Nile Builder: The Architect from the East

Chapter 94: Chapter 2: The Haven Expands — Every Life Gets a Floor

In the first days after the fighting, the Haven of Settled Lives north of the city was more crowded than it had ever been during the siege.

The lanes between the rows were full of pallets laid in the open, and the cooking fires went from first light to dark without pause. The city took the crowd in the way it had taken every other burden of the four months — by widening, and by counting.

The wounded came first. The casualties of the night at the south gate, more than the field hospital could hold, were moved into the shelter grounds. The prisoners came too — two thousand three hundred of them could not sit forever in the open beyond the walls, and those who had passed the screening were quartered, in part, under the colonnade of the old temple. And the new refugees came: on the east bank, whole villages lay between the two armies, and when the South Camp fell and the two fires came together, more families crossed the river by night, a boatload at a time, with whatever they had been able to carry. None of them asked whether the city would take them in; the city’s answer was written on the landing, in the queues and the lamps.

”This shelter,” Nefer said, arms on her hips in the middle of the grounds, ”has to move again.” She had said those words twice in four months, and both times the grounds had grown around her like a village growing around its well.

The newest arrivals came on the third night. The word had run ahead of them down the river; the lamps on the landing were lit before the first boat came in.

A-Tu’s boat made six crossings, back and forth over the black water, and each time it came in loaded. The boatmen worked in silence and handed the arrivals up the bank one by one; on a night landing no one asks questions, and no one tells lies either. Among those who stepped ashore was a blacksmith from Bridgehead village, carrying his livelihood on his shoulder — a hammer and a pair of tongs, wrapped in three layers of rag. There was a young wife whose belly was already showing, her husband supporting her the whole way; both of their sandals had worn through to nothing on the road. The husband’s arm stayed around her all the way up from the boat, and where the ground turned rough he put his own feet to the worst of it first. And there was a half-blind old man leading a thin dog, and around the dog’s neck, tied with a cord, hung half a roof tile — the last thing left of his house’s roof, kept where he could touch it. The dog walked close against his leg, reading the ground for him, and the old man’s hand never left the rope.

The chief officiant set up a table at the landing and registered them as they came, in his even, unhurried hand. He asked every family the same three questions — village, craft, kin still living — and wrote the answers down without comment, the way a man writes a debt he means to keep straight. When he came to the young wife, his brush paused. He asked: ”How many months?”

”Seven months and more.” Her husband said. ”The midwife in our village — the rebels pressed her into corvée. We... had nowhere to give birth.”

”There is a place.” The chief officiant said. He looked north, toward the city. ”Two rooms were set aside long ago, for families about to add a child. You have come in time for them.” He said it without fuss, the way a man states that a room has been kept ready.

The man stood still a moment — and then his knees began to fold. The chief officiant caught him by the arm and held him up. ”This city does not do that. Steady your wife first. The child in her belly is the first child of this city to be born in the middle of the war.”

”A good thing too.” A warden put in from the side. ”This city has not heard a newborn cry in months. A child is a happy thing. No matter how hard a city gets, it cannot press the happy things flat.” The words ran down the landing like a warmth, and the new arrivals straightened where they stood.

The adjutant of the city guard stood at the edge of the landing, and his face was still tight. When one batch of people had passed in, he caught Lu Zhu’s arm and spoke low: ”Chief Builder, the siege is lifted, and the people have only multiplied. East and north, twenty thousand rebels are still squatting in their camps. The city’s population is nearly three-tenths larger than it was during the siege.”

”Three-tenths more people,” Lu Zhu said, ”is three-tenths more shoulders. The villages of the east bank are villages we failed to hold — that is why these people had nowhere to go. Now they stand at our gate. Close the gate on them, and the South Camp was fought for nothing.”

”But the grain, the water, the shelters...”

”The grain — the south line’s boats come every day. The water — the wells are still there. The shelters —” Lu Zhu nodded toward the north of the city. ”Is Nefer not already out there drawing her lines?”

The adjutant said nothing more. He watched the line of people moving up from the landing for a long moment, and then he said, slowly: ”Then... take them. Take them all.”

”Take them all.” Lu Zhu said. ”We carried this city through four months. Can a few hundred more mouths break us?”

The adjutant looked at the line of people again — the blacksmith with his hammer, the old man with his dog, the wife with her belly — and said nothing more. Some of the tightness had gone out of his jaw.

On the day the work began, Nefer was on the open ground north of the city before dawn.

She crouched on the bare earth and drew lines with a shard of broken pottery. First the housing area, then the cooking area, then the water area. When the lines were drawn she stood up and looked at them, crouched again, and changed them. When she was done she pressed one firm circle into the earth at the edge of the drawing.

”Here.” She said. ”From now on, the Haven is not just a place to sleep. Eating has to have the shape of eating; drawing water has to have a place for drawing water; sickness has to have a door to go through. A person lives on three things — food, drink, and the curing of illness. When those three have their places, a shelter becomes a home.”

”Nefer,” Lu Zhu said from behind her, ”talk about materials first. Where does the timber come from?”

”Timber?” Nefer dusted the earth from her hands. ”From the dismantled South Camp. Palisades, wagons, beams and columns — a whole yard of it. That timber is good for walls; it is even better for shelters.”

”Kamon has marked that timber.” Lu Zhu said. ”Beams to beams, columns to columns, firewood to firewood.”

”Marked or not,” Nefer said, ”beams roof the shelters, columns hold them up, and firewood feeds the cookfires. Not one stick of his three words will I waste. You tell him — when Nefer takes timber, she keeps accounts for it!”

Lu Zhu smiled and said nothing. He knew that in the end he would have to stand between the two of them and split the pile, half and half.

The timber moved the same day.

From the lumber yard south of the city to the shelter grounds in the north was a walk across half the city, and the cart teams ran it trip after trip, like a line of ants carrying home a feast. On the carts rode the best of the dismantled camp — whole jujube beams, half-new pine columns, a few wagon sides still whole enough to use. Every load was counted at the yard as it left and counted again at the shelter as it arrived; the tally never left the driver’s hand. When a cart passed down the old street through the middle of the city, people came out of their doors to watch. The old men leaned on their doorposts and counted the beams as they went past, the way men count the returns of a harvest they had begun to doubt.

”That timber,” someone said, recognizing it, ”is from the rebels’ camp!”

”It is.” The driver said. ”Their camp belongs to us now. The palisades they built to pen men in — they roof our children’s shelters now. That is a fair trade.”

”Fair indeed.” The man said. ”That timber looks sturdier than the men who built with it.”

At the shelter grounds, Nefer supervised the unloading herself. She looked at every piece, ran her fingers over the grain, knocked on the faces of the boards. ”The rebels had a few good sticks in their hands, I’ll give them that. Used them for a cage. Wasted.”

”You said it.” A young laborer said, heaving a beam off the cart. ”Good timber that follows the wrong master just stands in the open and takes the rain. Now it has followed us home.”

”Less talk.” Nefer said. ”Unload faster. Three more carts behind this one.”

True to her word, Kamon came looking for her at noon. He came straight from the yard, his sleeves still white with sawdust, and he had brought the tally board with him — he meant business, and he meant it in numbers.

It was about the timber. He crouched at the edge of the yard and knocked his knuckles against the pile, a hard, even knocking. ”The south wall has to be patched. The city gate has to be repaired. A dozen of the plank bridges are worn past mending and have to be built new. The good timber has to go to the walls first.”

”Walls, walls, walls!” Nefer tucked her cloth bag into her belt. ”Walls are all you can see! Do the old people and children in the shelters sleep under your walls? When a beam breaks, whose head does it fall on?”

”A shelter beam will hold with second-grade timber.”

”Second-grade?” Nefer’s voice rose half a notch. ”Last time it was chopped straw you wanted to save. Now it is second-grade timber. I built the West Bank shelters with second-grade timber for three years — one big wind took down seven of them! And that was in peacetime! Now the war is not even over, and there are hundreds of people sleeping under these roofs — and you would give them second-grade beams?”

Kamon said nothing. He crouched there, weighing a piece of jujube wood in his hands, turning it over and over. At last he said: ”The good timber, seventy-thirty. Seventy to the walls, thirty to the shelters.”

”Fifty-fifty.” Nefer said.

”The walls stop arrows for the whole city.”

”The shelters stop the wind for the whole city.” Nefer said. ”Arrows kill people. So does the wind. Which is the heavier sin?”

The two of them stood there — one crouched, one with her arms on her hips — and neither would give way. Half the work crews had stopped to watch; even the men unloading the carts stood with their loads on their shoulders, listening. In the end Lu Zhu came over and led them both to the foot of the south wall, and pointed at the fresh patch in it. ”Kamon, the wall has to be mended. But think: who stands behind this wall? Soldiers — and citizens. Nefer, the shelters have to go up. But think: what protects the people sleeping in them? The wall. The wall keeps out the blade from outside; the shelter keeps out the wind from inside. Why are you arguing about which comes first?”

He paused. ”The timber is split half and half. But every stick of it is entered in the accounts — which beam went where, which board mended what, written plainly. We survived four months; we will not tear a crack between our own people over our own timber. One ledger for the wall, one ledger for the shelters — and when the war is over, both go into the same archive, because both built the same city.”

Nefer snorted, and nodded first. Kamon crouched a while longer, and nodded too. As he left he threw one line over his shoulder: ”I keep my own accounts. When you want timber, take it from the yard. What you leave behind, send back to me.”

”Who wants your yard!” Nefer shouted after him. ”From now on that yard of yours is my storehouse!”

”Storehouses get locked!” Kamon said without turning.

”Locked! Everything in it is for the city!”

The two words went their separate ways — one man walking east, one woman walking west, with a whole lumber yard between them. Lu Zhu stood in the middle, shook his head, and smiled. He had expected the quarrel, and he had counted on it ending this way; between two such people, an argument that ends in two ledgers is as good as a peace treaty.

The shelters went up in three days. The frames stood by the second evening, and the felt went on by the third; the crews passed the courses from hand to hand and never once dropped a board.

Not all of them were new. Beside the old kiln grounds in the north of the city, the twenty ruined houses converted the time before had made room for more, and the conversion went on: roofs that had fallen were fitted with new beams, walls that let the wind through were daubed with fresh mud. The new shelters kept the old form — three mud-brick walls, a roof of reed matting over felt, one family to one shelter. But this time, a wide lane had been left between the rows, and Nefer had a name for it: the stretcher lane.

”The lanes we had before were wide enough for people.” She said. ”This one has to be wide enough for a stretcher. When an old person falls sick at night and has to be carried out, the carrying must not jam on the way.”

The two birthing rooms were made ready on the first day. Their walls were thickened by one course, the windows faced south, and the floors were laid with three layers of dry straw. The straw was fresh-cut; its smell filled the rooms, clean and sharp, the smell of a beginning. Nefer led the young couple in and showed them round. The husband kept one hand on his wife’s elbow the whole way, as if the ground of this strange city might still give way under her. ”These rooms were the kiln workers’ quarters in the old days. Thick walls — warm in winter. There is no better place in the city for a lying-in.” She looked at the wife’s belly and added: ”When the pains start, call out. There is someone at the kitchen every day, and someone at the medical point every day. This city does not lack hands for birthing.”

The wife touched the new wall, and her eyes went red. She pressed her palm flat against the mud-brick and held it there, as if the wall could feel her. ”If our village house had walls like this...”

”It will, one day.” Nefer said. ”The timber of this wall, the bricks of this wall, the roof of this wall — how it is laid, how it is pressed — I have people drawing it all down. When you go back to your village, build it the same way. The child in your belly will grow up under a house like this one.”

The birthing was entrusted to Sister Wei that same evening.

Sister Wei was a medical worker from the western line, and she had seen births before. She looked the young wife over, felt her belly with careful hands, and said: ”The position is right. But the mother is worn out — she needs feeding. Your village, coming out as you did, you all went hungry on the road.” She wrote a list and handed it to Nefer. ”Dates, eggs, thick porridge. Three meals a day, not one to be skipped.”

”Her meals come out of the kitchen first.” Nefer said. ”This city owes that child a steady arrival in the world.”

”No debt.” Sister Wei said. ”I will have the hot water and the clean cloths ready, and clean reed mats besides. When that cry comes out, the whole city will hear it.”

That night, the half-blind old man squatted at the door of his newly assigned shelter and took the half tile down from around the dog’s neck.

The tile was broken, one corner gone. He set it on the lintel above the door and adjusted it for a long time, until it sat straight. He set it by touch, running his fingers along its edges, for his eyes could no longer be trusted with straightness. The thin dog lay at his feet, its tail sweeping the ground in slow strokes.

”Grandfather,” the child from the next shelter asked, ”what is that broken tile doing on your door?”

”It guards the door.” The old man said. ”It is the last piece left of my roof at home. It knows our family. As long as it is here, the family has not scattered.”

”Where is your family, then?”

The old man did not answer at once. He reached out and touched the tile, then touched the dog’s head. The dog gave a low whimper and buried its muzzle in its paws.

”They are on the road.” He said at last. ”The road is long. Slowly, they will all come back along it.”

The child asked nothing more. He went into his own shelter and came out again, and set a small stone under the tile, wedging it firm. ”There,” he said. ”Now it will not fall even in the wind.”

The old man stared a moment — and then he grinned, a grin with half a lifetime of sourness in it. ”Ay. Good.” The dog, as if it understood, thumped its tail once against the ground.

In the middle of the shelter grounds, three new things had risen.

The first was the common kitchen. Steam stood over its roof from dawn to dusk, and the smell of boiling grain went downwind across the whole grounds. The old cooking shed had grown from eight cauldrons to twelve; the cart sides from the dismantled camp had been joined into a dozen long tables, set in two rows with a passage down the middle. At mealtimes people entered from the west end and left by the east, bowls in hand, and no one jostled anyone.

”This is copied from the field hospital.” Nefer said. ”Sickness has a flow; eating has to have a flow too. When people crowd, porridge spills. Spilled porridge is grain — and grain is life.”

The flue ran into the old kiln chimney. Lu Zhu came to look at it once, crouched behind the stoves, and squinted up the flue mouth for a long while. ”This flue runs northeast,” he said at last. ”That is right. The smoke will not blow back over the shelter grounds or into people’s faces. But the mouth has to be half a span wider — twelve cauldrons make half again the smoke of eight. Leave the mouth narrow, and this kitchen will be choked with it.”

”Wider, then.” Nefer said. ”We chisel it tomorrow.” She said it the way she said everything about the grounds — as a promise, not a hope.

Outside, the old kiln chimney stood black against the dusk, waiting for the wider mouth.

The second new thing was the clean-water point.

At the east and west ends of the shelter grounds stood three great water jars each — jars set on stones at the bottom, covered with lids, and on the lids the water-tokens lay pressed flat. The tokens were clay, baked hard, one for each household; a household without a token waited its turn. Water was carried from the city’s wells and the jars were filled one by one. The well-ropes of the city had grown new calluses on new hands; the refugees learned the wells the way they had learned the roads — by walking them. The carrying was rotated among the able-bodied refugees, and Nefer had laid down one rule for the carriers: the first carrying of the day goes to the sick and the birthing mothers; the second carrying goes to the old people and the children; only after that to everyone else.

”When water is short,” she said, ”this rule is life itself. When water is plentiful, this rule is the people’s hearts. When the hearts are in place, it counts for more than a full jar.” The carriers learned the order in a day, the way soldiers learn the order of a march — by seeing what happens when it is broken.

Beside the jars, a seep trench had been newly dug. Lu Zhu waded the length of it in his bare feet, feeling the grade, and said: ”Three fingers of fall to the length. Steeper, and it scours out the mud; gentler, and the water stands. Three fingers, no more.” He made the foreman lay a handful of straw across the mouth of the trench. ”Strain it. Spilled water carries grit. Grit gets into the trench, and in ten days the trench is blocked.”

The third new thing was the medical point.

It was the smallest of the three, and in its way the most important; a shelter that cannot doctor its people is only a roof.

It stood at the east end of the kitchen — a larger shelter, divided in two: the examination table in front, the medicine cabinet behind. The table faced south to borrow the daylight; the cabinet stood a half foot off the floor on bricks, so the air could pass under it. Imset came every three days with his medicine boy; on the other days, Neht sat there. The old apothecary had moved his small bronze knives, his pots of salve, and his triage notebook in, piece by piece, as carefully as a man moving house. His hands, at seventy, were the oldest things in the room and the steadiest.

”My pharmacy,” Neht said, ”guarded the city for half my life. Now it has a branch office.”

The words ”branch office” made the refugees in the queue laugh, and laughter at a medical point is half a cure. A woman who had come in holding a feverish child came out smiling: ”In our village, if a child burned with fever at night, we ran thirty li before dawn. Here, it is twenty steps from my door.” She paused. ”This city is more of a home than our village was.”

”Then let it be one.” Neht said. ”A place that looks like a home is a place where people dare to name their sickness.”

The woman carried the child out into the evening light; the fever had not broken, but she walked lighter than she had come in.

The young man A-Shi had his younger brother’s leg dressed at the medical point that day.

A-Shi was the one who had carried his brother down from the battlefield on the night the South Camp fell, walking the whole way with the boy on his back and never once setting him down. Neht unwound the old cloth and looked at the wound. ”Not deep. But it bled much, and it went a whole night untended. Half a day earlier, and it would have cost you a day of pain.” He laid on fresh salve and bound the leg again. ”Lie still seven days. Do not move it. This leg still has to walk for your elder brother.”

”The roads he walked for me were long enough.” A-Shi said, low. ”This time, let me walk for him.”

”Then walk for him.” Neht said. ”When the medicine is done, carry him home on your back. Your father is at home, waiting for both of you.”

A-Shi did not answer. He only looked at his brother’s leg, and nodded.

The medicine cabinet was arranged by Shafi.

It was an old cabinet, only waist-high, and she spent a whole afternoon on it. She had fetched it up from the granary’s spare stores on the back of a cart herself, and she treated it as if it were the most important piece of furniture in the city. Two bricks under the feet, the doors remade into small compartments, and each compartment pasted with a label: the styptics together, the antidiarrheals together, the wound salves together. Dry medicines on the upper shelves, wet ones below; anything that might taint its neighbors was hung by itself in a grass rope from the corner of the cabinet. The grass-rope trick had come from the western line with Sister Wei; she had taught it to Shafi on the first day.

”The cabinet is small,” she said as she worked, ”but the rules cannot be small. Damp rises from the ground. Two bricks under the feet are two lives saved. Medicine is dead; damp is alive. This cabinet has to keep dead medicine sleeping above living damp.”

”Girl Shafi,” Neht said, watching her, ”did you learn this from the granaries?”

”I did.” Shafi said. ”Grain fears damp; medicine fears it more. Damp grain means empty bellies. Damp medicine means lost lives. So this cabinet has to be kept more carefully than a granary.”

”Well kept, then.” Neht said. ”I have minded medicines half my life, and it never occurred to me they could be minded this way.”

”From now on,” Shafi said, ”all the medicines of Egypt will be minded this way.” She said it without looking up, the way she said everything she had already decided.

The felt came on Meru’s boats.

It came folded in great square bundles, dry and smelling of sheep and wool-oil, and the whole dock knew what it was before the first bundle was over the side.

The new shelters needed roofing, the old roofs needed refelting, and the count fell short by a hundred-odd sheets. Nefer had been about to ask the city’s households to spare what they had when Meru heard of it and simply added a line to the fleet’s cargo list: the West Bank traders’ guild would gather fifty sheets on the next trip, and the new capital’s storehouses would release fifty more. On the afternoon of the fifth day the boats put in, and the felt went onto the roofs the same evening. The women of the grounds held the sheets down against the wind while the men nailed; it went fast.

”Merchant Meru,” Nefer called from the landing, ”how do you want this paid for?”

”Paid for?” Meru knocked out his pipe and laughed. ”Enter it in the books. When the war is over and the Haven is still standing, we will talk about money.”

”And if it falls?”

”If it falls,” Meru said, ”then come and find me — my felt has stood against four months of wind; a few rains will not rot it. And if it does, you may count this felt as the city buying me a smoke.”

”You and your boasting.” Nefer said.

”Boasting?” Meru shook a sheet of felt open until it cracked in the air. ”Feel this weave. New capital felt, beaten out thread by thread by the women of the West Bank. Is it better than yours from the western line, or not?”

Nefer took it, felt it between her fingers, and nodded. ”Better. Almost too good — wasted on a roof.”

”Not wasted.” Meru said. ”However good the felt is, it is not too good for a roof over people’s heads.” He paused. ”You built the West Bank shelters to last three years. Build this Haven to last three, five, ten. Roof it for ten years’ weather.” He said it without bargaining, which from Meru was the highest form of generosity.

Nefer said nothing to that. She took the sheet of felt herself and pressed it down over the roof of the first new shelter, with her own hands. The felt settled under her palms the way a thing settles when it has been well made.

The drainage and the latrines were dealt with next.

The whole floor of the shelter grounds was regraded — higher in the west, lower in the east, so that the water ran east. The seep trenches behind the shelters were deepened by half a foot and led into the old ditch beyond the grounds. The three latrine pits were given roofs, and new wooden boards stood beside them, carrying the same four words as before: Cover the earth after use. The boards were repainted every tenday, and Nefer checked them herself, walking the row with a lamp.

”These things,” Nefer told the women, ”look dirty, but they are the roots of the shelter grounds. Rot the roots, and the newest shelter is a bad place to live. You mind the cooking, the shelters, the needlework. Add one more duty — mind the cleanliness. If a doorstep is dirty, I will show no mercy!”

The women laughed and answered her. A young wife said, low, with a smile: ”Sister Nefer, you have been threatening ’no mercy’ for four months now, and we have never once seen you truly fierce with anyone.”

”The fierceness is saved up.” Nefer said. ”When the war is over, I will deal with all of you, one by one.”

The whole shelter grounds laughed at that, and the laughter was warm in the wind. Even the children laughed, though they did not know why.

The work-tallies were begun on the first day.

Nefer had the wardens whittle a heap of small wooden tablets, half a palm wide, each with a hole bored through it and a cord threaded through the hole. Every worker hung one around his neck. The tablets knocked together as the men walked, a small dry music that the grounds came to know. For every day of work, the warden cut one notch into the tablet. Ten notches, and the tablet was worth one sheng of grain. The wardens cut the notches deep, so that a day’s work could not be rubbed out by weather or by argument.

”This is not wages.” Nefer said. ”It is counting. The war is not over, and grain and money are both tight. But your strength — the city is entering it in its books. Notch by notch, it is cut into your tablet, and cut into the city’s accounts. When the war is done, one notch will be one sheng, and not one will be lost.”

”Aunt Nefer,” a young man asked, ”if I work until the war is over, can I earn a watertight room for my mother?”

”You can.” Nefer said. ”Work a hundred days, and that is a hundred notches. A hundred notches will put a room over her head sounder than a newly built one.”

The young man hung the tablet straight around his neck. ”Then from today, I will come every day.” He said it with his hand already on the tablet, the way a man grips a tool he means to use.

The work accounts were joined to Mery’s grain accounts on the seventh day.

Nefer carried an armful of notched boards to the official granary, tied in two bundles with rope, and set them down on the table so that they landed without a sound. Mery went through them one by one, counting the notches, then worked a row of counting-rods. He worked them twice — he worked everything twice. ”The shelter grounds’ workers, counting the prisoner work-teams, turned out more than two thousand one hundred work-days this tenday. Ten notches to a sheng, that is more than two hundred sheng of grain. It comes out of the south line’s account — not from the city’s rations, but from the grain set aside for work.”

”From now on,” Mery said, adding a column to the ledger, ”’work-grain’ is listed separately. Those who work eat work-grain; the people’s rations are not touched. The workers eat full, and the idle have no cause for envy — the accounts are open for everyone to see.”

”Your method is good.” Nefer said. ”On the western line we suffered for having no accounts. Those who worked drank thin porridge, and those who shirked drank thick. In the end, no one would work.”

”So,” Mery said, ”the tablets belong to the workers, and the accounts belong to everyone. The city gives grain; the grain buys work; the work builds the city. Only when the circle turns is the city alive.” He drew the circle in the air with his counting-rod, once, and the men laughed — but they remembered it.

Work was needed everywhere. Dismantling and clearing needed hands; mending the wall needed hands; hauling grain needed hands; carrying water needed hands. Every morning the foremen stood at the gate of the grounds with their lists, and every list was full by mid-morning. Nefer sorted the able-bodied of the shelter grounds by their build: the strong-legged went to the work sites, the good swimmers went to the landing to unload boats, and the rest stayed in the grounds to carry water, weave matting, and make mud-bricks. The women were not idle either — some minded the cooking, some the needlework, and the refugee women newly arrived were put into the teams on their first day. No one asked where a woman had come from; they asked what she could do, and set her to it.

”In this city,” Nefer said, ”no one eats without working. The old mind the children; the children gather firewood. As long as this city stands, everyone has a place to stand in it.”

The prisoners were put to work on the fourth day.

The order had gone out the day before, and the news ran through the prisoners like wind through dry reeds: work, not punishment.

All two thousand three hundred of them. The chief officiant went through them with the wardens, man by man: which village they came from, whether they had farmed, what craft they knew. The sorting took the day; by dusk, every man had a name on a roll and a team to report to in the morning. When the asking was done, the prisoners were divided into three groups: those who knew woodwork and masonry went into the work-teams; those who had farmed went into the clearing-and-hauling teams; and those who knew nothing — the half-grown boys — were set to helping in the kitchens.

”Question them closely.” The chief officiant told the wardens. ”These are not criminals. They are men who took the wrong road. Men who took the wrong road can be led back. This city has to be rebuilt, and every kind of work needs hands.” He said it the way he said everything — quietly, and as if it had already been decided.

The prisoner work-teams’ first day was spent dismantling the remains of the South Camp. The prisoners came out in columns, unarmed, and the city’s guards walked at the edges without once drawing a blade; it was the oddest escort the grounds had ever seen. They bent over their own camp, picking it apart — half a palisade, a drum, a pot with a chipped rim. As they worked, an elderly prisoner who had been a carpenter planed a camp gate board that was half burned, and said: ”This board could be made into a shelter door.”

”Make it, then.” The foreman said. ”When it is done, fit it to the medical point.”

”I...” The carpenter rubbed his hands. ”I only said it in passing.”

”Say it in passing, do it in passing.” The foreman said. ”In this city, the men who only eat in passing died long ago.”

The carpenter said nothing more. The next day, the medical point had a new door, its face planed smooth and its hinges set true. He squatted in front of it for a long time, looking at it; when he stood up, his back was straighter than it had been the day before. The door faced the morning, and the light came through its opening and fell across the threshold.

The boy whose face was still smeared with pot-black was set to the kitchens. The chief officiant asked his name; he said it was A-He, from Wheat Village on the east bank, fourteen years old. The chief officiant wrote it down and said: ”A-He, you tend the kitchen fire. Tending a fire is nothing to be ashamed of. Four months ago, the fires of this city were kept burning by children too.”

A-He nodded, crouched before the stove, and stirred the fire brighter. The flame lit his face; the layers of pot-black were slowly streaked into runnels by his sweat. He did not wipe his face; the fire needed feeding, and feeding it was his work now.

”Build the fire up,” the woman who minded the kitchen said. ”Today we steam date cakes. The date cake is the first dish the Haven can be proud of.” The dates for it had come from the old seller at the market lane, who had parted with his last sack only when he was told who the cakes were for.

”Auntie,” A-He asked, ”who eats the date cake?”

”The wounded eat it, and the soldiers on the walls, and the workers.” The woman said. ”And your prisoner team gets a share too. Eat your fill, and you will have strength to clear the grounds south of the city.”

A-He said nothing; he fed the fire stick by stick. The flame rose, and the sweet smell of dates rode the smoke halfway down the street.

When the date cakes came out of the steamer, the woman who minded the kitchen broke one in half and pressed it into A-He’s hands. ”Taste it. How does it compare with your Wheat Village cakes?”

A-He bit into it. He chewed, and as he chewed his head sank lower and lower. After a long moment he said, in a small voice: ”My mother steamed them just like this.”

The woman said nothing. She pressed the whole cake into his hands. A-He held it, squatting by the stove, and ate it mouthful by small mouthful. As he ate, the tears came, and fell on the cake; and he ate the whole cake, tears and all. The other children of the kitchen watched him without speaking; no one laughed.

”When it is finished,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his hand, ”I will go back to tending the fire.”

The kitchen woman watched him a moment longer, then turned back to her pots without a word.

The blacksmith of Bridgehead village found his way to the city’s eastern smithy on his second day in the city.

He had spent the first day carrying timber at the lumber yard, and his hands had not rested in years; they did not get one now.

The old smith was there with his two apprentices, forging — grappling hooks and pry bars, stocked up for the next battle. The two apprentices made room at the anvil without being asked. The Bridgehead blacksmith stood at the door a while, watching; then he unwrapped the rags from around his hammer and said: ”Master smith, let me lend a hand. No wages — just a meal is enough.”

The old smith looked up at him, and then at the hammer in his hands. ”A good hammer. How old is it?”

”Three generations.” The Bridgehead blacksmith said. ”My grandfather passed it to my father, and my father to me.”

”A three-generation hammer,” the old smith said, ”does not make bad work.” He made room by the forge. ”Come. The south wall needs nails, the north gate needs hinges, the landing needs hooks — we are short of hands.”

The Bridgehead blacksmith held his hammer to his chest and stepped into the smithy. The fire burned red, and lit the two old men — one old, one new — as they hammered together, ding by dong, until dark. When they stopped, he looked up and wiped the sweat from his face. ”This fire burns brighter than the one in our village.”

”Bright.” The old smith said. ”All the iron of this city is fired for the defense of the city. Every nail you strike puts a little more strength into the wall.” He paused. ”In your village, who will forge your door-rings?”

”I will.” The Bridgehead blacksmith said. ”When I go back, I will forge them new.”

”When you forge them,” the old smith said, ”carry a little of the color of my fire in them. Good iron has to be born in a good fire.”

That night the two smiths knocked off work and squatted side by side at the smithy door, sharing a pipe in the warmth left by the forge. The one red point of the pipe coal glowed and dimmed in the dark, like two villages across the river passing fire to each other. In the morning both men would be at their forges again; the fire between them would not go out.

Lu Zhu came to inspect the shelters on the evening of the fifth day.

He came on foot, without escort, the way he had moved through the city all through the four months of the siege.

He walked slowly, looking at the shelters one by one. When he came to the new row, he crouched and worked his fingers into the earth at the foot of a wall — the dew had been heavy these nights, and the wall-foot takes the damp worst of all.

”Bedded.” The foreman behind him said. ”As you ordered the last time — a layer of broken brick and pebbles.”

”And the roof?” Lu Zhu looked up.

”Felt below, matting above.” The foreman said. ”Nefer watched over the change herself. She said the rain strikes the matting first, and only what soaks through reaches the felt. Done the other way round, the matting sticks to the felt, and the felt leaks at the seams.”

Lu Zhu nodded, straightened up, and looked over the little field of shelters. The shelters were new, the walls were new — but the wall-feet were bedded level, the roofs pressed firm, the drainage running clean. Four months of craft, all of it in the small places.

”Nefer,” he said suddenly, ”these shelters of yours are more than shelters from now on.”

”What are they, then?” Nefer asked.

”They are the pattern.” Lu Zhu said. ”From now on, when the villages of all Egypt raise shelters in lean years, and build houses after disasters, they will build to this pattern. How the kitchen is laid out, where the water points are set, how the examination table faces, how wide the stretcher lane is kept — every one of them needs a standard. Keep the drawings complete. When the war is over, this will be the most important page of the Safety Standards for the Building of Dwellings.”

”Laws again.” Nefer said. ”You officials — everything out of your mouths is a law.”

”It is not a law.” Lu Zhu said. ”It is giving people a place to fall back to. You saw it yourself in the four months of the siege — in the good houses, people suffered less; in the bad houses, one fire took everything. From now on, let no house in the world be a bad one.”

Nefer was silent. She looked at the field of shelters for a long moment, and then she said: ”The drawings — I will have the wardens measure and record them. Every day. On the day you pass your law, I will carry the drawings there myself.”

”No need to carry them.” Lu Zhu said. ”While the drawings exist, and you exist, the law will stand.”

He walked on along the rows; Nefer stood looking after him a moment, then crouched and went back to her drawings.

Before dark, a queue had formed at the registration table — a long one, and still being joined.

The adjutant and Mery had set up a table on the open ground south of the city, with two registers on it: one headed ”City Guard,” one headed ”Grain Transport.” Two brushes, two inkstones, and between them a lamp already lit against the dusk. The able-bodied of the shelter grounds had come, and the returned prisoners, and the idle laborers of the city. Someone had carried the word to the grounds at noon; by the time the tables were set, the queue had already turned twice.

”Let it be said plainly first.” The adjutant stood behind the table. ”Those who guard the city go up on the walls. Those who carry grain go out on the road. Both roads look the rebels in the face. Whoever is afraid may go home now.”

He waited, giving the words time to work; the queue held still.

No one moved.

The first man to step forward was A-Shi. The crowd parted for him the way a crowd parts for a man it has watched carry his brother through a gate. The fresh cut on his left cheek had not yet closed. He walked to the register headed ”Grain Transport” and pressed his thumbprint to it.

”My name is A-Shi.” He said. ”My brother is still lying in the medical point. I will walk the grain road in his place.” The ink of his print was still wet when the next man stepped up behind him.

When the print was pressed, he glanced back over the crowd. Behind them all, the old warden stood holding his lantern, silent; he said nothing — he only nodded to his son. The adjutant did not hurry him; some prints are worth waiting for.

”Good.” The adjutant said. ”Next.”

A-Tu was not recruiting watermen from that line. He had his own way of choosing men: he did not look at their legs, he looked at their hands. He had read hands all his life at the river landings; a palm that has held a pole for ten years cannot hide it. Each volunteer held out his hands, and A-Tu looked at the palms one by one. When he came to the fourth man, he took hold of the young man’s hand and said: ”These calluses sit at the base of your fingers. You are a boatman.”

”I am.” The young man said. ”My father was a fisherman. I have been on boats since I could walk.”

”Being on boats is not enough.” A-Tu handed him the bamboo pole. ”Push twice — let me see your feet.”

The young man took the pole, planted it on the ground, and turned on it with the push. A-Tu nodded. ”Feet rooted. Taken.”

The young man’s chest rose; he had been holding his breath.

A burly man pushed forward, not satisfied, and spread his hands wide. ”I want a place on a boat too! My strength is worth three men!”

A-Tu squeezed his palm and shook his head. ”These calluses sit at the base of your thumb. You are a carter. A carter is a fine hand with a cart — but not on a boat. On a boat, the first swell will throw you off balance, and you will take half the boat down with you.” He paused. ”Join the grain transport. A grain cart is where they need you.”

The man opened his mouth, then said: ”Then... fine. Cart it is.” He had meant it as a surrender; it came out sounding like a decision.

The prints on the registers multiplied, one after another. Old men and young men; men from the city and men from the shelter grounds; men who, the day before, had still been squatting outside the walls. They queued, pressed their prints, and no one spoke much. The brush dipped and rose; name by name the two rolls filled, and the evening lengthened over the tables. The evening sun came from the west and laid a golden light over the ground before the table. The light ran down the queue and over the two registers, and for a moment the whole ground looked like a harvest field.

”Master Mery,” the adjutant said, low, ”there are more men than I thought.”

”The more the better.” Mery said. ”With more men, the south line’s boats and the north line’s carts can all be kept running.”

”But the grain?” The adjutant said. ”More men — will the grain not run shorter?”

”You have forgotten.” Mery said. ”This city is not under siege anymore. The grain comes up the river, and through the south gate, and by the open road. The more men there are, the more men there are to carry it; the more men carry it, the more alive the grain becomes.” He paused. ”Before, more men meant more mouths to feed. Now, more men means more shoulders to carry.”

The adjutant looked at the queue again, and this time what he saw in it was not mouths.

Lu Zhu was the last to leave the registration ground.

He stood behind the table and looked at the two registers. The thumbprints crowded one against another — red prints, black prints, some dark and some light. The wind came and lifted the pages, and let them fall.

”Chief Builder,” the adjutant said, ”the hearts of this city are straighter than its walls.”

”It is not that the hearts are straight.” Lu Zhu said. ”It is that the people have somewhere to stand. When a man has a roof, and the hope of food, and a door to go to when he is sick — only then will he stake his life on a city.” He looked up at the sky. ”Settle these people well, and you have driven the roots deep for the next battle. Roots deep, and the city cannot fall.”

He turned north. The night was coming up from the east, and in the Haven of Settled Lives the lamps were lighting, one after another. The lamps joined into a sheet of light — denser, and warmer, than the torches on the city wall. He stood a moment watching them, then went in.

The chief officiant came after dark.

He went first to the peace boards. The old three lines had been erased — the whitewash laid on thick, so that no ghost of the old words showed through — and new lines written in their place: one said ”The siege is lifted”; one said ”Work-grain established”; one said ”The shelter medical point is manned day and night.” Those who could not read had the words read to them. When the reading was done, someone in the crowd asked: ”Chief Officiant, what is this ’work-grain’?”

”It is grain for the people who work.” The chief officiant said. ”Those who work carry the work-tally; the notches on the tally are exchanged for grain. Strength is not spent for nothing, and lives are not risked for nothing.”

”Then... those of us who cannot work?”

”Those who cannot work,” the chief officiant said, ”have their own way of working. The city has counted it out: the old mind the children, the small gather firewood, and the women’s hands have not stopped for a moment. Every bowl of porridge in this city has a share in it for you.”

The questioner said nothing more. He smacked his lips and said: ”Then it is settled. Tomorrow I gather firewood, and notch my tally too.” Some of the stiffness had gone out of his shoulders as he said it.

”It will be notched.” The chief officiant said. ”This city keeps its count.”

The night patrol came up from the south of the city, lamp in hand, and walked the rounds to the north. When they reached the Haven, the chief officiant had the lamp carried one extra circuit through the shelter grounds. Where a door-curtain hung open, they tucked it closed; where a child slept outside the shelter, they carried it back in, gently. When they came to the half-blind old man’s shelter, he stopped and looked at the lintel: the half tile, and the small stone wedged under it. He stood a moment, then lifted his lamp and let the light fall on the tile.

”This tile,” he said to the men of the patrol, ”is the heaviest brick in the whole shelter grounds.”

”Why?”

”Because under it,” the chief officiant said, ”there is a word pressing down: ’home.’”

The men of the patrol did not understand, and did not ask. They only lifted their lamp higher, so that the shadow of the half tile lay steady on the shelter door. Behind them, the tile kept its watch on the lintel, and the small stone kept its place beneath it.

South of the city, the works were creeping east these days.

The lines moved a little every day, the way a siege moves — by lengths no single morning can measure and no single week can deny. Kamon had drawn off half a company of craftsmen and, with the men of the army camp, was pushing the lines Seb had drawn, little by little, toward the East Camp and the North Camp. Shallow trenches were deepened; low walls were raised; the watch posts were re-surveyed at half-li intervals. The men went out before dawn and came back at dusk, and not one of them spoke a word about being tired. They worked by lengths and courses, the craftsmen’s measure of a day, and a finished length needed no report.

”What is this for?” A newly enrolled prisoner asked.

”We are changing the pen for the rebels.” The foreman said. ”When a pigpen is too narrow, the pig grows frantic. When a man’s pen is too narrow, the man scatters. When this pen has been drawn up to their very gates, there will be no need to fight — they will run out of it by themselves.”

”Those who run out...”

”Those who run out are brought to the landing, and there is porridge and work for them.” The foreman said. ”You have seen for yourself how this city takes people in.”

The prisoner said nothing more. He bent to his work, spade after spade, digging deeper than anyone. His spade had found its answer; he did not look up again until dark.

When the work stopped that night, Kamon crouched at the edge of the newly cut trench and knocked his knuckles against its earthen wall. The earth was damp, and cold. He scooped up a handful and squeezed it, feeling its grain. ”Give this earth two days of drying, and it will pound into a wall.”

”A wall for what?” A craftsman beside him asked.

”For arrow-screens.” Kamon said. ”Wherever they shrink their pen to, our arrows have to follow.” He stood up and brushed the earth from his hands. ”Four months ago, this pen was drawn around the city to keep us in. Now it is drawn to keep others in for us. The same earth, the same trenches — just turned the other way round.” The same words, the same work — and yet the whole meaning of the trench had changed sides.

He looked east. In the night, the fires of the East Camp flickered under the northern sky, a few tilted stars blown by the wind.

”Wait,” he said, low. ”Their turn to lie awake is coming.” He said it without triumph, the way a builder states a schedule.

At the Zi hour, Nefer was still walking the shelter grounds.

Her lamp burned low; she had refilled it once already, and she would refill it again before the rounds were done. She checked shelter by shelter — the door-curtains, the stove mouths, the wall-feet — the way she had checked them every night of the siege: by hand, by smell, by the way the warm air met her face. When she came to the birthing room, she lifted the curtain a little and looked in: the young wife was asleep, her breathing even. Nefer drew back and tucked the curtain corner in. When she came to the half-blind old man’s shelter, the thin dog raised its head at the sound of her, saw who it was, and laid its head back on its paws.

”Sleep.” Nefer said, low. ”I am walking the watch for you in this city.” She had said those words to every door in the grounds, and she meant them for every door.

At the end of her rounds she came to the tally board. Dozens of small wooden tablets hung in a row on it, knocking softly against one another in the wind. She looked at them one by one, counting the notches: some had one, some three, and the fullest already had five.

”Five.” She said, and smiled. ”Five more days, and you will be the first to exchange for grain.”

She reached out and straightened a tablet that the wind had knocked crooked. The tablets swayed in the wind, making a small sound like the grounds counting their own days in the night.

”Four months ago,” she said to the row of tablets, ”the refugees of this city came in lying down. Now they all stand up to work.” She paused. ”A city that lies down cannot be held. A city that stands up — that one can be held.”

Far off, from the direction of the south wall, came the very faint sound of hammering. It was the night shift of craftsmen, fitting new hinges to the city gate. The sound came and stopped, stopped and came, answering the tamping in the shelter grounds across half the city, question for answer. The two sounds kept each other company across the dark, and neither stopped until the night was old.

Nefer listened, tucked her cloth bag into her belt, and walked on. The night was thick — but wherever she walked, the lamps lit up behind her, one by one.

In the night, the tamping in the Haven of Settled Lives sounded again.

A new row of shelters was being founded, by moonlight. The craftsmen had lit no torches — they were afraid of the eyes east and north. The rebels’ watch-fires still showed on the far ridges, and a torch on this ground would have been seen and counted. The moonlight was thin; it laid the workers’ shadows faint and blurred over the ground. The rammer fell, and rose, and fell again, a muffled beating, like the city breathing hard in the dark.

”Put your backs into it.” Nefer’s voice drifted on the wind. ”This row is for the people still coming. Before dawn, they must have a roof.”

No one answered. Only the ramming went on, stroke after stroke, sinking steadily into the earth.

(End of Chapter 2)