The Last Hour of Gann

by R. Lee Smith

  She put it on—a simple pullover in a pale beige color that hung to her knees. It smelled musty, unused, but she could already see that it was nicer than the first one.

  “I’ll see if I can find better for you once the trade wagons start moving,” said Zhuqa, watching her. “But for now, you are pleased.”

  It wasn’t a question as much as a warning. Amber smoothed down the wrinkled front of her new shift and nodded. The gesture couldn’t have meant much to him, but he accepted it.

  “So today, you will make every effort to please me further,” he said, crossing back to open the door. “I am going to take you to the workpit, where you will learn to keep my House. How say you?”

  “Yippee.”

  He grunted and beckoned for her to follow him out into the hall.

  She went.

  The guards were positioned on the landings already, or maybe they were always there. Other men walked in the halls and passed them on the stair, more and more as they climbed toward the surface. Her clumsy estimate of their numbers kept stretching and stretching, until the word ‘dozens’ just wasn’t enough.

  There were a hundred men here. There might even be two. Like roaches, the ones she saw were only indicators of the ones that scurried around in the greater darkness. They might as well be infinite.

  Meoraq was coming. And for the first time, that thought brought horror, because he couldn’t possibly be prepared to find something like this, let alone fight it.

  Zhuqa turned her aside while they were still two flights from the surface, leading her down a wide corridor past several sets of curious, disgusted, and fascinated eyes. Raiders were in constant movement here, hauling crates, waterskins and packs, while others just seemed to be lounging around, but all came to attention for Zhuqa and showed him their fists. He tapped a few, ignored most, and brought Amber without comment to a closed door at the far end of the hall.

  “Do you know where you are?” he asked, bringing out his keys.

  Startled, Amber looked back, wondering why he thought she should, and suddenly realized they were in what he’d called his slave quarters. They’d walked right past the door where Zru’itak had given birth.

  “Do you know where you are?” he asked again, now with his hand on the open door and staring her down. He wasn’t smiling. He wanted her to know this door before she walked through it. He wanted her to think about where she was while she waited for him and wondered if she was ever coming back out.

  Amber knew she was a bitch a lot more often than was smart, but that didn’t make her stupid. Where was she? Speaking lizardish, looking him straight in the eye, she said, “Zhuqa’s House.”

  It wasn’t the response he expected (and judging from the twitching of his spines, it took him a second or two to work it out), but it was definitely the right one. He smiled and reached out to stroke the back of his hand across her brow. Meoraq’s touch. It was nauseating, but Amber would not allow herself to wipe this one away.

  He opened the door on a huge room, maybe even several rooms, all connected. The stink was immediate: unwashed bodies and the green reek of compost. It was hot—she could see a huge fire burning in another room—but not stuffy. There were fans in the ceiling, big ones, locked away behind metal bars that either drew up the heated air and carried it away or blew cooler air down at them. It gave her a hell of a jolt to see that and to realize that, just like all the other ruins she’d seen, some parts of this one were still working. That maybe Zhuqa was even fixing it up. The metal bars that kept desperate slaves from trying to crawl out through the air ducts weren’t that old.

  Amber saw the fire and the fans because they were moving. The lizardladies that huddled around the walls, shelves and tables that cluttered these rooms were not. Her eye had taken them in only peripherally as lumps of laundry or stacked sacks right up until Zhuqa waved at them and they went back to work.

  Now Amber flinched. Zhuqa gripped her shoulder, then patted it. “Easy, Eshiqi. Go on, then. You have work to do and so do I.”

  And with that, he left her there.

  Amber waited for a few seconds, but the frenetic hush of all this work made it impossible to just stand there. She began to walk around, randomly at first, glancing back at the door every few steps, and then with more of an eye for what she was seeing.

  None of it was work she knew how to do. After spending the whole winter in a cave doing one menial thing after another, that surprised her. Amber could put a pretty good cure on a hide, render fat into soap, draw sinews and turn them into strong cord, and countless other useful things, but she didn’t know what half these women were doing.

  Most of it was plant-related. Not cooking—that, at least, Amber could do—but other stuff. The plants in question were long, bulbous roots terminating in two wide, rubbery leaves with serrated edges as sharp as knives. Lizardladies with wrapped hands stripped these dangerous looking leaves; others split the stalks, pried them open, and scraped out the whitish meat; this was pounded into a flat, fibrous substance, which was in turn briskly combed out into fluff. Huge rough-woven bags of this fluff were positioned throughout the room, and when one got too full, someone took it into one of the adjoining chambers where more lizardladies and half a dozen pale-scaled children hip-high or smaller spun it into thick thread using nothing more than hooked sticks and spools. From there, the thread went on to be made into rope, cloth or who knew what in one of the other rooms.

  It was a lot of work and should have made a lot of noise. Amber had worked line jobs of some kind or another all her adult life, and the eerie silence with which all these people went about their various tasks put an honest-to-God chill in her spine. She found herself thinking of Zru’itak’s tongueless mouth more and more as she studied the faces around her, all of whom pointedly refused to study her in return. Only the children were at all animated—whispering and coughing quiet laughter, throwing fluff or spools at each other if they thought no one was looking, staring at Amber even as their little hands kept busy, and scuttling away if she got close enough for their courage to fail.

  When Amber finally made her way back into the first room, Zhuqa was back, with a line of shivering, naked, dull-eyed lizardladies. His newest acquisitions. Standing beside them was another raider, a big one. Easily a head taller than even Zhuqa and built as solid as a coffin, with stocky limbs that bulged with so much muscle, he surpassed mere strength and seemed grotesque. He was missing two fingers on one hand, as well as an eye and most of the knobby ridges that should be above it. Several of his spines were either broken short or missing entirely and his snout had a wedge-shaped hole through it that looked like it had been on the wrong end of an axe years ago.

  Zhuqa and the stranger exchanged a few low words as they looked over the women, then Zhuqa paused, noticing Amber’s stare. He gave the broad, scarred chest a slap and said, “This is Hruuzk, my slave-master.”

  Hruuzk looked startled, then perplexed. He scanned the room as what remained of his spines flexed. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Eshiqi. Come here and give your man a greeting.”

  Unsure how demonstrative he wanted her to be, she obeyed. Hruuzk grunted as he watched her ease up against Zhuqa’s side. His gaze held nothing but the purest academic interest. “I heard about that. What is it?”

  “Something new.”

  “Nothing new in Gann’s land,” the slave-master said. A philosopher. He bent his head in a distracted, deferential manner and held up his mutilated hand, scarred palm to heaven. When Zhuqa grunted approval, Hruuzk reached out and rubbed some of Amber’s hair between his two remaining fingers. “Can you fuck it?”

  “Yes. Shift your skirts, Eshiqi.”

  She looked at him, alarmed.

  He brushed the back of his hand along her cheek, then gripped her chin and lightly squeezed. “You are Zhuqa’s woman, never fear. Now shift your skirts.”

  As comfort went, it was a cold puddle of piss indeed, but it wasn’t like she had any real choice. She
lifted her dress up to her waist, shifting uneasily as Hruuzk hunkered down to get a better look at her pubis. He grunted, then raised his hand and gave Zhuqa a second inquiring nod.

  Zhuqa’s approval was a long time coming, but it came. “Hold still, Eshiqi.”

  But she couldn’t, quite. Hruuzk’s hand was huge and abrasive, repulsive in every touch no matter how impartially he prodded at her. She shuddered, twisting the fabric of her shift to keep from slapping him away, and shut her eyes as he wedged one thick finger inside her.

  “She’s open,” Hruuzk said, amused.

  “I’m beginning to think she’s always open.”

  “Oh, that’s a seller, if it’s true.”

  “Isn’t it.”

  Hruuzk got his finger up as deep as it would go, rubbing at her in a clinical fashion, then withdrew to clasp both hands between his bulging thighs and study her some more. “If you ever decide to sell that, I want it,” he said at last.

  “Vek has my promise of first refusal. She took his hand off.”

  “So I heard, but there’s good coin in this thing. Let me have it for one year,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Vek can have it back in just this condition and if I pour less than fifty thousand strips in your hand, you can have my other eye. Not points. Not rounds. Strips.”

  “Take it up with Vek, but for now, she’s mine. Put your clothes right, Eshiqi.”

  Hruuzk grunted and shifted his gaze to the other lizardladies, the matter closed to him. While Amber adjusted her clothes, he moved out to get a better look, catching at their heads to examine their teeth or eyes, turning them around to pass a hand down their spines, and stopping at every one of them to pry their slits open and test at their insides.

  “Weak batch,” was his ultimate judgment. “Were you told these were virgins?”

  “No,” said Zhuqa, flexing his spines in a careless, shrugging gesture. “But they must be fresher than the ones we have, surely.”

  “Those two,” he said, pointing, “are the pick of the lot. Virgin, or close enough, since I guess you let your runners go at them. If you put them up for bidding, they might go for as much as two hundred rounds each, maybe more. But with respect, sir, if you want me to stable them under you, I’ll only send you back a quarter of their coin until I see for myself that they don’t come with cargo.” He gave the slave nearest him a pat on the belly. “They don’t turn a dip this pretty out of Praxas on a whim.”

  “A point, but I’m bidding them all out. If there’s cargo, it’ll fall in the hands of the man who buys the cart.”

  “Please yourself.” The slave-master turned his good eye back on the ladies. “This one’s not as fresh, but she might go for as much as a hundred rounds. Slant-Eyes is the tightest of the lot, but she has a good case of the twist coming on—”

  “Yes, I saw that on the run.”

  “—and Black-Stripe’s mouth isn’t right. Could just be bad feeding, coming from Praxas.” Hruuzk shrugged again. “But I think it’s the juun.”

  “Piss,” said Zhuqa disgustedly, his spines going flat.

  “Won’t hurt for fucking.”

  “I am not selling a dip with the juun to my men.” Zhuqa thought about it, stroking at his throat, where faint streaks of yellow were beginning to show. They faded while he pondered the matter, and at last he said, “Catch her up with Shu’ir and Ila, see if Ghelip wants to buy them. I don’t mind cheating him.”

  “He might not be feeling very receptive. You know we killed three of his patrollers while you were gone.”

  “Throw Salahkthu in with them and call it an apology.”

  Hruuzk snorted laughter. “Done. The rest of them ought to go straight to the stables in my opinion, and if I see fifty points by year’s end for the lot of them, I’ll pay you back in rounds. They’re worn loose already and two of them have been cut.”

  “The piss you say!” The color flared in Zhuqa’s throat. “By my men?”

  “No, they’re good and scarred. Probably done when they were hip-high, so they could take an early poke. Bunch of perverts in Praxas,” the slave-master remarked, his gaze once more straying to Amber. “But you may as well keep them because, as you say, they’re fresher than the ones we have, and besides, we lost some while you were away.”

  “So I heard,” Zhuqa said coolly.

  The slave-master spread his huge hands. “What would you have me do, stand over them and help push?”

  “It’s a very simple thing, Hruuzk. If a man can’t be trusted not to break the toy, he doesn’t get to play with it. If you have to kill a few men to make that lesson clear, do it. I can always get more men. The dips are hard to come by. So.” Zhuqa looked the new slaves over one last time. “Gather those three…no, those four and show them around to whoever’s got coin to spend. How soon can you have them ready for the block?”

  “How ready do you want them to be?”

  “They’d ought to know their way around the workpit.” Zhuqa glanced over at Amber. “My Eshiqi needs to know how to care for her man’s House.”

  “Ah, you’re doing this again,” the slave-master remarked with a small smile. “All right. I’ll start it on lamps for now. Does it talk?”

  “Not much, but she understands you.” Zhuqa pinched Amber’s jaw again and put his face very close to hers. “And she’s going to behave.”

  Hruuzk grunted and gestured for Amber to stand beside him, watching with undisguised amusement as she obeyed. “Ugly little thing, but I did like the grip of that cunt. How would you feel if I took a dip?”

  “Murderous,” Zhuqa replied mildly.

  “All right,” he said again, in much the same easy-going way. “Yllgami, come get the rest of the cattle and put them to work. Not you, Gold-Eyes. Stay right here and wait for me. We’re going to take a walk. Come, Eshiqi.” His huge hand dropped comfortably over her shoulder as he took her into the next room. “Let’s get you started.”

  7

  Amber’s first jobs were plainly tests of her ability to understand and obey Hruuzk’s orders: she wiped down tables, bagged fluff, hauled water around to each of the work stations, swept without a broom, washed without a sink, and did it all without a word. When Hruuzk was satisfied, he put her to work cutting lamp wicks and left her there while he took one of the slaves out on her ‘walk’. Even this simple task was trickier than it seemed. They didn’t have scissors, or maybe just didn’t trust slaves with them. Amber had to feed the rope through a blocky guillotine-like device and smack a spring-loaded lever to make the cut. She’d worked a lot of monotonous factory jobs; she soon had the fiddly business of feed/measure/cut/pull/feed down to a comfortable routine.

  When Hruuzk returned from showing ‘Gold-Eyes’ around to potential buyers, her table was piled high with dry wicks and he made her stop and soak them. While he took ‘Shivers’ out on her walk, Amber swished wicks around in a jar of xuseth oil, then hung them up on rods to dry. The oil ran down her arms each time she reached up to hang more wicks and soon the front of her shift was soaked and clinging to her like a second skin, exposing every line and shadow of the body beneath. Hruuzk’s interest when he came back to drop off ‘Shivers’ and pick up ‘Crook-Toe’ was evident, but he kept his hands to himself.

  “Good girl,” he said, patting her head after she’d hung up the last wick and put the xuseth oil away. “Unless I tell you different, you start each day with wicks. This camp runs through about two, three hundred a day and they have to be fresh. You seem to be quick enough with those freakish little hands…you can make lamps.”

  Back he went to the door, to bellow at someone outside to bring him two blocks of clay. He waited, watching Amber clear off her table and fiddling absentmindedly with any slave who caught his eye, and soon after, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of the clay. Hruuzk inspected it as intently as any slave, judged it acceptable, and thumped both blocks down on the table in front of Amber.

  A lamp began with a clay-snake, just like the kind she’d once mad
e in state-care art class out of colored dough. The snake was coiled into a fat, shallow bowl with a bit of a lip for a mouth. Smooth down the sides, pinch the lip tight at one end to hold the wick (but not all the way closed), set it on a tray to be fired, and that was a lamp.

  “Use it all,” Hruuzk ordered, patting her on the head again. “Do a good job and I’ll tell Zhuqa what a hard-working woman he has.”

  “Fuck you and him,” Amber muttered, concentrating on smoothing her lamp without thinning out the side.

  “Good girl. Crook-Toe, let’s go.”

  So the next time she heard the door unlock, she thought it was Hruuzk again. She’d only made four lamps and she was a little relieved when it opened on the raider Dkorm instead, along with Xzem and two crying babies.

  Dkorm looked around the workpit with an expression of profound disgust, kicked an empty bag out of his way, and stomped over to sit on a crate. The children who had been squabbling and playing through their work all morning withdrew very quietly to another room. The lizardladies bent their necks and focused even harder on whatever task was at hand. Dkorm pulled a heavy-looking sack of something over, punched it down in the middle, and put Rosek in the depression. She tried to climb out at once. He slapped her and thumped her down harder. Xzem flinched at the sound of the blow, but only bent her head at her child’s howl of pain.

  “Fucking sprat. Shut up and lie there. Xzem, I swear before God and Gann, if you don’t quiet your little dip—”

  “She’s hungry,” Xzem whispered.

  “Then feed it! Do I have to tell you to do everything?”

  Xzem crept over, hesitated, and held out the baby.

  Dkorm folded his arms. “I don’t want it. Put it down. Anywhere,” he added as Xzem looked helplessly around. “Just put it—shut the fuck up!” he roared suddenly and Rosek, who had in fact been winding down now that her mother was beside her, went right back into screams.

  Amber gave her lamp a vicious finishing pinch and stalked over to take Zhuqa’s baby. It turned toward her at once, its small cries quieting. Xzem snatched up Rosek and retreated. Dkorn leaned back and laughed at both of them.