Despite the fact he had aided in her enslavement and would most likely soon participate in killing her, she was instantly inclined to like him.
He had excellent manners and pronunciation.
If you were going to be murdered by someone, the least they could do was be cordial about it.
And being murdered by a mumbler was Tandy’s nightmare.
She nodded her head formally, as she’d done countless times in the Galland court. “Greetings, Kobb.” She held a hand to her chest. “I am called ‘Tandrea.’ Or ‘Tandy,’ if you would prefer. It is a pleasure to meet you and your beautiful manners bring honor to your clan.”
“Greetings, ‘Tandy’ of the Brightlighters.” He smiled, pleased that she’d understood him and followed proper protocol, then gestured to The Wasteland Butcher. “This is my Sister’s Son, Tzadok, The Wasteland Butcher. He is Lord of Salt.” He paused. “Which means… like… our ‘
Tzadok looked at her silently, eyes blazing.
Tandy just stared back at him, feeling like she couldn’t turn away. There was something… captivating about the man. And it wasn’t simply the fact that he was still wearing an animal skull on his head.
He was… power.
Just raw power, filling the room.
Tandy had no real experience with power. She’d never known anyone who possessed it, least of all herself.
But this man… strength and command seemed to surround him like a cloud. You could feel it.
His movements, his voice… everything. When you were in the room with him, you were looking at him. Even if someone else was speaking. He was the huge barbarian warlord you paid attention to. He seemed to draw you in, somehow. Like there was some hidden force pushing all things in the world towards him… especially her.
He crossed his huge arms over his broad chest, obviously impatient about something. The man seemed to have GIGANTIC emotions.
She tilted her head to the side, trying to see what he looked like under the skull helmet. But it covered most of his face. Only his eyes were clearly visible.
They were dark and frightening, burning beneath the mask like ancient fiery gemstones.
Everything about the man was utterly terrifying though, so that wasn’t surprising. Just looking at him made Tandy want to squeak in fear and hide.
But she didn’t… and she wasn’t sure why.
Instead, she was having a fairly casual conversation with the men who had slaughtered her countrymen and were holding her captive.
It was a most eventful day.
“Do you have a ‘husband,’ Tandy of the Brightlighters?” Kobb asked innocently, like it was a perfectly ordinary question to inquire about with your hostage over tea. “A man of any kind? Someone who will come to The Wasteland looking for you, perhaps?”
“Me?” She shook her head. “No, I’m…” She stopped short, suddenly suspicious about where this topic was going. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“He just wants to know who I have to kill.” Tzadok bit out. “Names. Locations. And such.”
“Yes.” Kobb nodded, stifling an amused smile. “’And such.’”
“Ah.” She rearranged her clothes again. “No, it’s just me.”
“The powerful often have difficulty finding an equal.” The huge man decided, like that confirmed something he suspected. “They will come looking for you when your powers are noticed to be absent from their lives and their villages are endangered without your protection.”
“Yeeeeah…” Tandy wasn’t sure what that meant. “I… umm…” No, she didn’t know what to make of that. She decided to err on the side of being cordial though and continue the conversation. She was oddly interested in hearing The Wasteland Butcher’s answer to the question of who he might be involved with, but thought that he might overreact in some way. He seemed like a very emotional person. So, she instead asked the man’s uncle. “You, Kobb? Do you have a wife?”
“Funny you should ask…” Tzadok looked pointedly at his uncle. “Perhaps you can tell her the touching story of your romance with the dark-haired nightmare and her ongoing reign of terror.”
Kobb ignored that. “No, I’m afraid I have no mate either.” He pursed his lips, deep in thought. “I always wanted children. A woman of my own...” He shrugged. “But I never married. Never even looked for my (weird unrecognized word), to be honest. Because I would have had to leave the clan and live with her people. Which would have meant leaving Tzadok. And that boy needed me. Still does.” He nodded in certainty. “So… I stayed.”
Tzadok gasped in sheer incredulity. “Don’t you dare place the blame on me!” He roared. “You didn’t look for your (the weird word again) because you haven’t wanted to do anything in decades but sit around and stare at your damned flowers! My entire life, all you’ve done is lecture and meditate. You never focus on your own life! You treat it like… like… like a damned inconvenience! Do you have any idea how many perfectly acceptable mates I’ve introduced you to over the years? I’ve practically lined them up, ages eighteen to eighty! You ignored them all!”
Kobb snorted. “I remember it as the other way around. Every attempt at matchmaking I try, you always have cruel things to say about the girl and my ‘interference.’”
“Oh, that’s horseshit! Utter dog-loving horseshit!” Tzadok let out an irritated sound of fury. “You introduced me to one girl! ONE! What’s-her-name from the Thunder Forest, the one with the weird ears.”
“She is a fine young woman, from a fine family and a fine clan.” Kobb argued. “Her ears were perfectly fine too, as long as you didn’t focus on them. All of Chox’s women are beautiful in their own special way. In His wisdom, He has made each a unique work of art. She…”
“Then why didn’t you marry her if you’ve been so silently desperate for companionship all these years!?!” Tzadok interrupted.
“As I said, I was needed here…” Kobb sniffed in indignation.
“More horseshit.” He pointed at his uncle and looked at Tandy, as if warning her of a danger. “That’s horseshit. Right there. That is what that remains, close your ears to him, Green Thing. Hear not his lies.”
Kobb ignored that. “Chox knows that you need all the help you can get.”
Tzadok’s seemed too furious to even respond to that. Instead he kicked one of the tent’s support poles in frustration, cracking the thick wood in half and causing one section of the roof to droop.
Kobb shook his head in silent condemnation.
Tzadok shouted what could only be a curse as he looked at the destruction, apparently getting frustrated over his own frustration and the damage it had caused.
“It’s fine.” Kobb assured him, trying to calm the man down. “It can be fixed.”
But Tzadok didn’t seem to calm down at all, and instead appeared to be dwelling on his outburst and the shattered support pole. He continued to mutter oaths and curses to himself, most of which seemed to be about himself, oddly. Well, that and his uncle’s alleged history of monstrous fabrications.
The tent fell into awkward silence.
She cleared her throat, garnering her courage to ask The Wasteland Butcher about romance. “And… you?”
As expected, he didn’t take the question well. In fact, he seemed to find it insulting for some reason, like the answer was obvious. “Don’t you DARE play innocent with me! WHY ARE YOU HERE!?!” He bellowed. “There has to be some hidden reason why you allowed yourself to be captured like this. I want to know and I want to know NOW!”
Tandy swallowed, trying to keep herself from fleeing the room in terror.
“I don’t think she comprehended you. Or doesn’t flash your query.” Kobb told his nephew.
Tandy’s brow furrowed, trying to decide if that was a local expression or something she’d mistranslated. Probably the latter.
In either case, Kobb seemed to have already forgotten his argument with his nephew. “Speak with less speed. She has a
very small head.”
Again, she wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.
“I understood him. Kinda.” She squinted, trying to follow along with their language as best she could, despite her overwhelming fear. “I just…” She cleared her throat, getting back to her job. “The Minister of Empire… the man you killed?”
“Which one?” Tzadok asked immediately.
“He was… umm…” She tried to think of a way to articulate which person she was referring to. He’d killed so many it was hard. “It… it doesn’t matter, never mind.” She cleared her throat again. “He was sent by Galland…”
“Which clan is he from?” Tzadok pressed, cutting her off. “’Gall-Land.’” He turned to look at his uncle. “Sounds like a Swampman to me. You?”
Kobb thought about it. “If they’re planning something, you need to contact…”
She shook her head. “No, no. It’s… it’s…” She gestured with her hand. “It’s a land far away. Towards the setting sun.”
“Wait…” Kobb squinted in thought. “You mean (word Tandy had never heard before)?”
“Suuuuure.” She drew out. “I guess.”
“I was there once, decades ago.” Kobb nodded in understanding. “Smart people.”
“Well… not anymore.” She corrected. “We executed all of those.”
Kobb frowned at the news. “Why?”
“I… don’t know.” She admitted with a shrug, unable to come up with an explanation. “In any case, they’ve now decided to…” She tried to remember what the minister had ordered her to communicate to the Wastelander earlier. “Minister Hamtramck? The man you… umm… squished? He told me to tell you that my forces have freed you from your savagery, and that I will be leveling a tax. It’s your duty to support my Empire and further my glorious cause of freedom and equality. I am going to place these lands back under the watchful eye of the kingdom of Galland. I will serve as its protectorate until such time as I can impose a more permanent civic order here. In the meantime, I will arrest and relocate you, for your own security.”
Silence.
Kobb’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
Tzadok’s voice lowered dangerously. “You must have considerable power, Green Thing, if you threaten The Lord of Salt to his face without fear.” He leaned towards her. “WHAT POWER DO YOU HAVE!?! Out with it!?! Let us do battle and be done with this enchantment!”
She shrank back from him, unsure what he was angry about.
“DON’T YELL!” Kobb yelled at his nephew. “Yelling gets you nothing in life but a sore throat! You’ll scare her off, you ass! And I’m not catching you another one!”
“She just threatened me, Mother’s Brother!” Tzadok insisted, sounding insulted. “How should I react!?!”
Kobb let out an exaggerated calming breath to demonstrate how one could achieve serenity. “Patience. Balance. Understanding. These are the attributes an honorable man should strive for. Both in the world and within himself.”
“She threatened us!” Tzadok insisted.
“So!?!” Kobb shot back. “Look around you! You’re not getting another Green Thing, boy! Which means you take the one you’ve got— threats and all— and thank Chox for her!”
“I want to know what kind of danger she represents!” Tzadok countered. “I want to know what she’s plotting and why! We’ll figure it out right fucking now, THEN be patient!”
“I’m not…” She said softly, still terrified but trying to be a professional. “I’m not the one who issued the… the threat?” She reminded them, recognizing both that it was phrased as a question and that she had mistakenly used the wrong prosodic stress, so it sounded like although she hadn’t been the one to issue the ultimatum, that she would follow it all the same. She made a face, unhappy with that attempt. “No, no. My apologies, let me try again: ‘I did not issue the threat.’” She stated bluntly, avoiding the difficult sentence stress rules of the Wastelandi language entirely. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do until she could find a way to articulate her precise meaning. “I am sorry if it sounded that way to you. I am not entirely familiar with the conjugations of your language. I may have used the first person singular, rather than the third-person plural.”
They both stared at her in confusion again.
She started to fidget, unable to stop herself. “Never… never mind. It’s not important. We can just…” She trailed off.
Tzadok stepped towards her again. “The Wasteland does not need ‘protection.’” He growled. “The Wasteland does not want ‘protection.’ The Wasteland will not tolerate ‘protection.’ Tell your people to drown in their own piss.”
She bit her lip nervously. “I… I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because… you’ve killed all my people.” She shrugged helplessly. “Or at least the ones I arrived with, anyway.” A new idea occurred to her and instantly made her hopeful. “But… but I would be happy to relay your message to the Galland capital in person, if you would be so kind as to free me and point me in the right direction, please.”
“There is no need for that.” Tzadok assured her, which made her think that whatever she’d said in his language, hadn’t been what she’d intended. “I will deal with them soon enough.”
“There are many men in (word Tandy still theorized was the local name for Galland). More than the Swamp and Salt combined.” Kobb warned. “If they are our enemy, our (new word which in context must mean something like ‘survival of our people’) is threatened.”
Tzadok shook his head. “I am unafraid. The bird has feathers but it cannot dance.”
Tandy’s brow compressed in thought, wondering what that meant. It was apparently some kind of colloquialism or folk saying. She would interpret it into Gallandish as something like: “They talk big, but won’t back it up.” Or perhaps: “Superior numbers do not a victory make.”
That was still missing the deeper meaning though, since it was obvious that the image of a dancing bird was chosen deliberately because it was absurd and ridiculous, just as the idea of those men standing against Tzadok would be.
There was also an implied enviousness to the situation, because the bird couldn’t dance while people could. It seemed to suggest that the bird wanted to dance, or wanted the person to stop dancing for some unspecified reason.
That meaning was also lost in her translation, which was…
She blinked, suddenly realizing that both men were staring at her. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Where were we?”
“My Sister’s Son just threatened to butcher your extended clan like cattle.” Kobb reminded her matter-of-factly. “And now he is yelling at you. Again.” He shook his head sadly. “I apologize for his manners. Please forgive him. He is young.”
Tandy pursed her lips in thought, cataloging how the man had made his sentence stress clear. Contextually, it conveyed a meaning entirely different than simply saying “again” would have.
“I am not yelling.” Tzadok snapped, again demonstrating the Wastelandi version of prosodic stress for her. She was really learning so much now that she could listen to the language being used by native speakers. It was a truly momentous day for the linguistic sciences. “I am merely reminding her that as my (strange word which in context must mean ‘property’ or ‘slave’) she should please refrain from threatening to overthrow me and install herself as ruler.” He sounded exasperated, elongating the vowels of his language to indicate his mental frustration. “Is that unreasonable!?! Am I wrong in this thinking?”
“Oh, I don’t want to be ruler.” She told them honestly. “I only want to be left alone with my studies. You can just… ignore me. I can be very quiet, you won’t even know that I’m…” She swallowed. “…That is to say, uh…” She didn’t finish the thought, too distracted by the Butcher’s dark gaze. There was something about it which she found absolutely fascinating. “Wow…” She breathed in wonder.
The men frowned at her again, strugglin
g to understand either her words or her motivations. Hopefully they didn’t ask her to explain them, because that was a mystery to Tandy as well.
Tzadok finally shook his head to clear it. “These are the rules, learn them well.” He announced to her. “You will stay where I can see you at all times…”
Kobb shifted in his chair. “Uh… Sister’s Son?”
Tzadok held up a hand, halting his uncle’s thought. “Unless there’s…”
“I understand.” She nodded, cutting him off. “’Within your sight, unless it would be gross.’ Continue.”
Kobb chuckled in delight, obviously enjoying the conversation.
“You will not consort with the People of the Coast.” Tzadok counted that off on his fingers. “They are dangerous and not to be trusted.”
“I will need someone to point them out to me, but I understand, and will accept your appraisal of their moral character without argument, since you are more familiar with them than I.” She nodded again. “Continue.”
“You will not use whatever secrets you are hiding against my people.” Tzadok shook his head. “I will not stand for it.”
She nodded. “I can absolutely promise that.” She swallowed nervously. “For the sake of clarity and to avoid any unpleasant surprises: what… what actions will result in my death or beating?”
Kobb frowned.
Tzadok looked equally confused.
“Was that the wrong word?” She pursed her lips in thought, then looked at the older man, asking for his help. “Kobb?”
The man shrugged helplessly, obviously having no idea what she was looking for assistance in expressing.
“What would I have to do to…” She tried again, her mind racing. She was failing at this! It was a disaster! She was doing a very poor job, very poor indeed. “Umm…” She let out a breath, unable to think of the phrase she needed. “If… okay, okay… what do I have to do to get you to kill me?”
Everyone was silent for a long beat.
The men glanced at each other in an odd way, and Tandy knew immediately she’d made another mistake.
Captive of a Fairytale Barbarian Page 7
