The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (69 page)

"It is the council's court that you would find yourself in if you committed a crime against a council lord," said Lord Carle, "and I have no intention of sullying my hands on his greasy body." He looked at me with distaste, his gaze travelling down over my chest. Then, in an instant, his eyes rose to catch me looking at him. I froze my gaze once more, and a smile entered his eyes. Then he turned away in apparent disinterest.
"I have some tamer slaves to sell, if you prefer," said the disappointed slave-seller.
"Taming is an art," said Lord Carle, his voice smooth with passion. "I bought a stallion off of Warren the horse-seller last year. He told me that it could never be tamed, that I was better off buying another horse that had already been broken. Three months later he visited the palace stables and saw my horse, broken in both body and spirit, and obedient to my slightest command. He has not tried to sell me any tame horses since then."
The slave-seller beamed with pleasure. Lord Carle turned slowly back to the place in which he had stood before, where his gaze met my gaze, and this time I did not dare try to shift my eyes. He said, "This Koretian dog speaks with a barbaric tongue and comes from a barbaric land, one which has no order or laws. Yet if I were to take him, in three months you would find him thinking and acting like a civilized Emorian. If you know how to discipline a slave, as I do, such transformations are accomplished with ease."
He stepped forward slightly, his eyebrows drawn down low as he gazed narrowly at me. I lifted my eyes slowly until they met his once more, and I said in Emorian, "I am Koretian. I will never be Emorian, for I have taken a blood vow to kill the Chara and bring freedom to my land."
Lord Carle began to smile again, a slow, crooked smile. So fascinating was that dark smile that I did not see his fist until it had nearly reached my cheek.
I dodged then, and the blow landed at a glance so that I was thrown to my knees rather than being flattened to the ground. I felt the platform vibrate with a thump as the slave-seller's assistant jumped up next to me to ensure that I would not cause trouble. Shaking my bowed head in an attempt to stop the buzzing in my ears, I rose, and then lifted my eyes firmly to meet Lord Carle's.
He was still smiling. Now something more entered his expression, like the look of admiration that a soldier might show for his enemy. He said with soft viciousness, "You have just learned the first lesson of being an Emorian, which is to show respect for your masters. If you wish to remain Koretian inside, I will not interfere with your loyalties. By the Chara's high doom, though, you
will
learn how to behave like an Emorian, and you will begin by apologizing to me."
The wind was running up and down my spine now like a dagger blade, and I could feel myself begin to shiver. But I did not speak, and I did not move my eyes.
After a moment, Lord Carle turned away. "Geld him."
"Lord Carle?" said the slave-seller uncertainly.
"Have him delivered to the palace dungeon's torturers; tell them to send him to my quarters after they have gelded him. If he dies under the knife, I will pay for his loss. But if he lives—" He turned his dark gaze my way. "If he lives, he will know who his master is, and that his master is to be obeyed."
Then he walked away, and I was left staring at the marble prison in front of me.
"What do you think you're looking at?"
Philippa, Lord Carle's kitchen slave, was always a beauty to look at: she had honey-colored skin, nut-brown lips, and amber eyelashes. She was not Koretian, as I had once thought; rather, she had Koretian coloring and a soft Koretian accent because she had been born in the borderland, the strip of land stretching on both sides of the black border mountains. Here Koretians married Emorians, producing light-skinned Koretians and dark-skinned Emorians. Philippa was Emorian, but I allowed this fact to be dulled in my mind whenever I caught sight of her.
She was a beauty even now that she stood frowning at me because she had noticed me watching out of the corner of my eye as she cuddled with Lord Diggory's slave-servant Patrick. We were in the pantry, one of the few rooms in Lord Carle's section of the slave-quarters with a reasonable amount of privacy, and a favorite location for palace slaves who wished to carry on a romance.
I had not come to the room with the deliberate intention of spying on them. I had been sent there that evening by Lord Carle's free-servant Henry to clean the silver wine cups.
"Oh, leave him alone, Lippa," said Patrick, pausing from the act of nibbling her ear. "Have mercy on the poor wretch. It's the most fun
he'll
ever have."
My face remained expressionless as I wiped the cups mechanically with a cloth, but something about my hunched posture prompted Patrick to add with exasperation, "Oh, come on – I'm just joking."
"Look at him –
look
at him," said Philippa, twisting away from Patrick's grasp so that she could rest her fists on her hips. "He's cleaning the bottom of the wine pitcher as well. I know that Henry wouldn't have told him to do that. It's just another way he has found to act as though he's better than any other slave. He's a cold, uppity creature, and he spends half his time trying to make the rest of us look lazy."
"It won't be hard for him to do that, will it?" said Patrick, smoothing down the front of his tunic. "You're supposed to be washing up right now, aren't you? You'd better go finish cleaning the dishes before Henry suspects that I have been waylaying you from your duties. Henry's a stickler for duty, he is. And I don't want to come by here again and find that Henry has given orders for the guards to keep me out."
Philippa gave a half-smile, half-frown, coaxing Patrick's mouth down to her own. Once he had begun to take interest, she pushed him away and left the pantry, not looking back. Patrick sighed and turned to me. "Here, I'll help you with that. You'll never get those cups done in time if you take that much trouble over them."
He sat down beside me on the stone bench next to the table and began wiping the cups with a skill lesser than my own. After a few minutes he said, "Why
do
you take so much trouble? I'm just curious. I've heard plenty of stories about the encounters you've had with Lord Carle, so love of your master can't be what drives you."
I wiped the lip of the cup I was holding, held it up to the light, and wiped it again before replying, "I do it for the Jackal."
"The Jackal? . . . Oh, one of your Koretian gods. What does the Jackal have to do with it?"
I tossed aside the cloth I was holding and pulled over a clean one, pushing a lock of hair out of my eyes as I did so. I did not have to worry about much hair getting in my face as I worked; Lord Carle had ordered my hair cut soon after I first arrived at his quarters, while I still lay half-conscious on my sickbed. He wanted me to have short hair like any decent Emorian boy. I had not protested. It had seemed to me at that time that all my dreams of coming of age had already been destroyed forever.
"If I had to do my work for the sake of Lord Carle, I would never do it," I replied. "If I didn't do my work, Lord Carle would kill me. So, since the Jackal is my real master, I pretend that I'm doing the work for him. When you work for a god, you want to work well."
Patrick stared at me. He was an Emorian, sold on his village court's orders to pay a debt that his father had incurred, and he had spent most of his seventeen years at the palace. I knew little about him, since he worked in Lord Diggory's section of the slave-quarters, farther along in the basement. But I knew that most of the other slaves disliked him. This was reason enough for me to like him, since I shared his problem.
"You're an odd one, aren't you?" he said. "I'd heard that you had your own way of thinking. You would have to have a different sort of mind to get into so many arguments with Lord Carle. I hate being in the same room as that lord, even on his good days. I thought you were going to say that you did a lot of work in hope that he would free you some day."
"No," I said, taking a cup from his hand because he had been wiping the same spot for several minutes. "Lord Carle will never free me."
"You're right about that, and it's not just Lord Carle. I haven't known any palace slaves to be freed the whole time I've been here. I think the Chara is afraid that the dominion-born ones will take secrets back to their lands and cause trouble. And, of course, what the Chara wants, every council lord wants as well. The only way I know for a palace slave to be freed is for him to be transferred to his master's country home – that's the route I'm planning to take. After a few years, they forget that you lived in the palace, and you have just as good a chance as any other slave in this land of getting your manumission paper."
I pushed the finished wine cups to one side and began wiping the water cups once more. "There are benefits to living in the palace. Some day I may meet the Chara."
"What will you do if that happens?" replied Patrick with a laugh. "Ask to touch his pendant? Tell him what he should do in Koretia? Or you could just kill him and solve all the problems of your land."
Again I said nothing, and again something about my posture caused Patrick to exclaim, "You're not serious! Don't be a fool, boy; it has been tried before. It never works – the palace guards always catch the assassin beforehand, and you know what would happen to you then."
I put down the water cup I was holding, staring at the reflections on it. The mirrored colors were as dull as my surroundings: grey from the windowless walls of the slave-quarters, brown from the tunics that Patrick and I wore, and black from the shelves around us. I said, "To die for the sake of the god would be better than spending the rest of my life serving Lord Carle."
"Well, if your god has ordered you to do this, tell him that he should reconsider the matter. Do you have any idea what they do to a slave who has been placed under the high doom? He doesn't get his head cut off with a sword as though he were a free-man. If I ever have to die, you may be sure that I'll arrange for it to be in a quick and painless manner."
I stood up and went over to the shelf, where I pulled out a gold tray. As I began placing the cups and wine and water in careful order on the tray, Patrick lowered his voice. "Listen, you take my advice and don't tell anyone else about this. You can't trust slaves – they'd give word to their master what you were up to, just to get on his good side. You don't want to have to fight off all the palace guards before you even get to meet the Chara. It will be hard enough killing one person."
"Two people," I said. "The Chara and the Chara To Be. They are both the Chara."
"Have you been sneaking a look at Lord Carle's law books? For sure, you'd have to kill the Chara's son too, but you'd have even less chance of doing that. The Chara keeps Lord Peter locked away in his room, reading book after book, and only brings him out for the occasional ceremony or court case."
I did not reply. Patrick opened his mouth to say more, and then rose quickly as Henry opened the door to the room.
"What are you doing here, Patrick?" he asked, looking hard at the slave-servant.
"Message for Lord Carle, sir," said Patrick smoothly. "Lord Diggory said that I was to deliver it personally, but I understand that Lord Carle is at dinner."
Henry held out his hand, and Patrick placed the wax-sealed letter there. The white-haired free-servant glanced at the seal briefly, then handed the envelope back and said, "You will have to wait until later this evening.
Not
here, where you will be in the way of the other slaves. There is food left from the dinner in the kitchen – you can wait there."
Patrick bowed his head in acknowledgment and thanks of the order, waited until Henry had stepped past him, and then winked at me before leaving the room.
Henry's composed gaze took in me and the cleaned cups. "Well done. Is that the best tunic you have?"
"It is the only tunic I have, sir."
"We will have to find you a better one soon. That one will do for now. Lord Carle has dinner guests, and while it was my understanding that the chief guest would bring his own free-servant to help pour the wine, he has not done so. Lord Carle told me to send for you, since he knows you to be circumspect in your manner and not the type to gossip about what you overhear while serving."
Lord Carle, I was sure, had phrased his command in a far less complimentary manner, but Henry had served the council lord for many years and had a special talent for covering up his master's brusqueness. I asked, "Do I come right away?"
"Yes, bring the tray now; they have finished their dinner. I will serve the wine, and you will serve the water. You do know which is the water cup, do you not?"
"The larger one, sir."
"Mind that you remember." Henry strode out of the room, his head held high with the dignity of a favored free-servant. I followed, cradling the heavy tray in my arms.
We walked through the slave-quarters, up the stairs, through the basement door that Henry opened with a key (since the slaves were now locked in for the night), past the guards stationed outside, down the short stretch of corridor that was the only part of the palace I had seen during my time there, through the door to Lord Carle's quarters, up a passage to the door of the dining chamber, and stopped there. Henry gave me a sharp look and opened the door. For a moment, his body blocked my view of the chamber. Then he stepped inside, and I looked straight into the eyes of the Chara's son.
He had changed much in the three-and-a-half years since I had seen him last, tugging at the cloak of his father. He had the lankiness of a boy on the edge of manhood – he was now nearly fifteen, just over a year from his coming of age. The open eagerness I had once seen on his face had altered to a more caged look, as though something had either frightened him or matured him. Only his eyes remained as I remembered them: grey as the Emorian sky on a winter's day, filled with curiosity and depth.
This much I saw before I dropped my gaze hastily. I followed Henry into the chamber. Its southern window was shuttered for the night, and the serving ledge where Henry placed the gold tray was shadow-dark in the candle-lit room. I took the water pitcher that Henry handed me, and then went over to stand at my place, on the side of the table to the right of Lord Carle. Only then did I see who the council lord's other two guests were: an elderly, hawk-eyed man whose glance darted around the table, and the Chara Nicholas.