01 - The Compass Rose (13 page)

The male officer, in charge of passengers and cargo, if she remembered right, bowed. “I will see to it, naitan.”

“I will be watching your new ‘servant’ with careful eyes, naitan,” Torchay murmured as he gestured for Aisse to follow the other man.

“I expect nothing less.” Kallista gave him a wicked grin. “That’s why I’m putting her in your charge. See that she has what she needs—new clothes and a pair of shoes to start with. Probably food. And then, teach her Adaran.”

“I’m no scholar.”

“No.” She patted his shoulder. “Which means your teaching will be eminently practical. Just try not to teach her too many curse words.”

“Here! What are you doing? Are you mad?” A hand caught Stone’s arm, jerked him back.

Stone was standing at the prow of a boat, trying to climb onto the railing. The shackles he wore on his ankles and wrists wouldn’t allow it.

“Of course you’re mad,” the voice attached to the hand muttered. “What was I thinking?” It was male, belonging to the officer in charge of the soldiers escorting Stone up the river to the Adaran capital.

“Sergeant!” He shouted back down the length of the boat, and the fat guard from the prison came clattering up the stairs to the high foredeck.

“Sir!” The sergeant came to attention, obviously missing the presence of his pike. He had nothing to pound on the deck.

“Who, Sergeant, is supposed to be guarding the prisoner this watch?” The icy fury in the lieutenant’s voice made even Stone shiver with fear.

“I am, sir. Me and Dyrney. The Tibran’s asleep.” The guard’s voice faltered as he realized just who his superior held by the elbow. “Or he
was
. How’d he get out?”

“Precisely what I would like to know.”

So would he
. Stone had lost time. Hours, if not days. He did not remember boarding this boat.

Stone tried his voice, swallowed and tried again. “How long—” His voice crackled, as if he’d either not been using it, or been using it too much.

“I dunno, sir,” the sergeant answered the lieutenant. “I swear we was watchin’ him. He couldn’t’ve got out the door.”

“Then perhaps he left by the window, hmm?” The officer turned to Stone, impaling him on the glare from his uncanny blue eyes. Save for those eyes, this man looked like a proper officer. His brown hair was pulled smoothly back from a high forehead into that tight Adaran queue, his face set and hard with an attitude of command. His rank was marked by a single white ribbon on either shoulder of his dun-colored tunic.

“How long?” He repeated Stone’s question. “Are you with us, warrior?”

Stone cleared his throat. “How long have we been traveling?”

The man leaned closer, peering into Stone’s face. “Yes, I believe you are here. Welcome back. Do you recall who I am?”

It took some effort, but Stone finally dredged up the information. “Lieutenant Joh…I don’t remember your other name. Twenty-first Infantry.”

“Joh Suteny, but that doesn’t matter.” He continued staring.

“How long?” Stone asked again.

“Oh. Yes. We have been on the river almost one full day.” He gestured at the lowering sun, then at the stairway. “Shall we go down?”

Surprised by the courtesy—it was seldom offered to prisoners in shackles—Stone shuffled toward the steps. The sergeant moved as if to take Stone’s arm, but the lieutenant got there first.

“
I
will secure the prisoner,” he said, his voice all ice and iron. “Since it seems your incompetence knows no bounds.”

“Yessir. Nossir.” The fat guard bobbed his head, backed away.

The lieutenant had to hold Stone upright during the descent down the steep gangway. The shackles made it almost impossible to maintain his balance.

“However did you get up there?” Suteny asked in a mild conversational tone as they made their slow way down the walkway to the cabin that was his prison during the river journey.

“Up is easier than down.”

“When you leave us—” Suteny opened the cabin door and ushered him inside, then followed to lean against the closed door “—where do you go?”

Stone shuffled to the bunk and sat down. How
had
he got out of the cabin? He would have sworn his shoulders could never fit through that porthole.

“Warrior?” The Adaran spoke.

Oh yes
. He’d asked a question, hadn’t he? Stone fought through the fog clouding his mind. He didn’t have the brains Fox had, but he’d never had trouble thinking. What was wrong with him?
Was
he mad? “I don’t know,” he said. “I—the time is just…gone. I don’t—”

But he did remember something. An urgency. A pull. A need to—“I have to go…somewhere. I’m—I’m looking for something. I don’t know what it is. But I must find it. I
must
. Or…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t find it. Bad things, I think.”

“I see.” The lieutenant looked down, seeming to think. “I am afraid we are going to have to add to your burden. I have been ordered to treat you with courtesy, as far as I might. But when you do not yourself know what you are doing…

“I will make the chain a long one so that you may move about the cabin, and you may take the air on deck with an escort, as the journey is several more days. But—for your own safety—I must chain you in place. Do you understand?”

Stone nodded, hiding the relief that ebbed through him. A chain would hold him. Even if he injured himself fighting the chain, which he feared was likely, at least he could not plunge to his death over the side of the boat.

“You seem a reasonable man, warrior—Stone, is it?” Suteny waited for an answer. Stone nodded and the other man went on. “When you are here with us, that is. Do you know what triggers these…little spells of time?” The lieutenant put his head outside the door and spoke in a voice of quiet authority before closing it again and turning back to Stone.

Hunching his shoulders, Stone shook his head. He wished he knew. He wanted to be rid of it, his madness or whatever it might be.

“Would you allow me to try calling you back?”

Stone stared at the pale-skinned Adaran. “You wish to do this?”

Suteny seemed surprised by Stone’s surprise. “It would make my job easier, would it not? If you could retain better possession of your senses.”

“True.” Stone shrugged. “I see no reason why not. Try.”

“Very well. We are agreed.”

A knock sounded at the door and the lieutenant opened it to admit one of the other guards, young, with a dogged determination that made up for his lack of experience. He proceeded to attach a long chain to Stone’s ankle bonds and to the bolts holding the cabin’s bunk to the floor.

“Is there anything else I can provide for your comfort?” Lieutenant Suteny asked. “Some reading material perhaps?”

Stone shook his head, testing the chain’s length. “I can speak Adaran, but I can’t read it.” He’d tried to read the words on the general’s map.

“Oh?” A single eyebrow arched high on Suteny’s forehead. “Pity.”

Stone shrugged. He’d never been much for reading anyway. Not like Fox.

Suteny watched him another long moment. It made Stone uneasy. As if the man was studying him. Preparing a report. He probably was. When they reached Arikon, he would likely be called upon to report to his superiors everything observed about their Tibran prisoner and whether he was too mad to be of any use. Stone would like to know the answer to that himself.

Aisse was sitting in complete idleness on the back of the boat a short space apart from her mistress and the man. It was the second afternoon from the time she had been discovered and Aisse still did not understand what sort of service was expected of her. She didn’t understand much of anything in her new country.

Kallista was the captain, but it did not seem to mean the same as it would in Tibre. She did not own the man. Nor did he own her. He protected her. He served her, carrying out duties Aisse had thought would be hers.

When the man came that first night, while she was in her bath, Aisse had feared his purpose. But he had ignored her naked self to empty her bag on the floor and search it, then carried her clothing away. Aisse had been confused, then amused when she realized the man had been searching for weapons, things that could harm the captain. Then she remembered that in this place, women were indeed as dangerous as the men, if not more so.

The man brought her new clothes, a tunic much like the old one and trousers to cover her legs, all the way to her waist. Aisse liked trousers. The man brought her to the cabin, gave her a blanket and a corner for sleeping. He gave her food and the words for food and blanket, for cup, bowl and spoon. But when she tried to begin her duties by putting away the captain’s things, he had growled and sent her away.

He would not allow Aisse to touch anything belonging to either the captain or himself. He did not allow her to collect their food from the boat’s kitchen. He did not trust her. It was a strange feeling for Aisse, to be considered important enough for suspicion, worthy of distrust.

She rested her head on her knees and wrapped her arms around her folded legs as she watched the captain and her man. She did not understand relations between men and women in this new country either. She had thought women ruled here—and they did, but not in a way Aisse could comprehend. She did not have words for the things she saw.

The man argued with the captain. They did not shout, but spoke quietly through clenched teeth and glared lightning bolts at each other. It amazed Aisse that he would dare to argue, but dare he did and without any apparent fear of punishment. She did not understand. But that was not all that confused her.

Aisse had thought the man did not make any demands for sex because he belonged to the captain. And he did in some way, but she did not know what it was. They slept side by side, their bodies touching, and they did not have sex. The man did not touch the captain save for when they slept and when he tied up her hair. He did not grope, squeeze, fondle, or anything at all.

The captain touched him sometimes, on the hand or arm, or perhaps laid a hand on his shoulder. But not often. It didn’t make sense. Did she want the man or not? Did he want her? If he did, maybe Aisse could stop worrying over having to do sex.

She was trying to puzzle the matter out when one of the boatmen approached her, the one who had ordered the others to bring her bath. He sat in the chair beside her, speaking his pretty language. She shrank into a smaller ball, struggling to pick out a word or two. She could not remember what she had learned. He was too close. He frightened her.

“He means no harm,” the captain said. “He’s only saying how sorry he is you were hurt and that you must be very beautiful indeed, for even now you are beautiful.”

Aisse made a face. Much good beauty had ever done her. Captain Varyl laughed. The boatman spoke again and she translated. “He says if there is any service he might do for you, you have only to ask.”

“I want him to go away,” Aisse said, surprising herself with her bravado. “I will not do sex with him. But I want to say it myself. What are the words?”

The captain had to have her man give the words to Aisse. The boatman did not look angry or frustrated when she said them, merely sad as he rose to do what she ordered.

“He was not looking for sex,” the captain said. “He’s one of the boat captain’s iliasti. Didn’t you see his anklets?”

Aisse looked as the boatman climbed the stairs to the foredeck and saw a pair of narrow gold bangles encircling one ankle, and three more shining from the other. “They mean he belongs to the captain?”

“And she belongs to him and both of them to the rest of their ilian.”

That word was in Adaran, like the other strange words she used. “What is that? Ilian?”

“It means they are—are mates. Oathsworn to each other in the temple, joined by love in a family to raise their children. They all belong to each other.”

Aisse shook her head. She was confused by more words than just
ilian
. Love was what a person owed the Rulers. How could love join someone? Family—that had to do with children, she thought. Aisse had no children, would never have them, so she wasn’t sure of that term. She understood swearing an oath and belonging. But one person belonged to another and the one who was owned could not then own the one who owned her. Could she?

She frowned. “The boatman and the boat captain…love?”

“Yes. And their ilian. It has six members. Didn’t you see? He wore five anklets, three on the right and two on the left. Three women and two other men. The captain wears five bracelets, two on the right and three on the left. They belong to their ilian and do not—don’t have sex with anyone else.”

“Your man does not have an anklet.”

The captain sighed. “Torchay is my bodyguard. Not my ilias. We are not bound in that way.”

“Then who does he do sex with?” Should she worry after all?

“Whoever he wishes, I suppose.” The captain’s face turned pink, but Aisse did not understand the reason for the blush. “And if she wishes it as well. Sex must be agreed to by all involved.”

Aisse nodded. She could like that rule.

The captain’s blush faded and she turned thoughtful. “He’s never taken a lover though, not for more than a night or two.”

“Have you? Taken lovers?” Aisse needed to understand.

“Yes.” The captain’s face was pink again. “And I believe this conversation has ended.”

Aisse rested her cheek on her knees as the captain walked away, followed by the man. She had more than enough to think through.

Kallista set aside her reading when Torchay returned with the evening meal. He’d taken Aisse with him this time, allowed her to bring her own food, grudgingly admitting before they left that she might not be a secret weapon aimed by Tibre at Adara’s naitani. Kallista moved over as he set her meal on the room’s narrow table, took his own from the tray and sat down opposite. Stew made from last night’s roast chicken. She sampled it. Not bad. Better than field rations.

“Today is Graceday,” Torchay said as he tore off a piece of brown bread and dunked it in his stew.