by R. Lee Smith
“I have not released this city,” Meoraq said at length.
Onahi raised his spines slightly in acknowledgement. He did not answer.
“Praxas stands in the shadow of Uyane,” Meoraq said. “Open to me.”
“I am barracks-ward here, sir,” Onahi told him. “I no longer hold a key.”
Barracks…ward? Meoraq had never seen that title held by a boy older than sixteen. “What is happening here?” he asked bluntly.
“They’ve gone to fetch the governor. It won’t be long. He’s been boarding here since you left us, sir. I turn his sheets,” Onahi added caustically. He glanced behind his shoulder and stepped aside as Warden Myselo lumbered into sight.
“Open this gate,” ordered Meoraq in what he felt was an admirably patient voice.
Warden Myselo drew himself up importantly and raised a hand in salute, not to Meoraq, but to one of the two men coming up the tunnel behind him. “Governor Rsstha Tolmar of House Rsstha, a son of Lonagra, who was son of—”
“I’ve never heard of you,” interrupted Meoraq, and knew at once which was Rsstha by the flattening of his spines.
“—a son of Posh’ar, who—”
“I am Uyane Meoraq,” said Meoraq, lowering his own spines with deliberate insolence. “Son of Uyane Rasozul, steward of House Uyane which is champion to the city of Xeqor in Yroq. Have you heard of me?”
“—who is Praxas in the sight of Sheul,” Myselo finished, flustered.
Governor Rsstha gave the warden a tap of release that did not quite reach the man’s actual shoulder. “I have,” he said. His voice was ridiculously deep and full coming from such a reedy, workless body. “Praxas welcomes you, Sheulek.”
Meoraq leaned back to run his gaze over the bars of the gate. “Such is Praxas’ welcome, eh?”
“We are happy to make provision for you on your journey. House Rsstha itself shall board you for however long you desire to rest within my walls, but before I open to your conquest, I will hear your intentions.”
How easy it would be to argue. Meoraq had never once been given so audacious an order in all his years of service and he thought no tribunal in the world would so much as call him for query if he cut Rsstha down for making it. He yearned to say this aloud…
Ah, but even valid arguments turned easily to insults, which had a way of building to a surge of temper when Meoraq was tired, even when he hadn’t been four days keeping a herd of unwanted women ahead of the murderous raiders who may be in pursuit. So instead of parrying the governor’s demand, Meoraq simply said, “I do not intend to stay. I will speak with the high judge here. Afterwards, I have a short list of needs for your provisioner and as soon as they are met, I will release your city and go. Open the gate.”
“You will go,” the governor repeated. “You and your…party?”
Meoraq’s temper, none too secure already, slipped. “Take the sneer out of your tone when you speak of them,” he said, and Myselo took a broad step back, bumping into his watchmen. “These women come from this city, your city, and it was here just days ago that their own fathers conspired to place them in Gann’s hands for coin.”
“You have proof of this accusation?”
His temper slipped again. “I am proof!” he snapped. “Are you involved in this commerce?”
“Certainly not!” The governor’s indignation did not appear to be feigned. “Neither have I any reason to question the judgments executed at my tribunals! These women were exiled according to the laws we are all sworn before God to uphold!”
“These women were not exiled, they were sold! That crime is unforgiveable and will be rooted out at its source and if those roots go as deep as the Governor’s Seat, so be it!” Meoraq bared his samr and stabbed it suddenly through the bars, restraining himself with less than a finger’s breadth between his blade and Rsstha’s neck. “Open this gate or here do I swear in the sight of Sheul that I will come through it.”
The governor hissed at Myselo and retreated to an ignoble distance with his aide. The nervous jangling of the warden’s keys could not quite cover the sound of their voices, but Meoraq did not care enough to listen. He returned to his herd with an itch under his scales and paced among them, coming to stand at last beside his wife. Predictably, the women shrank away, leaving a wide space around him.
And Amber.
Activity at the gate ceased. Rsstha came a few steps forward, staring, then retreated again. More hissing.
Warden Myselo opened the gate and raised a salute. “Honored one, the governor wishes to speak.”
“Is everything okay?” Amber whispered.
He glanced at her, wondering blackly how close he’d come to being able to just do what he’d come to do and walk away. He shouldn’t have pulled a sword on the governor. A Sheulek was supposed to be the master of his emotions at all times and this was probably why. Fuck.
“Stay here,” he said and went to see what the piss-licker wanted.
“The barracks-ward here will take your list of needs to be filled,” Rsstha said with a wave at Onahi. “And to arrange your meeting with the high judge. Until that matter is settled, I must insist the women be confined under arms. Regardless of the sins of their fathers, they still stand convicted of criminal acts and have by your own acknowledgement been exposed to further corruption in the grip of Gann.”
“Insist,” Meoraq said. His hand flexed on the hilt of his samr. “Go on.”
“The human.” Rsstha tucked his hands into his sleeves, oblivious to all danger. “My guards will take it now, honored one.”
“I’ll split the man who so much as…” Meoraq’s hiss died in his throat. His head cocked. “What did you just call her?”
“Human.” Rsstha flared his mouth and hissed delicately through his teeth. “It is the word for their monstrous kind.”
“It is.” Meoraq tipped his head further. “How did you come to hear it?”
Rsstha’s answer took few words. Meoraq stared at him, at Myselo, at the ceiling of the tunnel (which had several disturbing cracks). He took six deep breaths and six again. At length, he released the grip on his sword. He brought his eyes down and his spines up. He looked at Onahi.
“Do you have a room where these women can be held?” he asked. Calmly.
“Yes, sir.”
“And defended, if need be?”
Governor Rsstha bristled. Meoraq ignored him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Gather your men, then. See that the women of my party are provided food and fresh clothing. A bath, if one can be managed. And hold that door until you are given my word to open, do you mark me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Meoraq released Onahi, who left the tunnel at a soldierly run, and turned to Myselo. He leaned in very close, taking up every step that the warden tried to put between them, until there was a wall at the man’s back and Meoraq full in his face. “You know my father,” he said.
“I, eh, I’ve heard of him, sir.”
“You’ve heard of how he climbed the wall at Kuaq.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Killed one hundred and eleven men, alone. Killed the Raider-Lord Szadt.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who am I, warden?”
“Sheulek, sir.”
“Who am I?”
Myselo’s throat worked weakly as he cast his eyes about for aid. “Uyane?”
“I am Uyane. I am my father’s son. I am the Sword and the Striding Foot of Sheul. I am—” Meoraq caught the warden’s broad face and forced him to look at him. “—the man who comes to you now from the ruins where your Raider-Lord Zhuqa laired and who killed his way in and out to bring you these women. I did not count them,” he admitted. “I will not say that I have bettered my father’s tally at Kuaq, but I will tell you this, warden.” He yanked Myselo’s snout down so that he could lean even closer. “I can climb this wall.”
Myselo had no answer other than his rapid breath and the metallic stink of fear that rode it. Meora
q released him and went through the gate back to his women.
“A room is being prepared,” he told them. “You will rest there until permanent arrangements can be made. I want you with them for now,” he said to Amber.
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. “Not far,” was the best he could think of.
She took a small step toward him. “I want to go with you.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No. Get back!” He held up his hand and looked aside until she stepped away again. His throat felt hot. He rubbed it, breathing until he had lost some of the blackness that clouded his brain. Some. Not all. Rsstha’s words—those few, simple words—scratched bloody furrows in his head. Damn him. Damn them.
Onahi was back, waiting at the mouth of the tunnel with several armed watchmen. Meoraq put his women in a line with Amber at its tail and took them into Praxas. “To my word,” he reminded Onahi, “and no other.”
Onahi saluted. His men echoed him. They closed their small ranks around the women and marched them into darkness. Meoraq watched the cracks in the ceiling of the tunnel until they were gone.
“Take me to them,” he said, and felt his heart begin again to burn in spite of all his deep, calming breaths. “Now.”
* * *
Myselo lumbered off ahead of them, ostensibly to find a boy and a cart, but the governor’s carriage was waiting at the inner road, and over the governor’s outraged exclamations, Meoraq tore the standards off and took it for his own. Rsstha kept a bitter half-silence all the way to the Temple District, which was to say that he glared at Meoraq with his mouth shut tight while his aide made polite objections at regular intervals.
Meoraq ignored them both, meditating with his eyes open and his arms folded. He was quiet, but he was not calm.
There was no one at the gate of Xi’Praxas when they reached it. Meoraq had to bang on the bars with the hilt of his samr for several minutes before a swearing abbot finally let them in.
The inner halls were dark and empty. The abbot brought them a lamp and took himself back to his rooms, muttering loudly and in no uncertain terms about his cold dinner and certain slit-lickers who abused their powers of authority. Meoraq amused himself during much of the next walk debating whether it were himself or Rsstha who had been the slit-licker in question. His tendency to toy with the hilt of one blade or another as he waged this mental argument kept Rsstha and his aide very quiet.
He was led to the Temple’s infirmary, past several unattended watch-points, and at the end of the hall in the wing reserved for the needs of the oracles and the high judge, propped up against the wall with his arms folded and his chin tucked against his chest, was a watchman. He appeared to be asleep, but at least he was at his post. He roused himself at their footsteps to say, “Fifty rounds for a dip, five hundred goes an hour, next hour opens at—” He opened his eyes to check the time and saw them. His hands flinched to his sword-belt as his eyes darted to the door, but he drew nothing, and after a tense, considering silence, Meoraq saw him surrender.
Meoraq no longer knew what to expect behind the door, but he was suddenly intensely glad he had not brought Amber with him.
“What is the meaning of this?” Governor Rsstha demanded and his aide went scurrying forward, demanding that the door be opened and didn’t the watchman see that this was House Rsstha before him and who was his commander, what was his name, stand and answer.
The watchman dropped his arms to his sides, away from the hilt of his sword. He didn’t answer, didn’t even salute. His eyes were for Meoraq alone. “I wish to pray,” he said simply.
Meoraq drew his samr. “Do so.”
The watchman bent his brow to the ground and made his prayers in silence while Rsstha tried to take control of what he obviously perceived as an embarrassing breach of security which Meoraq had no right to judge. He was ignored, and after several minutes, the watchman rose, took the key from his belt and walked to the door.
“Hold where you stand! Honored one, I assure you, we will pursue this matter,” Rsstha said stiffly. “But I think it is not your place to—”
“My place,” said Meoraq calmly, pensively, and the governor fell silent at once. “My place is to enforce the law of Sheul. That is my place and I know it well. Your place is to run this city in accordance with those laws, and if you believe that doing so allows you to challenge me—” Meoraq’s eye at last broke from that of the silent man before him to slide back and stab at Rsstha. “—judgment shall be passed.”
The governor made a few flustered gestures, but couldn’t seem to think of anything to say.
Meoraq stared at him for a while, then glanced at the watchman. “Open the door and await the will of Sheul.”
“Outrageous,” the governor said again, but very quietly this time. He stalked away a short distance and came back, then had to do it again because the guard’s hands were shaking too much to work the key. For a time, the only sounds to be heard were the key rattling at the lock and the governor’s angry footsteps.
Until the door opened.
It was another guard, by the look of him, one still meant to be at his post somewhere in the city. The sound of his armored leg-plates striking against the bars of the cage rang out in discord against the weak cries of his prisoner.
This had not long been a prison. Meoraq could see that by the lightness of the mortar where the bars had been set, and the bars themselves were neither straight, nor smooth, but crude as it was, the cage was more than sufficient to hold the humans. The cage ran the length of the far wall, but was no deeper than a man’s arm could reach. There was nothing inside but the prisoners themselves, not even a pail to piss in or dried grass to soak it up. Grooves in the floor were clearly meant to carry wastes away, but they weren’t over-careful about using it; they were sitting in filth even now, just watching him. He saw recognition in no one’s eye, not even Scott’s.
“What the hell is this?” Rsstha demanded in a high, almost comical shriek.
The man at the cage bucked, startled into an early climax. He looked back at them, already furiously snarling out something about that not being anything like a full hour, but then really saw them. He froze, panting, wide-eyed, then shoved himself away from the bars, letting the body he’d been deep inside fall carelessly to the ground as he buckled his loin-plate hurriedly back in place. The girl in the cage rolled onto her side, reaching down between her legs to wipe his semen away.
For one terrible moment, even knowing she was safe under Onahi’s honest eye, he thought it was Amber. Then he saw it was Nicci, and he wondered if it made him an evil man that he felt even a moment’s relief. He would pray on that later. For now…
He counted ten men, and though he should have known them all, Scott was the only one of them he recognized straight away and only because his face was so hateful to Meoraq’s eye, even now as it was, bruised and smeared with unmentionable grime. Ten men and Nicci. Of forty-seven human lives, ten men survived. And Nicci.
“Is this all there are?” Meoraq asked.
Rsstha stammered for a second or two, then swung on the watchman, screaming, “How long has this been going on? How dare you? How long have you been selling time to these…these deviants? Answer me at once, you—”
Without turning, Meoraq slapped him across the snout, knocking the governor of Praxas sprawling across the floor. “Is this all of them?” he asked again, just as calmly.
“These are all that remain,” said the watchman.
“I assure you, I had no knowledge of this!” Rsstha said, scrambling to his feet. He shoved his aide away and aimed an accusing hand at the guard standing silent by Nicci’s cage. “This…this…bestiality shall be punished!”
Meoraq’s head cocked at a dangerous angle. “It is no sin for Sheul to urge a man to lie with humans,” he said. “We are all His children.”
Rsstha blinked rapidly for several seconds before, perhaps, visibly recallin
g Amber and the scar on her shoulder.
“It is no sin to feel that urge. The sin,” said Meoraq, “lies with selling it.”
The watchman took a deep breath and did his best to let it out slow. He raised his chin and closed his eyes. “My name is Seelat Vin.”
“Seelat Vin, you have broken the Fifth Law. You have made trade of flesh and so acted against the Word of Sheul. You have broken your faith with Him and as His Sword, I deem you unforgiveable. Stand and be judged.”
The nerve which had steadied the watchman until this point crumbled. He cried out for his father, flinching back from the cut that swept across his throat, but it was already over by then and the flinch only opened the fresh gap between head and neck that much wider. He staggered as blood poured in a dark flood across his chest and then fell, his last breath turning to froth under his sagging chin.
The humans in their cage at last showed some reaction, recoiling with even more force than the governor and his aide, who found themselves splattered with blood. And then one of them—he really should know the name—surged forward to seize the bars, saying, “Holy shit, that’s Meoraq!”
Meoraq paid the death a proper witness and then, with great effort, turned away. “Get out,” he said to the other guard. The humans set up an immediate clamor, beating on the bars and calling his name in their mangled way, but he ignored them for now and turned to Governor Rsstha. “Release them. Do you have a tablet?” he asked the aide.
“Release…? What?”
“Yes, sir,” said the aide, producing one from his deep sleeve, along with a stylus.
“I require…” He eyed the humans, blackly considering. “Four tents. Each human is to have a pack, two sets of clothing and a blanket. I will also have four travel-flasks and four bricks of cuuvash. You will take everything to Southgate immediately.”
“Honored one, you cannot take these creatures!” the governor stammered. “Sheul gave them to Praxas for study. They are mine!”
Meoraq turned on him fast and hissed, “If you claim possession, then you have broken the Fifth Law yourself! All of you! All who have penned these people as cattle, who force bestial behavior upon them against the Word of Sheul, have broken faith with Him! Do you submit to my judgment then or do you release them?”