Soul of Kandrith (The Kandrith Series)

by Luiken, Nicole

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last, staring at his hands. Was he remembering what it had felt like to have claws?

  “No, I’m sorrry,” she whined. “I did it all wrrrong. I should’ve explained betterrr.”

  “You never said it would heal my leg.” He tossed a stone hand to hand and didn’t look at her. “Do you think I’m a coward?” His voice was low.

  “No! Of courrrse not! You werrre the brrravest one therrre.”

  He rolled his eyes. “The bravest one out of all the grandfathers and girls?”

  “I’m a girrrl,” she growled.

  He winced. “Yes, and you became a shandy so you could fight for your freedom. You refused to be a slave.”

  Rhiain clawed the ground. The admiration in his voice made her uneasy. “That wasn’t the only rrreason,” she confessed. “I didn’t tell the whole storrry.”

  He turned his face toward her, perking up.

  Reluctantly, she continued, “When the slaverrrs came, I was verrry young, about six yearrrs old. My motherrr had always told me to hide if they came, that she would make a sacrifice and escape back to me. But one of the slaverrrs found me and put me up in frrront of him on his horrrse.”

  She’d never told anyone but her mother the next part, but she had to tell Edvard so that he would understand.

  “He kept petting me. I didn’t like the way he touched me so I bit him. He laughed at me.” Remembered rage made her tremble. “That evening he drrragged me behind a shed. I knew he meant to hurrrt me, though I didn’t underrrstand how. I scrrreamed and fought and fought, but he was too strrrong. He kept laughing and calling me Wild Cat. My mother had told me in orderrr to sacrifice you had to prrray to Loma. I asked Herrr to make me a rrreal wild cat. She changed me, and I clawed him. He scrrreamed and drrropped me.” Rhiain stared broodingly at the ground before making the most shameful confession of all. “I didn’t kill him, I was too scarrred. I just rrran away.

  “My motherrr crrried when she saw me. She wanted me to change back. She said she’d make the sacrrrifice instead. I wanted so badly to turrrn back into a little girrrl so I could cuddle on herrr lap, but I knew if I did then I wouldn’t have escaped the bad man. That he’d have hurrrt me.

  “I was too scarrred to change back. And then I found out how useful this forrrm was, that I didn’t have to be afrrraid anymorrre, and prrretty soon I didn’t want to be a weak girrrl.” She rolled her shoulders. “So you see, I’m not any braverrr than you arrre.”

  She raised her head, a touch of fear in her heart. Would he look at her differently now? Would he admire her less?

  Edvard was scowling. “Why didn’t your mother turn shandy when you screamed? She should’ve protected you.”

  He didn’t think less of her. He thought less of her mother. Relieved, Rhiain shook her head. “She’d never seen a shandy. The sacrifices she knew about were healing and hearing trrruth.” Useless ones. “And she had a chain around herrr neck. It would’ve choked herrr. She changed laterrrr.”

  Out of guilt. So her daughter wouldn’t be alone. But ferocity didn’t come naturally to Rhiain’s mother. She preferred to use her swiftness to hide, not attack.

  It was a pity. Edvard would’ve made a much better shandy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The girl in line beside Sara vomited. Sara stepped sideways, narrowly avoiding the backsplash. The blonde slave moaned and wiped her mouth, then stared at Sara. “How can you be so calm? Don’t you know what’s coming?”

  “We will serve dinner,” Sara repeated what Blorius’s head servant had told her.

  “We are the dinner, and the guests are racha beasts,” the girl said.

  Sara doubted it. Racha beasts couldn’t pay silver, and Blorius had bragged to the fat woman that he anticipated making a large profit tonight.

  The fat woman bustled over. She pinched the blonde slave’s arm. “Look, what a mess you’ve made. And your eyes are red again. Do I need to send you to Kuhlt to be switched?”

  “No.” The blonde trembled. “Please no.” Tears welled in her eyes. “It’s just that I haven’t had my jazoria yet, mistress. I’m afraid I’ll do badly without my jazoria.”

  “Is that so?” The head servant raised one plucked-thin eyebrow. “That’s unfortunate because there will be no jazoria tonight. For anyone. A very important customer is in house, and he prefers his slaves undrugged. You’ll all do without. And you’ll all do well.”

  Tears dripped down the blonde girl’s face.

  “And do you know why?” The head servant leaned closer until her red-painted lips almost touched the blonde slave’s ear. “Because if you disgrace me at tonight’s dinner, I’ll give you to Kuhlt for a week. Now go clean up. And rinse out your mouth. Nobody will buy a girl with vomit breath.” She slapped the blonde slave’s buttocks, and the girl hurried off.

  The head servant turned to Sara then, her green eyes narrowed. “What are you staring at?”

  “You,” Sara said. Why did people ask questions to which they knew the answers?

  The head servant’s plump cheeks reddened. She grabbed Sara’s ear and twisted, pulling. The rim of Sara’s ear began to tingle and then burn. As pains went Sara judged it to be only of medium intensity.

  The servant yanked harder, but she was shorter than Sara and not strong enough to pull her head down. Sara waited.

  The fat woman released her ear and hissed. “You. You think you’re high and mighty, but just you wait. I’ll not tolerate insolence from a slave. You’d better pray to Loma one of the men tonight takes a fancy to you, or you’ll be the one visiting Kuhlt tonight.”

  Sara wondered who Kuhlt was.

  The head servant moved further down the line, inspecting them. More slaves were pinched or their ears twisted. More girls cried.

  The redhead on the other side of Sara pinched her arm. “Why’d you have to go and make her angry?” she whispered.

  “She was already angry,” Sara pointed out. She had only known the head servant for a matter of hours, but Sara suspected the fat woman liked being angry.

  “Shhh,” the redhead said, pinching Sara again. “Next time just drop your eyes.”

  Drop her eyes? On the floor? Oh, the other woman meant lower her gaze. Why hadn’t the redhead just said so? A gong sounded and the head servant hissed at the first serving girl to go. She balanced a large platter with halved melons on top of her head and pushed through the curtain. Her dress had no top and her large breasts swayed from side to side.

  A masculine shout went up from the room beyond. It took the men a long time to eat the melons, with many calling out comments and laughing about the sweetness of the fruit and the size of the melons.

  Sara counted four women ahead of her. She was last in line and would serve the dessert. For the first time she noticed that she wore more clothes than the rest of the slaves.

  Her Remillus blue dress was similar to those she’d worn as Lady Sarathena, except that the skirt had been hemmed much shorter, barely skimming her thighs.

  The women went out one by one. All but the redhead stumbled back in with disheveled hair and dresses. Finally, Sara’s turn came.

  She stepped through the curtain carrying a platter of honeyed figs.

  “Ah, here’s my newest addition,” Blorius said. “A rare beauty, as you can see, though I must warn you, her contract is unusual...” he singsonged.

  In addition to Blorius, three men reclined on couches. Sara walked to the closest and knelt to offer her platter.

  Folds of flesh bulged under his toga, but his headful of long dark ringlets proclaimed his relative youth. He opened his mouth, and she placed a dripping fig inside. He chewed,
setting his double chins into motion. “Mmmm, sweet.” He sucked honey from her fingers while groping her breasts.

  Sara permitted the touch. This was part of being a slave.

  Blorius signalled, and she moved on to the next man. This one was square-jawed with a stubbled chin. His eyes were glazed, and his breath stank of ale. After a cursory tweak of her nipple, he waved away the platter of figs and her. “So tell me again, exactly how are you going to crush the rebellion?” he asked the third man.

  “Easy.” The third man had short iron gray hair and muscular arms and legs. His nose hooked down, and his face was so lean it had hollows. Instead of a toga he wore the sweat-stained leathers of a legionnaire. His eyes were gray with a black rim.

  The missing redheaded slave sat on his lap. Her lips curved up, but her body sang with tension.

  “The rebels’ biggest strength lies in their ability to run away and hide in the forest. So we put them in a position where they can’t run away. Like this.” The third man unsheathed his sword and pressed the naked blade to the slave girl’s spine. She cried out. “Be still and you won’t be hurt,” he told her. She calmed, but then his other hand squeezed her breast, fingers gouging and scratching. The girl flinched and nicked herself on the sword.

  The other men laughed.

  “Would you care for something sweet, my lord?” Blorius asked.

  The third man didn’t look at the slaver or at Sara. “I’m busy.”

  Blorius chuckled. “Yes, I can see. But you haven’t even glanced at my newest offering—and I bought her with your specifications in mind.”

  “Did you?” The man squeezed the woman’s nipple until tears dripped down her face, but she kept still and didn’t cut herself.

  The longer Sara looked at him, the more she began to suspect that she knew him. Her brows wrinkled. There was something—something—

  And then the memories cascaded through her mind. This man standing before her father at a feast and rejecting an offering of racha meat. This man sitting next to her at dinner and running his fingernail down her cheek. This man watching her in her bath while whipping Rochelle.

  Nir. He was the high priest of the God of War and was thus called by the same name as his god.

  With the memories came a chill, a faint echo of emotion...

  She used to fear this man.

  Strange.

  “Come, my lord,” Blorius said, “leave off playing with your toy for a moment and look.” He pulled Sara to her feet. “Look at the treasure I’ve found for you.”

  Nir’s lips pressed together. “I told you, Blorius, I’m not in the market for—” Then he looked at Sara for the first time and stopped talking.

  He shoved the redhead off his lap and stood. While she crawled away, weeping silently, Nir walked in a circle all around Sara. His eyes were wide, his lips parted. “Where did you get her?”

  Blorius’s lips curved up. “From a Qiph slaver of all things. Now, remember what I said, she comes with an unusual contract, which you’ll have to sign before—”

  “Shut up, Blorius.” Nir stopped in front of Sara and stared into her eyes. He scratched her cheek with his fingernail. “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes,” Sara said clearly, “you’re Nir, high priest of the God of War.” She stared back at him, oddly fascinated. Sara-who-had-a-soul would have done anything not to be in his power.

  Based on the way he had treated Rochelle, Nir would not be a kind master.

  If he bought her, she would have a chance to earn true magic. Good.

  Nir threw his head back and laughed harshly. “And here I feared it would be hardly worth the trip to crush this paltry rebellion. Truly, Nir has rewarded me. I’ll take her.”

  “She’s quite expensive,” Blorius said, “and as I mentioned there is a very restrictive clause in her contract—”

  “Give the papers to Wettar.”

  The double-chinned buyer stirred. “Hold on. Being recently widowed, I need something to take my mind off my grief—like those tits.” He licked his lips.

  The drunk laughed, spraying wine. “Grief? Over the Viper? The only grief you feel is for losing your connection to House Jarkonus’s wealth. Admit it, Drencis. You’re rushing down from the capital in hopes of marrying Hermia’s younger sister before anyone else snaps her up. Not even the governorship of Gotia would have lured you from Temborium otherwise.”

  Drencis pouted, his ringlets and chin jiggling. “Maybe so, but I still want to bid on the coeurelle.”

  Nir narrowed his gray eyes to slits and glared at him for a long moment. “No. You. Don’t.”

  “I don’t?” Drencis swallowed. “No, that’s right, I remember now, I need all my money to replace the slaves stolen by the rebels. I can’t afford a pleasure slave.” He picked up his goblet and downed half the cup in one swallow.

  Nir scrawled his name at the bottom of the two sets of papers Blorius extended, then slung Sara over his shoulder and carried her out the door.

  Sara caught a last upside-down glimpse of Blorius smiling widely. “I’ll send Wettar a copy of the bill in the morning,” he called after them.

  That swiftly, Sara’s time as a slave began.

  * * *

  “Hold still,” Lance told the black-haired Grasslander standing before him. He grasped his patient’s broken nose and moved it back into position, ignoring the gasp of pain.

  Since the injury had resulted from a wrestling match over a haunch of meat, Lance’s sympathy was in short supply.

  The bones in a nose are softer than regular bones and take less effort to heal. Lance felt the Goddess only as a warm presence before the young man’s face mended. “There,” he said brusquely, lifting his hands and breaking his connection to Loma. “Done.”

  The Grasslander warrior explored his face with his fingers. “How do I look?” he asked anxiously.

  “Horrid,” Edvard said promptly.

  Ever since he’d nearly died trying to become a shandy, Edvard had been spending a lot of time in Lance’s vicinity. Lance had put him to work, helping to stoke the fire for the small forge Lance had set up, but he suspected most of the attraction for Edvard was that Rhiain liked to nap nearby. Rhiain was out hunting right now, but when she was present the boy was forever stealing glances at her.

  If turning yourself into a shandy wasn’t proof of devotion, Lance didn’t know what was. Rhiain didn’t seem to see it, though, treating Edvard like a comrade and mooning over Fitch. Lance knew which brother he preferred.

  Of course, one couldn’t always pick who one was attracted to. Or he would never have fallen for Sara, a Temborian noblewoman.

  “You look fine.” Fitch scowled at Edvard before taking a bite of the drumstick he’d won. “In fact,” Fitch squinted, “that bump on your nose from the time Spring Colt broke it is gone now.”

  “No lie?” The Grasslander ran his finger down his nose. “Hai, it does feel straighter.”

  Lance hadn’t been paying much attention to the conversation until Edvard stood up and stared accusingly at Lance. “But you told me you couldn’t heal something that had already healed over,” he said shrilly. His fists clenched at his side.

  “I can’t.” Lance tried to puzzle it out. “It must have worked because the bone was rebroken.”

  Hope filled Edvard’s eyes. “What about my leg? Could we rebreak it?”

  “I don’t know,” Lance said cautiously. “Nose bones are soft and easily broken. Leg bones are much harder. And your leg is very crooked, with multiple breaks.” He shook his head. “We’d have to almost crush it to get the bone pieces small enough...It would be both painful and dangerous.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “Edvard.” Lance sighed and passed a hand through his hair. “Think. Anything that could crush your legs could also kil
l you. Is it really worth the risk?”

  “Yes!” Edvard yelled, his eyes blazing with passion. “Anything is better than living like this!”

  Queasy at the thought of what would need to be done, Lance appealed to Fitch for support. “Tell him what he’s risking.”

  “Saving my brother from life as a useless cripple is worth any risk,” Fitch said flatly.

  Typical. Lance seethed. Fitch seemed to take Edvard’s weakness as a personal affront; Fitch treated his brother as if Edvard had chosen to limp.

  Fitch took a step closer to Lance. “But you’d better be sure you can make good on your promise, because if he comes out still crippled, I’ll break both of your legs.”

  Lance stood his ground, glaring back. “Don’t threaten me. I won’t be doing anything until I’ve had a chance to think it through.” Normally, he would consult with Loma, but he was still too angry with the Goddess to pray.

  Fitch’s neck reddened. “You’ll do what I order or—”

  “Chief! Chief!”

  They both turned as Minast, one of the Gotian men, ran into camp as if pursued by blue devils. He staggered to a halt in front of Fitch, red-faced and gasping. “Just came...Tolium. News... all over...New Legion...high priest of Nir...leading it himself.” Minast sucked in another lungful of air. “Jazor says he’s sworn to exterminate us, like terriers rooting out a nest of rats. He’s sworn it to the God of War.”

  * * *

  Sara lay facedown on the bed and counted. Nir had thrust into her one hundred and twenty-three times so far. She wondered how long he would go on. Her inner tissues had burned at first, but the area had long since gone numb.

  On stroke one hundred and thirty Nir began to speed up, and on stroke one hundred and forty-one he grunted and collapsed on top of her. His weight pressed her deeper into the mattress, and his sweaty chest touched her back.

  Aunt Evina had claimed men fell asleep at this point, but after nine hundred pulsebeats, Nir rolled off her and sat up. He pinched her naked buttocks. He’d torn her gown off her the second they were alone in his room at the Temple of Jut.