by Kate Elliott
“Why do eagles choose the people they do?” Lifka asked past a lump in her throat.
“No one knows.”
The Runt thrashed out of a stand of high grass with a rat in his jaws.
Tarnit grinned. “That is our signal to make supper.”
He paused, growling at her.
“No, you malevolent little dog,” Tarnit retorted, chuckling. “We don’t want your rat!”
In the morning they glided down to the cove, the end point of a small valley worn into the hills by a stream. The stream had been partially dammed to make a string of ponds whose water was channeled into irrigation canals that wove a network down through the gardens and fields of two separate villages, one high in the valley and the other down by the beach where boats were pulled up on the strand. They landed near a large one-story house built off by itself. Its wide terrace offered a splendid view over the glistening waters of the cove. Shuttered windows gave the house the look of a person with closed eyes, and the reception room was littered with dirty straw and goat manure.
At length a man walked up from the beach-side village, several youths trailing along behind with wide-eyed curiosity.
“How may I help you reeves?” he said. Lifka had a little trouble understanding his accent. “We would be honored to share a meal with you as the law instructs: Let the people feed the reeves who guard the land.”
“My thanks, ver,” said Tarnit. “We will accept your hospitality gladly.”
They released the eagles and walked with him back to the village. He soon made a friend of the Runt, although the dog snarled when the children tried to come too close.
Two reeves were a season’s wonder, quite the most interesting event to happen for months, and they were happy to take in Lifka for as long as she needed to get over what Tarnit kept referring to as “her recent illness.”
Lifka’s looks did not astonish them; they sheltered the occasional sailor and traded with a few foreign merchants. A feast of rice and fish filled Lifka until she burped, and they insisted she taste each one of the four varieties of rice wine they brewed and the three varieties of liquor they distilled. The more she drank the better she liked them. They were an old-fashioned people isolated by sea and hills, and hadn’t even heard of the new law about work gangs.
“Did the old queen not live here for a time?” Tarnit asked.
The man had assigned himself as their spokesman. “The gracious Queen Zayrah. Our elders recall her. The young prince—him who became King Atani—and his sisters used to come. There were merlings in the cove then. They would sing for him at night.”
With a lift of her eyebrows at this unexpected detail, Tarnit glanced at Lifka. “Who inherited the estate after the queen died?”
“The prince, who then became King Atani. He visited here a few times, with his household.”
“And when he died? Who now owns the estate?”
“Why, we do, verea. The labor and tithe we owed Queen Zayrah was gifted at King Atani’s death to all the families who live here. Now we owe what is due to the seven gods and the assizes and you reeves. Also we maintain the nearby beacon, the one you can see there on the headland. We keep our portion of the Beacon Path that runs along this shore under repair. That is our tithe, just as it was in the old days, before there were kings.”
“And King Atani’s household? You never saw them again?”
“No, verea. We never saw them again.”
39
As the days passed and the work gang crossed the Istri Plain and climbed to the Aua Gap, the frightened prisoners began to complain, in whispers, as they camped each night.
Tyras sat with forearms and head resting on his bent knees. “The hells, Gil. I’m so hungry I could puke.”
“Do you know what I’ve noticed?” They sat close enough to touch. Some of the other men had taken to calling them lovers, which suited Gil because it meant they could whisper together. “Every morning there are more prisoners. It’s like they sneak in under cover of night. They get fed from the other wagon, and they get rice, meat, and greens. Also, the new prisoners aren’t marked. They just have ink brushed on their faces. You can see it wear off in patches and in the morning someone’s drawn it on again.”
Ty rolled his head to one side on his arms to glare at Gil. “Are you really taking this spying business seriously?”
“Of course I am!”
“It’s a stupid idea.”
“It’s a cursed sight better than being stuck in the palace flattering courtiers just for the hope of a nod and a wink.”
“You’re such an ass, Gil. This isn’t better.”
“You hated the endless processions and audiences and kissing asses just as much as I did, Ty. Don’t start claiming now that you miss it.”
“What about your wife? I thought you liked her. I have to say that was hells bold of her, having sex with you in the prison. And she gave you useful things that don’t look valuable. I can’t believe my mother gave me enough coin to buy an estate, which anyone with one thought to rub together would know the guards would steal, like they did. It’s because of the herbs Saraiya gave you that our faces aren’t inflamed like half the other prisoners. And we have a cloth to sleep on at night.”
Gil stroked the old leather sack, which was too worn to be worth stealing but strong enough to survive. She had chosen wisely. How like her to do so!
When he shut his eyes he thought of her silky skin and the sweet way her nipples tasted, then sighed. That was definitely not a road to walk down, not now. “I do miss her. But I don’t know, Ty. If we had stayed on for years in the lower palace, wouldn’t we have gotten bored with each other? Then started fighting? It’s not that I wanted to be arrested and marched out in a work gang—”
“I sure as the hells did not want it!” Ty spat on the ground as if the taste of bad fortune stank in his mouth.
“—but you have to admit there’s something thrilling about being a spy, just like in the tales! And maybe we’re helping Kas.”
“What does Kas have to do with this?”
“You can’t need me to string this together. It makes sense that they wanted me gone to get at Sarai-ya’s coin. You being arrested doesn’t make sense unless they want to isolate Kas and make every man fear being seen as his friend. Who will go out drinking with him now?”
Tyras said nothing.
“You’re not regretting it, are you?” Gil demanded. “Befriending Kas, I mean?”
“I still don’t see how us being thrown into this cursed work gang helps him.”
“If they think he’s isolated enough, they might leave him alone. Queen Dia might send him back to her country estate and get him out of the cursed palace.”
“Hush.” Ty curled a hand around Gil’s ankle. “That man’s been watching us for days.”
The young man Ty indicated had broad shoulders, rippling muscles, a scar along his ribs as from a knife wound, a badly healed broken nose, and the Water Mother’s inks down his right arm and left leg. When he caught Gil looking, he narrowed his eyes as if he was deciding whether to engage in a staring contest, which Gil would certainly lose the moment the other man decided to punch him in the face. Gil offered his brightest smile, and the fellow paced away.
“I’d wager he was arrested for murder,” muttered Tyras. “Probably slit the throat of a man he was robbing. You smiling at him is an invitation for a thug like that to come wandering back to bully us.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You never do think, Gil.” Tyras scratched a bug off his ear, leaving a welt.
“I noticed him at the prison with a few other criminal-looking men. One was killed the first night—”
“For trying to escape. I can’t forget that.”
“The second tried to get me to worship Beltak, and the third is now marching with the new prisoners, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“What?”
Gil glanced around. Men sat alone or huddled in nervous groups. One pack o
f three sulky-looking young men were muttering intimately together like old acquaintances, just as he and Ty were, and nodding toward the cook wagons. He wasn’t the only one to have noticed that the new arrivals got fed more and received rice instead of millet. “You can count, Ty. There are now about equal numbers of those of us who marched out of the prison in Toskala and those who joined on the road.”
“They’re work gangs from other places.”
“No. There’s something else going on.” His gaze crossed paths with that of one of the men sitting in the group of three. When the man gave him a hard stare, Gil stared hard back, not liking to give anyone here the idea he was frightened of them. There was something vaguely familiar about the other man’s face—his high forehead, his cleft chin, the noticeable gap between his two front teeth—but he couldn’t place where he’d seen him before.
The chief clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Any man who agrees to drill will get an extra ration. Line up in ranks.”
“These asswits want us to drill after walking all day?” Gil exclaimed.
His words rose into the air just as everyone else quieted.
The chief looked around. “Who said that?”
Enough men glanced their way that there was no hiding. So Gil stood. “I did. It just seems like the walking is enough exercise given how little feed we get. Oxen aren’t expected to drill at the end of a day’s haul. You might at least offer us rice.”
The chief strolled over. Prisoners drew back, isolating them.
“Fuck,” Gil murmured. Instinct told him the chief was looking for an excuse to make another example. “Ty, back away with the others. Stay out of this.”
“Don’t ask me to be a coward.” Tyras didn’t shift.
Gil took a step forward, bracing himself. He just hoped it would be fast.
The chief stepped past him and grabbed Ty by the arm.
“Heya!” Gil lunged for them but guards blocked his way. One slapped a baton so hard across Gil’s chest that the blow stopped him in his tracks. Searing pain spread outward from the impact.
The chief shoved Tyras toward a group of guards but his gaze stuck to Gil. “Don’t fuck with us, you piece of shit. Don’t think you’re too good to get what is coming to you. I see you two and your good sandals even though every one of you cursed prisoners is meant to walk into the gang with nothing but the kilt you’re issued. I see your soft hands. So you think you can mouth off whenever you please just because you’re boys born into rich clans.”
He surveyed the silent prisoners, most of whom were now staring at the ground hoping to avoid notice. “When I say you can get an extra ration if you drill, I mean a ration of rice gruel. If you don’t drill, here’s the extra ration you’ll get.”
When the guards threw Tyras facedown to the ground and yanked up his kilt in the most demeaning manner imaginable, Gil was for several stark breaths taken so unawares that he couldn’t move or think. The guards blocking his way grabbed his arms just as he realized what was going to happen. He tried to break free but they held too tight.
“Fuck me, you fuckers!” Gil screamed as the chief rubbed his own cock until it stood erect and then got down on his knees between Ty’s forcibly spread legs. “I’m the one who said it! Punish me! Fucking cowards! You pissing cowards!”
The hells Ty struggled, kicking as the guards held him down, cursing them and then grunting in coughing shrieks as he tried to choke down the pain of the man ripping into him. Gil elbowed, kicked, threw his weight against the men holding him, tried to bite the cursed hands of the cursed guards but he could not get free. But he could not stop fighting to try to reach Ty because it was a betrayal to stand and watch. Around him a few men laughed nervously but mostly it was deadly silent.
After an agony of time the chief gasped and held still with the grimace of orgasm. Oh gods, Tyras tried not to whimper as the man pulled out of him and stood.
“So, who’s next?” said the chief, Ty still pinned on the ground and the chief looking around at the guards.
Gil shoved and twisted, fighting and cursing, because he could see how the guards were deciding who was going to have the next go at Ty. Oh fuck what a nightmare. What an ass he was to think this was some grand adventure like in the tales.
The thug Tyras had noticed earlier sauntered out from the mass of prisoners, looking brutal and nasty and like he would do any cruel thing for an extra ration of gruel.
“You want a go at him, lad?” said the chief with a laugh. “That’s the first time I’ve had a prisoner want to join in.”
“A go at him?” The thug looked around as if surprised to see the whole appalled audience. “I thought you meant a go at being the one held down on the ground. I like it a bit rough.” He cast a gaze around the guards. “I can give it or I can take it and I must say after ten days on the road I am cursed bored and hells hungry. So if we’re not going to get on with the drilling so I can take an extra ration of gruel, I’ll take whatever pony I can get now. Nothing like sex to take your thoughts off hunger, neh?” He glanced over his shoulder at Gil, then away.
Gil stopped fighting because there was no fathoming that look. Everyone else was watching the chief.
“Let him go,” said the chief. “Line up in ranks of ten.”
Of course every man there lined up for drill. Gil darted over to Ty but when he put a hand on Ty’s shoulder his friend slapped him away.
“Fuck you, Gil. Fuck you and your fucking schemes.” He lurched to his feet, staggering. Tears dribbled down his cheeks and semen down the back of one leg. “And fuck your mother, too.”
“My mother’s dead, Ty. Get in line. We’re drilling now.”
“You fucker, don’t touch me! Don’t tell me what to do.” He clawed tears from his face but he couldn’t stand in a way that did not cause him pain.
“Do you want them to drag you off to fuck you some more, Ty? Is that what you want? Because that’s what they want you to do. They want any excuse now they’ve started in on you. So you can tell me to go fuck myself and be fucked and fuck all but you are fucking getting in line for this drill because I am not going to fucking watch that again, do you hear me?”
Ty paused, an odd expression breaking through his pain. “The hells, Gil. You’re crying.”
“Heya! You two!” The chief shoved his baton in between them, then grinned to remind them of what else the baton could do. “You drilling or you hugging each other for later?”
“We’re drilling,” said Gil.
He whispered thanks to all his grandmother’s seven gods that Tyras went meekly. It took more cursed courage than Gil had for Ty to jerkily stump through the drill. Gil had learned drill as a boy when he’d run around after Shevad and Yofar. The drill the chief ran them through was a basic drill for recruits to get them used to moving together and being aware of where the men on either side of you were. The prisoners lumbered around, some clumsy and some getting the hang of it. But the other men, the ones who sneaked into the work gang at night, drilled with precision. They were already soldiers.
Afterward the prisoners formed meekly into line for their extra rations, grateful for a splash of gruel. Gil waited until he saw where the thug sat down alone and dragged Tyras over. He plopped down without invitation.
“What in the hells did you do that for?” Gil asked in a low voice.
Instead of answering the young man watched Tyras shifting restlessly trying to find a comfortable way to sit.
“Lie on your side,” said the thug. “It’ll take a few days to feel better.”
“Fuck you,” said Tyras, but he rolled onto his side.
“Why did you do it?” Gil asked again.
The man jerked his chin sideways to indicate guards were patrolling close by. So Gil ate. The rice gruel was chewy, undercooked, cold, and tasteless and maybe the best meal he had ever had. Afterward darkness fell, stars blazing and a bright moon rising. People settled down to sleep. Gil lay beside Ty, who shifted away from him, and cu
rsed if the thug didn’t lie down on Tyras’s other side.
“I told you to fuck off,” said Tyras, voice rising.
The thug answered in a whisper. “Just protecting your ass. You don’t think the guards don’t see you as their toy now one’s gotten his cock into you when you didn’t want it? Why do you think they played out this game? As soon as they hear prisoners whispering complaints they set up another punishment to keep people in line.”
“The chief said this was the first time a prisoner had offered to join in,” murmured Gil. “Which means they’ve done exactly the same thing before.”
“Exactly,” agreed the thug. “What I can’t figure is whether they picked on you two on purpose or if your fat mouth just gave them the excuse they’ve been looking for. Smart of them to punish your friend instead of you. I didn’t see that coming.”
“Shut up,” said Ty.
“Why did you walk out there like that?” repeated Gil, too weary to be angered.
The man rolled onto his back to gaze up at the moon. “It’s a lovely night, isn’t it? I always admire the flare of a crescent moon.”
The moon wasn’t a crescent at all; it was a waxing Lamp moon, swelling with each day.
Then the words hit him.
He raised up onto an arm. On the other side of Ty the thug stretched out utterly relaxed, as if he were arrested, branded, shorn, and marched away from everything he knew every day. When his head turned, Gil knew the man was looking at him, awaiting an answer he expected.
“How in the hells is a handsome swan like you come to rest among feral dogs like us?” Gil said, almost laughing because it was so absurd.
“I’ve been circling around you for days, Lord Gilaras. It just seemed a good moment to make a move that would give us an excuse to form a pact. I’m called Adiki. I’m here at the behest of Captain Kellas. And with business of my own besides.”
Tyras rolled onto his stomach. After a silence, he muttered, “My thanks, ver. You saved me from much worse.”