by Andre Nolton
Gianna was already staring in awe, her lips pursed. "Oooh, Kara!" she enthused. "It's perfect, Ren's right! Wear it!"
And it was perfect; Kara's misty-blue eyes in the reflection were wide with surprise as she pulled her long hair over one shoulder to fall in a silver-gilt cascade along the shining black satin. Rennati smothered a smile. "Remember those silver-and-jet ornaments that puzzled you in the jewel-chest?" she prompted. "I would bet that they're meant to go with the black." As the other two women dove for the jewel-chest, Rennati went back to her own thoughts. She and Gianna were more than ready for any potential call for their services; it was only Kara who'd been indecisive. Kara could never make up her mind about anything, and preferred to be led by the other two.
Which was fine with Rennati. Gianna was the natural leader of the harem, if one could be called a "leader" in a group of three. Rennati was indifferent to who took the lead in such pressing questions as what to eat, what music to play, or what to wear. Even now Kara sat passively while Gianna decided what to do with her hair and the wealth of silver and black ornaments that were obviously supposed to go into a coiffure.
Gianna had been ready hours ago; last night she had worn a close-cut scarlet velvet gown with a cleavage so low and tight that she nearly popped out of it—not that, with her generous features, she wasn't perilously close to popping out of anything she wore. Tonight she favored a dusty rose that was not tight-fitting at all, but plunged so low in the back that there was not a single one of her perfectly-sculptured vertebrae that was not on show, and as usual, she had made up her mind after swiftly rifling through her closet. Rennati had been ready even earlier; last night she had worn an emerald-green sheath that matched her eyes, slit to the hips on either side, and tonight it was a pale green tunic with an asymmetrical hem and no shoes. She didn't expect Lord Kyndreth to get to her, anyway; she expected to dance while the other two worked their wiles on him. Lord Kyndreth had expressed pleasure with her dancing last night, and she hadn't even begun to show off her talent. If the other two occupied his bed, that would give her a rare moment alone to activate her teleson-ring to speak with her real Mistress.
She hadn't learned much—except that Kyndreth was pleased, very pleased, with Lord Kyrtian, and intended to become his patron—but she remembered Lady Triana's instructions to report everything. They hadn't yet been allowed out of the tiny harem, though neither Kara nor Gianna particularly cared. Rennati would have liked the chance to get out, rare though it might be for a concubine to have that chance, but she had to admit that, although the suite was relatively small, it was sumptuously appointed and should satisfy most cravings.
It even had windows gazing out on the world; from the look of things, their suite was in a tower, for the window-seat where Rennati lounged was at some height above a wide, green lawn. There were trees in the far distance, although with twilight darkening the sky it was hard to distinguish anything but a vague, bluish blur at the end of the lawn. This was a novelty; Rennati had never been in a harem that had a view of the world she had last seen as a young child, and she spent as much time as possible in the windows, watching the rest of Lord Kyrtian's slaves walking from here to there with purpose in their steps, or even working on that plushy grass.
Anything they might possibly have wanted had been supplied to them. There were the usual lutes and harps to play on, if they desired, or they could leave the instruments to play by themselves with a touch of the hand on a little silver stud in the neck. If they chose the latter, the instruments somehow also supplied an accompaniment of drums, bells, and flutes. There were materials for embroidery and beadwork, scents, cosmetics of every sort, hair-dressing instruments, and even books, though Rennati was the only one of the three of them who could read with any proficiency. The bathroom was small, but one didn't necessarily need a bath one could swim in, and the food invariably pleasant, if not sumptuous. Still, one didn't particularly want a feast presented to one every day in a harem; it was altogether too easy to overeat, and that would be a disaster for the figure.
The door-chime sent the other two into a flutter, and Rennati rose from the window seat to join them as they flew into the reception-chamber together.
Lord Kyndreth, tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome enough for any two humans, strode unaccompanied into the room. All three of them dropped to the floor in a profoundly deep curtsy the moment his foot crossed the threshold. He laughed at Kara's eager face as she looked up at him.
"Well, last night you were a lily, so what are you tonight, hmm?" he teased. "A black narcissus, perhaps?"
"I am whatever your lordship pleases to call me," Kara replied, rising first, with an expression of adoration.
She probably didn't feel adoration, but she was adept at assuming any expression she thought might be met with pleasure.
"As it should be," he responded, gesturing to Kara and Gi-anna, and gathering each into an arm. "Come now, last night I had but a brief introduction to flame-hair's dancing, and I am eager to see more."
He took a seat on a couch piled high with silk and velvet pillows, still with a girl on either side to minister to him. Rennati made the rounds of the room, touching each of the waiting instruments in turn, then set the time for the dance by clapping her hands for a measure. The instruments, in concert, struck up a lively piece; she let it play through for four measures before leaping out into the room and setting her flying feet into motion.
This, if anything, was what she lived for. She would rather have died than not dance. Her first owner, a Lord of discriminating tastes (so he styled himself) and limited means, had grown bored with her passion, and had decided to dispose of her in a private sale to finance the purchase of a new girl to train.
"There's nothing at all wrong with her," he'd told Lady Tri-ana, "It's just that she's always dancing. I'd really like to find a new girl who has talents that are a little more restful. One doesn't always want prancing about; it's very fatiguing to watch after a while."
For Lord Kyndreth, however, Rennati's passion apparently had the virtue of novelty, even if he was so busy with Kara and Gianna that he paid scant attention to the nuances of Rennati's performance. And long before she was weary, he was fully involved with them. Ornaments had been removed and set carefully aside, along with a few bits of clothing, and when Rennati signaled the instruments to play quietly to themselves and stole out of the room, none of the three even noticed. That was fair enough; she'd been Lord Kyndreth's first last night, which had left Kara out. Kara no doubt wanted a chance for a better present tonight.
Rennati stole up the stairs to the uppermost story of the tower where their bedrooms were—not so much bedrooms, as curtained-off alcoves of a room meant never to be seen by the eyes of a Lord. Here they could practice with cosmetics, sometimes to hilarious effect; here they kept the litter of their previous lives, personal belongings too shabby for a Lord to see. Kara had a battered old doll, much loved and worn, and every bit of "jewelry" she ever owned, going right back to a string of pierced sea-shells some little boy-child had once given her, up to her own efforts with needle and beads. There were a dozen works-in-progress on a table, along with a doll being costumed with beads and bits. Gianna had managed to keep hold of all of her attempts at artwork and kept her supplies and easel up here. She was making an attempt at a still-life of Kara's work-table, but Kara kept moving things around, much to her frustration.
Rennati had books—not the pretty leather-bound volumes of poetry downstairs, but dirty old things with torn covers or no covers at all on every subject under the sun, rescued from the Lord's trash-heaps. And, of course, she had Lady Triana's teleson-ring.
With a few hesitant words, she activated it.
It was too small to allow a picture; it sent and received voices only. As she had been told to expect, the first voice was unfamiliar.
"Who calls?" the voice asked.
"Rennati," she replied breathlessly, a little astonished and a little fearful to be holding a thing of s
uch great magic in her hand.
"Ah—wait one moment. Lady Triana will wish to speak with you herself."
The ring, a beryl like the one in her collar, fell silent. Rennati waited patiently; so long as no one came up here to interrupt her, she would wait for as long as she was told to. Elvenlords were busy, and it was not reasonable to expect one to drop whatever she was doing simply to come and hear what a mere concubine had to say.
Finally, "Speak," said an imperious female voice from the ring.
"I have been here since your agent sent me to Lady Lydiell," Rennati said instantly. "I am with two other concubines, in a tower, in a small harem. I can see outside from the windows, but I have not yet been allowed to venture past the door. Lord Kyrtian has been here once only. He is entertaining Lyon Lord Kyndreth, who was here last night and is here now. Lord Kyn-dreth is going to become Lord Kyrtian's patron. He told Kara tonight that Lord Kyrtian has pleased him and that we must not expect to see very much of our master for some time, since he is going to go away to take charge of an army."
There was an odd laugh. "Well, that rather puts a kink in my plans; if he won't be there, you won't be able to learn much from him. On the other hand, if you do manage to get out, you can see a great deal more when the lord himself is away. And this other news—more than interesting. I take it that this is all you have for me for now?"
Rennati nodded, forgetting for a moment that she could not be seen, then hastily said, "I am sorry, but that is indeed all I have learned."
"It is not a great deal, but the quality is good, and I am pleased. Notify me the moment you learn anything more. You may deactivate the ring now."
Obediently, Rennati passed her hand over the ring, shutting out the light from the room for a moment, which turned it into an ordinary beryl again. Then she placed the ring in the darkest comer of her jewel-box, and hurried back downstairs. After all, it was not too late to earn another generous present from Lord Kyndreth—and more importantly, he might be inclined to talk afterwards. Elvenlord or human, if they didn't sleep, they were all often inclined to talk—afterwards.
13
The sun shining down on the top of the highest tower of the lady-keep imparted a drowsy warmth to Lady Moth's back that she was thoroughly enjoying. She had always liked the gentle heat of the sun; her late husband had once scornfully accused her of being half-lizard for the way she enjoyed basking in the garden. But even if it had been the dead of winter, she would have been up here, for this was the only place on the entire estate that gave an unrestricted view down into the valley below. And what she watched through the eyepiece of her bit of antique equipment was fascinating indeed. There was no breeze to stir the silken, silvery-blue folds of her dress, or disturb the simple, straight fall of her hair, nor to make breezes wave distant branches between her and the interesting scene so far away in the valley. She felt sorry for the tiny little figures that she knew by their drab tunics were human slaves. First one brightly-colored creature in scarlet paraded them out and set them to work in the kitchen-garden. Then a second appeared, clad in a violent blue, far too soon for them to have accomplished much, and marched them off to drill with weapons.
Then a third emerged from the stables, this one in bronze satin, and ran them off into the farm-fields. What those poor bewildered slaves must be thinking now, she could not even begin to guess.
"Lady Morthena?" said a diffident voice from behind the El-ven lady. "What are you doing?"
Lady Moth took her eye away from the eyepiece of the old-fashioned, gold-and-bronze telescope, and turned to smile at her most recent guest.
"I am using an old device, my dear," she said to the younger woman in a kindly voice, knowing that Lady Viridina would never have seen such a thing as a telescope. "In fact, it dates quite back to Evelon—or at least, the lenses in it do. It is called a telescope, and although I normally use it to examine stars, at the moment I am using it to spy upon our neighbors." She patted the long cylinder of bronze, with ornate curlicues chased into the metal and inlaid with gold wire, for it was a very old friend and long-time companion.
Lady Viridina's pale brow wrinkled with puzzlement, with a faint frown on a face that was attenuated by long illness. "Why are you bothering to do that?" she wondered. "They already tell you everything, don't they?"
"That, my dear, is what I am ascertaining for myself." Lady Moth put her eye back to the eyepiece, and continued to make mental notes on the movements of the Young Lords' slaves outside the Great House. "In point of fact, I rather doubt that they are telling me everything. For instance, there seems to be some disagreement down there about just who is in charge of what. Just during the time I have been sitting here, I have seen one hapless group of slaves herded from one uncompleted task to another by three different Young Lords." She chuckled, and her laughter was echoed faintly by her companion, who patted the knot of long, silver hair at the back of her head self-consciously. "That is what comes with age, Viridina; suspicion. I stopped taking things at face value a very, very long time ago."
"So did I—but the difference between us, I think, is that you found other ways of finding out what you needed to know, and I didn't even try," Viridina said ruefully, twisting her hands in the fine silk of her flowing and many-layered violet gown. "If I had, perhaps—"
She didn't finish the sentence, but Lady Moth was not about to allow her to sink into self-recrimination. "If you had, I doubt that it would have materially changed anything. You and I were firmly under the thumbs of our unlamented Lords, and no knowledge or even foreknowledge would have allowed us to change what happened to us. Knowledge is not always power." She smiled again. "If it was, fond as I am of my Tower, it would be Lady Moth who ruled the manor down there, and not that rabble of Young Lords."
Lady Moth had known very well that there was going to be a slave revolt when the Young Lords staged their own revolution against their elders. Her own slaves had told her. She had already taken herself out of her disagreeable husband's home; she had made a bargain with him—if he gave her the lady-keep, which had been the Dowager-House attached to his estate, she would make no trouble for him when he filed a divorcement with the Council. He had his eye on a very young Elven girl— his tastes had begun to run to the barely-pubescent in the past few years—and he was heartily tired of the wife who could not or would not take him as seriously as he thought he should be taken.
"I wish you had managed to take the Manor," Lady Viridina sighed wistfully. "I hate to think what damage those careless boys are wreaking to your beautiful home."
Lady Moth only shrugged. "I have an equally beautiful home here—and much more manageable," she pointed out. "It's probably just as well that I didn't try."
For her part, she had been so heartily tired of her lord that— given that she would not be required to remarry and could have an establishment, however small, of her own—she was prepared to allow him to say whatever he pleased about her in order to obtain his freedom. She suspected that he would claim she was pleasuring herself with human slaves—but as it fell out, he never got the chance, so her reputation survived intact.
"May I look?" Viridina finally asked, allowing her curiosity to overcome her reticence. Moth just laughed, showed her how to focus the instrument, and rose so that Dina could take her seat.
Moth's husband had not even lived to encounter the revolt, though without a doubt, if he had, he and his son would have been on opposite sides of the conflict. Her son, who had suddenly become as conservative as his father once he was in the ruling seat, had managed to be slaughtered almost immediately, and her daughter had fled after an abortive attempt to rule the manor herself had failed miserably. Lady Moth, as was the tradition in her family, had always treated her slaves with consideration and respect, entirely as if they were servants, not slaves, and as if they were free to leave her service if they chose to. She had taken all her slaves with her to the Tower, every slave for which she could concoct even the remotest excuse to have with her— a
fact which probably would have provided ample fodder for her husband's accusations. Once there, she had deactivated the elfstones in all of their collars, making them merely decorative shams, and told them frankly that they now were free to go or stay. They all, to a man and woman, chose to stay. When the revolt was at the breaking-point, her slaves had told her. They had fortified the place, she had armed those who knew how to use weapons. Together, they had outfaced rebellious ex-slaves and Young Lords. In fact, her burly young guards called her "little mother," and took as much care of her as if she had truly given birth to them—unlike her own offspring.
"Why not use scrying instead of this device?" Dina asked, moving the telescope to gaze at another part of the valley.
"Because, my dear, the place is adequately shielded against scrying—oh, not by magic, by all that iron and steel they've managed to collect." She stared down at the valley, one finger tapping her lips thoughtfully. "Very clever of them, actually; there aren't three of them together that are a match for a single one of the Old Lords, but the metal does their work for them."
Needless to say, her son's magic had not been enough to save him from enraged and mistreated humans who came in the middle of the night to beat him to death in his own bed—especially not when they arrived bedecked in thin iron armbands.
During the chaos of the revolt itself, some of her son's slaves had escaped to her; the rest fled to the Wizards and the wilderness. When more armed bands of escaped slaves had come upon the Tower, her people protected and guarded her while she stood ready to use deadly war-magics if it became necessary. She knew about the effects of iron and steel; she would not have made any attempt to blast attackers, unlike those foolish Elvenlords like Dina's husband. She planned to blast holes into the earth beneath their feet—or to use her magic to launch large and heavy objects at them. Most of her anxiety had not been for herself, but for her people, if they could not convince their fellow humans to go away peaceably. She didn't want them hurt on her behalf, and she didn't want them to have to witness what she might have to do to protect them all.