The Palace of Impossible Dreams (15 page)

It was clear now, why she'd been branded on the breast. It wasn't to hide her status as a slave; it was to display it. In Senestra, clothes were the privilege of free men. All slaves, regardless of race or species, wore a short linen loincloth and skirt, the coloured edging on the hem denoting their house and their rank. Arkady's skirt was banded in blue—the colour of the Medura family—and a single thin band of black, which apparently indicated that she was a
makor-di
, the lowest of the low, fit only for menial labour in the worst jobs.

She was still uncomfortable walking around in what was—by her standards—pretty much nothing at all, but with everyone else dressed (or undressed) in the same fashion, it was a little less harrowing. She had overcome her initial mortification when the slave-master at Cydne's palace had taken her shift and handed her a short skirt and nothing else to replace it, but sitting here in a hall crowded with hundreds and hundreds of people with her breasts bared, still left her feeling queasy.

The other slaves, sensing her embarrassment, laughed among themselves at her prudishness. When she glanced down the table, Alkasa, one of her companions on the journey from Torlenia, caught her eye. She cupped her large painted breasts—this was a wedding, after all, and they'd all been daubed in blue and green designs to symbolise the union between the two great houses—with both hands and pointed them at Arkady, waggling the nipples at her. Then she said something Arkady didn't catch to the women around her, and they all began to do the same.

“Yours are better.”

She realised the man who'd eaten her leftovers was talking to her again.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You got nicer tits than Alkasa.”

“How noble of you to notice,” she replied in Glaeban, certain he wouldn't understand.

“You'd get laid more often if you were chubbier, though. Men don't like bangin' into a sack of bones. You gonna eat that bread?”

“Be my guest,” Arkady said, as she handed him the crust of her bread, deciding starvation might be the go, if putting weight on was going to make her more desirable to these people.

“I'm Geriko,” the man said, smiling at her. “What's your name?”

“Kady.”

“You don't speak too good. You stupid or something?”

She smiled in spite of herself. “I'm still learning to speak your language.”

“I could tell you was foreign,” he said. Since learning she wasn't stupid, but merely foreign, he'd stopped yelling at her to make himself understood. In truth, she could make out most of what he was saying. She just wasn't that good at
speaking
Senestran yet.

“Really? What gave it away?”
Besides my skin colour, my eye colour, the language difference
 . . .

“You're too tall. And you're too skinny. And you walk like you're proud of it. And your brand's still fresh.”

And the only reason you know that is because you've been staring at my breasts long enough to establish the age of my brand and that they're nicer than Alkasa's.
“You're very . . .” She wanted to say
observant
but didn't know the Senestran word for it . . . “You look well.”

He smiled, totally misunderstanding her meaning. “You think so?”

Oh, Tides
 . . . “You
see
things well,” she said, and then on the slim chance of directing his thoughts away from her breasts, she added, “Where do you work?”

“In Doctor Cydne's clinic. I keep the Crasii scum under control.”

“Crasii
scum
?”

He nodded. “They get all snarly and snappy when they're sick. I'm there to make sure they behave themselves.”

Arkady glanced down the hall at the tables even further from the wedding party than her own. That's where the Crasii sat. She was wrong to think the
makor-di
were the lowest of the low. The Crasii, the
celum-di
, ranked even lower in Senestra's complicated caste system than batch-bought human slaves.

“That's where I'll be working too.” At least, Arkady hoped that's what she said. She might have said
the table leg has three eyes
for all she knew. Senestran wasn't an easy language to master.

Geriko smiled. “Then we'll be working together. Did you want to bunk with me too?”

Clearly tact, delicacy or any pretence of seduction weren't skills considered necessary among the slave caste. “Er, no . . .”

“You have another mate?”

“No.”

He nodded in understanding. “Ah!
You
are the master's
wii-ah.
”

“The master's
what
?” Arkady wasn't familiar with the word.

“His
wii-ah
,” Geriko said. “It means . . . his . . . toy . . . plaything.” He grinned broadly and leaned a little closer. “We heard the young master spent the entire voyage to Torlenia locked in his cabin with a foreign slave. Quite a few people lost money on that voyage.”

“I thought the whole trip was quite successful.”

“Oh, it was a commercial success, sure enough,” Geriko agreed. “People lost money betting on Cydne locking himself in his cabin with a sailor, is what I meant.”

Poor Cydne
, Arkady thought, still a little amazed that she pitied the man who now effectively owned her.
They really do have it in for you, don't they?

But there was an opportunity here, both to protect herself and do the young doctor a favour. And she owed him something, she supposed. She wasn't due to be shipped off to a mining camp as soon as the wedding celebrations were done, and that was entirely due to Cydne's intervention.

“It was quite a voyage,” she told Geriko. “He was . . .” she hesitated, not knowing the Senestran word for insatiable, “. . . very hungry. At it all the time. Like a rutting stallion.”

Geriko's eyes lit up to hear such valuable gossip. “Like a
stallion
?”

Arkady nodded, warming to the subterfuge. She leaned a little closer and added in a low voice, “He's built like one too. Damn near wore me out with it.”

The slave stared at her in amazement and then looked toward the wedding table with new respect. “Really?
Cydne
? Who'd have thought?”

Arkady smiled, wondering how long it would take for the rumour to
spread that Cydne Medura was not only well-endowed but an insatiable lover, to boot.

I think that makes us even, Cydne
, she told him silently.

And then she turned and smiled at Geriko. If she was going to find a way out of here, if she was ever going to escape Senestra and her fate as a slave, she needed friends.

The big bearded slave who'd be working in the clinic with her, who didn't mind that she was skinny and who liked her breasts, was as good a place as any to start.

“The city welcomes you.”

Declan turned to the sailor who'd spoken to him. “How do you figure that?”

“The Crystal City has turned on her light show for you.”

Declan squinted in the glare of the crystalline cliffs of Ramahn as his ship made its way through the heads. The cliffs and the city walls above them—assaulted by eons of crashing waves—were encrusted with salt which had been baked by the harsh sun into a glistening wall of crystal. As it usually did at this time of year, the rising sun illuminated the encrusted cliffs, setting the whole city alight, making it almost too bright to look upon.

“The Crystal City's a whore. She turns it on for every man.”

The sailor laughed, revealing a row of unevenly coloured teeth. “You've been to Ramahn before, I see, if you know her well enough to call her the Whore.”

“Once or twice.”

“Then you'll not need to be warned about the Whore's habit of devouring strangers.”

Declan shook his head. “Thanks, but I think I can cope.”

The sailor moved off in response to a shouted command from the first mate, leaving Declan and the other passengers on the small freighter to admire the sparkling city walls. Declan fretted a little at the time he had taken to get here, as the sailors reefed the sails and the helmsman fought the rudder against the incoming tide. It was over a month since he'd left Clyden's Inn after speaking to Aleki. He hoped everything was working out as he planned for Nyah and Stellan, but in truth, he'd spent little time worrying about it.

He'd spent far more time wondering if he really did have the power to direct the wind and send his ship flying south; almost as much time as he'd spent worrying about what might happen if he tried.

Once he was disembarked, cleared by the Customs men and suitably warned about behaving himself while a guest in Torlenia—a warning
delivered to all unaccompanied men on the ship—he shouldered his pack and headed into the city.

Of the many things Declan Hawkes had learned from the old King's Spymaster, Daly Bridgeman—and one of the first things the Cabal of the Tarot had taught him—the most useful tip was not to rely on official channels, which could be disrupted all too easily. The vagaries of war, the death of kings, sometimes the sheer inefficiency of bureaucrats, were all capable of interrupting the flow of information an effective spymaster needed to do his job. Because of that advice, Declan had long ago set up a series of protocols for his spies to contact him or leave information for him, which he didn't want to fall victim to the whim of chance or, worse, an overworked or corrupt government official.

The drop-point Declan had arranged with Tiji in Ramahn was in a tavern called Cayal's Rest. He'd chosen it because it was located in the central market of Ramahn and because it was a name he (or anyone in the employ of the Cabal) wasn't likely to forget. He was very glad he'd arranged the drop too, given that he was now supposed to be dead and appearing at the front door of the embassy asking if any of his spies had left a message for him, might prove somewhat problematic.

He ordered ale from the barkeep, looked around at the sea of unfamiliar faces and then asked the man if anybody had left a parcel or a letter for him. After a discreet exchange of currency, and the mention of a pre-arranged password, the barkeep admitted he did have such a letter and handed over a small packet with Declan's name scrawled across it in Tiji's spidery scrawl.

Declan took the packet to a booth in the back of the taproom, swallowed down half his ale and then opened the letter.

Not sure if you'll ever get this
, the letter began.
But I'm leaving it here on the off-chance you'll send someone to follow. As you suspected, the person of note you thought might be a suzerain is exactly what we suspected and it is your friend's view that she's probably arranging things to facilitate her lover's return when the Tide peaks.

Thought this might be a problem and then I got the news today that the Duke of Lebec was arrested. I don't know what this means for your friend. I thought of trying to get into the Royal Seraglium to see her, but I don't think I'll be able to, because something else has come up.

I have found the prisoner who escaped from Lebec with your friend's help.

I've seen him twice now, the first time when I was in the seraglium. Today I saw him again drinking in this very tavern. I followed him to the Temple of the Way of the Tide and heard him talking to one of the priests. I think he's heading for a certain person's stronghold in the desert, so I'm going to follow him. I'm sure your friend will be fine. Her new hostess likes her and I don't think she'll just hand your duchess over to the Glaeban authorities so they can send her home to stand trial for something she didn't do.

Or maybe she will. Who can tell with the suzerain?

I've booked passage on the next caravan travelling to the abbey. It leaves tomorrow.

I'll try to get word to you from there. Don't worry about me.

Tiji

He read the letter through twice, smiling at her attempts to be evasive, which he didn't think very effective at all. Anybody with even a passing acquaintance with the characters involved would be able to identify the people she was so desperately trying to protect.

And then he sighed, tore up the letter, and began burning the pieces, one at a time, using the candle on the table.
Tides
, Declan thought.
She went after the Immortal Prince.

He shouldn't be surprised, really. That was too much temptation for a little Crasii with an abiding hatred of the suzerain. But what had happened to Arkady? He would have heard if she was still a guest at the palace; the whole city would be talking about it. There would have been a major diplomatic incident over the notion that a Glaeban citizen wanted by the Glaeban crown was being offered sanctuary in the Torlenian Royal Seraglium and they were refusing to hand her over.

That might mean Arkady had already left the seraglium. Maybe of her own free will and maybe not.

I could always just turn up at the palace, make an appointment to see the Imperator's Consort, and ask her what she's done with our missing duchess, I suppose.

Which was a grand plan, except for two small problems. He'd never get in to see the Imperator's Consort in the first place, and even if he did, she would be able to tell from across the room that he was immortal.

Declan wasn't ready for the news to get about among the rest of the immortals that another had joined their ranks.

He didn't think he
ever
would be ready for that moment.

The chances were good that someone at the Glaeban Embassy had at least an inkling about Arkady's whereabouts. He couldn't knock on the
front door of the embassy, however, any more than he could arrive unannounced at the royal palace. He was supposed to be dead, and it wouldn't take long for word to reach Glaeba that he wasn't if he miraculously turned up in Torlenia.