Children of the Dragon

by Frank Robinson

  “Of course. Dumping so much onto the market would depress the price disastrously.”

  “Yes, disastrously.” The Jhay’s blue eyes glittered.

  “Such a fall in the price would be perilous for the stability of the economy of the region.”

  Jhay Parmar Harkout’s smile broadened. “You are most perceptive, sir. Most perceptive indeed. And might I be so bold as to point out that if for some reason you should find it necessary to sell out in a hurry, the effect upon the market would be quite aggravated. In such circumstances, your hoard would fetch hardly any price at all.”

  Jehan agreed. “So much simply can’t be sold all at once. These miserable peasants have no money for lumppurchases. They live from hand to mouth, from day to day. If I had to sell all the rice in a hurry, there would be no one to buy it all.”

  These references to a quick sale could not be more plain: They were really talking about the presumed brevity of Jehan’s domination of Zidneppa. Bandits had captured towns before, taken from them what they could, and fled at the first Tnemghadi onslaught. The story was expected to be repeated at Zidneppa. It was taken for granted that a leisurely sale of the commodities was not one of Jehan’s options.

  “Naturally then,” said the Jhay, “you agree that the release of the city’s stores would be most undesirable and foolish.”

  “Naturally. And naturally, you realize that if I don’t sell the grain, I would need other sources of revenue.”

  “Of course. Certain exactions, certain taxes, would have to be collected.”

  “And collected, certainly, from those who are profiting so greatly from the high prices.”

  “That is only fair,” the Jhay admitted readily.

  Jehan fixed him, stabbed deep into him with his one eye, and the rich lord stiffened. The formalistic niceties, the mincing of words, were put aside now.

  The ultimatum was blunt: unless the landowners paid a large sum in gold, the grain and rice would be released at once, dumped onto the market.

  Harkout protested at the fabulous amount Jehan was demanding. His face a picture of reasonableness, he made a counteroffer. This Jehan brushed aside with a contemptuous gesture. There would be no haggling.

  Harkout thoughtfully fingered the silver fretwork on his litter. If Jehan opened the granaries, the barons would be snowed right out of the market; buried in the outpouring of produce, they would sustain mammoth losses. The Jhay did some quick mental arithmetic, and determined that the bandit had quite shrewdly set his blackmail price: It was only a little less than the barons stood to lose if the market was ruined. Although Jehan was not budging from his exorbitant figure, he had still left the barons an advantage if they met his terms.

  Jhay Parmar Harkout nodded gravely. Then, bowing to each other, the nobleman and the bandit sealed their deal.

  Carried on his silver litter, the Jhay returned to his fellow barons to report the outcome, and to raise the stipulated sum. Each landlord in the region would contribute according to the size of his holdings; the largest assessment was upon Harkout himself. Moreover, he grumbled, that vile bandit had set the price so high as to leave Harkout no room to rake off a little for himself from what the others would contribute.

  BERGHARRA—City of Zidneppa, counterstamp of Jehan Henghmani on a silver two-tayel piece of Emperor Sarbat, Satanichadh Dynasty, middle period of reign, circa 1180. Fish mintmark (Zidneppa). The counterstamp is a square with the initials J H in Urhemmedhin script above, Z below. Probably done at the Zidneppa mint during Jehan’s occupation of the city in 1181. Breitenbach 1627, 25 mm. Host coin very fine, the counterstamp is extremely fine. Fewer than half a dozen known. (Hauchschild Collection Catalog)

  7

  WITH A DEEP breath of relief—nay, of deliverance— the girl flung herself down into the coarse gray-green grass by the road.

  Although she had almost collapsed, now she sprawled out comfortably on her back upon a cloudless blue sky. She closed her eyes; in exhaustion from her journey, sleep drew powerfully upon her. But she wrenched herself from its cloying arms and sat upright, to gaze down the road, down the hill whose crest she had just rounded.

  As she had reached the top of this hill, the City of Zidneppa at last had risen into view. Now it was spread neatly before her, like a meal on a plate, and beyond shone the great flat blue expanse of sea. The sun was brilliant in the eastern sky. This was the morning of the third day of her journey. She had trekked, walking almost without respite, as though on a forced march. Each night she had allowed herself but little sleep, and somehow she would rouse herself to push on before the sky lightened.

  By now her feet and legs burned with every step, her neck and hips ached, her shoulders stung with pain from the burden she carried, her child. She had ported him on her back most of the way. He was the only thing she carried; everything else had been left behind. In her haste, she had taken neither food nor money, and had eaten almost nothing since starting out. Her stomach groaned with hunger. And her clothes were filthy with sweat and the dun-hued dust of the road. The dust was matted all over her, caked in her hair and on her legs and face. She could feel it like a gritty bandage, stifling her. It made her pretty face seem ugly, and made her appear much older than her not quite seventeen years. All in all, at the threshold of Zidneppa, the girl was in a rather sorry state.

  The child she had brought all this way on her back was a little less than four years of age. He too hadn’t eaten since the start of the journey, and by now he was crying more or less continuously, from tiredness, hunger, and discomfort. As the girl lay down in the grass, he ran away from her.

  Wearily she jumped up to catch the little boy, chasing him a few yards and then grabbing him up in her arms. “We’re almost there,” she chirped to him. “Look, there it is!”

  She hoisted him up to look down the road at the city below them, and at the sea. The child had never seen a city, or the sea. The girl took it in with wide eyes herself; she had never seen the great ocean either.

  “It’s Zidneppa! You’ll be treated like a little prince there. Don’t you remember all I’ve told you?”

  The child bawled, uninterested in what she was talking about.

  The girl sighed and, renewing her grip around his middle, started trotting down the hill.

  In the temple building of Zidneppa, the Chief Constable was nervously pacing back and forth. It was the twenty-fourth day of Nrava, the tenth day of his occupation of the city, and he was waiting now with growing impatience. Despite several reassuring messages, Jhay Parmar Harkout had yet to deliver a single gold tayel, and was requesting more time to gather the money together. But Jehan suspected that the old baron was playing for time to see if the army might quickly recapture Zidneppa, together with its grain and rice hoard. That was, of course, the other thing for which Jehan was waiting: the army. Ten days had passed, and no attack had come.

  The waiting made him edgy. He kept to himself in a chamber of the temple, pacing. He jumped at every knock on the door, expecting momentous news.

  The knock came. It was Kamil Kawaras.

  “Yes, what is it?” Jehan snapped in a rush.

  “Not important,” Kawaras advised so that Jehan could relax. “In fact, I must apologize to bother you with it, only ... I thought I’d better make sure. There’s some young girl who insists that she must see you. She says her name is Maiya. Didn’t you have a daughter by that name?”

  “Yes. But she is dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I will send the girl away.” Kawaras bowed his tousled head and turned to leave.

  “Wait a moment,” said Jehan. “Did this girl actually claim to be my daughter?”

  “Not in so many words. But what’s the difference, if your Maiya is dead?”

  “I never actually saw her body. I had every reason to assume she was killed, but I must confess, from time to time, I have had a little grain of hope. I
might just as well grant this girl a brief audience, at least to set my mind at rest. If I see that she isn’t the one, then it won’t come back to haunt me, and nothing will have been lost.”

  “I understand.”

  “She came here all alone?”

  “Not exactly. There’s a little boy with her.” Kawaras smiled wrily. “Perhaps you are a grandfather!”

  “Never mind the quips. Just fetch her.”

  Kawaras exited with a salute. Jehan plumped down on a couch and purposefully surrendered himself to the sweet pleasure of hope. But it quickly soured, for he knew it was false. It was indeed foolhardy to rise on a cloud of hope, since he would only be dashed to disappointment in the end.

  This little affair should have been expected, he grumbled to himself. It was inevitable that some addle-headed peasant maid, carried away by the stories of Jehan Henghmani and his exploits, would take to fancying herself his daughter. Perhaps, in her innocent dream-world, she really believed it.

  He was suddenly sorry that he’d mentioned to Kawaras his sometime hope for Maiya. That had been an invitation to trouble. If word of it spread, half the young girls of Taroloweh would plague him with their claims. Jehan would have to innure himself against vain hope. This girl would merely be the first of many; there would be no end to it. And the only thing it would accomplish would be to make him constantly relive that anguished day at Ksiritsa.

  Jehan eschewed the couch and resumed pacing. He chided himself for his anxiety, tried not to dwell on the fact of his waiting, tried to deny sustenance to his hope, so that his unavoidable disappointment would be minimized. But in spite of himself, he hoped.

  The door opened.

  There stood slovenly Kawaras, and the girl, far more filthy. She was leading her child by the hand. Jehan peered dumbly at this bedraggled stick figure, not knowing what to say.

  But she bolted toward him, threw herself upon him.

  “Paban!” she screamed, exploding into tears.

  She was Maiya, Jehan’s Maiya.

  They embraced tightly, Jehan restraining himself from crushing her in his brawny arms. She buried her face in his chest, his face was in her dusty hair; it was as though they were afraid to look at each other too closely, lest an illusion be dispelled. Their tears of joy sluiced together.

  Maiya pulled forward the little boy, as comically dirty as she. He wailed in terror at huge Jehan with his monster- face, and redoubled his cries when Jehan picked him up and bounced him playfully on his shoulder. Maiya laughed and patted the boy on the head, trying to calm him.

  “He’s very tired and hungry. His name is Jehan,” she said. “I named him for you.”

  “Jehandai—little Jehan—my grandson! This is too much —a daughter and a grandson, all at once!”

  “Not exactly,” Maiya said in a suddenly changed voice, quiet and precise. “Not a daughter and a grandson. A daughter and a son.”

  Jehan tweaked the boy’s cheek. “I don’t understand your riddle, but never mind now. You must have had a rough trip! I’m sure you want a bath and a meal.”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “You shall have that, and much more. Nothing will be too good for my lost daughter, so miraculously returned to me.”

  “Did you give me up for lost?”

  Jehan smiled. “Hope never died.”

  Later, after she had been well scrubbed, clothed in crisp fresh linen, and treated to a lavish feast, Maiya sat with her father and told him the story of her years since they had seen each other last, in the dungeon of Ksiritsa. But the tale she recited was not the complete one.

  8

  OUT OF THE sides of his glittering eyes, Nimajneb Grebzreh peered at Maiya.

  He was pulling her by the hand, a naked twelve-year- old child. Ironically, she had been rescued by Grebzreh from her father’s murderous intention, but that was no comfort to her. Jehan had wanted to kill her only to spare her from even worse horrors.

  The girl understood that. Having seen her mother and sister raped and killed, and the hideous scars of torture on her father, she was frightened to the bottom of her soul.

  There was no point in trying to resist. It could only aggravate her captor. So she followed meekly as the warden led her alone down a dark corridor and stopped in front of a locked door. Then he unsheathed his dagger and touched its point to the underside of her breast. “Is there any reason,” he asked in a soft vibrato, “why I should not cut you open to have a look at what’s inside this pretty body?”

  The picture of her sister, disemboweled alive, was still vivid in Maiya’s mind. But the cold touch of steel against her body was strangely galvanizing. “I’ve done nothing to deserve it,” she heard a firm voice say. “And you promised my freedom!”

  Grebzreh snickered. “Foolish little chicken; what does all that mean here? My promise means nothing. The only thing that matters is what I feel like doing.”

  “And what do you feel like doing?”

  Beneath the bloody bandage covering his nose, the warden grinned, flashing his yellow-green teeth. “You will find out in due course.”

  He pulled back the dagger with a jerky motion, deliberately pricking her. Then he drew a key from his belt and unlocked the door. Grabbing Maiya by the back of her neck, he shoved her inside and quickly slammed the door on her, locking it again.

  The room was absolutely dark. Maiya stood petrified, waiting for something to happen. Had she been thrown into a den of tigers? Poisonous serpents? Would knives come at her, or would the walls close upon her?

  But nothing happened. She could tell that this was not a dungeon cell; it was much larger and lacked the dankness. Maiya stretched her hands out and began to explore gropingly, touching everything in the darkness. It soon dawned upon her that she must be in Grebzreh’s private quarters. Realizing this, Maiya gained an inkling of the warden’s plans for her. And she did not forget his toothy grin.

  Later, the sound of the key in the lock was heard again.

  Nimajneb Grebzreh entered carrying a lamp. His face was expressionless at first, bandaged more neatly now where Jenefa had bitten off his nose. But then he flushed with satisfaction. He stopped and looked long and hard at Maiya.

  She was stretched out on her back upon his bed. Her pose was wantonly naked in a way that seemed to exude concupiscence. When she looked up at Grebzreh, her eyes were far from hostile.

  Perhaps she liked her first taste of a man! Grebzreh said to himself. Without taking his eyes off her, he placed the lamp on a bed-stand, and then stripped off his armored uniform, and then his underclothing. Not a word was said. When he sidled into the bed the girl did not shrink away, nor did she resist when he began rubbing her breast and thighs. He pressed himself down on her, and she spread her legs.

  He didn’t rush to take her. Flabbergasted at her willingness, he made-love slowly, and wished he hadn’t spent himself earlier in raping the girl’s mother and sister.

  Afterward, he lay back, panting, eyes glazed. He closed them, thoroughly exhausted. But she wouldn’t let him sleep! She stroked his privates, rubbing her breasts against his arms. Although drugged torpid by the day’s exertions, sexual and otherwise, light-headed from his loss of blood and the dulling pain where his nose used to be, Nimajneb Grebzreh roused himself once more and mounted her.

  Afterward, spent down to his last embers, the warden dropped off to sleep almost immediately. His snore through the bandage was a grating hiss. He had fallen asleep without even bothering to blow out the candle.

  Maiya lay seemingly inert at his side; but her eyes were open wide. Sleep, she said to herself, sleep, you vicious man! She had drugged him well with the only potion she had.

  Grebzreh’s rasping snore was steady, and he didn’t even twitch. With belabored caution, Maiya slid away from him. Aided by the light of the candle, she padded catlike to the closet and appropriated one of Grebzreh’
s cloaks. Since he was a small man, the fit was not unreasonable. Then she moved to a bureau and opened one drawer just enough to slip her hand inside. She extracted a small leather pouch, holding it firmly about the bottom so that the coins it contained would not jingle. From the same drawer she drew a long, narrow dagger.

  All this was accomplished quickly and deftly. Maiya did not have to search for what she sought, since all the searching had been done in Grebzreh’s absence, in the dark. She gloated: The man had been a fool to leave her alone in his own room. Foolishly, too, he had let her drug him to debility with sex, and then gone to sleep confident that she was too afraid to take advantage. He hadn’t even locked the door.

  And his worst mistake had been his grin.

  Maiya looked back at him in the candle-light. He looked tiny and pathetic, lying naked, his face bandaged, snoring hoarsely. The girl fingered the dagger she had taken.

  But she hesitated. She wanted to avenge her mother and sister, and her father’s ordeal, and to repay this villain for the indignities to which he had subjected Maiya herself. On the other hand, if she plunged the dagger into him, he might scream, and thereby thwart her escape. Reluctantly, she decided against it.

  Opening the door a crack, she made a quick reconnaissance of the corridor. It was empty. Then she turned back to blow out the candle, supposing that Grebzreh would sleep more soundly in the dark.

  That was her mistake.

  As the room was swallowed abruptly by darkness, the man on the bed jerked and coughed. Maiya froze.

  “What are you doing?” he asked groggily. She had left the door slightly ajar, and in the dim light from the corridor, he could see her standing up and wrapped in the cloak.

  Maiya brandished the dagger violently in the air. “Shhh!”

  Grebzreh gawked at her for a moment, not moving. She’s afraid I might cry out, he thought, and that was silly: Nothing was more commonplace in this dungeon than a human scream. No one would come running to his aid. But he did not tell this to Maiya.