by Carol Berg
“Wake up and get out here! You sleep like the chastou at noonday.”
I had almost given up on ever seeing daylight again. Seven days had passed since I’d read the Prince’s letter. I assumed I had not pleased him, for in the last three of the seven, no cup had been lowered with my daily scrap of food. I couldn’t muster enough spit to wet a dust mote, and hadn’t even been able to eat the last hunk of dry bread they’d given me. Death by thirst was very ugly. Better to be killed outright.
In the great paradox of the desert, I was so dry I no longer desired to drink. But even in my muddled state I knew I was not one of the sturdy desert beasts, and I’d better do what was needed. I knelt to Durgan once I was out of the hole, and I held out my hands. “Please, master, may I drink?” The words ran together, stumbling over my tongue.
Durgan growled and called for someone named Filip. A scrawny albino boy, a Fryth, scurried into the long block-shaped room, where it appeared that at least a hundred men must sleep on the straw-covered stone floor. “When did you last give water to the one in the hole?” demanded the slave master.
The pale-eyed boy shrugged. “You just said feed him. Didn’t say nothing else.”
Durgan laid the back of his hand into the boy’s head so hard it flipped the child end over end. The boy bounced up and shrugged his skinny shoulders, then strolled casually out of the door. “Drink as you need.” Durgan threw a tunic at me and a tin cup, and pointed me at the cistern at the end of the room, all the while mumbling, “ Cursed Fryth. Don’t have a brain to share out amongst the lot of them.”
There had been a time when I believed that drinking and washing from the same basin was impure, a sign of inner disorder that prevented one from discovering universal truths, and put one at risk of corruption. Youth can be so laughably serious. On that day the only difficulty was leaving any of the brown, brackish stuff to wash with. When I was dressed, Durgan informed me that I was to go to the Prince yet again. “Best behave yourself. He’s had me asking around for another reading slave. He don’t trust you.”
Well, I certainly shared that feeling. If I had thought the only penalty was to be sent away, I might have considered misbehaving, but I knew better. I didn’t want to attract any further unpleasant attention from the future Emperor of the Derzhi. Survival was still of interest to me, though it was not the passion it had been when I was eighteen and still learning what manacles and whips were all about. “Thank you, Durgan. And thank you for the water. I’ll do nothing to draw his wrath upon you.” I gave him a bow of true respect. He had not been required to let me drink my fill before answering the Prince’s summons.
“Off with you, then,” he said.
This time the Prince was alone in a modestly proportioned map room attached to his chambers. The walls were covered with maps of the Empire. A rectangular table and most of the floor were littered with map rolls, and ebony pointing sticks, and gold and silver markers used to indicate troop positions and supplies. Massive candelabra hung low over the table, casting bright light upon the strategist’s tools. Prince Aleksander was standing beside one of the maps tracing his finger idly over a part of it and sipping a glass of wine. Unlike his larger chambers, this one had no perfumes sprayed about to cover the stink of gathered bodies. Though the Prince seemed reasonably clean, his race—a race with origins in the desert—was, in general, not keen on bathing. The only scents in the map room were candle smoke and wine.
In the first months after my capture, I spent an inordinate time wallowing in the pain of looking backward. But another man, one who had been in bondage for forty years, had taught me the self-discipline required to stave off that particular madness. “Look at your hand,” he said. “Trace the bones and examine the skin and the calluses, the fingernails, and the iron band about your wrist. Now re-create the hand in your mind with the joints knotted, the skin hanging loose and dry like paper, the nails brown and thick, the flesh spotted with age like mine. The same iron band about the wrist. Tell yourself ... command yourself ... that only when there is no difference between your hand and the image ... only then will you be allowed to remember what has been. It will not be forever, so it is not an impossible command to obey. And when the time comes, you’ll not remember so clearly why you weep, and no one will take you to task for it.” I had followed his lesson faithfully and became quite good at it. But there were moments when the exercise failed, and I would glimpse a piercingly clear image from my true life.
Such was the moment when I knelt just inside the door of Prince Aleksander’s map room and inhaled the homely scents of hot beeswax and strong red wine. There flashed before my eyes a vision of a comfortable room, lined with books, hung and carpeted with the rich, deep autumn colors of my mother’s weavings. My sword and my cloak lay on the floor, dropped after a long day of training. A beeswax candle burned softly on the dark pine desk, and a man’s strong and vital hand pressed a glass of wine into my grasp....
“I said come here! Are you deaf or just insolent?”
When I lifted my eyes, the Prince was glaring at me from across the room. I was up quickly, trying to regain my composure, trying to suppress a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
The Prince motioned me to a stool. Paper and pen, ink and sand were set out on the table in front of me.
“I want to see a sample of your writing.”
I picked up the pen, dipped it, and waited.
“Well, get on with it.”
I steeled myself for his displeasure. “Is there anything particular you would like me to write, my lord?”
“Damn it all, I told you I wanted a sample of your writing. Did I say I cared what it was?”
I deemed it prudent to answer with deeds, and that the deed had best be well considered, so I wrote, “May all honor and glory come to Prince Aleksander, Crown Prince of the Derzhi.” I turned the paper so he could see it over my shoulder, dipped the pen again, and asked, “Would you like to see more, my lord?”
“You wrote my name,” he said, accusing.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“What did you put with it?”
I read him the sentence. He was quiet for a moment, and I kept my eyes pinned to the paper.
“Not very original.”
I glanced up in surprise at the wry humor behind the un-smiling words. Perhaps it was because I was off balance from the vision ... unguarded ... still weak in the head from hunger, or drunk with water after three days without ... but I grinned at him and said, “But safe.”
He stiffened, and it appeared for one instant that I might regret my moment’s madness, but then he slapped me on the back—spattering ink all over my composition—and laughed heartily. “Indeed. Hard to find fault with it—even for me.” He drained his glass of wine and shoved another sheet of paper in front of me. “Your hand seems good enough. So now write what I tell you.”
He walked around the table as he dictated. The faster he walked, the faster he talked, which did nothing to aid my dizziness. I tried to think of something to make him stop, but he was accustomed to scribes, of course, and knew when his thoughts raced too far ahead of my hand. He would pause his words to give me time to catch up, but would not slow his walking.
Cousin,
I am dreadfully annoyed with you for taking your duties so seriously. Give the cursed Khelid legate a hovel and be done with him. These are my subjects, for the gods’ sake, not my masters. If you are not here for my dakrah, I’ll have your balls in my tea the day after.
I despise these damned Khelid and wish they would crawl back to their rocks and pits, wherever they are. Father is so preoccupied with this Khelid Lord Kastavan and his clever ideas that he has sent me here to Capharna to hold his winter Dar Heged. The weather is uniformly dreadful, my duties tedious, and of course, Father has sent Dmitri to be my schoolmaster. Was there ever anyone so preoccupied with plots and conspiracies as our unerringly grim uncle? I know I am truly bored when I start listening to his warnings and taking them to
heart. The only reason I allow him in my chambers is that there is so little other amusement. The company in Capharna in the middle of winter is dismal—all imbeciles or asslickers. Who else would give up the glories of Zhagad’s finest season for this? Between the mistrust Dmitri hammers into me and the hatred they have earned through this despicable winter’s banishment, I’ll confide to you that I plan to behead or exile all of the fiendish Khelid the moment I am crowned.
The wager is doubled to two thousand. Musa will not allow your plow horse to beat him.
Your equally desolate cousin,
Zander
I read the letter back to the Prince, made the few minor corrections he wished, then, in all innocence, asked if he wished to sign it himself before I melted the wax for his seal.
“You insolent pig!” He raised the back of his hand in a painfully familiar gesture, and I dropped instantly to my knees, pressing my forehead to the floor. In my first years of bondage, I could not assume the submissive posture without my stomach gnawing on itself and my hands trembling in anger. But over time I learned that such a position made it much more difficult for an angry man to lay his fist to your head. Somehow it seemed to take a little more thought or preparation before they began using their feet.
“My apologies for my stupidity, my lord! I beg you command me.” My tongue rattled off the necessary words. Not too many. No excuses. Prattling or excuses always made them angrier.
He was silent for a long while, and I dared not look up.
“Melt the wax.”
I got to my feet and stepped back to the stool, but as the blood rushed out of my aching head, another wave of dizziness made me stagger slightly against the table.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing, my lord.” He didn’t really want to hear it. “Would you prefer the white wax or the green or some other?”
“Red. For Kiril, always red.”
I bowed my head and got about the business of sealing the letter. When he had pressed his signet ring into the soft red wax, he rang a bell, and one of his gentleman attendants appeared before the ringing had ceased. There were at least two of the gold-clad young men outside the door at all times in addition to the four heavily armed bodyguards.
The Prince dispatched the letter on its way to Parnifour, then turned back to me. I was uneasy, sitting idle on the stool under his unwavering eye.
“Get out. Tell Durgan you’re to have ten lashes for insolence. You think too much, and you don’t say what you’re thinking.”
I performed my obeisance and said nothing ... certainly not what I was thinking.
Chapter 3
It was another seven days until I was brought out of my cell again. The day was brilliantly sunny, a rarity in Capharna’s high valley, which seemed to capture every fog, mist, and cloud that hung in the northern mountains of Azhakstan. Perhaps it was this ever-present cloud of mystery that convinced the Derzhi, who had their origins in the dune seas of central Azhakstan where the sky was a constant flat steel blue, that Capharna was a holy city, sacred to their gods.
The doors of the slave house had been thrown open to the sun. It was still cold enough to show your breath, but anything was better than the stale, fetid air of my burrow under the floor. I stretched and inhaled and felt half-human. My other half was itching, stinking, and squinting to keep out the painful glare of sunlight on snow. But I wasn’t greedy.
“What’s the matter with you? I’ve never seen anyone smile after nigh on three weeks down there.” Durgan held the white tunic close to his brawny chest, as if planning to withhold it until I had confessed my secret sin.
“I’ve slept enough for ten men, I’ve not had a lash in seven days, and yesterday’s meat was only half gristle and not quite off. I’ve had worse weeks.”
The slave master stared at me as if I were mad. “You’re an odd one, Ezzarian.”
I could have said the same for Durgan, who had not only made sure the Fryth boy sent my water down every day, but had sent two cups instead of just the one. And the portions of food in my one meal a day had been noticeably larger than before. But it’s never wise to point out a kindness in your master, lest you find out it was all a mistake.
I pointed to the tunic. “Is that for me?”
“Oh, aye. As before. In his chambers. Be quick about it.”
I bowed, took myself to the cistern, and, once the slave master had inspected me and given his approval, started for the palace. As I left the slave house, Durgan called after me, “Watch your tongue, slave. Better than last time.”
I was not averse to watching my tongue. I just wished I knew how to go about it with Aleksander.
On this occasion the bodyguards outside the Prince’s door searched me before I was allowed to knock. As they prodded and poked self-importantly, I heard the disconcerting sounds of glass breaking and cursing from behind the door. At the snappish, “Come,” my fading lash marks stung in warning.
The Prince was throwing things: pillows, statuary, wineglasses and bottles, and the occasional knife. Evidently this had been going on for quite a while, for the priceless Induit carpet was stained with wine and littered with fragments of glass, porcelain, feathers, clothing, and cushions. I worried that I might slice my forehead on the shards, and it was difficult to convince myself to rise up again after my obeisance. So I stayed down. I didn’t want his attention. And, in truth, he seemed to have forgotten me already.
“Intolerable! I’ll see them all dead. Better, I’ll see them all in chains. I’ll send them to the Veshtari Overlord to spread dung in his fields. The Veshtar know how to use slaves.”
“Aleksander, control yourself.” It was the Lord Dmitri, brother to the Emperor. “Your rash behavior has caused this mess.”
“You blame me as Father does. It’s my fault that this city is filled with inbred imbeciles who can’t find their mouths with a spoon, but who dare spy on their Emperor’s son. And I am to accept it? You’re the one who keeps warning me of these Khelid, and now I’m taken to task for speaking my mind in private correspondence. By Druya’s horns, Dmitri, he’ll have me married to one of them, if this doesn’t stop.”
My equanimity, already unsettled by Durgan’s warning, lay in ruins.
“I’m as concerned about the Khelid as ever, Aleksander. But if you’re to be Emperor, you must think before you act. You mutilated the son of the oldest family in northern Azhakstan. You taunted and shamed him—and therefore his kin to the sixteenth degree—setting them at odds with your father and yourself. And to compound your stupidity, you make fatuous threats against your father’s new favorites and trust the letter to one of your attendants who happens to be Vanye’s brother-in-law! How can one intelligent man be so thickheaded?”
“Get out, Dmitri. Until my father revokes my birth, I am your prince. You will watch your despicable tongue or I’ll have it out of your mouth.”
“Zander—”
“Out!”
I glimpsed two well-worn boots, elegantly crafted of the finest leather, standing beside my head.
“Here is your slave, Aleksander. Consider carefully what words you have him commit to paper. I love you well, but I will not stand between you and Ivan. Never think it.”
An oil lamp crashed into the door as it closed behind Dmitri. I knew it was from the combination of shattered glass, rattling brass, and peach-scented oil that splattered over my back. It took all the control I could muster to stay still. It was daytime. The lamp was not lit.
“Insolent, damnable wretch!” I hoped that was aimed at Dmitri. I kept my head to the carpet. I would have preferred to keep it there all day rather than allow the Prince to glimpse the barely healed mark on my face—the abstractions of a rampant lion that threatened to devour my left eye and the falcon that still throbbed on my cheekbone. From the conversation I had just heard, I was much too involved in this unpleasantness—exactly the last place a slave should ever be.
Droplets of oil dribbled slowly down the backs of
my legs. How could something so complexly wonderful and mysterious as the human intelligence devise a world so utterly, absolutely absurd?
“Come, take up your pen, Ezzarian.” Anger transformed to cold bitterness. Very dangerous.
“In the map room, Your Highness?” I asked, speaking clearly, not in some annoying craven whisper. I kept my face averted.
“No. Right here.” He pointed to a small desk beside the window where he stood. It was a simple piece, made of dark cherry wood, planed and shaped into smooth, elegant lines, far less exotic and elaborate than the other tables and chests in his chambers. Out of place, yet far more pleasing to my eye. The drawer slid open quietly at my touch. Inside it a small, sharp knife lay beside the stack of creamy white paper. While I unstoppered the ink and used the little knife to sharpen the three pens that lay on the desktop, the Prince absentmindedly ran his hand over the satiny, tight-grained finish of the desk, muttering. “Damn you, Dmitri. Damn you.”
“All is ready, my lord.”
I waited a good five minutes while Aleksander stared out of the window, folding his arms in front of his chest, his jaw rigid, in the very posture of controlled rage. When he began to release his words, they were like the first few pellets of sleet spit from lowering clouds, so hard and biting that they would send villagers scurrying to gather in their children and their stock to protect them from the coming fury of the storm.
