I weren’t done staring at marvels, it seemed, for just as we all passed the threshold of the double doors, six robots come through similar doors opposite and begun ushering our bosses to one table. I stared at the robots, all shiny and each different. One was gold from head to foot, by the looks of him, wearing a dark suit nicer’n owt anyone I ever knew owned. Another was pearly white with that warm glow pearls have, built to look like a woman though without any hair, and wearing a black dress what must have belonged to a courtier, all beads and lace. Another was silver and dressed like the first male, and another was all black, but his suit was white. The other two were identical, females all silver from head to toe, wearing silver dresses in that metal fabric I used to see on the courtiers back ’fore the city fell.
The robots spoke to our leaders and waved to one of the tables, so’s the yfirmadars were all sitting with Atli at the far end. For a few moments everyone else pushed and jostled to stay close to them. In the end the bosses had to impose order with a lot of shouting and pointing. It never concerned me none. I knew I weren’t welcome at Styrlakker’s table on account of him and Gaddi exchanging a few words as to my new commitments when Gaddi and I’d come back to Styrlakker’s camp.
The six robots now each brung out trays with big jugs and cups. Each table got three jugs and each jug had eight cups, so by the time everyone got them sorted we each had a cup and some to spare. What next surprised me, and others besides, was what the jugs held. Wine’d been outlawed in Eiflar’s time, so I’d not looked for Atli to have any. He must have either found a secret cellar in the palace, or maybe he was friends with someone on the mainland what had wine to sell still, but in any case we each found dark red liquid in our cup, and most of us’d never thought to taste wine in all our lives.
“The food’s a moment yet,” Atli declared, loud and confident, his smile like the grin on a wolf. “While we wait: a toast! To our alliance, and our success against the invasion what’s sure to come on the morrow!”
Everyone was still standing. We raised our cups at that, and just as I brung mine to my lips, something come outta nowhere and hit me in the back of the head, big and heavy as a rock, it seemed, though once I recovered I seen it was a candle thick as a tree limb. When it hit me my face knocked the cup clear out of my hand, and it shattered on the table in front of me.
I straightened myself out, looking to see what hit me, and just about when I seen the candle rolling across the floor under the table two things happened.
First, the toady across from me—I thought he was one of Modvig’s but I weren’t sure on account of everyone getting so mixed up when we got sent to the tables—made the strangest noise, low in his throat. Then, I felt a hand clutch round my right wrist.
By then I was right confused, I can tell you, and I went from giving the toady a look to searching for the owner of the hand. It made no sense to me to see it belonged to Gaddi, who come outta nowhere to stand right behind me. I couldn’t understand what he was doing—I’d no intention of running from my promises and he seemed to understand that just an hour before, and now here he was yanking me away from the table so hard I near to fell over the bench ’fore I could get my legs over it.
Then they all started coughing.
Only it weren’t coughing, but choking. They clutched their throats—every damned last one of them, every man, every woman, every toady, every boss—my eyes flashed right and left—Ekkill, Styrlakker, Dag, Halla, and at her side, Ótti—everyone, except Atli, I seen at last. Atli, and Atli’s toadies. They stood with cups in hand and watched the rest.
“Come on, Ginna,” Gaddi growled. I stumbled, not understanding, as he dragged me behind one of them awful purple velvet curtains into an alcove. As it closed behind us, heavy as a corpse, it muffled the sounds of choking what were growing ever louder in the ballroom beyond.
“What in the name of all the Gods is going on out there?” I demanded.
“Shut up,” Gaddi barked, then lowered his own voice. “Are you blind and deaf, then?” he whispered. “Atli’s murdering them all.”
Why I’d not understood ’til that moment what was happening, I can’t explain, except to say that everything I’d seen had been so strange—the Great Hall, the bosses and their toadies all together, the ballroom, the robots, the wine—I was fair awash in strangeness and the choking was just another wave in the sea of it. But once Gaddi said it, clear as day, I understood at last, and he had to knock me down and sit on my back to stop me from bolting out of the alcove and tearing across the ballroom to where Ótti was dying.
“Don’t be daft!” he breathed in my ear. “We’ll be lucky if no one catches us, and luckier still if they believe we were having a tumble if they do! You can’t do owt to help anyone, in any case, Ginna. Be still!”
I struggled but Gaddi is far stronger’n he looks. The terror I felt was so complete it filled me so’s no room was left for rage to come and give me a god’s strength to fight with. I weren’t afraid for myself, so much, though some part of me must have been. It was the sounds what come in through the weighty velvet—the sheer number of voices in agony, the sounds of arms hitting the table, legs kicking against the floor. It was a nightmare out of a legend, but real, and just beyond the curtain. Horror flowed through me and paralyzed me, and all I could think was that Dag was one of them voices, Ótti was one of them voices—Luka’s Chains, Ekkill and Styrlakker—all of them, dying—
I don’t know how long it took, but soon enough Gaddi climbed off me for I was retching and curled on my side, hands pressed to my ears, hating myself for a weak useless whore, and still the sounds went on, ’til I wished they’d all just die and be done with it.
~~~
Gaddi claimed he’d not known ’til right before it happened, and I was forced to believe him, on account of he never would have saved Rokja, Mum and Amma if he’d known. Gaddi’s not one for rescuing folk when his own skin’s on the line. He’d have let me die and them as well, but Gaddi’d never let an investment go to waste, and he swore he’d make a profit on me sooner or later.
We stayed put for a long time, listening to Atli and his toadies patting each other on their backs for fooling everyone, wouldn’t you know. Their voices come clear enough through the purple curtain though you could still hear a few of the folk struggling and dying a long time after you’d expect them to go quiet. My body curled in on itself, and keeping still weren’t no trial, for I’d no sense of myself at all for a time.
We waited ’til Atli and the rest left the hall and the last of the sounds of dying faded away for good. Gaddi snuck us out through the hall when the robots set about cleaning up, for they seemed not to care who we were or what we were about. Maybe they’d no call to mind us, or maybe they had too much to do, for the mess was more awful’n I could ever hope to describe. I don’t know what they did with the bodies. I wish I did, for I never got to say good-bye to Dag or Ótti, and I’d like to have somewhere to go to talk to them, and maybe replace the sight of the ballroom as my last memory of them.
Even after we left the palace, the horror never left me. I felt it in my arms and in my legs. I felt it in my throat and in my chest. It walked with me. It breathed with me, a tight grip of steel fingers around my heart. Nowhere inside me did I feel the power of that god-touched rage no more. If the horror had freed me of my curse, it was no comfort, for the horror was as much a curse as the rage.
Though I followed Gaddi to his ship, docile as you please, I’d no sense of having survived. Everywhere the light was too bright, the shadows too dark. My sight seemed to cast out only shallow-like, ending in night. Luka’s Chains, all the walls around me shrank, and every breath seemed to count me closer to my’n death—for how could I survive when all them others hadn’t?
And within that terror dwelt a guilt what’d never budge again from my heart, sure enough. I’d done nothing. I’d known what a killer Atli was, and did I warn a single soul? When the choking started, did I run to Ótti’s side? To Dag’s? Did I
drag them from the ballroom and try to make them puke the wine up? No. It made no difference Gaddi was right—Atli’s vigamadr’d have cut me down had they seen me moving free of poison. It never mattered none—I should have died trying.
Terror, guilt, and stark horror lived in me, filling every part of me, so’s I was no good to Gaddi at all for a time. I found a dark corner of his ship and curled up there, refusing all food and water. It’d gone on two days when he sat down beside me, his body hitting the wood of the floor hard and making me twitch, for it sounded like the bodies what fell to the floor poisoned in the ballroom.
“Enough’s enough, Ginna,” he said, his voice cold and sharp as icicles. “You’ve moped and cried for long enough, and I didn’t go to all the trouble to save you for you to fall to pieces and die not eating on my deck.”
I made no reply, for the horror filled my mouth, and I couldn’t stop my body from shaking, no matter how tight I held my arms round myself. I tried to make myself as small as I could, and I’d not turn my gaze from the walls what met in the corner. Staring at them, I memorized the pattern in the wood’s grain.
“A deal’s a deal. You made a promise. I’ve no use for you if you can’t live up to that promise, and that’s a fact.”
Still I shook and made no answer. I’d not eaten in so long, I felt as weak and sick as I ever had, and yet I’d no wish to remedy that.
“I told you what’d happen if you turned on me, Ginna,” Gaddi said, his voice cutting. “I’ve a mind to get it done. Tomorrow I’ll send a man to look for your Amma and the rest. I’ll see he has a nice sharp knife when he finds them.”
And just like that my body stopped shaking. I turned from the corner I stared at and looked at him. I wish I could say my vision filled with red, or even gold, but it seemed the Gods had all abandoned me. I was just me, just Ginna the stupid whore. But at least I was that. I would give Gaddi what he wanted, and at least I could keep Rokja safe.
The dread never left me, but I could separate it from my body, at least enough to make myself do what Gaddi wanted, somewhat anyhow. That night he sent me as one of a group of women to dance for Atli and his toadies, and it weren’t ’til then I even realized that Leika-Konungdis had come and the invasion was already over with. Atli’d allied with her long before he ever sent Gaddi out to speak with the bosses, and the meeting where he killed them all was his payment to her for sparing him and raising him to some sort of high post. It weren’t ’til later I learned she made him State Inspector, the rank of the city’s chief Officer of Tyr.
You might expect that seeing Atli’d have woken up the rage in me, but you’d be wrong, by the Eye. All it done was make me feel awful sick in my gut, and I done my best to never look on him if I could help it.
At first I’d no skill as a dancer, for I’d never danced other’n the times everyone did at a festival round some bonfire or other. Gaddi had a dozen girls working for him, and I paid no mind as to whether they were getting paid or enslaved like me, for I didn’t care. Most of them’d danced plenty, and they put me behind them so’s not to show how worthless I was. Soon enough I seen it weren’t especially complicated, though, and I got the knack of it.
We went out every night to entertain Atli, at first. This went on for two weeks or so. Then Gaddi revealed his great plan: he’d restored a building in the Torc and cleared away the rubble all around it. He’d reinforced the spoke nearest to it, and fixed up the street what led to it. He was opening a club, and we’d be one of its main attractions. He even got four more new girls.
On account of how much Atli’s folk missed us when Gaddi stopped sending us, the club opened to a packed house the first night. I wore a feathered headdress and a tight, glittering dress of white silk and crystals, same as all the other girls, but I felt a right idiot despite being one of many. It was the first time I felt owt other’n the vile dread, though, so after a time I decided it was all to the good. I danced as I was expected to, and Gaddi was happy as a lark on account of the number of people what turned up. He gave me a pat on the arse as I left the stage, so I knew he was pleased with my work for him.
“We supposed to go out and mingle now?” asked one of the new girls, this one with short, curly red hair.
Another girl, a blonde named Gudva what used to hide me behind her, answered, “When we were dancing just in the palace for Atli and his vigamadrs we did, and give’em a tumble if they wanted, long as they had the coin.”
It was true enough. In my haze of guilt and fear I’d gone along with it, but for the first time I thought back and wondered if I’d gotten as many customers as the other girls. I thought not, and with my brown hair, that was something of a surprise. I’d been too gloomy, I supposed.
“Well this ain’t the palace,” the red-haired girl said.
“No, and I’m not sure we’ve the rooms for it, if you catch my meaning,” said Gudva. The red-haired girl gave her a look what said she didn’t catch her meaning, so Gudva explained, “We’d use the private rooms, don’t you know, for the tumbles. This place only has three or four of those. It’ll make managing things a sight more complicated.”
“So will the fancy costumes, I might add—” interrupted another blonde, this one named Holma, who’d also been with the group for some time.
“Sure enough,” Gudva agreed. “I don’t know how a lad’s to manage this dress and these stockings; I suppose we’ll have to ask him to unzip us and such, but if we’re to share the rooms we’ll be at it all night.”
The dresses were so tight, we’d risk ripping them if we tried to hitch them up as we had the looser ones we’d worn to the palace. I’d not considered the problem ’til the girls started talking about it. Part of me marveled that I considered it now. I’d had no head for problem-solving since the massacre. Some part of me’d been certain I was dead already, my heart at least, and that the rest of me’d follow along in short order. Somehow finding out the konungdis’d already invaded, and there’d be no mad defense of the city, had done nowt to convince me I’d survive. I was so sure I should’ve died with the others, I kept expecting it to happen sooner or later. Somehow now, for the first time, having come off the new stage and joined the other girls who were all complaining about their dresses now and trying to figure whether Gaddi expected us to go out into the crowd, and how we’d manage a customer if they wanted a tumble, I realized for the first time that I had survived, for better or worse. I weren’t on the verge of being murdered, or dying fighting, or owt of the sort. No one expected me to fight anymore. All that was expected of me was dancing and maybe whoring, and if I did that, my family was safe. And so was I, come right down to it.
So just like that the horror loosened its grip on me. Not completely, no. But enough so’s I could breathe a bit, and even better, think a bit. For the first time, I could look ahead and ask myself what sort of future I might have.
I’d not planned for that when I made my deal with Gaddi. I’d been certain I’d not live out the battle on the morrow, don’t you know. Except there was no battle and now I was stuck with my agreement.
As it turned out, Gaddi did want us out in the crowd, but any “assignations,” as he called tumbles, would be scheduled with him in advance. We were just to be as friendly and charming as possible to the customers without it going farther’n that. Course that meant plenty of hands groping wherever they could manage, what with the challenges of the dresses, and in that way I liked the dresses a bit after all.
On the one hand, it weren’t so bad, for I’d not been asked to do owt I’d not done a hundred times before. But on the other hand it was a cutter, for I belonged to Gaddi, and I’d no freedom as I had before when I was just whoring for food and such. Gaddi was my broker, and I was a bed-wife, sure enough, and I hated how that felt. I’d always told myself that if I was a whore, at least I was my own whore, and could pick and choose my customers and all the rest. Now I’d lost even that, and I’d nowt to pride myself on no more, except for keeping Rokja and Mum and Kisla safe.
So I clung to that and told myself I’d figure something out. I’d not be Gaddi’s slave forever, and in the meantime I could pretend he didn’t exist.
But Gaddi weren’t content to let me do such a thing—nor any of the other girls, to be sure. It was brought clear to me one night not long after that first performance. Sigrid, one of the girls what had bobbed hair growing out so’s it was about to the length of her shoulders—bobbed hair’d been the fashion ’fore the city fell—made a fuss on account of a customer grabbing a big handful of her dark golden curls and yanking her down onto his lap. She gave him a shove and run off behind the stage. I seen it happen as I was just leaving the backstage to go out into the crowd.
Sigrid weren’t one for tears, you mind, but she was fair angry and letting everyone around her know it, calling the customer all manner of nasty names and such. I about turned to go carry on with business, thinking that nothing much would come of it, when Gaddi come storming through a side door to the backstage and grabbed her arms all in a rush. He gave her a hard shake.
“What’re you about, eh?” he demanded. “What’d’ya think you’re doing, pushing away a jarl like that?”
“Fucker yanked my hair,” Sigrid said, though she lacked some of her former venom already, she was that surprised.
“And if he wants to fucking pull it all out, you’ll let him, Sigrid Godormir. We’ve got an arrangement, you and I. Or had you forgotten about that?”
That froze me in my tracks, by the Eye. Sigrid had an arrangement with Gaddi, just like me.
Sigrid’s face darkened and her lips pulled back from her teeth. “Go to Hel, Gaddi!” she hissed.
Gaddi dropped her arms and made as through to turn away, then hauled round and struck her in the stomach so hard I heard all the air leave her. She doubled over and collapsed at his feet.
No rage stirred in me. I watched, blank and frozen.
After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2) Page 16