor now, even if Jov was injured and I was useless, standing well back. One of the men on the ground staggered to his feet, clutching his cheek, moaning. “This isn’t your business.”
“Oh, I think it is,” Tain said. He advanced again, but the young man they’d attacked let out a gurgling sob, and Tain instead dropped to a knee beside him. “Are you all right?” he asked.
The three men took their chance and fled. Eliska half-started after them, then obviously thought better of it. My paralysis lifting, I joined Tain on the edge of the canal to help the boy sit up.
The fortunes knew how long the men’s amusement had carried on before we arrived. Swelling distorted the boy’s face, and a deep cut, perhaps only as long as a finger joint, spewed a waterfall of blood down his forehead. The bloody lines spread like a red spiderweb over his face. I asked his name, as gently as I could. He didn’t respond, but one eye, the white part shockingly bright in the mass of discolored flesh, tracked us in terrified jolts.
“We’re going to take you to the hospital, all right?” The boy slumped against Tain’s shoulder as we lifted him to his feet. His head lolled forward and his feet dragged as if he were a half-filled moppet.
“What about him?” Eliska asked, her tone harsh as she regarded the remaining man, who lay on the ground in a fetal position, sobbing and clutching his knee.
Tain looked down at him. “What was this all about?” he asked the man. “Talk quickly.”
At some point Tain’s tattoos and face must have registered because when the man spoke his tone was as deferential as it was possible to be between hiccoughs and sobs. “Honored … Chancellor … I … he was one of them, sir.…” He pointed a shaky hand to what looked like a broken pile of sticks on the ground. I scooped it up. Hard to see now that it was in pieces, but I thought perhaps it had been bunches of twigs shaped like a figure, and tied together with string. “He was going to do magic with it. Put a curse on us. Filthy earther, we caught him bringing it to the canal, probably to poison us all.”
“He’s a Silastian citizen,” Tain said. “And half your age. Here, look, see what you did? Look at his face. Four grown men beating on a boy. You disgusting cowards.” He looked up, dismissing the man on the ground. “Let’s get him to the hospital. Tomorrow I have some things to discuss with the Council.” His jaw was set. He was angry, angrier than I’d seen him in years.
Tears and snot ran down the man’s face. “Please, Honored Chancellor,” he cried out after us as we left. “I need the hospital, too!”
Tain looked down him, his face bereft of pity. “Then start crawling.”
The man’s sobs followed us around the corner.
A few moments later Tain stopped a woman heading to her shift on the wall, carrying a piece of laminar armor and a dented conical helmet. She stared at our burden, eyes so wide her eyebrows disappeared into her hair, and nodded as Tain instructed her.
“I’ll need the man with the knee injury escorted to the hospital by someone armed, then taken to jail once he’s been tended to,” he finished. “Tell the Order Guards if he gives them the names of his friends who were with him, I’ll want them tracked down and arrested as well.”
“One might show up to the hospital with bruising or swelling to the face,” Jov put in.
Tain nodded. “We can ask the physics to keep an eye out.”
She scurried off and we continued to the hospital, where we gave the boy to the care of a bearded physic in stained robes. “Here, lad, let’s get you down here,” he said, lifting him with practiced ease onto a pallet. The physic’s face was lined and weary as he checked over his patient and glanced up at us. “Fourth one this week,” he said. “I don’t suppose you caught anyone this time?”
“What do you mean, the fourth one?” Tain asked, brow tightening.
The physic felt along the boy’s arm, probing with competent fingers. “It’s all right,” he said when the boy jumped. “We’ll get that sorted.” He cleared his throat. “The fourth Darfri patient beaten half to death,” he said, meeting Tain’s gaze, chin high. “And I’m not the only one treating them. There must have been at least a dozen more in here this week. So, since I reported to one of your Order Guards that this was happening three days ago, I assume you are doing everything you can to track down those responsible. Honored Chancellor.” The last he tacked on as an afterthought.
Tain’s face was very still. “To be clear—other Silastian residents have come to the hospital, or been brought, after having been beaten. And those patients have all been Darfri. Do they tell you that?”
The physic scoffed. “No, Honored Chancellor. They won’t tell us a thing. The first one or two, we thought were drunken fights. The third was a woman and she was conscious enough to say a group of men attacked her on her way home from her shift at the wall. Didn’t seem likely she’d been in a fight at a bar. Nice lass, well spoken.” He turned back to the boy on the pallet, continuing his examination. “Then we got more, and more. They stopped talking to us. Started hiding their necklaces, if they were wearing them. Look at this.” He indicated a thin red line of abrasion at the back of the boy’s neck. “Oftentimes the attackers tear it off.”
“How is it I don’t know about this?” Tain’s question seemed aimed as much at the rest of us as the physic.
“Like I said, I went to the nearest guard tower on my way home earlier this week and reported the whole thing to the Order Guard there. But no one ever came to ask us about it.”
Right under our noses, our own citizens were being attacked, and no one had told the Chancellor about it. Servants failing to turn up to their posts, all my troubles finding any Darfri to talk to … perhaps even missing street people. We’d guessed they’d been frightened to admit their beliefs, but perhaps they were hiding from a much more immediate danger. I remembered the moppet I’d found, with its frayed little skirts and shawl, its face worn off. Lying alone in an abandoned house. Had the family fled, or been forced from their home?
Tain’s face had darkened, his jaw ticking with a tiny vein. “No one brought this to me,” he said, his voice taut as a drawn bowstring.
The physic looked him over, heedless of his casual discourtesy as only physics seemed capable. “I suppose they didn’t,” he agreed. “Perhaps there has been a gap in your reporting system, Honored Chancellor?”
Tain nodded, stiff. “Perhaps. Something I’ll be remedying. If you’ll excuse us, we’ll leave him in your care.”