“I do not think, kovneva, I shall fight this girl.”
“Not fight her, my dear? Oh, of course. You are tired from your journey. I see! Well, this shif must be tired, too, since she has defeated Nadia Woodraven who used to be my cadade, and Chica Trevalmin ti Alvondsmot, whom we used to call the Fangs.”
Jilian let her dark intense gaze pass broodingly across Delia. She drew off her left-hand glove, supple and black. She did not remove the right, for the Whip coiled its sinuous lashes about the leather gauntlet.
“If Nadia and Chica are both defeated, have you not found yourself a Jikvushi who would serve you and fight for you — if you treated her well?”
Giving the kovneva no time to reply, Jilian gestured with her right hand. “Slave — bring me wine, a light yellow, for my mouth is as parched as the Ochre Limits.”
The slave girl thus addressed scuttled to obey. Delia stood motionless. Jilian looked almost just the same. Her pale face bore its normal look of brooding intensity, her dark hair cut low over her broad white forehead setting an added luster in her dark eyes. Her whole face looked almost the same; pleasing, broad and well-proportioned and with a warm and mobile mouth. But there hung about Jilian Sweet-Tooth an air of dejection, of more than usual brooding hurt. She took the wine and quaffed it and threw the goblet at the slave girl as Nyleen arched her back, like a cat, her face rigid in its icy smile.
“You have been unsuccessful, Jilian?”
“Yes and no. I have almost certain news of the rast. Almost certain. But I must follow up even this slender lead. I came to advise you that I leave for Pandahem tomorrow.”
“Do not forget to bring back his head — or some other part of Kov Colun’s anatomy — for our inspection and delectation as you tell your story.”
“If there is anything of him left.”
“Ah! And, now, Jilian, mayhap you will cut this slave shishi up for our inspection and delectation — here and now?”
Still Delia stood motionless. Truth to tell, in all their practice bouts together, she and Jilian had never settled the issue — who was the better. It had not mattered. They had joined in combat, joying in the tussle, in the skill and expertise. In the nature of practice bouts they had used rebated weapons and heavily padded Claws. Whips, one against another in practice, were uncommonly difficult to manage. Delia just did not know who would win, if she and Jilian fought in the Jikvar and the Grakvar with razor-edged Claws and Whips that could flay.
Again, truth to tell, she was aware of the odd trifling deficiency in Jilian’s technique. She had told her friend. And Jilian had told her, in her turn, of Delia’s mistakes. Perhaps, if it came to a fight to the death, just perhaps, Delia felt she might win. But that victory would leave her a ruin. Then she thrust those thoughts aside. So Jilian had renounced the Sisters of the Rose and had joined the Sisters of the Whip. Very well. That did not mean she had renounced her friendship. Being Jilian, she would do what she wanted to do, and Delia found herself confident that Jilian would unravel a way to settle this without fighting.
She hoped so, she devoutly hoped so...
Moving with her lithe easy swing, Jilian crossed the open space and hitched herself up onto the edge of a table. Her body sat erect, and one long leg swung backward and forward, backward and forward. If anyone here could think it of anyone else, then that swinging leg in the tall black boot was a most insolent gesture, most insolent indeed.
Jilian took up a goblet of wine. She said: “Let me compose myself, kovneva. As I said, I have ridden hard and long.”
She drank the wine down. Then, with her bare left hand, she wiped across her mouth. Deliberately, she said: “By Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that!”
Delia showed no startlement. She just hadn’t given a thought to the idea that Jilian would tell the kovneva and her cronies who this slave girl was. Delia showed no startlement; but she was profoundly moved. Jilian, a member now of the Sisters of the Whip, could so easily have told, so easily done what would amount to a betrayal of her friend. But, by saying what she had after she drank, Jilian was reassuring Delia. Jilian had never, to Delia’s knowledge, visited the inner sea of Turismond, the Eye of the World. But she had heard the emperor, many times, say those words when he was dry and downed a draught.
“By Mother Zinzu the Blessed, I needed that!”
Yes, those words had been used many times, and Jilian was reaching out to Delia. Now, she went on in a conversational tone: “People call me Sweet-Tooth. Many people — and, I think, all men — believe that because I was born in a Banje shop and like sweet things, I was given that name. That the Tooth does not refer to any tooth I have in my head is so; men do not know.”
Nyleen’s frustration grew visibly upon her. Now she took what Jilian said in an entirely different context from that intended. Jilian was speaking to Delia, reassuring her that her secret was safe; Nyleen imagined she was making excuses for not fighting this slave girl.
“Do you tell me, Jilian, that because she is a girl you will not fight her?”
“Give me the moment I ask, kovneva. Then, as surely as a leem takes a ponsho, you will see...” She pointed negligently at the length of whip sliced from Chica’s favorite Fang. “Chica relied too much on her Whip. You did well, kovneva, when you brought her away from the Sisters of the Rose, for she spied for them in Delka Ob. Now, they know nothing of our plans.”
The horror hit Delia then.
Could Jilian be a party to the plot to kill the emperor?
That did not seem credible to the empress.
The emperor had rescued Jilian and brought her out of humiliating bondage to a position of respect. Jilian was a loved and valued member of the household, who had raised her own regiment of Jikai Vuvushis to fight for Vallia. At first she had known the emperor only as Jak the Drang, a now famous cognomen. Delia understood well enough the ties Jilian might form.
Between the emperor and the empress existed ties that had not been broken by the sundering of four hundred light-years, by the interference of superhuman beings, immortals, godlike beings of supernal power. Those bonds had not been broken by the petty slanders of evil tongues. Other attachments, for these two, were matters of supreme indifference. Yes, considered Delia, poor Jilian might well have formed a romantic attachment in her mind. Perhaps that had gone sour.
Perhaps she was in the plot to kill the emperor.
If so, then she was going about it in a remarkably peculiar way...
Also, this explained what had happened to the spy sent by Thalmi Crockhaden, pro-marshal and spy mistress of the SoR. A girl of Chica’s caliber would be needed for that work. Yet she had turned sour, gone rotten, been suborned, turned herself over to the Sisters of the Whip.
The cause of that rapid overturning of the beliefs of a lifetime and the embracing of inferior beliefs, now entered the refectory.
The witch, Fiacola the Gaze, walked in on the arm of the flunkey woman, Ilka the Silver Rod. Following, spitting and snarling, prowled two couples of werstings straining the leashes held by Rinka the Stripe. The intrusion of the witch brought everything else to a halt.
Even so, in the respectful hush, Nyleen called crossly to Ilka: “Where is that tiresome girl Sissy? I shall surely stripe her when she comes crawling and sobbing to me.”
Ilka made a small gesture with her free hand. “I have not seen her, my lady.”
Fiacola the Gaze kept her face hidden by the deep folds of a dark blue hood. She moved heavily to a chair quickly vacated at the side of Nyleen’s chair. She sat, and Ilka fussily arranged her robes. The hood was not thrown back.
Only those two eyes caught the torchlights and gleamed a deep crimson in the shadows of the hood.
Not for nothing was the sorceress Fiacola called The Gaze...
Standing quite still, Delia took note of what went forward. She was able to feel amusement that amid this respectful hush, Nyleen still could react in her cross way, and Jilian could still swing that long booted leg back and forth in
her insolent fashion.
When Fiacola spoke her voice surprised Delia. That voice sounded deep and clear, like a note from a woodwind, like a sonorous chime.
“Does Jilian Sweet-Tooth forget what she now is?”
Jilian’s booted foot stopped swinging.
“She says she is tired, Sana—”
“I am aware, kovneva, of what goes forward here.”
Delia clamped her mind shut. Witches did have powers; of course, this Fiacola could merely have been listening at the door. But, all the same, it was a mightily powerful performance.
The witch’s hood turned and inclined and Delia was aware of that sliding crimson gleam upon her. In the silence the hoarse breathing of many of the women sounded like the scraping of sword upon shield, the grating of a badly balanced spinning wheel. Even the werstings slobbered into silence.
The witch spoke again. “You promised me a diversion tonight, Nyleen. I do not object to seeing women cutting up other women if they deserve it. But that does not compare.”
“You are right, Fiacola,” responded Nyleen instantly. She lifted her right hand and gestured. She made of the gesture an imperial demand. “Begin!”
“Leave the slave girl to me.” The ominous ring in the words was not lost on Delia.
The two Jikai Vuvushis with half-bent bows shepherded her away to stand near the side table. Jilian sat on the edge of her table across the central space. And, into the space from the flung open doors, on the kovneva’s command, advanced a familiar, a sorry, a horrible procession.
The women who used their whips upon the naked bodies of the men were careful. All the shuffling men wore chains loading them down. There were various sizes and weights of chain in common usage among slavemasters. Sometimes they would refer to a slave as a one-chain man, or a three-chain man. This gave an indication not only of his troublesomeness but also of his strength and the care they took over restraining him until he was brought to heel and trained into the ways of slavery.
Most of the men wore one set of chains.
One man wore two. One man was a three-chain man. One was a four-chain slave. And one was loaded down with no less than six sets of chains. He could walk upright, which he did, defiant, arrogant, his four arms cruelly chained up his back.
“Oh!” said Delia to herself. “My poor Djangs!”
The two-chain man was Jordio the Hawk. The three-chain man was Lathdo the Eager. The four-chain man was Dalki, and the six-chain man was Tandu, his father.
So Jordio and Lathdo had fallen safely from the storm-wrecked airboat and had been taken up, at last, and so, eventually, brought here to be tortured to death. And her two ferocious Djangs? Surely, she reasoned, surely they must have ridden up to take service with the kov, bearing the letter from the Lord Farris, and had been sent on, and so been entrapped. They would not have been taken easily...
Dragging their chains, herded in a mass of suffering, the four men did not see their empress and queen beside the table at the far end. They saw the prepared stakes, the saw-edged barriers, the instruments, and they understood what was to be their fate.
Now the excitement rippled around the watching women. Everyone brightened up. Nyleen and her cronies prepared themselves for a pleasant divertissement. Only the witch kept her gaze bent on first Delia and then Jilian. She looked from one to the other, and back, like a reptile measuring its prey.
The occult powers of sorcerers and sorceresses could be very real, or could be shams to rook the gullible. Delia believed this Fiacola must be mistress of some of the arts, for to suborn away a Sister of the Rose from her vows must take thaumaturgy of a high order. Perhaps Delia could not answer for the integrity of every Sister...
But — Jilian! No, that was certain sure. Witchery had ensorcelled Jilian, quite apart from glib promises of help in tracking down Kov Colun Mogper of Mursham to his just desserts. If Delia could not believe in and trust Jilian, then her whole concept of integrity was proved valueless and ridiculous.
The first men were prepared for blood, agony and death. Delia put one hand on the edge of the table. Sticky wine fouled her fingers, but she did not grimace with distaste. Spilled wine, sticky and unpleasant though it be, was as nothing beside the spilling of blood now being enacted out there on the floor. The Claw still strapped up on her arm fit her hand like a glove. The dagger, blood-befouled like the Claw, hung limply in her fist. The two Battle Maidens kept on taking their surveillance away, kept on darting looks at what was going on out there among the shrieks and the vomit and the blood. But they did not relax their vigilance. One movement, and one or other of the Battle Maidens would shaft her...
Aware of the grisly scrutiny of the witch, Delia deliberately kept her own gaze averted. She did not look at the suffering human beings out there; she looked at her Djangs, and at Lathdo and Jordio. They stood sullenly, chafing their chains, so overloaded they could barely move. Their clothes were in a mess, ripped and stained, and their faces were bruised and bloodied. But they did not look cowed. In this, at least, they were prepared to face a ghastly end with fortitude.
She noticed an odd circumstance about Dalki. He was the four-chain man. But, somehow, he seemed only to have three chains lapping his body. As she watched a loop of chain tumbled free of his tunic. Weirdly, like the trunk of a mammoth beast withdrawing, it slithered up and vanished from view. Delia blinked. Dalki seemed to be in movement although he remained still. Most odd. Another chain dropped, and was checked, and so drawn back. She felt the pulse in her throat. In some unaccountable way, Dalki was freeing himself of his chains. He must have been working on them from the moment they were first loaded upon him, and, no doubt now, he was cursing away that it had taken so long, and that he was in sight of freedom when he was also in sight of death.
A victim shrieked and died. He was glad to die, and the women were sorry that entertainment was over. But they looked eagerly for the next. Nyleen stood up. She walked with her smooth gait out onto the floor to inspect personally the gruesome wreckage. Other women crowded up. The guards moved forward.
Nyleen liked, now and then, to take a hand herself. She could flick and slash her Whip, and although she would have been cut to shreds in short order by any mistress in the Grakvar, she still liked to posture.
“Chain some to the posts,” she commanded. “We will have a competition.”
“Oh, yes, kovneva,” chorused her cronies. And, still, Delia found it hard to hate the silly woman. Her craving for power and glory, her mimicry of the ways of the Queens of Pain of Loh, as Delia shrewdly surmised, her genuine belief that she had a mission to chastise all men, all these things added up to a woman bereft of essentials and adrift on tides of unchecked emotion. That was unfortunate, reprehensible, and in its effects evil; but Nyleen, Delia guessed, was also the victim of sorcery.
“Chain up some fine specimens, strong ones.” Nyleen pointed. “Those! They are sullen enough, by the Breath of Evirani! We will make them wish they had not been born men.”
Lathdo, Jordio, Dalki and Tandu were chained up. In an odd way, Dalki managed to conceal his handiwork and was chained up with the others. Delia marveled. Three other hard and hairy men were chained up alongside to the stakes. Nyleen preened herself and took the whip a girl slave ran out and proffered.
The first blow missed. No one laughed. Jilian’s booted foot quivered; but it did not swing. The second blow chunked into one of the hairy men, and he yelled. The third blow almost took Nyleen’s eye out. She glared around pettishly. She threw the Whip down and drew a long Vallian dagger.
“I have a keener way with men, my dears!”
“Yes, kovneva!”
She advanced with the dagger held aloft.
“Wait!” The deep bell-like voice of Fiacola the Gaze caught everyone. Nyleen stopped and looked around. The dagger slowly descended.
“Yes, Sana?”
“The Jikai Vuvushi, Jilian, will now fight the slave girl.”
“But, Fiacola—”
“Fig
ht! Now!”
Jilian put her feet on the floor and stood up slowly.
She turned to face the witch. On Jilian’s pallid face that brooding look compressed into a deep and intense absorption.
“And Sana, if I do not choose to fight?”
The witch cackled. The mellow voice broke into a harsh cackling croak, as of great enjoyment.
“I did not think you would. Would you fight some other girl? Say, that Jikai Vuvushi there?”
Delia felt her heart contract.
“Oh, Jilian!” she said to herself. “Careful!”
But Jilian tossed that dark hair back. “If I was commanded,” she said, carelessly.
The Witch nodded within her hood, and the sliding crimson gleam came and went. “Take the dagger from that slave girl. Take the Claw away from her. Why, Kovneva Nyleen, do you think Jilian Sweet-Tooth will not fight this one particular little slave shishi?”
Nyleen looked bewildered. “Why, she says she is tired. But she will fight. We will see to that.”
The hood swept back. Fiacola’s face was revealed. Delia saw the smooth round plump features, like those of a young girl who in all innocence and purity follows the sacred procession, clad all in a long white gown, trembling with the spiritual fires of devotion. A clawed hand lifted, and a black fingernail pointed.
That hooked talon pointed directly at Delia.
“Jilian would fight another, if you commanded, Nyleen. But you will not make her fight this one! I know! I have the power. I have the Gaze!” Her voice rose, booming around the refectory, echoing, demanding. “For that silly slave girl is Delia, Empress of Vallia!”
Into the stunned silence Delia’s scornful laugh rang like a sword striking stone. “The witch is deranged. I am just a poor girl caught up into slavery—”
“It is useless, Delia of Delphond! You are the Empress of Vallia.”
A massive bull bellow smashed above the sudden chatter. Over the exclamations of wonder and surprise, and then of understanding and satisfaction, that gargantuan roar broke like a hurricane.
Delia of Vallia Page 20
