The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  Yet there was one memory that kept contentment from trapping him. Baruma. Every afternoon, when the entire household, slave and mistress alike, took a couple of hours to nap or at least rest on their beds, Rhodry would remind himself that he owed Baruma a bloody death, even though it would cost him his own life. What’s the swine done with my silver dagger? The question became an obsession, as if the weapon itself, those few ounces of dwarven silver, contained his very honor the way a body contains a soul. Every now and then he dreamt of killing Baruma and taking the dagger back; after one of those dreams he would be silent, wrapped in himself all morning, and he would notice that everyone would avoid him then, even the mistress.

  There came an afternoon, as well, when he recovered another memory of his lost life, one that stabbed him to the heart. After a gray morning, rain broke, a chilly drizzle that set everyone grumbling. Since he couldn’t work outside, Rhodry went to attend their mistress, who was as usual pouring over her fortune-telling set. For some time Rhodry merely sat beside her and handed her tidbits of dried apricots and sugared almonds when she held out an impatient hand. The rain droned on, the oil lamps flickered, while Alaena laid out tile after tile, only to sweep them impatiently away and start all over. When she finally spoke to him, he was nearly asleep.

  “This wearies me, and don’t yawn like that.”

  “I’m humbly sorry. Shall I put them away now, mistress?”

  Alaena shrugged, pouting, and held out her hand. Rhodry gave her an apricot, which she nibbled while she considered.

  “I know.” All at once she smiled. “I’ll tell your fortune. Sit round the other side and start mixing up the tiles.”

  He’d seen the fortune-telling game so many times now that he knew what to do. After the mix he picked twenty-one of the ninety-six tiles at random, then laid them out in a star-shaped pattern. Alaena helped herself to an almond and ate it while she studied the layout.

  “Now, of course, this is all in the past, because you’ve never had your tiles read before. Sometimes you get several readings that refer backward before you start going forward again. I don’t know why. The scroll that came with the set didn’t say.” She paused, thinking. “By the hem of the Goddess’s robe! I never knew you were a soldier. I see lots of battles in your past.”

  “That’s certainly true, mistress.” Rhodry moved closer, suddenly interested in this game. What if she could find out other things about him, ones he didn’t know?

  “And you fought in many different places.” She pointed to a tile of two crossed spears. “This indicates you were a mercenary, not a citizen volunteer.”

  “I certainly was.”

  “How very odd, because it looks like you were born to a highly placed family.” She laid a painted fingernail on the ace of Golds. “Very highly placed. But, oh yes, here it is! You got in trouble with law, and you were either exiled or you just ran away. Honestly, Rhodry, how naughty of you! Was it gambling that time, too?”

  Since he couldn’t remember, he merely smiled, a gesture she took for a yes.

  “You never had any sense about money, that’s certain. Draw two more tiles.”

  When he handed them over, she turned them faceup and placed them by the two of Golds.

  “No sense at all,” she laughed. “I see you handing out rich presents to everyone who asked.”

  “That’s the way of a Deverry lord, mistress. They have to be generous, or they’re dishonored in everyone’s eyes.”

  “So you were noble-born. I rather thought so, but Pommaeo said it was a stupid idea, and I should forget it. Honestly, Rhodry, how awful, to fall so far, and all because you couldn’t keep your hands off the dice.” She considered the tiles again, then smiled wickedly. “There were other things you couldn’t keep your hands off, as well. Look at that prince of Swords with a Flower Princess on either side. You had lots of love affairs.”

  It struck Rhodry as unjust to the extreme that he could remember none of them.

  “Oh, look at this! You have a child back home.”

  “I do?” The shock made him forget his mask of servility.

  “You didn’t know? What did you do? March off with your army before she even knew she was pregnant, probably.” She burst out laughing. “Well, Deverry men are certainly like Bardek men in some crucial respects, aren’t they? I’m afraid the tiles can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.” Still smiling, she took another apricot and ate it slowly while she thought. “I wonder about this Queen of Swords at the top. It seems such an odd place for her. Draw me two more.”

  The pair turned out to be the Ace of Spears and the Raven.

  “Oh!” Alaena gasped in honest shock. “How very sad! She was the one true love of your life, but it all ended tragically. What happened? It almost looks like she got sold into slavery, too, or married off against her will to some other man.”

  Suddenly Rhodry remembered Jill, remembered the name to put with the blonde woman who at times had haunted his memory and his dreams, remembered with a rush of emotion his despair when he had lost her, somewhere along the long road. Dimly he could remember beginning to search for her, somewhere in dark woodlands …

  “Rhodry, you’re weeping.”

  “I’m sorry, mistress.” He choked back the tears and wiped his face on his tunic sleeve. “Forgive me. I loved her very much, and she was forced to go with another man.”

  He looked up to find her watching him with a startled expression, as if he’d just materialized like one of the Wildfolk.

  “No, you forgive me. I forget that you weren’t always a slave.” She looked down at the tiles and frowned, then swept her hand through the pattern. “Just take that fruit away, will you? Do whatever you want until it’s time for dinner.”

  Since he had no other privacy, Rhodry went up to his bunk in the men’s quarters and lay down, his hands under his head as he stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain. Slowly he pieced together a few of his memories, but only a few. He knew that he had loved, that he still did love, with a fierceness that shocked him, this woman named Jill, but who she was, where he’d met her, why she’d been dragged away from him—they were all mysteries still. He wept again, but only briefly, a few tears of frustration more than heartbreak.

  Although Alaena never referred to the incident again, from that afternoon on Rhodry was aware of a change in her attitude toward him. At times, he caught her watching him with a little puzzled frown, as if he’d become a problem for her to solve. Outwardly, nothing seemed to have changed; he spent his afternoons with her as before, learning the protocols of greeting and announcing guests of various ranks, and none of the others seemed to have noticed anything, except, perhaps, Disna. Suddenly Rhodry noticed that the maidservant had grown cold to him; whenever he complimented her, she gave him the barest trace of a smile or even a downright nasty look. When he tried to turn the whole thing into a joke and tease her about it, she refused to answer, merely walked away fast with her nose in the air, making him wonder if all those love affairs that had appeared in the tiles were doomed to remain in the past.

  After some days the rain stopped, and Alaena went out to the marketplace. Since everyone in town seemed to be there, catching up on their shopping and gossip, they left the litter on a side street, hired a shopkeeper’s lad to watch it, and walked to the market itself. Carrying his ebony staff, Rhodry followed a few paces behind the mistress while she went from booth to booth, looking mostly at jewelry and silks while merchants groveled before her. Finally she motioned Rhodry up beside her and pointed at some silver brooches set with bits of semiprecious stones.

  “I want to buy a present for Disna. Do you think she’d like the one with the large turquoise?”

  “I have no idea, mistress. I don’t know anything about jewelry.”

  “You should learn. It helps you judge people when you first meet them—their taste in things, I mean, not just what they can afford to spend. But I don’t think these will do.” She walked on, motioning him to walk at
her side. “I have heaps of things Pommaeo gave me at home, of course, and some of them are quite fine, but …” All at once she flashed one of her wicked smiles. “No, I have a different use for them. Come along. There’s another jeweler over here.”

  This particular jeweler was a fat man who reminded Rhodry of Brindemo. On each hand was an amazing collection of garish rings, and he wore a dozen different pendants around his neck, too. Among his collection of merchandise was one pin so different from the others that it seemed to call to Rhodry, a tiny rose, worked in fine silver, no more than an inch long but so lifelike that the leaves seemed to stir in the breeze. Alaena picked it up.

  “What an odd thing,” she said to the merchant. “What kind of alloy is this? It’s much too hard to be pure silver.”

  “I don’t know, oh exalted and beautiful exemplar of womanhood. I won it in a dice game actually, from a man who said it came from the barbarian kingdom.”

  “Indeed? How much do you want for it?”

  “Two zotars only, for one as lovely as you.”

  “Bandit! I’ll give you ten silvers.”

  The haggling was on in earnest. At the end, Alaena had the pin for twenty silvers, about a sixth of the asking price. Rather than having the man wrap it, she turned and pinned it onto Rhodry’s tunic, near the collar.

  “A barbarian trinket for a barbarian,” she said, smiling. “I rather like the effect.”

  “Thank you, mistress.” Rhodry had learned that gifts like this were his to keep, even if he chose to turn them into cash some day. “I’m flattered you’d think so well of me.”

  “Do you know what kind of metal that is?”

  “Well, yes. I had a knife made out of it once. In the Deverry mountains are little people called dwarves, who live in tunnels and make precious things out of strange metals like this kind of silver. Some of their trinkets have magic spells on them. Maybe this one does, too, but we won’t find out unless it chooses to show us.”

  “How charming you are when you want to be.” She laughed and reached up to pat his cheek. “What a darling story! Now let’s find something for Disna.”

  Eventually she found a pair of long gold earrings, shaped like tiny oars, that she pronounced suitable. Rhodry took the parcel and started to follow her out of the marketplace, but again she had him walk beside her.

  “That was fun, but now everything wearies me again.” She sighed gently. “Do you think I should marry Pommaeo?”

  The question took him too much by surprise for him to think of a properly phrased answer. He gawked at her while she laughed.

  “Well, I think he’d be mean to you—and far too interested in Disna,” she said at last. “So perhaps I won’t. Besides, he can be the most wearisome thing of all when he wants to.”

  At that she moved ahead and let him walk behind until they reached the fitter.

  When they returned to the house, Alaena closeted herself in her bedchamber with Disna while Rhodry went on to the kitchen to haul in firewood for the evening meal. In some half an hour Disna rushed in, the earrings glittering as they framed her face in a most appealing way.

  “Guess what? The mistress won’t marry that awful Pommaeo after all. She’s going to ask Mistress Malina to find her other possible suitors instead.”

  The staff raised a small, dignified cheer.

  “My thanks to holy Zaeos, to all the Goddesses of the Many-Starred Sky, and to the Wave-father,” Vinsima said. “Any member of Mistress Malina’s family is bound to be a fair-minded and generous man.”

  “I think,” Porto said, “that we may have some extra wine with the evening meal. To toast the gods for smiling upon us if nothing else. Girl, does the mistress require anything?”

  “Yes.” Disna glanced at Rhodry, her smile disappearing in an oddly abrupt way. “She wants you to run an errand. She’s in her bedchamber at the moment.”

  Rhodry assumed that he was to take a note over to Malina’s, but when he came into the chamber, he found Alaena sitting, as carelessly as a girl, on the floor in front of her jewel chest. When he hovered uncertainly in front of her, she motioned for him to sit down, too, with a flick and a point of one slender hand. Beside her on a cushion lay a tangle of emerald necklaces and two heavy gold arm bracelets.

  “Pommaeo gave me these. I want you to take them over to the temple of Selenta as a gift to the priestesses. They run an orphanage, and they can sell these off a bit at a time when they need coin.”

  “Very well, mistress. Are you going to give me away, too?”

  Alaena laughed in a peal of musical amusement.

  “No, I don’t think so, really.” She reached up and put her hands on either side of her face. “Well, come along. Kiss me.”

  More in shock than pleasure, Rhodry kissed her on the mouth.

  “You do that much better than Pommaeo ever did. Yes, I think I definitely like the slave better than the stupid master.” She glanced at the jewelry beside her. “Oh, that can wait.”

  The meaning was unmistakable, but Rhodry hesitated, half-panicked. All his intuitions were screaming that it would be very unsafe for both parties if a slave had an affair with his mistress, no matter how common it was for men to take their female slaves. No doubt it’s worse for the slave, too, he thought; I’ve no desire to end up getting flogged in the public square or suchlike.

  “How can you look so shy?” She was grinning at him in her wicked way. “What about all those other women I saw in your tiles?”

  “They weren’t as far above me as you are. You own me body and soul.”

  “Then you’d best do what I want, hadn’t you?”

  This time she reached up and kissed him. The hungry feel of her mouth, the soft warmth of her body, the way she pressed herself against him, all conspired to made him forget that he’d ever thought this a dangerous idea.

  From that time on, Alaena would often summon him to her bedchamber on one excuse or another or even tell him to slip out of bed at night and join her. Yet most of the time, she treated him exactly as she had before, as an exotic servant who often needed a good slap to teach him a lesson. Although he was glad enough of the sexual comfort she was giving him, Rhodry honestly wished that the affair had never begun. On the one hand he felt that his lovemaking was just another of the well-trained footman’s dudes; on the other, he knew that it threatened his secure niche in the household. What if she tired of him and decided to sell him off to remove an embarrassment? Although Alaena realized his reluctance, it amused rather than annoyed her. She liked ordering him into her bed, and once he was there, he could never refuse her.

  Since at night he was creeping out of the room they shared, he had no doubt that Porto knew what was happening in the mistress’s bedchamber, just as Disna did, though neither of them betrayed a thing, not by one word or gesture or giggle. Once or twice, though, Rhodry overheard Porto making a sharp remark to one of the other slaves that was obviously designed to keep the scandal within strict limits. Finally Rhodry was sick enough of feeling shamed to bring the matter out into the open. He was restacking the woodshed one afternoon when Porto came out to tell him that there would be guests for dinner that night.

  “You’ve done a good job on the shed, boy, and I’m afraid it really needed it. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing. You do all your work well.”

  “Thanks. Yes, I’m sure I do. All of it.”

  Porto stiffened, his eyelids flickering.

  “Oh by Zaeos and all your gods!” Rhodry burst out. “Do you think I like these goings-on? I’m scared sick.”

  “You’re sensible, boy. More so than our poor little mistress.”

  “Tell me something, will you? How much trouble is there going to be over this? I don’t want to be beaten to death in the marketplace just to set a good example for every slave on the cursed island.”

  “Now, now, I doubt it’ll come to that. Alaena’s so rich that no one’s going to interfere, not even that brother-in-law of hers. Without the commission she pays hi
m he wouldn’t live very comfortably. But there’s going to be nasty talk if this gets spread around, and somehow or other, things always do get out, don’t they? No matter how careful we all try to be.” He sighed, shaking his head. “You’d best pray to all the Holy Stars that Pommaeo never hears of this. A clever man, of course, can help the goddesses answer his prayers.”

  “By keeping his mouth shut and watching every step he makes?”

  “Just that. And by making himself well-liked. If any of the mistress’s friends tip you, you might consider spending part of it on Vinsima.”

  “Very well. And Disna’s never going to carry a heavy load upstairs again, not while I’m within reach of it.”

  On a day sticky with a cool drizzle Jill and Salamander arrived at the harbor town of Daradion. Since it was too late in the day to question the harbormaster about the Gray Kestrel, they found a room in an inn, then went down to the evening market as soon as the rain stopped. Jill found the wet weather such a pleasant change that she was shocked to hear the citizens complaining bitterly about the cold and damp. The market was nearly deserted, with over half the stalls empty and only a handful of customers hurrying along on brisk business.