Two days later, I was so sore and in so much pain moving brought tears to my eyes... but with a sense of cold pragmatism I smeared them over my cheeks with grime and set off on my errand. The pendant I tied at the base of my neck, where the weight of my hair would conceal it. The hours spent laboriously crawling around the edges of the manor had given me all the information I needed to find the servant’s quarters and stagger into the chicken yard (kept carefully insulated from the manor proper by trees, gardens, fountains and sculptural walls), there to collapse just before the arrival of the soft-hearted maid who consistently demonstrated her generosity to all the wayward animals she encountered.
As I expected, the sight of a strange human sprawled in her yard incited her mercy and I soon found her hovering over me, hands fluttering near my face.
“Oh, you poor dear, you poor dear,” the maid said. “Are you awake? Can you talk?
“So thirsty,” I said, and truthfully at that. She brought me well-water and helped me sip from the ladle. “Thank you.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Where are you from?”
“Farm,” I breathed. “Not strong enough... going to dispose of me...”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, horrified, but uneasy also. I expected little else. “You... you’re an escaped farmhand?”
“They won’t miss me,” I said. “Probably think I’m dead.”
She swallowed and checked my brow, my throat, my hands. “You don’t have any blood-flag marks.”
“Didn’t bother,” I said. “They didn’t think I’d last so long.”
She tucked some of my hair behind my ear and studied my face. “I don’t think you should be here,” she said. “But... “ She sighed. “I’ll go get the steward.”
I nodded, hoping the steward wouldn’t kill me on sight. After she left I dragged myself to the nearest tree and set my back against its smooth gray trunk. I wiped my face until I looked dirty rather than melancholy; I would not impress an authority by seeming too easily moved to tears. And there, surrounded by the chickens, I closed my eyes and settled to conserve my strength and fight the ever-present pain.
My shadow had begun to drag across the ground when at last the maid returned, followed by a human man gray as the tree I leaned against and as willowy. He looked down at me, his dark eyes unreadable, and said nothing. I respected the silence and waited.
Presently: “If you came seeking succor, you’ve come to the wrong place.”
“I’m not looking for succor,” I said. “I’m looking for honest work.”
“Honest work, is that it,” he said. “So you fled the farms. Is that work not honest enough for you?”
“More than honest enough,” I said, “If I could do it. But I was born too frail for labor. My strengths are in my mind. I can read, write, keep accounts. I can plan for the needs of a dozen guests. I can coordinate schedules, oversee workers—”
“Gather dirty laundry and bring food to elves too lazy to come to the banquet hall for dinner?” he interrupted dryly.
“That also,” I said. “So long as I am not in the sun hacking at the soil with a hoe.”
“You have a high opinion of your abilities.”
“I am an asset,” I said. “I want only to be used. Given the right place I can bring comfort and ease to our masters.”
His eyes narrowed. “You would have me believe you like them?”
“No,” I said. “But a contented master is a kind one. Better to keep them pleased than to elicit their discipline.”
He inhaled sharply. “You speak plainly.”
“Are you not human also?” I asked.
He squinted at me, almost scowling; I had the impression that taciturn expression was not a conscious one, but habit. “Get up,” he said.
I clambered to my feet, trying for grace and managing what I hoped was some facsimile of it. The steward studied me at length.
“You are a little underfed,” he said. “But well-formed. Have you been manhandled by them yet?”
I thought of Sedetnet. “One does not say no to an elf.”
The maid gasped, but the man nodded. “I thought so. You don’t seem very distressed about it.”
I shrugged. “What use crying over it?”
“You have an uncommonly good attitude,” the steward said. “It makes me wonder what you’re hiding.”
“What I’m hiding,” I said, “is that I am infirm and of poor condition, and while the notion of being an elven decoration for the short span of my life is humiliating it’s also the best life I can expect. I can be bitter about it or I can do my best to make myself such a pleasant decoration that I will be kept fed, washed and sheltered in relative comfort for the remainder of my useful years.”
He studied my face a while longer, then said, “No. You may be resigned to that fate, but that doesn’t mean I must abet them in your humiliation. If you’re willing to gather laundry and help in the kitchen, I will put you to that. It will keep you from their sight... for the most part.”
I bowed my head. I hadn’t expected it, but his rough kindness moved me. “Thank you. My name is Morgan.”
“And I am Davor,” he said. “Welcome to House Suleris.”
My assimilation into Suleris was that simple. Davor marked me with the blood-flag, a design stamped at the base of my throat just below the meeting of my collarbones; with that and a set of simple livery I was sent into the house to collect dirty dishes and soiled laundry from opulent rooms empty of their guests. Whatever powers and assets Suleris managed had made them rich beyond the kings of history... their wealth rivaled that of folk tale emperors who ate off gold-plated dishes and drank vintages of wine so rare they had to be crushed by the feet of virgins. And such decadence! Even I, living on a student’s budget, could recognize the signs of high living in the disarray left behind in banquet halls and recherché salons and solars. There were even guests who left opium burning in their rooms, and perhaps I lingered there longer than I should have. My own supply I hoarded for the worst of my days, knowing that I would have to accomplish my mission before I ran out or I would be in dire circumstance indeed. I was slow at my tasks, and often found myself slumped against walls, having suffered a seizure, but knowing how near I was to a possible cure kept me from surrendering to despair.
But the part I thought would give me difficulties—being accepted into the household—was nothing to the task that I’d felt sure would be easy... finding my wayward king. I hadn’t anticipated there being a tour guide to lead me to his cell, or even a map with a block of rooms labeled “Here There Be Dungeons,” but I’d felt that having such an august prisoner would surely elicit gossip among the servants. The first week passed, and though I’d been in and out of dozens of rooms and listened attentively to even the most innocuous of conversations, I came no closer to discovering his whereabouts. Curled up on my cot in the servant’s quarters beneath the worn but thick blanket I’d been issued, I wondered if he was still here. Perhaps Sedetnet had erred.
“Morgan,” the sommelier said. “Would you bring this to the study? It’ll be wanted shortly.”
Wine flowed in never-ending streams throughout the house, as ubiquitous as the blood in a man’s veins. I was forever delivering bottles of it hither and yon, which bothered me not at all; it was a gentle service, and the sommelier a genial man if eternally distracted by the nuances of his trade.
“I’ve never been to the study,” I said.
“It’s above the entrance on the top floor,” he said. “Use the northeast stair. It looks like a study, you’ll have no trouble recognizing it.”
Stairs... one of my favorite things. I smiled and took the bottle. “Consider it done.”
“Thank you, Morgan.”
So I set off through the network of passages that served the main household; I’d found the service corridors far finer than I’d expected. Narrow, perhaps, but well-designed, with doors flush to the walls of the main halls with their elegant molding and astonishing
murals. The stairs exacted their toll as expected, and once I reached the top I allowed myself the luxury of a short respite, leaning against the wall and catching my breath. Then I slipped through the door and into the house, finding myself in a circular foyer lined with windows, motes of dust glimmering in the shafts of golden light that fell onto the thick rugs beneath my feet. It was not a room... merely an interstitial area between broad halls and chambers, but it had benches padded in velvet and a petite table suitable for tea and pastries. Suleris was so rich even such places were beautifully appointed. There was no detail left undone.
The study was adjacent to the resting area and as the sommelier promised there was no mistaking it. The heavy wooden doors had been left open, revealing a room lined with bookcases. The floors, walls and furniture were all the same rich red wood, and as I entered I smelled paper and polish and the lingering bouquet of the last wine that had been opened here. I set the fresh bottle on the tray on the sideboard and hesitated. It had been so long since I’d been anywhere near so many books. I drifted toward the mantel, studying their spines with mute longing; once I reached the fireplace—what did they use it for, in this temperate clime?—my eyes rose slowly toward what I took to be ornament.
It was no ornament. It was a single yellowed vertebra, larger in circumference than my waist and mounted on an illustration of a dragon. I stopped, struck numb at the sight of it, and reached to brush my fingers across its porous surface. The angry hiss of the hallucination from my flat echoed in my mind. The skulls of my brothers and sisters adorn your people’s halls.
I backed away from it, turning, and found myself facing a map.
Though I knew I should make my exit, I couldn’t resist the map. I had never seen the Archipelago. It was much larger than I’d anticipated, twenty-six islands of varying sizes, and they were each tinted either red, green, blue or gold. And it was while staring at this wealth of information that I discovered a severe deficiency in the linguistic education Kelu had spearheaded.
I couldn’t read.
The little circular marks, cradled in their alien diacritics, were indecipherable. They looked more like art than words. I had never realized how great a light literacy had shed on my world. To be deprived of it... I felt as if someone had blinded me. Dismayed I traced the ciphers on the vellum. They could be names, numbers, distances, notes... they could be anything. And I... I was helpless in the face of their opacity. Would that Chester were here to give me some basis for understanding...!
A faint heat bathed my back, and just as I began to puzzle at it a body slammed me against the wall, crushing my cheek against the map. My nascent struggles were quelled by an invisible force and then the hands clawed beneath my skin, digging up the magic there and yanking it past the scream in every particle of my being. My vision bled black, threatening to drown me as the pain flared from fingertip to fingertip, from crown to the tip of my heel. And the revoltingly intimate caress continued, slowed even, as if my attacker was savoring every lick of it.
When he released me I slid down the wall, half-crumpled near elegant feet glowing with the force stolen from me, shod in dainty sandals more appropriate to a woman. But then, he had very pretty feet, the bastard.
“Not a feast.” Such a smug voice. “But fair for an afternoon diversion. Get up.”
Just like that, as if it were some easy task. “I cannot.”
“‘I cannot, Master,’“ he corrected. When I didn’t repeat it, he slipped his foot from his sandal and used his toes to lift my chin. “Come, come, new boy. For you are new, aren’t you, or you would know me. Address the blood-flag’s head correctly.”
I was not here to draw attention to myself. I closed my eyes and said, slowly, “I cannot, Master.”
“Better,” he said. “I suppose I over-drained you. But you were there and one gets... absorbed... in one’s pleasures.”
I had no idea how to respond to that without spitting on his toes, so perhaps it was for the best that he let my head drop back to the ground. “Strange of you to linger, though. Was it that you’d never seen a map before?”
Was he serious? But from the curiosity and condescension mingled in his voice, he was. I wondered anew at the elven penchant for arrogance.
“I have seen a map, yes,” I said.
“Then why do you stare so?”
He assumed I’d seen a map of the Archipelago, a reasonable assumption... as far as he knew I’d been born here, and the elves concerned themselves not at all with the rest of the world. What other map would I have seen, save Serala’s? As I struggled to frame an answer that would not reveal me, he crouched and lifted my face, and at last I was forced to look at him. As with every elf he shone; my fleeting impression before I averted my eyes was of blond and white and cream, of feline eyes a summer-sky blue and generous lips a sensuous coral pink.
“Come now. You can’t be inarticulate. Some elf was taken enough with you to actually have these made for you.” His finger flicked against the frame of my spectacles. “Speak.”
“I wondered at the coloring,” I said.
“Master,” he reminded me.
“Master,” I said, maintaining a bland expression. They were just sounds, devoid of meaning. I could say them and not be demeaned.
“Ah, you are ignorant of politics,” he said. “What a pathetic master you had before me, to have coddled your weaknesses and yet left you uneducated about your betters. Well, let us rectify that, eh? Stand up.”
I managed to drag myself to my feet as he watched.
“Tch,” he said, shaking his head. “So clumsy. I see why you were discarded.” The cold that gripped me at his words made it to the surface for he continued, “Oh, never fear, frail mortal blossom. I’m far more magnanimous than the average petty lordling. I am true nobility. They are merely pretenders. Now... pay attention.”
I forced myself to turn and focus on the map when what I wanted to do was escape him at speed. But truly, the map was interesting.
“Here in yellow you have the islands controlled by the blood-flag Nudain. As you can see, Nudain is falling out of power, though they are nowhere near so poorly off as blood-flag Aresset with its lonely two island holdings. Vanel is also failing, here in blue. Suleris is red...” He caressed the entire middle of the map. “Leaving only Ekadet in the north.”
I squinted. Suleris and Nudain held the largest islands and all the surrounding chains, with the other blood-flags relegated to lesser isles and scraps of land here and there, lonely splotches of color amid the gold and red. “This is the capital?” I asked, pointing at the largest island.
“Yes.”
“And Suleris doesn’t hold the capital of Serala,” I said.
He narrowed his cat-like eyes at me, mouth pinched. Then he smiled a smile I liked not at all. “For now,” he said.
“Nudain, Aresset, Vanel, Suleris and Ekadet,” I repeated. “What of Sadar?”
He snorted. “A minor power. He owns a single city. The only reason Ekadet hasn’t consumed him is that he’s not worth consuming.”
The words tipped off a memory: Tornen. Tornen e Ekadet... the man Kemses had been fighting in the line duel. I suppressed a grim smile. Port cities were never worthless, even in a country that appeared to be mostly coastline... apparently Erevar was not so minor a prize as was supposed. “And Sedetnet?”
He laughed. “You know the sorcerer! Was he your last master, then? Somehow I can see him indulging your weak body and then casting it off for some newer whim. You are lucky he didn’t decided to turn you inside out to examine the color of your bones... or give you a fur coat and sell you to us as breeding stock for the genets. But no. He has no care for politics. Fortunately for him, as if he did we would all unite against him. Are you enlightened now?”
Not even a quarter as enlightened as I wished to be, but I couldn’t imagine revealing that I had no idea how to read. I opted instead for safety and said, “Yes, Master.”
“And you see the power of Suleris.”
In bright crimson, yes. Only Ekadet held close to as much land. “Yes, Master.”
“Good,” he said. “Time for you to return to the kitchens. But before you go—” He pressed me back against the wall, sealing my wrists to it before he leaned in and brushed his hands down my ribcage. And as I struggled to tear free of my invisible bonds, he petted the magic out of me and drank of it and I would have screamed if he had allowed it.
“Very nice,” he said. “Better than wine.” He waved a hand, releasing me. “Off you go.”
White, tearing pain warred with atavistic revulsion and the latter won, propelling me from the study on trembling legs. It wasn’t until I’d reached the relative safety of the stairwell that I began to shake in earnest. My stomach had knotted, my muscles followed suit. I was on the fourth step, looking at the long, long fall down, when my knees gave way. I hoped with a grim resignation that whatever insult my tumble would inevitably bestow would heal before someone found me or surely they would wonder how I’d survived. And then my head struck the railing and I knew nothing more.
The sound of dripping water coaxed me to consciousness next as someone draped a cool, wet rag over my eyes. I felt remarkably calm for how raw my spirit felt against my skin, as if I’d been alienated from my physical shell... though I could just, just pierce the numbness enough to sense the pinprick sparks in my joints that were the aftermath of the worst convulsions.
“You ran into Thameis, I wager,” said Davor from near my feet.
I cleared my throat experimentally and tried my voice: hoarse but serviceable, so long as I didn’t wax garrulous. “Study’s owner?”
“And the entire manor and the island and indeed most of the surrounding islands, yes,” he said. “I would have thought you’d have been intelligent enough not to let yourself be caught in a room with an elf.”
If I hadn’t heard the rue on the words I would almost have thought it a reprimand. “Not my intention.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “I imagine it wasn’t. Stay out of his way in the future. He’s a ruiner.”
An Heir to Thorns and Steel Page 25