by Carol Berg
“‘Twas no one but a cursed Derzhi baron as killed the boy,” said Borian, the shy, nervous potter speaking up for the first time. “Tell them as you told me, Vanko. The blame falls on the Rhyzka bastard who would not allow my sister to rest when he decided that the men of Eleuthra were not enough to plant his fields this year. From sunrise to sundown for a seven day he forced her and the other women to kneel in the sun to seed his rows. When she asked to rest for a while and see to her childer, the overseer would not allow her to drink for the whole day as punishment. And so the same every day until the planting was done. Though they gave her water each night after sundown, the child withered in her. By the eye of Dolgar, that’s what killed them both.” Borian turned red after this outburst and ducked his head toward his bowl.
“No Rhyzka baron has land-bound peasants in Eleuthra,” said Aleksander scornfully. “Those are Bek lands, held by grant from my—from imperial properties.”
Vanko looked at Aleksander as if the lame visitor had indeed fallen on his head. “What Derzhi ever cared if a man was land-bound to force him to do his work?”
The Prince swallowed the dregs of his soup and shook his head. “The law of the Empire says—”
“Is your head stuck up a goat’s ass, friend Wat?” said the gaunt Manganar. “If the lord refuses to sell you wheat and forbids any transport of another lord’s wheat through his lands, then you work for him or starve. Though I’d give no Derzhi credit for a decent bone, at least Bek paid a wage for forced labor. The Bek still hold the manor at Gan Hyffir, but the new Emperor—curse all Derzhi now and forever—has given all the land in northern Manganar to these Rhyzka, who wouldn’t know the law from the shit on their boots.”
“Bloody thief!” Aleksander threw his bowl to the floor, scattering shards of blue crockery everywhere. “I’ll have his balls for this.” As he fumbled for his crutches, Lavra and her daughter glanced in alarm at the Prince and began shooing the younger children into others’ laps so they wouldn’t cut their bare feet.
“Hold, Wat,” I said, trying to restrain Aleksander while suddenly tangled in the warm, wriggling limbs of a two-year-old boy. “Wat has no love for this new Emperor, either. His injury was—”
But I had no time to give them a story, for a noisy pounding on the shop door below us was followed by running steps and the appearance of Sovari, flushed and panting at the top of the stair. “An imperial search party headed this way—five warriors. And you”—he nodded to Vanko—“you’ll want to know that the clerk from the gates is with them, and the fat tax collector.”
“An imperial search party?” said Borian, turning a puzzled face to me. “Why? Who are you?” Before I could answer, his glance drifted to Aleksander and the sword that the Prince was buckling about his waist—the fine sword with the simple hilt, engraved with a falcon and a lion. All color deserted the potter’s face.
“My cousin has had a mortal dispute with the servants of the new Emperor,” I said, jumping to my feet and plopping the little boy on the table. “I’m so sorry, Borian, we had no reason to believe they could follow us here. We’ll go. And you, Vanko, tell them—” Gods. What to tell them . . .
“We’ll every one of us be dead before we let them take Olia,” said Borian in quiet anger. “Now, get you gone the two of you. Vanko owes you his sustenance—as good as his life for a Manganar in this Empire. And anyone at dispute with our new Emperor—no matter who you are—deserves a life for a life. But we’ll deal with our own trouble as we have ever done.”
“We won’t forget,” I said, bowing quickly.
“Neftar, show them the back lane.” Borian shoved the pimple-faced boy toward us. Sovari was already helping Aleksander down the back stairs.
The potter’s yard smelled of goat and ash, and everywhere were broken or misshapen oil jars and water jars, pots of dried paint, and barrels of sand. The goat shed was little more than an earth-roofed vestibule built over a scrape dug into the hillside. Sovari had brought the horses on his way up, and as the captain and I shoved Aleksander onto his mount, I heard the crash when the front door of the shop was kicked in.
“Go on,” I said to Aleksander and Sovari. “Find Malver and get yourselves out of the city. Take my horse. I’ll catch up. Fly if I have to.” I could not leave the two families in such danger. They didn’t understand what kind of trouble they were in.
“Where’s the cripple?” The warrior’s bellow was almost unhearable above the screams and wails of the children. “Get these brats out of my way.”
“Go!” I said. The pimple-faced Neftar had dragged open a section of wooden fence, revealing a weed-choked lane that led into the darkness beside the goat shed and the hill. The boy waved his arm frantically for us to get through it. Sovari hesitated, but Aleksander nodded and disappeared quickly into the lane without looking back.
“If you want to save your family, come to the shed with me,” I said to the boy once he had shoved the gate closed and flapped his arms at the goats so they would mill about and cover the horse’s tracks. “And listen carefully to everything I say.” I didn’t tell him not to be frightened. A good show of terror was exactly what I wanted.
We slipped into the close warmth of the goat shed. In one corner, scarcely discernible in the darkness was the tumbled pile of bundles that were the entirety of Vanko’s household. I pulled off my haffai, shirt, leggings, and boots and stashed them behind the bundles along with my sword belt. Dressed only in breeches, my knife in hand, I took a breath. “Give me a moment.”
With care and discipline, I let the shaping I had carried with me throughout the long evening fall away. Though I could not see the change in the angle of my eyes, nor even the altered color of my skin, I felt the nagging constriction of held enchantment lifted, the relief a snake must feel when shedding its papery skin. But I had no time to enjoy the release, nor the fact that I maintained my barrier against my angry demon as I changed, for I needed to work an illusion—one that was very easy to create as its component parts were disturbingly familiar. A moment’s concentration, and then, with full sympathy for young Neftar’s choking terror, I dragged the boy into the corner of the little shack, twisted his arms behind him in a secure hold, and put my knife to his throat. When the searchers came and lit the goat shed with their torches, the slave bands on my wrists and ankles shone like evil talismans to lead them straight to us.
CHAPTER 16
“Where’s the girl?” I growled. “I told you I wanted the dark-haired girl-child, not this pustule-covered lackwit that a maggot wouldn’t mate with.”
“Well, what have we here?” The voice boomed heartily from behind the gaping Borian, who had just stumbled into the goat shed. One of the potter’s eyes was purple and almost swollen shut, and he was clutching his left arm tightly to his ripped shirt.
I tightened my hold on the quivering Neftar and made sure my own hands were visibly shaking. “This Felics wants a whore, not a catamite. It’s my freedom—” Then, as if just noticing the three Derzhi crowding in behind the bewildered Borian, I screamed, “You bastard! I spared your lives. I spared your children. All I wanted was the one girl to buy my freedom. He promised me.” I nicked the boy’s chin with my knife, a neat little wound that would dribble a goodly bit of blood down his neck and leave only a small, manly scar. “Stay back or I’ll kill him.”
“Please, your honors, my son . . .” Borian’s voice cracked.
“We care naught for your scrawny offspring.” The warrior captain shoved Borian to his knees, and his two companions moved to either side of me, awaiting his word to take me down. Sovari had reported only five Derzhi, but my ears told me there was one man standing just outside the door, and at least four more people in the yard, two with drawn swords, and two scrabbling up the hill behind the goat shed. “Come in here, clerk!” bellowed the captain.
The sallow-faced clerk sidled into the shed, his hands in his pockets.
“What’s your game, you little rat’s ass?” said the captain, not t
aking his eyes from me as he snarled at the clerk. “Instead of the kin-murdering Prince, you’ve hauled us from our watch to catch a runaway slave who couldn’t walk five paces from the walls without getting caught.”
“But this isn’t the one,” said the clerk, his smug expression quickly sagged into confusion. “There were two of them, a cripple that wore a braid and a ring and rode like a lord, and the fellow what was with him—a Kuvai, I think. And they met up with two others—at least one of them Derzhi—outside the house of the Mardek. Just as I told you.”
“That’s the filthy devil what made the deal,” I yelled, pointing to the clerk as I pulled the quivering boy deeper into the corner. “His master promised me my freedom for the girl. Did you think to play a double round, devil? Pocket both the money for the girl and the reward for the runaway? Your master’s likely pinching the girl for himself even now. You’re too stupid to know the truth from the shit on your boots.”
Borian jerked his head up and stared at me, ignoring the six goats that were nosing about him.
I didn’t see much after that. With a jerk of his head, the warrior captain had his lieutenants pull Neftar from my hands and throw me to the straw, exposing my accumulation of scars, including the slave mark burned into my shoulder. Then they laid in to me with their boots for a goodly while before one of the heavy feet came to rest in the middle of my back.
The captain approached, his well-crafted boots stopping perilously close to my face. He crouched down and used a handful of my hair to pull my ear close to his mouth. “Now, what’s all this about Felics?” he said.
Before I could catch a breath to spin out my story, the potter blurted out, “This slave sneaked in here earlier tonight and took my son captive. He said a tax collector promised to let him out through the gates if he would steal my sister’s child for him. This Felics lusted for the child, he said, but couldn’t take her himself as it was against the law and he would lose his post.” The captain shoved my face into the dirt and moved away as Borian babbled on. “I didn’t know what to do, your worships. The slave said he’d kill my son if I reported him to the watch, and kill us all in our beds if we didn’t give him the child.” My smile was hidden by the filthy straw. Not an impregnable story, but it would do.
The clerk regained his wits as quickly as had Borian. “Felics is mad for the girl-child, your honor. Ask Vallot, who worked the gates with him today. The fat bastard had me chasing ‘round the city this whole night to find her. He’s such a coward that he forced me to tell the lie of the villain Prince being here. He thought that if he came here with the watch, he could snatch the girl without danger from her kin. I feared to cross him when he’s witless over the girl.”
“Bring me this Felics,” said the exasperated captain, who sounded ready to wilt under the barrage of changing stories.
Felics was evidently found inside Borian’s house, attempting to dismember a defiant Vanko, who was shielding little Olia from the tax collector’s paws. When dragged into the yard and questioned, Felics vehemently denied all knowledge of the clerk’s accusations. His denial rang somewhat true, since he was clearly confounded by my appearance and the general turn of events. Unfortunately, he gave the Derzhi quite an accurate description of Aleksander.
It took the Derzhi watch captain well over an hour to get things sorted out. Somehow all the neighbors had got wind of the story that Prince Aleksander had been found in Borian’s goat shed, and a goodly number of them stepped forward to tell the guardsmen how they had seen the Prince in other parts of the city. Their descriptions were not quite so accurate as the tax collector‘s, though every one of them mentioned that the Prince was lame. All swore that Borian had told them to summon the guards, so he should not be blamed for harboring a runaway slave. The potter could not possibly have gone to give the news himself, they said, as all Manganar were known to be half-crazed about their sons.
In the end, irritated and confused, the captain sent everyone packing with threats of mayhem if he was called out again, whether by false tales of fugitive princes or true tales of child stealing. By the time he dispatched two of his warriors to discover who in the city was missing a slave, the crowd had dispersed. No one needed to witness the dismal departure of a runaway slave bound for a night of beatings and certain mutilation. For I, of course, had not been sent home, but leashed to the captain’s saddle by ropes around my wrists and to his hand by a rope around my neck. My bonds would not last long; a little way down the street, away from the Manganar’s house and into the dark lanes where the Derzhi would relax, the slave bands on my wrists and ankles would vanish, and the ropes would snap to set me loose. I just hoped I’d not be forced to kill any of the guardsmen as I escaped, inviting Derzhi retribution on the slaves of Karn‘Hegeth.
As the captain and his men mounted up, I stood barefoot in the muck, bent over to ease the throbbing in my side where a warrior’s boot had come too near my old wound, and waiting for the uncomfortable jerk on my wrists and neck that meant I was to keep up or be dragged. Through the open door of the pottery shop, I saw Vanko watching me, holding his bright-eyed daughter. It would be up to Vanko and Borian to keep the little girl safe from the lascivious tax collector. I had no great hopes for them. But then, I wasn’t counting on Aleksander.
About the time the captain spurred his mount and I stumbled forward, familiar laughter echoed from Potter’s Lane. “Ah, Vanye, the wine was sweet tonight, was it not? And the loving so full of charm! You have no such succulent roses in the north, I think.”
My ears pricked. Vanye was the name of the dead man who was the root of my history with the Prince. We had used the name once before when working a deception.
“Did you see her father’s face when she saw you were a Derzhi? I’ve heard chastouain lock their girls in cages if they lie down for Derzhi.” I would never have guessed Sovari for an actor. “Speaking of fathers, we need to get home before yours has us beaten. He warned you after the races.”
“My father is a noble ass.” The slurring baritone began singing in wine-endowed fervor. “Desert roses are passing fair; no rain-fed bloom will ere compare. Mark my words, all ye who dare; my love is true, though I be ... drunk! What comes next, my good Vanye? I’ve forgotten the cursed words.”
All but one of the torches had gone with the Derzhi messengers, and the sleepy neighbors had returned to their beds, so only one sputtering flame and a few windows cast any illumination on the dark street where two haffai-clad riders were weaving their drunken way down Potter’s Lane.
“What ho, Captain?” Aleksander pulled up abruptly, about the time I was scrambling to my feet after tripping over a rut. I could mistake neither the form nor the voice, though the haffai scarf was wound about his head. “Did your horse just shit an Ezzarian turd?” The Prince and Sovari burst into raucous laughter. “Whatever are you doing with Lord Vanye’s slave?”
With scarcely concealed irritation, the captain gave an abbreviated version of the evening’s confusion.
“A girl-child!” Sovari kicked me in the shoulder, sending me sprawling in the street muck. “Come, come, vermin, I thought Ezzarians only lusted after pigs.” As Sovari leaned toward the captain to offer him a swig from a wineskin, his haffai fell open to reveal his red imperial sash. “My slave doesn’t like it here in the desert because the pigs stink too much in the heat.”
“So this is your slave, Lord... Vanye, is it?”
“House of Mezzrah, from Capharna.” Sovari nearly tumbled off his horse as he swept a bow. “Visiting my Fontezhi cousins. And yes, this squirming little vermin is the slave that my father charged to be my wet-nurse. I commanded him to wait at the gates until I came back from—”
“Shhh,” said Aleksander, with exaggerated gestures. “Mustn’t tell the captain where the roses can be found.” His haffai was wrapped just enough to cover his boot, but expose a gold-wrought tef-coat embroidered with the Fontezhi kayeet. “So where is this girl-child?”
“In the potter’s shop jus
t behind me, my lord.” The captain’s voice was stiff. Anyone would have grown impatient with their reeling silliness.
“Is she fair?”
“Quite pretty for a Manganar whelp. Shall I have her brought out to you? If not, I‘ll—”
“Do you need another rose, Vanye?” said Aleksander, clapping his hand on Sovari’s shoulder. “Or have we been pricked enough this night?”
“I think we’re the ones have done the pricking!” More hilarity. “My slave will do nicely. I’ll have him bathe me with rose petals before I take his foot.”
Sovari flipped a coin in the air toward the guardsman, but it fell in the dirt out of the Derzhi’s reach. The officer had either to bend over to pick it up, risking an appearance of avarice, or ignore it, risking the “noble‘s” wrath at his ingratitude. I could have sworn I heard a murmured oath. After bowing with strained politeness, he attached my ropes to Sovari’s saddle, and then asked if there was anything more he could do for the two lords.
“This fair girl-child,” said Aleksander, wagging his finger at the captain. “We mustn’t have our roses plucked by slaves or tax collectors. You put it about that any man who touches this house will hang in the marketplace without his balls—right beside the cursed traitors. Do you understand me, Captain? By the honor of my father’s house, you are commanded to see to it. And don’t think I’m too drunk to remember. Is it understood?” Even with his wine-soaked slur, the command was clear. Derzhi nobles had a certain way with words, and Derzhi guard captains recognized it.
The Captain bowed his head. “Understood, my lord... I didn’t catch your name . . .”
But Aleksander and Sovari had already spurred their mounts to a fast trot and broken into song again. I stumbled along behind them into the dark.
