Authors: Carol Berg

Transformation (9 page)

BOOK: Transformation

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“Here, here, woman,” said Aleksander, shaking his hand at the woman, though still not looking at her. “Take it and get up or these cretins will trample you.”

She reached out a hand as if putting it into the mouth of a wolf, but the Prince pulled her up and shoved her away. Then he sheathed his sword and with cold ferocity back-handed the Fontezhi guard who had throttled the children. Astonished, I urged the two little ones toward their mother, and the three of them fled down an alleyway. I wondered how many days they had left to live. Unless the weather eased up a little, I guessed it was not many.

The Prince said nothing more of the incident, but he did seem to take notice of me as I stood shivering in my sleeveless tunic, waiting for the expedition to proceed. He stared at me so long I wondered if I had angered him by interfering even in so small a way. After a quick glance about, he started to speak, but thought better of it and motioned me to stay close behind him. When we reached the Jurran warehouse, he commanded one of Lord Celdric’s attendants to find me a cloak and some sandals lest I be too cold to write properly. I was confounded.

The Prince took only a few moments to inspect the warehouse before rendering his judgment. The district could not be burned. It might encourage all the unsavory residents of the place to converge on the rest of the city, he said. The Fontezhi dennissar was speechless and kept fingering the tiny scratch on his neck left by Aleksander’s sword. No doubt the Fontezhi lords had assumed that the residents would burn along with the other filth.

But Aleksander was not done. “The Jurrans will pay for the land on which their warehouses sit,” he said. “Not rent, but in full for proper ownership. Before the end of the Dar Heged, Lord Celdric will bring me a notice of the settlement. Make a note of it, Seyonne. And for the next twenty years the Jurrans will contract solely with Fontezhi caravans to transport their spices within the boundaries of Azhakstan.”

Masterful. The Fontezhi would lose land for their insult of the Prince. The Jurrans would lose gold for their insult to a more powerful house. The two hegeds would be forced to work together, and would likely both profit handsomely from the contract, leaving good feelings all around. It was well-done. But it was Aleksander’s treatment of the woman I found intriguing. It seemed wholly out of character.

We were soon back to normal. On that evening as I sat at the Prince’s writing desk copying dispatches for the military commanders on the northern borders, Aleksander came in from the bedchamber and poured himself a glass of wine, then summoned one of his aides. He pointed at the curtained door to the bedroom and jerked his head.

“What shall we do with her, Your Highness?”

“Throw her back in the cesspit where you found her. She stinks and is more crude than a Veshtar. Sovari was right.”

The aide disappeared through the curtain and did not return.

“What are you looking at, slave?” said Aleksander. “Was she a friend of yours?”

I suspected it was the whore from the streets, though I never saw her.

Chapter 6

On the fifth morning of the Dar Heged the Prince began acting strangely. He could not sit still. He tapped constantly on the arms of his chair. He shifted and settled in the red velvet as if he could not get comfortable. He fiddled with his knife, twisted his braid, and played with a jewel on a chain about his neck, then threw the cushions from his chair aside before commanding a servant to bring them back again. He called for wine, but did not drink it; rather he threw the goblet on the floor when he got irritated at a petitioner. An elderly matriarch of a powerful family accusing her son of falsifying the lineage of a prize horse—a crime more serious than murder in the Derzhi Empire—almost fell out of her chair when Aleksander jumped up in the middle of her droning argument and yelled at her. “Be quick about it, woman. There are a thousand others waiting to stand before me.” He circled his chair and drummed his fists on the back of it, trying to induce the woman to talk faster. She got flustered, and I thought he was going to have her hanged when she started panting and holding her breast and had to be carried away. A steward stepped up to the Prince and whispered quietly in his ear, only to have Aleksander yell at him. “I’m perfectly fine. Just get the next person up here before I have you flogged.”

On the next day things were worse. The Prince could not sit for more than a minute at a time, so he paced back and forth across the dais as people spoke to him, their heads following his movements. It made them stumble in their words, which made him angrier. As the hours passed, he fought to control this restlessness, folding his arms tight about his chest or clenching his wine cup until his knuckles were white. But even then his foot would drum or his head would toss. The stewards and the chamberlains were wide-eyed and fearful. He had two of them flogged for daring to suggest he might want to rest, and he was threatening to do the same for the next person who asked if they could do something for him. It was on that day, the second of this strange behavior, that I noticed the Khelid emissary among the courtiers and attendants behind the Prince’s chair. The fair, slender man in the purple cloak stood watching, saying nothing to anyone, smiling to himself on occasion, though I could never understand what kinds of things he found amusing. I put it out of my mind quickly. What did slaves care about demons or their amusements?

The seventh day of Dar Heged, the third of Aleksander’s odd behavior, began with a very complex case where the head of a family had died, leaving only one unmarried female child to inherit extensive lands and properties. Aleksander sat in his chair holding on to its arms so tightly, I would not have been surprised to see the ancient wood crumble in his grasp. I was close enough to see dark gray circles under the amber eyes that darted here and there, never focusing on anything. The Chamberlain had warned him that the parties to the disputed inheritance, two male members of the House who each claimed the young woman in marriage, were powerful barons of equal degree, who guarded the most dangerous frontiers of the Empire. The Emperor would not wish to antagonize either of them.

After half an hour of tedious explanation by the representative of one of the warriors, Aleksander began to tremble. His hands, his legs, his body quivered as if the bitter winter outside had snuffed out the hearth fires and settled upon him alone. “Continue,” said the Prince tightly when the speaker paused to stare at him. Quiet murmuring rippled through the audience hall. “I said, continue.”

The man went on, then yielded to the other party in the disagreement. I did not see how Aleksander could possibly be taking in the details of family connections, old debts, warriors’ promises, marriage pledges—the very minutiae of Derzhi clan lore. He looked like a volcano ready to spew fire. Onlookers were shaking their heads, frowning, wondering. And there among them, leaning casually against a doorway was Korelyi, the Khelid emissary ... smiling.

I quickly dropped my eyes to my ledger. Never, ever could I allow the Khelid to see me watching him, to see that I knew. I had no power. I would be helpless. There were things in the world that made enslavement to the Derzhi seem benign by comparison, and I could not allow myself to so much as think of them. Demons were attracted by fear. But in the instant of time that it took me to pull my eyes from the smiling Khelid, he made a slight movement of his fingers and my heart skipped a beat. I whipped my head back up to look at Aleksander. He was shaking his head from side to side as if to clear it. What was happening?

“I beg you, do not deny my saying, Your Highness,” said the bewildered advocate. “I have not even bespoke the agreement with the young lady in the matter as to Baron Juzai’s suit.”

“No, no. I’m not denying ... Proceed, Cerdan. I understand the import of this matter, and I will give you full hearing as I promised.” The Prince could scarcely pronounce the words through his gritted teeth.

For another half hour Aleksander battled his strange malady, setting his jaw in iron. As I wrote down the particulars of the case, I would glance up from time to time and let my eyes wander to the slender man by the door. There ... another flick of his fingers. The Prince tightened his grip on the chair and forced himself still. The man in purple was not smiling anymore.

When both sides had presented all their evidence, Aleksander closed his eyes briefly, then said, “I must give this case full consideration. Such noble servants of the Empire will receive all due respect. I shall retire to my chambers and issue my judgment tomorrow morning.” With such self-mastery as I had never witnessed, Aleksander stood, acknowledged the two lords’ genuflection and the obeisance of the crowd, and hurried out of the Hall.

The people broke into frenzy the moment he was gone.

“What ails him?”

“Must be a sickness ... I’ve not seen its like before.”

“I’ve heard he’s not slept in three days.”

“Ah, it’s that he has no patience for ruling. He has not his father’s strength.”

“Arrogant twit. He’ll never have wit enough to rule. Did you hear ... ?”

“We’ll pray he has fine sons and dies young.”

The comment in which I was most interested was made without words. As I stood up, stoppering my ink, gathering up papers, closing the ledger to give into the safekeeping of the Chamberlain, I cast my eyes about once more. The scowling Khelid brutally shoved three servants aside and disappeared through the door.

It didn’t work as you expected, did it?
I thought, as I packed the pens and sharpening knife into the wooden writing case.
He was stronger than you believed. Stubborn.

I ran my ink-stained fingers idly over the maroon leather binding of the ledger. Not sleeping. Of course that was it. It would be easy to find the cause of Prince Aleksander’s malady. A gift, perhaps, a miniature bronze horse or porcelain egg ... or something left behind under a cushion, perhaps a ring or a kerchief. No, not a kerchief. Cloth was too weak. It could be a brass box, suitable for a jewel, or a shining pebble dropped in one of the garden pots in Aleksander’s chambers. All you had to know was what to look for, what to see, what to listen for when you took yourself into silence....

I shook my head as if to dismiss a dream and snuffed the lamp that had illuminated my writing. The First Audience Hall was almost deserted. Sweepers came through with mops to clear away the puddles and dirt left by the hundreds of muddy boots.

What was I thinking? I had no power. No weapon. I cared nothing ... far less than nothing for Prince Aleksander. He and his people had stolen my life, had destroyed everything of meaning to me, had maimed and mutilated my body and mind, and ruined ...
oh gods, don’t let it come. Not now.
I stared at my trembling hand that held the ledger book. I forced myself to trace its lines, the long, bony fingers stained with ink, the roughness and cracks of constant cold, the steel wrist band that would be with me until death, and then, in my mind, I transformed my hand into the aged, dried husk it would become. The reality and the illusion were not yet the same. Not yet. I banished the unwanted memory quite effectively, but I could not dismiss my belief in what I had to do.

It was not for Aleksander or any Derzhi that I picked up the maroon book and set off for the Prince’s chambers. It was not for any larger purpose. My larger purposes had been stripped away with my power. It was for myself. So I would not see the sly smile in company with the ice-blue eyes. So I could sleep again in peace.

“I’ve brought the recording book. The Prince needs my notes to aid in his deliberation,” I said to the door guard who had searched me and my writing case thoroughly and didn’t quite know what to do with me.

“But he hasn’t sent for you.”

“Well, he may have. It’s all so strange, how he can’t sleep, and we’ve been having all these cases in the Dar Heged, and it’s very confusing. I think he commanded me to bring it. Perhaps it would be best if you ask him, you being a Derzhi warrior and all. He’ll not have you hanged just for asking like he would a slave. Maybe a lash or two, nothing more. But if he wanted me to come and you didn’t let me in ...” I shrugged my shoulders. “Yes, you should be the one to ask him.”

The guard blanched and glanced over his shoulder as if the whip might be bearing down on him already. “Certainly not, slave. If you can’t hear things right, then you’ll have to take your own consequences.”

“He’s been here before when the Prince needs writing work done,” said one of the gentleman attendants. “And if he dies for his stupidity, who cares?”

Indeed.

They tapped on the door, opened it, and shoved me inside. It was very dark. Heavy draperies had been drawn across the windows and only a single candle gleamed on the table by the door. Aleksander was sprawled on the couch, one arm thrown over his face, and I screamed silently at myself for an idiot. He was asleep. I’d risked my neck for nothing.

“Who is it?”

Quickly I knelt, bent my head, and took a deep breath. “Seyonne, Your Highness.”

He pulled his arm away, and his eyes were like dark holes in the dim room. “Have you a particular wish to die this day, Ezzarian? I did not send for you.”

“No, my lord. I’ve come to give you back your sleep.”

He sat up abruptly. “Has the whole world gone mad and not just me? I’ll have you flayed and hung out for the wolves for this impertinence.”

BOOK: Transformation

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