High Couch of Silistra (11 page)

“Shall I escort you myself, sir, that none of my men bother your party further?” He raised his right arm to his chest, forearm parallel to the ground in the Silistran gesture of respect and service. Ganrom muttered to himself.

“What is your name?” Dellin asked.

“Tetrim, point leader, Liaison,” answered the officer. The Slayers behind me whispered to each other. If they had suspected before, they knew now.

“Tetrim, send that man back to school. And any others here who cannot read Standard. I would make my own way for the moment. You could, however, inform my house of my arrival, and that there will be five for evening’s meal, at moon’s rising.”

Dismissed, the point leader, Tetrim, made haste to his fellows, where he spoke briefly, and then disappeared in the crowd. He took the brown-skinned guard with him.

We passed through the gate without further problem. Ganrom reached across me, and, grinning, took Dellin’s arm and squeezed. The two faced each other against the inside of Aglet’s great wall. Ganrom furrowed his brow in mock anger. Dellin had the look of a boy caught stealing brin.

“You lying outworlder!” Ganrom accused. “Liaison Second of Arlet. Ha!” And he could restrain himself no longer. Peals of laughter rang from that mighty throat and broke Dellin’s composure, and the two leaned against each other, pounding and poking.

“And do you know …” gasped Dellin, pointing his finger at me, shaking with mirth. “Can you guess who that… that girl is?”

“She is not, then, a coin girl?” wheezed Ganrom, leaning on Dellin. The other Slayers were also infected with mirth. They sat on the ground, their backs against the blue-gol blocks of Arlet, chortling.

“Perhaps she is high-couch of Astria?” wisecracked Idrer, snorting in hilarity at his joke.

At that, Dellin sank back against the wall, rubbing his eyes with his hands.

I had hoped he would not tell them. I had also hoped he would include me in his evening meal.

“Not possible, but funny, very funny,” objected Ganrom.

“Why not possible, Ganrom?” said Dellin innocently, composed.

“She … she is mute, and agreeable, and … she obeys you,” he trailed off.

“That she does. Here.” Shaking with rage, I went to him. I considered strangling him with my chald, which he still wore around his neck.

“Magic,” he said, putting his hand to my throat. “Speak. Tell them your name.”

I did, and they fell silent. One does not so abuse a Well-Keepress.

“Give me my things, Dellin,” I hissed, “and I will take leave of you. Who knows what will befall me by way of your flapping tongue?”

“Soon enough, soon enough. Now, be silent again, if you would have them.” He turned to the Slayers. They looked, to a man, perturbed.

“At moon’s rise, my friends. And do not forget. One must give a woman what she needs, no matter how high her station,” and he turned me roughly around and guided me through the crowd to an aisle of stalls.

Through every stall in the Arletian market we walked, until Dellin stopped me before a large star-trader’s booth filled with off-world fabrics and crafts.

“Choose,” he said, waving me inside, and struck up a conversation with the clerk.

I was loath to touch the delicate gauzes and silks with my filthy hands, and the shopkeeper’s eyes followed me as if the same thought was in his mind. He suggested to Dellin that under the circumstances I might use his shower stall in the back room.

I did this, and took my time. It was a narrow portable shower, with hardly enough space to turn, but I luxuriated in it.

Clean to squeaking, I disdained my grimy s’kim, leaving it on the dirt between shower and shop proper, and walked, naked, covered with beaded drops of water, to where Dellin lounged with the clerk. There was a length of silvery silk and two silver clips, set with white stones, and a bone comb backed with a matching silver handle on the counter between them.

“I have little time, Estri. These will have to do.” He gestured to me to dress.

I did so, slowly, shamelessly, before the popeyed clerk, taking as much time before the mirror as I dared. Only when the silvery silk was most artfully draped and my hair sleek and shining did I leave the interior of the star-trader’s shop.

Dellin looked me up and down, nodded, and paid the bill. It was exorbitant. He steered me across the crowded Inner Well until we stood before three broad steps that led up to a massive thala door, upon which were carved many women.

“Turn for me.” I did so. He took my chald from about his neck and with the tiny key unlocked it. He removed my father’s ring from his middle finger and threaded the chald through its band, then fastened the chald around my waist and secured the key in its housing. He drew from his wide parr pocket belt a small tas bag and handed it to me. I could feel the viewer and slightly bigger holos through the buttery leather. He then reached behind my neck and removed the necklace of dippars he had put on me in the forest. He Held it out to me.

“Take it. You earned them.”

I shook my head. Again he tried to put the necklace of gold coins into my hands. I knew what he had paid at the star-trader’s stall. He had not even haggled.

“I will not take payment from you, Dellin.”

“But you will lower your value. You cannot couch with me for nothing, like some binnirin farmer’s daughter.” He mocked me, but his tone was gentle.

I shook my head again, and backed a step from him. He grinned broadly and put the dippars, still threaded on the thong, in his belt.

“If I should buy your use here in Arlet, you will have no choice but to take payment,” he reminded me.

“If you should,” I allowed, “then I will have no choice.” My voice trembled.

I turned from him and ran the three steps and pushed through the carved thala door, closing it quickly behind me, leaning against it. Another moment, and he would have had me begging. I took deep breaths, counting, until my throat stopped aching. Then I opened my eyes.

A girl, startled, faced me, her hands frozen in front of her with mop and bowl. She had been moist-dusting. She was a small girl with sturdy legs and peas-shaped breasts, a pleasant round face, large brown eyes, pale skin. Her head was shaved. She wore a mesh wisp of a breech, a metal triangle held over her crotch by a fine-linked brass chain, and nothing eke. She went on her knees to me.

I ran my hands down my hips and took a deep breath and motioned her up.

“High lady,” she whispered, touching her forehead to the tilted blue floor, and rose.

“Is your mistress in?”

“She is in, if you are she whom we have been expecting.” Her face was tense, her huge eyes luminous.

“I am Estri of Astria, Hadrath diet Estrazi. Will that do?”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled, relief evident in her expression. “Mistress has been waiting for two days for you, high lady, and the Liaison’s men have haunted us for word of you, and she hates waiting and she hates haunting and she is in a very bad temper.” She stopped, put her hand to her mouth. She had said too much.

“Take me to her, then, and we will see if her mood brightens.”

The shaved-headed girl dropped her bowl and rag on the deep-blue tiles and started down the dimly lit corridor. Her plump hips swung before me, and I watched the chain that came up between her buttocks, to split and encircle her loins, glitter as she moved.

The corridor gave way to the sunken, vaulted-ceilinged common room, with its inlaid floors of semiprecious-stone slabs. We walked past the entry desk, unattended at this early hour, down across the middle of the huge sunken, circular chamber, past low pillowed divans and furred cushions arranged in three seating sections. This evening those divans and cushions would seat the women of Arlet, each in her price section, and the men who would pleasure after buying a well token at the entry desk. The price of the token determined the group from which he would choose. Now, in the afternoon, none reclined in the common room. My guide led me straight to the passageway opposite the entry. To my right were the open doors to the dining hall and baths, to my left the drink room, the drug chamber, and a narrow door leading to the staff quarters. The passage we entered led to the girls’ keeps. It branched right and left immediately under the lintel. We took neither turn, but stopped before a star-steel panel, complete with red-glowing palm lock directly in front of us. My guide touched the red oblong, and the door slid soundlessly aside. I stepped within and regarded Celendra Doried bast Aknet, Well-Keepress of Arlet.

The room was warmly lit from a concealed source. Everywhere hung rich, figured brocades from the desert tribes of the Parset barrens, barbaric and splendid. Not one surface of the large irregular keep was free from draperies of scarlets, umbers, and ochers. Hunting tapestries, geometries, free-form swirls, all glowed forth in perpetual sunset hues, as if I had suddenly come into some magnificent apprei, the portable homes of the desert nomads. The ceiling was obscured with them, the floor strewn carelessly with priceless deep-pile Parset rugs. The psychotropic patterns dragged at the eye, teasing, confusing. Here and there, stout thala poles rose from the silky rugs, to disappear in the ceiling draperies. From these poles hung chains and lashes, daggers and cords.

In the midst of this rioting color, Celendra of Arlet reclined upon a great fall of cushions. The smell of narcotic danne was thick in the air as she rose like some sinuous dorkat, the wingless hulion of the desert, and moved noiselessly to take my hand. She was black as Santh, and as supple. Her hair was caught at the top of her head in a chased-silver cone, bursting from confinement at the narrowed opening of the cone’s apex to flow black-blue, shining, to her waist. She wore thick silver wristlets and anklets, and a band of the same chased metal at her regal throat. She was half again my weight, and this she carried on a massive lean frame with not a hint of fat, yet her breasts were great pointed pillows, and her lips full and inviting. Beside her I was but a stripling girl, not yet grown into my womanhood.

I thought of Dellin with this magnificent woman, and the image was a splinter in my heart.

She took my copper hand in her midnight one, and her silvered nails glittered. Celendra stood back, then, appraising me. She wore an Arletian chald, loosely woven, the chains separate and distinct between the spaced knots against the dark of her skin. It hung low over her inverted navel. I picked out, among the chaldric chains, the golden links of birthing fulfilled, and the copper of the forereaders, and between them, like a dark shadow, the black-iron Slayer’s chain. Her fifteen-strand chald spoke eloquently of her capabilities.

“Perhaps you are truly daughter of chaos,” she said to me in a husky voice, slurred with danne. I thought it a strange greeting.

“Come sit with me,” she continued, “and we shall test the time.” The forereaders use danne to dive deep in the time flow. Celendra was still half-tranced. She smiled, and her white teeth flashed.

Seated among the cushions, she prepared the smoke, and I partook of it with her. She peered at me over the smoldering bowl of the gem-encrusted pipe. Her eyes were gold-green, the whites reddened from the drug. I felt my muscles relax and my mind slow in its whirling as the yellow herb had its effect. My emotions receded, leaving me clear and calm. Danne gives one distance from one’s situation.

“I knew you would come today,” said the Keepress of Arlet. “All the forereaders leave for conclave with the Day-Keepers, but I think what they seek might be here in Arlet.” She spoke as if to herself, but her eyes were for me.

“I had some difficulty arriving here,” I apologized. I would not have kept her from her call to conclave.

“No matter.” She waved her hand. “All right with me. That impotent First roused out all the Liaison’s men. Where are they? Where are they? They have not let us live. I told them, but they believe only what their eyes can see, ears can hear, hands can touch. I saw you, and the winds from the abyss blew around. Your feet were imprisoned in the weave of the time-flow, and your hands bound behind. The current dragged you off at right angles to your chosen path, and the life spirits warred over you. Then, slowly, the branch rejoined the time flow, and that flow drew you here. Almost, you were lost to the call of the crux time, but in the end, it triumphed. The Day-Keepers sense a great crux, and they call us together to prepare. They are blinded by the mists such time throws out, that we may not avoid our destiny. But I see. And, of course, that I might not lead them, the flow bound me here.” She stared at me, leaning forward, her eyes narrowed. Her red tongue darted out to moisten her lips.

“What say you, pawn of power?” she queried. “What sense do you make of my reading?”

I thought she had perhaps smoked too much danne. The reading I got was confusion.

“I say that I, too, am blinded by the mists such time throws out.”

She nodded. I wondered how much true knowledge she had, how much was seeress drug babble.

“This is very lovely.” I would change the subject. I waved at the keep.

“Yes. I would keep my father’s heritage around me. Do you not, also, in Astria?”

“I would, if I had access to it.”

She looked at me questioningly. It seemed she knew less than she pretended.

The moment was opportune. I took one of the holos from the tas bag and handed it to her.

She peered at it, blinking, struggling for focus.

“My father,” I explained. “I seek him. Have you serviced such a man in Arlet?”

“No.” She handed it back, and I replaced it carefully in the tas bag. “If I had, I would remember. I would also be tempted to seek such a one. Should you find him, invite him for me to Arlet.” She grinned, chiaroscuro.

“How did you fare with the Liaison Second?” she asked.

“Not as well as I would have wished. He is overly muscled and sadistic.” I shrugged. “I do not envy you, Celendra. M’lennin is bad enough. Dellin is an exceedingly difficult man.” Half a truth is better than none.

“M’ksakkan, isn’t he? He will mellow, as M’lennin did. When M’glarenn took Astria, it is said that he used four additional women a day for a thousand days. When the restraints of M’ksakka are thrown off, much comes bubbling to the surface that has been long afester in them.”