The Palace of Impossible Dreams

by Jennifer Fallon

  Perhaps, she thought, the noises we’ve been hearing at night weren’t some hapless cabin boy, but the ship’s doctor being tormented and beaten.

  Of all the things she’d been expecting about the ship’s doctor, to find that he looked even more damaged than her was not among them. It beggared belief, and for a moment she forgot herself.

  “I’ll bet that hurts,” she muttered in Glaeban, wincing in sympathy for the beating this young man must have endured.

  The young man looked up sharply. “You’re Glaeban.”

  “You speak Glaeban,” she replied, equally surprised and unable to think of anything more intelligent to say. Her plan had been to look ill and on the verge of collapse, but she’d been expecting a drunkard with no hope of a future or much care for his patients. For all that the ship’s doctor looked as if he’d just been chewed up and spat out by a Jelidian snow bear, Arkady doubted her gruel-covered wound would pass even the most distracted glance by this sharp young man.

  Time for my back-up plan, she thought.

  Pity there is no back-up plan.

  “I studied in Glaeba for a time,” the doctor said.

  “Ah . . . that would explain it . . .”

  “I would not have expected to find a Glaeban noblewoman in the holds of one of my father’s slavers,” he said, studying her with interest. “What happened? Debtor slave?”

  “I suppose you could say that,” she said. It wasn’t really a lie. She’d been sold into slavery, after all, to settle the debt between two immortals. “What makes you think I’m a Glaeban noblewoman?”

  “You speak too well to be a poor man’s wife. Do you have a name?”

  “Kady.”

  “Is that your real name?”

  “It’s near enough.”

  “And what can I do for you, Kady Near Enough? You appear healthy, given your circumstances. Yet you’d not have been sent to me unless they feared you were mortally ill.”

  “I . . . my brand . . . the burn . . .” she said. “I think it’s infected.”

  He indicated she should take a seat on the examination table. “Where is the brand?”

  Arkady sat on the table and then hesitated, certain now that her ruse, far from giving her an opportunity to end her life painlessly, was about to plunge her into far deeper trouble. Gingerly, she pulled the loose shift aside, exposing her breast.

  In a business-like fashion the young man leaned forward to examine the wound. He studied it for an inordinately long time, touching her breast with hesitant fingers, before standing up and turning to the wash bowl on the table beside the instruments, where he began to wash his hands, the water sloshing around with the motion of the ship.

  “Your wound seems to be suffering from indigestion rather than infection,” he remarked, speaking Glaeban so she could understand him.

  “Sorry?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. “That’s porridge, not pus. And the smell? That’s either deliberate or the result of poor personal hygiene.”

  Arkady covered her breast in annoyance. There would be no scalpel to snatch from this young man’s distracted hand. No quick end. No easy death from loss of blood . . .

  “I . . . I wanted to see you,” she said, for want of a better reason for her deception. I wanted to steal a scalpel and kill myself, might not be a wise confession to make at this point.

  “Why?” He turned back to her, this time with a washcloth in his hand. Arkady turned her head as he cautiously exposed her breast again and began to wash away the muck.

  “It got me out of the slave cabin,” she said.

  Arkady risked a closer look. The young man was concentrating on his work. As she suspected, in the better light of the doctor’s cabin it was obvious that her burn was clean and healing well. But the doctor was blushing crimson as he worked, making Arkady wonder how many naked breasts this young man had actually handled before.

  Not many, she decided, as he stepped away from the table to rinse out the washcloth. There was a noticeable swelling in the front of his trousers that she was fairly certain wasn’t the result of anything other than good old-fashioned lust.

  “Tides,” she said, pulling her shift up. “How long have you been at sea?”

  He glanced down and managed to blush an even deeper shade of vermillion, if that were possible. “I’m . . . I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”

  Arkady stared at him in shock. “Why are you apologising? I’m the slave here.”

  “I’m not . . .” He stopped and then shrugged helplessly. “I’m not very good at dealing with women, I’m afraid. Slave or freeborn.” He tossed the washcloth into the bowl and turned to look at her. “Actually, I’m not very good at dealing with my own gender, either, as evidenced by my many impressive cuts and bruises.”

  “Why did they beat you up?” she asked, partly out of curiosity and partly out of the need to stall her return to the slave cabin for as long as possible. On that beautifully neat tray just out of arm’s reach lay the means for her escape. If feigning interest in this young doctor’s woes meant a chance at getting her hands on a scalpel, Arkady was prepared to sit here and listen sympathetically while he poured out his entire life story.

  “I think they’re under orders to toughen me up.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “My name is Cydne Medura.”

  She waited, assuming there was more to the statement, but apparently not. “I’m sorry, is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  He smiled. “If you were Senestran you would have heard of me. My family is very important.”

  Medura. She remembered where she’d heard it before and nodded in comprehension. “So when you said you were surprised to find a Glaeban noblewoman on your father’s slaver you meant . . . what’s-his-name . . . Filimon Medura?”

  “Filimar,” he corrected.

  “I would have thought being the owner’s son would have protected you from the crew’s excesses,” she said. “Not made you a target.”

  “One would think,” Cydne agreed, wiping his hands. “But I suspect my shipmates are acting on orders from the captain.”

  When Arkady didn’t react to that, he added, “I’m on this cruise because my father believes a few months at sea will make a man of me, you see. He’s a very efficient sort of fellow, so if I’m here and the aim is to toughen me up, he’ll have taken steps to make damn certain that’s the inevitable outcome of my journey.”

  She studied his bloodied eye and bruised jaw for a moment. “Not enjoying the process much, I’d say.”

  “Not much, no.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  That made Cydne smile even wider, which had the unfortunate effect of making him seem younger than he was. Given his profession, and that he had studied in both Senestra and Glaeba, it was likely he was closer to thirty than twenty, but he didn’t look it, which would have done little, Arkady guessed, to help his cause.

  “Pity from a slave,” he sighed. “Now I am truly depressed.”

  “I’d be happier dead than in my current predicament,” Arkady said. “So any time you want to swap places, doctor . . .”

  “You should be getting back,” he said, looking away uncomfortably. “Is there anything else you need?”

  Rescuing, she replied silently, but there didn’t seem much point. Arkady slipped off the edge of the examination table, which had the unfortunate effect of placing Cydne between her and the tray of instruments. Her chance—if it had ever really been a chance—was gone. There wouldn’t be a second trip back to the doctor’s cabin for her infected burn—or for any other reason.

  He stepped past her, put his hand on the latch, ready to open it and call back her guard . . .

  “Wait!”

  “Was there something else?”

  “Take me,” she blurted out, unable to frame a more delicate suggestion in the split second she had to turn this around. She would never, ever, get another opportunity like this.

&nb
sp; “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re being picked on by the crew because your shipmates think you’re . . . you’re . . .” She fished around for the right word, not sure how to frame it, gambling her life on the fact that she had only a moment to convince this man to help her. “Because they think you’re not a real man . . .”

  Cydne was blushing crimson again.

  “The captain has ordered the female slaves may be used by the crew as soon as we clear Torlenian waters,” she added in a rush. “That’s about an hour from now, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose . . .”

  “Well, you don’t want to keep getting beaten up and I don’t fancy being repeatedly raped. Please, doctor. Tell the captain you want me for your bed; that you want me to stay here with you.”

  Cydne looked horrified by her suggestion. “Why, in the name of the Tides, would I do something like that?”

  “Because if you have a woman of your own, the crew will be satisfied, your father will think you’re a real man and I won’t have to find another way to kill myself.”

  The blood drained from the young doctor’s face. “Is that why you came here? Why you pretended your wound was septic? Were you hoping I would give you something for the pain? Enough to kill yourself?”

  Arkady shook her head. “Actually, I was planning to steal a scalpel and open my carotid with it.”

  “How do you even know where your carotid artery is?” he asked with a bewildered frown.

  “My father was a physician.”

  Cydne looked too confused, too dazed to make a decision about anything, let alone make the unheard of leap of faith required to help this strange Glaeban slave he’d known for all of five minutes.

  Significantly, though, he hadn’t yet opened the door or called for the guard.

  “You know nothing about me,” the young man said, after a moment. “For all you know, I might be your worst nightmare.”

  “My worst nightmare is spending the next few weeks being handed around the crew for their entertainment,” she said. “I doubt, even at your most perverse, you could do worse than that.”

  “Do you also assume I’m not interested in women?” he asked, more than a little defensively. “Is that why you’re throwing yourself on my mercy? Because you think I have no lustful interest in you?”

  Arkady wanted to scream at him. Instead, she took a deep breath and hoped she sounded rational, not desperate. “I’ve seen the evidence of your ‘lustful interest,’ doctor. It scares me a whole lot less than being pack raped.”

  “But I know nothing about you . . .”

  “And the only thing I know about you is that you know I faked an injury to get here and you haven’t reported me yet. I’m taking it on trust that your silence means you’re a decent human being. You’re going to have to take it on trust that I’m one too.”

  He stared at her indecisively for a moment and then pointed to the instrument tray. “There. That long piece with the grip in the middle and the flattened hooks at the end, next to the scalpels. What is it?”

  “A bone lever,” she said with reasonable confidence. “It’s used for levering broken bones back into place; sometimes for extracting teeth that have rotted and broken off in the gum.”

  “And the thing next to it? With the flat head?”

  “It’s a cautery. It’s used to seal wounds; sometimes for destroying skin tumours and warts.”

  “And the hooks next to that? What are they used for?”

  “The blunt one is for raising blood-vessels; the sharp ones are for seizing and raising small pieces of tissue for excision and for holding the edges of wounds open. Please, doctor, I’m not lying. I can help you. I just need you to help me.”

  He didn’t respond immediately, but when he did, Arkady’s heart sank. The doctor opened the door and called for the guard before turning back to watch her suspiciously, but not without doing a quick visual check of the instrument table first, to be certain that all the scalpels were still there.

  The sailor appeared in the doorway a few tense moments later and said something to the doctor. The young man squared his shoulders and rattled off something else that made no sense to Arkady. Once he was finished speaking the sailor glared at Arkady for a moment, and then slapped the doctor on the shoulder and burst out laughing. He said something else Arkady didn’t understand and left, laughing all the way down the corridor.

  “What did you say to him?” Did you report my fake wound? My attempt to escape my fate by throwing myself at you? The fact that I was planning suicide?

  Any one of those explanations might have evoked the laughter of the sailor the doctor had sent away without her. Even now, the guard could be on his way to report her crimes to the captain . . .

  “I told him I wasn’t sending you back,” Cydne replied, turning to face her. Arkady almost fainted with relief as he added, “I told him I’d heard the captain has made the female slaves available for the use of the crew and I wanted this one for myself.”

  Arkady could have cried with relief. “Thank you.”

  He shook his head sadly. “You are thanking me for nothing, Kady. I am still one of the crew. And you are still mine to do with as I want.”

  But you’re going to have to sleep sometime, Arkady thought, sniffing back unexpected tears and quite deliberately not looking in the direction of the tray of instruments where the scalpels lay.

  Turns out I have an alternate plan, after all.

  Chapter 5

  Cayal’s journey across the desert to Elvere was relatively fast, although it was uncomfortable. For one, he was on foot, and he stopped for nothing—not to eat, drink or rest—in the two days it took him to reach the city. This was one of those occasions when his immortality was a blessing rather than a curse. He didn’t hunger or thirst or tire the way a mortal man would, or a mortal beast of burden, for that matter, which is why he chose to cross the desert on foot. Riding a camel may have been more comfortable, but it would have been much much slower.

  It proved easy enough for Cayal to track Arkady down once he reached Elvere. There was really only one slave concern of note in the city and they pretty much controlled the movement of all slaves in and out of the port. Posing as a buyer, Cayal had hardly any trouble gaining an audience with the slave trader Brynden had sent Arkady to.

  He described Arkady quite specifically and asked the man how much he wanted for her.

  The slaver had treated him to an oily, apologetic smile and informed him he didn’t have the Glaeban woman Cayal described. He had, however, recently acquired a Caelish woman of similar stature and appearance that his lordship might be interested in.

  Cayal was relieved beyond measure . . . Until the slaver announced he’d recently branded the slave in question, batch-sold her to the Medura Shipping Company for eventual placement in the Senestran mines, and shipped her out several days earlier.

  At which point, Cayal exploded with fury.

  With the Tide on the turn, Cayal’s anger was a tangible thing. The freak storm that lashed the city for more than a day, unroofing houses and swamping the slums with its torrential downpour, was nothing more than a reflex. For a time, Cayal even relished the feel of the rising Tide as he channelled its still nascent power . . .

  But the unseasonable hurricane that swept across Elvere was fairly pathetic, given what he would be capable of once the Tide peaked. It made him feel a little better, even if it achieved nothing else useful. Even the thrill of the Tide faded too quickly, however. Within a day, Cayal’s rage was spent, and he was forcefully reminded of the reason the Tide no longer offered relief from his despair.

  Besides, a part of him argued, he should probably let her go. Arkady Desean had a bad habit of making him forget his purpose. He was sorry for her—sorry she’d been sold into slavery—but worse had happened to him in his eight thousand years, and besides, she was a smart, tough woman. If anybody could find a way to survive such a fate, Arkady would. Cayal wanted to die, he reminded himself,
and Lukys was insisting he’d found a way to make it happen.

  I should listen to Lukys. Take advantage of the rising Tide and put an end to this endless existence while I have the chance.

  He would be a fool to pass up an opportunity that may not come again for some ten thousand years, all for the sake of a woman who didn’t want him, didn’t love him, and tricked him into thinking there might be some reason to his existence, when eight thousand years of experience told him quite the opposite.

  So Cayal, after three days of savage weather and countless mortal casualties, let the Tide go.

  And yet the storm raged on . . .

  Once he’d calmed down enough to take note of his surroundings, Cayal quickly discovered why the storm continued to rage, despite his attempts to calm it. He could feel the reason tingling along his arms. He could feel it resonating in his bones. He could feel the disturbance in the Tide; the ripples of another presence nearby on the surface of the magical ocean from which the Tide Lords drew their power.

  There was another Tide Lord in Elvere, working mischief with the storm Cayal had set off in his rage.

  The identity of the culprit was easy enough to deduce. It wasn’t Brynden, Cayal was sure. The Lord of Reckoning was too careful of his mortal charges to allow such a storm to harm them. He’d be trying to end it, not feed it. Besides, he was busy trying to take over the country. Kinta was in Ramahn already, paving the way for his return. He wouldn’t allow the most important port in the north to be destroyed. He wanted to rule Torlenia. He needed the commerce that passed through this port too much to allow any harm to come to it.

  For similar reasons, Cayal doubted any of the other Tide Lords who could—on a good day—be considered reasonably sane, were responsible for this. Which meant it was likely to be one of them who wasn’t sane, narrowing down the candidates to Kentravyon or Pellys.

  Both men had been driven insane by immortality, something Cayal tried not to think about too often, for fear of having to examine his own sanity too closely. Kentravyon was living proof of what happened when you swam too deep into the Tide and couldn’t find your way back again. It had ended with him believing he was God and they’d had to band together and bind him in ice, to save the world from his delusions. Until Lukys had inexplicably decided to revive him, he should have remained in Jelidia where he could hurt no one.