To the Victor

by R Coots

  Finally, the other woman stopped squeezing. Instead she glowered even harder. “Can’t. It’s not the right type. The old warlord liked bones. Blood.” She huffed and glared at the door to the outer rooms. “Milord—” The woman cut herself off abruptly. “He had questions. You gave him answers.” Her grip on Jossa’s arm didn’t give any clue as to Iira’s emotional state. It was as if she was made of stone.

  “I gave him the answers I could,” Jossa said, fighting the urge to pull away. Who could shut down their feelings like that? Or was the crown adapting to her abilities and extending its reach to her skin?

  Iira nodded. “His orders are to follow, not kill escapees. Because of the answers you gave. If he has made a bad choice, he will die. Then we will have a new warlord.” She pointed at the table. “And you’ll see the medunit work.

  “Now.” She stabbed a finger at a button in the wall. “Come.”

  Still trying to process the reasons for someone to have a medunit that could only handle trauma but not systemic damage on a cellular level, Jossa allowed herself to be pulled out of the room.

  >><<

  Jossa didn’t know what she’d expected, but this wasn’t it. The chamber was huge. Egg shaped, with the lines of a door frame capping the narrow end, it was largely unfurnished. A floating slab of metal near the door must be a table, the smaller slabs the seats. They hovered by some invisible means that Jossa couldn’t see. Grav boosters, maybe?

  At the other end of the room was a gigantic bed. Heavy curtains hung at intervals on either side of the bed. Halfway down the wall between the infirmary and the bed was another door, mirrored on the far side of the room by a slightly larger one. The far wall and most of the ceiling displayed a starscape with a huge blue-and-green planet sitting in one corner and an array of ships strung out into the distance. Every other bit of paneling was taken up with more of the brambles and snakes that had become so familiar in the infirmary.

  Considering the noises she’d been hearing, she shouldn’t have been surprised that the bed took pride of place, but after days of being stuck in a box of a room with nothing but medical equipment and Delfi to look at, she would have thought there’d be at least a few things to mark this as the room of a warlord. Blood, maybe. More armor somewhere.

  She didn’t have a chance to get a better look. Coming towards her was a cluster of women. That, at least, she had anticipated. What she hadn’t expected was the looks on their faces. The women watched her warily, as if she were a snake that might bite them at any moment.

  Maybe it was Iira. Glancing to the side, she saw that the medic had gone back to her usual impassive mien. Her body language was no help either. Touching her unasked was out of the question, so Jossa clasped her hands together and turned back to the women instead.

  With a start, she realized they all wore crowns over long, loose hair. The same fused-together skullcap and flares that encased her own head. No gaps, no growth plates, no shifters. She’d checked her own crown as soon as Iira had left her to her own devices, after that disastrous first encounter with the warlord. It was nothing like the one the Imperial scientists had tried on her after she’d hit puberty. These were meant to do one thing. Block a woman’s sai, totally and completely.

  Did that mean each of these women was a sai? Or were the Svis Konanuog just guarding the Barbicans, as it were? The long hair that each wore loose around their shoulders would have weighed things in favor of the Fleet not taking chances. If it weren’t for the fact that this most definitely wasn’t the Empire. If it weren’t for the fact that familiar distinctions between commoners and highborns didn’t matter much when you were a captive of the enemy.

  The floor was cold to her bare feet. She shifted, wondering if she should introduce herself. Was there a protocol for this? Hello, I’m the fresh meat? Is there a rotation or does the warlord take us as he pleases? How many girls does he put in a medunit in a given week? Has anyone died because we were in there taking up space?

  That last would go over well. Maybe that was why none of them had stepped away from the little group. And the air of general doom. A person wouldn’t need to be a Feel to tell that much.

  Iira made a little tchting noise and turned on her heel. Staring, Jossa watched her vanish back into the other room. Well! So much for guidance.

  She was just working up the final nerve to step forward and give her name when the stalemate was broken from the other side. One of the women came out of the pack, dark hair a tumble around her shoulders and the stiffness in her posture all at odds with the welcoming smile on her full lips. She held out her hands as if to take Jossa’s.

  Jossa shrank away. She didn’t need anyone else’s thoughts and feelings right now. The woman dropped her hands and sympathy filled her green eyes. “Hello there. It’s such a shock, isn’t it? So horrible, being taken from everything you know and getting put in here?”

  Jossa blinked and tried to come up with an alternative to blurting out her life story. She didn’t get a chance to lie.

  “Why don’t you come with us?” The woman nodded at one of the other doors in the wall. There was fear in that voice, oh so carefully hidden under the confidence. “Milady says you need a bath and clothes.” The woman raked her from top to toe with a critical eye. “And probably some real food too, from the sight of you. I’m Julin. Come now,” she said, holding out a hand. “Let’s get you taken care of.”

  “Jossalyn,” she replied as she followed, but didn’t take the offered hand. Really, what else could she do?

  The ship must be as big as an Ajiri city. That was the only thing Jossa could think when presented with the tub large enough to fit the whole crew of the Skatasi with room to spare. No crew showers here, timed and cramped. No, this was a small lake. A pond at the very least. And it was full of steaming water. From the patterns and ripples on the surface, it was probably kept full and circulating, warmed at need with heat coils built into the bottom and sides.

  It was ridiculous. She wanted to sit in it up to her neck and never come out. Forget clothes. She’d spent a good portion of her life mostly naked. Forget food. For the last ten years or so, food had oscillated between the feasts of minor kings to whatever she could scrounge out of the back end of an almost empty cupboard. Predictability had never been in the course projection when it came to food.

  But a real bath. A bath! Now that was enough to turn her into a greedy child offered her pick of sweets. She’d expected to be stuffed in a tiny little water closet and told to scrub down as fast as she could. She didn’t know why. The warlord had his own private infirmary, so why she’d thought he wouldn’t have better bathing facilities than they had on the Skatasi, she had no idea.

  “Now, if you press this,” Julin touched a button along the rim, out of range of all but the most enthusiastic splashing, “there are supplies.” True to her words, a section of the wall opened up and shelves of bottles and tubes slid out from behind a panel. Julin took a small bucket stuffed with brushes and sponges and held it out. “Do you need help?”

  Jossa couldn’t tell if that was polite scorn or genuine worry coloring Julin’s voice. She didn’t care. She might not be strong enough to do much more than walk, but she could manage a bath without too much trouble. And then she remembered. “Probably with my hair.” She sighed as she tried to gather it in her hands. She’d never had hair longer than her earlobes while fully crowned. The crown made it awkward. Her cryo-weakened arms took exception to being raised a moment longer than they thought they should be.

  “All right then.” The woman started undoing the fastenings of the loose gown she was wearing. “Let’s get this over with. Might as well learn to be friends, right?”

  Jossa wasn’t sure what to make of that, but until this woman was in touching range, she wouldn’t know if Julin had an ulterior motive. Without a place to escape to, she’d just have to wait and see. Besides, if they were her jailors, they’d report any bad behavior. And then what would happen to Delfi?

  N
o. For now it was better to sit quiet and go along with things. So she slipped into the tub and prepared to send herself back in time.

  > Chapter Sixteen

  Jossa

  We work together as a group. Your sisters may undermine you in petty things. Your mothers may hand down menial chores and play favorites. But when it comes to the safety of the whole, we stand united.

  Do you understand, child?

  -Chataf Kuchru lis Chuis isk Fuerrus, to Jossalyn

  As it turned out, accepting help with washing her hair had been one of her better ideas. She didn’t even think about her maruste, and Julin didn’t comment on it as she worked on her charge’s hair.

  Scrub, rinse, and scrub again. Tip the head back and close the eyes so suds and water could make their way under the edges of the crown and through the microscopic channels in the underside of the thing. Another rinse with a pressure jet. Jossa sent a prayer to her Ancestors, hoping that whoever came up with the Kuchen variety of the crown had been as good at covering the circuitry as the Imperials were. Electrocution to the brain pan did not appeal as a way to go. She’d rather have greasy hair and dandruff, and Ancestors knew what else.

  But she survived and the crown didn’t short, and she never picked up more than genuine worry and concern from Julin. Hope that the new girl would learn her place quickly and a sort of quiet wishfulness that Jossa couldn’t put a reason to. Not much curiosity at all. Not a flicker of sai reaching out to meet her where their skin touched. With all the skin-to-skin contact, something should have come through, right?

  Then she was clean and it was time to face the others again. Julin wrapped Jossa in a towel after squeezing most of the water out of her hair, then led the way through a different door into what was obviously the women’s quarters. “Milord prefers we sleep in the main room when he does not wish us in his bed,” the woman said as Jossa padded along behind her, trailing a series of damp footprints. “But when he’s away on Campaign, we stay back here.” The woman gestured at the room.

  Cushions and benches lined the walls near the floor, shelves near the ceiling, with spaces between them for the odd door here and there. Plants covered every horizontal surface in the center of the room, from sprouts to seedlings to small saplings. Ferns, low broadleaves, and various woody stalks. Jossa stopped and stared. “This is . . .”

  “We have to do something when he’s not around,” said a new woman as she came through a door a little further down the wall. “Milord spends a good deal of time planetside at the start of a Campaign. What do you know of growing things?”

  Jossa shrugged. “Very little. Our ship—” She stopped to swallow down the grief. “It wasn’t big enough for much in the way of hydroponics.”

  “Oh, they don’t let the outFleet near those.” The woman laid the armful of cloth she’d been carrying on a nearby chair, then tucked a drifting curl of blond hair behind one ear. “These are for the personal quarters. Ornament. Take some of the load off the air filters. Or so they tell us.”

  “Mainly it’s to give us something to do that’s not trying to tear apart the walls.” Another woman came with a tray of what looked like cosmetics and jewelry cases. “There’re a recreation room through there.” She nodded at another door. Her face twisted wryly. “We’re expected to divide our time between the plants and keeping up bone and muscle mass. Now let’s see here.” She started sorting through the vials, holding them up to the light, and then to Jossa’s face. Jossa held still.

  “I’m Adafa,” the woman said after she’d set aside two or three different containers. “Miss Cynical here is Mivi. She’d love to find a way out, because she can’t manage to antagonize milord Syrus nearly as often as she’d like, now that his tempers come fewer and further between than they used to.

  “The rest of us are quite happy to stay here and tend plants and know that no one can get into the warlord’s quarters.” She twisted the top off a small bottle and dabbed a bit on her finger, then onto Jossa’s wrist. The light brown stood out against Jossa’s dark skin like a beacon. Adafa shook her head and reached for a different bottle. “Now that he’s changed the settings on the locks, she’s been especially bitchy. We have free run of his quarters, but we need his DNA, fresh, to leave. I gather we have you to thank for that?” The woman grinned up at Jossa as she shook another bottle and popped the cap open.

  Jossa blinked and latched on to the least troublesome bit of information she could find in the torrent. “Syrus?”

  “He’s the warlord, or milord to you,” Adafa said sharply, as if she hadn’t realized she’d slipped. “Or any of us really. He might be gentler than Warlord Brander—”

  Julin, still standing next to Jossa, leaned over and spat. Adafa slapped her. Casually. Without even looking at her. The makeup on her fingers left dark smears on the girl’s lighter skin.

  “He might be gentler,” Adafa continued, as if Julin didn’t have a red handprint on her face. “He might have unlocked the infirmary when he brought you in. But he managed to kill Brander. Beat him to a pulp with his bare hands. And if you knew what Brander was . . .” Adafa trailed off as her eyes focused on some point a thousand miles past the wall she was looking at.

  Jossa braced herself for the feelings that would come through the grip the woman had on her wrist, but it was as if she’d shut down. An empty shell, with faint rattles of ancient horror echoing down her nerves.

  After another heartbeat, Adafa shook her head and straightened. “He’ll kill you and never bat an eye,” she said. “Don’t think he won’t.

  “We’re here for one reason. The sooner you get that through your head, the easier things will be for you and the longer you’ll survive. Pray the Ancestors keep him alive through Campaign and that he stays strong enough to hold off any Challengers. We’ll all live a lot longer with him than we ever would have under a different warlord. And he makes sure our bodies don’t go for the rank and file after we’re used up.”

  That last comment almost went right through the Barbican without a safety check. Jossa was still thinking of Delfi and the difficulty of remembering how to be a good concubine instead of Rui’s wife. When her too-slow brain finally caught the meaning, she felt the blood drain from her face. “What?”

  Adafa sniffed. “Exactly what it sounds like. Milord Syrus may have been born Savage, but there are worse than Savages, and they are Fleet. Whatever hole he found you in, whatever you may have been before you came here, you are the warlord’s now. You understand me?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about that last part.” Mivi had come around behind Jossa without anyone else noticing. Jossa twisted her head to see what the woman was doing, but saw nothing more than blond curls and a bare white shoulder. Unfamiliar fingers gathered up Jossa’s dripping hair from where it had plastered itself to her skin. The spike of sick jealousy and rage tripping through her skin and along her nerves nearly staggered Jossa. She bit her lip against the nausea that churned her stomach like a tidal wave and closed her mind as best she could to the images that rode the emotions.

  The warlord had deactivated the Open Blossom of her maruste before leaving her to Iira’s tender care, so at least she wasn’t glowing anymore. But the basic patterns and condensed glyphs of her occupation and lineage were still there for anyone to see.

  Mivi knew what Jossa’s maruste meant. Somehow. Although Julin hadn’t so much as twitched while helping Jossa bathe. How? How dangerous was it for the other women to know?

  Suddenly she realized that except for Julin and Adafa, none of them had turned their backs on her. Not that it mattered, since their hair hung loose, instead of up like a proper concubines’. Impossible to tell what anyone’s maruste looked like. Not without asking them to pull their hair out of the way.

  The warlord, Syrus, had made sure Iira wasn’t in earshot when he’d asked his questions. When he’d taken the knife to her back, completed the contract by cutting her shoulder to mix his blood with hers, and sealed the bond so
it wouldn’t bloom unless he deliberately turned it on. Why hadn’t he warned her about the women in his quarters? Had he thought they wouldn’t recognize her markings? Did he even care? Probably not, now that she thought about it.

  Jossa had no doubt that if she displeased him, the warlord would kill her as easily as Adafa promised. Despite all the effort he’d put in to rescuing her from cryo and getting her healed, he’d gone to great lengths to hide his blood connection to her. She didn’t think he’d appreciate her shouting it to the stars.

  So many of the men in her childhood would have died for the chance to claim royal blood in their veins. And here he was, doing everything he could to hide it.

  No time to wonder why. Right now she had to concentrate on keeping Delfi safe and herself alive. Which meant lying. Which meant using as much truth as she could possibly manage without telling them anything really important.

  Other fingers joined Mivi’s on Jossa’s back. Adafa. The others came around so they could see. More touches. With them came a mix of emotions she couldn’t begin to sort out. Reasons and questions and speculation swam in her gut until she had to clench her hands so hard the untrimmed fingernails broke skin. She pressed her fists to her stomach, willing it to settle, grateful they hadn’t given her any food yet.

  “Mivi is the only highborn any warlord’s brought into the quarters,” Adafa said, quite as if Jossa wasn’t swallowing great gulps of fear. “And Brander only let her in because the ruler of her planet promised she had special skills.” Disgust, relief, and an odd sort of pride prickled along Jossa’s nerves from where Julin’s fingers traced the marks of sire and dam on her skin.

  “His promises weren’t empty,” Mivi snapped. “No one’s lasted as long as I have in the warlord’s bed.” Lust. Joy. And deep, deep self-loathing. If they had been Jossa’s—if she’d had to live through the tortures this woman carried within—she would have thrown herself off a cliff eons ago rather than live in such a state.