Fliers of Antares [Dray Prescot #8]

by Alan Burt Akers

  * * *

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Concerning the silver chains of Kovneva Esme

  I could hear the shrill ululating call of the night straerlker as we walked past the end of the barrack block and up the winding stone-flagged path to the Kov's villa. The night straerlker, unlike its cousin of the daytime, hunts night-flying insects, whereas the day variant hunts in rocky clefts for scurrying arachnids. The black bag over my head smelled of a scent not unlike chypre, heavy, cloying. That was the favorite scent of Esme, Kovneva of Apulad.

  Tripping over a step quite deliberately to let them know I was helpless and had no idea where I was being taken, I took stock of our progress. Up the long flight of steps to the villa, past the guardhouse, around to the side where I heard the soft night breeze rustle in the yellow mushk and I smelled its sweet perfume. That recalled Valka to me, and the high fortress of Esser Rarioch. Then I was pushed roughly through a narrow door for those shoulders of mine brushed against each jamb. Up a long carpeted stair. Then a wait before a door, and the faint sound of a girl's laugh, and a door closing, and then the rustle of soft clothes, and the rough hand on my arm relaxing, and a smaller, softer hand, urging me forward. The door clashed at my back, a harsh sound in what I guessed must be a scented, soft and downy bower. I heard the harsh breathing of a man near my right shoulder, and the creak of his harness as he breathed, and I smelled oiled leather and steel, and so knew a guard stood over the doorway, ready to kill if the Kovneva so ordered.

  There was mystery and a haunting terror lurking below the threshold here, if I allowed. A normal man might be forgiven if he trembled at what awaited him. I did not tremble; but I admit I wondered if I had been so clever in allowing myself to be brought here. I had thought it a capital scheme, to further my plans. Now, the doubt occurred. Maybe I should have bashed Hikdar Covell and taken his thraxter, and cut up the guards, and gone my own headstrong way.

  But, as you know, I was trying to be clever...

  The girl pulling me forward halted and again I heard that soft silver jingling. I had an idea what that was, and if my idea was right I would be less than polite to the Kovneva...

  I heard a slithery sound that told me a screen had been pulled across. Probably it was sturm-wood cunningly pierced into a grille, or fabricated from ivory from Chem. I heard a low laugh, and then a hand whipped the black bag away and I had to shut my eyes against the glare of soft samphron-oil lamps.

  The Kovneva's voice said, “A great shaggy graint! Yes, Merle, I shall enjoy taming this one!"

  “Indeed, yes, my lady,” responded a young voice, and yet the voice, although bright, held a note of dullness and despair.

  Sound of a slap and a muffled shriek, and then I opened my eyes and I could see again.

  I'll give her this, Esme, Kovneva of Apulad; she tried to make of her private bower as sophisticated and luxurious a shrine to love as she imagined the empress’ in far Ruathytu's must be. She was a Kovneva, and therefore a very great lady; but her husband the Kov had been personally charged by the Emperor with voller production at Sumbakir, and that meant a dreadful provincial prison sentence for Esme. If I had had any feelings of sympathy for her they hardened as her maidservant, a young apim girl, put a hand to her cheek, which flamed scarlet and angry. Bright tears stood in the eyes of the girl, and her bosom moved beneath the scrap of peach-colored silk which the Kovneva allowed her as her only clothing.

  “You need not stand looking like a fambly, Chaadur! You onker! Sit on this cushion and drink this wine."

  I sat. The room had been festooned with draping silks and tapestries embroidered with various scenes from the more amorous of the legends of Kregen. I saw many that depicted stories I knew, others that at the time I did not know. Samphron-oil lamps stood upon balass-wood tables. Gilt chairs stood against the walls. The sofa upon which Esme reclined rested on six feet sculpted to look like the pads and claws of zhantils. I thought they might be solid gold and then noticed a claw knocked off and the sturm-wood showing through the gilt. Provincial, provincial...

  Another slave, a black girl probably from Xuntal, stood waving an exotic fan of whistling-faerling feathers to keep the air moving and sweet. If there were windows in the room they had been closed and shuttered and concealed by the draperies. Rugs upon the floor were strewn here and there; they were not of Walfarg weave.

  A third slave girl brought in the wine. She was a Fristle, a superb little fifi, and I thought of Tilly, my little Fristle fifi of the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, who now waited with Delia and my friends in the airboat—to which I would return, by Zair, to which I would return.

  The Fristle girl slave poured the wine. The goblet was glass, of a pale cream color, and twisted in the stem, and of a flat shape. I do not care for twisted glass stems, and I prefer a wineglass—given that one must use different shapes for each different wine or liquor—of a more rotund appearance.

  But all these things meant little besides the debased appearance of the three slave girls. They did not wear the gray slave breechclouts. I had heard of this manner of collaring and chaining slaves, girl slaves, the manner known as nohnam. They wore scanty silk garments, pale green, peach, lake-blue. Around their necks, their wrists, their ankles, were fastened bands of silver—the collars were high, causing the girls to lift their heads when they wished to let their chins sink in misery. I doubted if the metal was really silver. From the collar ran chains to the wrists and to the ankles, and from ankles to wrists ran more chains, caught up beneath the girls’ bodies. As they moved the chains swung.

  During my time at the Jikhorkdun in Hyrklana I had heard men talking of taking a delight in chaining and collaring their girl slaves in nohnam. They seemed to think that by debasing a girl they exalted themselves.

  Merle, the slave whom Esme had slapped—for no reason apart from the enjoyment of administering the punishment—moved near me as I made no attempt to drink the wine the Fristle girl had poured. I looked at Merle's neck, and wrists, and ankles.

  The sores on her wrists and ankles were bad enough, some scabbed over and broken again. She had stuffed a few pitiful scraps of cloth down to try to prevent the chafing. But the sores around her neck were nothing short of disgusting. The collar's friction, which is unavoidable in a metal collar in nohnam, had rubbed the skin away in wide areas, and the scabs had formed, and had been knocked off, and the blood and pus dribbled down. Esme saw my look and belted Merle across her backside with the flexible length of tuffa tree handy, as she spoke most viciously to her.

  “Wash your neck, you filthy rast!"

  “Yes'm, my Lady,” said Merle, and scuttled with jangling chains to a screen across one corner. I heard the sound of splashing water.

  The black girl's scabs were not so bad, but she suffered, too. As for the Fristle, her fine and delightfully snuggly fur had been worn away where the fake silver of the nohnam chafed, and the skin showed, red and raw and bleeding.

  “These girls are useless, Chaadur! Now when we return to the capital I shall buy slaves who understand the refinements of good breeding and fine manners."

  I still had not spoken.

  Esme went on talking.

  “You are just a gul, Chaadur, at the moment. You are little better than a slave. Now I want you to take the baths of nine—we have a reasonable establishment here, as you will discover—and then I think you and I may talk to our mutual advantage. I can assure you of rapid promotion. I can get you what you desire most in all Havilfar. The Empire of Hamal can be yours for the taking.” Then she checked herself, and laughed, and sipped her wine, with the color flooding her cheek. She had overstepped herself. “I mean, of course, that in Hamal under the Emperor's wise and benign rule you may make your fortune. You can be a Horter, a Notor—there is no reason why you may not be a Kov yourself, one day."

  Still I did not say anything but sat on the cushion, which was lumpy and was clearly not stuffed with fine quality feathers. I looked calmly at her, and her slaves, and her tatty lit
tle bower.

  When I think of the women I have met on Kregen—and only those few whom I had up until now met—who cherished notions not far removed from this Kovneva Esme! The Princess Susheeng, the Princess Natema, Queen Lilah, Kovneva Katrin Rashumin, Queen Fahia, Viridia the Render, oh, yes, and the others, as you know—and do not associate Mayfwy with them—or, come to that, Natema, who was married to my comrade Prince Varden Wanek. When I imagined what they would think of me now I smiled.

  I, Dray Prescot, smiled reflectively there in the soft glow from the samphron-oil lamps.

  This Esme, this Kovneva, smiled back uncertainly.

  “Yes, you see, Chaadur? All you must do is obey me in all things. You can give me so much—” Her moist red lips parted hungrily.

  Merle came back. The washing had been painful.

  “Why do you not speak, Chaadur?” Then Esme put down my silence to what must have been a not uncommon reaction of a slave, a gul, to this soft blaze of luxury and refinement as they would see it. “This is nothing, Chaadur, to what may be yours in the future if you will but obey me!"

  So I said, “It seems to me to be nothing now.” I sipped the wine. “And your wine is a dreadful vintage.” I poured it upon one of the rugs, a brash affair with a Chunkrah and a Fristle that is not worth commenting on.

  “You!” She didn't believe this.

  I said, “If you have the key to these girls’ chains I will have it and take the chains off. You are a rast and a cramph for chaining them up."

  She gaped at me.

  Merle and the Fristle fifi gazed at me as though I were mad. I own I am a bit of a maniac; but that is me, Dray Prescot. I wondered what to do with these three slave girls once I had taken the degrading nohnam from them, so that they would not have to sit and stand in that disgusting slavish posture of humiliation. Some people really think girls are not part of the human race!

  The black girl put out her hands, as far as the chains would allow, and she said, “I give you the Jikai, dom; but I fear, by Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword, you are a dead apim."

  I stood up. “Give me the key, Esme."

  She was a Kovneva. She called out, “Bagor! Here! Kill!"

  The sliding door slid aside with a screech. The guard appeared, craggy, bulky, clad in armor, ferociously lusting after letting blood. At his appearance all three slave girls screamed and drew back in such a pitiful way that I knew instantly this Bagor had been mistreating them abominably.

  “Kill the rast, Bagor!” screamed Esme.

  “You,” said this Bagor. His bulk was mostly muscle, but there was fat there, too, as I had judged by his breathing when he stood by the outer door. “Outside! The Kovneva will not be pleased for your blood to stain her carpets."

  The girls screamed again.

  I am not given to talking when action is imminent, but I wanted to give some heart to these three pitiful slave girls, and so I boasted. How my tough warriors of Valka, or my clansmen, or, even, my fighters of Djanduin would have stared at me then. I dared not think what my Krozair brothers would say.

  So I said, “I do not care about splattering the cramph of a Kovneva's carpets with your blood, Bagor!"

  And I leaped for him, poor onker, and took his thraxter away and cut his legs from under him. He fell asprawl in blood across the tatty carpets. I thunked the hilt down on his head to put him to sleep.

  The Kovneva Esme could not speak. She sat there on her couch, her legs drawn up, her gown bedraggled with blood that had splashed it. She looked at me with horrified eyes and she tried to speak, but her fingers dug clawlike into her throat so that she could not utter a word.

  I went over to her and ripped the dress about until I found the key. Then I unlocked the fetters and the manacles and took the collars from their necks. I am not a vengeful man. But I did something then, I, perhaps, should not have done.

  When I had finished, there lay Esme, the Kovneva of Apulad, collared and chained in nohnam, degraded in her own bower.

  * * *

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dirt and air

  Although Esme appeared paralyzed and unable to cry out, lying there on her blood-spattered carpets with the collar and chains and manacles of nohnam upon her, the previous screaming must soon bring guards. They would not be big, bloated hunks of female-tamers like Bagor. And Bagor was an honorable name in most parts of Kregen.

  I picked up the curved dagger he wore in a cheap brass scabbard and held it in my left hand. The thraxter in my right, my old shirt and ragged pair of trousers cut off at the knees, and I was as fully armed and accoutered as I could be, for Bagor carried no shield for this duty of chastising female slaves in chains and of cutting down slaves or guls if they displeased his mistress. What of the laws of Hamal here?

  As I did this, Merle snatched up the thin tuffa rod and started hitting Esme. She swung wildly, her body heaving with each blow, her gasps sounding painfully loud. The black girl, Xasha, laughed. I took Merle's arm.

  “Do you wish to remain here, Merle?"

  She looked at me with deep shock in her eyes, very pitiful to see. She drew in a deep breath and threw the switch away.

  “I cannot remain here, Jikai, and live!"

  “That is true,” said Xasha. “And if we do not leave at once the guards will take us all. Then, after the beatings it will be the Jikhorkdun for us all."

  I moved to the door. I heard a soft click from the direction of the couch, and turning to call the girls, I saw the Fristle, Floy, take a long thin dagger from the tray which had slid out from its concealment in the side of the sofa. She lifted the dagger high and the samphron-oil lamps gleamed off the blade and sparkled off the gems set in the hilt.

  With a triumphant shriek the Fristle girl buried the dagger in Esme's throat.

  Esme choked, coughed, vomited blood, kicked her legs, and then rolled slowly over onto her face.

  There was nothing anyone could do for her.

  Floy, the Fristle girl, stood, her legs apart, her diaphanous scrap of silk quivering with her own excited body-movements. She whispered, to herself, really, unaware for the moment of any other person.

  “Hai,” she whispered. “Hai, Jikai!"

  Not unmoved, I turned away and with a harsh and intemperate gesture and a few uncouth words bade the girls follow me.

  Xasha said, “We would do well to take what jewels and money we can carry, dom. Also, we will need clothes."

  I nodded. “Very well. I will stand by the door."

  Still panting, her bosom in tumult, Floy circled the contorted body of the Kovneva. She spat upon the corpse. She would have stuck the dagger again and again into that hated form; but I held the dagger and the blood dripped, drop by drop, upon the carpet.

  We collected jewels, mostly from the dead person of the Kovneva, and the girls threw clothes about themselves, breechclouts of silk, mashcere blouses, and long cloaks of checkered green and crimson and blue. Out of a habit that I would not break if I could I seized up a scarlet length and wound it around my middle. Bagor's belt held it up, and his scabbard of risslaca scale would be useful if there was climbing to be done.

  “This way,” said Merle.

  We went out past the sliding screen—which was of ivory not from Chem, but from the northern jungles of Havilfar, as one might notice from the whiter color and coarser texture—and down the passageways up which I had been brought, and down to the outer door. Here Merle paused, her finger to her lips in the dwindling light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. Soon the Twins, the two second moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other, would be up and throwing down enough light by which to see comfortably. Merle beckoned and we hurried from the door, which we closed, and down a shadowed arcaded way to the first garden of the pools.

  “The stables are beyond the Pagoda of the Green Smile,” she whispered. “Can you ride a saddle-flyer?"

  “Yes."

  “So can we all. It is something our mistress thought proper in her girl slaves, her Chail Sheom.” S
he spoke with a bitter savagery, a masochistic anger. The Chail Sheom is the name on Kregen given to these beautiful girl slaves who wear fine silks and pearls and who minister intimately to their mistresses.

  “You shall be free, Merle,” I said. “You and Xasha and Floy."

  We crept toward the aerial stables. Before we crossed the second garden of the pools where the intricately pierced stonework of the Pagoda of the Green Smile stood against the rising of the Twins, we could hear the birds. They rustled and stirred and fluttered their wings. We approached cautiously.

  At the barred gate the guards, sleepy, not caring to catch this boring duty, talking desultorily between them, had no notion of our presence. They still could not have known what it was that sent Notor Zan's cavernous paunch encircling them in darkness. I did not kill them. I stepped over their unconscious bodies and called the girls. They ran up, lissome forms in the moons-light.

  “You have homes to go to? Places where you will be safe?"

  They were surprised, and even though they were still in shock, they were dismayed that I meant what I did.

  “You will not desert us now, Jikai?"

  Shouts resounded and torches flared in the gardens, beyond the pools, toward the villa.

  “If you fly now they will never find you. Go. I have tasks I must do here before I may leave."

  Floy in her drugged way said, “If you plan to kill the Kov I will stand with you. Give me back the dagger."

  “I do not wish to kill the Kov. He is an onker and a rast. But I have more important work to do.” I pushed the gate open and started to untether the nearest fluttrell. He banged his wings and pretended he was asleep; but I woke him up smartly enough and with a whimper he was dragged out.