The Shattered Sylph (11 page)

“That was you, wasn’t it?” he whispered so Justin couldn’t hear. “You connected our dreams, didn’t you?”

Still shivering, Ril nodded. “I don’t know how,” he whispered back. “I just did it.”

“Why?” Leon asked. To see his daughter again, even so briefly, had been wonderful, but Ril had nearly killed himself doing it.

“You told me to,” Ril said.

Leon stiffened. “I never meant—”

“I know.” Ril pulled away and wiped his mouth. “Never mind.” He looked across the room at Justin, who was sitting on his bed staring at them, and he snarled.

Justin cowered. “Hey! What did I do?”

“You looked at me.”

“Easy.” Leon put a hand on his battler’s shoulder. “Be calm, both of you. We have a long way to go still.”

Ril shrugged, settling down as though nothing had happened, his back to them both. Leon didn’t know if he was all right, but he couldn’t ask. He wanted too much for Ril to connect their dreams again, to find his daughter and make sure she was all right. He rose and pulled on his clothes, finding his boots before heading outside to clear his head.

“What’s going on?” Justin asked, following him up to the ship’s deck.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Leon told him. They were still three ports away from Meridal. When they arrived, they’d be docking just long enough for the ship to drop off and take on new passengers, and to renew their stores; then it would continue south. It was up to Ril whether they stayed on the ship at that point. Leon hoped not. He wanted to be doing something. He wanted Lizzy to be in that city, preferably on the dock waiting for him.

“I need to know,” Justin said behind him. Leon sighed and turned. Justin was a man, he reminded himself, and he cared about Lizzy as much as any of them. He was also risking his life.

“I don’t know what happened,” Leon admitted. “I think Ril connected his dreams to mine and Lizzy’s.”

“I didn’t know battlers could do that,” Justin gasped.

Neither had Leon. Then again, Ril was the only battler to sleep on a regular basis, let alone dream. “Don’t call him by that word,” he said instead. “Not here.”

Justin hunched his shoulders. “Can he do that to me? See into my head?”

“I don’t know.”

Justin glanced uncertainly toward the cabin, probably wishing they didn’t need Ril at all, but finally he sighed and turned back. “Lizzy’s okay?”

“She seems to be.” That at least was a relief.

Justin smiled, his shoulders relaxing and dropping away from his ears. “I’ve been thinking. Of after. I’d like to have my father’s earth sylph Stria build a house for us near the lake, where all the blackberry bushes are. My father promised me half his herd when I marry, so we’ll have money. It’s not a big herd, but I can be a drover as well.” The shoulders went up again. “If you don’t have any objections.”

Leon managed a smile. Justin wasn’t the first person he’d choose for a son-in-law, but he couldn’t fault the boy’s courage. No one else had been volunteering for this trip. “Don’t you think you need to ask Lizzy?”

“Yeah, but, well, I need your blessing first, don’t I? Can I have your blessing? To marry your daughter?”

His daughter, married. Grandchildren. Leon’s smile softened. “If she’ll have you, yes, you have my blessing.”

Justin beamed.

When breakfast didn’t seem imminent, Lizzy poked her head out of the room where she’d slept and peered around nervously, just in case someone was waiting to grab her. Eapha was outside, giggling madly along with a half dozen other women who ran around the main room, dodging a battler with the number 200 tattooed on his chest. He wore a breechcloth and seemed to be having a glorious time trying to grab them. The sylph snatched Eapha around the waist, pulling her against his chest and nuzzling her neck while she shrieked. Letting her go, he lunged after another woman, his clawed feet digging into the marble floor as he chased the dark-haired girl down the hall. Lizzy had to giggle. She knew how fast battlers were. This one was playing.

Eapha trotted over. “Good morning, sleepyhead. You slept all night.”

Had she? Lizzy remembered her dream and smiled. “I guess I was tired. Do they ever feed us?”

“Of course. They leave the food at the other end. Most of it will probably have been eaten by now, but there’ll be some left.”

So the girls were forced to walk the entire gauntlet if they wanted to eat, Lizzy realized. She shuddered but made herself step out of the sleeping chamber. Her belly was rumbling and she couldn’t stay hidden forever. Eapha just laughed and took her hand, leading as she had when first showing Lizzy where to rest. Lizzy followed, tugging her
gauzy gown closer around her, for all the good it did, and trying to comb out her sleep-tousled hair with her fingers.

Even though she was watching for just such a thing, she didn’t see Two-hundred pad up behind her—not until he put his arms around her, his hands on her breasts, and pulled her back against him. Lizzy screamed.

Eapha spun around, her eyes wide. “Lizzy,” she gasped. “It’s okay! Don’t hurt him!”

Hurt him? How was she supposed to do that? Lizzy wondered, even as Two-hundred sniffed her neck, inhaling deeply. He froze, and a moment later released her. Lizzy looked up to see him staring at her with confusion. He leaned close and sniffed again. Then he glanced to Eapha and back. Silent, he nonetheless made a discrete series of motions with his hands and straightened.

“W-what?” Lizzy managed.

Eapha looked equally confused. “No one’s going to want her?” Fear crossed the dark-haired woman’s face. “They have to!” She shot a look at Lizzy and back at the battler. Then she looked past him, up at where the walls joined the ceiling. Before Lizzy could turn to see what she was looking at, with a forced gale of laughter Eapha grabbed both of them by the hands and dragged them into the nearest alcove.

The place was small, wreathed in silk with a soft mattress sunken into the floor. Eapha stumbled on it, pulling the battler with her, and turned to face Lizzy. “If no one wants you, they’ll turn you into a feeder.”

“What?”

Eapha looked at Two-hundred. “They have to sleep with her!”

“No, they don’t!” Lizzy squealed.

Eapha grabbed the battler’s arm. “They’ll cut her tongue out, Tooie! They have to!”

Tooie looked at Lizzy again, and back at Eapha. Silently he shook his head.

“Well…pretend!”

Tooie considered that and finally nodded, his eyes sparkling. Wandering over onto the mattress, he started to hop up and down. The mattress squeaked loudly. He looked amused.

Lizzy stared at Eapha, baffled. “What’s going on?”

The woman sagged. “I told you. They only keep girls who the battlers will have sex with. Tooie says no one will want you, though. That’s nearly a death sentence in this place.”

“Um. It’s not like I want to, but…why not?”

Eapha shrugged and turned, making a series of hand motions at Tooie. To Lizzy’s surprise, he returned them. Eapha made more and finally finished. “He says you smell mated already. I don’t really understand. He’ll pretend, though—he already does with a lot of the women. The handlers think Tooie’s a lot more active than he is. They won’t care about one more.”

“I don’t understand,” Lizzy said.

Eapha blushed prettily. “I shouldn’t tell you this. I hardly know you…but I’d feel awful if you got turned into a feeder, and Tooie wants me to ask you about that mate. When he wants something, well…” She grabbed at her hair, tugging it with a groan. “I hate this! You better not be a spy. No, you can’t be a spy. Tooie would know.”

Tooie made more gestures at her while he bounced, and finally Eapha sighed and clasped her hands. “It’s the handlers. They’re evil. I’ve known Tooie for years. He loves me and he doesn’t want to be with anyone but me, but the handlers don’t want the battlers to love. If they knew he loved me, they’d turn me into a feeder right away. So he pretends to sleep with a whole bunch of women to hide it.”

Lizzy gaped, even though she’d had six years of experience interacting with battlers. Given a choice, they all preferred monogamy. “He does?”

Eapha regarded Tooie again, and her expression made Lizzy’s throat thick. “Yes. There are a bunch of us with battlers who want to be exclusive. Tooie pretends he’s sleeping with all of them. So do the other battlers. There’s only about a dozen of them that are that organized, though, who talk to each other to plan out who’s going to be with who. Believe me, most battlers won’t talk to each other at all. They just jump anyone who interests them.”

Lizzy noticed Eapha didn’t say whether any of those battlers had ever shown an interest in her. “How do you talk to him?” she asked instead.

“Gestures.” Eapha made a few motions with her hand. Tooie returned them. “They all mean something. One of the women who was in here a few years ago had a deaf brother. She taught the gestures to a few of the girls and a couple of the battlers. There aren’t many of us who know how to do it, though, and we have to keep it a secret.” Her face hardened. “I’ll teach you how to sign, but please, don’t do it outside the alcoves if you can avoid it, and be careful who sees you. Tooie never should have done it out there, but you surprised him. Me, too. The handlers watch us through vents at the base of the ceiling. If they knew we did this, they’d take us all for feeders. It might be even worse for Tooie and the others. They’re not supposed to talk at all. The handlers have no idea, though. They can’t see what’s happening in the alcoves, and we usually only talk in here. Still, please be careful. There are some girls we think spy for the handlers, and there are a lot of battlers I’d never trust.”

Behind them, Tooie kept bouncing on the bed, slapping the ceiling with his hands on every bounce. Lizzy watched
him for a moment before looking again at Eapha. That they were friends she didn’t allow herself to doubt. In this place, she needed friends. Now she had two.

“Has anyone ever escaped?” she asked.

“No. I know women who’ve tried, but the only way out is the door, and that’s locked and guarded.” Eapha saw Lizzy glance at Tooie and gave a bitter laugh. “He can’t help either. He’s under orders not to help us get free. Battlers can’t disobey their masters—did you know that?”

Lizzy nodded. Back home, no one took advantage of their bondage. She’d seen one man abuse his fire sylph, driving the poor creature to distraction, but the battlers had sensed her distress and told Solie. She’d had the sylph transferred to a new master and the abuser banished. He’d been lucky the battlers hadn’t killed him. They’d wanted to. Also, her father was always careful never to order Ril around, knowing Ril had no choice but to obey.

Thinking of the blond battler and the warmth of his lips, Lizzy blushed. They were coming for her, Ril and her father. He’d told her so in her dreams. But was that even possible? Lizzy wanted to believe with every bit of hope left in her, but there was so little remaining after weeks caged in the dark, and now in this place, with its soft fabrics and interminable lust.

She could feel it now that she was rested and calmer: the need of the battlers broadcast through the harem in order to turn the women’s own inhibitions into uncontrollable desires. If a woman wasn’t willing, they’d make her willing, and the space between Lizzy’s legs tingled even as she wrapped her arms around herself, still trying to hide the sight of her near nudity from Eapha and Tooie. Not that either of them cared. In this place, how could anyone even pretend at modesty? She couldn’t let her arms drop,
though. Not yet. Hopefully not ever. She never wanted to become so used to this place.

Please, Ril, she thought. Don’t let that have been a dream.

“Now what?” she whispered.

Eapha shrugged. “Breakfast?”

Life for Lizzy formed a pattern that she knew would eventually drive her as crazy as a wild bird trapped inside a house. She’d beat her wings against the walls until they broke, would end up like the women she saw sitting in corners of the harem, women who just sat there, not speaking or reacting to anything. Eventually, even the battlers avoided them. Then came the handlers.

Lizzy quickly learned to hate those tall female guards as much as the other women did. She especially learned to hate Rashala Misharol, the official who led them. The bald woman was vicious as a snake, and as cold. In the middle of her second week in the harem, Lizzy watched Rashala order one of the women taken to the feeder cages, her tongue cut out before she was moved. Lizzy was afraid they’d do it right there, but the handlers dragged her off first. Rashala strolled away without even a quelling glance. She hadn’t needed one, Lizzy realized later—none of the others had tried to do anything. A hundred women against three. Not one of them moved.

Still, for now at least she was safe, though safety was a tenuous concept in the harem. She was also still a virgin. Tooie and eleven other battlers like him would take her into the alcoves, usually just picking her up and carrying her there, and they’d stay with her for an hour or more, pretending to do things that Lizzy found less and less frightening, surrounded by it as she was. She didn’t want
to sleep with any of them, even if they’d been interested in her, but the idea of it wasn’t so strange anymore. A girl who’d only had two kisses herself, now Lizzy walked unblinkingly past women having sex with battlers right in the middle of the harem. The only result was a subtle arousal inside her that never went away.

“Where’s Tooie?” she murmured to Eapha one morning as they sat eating a plain but edible breakfast of cheeses and breads. Most of the cheeses were unfamiliar to her, some of them strange colors and a few rank smelling, but all were delicious. Once a week they also received meat and fish to eat, cut into small pieces as the women had no utensils in the harem, and certainly no knives. Tooie usually showed up shortly after they woke in what she couldn’t quite be sure was morning. He stayed for half the day, amusing himself with different women and somehow always including time with Eapha. Then he would vanish, turning to smoke and lightning and rising up through one of the openings in the ceiling. He spent the remainder of his day working, she knew, but he usually didn’t start so early.

Eapha put a small fruit in her mouth and chewed. “He told me he’s fighting in the arena for the emperor this week.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Lizzy asked. She liked Tooie. He was really very sweet, and he’d been teaching her their sign language whenever they were alone in the alcove. Not that she’d managed to learn much yet—certainly not enough to answer his questions about her being mated.

Eapha smiled. “He’s not fighting other battlers. Nobody’s that stupid. He only fights criminals. Executes them, actually. There’s no danger for him.”

It sounded as though there was a lot of danger for the criminals. Lizzy didn’t ask what sort of offenses people
committed in order to be given such a sentence. Instead, she reached for one of the last pieces of bread.

A bell sounded. It was one of those in the shafts that the battlers used to get into the harem. Their passage would sound the chimes, alerting the women inside and, more important, the handlers who watched from without. Lizzy wasn’t sure how many handlers there were, or how often they actually watched, but she’d learned to spot their peepholes: tiny gaps high on the wall and placed at regular intervals. These couldn’t observe into the alcoves in the walls beneath them, but they viewed nearly everything else. There were even peepholes in the sleeping chambers and bathrooms! Lizzy had never thought she’d get used to observers, but she had. She never forgot them, though. According to Eapha, those who did wound up as feeders.

In the center of the ceiling about thirty feet away, a smoky shape laced with lightning flowed out and down to the floor. A battler in his natural form resembled almost any other battler, but Lizzy had learned to identify most of those here. She’d been able to do it for years back home. She’d never seen Ril in his natural form, but she’d always been able to recognize Mace or Heyou and the others. The lightning moved differently inside each of them. This one she didn’t recognize at all, and the lightning within him flickered like fractured ice.

He flowed down and solidified into the same olive-hued form they were all ordered into when relaxing. Lizzy didn’t know what the other permitted shapes were, but apparently the battlers in this country took on specific, sanctioned figures for different jobs. In the harem, however, they were always the mouthless, backward-legged creatures she’d first seen, distinguishable from each other only by the tattooed number they wore.

This one was numbered 89.

“Oh no,” Eapha whispered. “Tooie must have taken his place in the arena!” She scrambled backward, suddenly finding something fascinating amongst the stacks of used plates they’d put by the door for retrieval.

The other women who’d been eating started backing up as well, one even going so far as to dart into an occupied alcove. Lizzy heard a startled squeak from whoever was already inside. At the same time, another battler—one numbered 417 and one of the dozen who’d been pretending to sleep around the way Tooie did—abandoned all pretense of boredom. He snatched up the woman whose hair he’d been fondling while she ate, took two steps, and grabbed a woman named Kiala, who was his actual lover. Four-seventeen carried both into an alcove.

Eighty-nine didn’t seem to mark the reactions, though he did flare his hate at another battler who was glaring at him. The two bristled but didn’t take the confrontation farther—battlers were as forbidden to fight amongst themselves as they were to talk. Eighty-nine jerked his head at the other insultingly and went back to examining those women who hadn’t managed to hide.

It didn’t take him long to spot Lizzy, with her long blonde hair. She saw his eyes widen, and suddenly he was running toward her, blindingly fast. Eapha moaned, a world of pain in her voice.

Lizzy didn’t have time to react. Eighty-nine grabbed her, his claws painfully close to tearing through her skin, and hauled her up. He didn’t even bother to take her to an alcove, instead slamming her down on her back in the middle of the floor. His eyes gleamed with undeniable excitement as the breath woofed out of her. He filled her with his lust, with his undeniable need to push her legs apart
and spear himself into her, pumping again and again until she tore apart. The power of that, the animal pleasure rushing into her, was overwhelming, and in that first second while her lungs were trying to inhale and her brain was struggling to catch up, Lizzy actually climaxed.

“Stay away from Eighty-nine,” Eapha had cautioned her. Even the handlers had warned her in their roundabout way. Battlers were empathic: they enjoyed their partners’ pleasure at least as much as their own. Eighty-nine didn’t. He gave pleasure—she’d just experienced that, and he still had his breechcloth on—but he wouldn’t stop. He’d killed women with his lust. In three or four days he’d still be raping her, whether she was alive anymore or not.

Pleasure rocked through her, and her body quivered in expectation as he undid his breechcloth with one hand and ripped her gown off with the other. Yet that orgasm had nothing on Lizzy’s feeling of violation. But no one would come to her rescue—the battlers were forbidden, and the women wouldn’t dare. There was no sign of her father, and Ril was somewhere far away, only showing up in her dreams to whisper promises of salvation.

She was supposed to be safe, she recalled in a sudden rage. Something inside her made her unattractive to battlers—even the ones who weren’t in the circle with Tooie and Eapha. He’d said she was mated already, something she’d had a lot of time to think about. All she’d had in her life were two kisses, one given in a moment of petulance at a dance, and the second taken in secret afterward. One had been wet and rather forgettable, if the boy involved hadn’t insisted on not forgetting until he’d abandoned her on a dock to a bunch of slave traders. The other had made her toes curl and her nipples perk, and flashbound her heart with a fact that she’d made herself forget during the
subsequent two years. Ril loved her. She’d made herself forget that in the face of how much he hated himself.

Eighty-nine got his breechcloth off with a gleam of joy in his eyes and what she was sure would have been a yell of triumph if he had a mouth. Now he was going to rape her in front of everyone, ignoring whatever etiquette made the other battlers turn away. And so…

Lizzy rejected him. Not physically, since her lust-soaked body was already dripping for him and her legs were wedged so far apart her joints ached. Even if she were strong enough, spread out that way she couldn’t move to defend herself. She rejected him with her mind instead, knowing he was empathic. She thought of Ril, and hit Eighty-nine with the memory of him. Of Ril sitting on her arm as a bird. Of Ril spelling out his love for her with the blocks. Of him carrying her and her family to that cliff where the Community had fled, running himself nearly to death but still cradling her so softly, letting her ride above his mantle where she could see. Of him coming to her room at night when she had bad dreams and sitting there to watch over her, somehow always knowing her need. Of him kissing her in the field after she’d already betrayed him by kissing Justin. Of him coming to find her even after she’d decided he wasn’t the man for her and had led Justin on with the idea that he might be. Justin, who’d left her. Ril, who loved her, and who had always loved her, and who had somehow marked her as his even in this place where women were less than nothing and the battlers volatile property.

Eighty-nine hesitated, his alien eyes staring into hers as she glared and forced those images at him. And this one:
I. Do. Not. Want. You.
Eighty-nine howled silently, and his fist came down on the floor beside her, cracking the tile. Madness was in his eyes, but his erection was wilting even
as he pressed against her, and Lizzy knew in that moment that she’d won. He might kill her in the next second, but she’d won.

The victory was a painful one. Eighty-nine howled and shoved against her, hard. It hurt, bruising her from the middle of her thighs right up through her crotch, but he was flaccid and couldn’t penetrate. He shoved again and pushed himself off her, his hate flaring out wildly. This banished the last bits of lust he’d forced into Lizzy and set the rest of the battlers to flashing out their own hate. Women screamed, cowering, but Eighty-nine leaped into the air, shifting to erratic smoke and lightning. He vanished up one of the shafts, his hatred following.

Lizzy lay there for a moment, just gasping. Her crotch hurt terribly, as did her head, and in that pain she could hear Ril screaming. He knew her torment and was terrified. She hadn’t known he could be terrified.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, sending that thought to him.
I’m fine.
And
I love you.
She had no idea if he heard.

Eapha leaned over her. “Lizzy?” she gasped. “Are you all right?”

Lizzy eyed her wearily and sat up with terrible slowness. Her groin ached so badly that she dreaded the thought of what it would have felt like if she hadn’t managed to get Eighty-nine to stop. Her dress was transparent and useless, but still she tried to rearrange it around herself, wanting at least a modicum of decency. “I think so…,” she started to say, still dazed and really wanting nothing more than to limp away and take a nap. She couldn’t feel Ril anymore. All she could feel was her bruises, and they seemed to be deep.

The door to the harem opened only a dozen feet away from where they’d been having breakfast. Both Eapha and Lizzy froze, staring at it in horror. The handlers had been
watching. They’d seen Eighty-nine go for her and retreat. Lizzy had a sudden, horrifying vision of them taking her away because of that, turning her into a feeder because Eighty-nine had shown an interest, just as they’d promised.

Eapha whimpered, leaping to her feet and running off into one of the alcoves. Lizzy felt her tongue and mouth dry up at being abandoned again, but she forced herself to her feet. She’d frozen when the sailors kidnapped her. She’d been useless when Rashala sent her to the sacrifice altar, and she hadn’t fought hard enough when they put her in here. Finally, she
had
fought back and stopped Eighty-nine, but to what end?

Four guards stepped into the room, Rashala behind them. She stared at Lizzy with bemusement, obviously pondering exactly what had just happened. Lizzy backed up, not willing to just let them take her this time. Not again.

An arm came around her, a nose nuzzling against her neck. She stiffened, suddenly convinced that her defiance hadn’t been enough and Eighty-nine had come back after all. Hauled off her feet and spun around, tucked under an arm and carried swiftly into an alcove before she could do more than muster breath to scream, she was set down on her feet before she could release it. And then Lizzy saw Eapha. The woman stood before her with the two others Four-seventeen had taken away. Sitting at her feet the battler just winked at her, and he started bouncing up and down on the bed.

Lizzy goggled at Eapha and started to cry, realizing what she’d done. The other woman moved to hug her and started crying as well.

Rashala frowned thoughtfully as she stepped out of the harem, unprepared to disturb a battler during coitus—especially not one who had no preference for any specific
woman that she’d ever been able to see. Still, something odd had just occurred.

Down a doorway to the right was a gathering area for the women who worked with the battlers. One of these followed Rashala out of the harem: Melorta, the lead handler and a slave. Rashala had picked her up in the market ten years before, and now she relied on Melorta as much as herself. The woman had started out just as Rashala had, as a concubine in the harem, and like Rashala, Melorta had a truly uncanny knack for calming battlers. More important, she’d reported on any of her fellow concubines who were trying to break the rules, even uncovering a plan by several to escape that might actually have worked.