by A. F. Dery
“You eat meat? Really?” Lord Malachi frowned. “I thought your lot ate, you know, fruit. And oats. Maybe the occasional insect.”
The pig huffed loudly, stomping his feet and knocking over a nearby chair with a swipe of one arm. It clattered several feet away and the pig turned to him angrily.
“You know nothing of ‘my kind,’” the pig squealed. “Of course I eat meat. I eat everything one of your stinking ‘lot’ can eat.”
“Now, now, no need to become offensive, Master, er, Grayson,” Lord Malachi said, who watched this display with more fascination than concern. “I have not eaten in some hours myself. We will dine, and talk, and perhaps your humor will improve.”
Again the pig huffed. “Graegun, I am called Master Graegun,” he rumbled. He put up a hand- and indeed, Lord Malachi noted at once, it was a hand, and not a hoof- and tugged at the collar of his shirt. He let off stomping his feet but continued to shift agitatedly from one side to the other. “I should like the opportunity to refresh myself, first. It has been stifling hot in here.”
“Of course,” Lord Malachi said. He took a small whistle from around his neck and signaled for one of his domestic staff. A modified sentry (it featured grasping claws rather than weapons at the ends of its arms) quickly marched to his side. It also wore a very friendly looking gingham apron to distinguish it from its murderous kin. That had been Margaret’s idea- a joke, actually, but Lord Malachi had had it done anyway just to hear her laugh.
He snapped open a side compartment and quickly toggled switches, issuing his orders, then snapped it closed. The sentry turned at once and started to march off down the corridor.
“You’d best follow it. It doesn’t know whether you are or not,” Lord Malachi offered helpfully. The pig scowled and hurried after it.
**
Dinner was an unusual affair by civilized standards. Lord Malachi was not normally one for entertaining, and when he had married, it had been a relief to have someone else to take over all the social occasions that he was obliged to host from time to time. Such obligations were blessedly rare, though he knew Margaret had been most stressed by them. She failed somehow to understand that even if her efforts had been halfhearted and in every usual sense, deficient (and certainly, he had not thought this to be the case at all), she still would have surpassed his own competence in this department with ease.
As it was, one of the two women who worked in the kitchen unceremoniously dumped numerous dishes and platters onto the table after he had hand-waved the entire affair with “whatever you think is best, but mind, no pig or pig derivatives. I’m not too certain how I feel about cannibalism.” She strode off into the kitchen with the lids still on many of them and Lord Malachi’s one and only guest short a spoon. That man- or pig, for Lord Malachi had not quite made up his mind on this question yet- was gracious enough not to call notice to it, so obviously aghast was he at being made to uncover the dishes nearest to himself and fill his own plate from them.
“I’ve yet to be able to invent anything that would do a passable job of it, I’m afraid,” Lord Malachi said apologetically, sincerely embarrassed at this shortcoming. “I’ve managed to design sentries who can manage cups and plates, but not the serving utensils. At least, not unless you’re of the mind to eat off the table or your own lap rather than the plate.”
“What of the human servants?” Graegun demanded, eyeing the ladle presently in his hand with obvious distaste.
“They don’t really seem to care for it when I have company,” Lord Malachi said.
“Then take a whip to them.” Graegun put down the ladle gingerly and stared across the table at his host. “Are your guards made of gears because you cannot master humans, then?”
Lord Malachi chuckled dryly. “That’s an interesting way of looking at it. I’m not sure it’s really a matter of ‘mastery,’ per se. I just prefer not to be bothered. I know people have their uses, though. Some of my troops are made of flesh, but I don’t like them in my home if I can help it. I certainly wouldn’t care to have a bunch of servants running about, chattering all damn day and dropping things and needing attention, just so I don’t have to pour my own gravy.”
“But you already have that woman who brought out the food,” Graegun pointed out bemusedly. “Why do you not make her do her job and serve it to us?”
Lord Malachi contemplated this idea a moment. “I suppose I could,” he said reluctantly. “But then she’d be in here while I’m trying to eat, breathing and things. So very annoying.” And he gave Graegun, who breathed rather loudly whether through snout or mouth, a very pointed look.
Graegun ignored this. “Why even have her here if you cannot tolerate her presence?”
Lord Malachi heaved the sigh of one who had long been made to suffer vexation after vexation. He rang the little bell by his plate (which he had found, not long ago, obscured in a back cupboard in one of the pantries as if hidden there by some diabolical hand) and after several moments, one of the kitchen women came, her face blank but her eyes resentful.
“Our guest requires serving, but pray keep well clear of me while you do it,” Lord Malachi said curtly. He immediately realized how rude that sounded and thought it unjust of himself, given that she was not actually the source of his irritation, and added in hopes of softening the blow, “my good woman.” That was the sort of thing that idiot Eladria would say, Lord Malachi thought. He was forced to grudgingly admit, if only to himself, that the ugly bastard could behave like a gentleman when he had a mind to, though his efforts were usually a complete waste.
He quickly turned his thoughts back to his annoying guest before he could be tempted into anything even more ridiculous, like pity or, gods forbid, sympathy.
The servant woman had begun to serve as Lord Malachi supposed she must think serving should go. She went to various dishes at random, occasionally reaching right in front of the pig-man to slop food onto his plate. Graegun began first to sputter in bewilderment, and then again to huff, and Lord Malachi quickly put in to avoid disaster, “You might ask him what he wants first, you know.”
The woman sighed a sigh remarkably like to Lord Malachi’s of but a few minutes before. She turned expectantly to the pig-man, but Graegun’s face had hardened, his breath coming out of his snout in short, sharp puffs.
“Unless you are willing to let me demonstrate the proper management of domestic servants, my lord, perhaps she is better off where she was...if you value her use of both arms,” the pig-man grunted. There was a coldness present in his eyes that made Lord Malachi appraise him seriously for the first time. He saw with new eyes the sharpness of the teeth that lurked behind the fleshy pink lips, the stoniness of the pig-man’s glare, the unexpected ripple of tensed muscle in the forearm of the broad meaty hand that gripped Graegun’s fork.
Without a word, Lord Malachi gestured with one hand for the servant to leave, not taking his eyes off the pig-man. When he’d heard the door swing shut behind her, he said in a low, quiet voice, “I would be pleased to demonstrate my ‘management’ of domestic servants on the High Lord’s servant now, if you would like, or else you will remember your place, in this house, at my table. The High Lord will not miss you, Graegun. He would not have sent you here, to me, otherwise. Such an act leaves your value in his eyes no secret at all, I assure you. He knows what...uses...one such as you would be to me, completely apart from your little ‘gift’ for my wife. Surely your savagery can find a better application than this misguided hostility at my dinner table.”
Graegun’s hand relaxed on his fork and he slowly set it down on the table. “Can it, my lord?” he asked in a surprisingly normal, if somewhat grunty, voice.
“Oh, indeed,” Lord Malachi murmured, and he smiled.
CHAPTER THREE
It took the better part of two months before the Dread Lord of Eladria broke. Spring had finally begun its gradual thaw: life now raked all but the peaks of the mountains with vivid, spreading green fingers. The air remained crisp and
cold enough for the soldiers’ breaths to hang like fog in the air as they trained now in the outer courtyard of the Keep.
Thane had woken that morning, washed, dressed, stepped into the sunlit outer chamber of his tower, and choked back a yelp as the merciless light burned through his eyeballs and into his brain. He backed away from the room with uncharacteristic clumsiness, his stomach already threatening to heave.
It was a long day. By the time night encroached, the Dread Lord of Eladria, most favored of the High Lord, who had led troops onto the battlefield more times than he had years waving his ax in the forefront with a bellow that had sent enemies fleeing in terror, was curled into the most compact ball that his massive limbs could form, shivering so hard that his great teeth chattered and exerting heroic effort not to whimper.
At that point, a pin dropped on the other side of the Keep would have been unholy agony. The chattering of his own teeth was nearly unbearable, and he was sure that adding any further noise would kill him. All of those battles and in the end, it was not the enemy’s blade sending him to the afterlife in a blaze of glory. Oh no, Thane reflected darkly, he would be taken down by a headache. If the pain itself was insufficient to make him desire death, that pretty thought was certainly more than adequate.
It was sometime around midnight, having swallowed as much of Graunt’s pain relieving potions as he dared and keeping down, by his own estimation, perhaps less than half of them, that he sent for the servant from Ytar.
For the past month, she had been watched, per his instructions. As it turned out, he had not even been forced to spare any men for the effort, for she was never alone. Cook worked her every daylit hour and many of the night ones, just as her predecessor had, and she was always surrounded by the other servants, whether waking or sleeping.
The most suspicious thing about her, in fact, was that she did absolutely nothing worthy of suspicion. She wrote no letters to family or friends left behind. She spent none of her wages, her uniform, food, and bed being provided by the Keep. On the one afternoon a week that was her own per Eladrian law, she drank a cup of tea, took a leisurely walk around the ground floor of the Keep in full view of the gods and everybody, then went to sleep. Four hours early and missing dinner. As far as he could tell, all she did was eat, sleep, work, and take a walk once a week. It was pitiful, but even his paranoid brain, sans headache, was incapable of conjuring any nefarious and sorcerous activities from what precious little material this Ytaren girl provided. It simply wasn’t normal. Everyone did something that could be interpreted in the worst possible light, he was sure of it.
Between this and the fact that he was suddenly, nauseatingly certain that he would not make it through the night as he was, he was driven to desperate measures. Thane did not know how her infernal powers of pain relief worked, and damned if he cared at the moment. Who was he to scruple? Sorcery was bad, blah blah blah, get the damn witch in here.
Somehow he actually managed to chatter out something to that effect to one of his servants- he must have done, though he could not quite remember anything past a minute ago in his present state- and after an eternity of trembling and teeth clenching and bloodying his palms with his fingernails, his eyes screwed shut against his old foe light, he finally felt a cool hand against his face, and the sudden heady rush of respite.
Suddenly crushed under the weight of exhaustion as his body relaxed for the first time in the many hours since his head had begun to ache, Thane slept.
Kesara stood uneasily next to Lord Eladria’s bed. He snored softly and she was left wondering what she was meant to do now. In her past life, she would have been supplied with a chair, a hot drink, maybe even a book.
Oh, gods help me if I’m waxing nostalgic, she thought with a faint snort.
She could barely see anything in the darkened room, could only make out the prone form of the Dread Lord on the bed from the light that streamed in from the open door.
And that bed, she could not help but notice, was huge. It took up most of a not inconsiderable room, but that made sense given the size of its occupant. Had he been sprawled, a foot may still have made it over.
She shook herself a little. Now that he was no longer suffering and asleep, he surely would not mind a bit more light. She moved back to the doorway and pushed the heavy door the rest of the way open. It did not escape her notice that the soldier who had escorted her to Lord Eladria remained in the hall, positioned where he could see in.
And watch her. As she had been watched ever since she had last left this tower. It was hard to feel hurt, when she had spent the whole of her life under one pair of eyes or another. It was also hard not to recognize the signs. The person watching her changed, always one of her fellow servants, sometimes even Cook herself, but the vigil remained unceasing.
Not that it mattered. She did absolutely nothing. Her routine had not varied in the slightest because she was now being observed. If she managed to bore one of her watchers to death, it would serve them right, she thought spitefully.
Kesara focused her attention now on finding somewhere to sit. She could stand for hours, HAD stood for hours, but she saw no real need to torment herself. She had nothing to prove here. I am not his, she thought, and felt nothing but grim satisfaction. I am my own.
And she decreed that she, Kesara, should sit through this night in comfort. When the Dread Lord awakened, there would be no telling what he would be thinking. Likely he would turn stubborn again and send her away, and back to the kitchen with a sleepless night for her.
In the meantime, she would be the one watching. She finally located what looked like a chair beneath a heap of discarded clothing. She frowned a little at that. It was strange that housekeeping neglected Lord Eladria’s private rooms this way, unless perhaps he had requested such a thing. She shrugged one shoulder and relocated the clothing to the top of...a table? chest of drawers? and pulled the chair to his bedside.
She did not, strictly speaking, need to sit so close to him- being in the same room alone would suffice- but why make life any harder than it had to be? It felt to her like being on an invisible tether, this temporary bond, and allowing it to be stretched too tightly was...uncomfortable. She preferred a good bit of slack when she could manage it.
She glanced up at the doorway and although the soldier in the hall made no pretense of doing anything apart from watching her, he had neither moved nor commented at the sight of her rearranging his lordship’s bedchamber. She suppressed the urge to wave at him as she settled herself in the chair. It was big enough for three of her. She crossed her ankles primly and rested her head against the chair’s high back. The pain was worse for him this time than last, she observed to herself. And though she hated to admit it, its advent had affected her a great deal more keenly than she’d expected.
Ordinarily, she would not have sensed it. This was, without a doubt, a different and separate affliction from the one she had first touched. She had been relieved when that one had finally left her alone. This was a new one, and that she still was able to sense it, across the Keep and completely out of contact with Lord Eladria, disturbed her no small amount.
It meant that time was slipping away from her. Whatever was in her that made her what she was sought the bond relentlessly, and in due time, she would be able to keep no one’s ache, pang, or twinge away.
It was a thought that did not bear thinking of and so she resolved she would not. Not this night, anyway. Kesara studied the sleeping Dread Lord.
It came as no surprise to her that suffering changed people’s appearances. She had once seen a woman at the end of her life, some terrible affliction which had no name but was apparently eating her somehow from the inside out, to hear the healers talk. When she had finally passed, after many long weeks of torment, she had looked...different. Younger, brighter, even in death.
When she had asked her mentor at the time about this phenomenon, one she had noticed many times before, albeit never quite as strikingly, she had been told that it
was the peace of death transforming its victim. But she had not believed. She had seen it in those who yet lived, once their suffering had abated. She saw it now in Lord Eladria, in his relaxed and untroubled brow. It was as though years had indeed fallen away from him, she could tell even in the darkness. His red-stubbled cheeks glimmered in the dim half-light; he had been crying, she realized, in utter silence. Had been for who knew how many hours. Again, that uncomfortable twist inside her. It was madness for a man so proud as she was sure the Dread Lord of Eladria was to suffer so, with a Mirror in his own Keep.
But then, he did not know, and she did not want him to. Did she?
Of course not, she told herself firmly. I am free. I will die free. I am not meant for...this. For him.
She buried her face in her hands, hiding the first visible traces of pain that had touched her features since she left Ytar.
And this is only the start, something inside her whispered.
The start of her end.
It was precisely at dawn that the Dread Lord woke, as he did each and every day, no matter whatever events transpired the night before. His head felt perfectly fine. The night and day before might have been nothing but a stomach-churning nightmare, except for the woman dozing in a chair next to his bed. She was dwarfed by it, he noticed with some amusement, and could have been a child.
Except she wasn’t. She was merely, like most foreigners, small. She had dark curly hair pinned up somehow on her head and smooth tawny skin the exact shade as a doe’s pelt. It was curious, he thought, because the sun seldom came out here, and she never went outside anyway. Perhaps all her kin looked like this. Ytar was distant enough from him that he had no dealings with her whatsoever. She was not even part of the High Lord’s domain, and thus was relegated in the back of Thane’s mind to the same place as the fairy stories he was told as a child and the rumors that alchemists could turn common pebbles into gold.
