by R. Lee Smith
“Cell? Did you kill him?”
“No. He was even at the tribunal, although he had to sit in a special litter and his face was mashed out of knowing.”
“Tribunal?” Iziz laughed, but quizzically, as if he suspected Zhuqa were having him on. “For throwing a poke into some bullying sprat?”
“No, for throwing a poke into some high-born bullying sprat after I’d beaten him into paste. They had it posted on the gate before the hour was out and they were ringing it to order at sunset.”
“Was that what you…?”
“No.” Zhuqa finished off the root and beckoned Amber back to him. Once she was again uncomfortably straddling his thigh, he went on. “No, that wasn’t what they had me for, although that might have been cause enough if they’d found anything in him. Fortunately, I hadn’t cum yet, so in the end, they let me go. I took a public whipping the next morning and I never heard another word about it, except I know they must have sent a message to my father because when I went home for the cold season, I found the little poke my father kept to scrub the floors waiting in my room without a stitch sewn on her.”
“Pretty?” asked Iziz, perking up.
“If you like the sort.” Zhuqa’s hand drifted over Amber’s belly and lightly rubbed. “A little too grey yet for my taste and her eyes were sloped funny, but Gann knows I could sell her here for more coin than I could easily hold. She put her hand on my slit and out came my cock and before the hour turned, I knew indisputably that God looked down from His heaven and loved me.”
“How many times?” asked Iziz. He was watching Zhuqa rub Amber’s stomach with sleepy, slightly glazed eyes.
“Twice.”
“Twice? You fucking waste of meat! Talk to me about God in His heaven when it’s ten times a poke! I fucked my mother more than twice a night!”
“Three is the sacred number of creation and belongs to God alone, you ignorant heathen.” Zhuqa’s hand dropped, pushing two fingers along her folds once or twice before crooking up inside her. Iziz watched that, too. “Piss like that used to matter to me,” he mused.
“Is that her making that sound?” Iziz asked abruptly. “Is she…oiling up at you?”
“No. I was in her once already tonight. Before you killed the mood and got me too drunk to care.” Zhuqa glanced over at the baby, which now lay quiet and perhaps sleeping at Xzem’s breast. “Got any teat-biters out there, Iziz?”
“Probably,” he said without much interest. “You want the rest of this?”
Zhuqa waved the hand that wasn’t working methodically at Amber’s pussy.
Iziz picked up the cup and drank it off. “I want to fuck now. I’m taking one of your slaves for the night.”
Zhuqa grunted and shut his eyes.
“Thought I’d mention. Manners are important to city-born scuff like you. Up, Xzem. Let Eshiqi give the sprat a tap and let’s go.”
Xzem crept forward and presented the wrapped baby from a servile crouch.
Amber looked at Zhuqa.
He grunted without opening his eyes or interrupting the rhythm of his fingers.
Amber reached out and brushed the back of her knuckles lightly across the baby’s snout. It roused at once, sucking sleepily, but began to drift away again almost immediately.
“And that was all it wanted, all this time,” said Iziz. “A smooth blanket.”
“Doesn’t care about the blanket.” Zhuqa fanned his spines forward with deep, drunken pleasure. “Wanted his mother’s touch. Something you would never understand.”
“Piss on that. My mother touched me plenty!” Iziz declared and, giving Xzem a light smack to the back of the head, herded her out and shut the door behind them.
“I’m sure she did,” Zhuqa murmured. “And I’m sure it felt like love. But you’ll never touch my child like that, will you, Eshiqi? Because you love it. And you just may be the only other person in this camp who knows that when you love someone, sometimes you don’t touch.” He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slow, patting Amber’s thigh. “Put yourself to bed,” he told her, and gave her a nudge off his lap. He made no effort to follow, only sat there with his eyes closed and one hand resting on the table near his empty cup.
He looked like he was sleeping already, but she thought that would change in a hurry if she so much as touched one of the knives he kept strapped to his arms or took even one step toward the door. Amber went over and climbed into the cupboard. Sliding the door shut made the bells jingle; she looked out to see if they’d disturbed him and found him already gazing back at her through slitted, cat-content eyes.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” he murmured. “The things you find to love in this life…so you don’t hate yourself so much for living it.”
She shut the door on him.
9
There was no real sense of time, but Amber thought three more days passed because she slept three times. Zhuqa fed her when they woke up—whatever they had left over from the night before, cold and greasy. He fed her when he brought her home from the workpit—mostly meat with baked roots, and once, some unknown animal’s head with roasted marrow bones. He had a bath brought on the second night and let her bathe herself, after she’d bathed him, of course. He made her talk to him, sometimes in her language, sometimes in his. He had sex with her every night. For hours.
She worked. Busy hands make a light heart, as Hruuzk was fond of saying. She learned to make bowls, plates and pitchers as well as lamps. She mended shifts, shirts and breeches, using anything beyond repair as patches. She pounded thousands of xuseth stalks through a sieve with a heavy wooden mallet for hour after hour to get one lousy jar of oil. And of course, at the end of each back-breaking day, there was plenty of lifting, packing, sweeping and scrubbing.
Three days.
On the fourth, things changed.
It was subtle at first. Hruuzk had been coming at mid-morning to take the children and some of the older slaves off to work in the gardens, kitchens or canals, but not today. This was just unusual enough that Amber noticed, but she hadn’t been there long enough to know what was routine and what wasn’t, so she thought nothing of it except how much more crowded the workpit was. What she noticed next was activity out in the halls, not the crash and roar of a violent rescue, but merely a clamor of boots and voices that grew steadily louder and more raucous throughout the day—the sound of a stadium crowd…or a mob working up for a riot.
The veteran slaves simply kept their heads down and their hands busy, and if they were at all anxious about what was going on outside, they did not show it. Amber tried to follow their example, but when the unseen crowd began to clap, shout and stomp their feet in unison, she threw whatever wicks she’d cut in the oil to soak and retreated to the back room to sit with Xzem and hold the baby. They were making so much noise it was impossible to be sure, but she thought they were chanting, “Meat.”
She didn’t have long to wonder what it meant. The shouting came to a sudden swell of cheers and then Hruuzk opened the door. The children ran to him at once, infected by the unruly energy out in the halls, but he turned them back after just a few words and clapped his hands to stop work.
“The bidding is about to start,” he called. “All my unstabled ladies, line up. Everyone else, keep working. No fussing,” he added, pointing sternly at Shivers, who had begun to tear up. “Until I have coin in my hand, you all belong to me and my ladies do not what?”
“Piss out of their eyes,” Shivers whispered.
“My ladies do not piss out of their eyes.” He gave her a forgiving pat on the head, using the gesture to put her in the forming line. “Gold-Eyes, Crook-Toe, you go last. They want you, they’ll have to pay for the rest of this lot first.” He glanced through the open door, assessing something in the crowd outside, then beckoned to Amber. “Eshiqi, come.”
She heard her name, saw him looking at her when he said it, and still it made no immediate sense to her. He couldn’t sell her, she was Zhuqa’s!
‘
Oh sure, now you’re Zhuqa’s,’ the ghost of her dead mother said with a caustic laugh. ‘If you wanted to hide behind his skirts, you should have played his game, little girl. You didn’t, so suck it up.’
But Meoraq was coming. He was supposed to find her, kill Zhuqa and get her out of here.
‘Well, he didn’t,’ Bo Peep said simply. ‘And this is exactly what you deserve for sitting on your ass and waiting for someone else to save you.’
Hruuzk, making a last inspection of his ladies before they passed out of his keeping, finally noticed she was still sitting next to Xzem. His head cocked. He turned around to fully face her and hooked his thumb behind the buckle of his belt.
Amber’s mind remained perfectly still, but her body did not want to be whipped before she was sold. She got up.
Watching her as he bounced Rosek roughly on his knee, Dkorm rattled out a laugh. “I believe that is surprise I see on that ugly face,” he remarked. “I told you it would happen, didn’t I? Although I confess I’m a bit surprised myself. Most of Zhuqa’s toy cunts last at least a year.”
“Did I hear my name?” Zhuqa asked, walking suddenly through the door with an expression of polite interest. “Was there something you wanted to say to me? Perhaps on the subject of my women?”
Dkorm snapped to attention, yanking Rosek into the crook of his arm and pinching her squalling snout shut with his hand. “No, sir! I was just…just…”
Zhuqa’s gaze dropped to Rosek and hardened. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Dkorm let go and actually swept his hand behind his back like a kid trying to hide a forbidden candy bar. Rosek gasped in air and shrieked it out. Xzem held Zhuqa’s baby and trembled. “Nothing, sir.”
“Eshiqi,” said Zhuqa. “Take Rosek.”
“Sir—”
Amber lifted the struggling baby and stepped back. In the next instant, Zhuqa was across the room with his hand around Dkorm’s snout, whose explanations became a choked wheeze.
“You,” said Zhuqa, very calmly, “are making me regret giving you this assignment. Do you think—”
Dkorm began to struggle.
“—I would give the care of my child to anyone? Eh? Answer me.”
Dkorm pitched himself back against the wall, slapping and scratching at Zhuqa’s restraining arm.
“I’m beginning to think you don’t want it in your care,” said Zhuqa. “And I’m beginning to feel offended.”
Amber could see Dkorm’s chest heaving, bulging outward with each whistling effort at breath like an alien parasite was about to burst free.
And then Zhuqa’s hand opened. With a howling gasp, Dkorm dropped flat over the crates, bags and barrels that had been his chair all day and just breathed for a while.
Zhuqa watched him until he’d lost the hoarse, shuddery quality on his inhales, and then he sat down beside him. “How are things with my child, Dkorm?”
“…fair…sir.”
“Good to hear. Good appetite, I trust?”
“…better.”
“Yes, it had some trouble early on.” Zhuqa glanced at Amber. “But we seem to have solved it. Cry much?”
“…some.”
“And Rosek, eh? Healthy?”
“…think so.”
“Healthy lungs, it would seem.” Zhuqa gave the baby in Amber’s arms a tolerant smile. “She’s quiet now, though. Do you know why she’s quiet now?”
And before Dkorm could suck in enough of a tortured breath to answer, Zhuqa the Warlord had seized him by the throat and yanked him up. “Because someone is comforting her,” he hissed. “Can you comfort a baby, Dkorm? Can you do that for me? Because babies cry, all babies cry, and when my baby cries, I want to know that the man I have honored with its care is not pinching its fucking mouth shut!” he roared, seizing Dkorm by the snout and shaking him hard.
Rosek, falling asleep in Amber’s arms, jerked and let out a wail. Amber rocked her, rubbing her little back as Xzem whispered and together, they quieted her to sniffles.
“Do you see that?” Zhuqa demanded, pointing. “Do you see how she did that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There are a lot of restless men waiting for this sale,” Hruuzk called.
“One thing at a time,” Zhuqa told him, and put his face very close to Dkorm’s. “My patience with you is right down to its last grains. So. Get up. Fetch little Rosek and if she cries and you can’t comfort her, I’m going to kill you. Do you mark me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go.” Zhuqa released him and unclipped the hooked sword from his belt.
Dkorm stood up, understandably shaky on his feet. He took a few steps toward Amber, hesitated when Rosek began to tear up, then very carefully took her and pressed her to his shoulder. He patted her back, mimicking Amber’s swaying motions, and did not appear to breathe at all until Rosek sniffled herself quiet.
“This has been,” said Zhuqa, “your final forgiveness.” He hung his sword back on his belt. “I suggest you go someplace private and meditate on that until you come to some lasting conclusion. Go.”
Dkorm went. Xzem twitched as if to rise and follow, but Zhuqa’s pointing hand defeated her. She settled back down, staring after Rosek with haunted eyes.
“Are you coming to watch the sale?” asked Hruuzk.
“No. My Eshiqi is upset and wants to go home.”
Hruuzk grunted and patted Amber on the head when she came close enough. “You know I’d never presume to give you advice—”
“Never,” Zhuqa agreed thinly, watching Dkorm disappear in the crowd.
“—but why haven’t you just given the sprat to Eshiqi to raise up?”
“For the same reason I haven’t given it to you.”
Hruuzk’s broken spines flared. “I could do it,” he said, sounding wounded. “Half the bodies under my hand are sprats, you think I don’t know how to raise one?”
“I think,” said Zhuqa, softening enough now that Dkorm was out of the room to give his slave-master a friendly tap to the arm. “I think you have enough to do. My Eshiqi has too much to learn right now. A child would be a distraction. Perhaps when it’s weaned and not so needful, eh?” He glanced back at Xzem, smiling. “It will need a mother when Xzem is gone.”
Xzem ducked her head and nuzzled at the infant that suckled her.
“I’ve never seen a slave so quick to take to a sprat,” Hruuzk agreed. “Must have lost one of her own. Sure you won’t come? I expect good coin for Gold-Eyes here.”
“I can trust you, can’t I?”
Hruuzk widened his good eye and pushed his broken spines forward. “Yes,” he said gravely. “Trustworthy as the wind and tides, sir. Why, my sire was turned out from Fol Mgesh for an excess of trustiness and to his great pride it was a trait I took on.”
“To it, then,” said Zhuqa, hunkering down to watch his child at Xzem’s breast. “We’ll settle tomorrow.”
“To his trust, men say of me,” Hruuzk loudly muttered, leading his slaves out into the packed hall. “And they’ll sing it at my pyre, I’m sure. All right then. Quiet up, you pack of animals! Quiet up and clear a path! If I can’t reach the bidding block, I’ll buy these dips myself and you can all poke each other!”
The door shut behind the last lizardlady, muting much of the noise, which then slowly receded as the men making it followed Hruuzk to wherever it was they went to auction slaves. At length, there was quiet. Even the children, as keyed up as they were, stayed in the back room and did their work without their usual chatter while Zhuqa was there.
“How is it, Xzem?” Zhuqa asked finally, gazing grimly down at the drowsing infant. “Say truth. Is it strong?”
Xzem hesitated.
“Truth,” he said again, his voice hard.
“It is not ill, my lord,” she told him.
“But…?”
“But it was a difficult birth and the mother…suffered. What weakens the womb, weakens the child.”
Zhuqa grunted, expressionless.
&nbs
p; “It has a good appetite and a strong grip. If it can be kept warm and dry and allowed to rest, it can grow strong.”
“Do you say it will live?”
Xzem bent her head even lower. “I say it can live, my lord.”
Zhuqa grunted again and stood. “There is a difference, isn’t there? All right. I’m pleased. Is there anything you require?”
“No, my lord.”
“You have enough to eat? And Rosek? She’s comfortable?”
“We are both kept very well, my lord.”
“Good. Eshiqi, come.”
The hall outside the workpit was empty now, but Amber could still hear the crowd somewhere in the labyrinth of the ruins, jeering and hooting as Hruuzk called out bids. Zhuqa tipped his head to listen, but took her to the stair and down into the dark.
“You’re very quiet,” he said, when they’d passed the last set of guards and were alone in the long corridor leading to his private room.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Again?”
She glanced at him, but he just kept walking with the same distracted look about him. “I don’t have anything to say.”
He grunted thoughtfully.
They walked.
“You’re quiet too,” she said.
“I’m a quiet man.”
Her feet rooted so suddenly that she stumbled. He caught her—he was so damned fast—and waited for her to steady herself before he continued on. He was smiling, just a little.
Lucky guess. It had to be. Meoraq had picked up English fast, but not that fast. All the same, she was glad she’d kept the bitchy out of her mouth for a change.
He unlocked his door and held it for her. His lamp was already lit inside. There was food on the table—tachuqi and roots and what looked like a short stack of pancakes. Zhuqa had to tap her shoulder to get her attention again. “Take off your clothes.”
She did and he took them, feeling out every fold before tossing the robe carelessly over a crate.