“Brilliant plan,” I said, unable to help the wryness. “Would never have thought... of it.” And then I erupted into a coughing spell that startled the woman on the stool beside me and prompted Davor to catch my ankles.
“Ah! None of that,” he said. “The doctor’s been by, he says you’re not to strain yourself for the rest of the night.”
“Same night?” I wondered, though by then my voice was a rasp of a thing.
“New night,” he said. “We found you yestereve in the stairwell, you’ve been unconscious since. It’s approaching sundown.”
I sighed. “Naturally.”
His voice held curiosity then. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“No,” I said.
“Then you have been used often enough to know your reaction to it.”
“Convulsions,” I said. “Nausea. Pain. Fainting.”
“Horrible,” the woman on the stool murmured. She wrung another cloth out and wiped my face with it, slow and careful strokes.
“I didn’t know you were bait for them,” Davor said.
“Not something one admits,” I said while marveling. Bait? Were there truly humans so enticing they drew elves whatever they willed? Did the moral decay here ever reach an end?
“How do you feel about working with animals? Or madmen?”
“Sending me to the circus?” I asked with a crooked grin.
“No,” he said. “Just thinking of duties I can put you to that will keep you out of their easy reach, or overshadow you so much they won’t notice you at all. If you are bait they’ll feed on you until you don’t rise again.”
I would have stared at him had I been able to. “Possible?”
“I’ve seen it,” he said. “Worse, I’ve had to figure out what to do with the remains.” He paused. He was looking at the floor then, voice muffled. “Sometimes the bodies don’t die for months.”
“Animals, madmen,” I said. “Sounds positively delightful.”
He said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
The next morning I found myself on a cart, accompanying foodstuffs across the manor’s broad fields in the company of a phlegmatic old man. He lent me his broad straw hat without comment and said nothing about my being huddled in a blanket on a bright and breezy day.
“Talk to Sondrea when you arrive,” Davor had said as I climbed up beside the driver. “She’ll put you to whatever work seems appropriate.”
“Is it so far?” I asked.
“The pens and showroom are kept carefully apart from the life here,” he said. “I likely won’t see you until the holidays.”
I had nodded, bewildered, but I didn’t begin to understand until the driver had set off down the trail and we plodded on... and on... through winding gardens, past a decorative gate and into the fields surrounding the manor house. We were still on the estate but no longer anywhere near where I’d been working before, and the pastoral loveliness of the landscape surprised me. I had grown weary of ornamental gardens, manicured and trammeled and controlled. To see wildflowers again pleased my spirit.
“How far is it?” I asked.
“Couple of hours,” the old man said.
“Hours?” I asked, astonished.
“Them shining prefer not to hear the cries.”
I pulled the blanket closer and wondered if I would find my new assignment more difficult than serving as elf food.
The cart rocked me to a sun-warmed somnolence. My tolerance had grown enough that I could doze through pains that would have dismayed me in Evertrue, and so I did.
“Up with you,” the man said, gruff. “Almost there.”
I blinked the sleep from my eyes and found us on the approach to a set of buildings set in a hemispherical arc. Beautiful buildings, elegant facades with ornamental flowering trees, and yet there was something oppressive and thick about the air that grew more and more powerful the closer we came. We were driving up the back of the curve toward what I barely believed to be pens... but they were. Tall cages stacked on top of one another, each one occupied by a genet. And as promised by the old man, they were making sounds... little sad sighs, the occasional whimper.
“What do they do when it rains?” I asked.
“Toss a sheet on them, sometimes.”
“Snow?”
He snorted. “Don’t snow here.”
“Right,” I said. “But... just to leave them exposed that way?”
He shrugged, leaving me to stare as we wound past the cages. They were clustered in groups, with all the genets in those groups similar in color and size. Genets black and sleek as summer nights; genets with shimmering silver tipping; variegated genets in black and red and white and gray... my breath caught as we passed a group of soft white genets with golden spots. They looked like copies of Almond.
One of them was crying into her knees.
The driver dropped me off beside one of the less imposing buildings near the cages. By that time the miasma of wrongness surrounding the place had become so dense I could barely think. “Sondrea’s here,” he said. “Luck.”
“Thank you,” I said, dragging the blanket off my shoulders and folding it over an arm. I turned to the door and couldn’t move. It took me a moment to realize what had paralyzed me.
I was shaking with anger.
Did they not hear the muffled noises? Oh, they must. Did they not care? Had they become inured to the sound of slavery? I faced the pens and ground my teeth. I knew I shouldn’t, but I went to the nearest cage and looked at the door... locked, of course. But the lock had no keyhole.
The genet in the cage glanced at me with lambent green eyes. She licked her mouth and worked her jaws, as if trying to remember how to speak, and said, “Don’t bother. You need magic to work them.”
“Everyone has magic.”
“Not like that.” She sounded bored. “You must be new.”
“Yes,” I said. “Does my horror give me away?”
“No,” she said. “You’re talking to us. I’d have remembered someone who talked to us.”
“No one... talks to you?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “They just feed us, occasionally take one of us out to parade at the showcase hall, then put us back.”
The genet above this one poked her nose through the wire frame. “He’s talking to us?” she asked in a voice so close in timbre to the first that they could have been duplicates.
“Seems that way,” the first one said.
“Won’t last long,” a third opined.
“Probably not,” the second said and turned her back, resettling herself against the cage’s corner.
The magnitude of the evil of it staggered me. I hooked my fingers in the cage’s wire and leaned in toward the first genet. “Is there anything I can do?”
She grinned like a dog, gape-jawed and silent and toothy. “You are new.”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s an honest question.”
She said, “You’ll learn the way of things soon enough.” And then she too turned her back on me, leaving me to their silence.
I chafed the smooth face of the lock with my thumb, but I could feel nothing, no magic I could hook any tendril onto. Not that I knew the first thing about using the magic that was giving me such trouble... but surely such things were intuitive. Like thinking or at worst, learning to walk.
I passed on from that cluster of cages to the next. These genets were a soft pale gray with cloudy patches, ever so slight variations in color, milky white or rain gray. Their locks were also magical. So were the locks on the yellow ones. I paused when I reached the Almond look-alikes; by this time, all the genets had roused and were watching, and having twelve pairs of nearly identical lilac eyes turned on me was unnerving.
“You look like someone I know,” I said.
One of them canted her head.
“A genet,” I said. “Almond?”
“Oh,” one of them said. “We’re all Almond.”
I swallowed around a suddenly dry throat.
“Her sisters, I assume.”
“Repeats,” one of them said. “We are repeats. Get of the Fount after the template of Almond-1.”
“We are biddable and gentle,” said a second. “The sweetest-tempered of all the genets.”
“Happy to serve,” a third piped.
“Did our repeat make you happy?” the first asked.
“I—yes, of course,” I said.
They purred in unison, and I backed away, almost into a human woman. We stepped apart; she was stout, middle-aged, with caramel-colored skin and silver-threaded dark hair braided back from her face in a utilitarian tail. Her scowl was so accustomed to her face it had dug grooves into it for comfort.
“Why do all the new people have to agitate the genets?” she asked, irritated. “Follow me, please. And stop staring at them.”
“I’m not staring.”
“No, you’re trying to figure out how to release them,” she said. “Just like every other person who’s come by. Please, spare us both the trouble and resign yourself to the situation. No one is getting them out of their cages but an elf. Now, who are you?”
“Morgan,” I said. “Davor sent me, said you’d find something to do with me.”
She eyed me. “You’re not another one of those trouble-makers, are you?”
I said, “That would depend on what kind of trouble you mean, I suppose.”
“I mean rebellious,” she said. “People who throw themselves at their masters and try to strangle them.”
“Did someone actually try that?” I asked. “God help them!”
“God didn’t, in most cases. The cases Davor saves he sends to me,” she said, exasperated. “So, why did he send me you?”
“Elves like to render me useless for normal work,” I said dryly.
She squinted at me. “You’re bait?”
I was already tired of the word. “I believe that was the term, yes.”
“Oh.” She sighed. Her scowl relaxed, revealing a countenance worn by her worries. “Not much better, but at least not your fault. All right, then. What were you doing there?”
“Laundry and errands.”
“Bah,” she said. “I can’t put you on that or the customers will think the blood-flag is providing you as a complimentary delicacy.” She rubbed her forehead.
“I’m good with animals and madmen,” I offered with half a grin.
She snorted. “I don’t want you stirring up the merchandise.”
The hot flush that passed over me halted me in my tracks, but I forced myself to resume following her. “I won’t release them.”
“No, but I don’t need you talking to them,” she said. “For all I know you’ll be putting cruel thoughts in their heads.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Freedom? Dignity?”
She snorted. “As I said, cruel thoughts. What good will you do them, making them discontent? Then they’ll try to escape and fail, or turn on their masters and be destroyed. You won’t bring them any happiness, telling them such things. You’ll only guarantee their short lives will be miserable... or cut off by an elf too lazy to discipline them when killing them off and buying a new one is so much easier.”
“Do they really?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Really. So no, I don’t want you near them if you can’t keep your mouth clipped.” She sighed. “Were you serious about madmen?”
“I... suppose,” I said, fighting my nausea.
“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll give you over to the care of the Fount. If you can’t handle it, tell me immediately. It’s too important to fumble.”
“What exactly does this duty entail?” I asked.
“Bringing him food. Taking away the food he probably hasn’t eaten.” She sighed. “If you can get him to eat, that would be wonderful. If you could make him more biddable that would be even better. Thorn in our sides, the Fount. If they could find some other way to make their genets, I’m sure they’d have done away with him by now.”
“All these genets have only one sire, then?” I asked.
She nodded.
“No wonder he’s insane,” I said. “I can’t imagine serving stud for so many.”
She snorted. “He doesn’t do any physical work. They do it all with magic, elfish things. Don’t try to understand it.”
I wanted to see this poor genet. What kind of cage did they keep him in, I wondered? “When do I begin?”
“We’ll get you a space in the dormitory,” she said. “Then you can bring him his lunch.”
I reported to the kitchens to receive the genet stud’s lunch and found there a man in a smock orchestrating an intricate dance, servants, sauce pans and serving dishes in constant motion. As I watched, enthralled, a meal fit for an emperor assembled itself on a tray: a delicate quail in some thick glaze of oranges and wine and spices, garnished with edible flowers, on a bed of rice cooked almost to the consistency of pudding with cream and some kind of stock. The vegetables were artistically shredded and arranged in a tower held together with an egg and butter glue. A salad so fresh the leaves still snapped when broken, bread from flour milled so fine the crust looked like silk... wine with a fragrance so intense I felt giddy just smelling it.
The chef eyed me. “You’re the Fount’s new runner?”
“Yes.”
“Take the basket,” he said. “You’re not supposed to leave unless he’s eaten all of it, but you’ll probably be back long before then. Wait as long as you feel, so long as you’re back before dinner to bring him the next tray.”
“This?” I asked, astonished. “This is for him?”
“Yes,” the chef said, the picture of artistic suffering. “God knows he doesn’t deserve or appreciate it. Get on with you, it should be served fresh.”
I took up the basket and left, bemused. Sondrea had given me directions to the Fount’s chamber but I hadn’t expected to be carrying a picnic of this quality to a genet. Were they really surprised that he didn’t want such rich fare? And so much of it! By the time the chef had finished with the basket I would have expected a party of at least four. I wondered how many servants had waited in irritated impatience for a single creature to finish off even half this repast.
The hall to the Fount was an arrow shot straight into the center of the main building. I started down it, ignoring my sense of unease, but by halfway down its length I could no longer brush off the weight of the air. That sense of disaster that had assailed me on the ride into the compound... its source was close. Appropriately, the corridor reflected it; it eschewed the windows and broad, open architecture so favored by the elves, growing more and more narrow and more and more austere until by the time I reached its end the claustrophobia stole my breath and I had to force myself into the center room.
I was expecting a cage similar to those outside, perhaps larger. To find myself in a luxurious suite with gold-leafed columns and carpets rich enough to sink into was such a surprise that I halted.
Women were giggling. I lifted my face slowly and saw... writhing. A bed nearly the size of a room and on it sleek elven bodies undulating, laughing low and rich. There were so many of those bodies, male, female, supernal in their elven shining, their grace, that I almost couldn’t find the man under them... could not, in fact, see his face. Only his wrists, being held down against the bed by an indulgent, self-satisfied male. It looked on the surface like the kind of debauchery I’d come to expect from elves.
And then I looked at the hands. At the strain of the tendons, trembling, lifted from the dull skin by a frantic effort. At the fingertips with their ragged nails and bloodied tips and shredded skin. At the amount of pressure the elf holding his hands down was exerting to keep them in place.
I began to back away as more and more of the scene clarified in my eyes. A spill of lank, lifeless hair across the satin sheets. A weak wave beneath the bodies that bespoke a futile attempt to push them away. The muffled sounds of flesh and sweat chafing.
Oh, no, no. I didn’t hav
e to stay for this. I took another step back—
—and then the man trapped beneath them turned his face toward the door.
I dropped the basket and fled until I could put my back against the wall on the other side, and there I slid to the ground and clutched my knees, shaking violently. I had never seen such desperation, such naked anguish on a face.
And not just any face. My face. My face, older and more severe, my arched brows, my knife of a nose, my sharp chin with its blunted point.
I had found my kin, my brother, the king of elves.
I don’t know how long it took for the voluptuaries to grow bored and leave. I only remember hearing their voices approaching and hastily raking my hair over my face, slumping my shoulders and trying to self-efface to the point of vanishing. And it worked, or the elves were accustomed to ignoring human servants, for they passed me with all evidence of self-absorption. They were laughing, their magic so heady it draped in the air as they passed, sparkling; they almost danced. Whatever pleasure they’d had in the chamber, it had revitalized them. I could guess just what it had involved.
When I could no longer hear their voices I drew in a long breath, steeling myself, and slipped back into the room. The wine had been spilled across the bed and floor, though the food was untouched. Pillows were thrown in every direction; the disarray seemed almost spiteful, as if they’d tried to leave as chaotic an environment behind as they could. Somehow I didn’t think they’d done it to make trouble for the servants who had to clean up after them, either.
On the bed the king of elves had his back turned to the door and had curled into as small a ball as possible. I licked my teeth and crept closer. I had not even reached the bed when he flinched, and I froze.
I had never seen such a sick man, human or elf. Not even Kemses, staggering off the arena’s field, had looked so ghastly. His skin reminded me of the wings of a dead butterfly, thin as tissue, desiccated and frail. His hair was some color I couldn’t discern, so brittle it rested on the sheets in angles, as if it couldn’t soften enough to conform to the wrinkles in the satin. The chain of his spine creased his back in discernible knobs running all the way to the nape of his neck. They had not, I saw, even washed him of their emissions. They’d left him, sullied and drained and nearly broken, with every contempt.
An Heir to Thorns and Steel Page 26