Hamar wiped his mouth on his sleeve and darted over beside the door where they couldn’t see him. When would these people be coming for him, and why? What should he do?
Was there no one of them who would treat him like a child, – even in the market there had always been a few people who’d saved hard bread for him, looked the other way when he took an apple. But this place was not like there. Still, the tray of food…
Much time passed, his gut happily gurgling. After awhile he also ate the lumps of chewed beeswax he’d left on the side of the platter. He reasoned it must be early evening aboveground by then, Al Musar slipping away into night. Now the room again began to feel menacing with a private life of its own. He sat nervously picking at his toes, studying every inch of the place.
Finally someone in clacking shoes came up to the door and spoke to Adept before peering through the squares. The door opened to let in a short old man. Hamar stood up straight and watched his every move.
The man dropped his hood to reveal a pink face with a tangle of tattoos, very faded, and hairy white eyebrows that went high on his forehead like two long-haired goats rearing at each other across the bridge of his nose. Under one of them an eyelid drooped over a dead eye.
The old man smiled a peg-toothed smile, one that looked genuinely pleased, and he bowed. Then he stiffly knelt in front of Hamar, a smell of incense whooshing up from his garments. He uncorked a little leather bottle he took from under his sash, and motioned for Hamar to sit.
The man poured out golden oil on Hamar’s feet and sang short words as he began massaging it in. It was bewildering to the boy, as personal as a grandfather’s touch yet formal at the same time. The oil made the skin of his feet feel loose and warm, and softened his horn-hard soles. Then the man rubbed them perfectly clean with a cloth. This was goodness, of a sort, a genteel courtesy, but nevertheless Hamar sat rigid.
Then the little man stood and produced from a deep pocket two of the richest shoes Hamar had ever seen! They were of crimson and scarlet leather, tooled in gold and curved to a point, such as bankers wore who rode in litters instead of walking. Hamar had never worn shoes, at least not since his childhood sandals finally fell apart. The man cupped the shoes onto Hamar’s feet.
Hamar stood up. The shoes fit as snug as carob pods. They matched the richness of his new clothes, and in that moment it seemed to Hamar as if he’d stepped out of beggarhood itself.
The old man went behind him, still quietly singing some words, and gripped Hamar’s matted braid in his gnarled hands and poured more oil on it before suddenly ripping its three strands apart. Hamar couldn’t see how the man did it, but the man next combed through all the hair as if it was silk. Then the man deftly rewove it, binding the end with a red cord.
The old man bowed, put up his hood, turned around and left. The door locked shut.
Hamar looked down at his new shoes. He ran his hand along his soft coat sleeve. He looked around at all the rich cushions and the panorama of silken flowers on the walls. The greasy fingerprints of his feast looked harmless enough in the brass tray, and he closed his eyes and inhaled the spicy garlic smell now mingled with the scent of the perfumed oil.
What to think? What to think!
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