She resumed her leisurely walk down the line of the townspeople, all assembled along one side of the dusty market square. People in outlying farms and smaller communities no doubt came into the town several times a month, on market days, some staying overnight if they had come from far away. This wasn’t a market day, but it would suit her purpose well enough.
A few of the crowded buildings had a second story, typically a room or two for a family over their small shop. Nicci saw a bakery, a cobbler’s shop, a shop selling pottery, a blacksmith, an herbalist, a shop offering leatherwork—the usual places. One of these towns was much the same as the next. Many of the town’s people worked the surrounding fields of wheat or sorghum, tended animals, and had extensive vegetable plots. Dung, straw, and clay being plentiful, they lived in homes of daub and wattle. A few of the shops with a second story boasted beam construction with clapboard siding.
Behind her, sullen soldiers bristling with weapons filled the majority of the square. They were tired from the hot ride, and worse, bored. Nicci knew they were a twitch away from a rampage. A town, even one with meager plunder, was an inviting diversion. It wasn’t so much the taking as the breaking that they liked. Sometimes, though, it was the taking. The nervous women only rarely met the soldiers’ bold stares.
As she strolled past the scruffy people, Nicci looked into the eyes watching her. Most were wide with terror and fixed not on the soldiers, but on the object of their dread: Nicci—or as people had taken to calling her, “Death’s Mistress.” The designation neither pleased nor displeased her; it was simply a fact she noted, a fact of no more significance to her than if someone had told her that they had mended a pair of her stockings.
Some, she knew, were staring at the gold ring through her lower lip. Gossip would have already informed them that a woman so marked was a personal slave to Emperor Jagang—something lower even than simple peasants such as themselves. That they stared at the gold ring, or what they thought of her for it, was of even less significance to her than being called “Death’s Mistress.”
Jagang only possessed her body in this world; the Keeper would have her soul for eternity in the next. Her body’s existence in this world was torment; her spirit’s existence in the next would be no less. Existence and torment were simply the two sides of the same coin—there could be no other.
Smoke, rolling up from the fire pit over her left shoulder, sailed away on a fitful wind to make a dark slash across the bright blue afternoon sky. Stacked stones to each side of the communal cooking pit supported a rod above the fire. Two or three pigs or sheep, skewered on the rod, could be roasted at once. Temporary sides were probably available to convert the fire pit into a smokehouse.
At other times, an outdoor fire pit was used, often in conjunction with butchering, for the making of soap, since making soap was not something typically done indoors. Nicci saw a wooden ash pit, used for making lye, standing to the side of the open area, along with a large iron kettle that could be used for rendering fat. Lye and fat were the primary ingredients of soap. Some women liked to add fragrance to their soap with herbs and such, like lavender or rosemary.
When Nicci was little, her mother made her go each autumn, when the butchering was being done, to help people make soap. Her mother said helping others built proper character. Nicci still had a few small dots of scars on the backs of her hands and forearms where she had been splashed and blistered by the hot fat. Nicci’s mother always made her wear a fine dress—not to impress the other people who didn’t have such clothes, but to make Nicci conspicuous and uncomfortable. The attention her pink dress attracted was not admiration. As she stood with the long wooden paddle, stirring the bubbling kettle while the lye was being poured in, some of the other children, trying to splash the dress and ruin it, burned Nicci, too. Nicci’s mother had said the burns were the Creator’s punishment.
As Nicci moved past, inspecting the assembled people, the only sounds were the horses off behind the buildings, the sporadic coughs of people, and the flags of flame in the fire pit snapping and flapping in the breeze. The soldiers had already helped themselves to the two pigs that had been roasting on the rod, so the aroma of cooking meat had mostly dissipated on the wind, leaving the sour smells of sweat and the stink of human habitation. Whether a belligerent army or a peaceful town, the filth of people smelled the same.
“You all know why I’m here,” Nicci announced. “Why have you people made me go to the trouble of such a journey?” She gazed down the line of maybe two hundred people standing four and five deep. The soldiers, who had ordered them out of their homes and in from the fields, greatly outnumbered them. She stopped in front of a man she had noticed people glancing at.
“Well?”
The wind fluttered his thin gray hair across his balding, bowed head as he fixed his gaze on the ground at her feet. “We don’t have anything to give, Mistress. We’re a poor community. We have nothing.”
“You are a liar. You had two pigs. You saw fit to have a gluttonous feast instead of helping those in need.”
“But we have to eat.” It was not an argument, so much as a plea.
“So do others, but they are not so fortunate as you. They know only the ache of hunger in their bellies every night. What an ugly tragedy, that every day thousands of children die from the simple want of food, and millions more know the gnawing pain of hunger—while people like you, in a land of plenty, offer nothing but selfish excuses. Having what they need to live is their right, and must be honored by those with the means to help.
“Our soldiers, too, need to eat. Do you think our struggle on the behalf of the people is easy? These men risk their lives daily so you may raise your children in a proper, civilized society. How can you look these men in the eye? How can we even feed our troops, if everyone doesn’t help support the cause?”
The trembling man remained mute.
“What must I do to impress upon you people the seriousness of your obligation to the lives of others? Your contribution to those in need is a solemn moral duty—sharing in a greater good.”
Nicci’s vision suddenly went white. With a pain like scorching hot needles driven into her ears, Jagang’s voice filled her mind.
Why must you play this game? Make examples of people! Teach them a lesson that I am not to be ignored!
Nicci swayed on her feet. She was completely blinded by the pain bursting inside her head. She let it wash through her, as if watching it happen to a stranger. Her abdominal muscles twitched and convulsed. A rusty, barbed lance driven up through her, ripping her insides, could not have hurt more. Her arms hung limp at her sides while she waited for Jagang’s displeasure to end, or for death.
She was unable to tell how long the torture lasted. When he was doing it, she was never able to sense time—the pain was too all-consuming. She knew, from what others told her when they saw it done to her, and from seeing it done to others, that it sometimes lasted only an instant. Sometimes it lasted hours.
Making it last hours was a waste of Jagang’s effort—she couldn’t tell the difference. She had told him as much.
Suddenly, she was unable to draw a breath. It felt like a fist squeezed her heart to a stop. She thought her lungs might burst. Her knees were about to buckle.
Do not disobey me again!
With a gasp, air filled her lungs. Jagang’s discipline ended, as it always did, with an impossibly tart, sour taste on her tongue, like an unexpected mouthful of fresh raw lemon juice, and pain searing the nerves at the back of her jaw under her earlobes. It left her head ringing and her teeth throbbing. As she opened her eyes, she was surprised, as she always was, not to see herself standing in a pool of blood. She touched the corner of her mouth, and then brushed her fingers to an ear. She found no blood.
She wondered in passing why Jagang had been able to come into her mind now. Sometimes, he couldn’t. It didn’t happen that way for any of the other Sisters—he always had access to their minds.
As her vision cle
ared, she saw people staring at her. They didn’t know why she had paused. The young men—and a few of the older ones, too—were sneaking peeks at her body. They were used to seeing women in drab, shapeless dresses, women whose bodies exhibited the toll taken by endless hard work and almost constant pregnancy from the time they were old enough for the seed to catch. They had never before seen a woman like Nicci, standing straight and tall, looking them in the eye, wearing a fine black dress that hugged a nearly flawless shape marred by neither hard work or the labor of birth. The stark black material contrasted the pale curve of cleavage revealed by the cut of the laced bodice. Nicci was numb to such stares. Occasionally, they suited her purposes, but most of the time they didn’t, and so she disregarded them.
She began walking down the line of people again, ignoring Emperor Jagang’s orders. She rarely complied with his orders. She was, for the most part, indifferent to his punishment. If anything, she welcomed it.
Nicci, forgive me. You know I don’t mean to hurt you.
She ignored his voice, too, as she studied the eyes peering up at her. Not everyone did. She liked to look into the eyes of those courageous enough to risk a glimpse of her. Most were filled with simple terror.
There would soon be abundant justification for such apprehension.
Nicci, you must do as I tell you, or you are only going to end up forcing me to do something terrible to you. Neither of us wants that. Someday, I am going to end up doing something from which you will be unable to recover.
If that is what you wish to do, then do it, she thought, in answer.
It was not a challenge; she simply didn’t care.
You know I don’t want to do that, Nicci.
Without the pain, his voice was little more than a fly annoying her. She paid it no heed. She addressed the crowd.
“Do you people have any concept of the effort being put into the fight for your future? Or is it that you expect to benefit without contributing? Many of our brave men have given their lives fighting the oppressors of the people, fighting for our new beginning. We struggle so that all people will be able to share equally in the coming prosperity. You must help us in our effort on your behalf. Just as helping those in need is the moral obligation of every person, so, too, is this.”
Commander Kardeef, displaying a look of sour displeasure, planted himself in front of her. The sunlight slanting across his lined face cast his hooded eyes in deep shadows. She was not moved by his disfavor. He was never satisfied with anything. Well, she corrected herself, almost never.
“People can only achieve virtue through obedience and sacrifice. Your contribution to the Order is to implement their compliance. We are not here to hold civic lessons!”
Commander Kardeef was confident in his privileged mastery over her. He, too, had given her pain. She endured what Kadar Kardeef did to her with the same detachment with which she endured what Jagang did to her.
Only in the furthest depths of pain could she begin to feel anything. Even pain was preferable to the nothingness she usually felt.
Kadar Kardeef was probably unaware of the punishment Jagang had just completed, or his orders; His Excellency didn’t use Commander Kardeef’s mind. It was an arduous undertaking for Jagang to control those who didn’t possess the gift—he could do it, but it was rarely worth his effort; he had the gifted to control people for him. A dream walker somehow used the gift in those who possessed it in order to help complete the connection to their minds. In a way, the gifted made it possible for Jagang to so easily control them.
Kadar Kardeef glowered down at her as she gazed up at his darkly tanned and creased face. He was an imposing figure, with the studded leather straps that crossed his massive chest, his armored leather shoulder and breast plates, his chain mail, his array of well-used weapons. Nicci had seen him crush men’s throats in one of his big, powerful hands. As silent witness to his bravery in battle, he bore a number of scars. She had seen them all.
Few officers ranked higher or were more trusted than Kadar Kardeef. He had been with the Order since his youth, rising through the ranks to fight alongside Jagang as they expanded the empire of the Imperial Order out of their homeland of Altur’Rang to eventually subjugate the rest of the Old World. Kadar Kardeef was the hero of the Little Gap campaign, the man who almost single-handedly turned the course of the battle, breaking through enemy lines and personally slaying the three great kings who had joined forces to trap and crush the Imperial Order before it could seize the imaginations of the millions of people living in a patchwork of kingdoms, fiefdoms, clans, city-states, and vast regions controlled by alliances of warlords.
The Old World had been a tinderbox, waiting for the spark of revolution. The preachings of the Order were that spark. If the high priests were the Order’s soul, Jagang was its bone and muscle. Few people understood Jagang’s genius—they saw only a dream walker, or a ferocious warrior. He was far more.
It had taken Jagang decades to finally bring the rest of the Old World to heel—to put the Order on its final path to greater glory. During those years of struggle for the Order, while engaged in nearly constant war, Jagang toiled building the road system that allowed him to move men and supplies great distances with lightning speed. The more lands and peoples he annexed, the more laborers he put to the construction of yet more roads by which he could conquer yet more territory. He was thus able to maintain communications and to react to situations faster than anyone would have believed possible. Formerly isolated lands were suddenly connected to the rest of the Old World. Jagang had knitted them together with a net of roads. Along those roads, the people of the Old World had risen up to follow him as he forged the way for the Order.
Kadar Kardeef had been part of it all. More than once he had taken wounds to save Jagang’s life. Jagang had once taken a bolt from a crossbow to save Kardeef. If Jagang could be said to have a friend, Kadar Kardeef was as close as any came to it.
Nicci first met Kardeef when he had come to the Palace of the Prophets in Tanimura to pray. Old King Gregory, who had ruled the land including Tanimura, had disappeared without a trace. Kadar Kardeef was a solemnly devout man; before battle he prayed to the Creator for the blood of the enemy, and after, for the souls of the men he had killed. That day he was said to have prayed for the soul of King Gregory. The Imperial Order was suddenly the new rule in Tanimura. The people celebrated in the streets for days.
Over the course of three thousand years, the Sisters, from their home at the Palace of the Prophets in Tanimura, had seen governments come and go. For the most part, the Sisters, led by their prelate, considered matters of rule a petty foolishness best ignored. They believed in a higher calling. The Sisters believed they would remain at the Palace of the Prophets, undisturbed in their work, long after the Order had vanished into the dust of history. Revolutions had many times come and gone. This one, though, caught them up.
Kadar Kardeef had been nearly twenty years younger, then—a handsome conqueror riding into the city. Many of the Sisters were fascinated by the man. Nicci never was. But he was fascinated by her.
Emperor Jagang, of course, did not send such invaluable men as Commander Kardeef out to pacify conquered lands. He had entrusted Kardeef with a much more important task: guarding his valuable property—Nicci.
Nicci turned her attention away from Kadar Kardeef and back to the people.
She settled her gaze on the man who had spoken before. “We cannot allow anyone to shirk their responsibility to others and to our new beginning.”
“Please, Mistress…We have nothing—”
“Disregard of our cause is treasonous.”
He thought better of disagreeing with that pronouncement.
“You don’t seem to understand that this man behind me wants you to see that the Imperial Order is resolute in their devotion to their cause—if you don’t do your duty. I know you have heard the stories, but this man wants you to experience the grim reality. Imagining it is never quite the same. Never quit
e as gruesome.”
She stared at the man, waiting for his answer. He licked his weather-cracked lips.
“We just need some more time…. Our crops are doing well. When the harvest comes in…we could contribute our fair share toward the struggle for…for…”
“The new beginning.”
“Yes, Mistress,” he said, bobbing his head, “the new beginning.” When his gaze returned to the dirt at his feet, she moved on down the line.
Her purpose was not really to collect, but to cow.
The time had come.
A girl gazing up at her snagged Nicci to a stop, distracting her from what she had intended. The girl’s big, dark eyes sparkled with innocent wonder. Everything was new to her, and she was eager to see it all. In her dark eyes shone that rare, fragile, and most perishable of qualities: a guileless view of life that had yet to be touched by pain or loss or evil.
Nicci cupped the girl’s chin, staring into the depths of those thirsting eyes.
One of Nicci’s earliest memories was of her mother standing over her like this, holding her chin, looking down at her. Nicci’s mother was gifted, too. She said that the gift was a curse, and a test. It was a curse because it gave her abilities others didn’t have, and it was a test to see if she would wrongly exert that superiority. Nicci’s mother almost never used her gift. Servants handled the work; she spent most of her time nested among her clutch of friends, devoting herself to higher pursuits.
“Dear Creator, but Nicci’s father is a monster,” she would complain as she wrung her hands. Some of her friends would murmur their sympathy. “Why must he burden me so! I fear his eternal soul is beyond hope or prayer.” The other women would tsk in grim agreement.
Her mother’s eyes were the same dull brown as a cockroach’s back. To Nicci’s mind, they were set too close together. Her mouth, too, was narrow, as if fixed in place by her perpetual disapproval. While Nicci never really thought of her mother as homely, neither did she consider her beautiful, although her friends regularly reassured her that she most surely was.
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