“Oh, Skelern, this is — surely most improper, please, go and dress yourself.”
He wanted to laugh. But he went to fetch his shirt, instead. “If my little maistress doesn’t think it seemly, I would suggest she not come looking for her mother’s gardener come spring. A man likes to work in his hip-wrap when it’s hot, sweet Sylyphe.”
She was blushing as deep as a vine-ripened acid-plum, and she did it very prettily, too. Well, perhaps not; her cheeks were blotched and blighted with embarrassment. It looked pretty enough to him.
“I shall carry bells. And call out warning. What are you doing, Skelern?”
She was interested in gardening, that was true. “I’m heading the late starchies. If you don’t trim them to the ground they waste themselves away in the winter light as though it was spring, and you lose the spring blossom.” Bending down for a clump of leaves, he shook it free of dirt to offer it to her, half-joking. “Flowers, for the little maistress of the house?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Imagine, wearing a vegetable.” And yet she tucked the base of the leaf-bundle into her bodice, and arrayed the green leaves carefully in a symmetrical pattern upon her bosom. “There, how do I look?”
“As if you were wearing a vegetable. Of course. What were you calling to me, on your way out? A party for me, is it?”
“Um.” She was distracted by her corsage still, making further adjustments. There had been a year when such rubbish as Sylyphe’s corsage would have been his dinner. They’d eaten less likely things not so very long ago. “Gardeners for the Danzilar prince’s garden, to make ready for his party. Mother’s offered you, but you’re to be paid, of course, and to have a holiday after.”
He wasn’t quite sure that he liked being “offered,” as if he were a bundle of packaging. Still, the Tavart treated him well enough to take the sting out of any real resentment on his part. Surely the Tavart had earned the right to lend him out, with pay and bonuses. There was a good deal to be said for the contractual value of a new coat before winter, and a warm dry room safe from the weather for his bed. “Tell me about the party, Sylyphe. Am I to have a day to finish up my starchies, here?” He wasn’t going to want to let the tubers go. He needed a day or two yet in the late sun to be ready for the ice that was to come.
She dimpled at him, seeming grateful for a chance to talk about it. “It’s to be three weeks yet before the Fleet arrives. The master-gardener says a week’s worth of work, but a month’s pay is offered, Skelern, say that you aren’t cross? I mean — ”
She meant that he was prickly with her on the issue of being told where to go and how to go when he got there. “Na, there’s good to it, then. Plenty of time to finish up what’s needful.”
It was a little selfish of him to be so self-absorbed when she was all alone here and aching with the excitement of it all. Once the Danzilar arrived there would be more doing in Port Burkhayden, and probably more company for Sylyphe — company more suited than his to her high place.
“And your Lieutenant, Sylyphe, tell me about him, do.” No doubt he’d go back to being “Gardener Hanner” then, if she had time to speak to him at all. It was probably just as well.
He could not bear to think of Sylyphe trying to cope with the life of a Nurail gardener with one small room in a gardener’s shed of a wintertime, and that was the sum of the best he could ever hope to offer her.
“G’herm Wyrlann. Fleet First Lieutenant, Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok.” She spoke the uncouth name with careful precision, as if testing the contours of it in her mouth with studious attention. “Command Branch, and he looks very stern. The uniform! And Security, they all move perfectly, Skelern, perfectly, you should just see them.”
She’d been with her mother to some public function, no doubt. As prepared as Sylyphe was to be excited they could have sent a maintenance crew, and Sylyphe would have taken them for splendid.
“The Danzilar in four weeks. Oh, your mother’s to be busy.” Parties all over town, no doubt. He’d want to see about forcing some of his second flat of ice-blooms; the Tavart liked the ice-blooms, and she made good capital of them as well. The Danzilar wanted to exploit the specifically Nurailian nature of its newly indentured world. Ice-blooms were apparently a useful token of Iaccary Textile and Cordage’s commitment to the Danzilar’s goals.
And on the tail end of his musing, a random thought, come strolling forward from his mouth before he saw it. “Shan’t be having much time to chat with you, Sylyphe.”
She bridled at the idea, seeming as surprised as he was to have heard it. “Why, whatever can you suppose that to mean, Skelern ?”
There was a silence for a moment, each staring at each, she and he confused alike by why the thought had come and why it had seemed so objectionable. Then Sylyphe recovered herself, to an extent. It was her breeding.
“There will be plenty of time to talk. Later. There’s winter gardening, I’ve read about it, I want to hear all that you can teach me.”
But her reassurance, gracious as it was, came too late for either of them. The point had been made, and there was no recalling it. Gardener Hanner it was to be. There was no way it could be otherwise.
“Later, of course.” He could only agree, or else give offense. He said it with a certain heaviness of heart all the same. “You’ll want to go into the house, before your mother catches you with a tuber in your bosom.”
“Oh, Skelern, don’t be silly. As if Mother would care.”
There was no longer any conviction in her protest.
She removed the now-wilting greens with grave decorous grief, and handed them back to him without meeting his eyes.
###
Standing in the empty echoing foyer of the Center House, G’herm Wyrlann eyed the overgrown garden through the unwashed panes of the old-fashioned clear-walls with distaste. Captain Lowden’s promises aside, he was not enjoying his brief taste of absolute power; there was so little to have power over — so little privilege to abrogate or enjoy.
Fleet’s provisioners had done their job too well, down to the very last. There was precious little left to beguile a man in Port Burkhayden, and there would be no one to carpet these bare dirty floors — to hang the high walls with insulating fabric as a barrier to the damp falling dark — to stock the kitchen with anything more than survival rations; not until Danzilar came.
“Oh, yes, very well done indeed,” he snarled, at no one in particular. He’d been all over the port inside of the past few hours — what there was left of the port. “Nothing left in the armory, nothing. Nothing left in Administrative Quarters. Nothing left here, and I swear that it would not surprise me if the local Bench itself had been carted off to Stores.”
His contact, the Fleet Liaison Officer, merely bowed as if in receipt of a compliment. And Wyrlann hadn’t meant it as a compliment. The local Fleet Liaison had gone disgustingly native, from what Wyrlann could gather. He’d received the mildest of the comments Wyrlann had felt called upon to make about Nurail, about Meghilder, about Port Burkhayden itself in particular with a blank stare of disapproval that Wyrlann hadn’t cared for, not at all.
No doubt the Fleet Liaison was already on Danzilar’s payroll behind Fleet’s back. The Danzilar’s local majordomo certainly seemed comfortable enough with him; and the Danzilar’s majordomo was Nurail, probably Free Government. There was no getting away from Nurail at Burkhayden. The place was filthy with them.
Nor had the welcoming party been so much as properly coached in the expected expressions of respect and gratitude; it had instead been apparently assembled more or less by accident, through mere word of mouth.
Four weeks until the Ragnarok arrived, and he was stuck here until then. If he’d realized that it was going to be like this, he would have suggested Lowden send ap Rhiannon instead of him. It would have been a good experience for the crèche-bred junior officer to be isolated in the middle of a derelict port for four weeks with only a suspicious — and suspiciously reserved — Fleet Lia
ison Officer for company.
Wyrlann sighed. The sun was going down, and if the draft was any indication the wind was picking up as well. “I’ve seen all I need to see of this, for now. Which isn’t saying much.” He had no intention of spending the night here, with the heating systems all turned off and no liquor to be had.
He hadn’t any doubt that the majordomo’s personal quarters were comfortable and luxurious enough, but Artigen was just the sort of icicle-up-his-ass administrative officer to take exception to any suggestions on Wyrlann’s part that they go find out. “There’s a service house here, isn’t there? Or have you had that shipped out as well?”
Now the majordomo answered, and he hadn’t been spoken to. Wyrlann wondered that Danzilar’s people would put a Nurail in a position of such influence and authority. On the other hand it was Danzilar’s lookout if the Nurail robbed him blind. “There is indeed, Fleet Lieutenant. It’s part of the contracted package, still in place for the Danzilar prince’s use.”
Which probably meant that it wasn’t very profitable, which in turn probably meant that it wasn’t much of a service house. As if anything different could be expected in this stinking Nurail port full of stinking Nurail. Still, as a Command Branch officer he didn’t have to pay at service centers.
He could have anything he wanted for the asking. And for now what he really wanted was a little entertainment. The service house would be adequately heated, if nothing else. “Well, let’s go, then.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.” Artigen, once more; Wyrlann was glad to see that at least the Nurail hadn’t forgotten his place to the extent of presuming himself to be included. “Your Security as well? Of course.”
Captain Lowden would expect him to evaluate what amenities remained in Port Burkhayden.
Good subordinate officers were quick to anticipate and execute the wishes of their senior officers.
###
She’d told young Hanner that she would tell him all about their new maisters. That she had. So Megh examined this Ragnarok’s First Lieutenant covertly as she set his mea] to table, mindful of the necessity to keep the inner elbow-point of her patterned shawl out of the food.
Not a sound. Not a single clink or bell-like ting or muffled thud; she knew the trick of it, setting the place without a single stray bit of noise to distract the officer. Tallish. Stoutish, but like it was all muscle and bone, no hint of any easy living, any fat. Mouth that seemed always in a sneer, even drinking his liquor, which should make a man at least stop frowning if it didn’t make him smile.
She glanced over at the officer one too many times and met his cold sarcastic gaze, which quite unnerved her. Startled, she let the silence stretch too far for a graceful recovery, and the realization unbalanced her even more. She bent her head to stare at the napery still in her hands, thinking hard and fast.
“The Lieutenant is but half a day in Burkhayden, yet?” she asked with studied timidity in her voice, falling back into the exaggerated Nurail lilt expected of her for camouflage. “How does the officer take to our salt sea, and our proud new sky-starport?”
Burkhayden had been a seaport, once, but the marsh had gotten too far into the bay, and the Jurisdiction had not cared to dredge for navigability when higher tolls could be taken in other channels.
“Can’t say that I like it at all.” The voice was harsh, amused. She knew that voice; it meant that she’d become a target, once again. That was what she was here for, of course, her primary function; one wretched Nurail slave to mock at, so that the Jurisdiction could forget tile menace that it had once felt from the war-weaves.
“Well, it’s a poor mean place, compared to what the officer — ”
He interrupted her without the slightest hint of discomfort. “You’re Nurail, aren’t you? I know the accent.”
Of course the Lieutenant knew the accent. It was the Jurisdiction Standard accent for a Nurail slave, one she had learned early on. The fact that it had nothing to do with any honest Nurail lilt that she had ever heard was just another part of the point that they were making about Nurail.
“I wonder that you caught it, sir, it takes a keen ear — ”
Interrupting again, with obvious relish this time, the Lieutenant — Megh realized — was enjoying the fact that he was being rude. That he could be as rude as he liked with impunity. “Don’t try any of that whore-pap on me. I know better. That’s not a Nurail pattern, either, so what was your weave? Tell me about it.”
Yes, the old question, the old chore. Swallowing a sigh of resignation Megh lifted the shawl down from her right shoulder, and began to count the callings that defined her life.
“Seven tones in a Nurail scale, and four half-tones to each. This color of green’s the chord called Dogwood Blossom. These notes together in this set, these chords, it’s the defining phrase for the tune of Dancing Meggins, which has been a treaty-record tune once of a time. So this space of threads gives you the Nurail Conventions at Berrine, before the Political Stabilization Acts, and here — ”
He’d risen from the cradle-chair he had been resting in and come to stand near her. The house’s best room it was, separate bath, no sound from the outside, bed big enough for five to sport in. She’d spent her time in a room like this, but not recently. She was beginning to show too much of her history, and was only bidden to smaller, more utilitarian rooms when she was bidden to provide sexual services at all.
“I thought I told you. I already know that’s not a Nurail weave.”
She couldn’t decide on his tone of voice, whether gentle or threatening. She did know that it made her uncomfortable.
“With the officer’s permission, it’s the only weave the Bench will have me speak of — ”
“Not good enough.” Draining his glass, he sat down on the table so forcefully that the cutlery jumped. “I told your proprietor that I wanted amusement. I don’t need to. hear the damn fake weave, I want to hear your weave. The one you used to have. Before you got what’s coming to any insurrectionary, you filthy little traitor.”
And she wasn’t an insurrectionary except by default, and she wasn’t any kind of a traitor, not to her weave and kind. The weave she wore was the only one she was allowed to tell over in public. It was the only one that people were permitted to demand of her.
“Begging the officer’s pardon, but it is my weave, it has been so for going on ten years . . . “
Eyes respectfully lowered, she didn’t see the hand coming across her face, and the shock almost as much as the blow itself made her stagger back half-collapsing to the ground.
“Your weave.” Crouching over her, now, and the smell of his breath was heavy with malice and liquor. “Tell your other customers whatever damn lies you please. But to me you tell the truth, understand?”
Well, it seemed clear enough. But she could not speak of her weave even to please a difficult patron, even if it might save her a beating. Her father’s people had held the Narrow Pass. She was strictly prohibited to rehearse it, and her governor made sure she would not do the forbidden thing.
“The Fleet Lieutenant surely understands better than anyone else. The weave, it’s proscribed, I may not — ”
This time she saw the blow coming, but she couldn’t avoid, it even so. Back against the heavy base of the sideboard she went, and fetched her head sharply up against it.
“I’ve had just about enough of this. Do you have any idea who I am?”
Oh, yes. She knew exactly who he was. He was a bully who beat up women, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. Influential patrons were left more or less to do as they pleased, as long as the house got its money.
Still, his musical entertainment would be coming, she could get away from him when the musicians came. And the establishment husbanded its livestock responsibly. They would not let her suffer too much pain after an undeserved beating.
“His Excellency is the First Lieutenant of the Ragnarok, Command Branch — ”
He dragged her away from the side
board and hit her yet again, keeping a good grip on her arm so that she couldn’t put any distance between them. “Wrong. Dear me. The little whore thinks I’m an Excellency. Is that what you think, little whore? Do you think that I’m an Excellency?”
He wouldn’t stop hitting her face, and her thoughts rattled against each other into incoherence with each blow. The inside of her cheek was cut against her teeth. It was difficult to speak distinctly.
“The officer is Command Branch, surely.”
“But not an Excellency. Maybe it’s Koscuisko you have in mind. He spent a lot of time getting to know you Nurail, remember? At the Domitt Prison?”
She kept on trying to get away. She knew he hadn’t cleared this with the housemaster, and she couldn’t help but try to escape pain. She tried, but his grip was like iron, and it only seemed to make him angrier.
“Everyone knows about Black Andrej. And the Domitt Prison.” Keeping her voice low on instinct, Megh kept testing for the right approach to appease him, to get him to stop for long enough for her to get away. Once she could get away she would be safe, the house staff would surely intervene to protect her. She couldn’t be beaten for not singing her weave, even had her governor permitted it. It was a killing offense to sing any weave, let alone a war-weave like the Narrow Pass.
“Oh, well, perhaps you’re disappointed, then. You’d sing the weave for him, soon enough, but not for me, is that it?”
He shook her and let her go, but she couldn’t get to the door, because her legs came out from underneath her as soon as he released her upper arm. And he was still talking. It was important to pay attention to what he was saying; she had to find a way to placate him.
“I’ll tell you something, though. I’ve seen him work. There’s really nothing very complicated to it. Anything he can do, I can do, and better.”
Hour of Judgement Page 5