by Alec Hutson
“By the dead gods,” I murmur, sliding to the floor. I glance at the bearded man, who I think from the smell has just soiled himself, and then we both look at the kvah. The olive-skinned creature meets our gazes with something like embarrassed defiance, then spits out a chunk of rubbery umber flesh. The piece of the tendril flops on the wooden floor of the wagon like a fish out of water.
“Not delicious,” rumbles the kvah, wiping its mouth with the back of its hand. This one looks different than the others of its kind I’ve encountered before – no tusks jut from its lower jaw, and its skin isn’t as pockmarked.
“Ah, well, thanks,” I offer, but the creature only shrugs and turns back to the wall.
Outside the wagon the screams of terror have been replaced with bellowed commands and pained moaning. Guards holding broad-bladed swords and merchants in flapping robes rush back and forth, frantically trying to put the damaged caravan back together before the creature returns. No one seems very interested in braving the grass to find out what has happened to those who were dragged away.
Finally, after an agonizingly long wait, the wagon lurches into motion once more.
We camp that night in a huge clearing hacked from the grasslands, our wagons circled in a defensive bulwark against the vast dark sea and its horrors. In the middle of this ring a massive bonfire climbs towards the stars, and I can feel the prickling heat even inside our prison. Some of the guards and merchants have shed their armor and shirts and now hunker around the flames in exhausted silence. This has apparently been a trying day for everyone.
My eyes flick to the sound of footsteps approaching. It’s the slaver Ximachus, flanked by a pair of black-skinned warriors carrying long spears. The old Zimani’s frizzy hair is sticking up at odd angles, and he looks to have aged a decade since I saw him last night.
“So you all survived,” he says, without sounding like he cares too much.
None of us say anything in response to this, though the bearded prisoner hisses something under his breath that doesn’t sound polite.
Ximachus ignores him. “You should be happy – your daily rations will be increasing. Seems we have a bit of a surplus now.”
“What was that thing?” I ask him, and his tired eyes turn to me.
“A grass-kraken. One of the more dangerous predators of the grasslands. Must have been starving, or chased from the deeper grass by something larger. They rarely venture this close to the road or attack caravans of this size.”
“Give me my sword back and I’ll help fight the next one off,” I say, but he only shakes his head and chuckles.
“Selling you three will help offset the losses I’ve just incurred.” He glances at the scowling sharp-toothed man and the hunkered kvah. “Though you’re certainly more likely to get a decent return. Those two I might as well send running into the grass as an offering. A smelly feral and a female kvah will barely be worth the food I’m feeding them.”
Female? I glance at the huddled kvah. A lack of tusks, smooth skin, and she did seem somehow softer than the beasts that ambushed us outside Soril . . .
The bearded man snarls and spits in the direction of the bars.
“You’ll be let out now to relieve yourselves, but remember” – Ximachus’s hand goes to his necklace of dark gray spheres –“if you try to run off, you’d best be prepared to do it hopping through the grass with only one foot.”
He motions, and one of the Zimani guards steps forward and unlocks our cage. For a moment I consider lunging at the slaver, but the mental image of the circlet around my ankle slicing through flesh and bone is powerful.
I’m the first to emerge from the wagon, stiff-legged, and the two Zimani warriors draw back a pace, lowering their spears. “I just need to take a piss,” I tell them, holding up my hands in an attempt to seem as unthreatening as possible. One of the guards jerks a thumb at the gap between the wagons.
“Back there,” he says, and I nod wearily.
I slip behind the wagon. It’s dark here, away from the fire, and cold. The grass is a black, seamless wall looming above me. Higher up, stars glitter like diamonds spread across velvet, arrayed around the curving slivers of this world’s red and white moons. I hear a pair of muffled thumps as my fellow prisoners jump down from our cage, and then a pair of dark shapes join me. I recognize the bearded man as he gives a satisfied groan and unleashes a powerful stream. I edge away to avoid getting wet, and the kvah goes in the opposite direction and then squats.
So it’s true. For some reason I feel a pang of sympathy for her. The males of her species I’d met were murderous bastards, but perhaps the females are different. Outside of her lunging at the tendril, I haven’t seen any of the aggression that I would expect from a kvah.
By the time I finish my own business the bearded man has stumped back towards the flickering light. The kvah, however, has risen and is staring silently out at the night.
“Hey,” I say softly, coming closer.
She turns, and for a brief moment I think she’s going to strike me. I step hurriedly back, raising my hands.
“No. I just wanted to say thank you. For what you did when that thing attacked.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can feel the tension in her. Then she lowers her arm. I can’t see her face in the darkness.
“Don’t need thanks,” she says finally.
I nod. “It was brave.”
She doesn’t acknowledge the compliment. “Didn’t have much choice. Wasn’t going to sit there and be food.”
“Next time, maybe you could wait and let the monster take our bearded friend first, yes?”
Her shadowed face twists towards me, as if I’ve surprised her. Was that a hint of a smile?
Then with a snort she shakes her head and turns away, her steps crackling in the dry grass.
5
The following days are mercifully free of whatever other terrors lurk in the long grass. The tension that has gripped the merchants and guards since the ambush by the graken gradually dissipates, until once more I hear laughter drifting on the breeze, and the horsemen who ride past our wagon are not always peering fearfully at the golden grass.
Food is thrown inside our prison twice a day, and in the evenings we are let out to relieve ourselves and stretch our legs. Alone with my thoughts in these long days I carefully pick through my memories of what transpired on the mountain. The fire that erupted higher up the snowy slopes concerns me the most. Could it have been Valans, manifesting himself after being consumed by the Cleansing Flame? There had been a twisting shadow within the flames, vaguely man-shaped, and the sound that had echoed with the apparition’s appearance had been something between a crack of thunder and a rage-filled howl.
But if it was Valans, and he now possessed some divine power, how had I survived? Surely he must know I lived. Would he come for me again? If he did, I don’t think I’d prove very hard to kill, locked inside a cage without my sword. Alone, for the first time since I woke up among the reeds on this side of the Gate. Although I try to keep my mind occupied with other things, I can’t keep Bell and Deliah and Xela from slipping into my thoughts. The gnawing ache of their loss is only growing bigger.
Escape – that must be my focus now. My companions wouldn’t want me wallowing in sorrow when I should be devising a way out of this prison. I spend some time examining the circlet around my ankle. Whatever clasping mechanism it uses is nearly invisible, and outside of a thin line the silver metal is otherwise unblemished. I can’t even fit my fingernail into the hair-thin crack, nor does the circlet bend in the slightest no matter how much I strain.
“Can’t be broken.”
I glance up from my examination. The kvah is watching me from across the wagon, her knees drawn up to her chest.
“How do you know?” I ask softly, not wanting to wake the other prisoner, who is snoring loudly. I suspect the kvah’s willingness to speak is reliant on the bearded man staying asleep.
She regards me with glitter
ing black eyes. I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t realize she was female until Ximachus told me – her face definitely has a feminine cast, a certain softness to go along with her lack of tusks and smooth skin.
“I saw the strongest in my tribe try to rip a circle off. Wouldn’t bend. Then the wisest did their best – coated the leg with pig fat, tried to pull it free. Slipped a little piece of metal into the joints to pry it open. Nothing worked.” She looks away, out through the bars of our cage. “It was Fat Ear. He’d been taken by the black men while on the hunt. We’d thought him lost. Then a year later he came stumbling back into our village, all wild-eyed. He’d been made to work in the blood mines. A place of death, he said. He saw his chance one day and pushed his overseer into a chasm. Then Fat Ear lights out, runs all the way back to the tribe. Desperate to get the circle off, ‘cause if they recover the body they’ll get the slaver’s spheres.”
“Sure enough, one night we’re all woken by his screaming. The spheres had finally been found out and someone had flicked ‘em and a hundred miles away his foot had been sliced clean off. I remember the screams.”
My spirits sink as the kvah lapses into silence again. I’d entertained some idea of slipping out of the wagon when we leave the grass, expecting that whatever link existed between the spheres and circlet could only be maintained for a short distance.
The kvah must see my expression, because she gives a little snort. “Don’t be sad, pinkling. Your future is not so bleak. You will be a house slave, or trained to be a soldier. Food and warmth will be yours. Me, I will go to the mines. To the pits. They will work me until my back breaks and then push my corpse into the flames. I will not be so lucky as Fat Ear. The Zimani have learned not to trust a kvah slave.”
I consider her words. Perhaps my best chance of escape is not here in the caravan, but later, after I have been sold. Ximachus may not be merciful, but perhaps I can earn my freedom from whoever comes to own my sphere.
“What is your name?” I ask the kvah, and she looks surprised at my question. For a long moment she does not reply.
“Bright Eyes,” she says finally, with a hint of challenge in her voice. “Once of the Firerock Tribe.”
“I’m Talin.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Talin. You have no tribe? No family?”
I swallow back the sadness that wells up with this question. “They are gone.”
Bright Eyes looks away, staring at the wall.
I reach for something to keep her talking. “What happened to Fat Ear?”
She does not turn back to me. “We ate him. A kvah with one foot is useless.”
The next morning, when the clattering of our wagon’s wheels jolts me awake, I find that the grass has dwindled to maybe waist-height, and relief washes through me at the sight. Ever since the attack by the grass kraken I’ve been on edge, imagining vast predators lurking just beyond my sight, but now I can see over the top of the rippling sea of gold. Behind us, dwindling into the distance and flashing in the morning light, the taller grass looms like a cresting wave. It is a place I never want to enter again.
Ximachus arrives while the caravan is stopped for its midday rest, just after the guards throw us our lunch of salted pork and fresh water skins. He watches us eat for a moment, his lip curled in disgust. I don’t blame him – the bearded man eats like a wild animal, tearing at his food like he’s a scavenger in the forest and needs to wolf down his meal before a more dangerous animal catches the scent. The kvah isn’t much better.
The old man stands a short distance away from the iron bars of our prison, his hands clasped behind his back. “Today we will reach Venoch Ver,” he says.
The feral man looks up from his hunk of meat, his beard glistening. “What’s that?”
Ximachus begins to pace back and forth. “A trading outpost not so far from Zim. Owning slaves is allowed within the holy city, but not the buying and selling. So we must go there to find buyers for our meat.”
“What kind of men own other men?” I ask, my hands gripping the iron bars of our prison.
Ximachus lifts his bushy eyebrows. “Rich men,” he says simply. “Perhaps a better question would be: what kind of men are owned by other men?”
“Unlucky ones,” I respond quickly, and the old man shakes his head.
“No. Men whose lives no longer belong to them. You, silver eyes, should be dead. I saved you, so it is right that you belong to me. This one” – he points at the bearded man – “murdered a woodsman’s family in their sleep. He was caught by locals, and I bought him from them just before he was to be hanged.” He indicates Bright Eyes. “And she is a kvah. They are vermin that live only to kill and steal.”
“You murdered my tribe,” Bright Eyes hisses angrily.
The old man chuckles. “And how many innocents had the warriors of your tribe murdered?”
“I am not a warrior of my tribe.”
“The guilt of the parents stains the child. That is Zimani law, and it is just.”
The kvah hurls the remnants of her bread at the old man, who calmly steps aside. “Piss on your laws.”
“A lack of laws and order is why your people live in caves in the mountain and mine dwell in resplendent cities.” He turns away from Bright Eyes, as if dismissing her. “But I did not come here to fence words with an animal. I came to deliver a warning – when you are brought before those who will bid on your lives, be respectful. If you are not, if you threaten or denounce them, I will have no qualms about separating you from your foot and leaving you to bleed to death in the dust. A recalcitrant slave is useless to me, and to those who would purchase your lives. You represent the Lessanius merchant guild now, and we stand by the quality of our wares.”
I catch sight of what the old man is wearing at his hip. “My sword,” I whisper, but loud enough that Ximachus hears and grins.
“Ah, no, my sword.” He pulls the blade free and the chime it makes sends a dagger into my heart. “A fascinating weapon,” he says, examining the tapering length of green glass. “I planned on getting it appraised and selling it, but perhaps I will keep the sword for myself. I think I cut a rather dashing figure with it.”
I grit my teeth as the old man turns and walks away, a mocking swagger in his step.
Venoch Ver is a scattering of round buildings with peaked roofs clustered around a great wooden platform. Our caravan halts alongside twenty or thirty similar-looking wagons, and under the watchful eye of Ximachus we are released from our prison. Another four men – one old fellow with chalk-white skin, and three nervous-looking Zimani youths who could be brothers – disembark from the wagon I’d suspected was also carrying slaves, all wearing gleaming circlets around their ankles. We mill around on the grass uncertainly as merchants unload goods from the other wagons and carry them towards a distant open-air market.
“Come,” Ximachus says finally, motioning for us to follow him and a trio of heavily armed guards towards the wooden platform. I see his face fall as we approach, and I think that’s because there are only a handful of buyers waiting to see what he has brought. Most of them are older Zimani men dressed in the same manner as I remember from Ysala – long, colorful robes stitched with geometric designs. They fan themselves with shimmering iridescent feathers as Ximachus leads us up the stairs and arrays us along the platform’s length.
“Esteemed gentlemen of Zim,” he says loudly, flourishing a bow. “I am Ximachus of the Lessanius, slave trader of the second rank. I bring before you today my wares, their acquisitions all legally witnessed, with documentation that will be provided after the sale.” He clears his throat and indicates the three Zimani youths, who look on the verge of fainting. “First, we have these three boys, nearly men, all healthy and strong. They are of good character and sound mind, and have committed no crimes. They were sold to me so that their father could settle his outstanding debts. Their term of indenture is five years, and I shall start the bidding at fifty glories a head.”
“Sixty,”
one of the watching Zimani says, raising his feather high.
“Sixty-five,” says another, waving his own feather languidly.
As the auction proceeds, my already smoldering anger flares higher. Who are these men, that they think they can own the life of another? The casual evilness of the whole spectacle makes me want to rip my sword away from Ximachus and show them that I am not a piece of flesh to be bartered.
I’m lost in this fantasy when I feel something sharp poke my back, and I stumble forward a step.
“And this one,” Ximachus is saying from his perch at the edge of the platform, “was found on the shores of a river, near drowned. It was witnessed that he would have perished in the cold mud if my men had not rescued him, and so his life belongs to me, and for only a hundred glories it could instead be yours! Look at those exotic silver eyes, set in a face handsome enough for the Lotus Towers. But he is a fighter, mark my words! When a grass kraken attacked our caravan, he helped fight it off with only his strength, and the barbarian ferocity for which the southern people are known!”
“May we see a demonstration of his prowess?”
The speaker is a slight man, shorter than most of the other buyers. His burgundy robes lack the angular, multicolored designs that adorn the garments of his fellows, and he wears a pair of thin-framed spectacles that flash in the late afternoon sun.
