“Men will do much for gold,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Conflicting leaders, self-proclaimed and assertive,” said Otto, “in the midst of men fetching water, forbade entry upon the premises. The stink of burned, and burning, flesh was about. Finally, the unreluctant, tenacious flames, protesting amidst hissing steam and billowing smoke, must subside, that to the point where men might, to the consternation of erstwhile leaders who counseled patience and division, invade debris and ashes. They did so, from all sides, unheeding, like swarms of eager filchen. Coins abounded, strewn about, some dark, defaced with ash and soot, others scattered here and there like bright, hot pebbles. Men scrambled to seize them. Bodies were rifled. And woe to those who seized a prize and foolishly sought to escape. Many were hunted down in the streets and alleys. Some flung gold about, that others, retrieving it, would be delayed in their pursuit. The wisest, finding a coin, would endeavor to conceal it. Many fortunes were won and lost that day.”
“And so,” said Titus Gelinus, “a thousand or so pieces of gold were distributed in the streets of Telnar.”
“And doubtless now still, under the behest of knives and clubs, continue to change hands,” said Julian.
“Without law,” said Tuvo Ausonius, “even crime becomes impractical.”
Solemnly was the emperor regarded.
“So,” said Otto, “it was in the tavern I learned that it was done, the siege of the sturdy house, a war, small but terrible.”
“Ill news, indeed, for us,” said Iaachus, “the fall of the sturdy house, it no longer concealing the trove of Corelius.”
“Wolves could then seek new prey,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Rejoice,” said Otto, “some time was purchased.”
“At least,” said Julian, “our puzzle has been solved, the respite, the silence, the vacant square, the mystery of delay.”
“Let me go!” cried Corelius, bound, lying on the floor of the balcony. “I have no wish to die with you!”
“Time was earlier purchased, as well,” said Otto, “when we encouraged Safarius to issue the signal prematurely, this disrupting the plans of Sidonicus, and loosening unguided, uncontrolled crowds into the streets, crowds soon, following the lure of license, turning to arson, destruction, and looting.”
“Predictably,” said Tuvo Ausonius, “fires were ignited, intentionally or inadvertently, and must be dealt with, not only to save the city, but the very lives of the rioters, the arsonists, and looters as well.”
“But flames much subsided and circumspect calm soon prevailed,” said Julian.
“Then,” said Iaachus, “the agents of Sidonicus doubtless began to harangue and regather the crowds, to direct an attack upon the palace itself.”
“As the palace goes, so goes Telnaria,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“But,” said Iaachus, “the beasts of the street, goaded and guided, did not yet pounce.”
“It was then we were indebted to dear Corelius,” said Otto, “who had tried to change a gold piece into silver.”
“Better I had drunk from puddles and stolen bread,” muttered Corelius.
“Following the seizure of the trove of Corelius,” said Otto, “rumors of obtainable wealth abounded, initiating a new cycle of savage inquiry and methodological looting, this further disrupting the plans of Sidonicus.”
“Giving us more time,” said Julian.
“But,” said Otto, “it soon became clear that much wealth had left the city, or was concealed, perhaps secured in walls or buried in cellars, or that it existed, but was distributed in tens of thousands of households, a handful of coins here, a handful of coins there, any coin of which might be stoutly defended. A man whose life depends on pennies will defend those pennies as gold. One calculates; one balances risk and gain. Few will choose to risk death for copper. So it soon became clear that the trove of Corelius might well be unique. Then, as might be expected, those who had seized the trove, and those whom they had recruited as allies, and guards, were sought. Did they not have graspable riches? Surely. Then, as they were closely pursued and found themselves unable to flee, they seized, and retired to, a stout house, a sturdy house, the house in question, to fortify and defend it, and set themselves to withstand the inevitable assault and siege.”
“Which house has now fallen,” said Julian.
“Yes,” said Otto.
“Which indeed bodes ill for us,” said Iaachus.
“The agents of Sidonicus,” said Julian, “doubtless hint that a hundred troves, such as that of Corelius, lie within the palace.”
“Of course,” said Iaachus.
“I see nothing,” said Julian, peering outward. “The great square, the plaza, is clear.”
“The palace is silent,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“It is muchly deserted, largely empty,” said Iaachus.
“We are few,” said Julian, he of the Aureliani, “some officers, a handful of Otungs.”
“There is no signal from the dock district,” said Iaachus.
“The Otungs on Tangara will not intervene,” said Tuvo Ausonius. “They would not surrender their lands, their women and children, to the Heruls.”
“In any event,” said Julian, “there is no time. Tangara is far.”
“I see no hope, friends,” said Iaachus.
“‘Friends’?” asked Julian.
“Even you,” said Iaachus.
The two men clasped hands.
Otto lifted his head, and raised his hand. “Do you hear it?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Julian, after a time.
The sound was far off and faint.
“It is a hymn of Floon,” said Iaachus.
“There must be a great number of voices,” whispered Tuvo Ausonius, listening, awed.
“It is easy to see why religion is so popular,” said Julian. “It appeals to what is darkest and most terrible in human beings. It may be used to justify any crime or horror. One wishes to be special and superior, so one is. One wishes to burn, loot, and kill, so, properly guided, one may. Hatred and intolerance, suitably directed, become virtues. How many, I wonder, have died in the names of a thousand gods? Those who yesterday were arsonists, looters, rioters, killers, and thieves, the hating, rabid, destructive mobs, are now the devout and faithful, the redeemed and exonerated, ready now, eager now, singing, to burn and kill, as permitted, as directed, in the name of sweet, gentle Floon, loving prophet of the god, Karch.”
“Floon is betrayed,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Perhaps he should not have preached to beasts,” said Julian. “He should have left them in the jungle.”
“How hungry they are in their holiness,” said Iaachus.
“Flee,” begged Corelius. “Take me with you!”
The sound of the hymn was now much clearer, and much louder.
“I see them,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
It seemed dark swarms, or herds, were at the far edge of the square. The street behind them was filled, like a river between buildings.
“They advance,” said Julian.
“Is Sidonicus with them?” asked Tuvo Ausonius.
“It is unlikely,” said Otto. “The crowd is his weapon. Weapons are dangerous. They are most safely wielded from afar.”
“Crowds may be manipulated with impunity,” said Tuvo Ausonius.
“Not always,” said Iaachus.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Urta, the Otung, looked down at the bellied slave at his feet.
“Off your belly and on your feet, meaningless slave,” said Urta. “From here we can see.”
The slave struggled to her feet.
Wind, swift, chilly, fierce, and relentless, sped across the roof of the building, on the east side of Palace Street. Yana, barefoot in her thin, brief, ragged tunic, shivered, her eyes half closed, her uncombed, tangled blond hair swept to
her left. About her throat, locked, was a number collar. She felt a tug on the leash, and hurried to respond. She then stood beside him, looking over the balustrade. Her hands were braceleted behind her back. She was gasping, breathing heavily, for she had been hurried through the streets, into the building, and up the long flights of stairs. The sweat on her body, from her climb, was cold on her body. Her leash looped up to his hand. It was a long leash; coiled and shortened, it afforded, like the common leash, perfect slave control; uncoiled, it afforded the master enough material to bind a slave, hand and foot, with enough material left over, folded on itself two or three times, to administer discipline.
“We can see the plaza, and the palace,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
She saw the great plaza, or square, and the fountains, now dry, and, beyond, in the distance, stately and imposing, the palace.
“See the palace?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“It is faraway, is it not?” he asked.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Worlds away from you,” he said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“Once, you lived there,” he said, “in indolence and pampered luxury. Perhaps you remember your former life, your riches and grandeur.”
Tears formed in her eyes.
“You were a worthless free woman,” he said. “Now for the first time in your life, you have some value, slave value, if only in pennies.”
“Please be kind,” she said.
“That is enough,” he said. “Belly, slave.”
She lowered herself to her belly. “How helpless are slaves,” she thought. “How men keep us!”
Yana was familiar with Telnarian custom, and Telnarian law. She had no hope of regaining her freedom, not merely because of the onrushing course of contemporary events, so inimical to the fortunes of her family, but even in more stable, placid, or typical times. Abundant was the folk wisdom on such matters. “An enslaved woman is besmirched and stained, to the last cell of her body. She can never again be free. She is spoiled for freedom. It is dishonorable and offensive, unthinkable, for a woman who has once worn the collar to be freed. How insulting to free women! Would you permit a woman who has once been a slave to walk again amongst free women, as though an equal? How demeaning and insulting that would be to free women! She has been irretrievably changed and degraded. Let her then be despised, scorned, and beaten. She is a slave.” “If a woman is in a collar she belongs in a collar. If she is in a collar, she should be in a collar.” “For a man the whip is right, for a woman, the collar.” “All women wish to be in collars, and thus, knowing in their hearts that they are worthless and despicable, put them in collars.” “The woman who wants a master knows she is a slave, and should be a slave.” “By nature, man is master and woman slave.” “Women belong on their knees, at the feet of men.” “Women wish to be subject to the whip. In that, they know they are women.” Much was the tumult of thought in the mind of Yana. She knew that she had never felt so feminine, so sexual, so helplessly and fully female, as in her collar. Families who recovered an enslaved daughter or sister, she knew, were commonly so scandalized and dishonored, that they did not free her, but disposed of her in some market, commonly faraway. If she was freed and kept, she was commonly kept sequestered, hidden away from public view, that her shame be concealed from society. Yana feared and hated Urta, and the miseries he inflicted on her, but she did not fear and hate being a slave. Never before had she felt so alive and vital. Being owned, being possessed as an object, she felt radiant and fulfilled. She wished to submit, will-lessly and joyfully. She remembered the arms of Ingeld. She felt ready, even eager, to be chained naked to the foot of his couch. Why not? Had she not learned she was a slave?
“The attack, temporarily disrupted and delayed, given an inadvertence in signals, is now readied,” said Urta.
“I beg, again,” she wept, her cheek to the surface of the roof, “to be permitted to warn those in the palace.”
“There is no time, even were I to permit it, which I would not,” said Urta.
He then looked, again, over the balustrade. The wind tore at his hood.
Yana felt warmer, now, prone, lying on the roof, sheltered from the wind by the balustrade.
Urta looked out toward the square and palace. Yana pulled a little at the bracelets which confined her hands behind her back. Thoughts raced in her mind. “He is distracted,” she thought. “If only he would drop the leash, I might rise up, and slip away, descend to the street, and hurry across the square. I could be gone before he noticed!”
“By nightfall,” said Urta, “the palace will be in the hands of the people, the glorious, sovereign people, herded forward to do the will of their masters. All slaves do not know they are slaves. All puppets do not know they are puppets. The terror of the usurper will be ended. Your supposed son, the infant, will be acclaimed emperor. Ingeld, his putative father, will be proclaimed regent. All will be ratified by the senate and blessed by the exarch of Telnar.”
“What of my brother, Aesilesius, and the empress mother?” asked Yana.
“Gone, dead,” said Urta.
“No!” protested Yana.
“Aesilesius, deposed and superseded, would have been put away by the usurper, long ago. Why should Aesilesius, an embarrassment, a useless presence, a possible center about which resistance might coalesce, be permitted to live?”
“Do not speak so, I beg you,” said Yana.
“How ignorant you are of statecraft,” said Urta.
“The usurper, though a barbarian, is a man of honor,” said Yana.
“On his part, an expedient hypocrisy,” said Urta.
“Surely not,” said Yana.
“Meanwhile a pillow, a blanket, a cushion, not the honor of a knife, or bow string, has sufficed to silence the vain, half-mad hag, the empress mother,” said Urta. “No longer does she rule by means of an idiot child. I surmise two dark sacks, months ago, one moonless night, were discreetly lowered into one carnarium or another.”
“No,” said Yana. “No!”
“Listen!” said Urta. “Hear it?”
“What?” said Yana.
“The hymn,” said Urta. “Thousands march, singing.”
“Yes,” said Yana, suddenly. “Far off.”
“It grows louder,” said Urta.
“Let me hurry to the palace!” begged Yana.
“I do not understand why there are no Otungs, no auxiliaries, no soldiers, no police, no guards, before the palace,” said Urta.
“Let me go!” begged Yana. “Perhaps warned, some could escape.”
“Strange that you should be solicitous of those who ruined your family, seized its throne, and slew your brother and mother.”
“Please!” begged Yana.
“Quiet,” said Urta, looking over the balustrade, and then back, to his right, up Palace Street. “I see them!” he said. He then shielded his eyes and looked, again, toward the palace. “I see no signs of defense, or flight,” he said. “Perhaps the palace is empty, abandoned. I trust it will not be pulled down, brick by brick, stone by stone, or burned.”
The singing was now easily audible.
Yana looked about as she could, back, toward the door through which they had reached the roof.
As Urta looked toward the palace, intently, Yana rose to her feet in such a way as to stress the leash as little as possible. It was held, with its coils, in Urta’s right hand, loosely. She suddenly lunged away, the leash strap at the side of her neck, jerking the leash from Urta’s hand, and sped toward the door.
“Stop!” cried Urta, spinning about.
In a moment Yana had reached the door.
She jerked wildly, desperately, at the cuffs that confined her hands behind her back, and turned her back to the door, reaching
back for the handle to lift it, to then turn, slip through the opening, and rush down the stairs. But her confined hands were no sooner clutching at the handle than she, back to the door, of necessity facing back toward the balustrade, saw, to her misery, the rushing form bearing down upon her, saw that she could not escape, that Urta was upon her. Urta seized her by the hair and, with the palm and back of his hand cuffed her several times, striking her head back and forth. The world seemed to jerk about her, and her face burned and raged with the sting of her master’s attentions. Urta then recovered the leash and, turning about, angrily, dragged her rapidly, stumbling, back to the balustrade. There, with his foot, he swept her feet from beneath her and she fell to the floor of the roof. She felt Urta’s bootlike sandal on her back, holding her in place.
“You are a stupid slave,” he said.
Yana suddenly felt a slave’s terror, that of having been found displeasing by her master.
Urta stepped to the side, loosening, and then folding together the strands of the leash.
“Forgive me, Master!” she begged.
A rain of blows then fell upon her, angrily, fiercely, from the triple-folded leash, and she wept in misery, punished.
“Please, stop, please stop, Master!” she cried.
How natural, and appropriate, she felt her cry. Shaken, she realized its authenticity. It was an indisputable slave’s plea to her master for mercy!
Urta took the leash down and back, beneath her trembling, prone, stinging form, pulled her ankles up, high, behind her, crossed them, and tied them together.
“You have not behaved well,” said Urta, standing up, looking down at his lovely, well-tethered property, surely a not unattractive girl beast.
“Let me proceed to the palace,” she wept. “There may yet be time to urge flight!”
“You are a slave,” he said. “I may dispose of you in a carnarium.”
“Please, no, Master!” she begged. She was a slave. It could be done with her, as with any animal.
She, a slave, was overcome with terror, and horror.
Urta thrust his bootlike sandal toward her, where her head was tied down by the leash strap, inserting the heavy sandal between the surface of the roof and her mouth.
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