“Are you sick?” inquired Sezarre in an undertone, his concern plain.
Irith shook his head again, still staring at his feet, this time making a faint grunt.
Grival glanced warily in Kaeska’s direction but she was absorbed in examining a spray of crimson flowers. “Have you offended our mistress?”
The man grimaced as if in sudden agony and turned to present his open mouth to Grival who recoiled with an expression of naked horror.
“What is it?” hissed Sezarre, but the path suddenly cleared and we had to resume our measured pace behind the nobles.
Grival muttered a word I did not know to Sezarre and I saw the same startled revulsion flare in his dark eyes.
“Sezarre?” I glanced at him as the curve of the path allowed me to turn my head.
“Irith has no tongue now,” he replied with a finality that forbade further inquiry.
As we were halted by another group hurrying up to make their obeisances, I noticed the Elietimm was staring, not directly at me but rather at my sword. That brought me up short as I realized it would almost certainly identify me to him, beard and armor notwithstanding. It may sound silly, but I had been concentrating so hard on learning the rules of this new situation, where the slightest mistake led to a thrashing, that I had hardly given the sword a thought since I’d got here. I certainly hadn’t been troubled by dreams that I was aware of; my main problem sleeping stemmed from the fact that Laio snored worse than Shiv. Keeping my face expressionless and making sure I did not look directly at the Ice Islander, I decided I had better talk to Laio about this as soon as we were alone. If I suggested Kaeska was plotting somehow, I knew I would have Laio’s instant interest.
As we entered the palace compound, one of the underlings came to escort the Ice Islander, presumably to a guest room. I watched him go with relief and wondered maliciously if the slave, who seemed to be what we would call an understeward in Tormalin, would misinterpret the white-haired man’s lack of a beard. I had soon realized why Sezarre had warned me against shaving after I had noted the nightly visits of a couple of sleek-eyed boys to the smooth-cheeked steward’s quarters. At least as a fighting man I was expected to keep my beard close-trimmed, offering no handhold to an enemy, but it still itched abominably in this sultry climate.
“Dinner will be served shortly.” Mahli smiled at Kaeska as she seated herself under a shady tree with visible relief.
“I congratulate you on having everything so well organized.” Kaeska’s tones dripped pure honey. “Especially when you had no real idea of when I would arrive.”
“You need not be so modest.” Mahli shook her head in mock reproof. “I’ve learned so much from watching you over the years. I’ve had a watcher at the north of the island, ready to send a signal down the flag-line as soon as your pennant was sighted.”
“All the flag stations and beacons are manned.” Shek Kul clasped Mahli’s hand warmly. “Everyone is awaiting news of our child.”
“I have some lovely things for the babe.” Kaeska’s expression grew more animated and she took a seat between Gar and Laio. “I have been right around the windward domains.”
The conversation grew more rapid and increasingly idiomatic as the five of them talked about people and places that meant nothing to me. The one thing I did notice was that Kaeska made no mention of visiting Relshaz at all. I wondered how Laio would take my assertion that Kaeska had been there at the same time as the rest of them.
I stopped trying to follow what they were saying and let my thoughts drift as I looked idly around the gardens. A few of the ever present gardeners were trimming the luxuriant shrubs, removing spent blooms, tidying the paths. Eventually a chime sounded from the far side of the central residence and Grival nodded to the rest of us. We escorted our ladies and the Warlord into the long and airy dining room where marble channels carried water around the edge of the room and then cascaded into a central ornamental pool that was home to some distinctly odd-looking lizards. Small censers set to give off faint columns of scented smoke were a welcome sight, since I was starting to think one of my minor roles here was to decoy the cursed insects into biting me rather than the Aldabreshi, who didn’t seem nearly so troubled by them as I was.
I realized this was going to be as long and tedious an evening as the ones when Laio was entertaining visitors from the domain of Kaasik Rai. The only good thing was there was no sign of the Elietimm; I wanted to keep out of his way as much as possible until I had some idea of what he wanted here. I was certainly curious to know just what he might be up to while everyone was dining, but my duties waiting on Laio kept me too busy to worry about it just for the present. A succession of courses came and went, my own hunger increasingly gnawing at my belly since Laio had neglected to eat at noon, too preoccupied with the complaints of her weavers. So I fetched, served, hungered and listened.
When at last the conversation turned to Kaeska’s unexpected guest, I pricked up my ears like the good hound I was spending so much of my time emulating lately.
“Where is he from?” inquired Gar innocently, abandoning her attempts to hold Shek Kul’s attentions.
Kaeska swallowed a mouthful of sour pickled fish. “The north somewhere.”
Laio looked thoughtful but did not say anything. She had been asking me about the precise geography of the Old Empire recently, but everyone else seemed happy to treat the mainland as one undistinguished lump, for all that they could describe every reef and islet of the Archipelago and name its owner besides.
“A mainlander,” Shek Kul’s expression was somewhere between pity and contempt, “they are all the same.”
Kaeska tilted her head in a rather feline gesture. “His people live on islands; I do not find him as uncouth as most.”
“What does he have to trade?” Mahli looked up from her plate. “Are his people interested in proper barter or do they reduce everything to metal bits and paltry gems like the rest of them?”
Kaeska shrugged. “The north has long been a source of metals, timber, leather, has it not?”
I couldn’t decide if she was speaking from genuine ignorance or deliberately being vague. I would have to make sure Laio knew the Ice Islands had none of these resources, to my certain knowledge.
“Let me know when you find out what he wishes to trade for.” Mahli laid a negligent hand on her abdomen as she smiled fondly at Kaeska. “Gar and Laio have been making up their accounts for me and I have been assessing the treasury.”
“Have you examined those sapphires I had from Rath Tek, my dear?” Shek Kul spoke through a mouthful of spiky green stems. “I think you should be able to do very well with them the next time we visit Relshaz.”
Kaeska’s expression froze at this unusually unsubtle exchange and I even saw Laio blink a little at the realization that Mahli had been taking on so many of Kaeska’s duties even before the birth of her child.
“If this man is from a northern land, perhaps he might trade for that cloth of yours, Laio,” Gar rushed to fill the awkward silence, her eyes betraying an unaccustomed confusion. “It’s too thick for anyone in the Islands to want it, even if it were not such poor quality.”
“Oh dear, Laio.” Kaeska’s face was instantly sisterly concern. “Are you in difficulties with your weavers?”
Laio hastily denied any such thing and began to explain how she had only been looking to help the foolish Tani Kaasik. Kaeska nodded and sympathized, but every time Laio looked to be coming out ahead, Gar innocently sank another barbed comment into the sensitive conversation. I was surprised to see Mahli remain aloof from the fencing but she concentrated on discussing household matters with Shek Kul, which seemed to keep Kaeska all the more determined to pursue the issue of Laio’s mistakes.
As the night deepened beyond past the slatted shutters, I saw the greater moon rise above the battlements, not yet quite at the half as it waned, with the lesser moon just showing an edge above the trees. I tried to remember when I’d last seen an Almanac and how ma
ny days the Emperor’s Chronicler had decreed for Aft-Spring this year. As far as I could estimate, from what I remembered of the charted phases of the two moons, we would be in the early days of For-Summer, around the 5th or 6th.
Soft-footed house slaves answered Shek Kul’s abrupt summons with small lamps and I hastily gathered my wits. Delighted to realize this interminable evening was about to end, I saw my own relief trebled in Laio’s eyes. Gar and Kaeska linked hands in high good humor and led the way up the broad central stairs though I saw the satisfaction on Kaeska’s face falter when she turned and realized Shek Kul was giving Mahli the support of his own arm. When Shek Kul did not leave his wives at the landing to go to his own apartments on the floor below, Kaeska abruptly dropped Gar’s hand with a theatrical yawn.
“Do forgive me, I am so tired.” She turned away almost instantly toward her own suite. “Irith!”
The poor wretch hastened up the remaining stairs like a beaten hound and Kaeska swept through the opened door to her own apartments without a backward glance.
Shek Kul muttered something I did not catch as he was embracing Mahli at the time. She laughed loudly as she took Grival’s arm down the corridor, a sound that would have carried clearly through the louvered doors of Kaeska’s apartments as she passed.
“To bed!” Shek Kul kissed Gar briskly and then turned to catch Laio around the waist with a swiftness that caught everyone by surprise. He swept her off her feet and planted a smacking kiss on the exposed swell of her bosom. Laio giggled with delight. At her nod I hurried to open the door to her bedroom. As I stood to let the Warlord and his wriggling armful past, I saw Gar’s face, scarlet and a suspicion of tears in her eyes. She turned on her heel and strode down the far corridor toward her own rooms.
Beyond hoping that she didn’t take her chagrin out on Sezarre with a cane switch, I had no time to worry about Gar’s feelings. Shek Kul had Laio’s dress off her shoulders and down to her waist, hands cupping her ripe breasts, by the time I had dragged my pallet out into the corridor and fetched the canvas bag that held all the possessions I was allowed.
At times like this it was nigh on impossible to pretend to myself that I was a servant, not a slave. I was weary and ravenous, my back and shoulders were knotted with pain and, for all anyone cared, I might as well have been a door-post. Shek Kul’s falcons were treated better than us body slaves sometimes. I cursed softly to myself, loosened the thongs on my chainmail and bent over, arms outstretched to shrug it off over my head. The crash it made hitting the polished wood of the floor seemed to echo all around the silent corridors and I froze for a moment, half expecting a rebuke from Laio. I need not have worried; there was scarcely a pause in the sounds of rising passion coming through the flimsy door.
Getting the weight off my shoulders was some improvement, but my aching muscles still screamed their indignation. If I’d been able to go and find Sezarre or Grival, we could have helped each other out with some of the remarkably effective rubbing oils the Aldabreshi favored, but I now knew that once a Warlord’s lady has retired to her rooms for the night her slave is expected to stay with her. Unless he is sitting on his bed in the corridor like a hound that can’t be trusted with the furniture, that is. I couldn’t even hope for a proper bathtub for a hot soak in the morning. Laio had told me in no uncertain terms that only mainlanders wallowed in their own filth, while decent people rinsed themselves clean with fresh water. Rubbing my own shoulders as best I could, I tried to ignore the clamorous demands of my stomach. I hadn’t been this hungry since Laio had arbitrarily kept me without food for a day and a half as punishment for some mealtime transgression that I had never fully understood.
Shek Kul’s wordless expressions of pleasure were settling into a regular rhythm behind the door of Laio’s room and her uninhibited responses were answering him enthusiastically, accelerating to moans of rapture. I knew from previous nights that, when it came to chasing a snake through the undergrowth, the Warlord was a man of considerable stamina for his age, so I padded stealthily away on bare feet. The pages who spent their days in a lobby off the stairwell were always provided with water and I reckoned I should at least be able to get a drink to stave off the worst pangs of hunger.
The stairwell was at the corner of the hollow square that formed the central keep of the Warlord’s residence. Each wife’s suite of rooms ran along one inner side of the square, overlooking a central garden that had some special significance I had yet to fathom. The staircase was at the corner, where Kaeska’s rooms met Laio’s. I moved cautiously, not wanting to alert Kaeska to the fact that I had left my station. As I reached the stairs, I saw bars of light on the dark wooden floor, revealing a lamp was still lit in Kaeska’s sitting room. I swore silently to myself and crouched low, not wanting to risk being found crossing to the pages’ room.
“So what are you going to do to help me?”
Kaeska’s low words drove all thoughts of thirst clean out of my head. Apart from anything else, she was speaking in passable Tormalin. The blood started to pound in my veins, almost deafening me, and I fought to curb my racing heartbeat.
“Whatever I do for you will depend entirely on what you are able to do for me.” The Elietimm accent was unmistakable, for all that his Tormalin was better than Kaeska’s. His tone was uncompromisingly harsh.
“Of course, I will do all I can.” Kaeska was abject, pleading. “Haven’t I already done well? You said you were pleased with me, you said you could reward me—”
“The Queen of the Moonless Night must be properly venerated if she is to answer your prayers.” The Elietimm sounded contemptuous. “She must have worshippers in every domain.”
I forced myself to breath slowly and evenly, to concentrate on getting every word. I had certainly never heard of this Queen he was talking about. How often do you see a clear night with no trace of either moon, anyway? Maybe once in a handful of years?
“I will travel, I will spread your teachings. I have done your bidding, have I not? I told Gar to secure that slave for Laio—” Kaeska’s voice rose in something approaching panic and was cut short with what could only be a slap.
What hold did this man have over her that he dared lay a hand on a Warlord’s wife without losing it in the next breath to her body slave’s sword?
I moved to the corner with agonizing care, lying prone until I could edge my way forward and look into the room through the lowest slats of the door. Kaeska and the Elietimm were sitting on cushions, facing each other from either side of a low table where a candle flickered under some kind of incense burner. This was no mere scent to deter insects; a chance draft wafted a taste of the smoke in my direction and I recognized the acrid, seductive tang of smouldering thassin leaves. I caught my breath, and not just from the fumes. Chewing thassin nuts is one thing; it’s a habit that’s hard to break, but beyond dulling your senses and staining your teeth, it won’t do you too much harm, not taken in moderation anyway. Taking the smoke is quite another matter; any sworn man who started that would soon find himself paid off with a Lescari cut-piece for his oath fee. No one is going to trust a swordsman who might turn his blade on imaginary three-headed monsters at any moment.
Kaeska’s eyes were dark and glazed, her intricate makeup smeared, disregarded. Sweat beaded her forehead and she wiped it away with a clumsy gesture, heedless of the trickle of blood at one corner of her mouth.
“Show me my son,” she pleaded in a hoarse whisper.
The Elietimm shook his head, a cruel satisfaction curling his lip. He was sitting cross-legged, straight-backed, stripped to the waist but for a gold gorget bright at his throat. Strange sigils were dark on his pale skin, on his chest and down his arms to his outspread hands. They must have been painted on; I was certain I hadn’t seen anything on his palms earlier. Even in the dim light of the candle, the man’s eyes were clear and focused; the smoke wasn’t curdling his senses at all and I wondered just why that might be. I was already getting enough to be risking a light head and exotic
dreams and I was keeping my face to the floor and breathing as shallow as I dared. Who was this man and what was he doing here with his cursed aetheric enchantments?
“Please…” Kaeska held out shaking hands in abject supplication.
“If I do, you must do something in return. The Queen of the Moonless Night demands balance in all things.” The man pretended to think, but I could see right through his false hesitation. He knew exactly what he wanted.
“Anything.” Kaeska’s eyes were wide and vacant by now, her jaw slack, but she still looked at the Elietimm as if he held Saedrin’s keys to the Otherworld.
“That slave of the woman Laio’s,” the Ice Islander leaned forward, his expression all cold intent, “he and his kind are enemies of my Queen. I will need to counter his powers if I am to get you with child. Trade something for him; if he is yours, we can take him with us when we leave and I can deal with him fittingly.”
“Once the child is born, Mahli will be First Wife.” Concern wrinkled Kaeska’s brow with visible effort. “It will be her business to make such trades.”
“So do it before the child arrives.” The Elietimm’s voice was harsh. “I can dispose of this garbage tonight, if necessary. Crush a few more berries on his gums and he won’t even wake up.”
He shoved a foot at what I had taken to be a pile of cushions and coverlets. It wasn’t; it was Irith who groaned feebly and rolled away from the kick. He came to rest facing me, eyes rolling half open, bloodshot even in the feeble light and a trickle of dark slime oozing from his slack lips.
“Shek will not be pleased,” Kaeska whimpered. “Disciplining a slave is one thing, using tahn on him like this is quite another.”
The bastards, the shit-sucking, pox-ridden bastards. I clenched my fists and fought to contain my revulsion. Anger wouldn’t help Irith, it didn’t look as if anything could now, but I needed to hear as much of this plot as possible, to take to Laio for certain and, if at all possible, to use to my own ends.
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