Return of the Exile l-3

by Mary H. Herbert

  “Did you earn these?” the Empress asked in a very rough Common. Her accent was so thick that Linsha barely understood her. But she filed the information in the back of her mind. The Empress could speak Common, albeit not well, so it was likely she could understand more than she could speak. Linsha realized she would have to be very careful when she spoke to Afec or Callista in the Empress’s presence. She pondered the scales between Tzithcana’s fingers. The Empress asked her if she had “earned” them. Did the Tarmaks consider dragon scales to be badges of honor or signs of disgrace? She decided to be honest.

  “They were gifts of friendship, Empress,” she said as distinctly as possible. “From two dragons I greatly admired.”

  A sudden pang of loss flared unexpectedly in her heart. She had admired, respected, and befriended Iyesta and still missed her very much, but she had grown to love Crucible. Although she had known of him since her time in Sanction, she had become very close to him during their months together on the Plains of Dust. Their companionship had turned into a deep friendship of trust, respect, and a genuine mutual liking that made his deceit and lies to her that much more painful when he finally revealed his human identity to her. She bit her lip hard and used the pain to fight back the unexpected grief. Crucible was gone. Probably forever. There was no point in harboring any feelings for him.

  She blinked and lifted her eyes to meet the Empress’s. The woman’s intense eyes bored into hers as if she could strip every mask and pretense and peer into the exposed soul. Linsha did not look away. She had endured too much in her life to be intimidated by a mere stare.

  At last the old woman nodded once. She walked around Linsha, studying her arms and shoulders and legs. She felt the bones in Linsha’s hips and the calluses on her hands.

  “Take tunic off,” said the Empress.

  With a grimace Linsha pulled off her wet outer shirt and stood in front of the Empress in her damp undertunic. The matriarch continued her inspection of Linsha’s muscles and scars. She poked Linsha so much she made her feel like a mare at a horse fair.

  “This wound?” she asked, stabbing a finger at a new red scar on Linsha’s upper arm.

  “Crossbow,” Linsha replied.

  “Your hands?”

  “Burns.”

  “These?”

  “Swords.”

  The Empress stared like a basilisk for another moment or two, then she clapped her hands, her appraisal finished. The other female Tarmaks gathered around, each studiously ignoring Malawaitha on the floor. Pointing at Linsha, the Empress spoke to the women in fast emphatic words that offered no chance for argument. When she finished with them, she growled to Linsha, “You are thin. You are weak. You must work. Afec will he your servant.”

  “I have a servant,” she dared to say.

  The Empress cast a contemptuous eye at Callista. “This one is too small. She will work. Afec will guide you on path of a proper Tarmak. Will teach you our ways. He will speak for you to others until you have learned our tongue.”

  Linsha bowed.

  Satisfied, the Empress turned her back on Linsha and reached for Malawaitha with a large hand. She yanked the woman to her feet and thrust her forward toward a door in the far wall.

  The young Tarmak shot a venomous look over her shoulder at Linsha before she fled the room, the Empress close on her heels. The door slammed behind them. Abruptly the crowd of women broke up as they all hurried back to their chosen tasks. Sounds and voices filled the silence again.

  Linsha heard a faint sigh of relief beside her. “You did well,” Afec said quietly, giving Linsha a brief bow. “The Empress has accepted you. For now.”

  “Afec,” Linsha said in tones that made Callista take a step out of the way. “Who is Malawaitha and why is she so angry at me?”

  The old Damjatt sighed again. “She is a minor daughter of the Emperor. She has always been full of challenge and desire.”

  “And why does she dislike me? The other Tarmaks don’t seem to be upset.”

  Afec glanced at the door where the young woman and the Empress had disappeared. “She is betrothed to Lanther Darthassian. She thinks you have come to take him from her.”

  4

  The Emperor’s Daughter

  A heavy knock on the frame of her narrow door Drought Linsha awake before dawn. She yawned and stretched to a sitting position, and for the thirtieth time in as many days, she thought sadly of Varia. The owl had been her constant companion for over five years and habitually woke her in the morning by bouncing on her and hooting softly in her face. It was a far better awakening than this unfriendly, impersonal slam on the door. By Kiri-Jolith, she missed her friend. She didn’t even have the solace of knowing what had happened to Varia. Lanther had refused to let her see the owl before they left the city and would not tell her what he had done with the bird. Nor had she been able to ask since they landed in Ithin’carthia. The one advantage that she could see about being sequestered from the male population was she hadn’t seen Lanther for almost two weeks.

  She groaned and rose as Callista slipped into the tiny room with a basin of cold water and a cup of juice. The courtesan looked tired. She had a soft gray look about her eyes and a sag in her shoulders. It was little wonder. Linsha estimated by the time she finished with all the work the palace servants were required to do that she had only four or five hours before she had to start again. The small blonde smiled at Linsha and handed her the juice.

  Linsha grimaced. “This dodgagd juice is foul. Where do you suppose they get it?”

  Callista laid the basin on a stand. “You don’t want to know. But I am told it is very good for the blood flow. And good blood flow means-”

  “Strong muscles, and strong muscles mean healthy babies, and healthy babies mean a greater Tarmak nation,” Linsha said by rote. “I swear if I hear any more about Tarmak babies, I will hurt someone.” She spoke in a loud voice knowing full well she could be heard through the thin screens that separated her from the other sleeping chambers of the barracks-like dormitory.

  But Callista was not so bold and replied in a much lower tone. “I know. They are single-minded. The servants say there are seven women with child in the Akeelawasee-and five of them are the Emperor’s get.”

  Linsha grimaced at the mere mention of the Emperor and pregnant women spoken together in the same breath. It reminded her of the slave women brought from the Missing City. She hadn’t seen one of them yet, and she could only hope they were still alive. Her thoughts hurried on while she pulled a clean sleeveless shirt over her head. The rumors of babies brought something else to mind she had noticed earlier.

  “If all these females are breeding little Tarmaks like rabbits, where are the children?” she asked.

  Callista straightened out the blankets and rolled up the sleeping pallet to look busy in case someone passed by the door. “The royal children are in another part of the palace. Their mothers feed them and visit them until they are about seven, then the boys are sent to a military camp and the girls are sent somewhere else for schooling and physical conditioning.”

  “Seven?” Linsha repeated, horrified at the thought. At seven she had been happily ensconced in the center of her family, surrounded by loving parents, grandparents, and a brother who still called her by her family nickname. “I can hardly imagine that. A child should be with its family.”

  Callista agreed. “My mother may have been a courtesan, but she kept me with her until her death.” She paused and a pale twinkle lit her blue eyes. “Have you had children, Lady Linsha?”

  Linsha gave a snort. “I had a horse once.”

  Then there was no more time for talk. A bell rang in the corridor calling the women to their first exercise period of the day. Linsha groaned. She had been in this place for about fourteen days and she had come to loathe that bell. It ruled her life like a slave driver, holding her fast to the rigid routine of the Akeelawasee. What, she wondered as she stretched a little, did the common females do? If they were bound t
o this sort of royal routine, nothing would ever be done.

  She was about to leave the cubicle when she suddenly turned and looked at Callista. “How do you know what the servants are saying? Do you speak Tarmakian already?”

  The courtesan waved a casual hand. “Servants talk. A few speak Common. They’re all slaves from different areas. There’s even an old woman from Solamnia who was left here by the Dark Knights. She talks to me often. Oh! Another thing I heard. The apothecary, Afec? Some of the older slaves say he is a prophet. They say he has visions sometimes.” She giggled. “It’s probably from all the fumes from his herbs and medicines. Maybe he’ll have another vision of how we can escape from here.”

  Linsha grinned. “I’ll ask. Keep your ears open. Let me know what else ‘they’ say.”

  Callista’s humor abruptly faded and she held out a hand. “One last thing. Malawaitha has been away being ‘properly chastised.’ Whatever that means. But someone said she was coming back soon.”

  “I’ll watch for her. Thanks.”

  Malawaitha, Linsha thought as she jogged outside to join the noblewomen. Afec had told her the emperor’s daughter had been sent out of the palace for a while as punishment for her temperamental outburst to the Empress, but no one had said where she had gone or what was happening to her. It had been rather nice not to have to worry about the fiery Tarmak stabbing her in the back or ambushing her during one of their long runs.

  The gods knew this place had taken some getting used to. Even her first few years in the Solamnic knighthood had not been as regimented as this. She and all the other royal women rose before dawn for a cup of foul dodgagd juice and a three mile run over the palace grounds followed by calisthenics and swimming. Then there was breakfast, more exercise, a massage, a light midday meal, more exercise, and any work the Empress saw fit to hand out. Then there was music lessons or weapons practice, gymnastics, a small evening meal, discussions on what Linsha could only describe as beauty lessons, and then it was bedtime when all the females had to retire to their personal cells for sleep. The routine was so set and so predictable that she was already perishing from boredom. She was too accustomed to setting her own times, making up her own mind, doing things in her own manner. She liked reading books, visiting with friends, riding her horses, eating different foods, facing challenges, using her mind! Here there was nothing to do but exercise, eat dull food, and sleep. It was enough to drive her mad.

  On the good side though, she noted while she jogged along the same dull dirt path, the food, the rest, and the exercise had done her a world of good. After so many months of war and hunger and strife, she desperately needed the food to rebuild her strength, the rest to rebuild her stamina, and the mindless exercise to regain her old skills. She truly felt better than she had in months.

  She was so deep in thought that she did not pay much attention to the grounds around her. She had already seen this path fourteen times in a row and examined it carefully for some means of escape. Unfortunately, the grounds were walled in by high stone barriers and frequently patrolled by Tarmak guards. There was no way out that she had been able to see, yet. This morning the sun was barely up and a heavy dew drenched the grass. The shadows were still thick under the trees, but the sky was clear and promised another warm sunlit day.

  There were so many other women out running that Linsha paid scant attention to the footsteps pounding behind her. Suddenly a hand struck her between her shoulder blades and shoved her off balance. She staggered sideways, slipped on the damp grass, and fell to her knees. One knee scraped something hard, and pain streaked up her leg. Linsha looked up in time to see Malawaitha run by, a nasty little smile on her face.

  “Malawaitha, wait! I’d like to talk to…” Linsha yelled, but the Tarmak woman kept running and soon disappeared among the trees.

  Wincing with pain, Linsha climbed to her feet and continued jogging. She didn’t look at her knee. It was obviously scraped, and if it was bleeding, the blood would help clean out the wound until she could find some water and a bandage. This time she ran with her full attention pinned on the track ahead. If Malawaitha could do something like this, she wouldn’t put it past the Tarmak woman to try to ambush her in any one of the groves of trees along the trail. When she heard more runners come up behind her, she slowed a little to allow them to catch up with her. Better to run in a group than by herself. The other Tarmak women in the Akeelawasee tended to ignore her, but at least they didn’t shove her into the dirt.

  By the time she reached the end of the morning run, she had blood dried in streaks down her shin. The Empress, waiting at the end of the path, spotted the bloody injury and snapped a word to Afec standing patiently nearby. There was no sign of Malawaitha. Linsha bowed to the Empress as was customary and said nothing about the petty incident with the Emperor’s daughter. She would bide her time and wait to see if this animosity would continue.

  The old slave shuffled forward to meet Linsha. “Lady, you must clean that before you can enter the eating hall. It is unsanitary.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Linsha replied. She looked down at her knee and frowned. The knee was scraped as she suspected, but there was a short deep cut just below the kneecap as if she had fallen on a sharp stick or a pointed rock. Annoyed, she followed Afec past the dining hall and through an archway into a large garden basking in the morning sun.

  Linsha slowed to look around. A few small trees grew in the well-tended beds, but most of the plants she could see looked like herbs. She recognized a few from her own land-feverfew, thyme, marigold, and sage. The rest were new to her, probably culled from the highlands and jungles of the Tarmak island. Their scents filled her nose as she walked along the side of a building after Afec.

  At the far end of the building, the Damjatt entered a small room and invited her to enter.

  The room must have been Afec’s workroom, for the only pieces of furniture in it were a large table, a smaller work table, and row after row of shelves neatly stacked with bottles, boxes, jars, stacks of linens, and bowls. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling. Another rack held small bottles of powders, unguents, and liquids of various colors. A brazier burned on the worktable, heating something that slowly bubbled in a cooking pot and smelled similar to horehound.

  “I wanted to warn you before you ran,” Afec said, indicating that she should take a seat on the large table. He bustled around the tables and shelves as if he was very familiar with the room. “Malawaitha has returned.”

  Linsha studied the dirty, oozing scrape and the cut on her knee. “Yes, I saw her.”

  She watched while Afec collected a basin of water and a clean cloth. His short stubby fingers played over the jars and boxes for a moment then plucked a stoppered bottle and a jar out of the rack.

  “I know you’ve told me Malawaitha is betrothed to Lanther, but what if one of them changes their mind?” she asked. “Do the Tarmaks break their betrothal vows?”

  The Damjatt poured a small amount of a clear liquid into the bowl of water and brought it to the table where Linsha sat. “This will sting a little.” Gently he swabbed her knee with a cloth dampened in the water.

  Linsha sucked in her breath. It did sting! Yet the pain was not enough to distract her from her chain of thought. She was about to repeat her question when Afec finally answered her with innate discretion.

  “It can be done if the Emperor wishes it. However, Malawaitha is a beautiful, headstrong, willful, ambitious woman with the desires of her father’s family. Unfortunately she has her mother’s blood and intelligence.” When Linsha looked blank, the old servant gave a slight shrug and went on. “As you might have noticed, the Tarmaks set great store by rank and position, but their ideas of rank are not always based on birth or even bloodlines. Often it is earned. The warlord Lanther is a good example. He is not a Tarmak, but his skills impressed them so much that he was adopted by the Emperor’s brother and became a high ranking leader in the military.”

  “So what does this have to do with Malawait
ha?” Linsha asked. “Isn’t she the daughter of the Emperor?”

  “Yes, and that grants her some rights and privileges of rank. But her mother was a slave. Unless Malawaitha marries a high-ranking leader or official in the court, she will forever remain a second-rank female in the Akeelawasee.”

  Linsha couldn’t think of many things that would be worse. The second-ranked females, she’d noticed, rarely left the grounds of the women’s compound and were often given the most mundane work such as spinning, simple weaving, cleaning equipment, and taking turns caring for the numerous offspring that lived in another part of the palace. She could little blame the energetic, ambitious Malawaitha for wanting something better.

  “So she has set her aim on Lanther.”

  Afec nodded while he cleaned the cut on her knee. “Some years ago. She saw him at court functions and at the games, and she tried to convince her father to let her marry the human. Even though he was not of the People, he was of higher rank and could bring her status up. She convinced the Emperor to arrange a betrothal. Then Lanther and the Akkad-Ur planned the attack on your land. Lanther left our city and was gone for almost three years. Now that he is back, Malawaitha plans to continue where she left off.”

  “But I am in the way.”

  Afec glanced at her keenly from under his thick brows. “Malawaitha certainly thinks so. If I may ask, Lady, why are you here? I do not believe it is to enjoy our customs. Are you wishing to marry the warlord?”

  Linsha laughed at the irony of the whole thing. She couldn’t help it.

  Afec, startled by the bitter fierceness in her eyes, set down the bloody cloth and studied her. His wrinkled face grew thoughtful. “You do not wish this?” he said curiously.

  “No,” she replied, shaking her head. “I do not wish it. But it is a matter of honor and a clutch of dragon eggs.”