The Empire of Reimia (3)

Do not tempt me without need...
Someday there will be a full quenta here. But that is not certain.

Prologue
The year 816. A quiet little town on the outskirts of the Empire plunged into the cold, transparent darkness of an autumn evening. Moonlight falls upon the tiled roofs of the houses, giving the monotonous, squat homes of provincial burghers an aura of restrained nobility. But the townspeople will not appreciate this silver glow; the working day ended long ago and they have already returned to their own hearths—to fulfill their duty to their families, just as they fulfilled their duty to the state through their daily labor. Doors are bolted, shutters lowered. Nothing shall break the silence of the night.
The silence is broken. A gray figure separates from the wall, with which it previously formed a single whole, and the soles of boots shuffle roughly across the dry mud of the street. Despite the shapeless, baggy clothing, she is unmistakably a woman, moreover a pregnant woman, and obviously nearing the end of her term. Tangled coal-black strands hang from beneath a hood, under which she hides her grimy, gaunt face that still bears traces of former beauty. Stepping onto the street, the woman instinctively hunches over, expecting a torrent of curses and insults, or even a stone thrown after her, but she does so in vain: for a long time now, she has ceased to exist for other people, and enduring this is harder for her than the heaviest insult or the harshest beating. An adulteress carrying in her womb one who should not have been conceived. An outcast.
She turns into one of a dozen identical alleys, then another, and another. The houses on her path grow more unsightly, the streets narrower and filthier. Finally, she has arrived. A solid-looking brick house, her refuge for the night, greets her with a heavy door featuring an ancient hammer of greened bronze. The hammer is cast in the shape of a ram's head, and the gaze of its empty eyes makes the outcast tremble like a leaf in the wind. At that moment, agonizing pre-labor contractions twist her thin body; she is too weak to scream and lets out only a low, stifled howl, like that of a wounded beast, falling onto the porch. But the end of her long nightmare is near—whatever it may be. Trying not to look into the ram's eyes, she knocks on the door, and after a few seconds, the old landlady appears on the threshold. Her earth-colored face has sagged, only a couple of teeth remain in her mouth, and her hunched figure reaches the guest barely above the waist, but the keen, very unpleasant gaze of yellow eyes makes it clear that she clings to life more firmly than many young people.
-- What brings you here, harlot? -- that is how she greeted everyone who came to her.
The newcomer explained herself haltingly and very wordily, but the old woman was interested in neither words nor pleas: with a trembling hand, the outcast offered her a pouch containing all her savings. A confident movement of a strong, knotty wrist—and the pouch vanished into the landlady's pocket.
-- Fine. Come in. Lie down, -- ignoring the jumbled words of gratitude, the old woman went to fetch the tools of her trade. In the morning, a piercing child's cry rang out within the walls of this house.

-- ...And if you have nowhere to go, go to my son, who keeps an eatery on the other side of town. His wife died recently; he might take you in, -- thus did the old woman advise her patient.
Once again she walked through the darkness along dusty streets, and once again the moon silvered the town with its cold radiance, but now the town was not silent. Whispers hummed behind the walls of houses, and curses and stones flew after her again. An outcast gave birth to an outcast—a trivial occurrence in essence, but a sensation for this provincial town, instantly becoming public knowledge, stirring the good burghers into a single feeling of contemptuous condemnation against one person, so sweet for the common folk. But the contempt was sweet for the outcast too—better to be a universal sinner, especially a great sinner, than to be nothing. And although even then she hated her broken life and her son, she proudly carried her new cross right to the doors of the tavern mentioned by the old woman.
The owner—a healthy red-bearded fellow in his thirties, own blood and milk with a beer belly—awaited her, leaning on a large sign that read "Drunken Bull Tavern", as if serving as an illustration for the text.
-- Hoo-hoo, our little rogue is coming, bringing a freak under her arm to feed the pigs, gyyk! -- pleased with the resulting verbal rhyme, the fellow laughed and his red mustache crept upward. -- What, you want to settle in with me?
-- Y-yes, -- despite what she had endured during the night, she spoke confidently, though she stammered. The extreme degree of desperation had made her very determined.
-- You'll cook, wash, serve at the table—can you? Fine, f*ck it, stay. My wife died recently; there's no one to warm the bed. -- the owner unceremoniously slapped the guest on the buttocks, letting her inside. -- Such a skinny thing! Well, nothing, we'll fatten her up. What did you name the bastard? My own also left a son. Named him Ablij.
-- Marey. After my great-grandfather.

__________________
Chapter I
-- Marey! Get over here!
The owner's shout. Marey, a thin and sickly seven-year-old boy, hated him. This shout always meant that he had to work, and that he would most likely be beaten. The moment he stepped out of his refuge—a dark pantry serving as storage for flour, where he spent long hours in pitch darkness, forgotten by everyone for a time, listening to the voices coming from the dining hall, timidly wondering how his life might have turned out without all this noisy hell, without the screams, beatings, broken dishes and mother's hysterics; if only he were like everyone else, with a father and mother, a family home, instead of being a bastard conceived by some passing vagabond; the moment he stepped out—trouble was unavoidable. But if he didn't come out—his stepfather would beat his mother, then beat him, all accompanied by unbearable words about how, in his virtue, he had given them undeserved shelter, feeds them, the rightless and outcast, from his own table, and how much they owed him. And afterward, having recovered from the beatings, his mother would come to Marey in the pantry, terrifying, pale as a corpse, and disheveled like a scarecrow; she would grab him firmly by the ear, sit opposite him, bringing her face close to his, and begin to tell him cruel words—that it would have been better if he had never been born at all, not to hang over her as an eternal reminder of her shame.
-- Why, why do you even live like this in the world! No one needs you, burden, only my cross! You don't even need yourself, sickly thing, coughing up blood; you won't even be able to work! If not for you, I would... I... -- and, choking with rage, she would drag him away from the pantry. Her hand was white and thin, but her strength was great. Thus she dragged him across the floor, while Ablij, his so-called brother, watched and rolled with laughter: it was just too funny how they dusted the same way with a scrawny thing, exactly like a rag. Ablij was a miniature copy of his father: red-cheeked, pot-bellied, loud-voiced. He was a little over a year older than Marey, but twice as strong and considered himself the second master.
Marey hurried to his stepfather's call. He ran very clumsily, his movements stiff and jerky. A serious obstacle lay in his path—Ablij was waiting for him in the doorway. Smiling widely with a gap-toothed mouth, he stepped aside as if wishing to let Marey pass, but upon drawing level with him, he tripped the running boy, who tumbled head over heels into the hall, sprawling on the floor amidst the laughter of the patrons.
-- Clean this up, -- the owner's fat finger pointed to the shards of a broken plate lying on the floor mixed with its contents.
Marey obediently hobbled for a bucket and rag. After wiping the floor, he looked up and met the hostile gaze of a patron's ratty eyes. Embarrassed and bewildered, Marey just stood before him, an awkward, skinny boy in washed-out clothes.
-- What are you staring at, bastard? -- the man was apparently already quite drunk, his flushed face breathing malice. He had had a hard day; he had argued with his wife once again, been denied a bonus for a trivial offense, and hadn't even managed to have a proper dinner; his evil feelings had reached critical mass, and he had to vent them on someone before they tore him apart from the inside. -- Son of a whore, I knew your mother well... very well.
Marey knew this was true. The secret of sexual relations had been revealed to him early. He knew that his mother brought men to her house, he knew that his stepfather received money for it, and he knew that this added further shame to the shame of his origin. Once he had loved his mother and pitied her hard lot, then he began to be ashamed of her, and finally, he hated her for the fate she had condemned him to. He found no strength within himself to answer this man and stood before him in silence, only his cheeks flushed crimson. Not shame, but malice was growing in his soul.
-- What, you're silent, you cur? Well now, what kind of a man are you if you can't even answer? Why do such people even exist, hmph, -- the man, becoming more heated, spat at the boy—and overestimated Marey's limits of patience. The response was a sudden, unrestrained flash of rage, the kind of rage only children and animals are capable of. Usually slow and weak, he sharply threw the crumpled rag into the man's face, grabbed the edge of the table, and flipped it over. By the time people realized what had happened, Marey was no longer in the "Drunken Bull".
He ran outside the city limits and stopped, falling to his knees. He gasped for air, a consumptive cough shaking his lungs, silent sobs tightening his throat. Having caught his breath, he stood up, looking around. It was a sunny noon in mid-summer, and before his eyes opened in all its splendor a sun-drenched endless golden field, which somewhere in the distance dropped off sharply into the clear blue space of a cloudless sky. Life around him teemed with joy: the flying insects, the singing birds, and the small lizards scurrying hastily among the ears of grain—everything seemed to merge into a single dance at the festival of summer, and only he, tearful, sick, miserable, was an intruder there. Marey walked another few dozen steps and, vaguely realizing the pointlessness of his actions, fell on his back, completely disappearing into the waves of the wheat sea.
"Better not to have been born" — that was his last thought before sinking into the heavy oblivion of a daytime nap. He woke up in the evening; his face burned from sunburn, and he was very thirsty. Completely devastated, he slowly trudged back toward the inevitable punishment.

Nine days later, evening. Marey was sitting in the pantry again, feeling his already waiting bruises, when a tall gray-bearded old man entered the "Drunken Bull". His brows were furrowed, his brown eyes darting anxiously around the hall, searching for something, or perhaps someone. And they found.
-- There you are! -- the old man pounces like a fierce kite on Marey's mother, who was wiping tables in the hall. His long, clutching fingers with long nails grip her shoulders, and he begins to shake her violently. -- Where is he?!
The owner runs over at the noise and tries to tear the uninvited guest away from his victim, but the latter has gripped her with a death-grip. The old man turns his gaze toward the owner and addresses the next question to him:
-- Where is my grandson, you brute?
Something in the old man's eyes makes the big man recoil. For some time he thinks something to himself, after which he answers so simply and quietly that none of those who knew him would believe these were truly the words of the owner of the "Drunken Bull".
-- I will bring him.
-- Quicker. And you get out, whore, I have no strength left to look at you, -- the old man pushes the woman away, and she obediently retreats into a corner. He sits at the nearest table, impatiently tapping his foot. When the owner brought Marey to him, the old man extended his bony hand to the boy's face, feeling him as if he were livestock intended for purchase.
-- Frail. Poor. Do you know who I am? Ariman Mainz. Your maternal grandfather. You are coming with me.
No one objected to the old man, and Marey obediently left with him, without looking back