The Cedna (Tales of Blood & Light Book 2) (17 page)

A
jarring clash
woke me in the night. I lay on my hard berth, blinking, confused by the boat’s sway. As another jolt shook the vessel, I slipped from my quarters like a blackstone shadow.

Another ship had pulled beside the one I’d been a passenger on for three days. Grappling hooks tangled between the vessels, and pure chaos ruled over the decks. Men in dark clothing moved rapidly; blades slashed and whirled. Screaming metal cu through the occasional groans as hull rubbed hull. I cowered within the bulwark, fumbling madly at my waist for the knife Khayan had given me.

Men fell, right and left, though the night proved too dark for me to discern whether they were the crew of my ship or the invaders. One fast shadow cut the only familiar figure, the captain who had offered me passage on the Queenstown docks.

My captain knelt before the leader of the invaders, a vicious, bleeding gash opening his face from brow to chin. “We surrender,” he rasped.

Other crew threw down their weapons while the pirate invaders lit torches.

I could finally see the leader from the other boat. He was compact and black-haired, with a wild look in his upslanted eastern eyes. He more resembled a Gantean than a Lethemian, perhaps because our peoples shared a heritage far in the past; the original Ganteans had come to the island from the east.

He held a long, curving blade in his left hand.

I’d had enough. I stepped forward and a surge of unlikely waves pummeled the vessel. “What is the meaning of this?” I demanded in my best Cedna voice.

“Who this?” The black-haired pirate ignored me and prodded the captured captain with his boot.

“Our passenger. She paid for passage to Amphicylix,” the captain said.

“How many more?”

“None. Only the woman.”

The black-haired invader gazed at me. Fear rose from my stomach to my mouth. This man knew about death and blood and darkness. His eyes were like blackstone. I bit my tongue to keep my lips from quivering. My southern dress offered no barrier against the night air.

“Hardly woman,” the pirate captain said. “I call her girl. Someone wanting her back, young pretty one like this. Take her.” He waved at his own men, and they moved faster than I could, grabbing my upper arms. My knife—my only means of accessing my powers—clattered to the deck. A third man deftly took me off my feet, slinging me as if I were a Gantean hanging bed.

I struggled, but I had no recourse. The men were strong and determined. At the gunwale, they all shifted, setting me on my feet, and in no time they’d bound me from elbow to wrist with my arms in front of me. My breaths came faster; I was filled with an old, raging panic, the memory of similar bindings digging into my mother’s arms.

I didn’t want to show these men my terror, but I could not stifle a small scream.

One batted my head. “Enough that. Captain no like.”

I took a ragged breath. “Wh—what will you do with me?” I couldn’t face the water. What if they threw me in with my hands bound? I would sink. I couldn’t die like that. Any way but that way. I could bear a knife in the gut or a purging poison, but not drowning.

The man did not answer me, instead leaning into my legs and slinging me over his shoulder. Then he took up a metal implement, hooked it onto one of the lines attaching his boat to mine, and thrust us both out over the channel separating the boats.

I choked on another scream, certain I’d end up in the black water below.

Instead, in a matter of moments, the pirate had righted me and marched me across the much larger deck of his own ship, down below decks and into a cabin appointed better than the one I’d had on the other ship. He left me sitting on the narrow berth, my hands still tied.

The ship lurched as they cut it free from the other, and then it galvanized into a steady clip. I had no idea which direction we headed, but I doubted these men ran for Amphicylix. These pirates were foreign; their accents and appearance told me so.

Meals and waterings punctuated time. The pirates appeared to have little interest in me. The close cabin reminded me of a lightless Kaluq cavern.

I tried to guess our destination by the motions of the boat, but I could tell only when our pace slowed and the large ship’s steam engine turned over to propel us into a harbor. I had no notion of how far we’d traveled or even how many days had passed.

The pirate captain brought me and the few other captives he had taken onto the deck as we came into port. His hand gripped like an iron clasp around my arm. They’d kept me alive this long, so I wasn’t truly afraid, only irritated. What use could these men possibly have for me? The captain’s men took the male captives onto the docks and disappeared, leaving me alone with him.

“Where are we?” I asked. “What port is this?”

The man started as if surprised to hear me speak. “Vorisipor, Vhimsantyr, Empire of God-Born. Not so far your country. Better.” He spoke in that halting accent, as if he, like a Gantean, disliked the many small connecting words the Lethemians required.

“Lethemia is not my country,” I snapped.

“No? You look like western girl at me.” He examined my dress, frowning. “Westerners want girl back. They buy back from privateer.”

No one would offer to buy me back. The first prickles of unease spiked my spine. This man was in the business of buying and selling people.

He nudged me towards the gangway to disembark, shrugging. “Governor know better what do with girl. He make decisions. I only serve. You quiet now.”

The captain leashed me to him like a dog, so that he could easily move through the traffic without losing me. I trotted along at his side, bewildered, staring at the port city around me, taking my first glimpse of the massive eastern empire of Vhimsantyr.

I’d heard bits and pieces about Vhimsantyr, some from Ganteans, some during my time at the Alcazar. The Empire sprawled over an entire continent, its westward expansion held at bay at Lethemia’s borders only by the threat of the powerful Lethemian mages and their magic.

The Vorisipor harbor was larger than any I’d seen in Lethemia. The volume of people, ships, animals, and businesses nearly overwhelmed me. Vorisipor was a free-for-all, a huge press of humanity squeezing through a slender bottleneck of civilization.

The leash that tethered me to my pirate actually comforted me. Without it, without him, I would have felt as lost as flotsam on the sea in such a place.

“
W
ait
, you.” My pirate yanked on the leash. After a dizzying trek through the city, he’d come to a walled compound at the top of a hill. We stood on a gravel path just inside the first wall, surrounded by gardens and more paths. I recognized citrus trees like the ones I’d seen in Amar, and pink blossoms on climbing vines trailing over the walls, making the air fragrant and sweet. I couldn’t have retraced our convoluted steps to the shore for any reward.

I had little fear. What did a woman like me have to worry about? I had no plans, no destination. I’d been severed from anything that mattered. I’d escaped death on Gante, and every breath I took was one borrowed from fate.

Despite my bravado, the entourage that approached us left my palms sweating. A man dressed in a blue velvet cloak, followed by six soldiers in intricate scaled mail, crunched down the gravel path.

My pirate bent at the waist in a deferential bow.

“What have you got for me,” the velvet-caped man said in the Imperial tongue of Vhimsantyr. It took me a moment to reach into my arcane knowledge to find the words’ meanings, but as with Lethemian, the language came to me quickly once I sought it.

“A hostage from the west. We took her in Lethemian waters.”

The velvet-cloaked man’s gaze roamed over my plain dress, my tangled hair, and my cold, controlled face. His gaze was assessing, yet at the same time, it made me feel less than human.

“She is nothing much.” He turned back to the pirate. “Strange-looking even for a westerner, and look at her clothes. She is clearly not rich enough to ransom or use in negotiations. I think perhaps you should take her down to the main markets, but the Governor will take a look and make the final decision. Come.”

We were led into a dark receiving hall, a blessed respite from the hot sun. More men stood at the far end of the hall, but only one drew the eye. Like the pirates who had kidnapped me, he had upslanted eyes and black hair drawn into a topknot. Silver beads adorned his hair, and scale armor clad his body. He stood a hand taller than all the others, and his chest was barrel-shaped and broad.

“Governor,” the velvet-caped man bowed. “Here is the girl your loyal servant has procured.”

The scale-clad governor examined me with cold assessment. I might have been a flower or a fish or a feather for all he recognized the awareness behind my eyes. A chill of concern found its way into my spine. I had felt gazes like that before, from Lethemians who scorned Ganteans as savages.

The governor rubbed his head, his scale armor clicking with an insectile foreboding. He lifted the disheveled rope of my red hair away from my body, threw it over my shoulder, and caught the neck of the dress. In one rough motion he pulled down, tearing the bodice to the waist.

I suppressed a flinch, determined not to show my increasing distress to these men. They seemed hard, but I was harder.

The governor pulled a knife from his belt, hooked it at the throat of the thin chemise that still covered me, and sliced the material, continuing past my navel until the clothes peeled away and fell in a pile at my feet.

I stood still. The Cedna had no need to feel shame when male eyes looked upon her naked body. She was the vessel that held the world.
Look upon your maker.
I stared into his rigid face.

The governor did not look at me with a lecherous gaze, but rather an appraising one. He laid a gloved finger on one of the silvery streaks that ran below my navel. “You have borne?” Interest transformed his face.

“Yes,” I replied. “Once.”

“A son or a daughter?”

I had no way to understand the point of his question. I did not know then that Vhimsantese prized sons above daughters, nor that they believed if a woman first bore a daughter, then her next would be male.

“The child was female,” I said.

“Very good.” The governor turned to the others. “I will keep her.”

M
y
reservations grew
. The man in the velvet cape, Jaxith, led me through the walled compound to a row of narrow, dark houses clustered together, delivering me to a woman who called herself Lari. She gave me fresh clothing and showed me where I could sleep. I fell into that bed as though it were my lover’s arms. I barely noticed the other women around me, and even if I had, I would not have understood their purpose. My Gantean experience did not encompass the notion of harem.

In the evening, Lari returned and roused me. Several other women had gathered around, all dark and eastern in appearance. They exchanged whispers behind their hands, sending sideways glances over me.

“You, Western Girl,” Lari said. “Tonight you must come with me.”

“Why?” I asked.

One of the young onlookers gave a sharp intake of breath.

“He asks,” Lari replied. She sounded like a woman who brooked no argument.

I rose, nodding, though I wondered what these women might do if I refused to obey. I stood half a span taller than any of them, and they were round and soft where I was lean and wiry.

“I will go then,” I said solemnly, as if I had a choice.

The whispers continued as Lari and I passed through the other women.

“Do you think he will like her?”

“That scrawny thing? She has no flesh to hold.”

“I give her one night, no more.”

Those words concerned me, but I had faced fear too many times to let it touch me. I followed Lari through the gardens and back to the large building where I had first met this Governor of Vorisipor.

As we went deeper into the large building with the receiving hall, the opulence surprised me. I had dismissed the building as dark and plain, but the wall mosaics, done in blue and green ceramic tiles, would have been breathtaking if kissed by sun or flame.

“You want the night queen, girl?” Lari asked over her shoulder as we walked.

“N—Night queen?” I faltered in her tongue.

“Night queen. For distraction. Some of the women use it when he calls for them. I can give you some if you want it.”

I shook my head, uncertain what she meant.

“Suit yourself. You enter here.” Lari stopped before a door and flicked the white linen drape that I had been given to wear shortly after my arrival. All the women wore such cloth; in the heat it sufficed. “Sit down and wait. He will come soon.”

I strode into the chamber. A thick indigo carpet spread over the floor. The only windows lay twelve spans up in the walls, a narrow row of panes near the ceiling, letting in little light at this twilight hour. Great swathes of linen shrouded a bed. Two chairs made from reeds woven together like a basket nestled around a low table. I ran a hand over the weavework but waited on the floor instead, curling my legs under my garment, leaning into the corner to watch the door.

The governor entered and removed his vest of scale armor. I retracted against the wall. He walked towards the bed and pulled away the drapes.

“Where are you?” He leaned over and checked beneath the bed, as if I might be hiding there.

I made no reply. This thick-bodied man with meaty limbs and too much flesh frightened me.

He turned around twice, searching the room. I sank into my corner, though the shadows would not long conceal my white clothing.

“Ah, there you are.” He faced me. Still I did not move.

“Western Girl,” he said. “Come out from there.” He held out a hand. “I have great hopes for you.”

I stepped forward, but I didn’t offer my hand in answer to his. “What is it you want?” I asked.

“Lie down,” he commanded.

I did not want to, though the bed looked softer than the one I’d slept on earlier. My palms were as sweaty as they had ever been before Ikselian’s rituals.

“I prefer to sit,” I said, quelling the tremble in my voice.

The governor only laughed. “Western Girl, do you think I care what you prefer? Lie down.”

I could not make my feet move. Understanding was slowly dawning: what he wanted, why I had been given over to him. I writhed against my fate. Why? Weren’t my sorrows enough? Why more? Why this?

I had no weapon, no strength to defend myself or fight.

He took hold of my shoulders, pushing me towards the bed.

I had been at odds with my place in the world my entire life. I was too tired to resist again. Nausea and memory rose to fill my throat.

I clutched at the bed to dispel my anxiety. He peeled off my garment and wrapped it around me, pulling it tight to fix me in place. He oiled his male parts while I drew blood from my inner cheek, biting down to suppress my scream.

When at last he rolled off me, I sprang up, ready to run, ready to die. Still, it was not over. “Lie down.” He spoke with total expectation that I would obey, as if I were a dog, as if I had no existence but what he gave me. “You cannot leave until I say you can.”

T
he last good
part of me died that night. The ung-aneraq that formed between the governor and me had little magic or light in it; it was a lifeless thing that left a toxic wake inside me, a path of ash and despair that I could feel if not see.

Of all the countless awful things one human could do to another—murder, betrayal, adultery, torture—the worst human nastiness was this: treating a person as if they were nothing, as if they had no feelings, no awareness behind their eyes, as if they were not human at all. It was not a new insult to me, to be commanded, to be treated as though my own desires and thoughts were nothing. But in Gante I had understood the reasons for it. In Vorisipor there was no reason, no higher purpose, nothing but a powerful man’s whim.

When he sent me back to the women’s houses, I scuttled away like a beaten dog. Terror, not his touch, had ruined me. I feared I would become what he believed me: nothing, nothing, nothing.

I had no ulio to cut the grey ung-aneraq that connected me to the governor. Its sinister touch tainted everything as it sat inside me like a dead, rotting corpse.

The only mercy—a small one—was that the following night, and the one after, and the next, the governor sent for other women, and I did not have to serve him.

I began to understand the cycle of the harem. Lari came to fetch one woman every night. These women ranged from barely past their girlhood to beyond my mother’s age, had she lived. Many were fat from spending their days sitting in the shade, eating. Food was plentiful. The food amazed me—the sheer amount of it and the constant availability. I would never go hungry here.

Some of the women wanted the duty; most didn’t. I had thought I would be spared while the governor cycled through the many women of his harem, but when Lari came again to the room I shared with five other women, only a sennight after my first visit to the governor, she pointed at me.

“He asks for the western girl.”

What could I do but follow her back to the dark hall, my feet shuffling with the weight of their reluctance? Again Lari paused outside the chambers and asked, “Do you want the night queen? It … distracts the mind.”

Distraction would be a blessing. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, give me the night queen.”

She pulled a vial from the folds of her linen sheath. “Take it all. Do it now, quickly.”

It tasted nothing like the bitter pujoanuki I had been given to remove my sayantaq taint in Gante. No, the night queen tasted sweet, as sweet as honey, but cloying, too, and difficult to swallow.

Lari gestured to the door. “Lie down on the bed as he likes.”

The night queen potion affected me immediately. The bed seemed to lift off the floor as I approached, moving of its own volition and mocking my efforts to reach it.

Finally, I arranged myself on the sheets, though the ceiling erupted into swirling patterns of light.

“In the correct place this time,” the governor’s voice said. The last word repeated itself endlessly:
time time time
—never stopping, only fading into the background of my awareness. He pulled off the swathes of fabric I wore and again tied me.

I closed my eyes and wished myself far away. In an act of self-preservation, my memory traveled back to an idyll at the Alcazar.

We, Onatos and I, rested in silken sheets, though they tangled around our ankles in the heat. He pressed open my thighs, and I sighed, letting him. I was a flower, some tropical, hot house bloom that Onatos worshipped. He entered me in a long, smooth thrust, and I made the sighs and moans I never could restrain. They came out of me even when I wished they would not—Onatos’s silence made me feel so needy. I pulled him down to kiss me—

“Do not touch me!” My eyes flew open. Onatos’s face did not hover above me; this man was ugly, with a thick nose and dead grey eyes. A scar ran from his hairline to his jaw. I tried to push him off of me.

“Only Onatos,” I whimpered. I only wanted Onatos.

“Lie still!” the man snarled, striking me across the face.

I plunged into darkness, a long, deep darkness that felt like falling.

D
ays and days
passed while I wandered that darkness. Only murky memories collected: images of walking back to the women’s house and collapsing into my bed, feeble attempts to feed and clothe myself amongst the harem women. A shadowy recollection of rising heat in the blood, a desperate gouging of my arms using … rose thorns? The sweet relief of bloodletting into a hot, still night. Time was a blur.

Lari fetched me often. Every time before I entered the governor’s bedchamber, she offered the night queen. Every time I accepted it. I learned to expect the hallucinations, the vivid scenes of fantasy rapture, and then the blessed darkness. I learned to control my reaction to the fantasies, for the governor wanted to lie with a creature who had no will of her own. I became what he wanted, resting on his bed like a doll or a dead thing. All the while, that rotten ung-aneraq grew, thickening until I thought it might cut off my breath.

The governor treated me like I was nothing, and under the influence of the night queen and his foul touch, that is what I became.

Moons passed in sick reveries of darkness and blood. I opened my veins with anything I could get my hands on: rose thorns, butter knives, a shard of pottery from a broken plate, once, my own teeth. I fed my blood to the world but it made no difference to my life. I was still suffocating. I had always imagined dying to be like this, an airless press, a weight on my breath, an endless fall.

The other harem women still whispered about me behind their hands.

“She has not quickened.”

“He will lose interest in her.”

“So thin she is, and yet he calls for her more than any of us!”

“They say she bore a daughter, before. That is why he prefers her. She can bear, and it is proven.”

Through the haze of the night queen I comprehended why I was asked to service the governor more often than the other women. It was widely known that the governor wanted a son, but despite a harem of over thirty women, no female had quickened his seed. He had taken me from his privateer because of the proof of my fertility. He wanted offspring.

Privately I believed that the man must be sterile, and that his hopes would never come to fruition. Every time my moon blood came, every time I gave blood to the Hinge, I also offered thanks that I did not carry his child.

That would have been more than I could endure.