The Last Hour of Gann (124 page)

“No, sir.”

“No?”

Dkorm fidgeted, checked himself, tried to stand taller
. “I don’t expect to see you in the workpit, is all.”

“Ah.” Zhuqa returned his easy stare to
Rosek. “I thought you might be nervous.”

“No, sir.”

“It would not be an unreasonable feeling.”

“Sir?”

“Particularly since the task of caring for whichever little sprat is not biting at Xzem’s ample teat is supposed to be yours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes?” Zhuqa allowed himself the posture of very mild surprise. “Then this was understood?”

“Yes, sir. Very well.”

“
Very
well,” Zhuqa mused. “So then. I confess to some confusion.”

“Eshiqi wanted to hold it.”

“Ah.” Zhuqa reached down to stroke the nursing baby’s cheek, and while he did this, Xzem did not breathe at all. “As it happens, I like to see Eshiqi hold it, but I believe my last word on the matter was that Eshiqi could see the baby, Dkorm.” He straightened up and turned around. “
See
it. Not hold it.”

D
korm was frowning, flustered. “My apologies, sir.”

“Well, yes.” Zhuqa
indulged himself in a small chuckle. “Apologies would certainly appear to be in order. You are passing my first-born around, Dkorm.”

“I am very sorry, sir.”

“To a slave, actually.” Zhuqa began to walk back around the table.

Dkorm did not back away, but was quick to say,
“Sir, I wouldn’t have done it if it were not Eshiqi.”

Zhuqa glanced back to rest his eyes on Amber and the baby in her arms. His spines were forward, relaxed. The scales at his throat remained black. “She does seem rather fond of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I confess to being fond of it myself,” said Zhuqa. “Have I made any secret of that?”

“No, sir.”

“No. I do not consider myself a sentimental man, but that is, as far as I know, my only
living child. Do you have children, Dkorm?”

“I…I don’t know, sir.”

“Truth?”

“Sir.”

“That is a howling shame. A man’s legacy is in his loins. Once the soul is pissed out and the body goes to rot, there is nothing left in this life that endures, not the coin of his hoarding or the good word of his friends or any damned thing at all, save the name he has left to his children.”

“I…Yes, sir.”

“Look there—” Zhuqa dropped his arm around Dkorm’s shoulders and gestured at the sleeping infant in Amber’s arms. “—and you look upon my eternity.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nestled in the arms of an unbroken slave.”

Dkorm hesitated, but there was no safe answer and not a lot
of give to the truth. “Yes, sir.”

“Did you ever stop to think such a slave could, in a moment of defian
ce—” His fingers drummed once on Dkorm’s shoulders. “—dash its helpless little brains out just to strike a scar on me?”

Amber’s arms tightened on the baby.

Zhuqa waited, then looked down at Dkorm. “Did you?” he prompted.

“No, sir.”

“Not even once?”

“No, sir.”

“You disappoint me, Dkorm.” Zhuqa studied the man standing rigid under his relaxed arm, then gave him another pat and stepped away. “I accept your apology. Let Eshiqi hold the baby if it makes her happy.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dkorm, only a little shakily.

Zhuqa came to the table and hunkered comfortably before Amber. He cocked his head, listening to the breathy rumble of its sleeping purrs. At length, he raised a hand to stroke at the side of its blunt snout, which caused it to curl up at once, mewing indignantly and turning into the swell of Amber’s breast. Zhuqa grunted, his spines fanned all the way forward. He looked at Amber. “You could hurt me very easily if you chose to kill it,” he said quietly. “But not so deeply or so well, I think, as I could hurt you by doing the very same thing.”

He glanced back down to watch her arms tighten into a protective shell around the baby, then grunted, pleased, and rose to his feet. “Xzem
, take it.”

Xzem
bent her head, then placed her squirming, complaining child in Dkorm’s hands, then came to take the infant from Amber’s equally reluctant grip. The baby’s mews, ignored, became howls. It fought the teat Xzem offered, twisting its head violently side to side and straining with all its fragile might to find its way back to Amber.

“Now, Dkorm, let
me make my next order very clear to you: Nobody touches Rosek except you and Xzem…and Eshiqi, I suppose. If she wants to. Nobody else.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Xzem is to hold my child every moment that her own is not sucking at her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“During those times, Eshiqi can hold it. If she doesn’t want it, you hold it. If anyone else touches either child—look at me, Dkorm—if God Himself lays on His benevolent hands in blessing, I will devote the next six days to killing you.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dkorm. His posture was exemplary. His hands on Xzem’s wailing baby did not shake.

“Do you believe I can make it last six days?” Zhuqa inquired, chucking at Rosek’s chin. She did not stop crying, but did give him a wet-eyed incredulous look.

“Yes, sir.”

Zhuqa rubbed Rosek’s small snout and smiled up at Dkorm. “I should have a certain reputation for honesty in this camp. I’ve worked hard to cultivate it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dkorm after a puzzled moment, since Zhuqa seemed to be waiting.

“So I know that I am understood when I tell you that sitting in the workpit with slaves may not be how you want to pass your days, but it is a sign of my trust and my high regard. It is, in fact, an honor and I want to know that it is appreciated.”

“It is, sir.”

“Good. That eases my mind.” Zhuqa headed for the door, then paused and turned back. “As an honest man,” he said evenly, “I say if I have to tell you to play with this fucking thing one more time, I will make her a rattle-stick out of your own teeth.”

Dkorm shrugged the baby up onto his shoulder and started rapidly patting
her.

Zhuqa grunted and left, closing the door quietly behind him without another glance for Amber.

Dkorm immediately turned on Xzem, saying, “If there’s a trick to shutting this thing up, you tell me right now or I’ll muzzle it.”

Xzem surged forward only to cringe back, her wide eyes filled with panic and pain in equal measure. The infant squirming at her teat renewed the full force of its waning screams immediately.

“Shut one of them up at least,” snapped Dkorm, jostling the baby harder. And suddenly his spines smacked flat against his scales and he thrust Rosek out at arm’s length, not quite fast enough to avoid the stream that came spraying out between her kicking legs.

D
korm closed his eyes. He took a short breath between tightly-clenched jaws and sighed it out. His head bent. “I hate sprats,” he muttered.

Amber eased warily onto her feet.

“Sit down!” Dkorm snapped, slapping at his leg. “Oh fuck Gann, it’s in my boot! I’m going to be walking in your little poke’s piss the whole rest of the day! Xzem!”

Xzem
darted forward, pushing Zhuqa’s screaming infant into Dkorm’s hands and snatching her own away. Dkorm dropped with a mutter onto a bench, hooking the baby over his arm so that he could keep rubbing at the wet patches on his leathers. “Fucking sprat. I want you to know, Xzem, the very instant this thing dies, I’m pulling your little pisspot in half.”

Xzem shivered, but made no sound.

“Baby,” said Amber in lizardish, putting out her hands.

Dkorm glared at her. “What’s the matter, Eshiqi?” he asked blackly. “Think I’m going to drop it? Think I’m going to bash it’s screaming little face into the floor and stomp on the fucking thing until it shuts the fuck up at last? Huh? It’s fine. Leave it alone.”

His neck was lighting up brighter and brighter with every breath.

Amber dropped her hands, looked around, then dashed into the other room to dunk a rag in wash-water and bring it back to Dkorm.

He eyed her with an ominous lack of expression, but then leaned back and gestured at his leg. Amber knelt beside him and scrubbed carefully at his breeches, feeling his stare like a physical thing on the back of her neck. The baby, inelegantly folded over his arm, squirmed and cried.

“
Fuck Gann, but you’re ugly,” Dkorm remarked, fingering a few handfuls of hair. “I don’t know why Zhuqa would want to dip it in you when he could have any other slave in this camp. Or all of them.” His gaze dropped to the baby in his arm. He shrugged it roughly into a new position and gave it a few equally rough pats in an unsuccessful effort to quiet it. “I don’t know why he wants this thing either. It doesn’t do anything but eat, make noise and stink the place up.”

“
Why do you keep calling it ‘it’?” Amber asked, and when he only squinted at her in confusion, she tried again, supplementing her terrible lizard-speech with pantomime. “Is it a girl?” she asked, pinching her thumb and forefinger together to form a tear-drop shaped opening. “Or a boy?” Blushing, she pushed a finger through from the underside so that it thrust out like a painfully true-to-life lizardman penis.

The yellow stripes on
Dkorm’s throat flashed a little brighter and began to fade. “You want to know the gender? Too soon to tell. Look.” He caught hold of the baby’s leg and moved it so that the baby’s naked loins were broadly displayed (and the baby itself was almost upside down). The baby’s slit was no more than a crease in its scales with a narrow hole at one end. Dkorm prodded this, saying, “It’s just a pisser right now. It won’t open for…” His spines snapped down and up again in a shrug. “…a year and some days. By dry season next, I should think. Some people say they can just tell, but some people piss out of their mouths.”

She couldn’t stand it anymore. She took the baby from him, righting it and drawing it in to lie against her breasts, where
it quieted at once. He watched, folding his empty arms, in no hurry to take it back.

“
Pointless,” he said, watching the baby begin its shivering song of sleep. “The first one always dies. I suppose Zhuqa thinks he can save it with a better mother, but it won’t work. Gann will have it. And once it’s gone—and I split your little dip, Xzem, don’t think I’ve forgotten—I’ll finally get some sleep.”

Xzem
hunched a little further over Rosek as she wiped the baby clean.

“She was raider-go
t herself,” Dkorm confided, running his eyes lazily over Xzem’s huddled back. “How old were you when you had your first bastard?”

“I do not know,” Xzem whispered.

“Young, then. We’ll say too young and close the door. How many have you had?”

“I do not know.”

“No, I suppose they all blur together after a time. Do any of them still live? No, you wouldn’t know. She’s been sold to so many camps, she’s probably fucked half the sons she brought into this world. What say you, Xzem?” he asked, helping himself to a fresh cup of their foul drink. “They say a mother always knows her child, no matter the years or the distance. Have you ever wondered if those were your own eyes you saw in some stranger’s face before he bent you over?”

Xzem cupped the back of the baby’s head, nuzzling at it with her n
arrow snout, and stayed silent.

“She came to us
so well-used, I was in her three shoves before I knew I was. Chuaan would never have paid for a woman like Xzem, but she had a sprat and Zhuqa’s stupid about sprats.” Dkorm rattled out a laugh and drank. “He actually wants one. Three of his play-women have squeezed one out for him, but they all died. And he burned them,” he added derisively. “Last time, it was raining and he made us all stand out in the fucking rain and watch him burn that noisy little shit-machine like it
mattered
.”

Dkorm punctuated this statement with a contemptuous glance at the baby in Amber’s arms, but soon his gaze
shifted to her body and took on a speculative gleam. He stood and came over to get a better look at her.

Amber moved
to put the worktable between them. He followed as unhurriedly as she’d done it, watched her struggle to roll out some clay with the baby tucked up in the crook of her arm, and said, “You could do that better with both hands, I think.”

Amber did not give him the baby.

He didn’t come right out and ask for it either. She felt him lift up a sizeable hank of her hair and drop it again. Then she felt him pressing at her arm. When she glanced tensely back, she found him with his spines all the way forward, watching his fingers dimple into her flesh. “Soft,” he said, almost to himself. “You soft like that all over, Eshiqi?”

She pulled out of his grip.

“Calm yourself. I don’t drink from Zhuqa’s cup,” he snorted. “Besides, I’ll find out soon enough. Zhuqa likes a little fighting spirit in his women, but only if he has the pleasure of breaking it quickly. When he decides you’re too distracting, he’ll put you up on the bidding block. Before long, you’ll be like Xzem here, nothing but a catch-cock with a little meat attached to keep it warm.”