by K. G. McAbee
Would Madryn leave him now? Would she go on her way without him? She had made him no promises, had not even told him where she was going or if she would take him with her. But, a tiny voice whispered apprehensively in his mind, she had brought him so far already; surely she had some plan for him? What could she want with him; what possible use could an escaped slave be to her, a rich noblewoman? Why, Val knew very well, she could buy a dozen like him in the slave markets of any of the larger cities, could no doubt find one or two of his size even here, in a tiny backwater like Karleon.
Still, Madryn must have a plan for him. Val knew that must be so…no one took on the risks of traveling with someone like him, not without some sort of pressing agenda.
Val shook his head at his whirling thoughts. His only hope was that, whatever Madryn's plans for him, she would not change them now. He knew he would not be able to stand it if she left him here, alone. Oh, he could survive with no problem; he could steal enough food and a horse to get out of the city, and then become a mercenary to earn his bread. Living would be the least of his worries.
But living without Madryn would be impossible.
Val determined to ask her these and other questions, this very night. He had to find out, had to stop living with his heart in his throat, where it had taken up residence since the day he'd met her. Tonight, he would find out his future.
Val had just reached this point in his musings when they returned to the Drunken Raven.
"Innkeeper?" Madryn called as they entered through the heavy street door that hung from rope hinges. Val looked around. The taproom was filled with somber, silent women and men, all gazing into brimming mugs, none of whom paid them the slightest attention.
A curious incident in itself.
A massive woman with an uncanny resemblance to her cousin the gatekeeper stuck her head up through a hole in the floor, her mighty bulk nearly blocking this entrance to her cellar. The ladder on which she balanced gave a protesting shriek that shot across the quiet room like a moan from a damned soul.
"Milady? Sir?"
"Do you serve food in this place?"
"No, indeed, milady, but there is a good eating place just a few paces down the street, run by my sister and her boy."
"Damn," Madryn muttered under her breath. "This entire village is one huge family."
"My sister is a famous cook, and she'll be pleased to arrange a most delicious dinner for you and the gentleman," continued the innkeeper. "Shall I send word to her to have it ready, say, sundown?"
A silver coin winked into existence and was gone almost as quickly, caught between two tubby fingers. Val spared a passing thought to the abundance of silver. How much could Madryn carry in that single saddlebag? How long until her supply ran out?
Madryn turned to him. Her hooded eyes told him nothing, but her voice was cold. "I'm going to the docks to see about a ship. Will you make sure Daemon is taken care of for me? I'll meet you at this eating place at sundown and we'll have supper."
Val nodded, but she had already disappeared without waiting for a reply.
"Would the gentleman care for a drop of something wet?" asked their landlady, who had finally managed to emerge from the depths of the cellar.
Val fingered the few coins that he had in his belt pouch, remembering when Madryn had tossed them to him the previous day. "For incidentals," she'd said, then gave him a crooked smile. His heart had twisted within him at her tone, so like that which one would use to an equal. At once he had been filled with a desire that burnt into his vitals. Not just the desire for her, though that was the greatest part of it; a desire to be her equal.
But he wasn't. He never could be. And he didn't even have the satisfaction granted to some, the remembrance of being free. He had been born a slave.
"Why do you treat me this way?" Val had snapped. The words appeared of their own volition; he could not have dared to say them otherwise.
"What way is that, Val?" Madryn asked, her lean brown fingers unconsciously turning another coin.
"You treat me…like a friend."
"Ah, I see…it's that dislike of the nobility that eats at you? Am I not supposed to speak to you at all, then? Idiot! We're on the run, or had you forgotten?" Sarcasm leaked from her voice. "If I treat you like a slave, how far will we get?"
Val had nodded once, an unreasoning anger roiling in his belly—not at her, but at her tone, at the impossible situation. "Yes…but you surely don't have the need to treat me so in private. Why do you do it?"
Madryn laughed, but this was not her usual soft, sardonic chuckle; this was sharp and bitter, more pain than pleasure. "I beg your pardon; if I had known it bothered you so, I would never have dealt with you as an equal. I know how…irritating it can be, being treated above your station," she said, and her words were thick with hidden meaning. She turned and wandered towards the single window of their room, which looked over the water of the harbor. Her back was stiff and unrepentant.
Val followed as if drawn by some magic force; he watched her as she peered through the slatted shutter. A sea bird whistled outside, arguing with another over a piece of rotten fish.
Val felt very much like that piece of fish.
"But it's not," Val said at last. "You don't."
Madryn turned and looked into his pain-filled eyes. Her own softened. "Not perhaps the clearest of statements—Did you ever have training as an oracle, by any chance?—but I think I can decipher your meaning. It's not irritating? I don't speak as if I'm far above your station?"
"No. Yes."
Madryn reached out one long finger and wrapped it around a lock of Val's hair. No longer shorn to the skin, it was beginning to curl over his broad forehead in thick auburn ringlets. He had contemplated cutting it, but remembered that lords and gentlemen cultivated their hair as they did their bodies.
Madryn gave the lock a gentle tug. "You remind me of someone, Val," she said as she twisted the hair over her finger, staring at it instead of meeting his eyes. "More and more each day…it's almost frightening how much. And you should have realized by now that I do not share the common opinions of my—class. So try to get over this feeling of inferiority, won't you? Although, grant you, it's far more pleasing that Val's—the first Val, you understand?"
"Was he arrogant and high-born?" Val asked, trying to control the shaking in his voice.
"The most arrogant and the highest born," she agreed with another bitter laugh.
Were those tears in her eyes?
"There were times when I most willingly could have slapped his arrogant, beautiful face. But of course, I didn't dare."
"Why?" Val smiled, not believing that there was anything this woman would not dare.
"Why? My dear Val, he'd have had me whipped to within an inch of my life, of course."
Her words were a blow to Val's belly that knocked all the air out of him. His view of the world gave a sudden, unexpected lurch.
"Whipped you?" Even to his own ears, Val's voice sounded strangled with disbelief.
"Of course," Madryn replied, releasing the lock of hair as if it had grown hot under her fingers. "It's what one does to one's slaves, is it not? Remember, Val. Slavery is not always something that is done to you. Some of us, poor fools that we are, seize the collar with sick joy and tighten it about our throats with our own hands."
Before Val could think of a reply, Madryn had turned and left the shabby room. She waited for him downstairs, and without another word, they had gone out to seek his blade.
And now she had left him alone again.
***
The trip to Daemon's stable residence was quickly accomplished. The huge horse was glad to see him, snuffling and snorting as Val reached up to rub his arched neck. Val checked to see that his water was fresh and his food plentiful before leaving Daemon to the competent hands of the stable attendants.
Now, the day stretched before him, empty until sundown. Val cast a quick look at the brassy sky. At least three more hours until his supper
with Madryn. The town beckoned; he had never been alone, unattended, without a guard or an owner, in any town. He wandered away from the harbor, his sword slapping companionably against his thigh. It was a most enjoyable feeling, and did some small part in lessening the tight pain in his chest.
In the Street of the Courtesans, he garnered a great deal of attention from the boys and girls offering their bodies for rent. He eyed the merchandise spread out for display, noting here a full bosom, there a lean flank, as he strolled down the street, smiling at their calls. In his time as a gladiator, Val had been used as breeding stock, producing with carefully chosen females a series of sturdy children, none of which he had ever seen or held. He wondered in passing what the parents of these young ones felt at their profession; doubtless, they considered it just another way of earning bread in a hard world.
Shaking his head, Val turned a corner and escaped from the throng-filled street into a smaller, quieter side passage. At once the noise level, until now pounding against his head like thunder, lessened to a more manageable roar. Soon it was almost silent as he walked deeper into and along a dim alleyway.
At the far end, Val found his progress halted. The end of the alley was closed off with bars as thick as his wrist, flaking with rust and decades of collected grime. With a sigh, he turned to retrace his steps.
A tiny wind whirled scraps of rubbish into a funnel shape. A harsh rasping sound echoed in the stillness, like some great beast breathing.
Val felt an icy sense of danger race down his spine. He looked around, noticing for the first time that he was alone, and with no idea of where he was, or who—or what—might be sharing this filthy alley with him.
A high-pitched voice, like the plucking of tightly stretched gut strings, whispered in his ear.
Valaren Starseeker, it whined.
Val swallowed through a throat gone dry. Surely, he imagined that eerie voice, those words? Or did he really hear someone—something—called the name that he had appropriated?
Valaren Starseeker, whispered the voice once more, the faintest bit louder this time, but no more recognizably human. Valaren Starseeker.
Val snatched his sword from its scabbard, taking comfort from the sturdy hilt, the silver nails at first cold against his palm, the warming to match the heat of his hand.
Another cold wind caressed his cheek, lifted the straggling curls from his forehead.
Valaren Starseeker, hissed the whining voice.
Val looked about him. Dizzy, his head whirled; his feet were so far away, and suddenly were not able to support his weight. A smell rose about him, sharp and strange amid the simmering reek of alley, a spicy smell, dazzling and unknown.
Val watched in fatal fascination as the rough cobbled floor of the alley rose up to slap full against his face. He felt a trickle of blood begin to leak from his nose as his mind floated away.
***
Another slap rocked Val's head backward.
But cobbles or eerie winds or magical voices did not administer this particular slap. This one came from a most mortal and human hand, delivered with the utmost in enthusiasm and a certain glee.
Val opened bleared eyes and tried to settle his vision as it bounced and ricocheted from succeeding slaps. Before another could land, he lashed out with his own hand and seized a scrawny wrist, encircled it with his strong fingers.
He squeezed.
A mouse-like squeak ripped from a gap-toothed mouth. "Your pardon, sire," said a small boy, his unwashed body nearly naked. "I was only trying to wake you, indeed I was, sire my lord, afore the rats began to nibble on your toes."
Val sat up. He was still in that same alleyway littered with rubbish and thick with a rancid, musty smell. But beneath that smell common to all alleys, there lingered a sharper, stronger scent, bitter as blood, seductive as opium.
A dim fragment of memory twined tendrils through his dizzy mind. A voice, a strange whispering voice…an order, a command…
The memory was gone, blown away by the fresh air of his returning senses, dissipating even as he tried to grasp it. Gone. What had it been? What had it wanted of him? What…what had it ordered him to do?
Val struggled to his feet, one hand reaching out for purchase on the stone wall beside him. He saw with relief that his other hand was still firm about the handle of his new sword, and his dagger still rested securely in the top of his boot.
The boy who had been slapping him sat back on bony heels, his skinny body a collection of sticks covered in rags.
"What did you see, boy?" Val grated, leaning against the wall as a sudden dizziness threatened to drop him again.
"Only you, sire, indeed, a lying here all alone, with the rats beginning to gather," said the boy, casting a nervous glance at Val's sword.
"Nothing else?"
"No, sire, nothing else indeed. Well, barring a strange sound, like as it might have been a very big rat a scuttling away. There be some fearful big rats near the harbor, sire," concluded the boy, as if satisfied in his own mind what the odd sound must have been.
But Val was not convinced that it had been a rat, huge or otherwise. He jingled the coins in his belt pouch and watched as the boy's face lit up.
"Indeed, sire, it was my pleasure to save you, but if you was a'wanting to offer me a reward, I won't say no," he said, a grin plastered across his dirty face.
Val dug out a small copper coin and tossed it to the boy, then shook himself once and walked from the alley.
The boy bit down with two of his remaining teeth on the coin. It was enough to buy bread for the whole family, he thought in satisfaction. Or enough to buy meat and ale for one.
The boy scampered toward the ale shop at the corner.
Chapter Six
The sun was casting out its last faint rays in a net of gold as Val approached the cookshop where he was to meet Madryn. The crowds in the street had lessened from earlier in the day. It was that time when approaching nightfall had sent many of the weaker indoors, even as the predators who thrived on darkness rose from sleep and began their wanderings in the soon to be murky streets.
The cookshop blazed with light. Succulent smells drifted out the unglazed windows, to gather like clouds end and entice the passers-by.
Val paused outside the open doorway and stooped to peer inside. Not seeing Madryn's lean, black-clad figure inside, he looked up and down the street. He was still shaky from his encounter with…whatever had been in the alley.
What had happened while he had lain there, unconscious, in that dank and smelly abode? Why had no one, in this village that lived off thieving, stolen his weapons, his money, his boots, while he lay there helpless? These and other questions ran round and round his weary mind as he stood like some great bronze statue before the cookshop.
"You must be starving, Val," a voice whispered in his ear.
Val jumped, bumped into an inoffensive burgher and sent him sprawling against a dirty stone wall.
"Carefully," laughed Madryn as she helped the man to his feet and brushed him off. "Your pardon, sir, but my friend hasn't eaten all day and he has a mighty appetite."
The man, quite small himself, looked with careful consideration at the height of Madryn, the breadth of Val, and the weapons of both, and decided that he had no complaint whatsoever in the matter. He offered a weak smile and scurried away, to disappear into the darkening street.
"Come along and tell me about your day," Madryn said, taking Val's arm and leading him into the shop. "Was Daemon well?"
Val nodded as they stepped over the threshold.
Clamor and steamy smells rose like a wall before them. A narrow, deep room cluttered with tables large and small, the shop reached away into a dim distance towards a huge fireplace that belched out a pale gray smoke through and around its collection of pots and kettles and pans.
A tall young man came toward them through the crush, his dour face as white as uncooked dough. "You are staying at the Raven and have ordered supper," he informed them in tones t
hat showed he would brook no argument on the subject. Then, without waiting for a reply, he led them to a table set for two in a relatively quiet corner near the door.
Madryn unbuckled her swordbelt and hung it on an unoccupied chair, then settled into another with a sigh of relief. "Sit down, Val. You look like you could use a bottle or two of wine." Her anger of earlier in the day had dissipated…or had it?
Val hung his sword beside hers and sat down. Should he tell her of his adventure in the alley, he wondered? Yes…of course…Val opened his mouth….
A harried boy, his apron stained with an archipelago of greasy spots, arrived at that instant with a deep tureen clasped to his hollow bosom. He set it down with solicitous care, then dashed off and returned with two wide shallow bowls, spoons, and a long loaf of brown bread on a tray.
"Soup," the boy announced unnecessarily, dealing out the bowls and spoon and dishing up helpings of a savory liquid swimming with unrecognizable chunks of green and brown.
A sturdy woman, her face a reverse mirror image of the dour young man's, approached their table. "Welcome, welcome," she sang, "welcome, most honored guests. My sister gave orders that I was to treat you well, so ask for what you wish, I pray you."
"This is an excellent beginning, madam," Madryn said around a mouthful of soup. "A pair of bottles would not be amiss."
"Our best wine, Leone, my son," trilled the woman as she danced away on cheerful feet.
The dour-faced young man trudged over with a dusty bottle and two mugs in his hands. He ripped a cork out as if it had done him an injury and poured both mugs to the brim, emptying the bottle in the process. Then he stamped away, the spent bottle hanging from one morose hand.
"What strange coupling produced that most opposite of sons?" wondered Madryn as she tasted her wine.
Since Val had been wondering the same thing, he grinned weakly and shook his head at her echo of his own thoughts.