by Jude Fisher
‘Kitten, as in “little cat”?’
Kitten smiled, revealing the tips of sharp, pearl-white teeth. ‘Yes, my lord.’
‘I wonder if I could make you purr.’
That drew a blush. ‘I am sure you could, my lord.’
‘Well, perhaps I shall. But I have a task for you first.’
‘Yesh . . .’ Varyx was on his feet now and wobbling unsteadily towards them. ‘A very . . . pleasant tashk indeed.’
Turning swiftly, Rui extended one hand, fingers splayed, and pushed Varyx firmly back onto the couch. The Lord of Ixta landed in a heap with his legs in the air and a most perplexed expression on his face. ‘Now then, Rui . . . fair’sh fair. It’sh my choice. You shaid sho . . .’
‘Oh, you shall have your choice, my friend. It’s just that this one is not part of the deal.’ He turned back to Kitten Soronsen, knelt and retrieved the crimson sabatka. This he held out to her graciously. ‘Put on your robe, my dear. Now, tell me: do you know a man called Erol Bardson?’
Kitten’s eyes grew round. ‘He is the King’s cousin.’
Rui grinned. ‘Excellent. So that much is true, at least.’ He looked past her to the mistress of his seraglio.‘Is she schooled, Peta?’
The woman laughed. ‘I would hardly call any of these northern women “schooled”, my lord. They came to me as rough as dogs and I have little chance to teach them our ways. But she is the best of a poor bunch.’
‘Do you want to be rich, Kitten? Rich and pampered and treated like an empress?’
Her eyes grew rounder. Then she nodded quickly.
‘You shall spend your first night in my service in the company of this Erol Bardson, and you shall make him as comfortable as he wishes to be. Do you understand what I mean by this?’
Again, Kitten nodded.
Rui caught her by the elbow and guided her to one side, his voice no louder than a whisper. ‘You will ask him why he is here and whether someone is paying him. You will ask him what he knows of Halbo City and its famed Sentinel Towers, which you have heard are impossible to pass from the sea. Then tomorrow you shall tell me all he says. You are an Eyran: he will talk to you more freely than any of my other women. And if you perform this service well for me and glean such knowledge as you can, I will reward you richly and keep you here in Forent Castle rather than sending you to the slave-blocks to become the property of some filthy old merchant. Do you agree?’
Kitten flashed him her most winning smile. ‘Oh yes, my lord, I do.’
‘Excellent. Agia?’
‘My lord?’
‘Have Plano conduct this lady to the quarters of the Earl of Broadfell and explain that it is my wish he makes the most of Forent’s famed hospitality.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
Peta said nothing, which in itself conveyed her displeasure. She watched Agia guide Kitten away with her hands on her hips, a most belligerent stance.
‘So, Peta, we have two ladies left for Varyx to choose from, I believe?’
‘There are two left.’ This was not what she had expected at all. Varyx should have seen Kitten Soronsen and the whole charade should have been over; instead they were left with the hell-cat and her difficult mother. She wondered if she might get away with bringing Leni Stelsen out again instead of the fox-haired brat, but any hope of this was immediately dashed.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing whether you have succeeded in taming the little redhead,’ Rui said with a cruel smile. ‘I’m sure you won’t have forgotten our bargain, Peta.’
‘Indeed not, my lord,’ Peta returned through gritted teeth.
Agia made to move through the door to fetch Katla, but Peta waved her aside. ‘I’ll get her,’ she hissed.
As soon as the door was unlocked, Katla was on her feet. With Plano gone, now was as good a time as any to make a run for it, if she had the chance; but Peta blocked the doorway with her robust frame. ‘You see this?’ the seraglio keeper asked softly. She inched a wicked-looking little blade out of her sleeve so that it gleamed for a moment in her palm.
‘Mmm,’ said Katla, trying to sound uninterested, though the sight of the weapon riveted her.
‘Embarrass me any way – take one wrong step or say one wrong word – and this lady – ’ she indicated the dark-robed Bera Rolfsen standing behind them ‘ – feel its kiss from here – ’ a sharp-taloned nail touched her right ear ‘ – to here.’ The nail drew itself across her throat to the other ear. ‘I make myself clear?’
Katla glared at her through the annoying veil.
‘She your mother, I believe,’ Peta added silkily. ‘At least, that what Agia told me when you were reunited yesterday.’ She leaned in closer to Katla. ‘We have no secrets here, in this seraglio: so I also cut her if you tell any more your dangerous nonsense to my girls about how free are Eyran women, you hear?’
Katla’s eyes narrowed. One quick foot inside the other woman’s instep and she knew she could have Peta on her back and the knife in her hand. Her fingers itched and buzzed as if she could feel the blade nestled in her palm already.
The door opened and all immediate chance of escape evaporated. ‘Is there a problem, Peta?’ Rui Finco asked smoothly. ‘You see, my lord of Ixta is becoming rather . . . tired and emotional and would like to make his choice.’ He smiled. ‘Before he passes out.’
He ushered both Katla and Bera ahead of him into the receiving room, where Varyx was slumped on the couch, snoring gently. The Lord of Forent smiled. He had watered his own wine while adding a tasteless but very potent rye spirit to Varyx’s, never having had the least intention of allowing him to spoil his prize merchandise. Nevertheless, he took the precaution of crossing the room and shaking the man by the shoulder. To no avail: the Lord of Ixta blew and whistled, then curled himself around his friend’s arm, murmuring obscenities. Rui removed himself with a curse, then turned to face the women.
‘Now then,’ he said to Katla in the Old Tongue, very quietly and very firmly. ‘Remove your robe.’
Katla stared hard at him through the sheer veil. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ she replied grimly. In Eyran.
Rui Finco had no need to understand the northern tongue to know her meaning. Neither did Peta. While the Lord of Forent grinned from ear to ear, Bera Rolfsen yelped involuntarily as a sharp blade jabbed into her back.
‘Sur’s knackers!’ Katla swore. She bent, grabbed a handful of the stupid silky robe and ripped it upwards in a single angry sweep. It tangled around her head: she fought clear of it then threw it to the ground and stamped on it so that the little silver bells draped around her shaved, perfumed, oiled and painted ankles tinkled sweetly. Arms folded, she stood naked and trembling in fury before the man who had sentenced her to burning.
The Lord of Forent laughed. ‘Such a little firebrand!’
He walked around her, taking in the view.
‘Much better, Peta, I’ll give you that. Nice skin, now that you can see what was under all that grime. Unusual hair colour, very striking. The braiding is pretty, and the henna-work, too. Whose hand is that?’
‘Mela’s,’ the seraglio keeper responded gruffly. Mela had for some inexplicable reason volunteered for this painstaking and intricate task on the most awkward of their charges, yet it seemed from the delicacy of the twined flowers she had inked the length of the hellcat’s spine that the Eyran girl had meekly allowed her to carry out her duties without a struggle. The two women must have struck up quite a friendship, despite their different backgrounds and circumstances. She didn’t like it at all: it fitted no behaviour pattern she understood. Something was wrong here.
‘Stringy little creature, isn’t she? Not much meat on her.’ He squeezed Katla’s bicep and she jerked herself away in disgust. ‘Strong, though: muscles built for stamina.’ He ran a finger lightly down her back, then cupped her right buttock in his palm. ‘Bet she could ride a man all night and gallop him like a prize mare.’
With a shriek of outrage she could not hold back, Katla whirled as fast as
a dervish, grabbed the Lord of Forent by the hair and brought her knee up hard so that his jaw connected with the bone with a resounding crack and his eyes rolled upwards. A moment later, Rui Finco was sprawled flat out unconscious on the floor of the receiving room. His pretty silver circlet came to rest with a clatter by the couch.
A moment’s uneasy silence rolled across the chamber. Then it was shattered by the sound of swearing in two very different languages. When Katla spun around it was to see her mother being borne to the floor by the much heavier mistress of Forent’s harem, knife in hand. Blood spattered both women’s clothing. Peta’s arm went up for a killing stroke. Like lightning, Katla grabbed up the wine flask and brought it down on her head with a thud. The last of Jetra’s finest gushed out over the mouth of the vessel and, soft as leather, the silver flask caved in on itself. Peta lurched to her feet. Red liquid trickled down her sabatka, pooled on the floor at her feet. Behind the veil, she growled. Then she came at Katla with the knife.
An immense, roiling anger filled Katla Aransen. This . . . woman . . . had betrayed her kind, had run her harem like a prison master, had procured women from the slavemarket for her lord’s perverse pleasures, had trained and ruled them with fear and brutality. Had made a favourite of that little traitor, Kitten Soronsen. Had wounded her mother – Sur knew how badly. And, Katla reminded herself grimly, had subjected her to the worst indignities of her short life.
She backed up, dodged sideways and slipped under Peta’s knife arm, catching her wrist as she went, but the silk of the sabatka slipped in her grip, so that suddenly Peta was facing her and the wicked-looking blade was descending towards her face. Ducking away, Katla thrust out a swift foot and hooked it around her opponent’s ankle, then crashed her body into the harem mistress’s and tried to lever her over. It was like trying to flip a boulder. Peta stood firm and gradually bore down upon Katla Aransen instead. Katla caught hold of the billowing fabric of the woman’s robe and wrapped it around the knife. The blade sheared through the fabric, soft as a whisper, and was in her face again a second later.
You’ve met your match now, came a traitor voice in her head. She’s much stronger than you, and she’s armed. What chance do you have? She’ll drive you down and rip you to shreds! So much for your vaunted wrestling prowess, Katla Aransen: so much for your pride! This is how you will die, shaved and painted and naked and defenceless under the knife of an Istrian whoremistress. Will they make songs about such a heroic end? I think not. Better to have gone to the fires at the Allfair last year than like this, in shame and ignominy . . .
Desperate now, Katla tore at the sabatka, hauling it upwards to fend off the blade and confound her attacker. It was a flimsy shield. Ribbons of fabric spun to the ground and Peta kept coming at her, roaring now, low and guttural, frustrated and full of bloodlust. Katla backed away, until a low table caught her in the crook of the knees so that she lost her balance and went crashing down in a limb-flailing somersault onto the other side of it, landing painfully on her back, the wind knocked out of her. She did not let go of the robe. It came with her in a swathe of ripping silk, a great tent of a thing rent with so many tears that the candlelight shone through it like holes in the night sky as it fell down upon her.
Someone howled like an animal on the light side of the sabatka. It was her mother’s voice: Katla knew it even through its wild distortion. With superhuman effort she caught her breath, thrust the destroyed robe away from her, rolled and came to her feet and the most extraordinary sight. A big fat naked figure was staggering around the room with a shrieking Bera Rolfsen astride its back, her veil bandaged firmly over its eyes so that it lashed out blindly with the little knife. Weird shadows leapt and rocked around the candlelit chamber in almost comical imitation of this bizarre scene; but when Peta and her rider swung around to face Katla in their careering progress, things became odder again.
Peta – whoremistress of Forent Castle, keeper of the seraglio, tyrant of Rui Finco’s houris – was no mistress at all, but something else entirely. Her shaved pubis gleamed in the dancing light; and so did her little bobbing penis.
Katla stared and stared: could not help herself.
Peta was a man.
Or was she? For while some parts were absent, or so small as to be invisible, other parts were vastly, flabbily in evidence. Above a swag of white belly, two vast tits swung and bounced.
This unusual information embedded itself in Katla’s skull, stopping her still in her tracks for several valuable seconds: then the reality of the situation invaded her again and like a dog casting away a rat she threw off her fascination and hurled herself into the fray.
Even Peta was no match for two Rockfall hoydens. Down she went in a heap with Bera and Katla on top of her, and suddenly the knife was – as she had known it would somehow be – in Katla’s own hand. Istrian blade or no, it sang to her greedily. All she had to do now was to plunge it down hard and it would be over. Katla felt the bloodlust calling her, felt the contact with the metal buzzing through her veins and into her bones, making her hot and lightheaded and wanton; but something in her resisted the call. It might have been the terror in Peta’s black eyes; or an unconscious acknowledgement of their shared predicament. Or it might have been the sound of the door of the reception room swinging wide open to admit a contingent of armed guards with Plano at their head.
But it was the Lord of Forent – looking somewhat dazed – who caught Katla by the wrist and twisted mercilessly till the blade came away into his own palm.
‘Well now,’ he said, stepping back and staring down at the extraordinary tangle, ‘I see you have been keeping something from me, Peta, all these years.’
The guards were all muttering now. Some gawped openly – at the Rockfall women, for they were the first of these fallen creatures they had seen, then at the whoremistress and her unfamiliar configuration. A couple of them began to laugh; others made superstitious gestures and felt their own genitals contract in mute sympathy. Eunuchs were not unheard of in Istria, but they were figures out of another age of the world, and another place. In Gila and the Spice Islands it had been commonplace to geld the men who guarded the houris; but never here, in civilised Forent.
‘Get them up and make them decent!’ Rui Finco roared at Plano. ‘And you – ’ he indicated the guards – ‘one word of this beyond these walls and I may revive an old custom.’ He cupped his balls, stared at them meaningfully. ‘I hope you understand me well.’
The men paled and nodded swiftly.
Then the Lord of Forent turned back to survey his captives. ‘You have disappointed me, Peta,’ he said softly. He laid a hand upon the seraglio keeper’s shoulder; but the other made a swift movement. Peta’s eyes widened; then his knees buckled. Blood gushed onto the floor.
‘As for you’ – he stared at Katla, who dragged her eyes unwillingly from the reddened knife in his hand to meet his gaze defiantly – ‘did you really imagine I’d ever invite you into my bed? You’re fit only for coupling with a wolf. What man in his right mind would pay to poke such a scrawny, rabid bitch? It might be kinder to slit your throat here and now and have done with it. But I have a better idea.’ He paused, then addressed Plano again. ‘Take these two to slavemaster Figro. Tell him I am sorry to send him such poor pickings, but if he gets me a reasonable price for them, I’ll see he gets the rest of the Eyran girls to sell, and that should make up for the effort.’
He watched as Bera and Katla were bundled in cloaks and hauled away, then he crossed the chamber, retrieved his circlet and donned it swiftly, then drew back the tapestry which was hung over the entrance to the passageway down to the Safflower Room, and disappeared into the wall.
Nineteen
Erno
Erno Hamson kicked his heels morosely against the side of the ship. It was full dark now and he had been watching the constellations shifting through the sky for longer than he could bear. When Persoa swarmed silently up over the gunwale he almost throttled him with his bare hands, his im
patience was so great.
‘Well? Do you know where she is?’
The hillman flashed Erno a grin, his white teeth and the sheen of his eyes all that was visible of him in the night. There was a soft scuffling sound as the hillman undid the bundle of clothes he had carried above the waves and dressed himself again. When he came into the circle of the lantern where Mam sat waiting on the deck, there was blood in his hair, where the sea had not washed it away. At once, she was on her feet, her hands questing over him, all incongruous concern.
‘Are you hurt? Tell me you’re not hurt!’
As if a badly injured man could possibly swim from that distant rocky shore and board a ship with nary a complaint.
Persoa lifted Mam’s vast mitts to his face and kissed them several times, on the palms, the fingers, the wrists. ‘Do not worry: it is not my blood, my dove,’ he said gently.
‘Then whose is it?’ Erno demanded, his voice shrill with irritation.
The hillman sat down on the sacking beside the lantern, his limbs coiling under him with fluid grace. He was, Mam said, one of the finest assassins in the world: and even though Doc and Dogo disagreed, since they’d managed to take him captive after he’d spitted poor Knobber that night in the back alleys of Forent, Mam was a bit soft where Persoa was concerned: there was history between them, and they were making more of it day by day.
‘After I swam to shore, I made my way inland and then back down the valley into the village in the next bay,’ Persoa replied, his southern accent making the words soft and sibilant. ‘In the back room of an inn called the Turkeycock, I found one of the raiders. We played three hands of cards and I contrived to lose atrociously. Having fleeced me, he was good enough to buy me a flagon of the local brew and we got talking about women, as you do.’ Mam gave him a narrow-eyed look, but the hillman smiled slyly. ‘He had a low opinion of northern women, I am sorry to say, my dove. He finds them coarse and ugly. I asked him how he formed this opinion and he told me at no little length.’