‘The gall of the man!’ Laodoc spluttered, as the carriage bumped and lurched its way to the academy. ‘One thousand ahanes apiece? Robbery, Simiona, that’s what you’ve just witnessed.’
‘Yes, master.’
She had been uncharacteristically quiet the whole way back, he noticed. And for the entire time since they had seen the Kellach slaves.
‘What’s bothering you, girl?’
‘Master, may I ask a question?’
‘Proceed.’
‘I don’t want to anger you.’
He frowned. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Master,’ she said, ‘are you going to experiment on the slaves, like that soldier said?’
‘You mean, dissect them?’
She nodded, her face paling.
‘Of course not,’ he laughed. ‘Is that it? You’re worried the academy will cut up our new Kellach captives for science? Ha! You’re feeling sentimental about them, eh?’
Simiona looked away, her face reddening.
‘No, Simiona,’ he said. ‘The academy want live specimens. There will be experiments from what I understand, but they will be more like, “Is it possible to teach them to understand our language?” for example, or, “Are they capable of rational thought?”, you know, that sort of thing.’
‘And what if they are?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘Excuse me?’
‘What if your academy proves that the Kellach Brigdomin are capable of thinking rationally, and that they can learn our language?’
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘then they’ll be more useful to us as slaves. Frankly though, after our visit today, I doubt we’ll find much intelligence in them. Nature seems to have endowed them with physical gifts, but possibly to the detriment of their brain development. Of course, that in itself would be interesting to study.’
‘Of course, master.’
‘What about you?’ he said. ‘What would you like to learn from our specimens?’
She looked away for a moment, thinking.
‘Songs,’ she said. ‘And stories. Of their people. Compare them to ours.’
Laodoc looked over his spectacles at her.
‘My,’ he said, ‘you are optimistic. Though I would suggest that sort of thing belongs more in an art college than our dear old science academy. However, this promise I make to you. If, by some miracle, we are able to glean stories from the captives, then you will be afforded the opportunity to record them for your studies.’
‘Thank you, master,’ she replied, beaming.
He smiled to himself. It was all fantasy of course. Slaves didn’t study. Didn’t have the mental capacity for it.
The carriage jerked to a stop.
‘Ahh, here we are,’ he said.
The door opened and Laodoc and Simiona stepped down. They were in the academy’s rear courtyard, enclosed on three sides by a high wall. The fourth was taken up with the solid back of the faculty buildings: three storeys high, in pink granite.
Lining the steps up to the rear entrance were a dozen or so staff and students, awaiting their arrival, word having been sent ahead.
Laodoc waved at them as he ascended the steps.
‘Chancellor, professors, good day to you all,’ he said.
‘Patron Councillor Laodoc,’ the academy chancellor said, bowing.
There was a gasp from the students, and Laodoc turned back to the courtyard to watch, as two dozen soldiers marched in, escorting an enormous covered wagon.
‘Councillor?’ the chancellor asked, his tongue flickering.
‘Don’t worry old chap,’ Laodoc smiled, ‘it’s not an armed takeover of the academy. No, these fine soldiers here are kindly escorting a new and, I hope, valuable addition to the Biology Department.’
‘You mean…?’ asked Professor Niniat, her eyes widening.
‘Indeed,’ he replied. ‘Your requisition. Took a little arm-twisting if I’m honest, but what’s the point of having a councillor as your patron if there aren’t a few perquisites now and again, eh?’
‘Professor, kindly explain,’ asked the chancellor.
‘Oh Chancellor,’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember? I requested three Kellach Brigdomin captives for study.’
‘You mean all these soldiers are for three slaves?’ he said, waving his arms at the growing crowd. The covered wagon had halted next to the steps, and guards were forming a circle round it, their crossbows bristling inwards. ‘Just how dangerous are they?’ he whispered.
It seemed like the entire student body was now watching, crowding the small courtyard, and leaning out of the tall windows overlooking it.
Two soldiers approached the wagon, and pulled back the tarpaulin covering it, revealing a large steel cage fixed to the chassis of the cart. The crowd let out a gasp, while Laodoc looked on, struggling to suppress a grin.
‘There they are,’ he announced. ‘Your new specimens.’
The three Kellach were sitting in the middle of the cage, warily eyeing the hundred or so soldiers, students and academy staff surrounding them. Each had been burdened with heavy chains, linking their ankles and wrists.
‘Now,’ Laodoc said, thinking aloud, ‘I assume the best place to keep them would be the gaien facility in the basement. It is empty at the moment isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Niniat said. ‘It’s been unoccupied since the last one died. I don’t think it’s been properly cleaned though, councillor.’
Laodoc shrugged. ‘I don’t think these three will mind. It’ll still be a step up from their previous conditions.’
She nodded and patted her belt. ‘I have the keys.’
The soldiers removed the heavy crossbars from the back of the cage, and a hatch fell open with a loud clang onto the courtyard’s flagstones. Silence descended over the onlookers as the Kellach male rose to his feet, and dragged his chains to the hatch. He was truly enormous, Laodoc thought, seeing him upright for the first time. His long dark brown hair and beard were filthy and matted, but his eyes held a fire. He jumped down from the back of the wagon, and the crowd seemed to flinch as one. Soldiers waved their crossbows at him, but he ignored them. He turned back to the carriage and picked up one of the women, the red-haired specimen, carrying her, and her weight of chains, in his big arms. The woman’s head hung limp, her long red hair tangled through the metal links of her shackles. Her eyes were closed.
She had better not be dead, Laodoc thought in dismay. Waste of money.
The other, dark-haired, woman also jumped down. She was shorter than the other two, though still a head taller than any Rahain. She put her hands on her hips and glared at the crowd.
‘They are giants!’ the chancellor gasped.
‘Beasts!’ someone from the crowd cried.
‘Murderers!’
The dark-haired female Kellach laughed, and shouted something back, her guttural and barbarous voice filling the air.
Laodoc glanced over at Niniat. ‘Best have that gaien cage opened up soon, I think.’
‘Get them inside!’ the chancellor cried, his high voice wavering. The guards responded, and started herding the captives towards the door, crossbows aimed at their backs.
Professor Niniat led them through the corridors of the academy, and down to the basement level. They passed the archives and records halls, and the mineralogy test laboratories, stopping when they reached the door to the animal room. Niniat unlocked it, and went ahead, lighting the interior lamps.
‘Master,’ Simiona whispered. ‘The lamps.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Laodoc said, as they waited for Niniat to finish lighting up the room. ‘It is believed that a Kellach mage requires a direct line between them and any fire for their powers to work. The lamps here are enclosed in glass, except for the small opening at the top. We’re perfectly safe.’
Niniat lit the final lamp, and nodded for them all to enter.
A stale odour of gaien filled Laodoc’s nostrils. Unpleasant enough, but nowhere near as bad as the slave pen had been. The la
rge chamber was filled with birds, mammals, and small reptiles in cages, which were stacked up against each side wall, and on tables running down the centre of the room. At the far end was an enormous single cage, where the academy had been keeping a small group of gaien.
The cage sat on a raised platform a foot and a half above the floor of the room, with the back resting against the rear wall. The bars of the other three sides were twelve feet high, and made of steel.
Niniat unlocked a gate at the rear of the cage.
‘We’ll need fresh straw, and lots of water,’ she said.
The soldiers escorted the three captives to the entrance. The man went in first, still carrying the red-haired female. The dark-haired woman stopped at the gate however, and turned to look at Laodoc, who was standing next to the chancellor.
Contempt shone in her eyes, and unbroken pride. She smirked at them.
Just as the guards were motioning for her to move, she stepped up into the cage, and shut the gate behind her.
‘She’s got spirit, eh?’ Laodoc chuckled, as Niniat re-locked the cage.
The chancellor puffed his cheeks in relief. ‘Now I know why none of the better families are taking on any of the Kellach as house slaves.’
‘Yes,’ Laodoc said. ‘They are a little intimidating. Still, they’re back behind bars now, ready for research and investigation by the academy’s finest young minds.’
‘Indeed,’ Niniat said, her set of keys swinging from her belt. ‘I’ll send you a copy of the programme I’ve been planning. We’re going to start with basic cognitive functions, and responses to external stimuli. Jahaieni has been working on a most interesting…’
‘Yes quite,’ Laodoc said. ‘Well, it’s been a long and tiring day for an old man. Come on Simiona, let’s be getting home.’
‘Thank you again, Councillor,’ Niniat called out as Laodoc made his way back to the door.
‘No, really, it was nothing,’ he said.
Merely three thousand ahanes. Better be worth it.
Chapter 3
Jade Falls
Tahrana Valley, Rahain Republic – 7th Day, First Third Summer 504
‘Are you ready?’
Daphne said nothing, her gaze fixed on the mountain range stretching out into the distance.
This was not how her powers were to be used.
She turned, eyed the opposition, and drew on her battle-vision.
A dozen heavily armed Rahain soldiers stood in the field before her. She took in every detail of their positions, their stances, the way they held their weapons, and set off like a hunting dog after a hare. She dived and rolled under the first clumsy sword swing, sprang to her feet and leapt over the second, her foot touching the soldier’s arm on the way up. She dug her heel into his shoulder and jumped clear, landing in the space between two others. As they lunged with their weapons, she dodged to the left, then right, moving faster than the soldiers could follow, their sword edges flashing through the air where she had been. She faced the final soldier, and sidestepped his frontal attack, the tip of the sword missing her neck by an inch. She turned out of his reach, and crossed the finish line, to a cheer and round of applause from the Rahain merchants and traders, sitting on their wooden foldaway chairs on the grass.
‘Bravo!’ Douanna cheered, getting to her feet and striding towards the Holdings mage. The man next to her also got up, a look of disbelief on his face.
‘It was just as you said, my girl, well done,’ Douanna grinned, shaking Daphne’s good right hand.
Daphne nodded, and eased off her battle-vision. Her intensive practice over the past three thirds since their escape from the Holdings meant that she barely noticed any after-effects from such a short burst of her mage skills. What would have left her doubled over and nauseous a year ago was now over in a minute or two. She wondered whether the cramps in her stomach were due to her powers, or her uneasiness at having let Douanna persuade her into putting on a display.
‘My dear Meiolan,’ Douanna said to the man next to her, ‘I do believe you owe me one hundred ahanes.’
The man frowned, and took out a purse from within the folds of his voluminous robes. He counted out some coins, and passed them over to the beaming merchant.
‘Something tells me that I have just been played. Most exquisitely,’ he nodded to Daphne, ‘but played nonetheless.’
‘Come now,’ Douanna said, laughing, ‘it’s been such a long and tedious journey, and I’ve been waiting so long to show off my new companion. Surely you wouldn’t want to deny me a little fun? I mean her skills are, as you only just said, exquisite.’
‘Quite. I just wish I wasn’t the first old friend you happened to come across on your return to Rahain.’
‘Oh,’ Douanna said, putting her hand on the man’s arm. ‘You won’t tell, will you? Promise you won’t tell. I intend to repeat the trick on quite a few others!’
Daphne coughed.
Douanna turned to her. ‘If that’s all right with you, dear? I mean, you told me you wouldn’t be in any real danger.’
‘One tiny slip,’ the man laughed, ‘and your trick might take on a more tragic flavour and, well, that could prove a little embarrassing.’
‘And painful,’ Daphne said. ‘No, I think one demonstration will suffice.’
‘You two ruin all my fun,’ Douanna said in mock sadness. ‘Though I can see advantages to keeping these skills a secret.’
‘Are you homeward bound, then?’ the man asked.
‘Yes,’ Douanna replied. ‘After two long years of sweat and toil, I am returned.’
‘And it looks,’ the man said, gesturing at the lines of wagons and carts by the roadside, ‘as if it were a most profitable endeavour.’
‘I did do rather well, didn’t I?’
‘I’ll say. Did you leave anything behind, or have you stripped the Sanang forest bare?’
‘Come now,’ she said, ‘I’ve brought plenty from the Holdings as well.’ She began pointing down the lines of wagons. ‘Tea, tobacco, coffee, sugar, and yes, glory of glories, crates of chocolate. All high end, all top quality, and enough to send even the most hard-headed traders in the capital into delirium.’
Daphne watched as Douanna showed off some of the stock to her friend. When she had met the Rahain trader during the previous autumn, she had been living in a rundown apartment block in seeming poverty, and Daphne had assumed that business had been bad. Douanna had not thought to disabuse her of this notion until after they had fled the Holdings on horseback at the tail-end of winter. When they had reached the new city being built on the northern shore of the Inner Sea, Douanna had taken her to a heavily guarded warehouse near the docks. The guards had recognised her as the owner, and Douanna had shown Daphne the true fruits of her trading business, crates piled high, packed with produce from both the Sanang forest and the rich fields of the Holdings savannah.
Douanna had chartered a Rahain boat at the docks to transport her, Daphne, and all of her stock across the Inner Sea to the Rahain port on the southern shore, a bustling, lively, but ramshackle township called Rainsby. The settlement was nominally under Rahain law, but behaved as if it was an independent city-state. It was cut off from the rest of Rahain by a long trip round the Grey Mountains, the road that Daphne and Douanna had just travelled, after transferring their cargo onto wagons and carts, and employing an entire company of Rahain guards as an armed escort.
Daphne had kept the horse Douanna had bought for her in the Holdings Capital when they had made their escape, a young hazel-brown stallion. Jamie, as Daphne had named him, was most likely the only horse in the Rahain Republic. The locals used large lumbering reptilian beasts, known as gaien, to pull carts and perform other heavy work, and many Rahain had stared as she had ridden her horse along the coastal road down from the Plateau. Douanna had told her that she could earn a good price from the stallion if she chose to sell him, whether for food or sport, but Daphne’s stomach had turned at the thought.
She looked up
as Meiolan was making his farewells to Douanna. He was clutching onto a small box of treats that Douanna had made up for him as a gift.
‘It’s been delightful seeing you again, my dear,’ Douanna was saying.
‘The pleasure was mine, my lady,’ he replied, bowing. ‘And might I say what a privilege it was to meet you, Lady Daphne of Hold Fast,’ he said, bowing to her as well.
Daphne started to frown, but remembered her upbringing.
‘It was an honour, my lord,’ she replied, bowing in return.
He smiled. ‘Most charming.’
Daphne put a foot into the reins of her horse, and pulled herself up with her good hand. Her useless left arm she kept close to her body, but once she was up on the saddle, she wound the reins round the withered fingers of her damaged hand. It was only on a horse that she felt her left arm was of any use to her, allowing her to ride while keeping her right arm free. A year had passed since her crippling injury, and although most of the pain had been healed by a Sanang hedgewitch, its constant discomfort nagged away at her. She could still be sent to her knees in agony if she bumped her left elbow against something, and she was always aware of the wrongness of how it felt.
Though they would never hold a sword again, the fingers on her left hand had, after much painful exercise, regained enough grip to enable her to hold the reins, and she smiled as she watched Douanna climb up onto the bench of the lead wagon, alongside her butler Jaioun.
Douanna raised her arm, and the long caravan lurched into motion, the guards marching on either side. Daphne kicked her heels, and Jamie responded with a slow trot. She fell into position to the left of the lead wagon, as they moved off south along the highway, leaving Meiolan’s country estate behind.
After they had travelled for a few hours, Douanna called out to her. ‘My dearest Daphne, soon we shall see my home, my beautiful city of Jade Falls, the most perfect jewel of the seven cities of Rahain. Wait until you gaze upon the most magnificent sight of the falls at dusk, when the last glimmerings of sunset flood the caverns! Ahh. How I long to see it again.’
The Queen's Executioner Page 4
